The secret of life

Good morning. This morning's scripture reading comes from Matthew chapter 16 verses 21 through 28. If you have your Bibles with us, we're going to be looking at Matthew 16:21–28.

From that time, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed and on the third day be raised. 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. You are a hindrance to me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man."

Then Jesus told his disciples, "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever shall 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? 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 according to what he has done. Truly I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God coming."

This is God's word.

Intro

What is the secret of life? Wouldn't we all like to know? And yet in this passage, Jesus has illustrated to us a secret of life, and it's paradoxical in its form. Ultimately, he says in verse 25, "whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it." So there's something about surrendering and losing our life that we actually find life. We gain life.

This is a conundrum and a mystery to all of us, and especially to the disciples at this point in time. As we looked at last week, Jesus had just been declared the Messiah. He had accepted and received, "Yes, I am the Messiah." He is the one that has long been prophesied to come to be the salvation of Israel, to deliver the people, to usher in God's kingdom. And yet now he begins to turn to the disciples and say, "But I'm going to go to Jerusalem, and I'm going to suffer at the hands of religious leaders, and I'm going to die. And on the third day, I'm going to rise again."

Now, they don't hear that third day. They don't hear rise again. They hear suffering and die. And this just does not equate. This doesn't seem to make sense in their own minds. I think that's true for all of us. Paradoxes are hard to process. They're hard to make sense of.

What do we do in these moments? We're told, even in our own culture, that it's not surrender that produces the life you want and that you really long for. It's success. It's achievement. It's setting your mind and all of your heart and focus on those things. The culture tells us you can do anything you want if you just set your mind to it.

I watched Drew Brees one time—who is a believer, probably a great guy—after he won the Super Bowl kneel down to his kids and say, "You can do anything you set your mind to." He wanted to use this as an example. I thought in that moment, well, did Dan Marino, who really wanted to go to the Super Bowl, not set his heart and mind on it enough? Did he not try enough? What about Matt Ryan who made it to the Super Bowl, got so close, was up by three touchdowns, and yet maybe he didn't try hard enough at the end when Tom Brady came back and beat him? Or any other number of people who set their heart, their mind, their intentions, and all of these sacrifices to gain it, and yet they didn't?

Sometimes we find, as Jesus has said here, that the salvation that we long for, the really deep things that we need in life are not obtained by running out there and grabbing them, but by surrendering. Not just surrendering in general, but surrendering to a particular one. Today, we're going to find that the secret of life is in that surrender, not in the achievement.

As we look at this today, we're going to see: what is the problem, how is it remedied, and why does it matter?

1. The problem

So, first thing: what is the problem?

Jesus has said, "I'm going to go and lay down my life. I'm going to suffer and I'm going to be killed." And they're thinking, this doesn't usher in God's kingdom. This is not how you actually achieve these things. Anyone would tell you if you want to have corporate success, then you achieve, you gain, you strive, you go harder. Jesus has all this momentum. He's healing. He's stilling the waves of the sea. He's doing all of these miraculous signs illustrating his power. That is the way. And you just want to put all that stuff aside and bow and be willing to suffer?

Somehow in this, Jesus is actually showing us not just that he's here to save, but what it means for each of us to follow in his footsteps to find that salvation for our own lives.

What is the problem? Well, Peter in this moment thinks he knows best. In verses 21 to 23: 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 scribes and be killed on the third day and raised. Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, "Far be it from you, Lord. This shall never happen to you."

Peter thinks that he knows better than Jesus. This is really a remarkable thing. It's brash. For a Jewish disciple to essentially turn to his rabbi, pull him aside, and begin to rebuke him was unheard of. You just didn't do something like that. It was completely disrespectful and risky to do that. Yet we also know Peter's character, and this is pretty much his type of personality anyway. He pulls Jesus aside and he's in essence saying, "You don't understand, Jesus. What are you talking about? This will never happen to you."

