and please be seated. And if you have a Bible, let me invite you to turn with me to Matthew chapter 17, this morning, verses 22 to 23, as we continue our way. The last few weeks, we've been on the mountain of divine majesty. We saw the transfiguration, the glory of God was revealed from the inside out in Jesus.
And then last week, we saw the valley of human misery where Jesus heals a young man. Today, we hear Jesus remind us of the principle work of his ministry, what he chiefly, most supremely, came to do. That is what's going to happen to him. And what is that?
Let me invite you to hear it from his own words, Matthew chapter 17, verses 22 and 23. This is the word of God. As they were gathering in Galilee, Jesus said to them, the Son of Man is about to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him, and he will be raised on the third day. And they were greatly distressed.
Amen. This is God's word. Let's look to him in prayer. Our Father, we ask that you would speak.
You would help us to hear what Jesus spoke, and by the work of the Holy Spirit, in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Jesus preaches, teaches a short, straightforward sermon here, unembellished, unillustrated, the unvarnished truth. And he pointedly tells his disciples, he's about to be killed, and he's about to be raised.
And now this is not the first time he's told them this. And if you've been paying attention in the Gospel of Matthew, you'll note that he has repeated himself here. Why does he repeat himself? And what does he tell them is actually going to happen?
And how is that helpful for any of us? And how should we respond? Let's think about those things together. First, I mean, why does he repeat himself?
He hasn't lost his mind, but he had already, just if you have your eyes on the text, turn over to chapter 16, verse 21, he had just said that he himself must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and the chief priests and scribes, and be killed and on the third day be raised. And you may remember, Peter's response to that was, never Lord, never. And Jesus will again later explicitly say once more in chapter 20, verse 18, if you turn there. He'll say, see, we're going to Jerusalem and the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the scribes and they will condemn him to death and deliver him over to the Gentiles, and he will be mocked and flogged and crucified, and he will be raised on the third day.
What's he up to? Why so many repetitions? Well, on the one hand, it's because he's a good teacher. Certainly, and good teachers repeat themselves.
Good teachers know that their students are forgetful about even the most important things, and we let those things slip through our minds. And that's certainly the case here with the disciples, but he also knows that good teachers don't assume their students understand everything the first time they hear it, and that likewise is true. And so, Luke will actually tell us in the same passage in Luke 9, verse 44, Jesus preffices his words here by saying, let these words sink into your ears. In other words, let them penetrate your mind, take them into your heart.
And Jesus knows that he has to tell them the most important thing about his ministry again and again, which is his death and resurrection, because they just aren't getting it. And if they lived with Jesus for three years and walked the earth with him in his flesh, and still needed to be told again and again, how much more do we need likewise? Oh, don't get tired of the old, old story. In fact, you need it pounded into your head.
Luther put it this way, here I must take counsel of the gospel, I must harken to the gospel which teaches me not what I ought to do. That is the proper office of the law. But what Jesus Christ, the Son of God, has done for me to it that he suffered and died to deliver me from sin and death. The gospel wills me to receive this and to believe it.
And this is the truth of the gospel. And it's also the principle article of Christian doctrine. So he goes on to say, most necessary is it, therefore, that we should know this article well, teach it unto others and beat it into their heads continually. This is why the Lord himself actually appointed a table for us, a table to be partaken of regularly, for the bread is the symbol of the body of Christ, given for the life of the world and the blood.
Well, the cup is poured out and it represents his blood spilled for us. And week after week, week after week, we need to be brought to the foot of the cross. And reminded that it is not what we do for Jesus, but what Jesus did do for us that reconciles us to God. And that's the first thing.
Why does he keep repeating himself? But what does he repeat himself about? Well, notice the three things Jesus emphasizes here. First, Jesus will be delivered into the hands of men.
Notice that language verse 22, as they were gathering in Galilee, Jesus said to them, the son of man is about to be delivered into the hands of men. Now, some translations, and you may have one in front of you, say Jesus will be betrayed into the hands of men. And that is one way to translate the verb. And that points us, of course, to Judas, who went to the chief priests in Matthew 26 and said, what will you give me if I deliver him over to you?
And they paid him 30 pieces of silver. But the word itself can mean something much less specific than betrayal, something more general like hand over or to give over. And of course, Judas delivers him into the hands of wicked men. But then those scribes and the chief priests and the Pharisees and the Sadducees will themselves deliver Jesus into the hands of wicked men.
