The Good Confession

Mark 8:27-30
Gary Wassermann | Sunday, August 02, 2020
Copyright © 2020, Gary Wassermann

Our passage this morning centers around the good confession, “You are the Christ.”  The purpose of the gospel of Mark is that we would likewise make this confession.  Rev. Perry preached at the beginning of our series on the book of Mark: “Mark writes this Gospel to persuade his readers that Jesus is, in fact, the long-awaited Messiah and the second person of the Trinity, which is why he begins his Gospel with this title phrase: The beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”[1]  Mark structured his account such that by the time we come to this text in chapter 8, he has provided all the evidence that is needed for his readers to know that Jesus is the Christ, and this is what our church has been preaching over the last several months.

I will speak four things about this confession.  First, it is the good confession, explaining what it means to say, “You are the Christ”; then, it is the distinguishing confession—what it says about you; third, the courageous confession—confessing Christ in this world;  and, fourth, the current confession— confessing Christ today. 

The Good Confession

In this passage, Peter said, “You are the Christ.”  Most people today only understand “Christ” as a name of Jesus, which it was not originally.  If you are familiar with the Greek word “the Christ” and the Hebrew word “the Messiah,” you may know that they both mean “the Anointed One,” but that does not mean much to people today.  However, to the Jews of that time, it was loaded with meaning based on the Old Testament scriptures.

God had promised a deliverer who would conquer the devil and redeem his people even from the time of Adam.  That one, that deliverer was the hope of God’s people through all the generations up to this point.  And over time, God progressively revealed more and more about who this deliverer would be and what he would do.  He did this in part through types that represented or foreshadowed the deliverer in some way.

One of those types was the priest.  Priests were anointed with oil—that is, the Christ—at the start of their priestly ministry, and they were ordained by God to offer sacrifices for the sins of the people and to intercede with God for the people so that God would be favorable to sinners.  Against this background, God gave the prophecy in Psalm 110:4: “The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind: ‘You are a priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek.’”  Man’s sin against the living God is a greater evil than all of creation can atone for, but this Christ would atone for men’s sins, and through him and through him alone men could have fellowship with the holy God.

Another type was the prophet.  God chose and raised up certain men to receive his words and to deliver them to the people.  First Kings 19:16 says that Elisha was anointed to be God’s prophet, which demonstrated his calling and symbolized the Holy Spirit coming upon him to equip him for this work.  In addition to the prophets God raised up at various times and for various occasions, God promised a unique and ultimate prophet.  Deuteronomy 18:15 says, “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own brothers. You must listen to him.”  So the Christ would speak the very words of God with all power and authority as God’s final revelation to men.

A third type was the king.  The kings of the nation of Israel were anointed with oil, and we read particularly in the case of King Saul and King David that the Spirit of the Lord came upon them to empower them to rule wisely and victoriously.  God promised through prophecy in Psalm 2:6, “I have installed my King on Zion, my holy hill.”  The world in rebellion is a cruel place in which the strong prey on the weak, and no one can find justice, but the Christ would have authority to rule his people in righteousness and justice, and to defeat their greatest enemies.

All this is what “Jesus is the Christ” means, and those who confess him as Christ relate to him in the corresponding way. They receive the revelation of God from him. They listen to him. They trust in him. They submit to his rule. They come to him for him to atone for their sins, and they approach God only in and through Jesus Christ.

It includes the idea that Jesus is Lord.  And it is not just that Jesus is extraordinary beyond any other man, but that he is God himself.  Mark wrote at the beginning of this account: “The beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”  In Matthew’s account of Peter’s confession, the parallel passage, we read that Peter confessed, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”  This is what we confess with our mouths, and we live out this confession by following Jesus Christ in trusting obedience. 

The Distinguishing Confession

We must be clear that the question, “Who do you say that I am?” is not an invitation to judge Jesus, but an examination by Jesus, and your response distinguishes you as either alive toward God or dead in sin.  You can see that in this passage.  The question of who Jesus is did not come up because of the disciples’ inquiry.  They were not trying to figure out who he was, nor were they challenging his claim.  And as for Jesus, he did not try to convince them that he is the Christ or to persuade them to accept his claim.  He was not the one on trial.  The initiative was entirely his, and the question he put to them was confrontational: “But what about you?  Who do you say that I am?”

