The Paradigm of the Cross, Part 2 | Christ, His Cross, Church

Luke 9:23

 So we return to Scripture, we look here to find the true paradigm of our faith in the cross, and we see the theology of the cross right here in Matthew 16, and I’m going to give you four concepts in this paradigm this evening. If you’d like to take notes, write these down. I’m going to give them to you one at a time so you don’t get lost.

But a first concept is, number one, discipleship demands divine regeneration. Discipleship demands divine regeneration. It says in verse 13, “When Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi,” there tucked beneath Mount Hermon, rising 9,000 feet in the air, hard rock, it took him to really what was predominantly a pagan area, Gentile places away from the Jews. And “there he asked his disciples, ‘Who do people say that the Son of Man is?’” They answer the question in verse 14. “‘Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, others Jeremiah, one of the prophets.’”

These all seem to be, don’t they, noble opinions. Due to the popularity of John the Baptist and probably also some degree of popular suspicion, people believed perhaps John was coming back to haunt Herod, who had beheaded him. Many people like to think that. John was extremely popular. His ministry was so powerful it’s hard for us to fathom this. And so people believed justice would not let Herod rest in peace, wouldn’t let him get a wink of sleep. And so Jesus is John returned to haunt Herod, to deal out divine retribution.

Elijah was also a popular choice, and since he ascended into heaven in a flaming chariot, alive, Malachi predicted, “I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes.” Many people thought that perhaps now, now this is the time. Elijah is here. This is the Elijah-like figure returned to overthrow the Romans and restore Israel to its rightful place in the world. Again, they’re thinking through, what is most glorious to me? Power. Strength. Military might. Others believe Jesus is a visitation by an ancient prophet, Jeremiah, Moses, Enoch rising up, returning for judgment, for glory.

And what ties all these popular opinions together, what they all have in common, is they interpret Jesus coming through the lens of human expectation and a human expectation about what real power is. Trueman writes this: “When theologians of glory read about divine power in the Bible, or use the term in their own theology, they assume that it, power, is analogous to human power. They suppose that they can write of it, an understanding of divine power, by magnifying to an infinite degree the most powerful, powerful thing of which they can think.” End quote. That’s what they’ve done here. Sure. The supernatural is at work in Jesus, but in how they interpreted him, essentially, he is an elevated man. He’s a super-prophet. He’s a super-duper prophet. He’s really impressive.

And so in so doing, in estimating Jesus that way, the people have undershot the mark, haven’t they? Infinitely. They are infinitely low because what is he? He is God himself, Son of God, distinct from man, Creator-creature distinction. And yet here he is showing up incarnated in human flesh. He’s something else entirely.

This is in clear contrast, their judgement, by the way, it’s in contrast to Peter’s answer. “He said to them, ‘But who do you say that I am?’”, turning to his disciples, “and Simon Peter replied, ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.’” “You are something else entirely. You are something else other than anything which I have ever seen. There is no category for you. You are unique. You are monogenes. You are the one and only begotten son of God. You’re the Christ,” Peter says. The Greek christos translates the Hebrew mashiach from the verb mashach, which is to anoint with oil.

So by God’s command, Israel used to anoint certain men who were set apart by God for three special offices: prophet, priests, and king. Jesus, he’s all three. Rich tapestry of prophetic revelation demonstrated in the, in the Old Testament Scriptures, but all of them demonstrating beyond a doubt that the Christ would be the Son of Man, predicted, prophesied Son of Man, Daniel 7, and also the Son of God.

We don’t have the time, and I would like to unpack all this, but incarnational theology is the substance of Peter’s answer here. We know, we know, Peter did not come up with all that on his own. He isn’t that smart. He’s not smarter than the crowds. In fact, he biffs it just a few sentences later. He’s no more literate than any of the rest. He’s no more studied, no more biblically astute than anybody else. How does he get it when other people don’t? What is the dividing line? What marks the difference between Peter and the, the other disciples, the other Apostles and all the crowds, the multitudes, the many?

Difference-maker for Peter? Peter knows what he knows and he confesses what he confesses by the sovereign working of the Triune God. Jesus said as much, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah.”  Simon Bar-Jonah reminds Peter of his sin nature, not to insult him, but just to remind him that sinners cannot on their own identify the Christ on their own power, by their own intellect, in their own merits.

