In our fallen nature, we want the crucified Savior without the cruciform life. But in our union with Christ, God has ordained that our path will be the path of his beloved son. If we are his and he is ours, our lives will pattern his life: and that pattern is suffering and then glory, the cross before the crown.

Who do people say that I am? And they told him, John the Baptist. And others say, Elijah. And others, one of the prophets. And he asked them, but who do you say that I am? Peter answered, you are the Christ. And he strictly charged them to tell no one about him. And he began to teach them that the son of man must suffer many things, be rejected by the elders and chief priests and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days, rise again. And he said this plainly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and seeing his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, get behind me, Satan, for you’re not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man. And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it. Whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospels will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? For what can a man give in return for his soul? 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 when he comes in the glory of his father with the holy angels. And he said to them, truly, I say to you, there’s some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God after it has come with power.

The word of the Lord. Amen. You may be seated.

Well, I want to dig back into this text this morning. Last week, we looked at an overview of this whole passage, really, these multiple pieces of the text together. We saw the flow of that whole section, really, from verse, chapter 822 into 9-1. And that was this, we saw this living parable of the blindness that remained and that needed correction to see who Christ truly was in the healing of this blind man. Again, it was a living parable. This morning we’ll see a gospel truth that is sadly so abhorrent and rejected, so confused and even unknown, not just in general to the general non-believing world, but sadly to many who name the name of Christ, who trust and love Him. Maybe even some of us this morning if not explicitly, then in our general thinking might feel this same way or might have this same response. And I’m talking about the reality, the very true reality that in our union with Jesus, God has ordained that our path will be the path of his beloved son while we live on this side of the cross, right? In our union with Christ, God has ordained that our path will be the path of his beloved son on this side of glory. In our natures, of course, we want the crucified Christ without the cruciform life, right? In our nature, that’s what we want. We want the crucified Christ, but we don’t want the cruciform life. But if we are his and he is ours, our lives will pattern his life. And that pattern is suffering and then glory. Suffering and then glory. And in the end, it’s only those who died in Christ who receive what they could never earn. So the pattern for Christ was again, cross before the crown, right? Suffering before glory. And this text that we’re in, this text that’s famous in the Christian church, well-known rather, Peter makes this grand confession, right? This confession of Peter. And that confession upon which the whole of the church is built, right? When we look at it’s given in the other gospels. And that is that Jesus is the Christ, the son of the living God. Peter’s confessed that which only God could have revealed to him and that this was the Messiah who was to come promised long ago. He was the one who was going to come and deliver Israel once and for all and finally set them free from their captors. And it’s interesting, you know, when we look at this text and the setting of this text, where is it? It’s in the region of Caesarea Philippi. Right? Caesarea Philippi. And it’s a reminder to us of the life situation that the disciples and the rest of Israel find themselves in. It’s Caesar’s land. Right? Where he rules. Caesarea. Caesarea Philippi. And this is how every Jew was waiting for the day when God would finally free them from that kind of oppression. And they would freely and finally have the upper hand and be established as their own sovereign nation. over all the other nations. And so when Peter confesses that Christ is the Messiah, all of this is in the background, right? And recall as well, if we look at places like Psalm 2, that would have been very familiar and very common in the life of every Jew, this is the kind of thing that they would think of when they think of God coming and the Messiah coming to rule, right? This is Psalm 2, Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against his anointed one, anointed one, against his Messiah, saying, let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords. He who sits in the heavens laughs. The Lord holds them in derision. Then he will speak to them with his wrath and terrify them in his fury, saying, as for me, I have set my king on Zion, my holy hill. I will tell of the decree the Lord said to me, you are my son, today I have begotten you. Ask of me and I will make the nations your heritage, the ends of the earth your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them into pieces like a potter’s vessel. Now therefore, O kings, be wise. The warning comes, be warned, O rulers of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest He be angry, and you perish in the way. For His wrath is quickly kindled. Blessed are all who take refuge in Him.” Right? And so this is in the mind of every Jew. This is in, when Peter makes reference to the Messiah, this is what he’s thinking. This is what he’s expecting. This is what Israel is expecting. But Christ quickly goes from Peter’s confession, and he introduces something that’s not been said in the Gospel of Mark until this point, where he clearly reveals that his coming, he reveals his coming, death, and resurrection. Right, and notice there’s Peter’s confession, and