Law & Grace - Matthew 16:1-28

Good morning. Before we proceed into the message, something I wanted to bring up is this marriage seminar that will be offered this next Saturday here. The reason I wanted to bring it up is I'm a little puzzled, and I figure we probably didn't mention it enough. Two Saturdays ago, we held this seminar in Fort Collins, and we had 26 sign up. Just yesterday, we had one at Berean Bible Church and over 50 signed up. Holly Hills, we now have six. So I'm trying to scratch my head and figure out why. And I figured at least I'd let you know about it.

This is not one we've done here before. So just in case you're thinking, oh, this is a repeat, it's not. We had numerous people come up and say, you know, I've never heard this stuff before. This is great. And some of them wanted to come to this one at Holly Hills and repeat it. And a few people who couldn't make it said they wanted to come. So anyway, I just wanted to make you aware of it. It's been, you know, good feedback from those who have been at it before.

All right. Now, oh, one more thing. This is also for singles. who are anticipating someday getting married, those who are not yet engaged but thinking of that, those who are engaged, those who are married for whatever length of time. I've even had some people come who were divorced and trying to figure out, how am I supposed to have done this? I even had one fellow say, where were you about ten years ago? Yeah, it would be appropriate. Yeah. OK.

Now, today's passage, as Connor read for us, starts off in this area of Caesarea Philippi. The reality is it says in the district of Caesarea Philippi. That is up in this area north of the Sea of Galilee. And then there's a little lake there called Lake Hula, or the other name for it is Lake Semiconidas. But that sounds like a disease. Anyway. So it's in that area, more likely that they were in that district and that is that area but closer to the Sea of Galilee.

Jesus in this passage focuses, most of the passage he's focused on his disciples so that they will focus on him. That's the summary statement for this chapter. Some Pharisees and Sadducees came to Jesus asking for a sign. As we've been seeing, they keep coming to Jesus, and it usually isn't to ask for something other than trouble. But they came asking for a sign. They had actually asked for a sign before, and he gives an answer like the one he gave before.

He tells his disciples to beware the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees, which is something that takes a while for them to figure out. Then, in verses 13 through 23, Jesus asks his disciples about, who do others say that I am? And then he asks who they say he is, and then tells them what must soon take place.

We'll talk about that in more detail. The last verses, 24 through 28, he underscores the cost of discipleship. As he talks to his disciples and continually puts before them, this is what it's going to cost you to be my disciple. He speaks of the high price of being his disciple. All right.

As a reminder, and this is from some Sundays back, there are two Gospels, yes, two, that span from Genesis to Revelation. And the two Gospels are the Gospel of Substitution and the Gospel of the Kingdom. They start in Genesis, the very first book of the Bible, even in some cases in the first chapters of Genesis, and continue on into the last chapters of the book of Revelation, the last book of the Bible. And the gospel of substitution is the message that Christ died in the place of every single human being for all time. He died for our sins, and he died as our substitute. Right connected with that is that he was buried and that he rose again. So that's the gospel of substitution that actually starts in Genesis chapter 3 and continues all the way to the last chapters of Revelation where Christ is called the Lamb. The gospel of the kingdom is the one that Jesus started preaching about chapter 4 in the book of Matthew.

It is that Christ will reign over Israel and the entire earth. He'll reign over Israel as Israel's King. He'll reign over the entire earth as King of Kings and Lord of Lords for a thousand years as the last of all earth times. The last of this earth's time.

Here is a map that we've shown previously. It comes from Genesis 15, 18-21 and Ezekiel chapter 48. This is Israel's land by tribe in the coming time of Israel's kingdom, in the coming kingdom time. And one of the things that you'll notice is that each of the tribes has a land that runs kind of like a horizontal stripe, and it goes from the Mediterranean all the way to the Euphrates River. It includes about eight of the current kingdoms or nations that are there presently. but it extends into Iraq and into the area just north of Kuwait.

This is the coming kingdom. Now, one of the things we find in this passage is that the Pharisees keep acting like, well, Pharisees. This agency is right along with them. Here in Matthew 12, 38, the scribes and Pharisees, and those two groups you often see listed together, asked to see a sign from Jesus in that chapter. That's chapter 12.