Blessed are you, though, Simon Bar-Jonah, because that’s what you are. You are the son of Jonah. You are the son of a sinful man that goes all the way back to the first sinful man, Adam. “Blessed are you,” though, “because flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father, who is in heaven.” That’s the difference-maker. By the election of God the Father, by the ministry of the Son, and by the power of the Holy Spirit, Peter’s mind is opened. It’s illuminated. So he is able now to apprehend a truth that was hidden to him before. He’s able to assent to its truthfulness and even more, he’s able to love this truth.

We see in the balance of Peter’s life, he embraced the truth. He joyfully obeyed the truth. Jesus, in John chapter 6, he’s teaching about himself. He’s teaching about how “‘unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood,’” I mean, this is gruesome-sounding stuff. Says it to all the crowds of disciples; they’re called disciples. “‘Unless you do that, you’re no disciple of mine.’ And many of those disciples were no longer walking with him anymore.” You know what that means? They were not true disciples.

Crowd clears out. Jesus finds himself standing there with just a few, the Twelve. He says, “‘What about you? Do you want to go away, too?’” And Peter speaks up then once again, “‘Where are we going to go? You have the words of eternal life.’” Why does he know that? Why does he believe that? Why doesn’t he wander away with the many? Why doesn’t he follow popular opinion? “‘Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah. Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you.’” This is not coming from the category of man. This is not coming from the category of a creature. “My Father, who is in heaven,” the Creator, God, “has revealed this to you.’”

That’s the evidence of divine regeneration. That is the hidden work of God, and it’s revealed in retrospect. It’s revealed as we look back. It becomes very clear in hindsight, very hard to tell sometimes in the moment. And definitely we can’t look into the future. Apart from the Triune God, Peter would not, he could not discern Jesus’ true identity as the Christ, and he would not embrace Jesus as Savior and Lord. He would not stand there; he would not stand against the crowds and popular opinion. He would not walk with him. He would not suffer with him. He would not die for him. He’d be just as blind as everyone else taking one of all these popular views.

Why? Because those who judge God’s ways through the lens of human power, they are blind to who God actually is. They’re ignorant of what God is actually like. They have no understanding of what God is actually doing in the world. It is only by divine regeneration that blind eyes are open, that truth is revealed to those eyes, and that the identity, the true identity of Jesus, is known.

Christian discipleship depends on divine regeneration, and it does, we need to examine the content of popular books and messages. We should not look at the success of its sales, its distribution, popular books and messages and music. Its success means absolutely nothing to us. The numbers don’t mean a thing. In fact, when the numbers are big, we should say, Warning flag!  Remember the majority in Israel after they came out of Egypt? Do you know what they wanted to do to Moses? Stone him and go back to slavery in Egypt. Don’t follow the majority.

Warren’s book, The Purpose-Driven Life, misuses God’s Word repeatedly. He distorts the meaning of God’s Word by using loose paraphrases that let him get away with all kinds of false stuff. He takes texts out of context all the time, and he does it so quickly and rapidly that you don’t stop and say, wait, wait wait, wait. Let’s pause right there and examine. Does the Bible actually say that, what you’re making it say?”

He undermines the entire need for the gospel in The Purpose-Driven Life, which everybody says is a gospel book, an evangelical book, and a book for evangelism. Give this to an unbeliever. The gospel’s so easy, so clear, that an unbeliever can get it easily. But he undermines the need for the gospel. He treats the biblical concept of guilt for sin, which is a good thing, to recognize your guilt for sin. Does it make you feel bad? Yeah, that’s the point. If you feel bad, blessed are you who mourn over your sin because maybe your salvation is right around the corner.

But he treats the biblical concept with guilt as nothing more than a psychological hang-up, a barrier to your success. Here’s what he says: “People are driven by guilt, manipulated by memories that allow the past to control their future and unconsciously punish themselves by sabotaging their own success.” If you carry your guilt before God, punishing yourself and sabotaging your own success is going to be far from your mind in that day.

But having redefined guilt as nothing more than the psychological issue, Warren preaches the gospel of self-worth. He says this: “When you finally understand this truth, you will never again have a problem with feeling insignificant because after all, that’s what you need salvation from. You need salvation from feeling insignificant, from lacking self-worth, from lacking self-esteem, and you need to esteem yourself highly.” He goes on. He says, “When you finally understand this truth, you’ll never again have a problem with feeling insignificant. It proves your worth. If you are that important to God, and He considers you valuable enough to keep you with Him for eternity, what greater significance could you have?”