He's trying to talk Jesus out of this. In 23, Jesus turned to Peter and said, "Get behind me, Satan." Now, that can be a title for Satan, but that also in the Hebrew just means an adversary. The word Satan in Hebrew is an adversary. Right here, Peter has positioned himself as an adversary. Hearing what Jesus is going to say, he says, "It's not going to happen." In essence, we might have to wonder if Peter's thinking, "I'm not going to let it happen." We've seen Peter's actions later in this book that prove he's really fighting against this ever happening. He stands against Jesus suffering and Jesus's death and this path that he wants.

He joins a long list of people in the Bible who didn't like the way that God was running the world or God's plan for bringing about his purposes. So they thought they would help God, or get in the way, or just flat out reject what God was doing. God had promised to bring the children of Israel into the land of Canaan, the promised land. Yet spies go into the land, they see giants, they grow afraid, and they come back and give a bad report. All of Israel decides this is a bad plan. We logistically cannot defeat them in any military way, so let me just abandon ship. Maybe we should go back to Egypt. They forgot the fact that God had just delivered them from the mightiest nation on earth of that day, the Egyptian army, the empire of that time, and God had ripped them out and given them deliverance. Couldn't he handle this kind of situation?

Moses circumvented all this when he was a younger man. He thought, "You know what? I'm going to bring about the deliverance of my people. I'm going to help God out. I'll kill an Egyptian and start a revolt." That wasn't God's plan. Pretty soon, he's running for his life. He spends 40 years in the wilderness tending sheep before God begins to work him back into his plan.

When you stand against the purposes of God, you become an adversary to God. It does no good to get in the way, to think that God needs your help in some way that goes against him, or to lecture him as if you know better. We don't resist God's plan. The invitation in life for Peter and for all of us is to trust that God actually knows best.

We think that only good is all that we need. But because we're broken people, just giving us all that we need in terms of good and everything we want isn't what we really need. What you want isn't always what you really need. What we find often in life is that through suffering, we find correction. Through trial, we grow closer to God. Sometimes through evil, even though God doesn't will it, we see him work good. It teaches us to trust and to surrender to the God of the Bible, to his plan, to his purposes.

For some of you, I get it. I understand that you can look at things—maybe you've looked out in life, and we all have at some point, and not understood God's purposes, his plan, or his way. Why did that girl who wanted to go to the mission field finally get there and die in her first year? Why did that child get cancer? Why did God allow those kinds of things to happen? Why did God let my father die? I prayed for him. I pleaded with him. I had faith. Where was God?

We can struggle to understand the plan of God. But time and time again, the invitation here is to trust his purposes because we don't always understand his ways. The Bible tells us that God's ways are higher than our ways. He has the full picture. He understands everything that's going on, and we don't always understand that. We can't always see or know that.

Years ago when I was a teenager, I had a dog. I let her out one night to go to the bathroom and something was outside, so she took off running after it. She ran into an area that was sort of overgrown with forest, and she came back limping. She actually had a stick that had jabbed through her front leg, clean through. Obviously she's bleeding, she's limping, she can't do anything.

I got one of my siblings to hold her down because I knew I had to get this thing out and it was late at night. I broke off part of the stick and was able to dislodge it and get it out. Then I took some peroxide to disinfect it. I mean, I was a teenager, 18 years old, just trying to figure out how to fix this thing. I threw some peroxide on her, got some Neosporin to cover it, and bandaged it up as a home remedy late at night.

My dog in that moment did not think I was helping. It took all my sibling's might to hold that dog down because, in the mind of that dog, I was an evil person causing more harm than good in that moment. But I really did know what I was doing. I knew that peroxide would disinfect, that ointment would heal, and removing the stick, even though it hurt, was the best thing we could do. Leaving it in was not going to help things.

