I'm going to bring a message
this evening. I've titled it Confessing Christ. Confessing
Christ. Start reading at verse 18 and
go down through verse 26. And it came to pass, as he was
alone praying, his disciples were with him, and he asked them,
saying, Whom say the people that I am? They answering said, John
the Baptist. But some say Elijah, or Elias,
and others said that one of the old prophets is risen again. But he said unto them, But whom
say ye that I am? Peter answering said, The Christ
of God. And he straightly charged them,
and commanded them to tell no man that thing, saying, The Son
of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders,
and chief priests, and scribes, and be slain, and be raised the
third day. And he said to all, if any man
will come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily,
and follow me. For whosoever will save his life
shall lose it, but whosoever will lose his life for my sake,
the same shall save him. For what is a man advantaged
if he gain the whole world and lose himself, or be cast away? For whosoever shall be ashamed
of me, and of my words, of him shall the Son of man be ashamed,
when he shall come in his own glory, and in his father's, and
of the holy angels." There in verse 18, it talks about
our Savior praying. Our Lord was a praying man. You
find so many times in the Scriptures where He prayed. He was a praying man. And He
had His disciples with Him, and oftentimes they went with Him,
and they would hear Him pray, and I'm sure that they prayed
with Him. But oh, what a glorious thing it would be to be able
to be alone with the Lord Jesus Christ and hear Him pray. But we can't hear Him pray, but
we know that He does pray for us now. You know, when He prayed
in John 17, He prayed for us before you and I ever existed.
He said, that those that thou hast given me, even to them which
shall believe on me through their word." So before you and I existed,
our Lord Jesus heard us. And so He was a praying man,
and as He prayed here on this earth, He's praying now, interceding
for us. And His disciples there were
with Him in order to be alone with the Lord Jesus Christ, and
He was a compassionate man. He was a compassionate man. Back
up in verse 11, the last part of that verse, it says, He healed
them that had need of healing. Oh, if a man has need, and he's
in bad shape, and he has a need, Christ will meet that need. He
heals those that have need of healing. Not just anybody. Those
that have need. And then not only that, but then
He fed this multitude. gave the men something, said,
You give them to eat. And he set them down in companies
of fifties, and he took five little loaves of bread and two
fishes and fed them to about five thousand people. But he
asked his disciples after they got through praying, they're
sitting alone, and they're all by themselves, the twelve and
the Lord Jesus Christ. And he asked them, saying, Whom
say the people that I Who do people say that I am? What do
they say about me? What is the scuttlebutt on me? What kind of things are people
talking about me? And then not only did he say
what did the people say, but then he said, For whom say ye
that I am? And so, I want to talk about
confessing Christ. What do you say about the Lord
Jesus Christ? But look what the people say.
Look what the people say. There's lots of different opinions.
It says in verse 19, they answered and said, some say you're John
the Baptist. Remember when Herod thought that John maybe had been
risen again? And he said, how could this be?
I beheaded him because he wanted to see the Lord Jesus Christ.
And oh, there was many opinions. Some said that he was Elijah.
He was the one who called fire down from heaven. And he raised
a dead boy to life. And others said that it was one
of the old prophets that had risen again. But, O beloved,
many opinions, the popular opinions, and there was a multitude of
opinions about our Lord Jesus Christ. And I'm sure when people
talk, who do you think about that Jesus in that? Oh, he probably
lied to you. I think he's a liar to come back.
Oh, no, I believe it's John the Baptist rose again from the dead.
I believe it's Jeremiah. I believe he may be one of them
old prophets. He may be sent. And they talk
about him and what he was, and others say, I don't believe he's
any one of those things. I believe he's an imposter. There
was many opinions about him. And the popular opinions. And
as there was opinions about him those days, there's lots of opinions
about him today. Everybody has an opinion about
the Lord Jesus Christ. Whether it's based on the scriptures,
whether it's based on what God said or not, that don't make
any difference. Everybody has an opinion. They write books
about him, they make movies about him, and I saw where this Sunday
night they're going to have a new special about him, where they
found some sacred writings that said when he was a young boy,
he was a very overbearing child, and that he had an affair with
a woman. So that's an opinion that's out
there about the Lord Jesus Christ. So there's a multitude of opinions.
