The Question that Changes Everything

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Well, one of the first widespread conspiracy theories came about over a hundred years ago after the last emperor of Russia and his entire family were executed one night by the communists who had captured them. And a story, a rumor, almost immediately started that one of his four daughters had escaped, had escaped the firing squad and gone into hiding in Europe. And it was about two years later, in the early 1920s, that a woman showed up in a mental hospital in Berlin and claimed that she was the Tsar’s youngest daughter, the Grand Duchess Anastasia.

And evidently she was convincing enough that some of the doctors, some of the nurses believed her, to the point that they contacted some of the relatives who had fled from the revolution and were living in France or Germany at the time.

And people, some of the emperor’s relatives, some of the former servants would come and meet with this woman, and some of them came away convinced that she was an imposter, but some of them came away convinced that she was exactly who she claimed to be, that she was the czar’s daughter, that she was now the, I don’t know if she would be the rightful heir to the throne if they were to restore it, but she was certainly entitled to all of the money that was left behind and the title and everything else. And it became a long-running debate in Europe, and it even spread to America. She moved at some point and ended up in Virginia, and it became a point of debate over here as well.

Who is this woman? Is she really the czar’s long-lost daughter? And there were people who devoted a substantial part of their lives to determining the question, who is this woman? And like I said, she had supporters and opponents, even among the family. It just was an open question. She ended up dying in the mid-80s with the question still not settled to the point that there wasn’t a debate anymore. It wasn’t until the Soviet Union fell in the early 90s that they were able to find and recover the bodies of the family and do DNA testing on her and find out that this woman who eventually went by the name Anna Anderson was not the czar’s daughter.

She was a Polish factory worker who just decided being the czar’s daughter, I guess, sounded like a better life than what she had and made that claim. But this, probably because of the title and because of the money involved, this was one of the big questions of the 20th century for a lot of people. Who is this woman? that people would devote their lives to figuring out who she is. Now, it’s an important question, like I said, because of all of the money involved. But for you and me, the question of was she or was she not the czar’s daughter isn’t of any real lasting significance. Really, for most of the people who didn’t stand to inherit the money, it wasn’t of any lasting significance.

But there is a question that we’re going to look at today, a question about Jesus, the same question, as a matter of fact, who is he? That is far more important for each of us than that question ever was for anybody else related to Anna Anderson. Who is he? Who do we believe him to be? Who does he tell us He is? And do we believe that? So this morning, as we continue our study through the book of Luke, we’ve come to Luke chapter 9. We’ve recently finished up the feeding of the 5,000, and now we’re going to talk about some of the aftermath in Luke chapter 9.

Once you’ve turned there with me, if you’ll stand with me as we prepare to read from God’s Word together, and this morning, if you don’t have your Bible or can’t find Luke chapter 9, it’ll be on the for you so you can follow along as well. But we’re going to read about this question that was posed that I think is the most substantial question any of us can ever be asked or can ever answer. So starting in verse 18, it says, and it happened that while he was praying alone, the disciples were with him. So that’s not a contradiction. Luke didn’t forget mid-sentence what he was talking about when he says Jesus was alone and the disciples were with him.

All through this section of Luke, what is Jesus trying to do? Trying to get away from the crowd for just a minute. Just give me five minutes. So when it says he was alone, it means he was away from the crowd. The disciples were with him. And he questioned them, saying, Who do the people say that I am? And they answered and said, John the Baptist. And others say Elijah. But others, that one of the prophets of old has risen again. And he said to them, But who do you say that I am?

and Peter answered and said the Christ of God but he warned them and instructed them not to tell this to anyone saying the son of man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed and be raised up on the third day and you may be seated so they’re walking along, or they’ve been walking along, Jesus is praying, and he asked them, who does everybody in town say that I am? And they were quick to answer. They just had all kinds of answers. And then he says, okay, that’s great. Who do you say that I am?

