Matthew chapter twenty, verse seventeen through nineteen. The Word of God says, As Jesus was going up to Jerusalem, he took the twelve disciples aside, and on the way he said to them, see, we're going up to Jerusalem. 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 to the Gentiles, to be mocked and flogged and crucified. And he will be raised on the third day. This is the Word of God. Everything in the world is understood only when it is understood in light of Christ. You only rightly understand something when you understand how it comes from Christ and how it relates back to him. That is what's been going on in the last few chapters of Matthew's Gospel. Jesus has been reorienting everything around himself. In fact, that really is the theme of much of Matthew's Gospel. It begins with the genealogy at the beginning of the gospel. You start from Adam and you get to Jesus. So human history is understood as it leads to Christ. The sermon on the Mount. Jesus is teaching and he is reorienting the law of Moses around himself. He keeps saying, you have heard it said, but I say to you. And then he expands with authority his own teaching over the law of Moses. So just imagine from the Jewish perspective how radically insane that is. So much so that when Jesus is done with the sermon on the Mount, the crowd has gathered around and they say, we have never in our whole lives Heard anybody teach like that? Everybody else is looking up to the law of Moses and saying, I think that, or I study that, or I deduce that or these rabbis said that, and Jesus is looking down on it, saying, I'm telling you, this is what it means. From there, he keeps going forward. He's persecuted and he flees Israel. And of course, he re-enters at strategic times to do miracles and gathers the masses to him. And then he leaves again. And now he's on his final reentry. He's gone through Capernaum or the Galilean, and he's heading back down towards Jerusalem. And the crowd will be growing and growing and growing. He's going to hit Jericho and then head up to Jerusalem on his way. He is reorienting everything around himself. Greatness. He reorients around himself at the start of Matthew eighteen. Who's the greatest? And he picks up a child who has really no virtues going on. No, no intellect or eloquence or money or anything like that. And the child becomes the greatest in the kingdom of heaven because of his proximity to Jesus. He tells a parable about forgiving people of their sins, and he talks about no matter how much you've been sinned against, it is so small compared to how much Jesus forgives you of your sin against him. That's what I mean by reorienting everything around himself. In Matthew nineteen, he reorients marriage around himself. He speaks of himself as if he is the author of marriage, and the New Testament will pick up on that. Husbands are supposed to love their wives as Christ loved the church. So hello, marriage gets redefined around Jesus. Divorce. He reinterprets and reapplies the law of Moses as it relates to divorce. Let's just forget all that. I mean, nothing is more fundamental to human society than marriage. And Jesus puts himself over that. But he even set that aside. He tells the rich young ruler, you've kept the Ten Commandments since you were young. That's impressive. there's one thing you lack to have eternal life. Sell everything you have and follow me. I know we're Christians, and so we can lose sight of just how insane that is. But Jesus takes a synagogue leader who has kept the Ten Commandments since he was young and says, oh man, good start. You're so close. What you're missing is following me. In saying that, Jesus puts himself above the whole synagogue system above the Old Testament Israel religion, above the sacrificial system, above the law of Moses. He reinterprets the Ten Commandments in light of himself. He is the the one God. You can worship him if you follow him. You're not breaking the third commandment and leading your life in vain. You find your Sabbath rest in him. Everything gets reinterpreted in light of Christ. You want to talk about a reordering of Jesus? Look at verse sixteen, the verse we ended at last week. The last will be first and the first last. You know, it doesn't matter how low you are in Christ, you're elevated. It doesn't matter how high you are in human terms, in Christ, you're brought down. Now, last week we looked at how that is teaching that in heaven we all kind of worship. We all worship the same God. In some sense, the reward is the same for everyone in heaven, not in every sense, but in some sense. That's the the real point of that. But just the way Jesus words it is. So reversing everything gets reoriented in light of Jesus Christ. He's the center of family. He just told the twelve, you leave father, mother lands and home for my sake and he'll reward you. Who says that's the fifth commandment, by the way, he returns the fifth commandment around himself. Everything is superseded by Jesus. Everything is supplanted by Jesus. Jesus is superior over everything in the Old Testament. It's fulfilled in him. He fulfills the law. He educates the scribes on what Moses