Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

It is human nature to look for a shortcut.

When I was growing up, my mom used to say to me, “If you’d spend as much time doing the work as you do trying to figure out how to make it easier, you’d be done in half the time.”

I can think back to when I was in gym class in junior high, and we were supposed to write a ten page paper on an athlete.

My girlfriend at the time told me that everyone just wrote the top page and stapled blank sheets to it and that all Coach Evans did was look to see if it was there and give you a grade.

Well, that may have been true for everybody else, but when I wrote my 3.5 pages and stapled 6 blank pages to it, that paper magically appeared in mother’s classroom.

What a blessing it was to have my mother as a teacher at school!

Or, last year, I had to lay 36 pallets (36 pallets!) of sod at my house.

Well, if you’ve ever laid sod, then you know that you have to rake up all of the rocks first.

About 2 hours in to raking up the rocks in about 1/100 of my yard, I was determined to find a faster way.

That’s when I called my man, Phil Bussey, shortcut extraordinaire, and new that he could come through for me.

He loaned me a homemade infield rake that is two 4 x 4 posts with a piece of chainlink fence between that I could drag behind my lawn mower.

Not only did it not pick up my rocks as hoped, but when I turned my lawn mower the chain got wrapped around my axle causing the 4 x 4 post to hit me in the head like Mike Tyson and nearly flip the lawn mower causing me to jump off in mid air.

So, as hard as we look for shortcuts, the truth is that almost always our shortcuts let us down.

And, there is no place where a shortcut is more lethal than in our pursuit of Jesus.

There are no shortcuts to becoming a mature follower of Jesus.

There are no shortcuts to godliness.

There is no lite version of Christianity, no easy street in discipleship that bypasses costs and persecution.

But, if we’re honest, we’re always looking for a path of less resistance.

This morning, we’re going to see an instance in the life of Jesus’ disciples, particularly Peter, in which they were looking for an easier way, a path of greater comfort and less difficulty.

God’s Word

Read

Jesus Must Go to the Cross

“From that time Jesus began to tell his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem” We are, this morning, at the hinge-point in Jesus’ ministry on earth.

He is now shifting the explicit focus of his ministry toward the cross.

As Zach told you last week, he is heading south from Caesarea Phillipi, and He is heading toward to Jerusalem.

It is, in fact, the last journey that Jesus will make before his slaughter.

From the beginning, Jesus has been heading there.

His death, his cross is no surprise to him.

At his Baptism in chapter we saw Jesus identify with the need for sinners to be washed clean, and Jesus accepting the will of his Father.

In the wilderness, Jesus rejected all that this world has to offer.

He rejected easy living.

He rejected all of the kingdoms of earth that Satan offered him.

And, at the same time, He committed himself to the cross.

But, this is the first time that he has spoken so explicitly.

This is the first time that he has told his disciples so directly that he’s going to suffer and die and be raised on the third day.

And so, our text tells us that beginning on this day, the message was steady and consistent.

Jesus had to die if he was to fulfill the will of his Father.

Before there would be a crown, there would be a cross.

Be sure to notice how emphatic Jesus says this.

He says, “I must go.”

That is not to say that Jesus was fatalistically and robotically going against his will.

No, he ‘must’ go because that was the Father’s will, and he had resolved to follow the Father’s will unequivocally, even to a gruesome death.

Jesus was going to Jerusalem.

Jesus was going to his own slaughter, and he was going willingly.

In the wilderness, Jesus rejected all that this world has to offer.

He rejected easy living.

And, at the same time, He committed himself to the cross.

Jesus Must Suffer

“he must....suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes” In Jesus’ explicit explanation of the coming days to his disciples, he makes clear to them that he ‘must suffer’ at the hands of the Sanhedrin, which is comprised of the three groups of people he mentions in verse 21.

Jesus does not give his disciples any rose-colored illusions about the days ahead.

They would be days of suffering.

Now, what you have to understand, is that this goes against everything that these men had ever been taught about the Messiah.

