Matthew 16:21-28

Read Matthew 16:21-28

 

Let’s take a moment to remember what lead up to these verses. As we looked at last week Jesus had questioned His disciples on what other people thought of Him, but also what they themselves thought of Him. He asked His disciples, “Who do you say that I am?”. This was an incredibly important question. Probably the most important question that can be asked in this world. And when Jesus asked this question, Peter spoke up immediately. And Peter looked at Jesus and said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God”.

 

In simple terms, Peter told Jesus, that “You are God and You have come to save”. It’s a great answer, it answers Who Jesus is and what He came to do.

 

And that’s where the conversation was as we left off in Matthew 16 last week.

 

But as we come into this passage today, Jesus is furthering the conversation. He’s starting to explain to them what exactly that will look like and what is going to happen to Him. We see that in verse 21, let me read that again.

 

Read Matthew 16:21

 

When we see this verse, maybe we’re seeing it now from a place where we understand these things already, maybe we’ve already seen how this story plays out. But take a moment to realize that the disciples hearing these things, and being a part of this conversation, are hearing this in a completely different light. This hasn’t happened yet for them, and this conversation was probably shocking to them. They love Jesus, they’re following Him, they have dedicated their lives to Him at this point, they left everything to follow Him, and now they’re hearing Him say that He’s going to go and suffer and die. That probably wasn’t the news that they were looking for, that’s probably not what they wanted to hear.

 

I think sometimes we may become so familiar with the stories of the Bible that we don’t take them with the weight that they deserve. Jesus was sitting there with His disciples explaining His upcoming death to them and that’s pretty rough.

 

But I want us to see something in this verse. Jesus knows where geographically the problems are going to come, He says it’s going to happen in Jerusalem. He knows the people that are looking to cause the problems for Him, He says the elders, chief priests, and scribes. And He knows what is going to happen to Him as a result of these things, He’s going to die.

 

Jesus knows the whole gameplan of His death and yet He says, that “HE MUST GO” to Jerusalem.

 

Jesus didn’t just end up dying as a result of His ministry, He purposely moved towards these things. He knew the place, the people, and result of their problems. With that information He had every opportunity to avoid what was coming, and yet He’s like, “that’s the way I’m going.”

 

Can you imagine knowing how you are going to die and deciding to head in that direction?

 

It’s not like this was easy for Jesus, He still walked through these things in His humanity, He still had to take physical steps towards Jerusalem knowing what’s waiting for Him there, He still had to deal with the emotions and the difficulty, He still had to deal with the understanding of the pain that His friends were going to have to go through. There’s so much wrapped up in this. We clearly see the difficulty that He went through recorded into the Gospels as the story progresses.

 

We obviously know from last week that Peter clearly understands Who Jesus is but remember that Peter’s culture still believed that the Messiah was going to address their salvation in a very different way. They wanted a military and political take over. That’s probably what Peter was raised with, and I don’t know if Peter himself still thought that way. But whether it was still thinking the old ways, or maybe it was just kneejerk reaction of concern for his friend Jesus, either way we can see what Peter does in verse 22.

 

Read Matthew 16:22

 

Peter takes it upon Himself to pull Jesus aside and rebuke Him (or to give like a serious talking to correct someone). That’s a serious move. It’s like, Peter, did you forget Who He was already? You just let us all know a few minutes back in this conversation. I mean, just a thought, but Maybe Peter got a little puffed up from Jesus’ blessing and acknowledgement of him in the last passage, and that gave him a little extra courage to take this step. It’s no small thing to try to rebuke God as a human being. That’s crazy.

 

But I look at this and I believe that Peter had great intentions. He probably just didn’t want his friend to die. Peter says in verse 22 “Far be it from You, Lord; this shall not happen to You!” He didn’t want to see Him die but look at Jesus’ response in verse 23.

 

Read Matthew 16:23

 

This obviously seems like a really harsh response. Peter was just riding the high of answering the other question correctly to now run into this response. But we need to understand why Jesus is responding this way. It’s crazy that Peter started rebuking Jesus in the first place, and it sounds like he might not have even had the chance to say all that he wanted to say. Verse 22 said that Peter “began” rebuking Jesus, it sounds like he was just getting started, and maybe Jesus just cut him off on this one.

 

But the reason why Jesus does this is because Peter didn’t just take to heart, Jesus’ words, and support the cause, even if it was hard. Instead, Peter got off Jesus’ plan and path, and ended up in this moment being a means of temptation towards Jesus. To steer Him away from His mission. Like I said a minute ago, this isn’t easy for Jesus, He’s still going to struggle through it, He knows what HAS TO BE DONE, He just told His friends what has to be done, but now one of His closest friends is trying to convince Him otherwise.

 

By not listening and acting on Jesus’ words only, Peter had himself become the means for Satan to bring temptation to Jesus at this moment. Satan wanted nothing more than for Jesus to give up on the mission and what better way to attack than through one of His best friends?

 

I don’t at all believe that Peter had Satanic intentions, but he got away from just following Jesus in this moment and ended up being part of the problem. I think there is a lesson in there for us that we need to be more than just well intentioned, we need to be lined up with God’s heart and purposes. Peter lost that for a minute here and earned a really strong rebuke from Jesus because of it.

 

Listen, I’m going to read the last of these verses again in a minute, but I want us to understand some things. First of all I want to understand Who is talking. We talked about this last week. This is literally God talking, He was talking to this group of men at that moment, but the conversation has now been extended to us through His Word.

 

 

If He is God, if He is Lord, if He is our Savior, then it’s time to, listen up, and hear His call, with the real intention to act on it. But notice one more thing too, that Jesus isn’t calling us to something that He Himself wasn’t willing to walk through as well. So, let’s read once again what He has to say here.

