And Jesus told his disciples, If anyone would come after me, let
him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.
For whoever would save his life will lose it.
But whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and
forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in
return for his soul? For the Son of Man is going to
come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he
shall repay each person according to what is he has
done. And this is the word of the
Lord. Let's pray together.
Gracious Lord, grant to us ears to hear, eyes to see, hearts
that are open to change, to be shaped and molded more and more
into Your image. Make it so, Lord, for we want to
give everything for your glory and praise.
We ask through Christ our Lord, we pray, Amen.
Please be seated and if you would grab your Bibles, turn to
Matthew chapter 16. Matthew chapter 16.
If you're following the service well today, you will see how
wonderfully well the Lord and the staff in which I work with
have woven together this passage of Scripture with everything
which we have done so far in worship today and with the way
in which we are expecting the Lord will be honored and pleased
by what we do. If you were with us last week,
you know that we talked a little bit about discipleship in
particular. What does it mean to be a
disciple of the Lord? It means following after the
Lord. In particular.
We use the concept or the idea of that old phrase that may you
be covered in the dust of your rabbi and otherwise way we
follow after Jesus Christ so closely and intimately that we
are covered in His dust. That is, that we are walking so
closely to Christ that as he was walking along the dusty Rd. that
dust is coming up and covering us.
I have occasionally, the passengers in my car have
occasionally complained that I drive too close to the person in
front of me. I frankly have never paid much
attention to that until one day I'm driving along on the highway
and it's a beautiful bright blue sky day.
Everything is glorious and marvelous outside, and we're
commenting on how beautiful it is.
And suddenly there's a mist that keeps hitting the windows.
And I'm looking around. Both of us would look and say,
hey, there's no clouds in the sky.
I wonder where that mist is coming.
You know, I'm surprised that there's a mist in here.
And then I realized the car in front of me is washing those
windows, spraying and hitting the windows.
And every time he wipes the windows, the spray falls back on
my car because I was following a little bit too closely.
That's the idea, to be covered in the dust, to be showered by
the evidence that you are walking closely with the person
that you are following. Now, I made the point last last
week, yesterday, last week, Yep, made the point last week that
every Christian, it's called to be a disciple.
It's not a special task. It's not a special calling that
first we have the Christian that is saved and follows Jesus
Christ as Lord and Savior and then you become a disciple
somewhere further down the line. No, being a Christian is being a
disciple. One thing that we didn't talk
about that I could have and should have is that everybody is
following somebody. You are being covered in some
dust of somebody. It might be the dust of your own
making. It could be the dust of another
part of the world. It could be Satan's dust.
Everybody in this world is following somebody.
And what we want to do is make sure that we are following after
the Lord Jesus Christ, that we are faithful disciple of His.
So we talked a lot about that. We didn't necessarily talk about
what we're going to look at today, which is the cost of
being a disciple. What is the cost of being a
disciple? Now it is a fundamental truth of
the gospel message that our salvation is a free gift of the
Lord Jesus Christ, That nothing we do, nothing we can possibly
do would earn us any piece of the salvation that the Lord
gives us. That that is a pure blessing
upon his, upon his gift to us. And anytime we think that we
have to do something in order to merit His salvation, we have
missed the whole point that indeed we place ourselves
outside the gospel message. The gospel is free.
It is a blessed gift that is given to us, but it will cost
you everything. The song we just sang today,
Lord, take everything. That is the cry of every
disciple. That is what it means to be a
disciple. And that couldn't be expressed
more clearly than in the text in which we read today, verse 24.
Jesus told his disciples. Jesus told his disciples about
the cost of discipleship. He gathers his disciples
together and one of the other gospels.
This story is recounted by all three of the synoptic gospel
writers, Matthew, Mark, and Luke.
And all three of them recounted the story.
Luke includes the fact that there is a crowd that is present
there as well, but Jesus calls his disciples together and tells
them about the cost of being a disciple.
But I want you to note this, that this event takes place 1 or
even 2 years into Jesus's ministry.
