The Gates Of Hell

The Depravity of the Cave: Baal Worship, Pan, and Man's Corruption of God's Good Creation 1:00

Way back in the Old Testament, we know that some of the practices of the Baal worshipers included child sacrifice at the mouth of this cave. And by the time the New Testament rolls around, Baal worship had been replaced by the worship of the Greeks. And the Greeks worshiped a goat god named Pan.

And Pan was a god of fertility. So as you could probably imagine, there was all manner of deviant sexual practices that were also engaged in at the mouth of this cave. Without going into any more details than that, you could say that this location, Caesarea Philippi, was renowned for its depravity. You would be hard-pressed to find 10 acres on the entire globe today where more wicked pagan practices had ever occurred than in this area in Caesarea Philippi.

This is why I referred to it a little bit ago as the Red Light District. It's the last area that you can imagine someone as holy as Christ Himself daring to set foot, let alone bringing His disciples. About a 30-mile walk just to get to this place. Last place you'd expect Him to go.

Caesarea Philippi made Bourbon Street look like Sesame Street.

Why Jesus Marched Into Enemy Territory to Name the Church 2:07

And yet, despite that reputation, despite that reputation, today's reading in Matthew 16, despite everything that Jesus knew about it, in fact, probably because of what He knew about it, He takes His disciples there. Field trip to Caesarea is what He tells His disciples. Now, they had to be saying, what is going on here?

Surely Capernaum needs more of us. Surely Galilee, even Jerusalem, there's other places to go other than this. So what was He doing there? The disciples must have wondered that as well.

Well, as I hinted at the outset here, I think the reason Jesus took His disciples to this area was to use it as a backdrop for a teaching point He's going to make about the power of the church. In today's study of Matthew 16, Jesus and His disciples are going to be standing in the region of this symbolic door to hell itself, a place known for its pagan practices.

And in this location, Jesus is going to look at His disciples. He's going to look at the nucleus of the church, such it was. In fact, He's going to use the word church for the first time in all the Bible, right in this text. He's going to look at the nucleus of the church's disciples and say, you guys and your progeny and your spiritual ancestors and the men and women in Gulfport, you, you who comprise, you who are the nucleus of the church, you will defeat that, that pit and the powers thereof.

It will not be able to defend against you and the message that you are bringing. So in today's text, Jesus is going to march into enemy territory. In today's text, Jesus is going to go up to the very mouth of hell itself, so to speak, as it was understood, and He's going to declare the certainty of victory, the certainty of His coming victory over hell and all of its armies.

Who Do Men Say That I Am? The Great Question of Christ's Identity 3:43

“Who do men say that I, the Son of Man, am?”

— Matthew 16:13 (NKJV)

All right, let's consider that victory further as we return to verse 13 through 16, then we'll work our way through as time allows. Verse 13. When Jesus came into the region of Caesarea Philippi, He asked His disciples, saying, who do men say that I am? Who do men say that I, the son of man, am?

And so they said, well, some say John the Baptist, some say Elijah, some say Jeremiah or one of the prophets. And he said to them, all right, but you, who do you say that I am? Simon Peter answered and said, you are the Christ. You are the Christ, the son of the living God.

Back in 2018, I had a chance to visit Caesarea Philippi to look upon that which we're speaking of here. What's interesting is I've going out of my way to explain how depraved this area is, but you wouldn't know it if you just stood there and looked around. If you just stood there and looked around, you'd say, this is beautiful.

If you look around northern Israel in general, you say, I can see why they called this the promised land. I can see why this is the land of milk and honey. I didn't see any milk and honey, but I understand what they meant. I've been to southern Israel, which is just dry and barren.

I've looked out into Syria, looked out into Jordan. I can tell you that most of the surrounding area is not that great. But here in northern Israel, it is something else. It is beautiful.

The mouth of the Jordan River starts up in this area. There's hills. You can see snow cap on Mount Hermon off to the north. It's just gorgeous.