meant. He reveals new divine truth to the masses about divorce and remarriage, which was instituted by God in the Garden of Eden. I'm telling you, you cannot exaggerate how radical and revolutionary Jesus is teaching has been so far. In the Gospel of Matthew, everything finds its orbit around Jesus. It's as if the whole Old Testament system sacrifices marriage, priesthood, the Torah, the Ten Commandments, the kings, the genealogies are just random planets spinning up there in space. And Jesus provides this kind of Copernican revolution by making himself the sun. And they all. Suddenly it all makes sense. Now it's all orbiting around him. That's what's happened so far in the gospel. He shakes the whole world like a snow globe and sets it down. and everything is falling in place around him. He said repeatedly, follow me at the beginning of the gospel. Drop your nets. Follow me. The rich young ruler wouldn't follow him. Peter says, we are following you. And that leads to a very natural question. Lord, we've been following you for three years. Obviously we're here. Where are we going again? We're following you. We're signed up. Where are we going? And that's the implied question of the context here. And that's where Jesus begins to teach them on their way up to Jerusalem. Now, Matthew, Mark and Luke mostly the same content, but they are arranged differently. Mark's gospel is arranged geographically. Everything is kind of pulling from Capernaum through Lebanon and then back down to Jerusalem, where it ends at the cross. Luke's gospel is arranged with teachings, with parables, and stories that are building up to the cross. Matthew's gospel is arranged kind of around his sermons, the structure and his teaching and the teaching is culminating in the cross. And that's why this kind of exchange here is in all three gospels. It's showing you the trajectory to the cross. We find it in verse seventeen, as Jesus was going up to Jerusalem. Americans sometimes struggle with the going up to Jerusalem because we recognize Capernaum is above Jerusalem on a map. And that's the kind of language that bothers us. We're like, why is it called going up when it's going down on a map? Well, they weren't using American maps. This is the short answer, but the more correct answer is that Jerusalem is elevated up in the mountains. So when you're going to visit Jerusalem, you're going up and that's where they're going. Jesus is leading the twelve there, and we'll pick up the story with the intentionality of the cross. Jesus is on his way up to Jerusalem. He took the twelve disciples aside. Now there's twelve of them here. The crowd is going to grow by the time they get to Jericho in chapter twenty one, there's a. Or even in this chapter down in verse twenty nine, it says, A great crowd was following him. So he's building momentum. He's gone from Capernaum or Tiberius area down the Jordan River. The crowd grows as the crowd is growing. He's taking the twelve aside and saying, just so you know, this is not going to end well. I'm going to Jerusalem where I'm going to be killed. It's letting you know the road to the cross was intentional, deliberate, charted out. You know, I put directions to somewhere from my house I'll put in, which is basically where the church is. I'll put in directions to Tyson's Mall or whatever. All right. And it'll give you different ways to go. I could get on the freeway at Edsel. I could go down Braddock, over to the freeway over there, or for some reason I could go on little River Turnpike. I don't know why anyone would choose that way and get stuck in Annandale for four days, but it gives you the different options. All right. They're all charted out for you, and there's different ways you could go to get there. Is there another way for Jesus to get to. God accepted the cross. And it's kind of a hypothetical question could Jesus have saved the world without the cross? It's a hypothetical question because it doesn't really mean anything. It says back in Genesis three, when sin first entered the world, that the Savior would come and crush the devil but be struck by the serpent. There's already a prophecy that the Savior is going to get struck. The Old Testament makes it clear he'll be. He'll be the substitute son for Isaac, who was will be offered on the offering. God will provide the substitute. He's the Passover lamb. He's going to go to the cross. There's an inevitability to it, and Jesus embraces that. So he's pulling the twelve aside and telling them, just so you know, this is where we're going. It's deliberate. It's corporate. He's using the nosotros here. We are going to Jerusalem. We're in this together. We are first person plural. We are on our way there. They're all in this together. He said that before. He's going to go die on the cross. Matthew sixteen, where Peter confesses him to be the Christ. And Jesus says, I'm telling you, I'm going to Jerusalem. The Son of Man will suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests. That's Matthew sixteen twenty one but now he lays out the fate, his fate, and he does it somewhat corporately. Look at verse eighteen again. See, we are going to