Some say he's a prophet. All the Muslims say that Christ
is a prophet. They'll admit he's a prophet.
The Jews, even, a lot of them will say he's a prophet. Others
say he's a teacher. Oh, what a glorious teacher.
Others say he's a social reformer, and that he's feeding the poor,
we ought to feed the poor. As he healed the sick, we ought
to build hospitals to heal the sick. Some say he was a great
example. Some say he was a martyr. And
then, of course, they got the historical Jesus. Some say that
he is even a myth, that he didn't really ever exist. Some say that
he's Jesus the Savior. But who did he save? Who is it
that he saves? Did he make an attempt to save?
Or does He actually save sinners? Some say they speak of His blood.
They talk about His blood. And how to clear us from sin.
But what's the effect of that blood? Did that blood when it
was shed, did it put away sin once and for all? That day when
He shed blood? Was my sin put away when Christ
shed His blood on Calvary Street? Or was it put away when I heard
of Him and I believed Him? Oh, no, no. My sin was put away
when he shed his blood on Calvary Street, and God viewed me with
that shed blood before the foundation of the world even. So you see,
they have many opinions. And the voice of the people,
they said, what do the people, whom do the people say that I
am? The voice of the people is not the voice of God. Whatever
the multitude is crying, you cry the opposite. Whichever way
the crowd's going, you go the opposite, and you'll probably
be right. And oh beloved, the voice of the people. But look
what our confession is now. What our confession, what the
believer's confession is. And he says in verse 20, he said
unto them, unto the twelve, But whom say ye, now let's forget
the people, let's get down to you and me. Whom say ye that
I am, Peter answering said, the Christ of God. That's what the
believers, that's what we say about him. We confess that he's
the Christ of God. Christ means the anointed one
of God. The one that God sent, the one
that God approved. Everyone who entered an office
in the Old Testament had to be anointed. They put oil on them,
they anointed their fingers, their thumbs, their toes, their
ears, and then they poured oil over their heads. If you was
in the priesthood, you had to be anointed. If you was a prophet,
you had to be anointed. Whatever you do, you was anointed
to the office. And Christ was sent to be the
Messiah, the Savior, the Redeemer, the one appointed of God Almighty
to save His people from their sin. And he had been promised
since Genesis chapter 3, he had been promised. And Peter says,
we confess that you are that Christ. You're that one anointed
of God from all the time from the scriptures. You're the one
that God sent into this world. You're the anointed one. And
there'll never be an anointed one after you. Huh? Oh my. The only Savior. And that's why
we all have to answer for ourselves. Now look over here in Matthew
16 with me just a minute. This is the same thing over here.
It goes into a little bit more detail in Matthew 16. We all have to answer this for
ourselves. We don't know, and I'll tell
you something, beloved. When we're made new creatures
in Christ, when we're regenerated by the Holy Spirit, when we're
brought to know Christ, we no longer know Him after the fact.
Our opinions that we had before has changed dramatically. You
know, we used to try our dead-level best to get on the good side
of Him, and to please Him, and to dress right, and to walk right,
and to talk right, and speak right, and quit bad habits, take
up new habits, attend church so much, pay tithes, do all kinds
of wonderful things to get on His good side, to stay in His
good graces, to get a blessing. That's anointing after the flash.
Now I know Him after the Spirit. I know He's the Son of God, and
God's the Son. And He came into this world,
beloved, to do for me what I could not do for myself. And no matter
what all of my efforts, I could never, ever do it. And when I
found out He did it all, that's when I quit doing it, and that's
when you quit doing it. And oh, look what it says here.
