Encounter the Truth

Jonathan Griffiths: One of the realities that you and I just have to reckon with is that we follow a crucified Savior who is despised by the world. Being a Christian does not mean joining the acceptable group. A day of glory is coming when every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

Steve Hiller: Welcome to Encounter the Truth with Jonathan Griffiths. I'm Steve Hiller, and glad you've joined us today. And Jonathan, for those who maybe were under the misconception that once they came to know Christ, life would be easy, people would like them, you learn very quickly that that is not the case. If we're really going to follow Jesus, that means we are going to be despised by some people. So for the person who's maybe walking through that right now, what encouragement would you offer?

Jonathan Griffiths: Well, I think I would want to offer encouragement, as you put it, because you need to know that your experience is not strange, it's not unexpected, and it's not out of step with the teachings of the Lord Jesus himself. He, he prepared us to understand that following him would be tough, because following him means following him on the way to the cross.

And we need these reminders, we need a reality check from time to time. It's helpful to have it ahead of times of suffering, to be reminded to expect these things. But of course, many will be going through times of difficulty, even listening to this message now. And for you, the encouragement is this, Jesus told us it would be this way. Your experience does not mean that your Christianity is substandard or inauthentic. This is the reality of the Christian life, and so be encouraged.

Steve Hiller: Well, let's continue that encouragement by opening God's Word together. Matthew chapter 16 is where we are at, looking at verses 21 to 28 today, as we begin a message called The Christ of the Cross. Here is Jonathan.

Jonathan Griffiths: I think we need to be realistic about the fact that our thinking is naturally inclined to be very, very worldly. Our patterns of thought and our outlook are profoundly shaped by the world around us, by the values and priorities of the culture in which we live.

And because that is true, because that is true for each of us, we need constantly to allow our thinking to be reshaped and renewed by the Word of God in the power of the Holy Spirit. That's at the very heart of the reason why we gather weekly like this, to hear the Word of God even as we are now.

As the Lord Jesus Christ engages with his disciples in the gospels, we find him very often needing to address the worldliness of their thinking. To instruct them, to correct them, to call them to think not after the patterns of this world, but after the pattern of his own teaching.

And here in our verses today in Matthew chapter 16, we find the Lord Jesus correcting a profoundly worldly pattern of thought, worldly patterns of understanding, both of himself and of themselves as disciples.

Within this section of teaching, we actually hear Jesus utter one of his strongest rebukes of any disciple recorded anywhere in the gospels. I'm sure it stood out to you as we read the passage. As Peter reveals the profound worldliness of his own thinking, Jesus has this stinging rebuke for him, there in verse 23. You see it, "Get behind me, Satan. You are a hindrance to me, for you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man." Remarkable words.

Peter's thinking was shaped by the things of man, says Jesus, not the things of God. His thinking was worldly. And Jesus made it clear that this worldly thinking was a real problem. A far greater problem than we might assume or that Peter might have assumed. He went so far as to call this great disciple, this leading disciple, what does he call him? He calls him Satan.

And to say that he was a hindrance to him, not a help. It's, it's so striking, isn't it? It's so very striking because Peter has just made that very wonderful confession of faith. You remember it, not a handful of verses before, perhaps only moments before in real time, we can't know for sure, Peter had declared a truth that no one else had declared with such clarity. Verse 16, in response to that great question, "Who do you say that I am?" Peter looks Jesus square in the face and he declares with perfect clarity, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." He's got it so right. He's got precisely the right words to say. He's made a profoundly accurate confession of faith, and now this.

And now this. In this incident, Peter stands for us as a cautionary warning of a worldly outlook, a worldly frame of mind, a worldliness in thought that you and I so easily share. And Jesus uses this incident to warn us against worldliness in our thinking, our thinking both about him and our thinking about ourselves as disciples.

First, Jesus warns us against a worldly view of him. The prompt for this whole incident is a major shift in gear in the ministry of Jesus. Up until this point, he has been traveling around Israel, as we've seen, and around the peripheral regions as well, preaching, calling disciples, performing great miracles, but now comes something of a change of focus and of emphasis. Now things are going to be a little bit different. Now the focus shifts to Jerusalem and what Jesus plans to do at Jerusalem.

