Who do You Say Jesus Is?

Pastor Luke Finkelstein

Luke • Sermon • Submitted 2 years ago

Luke 9:18–27

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Introduction

Jesus is grooming the disciples to perpetuate the mission He came to set in motion. Last week you will remember that at the beginning of Luke Chapter 9, we read of the sending out of the disciples for the first time independent of the bodily presence of Jesus. As I shared, at that moment, Luke called them something different at this stage of their ministry. He had called the group disciples, “learners, pupils”, and began to call them apostles meaning “sent out, or messengers.” Jesus as well calls us to deepen or grow in our devotion to Him.

You have heard that we:

are “Saved to Serve the Lord” and we

are “Saved to Share Jesus with the Lost”.

In the Word of God we understand that God desires that we continue in our growth in serving Him.

Paul writes to the church at Corinth:

1 Corinthians 3:2 “2 I fed you with milk and not with solid food; for until now you were not able to receive it, and even now you are still not able;”

The Hebrew Writer states:

Hebrews 5:12-13 “12 For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God; and you have come to need milk and not solid food. 13 For everyone who partakes only of milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a babe.”

As God’s called people, our desire should be to mature into the role that God has ultimately called us to. Sharing Him with a lost world.

I have never gotten over the amazement of the workings of God in our lives. Just as the apostles, the Lord is constantly working in our lives as we see pictured in Chapter 9. The Lord reveals Himself in some eventful miracle in our lives when we feel as we are against the wall and God does the unimaginable in our lives. And, it is in those times that Jesus reveals just a little more of Himself to us and deepens our faith, our trust, and our commitment to Him.

Jesus has just performed the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand and they all have deepened, yet one more time in their understanding of who this God man is with His humility that is sitting in close proximity to them. Jesus performs that in our lives on almost a daily basis as He works and heals and directs and affirms and the list goes on as we grow in Him with each passing day.

We know that Jesus is one of three persons, but one God, Jesus makes up a part of the God head, Jesus the Son, the Holy Spirit, and the Heavenly Father.

As a child, my earthly father introduced me to the very things I enjoy today by exposing to an impacting grandiose event that brought thrill in my life. My father carried me to an Episcopal Day Camp in Gadsden where He had permission to fish the pond. He rigged me up with a worm and cork and hook and I tied into the largest bluegill that my father ever saw caught. I was probably 5 or 6 years of age and he had that fish mounted for me. I was standing on a slick clay bank on the dam side of that pond and my dad made me fight that blue gill the whole time. That fish almost pulled me in the water on the slick clay bank I was fishing. He exposed me to the thrill and then began to teach me how to perpetuate that love for the sport. He repeated that process with golf, football, basketball, baseball and hunting. He helped me to experience a kill or a great shot and then began to teach how to perpetuate that love on to my next generation.

That is what our aim or objective is today. Jesus wants us time and again to experience the thrill of His workings in our lives and to perpetuate that blessing in the lives of others. He would love nothing better than you to experience leading someone to Christ and then to work with you in perpetuating that blessing in the lives of others that have not experienced Jesus.

Prayer

Let’s Pray.

Scripture Reading

Luke 9:18-22

Luke 9:18–22 NKJV

18 And it happened, as He was alone praying, that His disciples joined Him, and He asked them, saying, “Who do the crowds say that I am?” 19 So they answered and said, “John the Baptist, but some say Elijah; and others say that one of the old prophets has risen again.” 20 He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered and said, “The Christ of God.” 21 And He strictly warned and commanded them to tell this to no one, 22 saying, “The Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised the third day.”

Clarity against Fragmented Thought VV. 18-19

Luke 9:18-19 “18 And it happened, as He was alone praying, that His disciples joined Him, and He asked them, saying, “Who do the crowds say that I am?” 19 So they answered and said, “John the Baptist, but some say Elijah; and others say that one of the old prophets has risen again.””

This is the 4th time in 7 times that Jesus retreated to pray as recorded in Luke’s gospel. We are studying on Sunday nights a message series entitled, “Prayer Propels the Gospel” as we have studied in 1 Timothy 2:1-7. Interestingly, Jesus always prayed before big events, big encounters, or times of teaching life changing transformational building blocks to one’s journey.

If you want to learn from the Lord, dialogue with the Lord. Pray to Him and listen to Him through His Word, in worship, in the message, in Sunday School, on Christian Radio, through Christian friends, and the list goes on. If you want to hear from the Lord, dialogue with the Lord.

