biblestudy: Matthew (Part Twenty-Two)
Matthew 24
John W. Ritenbaugh
Given 31-Mar-82; Sermon #BS-MA22; 79 minutes
Description: (show)
I am going back to Matthew the 16th chapter. The last time we got to verse 21, so I am going to just drop back to about verse 13 and get a running start at verse 21 so that we have a little bit of a background, because what begins in verse 21 is very directly connected to what preceded it.
At any rate, the setting was that they were in Caesarea Philippi, and Jesus asked His disciples who the people were saying that He was. Peter, I am sure, speaking for the other 11—I do not think he was just speaking for himself—told Him that they believed that He was the Christ, the Son of God, the Messiah. Jesus replied that flesh and blood had not revealed this to him.
In other words, it was not something that was physically discerned, but rather something that was given to him of God—that God had directly worked on his mind to enable him to be able to see it, because he was seeing and hearing essentially the same thing that the other people were, but the other people were not being convinced necessarily of what Jesus was saying. They might have believed for a time on some of the things that He did and they followed Him around, but they did not perceive Him as the anointed of God. If they had perceived Him as the anointed of God, then Peter could not have answered the way he did; that other people perceive Jesus as being Elijah, John the Baptist, or Jeremiah or one of the other prophets.
Well, from that point, He went on to say that He was going to build a church. This is the first mention of a church in the New Testament, a body of people who would represent Him here on this earth. And He said that the church would be built upon Himself. Peter, of course we understand, is the form of the word petros, meaning a stone. But Jesus said that the church was going to be built on a petra, which is a large craggy rock, and He meant Himself. The church is built on Christ, the church is not built on Peter. And the fact that Jesus Christ is alive is the reason why the gates of hell will not prevail against it. If the church had been built upon Peter, it would soon die out because Peter died. But because the church is built upon Christ and Christ is resurrected, He is alive, He is able to sustain it and continue its life, and it continues to this day.
Then He told the apostles that He would give them the keys of the Kingdom of heaven and whatever they bound on earth would be bound in heaven. At least that is the way it reads. I do not think that I went into this too thoroughly the last time that we were going through it, but commentaries will tell you that that is not really the way that is written and the way that it is written in the Greek is "that whatever you bind on earth has already been bound in heaven."
Now, what He is saying there in short is that these men are going to have to work within the framework of God's law, which is of course binding. But He is also promising that He will continue to inspire, lead, and guide the apostles in the conduct of the church because He is alive. He is going to inspire them as to their decisions. Now, we are going to see a little bit later that just because Christ promises to inspire His apostle does not mean that apostles cannot make mistakes, that apostles cannot do things wrong. But even if they do, Christ is capable of straightening them up because they have to learn by experience as well.
Then picking it up in verse 20,
Matthew 16:20 Then He commanded His disciples that they should tell no one that He was Jesus the Christ.
Again, this tends to run counter to commonly accepted ideas. And that is that Christ was going around trying to get everybody converted, trying to get everybody to follow His way. But this statement was made many times. You can probably recall places where He healed people and He then told the people, "Don't tell anybody. Just go to the Temple, make the required offerings, but don't spread it around where this healing came from." And so they, of course, immediately disobeyed and told everybody where the healing came from.
So it was not that Jesus was going around trying to get everybody to follow Him. He did not want it. And there was a very significant reason why He did not want everybody to be following Him. Now, that reason had to do with their perception of the Messiah. Their feelings, that is, the apostles feelings or perception of what the Messiah would be like and what the Messiah would do, were the same as those that were held by the common Jew at that time. And those people had nationalistic longings. They wanted very much for the Messiah to kick the Romans out, establish His Kingdom with His headquarters in Palestine, and begin to expand the boundaries and the rule of Israel over the earth.
Now, the Jews completely missed on Christ partly because of this. They did not look upon Jesus as the Messiah because of this perception. To them, the Messiah would be a conquering king, not a suffering servant, not somebody who would die for their sins, but rather somebody who would obliterate to smithereens all the enemies of Israel. So their perception was entirely wrong and everything that they thought in light of the Messiah was covered by this perception.
This has application to you and me because we have been reared, every single one of us, in a predominantly Protestant society and Protestant thought dominates your thinking. It has given you your perception of what God is like. It has given to you your perception of what Christ is like. It has given you your perception of what the church ought to be like, what the laws of God ought to be like, and how God ought to be involved in your life or maybe not involved in your life.
And really, I think the dominant theme of Protestantism is rebellion. It comes pretty close to that. It is every man for himself; go to the church of your own choice, do your own thing, you see. And if you do not want to follow this religion, you can always go to another one. And if you do not like that one, you can go to another one. Well, let them do it. That is not the religion of the Bible. There is one church and God's people, His children, have to understand that very thoroughly.
But you also have to understand that Protestant thought does play a large part in our thinking. It cannot help but do that because we have been brought up in it. From the time that we were born, our parents who were influenced by it and were conducting their family life, their marriage, their child rearing practices, the way society is conducted, is done with Protestant thought, the Protestant work ethic. We toss these things around maybe not even really stopping to deeply consider where these things come from.
