Eyes ont he Prize Matthew 16:21-23

Everyone comes into this world with the opportunity either to make your life count or to throw it away. What is interesting about life is that none of us knows how long we'll be here. Some babies never leave the womb.

Other humans pass early in life. Others make it to middle age, while some die old. But even if you die in old age, life still goes by fast. People who live a century on this earth remarkably describe life as short, and we know this from our experience.

Before you know it, a year goes by, then another, and then you look back and think, where did the decade go? It's common to hear parents remark how quickly their children grew up. The days when they were little don't seem too far back, and now they're adults.

We know the shortness of life not only from our experience, but also because the Bible tells us this is so. James 4 .14 says, what is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.

I once heard a pastor say that life is like taking a breath on a cold winter day. You see your breath, it goes further away from you, and then it disappears. That's your life. It will be over sooner than you think.

This is true, even if you live a century. The sad reality of life is that most people squander the time they have been given. Instead of redeeming the time, as Scripture tells us, people waste their time.

Many people fill their lives with distractions. When you want nothing to do with God, what people do is fill their lives with idols so that one can cope with life. People are bored, and something needs to occupy one's mind and desires.

But the Bible pleads with people not to throw away your life. Psalm 90, verse 10 and 12 says, the years of our life are 70, or even by reason of strength, 80. Yet their span is but toil and trouble. They are soon gone, and we fly away.

So teach us to number our days, that we may get a heart of wisdom. The sad reality, though, is that most people squander their days foolishly. But the wise person makes every day count. The wise person is mission-minded, goal-oriented.

The wise person realizes that he or she is not here to live for oneself. You are here to live for God. You are here to live faithfully all the way to the finish line. The great example that we have about how to live is our Lord Jesus Christ.

There is one man who never wasted a moment, who had his eyes fixed on the finish line. His eyes fixed on his purpose in life. This morning as we continue our sermon series through Matthew, we are going to look at the life of Jesus and the focus of His life.

He knew His mission, and His focus never wavered from that mission. So this time, I encourage you to turn in a Bible with me to Matthew 16. We'll be looking at verses 21 through 23, such as three verses.

And if you're using a red Bible, it's on page 977. This sermon is titled, Eyes on the Prize. And I'll begin by reading the text. Matthew 16, 21 through 23. From that time, Jesus began to show His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed and on the third day be raised.

And Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him, saying, far be it from You, Lord. This shall never happen to You. But He turned and said to Peter, get behind Me, Satan. You are a hindrance to Me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.

Here's our big idea. Follow Jesus' example of a mission-focused life. Follow Jesus' example of a mission-focused life. And we're going to see two ways how in this text. But before we jump in, let me give you a little recap of where we've been.

Last week, we took a break from Matthew. And we had a Christmas sermon from Luke chapter 2. But two weeks ago, when we were back in Matthew, we looked at verses 13 through 20 of Matthew 16. It took us two Sundays to get through that text.

The text instructed us to understand that every person has to decide on the world's rightful king. And we saw four reasons why. The first reason is that many know there is something otherworldly about Jesus.

Secondly, with God's help, some come to believe in His uniqueness above all others. Thirdly, the King's teaching alone is triumphant. And lastly, those who come to Him hold the keys to heaven and hell.

And the one who sincerely proclaims that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, belongs to the world's rightful king. And by the way, if you ever miss a sermon, they're on our website, and you can go there to listen.

Now, this leads us back to our text this morning that we've already read, but now we'll zero in on. And let's begin by looking at verse 21, where Matthew writes here that from that time, Jesus began to show His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the leadership in Jerusalem, which was made up of the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes.

And He told them that He was going to be killed by them, and He was going to be raised on the third day. To this point, Jesus' ministry had predominantly been in the Galilean region, where He spent much time with the crowds.

We saw tens of thousands of people would swarm Him. What we see here with the words, from that time, is a transition where He would spend most of His time with His disciples in Jerusalem. What we see in verse 21 is that Jesus is on a mission.

He knew from His early days who He was. He was the long-awaited Messiah predicted in the Old Testament. He knew what the Old Testament said about Him. The Old Testament said that He would reign in power, but before He would reign in power, He needed to suffer.

