The Jesus We Preach – Part 2
Luke 9:21-22
October 21, 2018
With two funerals and then a Disciple Now all occurring last week, it honestly feels like it has been a lifetime since we were in the gospel of Luke.
But this morning we return, and we return to
The second part of the sermon we began two weeks ago.
We are talking about “The Jesus We Preach”
Of course you are familiar with Paul’s warning to the Corinthians:
2 Corinthians 11:3-4 “But I am afraid that, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds will be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ. For if one comes and preaches another Jesus whom we have not preached, or you receive a different spirit which you have not received, or a different gospel which you have not accepted, you bear this beautifully.”
Even in Paul’s day, the apostle had already become aware that
Not every “Jesus” being preached was the right Jesus.
It seems Luke was keen to this problem as well.
You may remember that he even started his gospel by saying:
Luke 1:1-4 “Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile an account of the things accomplished among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, it seemed fitting for me as well, having investigated everything carefully from the beginning, to write it out for you in consecutive order, most excellent Theophilus; so that you may know the exact truth about the things you have been taught.”
Luke wanted to get to “the exact truth” about the Lord.
In short: Distortions occur.
Not every Jesus being preached is the right Jesus.
And that certainly requires asking:
“Then which Jesus do we preach?”
Certainly the church must get this question right.
• We have been left on this earth for one overarching purpose.
• We are here to proclaim Christ to a lost world.
• We know the Great Commission.
And obviously in that mandate there can be 2 major problems.
1) WOULD BE THE FAILURE TO PREACH.
• That is a sin, and it denies not only the command of the Lord, but also the purpose for why we are here.
2) TO PREACH, BUT PREACH THE WRONG MESSAGE
That is just as big of a problem.
• The first withholds the truth,
• The second spreads error.
Both of those problems fail to get the gospel
To the sinners who need to hear it.
So we don’t just want to preach, we want to preach the right Jesus.
We want to preach the right message.
WHAT IS THAT MESSAGE?
That is precisely the answer we learn from our Lord here in Luke’s gospel.
If you will remember, we just finished a major section in Luke’s gospel.
We called it the “Who is this Man?” section.
Time after time we heard that question asked regarding Jesus.
WHO IS THIS MAN?
While that question was answered every time it was asked in one way or another,
IT WAS MOST DEFINITIVELY ANSWERED BY THE DISCIPLES IN LUKE 9:20
Luke 9:20 “And He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” And Peter answered and said, “The Christ of God.”
Jesus is God’s Christ.
Jesus is God’s Messiah.
Jesus is God’s Son.
BUT KNOWING JESUS AS MESSIAH IS ONLY PART OF THE EQUATION.
Equally important to knowing that Jesus is the Messiah,
Is knowing the truth about who the Messiah is,
And what the Messiah comes to do.
WHY?
Well, let’s suppose that you have always believed that the purpose of the Messiah is solely to make people healthy, wealthy, and happy.
• He’s going to overthrow Rome,
• He’s going to eradicate disease,
• He’s going to fix the economy,
• He’s going to bring world peace, etc.
You have always expected that when Messiah comes
That these are things He will do.
AND THEN YOU LEARN that Jesus is that Messiah.
Let me ask you then, what do you now expect Jesus to do?
And the answer: You’d expect Him to usher in earthly prosperity.
You can see why it’s important then,
Not only to know that Jesus is the Messiah,
But also to have an accurate understanding of the Messiah’s role.
OTHERWISE you will rightly preach that Jesus is the Messiah,
But you will wrongly preach what He came to do.
YOU MUST KNOW BOTH.
And that is why we enter this NEW SECTION in Luke’s gospel.
We have called it “Messianic Misconceptions”
It is the section where Jesus will systematically reveal to the disciples
The many areas where they are totally wrong
In their expectations of the Messiah.
And that segment starts with a peculiar statement from Jesus.
Let’s read it again, with verse 20 in there as well.
(20-21) “And He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” And Peter answered and said, “The Christ of God.” But He warned them and instructed them not to tell this to anyone,”
That just seems strange.
• He had already sent them out to preach the kingdom at the beginning of
chapter 9
• So it only stands to reason that now that they have an even better
understanding of who He is
• That He’d be all the more eager to send them out now.