These disciples have already been following him for one to
two years, and yet he still feels it's necessary to tell
them, to remind them of what the cost is.
I take that to be incredibly instructive for each of us.
Every day you must wake up and remind yourself of the cost of
following Jesus Christ. Every day, no matter how long
you've been a believer, No longer how long you have
followed Jesus Christ, No longer how long you how intimately you
were connected to church. I am telling you, every day you
need to call. Remind yourself again of the
cost of the following Jesus Christ.
This is a passage that is easy to memorize and you should
memorize it. Deny myself, take up my cross
and follow after Him every day. Why?
Because it is so easy to slide backwards.
It is so easy not to do those things.
Yes, even for followers that have been following Jesus Christ
for long periods of time, as I know many of you have.
Don't fool yourself into becoming complacent at this
point. Ask yourself every single day.
Don't miss that opportunity. It's right there in the text.
Jesus called his disciples. He called those of us who are
already following him. He calls us every day and says,
Let me remind you again of what you are doing here.
What are we doing here? We're doing 3 different things.
Jesus called his disciples. If anyone would come after me,
let him. Anybody would follow after
Jesus. Anybody would be his disciple.
Let him deny himself. Take up his cross and follow me.
Deny himself, take up his cross and follow me.
OK, Deny yourself. On one level that sounds really
easy. It it means put off the evil
thoughts in your minds. Don't follow after evil
thoughts, don't follow after evil desires.
Deny yourself. Those kind of things we all kind
of realize whenever I want to lash out at somebody or when I
want to gossip about somebody or when I want to act
inappropriately in certain ways, deny those desires, deny those
things so that I can be a follower of Jesus Christ.
This text means so much more than that.
To deny yourself. Here is an unqualified comment.
One commentator says that there's a tent that the way in
which the passage is phrased is there's a perfected sense to it.
In other words, not just deny yourself, but utterly,
completely, totally deny yourself when we realize how how
much of our lives is centered around us, around you?
How much of your life is centered around the pursuit of
youth, pursuing your own interests, your job, your
family, your, your, your involvement in the church?
Everything in which we do is centered around us.
And what Jesus is saying here is that the core concept of what it
means is to deny yourself. And Please note this, Jesus
doesn't say readjust yourself so that you're more in line with
Jesus. He doesn't say be ready to deny
yourself when those evil thoughts come up.
He doesn't say to practice faithfully whenever you need to
deny yourself. What he says is that command
that is listed upon every one of us.
Deny yourself. I have an outsized memory in my
mind, which is an outsize. It's an outsize because I
suspect that it wasn't as big a deal when I was living this
experience as it is and stuck in my head.
I was a young kid. My dad took us to Disney World.
We were walking into Disney World.
I, you know, picture me as 10 years old or something along
those lines. And mom and dad have a, my
sister and brother in hand. And my mother says, now follow
along closely so you don't get lost.
You know, stick with us. And so we're walking through
Disney and there's the packed walkway there early on, and
there's everybody's there. And I look off to my side and
they're giving away free fudge that is shaped in the image of
Mickey Mouse, and it's free fudge and it's Mickey Mouse
shape. And I look and I'm walking
closely to mom and I look over and I see the free fudge and I
see Mom. Why?
Mom's walking in this direction and there's the free fudge.
And so I take a couple steps and I look over my shoulder.
Mom's still moving that way. I take a little more.
Mom's still moving that way. I take a little bit more.
I get all the way to the fudge and I look over my shoulder and
Mom's still moving in that direction.
I grab the fudge. I run up to Mom.
I grab her hands and I say, Mom, I got free fudge.
Why not? Because it's free and it's fudge
and it's shaped in like Mickey Mouse.
Say Mom, I got free fudge, just Mickey Mouse.
And I hear, Oh dear, I'm not your mother.
Total panic, total panic. I wet myself.
It was just a tremendous experience.
Now, just to clarify, I looked next door and there was my mom.
I said thank you lady, and I go ahead and grab mom saying and
stuff like mom never is. But if you're going to follow in
someone's footsteps to deny yourself means what?