We'll look at this more in the second point, but in the first point, I want to focus on His mission. Jesus tells the disciples specifically what this mission is in this verse. His mission is to die on the cross and then rise from the dead on the third day.

The ones who would bring this about were His chief earthly enemies. We've seen this conflict throughout the Gospel of Matthew between the Jewish leadership and Jesus. The text says that the people who would be responsible for His death, committing the greatest crime in the history of the world.

Do you understand that? What's the greatest crime in the history of the world? Crucifying the perfect Son of God. And it was the chief priests, the elders, and the scribes who were responsible for this.

Their sin is greater than even Pontius Pilate, who put Him to death officially, because they plotted to kill Him. And they were the ones who delivered Him up to the Romans. So what kind of people make up these three groups?

The elders were the leaders of each of the 12 tribes of Israel. They go back to the Old Testament. And they are still here in the first century. The chief priests were mostly Sadducees. Remember, the Sadducees were the ones who were Jews by ethnicity only, but not by practice.

They were secularists. The last group that Jesus mentions were the scribes. The scribes were mostly made up of the Pharisees. These were the ultra-conservative Bible believers. They believed some things in the Bible, but they misinterpreted the Bible, and they added things through their man-made tradition.

Now the text says that from that time, Jesus began to show His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem. This is the first of four times in Matthew that Jesus predicted His death and resurrection. And that's only what Matthew recorded.

The Greek verb to show communicates that He continually told them, I am going to the cross. Now as we read this, we should not think that this is the first time that Jesus thought about His crucifixion.

No, from the earliest days of His life, He knew He was going to the cross. He knew His purpose in life. And nothing was going to keep Him from that purpose. His eyes were fixed on Jerusalem, the place where He would be crucified.

His eyes were fixed on the most significant moment of His life. The day when He would die for sinners. When He would make atonement for rebels. The New Testament makes it clear that this was His mission.

As we saw last week, the angel told Joseph in Matthew 1 .21 that Mary will bear a son. And you shall call His name Jesus. For He will save His people from their sins. In fact, that's what the name Jesus means.

It means Yahweh delivers. 1 Timothy 1 .15 says the same thing. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. Every moment of Jesus' life was preparing for the penultimate moment of His life, the day when He would become His people's sin-bearer.

We can't talk about Jesus without talking about the cross. Can we? Sometimes you hear people say that everything they have done to this point in their life has prepared them for some moment later on in life.

In other words, you are only prepared to do your task in the present because of the many things you did to get to that point.

This is so with Jesus.

He had to be perfect in order to be our sin-bearer. When Jesus saves us, He not only erases our sins, but His righteousness is counted as our righteousness. What this means is that through His journey on earth, He accumulated righteousness through His perfect life that would be counted to us.

To get into heaven, it's not only a clean slate, it's a perfect record that we have to have. Otherwise, we can't be right before God. So every moment mattered and it would conclude with the penultimate event at the cross where He took our sins upon Him and satisfied His Father's holy wrath.

Not only did Jesus make His life count by earning our salvation through His perfect life, but He also showed people how wonderful He was, how glorious He was during His ministry. What we have seen so far in Matthew is how many people Jesus helped.

He helped these people not only to take away their physical ailments, but also to draw them to Him. They weren't supposed to just forget about Him. They're supposed to be attached to Him forever. As they saw His greatness, people marveled at Him.

Some of the people He healed became His followers. He wanted to show the world, this is who I am. He wanted people to believe in Him as Savior and treasure. When people believed in Him before the cross, they knew that He was holy and they were not, and so they believed in Him.

They were attracted to Him and became His followers. This is how anyone is saved. We not only believe in what He did at the cross, but also we want to be like Him. Our sin makes us a mess and we need Him to transform us.

As you believe in Him, you want to be with Him and you want to be like Him. Jesus drew people to Him before He went to the cross. The people who followed Him before His crucifixion followed Him after.

Once they saw that He was truly alive after His resurrection, they rejoiced in the one they fell in love with before His crucifixion. At the same time, others who did not believe would look at His whole body of work in His life, death and resurrection, and come to believe that He truly is the Messiah.

