Revealing Christ

Luke 9:18 – 36

 

Intro – I’m not a perfectionist by any means, but I am the kind of guy who doesn’t like to get any questions wrong a test or quiz. Going back to school by going to seminary has reminded me of that flaw.

 

I find that when it comes to some areas of my life, no one is harder on me than myself. My wife has to remind me to settle down when I miss an answer or two on my quizzes and tests. But there are certain questions that carry greater importance and weight than others.

 

Whether I remembered the date that Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of church in Wittenburg, Germany or not isn’t going to have any eternal significance. But knowing that it is by faith in Christ alone that I’m justified before God and saved does.

 

Probably the most important question to know the answer to is the one we’ve been going over repeatedly throughout the Gospel of Luke. It’s the question that we saw Herod Antipas ask two weeks ago, who is this Jesus?

 

Herod heard everything about Jesus but was at a loss to know who He is because of the different ideas about Jesus’ identity perpetuated by the crowds.

 

But His question remains central here in the Gospel of Luke, and it’s central to our lives today. Let’s answer that question by reading God’s Word together, beginning with Luke 9:18.

 

Body – Last week I mentioned how Jesus’ blessing, breaking, and giving out bread, like He did when He fed the 5,000, is important to understanding His identity.

 

Like with the two disciples on the road to Emmaus who didn’t recognize Jesus until He blessed, broke, and gave them bread, a major revelation about Jesus’ identity follows the feeding of the 5,000.

 

Some time after the miraculous fish fry, it happened that Jesus was praying alone and the Twelve were with Him.

As we’ll see today, big things happen when Jesus prays. Here, Jesus asks the Twelve Himself the question, the defining question of our faith answered by Scripture: Who is this Jesus?

 

He first asks them, who do the crowds say that I am? Who do the people who come to Jesus for healing, to be restored from demon possession, and who just ate some of the best fish and chips they’ve ever had say that Jesus is?

 

The Apostle’s answer Him with the same theories in circulation, the same theories that perplexed Herod: Jesus is John the Baptist, or He’s Elijah, or He’s one of the prophets of old risen from the dead.

 

That’s twice now, in quick succession in this Gospel, that we’re shown that while partially right, the crowds have an incomplete understanding of who Jesus really is. You don’t get partial credit for being partially correct in answering this question.

 

But more importantly, Jesus presses into the Twelve and asks them the same question: Who do you say that I am? That you is emphatic.

 

Jesus expected more from them. They’ve spent so much time with Him already, they’ve experienced so much just in following Him, they’ve done so much having been empowered by Him, so they should definitely know Jesus better than the crowds do.

 

So Peter speaks up for them all, and He answers Jesus quite simply. Peter answered: the Christ of God. Does He even know what that means?

 

His disciples have called Him Master and they’ve called Him Lord, but for the first time, they recognize Jesus as the Christ, marking a big step in their discipleship training.

 

Now they recognized that God has certainly visited His people. The promised Messiah, God’s Anointed One has come. See, Christ isn’t Jesus’ last name, it’s His title.

 

He is the One foretold by the prophets to deliver God’s people from their oppression, to save them from their sins.

So it seems like Peter got it right, good job Peter, here’s a pat on the back. Jesus doesn’t pat Him on the back.

 

Instead, Jesus warns them strictly to not tell anyone that He is the Christ. Not because Peter got it wrong, but because he did get the answer right, even if he doesn’t yet fully know what it means.

 

The people’s expectations are of an Anointed King sent to break Israel free from the yoke of Rome’s oppression, to smite the Gentiles, and to bring Israel political independence.

 

It’s what John the Baptist expected. It’s likely that’s what Peter expected. The Apostle’s may have genuinely believed that Jesus was the Messiah during His time on earth, but even they failed fully grasp what Jesus’ role as the Christ involved.

 

Whatever their ideas behind the title christos, there’s no way they expected what Jesus says next.

 

In painting the full picture of being the Christ of God, Jesus predicts His death for the first time, underscoring the truth that for Jesus and the church, God’s Anointed One was a suffering, Messiah.

 

He must suffer many things. He must be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and scribes. He must be killed. On the third day, He must be raised from the dead. The death of Jesus wasn’t an accident, rather it was a necessity that took place in accordance with God’s divine plan.

 

This is what it means for Jesus to be the Messiah. Jesus has just shockingly realigned what the role of Messiah means with Scripture. His path to victory is the path of suffering and death before final vindication.