I want to show you a verse back here in I Peter 1.
I Peter 1:17-18 And if you call on the Father, who without partiality judges according to each one's work, conduct yourselves throughout the time your stay here in fear; knowing that you were not redeemed with corruptible things, like silver and gold [That is, we are redeemed by the blood of Christ. Now, what are we redeemed from?], from your aimless conduct received by tradition from your fathers.
This is the principle that I am getting at. And at this time in their lives in Matthew 16, their perception of the Messiah still was not correct. Now, you see, we too have received traditions from our fathers and that tradition is encompassed within Protestant ideals, Protestant standards, Protestant thinking. And so it tends to dominate the United States in not only religious areas but in political thinking as well, economic thinking. Because this country was predominantly founded by Protestants. Our Constitution was the work of Protestant minds. Our Declaration of Independence was the work of Protestant minds. And so it dominated our thinking from the founding of this country.
But yet, this is the very thing that we have been redeemed from, see, what we have received from our fathers, because what we have received from our fathers is a mixed bag. Some of it is good; some of it is not so good. And so it was with the apostles back in Matthew 16. They were still being dominated by the wrong thought and so they were able to grasp intellectually, academically, that Jesus was the Messiah, but they still did not grasp what that meant. See, to them, the Messiah was a conquering king. He was not a suffering servant.
Now you take men, young, probably most of them in their mid-twenties to mid-thirties, roughly the same age as Jesus, who are seeing this Man going around doing wonderful things. They are listening to teaching like they have never heard before and they realize that this Man has the answers. He has got the answers to political problems. He has a connection to God like nobody has ever had. He can heal people. He says He has the power to forgive sins. And we are going to see in a little bit, He actually raised somebody from the dead.
You take young men in the prime of their life, in the most revolutionary period of their lives, and what are they going to do? You see, they are going to seek a political solution. They are going to solve Israel's problems politically. They are going to get the people stirred up to follow Christ. That is exactly what Christ did not want. And that is why He told them, "Don't you dare tell anybody! Let's just leave things the way they are."
Let us go on verse 21.
Matthew 16:21 From that time Jesus began to show to His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and raised the third day.
Now, I am sure that He mentioned it maybe from time to time that He was going to die. But I am also sure that it went right over their heads. They just could not conceive that, or they would conceive it in terms of just simply the end of a physical life. You know, you get sick and you die. But He is now, from this point forward, instructing them more thoroughly regarding His responsibility—that somebody has to die for the sins of the people. Well, let us just say for the sins of mankind—and that somebody was Him.
Matthew 16:22-23 Then Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him, saying, "Far be it from You, Lord; this shall not happen to You!" But He turned and said to Peter, "Get behind Me, Satan! You are an offense to Me, for you are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men."
You see, apostles can make mistakes and Peter really pulled a boo-boo here.
First of all, the Bible does not give all the details regarding exactly what occurred here. It only says that He caught hold of Jesus (KJV). A better translation would be that he took Him. Actually, what he did is he took hold of Him, caught hold of Him. I do not think that Peter just roughly grabbed Him by the shoulder and spun Him around. I do not think that he did that at all. I think that he had enough respect for Jesus and what he very likely did was done in a more or less comradely way. You know, grabbed Him by the shoulders, said, "No! We don't want You to die. There surely is another way to do it." Sort of speaking to Him like a brother, appealing to Him, you know, that that was too hard to face.
On the other hand, what about Jesus' rebuke? Did His rebuke come out as an angry snarl? "Get you behind Me, Satan!" sort of thing. I do not think it came out as an angry snarl either. I think it was firm and I think that it was said with authority, but I do not think there was any bit of even a twinge of hatred or venom that was involved in it. But Peter knew he had been told and that he had been told with authority and yet not such a put down that Peter would be just totally and completely embarrassed.
Now, what did Peter do there? Why did Jesus call him Satan? Had Satan actually taken control of Peter's mind so that he was directing Peter's tongue, you know, that he was under Satan's control? No, I do not think so. Peter was not possessed. But what Peter did there without a doubt was influenced by Satan. I have no doubt at all. Now, what did Peter do? Well, whether you are able to see it or not, what Peter did there was very similar to what Satan did in Matthew 4 and Luke 4.
In Matthew 4, what did Satan challenge Christ on? He challenged Him on purely materialistic grounds. He said, look, turn the stones to bread, satisfy your hunger in a material way. The second one was, he told Him to cast Himself down. In other words, to do something sensational, abuse Your office, tempt God. And then he told Him to take power and took Him to the pinnacle of the Temple and showed Him the kingdoms of the world, which Satan said that he would give to Him. You see, every single one of them was materialistic.