When we casually read last week’s text and then read this week’s text, we can almost become a little bit confused by what’s going on with Peter.

In last week’s passage in , Peter calls Jesus the Messiah and Jesus says that Peter has been given knowledge from God and that Peter is the rock upon whom He will build his church.

And then this week, Peter so fundamentally misunderstands the mission of Jesus that it leads Jesus to call him Satan!

How could Peter be so confused?

How could Peter not know that Jesus was going to suffer if he knew that Jesus was the Messiah?

The Jews revered the Messiah as a dynamic political figure that would march in, overthrow the Roman Empire in a blaze of military glory, and then reign from the throne of David forever.

Oh, how they would have held fast to and the child that was to be born upon whose shoulders the government would rest and how they would’ve reveled in the words of would the Son of Man would rule the world and all nations would bow down before him.

But, they missed .

They missed that before the Messiah would be a celebrated king, he would be a Suffering Servant.

Before the Lion of Judah would strike down the nations, the Son of God would be struck in the face.

Before he would sit upon the throne of David, He would hang on the tree of curse enduring the jeers of men and the wrath of God.

Here’s what the Jews missed and what Peter missed: Jesus must suffer so that He might crush the source of suffering.

Suffering exists because sin does.

Israel’s main plight was not the rule of Rome; it was the rule of sin.

Rome only ruled because sin did.

Hatred and leprosy and cancer and political oppression are all mere groanings of a sin-warped earth.

The earth did not need a political savior; it needed a spiritual One.

So, Jesus was headed to suffer in Jerusalem so that He might crush, not the mere symptoms of suffering, but the source — sin itself.

He would suffer in every way.

Physically he would be stripped naked and chained to a post, beaten like a dog.

He’d have 9” nails driven through the nerve centers in his wrists to hang on a cross upon which he would ultimately suffocate.

He would suffer emotionally as endured the betrayal of Judas, the abandonment of Peter, the rejection of the crowd, and the hatred of leaders.

He would come under such emotional distress that the capillary blood vessels in his body would burst so that blood oozed from his pores.

And, He would suffer spiritually as the cup of God’s wrath was to be poured out unfiltered over the his very Son.

The Apostles often refer to the cross as the tree, which represents the very curse of God that is stored up to exacted against the wicked.

From the cross, Jesus would cry out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Jesus came to suffer, and He came to suffer in every way that you and I know suffering that the very source of our suffering might be crushed beneath his blood-stained victory.

Jesus Must Die

“he must....be killed” And so, Jesus says that He must not only suffer, but He must ‘be killed’ at the hands of sinful man.

For the source of suffering to be defeated, the Son of God had to do more than endure suffering; He had to die as a result of his suffering.

Because the wages of sin is death.

You know this from , but it dates all the way back to the Garden of Eden when God told Adam that if He disobeyed him and distrusted the goodness of his instruction that he would surely die.

Sin requires death.

This is the picture of every bull, bird, and ram slaughtered in Leviticus.

This is what you’ve beheld at every funeral you’ve ever attended.

The ultimate curse of sin is the curse of death.

And so, Jesus could not simply shed blood or endure hardship or be hated; He had to die.

His perfect life for your wicked life.

Only his infinite righteousness could be a worthy substitute for your infinite offense toward an infinite God.

It was a debt that only God himself by shedding his own righteous blood could repay.

We Are His Murderers!

“killed” And, the word ‘killed’ here is not an accidental one.

To ‘be killed’ is different than to die.

To ‘be killed’ is to be put to death at the hands of someone else.

Jesus was there according to the will of God, and Jesus went voluntarily, able to stop it at any point.

But, in Jerusalem, He was ‘killed,’ murdered at the hands of sinners.

As the executioners were cast lots at Jesus’ feet, he pulled up on the nails, gasping for air, and cried out, “Father, forgive them for the know not what they do.”

And as much as we may wish to deride those men responsible, we must remember, this morning, that we are responsible.