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Sunday sermon, 23 Aug 2026
Summary
This week Michael talked to us about Jesus's question to his disciples in Mark 8:27–38, “Who do you say I am?” He explored how people around Jesus placed him in safe, smaller categories; a moral teacher like John the Baptist, or one of the prophets. He then unpacked Peter's confession, “You are the Messiah,” showing how Peter had the right word but the wrong picture, expecting a conquering Messiah rather than one who would suffer, die and rise again. Michael closed by applying Jesus's call to deny ourselves, take up our cross and follow him.
Key Points & Takeways
This week's question is ‘Who do you say I am?’ - Jesus asks his disciples this in Mark 8:27–38, after first asking who other people say he is. It's still a vital question for us today, both for our own faith and for how we understand the different answers our culture gives about Jesus.
Some thought Jesus was John the Baptist - the archetype of a moral teacher - John the Baptist preached repentance and was killed for confronting Herod's wrongdoing. For many people today, this is still all Jesus is: a good moral teacher, admired but kept at arm's length.
C.S. Lewis's trilemma rules out ‘good moral teacher’ as a safe option - In Mere Christianity, Lewis argues that a man who said the things Jesus said, without being God, would be either a lunatic or something worse; not a great moral teacher. We must either call him Lord and God, or reject him; the middle option isn't available.
Some thought Jesus was Elijah or one of the prophets - Deuteronomy 18:15 promised a prophet would be raised up, and Jesus taught repentance, judgment and hope like the prophets before him, quoting Scripture directly throughout his teaching. But in John's Gospel Jesus makes far greater claims than any prophet, the seven ‘I am’ sayings, so ‘just a prophet’ isn't sufficient either.
Peter's answer, ‘You are the Messiah,’ is the right word but the wrong picture - In Jesus’ day, ‘Messiah’ was widely expected to mean a political and military deliverer in the line of David. Peter was right that Jesus is the Messiah, but the true Messiah, prophesied in Isaiah 53, would conquer death by suffering, not conquer Rome by force.
Peter rebukes Jesus, and Jesus rebukes Peter back - When Jesus predicts his rejection, suffering, death and resurrection, Peter can't reconcile that with his picture of a winning Messiah, and takes Jesus aside to rebuke him. Jesus responds, ‘Get behind me, Satan - you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.’
Even Peter, who walked with Jesus daily, misunderstood who he was - This is a caution against overconfidence in our own understanding of what it means to call Jesus Messiah, but also a hope, since Jesus never gave up on Peter, who later preached at Pentecost and saw 5,000 people come to faith.
To call Jesus Messiah is to deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow him - In verse 34, Jesus extends this call beyond his inner circle to the whole crowd. Taking up a cross evokes the way condemned criminals carried their own crossbeam to execution — a call to expect cost and possible rejection for following him, not just to admire him from a distance.
Denying ourselves includes rejecting false narratives about who we are - Michael shared how a senior leader once told him, after a poor spiritual gifts test, that he ‘wasn't pastoral’ - words he carried and repeated to himself for years, delaying his path to ordination. Denying ourselves means choosing to believe what Jesus says about us over the voices, including our own, that tell us what we can't do or aren't.
Taking up our cross can mean small, daily costs as much as public witness - This might mean patience with family, discipline in prayer and Scripture, or carrying the burden of praying for Christians facing real persecution elsewhere in the world — not only dramatic public stands.
Dock Discussion Questions
Michael opened by asking, ‘Who are you like?’ — who do people say you are, and how does that shape the way you see yourself?
Reflect on C.S. Lewis's ‘liar, lunatic, or Lord’ argument. Which of the safer, smaller categories; good moral teacher, one prophet among many, (or another) are you most tempted to quietly place Jesus into?
Peter had the right word for Jesus, ‘Messiah,’ but the wrong picture of what that meant. Where might you have the right words about Jesus, but a picture of him that's still shaped more by your own expectations than by who he actually is?
Michael described being told early in his ministry that he ‘wasn't pastoral,’ and carrying that word over himself for years. Is there a negative label or narrative you've been speaking over yourself instead of believing what God says about you?
