Matthew 16:21-26 * August 24, 2008 * Pentecost 15 * Pastor Pagels
In the name of Christ Jesus, dear friends:
The games of the twenty ninth Olympiad in
You could have watched women’s water polo at 1:00 AM. You could have witnessed Michael Phelps swim his way to a record-setting eight gold medals. If you turned on your TV in primetime, there is a good chance that you saw gymnastics and more gymnastics. Maybe you were even able to catch some coverage of more obscure sports like team handball or table tennis.
Since 8.8.08 more than 10,000 athletes have competed in dozens of different Olympic sports. These athletes came from many different countries. The athletes came in all different shapes and sizes. But no matter what the event was, the participants had at least one thing in common, pain.
Athletes go into strict training for months, even years to prepare for the Olympics. Many of them are forced to leave their homes and their families behind. They don’t get to sleep in. They can’t eat whatever they want. They push their bodies and minds to the limit, all in the hopes of having a gold medal placed around their neck.
In the ancient Olympics in
But we aren’t there yet. As long as we live in this world, and as long as there is sin in this world, there will always be pain. The Lord himself predicted it for himself and for his followers, not to scare us, but to prepare us and to remind us that…
WITHOUT PAIN THERE IS NO GAIN
I. Not for Jesus
II. Not for Jesus’ disciples
One of the benefits
of our summer sermon series from Matthew is the continuity it provides. Spending week after week in the same book
allows us to see the logical progression from one text to the next. This is especially true today.
Last Sunday
It’s not surprising
that Peter spoke up first, but his answer might come as a bit of a
surprise. He said: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living
God” (21:16). The disciples who were so often confused were
not confused on this point. After
spending so much time with Jesus, after seeing so many of his miracles, Peter
understood that Jesus was the Christ, the promised Messiah, the long expected
Savior of the world.
It was good that the
disciples got it, but they needed to take the next step. They needed to know exactly what Jesus had
come to do. And so “from that time on Jesus began to explain
to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the
hands of the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be
killed and on the third day be raised to life” (21).
The Lord had made
somewhat vague references to his death before, but this was a new
revelation. Jesus was giving his
disciples a glimpse into the not-so-pleasant future. He was laying out the details of his Father’s
plan of salvation. And carrying out that
plan meant that Jesus would have to die a painful and shameful death.
How did the
disciples react? Did they get down on
their hands and knees and thank the Lord for this divine revelation? Did they ask questions to make sure they
understood what Jesus was saying? Did
they just stand there in stunned silence?
None of the above.
Instead, Peter, the
bold confessor, Peter, the one who had just so clearly and so beautifully
confessed his faith, took Jesus aside and began to rebuke him: “Never, Lord! This shall never happen to you” (22)!
The NIV tries to
capture Peter’s emotion with a couple exclamation points, but punctuation can’t
capture the pain in Peter’s voice. He
understood exactly what Jesus was saying, and he couldn’t accept it. It was one thing to acknowledge that Jesus
was the Son of God, but death didn’t fit into his picture of the Messiah. Peter believed that Jesus was the Savior of
the world, but from his perspective death would bring everything to a
screeching halt. There had to be another
explanation. There had to be another
way.
“Jesus turned and said to Peter, ‘Get behind me,
Satan! You are a stumbling block to me;
you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men’” (23). Wasn’t Jesus being a bit harsh?
Perhaps Peter was out of line to rebuke him, but was it really necessary
for Jesus to call him Satan? Yes.
Satan
himself had tried to convince Jesus that there was another way. When he tempted Jesus, the devil took him to
the top of a high mountain and said: “Jesus,
you and I both know the difficult road that lies ahead of you, the suffering,
the pain, the cross. I have a deal for
you. You don’t have to go through with
it and you can still have it all. All
you have to do is bow down and worship me.”
Do
you remember how Jesus responded to this attack? He said: “Away from me Satan! For it is
written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only’’” (Matthew 4:10). Satan was defeated, but he didn’t give up. He tempted Jesus again and again. And sometimes he put on very deceptive
disguises.
Peter
wasn’t the devil. He was Jesus’
disciple. He was Jesus’ friend. He loved his Lord, but that made his words
even more dangerous. And his misguided
attempt to keep Jesus from his mission made him an unknowing ally of
Satan.