 

Read Matthew 16:24-28

 

Just like the question of “Who He is?” last week shouldn’t be taken lightly, His call to action in this passage shouldn’t be taken lightly either. Imagine being in this room, imagine Jesus just told you about how He was going to die, and now it’s right in the wake of that when Jesus says, “Follow Me”.

 

But He doesn’t just say follow Me. He says, “if anyone desires to come after Me”, or kind of like, “if you really do want to come after Me”, then you’re going to have to deny yourself and pick up a cross too. And so that first statement presents us with a question to consider:

 

 

I wouldn’t be too quick to answer that question until you have really considered what it means. I want to go look at a passage in the gospel of Luke together.

 

Read Luke 14:25-33

 

This is a heavy passage too. Jesus is saying some very similar things here. Now Jesus isn’t telling us to hate our family here, obviously we’re told to honor our parents and love others all throughout scripture, but the idea of what He is saying here is that our commitment to Him should be so great and so unique, that when that commitment is compared to our commitment to others, the commitment to others almost seems like hate, because our commitment to Him is that much greater. It’s a serious love, commitment, respect, fear, and so much more that would cause us to follow Him to this degree.

 

But Jesus in talking about this, introduces that idea of “counting the cost”. He gives the examples of someone intending to build a tower or of a king deciding to go to war and He’s like, wouldn’t you first sit down and make sure that you had the resources and the commitment necessary to actually see these through to completion or victory?

 

The point is this:

 

Don’t just lightly say “oh I want to follow Jesus” if you haven’t done the hard consideration of what that actually means. Jesus says in verse 33 that whoever does not forsake ALL THAT HE HAS cannot be My disciple.

 

This is very much like the family statement. It’s not necessarily, get rid of all that we have, though I absolutely believe that God does at times call people to that extreme. Maybe to get rid of everything and head out in the mission field or something. But like I said it’s like the family statement, maybe He isn’t going to call one of us to get rid of everything, but how we view the stuff of this world, should pale in comparison to how we view Him and His purposes. And if the stuff is at all clouding our view of Him, then the stuff needs to go.

 

It’s all about the radical change of perspective that comes with following Jesus.

 

Paul taught Timothy in 1 Timothy 6 that both a poor and rich person can follow Jesus, he told the poor person to be content and not run after riches, he told the rich person to also be rich in good works and share what they have. It’s a perspective shift, because Jesus is greater than running after more stuff or just trying to hold onto the stuff that we have. With Him, it becomes a question of how can our life or our stuff be leveraged for His benefit and for His glory?

 

Following Jesus means laying down our situation, our relationships, our stuff, even our hopes and dreams and plans, and saying Jesus I want You and I want to follow You. Now what would YOU have me do about all of this other stuff?

 

He might not get rid of everything, He absolutely might get rid of some, He might change your plans, He might change some relationships, He might change everything, but the question today is:

 

IS JESUS WORTH THAT TO YOU?

 

WILL WE COUNT THE COST?

 

Will we ask the hard questions? Will we make the hard considerations? Are we willing to make the changes that God directs? Will we follow Him even if His path is harder than the plan that we have for ourselves?

 

Let’s read verses 25 and 26 again back in Matthew 16.

 

Read Matthew 16:25-26

 

It’s such an interesting contrast that the attempt to save this live ends up with losing it, but losing this life ends up with finding it. And what does that mean? The core of Jesus’ call is to follow after Him, but that call requires a death of ourselves, our desires, and everything else so that we can fully walk in Him.

 

The Bible in 2 Corinthians 5:17 says:

 

 

Jesus said back in Matthew 16 that if we don’t want to give up ourselves for Him, then we may end up gaining the whole world, but what good is that if we lose our soul in the process?

 

What a terrible thing to lose the eternal salvation for our soul and the opportunity to be with God forever, just because we didn’t want to give things up here. The things of this world, as tempting as they might be, are just here today and gone tomorrow, none of it will ultimately bring any satisfaction to a soul that desperately needs the Lord. But the change of perspective comes when we see and understand and experience this new life that is only found in Him.

 

Let me read these last two verses once more.

 

Read Matthew 16:27-28

 

I don’t want us to ever miss the counting the cost part. I don’t want us to miss that following Jesus in this life, will very likely be harder than not following Him. But I also absolutely don’t want us to misunderstand and think that it’s all doom, gloom, and death, and crosses.

 

Hard doesn’t mean it’s bad.

Difficult doesn’t mean it’s not extremely satisfying.

The death of self here means real abundant life with Him.

 

Jesus says in these last verses that He fully intends to reward His people for following Him. Which is truly crazy to think about. Jesus told His disciples that you guys in this process are going to see Me and My Kingdom, that it’s not just tear everything down and focus on the difficulty, that there is beauty and an absolutely amazing life to be had with Jesus.

 

Like I said, it’s not just doom, gloom, death, and crosses. There’s power, and glory, and Jesus, and the very Kingdom of God.

 

As we end today I want us to focus on two things.

 

We need to hear Jesus’ words and not get sidetracked to other things. (like Peter did at the beginning)

 

And secondly:

 

 

Jesus set the example at every turn, He’s not calling us to anything that He Himself didn’t do, He walked the path even though it was harder. Imagine what our lives could mean if we laid it all down to Him, imagine if we weren’t the main character any longer, even if our kids weren’t the main character any longer, imagine if it wasn’t all just about working to get some temporary things that we want. That’s not to say that we don’t absolutely care about all of those things still but imagine if we pushed everything else to the sides and made it actually all about Jesus.

 

If that was the case, I believe that we would see His power, His glory, we would see Him and His Kingdom, like we never have before. Maybe some things will get harder, but He’s absolutely worth it.