Jerusalem. We're all on our way there. So when I say Jesus reorients everything around himself, that's true. But notice it's even more specific than that. Everything is reoriented, not just around Jesus, but around his cross. He's going to go die. This is not like a throwaway paragraph in Matthew's gospel here. It's not like just a transition From the rich young ruler to what's next, the blind men in Jericho kind of thing. This is doing work here. It's showing you that all the reorienting that Jesus has been doing, it's crystallizing. It's finding its focus on the cross, on the cross. That's where he's going. The disciples just said, we're following you. And now Jesus is saying, let me tell you where you're following me to the cross. There's no salvation without following Jesus. That's what he told the rich young ruler, because he's the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the father except through him. He's already taught that that was back up in Galilee. But now they come to the father except through him. He's explaining the why. That is because the gate to the father is narrow and it is through the cross. The cross provides forgiveness of sins. So that's the door. He's going to lay his life down for the sheep. He's the great shepherd who lays his life down for the sheep. You can't get to the father except through him. Do you remember what Thomas says during this conversation? Jesus says, you know where I'm going. Follow me. And Thomas speaks up and says, Lord, just to be clear, I heard you say, you know where we know where you're going. But to be clear, we have no idea where you're going. I want to make sure there is no misunderstanding there. We don't know. In fact. Jesus says that he's the way, the truth, and the life. Mark adds a very fascinating detail about this conversation. Mark lets you know that Jesus was walking first in the line, like there's the twelve of them. He pulls them aside and Jesus is leading them. He's walking out in front. So don't picture Jesus reluctantly going to to die on the cross, him being drug against his will to Jerusalem. No, he's leading the charge. This is very deliberate. It's almost as if the twelve are being left in the dust, and Jesus has to go back and fetch them. Then Mark says he came back and got them and told them he was going to Jerusalem to die, that they were amazed at it. That word in Mark's gospel just means they're stunned. They were astonished at the determination Jesus had to go to his own death. And that has implications for them as well. One author put it this way when the the bell tolls for Jesus, it tolls not only for him, but for the twelve as well. You know this, that Judas will commit suicide to be replaced with Paul of those new group of twelve here, eleven of them die martyrs deaths, I would say all of them die. Martyrs deaths, people say, but John died of old age on Patmos. Listen, if you exile a ninety year old to an island in the middle of the sea and he dies, I'm counting that as a martyr's death, okay? They all die for their faith in Christ. That's what Jesus means by the we're going. We're all in this together. He's going to die first, of course, But the others won't escape it. Some will be beheaded, some will be exiled, some will be killed. Peter's going to die crucified upside down. They're all going to die. Their amazement turns to fear and trepidation. But not Jesus. He is set towards Jerusalem. It's deliberate and intentional. No way around it. Secondly, the specificity of the cross. He's going to Jerusalem to die. And then he says in verse eighteen, The Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the scribes. The phrase son of Man, we've talked about many times before, but it's a messianic title from Daniel. Jesus applies it to himself. It's a title that declares his, um, that he's the Messiah, that he's the one appointed by God to be the Savior of the world, to reorient the world around him. He's truly God and truly man. Both, both natures are wrapped up in the title. He's going to be delivered over to the chief priests and the scribes. There. He's going to be condemned, mocked, flogged, crucified, buried and resurrected. There's almost a journalistic tone to this, isn't there? This is this dry. It sounds like the lead of a news story. Who, what, when, where and how? Who? The Son of man. What? Going to be crucified? Where? Jerusalem. How he's going to be mocked and flogged. All of it's wrapped up. When's this going to happen? Well, they're on their way there right now. The Sanhedrin, it doesn't use the word Sanhedrin, but that's what he's describing. The chief priests and the scribes, chief priests or the ruling class. They're the priests of the priests, the ones in charge of the other priests. This is the High court of Jerusalem. It's like the Jewish Supreme Court, the Sanhedrin, seventy people. They passed the final judicial authority. You know, we're used to small supreme courts, you know, nine people or whatever, seven people, I think on Virginia's court, something like that. They had seventy, a large group of them. It's an intimidating crowd. That's where Jesus is on his way. The chief priests