Jesus
needed Peter to understand that the cross is not just one possible solution for
the problem of sin in the world. The
cross is God’s only solution. Jesus had
to shed his blood on the cross to save the world from sin. As much as he didn’t want to hear it, Peter
needed Jesus to suffer and die on the cross for his sins. And so do we.
When
The Passion of the Christ came out in
theaters a few years ago, it stirred up quite a bit of controversy. While previous passion films sort of
sanitized the events of Good Friday, The
Passion of the Christ was especially brutal and bloody, and the graphic
nature of the film made people uncomfortable.
Christians
would prefer to picture Jesus with a smile on his face. Christians want to picture Jesus with
children sitting on his lap. We don’t
want to think about what happened on Good Friday. We don’t want to see the Roman soldiers
lashing Jesus’ back. We don’t want to
visualize the iron spikes being pounded through his hands. Thinking about the pain and suffering Jesus
endured makes us uncomfortable, but what should make us feel even more
uncomfortable is the fact that we caused it.
Jesus
was perfect. He didn’t do anything
wrong. He wasn’t punished for his own
sins. He was punished for your sins. He suffered for you. He died for you. And what makes Jesus’ sacrifice even more
amazing is that there wasn’t anything in it for him. He gave up his divine glory. He set aside his divine power. His pain was our gain.
Because
of Jesus, our sins are forgiven. Because
of Jesus, heaven is our home. But as I
said before we aren’t there yet. The
message of the cross is the Christian’s greatest comfort, but that doesn’t mean
that we will always be comfortable.
Because of who we are, because of whose we are, Christians will have to
carry their own crosses on earth.
Jesus said to his disciples: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it” (24,25).
Jesus
himself said it. His followers will
carry crosses. So what shape do those
crosses take? The cross does NOT include
every challenge or setback that we experience.
Some of our problems are the direct result of our own sin. Sometimes we have no one to blame but
ourselves.
When
Jesus talks about a cross, he is referring to anything that causes a Christian
to suffer for the sake of the Savior. It
can mean tearing down churches or tearing down reputations. It can be physical or it can be verbal. It can be political or it can be
personal. But no matter what form our
crosses take, Jesus tells us that we can expect them.
When
the disciples heard this, how do you think they felt? Not what they said. Not the front they tried to put up on the
outside. How do you think they really
felt on the inside? Maybe some of them
were thinking: “I never signed up for this.
Jesus, I thought that you were going to be the victor, not the
victim. And if you are really going to
die like you say you are, then what’s going to happen to us? I’m not so sure
about this anymore. I didn’t realize
that following Jesus was going to be this hard.”
Jesus’
disciples had their doubts. And they
still do. We pray for guidance, but we
don’t seem to get any answers. We ask
for relief, but our problems don’t go away.
Faithfulness to God’s Word causes tension with family and friends. Add all of these things up and we might begin
to wonder: “I’m not so sure about this. Why
does following Jesus have to be so hard?”
Nowhere
in the Bible does God promise to explain why everything happens the way it
does, but God’s Word does tell us that suffering serves a purpose in the life
of a Christian. “Suffering
produces, perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope” (Romans
5:3,4).
Eventually the disciples came to understand that the crosses they carried were not a burden. Eventually they were able to rejoice “because they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the Name” (Acts 5:41). And believers have God’s ultimate assurance that no matter what happens “our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us” (Romans 8:18).
Through
the crosses we bear, we give God glory.
Through the crosses we bear on earth, God serves our good. Through the crosses we bear in this life, our
Lord prepares us for something far better.
“No
pain, no gain” is an exercise motto that was made popular by Jane Fonda in the
1980s, but the idea actually goes back much farther than that. In 1650 poet Robert Herrick wrote: “If little labour, little are our gains:
Man’s fortunes are according to his pains.”
Herrick
got it at least half right. Without pain
there is no gain, but thankfully our fortunes and our future do not depend on
us. Instead we put our trust in God, who
loves us, who loved us so much that he sent his Son to save us. We willingly carry our crosses for him
because we know that Jesus carried his cross and died on the cross for us. And
his pain is our eternal gain. Amen.