And the Bible doesn’t say this, But when we get a flurry of answers to the first question, and only Peter, who has a habit of being the boldest and most outspoken of the group, Peter’s the only one recorded to answer, I kind of imagine that there were crickets at this second question before Peter finally is the only one with the boldness to speak up. It was easier for them to answer the first question than the second. And then Peter says, you’re the Christ of God. He’s saying, you’re the Messiah. You’re the one God sent. And Jesus immediately says, don’t tell anybody that. Now, for reasons that we’ll get into in a little bit, that does not mean that Jesus was denying it.

Like, don’t tell people that. It was, okay, don’t tell anybody. And we know from Matthew’s account that Jesus actually admitted it and said, you are blessed because the Father has revealed that to you. Now don’t tell anybody because it wasn’t time yet. We’ll get into that in just a moment. But these questions that Jesus asked are kind of a turning point in the Gospels. Because up till now, there’s been this ongoing question of who is Jesus that’s bubbled up just under the surface, where we see people watching His miracles and responding saying, is He a prophet? Can He be a prophet?

And Jesus does all these things that the great prophets would have done, does these miraculous things that even up to the point of raising the dead that we see happen in the ministries of Elijah and Elisha. And then right after that, on the heels of that, we come to the storm on the Sea of Galilee, where the disciples see him command nature. And they say, whoa, what kind of man is this? Who is this? Because they’re starting to realize he’s more than a prophet.

and we go back through the gospels and we can see Jesus is gradually revealing for these men who he is because if he walked up to them the very first day and said hey I’m God in human flesh how are they going to react to that somebody walks up to you today on the street as you’re going to get in your car and says hey I’m I’m I’m God I’ve come here as a person you’re going to think they’re not playing with a full deck, right? That person’s not all there. No, Jesus is gradually revealing this so that they can come to understand. And now they’re to the point where they’ve seen enough that they ought to know. They ought to have some understanding of who he is, that he’s not just a man.

He’s not even just a prophet. He’s so much more than that. And through this conversation, Jesus is bringing them to the point of understanding who He is, that He’s Lord, and what that means, what He’s come for. And so we’re going to look at a few things this morning that we can take out of this question and understand when it comes to our relationship with Jesus and our understanding of who He is and how we’re supposed to respond to Him. But we see starting out right in these first couple of verses, verses 18 and 19, that Jesus’ lordship does not depend on popular opinion. His first question to them that day was about who other people thought he was.

And as I pointed out, they were very quick to answer him. They’re sort of machine-gunning him with answers. Oh, some people think you’re Elijah. Some people think you’re John the Baptist. Some people think you’re one of the other prophets. I think Matthew records that they said some people think you’re Jeremiah. They were quick to provide the answers to that. And they were quick to answer because it’s always easier to account for other people. It’s always easier to critique other people than to take responsibility for your own self. So when it came time to get to their own convictions, oh, we’re a little more hesitant to put ourselves on the line and say this is what we believe.

But we’ll go ahead and say, You know, it’s easy to answer for everybody else. And they were right. There were many among the people who thought he was a prophet back from the dead. And we’ve seen glimpses of this through the other stories that we’ve read thus far through Luke. Even when he sent the twelve out, just a couple of passages ago, he sent the twelve out and Herod’s court is in an uproar about who is this man. In Herod’s court, it was a common belief that he was John the Baptist returned to life. And in Matthew, Herod himself even wonders, could this be John the Baptist? I beheaded him, but here he is. He’s back. Could it be him? Then they say, Elijah.

And it’s important that we understand where they’re coming from because this is such a strange idea to us. As we read about Jesus, that they think he’s all these other people. my answer to him being john the baptist is they’ve seen him and they’ve seen those two in the same place at the same time you know they’re not the same person because they’ve interacted but when it comes to elijah returning malachi 4 5 talks about elijah returning to turn the hearts of the children back to their fathers. It’s a prophecy of the coming of the Messiah, but Jesus and the apostles taught that this referred to John the Baptist coming in the spirit and power of Elijah.

But it was a common belief that Elijah is just going to be resurrected and walk in our midst. So when you understand that, it wasn’t completely crazy that they thought, oh, this man is Elijah. After all, he’s doing a lot of the same things Elijah did, Just he’s doing them on a grander scale. And he’s actually claiming the power and authority to do it on his own. And then according to the way some of the rabbis interpreted Deuteronomy 18, they had begun to insist that Jeremiah was going to return from the dead. When Moses talked about a prophet who is greater than I, they had decided, oh, that must mean Jeremiah.