Well, Warren sounds a lot like his former self-esteem coach, his ministry mentor Robert Schuller, who preached that Protestant liberal gospel. Richard Niebuhr famously summarized that gospel this way, that “a God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgement through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.” That’s exactly what Warren’s preaching.

If Christian discipleship depends on divine regeneration, and it does, then we need to preach Christ crucified. We need to preach what Christ taught us to preach: that sinners are guilty before a holy God, and with the regeneration work of the Holy Spirit, making them to be born again, opening blind eyes, unstopping deaf ears, giving them a new heart, they can believe and repent of their sin, and God can grant them justification by faith. All this by the sovereign grace of a kind and good and merciful God. If Christian discipleship depends on divine regeneration, and it does, we need to preach that message and not soft-pedal a message of self-esteem.

 Discipleship demands a religious institution. Look at verse 18: “And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church.” And Peter doesn’t interrupt him and say, “Oh, Lord, I’m kind of not into organized religion. I, I, this, you just talked about church. That kind of cramps my style. I kind of have this, like, kind of freewheeling, evangelizing, evangelistic thing I like to do. I’m a street preacher. I’m kind of a wild-at-heart kind of a guy.”

Quiet, fake Peter. Let’s see what Jesus actually said. “I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” I can tell you that by divine regeneration, because God has been gracious to me, I want to be a part of that thing. Whatever that is that the gates of hell cannot prevail against it, I want in. I want in for life. I want in for life and eternity.

You? I hear this all the time, and so do you. “I’m spiritual; I’m not religious. I’m spiritual; I’m not religious, though,” and I know what people are trying to say. “I’ve had a bad experience, had some difficult things go on. I’ve been hurt by churches.” But it’s worth examining the statement behind that sentiment, that statement, “I’m spiritual; I’m not religious.” To say, “I’m spiritual,” that’s just a truism. It’s like saying, “I breathe.” To say, “I’m spiritual” is just simply to admit one-half of your human ontology. We could just as easily make the pronouncement acknowledging the other half of human ontology, “I’m material.” Okay, so what?

But to say the next thing, “I’m not religious,” that is a tacit denial of the kind of creature that we are. We are religious by God’s design, and have by our nature, we’re religious. And since we are religious, God designed us to be joined to a religious institution. Jesus identifies it here as “my church.” Jesus gives Simon Bar-Jonah a new name, gives him a nickname, kind of to memorialize his confession.

That is the Greek word petros, “little rock.” “You’re the pebble and on this rock,” and he’s using another Greek word there. It’s similar, but it’s petra, refers to a big rock, a rock outcrop, a rock cliff. They’re standing there at the base of Mount Hermon, 9,000 feet in the air. That’s the setting they’re in. That’s the image Jesus is referring to.

So after memorializing the significance of Peter’s good confession in this nickname, Jesus said, “On this rock,” that is, on Peter’s confession, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God,” on that confession, “I will build my church. The gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” Church, the word ekklesia, “called out of” literally is what it means. But it means “assembly.” It means congregation, right here in this place, and just kind of a plain, vanilla sense, not in a, not in a biblical sense, but in a plain sense, we’re an assembly. This is an assembly. You all have assembled here in person. You’ve congregated. This is in that sense a church, just in the technical sense.

At the time that Jesus said this, there were no distinctions that were made between the church, visible and invisible, local church and universal church. The word simply meant “assembly,” referred to a congregation of gathered people, in-person meetings, which were visible and local. That’s the church.

This is not to deny the invisible and universal nature of the greater church of Jesus Christ, that historical reality of Christ by the Spirit, who’s gathered all his saints, joined them together in one body, creating for God one temple to glorify him. But the emphasis in the New Testament from the very beginning is on the localized expression of the ekklesia, an in-person gathering assembly of Christians.

Notice Jesus did not say here, “I will build my parachurch,” or “I will build my evangelism outreach,” or “I will build my denomination,” “I will build my conference,” “I will build my social, political, cultural, movement.” All that stuff is theology-of-glory thinking. The local church is where it’s at. The local church is where it’s at.

The local church is where God’s regular means of grace are administered to God’s people by biblically qualified leaders who preach biblical messages, Gospel-faithful messages, who administer the ordinances; and that requires examining candidates for membership and for baptism. It requires the practice, faithful practice, of church discipline.