So it is with God. He understands things on a bigger and higher level than we can. Sometimes when we're in the midst of this world, as broken as it is, it's hard to make sense of it. But we have to trust that he knows, that he is good, that his promises are true, and that sometimes even when we cannot make sense of it, God understands. Otherwise, what you wind up doing is being opposed to God.

If you've struggled in your own life with questions of God, that's okay. We all have. It's okay to wrestle with God and to be honest with God. But at some point in your life, you're either going to have to look to yourself as God and think you've got it all figured out and know best, or you're going to have to trust the one who knows all, who loves you, and who is ultimately working a plan in the midst of a very broken world. We have to trust.

The second thing we see here is that Jesus says to him not only that he is an adversary, he says, "You are a hindrance to me. You're a stumbling block in my way." Peter exhorts Jesus wrongly in this. He says, "May this never be." Then he says something that is hard to translate from the Greek into English, but it basically says, "Mercy to you," or "God have mercy on you." Peter is trying to talk Jesus out of this. He's preaching some other truth to Jesus like, "This is not the way. God have mercy on you. God wants to be merciful. He wants good for you. He doesn't want you to have to die and suffer. You're the savior of the world. This is not a good plan, and it cannot be your father's plan."

He's preaching a different narrative to Jesus than the will of his Father. We can do that same sort of thing in our own life. We can use cultural truths as if they're biblical in our own life and buy into them: You do you. Follow your heart. Do whatever makes you happy.

I think all of us know—and I hope you do—that sometimes following your heart and doing whatever you want to do has led to a lot of regrets and mistakes in our lives. We have to be careful about these cultural truths, these isms that we preach to ourselves and to other people around us, because you can lead yourself and other people astray in life. You become a stumbling block by buying into the lie of your day and preaching it as if it is truth.

You can ultimately struggle with who God is, not like it, start to buy into these truisms of life, and then reshape God to conform to the truisms of our day so that he's a god that likes the things we like and hates the things we hate. We reshape our theology—not bowing ourselves in our theology to who God is and how he's revealed himself in the Word, not to his way, his plan, or his commands, but to what we like and prefer. You can change your whole theology and following of God into something that really isn't a real God. It's a mini god. It's a fake god. It's your own god. Ultimately, what you're doing is bowing down to yourself.

If you've ever seen Thomas Jefferson's Bible or are familiar with it: Thomas Jefferson was a deist. He believed in a god who wound up the universe and essentially let the universe go its way. Thomas Jefferson did not like a lot of the Bible. So he was super honest—he just cut out sections. There are whole sections of Thomas Jefferson's Bible where he removed things that he didn't like. You see what he's done? He's become his own god, dictating what truth is. Instead of bowing and surrendering to the truth, he made up his own truth and served that. What kind of god is that? It's you. But can you save yourself? Do you really know what's best?

We are invited to trust.

Finally, Jesus says to Peter, "For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man." We can have human wisdom and human thinking and think of God wrongly. We can put our own interests first, just like Thomas Jefferson, conforming our theology and ways, changing and rejecting the truth of God, his call, and his command. We could follow our own heart instead of bowing to God, trying to surrender to his plan, and trusting it even when we cannot see it. We can reshape everything, think of God wrongly, and wind up serving a wrong god. When we do that, maybe we don't know the God of the Bible. Maybe we aren't bowing to or serving the God of the Bible.

God's ways are beyond us. At some point, we can either trust ourselves, which makes us our own god, or we can trust God. I think for all of us at some point in life, you've seen that you don't know what's best. Sometimes we feel like we want to steer the ship of life. It gets us into a mess, and then how are we going to get out of it by trying to steer ourselves into something else?

2. How is it remedied?

How is it remedied? What is the remedy? We find it in verse 24. Jesus says: "Then Jesus told his disciples, if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me."

Here's the real secret that he's explaining: "For whoever would save his life will lose it. But whoever loses his life for my sake will find it."

Losing our life for Christ's sake—how does this work? What does this look like? What is the path that Jesus has called his disciples and his followers to walk?