Is there anything wrong with free fudge shaped in Mickey
Mouse's? Of course not.
But that's not where my disciple was moving that to deny myself
means to deny that, to say that's not what I am after, but
rather to pursue whatever my disciple is pursuing.
That's what is important to me. That's what is in crucial to my
life is not to pursue what I'm interested in.
To deny myself means to turn away from all of the desires
that anchor themselves in my heart and in my desire.
Now, the reality is that most of us don't think of ourselves as
that bad that we have to deny ourselves.
Oh, sometimes we got to readjust.
Sometimes we've got to fix some things.
We've got to tweak some stuff here and there.
My guess is that nobody in this room thinks they're perfect.
If you do, come talk to me. You know, no, everybody realizes
that we got to tweak some stuff, but we don't realize that that's
not what the Bible says about you.
The Bible describes what a war that is going on between the old
self, that who you were, and the new self that is now present
because of the indwelling of Jesus Christ in your heart, your
union with Jesus Christ, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit
that has made you a new person. And therefore the old self
continues to war against that and continues to try to assert
dominance. And what we have to do is not
placate it, not to tackle it when it raises his head, not to
try to tamper it and to keep it under control.
We need to deny it. We have to turn our backs to it.
We have to insist, no, I am only going to follow my Savior.
I'm only going to follow. This should be easy for you to
ask yourself, how often do I deny myself?
How often do I sit there and say, you know what?
This is not the direction Jesus is going.
I'm not. My guess is you never think like
that. I don't think like that.
But how can we possibly respond to that call, that essential
call of Jesus Christ, that to be his follower, to come after him,
means to deny yourself. It doesn't mean to deny yourself
only when the big things happen. It means to deny yourself, to
turn away because you were at war.
That self is at war. How do you know?
Because frankly, I have lots of desires.
I have the desire to come to church.
I have the desire to see God's glory spread throughout this
world. I have the desire for you to
know the Lord better. Not every desire is evil.
How do you know? Because you're following the
Lord Jesus Christ. When do I deny myself?
When my eyes are not on Him. How do we know if your eyes are
on Him? This is the purpose of the
Scriptures. The Scripture reveals Jesus
Christ to us. This is why we talk so
essentially about the Scripture and why we're begging you to.
This is perfect for today. Look around you.
Look at all the people that were standing in front of you.
All of them are committed to one thing that you would know, the
Scriptures, because that's where you see Jesus Christ.
That's where you know what is His will, so that you can learn
to deny yourself. Deny yourself.
Take up your cross and follow me.
Take up your cross. Now.
For Christians on this side of the crucifixion, most of us have
a sense of what that means. That's where our Savior was
suffered and died. That's where the sacrifice of
our Lord took place. And most of us have a
sympathetic yearning for the cross represents everything that
is glorious about our salvation, that our debt has been paid upon
the cross of Jesus Christ and salvation has been earned.
We have a A a nice feeling about the cross.
Realize that this happened 2 years, a year or so before
Christ went to the cross. What did the cross mean to the
disciples who first heard it? They weren't thinking about
Christ dying on the cross. They were thinking of what
everybody in the Roman Empire knew what taking your cross
meant. The convicted criminal would
have to carry that cross beam from the point of his conviction
to the point of his execution. And he would have to carry it
through a mob of people who are howling at him, who are
denouncing every step along the way that we're declaring him to
be this horrible fallen person, this wicked individual.
And they were screaming at him across the bar.
When Jesus says to take up the cross and follow after him, he's
saying take up the cross. Embrace the rejection of this
world. We have a sympathetic thought
about somebody suffering on the cross and how terrible would
that would be? That is shaped and molded
completely by our experience with Jesus Christ.
Indeed, the world then recognized the cross is nothing
but a picture of a rejection of the of the person that would be
carrying that cross. The whole community would come
out and denounce that individual.
Jesus is saying, if you want to be on my team, put yourself in a
position where the whole world rejects you.
Not might reject you, but does reject you.
Not be willing to carry your cross, but actually carry the
cross and place yourself in a position of being completely
rejected by this world. Now this should be easy for you.
