author: Ryan Hayden Take your Bibles with me and turn to Luke 9. Luke 9. We are going to be looking at verses 18-27 again.

If you remember in Luke, Jesus has just sent out the disciples on a preaching tour. They have gone around the area preaching and healing and seeing some success. All of the time they have spent with Jesus seems to be paying off, it seems to be heading towards something.

Then, when they got back to give their report, they were so crowded that they decided to go to a desert place to get some alone time, and the crowds followed them there, requiring Jesus to miraculously feed the five thousand.

Look at verse 18 in our text:

[!bible] Luke 9:18 - KJV 18. And it came to pass, as he was alone praying, his disciples were with him: and he asked them, saying, Whom say the people that I am?

At the end of feeding the 5,000, Jesus and His disciples run away, and Jesus gets alone to pray. And the disciples come to see Him pray and Jesus stops and asks them a very important question "Who do the people say that I am?"

Now pause here, we'll come back and read the rest of the text in a moment. But I want you to understand that this marks the end of something and the beginning of something. This is a graduation of sorts.

Some of you are about to graduate from High School.

What is a graduation? It is the end of something, and it is the beginning of something new. It is finishing your basic schooling and starting in on your vocational schooling, or finishing your vocational schooling and starting in on adult life.

Well, I believe this chapter marks a kind of graduation for the disciples. This is the very end of Jesus' Galilean ministry. If you look at verse 51 in this chapter, Jesus is about to go to Judea - to Jerusalem and He is going to be crucified there. So Jesus is starting to get the disciples ready for that.

They are going through a transition. They have been training with Jesus for three years, they have gone out on their own, and now Jesus has to teach them some very important final lessons.

If this chapter is their graduation, then our text today is their final exam. Jesus is testing them—and us—with three questions: Who is He? Why did He come? And what does it mean to follow Him? Let’s read the text to see how these questions unfold.

[!bible] Luke 9:18-27 - KJV 18. And it came to pass, as he was alone praying, his disciples were with him: and he asked them, saying, Whom say the people that I am? 19. They answering said, John the Baptist; but some say, Elias; and others say, that one of the old prophets is risen again. 20. He said unto them, But whom say ye that I am? Peter answering said, The Christ of God. 21. And he straitly charged them, and commanded them to tell no man that thing; 22. Saying, The Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be slain, and be raised the third day. 23. And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me. 24. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: but whosoever will lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it. 25. For what is a man advantaged, if he gain the whole world, and lose himself, or be cast away? 26. For whosoever shall be ashamed of me and of my words, of him shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he shall come in his own glory, and in his Father’s, and of the holy angels. 27. But I tell you of a truth, there be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the kingdom of God.

Here is how I want to approach this text today. I believe that Jesus is giving his disciples a kind of final exam here - and He is trying to get them to understand three things that are required to understand as His disciples:

• Who He is,
• What He came to do,
• What it means to follow Him.

These three things are also three things we have to know if we would be His disciple. So these questions aren't just for the disciples - but they are for us.

Let's pray and we'll unpack that together.

1. Question 1: Who is Jesus?

So Jesus starts here by asking the question:

Who do men say that I am?

Or, to put it in modern English? "What are people saying about me?" or "What is the word on the street about me?"

The answers were all over the place: Some people thought he was John the Baptist (I don't know how that worked because they were together at one point.) Some thought he was some Old Testament prophet come back.

But Jesus asked the disciples "Who do men say that I am?"

If you or I were to ask that question, it would be a sign of pride or ego, but for Christ it was totally appropriate and He is obviously using it as a way to lead the disciples to the next question - which is "who do you say that I am?"

That is the most important question. I've told you many times:

Christianity isn't about what you do, it is about what you do with Christ.

The most important thing we have to settle is who Jesus is. And so Jesus is bringing the disciples right to it. That's the final exam. This one question - who do you believe that I am?

And I want to tell you church that there is no more important question. Who do you think Jesus is?

• Is He a myth? Is He a made up story?
• Is He just some good teacher that lived long ago?
• Is He a just a prophet like the Muslims say?
• Is He just a creation, like the Jehovah's witnesses say?
• Is He just one of many gods - like the Mormons teach?

Who is Jesus?

Peter speaks for the group and says "The Christ of God" Which is the right answer.

He is the Christ. Christ is the New Testament version of the Old Testament word "messiah." When we say that Jesus Christ we aren't saying Jesus' last name - we are confirming that Jesus is the one that all the Old Testament prophecies were about. He is "the Christ."

The Old Testament taught that the Messiah would:

• be a superhuman being who would overthrow Israel's enemies
• regather God's people from the four corners of the world.
• Make Jerusalem the center of the world
• Establish God's perfect reign on earth.

So Peter and the disciples were recognizing that. But they went further. They said Jesus is "The Christ of God". In Matthew's version of this story, Peter puts it this way:

[!bible] Matthew 16:16 - KJV 16. And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.

Jesus isn't just the Messiah. Jesus is God's son.

Listen, if we are going to follow Christ, we have to start with this confession. Jesus is the son of God and the theme of the scriptures. Jesus is what it is all about.

Listen, He isn't just some good teacher. He is God incarnate. He is the Christ and He is the Lord of all. You have to believe that to be His disciple.

So, do you believe that Jesus is God? Do you believe He is the Christ?

author: Ryan Hayden

That's question one on the final exam - but there are two more. Let's move onto the second question we have to answer if we would be Christ's disciple:

After Peter's confession, Jesus went on to say this in verse 22:

[!bible] Luke 9:22 - KJV 22. Saying, The Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be slain, and be raised the third day.

And the disciples struggled with this one. They got the first question right, but they had a hard time accepting this.