The New International Version does perhaps as good a job as is possible to convey in English the emphasis that the Greek text places on “you.”  In Greek, the verb conjugation is enough to imply “you,” but not only is the pronoun “you” explicitly included, it is the first word in that question.  It could not be more emphatic.  It is the disciples who are being examined, and by this question they are put on trial.  So, also, Jesus directs his gaze on you, and asks you, “Who do you say that I am?”

In 539 BC, the ruler of Babylon was an arrogant playboy.  His name was Belshazzar.  God wrote on the wall of his palace a message: “Weighed, weighed.  You have been weighed in the scales and found wanting.”  And the Judge of all the earth comes out now and he brings out this scale: When you look at Jesus, who do you see?  A myth?  A story?  A major figure in the history of human religions?  A man who lived and died long ago but has nothing to do with your life today?  Or do you see God himself—God come down for the purpose of redeeming and ruling his people?  Do you see the one whom you must serve and worship, the one whom you must confess?

“Who is Jesus?” is a question that children can understand and answer, and at the same time, it is a question that the most clever and philosophical men cannot escape.  You do not need philosophical sophistication for this question.

Quite simply, the upright see the Christ; those who suppress the truth by sinning do not.  The softhearted see him; the hardhearted through persistent sin do not.  Those who have made this world to be their home and who love its system and its values will never see Jesus for who he is, even though the evidence has been laid out plainly and nothing is more clear in all the world.

This question divides all men into two groups: the blind and the seeing.  Those who fail to confess that Jesus is the Christ do so for one simple reason: they are blind.  Second Corinthians 4:4 says, “The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.”  Jesus is presented, but they do not see who he is, because they have been blinded.  First Corinthians 2:8 says, “None of the rulers of this age understood it [meaning God’s plan of salvation through Christ], for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.”  They did not understand that Jesus is the Lord of glory.  On the other hand, the parallel passage for this morning’s text in the gospel of Matthew records that when Peter said, “You are the Christ,” Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven” (Matt 16:17).  God sets his love and favor on some nobodies, and he opens their eyes to see who Jesus is.  That is the most important distinction between men—whether they are blind in the deadness of sin or whether they see in the newness of life.

Your answer to this question has no effect on Jesus at all.  You cannot make him King. You cannot make him Christ. You cannot make him Lord.  If men could, they would not make him into the Messiah that God intended.  After Jesus fed the five thousand, John 6:15 says that the people intended to make Jesus king by force.  They wanted a king who would provide for their material needs, just as people today want a God and a King  who will provide for their material needs.  But Jesus did not allow it.  He withdrew to a mountain.

But just as you cannot make him King, you cannot stop him from being King.  In Luke 19, Jesus described himself in a parable as being like a man of noble birth who went to a distant country to have himself appointed king, and then to return.  Verses 14-15 say, “But his subjects hated him and sent a delegation after him to say, ‘We don’t want this man to be our king.’  He was made king, however, and returned home.”  God has made this Jesus both Lord and Christ, and your confession or your lack of confession does not affect him in the least.

However, your confession makes an eternal difference for you.  Romans 10:9 says, “If you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”  The Judge of all the earth has given guilty, hell-bound sinners an offer of mercy.  He sent his one and only Son into the world to redeem the worst of sinners unto eternal glory.  The Son of God went through the humiliation of a lowly life as a man, he took the sin of sinners upon himself, he died for that sin, and he rose from the dead to rule as King.  To all who see who he is, confess who he is, and follow him, he gives mercy.  He will take you to be with Jesus in glory.

If you know that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, all major questions of life have been answered.  There is no difficulty in believing his miracles, and in sharing his view of the Bible as the inerrant word of God.  Your purpose, then, is to do his will, and there is life and peace in the doing of his will.

But Jesus also said in John 5:23, “He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father, who sent him.”  And in John 3:36 we read, “Whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on him.”  Those who reject Jesus Christ stumble in darkness in this life and finally enter an eternity of torment in hell.  That is why you must confess, “You are the Christ.”  Your eternity depends upon it.

The Courageous Confession

You see, it takes courage to make this confession in this world because you will be opposed. The first question that Jesus asked his disciples was, “Who do people say that I am?”  Jesus did not ask this for his own information, and he did not ask this to see whether his disciples had heard what others said.  They certainly had.  He asked this to direct their minds out to the reality of the big world out there—the world filled with cities, crowds, learned men, the rich and the poor—and to the reality of what it is that the world says about Jesus.

