Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] That's my intro music, just a hum.
[00:00:05] I was going to ask DJ what note that was, but he's not in here at the moment. I think he took a kid to children's church or he's just in children's church. One of the two.
[00:00:16] We take up your cross and follow Jesus is a.
[00:00:28] We have so many crosses, so many crosses in our world.
[00:00:35] You can take up a cross at Hobby Lobby.
[00:00:38] They're decorated.
[00:00:40] They're made of flowers, they're made of wood, they're made of.
[00:00:44] They're all over the place.
[00:00:47] And we are so used to a cross, we've seen them so many times. They just see one, you go, oh, that's a cross. And we associate it with Jesus.
[00:01:02] We have associated a cross with Jesus so much that when we hear Jesus talk about a cross and we hear Peter and his disciples talk about the cross, we think they're talking about the cross we're talking about.
[00:01:16] But they aren't talking about the cross. We're talking about.
[00:01:22] For us the cross is something that can hang in a kitchen.
[00:01:26] For us the cross is something that you can, that can dangle from a rear view mirror.
[00:01:33] The absurdity of such a thing. In the first century, if you would have walked into a house and gone into their kitchen and saw a cross on the wall, you would have left immediately.
[00:01:49] What was that?
[00:01:53] We. Okay, the whole church just settled at once if you would have walked in and seen a cross because it wouldn't have meant redemption, it wouldn't have meant a hope, it wouldn't have meant salvation and forgiveness. It means death.
[00:02:12] And not just regular death. It meant death for criminals. It was the way those who had been convicted died.
[00:02:21] It was for those who deserved was agony. And it was the tool of the Roman government to put in place to make sure everybody bent to their will.
[00:02:38] And you didn't want a cross.
[00:02:43] And so if Jesus is going to be the Messiah, particularly in the disciples minds, that doesn't mean cross, it doesn't mean taking up a cross.
[00:02:57] So Jesus has this discussion with his disciples where he asked them, he came. We'll start in. This is not. We don't need to be in Matthew 24.
[00:03:10] Get down to the Mark 8 passage.
[00:03:13] He starts in Mark 8 and says when he came to this place, this village in Caesarea Philippi, he went with his disciples and he asked them, who do people say that I am? Now this is a dangerous question to ask. Do not ask your friends this question.
[00:03:40] Have you ever heard what people say about you?
[00:03:46] I had an elder One time, not here, but when I was in Arkansas, an elder come. He was away visiting some other church. He went on vacation and he went to church on his vacation. That's a good Christian. Or silly, I'm not sure which.
[00:03:59] But he went to church and he said he came back and he was an Arkansan through and through.
[00:04:07] He said, man I met, somebody knows you.
[00:04:10] Oh, really?
[00:04:12] He goes, yeah. He said, you know, you've.
[00:04:16] I heard y'all hired Benjamin Neely. And I said, yeah, you did.
[00:04:24] He said, we like him.
[00:04:26] The guy said, I heard he's an acquired taste.
[00:04:33] And I said, ed, why are you telling me this?
[00:04:42] There is no part about this conversation that makes me happy.
[00:04:49] This is an inside thought.
[00:04:52] He goes, I actually told him. I said, well, I don't necessarily know. I want to hear that. He goes, oh, I told him we've acquired the taste. I was like, oh, well, I feel a lot better now.
[00:05:08] Thank you for making this difficult and awkward. Good.
[00:05:12] Don't ask your friends this, but Jesus. Jesus had a reason. He said, who do people say I am?
[00:05:20] They answered him, well, some say John the Baptist, and others say Elijah. And others still one of the prophets.
[00:05:29] And he asked them, but who do you say that I am? And Peter. Peter was. He's probably stood and straightened his tie.
[00:05:39] He wasn't wearing a tie.
[00:05:43] Yes, praise God. But he said, who do you say that I am? And Peter answered him, you are the Messiah. Now, time out.
[00:05:55] What did Peter mean by Messiah?
[00:06:01] Now we hear that word. That's church word. We know Messiah. We know those words. We know Christ.
[00:06:08] And if you're really advanced, you know that Christ and Messiah are the same word in just two different languages, and they just mean the chosen, anointed king. That's all.
[00:06:20] And so when he's making a declaration about Jesus here, when he says, you are the Messiah, he's saying with one word, you are the king that God promised.
[00:06:35] You are the king that God gave us.
[00:06:43] And Jesus didn't then say, excellent. Now go tell everyone.
