SPEAKER_01: Jesus is more than a prophet.
SPEAKER_01: And the answer is given by Peter when he's making it very personal and he says, You give me the answer now.
SPEAKER_01: And everybody's quiet.
SPEAKER_01: Except Peter, who bursts into quietness and says, You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.
SPEAKER_01: And that's the right definition.
SPEAKER_01: You are equal with God.
SPEAKER_01: You are one with God.
SPEAKER_01: And I approve what you have already implied so many times, telling us that you are one with the Father in John 5.
SPEAKER_01: You are the way, you are the truth, you are the life, you are the resurrection, you are the door, you are the good shepherd.
SPEAKER_01: For all these qualifications, for all these titles, Jesus was ready to pay with his life.
SPEAKER_01: And he was ready to tell everybody, no, I'm not asking for apologies.
SPEAKER_01: I'm not apologizing for implying and letting you conclude that I am God.
SPEAKER_01: I'm not uh stepping back in front of this this theology of this teaching, identifying myself with God, because I am one with the Father.
SPEAKER_00: This podcast is brought to you by Grand Parkway Baptist Church, helping people to know, enjoy, and glorify God.
SPEAKER_00: For more information about Grand Parkway, visit our website at grandparkway.org.
SPEAKER_01: What a God, what a God for Grand Parkway Baptist Church.
SPEAKER_01: No wonder God is working in our midst, in your midst for so many years, uh filling up this place with his presence because Christ is exalted and people are drawn to meet Christ, to meet Jesus, who can be the only fulfillment for our souls.
SPEAKER_01: And what else can we do this morning than um repeating this um work of exalting Christ as we already did through music?
SPEAKER_01: Wonderful, exalting um uh moments gave me chills, and uh I'm so honored um being here, closing three days of uh of immersion in love in your midst.
SPEAKER_01: Um the people of uh Grand Park Way Baptist Church surrounded me and Adina, my wife, and our two children with so much love that is um is a sign, is a validation that um God has a bright future for you and things will um continue to grow uh in your midst and you will not um stop, you will not uh uh fall in complacency, though you have everything you need, everything that you can imagine is here in terms of music, conditions, uh AC, parking lots, um teachers for for children, pastors, everything.
SPEAKER_01: It's so amazing.
SPEAKER_01: And and somebody from Romania comes to make these observations, and and uh I'm really blessed to to see uh the work uh of God uh advancing here.
SPEAKER_01: And uh this message uh might might seem at first at first glance uh redundant, redundant, uh useless uh uh exercise.
SPEAKER_01: Uh me telling you some biblical solutions for a healthy church, because that that's the name of the the message.
SPEAKER_01: But um I think what what we can extract from Matthew Matthew 16, a text that I want to quickly read, a few verses.
SPEAKER_01: Um what we see there um are eternal solutions for his work.
SPEAKER_01: Um the thing uh solutions that lasted for millennia, for thousands of years, the last two thousand thousands of years of history for the church.
SPEAKER_01: So they they continue to function today.
SPEAKER_01: There are three three solutions that uh I'm gonna I'm gonna present to you quickly in uh the 30 minutes uh that I have.
SPEAKER_01: Um is um the magnificent savior.
SPEAKER_01: We need to have this view of on Christ of Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Uh the magnificent, the mighty savior.
SPEAKER_01: The second thing that we see in this text is uh the militant saints.
SPEAKER_01: Um the church is fighting for Jesus, for uh its um Lord, for its God.
SPEAKER_01: Um and then uh we see a mortified self, the personal only solution to follow Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Otherwise, everything is compromised.
SPEAKER_01: Uh the the view that you have on Christ is compromised.
SPEAKER_01: The life that you live before him is compromised if the mortified uh if the mortification of of self of flesh is not taking place.
SPEAKER_01: So I'm gonna read the text and then I'm I'm finished because I already gave you the the sermon.
SPEAKER_01: Um verse 13.
SPEAKER_01: Now when Jesus came into the district of uh Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, Who do people say that the Son of Man is?
SPEAKER_01: And they said, Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.
SPEAKER_01: He said to them, But who do you say that I am?
SPEAKER_01: Simon Peter replied, You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus answered him, Blessed are you, Simon John Bar Jonah, for flesh and blood did has not revealed this to you, but my father who is in heaven.