At the time Jesus asked this question, he was alone with his disciples.  That is the sort of a setting where it would be very easy for the disciples to say that Jesus was the Christ in a way that was just going along with the group or saying what they thought Jesus would want them to say. But Jesus does not want them to make a confession that will fall when everyone around them is not saying the same thing.

The disciples’ answer is almost a direct quote from Mark’s report in Mark 6:14–15 of what people were saying about Jesus.  And, of course, the disciples did not include everything.  There were many more negative things that people were saying about Jesus. But  here everything the disciples reported men to be saying was positive.  The people held Jesus in high regard.  They saw him as being in the same stream as these various men they revered, and they even recognized something extraordinary, something supernatural about him, so that perhaps he was one of these great men brought back to life.

But even among those who had a positive view of Jesus, no one, as far as the disciples could report, said that Jesus was the Christ.  Perhaps the people said what they did because they were expecting a political Messiah, who would lead a revolt against Rome and bring the wealth and power of the nations to Jerusalem. (GMW)  Jesus clearly was not that, but perhaps he was a forerunner of the political Messiah they hoped for.

If the disciples were to state that it was their conviction that Jesus is the Christ, the true hope of Israel, they must do so recognizing that they would be nearly alone in doing so.  The same is true for us.

A church community in which God’s word is preached and practiced is an incomparable blessing.  It is also a rare jewel; it is hard in this day and age to find a place where we can be surrounded by the people of God.  Children, especially if there is a school affiliated with the church, experience the blessing of growing up in such a community. Such children have the high privilege of being taught by God-fearing people who joyfully deliver a Christian education.  The teachers not only teach from a biblical perspective, but they also watch over the children’s conduct with one another to put a stop early to evil influences.  On top of that, these children are being raised in Christian homes, so most of the voices in their world are telling them that the Bible is the word of God, and that Jesus is Lord.

But most people in the world say something different.  Many people consider Jesus to be part of a great fiction that was constructed to oppress people.  These days, the popular thing to say is that he was part of “the patriarchy.”  Those who say such things are vocal and forceful.  They will oppose you with contempt for saying Jesus is Lord and for living out that confession.  And their influence is more powerful than you may realize.

But even on the conservative side of the culture around us, many who support so-called Judeo-Christian values are themselves atheists or Jews or nominal Christians, who have no faith in Jesus as the living God.  Among the minority who do support free speech, most of them will support your right to say “Jesus is Lord” even while they reject what you are saying.  When others condemn you as evil, free-speech supporters will back away and hang you out to dry.  I am not exaggerating about any of this.  We have heard of foreign exchange students and visiting scholars who have come from other countries who have expected that, because the United States is known as a Christian country, perhaps eighty percent of the people here would be Christians.  They were shocked to learn that it is difficult to find any Christians. And I say this to say that children raised in a Christian environment may be shocked as well.  If they say that Jesus is God, at best people will call them sheltered and uninformed and they will try to pat them on the head, and at worst they will oppose them vehemently.  Such young people will need courage to confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.

But keep in mind though, that Jesus was not speaking to children here.  These disciples were adults who reported what they themselves had seen and heard of what men were saying about Jesus. And it was they whose minds Jesus directed to the report of the world around them.  So I speak to you adults as well.  Face the fact that the vast majority of the people around us—people who are older than you, people who are younger than you, people who are more intelligent and more articulate than you—do not believe that the idea that Jesus is God is even worth serious consideration.  If you are going to confess that Jesus is Lord, you will be in the small minority.

But I want to add to that.  There were some in the disciples’ day who said that Jesus was the Son of God.  They were demons.  Three times before this in the book of Mark we find that, in Mark 1:24, 3:11, and 5:7.  So the disciples would not be quite as alone in their confession as they might like.  In practical terms, you will find the same today.  If you confess Jesus is Lord, the world will associate you with evildoers who say they are Christians.  The world will bring up names and incidents that you have never heard of and you will not be able to explain away.  Every evil act that can be associated with the name “Christian” will be headline news.  That is what you must expect if you are going to confess “Jesus is Lord” in this world.