So Jesus did not waste a moment during His earthly life.

He showed the world who He is.

We also see Jesus' mission focus in the way that He prepared His disciples. The time was short. He was going to leave the world, and these would be the ones who would carry on His message. In verse 21, Jesus is telling His disciples that He would die and rise again.

Jesus knows that after He is raised from the dead, they will come to understand this conversation. And He tells them here so that they will better understand. He did not want to die without first telling them that He was going to die.

And He told them numerous times that He was going to die. And when Jesus died, the disciples were perplexed. And when He rose from the dead, they could hardly believe it. And I'll explain that a little more in the next point why that was.

But at that time, they would be able to look back at this conversation, and many after it, and say, He was preparing us for what was to come. That's what a good leader does, right? They prepare people for what's to come.

In the Gospel of John, in chapters 13 through 16, Jesus gives the disciples instructions about following His example and living a faithful life in Him. He had other conversations after His resurrection and before His ascension to heaven.

But the most extensive conversation He had with His disciples was before His crucifixion. He was preparing His disciples for the end of His life on this earth. After His resurrection, He prepared His disciples by telling them that the reason He needed to die was to save sinners, and it was their responsibility to proclaim that message.

But the point I'm making with all of this is that Jesus did not waste a moment during His life, during His ministry. His eyes were always fixed on His purpose. I'm going to the cross. He knew His time was short in this world.

His goal was always to be faithful to His Father. He knew how His life would end. He would die faithfully and live faithfully before Him. And as we have looked at Jesus' focus in His life, that His eyes were fixed on the cross, that His eyes were fixed on His purpose.

My question to you is, does this describe your life? Are your eyes fixed on what God has for you? Jesus knew why He was here. He was here on a mission, and that mission was to save sinners and to transform people, to reverse the curse of what happened in the Garden of Eden.

That was His purpose. And His mission is the greatest mission in the history of the world. But you have a purpose here on earth also. God has made each of you differently. In one sense, all of us have the same goal.

We live here to glorify God. But in another sense, each of us has a different purpose.

I'm not you. You're not me.

You're not someone else. There's only one person in the world just like you. Think about that. My mission is to preach and teach and shepherd God's people. And I pray that I would do that faithfully. God has given each of you a purpose as well.

Yours and my purpose pales in comparison to the purpose of Christ, but our purpose is still important. And the question I have for you, are your eyes fixed on that which matters? Are you fulfilling the purpose that God has given you?

Some of you are good with children. Use your gifts to help children follow Jesus. Others of you are good with youth. Some of you are good with the elderly. Some of you have a gift of encouraging others.

Some of you are gifted at teaching. Some of you are gifted at administration. Some of you are gifted at serving. Others are prayer warriors. Some of you have carpentry skills that make you able to build and fix things around the church and also to help others.

Some of you are good with numbers. And you can use that ability to the glory of God. Some of you are good at evangelism. You love to have conversations with people about Christ whenever possible. So what is your purpose?

You have one. Every Christian does. God is writing your story, and your life is not meant to be boring. Your life is meant to be impactful. It is meant to make a difference for Christ and in the lives of others.

Jesus says in John 10, I have come that they may have life and have it abundantly. You have a purpose. And as you live a mission-focused life, you are living a life that counts. Following the example of Jesus.

Jesus did not waste a moment, nor should you. Jesus never fell short at this, and we will. But the question is, when we look at when the whole body of work is looked at, there's always going to be flaws, right?

But if people look at the whole body of work of your life, will they say, this person lived a life that mattered for Christ's sake. The more you grow in your relationship with Christ, the more you will be used by God and fulfill the purpose he has for you.

So follow Jesus' example of a mission-focused life. And the first way how? Is by living out your God-given purpose. The second way how you are to follow Jesus' example of a mission-focused life is by rejecting a life of ease.

Okay, rejecting a life of ease. What Jesus tells his disciples is something that would have been uncomfortable for them. They have been with Jesus for a couple of years now, and this is a man they have grown to love.

Their faith has been slow moving to this point as we have seen. What we saw in the previous text is their faith has taken a big step forward as they believe with full confidence that Jesus is the Christ, the son of the living God.