It's a picture of Eden, so to speak. And yet, despite how wonderful it is, despite God's manifest revelation as He created the area, look how man can mess it up. Man finds this cave with his waterfall, and what does man do? Instead of admiring the beauty and saying, praise God for what you've made, makes it a shrine to pagan gods.

There's still to this day, if you go and look at the rock outcropping itself, the Greeks cut out a little alcove to put their idols in, Pan and the other gods right there. You can see where these things would have sat, which is just cruelly ironic given how beautiful the overall region is.

Man will take something really good and mess it up really bad. That's his nature. So over the years, this has happened time and time and time again, right in this very area. Again, the Canaanites had done it.

They brought in Baal worship. They sacrificed infants. They did all sorts of terrible stuff. The Greeks did it.

The Romans did it after the Greeks. Even the Israelites, they don't get off the hook here. Just down the road in a place called Tel Dan, you see one of the most famous, nonsensical, silly, stupid idols that the Israelites ever made called the golden calf that was set up in a high place in Tel Dan, which is just down the road.

So whether it was the Canaanites, the Romans, the Greeks, or even the Israelites, they had a tendency to take that which God had made beautiful and to soil it. With that said, in the face of all the reasons to avoid this area like the plague, verse 13 says that Jesus came into the region of Caesarea Philippi.

As we said before, the disciples had to wonder what the deal is. But before they could even really ask the question, Jesus brings them to a halt here in verse 13. And perhaps on a hill or vantage point somewhere near this rock outcropping. It's pretty huge, but perhaps with an eyeshot of it, we don't know where He's standing, but perhaps with an eyeshot, Jesus asked His disciples this question with this thing.

If not in view, at least they all knew it was there. He asked His disciples this question. He says, who do men say that I am? Who do men say that I am?

What are people saying? You disciples, you keep your ear to the ground. What's the talk.

The Transmigration of Souls: Why the Crowds Named the Prophets Instead of the Messiah 7:25

Now that's an interesting question. So how did they respond? Well, they responded in an interesting way. They say, well, here's the thing, Jesus.

They really don't know who you are. Some are saying John the Baptist, which is odd because he was a contemporary of Christ. Others are saying Elijah, perhaps because the prophecies of Malachi and elsewhere that Elijah would have to come. So some are saying that.

Some are saying Jeremiah. In fact, the other prophets, they really just pick a prophet and they've said that you're probably him. Now what's that about? Let's just stop for a second.

Why would they think that? Why would they be like, yeah, you could be Jeremiah or Amos or Isaiah or any number of these prophets? Why would they say that? Well, Josephus, the Jewish historian, he records that at this time, at this time in Jewish life, remember they had left Scripture behind and their desire to pursue the ideas of their own hearts and minds, and they came up with this idea called the transmigration of the soul.

Transmigration of the soul. Now, what is that, you might wonder? Well, it's sort of what it sounds like. It's this idea.

It's like reincarnation. It's this idea that someone could die a long time ago, and the soul is transferred through the passage of time, and behold, there's Jeremiah once again. So, they had this idea of the transmigration of the souls. Now, were they correct that that's what was happening here, that Jesus was one of those guys from the past?

Well, no, absolutely not. And so, in verse 15, Jesus senses that His own disciples don't buy in all that. Other people are saying that Jesus is one of these guys. Jesus knows that His own disciples know better, and so He asks them the question.

He says, all right, so that's what they're saying. But you who've been with me, you who've sat at my feet as we've ministered together, and you've heard me speak and talk, I'm like, who do you say? that I am.

Peter's Confession: You Are the Christ, the Son of the Living God 9:14

“You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

— Matthew 16:16 (NKJV)

Now, who answered? Peter. Peter speaks up. Simon Barjona, he speaks up and he says, you are the Christ.