and the scribes, they had rules about how their conduct was supposed to be governed. They weren't allowed to have a trial at night. They had to close the darkness every day. They didn't want justice done under the cover of darkness. You had the right to cross-examine your accusers. You had to be charged with specific crimes that had to be enumerated. That had to be evidenced by two or three witnesses. That goes back to the law of Moses. The charges had to be made clear. You had to be allowed to respond to them. There had to be for a serious offense, like something that would result in excommunication or whatever. There had to be a day between the testimony and the verdict. The voting would go from the least, the newest on the bench to the last. That way, nobody was intimidated because you could imagine a new justice on the bench just looking at what the Chief Justice would do and following that, no, no, no, no. They started with the newest one and worked their way through seniority. That's the way their system worked. It's a very, very thoughtful system, isn't it? So much of those principles are even in our own American judicial code. Jesus knows that when he goes to Jerusalem, they'll follow zero of those. They'll put him on trial at midnight. They want to have a charge. Remember, they couldn't agree on what to charge him with. There's not two witnesses. They agree on anything. They say he doesn't get to cross-examine the charges against him. They start voting with the Chief Justice. Remember, he stands up and says, well, we don't have any more reason to even question him. You've heard him. He's guilty. They don't take a day between the trial and the verdict. They do it under the cover of darkness right then. That's why I often call the the trial the murder of Jesus. He was murdered. I mean, they had black robes on, so to speak, but it was murder nonetheless. The crazy thing about Jesus describing it this way is he knows that's going to happen to him. That's wrapped up in the word at the end of verse eighteen. They will condemn him to death. Condemn is a legal term. Jesus knows what's going to happen to him. He knows he's going to be put on trial. He knows it. He doesn't say, I'm going to go to Jerusalem and be captured by the Romans. He doesn't say, I'm going to go to Jerusalem. And, you know, scaffolding will fall on me or something. He says, I'm going to go, and I'm going to be condemned by the scribes and the chief priests, the Sanhedrin. He knows he's going to be put on trial and condemned to death. He knows that. And yet he's going anyway. Now, a little detail that might be lost in some of us. The Jews supposedly didn't have the authority to execute their own criminals. I say supposedly because they're going to kill Stephen in the book of acts like that doesn't really slow them down. If they want somebody dead, they have no problem throwing rocks at them until they die. But you know, what they don't do is crucify people. That's for the Romans. Romans took crucifixion over from the Assyrians. It was a barbaric way to kill people. When? When Assyria fell, the Romans just incorporated that part of their culture and used it. That's how Jesus will die again. Had the Jews wanted to put him to death, they would have thrown rocks at him. But he's going to be verse nineteen says, delivered over to the Gentiles. He's going to be bounced back and forth from Pilate to Herod, the governor of Jerusalem, all the way back to the. The King of Galilee. That's where Jesus's citizenship was, was over in Galilee. Sent back over to to Pilate. They don't tease the American kind of concept. They don't establish legal jurisdiction. You know, he's arrested in Jerusalem, but for what? Saying not to pay taxes to Caesar. Where did he say that? Was that in Jerusalem or was that up in Galilee? I don't know. Where is he from? Nazareth. We'll send him over to Herod. Then Herod says, I don't have any problem with what he did. And sends him back to Pilate. Pilate was reluctant to kill him, I guess. I mean, barely, but he did it. Not that reluctant, I guess. Jesus has all of that in his mind. None of this is surprising to him. He said it before it happened. He knew what was going to happen. So when Pilate tells Jesus, are you saying you're a king? Jesus already knows how this ends. That's why Jesus says, well, you said so. I've read people that kind of criticized Jesus's answer, like his lack of defense at the trial and his response to Pilate. Had he been more diplomatic with Pilate, he might have been acquitted. Now, before he even got to Jerusalem, he said, he's going to die. Such specificity. He's going to be mocked. And that's what the Romans do. The the Jews, they throw him in a pit at night. But the Romans mock him. They put a purple robe on him, and the Scripture calls it a purple robe. But elsewhere, scarlet robe. And I've heard people say, that's a contradiction. No, purple is the color of royalty. But it was a faded one. It was old and tattered and faded by the sun. So purple. A bright purple robe that a king would wear faded by the sun would be discarded. A king wouldn't wear that. It's so faded scarlet now. But