 

But His disciples don’t fully understand this, we see this in Matthew’s Gospel when after this Peter rebukes Jesus for saying such things. Peter’s mind was on earthly things; Jesus’ mind was set on heavenly things.

 

This is why Jesus commands silence, they don’t fully understand the meaning of the title Christ, and the timing isn’t yet right to publicly declare Jesus as the Messiah because He hasn’t finished His mission to the cross. The path to the crown leads through the cross.

And it’s the path that Jesus has led the way for His disciples to follow. Do you know what it means to follow this kind of Messiah? To become a disciple of Jesus, is to deny yourself, take up your cross daily, and follow Him.

 

Most of us, if not all of us, struggle with that first one. You want to know who is the hardest person to say no to? Yourself.

 

Denying our flesh is hard. I don’t know a single person who likes to deny themselves anything. Food, comfort, money, rec, pleasure and leisure, anything that makes life easier.

 

But Christ sets the example. He denied Himself. Look at what Satan offered Him in the wilderness. He offered Him the whole world. Yet, Christ never lost focus on the mission and denied Himself.

 

As God the Son He could have had whatever He wanted. Yet, He denied Himself when He voluntarily left heaven, setting aside His heavenly glory and divine privileges in His humanity.

 

Like Jesus did on the way to Calvary, that includes picking up your cross. We wear the symbol of the cross around our necks and we love to colloquially say, “that’s my cross to bear,” but do we truly know what it means?

 

The Apostle’s would not have grasped Jesus’ allusion to His death here like anyone reading this Gospel would have, but they did understand what the cross meant, and it would’ve shocked them.

 

We’re too far removed from that day to truly grasp the weight of what that means, because if we did, we would understand the cost of discipleship. It’s as if Jesus said, pick up your noose, or pick up your electric chair, or grab your lethal injection and follow me.

 

We wouldn’t dream of wearing a miniature noose or electric chair on chain around necks because of how awful and offensive that is today. In their day, that was the cross.

 

Jesus is laying out that the cost of discipleship means carrying your own instrument of death with you. He clearly took up His cross, carrying it to calvary Himself.

 In the same way, we all have to bear the cross, and it has to lead to us dying to ourselves. But there’s a caveat.

 

The truth is that bearing our crosses is a daily action. It’s not just something you do at your moment of salvation, but every day when you wake up you pick that cross up, and you bear it for the glory of Christ.

 

True discipleship involves a complete recalibration, a reordering of all your priorities. It’s the rejection of a life based on your own self-interests and self-fulfillment and instead it’s a life of fulfilling the will and words of Christ.

 

You must refocus your life around Christ and His example.

 

When confronted with such a difficult reality and teaching, our first reaction as disciples of Christ might be spiritually flinch, to cut and run, to cling desperately to comfort and ask if there’s another option. But Jesus warns against this.

 

As Jesus goes on to say, whoever wants to save their lives will lose it. Striving to get ahead in this life at all costs, indulging yourself, running away from your own cross because it’s hard and taking the easy way instead is how the world tells you to save your life, and it’s a lie.

 

Being so focused on the world is ridiculous because all of this temporary, transitory worldly stuff will fade away and you will lose it all in the end. You will not take it with you.

 

I used to tell my dad that all the time, when he would so desperately cling to his dairy. There is no profit to gain everything this world has to offer in exchange for your soul.

 

But whoever loses their life for Christ will save it. Losing your life doesn’t always mean being a martyr. In some circumstances, it may lead to physical death, but the loss of your life here is the fulfillment of the terms and conditions of discipleship.

 

You have to lose yourself in Jesus, sacrificing your earthly comfort, your worldly pleasure, your material possessions, and if necessary, your very life for His sake, in order to find yourself in Jesus.

 

Jesus isn’t looking at the here and now, He always has an eye to the end. Being ashamed of Jesus’ words, of Jesus Himself, will lead to Christ being ashamed of you in the last days when He comes back in glory. Which is to be separated from Jesus entirely.

 

And then Jesus makes this statement as He finishes talking, that there are some standing there that will see the kingdom of God revealed before tasting death? We don’t have to wait long to find out the answer, and neither did the disciples.

 

About a week later, Jesus takes Peter, James, and John up a “high” mountain to pray. While up there praying, Peter, James, and John gets sleepy. Why can’t these three stay awake during a prayer meeting? Don’t raise your hands, but how many of you fall asleep while praying?