And so some of them, there was this popular view that Jeremiah was going to come back.

so when we when we read that when we understand that it’s not as crazy as it first sounds that they all say oh it’s one of these guys it was based on the way they were interpreting scripture they just missed it which is easy for us to say in hindsight none of these outlandish none of these were outlandish for them to look at Jesus and say I bet he’s that guy because that’s who they expected were any one of those three and so they had these opinions about who Jesus is and they even had some justification for their opinions notice I didn’t say they were right I just said they had some justification they had some reason for thinking these things. They weren’t completely crazy.

But they had these opinions, and they were very sure in their opinions about Jesus. But see, that’s the thing. People today have opinions about Jesus that they’re very sure of. There are people you can get, I don’t recommend this unless you’ve taken some headache medicine, but you can get on YouTube today and watch all sorts of theories about Jesus that people are very, very sure about and very, very wrong about. And it even gets crazier in the comment sections of videos. Again, I don’t recommend that unless you’ve prayed for patience because God will use that to provide it to you. But today there are opinions. Some people will say, oh, Jesus wasn’t even real.

We have evidence even outside the Bible that He existed. they’ll say oh he was a he was a good moral teacher and I defer to C.S. Lewis who pointed out that he claimed to be God and if he claimed to be God he’s either God or he’s not if he’s not God he’s either a lunatic who thought he was God or he’s a liar who knew he wasn’t God and said it anyway in either case he’s not a good moral teacher and so Lewis’s trilemma was that he’s a liar a lunatic or Lord, but he can’t be just a good moral teacher because it goes against what he himself claimed.

People have all sorts of opinions about Jesus, but if our opinions about Jesus, no matter how certain we feel about them, if our opinions about Jesus are not rooted in what he and his closest associates said about him, then we’re very wrong. We’re as wrong as we are sure in our wrongness. And so his lordship doesn’t depend on popular opinion. The fact that all these, everybody had an opinion. Everybody thought, oh, he’s got to be Elijah. That didn’t make him Elijah. Oh, he’s got to be John the Baptist. That didn’t make him John the Baptist. All the claims that all the people made that were contrary to his claims didn’t change who he was. Then we skip ahead just a little bit to verse 21.

We’re not skipping verse 20. We’re going to come back to it. Because what we see at the beginning of this passage is people being confused about who He is. It ends with people being confused about who He is. And in the middle, there’s a clear statement of truth that’s being emphasized. Starting in verse 21, we see that Jesus’ lordship does not depend on our understanding. So when Peter made the confession of who Jesus is, he had taken a major step. This is the first time Jesus is being openly identified by his followers as who he is. But when he claimed to be the Christ, that’s not just his name. That means Messiah.

Christ comes from Christos, which is the Greek version of the Hebrew word Messiah. He’s making a claim about what He is, not just who He is. Not just His name, but what He is. And if Jesus is the Messiah, there were certain expectations that the people had for the Messiah. They were looking for somebody who was going to come in and sweep the Romans out. They did not like the Romans being in charge of them. We would not like it if some other country came in and just started telling us what to do. Even if they were nice about it, we wouldn’t like that. So they were looking for somebody who was going to sweep the Romans out.

They looked for somebody who was going to overthrow the Herodians, Herod and his dynasty, because they were corrupt and they were way too close to the Romans. So we’re going to get rid of them too, even though at least on the surface, they’re a Jewish ruling dynasty. We want to get rid of them. And they were looking for somebody who was going to come in and reestablish the kingdom that David had set up and usher in this golden age for Israel. They were looking for somebody who was going to come in as a political and military leader, who was going to right all the wrongs and fix everything and make everything in Israel wonderful. And that’s why he told the disciples, don’t tell anybody.