SPEAKER_01: And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
SPEAKER_01: I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven, and whatever you lose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven.
SPEAKER_01: Then he strictly charged the disciples to tell no one that he was the Christ.
SPEAKER_01: From that time Jesus began to uh show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders, the chief priests, the f uh, the scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.
SPEAKER_01: And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, Far be it from you, Lord, this shall never happen to you.
SPEAKER_01: 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 men.
SPEAKER_01: Then Jesus told his disciples, If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: Having the right definition on Christ, having the identity identity of Christ correctly defined for the church in any generation is a key, is a key factor for the healthy uh the health of that church.
SPEAKER_01: If we analyze the church, if we are to uh uh see to take give a test to the church to see if the test is healthy, we we have to go straight to its Christology.
SPEAKER_01: How the church is viewing Christ.
SPEAKER_01: If the church is weak on Christ, on uh the the doctrine of Christ, um we have a problem.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm telling you today that there are many uh nowadays, um both in Romania and in the United States of America or other parts of the world that um do not consider Jesus equal with God, according to the definition that the Father is giving uh to uh Peter to utter in front of the other disciples, which Jesus approves uh and says, Yes, you gave the right answer because God revealed that to you, and that's wonderful, because God has always the right revelation and God uh reveals to us the correct definition about Christ and about all the other things of our faith, elements of faith that make make us alive, make us grow, make us um uh resist the world and and be strong and embrace eternity uh with him.
SPEAKER_01: Uh otherwise, if we don't have the revelation of God, we we just uh wander around uh um like blind people, trying to guess uh the sense and the significance of life.
SPEAKER_01: So Peter gets to the point because he has the revelation of God.
SPEAKER_01: God has the right answer for who Christ is.
SPEAKER_01: But Jesus starts with the the view of the world and he's asking, Who do people think that the Son of Man is?
SPEAKER_01: He includes the answer in the question.
SPEAKER_01: He says, Um let me see uh what do you think, what do you hear about um me from the world?
SPEAKER_01: And they say some say that you are uh passionate like uh like Elijah, you have courage, you are brave like Elijah in front of Ahab, you are like uh Jeremiah, we heard you crying uh in the wilderness as you withdraw uh to pray, and you cry uh out loud for for the people, for us maybe.
SPEAKER_01: And um, you are like Jeremiah that cried for his people, or uh you are like uh other prophets, like John the Baptist.
SPEAKER_01: Um you you are turning the world upside down, you are not afraid of the the leaders, um uh the religious leaders.
SPEAKER_01: And um, so they give all these answers, or another prophet, which is the case for Muslims today.
SPEAKER_01: They they embrace Jesus as a prophet and they um love that title for Jesus, and they include Jesus as a prophet in their theology, in their eschatology.
SPEAKER_01: They say that Jesus is coming um uh again and he will be killed in in um at the end of times and be resurrected, but not as God, of course, because that would be a blasphemy in in their uh theological system.
SPEAKER_01: They would he would come just as another prophet in a line of prophets, and many people um, if they are not careful, they would uh uh be super excited that uh the Muslims finally uh get close to us uh in their view of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: No, Jesus is more than a prophet, and the answer is given by Peter when he's uh making it very personal and he says, You give me the answer now, and everybody's quiet, except Peter, who bursts into the uh uh quietness and says, You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God, and that's the right definition.
SPEAKER_01: You are equal with God, you are one with God, and I approve what you have already implied so many times, telling us that you are one with the Father in John 5.
SPEAKER_01: You are the way, you are the truth, you are the life, you are the resurrection, you are the door, you are the good shepherd.
SPEAKER_01: For all these qualifications, for all these titles, Jesus was ready to pay with his life, and he was ready to tell everybody, no, I'm not asking for apologies, you're I'm not apologizing for for implying and letting you conclude that I am God, I'm not uh stepping back in front of this this theology, of this teaching, I didn't myself identifying myself with God, because I am one with the Father.
SPEAKER_01: And all all all the the Gospel of John is uh is a tremendous tension between him and the perception that people have, especially the religious leaders, that are very um uh threatened by the title that Jesus has in uh before them, making himself one with God.
SPEAKER_01: They are always carrying rocks with with them, trying to stone him because um he's emphasizing that um uh reality, that identity more and more.