 

While they’re sleeping and Jesus was praying His face was changed and, according to Matthew, shown like the sun. His clothes became dazzling white.

 

And suddenly two men appeared in glory and spoke with Jesus, it was Moses and Elijah. The law and the prophets. The man who wrote the first words of the OT and the man referenced with the last words of the OT.

Jesus spoke to them about His departure, which He was about to fulfill at Jerusalem. The word used here is exodos, the Greek for exodus.

 

Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension at Jerusalem was His exodus from this world, but more importantly, it is the exodus from sin and death into the promised land of heaven that Christ leads His people through.

 

When the three Apostles there with Him wake up, they saw His glory, the glory of the coming kingdom that Jesus said some would see before they died, and they saw Moses and Elijah there with Him.

 

As those two were leaving Jesus, Peter remarks how good it is that they got to see that, and he suggests making three tents, one for each of them, Jesus, Moses, and Elijah. But Luke adds that Peter had no idea what he was saying.

 

 

Peter has no idea how wrong he still is about Jesus, even after his heavenly confession that Jesus is the Christ of God. To think that Jesus is on the same level as Moses or Elijah is to not fully comprehend who Christ is.

 

Jesus is greater than Moses and Elijah, He is greater than John the Baptist, He is greater than all the prophets and the law, in fact of He is the complete fulfillment of them.

 

And then, as Peter sticks in his foot in his mouth, God the Father speaks from heaven for the second time in this Gospel. While Peter was saying these things, a cloud came down over them, and they were afraid (rightfully so) as they entered the cloud.

 

And out of the cloud, spoke the voice of God the Father saying to them, “This is my Son, my Chosen One; listen to Him!” And once He finished speaking, the cloud was gone and Jesus was alone with them and they said nothing until after the resurrection.

 

The truth is Jesus is the glorious Christ, greater than the law, the prophets, and all the Apostle’s. And He alone is worthy of following.

 

So I want to encourage you, commit to following the Son of God daily, living by His example and obeying His Word.

 

Believe in the identity of Christ. Before you can follow Christ, you have to affirm His identity, you have to believe who Jesus is. You must understand that Jesus is the Christ of God, the creator of the universe, He is the one who sustains it with the word of His power.

 

You have to be able to look at Jesus of Nazareth, the son of a carpenter, and say He is the Christ of God, the Son of God. You have to accept Jesus’ identity.

 

If you accept His identity, then you have to accept His suffering. Believe in the suffering of Christ. The world wants a good moral teacher but they reject the idea that the justice of God demands satisfaction.

 

Jesus, with the revelation of His glory, tells us that He must suffer. His suffering, rejection, death, and resurrection is all part of His mission and you cannot separate Christ’s identity from His mission.

You have to accept that the mission of Jesus is to suffer. Jesus’ death was no accident, He came to die, He came to pay the price for the sin of His people. But with the promise of His suffering and death, he then points to us and tells us to take up our cross and follow Him.

 

Believe in the promise of Christ. Jesus is saying the you must assume His cross. The way to the cross is the way of suffering. You bring your own instrument of death when you follow Jesus.

 

But your identification with Jesus ought to be more precious to you than this world. Discipleship will cost you everything, but salvation is free. Jesus promises eternal life when you lose your life in Him. Yes, you have to assume His cross, but you also must anticipate His glory.

 

Believe in the glory of Christ. That’s what the transfiguration is about, Jesus is letting them see what waits for them on the other side of their suffering and death.

 

Peter and so many disciples gave their very lives for Jesus and they were able to do so because of knowing what awaited them on the other side. They knew that on the other side is glory, that nothing in this world is worth holding on to except Jesus.

 

Jesus is the only one worth following. Neither Moses nor Elijah, neither Peter nor Paul, no one is on equal footing with Jesus. Jesus reigns supreme and is worthy of all worship.

 

That’s the picture of heaven, the law and the prophets, and the apostle’s and disciples, all worship Jesus, and that’s what’s waiting for us to join in when we get there.

 

Conclusion – We know how the story ends, that Jesus will come back in glory with His angels to judge the living and the dead, to separate the wheat from the chaff, the sheep from the goats. God’s greatest requirement is that you listen to His Son.

 

So listen to Him, because you live out what you believe. But understand that to listen to Christ is to obey Him.