And then the civil leaders of Israel will deliver him into the hands of wicked men. And the Roman rulers will finally hand him over into the custody of armed soldiers who will then inflict the final punishment. But it's not just them. In Acts chapter two, we learn it is God the Father himself who does so.
Peter at Pentecost in preaching that Jesus is the true Messiah and Savior says this in Acts chapter two, verse 22 and following. He says this, men of Israel, hear these words. Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst. As you yourselves know, this Jesus delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.
God raised him up loosing the pangs of death because it was not possible for him to be held by it. Here what Peter is preaching, Jesus was crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. They had wicked intentions and they did an evil thing. But Peter also says that Jesus was delivered up according to the definite plan of God.
And that he was delivered up according to the foreknowledge of God. That before this event ever happened, God the Father had planned for this to happen. We see the same truth in Acts chapter four. Acts chapter four, Peter gets released from prison and they regather and the disciples lift up a prayer to God.
They join their voices to the sovereign Lord saying in verse 27, truly in this city, they were gathered together against your holy servant, Jesus whom you anointed, both Herod and Pilate, along with the Gentiles of the people of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place. That is Jesus was delivered into the hands of men to do with him as they wanted by the will of God. And this reminds us that the plan and purpose of God, this was agreed to in the councils of eternity, so to speak, when God the Father and God the Son of God the Holy Spirit, willed the covenant of redemption. That is God the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit agreed together that the Father would send his Son to the cross and the Son said, I will go to the cross and the Holy Spirit enabled and supported the Messiah in his earthly ministry as he went to the cross for our redemption.
It was not unplanned, it was not sprung on Jesus as a surprise and he was not a victim of circumstances, run amok or rebellious people undermining his purposes or the devil gaining an upper hand. It was what he was born for. It's what he came to do and that's so important. It reminds us again that what Jesus did is not plan B, that Jesus didn't come first, hoping to establish his kingdom among the Jews, but then he was rejected and it didn't work out so well.
And so that's when he decided plan B will have to rescue the Gentiles another way by my death. No, that's not what happened. God sent his Son to die and to rise. Isaiah 53, it was the will of the Lord to crush him.
He has put him to grief. There's some wonderful things then to learn from this for our comfort and our assurance. I mean, it's a helpful reminder to us that in every action among humans, there are two wills at work. There is the sinful will of man and there's the holy will of God and these run concurrently.
I mean, at the same time, lawless men were putting Jesus to death in order to get rid of him. God the Father was putting Jesus to death in our place in order to spare us, all who trust in him, just as Joseph. So long before had said in Genesis 50, 20, well, after his brothers had sold him into slavery, you remember, and then God raised him to be the right hand of Pharaoh and then his brothers are there begging food from him and he's, they're right in his hand. But he doesn't take his revenge.
No, he says, you meant it for evil. But God meant it for good for the saving of many lives. And so Jesus here wants his disciples to know ahead of time that things are not spinning wildly out of control. He's no victim, but he's the Lord of heaven and earth freely choosing this path for himself.
And then we might say what an encouragement that would be for them to hear it and should be to us. Jesus loved us and gave himself for us. And as Jesus said in John 10, for this reason the Father loves me because I lay down my life, that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down in my own accord.
I have authority to lay it down and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I receive from my Father. The Father, Jesus says, loves him for that. Do we?
And don't we know that just as the life of Jesus is in the hands of sovereign providence, the agreed upon plan and purposes of God? So ours is too. I mean, do we have this kind of confidence and assurance, the kind that Jesus wants us to have? You remember what he said in Matthew 10, 29, are not two sparrows sold for a penny.
Not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not therefore, you have more value than many sparrows. You hear what he's saying?
He's saying even the most little and insignificant things. Things you don't even realize are happening when they're happening, like a hair dropping out and falling to the ground. These things don't happen apart from your Father who loves you and values you. Now secondly, Jesus points us not only to himself being delivered, but notice he will be killed, verse 23.
And they will kill him. He knows this, he doesn't hide from it, and he didn't run like Jonah. And there is a good news then for us in his death. Why did he have to be killed?
Why did Jesus have to be killed? He had to be killed if we were to be spared. Our first Father Adam, you remember, was told by God back in that garden of Eden, that garden of luxury, that garden of paradise. If you disobey me, dying you will die.
Son, eat of everything in this garden that I have provided for you, except for from one tree. And if you eat, dying you will die, for the wages of sin is death. Physical death in the separation of the soul from the body, spiritual death in the separation of the person, the rebellious creature, from the enjoyable presence of a holy God who is life itself, and eternal death, in the continued loss of all joy, and the loss of all happiness in the presence of God. Instead, receiving the judgment of hell which we rebels deserve, and which we prefer, which we chose.
