Crossbearing
Matthew 16:21-28 NKJ From that time Jesus began to show to His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised the third day. 22 Then Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him, saying, "Far be it from You, Lord; this shall not happen to You!" 23 But He turned and said to Peter, "Get behind Me, Satan! You are an offense to Me, for you are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men." 24 Then Jesus said to His disciples, "If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. 25 "For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. 26 "For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul? 27 "For the Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then He will reward each according to his works. 28 "Assuredly, I say to you, there are some standing here who shall not taste death till they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom."
Introduction:
Some years ago I heard the story of a Russian man who was born to atheist parents, grew up in an atheist town and attended an atheist school. He had never in his life heard the truth of Jesus Christ. But somewhere along the path of his life he saw a picture of a man who had died on a cross. He never forgot that picture and often wondered why he was strangely drawn to that picture. He wanted to understand it. At first he thought the man must have been a very bad criminal. Then he thought that he might have been a very persecuted man. Eventually he met a Christian who also knew about this picture. Anxiously the Russian man asked the Christian to explain it to him. He did, and finally the Russian man knew why he had such a strange attraction to that picture. The picture, of course, was of Jesus’ crucifixion. The explanation was this man’s ticket to salvation.
Jesus is the Christ - What Does This Mean?
Last Sunday our Gospel lesson came from the verses right before today’s lesson where Peter boldly confessed that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the Living God. But Peter didn’t fully understand what that meant. Jesus went on to explain that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer, die, and rise again. Peter, like so many people before and after him, could not conceive of the Son of God suffering like that. The Son, he thought, should be crushing His enemies, not being crushed by them. But Jesus was only fulfilling the plan that God had in mind from the foundation of the world. In the very first promise of the Messiah, God told Satan, “You will crush His heel, but He will crush your head” (Genesis 3.15). Jesus would suffer and die at the hands of God’s enemies. But in the end He would rise from the dead, and His victory would mean forgiveness and salvation for those who trust in God.
If we would all be honest with ourselves, we would have to admit that this makes no sense at all. We can understand Peter’s confusion. When has anyone conquered by being killed? What army has ever won a war by being destroyed in battle? It doesn’t make sense as long as we have in mind the “things of men” as Jesus says. But so typical of Jesus... There’s much more to this.
Let me try to explain it this way. There was a farmer who was having trouble with snakes squeezing into the cracks and crevices of his chicken coup and devouring eggs. No matter how much he tried to seal up every crack, the snakes somehow managed to slither in. One day he decided to trick the snakes by placing a fake, porcelain egg among the other eggs. The hungry snakes would devour the fake eggs but be unable to digest them. With the big, hard lump in their bodies they were also unable to slither out through the cracks they had entered. They were caught and destroyed.
What Peter was struggling to understand and what Jesus was gradually unfolding before his eyes in His earthly ministry was that He was not just another ordinary man. He wasn’t even just an extra-ordinary man. He wasn’t a man who came to use the ways of men to destroy evil. He was the perfect, pure, righteous, truthful Son of God. Satan had the power to crush anything of this world and of men. But he couldn’t crush Jesus. In fact, by trying, he was crushed. This is why we, like the Russian man, are not only drawn to this picture of a dead man on a cross, but more importantly to the meaning of it. In death, the death of the cross, Jesus defeated the cause of death and ended its reign over this earth.
Take Up Your Cross - What Does This Mean?
Now, Jesus says something just as shocking about the cross. He says that those who follow Him must take up their cross as well. Please remember that in Jesus’ day the cross represented the worst punishment for evil that anyone could think of. Today He might have said, “Take up your electric chair or lethal injection.” This was serious. As He defeated sin and Satan through death, so must we. What are our crosses?
The first cross, and the most difficult of all, is the cross of repentance. Only the Holy Spirit can bring about that change in our hearts that causes us to quit making excuses and to quit blaming others or even God for our failure to live according to God’s commands. It is also the Holy Spirit that draws us to Jesus and to see how this dead man on the cross is the perfect, Holy One of God, who was swallowed by Satan and who destroyed Satan. Only in this greatest act of love of all time are our sins forgiven and in fact destroyed. The prophet Micah foretold this when he spoke of Jesus saying, “He will again have compassion on us, and will subdue our iniquities. You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea” (Micah 7.19). I love the word Micah uses for “subdue.” You may have heard this Hebrew word before. It is the word “kabash.” Jesus, in his perfect and faithful life and in His innocent suffering and death, put the kabash on sin. With this ultimate kabash, you are now able to take on this cross and pray every day as Martin Luther did at the beginning of every day that the Lord would “keep me this day from all sin and evil.” And then praying at the end of the day, “I pray that You would forgive me of all my sins where I have done wrong”?