First thing he says here is, "if anyone would come after me," which is really the word wish, desire, or want. If anyone begins to look and see—he's talking to his disciples—if you really believe I am who I am, if you really want to follow me and want to be one who surrenders and says, "I want to be like you. I want to grow in you. I want to follow you. I want to trust you as the Savior and Messiah of the world." That's the first piece he says. If anyone desires to come after, we have to recognize who he is.

Just in this wanting, desiring, and wishing for Jesus, we have to recognize that Jesus is who he says he is and that he's worth following. What Jesus has done here is unlike Eastern religions or Eastern mysticism. Often in those traditions, they talk about "the way"—a path you follow to obtain nirvana, heaven, or eternal bliss. You do all of these things to follow the way on that path to get to that location. What Jesus has done that is unlike all others is say that it's not about following a way; it's about following a person. It's about following me.

He has presented himself as the Savior, the salvation, the way, the truth, and the life. Not just a path that you walk, but a person that you walk along with, whose footsteps you follow, surrendering when he says to go left or right, doing those things and trusting him. So if anyone wants to come, believe, and follow, it's not just doing a bunch of tricks. It's not about earning salvation. It's about trusting me and coming to me.

Then he says in that verse that we deny ourselves, that we're called to lose ourselves, to let go of trying to be our own god. We don't like giving up control. Peter and the disciples thought Jesus was on a good path. Momentum was building. He was on his way to bringing in his kingdom. Now he wants to suffer and die? I just cannot make sense of that.

So many of the other disciples besides the original twelve had a hard time following and making sense of what Jesus was saying because he was calling them to trust him, to deny themselves, and to follow him even if it meant to a cross, even if it meant to suffering. We do not like losing control, especially when we cannot make sense of where the path is going, when it doesn't look like it's going to lead to good, and when we want to insert ourselves because it doesn't look like a safe bet.

If you've ever driven on ice, you can relate to this. If you are sliding towards a cliff or a curb, and you steer against the skid on the ice, what's going to happen? Nothing. You're going to keep skidding. It's only when you're willing to trust and turn into the skid that you regain control and turn out of it.

In a way, when we release control and submit to Christ, we're letting him take the steering wheel of life, trusting that he knows how to drive better than we do and that his purposes and plan are better than our own. We don't drive that well in life. We don't always know the right plan and the right way.

Often we think, "I need these things. I need that career. I need that spouse. I need this success. I need this money. I need this kind of pleasure in life." We try to fill our lives with all of these different things that we think will get us what we really want, what is really the path to salvation, and what is ultimately going to fill our life with what we long for.

We've found in life that if you buy into those truisms and all those different things, they leave you empty, unhappy, confused, and working against God's purpose and plan for your life. The secret is submitting and denying yourself to God's plan, giving yourself to him, and trusting that he knows best.

Most of us in life have probably at some point taken the wheel of life. You drove it toward career, success, pleasure, or the things you felt you really needed. Then you got there, and it didn't really satisfy. It didn't give you the meaning, satisfaction, or life that you wanted. History is filled with individuals who obtained all kinds of success in their life, got there, and thought, "Is this all there is? Is there anything more than this?" They were dissatisfied because we don't really know where we need to go in life. We don't know how to find or achieve salvation by our own means because we can't. We serve and bow down to the wrong things, driving our car in the wrong direction, causing harm, wrecking into things, and causing damage because we don't understand the big picture. We're not our own god.

The call and the secret of life is to bow to the one who is God, who does know what is best, and to trust his plan and purposes. Jesus invites us to let go of trying to be our own god, to let go of control, and to let go of our own plans that go against God's plan.

Even for the disciples, he's giving them a principle bigger than this moment. He's teaching them: "If you're going to follow me, it's not going to be on your terms." So often we think that salvation is only about mental assent: "I can believe in God and believe in Jesus, but I can live the way I want. I'm just going to keep my hands on my own life and do what I think is best. I'll try to be a good person, I'll try to serve him." But you're still being your own god. You're still trying to save yourself at the end of the day.

