Gospel-Centered Living: Gaining through Losing
Mark 8:32b-9:1
Introduction: During our time serving as
missionaries in Brazil, one of the most popular churches espoused a theology of
health, wealth, and prosperity. They taught that if you have faith, you will
experience blessing and abundance in terms of physical health and material
blessings. You just have to believe, and then, name it and claim it. That is
attractive, but that is not the message of the Bible. John said it this way in
his first epistle:
15 Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the
world, the love of the Father is not in him.
16 For all that is in the world- the desires of the flesh and
the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions- is not from the Father but is
from the world. 17 And the
world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God
abides forever (I John 2:15-17).
In our passage today Jesus makes some paradoxical statements. He says he
is the Christ, but that He is going to suffer and be killed. If you want to
follow Him, you need to be willing to be condemned by the world. If you want to
experience TRUE Life, you need to be willing, if necessary, to lose everything! Does that sounds like a great recruitment plan? That is God's plan.
Jesus has been training the
disciples, leading them deeper in their understanding, laying a foundation for
their illumination after the resurrection when He would open their minds to
understand what He had taught them, and what the Scriptures said about Him (Lk
24:44,45). That pattern should encourage us not to grow complacent in our
faith, satisfied with what we view as a sufficient understanding of the Gospel.
We are called to radical discipleship. Peter made a key, correct
declaration in answer to Jesus’ question, “Who
do you say that I am?” In response to that confession, Jesus begins to
plainly teach the disciples what the Messiah had come to do. The question is
posed: In view of the Cross, what does it mean to follow Him?
Context (31-32a): After Peter confesses Jesus as Messiah, the Lord immediately tells the
disciples not to tell anyone… and then He begins to teach them plainly
God’s plan as it was about to unfold…
31 And he began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things
and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be
killed, and after three days rise again.
32 And he said this plainly.
Jesus began to plainly teach His disciples about his coming
passion, death, and resurrection. It is one thing to recognize who He is,
but they still needed to grow in their understanding of what He came to do.
They were not alone by the way. Contemporary Judaism had largely lost the
biblical idea of a suffering Messiah. This was a shocking concept, a suffering,
dying Messiah? He was to be their Rescuer! As He teaches about His suffering,
He also cautions his hearers to count the cost of following Him…
The BIG Idea: We must love Jesus more than life, knowing that in Him alone can we
have true life. Four responses will
guide us, 1) Trust; 2) Obey; 3) Love, and 4) Hope…
I. Trust: A Follower of Jesus must believe God, and embrace His way
as revealed in the Gospel (32b-33). Peter had confessed Jesus as messiah, and
then Jesus spoke of what would happen in Jerusalem, His death and resurrection.
And now…
And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. 33 But turning and seeing his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, "Get behind me, Satan! For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man."
Peter had just made his confession,
recognizing that Jesus is the Christ, the long-awaited Messiah. For Peter, and
perhaps for all the disciples, that may have been the high point of their faith
journey up so far. But his response to Jesus’ clarifying teaching about what
HAD to happen, the sovereign plan of God, makes it painfully clear that His
understanding of who Jesus is still fell short. “Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him…” Peter reasoned, essentially, “You are the
messiah Jesus! There is no way you are going to suffer and die!” Jesus’
response? “Get behind me Satan!”
That severe rebuke no doubt
shook Peter to his core. From the mountain top, when he declared that Jesus is
messiah, to the deepest hole in ground but with no place to hide, “Get behind me Satan!” Just as Satan
tempted Jesus in the wilderness, inviting Him to avoid the Via Dolorosa, the Way of Suffering, Peter dared to rebuke the Lord
himself, he could not fathom a suffering, dying, Messiah. Mark only gives a
summary statement about the temptation of Christ in the wilderness. We get the
details of the three specific temptations from Luke and Matthew. Remember the Tempter in Matthew 4:8-9,
8 Again, the devil took him to a very
high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their
glory. 9 And he said to him,
"All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me."
From Luke’s Gospel we know that when
the devil had finished all his temptations He left him until an opportune time
(Luke 4:13). The devil had tried to tempt Jesus to avoid the Cross: “I’ll make
you king of the world right now—just admit that you are not God, I am!” Like
Satan, Peter too wanted Jesus to avoid the Cross! The Lord knew that it was necessary. Peter, having
recognized and confessed that Jesus is the promised Messiah, could not fathom
the Way of the Cross. It did not seem reasonable, it was not something he was
ready to accept. Though he had just confessed Jesus as Messiah, He was not
ready to believe Jesus, to trust Him, to take Him at His word, at least
not when the teaching got this difficult! He was not yet focused on
the things of God. He did not yet understand that God’s ways are not our
ways, and that His way is always best. His way is the only way. The Big Idea
here is that if we would follow Him, we must love Him more than life, know that
in Him alone can we have true life. We
must 1) TRUST Him…
II. Obey: A Follower of Jesus must walk in the Master’s steps, choosing
obedience over honor, acceptance, comfort, and security (34).