Notice the change of gear with me there in verse 21. From that time, change of gear, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things. Jesus is sharpening his focus now on the cross. He wants his disciples to be really clear about what is going to take place in Jerusalem and what he must do there. He wants them to understand that the journey to Jerusalem that he is going to undertake is actually vitally necessary. It is central to his mission. He is going there not to be welcomed by the great and the good of Jerusalem society as their king, but no, rather to be to suffer at the hand of the religious influencers and the leaders, to be killed and then to rise again.

And when Peter heard what Jesus was saying and began to understand what Jesus was saying, we're told in verse 22 that he reacted in the most remarkable, disrespectful and inappropriate way. He took his teacher aside, the one whom he had called the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of the living God. He took him aside and he had the audacity to rebuke Jesus Christ. "You're wrong, Jesus. The things that you are saying are not true. You are saying things you should not say, far be it from you, Lord, this shall never happen to you," says Peter. No disciple should talk to his teacher in this way. No Israelite would dream of addressing the true Messiah in these terms. It was outrageous behavior.

Why would Peter have been moved to speak in this way? What could possibly have incited him, prompted him? What was it about the teaching of Jesus at this point that elicited such a strong reaction? Well, remember Peter's confession. He confessed in verse 16 that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God. That's what he has come to see, what he has come to know about Jesus Christ.

The word Christ, as you may know, literally means the Anointed One, the Messiah. It means the king, it means the king who was anointed by God as Old Testament kings were. And actually the king was also sometimes in the Old Testament referred to as God's son. And so what Peter has got clear in his mind, whatever else he doesn't have clear, what he's got clear in his mind is that Jesus is the promised king of Israel, the one who would come as Messiah in David's line to save the nation from her enemies.

It was commonly understood in that time that when the Messiah came, he would remove foreign powers from the land. He would defeat the Roman overlords. He would restore the glory of an independent nation. Israel would once again stand on its own two feet with its dignity restored, not subjugated to other pagan nations, like the Greeks and the Romans.

Peter clearly understood that Jesus was the Messiah. And he clearly brought a set of expectations to him in that role. In Peter's mind, going to Jerusalem was going to be great. Jesus, the Messiah, was going to walk into the city and claim his crown and his throne.

But to go there and be rejected by the leadership, as Jesus said he would, to go there to suffer, to go there to die, no. No, no. That is not the plan here, Jesus. That's not what we need from you. We need liberation. We need power, Jesus. We need influence. We need force.

And within this exchange, we come to see that Peter's thinking was so very worldly. And it so profoundly missed the point of Jesus's program, Jesus's mission, his outlook, Peter's outlook. It was triumphalist. You see, Jesus is going to take the world by storm, thinks Peter. He's going to take the reigns of worldly power. He's going to shape the culture, shape the society. There will be an immediate display of force, of glory, of influence and power, and the disciples of Jesus, well, they're they're going to have a front row seat for all this. They are going to have a place of prominence and influence, thinks Peter.

And when Jesus interrupted that train of thought, dismantled that dream, and insisted that suffering and shame were in the offing, Peter, he couldn't bear it. He, he didn't like it. He had the audacity to contradict it.

And as we reflect on Peter's actions and Peter's words here, I think we quickly sense that his attitude and his concerns, his outlook, may not be so far from our very own as we might think and we might imagine. You see, Peter expected the work of Jesus and the ministry of Jesus to be immediately impressive in worldly terms. He expected there to be power and influence and the transformation of society, but Jesus said, "No. That's not where this is going. Not yet, at least. Not in this era of history, not at this stage of the salvation plan. Before reaching the heights of glory, I must go to the cross of shame."

Steve Hiller: You're listening to Encounter the Truth with Jonathan Griffiths and a message called The Christ of the Cross. It's part of our series called In the Presence of the King. We'll get back to this look at Matthew chapter 16 in just a moment.

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Let's get back to the message. Once again, here is Jonathan.

