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Matthew 16 "Cup of Wrath"

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Preacher

Ron

Date
March 30, 2018
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Passage

Matthew 16:1-28
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Transcription

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You are listening to a message from Southwood Presbyterian Church in Huntsville, Alabama. Our passion is to experience and express grace. Join us.

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Let's step back in Matthew a little ways to Matthew 16. Beginning at verse 21, from that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed and on the third day be raised.

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And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him saying, far be it from you, Lord, this shall never happen to you. But he turned and said to Peter, get behind me, Satan.

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You are a hindrance to me, for you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man. And Jesus told his disciples, if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.

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For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?

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Or what shall a man give in return for his soul? For the Son of Man is going to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay each person according to what he has done.

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Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom. Pray with me as I lead us.

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Father, the inadequacy of my ability to communicate the truth that is here weighs heavy, maybe more than most times.

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So Father, I pray for just an outpouring of your Spirit, that you would use the foolishness of a preacher, that you would draw us into the wisdom, the divine wisdom of God, the King, and the significance and the treasure that this night represents.

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Help us, we pray, to know you, to know ourselves. Help us, we pray, in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Now, there's something wrong with Good Friday.

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There's something wrong at its deepest levels. You know, Easter is supposed to be one of, really should be one of the great celebrations of the year, and it is because we celebrate that day when the first disciples beheld the risen Christ.

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And just try to imagine what that experience was like. You know, when Peter writes in 1 Peter about this inexpressible joy, he was talking from experience.

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You know, Sunday when we worship at Easter, it's going to be upbeat. It's going to be celebrative. Even tomorrow, we're going to have all the kids here. It's going to be more like a party, trying to, you know, find eggs out here on the lawn.

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And, but there's something wrong with Friday. It is a, even as we worship here together, it's very sullen, maybe depressing.

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You know, we don't like to talk about pain and suffering. It's not in our cultural makeup. I was just with some of my friends a couple nights ago, and somehow, some way, and none of these friends are a part of the church, but somehow we got on the subject of death at a Mexican restaurant.

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And as fast as we got there, they ran as fast as they could away from it. And so, we don't like to talk about pain and suffering, but when we think about that Friday, there was plenty to go around.

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You know, Good Friday is just hard. Because I think down inside, we feel that this, there is something wrong here. This is not what it should have been.

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You know, when we come to the gospel, the gospel is good news. And so, we want to talk about good news.

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We want to be upbeat and positive, and again, celebrate all the great things that God has done. We think of Jesus. We think how much He's loved us, the hope that we have in Him.

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We think of all of this infinite grace and mercy that is poured out upon us. And so, we should be celebrating. We should be upbeat. The gospel, indeed, is good news.

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But it's only good news when we contemplate the wrong that was done on Friday. There is no resurrection.

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There is no resurrected life. There is no celebration before. There is a death. And that death, we must look into deeply.

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You know, it's interesting, even as we read these verses in Matthew 16, you know, it's not just our culture, because the disciples had the same struggle. I mean, as soon as Jesus starts talking about them, he says, yeah, we're going to go to Jerusalem, and I'm going to suffer, and they're going to put me to death.

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And he even tells them about the resurrection, but that thought, that totally escapes them. And so, Peter, at least exercising a little bit of tact, didn't do this in front of the group, but took him off to the side.

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And basically saying, you got this wrong. This is not the script. This is not the way it's supposed to be.

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And then Jesus refers to maybe his closest friend as Satan himself. And he says, you are thinking in man's terms.

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You're not thinking in God's terms. And when you're thinking in men's terms, you're a hindrance to me. And so Jesus tells him here, he's determined to go to Jerusalem, because that's why he was called.

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That's why he came. He did not come just to make life better. He did not come just to heal diseases. He did not come just to teach people a better way of life.

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He did all that. That was a prelude, a foretaste of what the kingdom would look like. But what Jesus came for was a garden.

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A very eventful garden. But you know, all this started, you know, there's two things I want us to see about this tonight. And the first is the calling of Jesus is all about death.

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It is all about death. The year, you know, as Jesus came, you know, his ministry was glorious in so many ways, but yet his goal was this garden.

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But way back in the beginning, there was another garden. A garden where things should have gone better. God created all things, declared it to be good, and at the heart of that creation was man, and he put him in a garden.

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And man was made to give glory to his creator through his trust, through his submission, through his service, to declare the creator's greatness and value above all things.

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It was a perfect world, a perfect environment. He had one, only one way to do that, and that was simply to stay away from this one tree.

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And at that critical point, where he should have bowed in trust, and in submission, the one point when he should have given glory to the creator, he took it for himself.

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He said, I will submit to only one, and that's me. And so in doing that, as promised, they were cursed.

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They were exiled from the pleasure, the intimacy, the love, and joy of the creator. They were enslaved to futility along with all of the rest of creation.

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They were enslaved to suffering to suffering, and ultimately to death. Everything they touched, everything they thought, everything they dreamed, everything they did from here on was corrupt.

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it was polluted by a heart that wanted glory. The friend of God was now an enemy, separated in enmity with no hope of making it any better.

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well, now we can fast forward to another garden, a garden where Jesus finds himself.

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After the supper with his disciples, he goes to a garden. but there in that garden, it was not the created man that was put to test, but it was the God man.

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It was Jesus himself facing the same challenge with the odds so much heavier against him.