That is what Peter was doing here. In essence, he was doing exactly the same thing. He was saying, Jesus, you do not have to die. There is another way of doing it. Why not seize power? You see, that was the implication behind what Peter was saying. See, do not die, seize power, gather the people around You, overthrow the Sanhedrin, and then overthrow the Romans. The Sanhedrin is mentioned in verse 21, the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, that they were going to be the ones who would kill Him. And so Peter was tempting Christ in the same way that Satan did.
The next thing I think that needs to be considered is why did He say "You are not mindful of the things of God"? Well, the reason was that Jesus understood the Scriptures and they did not. He understood that the Messiah first had to die for the sins of the world (Isaiah 53, Isaiah 52, and others). All the way back in Genesis the third chapter, the Bible begins to prophesy of the payment for man's sins. But somehow or another, the Jews overlook those things. And this perception was in their mind, that their Messiah would be a conquering hero.
And so what Peter was trying to do was not in line with God's plan. That is why He said, "You are not mindful the things of God." What Peter was putting forward to Christ was something that was completely materialistic and was a way that a man would solve things. Not God, but a man would do it that way.
Now, if you would look back in Luke 4:13 (Luke 4 is Luke's version of the temptation of Christ,) but Luke adds something that Matthew does not have. And that is that the temptations of Christ did not end with the one that is described in Luke 4 and Matthew 4. But rather, it says that the Devil left off until an opportune time. Now it does not say that in the King James. It says that in modern translations though, that he left off the temptations until an opportune time. So the temptations that Christ was going through was not a one-time affair, but rather whenever Satan felt that Christ was in a vulnerable condition, then he would come with an attack and the temptations just kept continuing. And this one in Matthew 16 was just the latest of a long series of temptations.
We need to consider something else. Sometimes our perceptions of Jesus gets a little bit twisted and we sometimes get the idea that He was like an actor on a stage, that He knew the script perfectly, and He was just walking through His responsibility like an actor. It was not that way at all! Does it not say in Hebrews 2, Hebrews 4, Hebrews 5 that Jesus had to learn by obedience?
Now, you know the story very well. That Jesus was born a baby, as you and I, and He did not come out of the womb speaking Hebrew. He had to have his diaper changed. He had to learn to speak, He had to learn to be obedient to his mother and father, and He had to learn who He was from them. We know at age 12, according to Luke 2, that He knew a great deal. But it also says in that chapter that He grew in knowledge and favor with men and God.
Jesus had to search the Scriptures the same as we do. He had to look in Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, the Prophets and the Writings, and come to understand what His responsibility was. That once He recognized who He was, He had to learn from the Scriptures what His responsibility was. And of course, He kept in contact with God—constantly prayed, often studied, endlessly meditated upon God's Word. Fasted often, turned God's Word over and over in His mind and came to understand the applications of it—and He did it perfectly.
You see, He had to grow the same as a man does. That is how He can understand what a man is like and what a man has to go through. And that is why all judgment has been given into His hands; that He understands humanity in a way that God the Father does not in that He experienced it as a man. And so God, in order to protect us, has put judgment in Christ's hand so that He judges not only from the perception of being God, but also from the perception of having been a man.
Back to Matthew 16. We are going to see a little bit more of this principle just a little bit later.
Jesus said to Peter, "Get behind Me!" Now, this phrase is very similar to what Jesus said to Satan in Matthew 4 and in Luke 4 but there is one significant difference. It is not exactly the same phrase. What He said to Satan was "Away with you!" He said, "Get out of here!" in plain English. He said to Peter, "Get behind Me!" What He said to Peter was, "Peter, you're not the leader around here, I am. Get back in place." He said, "Follow Me." You see, get behind Me and follow Me. We will see how this fits into the next section.
This was not the only time that the apostles thought they knew better than Christ. And even though the Bible does not give a great bit of the details, I feel very strongly that this was the thing that tripped Judas up, one of the things. But he had a vision of Christ's capabilities, responsibility, that was not of God. It was just like Peter's was here. It was not of God, it was of man. And I believe that part of the reason that he did what he did was not out of maliciousness, not because he hated Christ, but because he was going to bring something about in a human way.
Now you can see by Judas' suicide that what he plotted did not work out the way he thought it would. I do not think that he ever expected Christ to be crucified. I think he had a different perception of what he was going to bring about by Christ's arrest. He was going to bring a confrontation to pass. He was going to force the confrontation between Jesus and the Sanhedrin. And then I think he thought that Jesus would use His power, His persuasion with God, His favor with God to usurp authority. And then would not Judas be in a beautiful condition, great position to be in? I tell you, I believe that that had a great deal to do with what Judas did. He did not savor the things of God either, but he held on to his thought a lot longer than the other eleven did. And I think that he carried it out.
Look at verse 24. Remember Jesus has just said, "Peter, get behind Me, be a follower."
Matthew 16:24-25 Then Jesus said to His disciples, "If anyone desires to come after Me [you see, walk after Me, follow Me], let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it."
Now, here was Peter trying to save Jesus' life. And so Jesus is just turning the tables on him and said, "Look, if you're trying to save your life and follow Me at the same time, it's an impossibility." Now look:
Matthew 16:25-26 "For whoever desires to save his life shall lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. For what profit is it if he gains the whole world. . .
