The Cost of Discipleship | Guest – Pastor Dave Chafee, Agents For Christ | July 31st, 2022

In Matthew 16:13–28, Guest Pastor Dave Chafee frames discipleship as the moment Jesus turns the crowd’s curiosity into a personal crossroads: “Who do you say that I am?” The setting matters—Caesarea Philippi, a place saturated with pagan worship—because Jesus is pressing the disciples to decide whether their confession will hold up when the culture around them pulls the other direction. People have theories (prophet, Elijah, John the Baptist), but Peter’s Spirit-given confession cuts through the noise: Jesus is “the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Dave emphasizes that this isn’t human deduction (“flesh and blood hasn’t revealed this”), it’s revelation—God opening the heart to see who Jesus really is. And on that confession—Jesus as Messiah and Lord—Christ builds His church, a people gathered by the gospel, with a promise that lands like a hammer: the gates of hell won’t prevail against what God is building.

But the message doesn’t stay in the “amen” zone for long. The instant Jesus begins explaining the cross—suffering, death, resurrection—Peter tries to protect Him, and Jesus responds with the shocking rebuke: “Get behind Me, Satan.” Dave uses that moment to expose the tension every believer faces: we often want a Jesus who conquers outwardly, fixes circumstances, and keeps life safe… but Jesus came first to conquer hearts and establish a kingdom that advances through surrender, not swagger. That’s where the sermon title becomes real. Jesus lays out the cost in three verbs that define true discipleship: deny yourself, take up your cross, follow Me. Dave keeps it practical and pointed: this is not a Western “add Jesus to your life” upgrade. It’s a full reordering—Jesus first, others second, yourself last—and it will involve risk, discomfort, and sometimes suffering, because the “cross” isn’t just life being hard; it’s identifying with Christ openly in a world that resists Him.

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Audio edited & mastered by:

Michael Gross