“…let
him deny himself and take up his cross, and follow Me…”
Self-denial is a concept
that is not popular in hardly any context, unless it is a means to an end.
Someone might give up sweets to get their weight to a healthier level—denying
themselves something they enjoy for their own long-term greater good. The
period of Lent, which is followed by some Christian traditions commemorates the
40 days that Jesus fasted in the wilderness after his baptism. Typically,
during this period of forty days before Easter, people in those
traditions will give up something: eating sweets, watching TV, logging onto
Facebook… They do this as a reminder of
Christ being tempted in the wilderness, and in the hope is that their
“self-denial” will lead them into a time of reflection and preparation for the
celebration of Good Friday and Easter. The irony we saw during our time in
Brazil was that for many Brazilians, before lent starts, they have Carnival, an uncontrolled hedonistic
celebration that seemingly aims to sin as much as possible before Lent begins
and they need to repent!
Jesus here calls the crowd
together with His disciples and He gives a shocking statement about what it
means to follow Him: “…let him deny
himself, take up his cross, and follow me…” For listeners in Roman
controlled Palestine in the first century, there was no doubt what Jesus was
saying. The Cross was not a piece of jewelry or a wall hanging. It was a humiliating,
tortuous, means of execution. It meant death. Prisoners were required to
carry the cross-beam to their own execution. They were then stripped, fastened
to the cross member, and lifted up, suspended off the ground. Each breath would
be difficult and painful. Typically, the prisoners would die of
asphyxiation. It was a symbol of
opposition by the authorities, of shame as they hung there naked and condemned,
of suffering, as it was a slow, torturous punishment. And of death, as that was
the inevitable result. It is the exact opposite of what we would naturally long
for: not opposition, we want approval, not shame, we want honor, not suffering,
we want comfort, not death, we want security!
We are all shocked to
hear about the violence in our city, and elsewhere in our country, and it
is more shocking still when children or schools are threatened by it. We need
to address the social and psychological factors of such violence, but the root cause is deeper, it is spiritual. We know that
every day, men and women put on the uniform knowing that if something happens they
will be asked to move toward the threat, whatever it might be, seeking
to save others. They are trained and ready to do it. If you take that job,
you need to count the cost. We need to be thankful for those who would put
themselves at risk to keep us safe every day. Yet we know the root cause of
crime and violence: we live in a fallen world, and the effects of sin are all
around us. If sin is the problem, JESUS is the answer!
Here in our passage Jesus
was telling the crowd they needed to count the cost if they wanted to follow
Him. It seems like a contradiction, but it is true that salvation costs us
nothing, because the price was paid for us—that is grace. On the other hand
discipleship costs us everything—we are not our own, we have been bought with a
price. There is the famous story of the 19th century missionary…
…James
Calvert went out as a missionary to the cannibals of the Fiji Islands. The ship
captain tried to turn him back, saying, “You will lose your life and the lives
of those with you if you go among such savages.” Calvert replied, “We died
before we came here.”
They knew what the cost might be, but they were compelled to follow Jesus,
and take up the call. Some of those early missionaries packed their belongings
in a coffin, knowing it was likely that they would not return. Many didn’t. The
apostle Paul made a similar statement in His letter to the Galatians,
“…I have been crucified with
Christ. 20 It is no longer I
who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I
live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me…” (Gal 2:20).
Taking up
your cross to follow Jesus means choosing Him over the acceptance, honor,
comfort, and security that we can find in world. That is the Big Idea: We must
love Jesus more than life, knowing that in Him alone can we have true life. So we must TRUST Him, we must
OBEY Him, and thirdly, we must…
III. Love: A Follower of Jesus will choose to love Jesus more than life in this
world (35-38).
35 For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses
his life for my
sake and the gospel's will save it.
36 For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and
forfeit his soul? 37
For what can a man give in return for his soul? 38 For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in
this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed…
V.35 presents a paradoxical
statement, that it seems to me is a play on words. The term translated “life” by
the ESV in v.35, and “soul” in verse 36 and 37 [yuch] can either mean “life” or “soul” depending
on the context. An earlier version of the ESV (2001) translated “life” all four
times in this context. This translation better reflects the idea that the Lord
is talking about more than our physical life in this fallen world. Jesus made a
similar statement in John 12:24-26 when He said,
24 Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth
and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. 25 Whoever loves his life loses
it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal
life. 26 If anyone serves me,
he must follow me; and where I am, there will my servant be also. If anyone
serves me, the Father will honor him.