Which is what they wanted Christ to do. Set up the Kingdom, take over, expand the boundaries of Israel. "You've got all this power, use it, man!" That is what they were saying, use it, increase Yourself.
Matthew 16:26 "For what profit is it if he shall gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?"
Let us stop there because we will go on to verse 27 separately.
Now Jesus never hid from you and me the demands of being His follower. And I think that, in most cases, we ministers honestly try to get this across to the people that we baptize. That God is demanding nothing less than the totality of your life. Nothing more, nothing less—unconditional surrender to Him. Otherwise, it will not work. Unless a person completely and totally repents, it is not going to work. We are going to be fighting Him the whole way because we will not be savoring (mindful of) the things of God. We have one foot in the world and one foot in the Kingdom and God does not want any fence sitters. And you know that Jesus said that if anybody is going to follow Him, he better be ready to forsake his father, mother, sister, brother, and uncle, and his own life. He makes it very plain.
What is He saying here is essentially the same thing that Paul says in Romans 8, beginning in verses 5 through 8 (what I was going through in a portion of the sermon last Sabbath). The carnal mind's interests lie in carnal things. Carnal simply means physical. Carnal means materialistic. And so the carnal mind is going to be materialistically oriented, its interest is going to lie in physical things, and because it does, it will dominate the thinking of the individual. He will pursue that which is carnal or physical. He will turn and bend every situation to get his own safety, security, comfort, or whatever out of it.
Now, the person whose mind is spiritual is not going to have himself at the center of his life, dominating things as the carnal person does. God is going to be at the center, dominating that person's life, and that person's interest is going to be in satisfying any requirements of God: of glorifying Him, of pleasing Him, of serving Him. And of course, man as well.
What we are talking about here are these two ways of life Mr. Armstrong is always talking about. The interest of the carnal mind is to get for himself. He wants to get money, he wants to get power, he wants to get security, he wants to get safety, he wants comfort, he wants the big house, he wants the fine clothing. Now again, I am not saying that these things are not nice to have, but those things will dominate his interests. Whereas the interest of the spiritual mind will revolve around the keeping of the those two great commandments. And so his interest then will be out away from himself toward the serving and pleasing of God and the serving and pleasing of others equal to or before himself.
Where it says "deny himself," Christ is not talking here about a typical Lenten situation. I can remember when I was a boy growing up, I grew up in a Catholic area. My family was not Catholic, but the city of Pittsburgh is Catholic, by and large. I would say that the greater portion of the population is Catholic. So every Lent my friends would tell me what they gave up, and so for 40 days they would deny themselves candy canes or they would deny themselves chewing gum. I am not kidding you. Or if a guy was really religious, he would deny himself going to the movies.
Well, Christ is not talking about that at all. What He is talking about here is a denial of the self in every moment of life. Everything. He is talking about the dominant interest of an individual. Where does the thinking lie? What does it revolve around? And in order to have the interest to be in spiritual areas, the self has to be denied because unless the self is denied, the interests are going to be toward the self and satisfying the self and the seeking for the self of security, comfort, ease, wealth, power, status, all of those kind of things. So what He is talking about here is really the obliteration of the self as the dominant principle of life.
Now, did He not say in Luke 14:26 that you have got to love Me more than father, mother, sister, brother, aunt, uncle, and so forth—and self. Is that not putting Christ first? Is that not denying yourself? Yes, it is. That is what He is saying here. And this phrase appears seven times in the scriptures, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, seven different times in slight variations. But it is always the same principle. You have got to deny yourself. If you are going to please God, you have got to obliterate yourself as being the dominant principle in your life.
Then He says that you have to "take up [your] cross." This is a little bit more specific. It has to do with specific areas where you take up the burden of sacrifice. Now, probably the best known example was when Simon of Cyrene was a "Chinese volunteer" to carry Christ's cross. You see, I am sure that God had that done as a literal example, where he gave up his time and his energy to bear somebody else's burden. In this case, it was the instrument of Christ's death.
You see, there is the example. And what He is talking about here, where we, in specific cases, give up money, time, energy, to serve somebody else, to lift the burden from them. That is taking up the cross. Now let me give you an example back here in James 1, verse 27 where he talks about serving the widows and the fatherless. Now, this is not the only example of pure religion, but let us look at it.
James 1:27 Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.
It is pure because the widow and the orphans are unable to pay you back and it is pure to the extent that our motivation is right. Now, our motivation may not be entirely right, but go ahead and do it anyway. I mean, serve those who cannot serve you back. You cannot expect your motivation to be perfect. That is something that we grow into and at the beginning, it is enough to do it simply because we know that it is right academically.
But let me tell you this, any time you sacrifice, it is not going to be easy. There is going to be a burden associated with it. If there was no burden, if there was no sacrifice, if there was no feeling of giving something up, then what is the big deal? It is not costing you a thing. And so any time you serve there is the likelihood that there is going to be the feeling of giving something up, and that is not wrong. Not at all. If there is no sacrifice, there is no big deal.