then we have Christ’s confession. Right, Peter’s confession in verse 29, and then Christ’s confession in verse 31. Right, 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.” You are the Christ, the Son of the living God, and Christ says, the Son of Man must suffer, be rejected, be killed, and after three days, rise again. And so Christ is telling him, in order to understand the ministry, my ministry at all, It’s necessary that as soon as they realize that He’s the Messiah, that He show them the life of the Messiah for this pattern, this particular place in history that they’re in. And Jesus makes reference there to the Son of Man, that image that comes to us from Daniel as we heard. When one like the Son of Man comes to the Father, into the throne set before Him, and it says God the Father at that moment gives Him power and dominion and authority over all nations. And so when Christ utters the words, the Son of Man, it makes perfect sense. It aligns precisely with Peter’s original confession. You’re the Messiah. You’re the one who’s coming to usher in God’s kingdom for us, your people. But then he gives them another image, one that he’s not ready for, where he says, he must suffer many things. The Son of Man, yes, he must suffer many things, and they’re bewildered. And these two things go together. They’re not something that the Jewish mindset was prepared for. This is something that gives them problems all through the gospel. But you see, to understand His life, to understand what it means to be Messiah, to be the actual Son of Man, you must understand this pattern that He lays out for them. It’s the cross and then the crown. It’s suffering and then glory. He must suffer many things. He must be rejected and then, yes, He rises. That’s the pattern. Before His glory, He had to undergo great suffering. And they just didn’t get it. It was difficult for them to make sense of this two-fold pattern that He gives them. And in all of God’s wisdom, though it did not seem wise to the disciples, as they’re hearing it, their very salvation, their very place in the kingdom of God depends upon this reality. That Christ will first enter into His suffering, be hung on a cross, before he rises in glory and is seated at the right hand of God. And so we have Peter’s confession and Christ’s confession. And then we have Peter’s rebuke followed by Christ’s rebuke. Verse 38, and he said this plainly, and Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. We learned from Matthew’s gospel more of kind of the way that the conversation went and it was this Peter says to Christ, this is beneath you as the Messiah. Lord, you can’t do this. And of course, there are all those messages that we’ve heard in the past. They’re probably familiar to you. It’s a well-known passage. And many of the messages that we hear say something like this. They say, see the audacity of a disciple to say to the Lord, Lord, no, you can’t do this. But of course, Peter wasn’t unfamiliar with being audacious, right? This wasn’t a problem for him. He kind of majored in audacity. And I think some of us may see this merely as some kind of emotional concern or worry for Jesus. Right? Surely Peter loves his Lord. There’s no doubt that this would be, that he would be fond of sparing him any kind of suffering. Even we do this with those whom we see suffering before us. We don’t want to see people suffering. It’s uncomfortable for us, and rightly so. And they tell us their condition, they tell us the trials they’re going through, that they’re enduring. And a lot of times, like Peter, we rush right in to the rescue of that, right? This can happen to you, or hopefully this will be done soon. And we leave it at that to get through it. We want to escape as fast as we can from any kind of trial, as if that’s the worst thing in the world. And surely it seems like it is at the time. But certainly Peter has no idea what he’s talking about, or very little idea of what he’s talking about. He has no idea what God is doing or how he’s going to work his way through this crucifixion. And a lot of times we don’t know how God is working. Oftentimes, usually we don’t know how God is working through the suffering and trials of other people or of ourselves. And we try to rush through it and get over it just so it will be over. ignoring the fact that perhaps God is teaching you something through this, that he is trying to instill and remind us of something. He’s trying to do something greater through these things. And so what does that say about what we believe? If we think then like Peter, and we want to quickly get away from this whole concept of suffering. And let’s be honest, this is not the message that’s usually advertised by most churches on their electronic signs outside their church. Many church signs, to be honest, are mostly failed attempts to be clever with lame, old-timey, irreverent sayings that weren’t clever 60 years ago, and they still remain unclever, and their glory diminishing and gospel degrading. We see lots of that. But what they’re certainly never going to say is, come here to get your cross to bear. crosses to bear here, enter in. But this is the message that Christ has come to give. And for Peter, in his mindset from Psalm 2 and the rest of what he remembers of the Old Testament and what they’re expecting from so long ago, is that Messiahs don’t get rejected by many. They don’t suffer. They certainly don’t die. Messiahs reign with power and sovereignty and dominion and dominance. They crushed the enemy nations with a rod, like pottery. This is not the right way, Lord, Peter says. And Christ tells him clearly, as he rebukes him, that Peter’s thinking is of the world, not of above. It’s not the thinking of God. And this is Christ’s rebuke to Peter. Verse 33, but turning and seeing his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, get behind me, Satan, for you’re not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man. Right, Peter wasn’t merely, we have to understand, merely being outrageous in rebuking Christ, not merely out of sincere concern for his