Our Lord Jesus says to the disciples the same thing here in verse
15, Matthew 16. He saith unto them, Whom say
ye that I am? And Simon Peter answered and
said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. Now watch this. And our Lord
answered and said unto him, O Simon, you are blessed. Simon, son of
Jonah, you are blessed. Your flesh and blood didn't make
you understand this. Peter's flesh and blood didn't
make you understand this. My flesh and blood didn't make
you understand this. This is a revelation. But my
Father in heaven revealed this to you. He's made you know who
I am. Oh my! You see, the Holy Spirit reveals
Him. Look back over in our text. As God and as sinless man, And
we don't follow the opinion of men anymore. We just don't do
that anymore. And every time we get an opportunity
to talk to somebody about the Scriptures, anything, we try
our dead level best to get them pointed to Christ as immediately
as we possibly can. And oh beloved, now look what
we confess about him down here in verse 22. Who say you that I am? We also
say he's our substitute. It says there in verse 22, the
Son of Man must suffer many things. Be rejected of the elders chief
priests described, and be slain, and be raised again the third
day. Everything concerned the Gospels
in that one verse, right there. We believe he must suffer. I confess, beloved, I say he
must. And if he must do it, then know
there's only one reason he must do it, and that's the only way
a sinner can be saved and God can be satisfied. How's sin going
to be put away? We can't put it away. And he
had no sin of his own, so why must he suffer? This sinless
man, this holy man, this glorious man, this Son of Man, this God-man,
why must he suffer? Cause the soul that sinneth it
shall die. And he must suffer many things.
And he started suffering the day he brought into this world.
The day he was born, our Lord Jesus Christ's journey of suffering
started. He was born in a stable and laid
in a manger. My neighbor built him a barn.
Oh, he built him a barn, I'm telling you. And he's got a manger
for his horses. He'd go upstairs in the gloss
of the barn, he's got a manger there, and he just opens up a
little more things. I'll tell you that, don't you? That's a
manger. That's why our Lord Jesus, when
He was born, He wrapped Him in His swaddling clothes and laid
Him in that straw in that manger, in that stable. Started out of
this person. Hour on this earth, suffering.
And then his mother and daddy had to take him and flee into
Egypt because Herod said, I want every child under two years old
and under, I want every male child killed in all of Israel. I want every one that's born,
go find them and kill them because I want to kill this one who's
king of the Jews. I ain't going to have nobody
usurp my throne. And he had to go into Egypt.
Then they brought him back out of Egypt and he lived in obscurity
down in Bethlehem. And then when he started his
public ministry, the very first day he preached in Nazareth,
after he started telling them about the electing sovereign
grace of God, they just rejoiced in his wondrous words. When he
got through talking about the sovereign grace of God, they
wanted to hate him. They got so angry, they took
him out to the brow of the hill and was trying to throw him over
so they could stuff him. His whole life was a life of
suffering. He suffered at the hands of his enemies. That's
bad. Lots and lots of enemies. But
I'll tell you what's worse. Suffering at the hands of his
friends. You know Malachi is the last book in the Old Testament. When you go to Malachi, and in
the book right before you is Zechariah. And you go to Zechariah,
next to the last book in the Old Testament, in chapter 13. Oh, he suffered at the hands
of his enemies. We'd expect to suffer at the hands of the enemies.
That's why our Lord said, it's my own familiar friend who hath
lifted up his heel against me. Look here in Zechariah 13, verse
6. And one shall say unto him, What
are these wounds in thine hands? Then he shall answer, Those with
which I was wounded in the house of my friends." And oh my, Simon, Peter, John,
James, all of them, forsook him and fled, and this is why he
must suffer. Awake, O sword, against my shepherd,
against the man that is my fellow, saith the Lord of hosts. Smite
the shepherd. and the sheep shall be scattered,
and I'll turn mine hands upon the little one." Oh, beloved,
listen, he must suffer many things. And then not only that, but he's
a sacrifice for sin. We confess that he's a substitute. He must suffer, not for himself.
He had no reason to suffer for himself. All of his suffering
was for somebody else. Every suffering he had, was for
somebody. He bore our grace and carried
our sorrows. He has wounded for our transgression,
bruised for our iniquities. All of His sufferings, even the
being born in poverty, was for somebody else other than Himself.