[00:06:49] Share this on Facebook like and thumbs up. Subscribe.
[00:06:56] He sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him.
[00:07:08] Real quick, is that weird?
[00:07:11] It seems odd. It seems kind of out of place for them to get the answer right, to say, you are the Messiah.
[00:07:20] And Jesus says, do not tell anyone.
[00:07:25] He sternly warned them, take it seriously. Do not tell a soul.
[00:07:33] And Jesus tells them not to tell anybody because they are not ready to tell anyone. They do not have in the slightest idea at this point what exactly it's going to look like for Jesus to be the king. They don't understand it.
[00:07:49] And I think we're still wrestling and grappling with that today.
[00:07:54] Like, we want Jesus to be the king, but we want him funded by our political action committee.
[00:08:07] We want Jesus to be the king, but a king that, you know, sort of does the things I want the king to do.
[00:08:18] Then he began to teach them, and this is where you can see the disciples understanding versus Jesus understanding.
[00:08:28] He began to teach them that the son of man, Jesus, must undergo great suffering and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the scribes, and be killed and after three days, be resurrected.
[00:08:49] After three days, rise again.
[00:08:53] And he said all this quite openly.
[00:08:57] And then Peter loosened his tie and began to rebuke him.
[00:09:05] He began to rebuke this.
[00:09:08] What Jesus has said, I've got it. Everyone's going to reject me. I'm telling you right now, everyone's going to reject me. And I'm going to be crucified. I'm going to die. I'm going to come back, but I'm going to die. And Peter's king couldn't merge with the Messiah.
[00:09:28] What Peter wanted the king to be, it wasn't going to mesh with what Jesus actually was.
[00:09:37] And so he rebukes him, but turning and looking at the disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, get behind me, Satan.
[00:09:53] Okay, again, kind of harsh.
[00:09:56] But here Satan's just a good Hebrew word that means adversary.
[00:10:03] You're standing in the way of what the kingdom is trying to accomplish.
[00:10:10] You're getting in the way of this with your. With Peter's understanding about, well, if you're gonna be the king, you can't lose.
[00:10:19] If you're gonna be the king, you can't die. If you're gonna be the king, you can't give up.
[00:10:26] He's standing in the way of the gospel.
[00:10:32] He said, for your mind, you are setting your mind not on holy or divine things, but on earthly things. You think winning is being in charge.
[00:10:46] You think victory is getting your way.
[00:10:51] You think the reward is to rule. And you're wrong.
[00:10:59] So Jesus calls the crowds to him and said, if anyone wants to become my follower, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. Now, this is such a fun turn of phrase here. If we can go back to that slide, let them deny themselves.
[00:11:25] If you were a king, if you walked out and said, I am the new king, and a bunch of people thought, yeah, that's right, we're going to follow this guy, you'd often say something like this. You would often call on the people who were wanting to follow you to give up of their own way and follow your way. But a lot of times, and most of the time, almost every other time except the time Jesus said it, the call was not to pick up a cross, but a sword, to pick up your own weapon and be the one who is victorious.
[00:12:11] We want to start a fight, everyone. Now, in Arkansas, we didn't have swords. We just had pitchforks and lanterns and jaw harps. But that was funny just to me. I'm sorry. Okay. It was good. All right. The.
[00:12:28] We just.
[00:12:30] You're picking up the weapon of violence. You're picking up the thing that's going to overpower the other.
[00:12:38] So for Jesus here, to use a very common phrase of messiahs in the past who have said, take up your sword and follow me, Peter was ready. I don't know if you remember this. He had a sword just cutting people's ears off in gardens, just flacking away.
[00:13:07] He had a sword. He was ready to use it.
[00:13:11] Quick Draw McPeter, they called him.
[00:13:15] Just swinging away. Just cut. Now, he wasn't aiming for an ear. I don't know if you know this.
[00:13:22] You don't. If you want to choose violence. If you want to stop someone from arresting your friend, you don't cut off their ear.
[00:13:32] That's not the first thing you learn with a sword.
[00:13:39] Peter was going for the head.
[00:13:42] And he's not a good swordsman. Pulls it, swings, and the guy sees it and ducks. And that's how an ear gets cut off. He didn't just, you know, he didn't just get the ear.
[00:13:59] This is a wild, aggressive movement he made with the sword. It's. He was. He. He. He got the ear. He was looking for a lope. He wanted to lop off the head.
[00:14:13] He wanted violence.