You are the Christ, the son of the living God. Now, that was a bold claim for any Jew to make. To say that the Messiah had come, remember, the rest of his contemporaries, they were all avoiding what was obvious. The contemporaries would literally pick a prophet out of a hat, rather than say the obvious, that maybe, I don't know, just maybe this guy who shows up and does just crazy miracles, raising the dead, healing the blind, all this sort of stuff, you know, 5,000 fish out of, you know, yay many fish.

He does all this incredible stuff, and instead of coming to the obvious conclusion that maybe this is the Messiah, because there was no record of Jeremiah doing that stuff, right? Jeremiah didn't do any of that stuff. Rather than say that this is the Messiah, they would draw the prophet's name out of a hat and appoint to anyone from their past and say, well, maybe it's him, rather than saying the obvious.

But Peter, he says the obvious. He says, you are the Christ. You're the one that all those other guys pointed forward to. You are the fulfillment of promise.

You are the fulfillment of prophecy. You are the Christ. You are the son of the living God. It's interesting he says the son of the living God because they're standing in a place that's filled with gods of wood, gods of stone, gods like Pan.

He says, Jesus, you're the son of the living God, not the God of stone and wood and marble. All right, let's see what Jesus says in response. Let's look at verses 17 through 20. So verse 17, Jesus answered and He gives a benediction.

He gives a blessing. He says, blessed are you, Simon Barjona, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And also I say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.

And I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven. Whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. And he commanded his disciples, they should tell no one that he was Jesus the Christ.

All right.

Revelation, Not Deduction: The Sovereign Grace Behind Every True Confession 11:35

Christ's response in verse 17 is interesting. On the one hand, he's just asked a question, and Peter got it right. He says, who do you say I am? And Peter says, you're the Christ.

And Jesus could have given him the golf clap and said, right on. You got it, nicely done. But Jesus adds something. You see, Jesus knew that Peter didn't just deduce that.

Jesus knew that Peter didn't just figure that out with his own cognition. He didn't connect all the dots on his own. Jesus knew that Peter was not an Arminian. He knew that he was not prone to just deducing, using his own intellect and cognition to figure out who God is, but rather God had acted to inform, to reveal to the heart of Peter who Jesus was.

You see this? He says, blessed are you. Not because you're awesome and smart. Well, blessed are you because God revealed to you what you now profess.

See, this is how it has worked with all of us. All of us, if you came into this church to sing and to profess that Jesus is Lord, if you came to church this morning to do that, it's not because you're so smart and you're so great. It's because God has done something great, and He has enabled and persuaded your heart to recognize Jesus for who He is.

And here, here Jesus says that's what happened to Peter. He says, blessed are you. In an age of contemporaries that don't recognize me, you are blessed because God has revealed to you what you now see. God has to reveal Himself to anyone in order for them to understand who He is.

This is the foundation of any right understanding of justification, regeneration, or soteriology in general. If you doubt that, again, look at this verse 18. Blessed are you, Simon Barjona, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. Now, after acknowledging that Peter has the right answer, that came from heaven, after acknowledging Peter's answer, Jesus then says something that a lot of folks will focus on exclusively amidst all this text.

Upon This Rock I Will Build My Church: Three Views of the Rock 13:32

“And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.”

— Matthew 16:18 (NKJV)

He says one of the most controversial, one of the most misunderstood statements that he'll ever make in verse 18. Something that divides and confuses folks to this day. So what does he say? Well, in verse 18, he says, Again, the first time the word church ever comes up in the Bible, first time Jesus ever uses it.

Which is interesting, because remember, he's speaking to a Jewish community who only knew Judaism, who only knew the Old Testament practices, and he's introducing something different here. When he uses the word church here, called out once, in Greek, ekklesia, he's introducing something that there wasn't a renowned understanding of, and he's introducing it right here in this verse, verses 17 and 18.