And so the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Lord, for all who put their trust in him, and for all who do, we find what? That in his death, he's the Passover Lamb, slain that we might be spared covered under his blood. That in his death, he provided purification for our sins. That is that we might be washed clean from the filth of our sin in the eyes of God.
And that in him we might be forgiven for our sins, for without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins, but by the shedding of blood, and not the blood of bowls and coats, but by the blood of a man, a man standing in substitute for you, we are released from what we deserve. And he made propitiation for our sins, that is by receiving to himself the wrath of God due to us and taking it away from us. And he redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. And so he reconciled us to God.
He made friends of enemies, making peace by the blood of his cross. And besides all of that, all that he did for us in dying for us, we also have this. We again have an answer to the problem of evil we posed last week. Last week, and pardon if you weren't here, there was a young boy who had terrible seizures, who would often fall into the fire, often into the water, and a desperate father brought the boy to Jesus.
He healed him. And we learned that he was also a boy possessed by a demon. So he suffered terrible physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual miseries. And we noted in light of that, in light of human misery, we noted that some people say, well, you know, if God exists, and he's all powerful, then he must be uncaring.
Because otherwise, he wouldn't permit human suffering if he's able to stop, but he would. Others would say, no, no, if he exists, and he's good in caring, then he must not be all powerful. So he simply can't stop human suffering. It's out of his control.
Or some would say, well, human misery just proves that God doesn't exist at all, and it's foolish to believe in him. And part of our answer last week, I want to remind you of it, to see an extension of the answer this week, part of it last week was to know what the Bible teaches. That is, that misery does really exist. It's not only the boy's experience, but our own experience of misery attests.
And that God exists, and is all powerful, as demonstrated by Jesus, God incarnate, simply commanding the demon to leave, and the demon does what Jesus tells it to do. He's power, all power. And that God is loving, as demonstrated by Jesus in having compassion on this young man, and healing him in mercy. And that God does exist, God incarnate, God in the flesh in Jesus.
And so we said Romans 828 is true, that God has good purposes for his people working all things together for good, for those who love him, and are called according to his purpose. Now I don't know how that answer sat with you this week, if it sat with you at all, but I did just repeat myself so you could hear it again, like all good teachers do. But that's not the complete answer to the problem of evil. And I won't say what comes next is either, but this is really important, folks.
God's response to the problem of sin and misery is the suffering of the Lord Jesus. For however much we might want to shake our fist at God and yell at him for the miseries of this life, and we do. The God we're angry at has not kept himself aloof from the miseries of this life. He is not far off, he is not untouched.
He stooped down to enter our experience. He was stricken, smitten, and afflicted. He became a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. He was falsely accused, wrongly condemned, nailed to a cross.
And this also is what we need when we are suffering. So often what we need is not somebody who can simply point out to us the ways our suffering isn't so bad, or the ways it could be worse, but who can't lift a finger and don't to help us. Instead what we need is someone to come alongside us who can say, I have been there myself. I've been through that.
I know what it's like. I know how painful it is. And I know what you need. I'm here to help you.
There is no other religion in the world which says the Creator came to suffer by His creatures, for His creatures, and to suffer with us, that He might sympathize with us and all our suffering. So whatever else is going on, it's certainly true. He gets us if you saw that commercial. He has been where we are, and He gets us.
He understands us, but it is more than that. And we haven't told the whole story. If we haven't pointed out, He also rescues us. He has been on the cross where we ought to be, and He was killed for us.
So He was delivered into the hands of men for us. He was killed for us, and Jesus goes on to say, and He will be raised for us. Verse 23, they will kill Him, and He will be raised on the third day, just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish. So the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.
And just as Jonah walked again upon the earth, so, too will Jesus. And Jesus knows this is gonna happen too. He knows that the grave will not win. He knows that the tomb will not contain Him.
That death will not have the victory. What, steel, that must have put in His backbone on His way to that cross, despising in shame. How could He endure it? Well, for the joy that was set before Him, what joy?
He could suffer the shame of the cross, despising it, knowing it wasn't the end, because He knew the joy that was set before Him. On the one hand, the joy, He prayed of in John 17, the joy of His rising to glory and returned to the Father to be glorified in the presence of the Father with the glory He had with Him before the world existed. He looked forward to that return. But also His joy to share that glory with those He came to redeem, for He came to bring many sons and daughters to glory.