The world thinks He’s John the Baptist or Elijah or some other prophet,
But the disciples know better.
It seems as though Jesus would want them to now get out there
And set the record straight.
But instead He gives the most peculiar command.
“He warned and instructed them not to tell this to anyone”
“warned and instructed” insinuates that Jesus was serious about this.
The command comes with a warning.
And LAST TIME we met, we asked WHY?
AND THE ANSWER IS SIMPLE.
Had the disciples gone out and preached with this new knowledge,
They would have preached a TRUE message,
But it would have been the WRONG message.
I can already hear them ready to go and tell the world how they had found the King,
• The One who’d reign on David’s throne.
• The One who will cause the lion to dwell with the Lamb, and bring peace to the
world.
• The One who will overthrow Israel’s enemies and usher in a reign of joy and
prosperity.
And all of those truths could be easily supported from Old Testament passages about the Messiah.
And someday they will occur.
When Jesus returns all of those promises will be fulfilled.
BUT THAT IS NOT THE MESSAGE ISRAEL NEEDED TO HEAR.
They did not need to hear about Jesus the Prospering King.
In fact, if you’ll remember our timeline.
Jesus just fed the 5,000 not too long ago.
Do you remember how the crowd responded to that miracle?
John 6:15 “So Jesus, perceiving that they were intending to come and take Him by force to make Him king, withdrew again to the mountain by Himself alone.”
• If it was an earthly throne that Jesus sought, it was available.
• If He was looking for people who would let Him solve all their problems and
meet all their needs, they were ready.
But lack of prosperity wasn’t the people’s biggest problem.
• These people had a sin problem.
• They didn’t need a bread maker, they needed a sacrifice for their sin.
What good would it be to have a land full of healthy people,
If they were only healthy on their way to hell?
What good would it be to have a land full of wealthy people,
If they were only wealthy on their way to hell?
Preaching the prosperous and coming reign of Jesus
Would be a true message,
But it is the wrong message to preach to a sinful world.
WELL WHAT IS THE RIGHT MESSAGE?
Jesus outlined it for us:
(22) “saying, “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed and be raised up on the third day.”
Do you see the 4 things we preach about Jesus there?
1) His suffering 2) His rejection 3) His death 4) His resurrection
This is what we preach to the world.
Now, we started looking at this list last time, in fact we covered the first two, let me briefly remind you of them here.
#1 HIS SUFFERING
Luke 9:22a
“The Son of Man must suffer…”
Because we will talk about His death in a moment,
We limited our conversation here to His “pre-cross suffering”.
Obviously He suffered immensely in His death,
But we spoke of the necessity of His suffering
Even before the cross occurred.
And really no greater way was this seen than in His incarnation.
He went from enjoying all the privileges and glory of being considered God to enduring all the scorn and all the shame of being considered a slave.
It was an astronomical drop in status.
And we learned why such suffering was necessary.
On one hand it was necessary to make Him a sympathetic and merciful High Priest.
• If He was going to intercede for us before the Father then He needed to
understand our weakness.
• We suffer, so He had to suffer.
• The writer of Hebrews speaks a great deal about this reality.
The other reason He had to suffer was to vindicate His righteousness.
• This is the purpose behind His intense temptation.
• Similar to the suffering of Job, where Job’s suffering was allowed merely to
prove his righteousness and commitment to God, so was Christ’s.
In every temptation – In every jab – In every accusation – In every affliction
JESUS PASSED HIS TESTS WITH FLYING COLORS.
Jesus didn’t just obey God in a controlled environment.
Jesus obeyed God in the most extreme periods of suffering.
HE PROVED HIS RIGHTEOUSNESS.
WE PREACH THAT TO THE WORLD
He did what no other human ever did.
HE EARNED GOD’S APPROVAL.
We preach that.
#2 HIS REJECTION
Luke 9:22b
“The Son of Man must…be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes”
This was also necessary.
Jesus HAD TO BE AT ODDS with the religious elite.
WHY?
And the answer is because they preached a false gospel.
• Their message was one of legalism and tradition and outward adherence and there was nothing about it that was salvageable.
• And to make matters worse they had a monopoly on the doctrinal preaching in Israel.