And then not only that, but we confess that He is a sacrifice
for sin, that He must be slain. Must be slain. and all as being
slain, it's the Lamb that was slain. The Lamb was slain as
a sacrifice for Sam, as one who would put away Sam. He was the
just for the unjust, being put to death in the flesh. He himself
bore our sins in his own body on the tree, and Christ Christ,
by the sacrifice of Himself, all that He was, all that it
made Him to be, Him, by the sacrifice of Himself, sanctified by the
offering of the body of Jesus Christ. And then look what else,
not only that, but we confess that He must be rejected of the
elders, chief priests and scribes. Oh my, that means, this is the
Sanhedrin he's talking about here, the elders, the 70 elders,
the chief priests, the scribes, everybody who was anybody. Everybody
who was anybody. The Billy Graham's, the Pat Robertson's
and Jerry Falwell's, the Robert Shuler's, the Jimmy Swaggart's, Everybody
that's seen anybody, turn thumbs down on him. They said, we'll not have this
man reign over us. He's going to get all our converts.
He's going to get all our people. He makes us look bad. He's smarter
than us. He's got more power than us.
More people listening to him than us. So I know what we'll do. We'll
kill him, and we'll run this vineyard by ourselves. We'll
be the husbandmen over this field ourselves. We'll kill the heir."
That's what they said. And our beloved Dennis said he'd
be raised another day. Thank God. Though he must suffer,
must be rejected, must be slain, but all since he satisfied God,
He must be raised again. Oh, bless His name. Death couldn't
hold Him. And beloved, because He must
suffer. He must be rejected. He must
be slain. And since He rose again, that
means that whatever He suffered for, whatever sins He bore, however
much He's rejected, He's accepted of God. And everybody who's accepted
with Him is accepted of God. God raised Him from the dead.
And then look at our, let me hurry quickly. Look down here
now in verse 23. Our confession, not only about
His person, He's the Christ of God. He's our Savior. He's our substitute. He's our
sacrifice. He's our satisfaction. He's our
risen Savior, our risen Lord, setting out God's right hand.
He's raised. And then our confession about
His call. And He said to all of them, all
of them, if any man will come after Me,
let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow
Me. Our confession about His call
then. We've got to come after Him.
We've got to follow Him. Nothing less short of that is
salvation. If He went through such great
agony, must suffer, must be slain, must be rejected in order to
save us from our sins, then there's nothing less, nothing less than
us identifying with Him in His cross. If any man Any man, the
preacher, the person in the pew, it don't make any difference.
Whether he's a child, whether he's an old man, whether he's
a young man, whether he's a woman, it don't make any difference.
Jew, Gentile, bond, or free. If any man, if any man will come
after me, the first thing he's got to do, he's got to turn on
himself. The first person he's got to
declare war against is himself. He got to stand up and say, nothing
to me. He got to turn on himself. There's
nothing to me. There's no salvation in me. There's
no goodness in me. There's no righteousness in me.
There's no strength in me. Huh? Oh, if you come after Him,
not after the opinions of men, not after other people's opinions,
not after what your mother said about Him or your father, not
after what religion says about Him, but He says, well, come
after Me. After Me. We're going to go after
Christ? Let Him deny Himself, turn on
Himself. And there's lots of self we've got to turn on. You
think about all the things about yourself. You're a lover of self,
you're going to turn in to loathe yourself. Ain't that right? You're proud, you're going to
have to hate that proud self and deny him. You're self-righteous
self, you're going to have to hate him and deny him. You're
going to have to deny your good self. You're going to have to
deny your moral self. And you're going to have to deny
your sinful self. That's right. I'll tell you what
to do. Well, you know what Paul said
about it? He said, I had a sentence of death in myself. He just wrote
D.E.A.D. Death! Death! And then watch what he says,
take up his cross. Nobody said take up his cross.
Take up nobody else's, take up your own cross. And those crosses that we'll
have in this world, they come, they're heavier at times than
other times. And the cross, beloved, He takes it daily. And the cross
is a place of death. Death. Death is what the cross
means. That's what it represents. Death. Paul said, I die daily. We've
got to guide ourselves. We've got to mortify ourselves.