The second cross is that which the world puts upon us for being Christians. In chapter ten of Matthew Jesus said, “You will be hated by all for My name’s sake. But the one who endures to the end will be saved” (10.22). This time of the year I see it as I am trying to form up confirmation classes to help young people grow in their faith. The world doesn’t care about faith. So the world gladly schedules soccer games and other athletic events on Sunday mornings. I also see it in the young people who are torn between what they’ve learned from Jesus and what they see in the world around them. Don’t make fun of people just because they’re a little different. Show respect to people who have the responsibility take care of you. Don’t slouch around on the job but actually get something done. Save sex for marriage. Don’t destroy your body for the empty pleasures that chemicals can give you. This past week someone sent me an article from the Wall Street Journal about the recent riots in London. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks wisely commented that these youth “are the victims of the tsunami of wishful thinking that washed across the West saying that you can have sex without the responsibility of marriage, children without the responsibility of parenthood, social order without the responsibility of citizenship, liberty without the responsibility of morality and self-esteem without the responsibility of work and earned achievement.
The third cross is that which Satan and all the powers of darkness put upon us. Cancer is not necessarily a cross. Sickness is unfortunately part of the curse that God has put on this world for turning away from Him in sin. Everyone suffers physically sooner or later whether they are Christians or not. But here, Jesus is specifically speaking to those who suffering because they follow Him. However, Satan’s cross comes from the fear, the doubt, the spiritual confusion that these physical troubles trigger in our lives. Satan’s cross is the one labeled “Why God?” He is the tempter, the deceiver, the one who confuses everything. This was Jeremiah’s cross as we heard in the first lesson this morning. Jeremiah was trying to serve God, but everything was going wrong. Jeremiah even comes to the point of saying, “You (God) have filled me with indignation” (Jer. 15.17). We will be talking about this today in our Adult Bible class as we discuss the problem of anger with God.
Conclusion
Let’s summarize this message by focusing again on Jesus’ words “the things of men” and the “the things of God.” We cannot fight evil with the things of men. Humans are by nature sinful and weak. Our powers may seem great, but they are no match for ultimate evil. The things of God are truth, righteousness, love, and good works. These are the things that defeat evil. This is what Christ has given us in His crossbearing, and this is what empowers us for our crossbearing lives.
Andy had the unfortunate fate of being born to a very immature and ignorant father. His father routinely mocked him for his lack of athletic ability and for his difficulties in relating to girls. Andy was tempted to hate his father, and for a time he did. He even had day dreams about killing his father. But something was holding him back. Andy was a Christian, and his family regularly attended church. For Andy this sometimes made everything worse. His father was a blatant hypocrite. Andy, however, took up his pastor’s recommendation that he actually read one of the Gospels to learn about Jesus for himself. As he read through the Gospel of Matthew, he came to this passage that we’ve read today, and he realized what his cross was. It was his father. From that moment on he stopped hating him and began to pray for him. Andy didn’t allow Satan’s venom that was working so effectively in his father to infect him. He grew up to be an outstanding young man, advancing far beyond his father’s achievements in every way. Andy didn’t flaunt his success in front is father. He didn’t stop talking to him, visiting, or praying for him. He just felt sorry for him. I wish I could tell you that his father finally came to repentance, but I can’t. This isn’t a fairy tale, this is real life. But I can tell you that Andy’s life did not go unnoticed. He had a brother and a sister who also struggled with the pain inflicted by their father. Through Andy’s crossbearing life they also learned to be crossbearers themselves, and Satan’s attempts to drag them into the pit of hatred did not work.
Here is your challenge today: Look at all the problems you face. You may pray that they go away, and I’m sure some of them will. But just as Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, “Not My will, but Yours be done,” so be prepared for the fact that not all of them will go away. Now, looking to Jesus, who bore the cross for you, take up your cross and follow Christ. Good will come of it, I promise. Amen.
