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Living Hope SDA Church

Chris Holland

Why Do We Behold Him?

Behold the Lamb of God who takes away our sin.

Behold the Lamb of God, the life and light of men.

Behold the Lamb of God who died and rose again.

Behold the Lamb of God who comes to take away our sins.

The DVD rack is filled with things to behold, those of us that are a little bit older.

The world is filled with all kinds of things to behold.

Is beholding a man who lived some 2, 000 years ago and died the Roman execution really relevant today?

Or is there possibly something even more dangerous that we face today in Christianity?

Thinking we're beholding the Lamb, but our attention focused elsewhere.

Being comfortable enough to think we're okay, but in reality being desperately lost.

And so today, our prayer is quite simple.

Some of you may be familiar with a tree that is native to this part of the world.

In fact, we have friends here from Ohio where just this last week there was a festival celebrating this tree.

It is the largest edible fruit indigenous to the United States.

It's the cousin of cherimoya and soursop.

It really has tropical flavors, but native to North America.

It's fairly easy to grow, and in fact, they grow all over the place.

If you pay attention along the C&O canal, you'll find them all along it.

But there's something very important that must happen with a pawpaw seed in order for it to grow.

In fact, if you eat a pawpaw and then save 1 of the many seeds that are within its flesh, you need to do something because if you simply put it in the ground, it likely will not grow.

You see, pawpaw seeds need to be stratified.

It's a technical term and I'm not a biologist, but this is what it essentially means.

Those seeds need to experience between 60 and 100 hours, excuse me, 60 and 100 days below 35 degrees Fahrenheit.

And what that does is it actually sends the seed into complete death and dormancy, and it's only when that death and dormancy comes that then the embryo of the seed can be brought to life.

It is an important lesson for the Christian experience.

You see, because in order to experience life to its fullest in the Christian experience, it requires something.

And that is, it requires our total surrender and our total and complete death.

And this is the context of the passage we will study today in Matthew chapter 16.

If you have your Bibles, I would invite you to open to Matthew the 16th chapter.

The event that we will look at today is also recorded in Mark chapter 8 and Luke chapter 9.

But there in Matthew chapter 16, we find that Jesus and His disciples have traveled to Caesarea Philippi.

Caesarea Philippi was an interesting city because it was a center of pagan worship.

In fact, the ancient towns as we find them in the Old Testament of Baal Gad and Baal Hermon were in that very region.

But what made Caesarea Philippi so interesting is that under Roman rule, Augustus gave that piece of land to Herod the Great.

And Herod the Great in turn built a temple in honor of Caesar Augustus and then dedicated that temple to him.

Then after he died, Herod's son Philip took over Caesarea Philippi and said, I have a marvelous idea.

Let's not only dedicate this city to the Caesar, but let's dedicate it to me as well.

He honored Tiberius Caesar and his own name.

It was to be distinguished from the Caesarea that was on the coastline, But it was in this pagan center that we find Jesus giving this teaching of Matthew 16.

13, Jesus asks A very important question.

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

The disciples of course answered him, and they answered Him saying, well, some say you're John the Baptist, some Elijah, and others Jeremiah, or excuse me, 1 of the prophets.

In that pagan center of emperor worship, Jesus asked the question, who do you say that I am?

And he asked that question today to each and every 1 of us.

And then Peter, and I don't know about you, I can unfortunately relate all too well to Peter.

Opening your mouth before you let your brain catch up.

But here Peter, with no apparent hesitation, says, You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.

And Jesus answered and said to him, Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven." You see, Peter acknowledged the reality that Jesus was the Christ, the Anointed 1, the promised Messiah.

But as we will find in just a moment, Peter's concept of the Messiah was not a biblical construct.

It was rather the construct of the Bible mixed with nationalism.

Peter had a pure faith, but his belief was skewed.

And as was read in the Scripture reading, as Jesus begins to describe the journey of His Messiahship and why He was there and why He had been anointed and what He had been anointed for.

The journey to Jerusalem that led to death.

You see, Jesus said that He must suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed and be raised the third day, but here's the problem.

That didn't fit what Peter had formed in his mind as what the Messiah was to be.

Now, that wasn't a part of the plan, you see.

The Messiah was the 1 who was going to take political control of Israel to literally sit on the throne of David, to remove the Romans from their territory.

This didn't fit the politically motivated Messiah that Peter had formed in his mind that would eventually lead them to eternal bliss.

Now Peter's Messiah was concerned with human and earthly problems.

But you know the problem that Peter faced is not too far removed from the same problem we face today.

Many of us have false expectations of God.

We have a false construct of who God is and what His purpose is in our life.

We serve this self-made, self-worship twisted with Jesus, and it makes us feel okay enough that we come to church every week, or at least when we conveniently can come.

And Peter's skewed view of the Messiah led him to tell Jesus, Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, Far be it from you, Lord, this shall not happen to you.

And in probably some of the most shocking words of the entire Bible.

Jesus, who had just affirmed Peter for being the first to acknowledge him as Messiah, says these words, but he turned and said to Peter, get behind me, Satan!

You are an offense to me, For you are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men." Jesus was clear.

He didn't have a politically correct answer so everybody felt comfortable.

He said to Peter, get behind Me, because you are more like the son of perdition than you are Me.

If you look at other translations, the words used are stumbling block or hindrance.

That word in its original means to literally cause someone to sin.

Peter, while you're the first to acknowledge me as the Christ, You are tempting me.

You are tempting me in a way you should not.

In fact, the word used there is the same word used by Jesus when He says, if your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out, the word that causes.

You see, Peter's denial of the journey that Jesus needed to go on was a literal stumbling block.

And Peter, the 1 whose profession of faith of Jesus as Messiah, was now the potential stumbling block.

You are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men.

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Why Do We Behold Him?

Transcript

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