Jesus is saying, "That's not going to work because you're still not submitting to my plan. You don't even know where you need to be steering. I'm calling you to let go, to surrender, to let me lead and steer, to follow me along the way, and to deny your own thinking, logic, purposes, and agendas."

We are reminded in Galatians 2 where Paul says, "I have been crucified with Christ. It's no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." We have been crucified with Christ. We give our lives to him. We take up our cross and follow him.

That's the last thing Jesus says about this remedy: it is to embrace the cross, to be dead to sin. There is an amazingly beautiful thing that happens when we take up our cross and surrender to Christ. Certainly we receive grace and salvation, but it's not just something distant in the future. We begin to experience the power, healing, and wholeness that is available for this life today when we surrender to him.

Paul says it in Colossians like this: "For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory."

It seems like a paradox to let go of life and surrender our life to Christ to actually gain life and heal. Letting go feels scary and doesn't feel like it's going to produce good because it involves trust and faith.

St. Augustine, who lived in the 4th century and became a great scholar and bishop in North Africa, lived a free life before coming to Christianity. He was pursuing a career, had achieved high ranks, and was a public speaker probably on his way to a political path. He later wrote a book called Confessions in which he talked about his former life. He was addicted to lust and sexual indulgence. He had a mistress, as well as an heiress he was eventually supposed to marry when she came of age. He lived a licentious sort of life.

Augustine was convinced, as he searched, that he felt empty in life. He was looking for the formula; he was looking for the way. He studied all of these different religions, trying out one religion to see if it worked and fit into his logic and way of thinking. If it didn't work for him, he'd be dissatisfied and move to something else. He even tried Christianity for a time and discarded it, thinking it wasn't for him.

Then he got to Milan and heard a sermon one day by an academic pastor. It moved him and began to stir his heart to revisit the truths of Christianity. He began to investigate it again. Logically, he became convinced that Christianity was true—he was a very logical person. But he had this lifestyle, and he didn't want to let it go. He knew that something about that was going to hold him back because the call of Christianity is to surrender your life: to turn from these things that were not life-giving, were not producing life, were making a mess of things, and were not satisfying in themselves.

He kept thinking he could hold on to those things and still have faith, but he knew it wouldn't work. It didn't logically make sense. He either had to surrender, or reject truth and turn back to his old life. He grew miserable with his state of life.

Then one day he was reading in Romans 13 and read a verse that helped him make sense of it all. He realized that if he turned to Christ, he didn't have to battle this old life in his own strength. Through resurrection power, Christ would heal him, change him, and make him new. He would have the power and strength to say no to that old life, to die to that way that was destructive and making him miserable.

That's exactly what Augustine did on that day: he took up his cross and followed Christ. He found it wasn't just a heavy, burdensome cross of death; it actually produced resurrection power in his life. That's the great mystery of the cross. It's not just that we're called to suffer, but we're called to follow Christ, and then we experience the joy, the life, and the resurrection power that comes when we make him Lord of our life to become dead to sin.

We all surrender to something. We're all following something. Are we chasing after an idol? Are we trusting in ourselves? Is that working? Or will we trust that God knows, and that ultimately life comes in him?

3. Why does this matter?

Ultimately, it matters because this life and all that it offers is fading away. At the end of the day, we know that death comes to all of us. No amount of fame, pleasure, or achievement that we attain in life is going to go with us.

Jesus says it here in verse 26: "For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?"

You can gain all of these different things in life, and yet what does it really get you? You're going to be unsatisfied, and you cannot take it with you. Even if you found something that was good for today, it's not going to last forever. At the end of the day, you'll be forgotten, your money will pass on to others, and the joy that you once felt will no longer be felt anymore.