SPEAKER_01: And their religion is is threatened because they they cannot control the authority of God incarnated, God among themselves, and he's always telling them why you don't understand in chapter 7 and in other chapters um in eight, in nine, in twelve, where they always threaten him to kill him, he keeps uh crying out to them, why you are not understanding that I am the send one, the I am the the one that was sent by the father, I am the only solution for your sin.
SPEAKER_01: He's telling that that to the uh doctor of theology, Nicodemus, in chapter 3, uh telling them, I will be uh lifted up uh uh on the cross like the serpent in in the desert um by by Moses.
SPEAKER_01: I I will uh be sacrificed, and whoever believes in me um as the only solution for the sin of the world uh will be saved.
SPEAKER_01: I am the only truth, I I have the truth that will set you free in chapter 8.
SPEAKER_01: And they uh are very antagonistic to that, they are very scandalized, they say we will we've never been slaves to to uh anybody, which was um nonsense because they all of their history they were slaves and they they denied the the fact the the reality and Jesus says I am your your way the only way today people have a very distorted view and attack the identity of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Last this this past Friday in Romania uh there was a movie that was offered for free in the largest cinema in the largest city of Romania, uh was offered for free as uh an attack on the person of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: It was a movie, probably you've heard about it.
SPEAKER_01: I I've I heard about it for the first time uh this weekend, uh, The Carpenter's Son, the son of the Carpenter, which is based on um the Gospel of Thomas.
SPEAKER_01: And uh, in this movie, uh Jesus is portrayed as uh uh simple man, maybe a rabbi, married um with uh Mary Magdalene, having uh children and being uh a simple uh man like like us all.
SPEAKER_01: So the attacks on the person of Jesus continue even today.
SPEAKER_01: At this moment, uh people are attacked to have a distorted wrong view about about his um um his um character, about who he is, his identity.
SPEAKER_01: Uh Jesus wants to tell them, I am sovereign, I am controlling the history, I will build my church.
SPEAKER_01: I I I am sovereign, I'm I'm a mighty savior because I am building the church, I am the son of man, which is a title from Daniel.
SPEAKER_01: A title from Daniel, Daniel having the revelation of the one with the white hair, not mocking him as people mock God be making him an old man uh up in the uh in the heavens.
SPEAKER_01: No, he is eternal, that's the symbol of eternity, that he is the symbol of him being um uh eternal and being God.
SPEAKER_01: And um uh Daniel acknowledges that he, the Son of Man, is reigning, and he will unleash a kingdom that has no end, that will destroy all the other kingdoms, and while the uh empires of his days were flexing their muscles um uh against each other, telling them um telling to each other, I am stronger, I'm the stronger, the strongest empire, I'm stronger than the Greeks, I'm stronger than the uh um I don't know what empires were there, the Romans were the strongest.
SPEAKER_01: Um they they try to to impress each other with their armies, and Jesus says, I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
SPEAKER_01: I am the sovereign God that is ruling history through the church, and I'm bringing an empire stronger than any army in the world.
SPEAKER_01: The empire of love, the empire that has a message, a message, a victorious message.
SPEAKER_01: Um, a few more things about his identity distorted.
SPEAKER_01: Uh, I will just enumerate them in Colossians.
SPEAKER_01: In Colossians 2, Paul was very concerned that the church was already under fire, under false doctrines uh that uh uh got into uh sneaked into the into the church, some uh more bluntly, some um uh subtle, subtly uh in a subtle way.
SPEAKER_01: In uh Colossians uh two, you have uh um uh an overflow of uh Christology there in a few verses before he enumerates those four uh dangers.
SPEAKER_01: Therefore, my beloved, as you have always Colossians, Colossians 2, 2, 6.
SPEAKER_01: Therefore, I as uh as you receive the Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him, and established in the faith, just as you were taught, uh abounding in thanksgiving.
SPEAKER_01: See to it that no one take you captive by philosophy and empty deceit according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.
SPEAKER_01: For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in him with who is the head of all rule and authority.
SPEAKER_01: In him all you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands by putting off the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God who raised him from the dead.
SPEAKER_01: And the text keeps going, um emphasizing Christ, and then all of a sudden um explodes with with these um warnings.
SPEAKER_01: Watch out, he already mentioned one one uh danger, which is uh paganism.
SPEAKER_01: Paganism uh which can consists of false philosophies, false solutions for life.