[00:14:17] This is the only way Peter knew how to function, to win.
[00:14:24] He was ready to take up his sword.
[00:14:28] I'll be honest with you. I think sometimes we're a little more comfortable with swords.
[00:14:33] We're a little more comfortable taking up our sword and getting our way.
[00:14:39] Winning the right comeback, the right argument, the right phrasing of words to make people understand that we're the right one and they're the wrong ones. Have you met people who are wrong?
[00:14:57] Was the mirror a start?
[00:15:04] Because we all are.
[00:15:07] We all have incorrect attitudes and bad understandings of things. It just is what it is. So when we force ourselves on, when we choose power over what Jesus is offering, when we choose aggression over what Jesus is offering. When we choose having the right argument instead of having the right attitude, we're choosing a sword, man. Sword just didn't come out of Jesus mouth.
[00:15:46] If anyone wants to become my followers, let him take up his cross, take up their cross and follow me.
[00:16:02] We're gonna lose this battle, he says.
[00:16:08] But the cross for Jesus wasn't the most powerful thing.
[00:16:16] Jesus didn't think that he had to defeat the cross to win humanity to become king.
[00:16:27] He knew that his presence on the cross overwhelms the cross.
[00:16:37] And God's power over death defeats the grave.
[00:16:44] Says those who want to save their lives will lose their lives.
[00:16:52] Those who lose their life for my sake, for Jesus sake, for the Messiah's sake, the one who takes up his cross, for my sake, and for the sake of the good news that the kingdom has arrived, that the kingdom of God is in this place. It's functioning.
[00:17:12] It's trying to let all heaven break loose.
[00:17:17] It's trying to bring into the world a community, as Eugene Peterson says, a community of life in a country of death.
[00:17:32] We are colonizing the world for the sake of our king, a king who doesn't colonize with power and with swords, but with submission and resurrection and victory through death. We give up of ourselves. If we're not willing to do that.
[00:17:52] We think we can hold on to our life, we can't.
[00:17:58] But he says, if you give up of yourself for Jesus sake and for the sake of the gospel, you will find salvation there.
[00:18:10] I think it is incredibly natural for us human beings to want what we want and for everyone to get out of our way, to desire what we desire, to need what we need, and just everyone give it to me. And sometimes we think Jesus role is for me to get my way in his name.
[00:18:37] And the role of Jesus was to give up of himself.
[00:18:43] He showed us how to do that, to give up of himself to save us.
[00:18:51] So we therefore are called to the same thing.
[00:18:56] And it's not power that wins.
[00:19:03] You are not going to find yourself in the presence of God one day and wonder in God's presence. You make it to the presence of God and it is more glorious than you've ever seen and more powerful than you're impacted, more than you've ever been impacted. You are resurrected. You are ready to live forever in the presence of God. And God finally makes his way to you and puts his hands on your face and says, oh, I'm so glad you're here in that moment. You're not going to Go. Was I right about everything?
[00:19:44] More importantly, were the people I disliked wrong?
[00:19:51] You will be overwhelmed by what God did for you.
[00:19:58] God sacrificing himself, Jesus. We're in Philippians a lot today.
[00:20:04] Jesus was equal to God, but did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but humbled himself. Not just humbled himself to humanity, but humanity to die. And not just a death, but a death on a cross. I mean, you see how He In Philippians 2, there, he walks that down.
[00:20:26] Death of a criminal laid in a grave.
[00:20:35] And his resurrection brings us to the place that every knee will bow at the sound of his name.
[00:20:44] See, it's the cross on our kitchen walls that tell us something about how powerful Jesus is. This weapon that the Romans used to make others submit.
[00:20:59] Now, some of you don't have crosses on your walls. Some of you do. And I am not one of those preachers that tells you what you should decorate with.
[00:21:08] But the fact that 2,000 years later, we see a cross and we see salvation shows what Jesus can do to anything.
[00:21:24] Before Jesus, I am selfish and broken and fighting to get my way.
[00:21:36] But when Jesus is laid upon anything, even an element of destruction and death, Jesus can change that thing to a beacon of salvation and hope.
[00:21:53] He did that with a cross, and he's done that with us.
[00:21:58] That when the Spirit resides in us, on us as his community, the Spirit is in this place. Jesus affects us.
[00:22:10] And we are no longer just a church that has a doctrine, that has practices and traditions. We are a church that is impacted by the Messiah, willing to give up of ourselves so that the kingdom can be glorified and the good news can be spread.