So there is going to be a feeling that you are giving something up as a result of it. Just do not get proud of doing it. If you get proud that you are doing this, giving up the time, you have lost your reward, you have already had it in that feeling. But if you feel as though you are being put out a little bit, do not worry about that. You are being put out and that is just part of it.
Now, this cross that we bear certainly extends beyond the service of others. James mentions keeping oneself unspotted from the world. Well, what he means there is what we have been talking about in verse 24. Where a person is obliterating himself as the center of his operations. It means doing all the things that are good and right in God's eyes, even though nobody else knows that you are doing it. I am talking about praying. I am talking about studying. I am talking about fasting. I am talking about meditation. I am talking about all of the efforts that you go to in the setting of your will to avoid sin. Even though nobody else knows it, you know it and God knows that you are doing that to keep yourself unspotted from the world.
That is pure religion. You are fighting sin tooth and toenail and nobody else knows you are going through that agony, whatever that agony might be, to keep yourself from sinning. Setting your will not to, even though you want to do it. Your flesh is driving you—do it, do it. Satisfy your taste buds, satisfy your sex organ, satisfy your mind, satisfy your whatever it is. And you are fighting that lonely battle and nobody else knows it. And maybe you even hate the fact that you are fighting it. Well, fight in any way, set your will.
That is the kind of attitude that God responds to. You are learning to discipline yourself. You are learning to keep yourself from allowing your nature to run amok and to have its way. The right feelings will come. Again, that is something that we have to grow into. Any time you are fighting your nature there is going to be sacrifice involved. And do not ever trust your feelings because your feelings are educated, just as mine are, and your feelings might be misleading you down the primrose path. Because I have heard of plenty of persons who have said to me, well, they do not feel like doing this and if I do not feel like doing it, then I do not think that I ought to do it.
We are talking about doing good things. Well, my heart really is not in praying. Well, my heart really is not in studying. Well, my heart really is not in doing this or that. Do you not realize that is your human nature that has been educated in that direction to keep you from doing those things? That is what you have to fight against those feelings that say, do not do what is right, regardless of your feeling.
Do you not think Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-Nego had strange feelings standing in front of that fiery furnace? Do you not think that they were afraid of being thrown in that fire? You better believe that they were afraid. They were human beings. They did not want to die, but by faith they set their will. They were not just walking through a stage play. And they said, ok, King, you may be able to kill us and our God may allow it, but our minds are made up. We will not bow down to you. Whoosh, right into the furnace. Of course, God did not rescue them until they were in it.
You know, in a situation like that, what your feelings would be saying to you? Your feelings would be saying, bow down; your feelings would be saying, save your skin because if I am alive later on I can repent and I will really obey God then. That is the way human nature is. It is the way it thinks. And that is really nothing more than situation ethics. So we have to set our will by faith. That is what He is talking about—taking up your cross.
So denying oneself has to do with the overall perspective. Taking up the cross has to do with specific areas where one is lifting the burden, especially from some other person.
He says, "For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?" Well, certainly I am sure, that Peter's comment still had something to do with this. Because really what Satan through Peter was dangling in front of Jesus was control of the world.
Now, what if Jesus had decided to take control? See, the human way. At the end of His life, what would He have? He would have nothing. You see, He would have the world but He would die and that would be the end.
And so again, Christ's orientation is always toward the Kingdom of God. That is life. We do not have life now. We have a material, chemical, electrical existence. Now, if you are catching it, what He is telling you and me here is the difference between existence and life, how you can have life as opposed to existence. What He is telling us here as far as the world is concerned is completely unworkable. You see, with God it is not unworkable and He will make it work. That is part of our faith, to know that it will work.
You have an example all the time of this working. We give away millions of Plain Truth magazines every month. We give away thousands of booklets and articles, correspondence courses, and on and on. Everything we offer the public is free. That will not work in this world. You cannot give things away like we do. But it works because God makes it work. That is the only thing that will make this work.
Now, if you can just adjust this to every aspect of life, this way of thinking, what He is saying is this: "Look, if you're playing this game of life with your eyes and your interests fixed upon that which is material and physical, then life is going to turn out to be to you nothing but a hopeless pursuit after nothing." Wind. And you will just be existing. Now, if you do it God's way, what He is saying is, "Man, you're going to live. Your life is going to be exciting. Your life is going to be filled with adventure. Your life is going to be filled with peace. It's going to have joy. You're going to have good health, you're going to have all the good things that people are seeking after and don't have. And you're going to have a sound mind and everything that these rich people are running after all over the place to try to get, you're going to have it."
Now, in order to help you and me to do this, He gives us various promises. He says, "I'll heal you." He says, "I'll provide your food, I'll provide your clothing." He says, I don't want you to take any anxious thoughts for tomorrow. I just want you to commit yourself to learning to be like Me." You see, I do not know what more I could say. That is what He is saying here. You can spend your life accumulating the whole world and end up with nothing. On the other hand, you can spend your life denying yourself, taking up Christ's cross, following Him in obedience, and you are going to have life here and now, and there in His Kingdom.