But in this chapter, Matthew 16.1, some of the Pharisees and Sadducees asked for a sign from heaven, meaning from God. They would use, among the Jews, actually a language similar to what we would do.

We oftentimes, instead of saying God, we'll use the word heaven. Instead of saying God knows, we will say heaven knows, right? Instead of saying, oh my God, we will say, oh my heavens. And so heaven is used as a substitute for saying the name of God. Jesus instead gives these leaders a summary statement.

He says, this is how you guys predict the weather. This is how you guys do it. He says, and you do that, but you can't figure out the signs of the times right now. What time is it? He's telling them. Do you guys understand what time it is? The long-promised King of Israel is here. You're talking to Him. Do you get it? Do you understand? When you see me talking to you, do you understand what's happening? I'm presenting to you an offer to be your long-promised Messiah, but you guys don't get it.

So what we find is Jesus said, it's like I told you before, and previously he gave them more detail in this instance in chapter 16. He speaks just kind of in summary shorthand. In chapter 12, Jesus told the Pharisees before when they asked for a sign from him, a wicked and spiritually adulterous generation seeks after a sign. He tells them that again, right?

Seeking after a sign, what are they looking for? When they look for a sign, it's not a matter of faith. It is a matter, in fact, of saying, I want something I can see. I want something I can see. They've seen a bunch of things, and they're not believing it anyway.

And so that was the first thing, a spiritually adulterous generation. I put in the word spiritually because it's not sexual adultery, it's spiritual adultery. You're following after all but the God who is the true God of Israel. Then also in chapter 12, Jesus tells the Pharisees that the only sign they're going to get is the sign of the prophet Jonah.

That's exactly what he repeats here. In chapter 12, however, he put more detail to it. Jonah was in the great fish for three days and three nights. And so the Son of Man will be in the earth for three days and three nights. All he did here in chapter 16 is he said, only the sign of Jonah will be given. He gave no more detail.

He says, remember back then? It's the same thing now. You guys were wicked and spiritually adulterous. You're asking for a show. I'm not going to give you a show. God already gave that with the prophet Jonah. I'm done. So Jesus left his challengers. He didn't even bother to give them a lengthy answer. And as a matter of fact, if you think about that, here's Jesus and the disciples. They've got boats. Have the Sadducees and Pharisees got boats?

No. That's an easy way to get away. I'm done. See ya. Bye-bye. And everybody gets in the boat, and they're gone. The Sadducees and Pharisees can't follow them. And so we're done. We're over. So they get in there, and they get on the water with the disciples. And he's in the water. And they may have waved hi and bye to the Sadducees and Pharisees. Maybe not. But they get in the water and start going across. So Jesus is crossing the water there. And here you see a higher up. We'll see how well that comes across.

Little tough to see, but there is a snow-covered mountain, Mount Hermon. Which, by the way, that's Israel's only ski area. There's Mount Hermon. But you can see it from the Sea of Galilee, which is below sea level. So real interesting. And the water that flows through the Sea of Galilee, much of it comes from Mount Hermon that you see off in the distance there. So, an interesting viewpoint and the land between the Sea of Galilee and Mount Hermon is this district of Caesarea Philippi. So, I think that gives some perspective here. Here's another view looking at the hills above the Sea of Galilee.

You can see the snow on the top of Mount Hermon a little bit better. One of the reasons I'm focusing on that is because we're going to be looking at Mount Hermon next week. It's a place that they go that is a part of the passage. Anyway, we'll take a look at that.

So anyway, they go across the water, and it dawns on them, we didn't bring any bread. We forgot the bread. Did you bring it? No, I thought you were going to bring it. Oh no! No bread. Here's a dozen of us, here's Jesus, no bread. This is bad. So, I'm sure there was a lot of finger pointing, and I thought, and I thought you, and all that, but nonetheless, no bread. So when Jesus saw this happening, he didn't say, you doofuses. He didn't say that. He used it as a teaching opportunity because they were particularly focused on the bread they didn't have.