The Scriptures tell us that Jesus had retreated or was alone praying and the disciples collectively came up to join Him. Jesus entered into a teaching moment with those men of God that day.

I pray for you that maybe God is drawing you in and that magnetism that Jesus has in our lives as were are growing in Him. They were being affirmed in their calling and Jesus had mesmerized them with the miracles He had performed, the lives He had changed, there very lives that had changed and they wanted, they hungered to share what Jesus was doing in their lives as well as the lives of others.

Jesus asked the disciples an open ended question. I want you to understand an important truth here. If you really want to understand where someone is in their spirituality, ask them an open ended question.

Jesus asked the question “who do the crowds say that I am?”

Consider for a moment that we have been hiking the mountain of understanding of who Jesus is in our study of Luke.

Luke 2:11 “11 For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.”

Luke 2:25 “25 And behold, there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon, and this man was just and devout, waiting for the Consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him.” Luke 2:29-32 “29 “Lord, now You are letting Your servant depart in peace, According to Your word; 30 For my eyes have seen Your salvation 31 Which You have prepared before the face of all peoples, 32 A light to bring revelation to the Gentiles, And the glory of Your people Israel.””

In Chapter 4, Jesus read Isaiah in the synagogue

Luke 4:18-19 “18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, Because He has anointed Me To preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, To proclaim liberty to the captives And recovery of sight to the blind, To set at liberty those who are oppressed; 19 To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.””

Jesus states “Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

On & On, “who is this that the winds and the waves obey Him?”

“Who is this that can forgive sins?”

And this morning, we stand upon the pinnacle, the synergy of all that we are about, keeping the main thing the main thing to both understand and share as well, of who Jesus is.

And they answered in this way:

“John the Baptist, another replied Elijah, and another, one of the old prophets has risen again.”

He asked that question for important reason and the reason is just as paramount to us today. We must not be fragment in our thoughts of the message of Jesus. You need to be grounded and understand the foremost priority of what to share when God provides the opportunity to share with someone about spiritual matters.

At this time in the Bible, because the mission had not moved out greatly into the pagan areas of the world, the people were responding to that question in a manner based upon their upbringing and their depth of understanding. People will respond most times relative to their cultural backgrounds or any religious exposure they have experienced in their upbringing.

They were responding with the here and now of that time having seen John the Baptist at work and the fact His ministry was prophesied as well in the OT. Furthermore, these were mostly Jewish people the disciples were interacting with. People of the region were exposed to the Torah or what we would call the OT. They knew the OT prophets. They knew Jesus walked with God, but they had not come to the realization that He was God.

Jesus asked those men that question because they needed to understand the mindset of the day as to who people believe Jesus was. There are three vitally important objectives accomplished in answering that question.

1. It is the highest priority question you can ask.

2. You will gain understanding to what is the mindset of the day when it comes to spiritual matters and the afterlife.

3. They understood the clarity of the question and the message to address.

Call for a Unified Message V. 20

Look with me at verse 20.

Luke 9:20 “20 He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered and said, “The Christ of God.””

Notice something quite important here. Jesus did not ask them about their understanding of the temple, the synagogue, sacrifices, or burnt offerings, or the church. Jesus was training them by the direct question:”who do you say that I am?”

And dearly beloved, so much theology is embedded within that question.

The pronoun who, in English, is an interrogative pronoun and a relative pronoun, used primarily to refer to persons.

Jesus is a person. Jesus is God and Jesus was man. He came to earth for you and for me. He lives and died upon this earth to be the sacrifice for our sins. After the resurrection, He was witnessed by 500 plus people. They touched Him, they talked to Him and with Him. They ate with Him. His life was a ransom for the sins of the world. He died that everyone could ultimately live if they accept Jesus’ gift of life.

Jesus is not some concept or alternative to some other form of answer within the bounds of religion that will pipeline you to an afterlife.

That is why it is vitally important that we understand what the world is thinking when it comes to the subject of the life hereafter. Two standout mindsets of the day that are so prevalent are:

The thought that a good God would not send someone to hell. Firstly, God in His great mercy would have it that no one go to hell. That is the very reason He has not come back to carry us home yet is because in His great mercy, he is waiting for the world to accept Him as Savior so that they do not have to live an eternity in hell.

The idea that there are multiple ways into heaven.

There is one way and that is Jesus Christ. Jesus states in His Word:

John 14:6 “6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.”