So, verse 18 says, You're Peter, you're the rock in which I will build my church. Now, what did he mean here? Well, again, we could spend a lot more time than we have, but there's three brief possibilities I'll least introduce, and then you can research them on your own. The first possibility is that maybe, maybe what Jesus was saying was that you're Peter, you're Petros, you're the rock, and you're such a swell guy that on you, you're going to be the first of many.

On you, I'm going to build this institution we're going to call the church. You're going to be the first head. It's a belief system that has led to what the Roman Catholics call the papacy. Maybe Jesus was looking at Peter and saying, you're the man, and there's going to be a succession of other men who are going to follow in your footsteps, and there's going to be a whole institution that's going to grow and flower on the basis of this first individual on whom I'm going to build the whole structure, the whole thing.

So Roman Catholicism and a few other folks would say that Peter himself, Petros, is the rock that Jesus is talking about. Now, alternately, many Protestants and evangelicals would say, well, no, it's not so much that Peter's the rock, although there's certainly a play on words going on here, but it's not so much that Peter is the rock per se, but rather it's the confession that Peter made that's the basis on which the church is going to grow.

It's not the man, the fallen man, the man who would deny Jesus literally just, you know, not name any chapters later. It's not the man. It's the confession. It's what he said.

It's the gospel. You're the Christ, the son of the living God. Those who profess Christ before the Father are the ones that are preserved before the Father. So the thought is amongst Protestants and evangelicals that it's the profession, it's what he said, it's the gospel, you are the Christ, that that's the basis on which the church would grow and ultimately take down the strongholds of hell itself.

And I think there's a lot of validity to that. I think that's a more reasonable conclusion personally than say that he was talking to one dude, one guy amongst the 12 and saying, you, you are going to be the head of this institution. So that's really, again, this is oversimplification of both of those views, but it's essentially representative.

The Church Built on the Ruins of Darkness: The Object Lesson of the Rock 16:22

Now, I want to introduce a third view, a third view that some hold and I think is the most accurate. As we said at the outset this morning, remember, context matters. Jesus had taken His disciples way out of the way. He had gone far to the north.

He went to a pagan red light district. He traveled 30 miles just to get there, and when he got there they were in the shadow, or at least nearby in the vicinity of a huge rock mound, huge rock outcropping that was regarded by everyone, you know, for a hundred leagues as the literal gates of hell, as the mouth of the underworld itself.

Is it possible that the context of where he brought them, involving this giant rock formation and the gates of hell, is it possible? Well, that's what he talks about when he's talking about rock on which I'm going to build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. Is it possible that the context is relevant?

Well, yes, yes, and yes. As I said, the cave that we've been talking about is at the base of this huge mound of rock. And with that setting in mind, listen again to the fullness of Christ's words. He says, you're Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.

The context is relevant. Let me explain why. What if, what if Christ is making the case in this statement in Matthew 16 that the church, that the institution that he first names right here, he talks about the church the first time in this passage, that this church, this thing that is going to flower, this thing that's going to develop upon his death, resurrection, and ascension, what if he was saying that the church would be built on top of the rocks and ruins of this present darkness.

You see, in Jewish history, new kingdoms were built on top of old ones. In Jewish history, new kingdoms, new cities, new fortresses were built on top of the old ones. That's why if you go to Israel, you'll see these big hills. And you say, well, that's a hill.

And they'll say, no, it's a tell. Well, what's a tell, you might ask. And they'll say, I'll tell you. That's a freebie.

So you'll say, well, what is this? This is a tell. And what it is, what a tell is, it's at one point there was a town or city, a village, a hamlet, and then it got razed and burned by enemies. And then others came and built on top of it.

And then that got razed and burned by enemies. And then it happened again and again. What happens is you get to these towns, these villages, these hamlets, these cities that are built up over the years. And in time, if they've just been decimated, then they get covered by growth and grass, and you look at something and say it's a hill, and they say, well, if you dig into that, it's much more than just a hill.