When you read the Sermon on the Mount you find that lengthy section where repeated is the statement, “You have heard…but I say”
It is where Jesus systematically exposes
The false teaching the people had come to believe.
Who do you think told the people all that false doctrine?
It was the religious leaders.
Even though they touted allegiance to the same God,
Their message had absolutely no compatibility with the truth.
• JESUS COULDN’T just “agree to disagree” with them
• JESUS COULDN’T just “focus on the essentials” and leave their differences aside.
• JESUS COULDN’T just give them the benefit of the doubt or “find the good” in what they were saying.
THEY WERE LEADING MEN TO HELL.
Matthew 23:15 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you travel around on sea and land to make one proselyte; and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as yourselves.”
FOR THAT REASON there had to be an undeniable and obvious opposition between the two.
• Jesus made it clear He was not with them and they made it clear they were not with Him.
• Jesus made it impossible to be in the Pharisees system and still think you were pleasing to God.
AND WE PREACH THAT.
We preach that when Jesus came, not only did He suffer,
But He suffered rejection by all the legalistic false teachers of Israel.
He was not coming to echo an external message of religion and tradition.
Jesus came and spoke to the heart.
WHEN WE PREACH JESUS,
We don’t preach a Jesus whose main goal is to make you moral,
We preach a Jesus who demanded righteousness from the heart.
We preach a righteous Jesus and a Jesus who demanded righteousness.
Make sense?
Well, that’s what we covered last time.
This morning we conclude with the final two elements of the Jesus we preach.
#3 HIS DEATH
Luke 9:22c
“The Son of Man must…be killed”
To quote Paul here:
1 Corinthians 2:2 “For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.”
We preach the death of Christ.
And this reality may seem to you to be the most obvious topic in our preaching.
We know why Christ had to die.
• GOD’S HOLINESS HAD TO BE SATISFIED
• God’s wrath against sin had to be appeased.
Romans 3:23-25 “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus; whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith. This was to demonstrate His righteousness, because in the forbearance of God He passed over the sins previously committed;”
That passage teaches us that God
Had not yet fully appeased His wrath against sinners.
Men like Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and David
Had all drawn near to God,
But had never paid the full penalty for their sin.
David even recognized this, saying:
Psalms 103:10 “He has not dealt with us according to our sins, Nor rewarded us according to our iniquities.”
Paul described that by saying that God
Had “passed over the sins previously committed”.
That is to say, God had purposely delayed in His punishment of those sins.
• He had not forgotten them.
• He had not determined to just overlook them forever.
• His holiness would not allow that.
God had just left them setting there
Until the time would come when He would demand justice
For all of those acts of rebellion.
THAT TIME WOULD COME ON THE CROSS.
On the cross God would pour out on Christ
All the wrath for all the sin that had ever been committed
For everyone who would ever believe.
We’ve read the story many times.
Matthew 27:45-46 “Now from the sixth hour darkness fell upon all the land until the ninth hour. About the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “ELI, ELI, LAMA SABACHTHANI?” that is, “MY GOD, MY GOD, WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME?”
• That darkness that fell upon the land was a living picture of God’s wrath.
• It hearkened back to the descriptions of “the day of the LORD” which was
promised as a day of darkness.
• When Christ was on the cross, God’s wrath arrived.
But in order to make sure that you don’t misunderstand,
God’s WRATH WAS NOT falling on those who were crucifying Jesus.
God’s wrath, God’s fury, was falling on Christ.
• Which is why Christ cried out “MY GOD, MY GOD, WHY HAVE YOU
FORSAKEN ME?”
On the cross Christ was actually bearing God’s wrath.
He was paying in full the penalty for all the sin
For all who would ever believe in Him.
And this is why before He died, He cried, “It is finished!” (paid in full)
WE UNDERSTAND THE PURPOSE OF THE CROSS.
It was there that Jesus Christ offered His holy life
As an acceptable sacrifice for sinners
In order that He might appease the wrath of God.
Isaiah 53:4-6 “Surely our griefs He Himself bore, And our sorrows He carried; Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, Smitten of God, and afflicted. But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, And by His scourging we are healed. All of us like sheep have gone astray, Each of us has turned to his own way; But the LORD has caused the iniquity of us all To fall on Him.”