savior, as if he’s saying, aw shucks, Jesus, I don’t want you to hurt. This is not simply how Christ sees this or accepts this. Christ sees this as sinister, as evil. And it’s so evil that he calls Peter, this one that he had just said, blessed are you, Peter. He calls him Satan himself. And why would Christ say that? Why is this sinister and evil? According to Christ, it’s because he has heard this voice before. It’s not the first time he’s heard this voice. He heard this voice when he was tempted in the wilderness. The same option once before. Just bow down to me, Satan says, and I will give you all the kingdoms of the world. Just turn these stones into bread. Cast yourself down, the angels will bear you up. Take another, a different, an easier way, a way that avoids suffering, that gets around the cross to gain the power and the glory. Christ has heard this voice before, and he calls it for what it is, and he tells Peter, get behind me, Satan. Notice what he says. He says, this is not the thinking of God, but the thinking of man. He says, get behind me. And the reason is that our thinking is below. It’s below thinking, he says. And you need to set your minds on the things above. And what’s interesting is we begin to see Christ’s rebuke that is likely that Peter is not just trying to keep Christ from suffering, right? In this setting our minds upon the things above, right? Paul tells us clearly in Colossians 3, a beautiful passage to meditate upon. And he says this in Colossians 3, starting at verse 1. If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on the things that are above, not on the things that are on the earth. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. What a glorious passage, indeed. And here, Christ is saying to Peter, that is below thinking, that is not the thinking that is above. You need to set your mind on the things that are above. And what’s interesting is that when we see, we begin to see Christ’s rebuke, again, that it’s likely Peter’s not just concerned with this, trying to keep Christ from suffering. There’s something else attending this rebuke that Peter attempts to give to Christ. Peter’s no fool. He’s seen how the religious leaders are and he’s seen that if Jesus is to gain prominence Peter and the disciples will gain prominence as well. Remember James and John always asking to be on Jesus right or left hand when he comes into his kingdom when he reigns. Christ’s reign means their success. There’s an element to this. This is why when Christ tells them, they’re suffering in store for me, Peter knows that means that they’re suffering in store for Peter. He says, Lord, far be it from you to suffer. You’re the Messiah. We’re going to conquer by power and everyone will honor us and we’ll have a position of place and prestige. This is the wrong way, he tells Christ. And notice there are two mindsets on display in this passage. Peter’s mindset is on the things of earth, things that deal with his self-preservation, with his self-promotion and self-service in order to secure his prosperity and his ease. But there’s another mindset that is presented here, and that is the mindset of Christ, in that Christ ultimately does not have self-preservation as his highest goal, right? But God’s purpose is to save is His highest goal. God’s glory is Christ’s chief end. God’s kingdom is His priority, and its prosperity is His priority. It’s what gripped His heart. It’s what gripped His life. And all that he did, and so for Christ to avoid humiliation and suffering and self-sacrifice and death would be to avoid the very will and way of his heavenly father, of God himself. It would be the undoing of all God’s purposes to save his people. So if Christ was to take this advice from below, of Peter, of man, you and I would be lost forever, as would Peter and everyone else. It would be to set our minds on things and purposes below and seek to implement the world’s ways in order to accomplish God’s plans and it just doesn’t work. And it will never work and it cannot work. And so the pattern for Jesus was suffering, then glory, right? It was a cross before the crown. And for us, the pattern is as well, death before life, death before life, suffering, then glory. You know, I think it was Augustine who said, it’s not this life that leads to death, but it’s death that leads to life. And that’s, of course, echoing the words of Paul when he says, when this mortal flesh is swallowed up by life, when we are raised into glory. And notice we see the way to glory is clearly explained here in Mark chapter eight, verse 34. And he says, And calling the crowd to him with the disciples, he said to them, if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. And this is one of those phrases that sadly entered into our vernacular and become so familiar and misused that we’re numb to it and it’s lost. It’s exactly what it is that he’s calling them to here. He received a call to come and die. Think about what he’s saying, right? The cross of which he is calling them to take up, for us, doesn’t quite strike us like it did back then, right? Because we don’t see people hanging on crosses for political persecution or otherwise. We don’t see the exposure and the public shame and the agony and all of those things associated with the cross. But you bring up a cross in that day, And it deals with execution. It deals with the sheer pain and shame that goes along with being an outcast and someone who is summoned to die. Christ is telling them, go ahead, pick up your cross and get in line with me because we’re headed to death. And that’s where he’s inviting them. That’s where he’s inviting us. whom he’s called to himself. Now for the disciples, this text had a very literal application, literal and immediate in their lives. They’re likely to be martyred and we see from history that most of the apostles indeed were martyred. They will take up their cross at some point in one form or another and they will pay the ultimate sacrifice. They will give their whole life, even unto death, because they have claimed this one as Messiah and proclaim