Our Lord Jesus Christ will not lie to you.
Politicians may lie to their constituency, making
promises they have no intention of keeping.
Pastors can lie by preaching and teaching false doctrine
instead of the pure Word of God.
The devil will certainly lie to you by telling you that
you have no need of the Gospel, no need of that forgiveness,
life and salvation that Jesus alone brings. Your sinful nature
will lie to you, saying that repentance is unnecessary, that you
can willfully break God’s holy Commandments and God doesn’t
care. All men are liars, the
Scripture says. But not Jesus.
Jesus does not lie. He
doesn’t shade the truth. What
He says is always true.
That doesn’t mean that the truth He speaks is always
comforting, always welcome.
Not at all. Jesus’
words are always an affront to the Old Adam.
They’re a slap in the face to the sinful nature that
wants a religion that’s manageable and safe.
But Jesus won’t stand for it.
He shatters our illusions.
He overturns our false securities.
He demolishes our idols.
And the One who took up His Cross for the salvation of
the world calls us, the baptized, to take up our crosses and
follow after Him.
We see this illustrated in today’s Gospel reading. Twice in
the eleven short verses of this reading our Lord speaks words
that must have made the disciples cringe with discomfort.
Maybe they make you uncomfortable too.
Jesus tells them, and us, that He, the Son of Man, must
suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and chief
priests and scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise
again. And then Jesus says that whoever wants to come after Him must deny
himself, take up his cross, and follow in the footsteps of the
One who came to suffer and die for the sins of all mankind.
Our Lord told His disciples that He was going to suffer and die.
Now all this talk of suffering and death was too much for Peter.
Peter’s old sinful nature wanted nothing to do with a
suffering Christ. He
had confessed that Jesus was the Christ, and he was excited
about that. Peter
was looking for a political liberator, one who would establish a
glorious earthly kingdom. Peter
wanted a Christ who would elevate him and the other disciples to
positions of authority and status.
No wonder Jesus’ words about the Son of Man’s
impending sufferings, rejection and death offended Peter so.
No, Lord, Peter
told Jesus, this can never
be!
You and I aren’t all that different from Peter.
We like the way of glory, too, rather than the way of
shame. We also have
a sinful nature that lies to us, that tells us we aren’t so
bad that we need a Savior who suffers and dies for us.
If we indeed aren’t that bad, then a Christ who suffers
and dies is unnecessary. If
we aren’t that bad, then we just have to buckle down, try
harder, make sure that the good we do outweighs the bad, and
then God will accept us. Then
we can be sure of admission into heaven when we die. If
we aren’t all that bad.
The world, the flesh and the devil lie to us to make us believe
that we aren’t that bad. They
lie to us to make us believe that God’s holy Commandments are
outmoded and no longer applicable in our enlightened age.
Did God really say, You
shall have no other gods?
Did God really say we are to remember His Sabbath Day and
keep it holy by gladly hearing preaching and His Word?
Did God really mean by His commandment, You
shall not murder, that this includes the defenseless
unborn child and the elderly infirm?
Did God really say that sex is to be confined to
marriage, between one man and one woman, for a lifetime, and
anything else is sin? Did
God really say that if we keep all of His commandments, but
stumble at just one point, then we’re guilty of breaking them
all?
We live in an age when the lies of the devil, the world and the
sinful nature are broadcast to the four winds.
Even in the Church, God’s Word and commandments are
frequently despised. Every
imaginable heresy can be found in the Church – every
imaginable form of disbelief and apostasy and moral turpitude.
Churches today are embracing homosexuality as normative
and life giving – in open disregard for the Word of God.
And the sinful nature and the devil would lie to us,
saying, These things are
no longer sins. You
aren’t that bad. God
understands. He
accepts you just the way you are.
But according to God’s Word we are all that bad.
There
is none righteous, no, not one.
And it is because we are that bad that it was
necessary for the Son of God to suffer and die on the Cross, as
payment for the sins of the world.
It was necessary that He humble
Himself and become obedient to the point of death – even death
on a Cross. It
was necessary that He come in the flesh, not
to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for
many.
The Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ shows us three things.
First, it shows us the depth of human sin.
If we were merely guilty of a few minor misdeeds the
Cross would not have been necessary.
But the fact that God chose such a radical means by which
we could be delivered and saved shows us the magnitude of our
fallen race’s sinful condition.
The second thing the Cross shows us is God’s hatred of sin.
The fact that God chose to punish sin by placing that sin
on His Son, and pouring out His wrath upon Him instead of you
and me, shows how violently God despises sin.
To deal with the sin He hated, God sent His only-begotten
Son whom He loved and punished Him.
And He did it so He could pour out His mercy and
lovingkindness upon you, instead of His wrath.
