Sett Your Minds
Listen here.
Last week: “You are the Christ!”
This week: “From that time Jesus began to show His disciples
that He must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief
priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.”
This is a huge step in Jesus’ ministry. He is initiating the
disciples into one of the most important mysteries of the kingdom of heaven. He
is pulling back the curtain and showing them what he actually came to do. And
for us, this message seems pretty ho-hum. We’ve read the book. We’ve seen the
movie. We know how the story goes. But did we always? Did we always know Jesus
had to suffer, die and rise to rescue us from sin and death, that this is what
it means for him to be the Christ? No! Of course not!
Everyone has to be initiated into the mysteries of the
kingdom of heaven. We had to be taught. Someone pulled back the curtain for us
and showed us who Jesus is, why he suffered and died, why he rose from the
dead. The Holy Spirit enlightened us and opened God’s Word to us to hear it,
believe it, and live in it. This is part of going from being citizens of the
kingdom of this world to being citizens of the kingdom of heaven. We learn its
history, we learn its priorities, we learn the message of the kingdom so that
we can carry it out into the world and proclaim Christ as he is – crucified and
risen.
Jesus is telling his disciples how it is in his kingdom. This
should be a huge “aha” moment for the disciples, but it’s not. It’s not because
Peter decides this can’t be right.
Can you imagine the audacity? To tell Jesus what he will or
won’t do? We would never do something like that would we? Yeah, we would. But
here’s the thing – we are initiated into God’s kingdom. We don’t get to tell
him how we think things should be. He tells us how things are.
So Peter took Jesus aside and began to rebuke him, saying,
“Far be it from you, Lord! This shall never happen to you.”
Grab the gravity of this situation; not just because of
Peter’s rudeness, but because of the ramifications of Peter’s words. He doesn’t
understand this, but what he is saying is, “Never! You will never do what is
necessary to save us from sin, death, and hell, Jesus!” And so often we find
that people don’t want to deal with a suffering, bleeding, dying Jesus even
today. But when people reduce Jesus to a teacher of morality or a good example,
this is in essence what they’re doing. They are exchanging a Savior, a Christ,
for a … a … a philosopher. And we run the risk of doing this ourselves when we
accept modern ideas regarding sin, or insert our thoughts about God’s wrath and
judgement negating what God himself has said, or when we excuse away what God
condemns.
Jesus came to save sinners. If we rationalize every sin away
– when we excuse our sins and justify ourselves – it’s a lot like saying,
“Never Lord! You will never pay for my sins!” And if Jesus doesn’t pay for your
sins, he isn’t your savior, he’s not your Christ. Let your sin be real sin. And
let your neighbor’s sin be real sin, too. But you – you stand under the cross
of the one who suffered, died, and rose. Let your neighbor stand under that
cross, too. That’s where the Christ atoned for our sins, and without that
atonement the empty tomb means nothing.
Jesus wants us to know that this is why he came. This is why
he is the Christ. He came to suffer, to die, and to rise. If he did not suffer
and die for our sins, his suffering and death are meaningless. One more
senseless act of violence in a senselessly violent world. And even his resurrection is robbed of its
power, because sin is the root of death, and with no sin, death has no power.
And this, this is why, Jesus rebukes Peter so sharply. “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.”
Let me ask you: Do different sins have different values? Are
some sins worse than others? Do we think that a person who steals $20 worth of
equipment from work is as bad as a person who steals $20 from a kid selling
lemonade? Do we think that the newspaper printing a story that ruins a person’s
reputation is worse than sitting in the coffee klatch dragging our neighbor’s
reputation through the mud? Do we hold everyone’s life to be equally valuable?
Or do we value lives of people who are employed and contribute to society
somewhat above a drug addicts’ on the street? This is how the world thinks.
These are the thoughts of men. We try to put everything in shades of grey, to
make things that are wrong right in certain circumstances. We try to make our
sins less sinful than another person’s sins … even if they are both technically
the same.
God doesn’t work like that. Sin is sin. It’s all damnable.
Catch that word. It’s not just upsetting, or frustrating, or offensive. It is
all damnable. Every sin stands under a death sentence. Every sin is worthy of
hell.
We don’t think like that, do we? But God does. And, friends,
this why Jesus came to be the Christ. Someone was going to suffer and die for
our sins. It should be us, but Jesus came and said, “No! I will be their
Christ. I will be their savior.” And he bore our sins as he suffered and died –
the sinless one on behalf of sinners. And as the sinless one died, he defeated
death and rose again to give us everlasting life and one day we will rise – a
new creation – just like Jesus.
Look at your life. Examine yourself. Set your minds on the
things of God, not on the things of man. Let your sin be real sin. But, also
let your Jesus be a real Christ, a real savior. That’s why he came: to be your
savior and to bring you into the kingdom of heaven. Amen.
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