That is quite a challenge because you see this mind of ours, which has been influenced by Satan the Devil from the time that we were born, is dominated by materialistic thinking. When God talks about overcoming He is talking about overcoming Satan, talking about overcoming this world. He is talking about overcoming the self and by far and away, the largest one is the self because we always want things to revolve around us.
I read once of an epitaph that was on a gravestone. Maybe this will help you to understand because I wrote it down. Whoever had this thing written had kind of a sense of humor and they got the essence of the person's life because what they wrote was this: "He was born a man, but he died a grocer." So just as easily it could have said he was born a man, but he died a lawyer. He was born a man, but he died a politician. He was born a man, but he died a welder.
What it meant was that this person was born with the Kingdom of God in front of him. And what did he turn his attention to? Earning money, his grocery business. And so his grocery business got all of his time, all of his attention, all of his hours, and maybe he made a fortune. But he died a grocer.
You know, there is a story and I really do not know whether it is true or not. It probably is. But Charlemagne the Great, who was one of the kings there of the beast power, the story is that when he was buried he was not buried like ordinary mortals. He was buried sitting up on a throne. Not in a casket, he was on a throne, sitting up with a Bible on his knee and his finger was in that Bible pointed to this very verse that we are talking about. "For what profit is it if to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" Now, whether Charlemagne felt that he had blown it I do not know. But Charlemagne ruled over a great empire and I think that he must have gone to his grave wondering if that applied to him, that he had gained everything and had nothing. It is an interesting thing.
Matthew 16:27 "For the Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then He will reward each according to his works."
This verse, taken separately, even though it really belongs with what preceded it, is a warning that the judgment of God is sure. There is a tendency humanly for us to put things like this off. I will take care of it later when I get older, then I will become religious. We tend to have our attention so focused on the immediate, the around and the about, the business of making a living, that we tend to forget that God is absolute and what He says surely comes to pass. And so it is a warning from Christ that we are not to take lightly what He just said. That God is going to judge men according to their works.
You see, the works have to do with the dominant interest in the person's life. And if the dominant interest is in glorifying God, then there is every chance that that person will succeed in producing good works. And if the dominant interest is for the comfort and safety and security and wealth and praise and approbation of this world, then God is going to judge that person's works too. And even though they have produced a great deal in this world, they have ended up, as far as God is concerned, with nothing because really their whole world has been swirling around themselves. So it is just a warning that what He is saying is absolute and God will judge.
Now verse 28 really belongs with the next chapter.
Matthew 16:28 "Assuredly, I say to you, there are some standing here who shall not taste death till they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom."
Matthew 17:1-8 Now after six days, Jesus took Peter, James, and John his brother, and brought them up into a high mountain by themselves; and He was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and His clothes became white as the light. And behold, Moses and Elijah appeared to them, talking with Him. Then Peter answered and said to Jesus, "Lord, it is good for us to be here; if You wish, let us make here three tabernacles: one for You, one for Moses, and one for Elijah." While he was still speaking, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them; and suddenly a voice came out of the cloud, saying, "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. Hear Him!" And when the disciples heard it, they fell on their faces and were greatly afraid. But Jesus came and touched them and said, "Arise, and do not be afraid." When they had lifted up their eyes, they saw no one but Jesus only.
We will read verse 9 a little bit later. But I do want to get one phrase out of there and then go back to explaining the rest of it. He said, "Tell the vision to no one." The characters in this vision, of course, were Moses and Elijah. Now we understand that they are dead and are in their grave and they are waiting for the resurrection. It says very plainly back in the book of Hebrews, all these died in faith. They died and they did not receive the promises so they are waiting in their grave. So what they saw was not really Moses and Elijah, but rather a vision of them.
Now, the best analogy that I can come up with in equating this into present day circumstances is very similar to motion pictures or television, where what you are looking at on the screen is not really the person, but it is a vision of the person, a reproduction of the person. And in the vision that He gave John later on, they were much the same, they were reproduction or maybe I can even use the term "movies" of what was going to happen in our day. So what they saw was not a reality, it appeared to be a reality and they were involved in part of it, but yet part of it was just a vision.
Back in verse 28 He says that some of them would not taste death until they saw the Son of Man coming in His Kingdom. Now, Peter, James, and John are all dead and yet they saw Christ in His Kingdom in this transfiguration that occurred on this high mountain. Some say the mountain was Mount Tabor. Most people think that it was probably Mount Herman because Mount Tabor really is not all that high and it is further away from Caesarea Philippi than Mount Herman is; and Mount Herman is a high mountain, 10,000 to 11,000 feet. So it probably took place up there. And so Peter, James, and John were up there on that mountain.
Let us begin to set the scene. Why was Jesus there? Now again, was He an actor walking through a drama?
Go back to Luke the ninth chapter where we have account of this same circumstance.
