Ministries Sermons School Youth Home
MARCH 8, 2009
And he began to teach them that 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. 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 are 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.
Mark 8:31–34
Many of us today wear crosses or crucifixes around our necks. And for good reason, for Christ–crucified is the preeminent symbol of God’s love for us in Christ. But it was not always so. In Jesus’ day, the Roman Empire crucified only the most wicked of criminals. And amongst the Jews, those crucified were held to be accursed by God, for the Scriptures say, “Anyone who is hung on a tree is under God’s curse.” And the Jews considered the cross to be the equivalent of a tree since its timbers were hewn from a tree.1
Jesus knew that one day he would be nailed to a cross. Yes, for the cross he was born; and on the cross he must die. But in our text, Jesus makes his first explicit announcement of his passion and death. To his apostles, he says of himself, “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.”2 Yes, he would be killed—and by means of crucifixion (according to St. Matthew).3
Actually, the word “must” in the phrase “the Son of Man must suffer many things,” is a tad bit weak. In the original we find the Greek word dei which means “it is necessary.” Yes, his death was and is a divine necessity. Here, Jesus is saying that it is a divine necessity that he suffer, that he be rejected, and that he die.
But the world asks why. “Why, Jesus must you die? We, of course, know the answer. He must die because of human sin, because of our sin.
Because of your sins in particular—and mine in particular—it became necessary for Christ to die. That’s why we use the first person, singular in the General Confession, saying to the Lord, “I a poor, miserable sinner confess unto Thee all my sins and iniquities with which I have ever offended Thee and justly deserve Thy temporal and eternal punishment.”4 And because Christ went to the cross and atoned for each one of our sins, that is why he speaks to us individually in the absolution, saying through the lips of the pastor, “I [Jesus] forgive you all of your sins.”
But in our text we find that Simon Peter wants to strip Christ of his cross. You may remember that, just a few verses earlier, Jesus asked the Twelve the supreme question: “But who do you say that I am?”5 Peter got it right when he confessed the truth, saying, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”6 But when Jesus announced that he was going to take the road that would end in his suffering and death, Peter began to rebuke him, for he wanted to save Christ from the cross. But Jesus said to him, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.”7
Indeed, Peter’s words had satanic origin, for to strip Christ of the cross would be to thwart God’s plan of salvation and consign all humanity to eternal damnation.
No, Jesus will not take the easy way out. Specifically, he will travel the road to the cross. But the church, like Peter, is constantly tempted to take a different road. We want the message from the pulpit to be in synch with what our culture thinks. Since our culture prefers religious tolerance to truth, there is an incessant cry for orthodox preachers to preach a kinder, gentler damnation. The church is tempted to use world’s methods. You and I know the modern churchly slogans:
How very 21st century!
How culturally relevant!
How very postmodern!
How very demonic!
How utterly wrong!
You see, all of this is not merely contrary to good taste; it is contrary to God’s Word. And regarding God’s Word, Jesus said, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”8
The church must ever preach the Word and the doctrines drawn from it, e.g., that sin damns and that only Christ–crucified saves, that God’s way of making disciples is by baptizing and teaching, that God is present with his people in his Word and in the Sacraments, and that the faith that saves always gives birth to the faith that behaves.
The Church must always resist the temptation to evaluate its pastors and ministries by the world’s standards (e.g., membership statistics, monetary growth, or successfulness) instead of the standards of the One who had nowhere to lay his head and whose only throne was a cross. It is incumbent on every congregation to examine itself to be sure it has not bowed its knee to the world. You see, ministry that sells is, quite often, not ministry that saves.
Everything begins and ends with Christ crucified. If we believe in a Christless cross, such a cross will benefit us nothing. If we believe in a crossless Christ, such a Christ will help us not. But if we believe that Christ, true God and true man, has died for you and me personally on the cross, well then, dear friends, we have the whole ballgame, forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. But a disciple named Peter wants to stand between Christ and his cross. Peter wants to stand in his way
People of God, your Savior travels from the hills of Galilee to the hard stones of the Via Dolorosa. He carries his cross on his bleeding back. Evil men nail him to its hardwood and watch him suffer and die. Only his death thereupon atones for the sins of the world. But a disciple named Peter wants to stand in his way!
Behold your Jesus. He is lifted up on the accursed tree to cry out from the pit of hell,
“My God, my God why have you forsaken me?”9 If he does not suffer and die, then every man, woman, and child since the beginning of time will be made to rot in hell. But a disciple named Peter wants to stand in his way.