When Peter said, you’re the Messiah, Jesus said, don’t tell anybody, not because he was saying, that’s wrong. Hey, you got it wrong. Don’t tell anybody that he’s the Messiah because he had not come yet in the way that they were expecting. Now, there will come a time where he overthrows all the wicked rulers, where he sets up a perfect kingdom, where He rules on the throne of David forever, that day will come, but that day is still in the future for us.

This time He had come for a very different reason that He outlines in verse 22 with what He says, the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed and be raised up on the third day. What He had come to do was very different from their expectation of this man who was going to whoop up on the Romans and set up a golden age. He had come to suffer at the hands of the Romans. And if the people got wind that he is the Messiah, it was totally going to cause an uproar and cause them to be trying to push him in a direction that he was not sent to go. He had come to suffer at the hands of the Romans.

He had come to be rejected by his own people, these people who would have tried to usher him in and put him on the throne. God’s plan required that he be rejected by those people, especially by the religious leaders who should have been the first to recognize him for who he was, but didn’t. He had come to be killed, which was, in their minds, it was unthinkable that the Messiah would be killed, would be executed, especially that the Messiah would be crucified. It was considered the most humiliating way that somebody could be put to death. But he had also come to rise, to rise from the dead, he says in verse 22.

And he says specifically on the third day, and this also is something that they didn’t really have a category for in their minds. The Jewish people at that time had a concept of a general resurrection at the end of time, but as far as somebody coming and coming back to life at this point in time when we’re not talking about the end of days, that wasn’t something they were expecting, and so everything about who he was and what he’d come to do was out of step with what they expected if they heard that term Messiah. And that’s why he tells them, don’t tell them yet. It’s because they wouldn’t understand.

If they found out he was the Messiah, they would have tried to make him a conquering king instead of the suffering servant that he’d come to be. The bottom line is he was not the kind of Messiah that they expected. But he doesn’t have to wait for us to understand everything in order for him to be what he claims. I think even his followers looked at him, even up to the time of the crucifixion, saying, this is not supposed to be this way. When he talked about laying down his life and being raised up the third day, Peter was telling him, no, we’ll never let it happen. Even his closest followers didn’t understand what it meant for him to be the Messiah. Did that stop him from being the Messiah?

No. So, his lordship does not depend on our understanding. For him to be lord of my life does not require that I understand everything that he is doing. Have you ever been confused by what his plans were for your life? Yeah. Some of you, I think, are afraid to shake your head. Are you afraid I’m going to ask you publicly what it was? See, I already know the answer. If you’ve walked with Jesus for any length of time, you’ve been confused by his plans for your life. And maybe, just maybe you get to the other side of it and you get some idea of, oh, that’s what that was for. Sometimes that’s not the case. Sometimes we never figure out why we went through this.

But if he’s Lord of my life, I don’t get to say, no, I’m not going to do things your way because I don’t really understand that. Or you can’t be who you claim to be because this didn’t work out this way. This is the way we sometimes deal with Jesus or deal with God the Father. Well, I’m not going to worship him because this happened in my life. Years ago, I spent a lot of time talking with a man who had completely walked away from the Lord because his sister died of cancer.

there are a lot of reasons that could that we could look at in our lives and say i don’t understand why that happened i don’t understand why i went through that so i i don’t believe in you anymore okay jesus either is and if you’re going through a time of difficulty please understand i’m not trying to minimize that. Everybody in this room has been through something traumatic in life. But Jesus either is who he says he is or he is not. And it has nothing to do with what you or I went through or are going through. The bottom line for all of this is Jesus either walked out of that grave 2,000 years ago or he didn’t.

And all the miscarriages or stillbirths that I’ve ever experienced for one of my children. They don’t change that. Any of the traumatic life situations, he is who he is regardless of whether I understand what’s happening around me or not. And the disciples were about to go through some traumatic things. Losing this man that they loved so dearly that they had walked with for years, seeing him go to the cross, they weren’t going to understand it, but their lack of understanding didn’t change the fact that he’s Lord. And so this passage begins and it ends with accounts of people being confused about who Jesus is.

