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Pentecost 13, 09/03/2017
Sermon on Matthew 16:21-28, by Paul C. Sizemore
Well it is official! Another new school year has opened in South Carolina and for many of these students it is a very exciting time in their young lives. It is a time filled with all sorts of hopes and possibilities. There is the hope of strengthening old friendships. There is the possibility of making new friends. But for some young people, the beginning of a new school year is a horrifying thing, even for them to think about! Why, because they find themselves numbered among those students who have become the subjects of school-bullying and this matter of school-bullying can easily go viral in a matter of minutes!
Years ago, if a young man made a terrible mistake on the athletic field, it’s possible that his friends would have teased him about it for a couple of days. He might have even become the subject of a few cruel jokes being told about him in the school cafeteria. But soon afterwards, it was all forgotten! Today, however, that scene may be captured on film and broadcast to the whole world in a matter of minutes, thereby invoking public ridicule and shame.
Brothers and sisters, St. Matthew did not have a smart phone or a camcorder, but if he did I think he might have captured this rather embarrassing episode in the life of Simon Peter on a video too, even though this whole episode falls directly on the heels of a most wonderful experience for Simon Peter, along with Jesus’ other 11 disciples. The place was Caesarea Philippi and Jesus had just asked his disciples pointblank: “Who do you say that I am?” (Matthew 16:15).
Peter, so often the spokesperson for the group, speaks up and answers emphatically: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God!” (Matthew 16:16). Following this Jesus praises Peter saying, “Blessed are you Simon son of John!” But Jesus also instructs Peter that it is always important to give credit where credit is due: “For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, Simon son of John, but my Father in heaven has revealed this to you!”
- JESUS PREDICTS HIS FUTURE SUFFERING, DEATH AND RESURRECTION
It was soon after this, that Matthew tells us: “From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised again” (v. 21)!
Impulsively, Peter then takes our Lord Jesus aside and rebukes him saying: “Far be it from you, Lord! This shall never happen to you!” (v. 23)
But Jesus certainly wasn’t pleased, nor impressed with Peter’s response! Instead Jesus rebukes Peter saying: “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!” (Matthew 16:23)
The Greek word that is translated here, as “hindrance” in the ESV is scandalon, from which we have received the English word “scandal.” In its most literal meaning however the translation would be a “stumbling block!” “Get behind me, Satan, you are a stumbling block to me! You do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of man!” (Matthew 16:23)
Friends, this whole understanding of something or someone becoming a stumbling block in the life of another person, is anything or anyone that could greatly diminish the kind of personal relationship that God longs to establish between himself and a human being; a word that actually appears in the Bible 14 times.
One of the best known verses is found in Matthew 18:7, “Woe to the world because of its stumbling blocks! For it is inevitable that stumbling blocks will come; but woe to that man through whom these stumbling blocks comes!”
In I Corinthians 1:23, Paul writes, “But we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Greeks, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, the power of God and the wisdom of God!” Friends, do you think that Jesus’ disciples understood what he was talking about when he began to predict to them, very clearly now, his own impending death, by crucifixion and of his rising to life three days later again? In one sense they didn’t understand it at all, because when Jesus was arrested and killed, his death came with as much shock to these disciples as it obviously came to everyone else. When Jesus was arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane, they scattered immediately; each man to his own home!
At that time, not even one of those disciples understood the necessity for Jesus’ death—his death that was required for our Savior to make a full atonement for all of our sins! Nor did they anticipate his resurrection three days later that became the visible proof that God indeed had accepted the sacrifice that the Holy Son of God was making for them and for all sinners in every time and place.
Friends, any brand of Christianity without a cross is absolutely worthless. Without the cross there is no salvation because there is no Savior. Christ’s example helps no one; not only because we can’t follow his example, because we are people who are born into this world a sinful nature! It is not merely a good example we need to see in human form—what we need above all other things is a Man to become our Savior; the gift that is freely given to us in the God-Man Jesus Christ!