And the cross is a place of shame. Shame. It's a place of humiliation. And we take up our cross and
we identify with Christ and say, oh, damn it. Oh, you know, instead
of feeling sorry for ourselves, we should glory in anything that
comes our way. And oh, we should be ashamed. Take up that cross and it's a
place of humiliation. Take our place down there. Let
me show you what we can look over in Galatians with me, just
a minute. Galatians 6, just a moment. This is what the scripture says
about it. What we confess of Him and His
cross. You know, what we confess of
Him, as far as the world is concerned, is the cross. The world, how
many people do you know, when they find out what you believe
and where you attend services at, how many of the people you
know think you're an absolute fool? How could you believe like that?
How could you go out there and hear that stuff? That's a cross. That's a cross. And Christ bore humiliation for
it, we'll be humiliated for it. Christ was shamed for it, for
being who He was, we'll be shamed for who we are if we'll stay
true to the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ and bear our cross
like He bore His. And look what it says here in
Galatians 6.14. But God forbid that I should boast in, rejoice
in, and only one thing, the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. The
world is crucified under me. I see the world and I see it
as something that's dead and rotten and corrupt. You know,
when you see something dead, it's nasty, it's rotten, it's
corrupt. He said, that's what I see the world as, crucified,
dead, rotten, and corrupt. It's crucified to me. And I'm
under the world. The world looks at us and says,
boy, those folks, I don't know why in the world they believe
like that. And then he says, follow me. Then he'll come back
to me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily. And
oh, here's the key. Follow me. Without me, you can
do nothing. And let me show you this. We
confess the worth of a soul. The worth of a soul. This is
why we confess about Christ. We know how precious a soul is.
He says here in verse 24 and 25, For whosoever will save his
life shall lose it. but whosoever will lose his life
for my sake, the same shall save him. For it is a man advantaged
if he gain the whole world and lose himself or be cast away."
Oh, the worth of a soul, the unspeakable value of a soul.
If a man saves his life, saves his life from suffering and identifying
with Christ and confessing Christ, and identifying with His cross,
the shame and humiliation of His cross, and when we say the
cross, we're identifying that that's the only... You know,
here's the way it is, the gospel is all-inclusive. It includes... You know, come all ye sinners,
come to the Lord Jesus Christ. It's inclusive, but there's only
one gospel. And the gospel is self-exclusive.
It will bring everybody in who will come in. And willing to
come in. But there ain't but one gospel.
And that's the gospel of the cross. And when we talk about
the cross, we're talking about the death of Christ. And if I
could be any other way for God to save a sinner other than the
death of Christ. Any other way for God to redeem
sin other than through the Lord Jesus Christ. There's any other
Savior other than the Lord Jesus Christ. Anybody else that raised
from the dead. Anybody else that's in God's right hand. Well, then
we've got a false confession. But if we identify with that
cross and refuse, refuse to let that cross say anything other
than what God says about it, then a person tries to save his
life and says, oh, I believe Jesus loves everybody. I believe
Jesus died for everybody. Go ahead and save your life.
Go ahead and save yourself that shame and humiliation. Go ahead
and walk an hour. Go ahead and make a confession.
Go ahead and say, I don't, you know, I don't think it's, I don't
think it's that serious. I think you make too much out
of it. I don't think it's that important. I've got plenty of
time. Go ahead. Let somebody save your life,
and they'll lose it. And they'll lose it for all time
and eternity. Now watch this. Now I love this
right here. But whosoever will lose his life,
this is what I like about it, for my sake. The same shall save it. Now let
me ask you a question. Whosoever shall lose his life
for my sake shall save it. Now, you know, the love of Christ
constrains us. Faith works by love. Now, in
having Christ, in having the Lord Jesus Christ, He did everything
for our sake. And we give ourselves to Him.