That joy, the joy of having you with Him was set before Him. And He rejoiced that by His death and resurrection, He would secure that future for us. How important that is this resurrection? Well, if He didn't rise, we're still in our sins.
Because if He didn't rise, that death still has a claim on us, because He would still be paying the wages of sin, which is death, and therefore He would not have satisfied the debt we owe. And if that was the case, then you and I who believe in Jesus risen from the dead are to be pitied among all men. The Apostle puts it in 1 Corinthians 15, for then we would have no hope beyond this life. We would be going to meet God in our own sins if Christ hasn't suffered for us sins and satisfied.
Divine justice on our behalf. And so then if there is no resurrection, our preaching in His vein and our faith is in vain, and we're all misrepresenting God. We're all lying about God if we say that God raised Him from the dead, if in fact God didn't raise Him from the dead. But we are not fools.
It's as the Apostle Paul. We are not fools for believing and preaching the resurrection. On that third day, the tomb was empty, and he appeared to Mary, and to Peter, and to John, and to the rest of the disciples. And a week later, to doubting Thomas, who missed it the first week, and said, I won't believe it unless I can put my hands on him.
And then he appeared to more than 500 at one time, and the Bible says he walked this earth for 40 days before he ascended into heaven. So the Apostle then gives us this confidence for our own resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15. But in fact, he says Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead.
For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own turn Christ, the first fruits, and then it is coming those who belong to Christ. This then is a reason for joy. The gospel is news that brings joy.
That's the very meaning of the word gospel. It is news. Something has happened that brings joy to those who hear it and believe it. And so I'd ask you, has it brought you joy?
You think that the disciples who first heard it would have rejoiced, right? But did you see how they reacted? This is where we'll close. Did he notice this verse 23?
And then they were greatly distressed. His message didn't sink in to their ears. It went in one ear and out the other. Certainly not the whole of the message.
I mean, maybe they understood that, and this is why they were distressed, that he was going to be delivered over into the hands of men and be killed. But the message of the resurrection didn't hit home. And this is how it is with disciples of Jesus. I mean, did you remember the storyline?
Just review it for a moment. Chapter 14, they see Jesus walking on water. And in a brief moment of faith, Peter says, Lord command me to walk on water with you. And he does until he sees the waves.
And then he, he sinks. And so Jesus then teaches them after that that, well, the Pharisees are wrong. And they've seen the risen Lord walk on water, and they're worried about Jesus offending the Pharisees. When he's the Lord.
And then Jesus teaches them that nothing goes, this is chapter 15, nothing that goes into a person's mouth can make him or her unclean. Only what comes out of the mouth because it comes from the unclean heart. And then they go right out and they meet a syrophoenician, gentile woman who is, in their view, unclean. And Jesus has just said, don't call unclean what is clean, and unclean this is an issue of the heart.
And they meet this woman that Jesus loves, and they say, send her away, get rid of her. And then Jesus feeds, 5,000. But if he loves and fish, months later, they encounter another hungry crowd this time, 4,000. And they just can't imagine where they're going to find food to feed these hungry people.
And then in chapter 16, we find Peter affirming that Jesus is Messiah, the Son of the Living God. Moments later, he tells him, no, Lord. And so here again, he says, I'll be delivered. I'll be killed, and I will rise.
And they're greatly distressed. So understanding is followed by misunderstanding. Progress is followed by failure, and this is their pattern. And this is our pattern too.
This is the pattern of all disciples of Jesus. We move ahead spiritually, and we fall back. And we move ahead, and we fall back. We make progress, and we regress.
Let me ask you, have you begun to believe in your heart that God raised Jesus from the dead, but find that your heart continues to be fickle about finding joy in Jesus? Well, I've given this for you. Jesus is a patient, teacher, and Jesus is a gracious Savior. If you, whoever you are, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
And you will, if not always perfectly in this world, but certainly perfectly in the world to come, you will find that your fullness of joy is in him. Let's pray. Father, thank you that you did what we could not do, that Jesus accomplished what we couldn't accomplish, that he died the death that we deserved, and he rose, having lived the life that we ought to have lived. And he rose for our justification to make us righteous in your eyes, that we could be welcomed and accepted, pardon, forgiven, cleansed.
The sons of daughters bound for glory, owe strength in that confidence in us, the confidence we have in Jesus. In his name I pray, amen. Amen, let's stand together and sing.