This was the atoning death of Christ.
But that’s not the only issue on the table here.
We are not just talking about the necessity of Christ’s death.
What we are talking about is
The necessity of preaching Christ’s death.
Jesus did not want His disciples going out preaching
Until they understood the message,
And that message included His death on the cross.
IN FACT, He NEVER fully commissioned them to go out and preach until they understood that this was the message.
Luke 24:45-47 “Then He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, and He said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ would suffer and rise again from the dead the third day, and that repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in His name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem.”
And as we said last time, go read the book of Acts and see if that’s not what the apostles are preaching?
• They aren’t preaching prosperity…
• They aren’t preaching health and wealth…
• They aren’t preaching Israel’s political rise…
• They are out there preaching the cross of Christ.
Again:
1 Corinthians 2:2 “For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.”
AND THE CHURCH NEEDS THIS REMINDER.
It is so tempting to go out in to the world and preach:
• Jesus the healer
• Jesus the chain breaker
• Jesus the blesser
• Jesus the author of abundant life
• Jesus the marriage healer
BUT WE ARE TOLD TO PREACH JESUS THE SACRIFICE FOR SINS.
And let me tell you WHY THIS IS SO DIFFICULT.
The Bible says the message of the cross is offensive.
1 Corinthians 1:23 “but we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block and to Gentiles foolishness,”
The cross is referred to as both a “stumbling block” and “foolishness”
It is the message that God became flesh
And died on a cross to pay the debt of sinners.
And the world hates that message.
FIRST: Because the message of the cross first condemns the world.
• If the world is not in danger then why was it necessary for Christ
to come and die?
• Why send a Savior if we didn’t need saving?
The message of the cross reminds the world
What God thinks about their sin.
Prosperity preachers and “feel good” evangelists today have gone to great lengths today to try and convince people that God isn’t angry at anyone, and that all He feels is love and that sin is not a big deal.
Well, if sin isn’t a big deal then why did God crush His Son?
Isaiah 53:10a “But the LORD was pleased To crush Him, putting Him to grief; If He would render Himself as a guilt offering”
SECONDLY: The message of the cross also reminds the world that salvation is only found in the One who paid our debt.
The cross is narrow and exclusive. It refuses other religions.
• It does not open the door for other religions, because no other religious leader
ever appeased God’s wrath.
The cross is pride-crushing. It devalues the efforts of man.
• It puts an absolute end to any notion of human’s appeasing God through their
own goodness.
Do you remember Jesus in the garden?
Matthew 26:39 “And He went a little beyond them, and fell on His face and prayed, saying, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I will, but as You will.”
In effect you have Jesus there asking,
“Father, is there any other way?”
And the fact that God still crushed His Son on the cross
Gives us the answer. NO
If it were possible for humans to save themselves any other way
Then the cross might have been avoided,
But the reality of the cross confirms
That man, on his own is an absolute lost cause.
The world hates the message of the cross.
• It tells them that they need saving
• It tells them that they are in mortal and eternal danger before God
• It tells them that salvation is possible, but only in one place
• It tells them that in order to be saved they are going to have to give up all their own efforts and place their hope totally in another.
It is a humiliating, confronting, exclusive, pride-crushing message.
BUT IT IS THE MESSAGE!
Only through the cross can sinners find forgiveness
Only through the cross can rebels be reconciled to God.
The cross does not magnify the value of humans,
The cross magnifies the mercy of God.
What does Paul say?
Romans 5:6-8 “For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will hardly die for a righteous man; though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”
I’ve heard the message twisted many times in recent years.
There was even a song published recently that sang, “Help me believe, Lord, I gotta believe that I’m something worth dying for.”
That is such a distortion!
Humans trying to figure out a way
That the cross must be saying how worthy we are.
NO!!!
The whole point of what Paul said was that we weren’t worth dying for,
Not even a good man would be willing to die for us.
BUT God did it anyway.
The cross does not magnify the worth or value of man.
The cross magnifies the mercy, and grace, and love of God.
The cross does not strengthen the pride of man, it crushes it.
THIS IS THE MESSAGE WE PREACH
• Christ came to live a righteous life as verified through suffering.