So what does he do? He gives it to them as a warning about the Pharisees and the Sadducees that they'd just seen on the other shore. He gives them the warning and they don't get it. They don't understand, which isn't unusual, but they didn't get it. They thought that he was warning them about the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees because they forgot the bread.

Of course, they were real focused on that, right? Ah, we forgot it. He must be talking about that. No. Jesus saw that the disciples didn't get it, that they didn't understand his words of warning, but instead were focused on the lack of bread. They just couldn't get their mind off of, I blew it, I can't, I thought, didn't you? All that, right? Instead, they're just thinking about the lack of bread.

So Jesus begins by pointing back to them about the leftover bread from the feeding of the 5,000 in the two previous chapters back, and then the previous chapter back of the feeding of the 4,000. There was lots of bread. Okay? I'm not talking about bread. Not like that. Okay? We had plenty of bread. Did you see the miracles that were done there? So I can make bread if we need to, right? That's not the issue. But a lack of bread was not his point. He was trying to get him off of that. Jesus had warned them not about the fact that you forgot the bread.

He was warning them about the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees. Now what was wrong with the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees? Now he had made several points. One is the teaching of the Pharisees and the Sadducees added to the Law of Moses.

He'd already pointed out to them, as we saw in the previous chapter, that they would use these additional laws to try to get around all the laws that were there, to make it so that you could actually go farther than you were supposed to, to make it so that you didn't actually have to honor your parents with things that you had. So they would make up additional rules so they didn't have to live by the rules that were already there. And so he gave them a warning about that. But another problem that the Sadducees and Pharisees had, and Jesus encountered this chronically, is that they would use the law to avoid doing the right thing.

If Jesus would heal someone on a Sabbath, they'd say, ah, that's work. You're not supposed to do that. And so guess what Jesus would do? He would deliberately heal on the Sabbath. He'd say, no, you don't understand. The law is not there to prohibit your doing something good. Right? And as we pointed out last week, even the parable of the Good Samaritan was to point out the law there was not to keep you from doing the right thing, but the law was there to have you do the right thing, which included doing something good, even on the Sabbath. If it involved helping someone, that was the thing that ought to be done, not using the law to avoid doing the right thing.

So he warned them about the teaching of the Pharisees and the Sadducees. The Pharisees and the Sadducees, with rare exception, and the Gospel of John actually points out some of those rare exceptions. With rare exception, the Sadducees and the Pharisees did not end up following Christ. Now, Jesus begins asking, And then he asks again, and then he tells.

What am I talking about? Well, we'll get there. He has two questions that he asks. And then what he has to tell them right after that touches on some very important points. And what we're going to be a little bit puzzled about is that the reaction of the disciples to what he asks and what he tells them is mixed. And we'll see what that means in just a minute here.

The disciples answer the questions that talk about, here's what the people of Israel understand, because they're in contact with these people. And so he asks a question that reveals, what do the people of Israel understand? And a great part, they don't understand why Christ has come.

The disciples' answers, however, are also going to reveal how well they understand the two Gospels, remember we talked about the Gospel of Substitution, Gospel of the Kingdom, that Jesus had been telling them about, Kingdom and Substitution. So, remember we have these two Gospels, Gospel of Substitution, Christ died for your sins in your place and was buried and rose again. That's one gospel. The other is the gospel of the kingdom, that Christ is the Messiah of Israel.

The one who, as the Magi were asking about, who was born the King of Israel. So, this first question. Who do the people say that the Son of Man is? Now, he always referred to himself as the Son of Man. when he was talking with the disciples and often in other circumstances.

That term, Son of Man, comes from Daniel 7.13. It is the Son of Man, meaning that he will come back as their Messiah King. As their Messiah King. But there's something else. The word son of, you find son of or child of in the Bible.

And when it's referring spiritually, not just a literal son or child, when it's referring spiritually to someone, it means this. It either means like in character or close in relationship to. Got that? Like in character or close in relationship to. So to be the son of man talks about his humanity. to be the son of God, talks about his deity. He was both fully God and fully man. Okay.