In Jewish history, new kingdoms were literally built on tops of old ones. A new city, a new empire could be built on the ashes of the old one. In any case, Matthew 16 says Jesus is standing near the symbolic gates of hell, speaking to a hellish empire itself, and he makes the declaration that on top, upon this rock, the church would be built.

What if, what if Jesus is using the rocks at Caesarea Philippi for an object lesson? What if he's using the rocks at Caesarea Philippi for an object lesson and saying that the gates of hell is a reference, is a reference to something that will be defeated upon which the church will prevail? Is he talking about Peter the man of the rock?

I don't think so. Is he talking about Peter's profession? That's far more likely, and it's probably partly the case, but I also think there's a reason he took them to this place to make the statement. In the big picture, he's talking about the defeat of the satanic kingdom and the dominance and transcendence of the church itself.

Get Behind Me, Satan: The Necessity of the Cross and Christ's Atoning Work 20:08

All right, let's look at verses 21 through 23. Verse 21. Now, from that time, Jesus began to show to 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 be raised up the third day. Then Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, Far be it from you, O Lord, this shall not happen to you.

But He turned and He said to Peter, Get behind me, Satan. Get behind me, Satan, for you are an offense to me. You are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men. All right.

In our previous verses, Jesus had asked a pop quiz, right? Pop quiz. And the guy who stood up, the guy who gave the answer, Peter, says, you are the Christ, the Son of the living God. He got an A. He got an A+.

He got it exactly right. The most important question humanity has ever asked, he gave the exact right answer to. Ultimately, that's the question that all of us have to come to an answer. Who is this Jesus?

The right answer, the saving answer, the answer that paves the way to eternity, at least to a heavenly eternity, is that you are the Christ. So Peter answered the question, he gets an A. But here we get to verse 22, just a few verses later, and he messes up something else just terribly.

He got the one thing right, but he gets something so wrong, so confused, so inappropriate. He makes a statement that's just so incorrect that Jesus had to offer him the most unprecedented rebuke. Get behind me, Satan.

Confessing Christ's Person and His Work: Why Divinity Alone Is Not Enough 21:47

You see, it's one thing to get the person of Jesus right, okay? It's one thing to get the person of Jesus right, but you also have to get His work correct as well. In other words, it's not enough just to realize that Jesus is God. Even the demons have that figured out.

It's not enough to recognize that Jesus is God. It's not enough to recognize his divinity per se. What else do you need to do? Well, you need to understand and recognize, and if you're following men and women like you and I, You need to accept and believe and trust in His atoning work on Calvary.

Just saying he's God is not sufficient. Again, the demons do that. You also have to not accept his sacrifice through faith. In verse 21, just the previous verse, Jesus had explained His mission.

This isn't the only time He did this. A matter of times he told his disciples what was about to go down, and they would always shrug their shoulders like, nah, that can't be. No, not going to happen. Not going to happen.

He'd say, I'm going to die. I'm going to go to Jerusalem. And all those guys that are running around in the tall pointy hats, all the religious ones, they're going to be the ones that kill me. He says in verse 21, he says it's the elders, it's the chief priests, it's the scribes, which speaks to how fallen Jerusalem and Israel was.

You have no idea what a small remnant of the faithful there were. Overwhelmingly, the folks were lost, lost to the point that the whole religious leadership were the very ones who were going to massacre him. And he says it in verse 21, the elders and the chief priests and the scribes are going to take me to Jerusalem and kill me, I'll be raised the third day.

Isaiah 53 and the Covenant of Redemption: Why the Messiah Had to Die 23:15

Now, in other places in scripture, he identifies why. And if you read, this Bible is open to Isaiah 53 for a reason. If you read Isaiah 53, you know that when the Messiah showed up, He had to die. He who knew no sin became sin for us, and the chastisement for our sins would be laid upon Him.