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This was not the perfect world. This was now a very broken world. He was not promised this you know, riches of intimacy with the Father.

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He was promised exactly the opposite. He said, if you obey, if you trust, if you serve, you will be separated from the one through all eternity he has enjoyed and loved.

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In this second garden, the son faced rejection and suffering beyond belief, beyond our comprehension.

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He did not choose prosperity. He did what the first man should have done. He bowed and said, not my will but yours be done.

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He trusted, submitted himself to the Father. He chose alienation. He chose judgment.

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He chose death. He chose death. what the first man should have done, now the second Adam did do.

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He put the Father's glory above all things and he bowed in submission and trust to the one who was above all others.

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This was his journey. His journey came. He came to this garden to stand in for that first man who had now lived for centuries in this slavery of futility, but he stood in for him in two different ways.

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He stood in and obeyed. He served. He worshipped the creator the way that first man should have done. He did it for him.

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But he also stood in and took the payment. It was not his. it was a payment that belonged to someone else.

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He was the sacrificial lamb, the innocent standing in for the guilty. and there is something very wrong with this.

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There's something very unfair. The righteous one is treated as a criminal.

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The righteous one is now the recipient of contempt and wrath and alienation while the guilty party gets off scot-free.

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We need to feel the weight of this. A lot more than we typically do. Because we are the guilty party.

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He received the punishment on himself, the innocent one that we should have received.

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But this was his calling. the death Jesus died, I should, you should have died. The glory that the father deserved that he gave, I should have, you should have given.

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He did all of that in our place. He, the beloved, was treated as the enemy. in eye, the enemy, and I have now become the friend of the throne.

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He was treated with contempt, so I can now be treated with joy. scorn, so that I can now be welcomed home.

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He was treated with wrath, so that I can now know peace. let the weight of Jesus' death sink in.

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Let it weigh heavy, because this is why he came. But as he continues in Matthew to talk to his disciples, Jesus came to glorify the father, and in that process was a road to a cross, to his death.

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And now, all of those who follow him, as he tells the disciples there, are to, everyone who would come after me must take up his cross.

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cross, we are called to follow him into death. When Luke writes this, he adds a word.

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He says, to take up her cross daily. This is not a one-time thing. This is a constant, I've got to do this every day kind of thing.

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Because as we follow Jesus, that self-determining, self-centered, self-glorifying aspect of who we are, must die.

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You know, coming to Jesus is a good thing. Life goes so much better in many ways because of him, you know, relationships and so forth, but, but, Easter, the joy of resurrected life, only happens after death.

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And so what does it mean for us to take up our cross daily? We don't die like Jesus died. His death was once for all.

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So what is he calling us here to? Well, I think we are to die in multiple ways. And all of it is, centers around this core of self-glorification.

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First thing is, it means dying to our self-determination. It was, last week I was reading through the Psalms, and I got to Psalm 100, 110.

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And at verse 2, this verse had never struck me this way, but verse 2 simply says, the Lord sends forth from Zion your mighty scepter. Rule in the midst of your enemies.

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And I read that verse, and I got a knot in my stomach. Because there was something down deep inside that says, I do not want someone ruling over me.

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I do not like submission. I want to determine my own thing.

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Just like every other part of our culture, I am hopelessly determined to be the king king and to rule over Klagastan.

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It's my kingdom and I'll do what I want. But that self-rule must die daily.

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I need to join with Jesus and pray constantly, not my will, but yours be done, even to the point of my own death, that I might declare the glory of the true king, not this imposter king.

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I also need to die to my own personal significance. You know, one of the things that terrifies me is obscurity.

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You know, that I would mean nothing. You know, I want to be somebody. I want to be somebody important. I want to be somebody that's known.

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I want to be somebody that's wanted. I want to be somebody that people will look up to and find value in them. And so I live and govern all that I do around this pursuit.

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I am addicted to glory. I am addicted to creating it for myself. I need to come once again daily to the place where I see I'm only the creature.

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Yes, I'm significant. Yes, I'm created in the image of God, but I am created in the image of God just like everyone else. And my significance does not come from me and what I produce.

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It comes from bowing before the king and serving him and exalting him. My glory daily must die.

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You know, Good Friday is a good time to contemplate Jesus' death in our place. It's also a good time for us to contemplate the need of our own deaths. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

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Yes, yes, yes, yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, we need to acknowledge the weight of our sin. We need to acknowledge the weight of that sin in our rebellion against the glory of God that we're addicted to.

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We are addicted to this rebellion. We are addicted to our own glory. We must contemplate also the cost the cost of that rebellion.

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It doesn't cost you a whole lot. You are really the beneficiaries of great riches, but it cost someone terribly.

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I must come to terms that the cross where Jesus died was my cross.

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It's coming to terms, too, with that daily dying that I need to be as a follower of Christ to embrace, not to fight. Christ. We who are in Christ can't embrace such a death because we know Easter is coming.

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But let's don't go to Easter too soon. Let's linger. Linger here on Friday. Linger here in the drama of the death of Christ.

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And then when Sunday morning gets here, the sweetness will be so much greater.

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Let's pray. Lord Jesus, help us to contemplate death. A death that was necessary.

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The death that you took that should have been ours, but a death that you gladly took for the glory of the Father.

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Thank you. Amen. For more information, visit us online at southwood.org.

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over hugs. WithANKS, bye.與あり on go.