The disciples tell him, here's what people say. Some people say, you're John the Baptist, resurrected, come back. Some will say, oh, he's Elijah. He's Elijah, come back after centuries. Or Jeremiah. Or, no name, one of the prophets, some of the others. Now, so you got about four different answers there. Is any of them quite correct? Not so much. None of them hits on it. The bottom line, the summary statement is, in general, people don't understand. In general, people don't get it.

But the disciples knew what people were saying. They could hear it. They could tell. They'd be in conversations around town. They'd be there mending the nets next to the other fishermen. Whatever it was, they heard these things. So Jesus didn't stop there. It was important that they understand this, that people don't get it. People don't get it. You guys all know, people don't understand. This meant that though the people have regard for Jesus, they're calling him good things, I guess. They don't view him as who he himself claimed to be, the Messiah. So then he turns around, but who do you say that I am? Oh, very important question. Yes, you've heard the rumors. You understand what the perception is out there. But who do you say that I am?

So Peter comes back, ever the one to speak up, right? You are the Christ, the son of the living God is what Peter responds with for him to be the Christ means that he's the Messiah of Israel the one who is the anointed both Christ and Messiah that Christ is from the Greek Christos and Messiah from the Hebrew Hamashiach both of those mean the Anointed One the Anointed One, Israel's King Born King of the Jews. But that's not all. To be the Son means that, of course we've mentioned that Son of means what?

Like in character, close in relationship. It means that He is Deity. He is the Messiah. Psalm 2, which is by the way a future looking psalm. Psalm 2 makes reference to the Son and the Son is Deity in that psalm. And there's reference there, Peter makes, to the living God. And that's a term that starts in the Old Testament. We give a couple references here from Deuteronomy and Joshua. And it continues on into the New Testament all the way into Revelation.

The living God. As a matter of fact, you recall the account, here's David, and there's this challenge from this giant, I think David called it an uncircumcised Philistine, right? This giant Goliath is there, and what's David's passionate statement? He says, how dare you defy the living God. The living God, that's his reference here. God is not a God of the dead. God's not passive. He's not asleep. He is active, and the Bible declares that from the earliest books to the very last one. He is the Living God, and He is also a God who is involved in your life.

So you are the Christ, the Messiah, the Anointed One, the Son of the Living God. Here's an interesting passage in Luke 2. You have it on page 2 of your handout in a similar slide. Luke 22, 67-70, and I've made some edits in order to reflect the Greek text here.

This is Jesus, and you see in the picture there, Jesus before the elders of Israel, and they're interrogating him illegally on the night in which he was betrayed. At this point, he has been betrayed by Judas there in the Garden of Gethsemane. And so he's asked in his interrogation, if you are the Christ, that is the Messiah, the anointed one, tell us. But he said to them, if I tell you, you will not believe. And if I ask a question, you will not answer.

But from now on, the Son of Man, that's the one who will come at the second coming to be Israel's Messiah, will be seated at the right hand of the power of God. This Son of Man is soon to be seated at God's right hand. And verse 70, And they said, Are you the Son of, and I put the definite article from the Greek, Are you the Son of the God then? What a pointed question.

What are they asking Him? Are you Deity? Are you the one who has a personal and close and unique relationship with the Father? Are you that one? And, of course, they're going to love his answer, right? No. And he said to them, yes, I am. Now, you'll notice I put it in all capital letters and bold, and there's a reason for that. You've got that in the bottom part of the slide. It comes in two parts. One, the I am is, and I don't usually throw out a bunch of geeky, geeky stuff, but a go, a me, And that's very special and unique.

In the Greek Old Testament, in Exodus 3.14, when God spoke to Moses out of the burning bush, the Greek Old Testament, where God says, I am, ego eimi. It is a claim to be deity. So you can imagine, here are the elders of Israel. They're asking, are you the son of the God? And his response, yes, I am, in fact, deity.

