Confession on SermonAudio

I. The searching question we are asked II. The Scriptural answer we may give III. The Spiritual knowledge we must have (next time, D.V.)

In his sermon series on Christ's Emotions and Ours, Pastor Holland explores the emotional stability of Jesus Christ during His humiliation, identifying God's presence as a crucial anchor alongside His promise of future glory. Jesus actively comforted Himself with the truth that the Father was with Him, even as His disciples abandoned Him, demonstrating a model for believers to follow in times of isolation and despair. Pastor Holland emphasizes that this comforting sense of divine presence is inextricably linked to maintaining a good conscience, urging believers to examine their hearts and confess sin to remove the barrier between themselves and God.

How is that that we poor sinners may approach a holy God with confidence? Not because we are sufficient, but because Jesus Christ is. This message shows how Christ gives assurance, freedom in prayer, forgiveness when we confess sin, and grace to obey and love others. When our hearts condemn us, God is greater than our hearts, and His grace is greater than our failures.

The disciples obeyed Jesus and gave the crowd something to eat — something that had been supplied by the generosity of Jesus Himself. Now, once again, He seeks privacy — and finds it. The crowds have gone, and our Lord is praying alone, though the disciples are nearby. He wants them to grow in their understanding of who He is. Do they know about the multitude of the heavenly host, announcing that "unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord"? I don't know. Luke doesn't tell us whether the disciples had been introduced to Jesus' full backstory. Clearly, though, he presents Peter's confession in our text today as a major breakthrough in the disciples' understanding of Jesus. They knew Him as Jesus. They knew that He called Himself the Son of Man. But did they know that He was God's Anointed? They did not — not until this moment. The lesson they learned is valuable for us too. Jesus is God's Anointed. The Hebrew word is Messiah, the Greek Christ. Whether you name Him in English, Hebrew, or Greek, the point is the same: Jesus is the Father's Anointed agent, the one set apart as prophet, priest, king, and judge to rule the world and save it. Jesus is still introducing the basics of His identity to His disciples. So let's look at them together.

1. An Amazing Confession 2. A Well-Grounded Confession 3. A Personal Confession

In this Adult Sunday School lesson from his series through the Gospel of Luke, Charles Sebold teaches Luke 9:18-26, where the question hanging over the narrative since the storm on the sea is finally answered. Praying alone, as He does at every hinge in Luke, Jesus asks who the crowds say He is, and they offer the same too-small categories Herod heard. Then He asks, "But who do you say that I am?" and Peter answers, "The Christ of God," the very title the rulers will sneer at beneath the cross. Jesus forbids them to repeat it, because a messianic title without a cross, in a crowd just fed in the wilderness, would be not a confession but a riot. Instead He declares that the Son of Man must suffer, be rejected, be killed, and be raised on the third day: the cross is divine necessity, not Plan B. Charles then reclaims cross-bearing from its modern trivialization. A cross is not a bad back or a difficult relative; it is a condemned man's public march to his own execution. To deny yourself is not asceticism or self-loathing but the renunciation of self-rule, and Luke alone adds "daily," making it a standing posture for ordinary Tuesdays rather than one heroic moment. Yet the cross is not the price of admission but the shape of the life admission gives, sustained by the Lord who holds us rather than by our willpower. When the rulers mock, "Let him save himself," Christ refuses, proving verse 24 in His own body: whoever loses his life for His sake will save it.

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