Oh dear church, understanding who Jesus is vital to your theology and your very salvation. Jesus is more than a good prophet, He is more than one sent 2,000 years ago to be written about and form the dictates of our lives through the Bible. He is more than a mere teacher of the Word of God, or of the other many agents sent from God, He is even more than one sent with power to do miracles, Jesus is God, our Sacrifice and the Savior of our very lives. Oh that we know that, and live out that salvation found in Him and God alone.

I think sometimes of Christ and the church as we do cash and credit cards. Alternatives to cash today makes money abstract. We use debit cards, credit cards, apple pay, paypal, cash app, Venmo, but at the end of the day we are spending real money.

Likewise, over time, with an emphasis on concepts like church, worship, Sunday School, tithing, or the pastor/deacon, or VBS, do we place greater emphasis on the concepts rather than the Christ that is the synergy of all that we are about?

When the church begins to talk about Jesus rather than church, we will see revival as we have never seen break out dear brothers and sisters.

In Matthew’s account of this same story, Peter stated these words:

Matthew 16:16-17 “16 Simon Peter answered and said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” 17 Jesus answered and said to him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven.”

In Luke, “you are the Christ of God” meaning you are the appointed agent to fulfill the messiah to set the world free from its sins for their individual choosing.

Comprehensive Understanding of the Gospel by Response & Obedience VV. 21-22.

Luke 9:21-22 “21 And He strictly warned and commanded them to tell this to no one, 22 saying, “The Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised the third day.””

While there are a number of crucial spiritual questions, none is more important than the question Jesus asked the twelve in Luke 9:20, “But who do you say that I am?” For example, there are thousands of people who believe that the Bible is God’s Word. They seek to obey its moral standards. They believe in Jesus’ virgin birth. They believe that He sacrificed His life to set us free from sin and death and that all who put their faith in Jesus can have their sins forgiven and receive everlasting life (these statements are affirmed in “What Does God Require of Us?” [Watchtower Society, 1996], pp. 6-7). Yet these people are going to hell because they deny the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ. I am referring to the Jehovah’s Witness cult. The same could be said of other cults, such as Mormonism, that claim to be Christian, but deny either Jesus’ true deity or His true humanity. Thus

Jesus’ question, “Who do you say that I am?” is crucial for each person to answer correctly and in its entirety.

Jesus told the disciples to be quiet on the subject of the things He prophesied that must happen as prophesied thousands of years before in the OT before Jesus came to earth. He did not want them in any way to interfere in any fashion to what providentially must happen for the sake of all mankind.

Their idea of the Christ was a political Messiah who would put food on every table and livestock in every stable. They were thinking of power and dominion, not of suffering, rejection, and death.

But Jesus wasn’t sent by the Father to make everyone happy, so that they could go on living self-centered lives with God’s help. He came to deal with the fundamental problem of the human race: sin. The essence of sin is our stubborn self-will that says, “I’ll run my own life, God. Just help me feel good when I need You.” The cross, where the Lord of Glory took the penalty we deserved, was the only divine solution for our sin problem. If you haven’t come as a sinner to the crucified Christ and trusted Him as God’s provision for your sin, you have not responded correctly to Jesus’ crucial question.

Luke Original Meaning

To be a Christian is to understand this unique role of Jesus. There is no one else like him in the plan of God. He is the only foundation that can be laid to build the house of God

1 Corinthians 3:11 “11 For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.”

Oh dearly beloved, Jesus must be described in a sound gospel message that no, he did not come as a political messiah, but he came as a suffering servant. The prophecies of Isaiah as our Suffering Servant revealed that the grace that our Lord and Savior brings is in total contrast to the religious elite of the day to the law, for one could not keep the law because if you broke one, you broke them all. But Jesus rose on the third day. The Gospel is Jesus come to earth in the obscurity of humility and humanity to sin infested earth. He lived upon this earth 33 years in servitude to lost humanity. He did suffer as on in contrast to the law that would not bring salvation, but the Lord and His grace and that blood bought gift at Calvary's cross is the way to salvation. He died on the cross, yes, but He escaped the empty tomb and that promise is made available in a Savior named Jesus.

Can you answer that question this morning, “who is Jesus to you?”

You might say, “Brother Luke, I can not truly answer that question.

For the more scientifically minded the problem is one of historical distance and having to rely on pre-scientific eye witnesses. For the more sceptical certainty about anything even our own experiences is doubted. But God has given us His word that we can know things truly, though not necessarily exhaustively. In particular the gospels have been given that we can know who Jesus Christ is. John at the end of his gospel writes, 20:30-31, ‘Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; 31 but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.’