That was his response. And that was why they immediately cried out, BLASPHEMY! They had no question in their mind what he just claimed. Two words right after yes, and they had no question at all what he claimed. They were not doubting it. We'll see in Matthew 22, 32 when we get there, it's only some chapters ahead of us, Jesus says of God, I am the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, and that I am is Ego Emi. Same claim. So when Jesus responded to the elders of Israel, yes I am, it's not just yes I am in answer to your question, but yes I am in fact deity. That was his statement.

Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah. Now, you see, in Hebrew, the name for son, the word for son is Ben, right? Like we have a Ben or two in this room. The name for son is Ben, right? In Aramaic, a related language, it's Bar. So this is Simon, son of Jonah. Simon, son of Jonah. That's essentially what he's called him here.

Jesus tells Peter that he is blessed because of his declaration of this momentous truth. That the Father has revealed this great truth to him. You see that? That's the focal point of what Jesus is telling Peter. Peter, you have revealed a great truth that the Father has revealed to you. You've stated this.

So in verse 18, we call this expanded and explained, where we put some of the meaning of the Greek there. You are Peter, Petras, a stone, and upon this, and it's a different word, Petra, this bedrock of truth, I will build the church of mine. It's a little bit awkward in the last part there, but that's bringing the Greek across more literally. So he says, you, Peter, are this stone, and I will build my church upon this bedrock." This is the first mention of the church, a separate body from the nation of Israel in the New Testament.

To explain this here, what would be done with any major building or a defensive wall? is they would have soil on top of bedrock. And what would be done, this was done, for example, on the wall that goes all the way around Jerusalem, right? They would dig into the soil down to bedrock. And why do it that way? Because then no one could come in and easily undermine the wall of the defensive wall or of a building.

So, they would first dig down to bedrock and anybody who's going to do a good job would do that. And then on top of the bedrock, then they would have solid stones. Some of the stones, for example, around the temple mount area are as much as 50 tons each stone. So, 50 tons founded on bedrock would be the way it would be done. And so, you would build on top of this bedrock.

And that's essentially what Jesus has just told Peter. Now, so Christ says he will build the church. The church, the body of Christ, is also pictured as a building. 1 Corinthians 3.16, pictured as a temple building.

Ephesians 2.14-22, pictured also as a temple building.

Hebrews 3.1-6, even speaks of Christ as the builder in this case. And that's some examples, that's not all of them. There are other instances that I could point out.

So, this is a mention of the church here for the first time, and the church is a building that Christ builds as is carried out in many places in the New Testament. the building of the church would take place through the apostles. Because here's what's going to happen. Christ, as he just has told them, he is going to be crucified, he is going to be buried, he is going to be raised, and in less than two months time after that, he will leave them, and the apostles will have the responsibility to carry this on. By the way, do we have any volunteers to be an apostle? That's a tough job. So far as we know, only one of them, John, died a natural death. But they did do an astounding job, and a job you wouldn't predict would come from a group of mostly fishermen. All right.

The gates of Hades, Hades was the place of the dead. The gates of Hades refers to gates as centers of fortification and authority. Gates, as they are used in much of the Old Testament and on into the new, oftentimes mean something other than just a piece of hardware. And so it's similar to this. Gates are centers of fortification and authority.

It was the place where the elders would gather. When Abraham went to buy a cave in order to bury Sarah, what did he do? He went to the city gates. That's where the elders met. That's where decisions were made. It was the center of power. and the authority of the powers of death, Satan and his angels.

Satan and his angels will not terminate the church. That's what he's saying. It will not overcome the church. The church will not be terminated by Satan and his angels. Now, after the time of the church comes the time of the kingdom of heaven. So verse 19 tells Peter that he will have a place of authority in the coming earthly reign of Christ, the kingdom of heaven. In Matthew 19, which we'll get to in a couple chapters here, it says, And Jesus said to them, Truly I say to you, that you who have followed me in the regeneration, this is the time when the kingdom will come, when the Son of Man will sit on his glorious throne, you also shall shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel." So here will be the apostles who will have a position of judgment in this coming kingdom.

Here is an instance. Now if you're a believer, this is for you. 1 Corinthians 6, 2-3. Church saints, church believers, judging the future. 1 Corinthians 6, 2, or do you not know that the saints will judge the world? This is ruling and reigning. Verse 3, do you not know that we will judge angels?