everybody would recognize it for what it is. That's what they put on him. It's meant to mock him. They didn't put a new purple sash on him. They put an old used one to mock him. He put a crown of thorns on his head like, oh, you're the king of the Jews. Here's your crown. They put the sign that said, behold, the King of the Jews, and Aramaic and Greek and Latin. It's meant to to mock him. Oh, this is your king Israel. And that's what he says in the verse nineteen. So Jesus knows all this like the the most Humiliating aspects of what he's going to go through. He knows that's coming. He's not surprised by it. He's flogged. It's another Roman thing that Jesus didn't really do that. Romans had their lashes. The flogging is not the whip that Paul's going to experience, but it's something smaller. It's got the barbs at the end of it. It rips open the flesh. People died from that all the time, and the flogging often killed people. Jesus is going to experience that. He's going to lose so much blood from the flogging that he has a hard time carrying the cross. Simon has to step in and carry the cross for him, and then he'll be crucified, the nails holding him to the cross. And not because he's reluctant to go to the cross, but because that's how they execute people. He knows all of this is going to happen. Then he's going to be raised on the third day. This is not vague suffering. It's not Jesus saying, I'm going to go to Jerusalem. Listen, guys, it's going to be bad. Now he charts out exactly what's going to happen to him. He knows it all. None of it is a surprise. This is a step by step execution plan that includes religious persecution and political execution. That's all of it. Now he ends with, he's going to be raised in the third day. I honestly don't know. I don't mean this to be funny or anything. I honestly don't know if the disciples even heard that part. And I think that for a few reasons. I mean, there's such specificity to his suffering and death. They're just jarred by that, that at the end, when he says and raised on the third day, you wonder, are they still dialed in at this point? And the other reason I think that is because when he is resurrected, they don't believe it. Remember, at first they're running this way and that, and they weren't looking for him to be resurrected and all of that. So whatever, for whatever reason, that didn't settle into their thinking, I think because they're so jarred by what he was saying. Jesus knew all he was going to do and go through with such specificity. Third, the centrality of the cross. When I say that Jesus reorients the world around himself, the truth is he reorients the world around his cross. That's his destination. He tells the disciples over and over and over again. That's where he's going. He's not building a worldwide movement, at least not yet. He has one goal in mind to die on the cross. And this is what's frustrating to the disciples. Remember, they were wanting the world wide movement. They wanted the rich young ruler. It is so hard to explain how frustrating that would have been to the disciples. That's the kind of guy they wanted. And instead, he left without faith. Not because, you know, Peter or Thomas or Thaddeus messed it up. He left without faith because Jesus told him to leave everything and follow him, and he wouldn't do it. And meanwhile, Jesus has all these kids with him. This is not a good trade in the disciples mind. They wanted the power and the influence. They wanted a revolution in Jerusalem. They thought they were going towards that end. And Jesus had said, sends the rich and powerful away and says, I'm going to go die on the cross. Even all the examples so far about how Jesus has reoriented the world around himself, it's really around the cross. I mean, consider marriage when Jesus reorients marriage around himself. Yes, he's in authority. Yes, he's the maker of marriage, the creator of the world. But also notice what the New Testament says. A husband shall love his wife as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. Even that is reoriented not just around Jesus generically, but around the cross, the sacrifice of the cross, the law of Moses. Yes, Jesus has authority over the law of Moses, but also he fulfills it from the inside out, leading a holy life which leads him to the cross. This is the great exchange. Jesus had to lead a holy life so that his holy life could be credited to us, and our sin could be credited to him. That's the exchange. Our sin goes to him and he dies on the cross bearing the penalty for it. So do you understand when Jesus is fulfilling the law, being obedient to obey the law, he's building up currency that will cash in for his own death. He didn't fulfill the law just generically, like he kept it all. And that's good. And that's why he's the example and the model of human living. I mean, that's also true, but that's not complete. He kept all the law to fulfill it all and be the example of human living. So that could be credited to us. And our sin could go to him and he would die, condemned as a sinner with our sin, truly his, but sinless by his own actions. So every act of obedience is