- NEXT JESUS CHALLENGES HIS DISCIPLES TO TAKE UP THEIR CROSSES TO FOLLOW HIM.
Jesus next turns his attention to whole group of his disciples standing before him and reveals to them the inevitable law of the Christian life—that a servant is never above his master.
“Then Jesus told his disciples, ‘If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?”
People who deny themselves completely abandon all attempts and saving themselves and bring themselves into a right relationship with the LORD God due to their own efforts and determination. Such people cease to be committed in promoting only their own selfish and self-centered agendas! Instead, their lives have become so transformed to by the grace of God (Romans 12:1-2) that they are now far more interested in promoting the glory of God!
Friends, these words in our Gospel lesson this morning should humble every one of us because they remind us how easily any one of us may be completely right in our thinking about our God and spiritual things, only for us in the next moment to shift gears and become completely wrong in our thinking, saying and doing—in the very next moment!
One minute Peter is a prophet; a true spokesman for God. The next minute he is advancing the agenda of the devil; not realizing, however, that in his trying to deflect Jesus away from the cross he was actually asking for his own damnation—since apart from Jesus’ death and resurrection, not he nor any of us, could ever be saved.
Nevertheless, by the grace of God this very man who said: “Never Lord! This shall never happen to you," became one of the greatest preachers of the Gospel of Jesus Christ; a man who spent his whole life sharing with others his message about the absolute necessity of our Savior’s death upon the cross! Once he got his theology right, by the Spirit’s outpouring upon him on that great day of Pentecost, he never forgot it.
And it was Peter who later boldly witnessed before the Sanhedrin one day confessing: “The stone you builders rejected has now become the cornerstone,” (Psalm 118:22) and “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved” (Acts 11-12)!
The Christian life may hold in store for us countless blessings, but there are times when the Christian life will make us susceptible to more personal heartache and suffering than we could ever imagine. Isn’t this what this same Apostle Peter shared later on with the church in his day?
In I Peter 4:13: “But rejoice insofar as you are sharing in Christ’s sufferings, so that you may also be glad and shout for joy when his glory is revealed!” All of the prophets in the Old Testament era suffered in their willingness to speak forth and also to constantly defend the Word of God and the Prophet Jeremiah was certainly no exception!
Jeremiah was certainly experiencing a hard time in his life and ministry, where and when we meet him in our Old Testament lesson today. Here he bares his troubled soul to God for sure. He had tried so hard to be faithful to the LORD God in his calling as a prophet. He says to the LORD: “Your words were found and I ate them, and your words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart, for I am called by your name, O LORD, God of hosts. I did not sit in the company of revelers, nor did I rejoice; I sat alone, because your hand was upon me, for you had filled me with indignation.
So why Lord, is my pain unceasing? Why are my wounds incurable and refusing to be healed? Will you be to me like a deceitful brook, like waters that fail?
It God’s response to Jeremiah it is almost as if God is responding to Jeremiah in the same way that Arnold used to respond to his older brother Willis on that 1970s situation comedy “Different Strokes.”
It’s almost as if we can now hear God saying to Jeremiah: “What you talkin’ about Jeremiah?”
God says to Jeremiah, “If you return to me, I will restore you, and you shall stand before me. If you utter what is precious, and not what is worthless, you shall be as my mouth. They shall turn to you, but you shall not turn to them. And I will make you to this people a fortified wall of bronze; they will fight against you, but they shall not prevail over you, for I am with you to save you and deliver you, declares the Lord. I will deliver you out of the hand of the wicked and redeem you from the grasp of the ruthless!”
When I was a child growing up in Florida, I can remember walking with friends just a few blocks down the street from the neighborhood in which we lived to a nearby park and playground. One of the most interesting pieces of playground equipment at that park in addition to the swings, the monkey-bars, and the merry-go-round was the “see-saw!” At least that’s what we called it when I was a child living in Florida.