In Matthew, Peter even said "Not so Lord." When Jesus said this. It's clear from the gospels that the disciples never quite got this until after Jesus died and rose again.

It's not like Jesus hadn't been saying this stuff from the beginning.

• John the Baptist said He was "the lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world." (John 1:29)
• Jesus said the Temple would be destroyed and raised up in three days (John 2:19)
• Jesus compared himself to the Serpent on the Pole (John 3:14)
• Jesus compared Himself to Jonah and said He would be buried like Jonah was for three days and three nights.

The lessons were there - the disciples just didn't grasp them.

And if they had read what the Old Testament said about the Messiah - passages like Isaiah 53 - they would have seen this - but they weren't ready for it.

The first question we have to answer if we would follow Jesus is "Who is Jesus?" The second question on this "final exam" is...

Question 2: Why did Jesus come to the earth?

And the answer is - He came to die. He came to bear the sins of the world and to rise again. He came to be the lamb of God, He came to be the snake on the pole that we can look at and live.

Jesus' death, burial and resurrection weren't plan B. They were always the plan.

So, the second question is: Do you understand why Jesus came? He came to be the Lamb of God, to die on the cross for your sins, and to rise again to give you life. To be His disciple, you must accept that the cross and resurrection are the only way to salvation. Without the cross, there’s no hope.

Maybe you are here today and you understand that Jesus is God. You understand that the Bible is all about Jesus. But you have never looked to Jesus to be your Savior. You don't understand why He came.

He came to die for you. He came to bear your sins. As Peter later wrote:

[!bible] 1 Peter 3:18 - KJV 18. For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit:

Jesus was the perfect one, the perfect sacrifice that suffered in our place so we could come to God. And then Jesus died and rose again, showing that God accepted Jesus death as payment for our sins.

So - how are you doing so far? Do you understand who Jesus is? Do you understand why Jesus came?

That's 2 of the three questions. But there is one more question Jesus wanted His disciples to answer and one more question for us:

Question 3: What does it mean to follow Him?

You see, as the disciples were reeling from the news that Jesus was going to be rejected and die, Jesus came at them with another blow. He said "It isn't enough for me to go to the cross - you have to follow me there."

Look at verse 23 again:

[!bible] Luke 9:23 - KJV 23. And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me.

Today, we see crosses all the time. Half the teenage girls I meet have cross necklaces on. Crosses are everywhere.

But what is a cross? It is an instrument of torture and execution. It is a shameful and painful way to kill criminals.

For the disciples, wearing a cross would be like wearing a noose, or wearing an electric chair necklace.

When Jesus said "take up your cross and follow me" that had a specific meaning to these disciples. Always, before the Romans crucified someone, they made them carry their cross. They had to carry their cross to the place of their execution.

And Jesus is saying "you have to take up your cross every day and follow me."

Listen, no one carried a cross for fun. There was no cross carrying exercise trend. Carrying a cross meant you were going to die. It was always a one way trip.

To be Jesus' disciple, you have to deny yourself. That word "deny" is the same word that was used when Peter denied Christ three times on the day of His crucifixion. It was a full repudiation. It was turning his back on Him.

And we have to do the same thing - we have to fully repudiate ourselves, to turn our back on ourselves - and follow Jesus. We have to give up our own dream, our own goals, our own desires - and be willing to do whatever Jesus wants us to do.

And listen, we have to do this every day.

Let me tell you something - if there is a dominant religion in our culture today - it is the religion of the self. It is worshipping you. Doing whatever you can for you.

• We've even taken this idea of self-determination so far that if someone says "I'm not a man, I'm a woman" the culture says "ok. Whatever you say."
• If a man wants to break his wedding vows and abandon his wife, all the justification he needs is "that is what I want, she wasn't pleasing me" and society is like "o.k."
• If a mother wants to terminate the life of her unborn child because it doesn't fit with her plans - society is ok with that sacrifice to the self.

Because the self reigns.

We have "Self" magazine. Millions of self-help books fly off the shelves every year. Doing your own thing, defining your own truth - that is the order of the day.

And what we see here in this passage cuts to the very heart of that. If we would be Jesus' disciples - if we are going to follow Him with our life - then the self doesn't need to be pampered, the self has to die - every day.

As Mike McKinley put it:

Any attempt at discipleship that does not involve renouncing autonomy and self-love is not actually following Jesus in any meaningful way. If we would make him our master, we must first remove ourselves from that position.

Look at verses 24-25:

[!bible] Luke 9:24-25 - KJV 24. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: but whosoever will lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it. 25. For what is a man advantaged, if he gain the whole world, and lose himself, or be cast away?

There is a paradox here: If we would win as Christ's disciples, it starts with losing. If we would save our life, we have to lose our life in Christ. We need to boldly embrace Christ and His life - even if it means losing ours.

Listen, I don't want to confuse you here. We aren't talking about what it takes to be saved. Salvation is by grace through faith. Salvation comes to those who simply believe in Jesus and what He has done for you.

We aren't talking about what it takes to be saved, we are talking about what it takes to live as Christ's disciple.

But I don't want to sugar coat it - this is what God calls all of us to: a life of self-denial. I life wrapped up in Him.

Conclusion

"As we close, let’s take this final exam ourselves. Who do you say Jesus is? Do you believe He is the Christ, the Son of God? Do you understand why He came—to die for your sins and rise again? And are you willing to take up your cross daily, deny yourself, and follow Him? These aren’t just questions for the disciples; they’re for each of us. Today, I invite you to answer them in your heart. If you’ve never trusted Jesus as your Savior, now is the time. If you’re a believer, recommit to following Him fully, no matter the cost. Let’s pray and ask God to help us live as true disciples."