Michael's closing challenge was three questions: how will you deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow Jesus this week? Choose one specific, concrete answer you're willing to commit to.
Long-form, edited transcript
Questions Jesus Asked
Who Do You Say I Am?
Mark 8:27-38
Introduction: Who Are You Like?
I've got a question for you, what are you like, or who are you like? If you had to guess how people might describe you, likening you to somebody else, I'll give you an example. I look like my mum, but my personality is much more like my dad, which I pray into every day. So take a minute, speak to someone next to you: who are you like?
This summer, as we've been journeying together, we've been looking at a series called ‘Questions Jesus Asked.’ Jesus asked the disciples and the people he journeyed with, many questions, we are unpacking the answers, and considering what our own answers might be.
This morning, the question is: ‘who do you say I am?’ It's a question Jesus asks in Mark chapter 8. We're going to unpack the question, look at some context, and then ask it for ourselves, who do we say Jesus is, and what does that mean?
The passage is Mark 8:27–38:
Jesus and his disciples went on to the villages around Caesarea Philippi. On the way he asked them, “Who do people say I am?” They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.”
“But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?” Peter answered, “You are the Messiah.” Jesus warned them not to tell anyone about him.
He then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again. He spoke plainly about this, and Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.
But when Jesus turned and looked at his disciples, he rebuked Peter. “Get behind me, Satan!” he said. “You do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”
Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of them when he comes in his Father's glory with the holy angels.”
“Some Say John the Baptist”: Jesus as Moral Teacher
Jesus doesn't ask his question in isolation, it comes in the context of a contrast between who people say Jesus is and who the disciples say he is. That's still a vital question for us today, and the answers given here can speak to the answers we see in the world around us. Who does the world say Jesus is, and how is that different from who I say he is, who you say he is?
In verses 27 and 28 we see the answers: some say John the Baptist, others Elijah, still others one of the prophets. Why might people have thought Jesus was John the Baptist? Jesus was a contemporary of John's, you might remember from the nativity story that Elizabeth, John's mother, was a relative of Mary. In fact, Mark's Gospel opens with John the Baptist: “The beginning of the good news about Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God,” quoting Isaiah's promise of a messenger to prepare the way. John appeared in the wilderness preaching a baptism of repentance, and the whole Judean countryside went out to him.
John's ministry makes a way for Jesus's ministry, and it's a ministry of repentance. We see this in how John dies, too; King Herod marries his brother's wife, Herodias, John says that's not lawful, and gets thrown in prison. Herod doesn't want to kill him at first, because he likes listening to him, but gets tricked into it. John dies because he preached repentance, because he preached moral teaching that cost him his life. He's the archetype of the moral teacher.
And for many people today, that's what Jesus is too, a moral teacher. I wasn't raised in a Christian household. I'm still praying for my family every day, but I'm grateful they were very much live-and-let-live people. When I started going to church young, they were fine with it. When I started working for churches, they said, if it makes you happy, that's fine. My dad even came to St Paul's Cathedral when I was ordained a priest, and he was very confused by everything going on, but happy that I was happy. They have a detached relationship with Jesus: if Jesus is for you, that's good, he was a good person, but it's not for me. Every time I go back to Scotland, where I'm from, if they've had maybe two glasses of wine, I get to talk to them about Jesus. Other than that, not so often.
But importantly, Jesus didn't leave this option open to us, that he's merely a good moral teacher. C.S. Lewis talks about this famously in Mere Christianity, which I believe is the best-selling Christian book after the Bible itself; if you haven't read it, you should. He writes:
I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about him: I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the devil of hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon, or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.
Lewis is saying that a man who claims to be God, and lives and teaches as though he is God, cannot be a great moral teacher if he isn't in fact God. That option simply isn't available.