His life is our life. When we lose our life, when it
says, when we lose our life, when they say, what kind of life
did we lose? Tell us the life we lost. You know what life I had? Sin,
guilt, condemnation, corruption, death and sin. That's the life
that I lost. That's the life that I'm that
I gave to everything else. Now, they want to save this life
over here just like the life we had, and we lost our life,
and in losing our life, we didn't lose anything. We left nothing
but gain. Oh, bless His holy name. What
did we find? Oh, for my sake, my sake, Oh
Lord, is there anybody here who's a believer that wouldn't want
his whole Christ to have his whole being? And longs for the
day when Christ has it all? And that's why he says, like
David, I'll be satisfied when I awake in your likeness? Is
there not anybody here who's a believer that wants his whole
life exposed to the Lord? That wants to be an open glass?
Huh? Losing! Oh Lord, losing! I don't
want it! Take it! Take it! Oh my, what
did we find? We found Christ. We found salvation. It's life. Our lives have been
saved. Like Paul said, I want to win
Christ. I want to be found in Christ.
I want to know Christ. And oh my, look at the gain or
the loss. In verse 25, for what has a man
advanced if he gained the whole world? If a man in this world
gets everything he wanted, If God let a man have everything
his heart desired, let him have the house he wanted, let him
have the amount of money he wanted, let him have the automobiles
he wanted, let him have the children he wanted, let him have the silver
and gold he wanted, let him have the job he wanted, let him have
everything he wanted in this world. If God gave him every
bit of it, and he had all that advantage, and didn't know God,
what difference would it make? And that's what that means there.
Nobody's going to get the whole world. You're going to get what
you want out of the world is what this is saying. The man
gained the whole world that he wanted. Everything that he ever
wanted. And lose his soul. What has he
gained? What has he advantaged? What's the advantage of having
everything you ever wanted? An endless Christ. And lose himself or be cast away.
Now watch this now, and I'm through. Look what we confess about him
in verse 26. We confess his word and him himself. For whosoever shall be ashamed
of me and of my word. Ashamed of me? Ashamed of Christ? How can it be? Huh? As a human being, that's what
it's called. Ashamed of Christ. But ashamed of Christ? I'll tell
you what, if you're ashamed of his word, you're ashamed of him.
And if we're ashamed of Him, we're ashamed of His Word. Him
and His Word go together. You can't have Him without what
He says. And if you take what He says, you've got to take Him.
They go together. You can't have Him and then divide
His Word up. He said, this man must be ashamed
of me and my words. That's why He said, He told them,
He said, except you believe I am He, you'll die in your sins. The words that I speak, they're
not mine, but the words of Him that sent me. Let me find that
song here right quick. The Shade of Christ. I can't find it. But anyway, it's in there. I
don't remember which one it is. I may be ashamed of it, but we
confess Him and His words both. We confess Him. All that He has,
and we confess His words. And the only thing that grays
our hearts is that we don't know enough about Him and enough about
His Word. Why would we ever be ashamed
of Christ? And what's what it says now,
for if you be ashamed of me and of my words, He said, the same
person who does that shall the Son of Man be ashamed. Oh my
goodness. Christ be ashamed of you? When
he shall come in his own glory, three glories here now, Christ's
going to come again, and he's going to come in his own glory,
he's going to come in his Father's glory, and he's going to come
in the glory of the holy angels. All of them are going to come
in their glory. And he says, and when I come, wouldn't it
be awful? And we stand up and say, oh Lord, I'm ashamed of you. That's why Peter
said, let's not be ashamed of him before he's appearing. Don't
be ashamed. If you're ashamed of me, I'm
going to be ashamed of you. If you don't confess me, I won't
confess you. When He comes again, wouldn't that be awful? For Christ
to be ashamed of you when He comes? Of all the times, you
know, He said He's not ashamed to be called our bread. God's
not ashamed to be called our God. And wouldn't it be awful
to go through your whole life and come to find out when the
Lord comes back that you're ashamed of Him? You had that opportunity to preach
the word as it is, and you did. You had that opportunity to tell
people who I really am, who I am. That's the way it will be.