To despise any of those divinely appointed means, to think of any of that is insufficient for sanctifying Christians, to denigrate the church of Jesus Christ, which gives meaningful avenues of ministry of service to his saints, which builds them up in their most holy faith, which grows them in the grace and the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, which protects them from false doctrine, false teachers, waves of doctrine throwing them here and there, winds of doctrine blowing them all over, teaching them to resist enticing temptations, to think Christ’s headship and his shepherding is somehow insufficient for the end for which God designed it, for the, with the end for which God gave it, to bring his people to maturity, to cause them to persevere to the end, well, that is the height of ignorance and arrogance and a false judgement from the theology of glory.

“I’m spiritual, but I’m not religious.” “I’m a Christian, but I don’t go to church.” It’s not through the parachurch or through the university outreach ministry or through Christian concerts. It’s not through the Internet. It’s not through podcasts. It’s not through listening to sermons online, but it is through the local church, an in-person gathering of people with biblically qualified leadership and all the things that I’ve said.

It’s through the local church that the manifold wisdom of God is on display, and it is being made known, Ephesians 3:10, “to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly places.” God is putting on a show of his wisdom to angels and demons. Something great is going on here, much greater than we can see, much greater than our eyes can behold.

Now, I’ll admit that it is not intuitively obvious to anyone that God’s wisdom is on display in a local church. Paul said as much in 1 Corinthians 1:26. He said, “Look at you. Just, just look at you. Not many of you are wise according to the world. Not many of you are powerful or wealthy or not many of noble birth.” Listen, but local churches are exactly what God has chosen to glorify himself. “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise. God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong. God chose what is low and despised in the world, even the things that are not, they are nothing, to bring to nothing the things that are so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.” You know what human beings boasting the presence of God is? The theology of what? Glory.

This religious institution, which Jesus bought and paid for at the price of his own precious blood, is indomitable, though it is assailed by all the powers of hell. And Jesus tells Peter and the Apostles in verse 19, he charges them, “I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth,” “whatever your pronouncement is about something on earth,” “it shall be bound in heaven,” or better translated, maybe, as “shall have been bound in heaven.” “You’re proclaiming the judgment of heaven as you, as you guide, oversee, as you make decisions in the church. As your church binds something on earth, it has already been bound in heaven. If you loose it on earth, it shall be loosed in heaven.”

What’s “binding and loosing”? It has to do with sins. “Are you truly a Christian or not a Christian?” We guard entrance into the local church by practicing meaningful church membership, actually examining people’s professions of faith. Why? Because so much of what I’m preaching is not the message you’re hearing in pulpits all over the country. I don’t, I’m not preaching anything different than what the Bible says. You can see it for yourself.

That’s why we have to examine people who come into our doors and call themselves Christians, and that’s why we have to examine people’s baptism testimonies. We have to even question the timing of their baptism and say, “Okay, you say you were baptized when you were two. How much did you understand of the Gospel back then?” “Well, I loved Jesus.” “Okay, okay, that’s good. What did you understand Jesus to be back then: Son of Man, according to the prophecy in Daniel chapter 7? Son of God, you know, monogenes? Did you understand that at two?” “Well, no, but…” “Well, if you didn’t understand the Gospel, how could you believe the Gospel if you didn’t understand the Gospel?”

Believing is not some mystical leap into the unknown. Believing is based on, it’s, it involves the mind, the intellect. It involves the, the will; it involves the emotion, the affection. All three of those things are involved in biblical saving faith, and if you don’t have one of any of those elements, it is not biblical saving faith that you have. You must understand the Gospel and assent to its truth in order to believe it, in order to embrace it, in order to let it change your entire life so you obey it, and you love it.

That’s why we have to guard entrance into the local church, examining people for membership, examining people for baptism, practicing church discipline. So the people who are here and want to come to the Lord’s Table, and yet they are living completely out of step with what the Lord’s Table represents, the body and the blood of the Lord, we’ve got to say, “You can’t come. You’re not, you’re not acting according to the fellowship because you’re walking in sin. Let’s, let’s get you working on the sin. We’ll get you to confess sin, repent, reconcile with whoever you need to reconcile, and we’ll bring you back to the Lord’s Table and fellowship.”