Luke 9:28 Now it came to pass, about eight days after these sayings, that He took Peter, John, and James and went up on the mountain to pray.
Now you might notice that there is a difference between Luke's reckoning and Matthew's and Mark's reckoning. Matthew and Mark say six days. Luke says eight days. The only difference is the time or the point from which they begin to count. Matthew's and Mark's took place six days after the things that He said that included, "Get behind Me, Satan!" Luke included all of the events of chapter 16, which took a couple of days to unfold. And so his is naturally then, longer, eight days rather than six days.
Why did they go up to the mountain to pray?
Luke 9:29 As He prayed, the appearance of His face was altered, and His robe became white and glistening.
So they began to see Him as He would appear in the Kingdom, glorified as God. But I do not think that they saw Him completely glorified as God because they might have died or at least been blinded.
Luke 9:30 And behold, two men talked with Him, who were Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory and spoke of his decease which He was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.
Now we see the subject of His prayer was His death because that is what He was talked to about, because that was what was on Christ's mind. Now, I am guessing here, speculating. But again, I do not think that I am wrong, willing to be corrected if anybody has a better idea. But if you go back and begin to pick this thing up in its context back in chapter 16, where He told Peter, "No, that's not the way. You aren't mindful of the things of God." He had just done a bit of explaining to those men that the Messiah was to die, that He was not to take over rulership of the earth, but rather to die.
Then we come through the explanation of what it means to follow Christ. Then we come to the instance where He goes up in the high mountain to pray. Now, why was He going up there? I think there were two reasons.
1. He wanted confirmation from God that He was on the right track.
2. He wanted strength from God to carry through because no man will willingly walk to his death unless he has an awfully good reason to do it. And I think that Christ wanted confirmation that He was doing the right thing.
And so He went up into the mountain with Peter, James, and John to pray to His Father for the confirmation and the strength to go through the ordeal that He was about to go through.
Remember, He was in Galilee. He was going to head back to Judea. Judea was the seat of the government. Judea was where His enemies were. Judea was the hot spot as far as He was concerned. As long as He was in Galilee, He was reasonably safe. But if He went back into Judea, He was going to march right back into trouble. And so He went up there, I feel certain, to prepare Himself for the ordeal and to receive if He could some confirmation from God that He was on the track, that He was on the beam, that He was going in the right direction.
And God's response was the Transfiguration, where He glorified Christ before Peter, James, and John, and said, "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. Hear Him!" It means that "You're on the beam, You're going in the right direction, continue on." And so we see two major things accomplished here.
Number 1, Christ gets confirmation that He is on the right track and I am sure that it energized Him knowing that He was on the right track and gave Him a great deal of resolve and strength to carry it through. Now, we know that He was concerned about it because even up to His death, He said, "Father, if it would be possible that this cup pass from Me, nevertheless, not My will but Yours be done." If there was another way to do it, He was saying, God, let Us do it that other way, but nevertheless, let Us do it Your way, whatever You will.
So you see that there were still certain questions in His mind right up until He began to go through those things. He was not just a zombie walking through a certain path that had been just laid out for Him. But He had to think these things through and make sure that He was going in the right direction, keeping in contact with God through prayer and study and meditating on these things, talking them over with people and getting His thoughts cleared out in His mind so that He would know that He was going in the right direction.
He was human, just as you and I are, and He had to build character this way as well by making decisions, studying God's Word, understanding God's will. And so this gave Him very strong confirmation that He was going in the right direction.
Number 2: not only that, it became a source of strength and inspiration for the apostles as well because these were three leaders, Peter, James, and John. And of course, Peter later received the primacy above those two. In fact, I guess you might say he had already gotten it. But nonetheless, Peter mentions this back in II Peter chapter 1 about being eyewitnesses of His glory. And he is referring back to this instance when they were up on the mountain and He was transfigured before them.
Now, these three then went on to set the pace for the others. They were the only ones who saw Christ in His glory and they then became the leading apostles and they had an extra spurt, you might say, a vision of what life in the Kingdom of God was going to be like. And so God granted them something extra to carry them through what they were going to have to go through. And it certainly, I am sure, did its job.
You will notice that the Feast of Tabernacles is involved here. It is obliquely referred to where Peter said, "Let's make three tabernacles" or three booths. Now, Peter got the point that he was viewing Christ in the Kingdom of God, as it were, and he recognized that he was actually given a vision or whatever of the Kingdom of God, of the Millennium, of which the Feast of Tabernacles is a type. That is why he wanted to build the tabernacles, because he knew that what was being shown him was a type of the Kingdom of God and so he immediately related it to the Feast of Tabernacles. Would that we would do so well under the circumstances and want to do that.
There is one little interesting sidelight here and that is that apparently they not only became afraid, but the light became quite bright and maybe that was the thing that actually struck fear in them. The cloud no doubt was what the Jews call the Shekinah. It appears many different places in the book of Exodus, where the cloud or the Shekinah or the glory of God came down on the Tabernacle and then Moses would go into the Tabernacle and he would talk to God—Christ—who was in the cloud. That is what God did here. You see, He brought the cloud and they immediately recognized it and knew that they were in the presence of God. They recognized it from what they knew of the Old Testament. And so they hid their faces. By the time they looked up again, why, Moses and Elijah were gone and only Christ was there.