And I will go further. If you are to confess that Jesus is the Christ and all that that means, you will also be in the small minority in the church world.  Many serve a God of their imagination.  They say Jesus is all love and he only forgives, and as we recently heard, he makes you absolutely free to sin all you want. And, in fact, they oppose Jesus’ lordship as being against the gospel itself.  They oppose his call to holiness, they oppose his authority in our practical lives, and they oppose all people who profess these things.  They will try to exclude you and cut you off from the broader Christian community.

All of this is what you will face if you are going to confess that Jesus is the Christ.  But the true Christian, the one who is born of God, will face all of that and overcome it.  Jesus said in Matthew 11:12, “From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven has been forcefully advancing, and forceful men lay hold of it.”  Forceful men!  That is what the kingdom calls for.

Elijah stood for God when he thought he was the only one in the whole world.  He was wrong about being the only one, of course, but against king and crowd and nation, he declared, “The Lord is God.”  The apostle Paul was brought to trial, and no one came to his support; everyone deserted him.  But the Lord stood at his side and gave him strength, so that he was able to proclaim the whole message of Jesus Christ.  Caleb and Joshua stood alone.  Daniel stood alone.  Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego stood alone.

A second-soil faith that is based on an emotional response will fall.  A faith that confesses Christ only when everyone else is doing the same will fall.  So how can a fallible human being stand against the world in confessing Christ?  He can do so, not by his own strength, but only by the Holy Spirit.  First Corinthians 12:3 says, “No one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except by the Holy Spirit.” But by the Holy Spirit, he can say, “Jesus is Lord,” for greater is he who is in you than he who is in the world (1 John 4:4).

So I say to you, recognize that the world around you says that Jesus is not the Christ, not Lord, and not God.  In view of that, who do you say that he is?  Are you ready to say that Jesus is Lord when everyone is against you? 

The Current Confession

This time in Caesarea Philippi was not the first time it had occurred to the disciples that Jesus is the Christ.  In fact, it was because Jesus was the Christ that they began to follow him.  John 1:35–37 tells how John the Baptist pointed out Jesus to two of his disciples. He said, “Look, the Lamb of God,” and those disciples followed Jesus.  One of those disciples was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother.  John 1:41 says, “The first thing Andrew did was to find his brother Simon and tell him, ‘We have found the Messiah’ (that is, the Christ).”  It was based on that confession that Andrew brought Simon Peter to Jesus.

Between that initial introduction and this time on the way to Caesarea Philippi, Peter had made some other profound statements about Jesus.  To prepare Peter for his calling as a fisher of men, Jesus found Peter after a night of unsuccessful fishing, and told him to cast his net on the other side of the boat.  They pulled up a tremendous catch of fish.  Luke 5:8 says, “When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at Jesus’ knees and said, ‘Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!’”  After the feeding of the five thousand, when many turned away from Jesus because they said his teaching was hard, Simon Peter said to Jesus in John 6:68–69, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”

But time had passed since then.  The breathtaking miracles of a boatload of fish and multiplied bread were not happening at that time.  There was no sweeping, group energy of crowds following Jesus at that time.  John the Baptist had been beheaded and could no longer speak with conviction to them about Jesus.  On top of that, the prevailing expectation was that the Christ would overthrow the Romans and bring the wealth and power of the nations streaming into Jerusalem.  Jesus had been engaged in public ministry long enough to be rich and powerful and to make the disciples rich and powerful. But Jesus had refused to be made king.  He had no palace nor even a house of his own, and he owned neither horse nor donkey.  So in that setting, on the way to Caesarea Philippi, Jesus asked the disciples pointedly and personally, “Who do you say that I am?”

So I address this point to those of you who have confessed Jesus Christ as Lord in the past.  Today, who do you say that he is?

I first address those of you who put your faith in Jesus Christ before you came here.  If you heard the gospel preached somewhere else in the fullness and power and authority with which our pastor preaches it, that is a rare treasure indeed.  But most likely the gospel you heard was a much lighter version.  The prevailing message in the church today is that Jesus will forgive your sins if you believe in him.  But what would be considered hard teaching, if not outright denied, is at least not spoken, but is silently ignored. In all likelihood, then, the gospel that you heard was an easier gospel.

Then you came here and heard about Jesus Christ, the risen and ruling Lord, to whom all authority has been given. You heard that sin is not a small thing that you might find embarrassing, but it is an offense and rebellion against the living God.  You heard that to repent means to turn from rebellion to submission and trust in the Lord, so that you stop doing the sins you did in the past and start living an obedient life.  And you heard that Christ exercises his authority through the institutions of the family, of the church, and of the state.  This is a much fuller, and perhaps more demanding, gospel than you heard before.