I think that is the point
in Mark as well: Life, true life, comes not through playing it safe, or through
maintaining our comfort and security. It comes from loving God more than we
love life in this fallen world, and pursuing intimacy with Him above the
acceptance, honor, comfort, and security that the world would offer. That is
the Big Idea: Do we love Jesus more than life? Do I? I
hope I do, I want to. Know that in Him alone can we have true life! So, we’ll trust Him, we’ll choose to obey
Him, we’ll love Him more than we love the world, and we’ll be motivated
by a sure…
IV. Hope: A Follower of Jesus has hope in the sure promise of His return (8:38c-9:1). When will our victory be
realized?
…when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy
angels." Mark 9:1And he said to them, "Truly, I say to you, there are some standing
here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God after it has
come with power."
We’ll pick up with 9:1 next
time, but I wanted to include a mention of this point because it gives some
perspective to the teaching in this passage. It invites us to consider the
bigger picture and to remember that we were created for eternity—that God has a
plan, a good plan, that by His grace includes us. We preach in this church
Christ crucified, risen, and coming again. All of human history up to the time
of Christ was pointing to the coming of the promised Rescuer who would come to
do for us what we could not do for ourselves. Or, as has been said, “He came to pay a debt He didn't owe because
we owed a debt we couldn't pay.” That happened when God showed his love toward us in that while
we were yet sinners, Christ died for us (Rom 5:8; I John 4:9). Since the
Cross / Resurrection / Ascension, all of history has been moving toward the
promise of His return. Jesus is
coming again. That is a promise. He will establish His rule, and every knee will bow and every tongue confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord.
It is maybe a little strange,
that if we believe God is real and that eternity is at stake, that we can get
so comfortable here and now. What do we really “love”? Look again at what John
said in his first letter, the passage we started with,
15 Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16 For all that is in the world- the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions- is not from the Father but is from the world. 17 And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever...
…about a Christian woman who was always bright, cheerful, and optimistic,
even though she was confined to her room because of illness. She lived in an
attic apartment on the fifth floor of an old, rundown building. A friend
decided to visit her one day and brought along another woman -- a person of
great wealth. Since there was no elevator, the two ladies began the long climb
upward. When they reached the second floor, the well-to-do woman commented,
"What a dark and filthy place!" Her friend replied, "It's better
higher up." When they arrived at the third landing, the remark was made,
"Things look even worse here." Again the reply, "It's better
higher up." The two women finally reached the attic level, where they
found the bedridden saint of God. A smile on her face radiated the joy that filled
her heart. Although the room was clean and flowers were on the window sill, the
wealthy visitor could not get over the stark surroundings in which this woman
lived. She blurted out, "It must be very difficult for you to be here like
this!" Without a moment's hesitation the shut-in responded, "It's
better higher up." She was not looking at temporal things. With the eye of
faith fixed on the eternal, she had found the secret of true satisfaction and
contentment.
What is God saying to me in
this passage? Trust Him, Obey Him, Love Him, Hope
in His coming. We must love Jesus more than life, knowing that in Him alone can we
have true life.
What would God have me to do in response to this passage?
1. In another context, Jesus will ask Peter, “Peter, do you love me?”
How would you answer that? It is easy to talk about loving Jesus more
than life. In some parts of the world it is not a theory, you must count the
cost to be a Christ follower. As in Peter’s first letter, Mark’s readers knew
they were pilgrims in a fallen world. Would we die for our faith in Christ? For
believers in Syria who had swords put to their throats (in the very region
where Jesus is teaching the disciples) they had to decide. Do we love
Jesus more than life? Do we really believe that the suffering of this present age is not worthy to be compared to the
glory that shall be revealed in us (Rom 8:18)?
2. Are we fighting desperately for as much comfort and security as we can have now,
or do we have a hope that goes beyond this life? As Jesus spoke, He was
preparing His followers for what was coming. As Mark wrote, believers
throughout the Roman world knew too well what the Cross meant. This is not
the health and wealth gospel that is preached in many venues here and around
the world. This isn’t the feel-good, “easy believe-ism” that is so popular.
Mark is inviting us to consider the
big picture, to think about what God has done for us in Christ, and then to
believe Him, trust Him, obey Him, follow Him. Eternity is at stake! Hope in Him. Let’s take a risk,
and tell our neighbors about Him!
3. Focus your heart on the love God
revealed to us at the Cross. God commended His love toward us in that while
we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Let’s share in the Table, as we
remember Him, and the love He showed in laying down His life for us... AMEN.
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