Jonathan Griffiths: One of the realities that you and I just have to reckon with is that we follow a crucified Savior who is despised by the world. Being a Christian does not mean joining the group of influence and power, the acceptable group, the embraced group, the inside group, the respected group.

A day of glory is coming when every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. That day is coming, but that day is not yet. That day is not today. We await Christ's return, we await a day of glory, but we must live today together, friends, in the shadow of the cross.

We must live today as followers of the crucified one, despised by the world. And it's, it's just tough for us. It's tough for us to get our heads around that, just as it was tough for Peter. We want the place of influence, we want to see and feel that we are on the side of power. We want to feel that we are insiders and not outsiders. But here's the thing, this side of the glorious return of Christ, this side of the glorious revealing of his kingdom, that is not our experience, that is not our reality. And it can be very hard to accept. In our worldliness, it is not what we desire and it is not what we long for.

But what Jesus wanted Peter to understand and what he wants us to understand is that his work at the cross, his rejection, his suffering, his death, this saving work is at the very heart of his mission.

You see, in the first instance, our greatest need is not political liberation or cultural change. Our greatest need is not the visible manifestation of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ. Our greatest need is for our sin problem to be addressed. Our greatest need is for our guilt to be taken away. Our greatest need is for our heart to be cleansed. And for that need to be addressed, for our sin to be paid for, we need not a political hero, but a suffering Savior. That's our need.

You see, that's why the work of Jesus at Calvary was so essential. Notice the necessity that Jesus communicates in verse 21. From that time, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders, the chief priests, the scribes and be killed and on the third day be raised. These things must happen. And so the cross confronts the worldly thinking of Peter and the worldly thinking that is so easily ours concerning Jesus Christ.

Jesus rebukes Peter sharply for his way of thinking. He was furthering man's cause, Satan's cause by talking that way. He was a hindrance to his master. That's what Jesus says.

And of course, if you and I will think like Peter, if we will persist in worldly thinking about Jesus Christ, if we will think only about worldly power and worldly influence and not the power of the cross and the wonder of the gospel, the gospel of sins forgiven. If that's our outlook, we're, we're actually a hindrance too. We're not helpful.

In every era of the church's life, there have been those and there will be those who are convinced that our calling and our aim as disciples of Jesus Christ is to, you know, take the culture by force, to become influencers and power brokers in the world. There are waves of that kind of thought today, without doubt, within the church, and we need to be clear, it is a misguided ambition. It's a misguided ambition. It's out of sync with the cross-shaped mission of Jesus Christ. In fact, that kind of an outlook is ultimately a hindrance and not a help. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man, Jesus tells Peter.

It's a wake-up call, isn't it? It's a wake-up call like none other, but Jesus is not done confronting our worldly way of thinking. Having challenged our worldly thinking about him, he now warns us against a worldly view of ourselves.

We are so conditioned in our affluent society to think of ourselves first and foremost as consumers. The advertising industry is so effective at surrounding us, actually bombarding us constantly with messaging that tells us that we are fundamentally consumers, whose main role in the world is to decide which products and which services we will choose for ourselves from among the vast array that are available to us. All the products, all the services, they want to be chosen. They want to be the one upon which we will place our stamp of approval. Which one will we favor with our patronage and with our resources? That's a great question.

I regularly get emails, as I'm sure you do, that try and entice me to sign up for a new credit card. I mean, most days. I normally ignore these, but I did decide the other day that I would actually have a look. I would do some of my own research. What, what is actually the best card to use, the best new card to sign up for? It, it used to be, you know, that you would just go to your local bank where, where you have your, your day-to-day account and just apply for a credit card there and that was all there was to it. But that's, apparently that is not how it goes now.

You take an online survey that will ask you about yourself and your, your spending habits, your travel patterns, your income, the kinds of insurance you need, the type of reward you prefer, and then you will receive a tailored list of recommendations. And just wading through all the card features is totally bewildering. Which reward programs do you use to collect your points? Do you have a favorite airline group or hotel brand? Do you want a shopping concierge, whatever that is? Do you want preferred tickets for a special event? Do you want airport lounge access, annual reward flights or hotel room stays, car rental insurance, baggage loss cover, bonus points on groceries or gas, foreign exchange fee waivers, and on and on it goes? And, and then there's the whole question of first-year bonuses and fee waivers, and 5 million extra points if you make three purchases in the first month and sign all your relatives up for companion cards or something.