Are you ready for that? So this is for you as a believer in the future. Now, in verse 19, Jesus then says, I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, whatever you bind on earth, and this is taking the verb tense from the Greek, shall already have been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall already have been loosed in heaven.

What's that saying? Binding and loosing are terms that the rabbis would use. If something was bound, it meant that it was prohibited. If it was loosed, it meant that it was allowed. And so by stating things this way, what does that mean? Things already have been judged by God. You will be the one to pronounce and announce that so that it's carried out. That's what he's saying. God is the one who establishes what's right and what's wrong and what's done and what's not done. And that's already determined. You will be the one to announce that and to put it into application as you judge. That's what this is saying here. You will be the one to express these things that God has already determined in the future.

Now, Matthew 16, 20. Now this might be puzzling. Jesus told the disciples, because he just asked them, who do you say that I am? He said they should tell no one that he was the Christ. Now is that puzzling or what? Wait a minute, I thought we were supposed to tell everybody! And you set us out two by two? What do you mean don't tell anybody? It may sound puzzling, but first of all, Jesus wasn't trying to get free publicity. This wasn't a publicity stunt or having anything to do with publicity. He didn't want or need publicity.

So that's one reason. But beyond that, Jesus was looking for deeper spiritual recognition, not just somebody who will head up a rebellion against these dirty, filthy, stinking Romans. They really, really, really wanted the Romans out of there. There had already been several revolutions against the Romans attempted starting in the area of Galilee. And did they work? No, they didn't work.

He didn't want to be another one of those. So he wasn't looking for some superficial adoption. He had drafted him as some sort of a political and military hero, or maybe martyr is the right word. He didn't want that. He wanted people to understand spiritually who he was, not just draft him into some short-term and terminal rebellion.

Here is to highlight the time. Here is between Christ's first and second coming. You are about here somewhere. Notice I don't don't put dates on it, right? I just say we're probably closer, right? But, then Christ will come again and establish his kingdom.

Matthew 16, 18 is talking about the time of the church, because he uses the word church, and then Matthew 16.19, that verse is talking about the kingdom. That's the sequence. He talks about them in sequence. He talks about each time on earth in each group. Okay.

Now, more clearly than the sign of Jonah, Jesus is explicit. See, previously he had talked about his being crucified and buried and resurrected in figurative terms. He talked about Jonah And Jonah being in this great fish and then out of the fish and use that as a picture of his crucifixion, burial, and then resurrection. He's going to start being more explicit now from this point forward.

He's going to say, not in just talking about Jonah or pointing to the sign of Jonah, he's going to say, the leaders of Israel, the ones that everybody respects, will be the ones that cause Christ to suffer and that Christ will die. He'll be put to death, but he'll be raised up on the third day. And so what the disciples do, they go, hooray! Right? Not so much.

While we would see that as a good thing that Christ would do because he loves us and he gave himself up for us, The Bible repeatedly says that, loved and gave and loved and gave and loved and gave. John 3.16, God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son.

Galatians 2.20, he loved me and gave himself up for me. Ephesians chapter 5, he loved and he gave, he loved and he gave. The Bible keeps saying this.

These guys didn't get it. Christ's disciples didn't understand. So rather than hooray, Jesus is going to do this for us, they're deeply grieved. No! You can't do that. And so, when Peter told Christ that this should never happen, Christ rebuked Peter. As a matter of fact, worse than rebuked.

Matthew 16, 23, He turned and said to Peter, this is the same one that he said, hey, you know, you just said something really good. He said, you just said something really bad. Get behind me, Satan. You're a stumbling block to me. For you are not setting your mind on God's interests, but man's." What does he mean by that? Think about this.

Here's Jesus, and Peter's thinking, hey, these guys are key to the kingdom. These Jesus guys are key to the kingdom. And so he's going to get the Romans off our back. That's how it's going to work out, right? And so Jesus says, no, I'm going to die. And he goes, ah, no, that can't be. That'll ruin all these plans that we have for you to get the Romans off our back. And so you can't do that. We would never let it happen. And so Peter, he's not getting it. And Jesus tells him, you're not getting it. You're not setting your mind on God's interests, but man's.