SPEAKER_01: Philosophies uh uh in those times and nowadays they try to compete with Jesus and to um press you uh in matters of of life, in matters of of your soul, in matters of marriage, in matters of how you raise your children, how um um how you uh conduct sexually, how you um uh uh invest your money, how you um uh relate to people, how you see eternity, how you see the value of life.
SPEAKER_01: In those times, those philosophies about all the details of life were impregnating the the life of the church, and the church had to be on guard, and the only solution that Paul is giving to the church is Christ, and he's telling them be aware of paganism, be aware of ascetism.
SPEAKER_01: Assassetism is is um uh disciplined life, a very tough life that you impose on on yourself.
SPEAKER_01: Going to a monastery, um, by the way, Romania has one of the largest number of monasteries and is one of the most religious places on earth.
SPEAKER_01: It's very tough, very tough place to uh present Christ because there are so many surrogates, so many so many elements that are trying to replace Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Um and people are are are uh very hungry to to try to find out or to to make for themselves um uh their own righteousness.
SPEAKER_01: Um they are experts in self-righteousness.
SPEAKER_01: We are all experts in self-righteousness.
SPEAKER_01: We think that we if we uh drive only electric cars, we are more righteousness than other people.
SPEAKER_01: Or if we only eat avocado or other things, we'll will we are more righteousness than others.
SPEAKER_01: I'm here to tell you that I love beef, guys.
SPEAKER_01: I love I love beef.
SPEAKER_01: And I will never eat beef made out of plants.
SPEAKER_01: Uh though you make a beef uh in a laboratory in Israel in in one day, the same uh amount of beef that somebody is a farmer is struggling to make in two years.
SPEAKER_01: I'm sorry.
SPEAKER_01: Um I'm with a farmer, praise the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Um so mysticism is another danger that you find here.
SPEAKER_01: People get mystical, and people like to be mystical, and they think that um they are closer to God if they close your eyes their eyes.
SPEAKER_01: I I love to close my eyes, I close my eyes and I even cried uh during one song.
SPEAKER_01: I was so moved.
SPEAKER_01: But um People try to find all sorts of ways to feel God, to think that they are closer to God if they do some things.
SPEAKER_01: Paul is saying, be aware that the mystical life would get into you, into your life, and it will replace Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Legalism, of course, is crazy, present everywhere.
SPEAKER_01: And churches are guilty for making people hating Jesus, hating life with the Lord, hating the Bible because they have shown during the years so much legalism.
SPEAKER_01: And I know it's not the case here.
SPEAKER_01: And I pray that the Lord would continue to bless your pastors, your leadership with abundance of wisdom, to uh never replace Christ with legalism as people did in Galatians, uh a trap in which even uh the apostle Paul Peter fell and uh he became legalistic.
SPEAKER_01: So if it happened to the apostle, it can happen to us to to become legalistic in what we do for God.
SPEAKER_01: Um God is Jesus is sovereign, Jesus is a mighty savior, a magnificent savior, and um he is establishing his church.
SPEAKER_01: His church um will face the darkness, uh the dark world, the dark life, um, uh the dark um uh dominion that exists.
SPEAKER_01: And uh Jesus says, I will build my church, and uh that's one another reason why I am sovereign, why I'm I'm mighty, why I'm why I am magnificent, is because I I will build my church.
SPEAKER_01: And um he promises that the gates of hell shall not prevail against us.
SPEAKER_01: That terminology there implies that we are attacking, we are uh advancing the kingdom, we are not um uh fearful, we are not uh retreating, we are not uh cornered by the world, and we are just um uh defending ourselves and we barely survive, and we have a life that we can hardly wait for Jesus to return.
SPEAKER_01: No, we are victorious, and our message of victory is his resurrection.
SPEAKER_01: The same message that he told uh the disciples that they they didn't hear in those moments because he he inserted in the message suffering, and we don't like suffering.
SPEAKER_01: But I've seen lives here like Margaret McBride embracing suffering, suffering in her family, suffering in her own life, fighting cancer, and not rebelling against God, not stopping to coming to church and having that angelic angel, uh, angelic smile on her face all the time when we met her, when we saw her.
SPEAKER_01: She she was beyond her suffering following Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Uh, we have a message that um is transcending suffering, and and that's based on his resurrection, and that uh makes us victorious.