When I student-taught as part of my education at Concordia University, Chicago, I later learned that people living in the northern United States didn’t call a see-saw a “see-saw.” They called it a “teeter-totter.”
But whether it was called a see-saw or a teeter totter, children would be children—and there were times when the person whose body on that see-saw was firmly resting on the ground, would jump up off of that see-saw without giving to that child on the other end of that see-saw, suspended 6 feet above the ground, the slightest warning whatsoever! Therefore, the other child who was supposedly that other child’s friend would come crashing down to the ground with a painful bump!
Sometimes, unfortunately, like Jeremiah, we too may feel that this is something, comparatively speaking, that our God does to us! We trust him to be there with us through the ups and down of life but when our lives take an unexpected turn and leaves us with some pretty big bumps and bruises, it may seem to us initially as if our God has walked away from us—leaving our lives to come crashing down upon us!
But in another book ascribed to Jeremiah, the book of Lamentations, listen to what we read there in chapter 3: “The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases. Her mercies never come to an end” (v. 22) and the same God who says this to Jeremiah, is also faithful to you and me, even when everything seems to be falling apart in our lives at the seams. This means that even in the midst of our pain, and during those times when we may certainly feel lonely, we are not alone at all! And even though, during times like this when we may not feel God’s presence, he is still right there alongside of us as our trusted Companion who promised us that he would never walk away from us and that he would never leave us or for sake us!
So how about me, that is with respect to my relationship with God and with other people in their lives?
Am I most often a stumbling block to Jesus in other peoples’ lives or am I instead a stepping stone to Jesus in other people’s lives?
In other words, do I let the love God has for me, demonstrated to me in his forgiveness and mercy, flow through me to other people in their lives, or do I simply seek to dam up his love, forgiveness and mercy towards me and prevent it from going out to other people?
Let me close this message today by reminding you that there are actually two major bodies of water in the land where Jesus walked. One is the Sea of Galilee; a beautiful lake 13 miles long and 7 miles wide; filled with fish and surrounded by many different types of lush foliage.
The other body of water is the Dead Sea, 50 miles long and 11 miles wide; the shoreline of which is 1300 feet below sea level. Believe it or not, seven million tons of water evaporates from the Dead Sea every day. The saline or salt content of the water of the Dead Sea ranges from 26-35%, making it 10 times saltier than the oceans of the world.
There’s no seaweed or plants of any kind in or around this body of water. There are no fish or any kind of swimming, squirming creatures living anywhere within the Dead Sea. As a matter of fact, the only thing you will see along the shores of the Dead Sea is white, crystals of salt covering EVERYTHING.
According to the website “extremescience.com,” fish that somehow unknowingly swim into some of the fresh streams that eventually flow into the Dead Sea are killed instantly. Their bodies are quickly coated with a preserving layer of salt crystals and then soon thereafter tossed onto the shore by the wind and the waves!
Both the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea are fed by the Jordan River, so that there is only one major difference between these two bodies of water; just one thing that causes the Sea of Galilee to be beautiful and alive, while the Dead Sea is completely lifeless and barren. Do you know what that difference is?
The Sea of Galilee has an outlet; while the Dead Sea does not! Water flows through the Sea of Galilee. Water flows into the Dead Sea, but can never flow out! For a person to receive spiritual input but who never exercises any spiritual output—results always and only into one thing: pure stagnation.
If you and I wish to receive from our gracious God all kinds of spiritual input from him—with respect to his great love, forgiveness and mercy towards us, but who at the same time are never willing to release any of his love, forgiveness and mercy into the lives of other people all around us; unfortunately we too then, will become only stagnant, lifeless, bitter, and toxic.
Rather than that, let us say to the Almighty One again this morning: “Abide with me, fast falls the eventide. The darkness deepens, Lord with me abide. When other helpers fail and comforts flee, help of the helpless Lord, abide with me.
I need thy presence every passing hour, what but thy grace can foil the tempter’s power. Who like thyself, my guide and stay shall be! Through night and sunshine Lord, abide with me!”