stepping towards the cross. That's the point. That's the exchange. He can say he's the way, the truth and the life, because the way of the father is through the cross. The reason the rich young ruler went away sad is because he had so much stuff and he valued his life. He didn't want to pick up his cross and follow Christ. The reason Jesus could mandate that no one could come to the father except through him, and whoever wants to follow him must deny himself and pick up his cross is because the cross is how sins are forgiven. In the Old Testament, God required a sacrifice for the sins of his people. Jesus is that sacrifice. That's why there's no way to the father except through the cross. And that's what the disciples were called to follow. Deny yourself, Jesus says, pick up your cross and follow him. That's the road the disciples are on. It did not lead to safety. Jesus knew there was something more important than preserving his own life, namely the mission of God, which led to the cross. That's why the disciples were afraid. Timid. That's why Jesus had to lead the charge. Had to kind of pull them to Jerusalem. It's very understandable when I say the disciples were afraid. I don't mean that. Judgmentally. There's nothing more precious to a person than their own life. And Jesus is telling them that they follow him. They're going to die. You can't gain your life in heaven without losing it here. Not that every believer is a martyr. Obviously not. But every believer accounts the life of Christ and the cross of Christ, the death of Christ as more significant than their own life. So it's a challenge for us as we reflect on this passage. Do you consider the cross of Christ the most important thing in the world? Do you make decisions in your life in light of the fact Jesus died for your sins? Do you evaluate your own life in light of the cross? Do you identify sin in your own life? Confess it to Christ because he died for it on the cross. Do you fight against that sin because you. I hate that sin because Jesus died for it, and so do you fight against it because of the centrality of the cross in your own life? Do you ask God for forgiveness for your sins because Jesus died on the cross to atone for your sins? The flip side of that is living for yourself, justifying your own conduct, making excuses for your own sin, living for yourself. Don't stand there afraid like the twelve. You need to know what a great Savior Jesus is because he's a sacrifice for sin. In the Old Testament, God required a sacrifice from his people in the New Testament. Christ is that sacrifice. That's why when Jesus says, come, follow me, that's the wonder of the gospel, because you're following him to the place where your sins are forgiven on the cross by him where sinners are forgiven. Jesus doesn't just say, come and die for me. He dies for us first. He leads in that sense by example. And of course, the road to the cross goes to the table that's set in front of us. It goes through the Lord's table. Communion. That night, the last night of Jesus's life. I'm sure the table looked like defeat, didn't it? This is the zenith of the movement. Judas is left to betray him. And there's a table set there. That points to the sacrifice and the imminent death of Christ. And Jesus says, I won't take of it again until I take of it with you in the kingdom. He's laying down his life for us. It looks like loss, but it was intentional and victorious. It looked like an act of defeat, but it was the most deliberate and victorious march in the whole history of the world. Lord, we're thankful for the table set before us. It doesn't symbolize defeat, but victory that comes through the grave. You rose in the third day. You brought new eternal life in the way of salvation through the empty grave. But to get there, we go through the cross. We're thankful for the path of life. I pray for people in this congregation that have never given their lives to you, that have never made the cross the center of their own life. I pray this morning they would examine their own heart, see their own sin. We know when we see the greatness of our sin, we see the greatness of Christ as the Savior from our sin. We're thankful that he didn't call us to do something he himself didn't do. We follow him? He is the way, the truth, and the life. We're thankful for Christ. In Jesus name, Amen. And now for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson. If you have any questions about what you heard today, or if you want to learn more about what it means to follow Christ, please visit our church website, ibc dot church. If you want more information about the Master's Seminary or our location here in Washington, DC, please go to TMZ dot edu. Now, if you're not a member of a local church and you live in the Washington, D.C. area, we'd love to have you worship with us here at Emmanuel. I hope to personally meet you this Sunday after our service. But no matter where you live, it's our hope that everyone who uses this resource is involved in their own local church. Now, may God bless you this week as you seek Jesus constantly. Serve the Lord faithfully and share the gospel boldly.