But what Jesus said in verse 21 about his murder, his upcoming murder, is something very hard for them to hear. This is why Peter says what he does in verse 22. Peter says to him, far be it from you, Lord,.

This shall never happen to you.

That's his response to Jesus telling him that he is going to go to the cross. What we have seen throughout Matthew is that there was a common belief in the first century about who the Messiah was going to be.

The belief among the Jews was that the Messiah would come, drive out their enemies, and they would reign with the Messiah, and now the nation of Israel would be the superpower in the world.

That's what they thought.

That was the prevailing belief at this time. This was attractive to Jews, of course, because they would be the ones in charge now.

And they would no longer be.

Under the authority of their enemies. Who likes that? To be under captivity? To be under someone else's authority that doesn't have your best wishes in mind? Do you want to be delivered from that? This was the common view among the Jewish people from the most powerful people in the Jewish community to the commoners.

The most powerful people at this point in Israel were the Pharisees and Sadducees. They had power, but the ones who had power over them were the Romans. If you know world history, it's interesting. The Bible lays out world history.

The Egyptians had the power at one time. Then it was the Babylonians and the Persians, and then Greco-Macedonia under Alexander the Great, and then the people who followed him. And then the Roman Empire takes over.

And the Jews live under all these different empires. And their longing to be delivered is where they will finally be the power in the world.

And by the way,.

That's what the future millennium is, where God reigns for a thousand years. Christ is going to reign from Jerusalem. And Israel will be the most powerful nation in the world at that time. But that's in the future.

That's at His return. But they thought it was going to come at His first coming. If He is in charge, then they would be in charge along with Him. The leadership of the Jews wanted this. But as we have seen in Matthew, they were corrupt.

And Jesus, of course, wanted nothing to do with their corruption. Instead of joining them, He called them out. He called them hypocrites, blind guides, and much more, as we'll see later on in Matthew 23, where He really calls out every bad name in the book.

Jesus did not belong to the good old boys club. We hate good old boys clubs, right? We've got to protect our people. We can't say what we need to say. That's my frustration with evangelicalism, by the way.

Is there a good old boys club in American evangelicalism? Yes, there is. If you haven't seen it yet, it's there. But this does not describe Jesus at all. He hung out with the people the Jewish leaders thought were lost causes like tax collectors,.

Drunkards,.

Prostitutes,.

And Gentiles. During Jesus' ministry, He did some things that people thought the Messiah would do. Yes, He performed miracles, but He was not the Messiah the Jewish leaders wanted. In their minds, they had a Messiah of their own making, and He did not fit their expectation.

They wanted Him to be like them. And He was nothing like them. The corrupt Jewish leaders hated Him. Now, not only did the most powerful people in Israel in the first century have a false idea of who the Messiah was going to be, but so did the commoners.

The disciples were commoners, ordinary people,.

Fishermen,.

Tax collectors.

They were not the elite of society. That's interesting, but doesn't that tell something about God? Who does He use usually? He uses the weakest.

Why?

To show His power.

The commoners were influenced by the prevailing thought of the day that came down from the elite circles made up of the Pharisees and Sadducees. What evil people do is ignore passages of the Bible they don't like and only believe passages that fit their desires.

The leadership of the Jewish nation in the first century abhorred the idea of a Messiah who came in weakness. But the Old Testament clearly proclaims that the Messiah would not only come in power, but He would suffer.

Listen to this prophecy about the weakness of the Messiah. This is the most well-known one. Isaiah 53, verses 7 -9. He was oppressed and He was afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth like a lamb that is led to the slaughter and like sheep that before its shear is silenced.

So He opened not His mouth. By oppression and judgment, He was taken away. And as for His generation, who considered that He was cut off from the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of My people?

And they made His grave with the wicked and with a rich man and his death? Although He had done no violence and there was no deceit in His mouth.

It's interesting.

Psalm 22 talks about the future crucifixion of the Messiah. Zechariah, in a couple places, talks about the future suffering of the Messiah. So it's there. They should have seen it. The Old Testament's clear.