It is a very dangerous and deadly thing to hold on to what you believed in the past as your claim to salvation, and to see what you did not hear until coming here as an extra that you can choose to believe or not.  Do not think you can be grandfathered into the kingdom of God.  “Grandfathering” is a principle in group memberships that deals with new requirements.  I will explain what it means by using the example of the group of people who are allowed to drive full-size buses in the United Kingdom.  Prior to 1992, anyone with an ordinary driver’s license could drive a bus, provided he did not take paying passengers.  In 1992, a law was passed requiring an additional PCV license to drive a bus. But those who had driven buses before 1992 were grandfathered in, meaning they were allowed to continue to drive a bus without a new PCV license.  The crucial difference in the kingdom of God is that a fuller understanding of Christ is not something new in Christianity, but it is something that was there in the Bible all along and it is newly understood.

Some people seem to think that they are grandfathered into the kingdom of God because they prayed a sinner’s prayer before they heard and understood that to be a Christian, you must follow Christ.  No such thing is true, and to hold on to such a thought is to hold on to a root of rebellion.  It is a wedge that will separate you from Christ and his church.  Perhaps there is much in the gospel that you did not understand at first. And this also applies to those who did confess Christ here for the first time.  If the disciples are an example, that is a common thing—to not understand everything at first—and it does not necessarily mean that your earlier faith was false.  But every true Christian puts his faith in the true Christ.  Every child of God who receives greater understanding than he had before from the word of God will gladly lay hold of it and cast off every thought, every part of his identity, every relationship, every love, every pursuit that the gospel calls him to cut off.  So now that you have been better taught, who do you say that Jesus is?

Then some of you professed faith in Christ at an extraordinary time.  There was a serious revival that came upon our church, especially in parts in 2009, and that is not the only one.  There have been such moves of God in our midst in other times as well.  Those are blessed times when the power of God is so evidently at work and many are responding.  Some of you professed faith in Christ in such a time.  But the potency of a revival does not last, and perhaps you do not feel the Spirit of God now as you did then.  So the question for you now is, who do you say that Jesus is?

Some of you had a similar experience, although there was not a widespread revival.  There was a sermon or perhaps a word that seems to be spoken directly from heaven into the core of your being, and you responded and said that Jesus is Lord.  Most sermons do not hit us as powerfully as that.  We must exert mental effort if we are to receive from the Lord what the Lord is giving us through his word.  So what do you hear now, in these days?  Who do you say that Jesus is?

Perhaps you first cried out to God because you were desperate.  You were drowning in trouble and as far as your own abilities were concerned, you were hopeless.  So you surrendered to Jesus Christ, put your faith in him, and looked to him for help.  Since then God has helped you.  You are no longer in desperate straits, and perhaps your life has gotten manageable and even comfortable.  So, now, who do you say that Jesus is?

On the other hand, perhaps your life is not easy.  Perhaps you put your faith in Christ when you were young, and you had a bright expectation of a successful and prosperous future because you were a Christian. But things have not gone as you thought.  Perhaps like Asaph in Psalm 73, you see the people of this world getting ahead and enjoying a carefree life, while you have trouble all day long.  Is Jesus your Creator who demands your allegiance without having to pay you in return?  Is he the one on whom all your hopes are set and in whom you are rich eternally?  Who do you say that Jesus is?

John the Baptist thought that Jesus would destroy all wickedness and establish his glorious reign, so John got discouraged and confused when he was stuck in prison.  He sent two of his disciples to ask, “Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?”  Jesus replied in Matthew 11:4–6, “Go back and report to John what you hear and see: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor.  Blessed is the man who does not fall away on account of me.”  Every true child of God will persevere in the faith to the end.  He will continue to make the good confession and receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him.

The question today is not what you say about yourself.  The Ephesians saw themselves as Christians.  They were proud of it.  They worked hard in the work of the Lord without growing weary.  But the risen Lord Jesus Christ looked on them and said, “Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love.  Remember the height from which you have fallen!  Repent and do the things you did at first” (Rev. 2:4–5).

You must look Jesus in the face by faith and answer his question: “Who do you say that I am?”  May God help us all to say with full faith and understanding, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.”

 

 

[1] https://gracevalley.org/sermon/jesus-christ-the-son-of-god/