But by His scars, we are healed. So the Old Testament knew he had to die. He explained He had to die. And then here's Peter.

Peter says, no, no dice, no deal. No, you're going to stay around. We're just going to have the grand old time. You're going to stay around.

It can't happen. Far be it. Far be it. Get this idea out of your thoughts, oh Jesus.

Far be it from you that this would ever happen. From a human perspective, we get that. If you had Jesus next to you, would you want Jesus to leave? Probably not.

From a human perspective, we get this. You don't want Jesus to go anywhere, but here's the thing. If Jesus didn't fulfill His mission, then neither Peter or you or I would be saved. If Jesus didn't do what He was sent to do, if the covenant of redemption made centuries past, eons past, handle fulfilled by the mission and mandate by which He came to this earth to do, if He didn't die, then Peter wouldn't be saved.

You and I wouldn't be saved. Peter didn't know what he was talking about here. If Jesus didn't intercede and offer Himself as a substitute on Calvary, then you and I and Peter and the whole lot of them, including Jeremiah and Elijah and all of them, all the prophets, if Jesus didn't die, if the wrath of God didn't come down upon Him, then it would come down upon you and all these other men, all these other prophets.

And Jesus knew that, and He wasn't lax in explaining this. And again, there was prophecies that pointed forward to this, that this is what would happen. That meant that what Peter was suggesting, what Peter was intimating would be a better course of action, was the antithesis of what Jesus came to do. And it had to be what the servant was whispering in Jesus' ear, even on Gethsemane.

You don't have to do it. And so when he hears those words, even coming out of his friend, even coming out of His disciple Peter, He says, get behind me. You don't know what you're talking about. This is the reason I came.

Get behind me. You're mindful of the things of men, not necessarily the things of God. Get behind me, Satan. To highlight the significance of Peter's error, Jesus gave a significant rebuke.

Take Up Your Cross and Follow Me: The Call to Public, Visible Discipleship 25:40

“If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.”

— Matthew 16:24 (NKJV)

All right, let's look at our last set of verses now, verses 24 to 28. Then Jesus said to His disciples, if anyone desires to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul? What will man give in exchange for his soul? The Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father and with the angels, and then He will reward each according to His works. He will reward each according to His works.

Verse 28, Assuredly, I say to you, there are some standing here who shall not taste death till they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom. In verse 24, Jesus said, Take up your cross and follow me. What cross? You and I look back.

We know he got crucified. They didn't know what was about to go down. Take up your cross and follow me. He refers in this block of text, he refers to the church and the cross.

He talked about things that have all the meaning to us as 21st century believers. The cross, the church. We take those words for granted. We know what they mean.

He spoke them to those who didn't necessarily know exactly what was going on, what they meant. Whatever the case is, he says, all right, you, my disciples, you, my apostles, whether it's in the first century, whether it's disciples like you and I all these centuries later, take up your cross and follow me.

Now, if you're a disciple, let's say you and I are disciples. I trust and hope and pray that that's the case for all of us this morning. If you're a disciple of Christ and Christ just told you to take up your cross and follow him, then the question for you is, what is your cross?

If Jesus looks at you and says, take up your cross and follow me, then what, as a disciple of Christ, is your cross? Well, what was a cross in this context? We know it as a horrific implement of death. We know that much.

But what was the utility by which Rome used that? There were other horrific implements of death, right? There were other ways to kill a man. So what was the utility in the Roman economy of tyranny?

What was the utility of the cross from a Roman perspective? How was the cross understood in this original context? Well, one of the main reasons that Rome used crosses is because they liked making a public display of those who were being punished. If you had to, if you were found guilty and you had to take your cross, take it on your back and weave it through the streets of the city, carrying your own cross, the implement of your death, until you got to a point where it was high and lifted up, high and lifted up where you were nailed to it, and it's the sight of everyone between walking through the city carrying it and being on the hillside wearing it.