My friends, Christ’s great love for us took him to cross, where he felt the curse of God and the scorn of men. But when he had paid for every last sin, he cried out, “It is finished!”10 And, behold, Easter is the proof that our sins were fully paid for by Christ’s death. And now, because he endured the cross, he bids all believers to travel in his steps.
He says, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”11 To take up the cross means to bear whatever afflictions God sends our way. It also means to suffer persecution because we confess Christ to be the world’s only Savior.
When we are so afflicted, please understand that God’s plan for you and me has not gone wrong. This is simply “cross life.” It is common to all true Christians. God uses two ways to get us to put down the promptings of our sinful flesh.12 One is internal; the other is external. On the inside, God uses the preaching of the Law so that our sins come to light and, thus, move us to repent. He also does an external job on us by means of giving us crosses and afflictions to bear.
Think of the apostle Paul. Three times he prayed that the Lord would remove his “thorn in the flesh.”13 But three times God said no. And the third time he added, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”14 In other words the LORD was saying, “Paul, the thorn in your flesh will be a constant reminder that you must rely on my grace and strength for your life and ministry.”
Like Paul, the Lord works on us externally by sending us afflictions to bear. But when we think of afflictions in the Bible, we usually think of Job. The Lord gives Satan the power to afflict him. “You can do anything you want to him,” says God, “only you can’t kill him. And you know what happens to Job: He suffers incredible adversity. His family and livestock die. His health is so bad that he has open sores from head to toe. But in the end, Job remains faithful. And after all was said and done God gave him a greater abundance of material and spiritual blessings than he had before.
But Job is only the prelude to another sufferer. We remember that, in the case of Job, God said to Satan, “You can do anything you want to him; but you must spare his life.”15 But, then, another Sufferer comes along, not a son of Job or of Jeremiah but the incarnate Son of God. And this time God said to Satan, “You can do anything you want to him. You can even kill him!”
And, behold, Satan did. And, in the midst of it all, God has his finest hour. It is the hour when the crucified, blood–stained Lamb of God lifts up his voice and says, “It is finished!”16 It is the hour when he says, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.”17 It is the hour when he hangs his head in death. This is the pinnacle event insofar as God’s glory here on earth is concerned.18 But it is simultaneously the greatest injustice the world has ever known.
Our dear Savior has prepared a foretaste of heaven for us in the Sacrament of Holy Communion. Sometimes, in the Divine Service, we can become distracted and not hear the Gospel. But you cannot miss the Gospel in the Sacrament, for Christ comes to you personally as you receive his body and blood under the forms of bread and the wine. “Come to my feast,” says Jesus, “and have your sins forgiven and washed away.”
Come, beloved, for the table is prepared just for you.
In the name of Christ, Amen.
Soli Deo Gloria!
Endnotes
1 In Deuteronomy 21:23 (LXX), it is written, “Cursed is everyone that hangs on a tree.” The cross was rightly held to be the same as a tree simply because it was hewn from a tree. So, then, the curse of God did, in fact, rest on the victim of crucifixion. St. Paul makes this clear when he writes, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree” (Galatians 3:13, ESV).
2 Mark 8:31. See also the parallels in Matthew 16:21 and Luke 9:22.
3 Later Jesus would spell it all out for his disciples. He said to them “Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem; and the Son of Man will be delivered to the chief priests and scribes, and they will condemn Him to death, and will hand him over to the Gentiles to mock and scourge and crucify him, and on the third day He will be raised up” (Matthew 20:18-19, NASB).
4 See TLH p. 16. See also LSB p. 184.
5 See Mark 8:29 and also Matthew 16:15.
6 See Mark 8:29 and the fuller statement of Peter in Matthew 16:16 (quoted here).
7 See Mark8:33, ESV.
8 See John 8:31-32, RSV.
9 Matthew 27:46.
10 John 19:30.
11 See Mark 8:34, ESV.
12 Galatians 5:24.
13 See 2 Corinthians 12:7-9.
14 See 2 Corinthians 12:9.
15 In Job 2:6, God set a limit on what the devil was permitted to do to Job. We read, “The LORD said to Satan, ‘Behold, he is in your hand; only spare his life.’”
16 See John 19:30.
17 See Luke 23:46.
18 Though it is hard for some to see Christ’s death as the ultimate glorification, it is nevertheless true. God’s ways are higher than our ways and his wisdom greater than ours. See Christ’s high-priestly prayer uttered on the night he was betrayed, John 17. See John 17:1-17.
© Copyright 2009 by Redeemer Lutheran Church. All rights reserved.