The final thing the Cross demonstrates is the grace of God.
Grace is God’s undeserved favor, His unmerited
kindness. As those
who by nature are sinful and unclean, we deserve hell, but for
Jesus’ sake God gives us mercy.
When I preach Christ and His Cross to you, I want you to
boldly say: There is all my sin, nailed to the Cross, taken away
by the holy Lamb of God. There
is all my unrighteousness, heaped upon the One who knew no sin.
But He became sin for me, so that in Him I might become
the righteousness of God. There
is all the condemnation I deserve, poured out from heaven not
upon me –but upon this broken, bleeding Man who suffered and
died under God’s wrath to save me.
This is the message of the Cross.
The sin you sinned – it’s been carried away by Jesus.
The condemnation you deserve – it crushed Jesus instead
of you. The love and
mercy you don’t deserve – you get it anyway, by grace, for
the sake of Him who suffered and died to set you free and make
you God’s child forever. Your
sins are gone – because Jesus took them away.
The sin that shames you most – it’s not yours; Jesus
took it! You are
forgiven, through faith in His Name.
Go in peace. The
Lord has taken away your iniquity.
That’s why we baptize – in order to unite people to the
sufferings and death of our Lord Jesus Christ.
That’s why we administer the Sacrament of the Altar –
to remember Him who bore the Cross for us, and to eat and drink
His true Body and Blood by which He obtained our salvation.
That’s why Christ and His Cross are preached here instead of
something like “12 Easy Steps to Victorious Living.”
Our victory is found in Him who in His sufferings and
death seemed to be defeated, but who by His resurrection proved
Himself to be victorious. Christ
is our victory. Christ
is our salvation. Christ
is our righteousness. Christ
is our peace with God. And
it’s all because of His Cross and sufferings and death and
resurrection on the third day.
The unbelieving world despises these things.
It despises those who confess their faith in Jesus.
The world wants an inclusive Jesus, a Jesus who meekly
takes His place among the world’s pantheon of other gods.
But He will not do it.
He says that the Father’s will is that everyone who
looks on the Son and believes in Him should have eternal life.
For God did not send His Son into
the world to condemn the world but that the world, through Him,
might be saved.
Jesus tells us the truth about these things, that it was
necessary that He suffer and die for sin.
And He also tells us the truth that we who have faith in
Him are to deny ourselves, take up our crosses and follow Him.
We are called to a radical discipleship in a world that
despises the Cross.
You, of course, are like me.
We’d rather be comfortable, wouldn’t we?
We’d rather be snug and secure in our nice little homes
in our nice friendly churches filled with nice people like
ourselves. We
don’t want a faith that demands anything of us.
We’re ready to admit that Christ had to suffer us so we
could be saved, but when it comes to our suffering for
Christ’s sake and the Gospel – whoa, that’s going too far.
No need to be fanatical about these things.
But when we’re tempted to think like this, we remember the
sufferings of our Lord Jesus Christ.
We remember that the world, the sinful flesh and the
devil are arrayed in conspiracy against us.
What do the Scriptures say? -- All who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. . . We
must through many tribulations enter the
kingdom
of
God
.
. . If
they hated Me, Jesus says, they
will hate you also.
Persecution and hatred of Christians is not something remote,
confined to another time and place.
It’s a reality today in
Asia
and
Africa
and the middle East. I
believe it’s a very real possibility in our own country in the
next decade or two. For
any time we Christians stand up for the truth of God’s Word
and expose the lies people believe, any time we confess the Name
of Jesus Christ, we run the risk of being spoken against and
hated. We run the
risk of suffering for the sake of Him who suffered and died for
us.
In our Baptism, the Holy Spirit has brought us to faith in
Christ as the only way to the Father, the only truth among a
host of false religions, the only life in a world of death.
Therefore, we stand up for Christ and His saving Gospel.
We confess Jesus so others can come to faith in Him as
their Savior. None
of this can we do in our own strength, of course.
So we look to our Lord, who in His Word promises to be
with us to strengthen us in our weakness.
We look to God and His Means of Grace to enable and
empower us. When we hear the Gospel, when we take the Sacrament,
there Jesus is, forgiving us, strengthening us.
And in the face of opposition, we take comfort in the
fact that because we’ve been united to Christ in our Baptism,
our sufferings as Christians are united to His sufferings for
us. This is the
truth. God says it.
And by His grace we believe this truth, and we confess it
boldly in a world brimming over with lies.
The Cross Jesus speaks of in today’s Gospel is no polished
piece of jewelry, bright and beautiful.
It is rough, it is crude, it is an instrument of
suffering and death. But for us who believe, it is so much more.
It is our signpost to eternal life.
And that’s the truth.
In Nomine Patris. . .