the gospel. That’s what Christ is challenging them to, even in this passage. And he says this confession that Jesus made Peter, it will lead to a death. And that’s uncomfortable for Peter. And we know from history that it did lead to Peter’s death. But it’s not merely this literal translation. It goes beyond that. And we see this even from the text in verse 34. He calls the whole crowd to himself. And he addresses them with whoever or whosoever. And it’s interesting that clearly not everyone in this crowd is going to die a martyr’s death. That’s something that’s, there’s something more that he’s calling them to when he says whosoever will pick up his cross and follow me. And it becomes clear when you read Luke’s cross reference, a parallel passage to this text, because Luke records it this way. He says, take up your cross, daily and follow me. And so of course you don’t get crucified more than once in our state of life. You can’t daily physically die and expect to rise again time and time again daily. And so Christ is surely speaking metaphorically here. There’s something beyond the physical death, just the physical death that’s being pointed to. It’s not that this means nothing, it means something else. There is a lifestyle that he’s calling us to in this text, through this text. It’s a metaphor, yes, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have meaning. There is a lifestyle that he’s calling us to, and Christ is calling us to a cruciform life, right, a cross-shaped life belonging to our Savior. And it’s a call to be, to sort of a lifestyle that will be sacrificial. It’s a call to come and to die. Suffering and then glory was the pattern for Jesus. And we see in this particular text it is the same twofold pattern for his people, those who were united to him in faith. For our life is hidden in his life, we’re told. Part of that union that we have with Jesus is that we have union with his humanity, even as it was here on earth, which means what he experienced in this world, in this life, is what we will experience in this world, in this life. And we need to begin to see our trials and seeing our trials and our sufferings in all of our lives through this lens. and to stop seeing ourselves as the most important and focus of most important, most importantly on Christ and all that he has done and what God is doing for his will through our sufferings and our strains that he brings us through. So what does that look like for our lives? It looks like a lot of things and we could go on and on and on, but what does it look like for our life? It looks like Jesus.

Your life, this life of the cross, this cruciform life, first begins because you’ve been united to the man of the cross. He is the basis for this life. If you belong to Him, if you’re united to Him by faith, your hope is in Him, your trust is in Him, your life is in Him, and your final conclusion is where His life is. Your end is His end. And remember that we’ve been crucified to this world and this world to us, and therefore we can put to death, we’re told, the things of this life, the desires of this world, the evil things that sneak upon us, and even the good things that we make idols of this life. So let us, brothers and sisters, at the sufferings and pains and strains and the losses and crosses that we go through, let us look at them from the perspective of above. Realizing that this is sent by God to form me and to shape me into the image of his son, into the shape of a cross, and seeking what God is doing in us, and seeing this is how he is saving us. This is how He’s sanctifying you, making you fit for glory. In those times where you were knee-deep in sin and you thought you would never get out, we can look back and know that that was part of God’s way of bringing you to glory as He broke you down. the difficulties in our relationships, the hardships with our spouses and with our children that He’s brought into our life, the struggles that we have at work. This is how God is saving your life. It’s how He’s keeping you near to His Son. It’s how He’s shaping you into the image of His Son, our Savior, which is ultimately will take the form of cross in this world, is suffering before glory. and therefore do not despise these things, but bear them up in faith, brothers and sisters, knowing that what God is doing, for we must see the end, right? Christ seated in glory, the Father and His holy angels coming to judge the living and the dead, and God saying to you, you who’ve gone through all of these things throughout your life, you who are united to Christ, I know that you suffered much. Enter, good and faithful servant. You are holy and righteous because of Jesus Christ, your Savior. Yes, you made many mistakes. Yes, you sinned often. And though you didn’t learn all that I had for you, and you failed many times throughout your life, you are my son. And as you see the end, we must learn to see that end and to see it often and to see it always before you. Look back from that perspective at what you’re going through now and see, brothers and sisters, that is exactly what God is using to get you there. All for the praise of His glory. Amen.

Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the wonder and awe of salvation. We pray that you would increase our faith. Help us, Lord, not to be overcome by the things of this world or the ease or idolize freedom from difficulties in this life, Lord, but that you would truly help us to enjoy rightly the good things of this world that you’ve given to us. And Lord, help us to see, even through the difficult things, that we are following our Savior. These are badges of belonging. They’re badges of that one to whom our life is united to, our savior. And we can look forward, Lord, that he suffered much, even unto death, for us, and he was raised in glory. And Lord, that is our destination as well. So help us have a right perspective, we pray, believing all these things, all for your glory, as we seek to follow closely our Lord. as we walk and live through this pilgrim life. We ask it in his precious name. Amen.