• Christ came to expose a religious system that that fell short of demanding true righteousness of the heart.
• And Christ came to then die upon a cross fully bearing the wrath of God on behalf of sinners who forsake their own goodness and their own efforts and trust in Him.
That is the message we preach.
That is the message the lost world needs to hear about Jesus.
• He was righteous
• He demanded righteousness
• He died to satisfy the righteous requirements of God
Go preach that message.
#4 HIS RESURRECTION
Luke 9:22d
“The Son of Man must…be raised up on the third day.”
• Certainly we preach His righteous life as proven by His suffering.
• Certainly we preach His expectation of a righteous heart beyond legalistic tradition.
• Certainly we preach His atoning death whereby He satisfied the righteous requirement of a Holy God on behalf of all believers who had fallen short of that standard.
But don’t stop there.
We also preach His resurrection from the dead.
WHY?
There are a number of things the resurrection proves. (And I’m just gonna list them quickly)
1) It proves the righteousness of Christ.
Had He remained dead, we would always wonder
If there was some secret sin that caused Him to be under God’s wrath.
2) It proves the effectiveness of His atonement.
Because God raised Him, we know He was righteous
And therefore we know that the wrath He bore was not for His own sin,
It must have been someone else’s punishment.
This verifies His atoning work.
2 Corinthians 5:21 “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”
Romans 4:25 “He who was delivered over because of our transgressions, and was raised because of our justification.”
That is to say, “He was raised because we had been justified through His death”
3) It reveals that He conquered death
Death is the ultimate penalty of sin.
And by conquering death Jesus reveals that
ALL OF OUR CONDEMNATION HAS BEEN REMOVED.
Hebrews 2:14-15 “Therefore, since the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise also partook of the same, that through death He might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and might free those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives.”
Revelation 1:17-18 “When I saw Him, I fell at His feet like a dead man. And He placed His right hand on me, saying, “Do not be afraid; I am the first and the last, and the living One; and I was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of death and of Hades.”
4) It gives an example of what salvation should look like.
Paul said it like this:
Romans 6:4 “Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.”
Christ didn’t come to die for sinners
So that He could leave them in their sin.
He didn’t come to die and in effect remain in the grave.
He went in to death for us and then He brought us out.
Remember the resurrection of Lazarus?
John 11:43-44 “When He had said these things, He cried out with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come forth.” The man who had died came forth, bound hand and foot with wrappings, and his face was wrapped around with a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.”
Lazarus had been brought out of death and now must walk in life.
AND WE PREACH THIS BECAUSE it declares to sinful man
That God demands righteous living from them,
And that this righteous living is only possible through Christ.
SO DO YOU SEE THE MESSAGE?
• We preach Christ’s suffering which demonstrates that He lived a perfectly righteous life, regardless of the temptation.
• We preach Christ’s rejection which shows us that Christ did not accept superficial righteousness as an acceptable substitute for genuine heart righteousness.
• We preach Christ’s death which shows us not only the penalty for failing to live righteous, but also the only way to be forgiven for not living righteous.
• We preach Christ’s resurrection which shows us Christ’s sacrifice worked and that through Him we are now freed to live the righteous life which God demands.
THAT IS THE MESSAGE.
And Jesus emphatically told the disciples not to go preach until they had that message.
• Don’t go out preaching about Me being the King who can restore Israel.
• Don’t go out preaching about Me being the Provider who can make bread at will.
• Don’t go out preaching about Me being the Healer who will eradicate everyone’s disease.
• Don’t go out preaching about Me being the Messiah who will usher in times of peace.
All of those things will one day be true,
But that’s NOT what I want you to preach.
You go out and preach that
I must suffer and be rejected and die and rise from the dead.
The message that confronts their sin and reveals their salvation.
The message that teaches them to value righteousness.
The message that shows them how to be reconciled to God.
The goal of the church is not to make healthy enemies of God.
The goal of the church is not to make wealthy enemies of God.
The goal of the church is not to make fulfilled enemies of God.
The goal of the church is not to make moral enemies of God.
The goal of the church is to make disciples of Christ
Who are reconciled to God through His righteous life,
Atoning death, and victorious resurrection.
THAT IS THE JESUS WE PREACH.