SPEAKER_01: All the all the messages, if you study the book of Acts, if you if you go uh through uh the epistles, uh the central message, of course, is Christ, but is a resurrected Christ, and all the sermons in the book of Acts are uh centering in the resurrection of Jesus, and that's our hope.
SPEAKER_01: Because if we don't have hope in his resurrection, what's the hope for our bodies, for our uh life to come?
SPEAKER_01: There's no hope, we are the uh most wretched people on earth uh because uh our sins are still not forgiven and we are lost, and that that's the most uh powerful message that we can give the world that um uh Jesus is coming, he's the forefruit of the the people, uh the persons that resurrected, and we are following him.
SPEAKER_01: We are uh uh in expectation, in anticipation of that moment when we will be resurrected and we will uh uh um inaugurate the new life to come in in the universe that he created, that he's controlling of billions of billions of galaxies, that he is is at work uh right now in in all the corners of the universe, but also careful and and attentive to and sensitive to our lives here right now.
SPEAKER_01: He knows all the stars, all the galaxies by heart, by name.
SPEAKER_01: He knows them, he has the map, he he's in control of everything, and he says, just follow me.
SPEAKER_01: And that implies a mortified self.
SPEAKER_01: The third the third point of my message is embrace, embrace death of self, which means denying yourself, picking up your cross, loving Jesus more than anything, following Him.
SPEAKER_01: You know what's the best method of um looking more and more like Jesus is contemplating Jesus, watching Him all the time.
SPEAKER_01: That's that's um that's the way that functions in function in every domain of life.
SPEAKER_01: If you contemplate something out of love, out of out of interest, out of passion, you are uh changed, you are uh developing, you are growing in any domain uh that you are uh doing with lots of passion is the same with Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus says, be ready to die, be ready to deny yourself.
SPEAKER_01: And what's left for us to deny and to put aside is our flesh.
SPEAKER_01: Our flesh.
SPEAKER_01: Yes, we are new creatures in Christ.
SPEAKER_01: We were resurrected, we were uh circumcised by Christ, putting aside the body of death, putting aside the the um incapacity, uncapacity to to know God.
SPEAKER_01: We were dead in our trespasses and sins, and we were not capable of connecting to God.
SPEAKER_01: We were separated from the glory of God until the Holy Spirit came in our lives and brought us life through uh the resurrected Christ, and then we became new believers, new creatures.
SPEAKER_01: Yes, but uh what's not what's not uh redeemed in our life is uh our flesh, our body that gives us so many uh problems.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus says, Be ready to be that be ready to physically die, be ready to suffer for me, be ready to take up your cross.
SPEAKER_01: And how you do this is looking for him, following him implies a walk day by day, walking with him implies contemplating him, looking at him, um having fellowship with him.
SPEAKER_01: And um the apostle Paul says, Oh, wretched me, who who will deliver me from this body of death?
SPEAKER_01: The Holy Spirit, he's exploding uh uh in excitement in the next chapter in Romans uh 8.
SPEAKER_01: He says, The Holy Spirit is the solution for our flesh, and that was my message in 2019 when your wonderful pastor allowed me to ruin uh the presentation here.
SPEAKER_01: God gave me uh uh the strength to carry uh on that message from Galatians uh 5 when I preached about the battle between uh the flesh and the spirit.
SPEAKER_01: All we have is is flesh in us, all our resources are nothing.
SPEAKER_01: The only solution for our flesh is the Holy Spirit, and and Jesus says, contemplate me.
SPEAKER_01: The Spirit of Christ will save us from our flesh and will help us mortify ourselves.
SPEAKER_01: And uh I pray that uh you will continue to contemplate this magnificent savior, you will continue to be to be uh militant, to be uh in the army of God, advancing the the work.
SPEAKER_01: And I I see the progress here.
SPEAKER_01: I'm so blessed to to be uh um in in class right now.
SPEAKER_01: I'm studying you and I see you, I observe you, and I see that the Lord is is moving mightily among you because you are uh uh in God's army and you are continu you're not giving up in st in spite of all the problems that are are coming in your lives.
SPEAKER_01: And uh I I pray that we all would continue to let the Spirit help us mortify ourselves.
unknown: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening to this message.
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SPEAKER_00: If you'd like to go deeper with our sermon content, you can hear more on our circling back with Neil McClendon podcast at Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and wherever you listen to podcasts.