Now, I think that there is a veiled implication here that maybe you and I would not pick up on. But to a Jew living at that time, it might have been very important. They looked upon Moses and Elijah as being the greatest of their people who had ever lived. That Moses was the greatest among the lawgivers. Elijah was the greatest of the prophets. I am sure that they looked upon Abraham as being in the same category, or the same level. But in a different category he would have been the greatest. I do not know what category they would put him in. But when they looked up there was nobody but Christ.
The inference to me is this, that if they are going to get into the Kingdom of God and to be glorified with Christ, that it is only going to be through Christ. Nobody else is going to help you into the Kingdom. Not Moses, not Elijah, nobody but Christ. Now there is an awful lot contained within that. Turn with me back to Hebrews because Paul mentioned something that I think is very interesting in Hebrews the second chapter where Paul is talking about what an awesome future we have before us.
Hebrews 2:5-8 For He has not put the world to come, of which we speak, in subjection to angels. But one testified in a certain place, saying: "What is man that you are mindful of him, . . . You made him a little lower than the angels [or as the Hebrew says, a little lower than God, Elohim]; . . . You put all things in subjection under his feet."
He left nothing that is put not under him. Everything is under the subjection of man, but not yet. We know that what Abraham is going to inherit is everything that God has created. And as being Abraham's children and co-heirs with him, then we are going to inherit that whole thing too.
Hebrews 2:9 But we see Jesus [just like the apostles when they came up off their feet, all they saw was Christ], who was made a little lower than the angels, for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor, that He, by the grace of God, might taste death for everyone.
You see, that is the point; that our salvation is going to be accomplished only through Christ, that our character is already flawed through the sins that we have committed, and so that it is only by the death of Jesus Christ that we can have our sins forgiven. In addition to that, Jesus Christ is now at the right hand of the Father. He is interceding for you and me. And it says so plainly in Romans 5:10, by His life we are saved. By the fact that He is alive, salvation is made possible. We are justified by His blood. We are saved by His life. We are saved by the fact that He is resurrected and He can give us the strength, He can lead us, He can teach us, He can encourage us, He can give us of His Spirit.
So we see back here at the Transfiguration, they saw no one save Jesus only. And so at this time of the year, at Passover, God forcibly makes us turn our attention to the means of our salvation so that we do not get the idea that somehow, through our own means, our own strength, or whatever, that we are going to come into His Kingdom. That it is through Christ alone that we are going to be able to do it. Certainly our efforts are required. But if it were not for Christ, we would never make it there.
Now, one final thing. Verse 9, as they came down from the mountain, Jesus commanded them, saying, "Tell the vision to no one until the Son of Man is risen from the dead." Again, a precautionary statement, do not spread it around. Do not let anybody know what has happened until afterwards so that there could be nothing used to focus the wrong kind of attention on Christ.
Matthew 17:10-13 And His disciples asked Him, saying, "Why then do the scribes say that Elijah must come first?" Jesus answered and said to them [notice this], "Indeed, Elijah is coming first [I want you to notice that, future Elijah truly shall come first] and restore all things. But I say to you that Elijah has come already, and they did not know him but did to him whatever they wished. Likewise the Son of Man is also about to suffer at their hands." Then the disciples understood that He spoke to them of John the Baptist.
Jesus Christ very neatly told us that there are two Elijahs to follow the original Elijah. Notice, Elijah is coming. Elijah has already come. That is not double talk. Because one Elijah was John the Baptist. He came in the spirit and power of Elijah and he prepared the way for Christ, but he did not fulfill all of the prophecies regarding Elijah. He did not restore all things. All he did was preach repentance and he prepared the way for Christ.
And so what He is saying here is that another Elijah shall come and that Elijah shall restore all things. And that Elijah you and I know is Mr. Herbert Armstrong and he has restored the religion of Jesus Christ. And when Christ comes, Christ will find a body of people who are obedient to Him, who have His mind, who are denying themselves, who are bearing their cross, who are preaching the gospel, who are keeping the commandments, who are praying to Him, and who know who Christ is.
Now, if I had to put a little summary on this section, I would have to say that before men can preach Christ, they have to know first who Christ is, and what it is obvious from reading Matthew 16 and 17, is that neither the Jews nor even His own disciples had the proper perception yet. And they did not get it until after He was resurrected. They still did not get it until after the resurrection and then they got it. They got it whenever they received God's Spirit.
That will tell you something. It is only those who have God's Spirit who know the real Jesus. They are the only ones who can know because it has to be revealed.
I think that is a good place to stop. I never get as far as I want to. There is just so much to say. I hope you will bear with me as I go through this and really try to tear them apart as much as I can.
JWR/aws/drm
Sermon Topics
The Gospel