But this was missed in the first century Jewish community. It was missed at the top and it's made its way down to the bottom. To the commoners, including the disciples. So when Jesus tells them in this area what He does in verse 21 of our text, that He's going to die and rise again, we need to put ourselves in their shoes.

Because when we read this, we're like, why is He reacting so strongly? Because they had a wrong idea of who the Messiah was going to be. They have been told He's going to come in power. So when He tells them that the Jewish leadership is going to hand me over to be killed, they're confused.

What Peter tells Jesus, this isn't going to happen to you. We're not going to let this happen to you. We're not going to let the chief priests, the Sadducees, the Pharisees, these elders, these high up people in our community, we're not going to let them kill you.

It's interesting, right? In the Garden of Gethsemane, what does Peter do? He picks up his knife and cuts off one of the guy's ears. Peter believes this is not his mission. So he objects to what Jesus says about his suffering that is coming not far down the road.

But Jesus is rightly upset at Peter for what he just said. As we saw in the first point, this is Jesus' mission and no one is going to stand in His way. As Jesus hears this, He rebukes Peter in the first half of verse 23, where He says, Get behind me, Satan.

Okay, in the text it says here, He turned and looked at him. Get behind me, Satan. Not a word you want to hear from Jesus, huh? What Jesus is telling Peter.

Is,.

I told you. What God's will for my life is. In fact, the Old Testament said what His will was. Isaiah 53 .10 says, It was the will of the Lord to crush Him. But what Peter says is not God's will, but Satan's.

If Christ does not die on the cross, then Satan is victorious. It is through the cross and His resurrection that sin, Satan, and death are conquered. It needs to happen. There's no other way. Remember Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane?

Father, if there is another way, let the cup pass from Me. He knew what the answer was. What Jesus is doing there is He's stressing. He's not saying He doesn't want to go through with it. What He's saying is this is going to be hard.

But He knows it's the only way. Jesus is troubled by what Peter says, and so He tells him, You're a hindrance to Me. Another way to say this Greek word is stumbling block. Peter is standing in his way, but no one can stand in his way from accomplishing his mission.

So He tells him, get behind Me. You're not going to stand in My way. Peter's focus is not in the right place. And Jesus bluntly tells him where his focus is at the end of verse 23. You're not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.

You're not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man. Peter believes the wrong things about who the Messiah was supposed to be. To view the Messiah as the one who would reign and drive out their enemies without first suffering.

This is worldly thinking. This is the thinking that came from corrupt people who wanted to satisfy their sinful desires. Worldly people want what is easy. Without going through what's hard. They want to prop themselves up instead of bringing themselves down.

The Jewish leaders, in their sinfulness, wanted power. And if the Messiah comes and drives out their enemies, they would have more power. They had hunger for power. Is that anything new? No, they were threatened by Jesus.

Their lives would be better with the Romans off the scene. Just about everyone thought this, not just the Jewish leaders. The Jews at this time wanted the easy way, not the hard. If the Messiah suffers and dies, then where does that put the disciples?

They were supposed to ride his coattails to victory, not watch the one who is supposed to be the Messiah get murdered in the most humiliating way possible. Leading them to run for their lives, which they would.

After Jesus' crucifixion,.

The disciples were terrified. They hid, wondering if what happened to him would happen to them. And what Jesus is telling Peter and the other disciples is that the path of following him is the hard path, not the easy one.

And we'll see that more next week. But let's take a little bit of a look here. Jesus is going to suffer and die and their experience would be like his. But that's not how the worldly mind thinks. The worldly mind thinks, I want to get through this life with as little difficulty as possible.

Have you thought that?

I know I have. It's easy to succumb to the temptation, eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die. What that passage means is just enjoy life. It actually, I've heard it described this way. It doesn't mean party, you know, you know, get drunk or it doesn't mean that.

It means just enjoy life, contentment, nice, easy, quiet life. Eat, drink, and be merry. This is my experience growing up, but then the Lord got a hold of my heart and then I realized my life was not my own and I was supposed to do what he called me to do.

Now, we should enjoy life. We are to enjoy God's gifts. I hope you did over Christmas. But the road to following Jesus is often difficult. You will suffer loss for following him. You will lose friendships.