This get-behind-me Satan, the Old Testament portrayed the Messiah as one who would suffer to benefit others. Isaiah 53 would be a prime example of that. Psalm 22 would be another one. But the Jews didn't see the same Messiah as both suffering and reigning. They taught two messiahs and they didn't pay that much attention to messiah ben joseph.

That's messiah son of joseph. This is pointing back to joseph, the one who was a ruler in israel back in genesis, right? They paid most of the attention to messiah ben david because they thought that's the one that's going to get the romans off our back. That's the one that's going to get rid of the Romans, so we'll put the attention there.

But the way they thought was that Messiah Ben-Joseph would die, and Messiah Ben-David would come and resurrect Him. So they saw Him as two separate people. So when Jesus says, I'm both, they go, Ah! And they can't handle it. Now, here's the last part, the last verses. in this particular chapter.

So Jesus said to his disciples, this is 1624, If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what will a man gain in exchange for his soul? for the Son of Man is going to come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then repay every man according to his deeds. Verse 28, Truly I say to you there are some, got that? Some of those who are standing here, right here, some of you, who will not taste death until they see the man coming in this kingdom.

Wow! Does that mean we get rid of the Romans? Right? That's what they're thinking. And we're going to see next week, we'll see next Sunday. What do you mean by that? I won't talk, I won't tell you what it means now. Sorry. Can I use a teaser? Is that all right? Anyway. Okay. Should you take up your cross daily? I got to answer that question. Okay. The word disciple was used of those Jews who followed Christ as a rabbi. That's how they understood the word.

And it's used in the Gospels in that way, in a Jewish sense. The word disciple was also used afterwards, and we find it in the book of Acts, of those who were believers and who were in the body of Christ. So the same word is used, but it's used in two different ways.

Disciples in the Jewish sense were challenged to take up their cross and follow Christ. Disciples in the body of Christ, the church sense, were to see themselves as having died with Christ. With Him. But there's more to it than that. Disciples in the Jewish sense were challenged to take up their cross and follow Christ.

So counting the cost of following Christ, that is to be paid by His Jewish disciple. Okay? You want to be His disciple? You're going to pay. You're going to pay a price under the Jewish system to be his disciple. Are you ready for that? That's what he's saying. You're going to pay a price. Get ready for that.

These Jewish disciples bear a cross for Christ. They do the work. Disciples in the body of Christ's sin, that is in the church, are to see themselves as having died with Christ and counting the price that Jesus Christ paid for you. For these disciples, Christ bore the sins on a cross.

He did the work. See the difference? It's a question, in our case, of who did the work, right? It's a question of who pays the price. In 1 Corinthians 6, 19 and 20, Paul writes to the believers, the church at Corinth, and he says, you are not your own, you were bought with a price. Who paid it? Christ. Christ paid the price. 723 also says, you are bought with a price. Christ paid it all.

That's why, we'll see when we get to the Christ's crucifixion, That's why Jesus was able to say at the very end, He said one Greek word, it's translated in English as a few others, Tetelestai. And it is an accounting term. Imagine Jesus on the cross using an accounting term. He uses an accounting term.

He says, it's all paid. Tetelestai! He called from the cross. It's all done. He did the work. He made the payment entirely. What we are asked to do is to believe it. To believe that He paid the price. That is what we're called to do. Do you believe it? Do you believe He paid the price? Do you believe He's done it all? Can we rest in His work? Can we rest in what He has done? What He has accomplished?

I hope the answer is yes. Let's pray about that, okay? Lord, as we look at this, what a wonderful thing you have accomplished. As our disciples are looking ahead to the cross, they're baffled. They don't understand. As we've been privileged to look back and given a great deal of revelation, we thank you for what you've revealed because you love us so immensely. But just as much, we thank you for telling us about it and that for the joy set before you, you endured the cross. And we thank you, Lord, for the price that you paid and for your loving and giving that's spoken about throughout your Word. We just pray in Jesus' name. Amen.