Some Say Elijah or One of the Prophets
What about Elijah, or one of the prophets? Verse 28 gives us that answer too. Why did Jesus's contemporaries think he might be a prophet? The Israelites expected prophets to be raised up among them; Deuteronomy 18:15 says, “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your fellow Israelites. You must listen to him.” It's not surprising that as Jesus began teaching, healing and gathering disciples, some believed he was a prophet. He taught many of the same things the prophets taught; repentance from sin, turning back to God, judgment and hope, and he was extremely well versed in the Hebrew Scriptures. About ten percent of everything Jesus says in the Bible is a direct quote from Scripture; he quotes directly from seven Old Testament books and alludes to six others. He seemed like a prophet.
This is still how many people see Jesus today. I went to an interfaith conversation event recently and had a two-hour discussion with a generous Muslim friend about whether Jesus was just a prophet, we know many of our Muslim neighbours think that. But again, Scripture doesn't leave that option open to us. Jesus claimed to be far more than a messenger of God. In John's Gospel, the famous seven ‘I am’ sayings have him claiming to be the bread of life, the light of the world, the door, the good shepherd, the resurrection and the life, the way, the truth and the life, the true vine. He's not just a prophet, not just John the Baptist, not just a good moral teacher.
Peter's Answer: You Are the Messiah
So we move to the next question: who do you say I am? Who do we say Jesus is? Peter answers in verse 29: “You are the Messiah.” The word Messiah means ‘anointed one.’ In the Old Testament it referred to someone anointed with oil for a special purpose — a priest, a king, a prophet. By Jesus's time the focus had narrowed to a political and military leader in the line of David, expected to bring God's people freedom from oppression.
Peter was right that Jesus is the Messiah, but not the kind of Messiah Peter expected. The Messiah Jesus actually was is far beyond Peter's expectation, and infinitely more able to accomplish what God sent him to do. Instead of conquering Rome through strength and violence, he conquered death by laying down his life to violence. He's the Messiah prophesied in Isaiah 53: “He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.” So Peter gets the right answer, but has the wrong picture.
Right Word, Wrong Picture
In verses 31 and 32, Peter takes Jesus aside and rebukes him for saying he'll be rejected, suffer, die and rise again. Why does this provoke Peter? Because his picture of a Messiah is so different, Peter's Messiah doesn't suffer, doesn't get rejected by the authorities, doesn't die. He wins. A Messiah who talks about being killed doesn't fit Peter's job description for the role.
That's why Peter rebukes Jesus, and why Jesus goes on to rebuke Peter: “You do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.” Peter hasn't stopped believing Jesus is the Messiah; he's still picturing the wrong kind of Messiah, a revolutionary, military Messiah. Think of the scene at Jesus's arrest, where Peter draws his sword and cuts off the guard's ear, he's ready for a fight. But that's not the Messiah Jesus is.
Even Peter Misunderstood
Let's take a moment on that, no need for hands up, no need to talk to your neighbour. If Peter, who walked with Jesus every day, could say the right thing and still misunderstand who Jesus is, how confident are we that we really understand what it means to call Jesus Messiah? How confident am I?
Peter didn't grasp the true scope of Jesus's messiahship even up to the moment of his arrest, not until the resurrection. But Jesus never gave up on Peter, even after he denied him three times. Peter is the one who preaches at Pentecost in Acts, and 5,000 people come to know Christ that day. So our understanding of what it means for Jesus to be Messiah in our lives is always developing, and that's a good thing. We're never stuck where we are.
What It Means to Call Jesus Messiah
Jesus tells us plainly what it looks like if we truly understand him as Messiah. Verse 34: “Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said, ‘Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.’” Deny ourselves, take up our cross, follow him. Jesus calls for a deliberate refusal to be guided by our own self-interest, a conscious surrender of control of our lives, an intentional choice to give Jesus control.
This isn't just a command for the inner circle, for those who are especially keen, Jesus expands the invitation to the whole crowd, to all of us. In calling us to take up our cross, he's prophetically pointing forward to his own brutal death; criminals condemned to crucifixion carried their own crossbeam to the place of execution. Jesus is saying: if you want to follow me, and this is how they treat the master, don't be surprised if you suffer persecution and rejection too. We see that all over the world, Christians facing persecution and death, and even in our own country, increasingly, you have to take a stand and face rejection and judgement at times. To follow Jesus, to deny ourselves and take up our cross, requires a continued determination to stick to the chosen path.