You'll be maligned in society. You will not be celebrated. Jesus said the world will hate you. That should cause us to tremble a little bit. You know, when we say the world is going to hate you, it hated me, it's going to hate you.

The Christian life is the upstream life. It is the life of sacrifice. One life that I find inspiring is the life of Eric Little. Eric Little is one of the runners featured in the famous British film, Chariots of Fire.

Little's life was a focused life. He lived for the glory of God. He was willing to forfeit his best event, the 100 meter dash, because it was his conviction that it was wrong to run on Sundays because according to Revelation, Sunday is the Lord's day.

And I'm struck by this.

Think about how much Sunday is devalued by so many. Sunday has become just another day. But it's not just another day. It is a day where all believers should take a break from their busy lives to gather with God's people.

You have a lot of things going on in your life. I know that.

You have busy lives, but you say,.

You know what?

We're going to stop that. We're going to come together. We're going to worship the Lord together. That's God's design. And Little had a strong conviction about that. He says, I'm not going to run on Sunday.

His best event was the 100 meter dash. But he was willing to run two other events where he could be competitive. And that was the 200 meter dash and the 400. The 200 is halfway around the track. The 400 is a full lap around the track.

It's amazing. He finished third in the 200 meter dash, and he finished first in the 400. To everyone's surprise, maybe including his own. But he gave it everything he had, and that's where he finished.

And instead of living a life of ease after this big victory, he lived a life of difficulty following God's call. People often don't understand the rest of his life. They know the story about this running event at the Paris Olympics in 1924, but they don't understand the rest of his story.

His parents were missionaries to China, and he felt the Lord was leading him there also. He served as a missionary in China for almost 20 years. He lived there during World War II. And during the war, China became occupied by Japan.

And we know how evil the Japan empire was at this time. They were ruthless. And what happened was, Little and other foreigners were taken to live in a prison camp. But while in this camp, Little faithfully did his missionary work, even in the most difficult of circumstances.

At this camp, the food they received was poor. And some believe that that's the reason that Little got a brain tumor at the age of 43, where he died. Not long before they were taken into the prison camp, Little wrote this to his Chinese believers.

Victory over all the circumstances of life comes only by might nor by power, but by a practical confidence in God and by allowing his spirit to dwell in our hearts and control our actions and emotions.

Learn in the days of ease and comfort so that when the days of hardship come, you will be fully prepared and equipped to meet them. Little's words are wise. We are to strengthen ourselves in the Lord in the present to be able to endure everything that will come our way.

We are to strengthen ourselves in the Lord daily to fulfill the purpose he has for each of us. To accomplish his purpose in life,.

Little took the hard road.

He could have stayed back in Great Britain and lived a life of ease, but instead he was a missionary to China. To be a missionary is hard enough, but to be a missionary at this time in history, in this place, was incredibly hard.

But his obedience to Christ led him to be a prisoner of war and die an early death. As good of an example as this is, it pales in comparison to the ultimate example. That, of course, is Jesus Christ, who walked with his Father step by step through life all the way to the cross.

At his first coming, he came to be rejected. He did not come to be crowned as king, even though he was the king. He came to suffer because he knew the only way that people could be saved is through his death.

He came on a mission to save sinners, and that mission meant great sacrifice. It meant giving up the comforts of heaven to come to a suffering world marred by sin. It meant being rejected by just about everyone and dying the most brutal death imaginable.

It meant being cut off from the sweetness of fellowship with his Father, something he had never experienced before. It meant, instead, experiencing the holy anger of his Father as he took sin upon himself.

Jesus took the hard road, and we ought to follow his example. A life of wise risk should be our experience. Wise risk. Are you willing to put yourself out there with the possibility of receiving pushback?

The goal of our life should not be to be safe. I'm not saying... It's okay to say, oh yeah, I hope your travels are safe. It's okay to say that, but we shouldn't say, I hope that you have the easiest life possible.

No, we shouldn't say that. We should say, I hope that your life is the most glorifying to God as it can be. As you follow Christ, this will lead to difficult conversations, taking a stand that most will not take.