Now, I started to wade through all this and my first thought was, you know, with all these rewards, I might be able to engineer things if I play my cards right that we could move the whole family permanently to an airport lounge, where we could feast on an endless buffet of tepid finger foods, and I might never need to work again. But then I got totally overwhelmed and I decided just to stick with the credit card from the local bank that I signed up for years ago.

You see, we now have an overwhelming variety of choices, not simply about what to buy, but through which mechanism we will buy them. And everyone is out to court our business. We think of ourselves primarily as consumers, with the world at our feet, with the products and the services of the world there to bring us fulfillment and pleasure and an ever-increasing standard of living, all with a sign-up bonus to make your head spin.

And when we hear the word of Jesus Christ, and when we receive the invitation of Jesus Christ, we just naturally assume that he must be there to fulfill our desires, to affirm us in our wants, to serve us in our personal goals. But into this worldly attitude, this worldly outlook of heart, Jesus speaks a very different reality, does he not? He issues a very different call, doesn't he? "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me."

Many won't follow Jesus Christ, of course, but whoever would do so, says Jesus, he must first learn to deny himself. Say no to your desires and your wants and your agenda, and instead pick up a cross of suffering and of cost, and follow Jesus on that road of suffering, of rejection, of shame.

And in those few, very packed and loaded words, Jesus dismantles, no, he decimates our worldly outlook concerning ourselves. And, and we hear this, but it sounds entirely foreign to us. We listen to it, and if we're honest, a large part of us dislikes it and recoils away from it, isn't that true?

Carrying a cross, of course, means suffering. It means suffering that will lead to death, it means cost, it means shame, it means pain. And you and I will assume that our discipleship of Jesus Christ, our service of Jesus Christ, should not cost us like it cost other generations, like it cost other believers in other parts of the world today. Not us. In the comfortable West, we will assume, we won't say it, we'll never say it, of course, but we will assume that cross-bearing is simply not for us. Is that not our assumption?

Steve Hiller: Jonathan Griffiths here on Encounter the Truth in a message called The Christ of the Cross. We're going to pause right here, but we'll continue next time. If you ever miss a broadcast, come and listen online at encounterthetruth.org.

When Encounter the Truth is able to be on this station, make the website, the podcast, and all the things that happen behind the scenes happen because of your generous financial support. And as you give a gift of any amount this month, we want to say thank you by sending you a book written by Paul Mallard. It's called An Anchor for the Soul. And Jonathan, how would reading this book be helpful in our Christian walk?

Jonathan Griffiths: Well, if we're going to keep walking with the Lord Jesus Christ day by day, week by week, month by month, year by year, we need stability. We need stability. And in order to have stability, we need to understand who Jesus is and what he's done for us. And Psalm 22 is a wonderful Old Testament passage that points us to Jesus and teaches us about his work on the cross for us, entering into the depths of human suffering and bearing the cost of sin in our place at Calvary. I think for each one of us, taking the time to reground and re-anchor our faith in the saving work of Jesus is going to do us tremendous good, and I just love to get this book into your hands.

Steve Hiller: Again, it's called An Anchor for the Soul, written by Paul Mallard, our thank you gift to you for your financial support this month. You can give online at encounterthetruth.org or over the phone. Our number is 1-833-99 Truth. Again, the website is encounterthetruth.org and the phone number is 1-833-998-7884.

You can also write to us at Encounter the Truth, PO Box 5513, Ottawa, Ontario, K2C 3M1. Or in the US, Encounter the Truth, 215 North Arlington Heights Road, Suite 102, Arlington Heights, Illinois, 60004. For Jonathan Griffiths and our producer Mark Bruda, I'm Steve Hiller. Thanks for listening and I hope you'll join us next time.