Even the people he’s talking to, they still don’t understand the Messiah came to suffer this time, not to rule. But in the middle, in the middle of all this confusion, oh, we think he’s John the Baptist. Oh, we think he’s come to set up his kingdom. In the middle of that, there’s this moment of remarkable clarity that is the focus of this passage. And that’s that Jesus is Lord. He is the Messiah, and His Lordship demands a personal response. As I’ve already pointed out, the disciples were quick to answer for everybody else in verse 19, but that wasn’t enough. And when we get to verse 20, Jesus called them to account personally for who they thought he was. Who do you say that I am?

That word there, we see it translated as but. It’s a Greek word that points out a contrast, telling us that we can put aside everything that came before. Take what everybody else says about Jesus. Take what everybody else thinks about Jesus. take all of their opinions, take them, roll them up in a ball, and set them aside. They go over here. They’re irrelevant. They’re over there, but we’re not even looking at that anymore. Now, who do you say that I am? The only thing that matters in that moment was their answer to that question. The only thing that matters for us is our answer to that question. Each of us has to answer this question for ourselves Who do we think Jesus is?

Jesus is one of the few figures in all of history That everybody who’s heard of him has some opinion on him And if you think that’s a tall claim, I wrote a whole book about it That every religion in the world has some answer to this question, who is Jesus? Now, I think they’re all wrong except one, otherwise I wouldn’t be up here doing this and telling you these things, but they all have an answer because it is such a central question. Who do you say that I am? Each of us has to answer that question. It’s a factual question describing his identity. Is he the Messiah? Did he come as God in human flesh as he claimed and as his closest associates, his disciples eventually became convinced.

It’s a factual question about that. Do I believe the claims that he made? That he would come and that he would die and then three days later he would rise again. Do I believe the claims that he made that through his shed blood we can have forgiveness of sins? Do I believe that he actually did those things? but it’s also a personal question about acknowledging the role that He plays in our lives. Who do you say that I am? I believe that He is everything He claimed to be. I believe that He’s God in human flesh. I believe that He was born of a virgin. I believe that He lived a sinless life of complete obedience to the Father.

I believe that He died on the cross taking responsibility for my sin and for yours. I believe he shed his blood and died. There is the full payment for that sin. I believe that three days later, he rose again from the dead in the same body that he was crucified in. And I believe that one day he is coming back to rule and to reign and to judge and to set all things to right. I believe that. But I can believe all of that and still not submit to it. I can believe all of that. I can intellectually believe all of that and still not receive him as the Lord of my life. So it’s more than just a factual question, who is he? It’s also a personal question of who is he to you.

What does who he is mean in your life? What role does he play? Is he your Savior? Is he your Lord? nothing matters more than the way we answer these questions and if you’re not sure about your answer or how to make your answer what it ought to be it’s not just enough to believe that he is those things but he calls us to put our faith in him that means trusting him as our one and only savior submitting to him as our lord and if you’ve never done that before, it’s very simple. It’s not very easy because our pride gets in the way, but it’s very simple. We have to acknowledge that we’ve sinned and that our sin separates us from a holy God.

And that’s difficult because we want to believe that we’re better than we are. I grew up in a Christian family. I grew up as a kid who was too scared of my parents to really do anything too wrong. And yet I had to acknowledge that I’d sinned against God. And even if we’re good in our behavior, our attitudes and our hearts are sinful before the Lord. So we have to acknowledge that there’s a problem. And we have to recognize that that’s the reason Jesus came, was to die on the cross, to pay for our sins because you and I could never do enough good to undo the wrong that we’ve done. And then we believe that He died not just to pay for sin in the abstract, but He died to pay for my sin.

And then He rose again three days later to prove it. And if we believe that, we believe all of that, that we’ve sinned, there’s a problem, Jesus is the only answer. He paid for the sin in full. He rose again the third day. Then all that’s necessary is for us to say, I believe he did that for me. And I trust in the payment he made, that he’s the only way I can get to heaven, that he’s the only way I can be forgiven. He’s the only way I can be right with the Father. See, we take what he did and we put our trust in that.

And this morning, wherever you’re seated, if you’ve never received that forgiveness, if you believe that he is who he said he was, if you believe that he paid for your sin like he said he would, then right where you are, you can ask him for that forgiveness and you’ll have it.

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