Absolutely, absolutely, the public witness to that was the intention of Rome. The condemned man would carry his cross, and this was to make a statement to a few other transgressors, make a statement that Rome was on top of things. When you looked up and you saw dead men hanging, you begin to think about your own inclination to rebel against Rome.

So this was the idea. The cross was a public display. With that said, when Jesus says that you and I are to take up our cross, on the one hand, at 10,000 feet, this recognizes our death to sin. That's certainly part of it.

But it also means that when we take up our cross prior to our death, so to speak, when we take up our cross, when we go through the city, when we take up our cross, a suggestion that would have been better understood then than it is now, is that our faith, like our cross, is to be lived out boldly in the city streets.

It's to be something that's visible, something that's manifest, not something that's hidden, not something that you're shocked. You're a Christian? How did we never know that? I've worked with you for 20 years.

You're a Christian? Really? What church? Where do you go?

If that's Christianity in terms of how you're implementing, let me encourage you to ask yourself the question, what is your cross? It's not simply self-flagellation, it's not simply self-discipline, it's not simply being persecuted for your beliefs, although that can certainly be part of it. It's the public profession. When you see someone having a cross, there's no doubt, there's no doubt that they've been identified with transgressors.

Well, when you take up your cross, you're identified with he who says it is finished from the cross. When you take up your cross and others see it, it affects him in the way that Rome thought they'd be affected by seeing the cross on the hillside. So he says, take up your cross.

And he didn't just say it to 12 men in Caesarea Philippi or somewhere else. He says it to the whole lot of disciples across all the church age.

Bearing the Cross Before a Dying World: What Makes the Gates of Hell Tremble 30:31

Now, as we close, the temptation that we have as disciples is to carry our faith in our heart, to go into our secret place and we pray in our prayer closets and the like, to keep it kind of chill, not necessarily visible, lest we were to be persecuted or at least disliked or made fun of or mocked on social media or goodness knows what.

The temptation is to want nothing to do with a cross of any type. He says, take up your cross. You're like, all right, I sure hope that doesn't mean what I think it might mean. Now, we can all relate to the impulse of not wanting to be mocked or persecuted.

That's natural. We can understand in that. Even Peter, who occupied so much of today's chapter, a few chapters later, he'll deny Jesus three times to avoid being nailed to a cross right next to his Savior. So the impulse to avoid identification with he who was crucified on Calvary in order to avoid being mocked or persecuted or spat upon or what have you, the impulse is understandable because none of us wants those things.

And yet, ambassadors are called to stand and speak for the kingdom. An ambassador, when he went to a foreign land, he oftentimes had a flag on a pole and it was read really high so that everyone could see which kingdom he represented when he came on in. It's a picture of what we're supposed to do.

The cross is similar. There's supposed to be some visibility. And even though our inclination is trying to hide that, what does Jesus say in verse 25 of our text? He says, who try to hide it.

Those who desire to save their lives will lose it, but those who lose their life for my sake will find it. True faith does not deny Christ's cross or even our own. It embraces it. Sometimes that's easy.

I would say that for most of our existence in 21st century Bible Belt Christendom, it's been easier than not, but sometimes it's hard, and it may yet get hard for us in the time yet to come. Whatever the case, again, this is Scripture speaking to you. Whatever the case, Scripture would say, when the world looks at you, do they see someone carrying a cross?

And if not, then the question is, have you picked it up? And for what it's worth, if they're not seeing it in times of comparative peace, if the world's not seeing your cross in times of peace, then why would they see it in times of persecution? Well, you'd be more inclined then than you are now.

This week, I would encourage you as we close to do something to make your faith more visible to a dying world than maybe it is at the moment, to those in your job, your vocation, your school, your neighborhood, your family. Christ is worth it. When we take our faith out into the world and we say, Jesus is Lord, Jesus is King, Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, when we profess that to those who are dying outside these doors, that's what makes the gates of hell tremble.

Let's pray.