Text: Mark 8:31-38
Date: February 28, 2021
Event: The Second Sunday in Lent, Year B
Mark 8:31–38 (EHV)
31Jesus began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things; be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the experts in the law; be killed; and after three days rise again. 32He was speaking plainly to them. Then Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. 33But after turning around and looking at his disciples, Jesus rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! You do not have your mind set on the things of God, but the things of men.”
34He called the crowd and his disciples together and said to them, “If anyone wants to follow me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. 35For whoever wants to save his life will lose it. But whoever loses his life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. 36After all, what good is it for a man to gain the whole world and yet forfeit his soul? 37Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul? 38In fact, whoever is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will also be ashamed of him when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”
Jesus’ Cross Enables Us to Bear Our Crosses
Fiction is fun because you get to do things that aren’t realistic. Whether it’s reading a book that takes you to a world that doesn’t exist, playing a video game where you can to do things that defy human ability or the laws of nature, or watching a movie where the only limitation is the director’s vision and the special effects budget, these fictional things take you out of the mundane or difficult reality and give you a break, give you an escape.
But, the issue with all of them is that at some point, you have to close the book, or turn off the game, or the credits roll on the movie. And then what are you left with? You’re back to reality. You still have those tough things to do for school, that troubled relationship still needs your attention, or your financial difficulties are still bearing down on you. We can escape reality for a little while, but we can’t ignore it completely. In the end, we always get a wake up call to be reminded of the difference between what is real and what is imaginary.
As Jesus was coming into the latter days of his ministry, he begins to give his disciples a wake-up-call of sorts. The disciples had been living a relatively easy, near-fictional life. They got to travel and learn from Jesus—God himself!—and they never wanted that to end. They loved Jesus and loved that they got to be near to him. Six days after this conversation in our Gospel would be the transfiguration that we saw just a couple of weeks ago, and we probably remember Peter’s stumbling words recognizing that he just wanted to stay in that glory with the radiant Jesus and the honored Moses and Elijah.
But the closer we come to the end of Jesus’ ministry, the more blunt he becomes with his disciples. Because this will not go on forever. Jesus’ ministry would last about 3 years and then it would come to an end. So, Jesus is clear how it would end. Jesus began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things; be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the experts in the law; be killed; and after three days rise again. 32He was speaking plainly to them. No parables, no metaphors. Jesus is being blunt as blunt can be.
But as we saw at the transfiguration, Peter does not want to leave the pleasant and go to the unpleasant. So his response is to refuse to allow Jesus to do this, rebuking his own dearly-loved teacher! But Jesus is quick to see this for what it is—a trap laid by Satan to pull him off course—and so he turns and rebukes Peter in front of the other disciples, “You do not have your mind set on the things of God, but the things of men.”
How often does Jesus’ barb hit us exactly? How often are we like Peter, not noticing the things God is doing despite our troubles, the good he’s working in difficulties? How often don’t you and I only long for and even pray for things to be simple and easy and pleasant rather than the toilsome burden that they often are. And yet, along with that, how often don’t we forget the promises God has made. Good will come from bad, eternal blessing will come despite earthly trials.
Consider the exact event that Jesus is talking about. Peter understandably doesn’t want Jesus to suffer all of those things. But those events that Peter and the others would undoubtedly call “very bad” in the moment are the eternal good from God because by them he would work the forgiveness of sins and give eternal life. Peter couldn’t see it as Jesus told him what was going to happen and it’s doubtful he could see it while these events were happening. But if Jesus has gone down the “easy” path, the path focused on the things of man rather and the things of God, it would’ve meant short-term ease but long-term disaster. If Jesus hadn’t gone to the cross, there would be no forgiveness for Peter, or you, or me, or anyone. We would all be lost to our sins.
But God’s plans are always greater than ours, and if he’s doing something in our lives or allowing something to happen to us that seems awful or even unbearable, he has a reason for it. He blesses our life through the good things he brings to it and works our eternal good from from the challenges he places on us. This is not often what we would choose, but these are the things of God, not the things of mankind.
But it’s hard to kick our natural reaction to bad, uncomfortable, and difficult things. It’s tempting to try to live in the daydream that God wants to and will always just make our lives better. Plenty of television preachers have made huge amounts of money peddling that very thing. “God wants you to be healthy! God wants you to be wealthy! God wants you to be happy!” Just this week the church received an email titled, “Three Bible passages that prove God wants you to be rich.” Appealing? Yes. But it’s fiction.
If that’s where our mind and heart go, we need a wake-up-call from that delusion. God cares about us, yes, and God absolutely provides what we need. But never, ever has God ever said that our lives are going to be easy. What did Jesus tell his disciples? If anyone wants to follow me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. We should see hardship and difficulty in this life not as God failing us or any indication that he doesn’t love us. The difficulties and crosses of this life simply prove that he is faithful to his promises and was honest with us about what was coming.
But as we look at Jesus’ cross, we find the strength to take up our own crosses. Look at what he did for us! Look how he did not hesitate to give up everything, even his very life, to save us from our sins! Look at how his suffering, the events that Peter forbade, mean our eternal rescue and deliverance! If God was able to work good—the ultimate good—from that most horrible of tragedies, is he not able to work good from your and my relatively smaller struggles and problems? The God who worked the death of his own Son for our salvation, is he too weak to work good and blessing through our difficulties? Is he not able to help us bear those crosses as we follow him?
This is hard to prioritize when all the world around us preaches a “gospel” of ease and comfort. Why take the difficult path when the easy one is right there? Why be a Christian when it’s far more in-sync with our culture to jettison faith? Jesus addresses that: For whoever wants to save his life will lose it. But whoever loses his life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. The ultimate example of this would be someone who becomes a martyr, who dies for their faith in Jesus. But at this time and in this place, this is not the most common way that you and I will run into this. We may not always run into threats on our physical life, but maybe we run in threats to our way of life, to our reputation among unbelievers who are our neighbors, friends, or family members. And in an effort to preserve that way of life or the quality of those relationships, perhaps we are tempted to set aside our faith or our Christian morals or priorities that come from bearing crosses in this life and instead take the route of the things of men rather than the path God has placed before us.
But woe to us if we continue to be bewitched by the illusion that an easy life now is of the highest priority! If we discard our faith for the easy life now, we lose eternity. But prioritizing Jesus and his good news of salvation through his death on the cross despite any difficulties that comes from it means eternal safety with our Savior.
Jesus put the guarantee of his suffering right in what he initially taught his disciples about his own path: the Son of Man must suffer many things; be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the experts in the law; be killed; and after three days rise again. There is certain victory after those grim circumstances. He attaches the same promise to you and me in our life of cross-bearing. Continuing to patiently endure trials and difficulty and clinging to God by the faith he provides will end in guaranteed victory: whoever loses his life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. Paul expounded on this in our Second Lesson: We also rejoice confidently in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces patient endurance, and patient endurance produces tested character, and tested character produces hope. And hope will not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, who was given to us (Romans 5:3-5).
The victory of eternal life that Jesus won by his death on the cross means that you and I can bear our crosses in confidence. Difficulty is not a sign of God’s hate, but something he uses to work for our good, both now and especially toward eternity. Today, face your trials with joy and confidence, knowing God’s promises, knowing his eternal love, knowing that you are his now and forever. This is not fiction; this is the gospel truth! Amen.