What can we give in exchange for our soul? We can't do enough good works because that would make God a debtor to us. At the end of the day, you can't come and say, "I did all of these good things. It's not about surrender, it's about me attaining my way. You can do anything you set your mind to. I'm going to set my mind on getting to God in heaven. I'm going to get into his kingdom through my own sheer will. I'll be a good person." You won't. You'll fail. God wouldn't have it that way because that would make him owe you something.

Ultimately, we believe that there are eternal consequences for the way that we live and who you submit your life to. C.S. Lewis reminds us that, at the end of the day, you can either say to God throughout your life, "Thy will be done," or you can say to God, "My will be done."

At the end of the day, for those who turn to God all their lives and say, "My will be done—I'm going to keep my hands on the wheel, maintain control, not bow, and try to make a deal with God to save myself," God turns and says, "Thy will be done." That's ultimately what hell is. It's not just a place of punishment; it's a place where people get what they wanted. In God's kingdom, God is King, which means our lives must be bowed to him, the ruler of the universe.

For those who do not like that, who have spent their lives saying, "My will be done," heaven doesn't sound like a good place—it sounds like a restrictive place. They have not found the resurrection power of life, so they hold on to control: "My will be done." God lets them have their way, but it becomes ultimately destructive. As we've seen in this life, having our own way, purpose, and plan doesn't give us life.

That's why we're always searching for the secret, looking to see other things that we can try on and make into our salvation, instead of looking to Christ and surrendering to him—not to achievement, but bowing to him. The secret comes when we give our life to Christ. In our death to the old, broken way of life, we experience the new power and life that comes in Christ. We experience it even now.

If you've come to Christ, remember what brought you there. Remember what God rescued you from. Don't forget those things. Remember the beauty of the truth when he bestowed upon you his grace, forgiveness, and love. It's something we experience now today, but also in the life to come.

Jesus reminds us: "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."

Ultimately, is Jesus your Lord? Do you surrender your life to him?

The real challenge in that isn't just a one-and-done choice—it's a daily thing. Paul said, "I take up my cross and follow him daily." The call of the Christian life is each day to surrender our own autonomy and trust his plan and purpose: to understand that he is good, that he loves you, and that his plan is good. If it is, won't you trust him? Won't you surrender and let him be the Lord of your life?

Lies can fill our minds. They can turn us away. We can be filled with all sorts of wrong thinking and cultural truisms. Or we can push those things aside—those stumbling blocks, lies, and adversaries—and turn to Christ.

We need to be honest about areas where we're not letting go. That's the discovery of life often times: even if you've committed your life to Christ and he is your Lord, there are still little places in the crevices of our heart where we are our own god. There are times where we don't want to surrender to him to forgive a person because of what they did to us: "I can't do it." So we reject what God is calling us to. "You can't be Lord there. You don't understand what I walked through."

Or we consider the anxiety we feel. We can slowly begin to want to control the outcome of life or be anxious about what lies on the horizon, instead of submitting to God as he reminds us, "I've got it. Even if hard things come, I told you I'll walk with you. I'll never leave you, I'll never forsake you." We are called to trust that he can be that kind of Lord to us. In the end, even if we suffer or experience hard things, just like Jesus rose on the third day, so we rise to newness of life in him.

We're called to surrender the unforgiveness, anxiety, hurt, and disappointment—to trust, take up our cross, follow him, and experience all the power of life found in him. The one who loses these things for Christ's sake will embrace the fullness of new life in him.

As we pray, let's take a moment. We confess daily to the Lord. We're called daily to examine our own hearts and see: where is there still a little throne for me that isn't trusting the Lord and hasn't submitted to him? Let the Holy Spirit in this moment speak to you through that. If you haven't trusted Christ, today is a good day to do that. In all of it, let's surrender—whether for the first time or the thousandth time, we're called to bow to him, to let him be our God and Savior, because it is good.

Let's pray.