If we see Jesus not merely as a prophet, not just a good moral teacher, but, like Peter, confess that he is Lord, the anointed one, with an understanding that he is the Messiah who suffered to overcome death, then what it means for me to say who Jesus is, that he is Messiah, means that I should deny myself, take up my cross, and follow him.
Challenge: Denying Ourselves
So some challenges as we wrap up. What does it mean to deny ourselves? To take up our cross? To follow Jesus? What does it mean that the answer to who Jesus is, is Messiah?
I've been blessed to journey with a lot of people as they come to know Christ and step into the freedom he offers as the anointed one. On denying ourselves, I want to challenge you this week. There are many ways God calls us to hand over the reins of our lives to him, but I must have had ten conversations in the last month, and another ten with myself, about the way we talk to ourselves about who we are. I asked at the start: who do people say you are? Who do you look like, act like? The question is as much ‘who do we say we are’ as ‘who do we say Jesus is,’ because denying ourselves isn't just about not pursuing the things we like or want, day to day, it's choosing to listen to the voice of God over our own voice in how we speak to ourselves.
So many people experience life as a constant feedback loop of telling themselves what they can't do, who they aren't, what they're not able to achieve. I'm not talking about some kind of self-help positive-thinking exercise — I'm not saying just picture it and it'll come true. I'm saying we walk and step into freedom: “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.”
For many years I told myself I wasn't good enough, not intelligent enough, didn't know enough, wasn't confident enough. Early in my twenties, working in church ministry, one of my senior pastors had me do a spiritual gifts test, and I scored very poorly in pastoral care. He sat me down and said, “You're just not pastoral.” I was thinking about ordination at the time, and he essentially told me he didn't think I had the gifts required. I carried that and spoke it over myself for years — it was one of the reasons, though not the only one, that it took me such a long time to be ordained. It's also God's timing, and I praise him for it. But we hold on to these things and speak them over ourselves. Deny yourself this week by identifying anything like that you need to stop speaking over yourself, and instead choose to believe what Jesus says about you.
Challenge: Taking Up Our Cross
That's the deny-yourself challenge. On taking up our cross: where will we stand for Jesus, even if it costs us this week? You may be fortunate that it costs you nothing to tell people you're a Christian, that you go to church, that's great, and I hope it increases, not decreases. But it may cost us to live Christlike lives this week. I know it's going to cost me not to be grumpy with my children. I know it's going to cost my wife not to be grumpy with me. I know it's going to cost me to get up early enough to get into the Word. I praise God I don't face the persecution many of our brothers and sisters across the world face, and maybe one way to take up your cross this week is to carry the burden of praying for people who do face real persecution.
Challenge: Follow Him
How will I consistently follow Jesus Christ as Lord, how will my prayer life draw me closer, my time in Scripture draw me closer, my time being silent before God draw me closer? Will I make time to listen to his voice, to do the hard work of pursuing and following him? This is what it means, according to Mark, to say that Jesus is Messiah, the anointed one: to deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow him.
Closing Prayer
Father, we thank you for your word, and for the truths that are revealed in it. I want to pray for myself, for all of us here and watching online, that we would not just be hearers of the word, but doers of it. Lord, help us to resolve, in your strength and for your glory, to deny ourselves.
Your word in Psalm 139 says, ‘Search me, O God, and know me; point out anything in me that offends you.’ Father, maybe the ways we talk down to ourselves, the lies we hold on to about ourselves, are hidden even to us, would your Holy Spirit move across this place and reveal to us what needs to be given to you.
Give us the strength to relinquish those things, to lay them down before you, to deny ourselves, and with empty hands to take up your cause, to stand for your gospel, to worship you wherever we are, today, this week, this month.
And Lord, in the busyness of this summer, call us forward to follow you one step after another, in prayer, in worship, in Scripture, in fellowship. Reveal to us, the step forward you want us to take, into the freedom Christ gives us as the Messiah, the anointed one. And as we come to your table, let us resolve to follow you in a new way, a deeper way, a renewed way. In Jesus's name we pray,
Amen.