How often does your faith lead you to purposefully put yourself
in a position where you are rejected by the world?
You don't have to be a people pleaser to know how desperately
we are about attaining people's approval and desiring to fit in.
It's why we wear the clothes we wear.
It's why we live the way we live.
It's why we talk the way we talk.
So much of our life is shaped by the world around us, not
necessarily for the bad. But if we're unwilling to be
rejected of all of those things, then we have not yet taken up
the cross. Take up the cross.
The cross was an element, a picture of great shame, so
rejection of the world and then incredible shame.
We have to recognize that the person that would be crucified
would be stripped naked, perhaps a loincloth, but otherwise
stripped completely naked, denounced by the whole
community, stuck before the whole world to see in everything
their terror and their suffering.
It would be a hugely shameful position.
When Jesus says take up your cross, he's saying put yourself
in a position where you are shamed, where you are shamed
continually by the world. I don't know anybody that
consistently acts in ways that makes them shamed by the world,
but that's exactly what it means to carry your cross.
Carry your cross so that you can experience that shame and the
great suffering of the cross. The cross was a horrific way to
die. All you do is got to study a
little bit about this and you realize how terrible it was.
When Jesus says pick up your cross, he's saying put yourself
in the position of great and immense suffering.
How many of us to follow after Jesus put ourselves consistently
in a position of great suffering?
Look, this isn't hard. Look at your life.
How often have I made a decision for the Lord that has involved
great suffering, great suffering.
Finally, take take up the cross only ended in one result,
consistently ended in one result, your death.
It was a position of great danger and suffering and shame
and rejection of the world that led to death.
And Jesus says, take up your cross to follow me.
He's implying nothing more than that you are going to your
death. I take every step in my life,
active steps in my life, to avoid that very scenario.
And here Jesus is saying this is exactly what you're supposed to
do. Recognize, by the way, how these
things fit together. Deny yourself and take up your
cross. For if you take up the cross of
the rejection of this world, you are denying yourself.
It's acceptance. You're denying it yourself.
It it's approval. It's it's pleasure, it's joy.
How many of us actively do that? You don't have to be a people
pleaser to realize that nobody who who actively seeks rejection
from this world. To take up the cross of shame
means that you are intentionally denying the glory that you would
have, the praise of people, the adoration, the approval of other
people. Instead, you are embracing a
life of shame. To take up the cross of
suffering means that you are giving up.
You are denying yourself a life of comfort.
How many of us are willing to do that?
Take up the cross that leads to death means that you are giving
up the pursuit of safety. Safety is so dominant in our
lives, and yet the cross insists that we take up the cross and
become Christ insists that we take up the cross, the very
antithesis of all of these things.
Who here is living that life? Christ calls.
Everyone of you to be his disciple, yes, to glory in the
benefits of our redemption. But realize that it's going to
cost you everything. It's going to cost you the
approval of this world. It's going to cost you it's a
shit your glory. It's going to cost you your
comfort. It's going to cost you your
safety. Take up your cross, deny
yourself and follow me. I like the way that Mark phrases
this. Mark phrases it this way.
He says if anybody would follow Jesus says if anyone would
follow me, deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me.
If anyone would follow me, follow me.
And I picture what I, my dad did to me, what I'm sure I did to my
kids, Jesus grabbing my head, saying, Henry, if you're going
to follow me, then follow me. Follow me.
Where's he going? I got to know where he's going.
If I'm going to follow him, does he follow me in the comforts of
my life and the desires of my look?
We have the reality, the theological reality, that
wherever I am, Jesus is there with me.
It's one of the fundamental truths of the gospel messages, a
beautiful thing that I can never separate, be separated from my
Lord Jesus Christ. Wherever I go, that's where he
is. That's not what he's saying
here. This text says not that I'm
going to be with you wherever you go.
His this text says, make sure you're going where I am going.
Where is Jesus going? He's going to the suffering.
He's going to those points of sadness.
He's going to those places of sorrow.
He's going to those places of brokenness and of evil and of
wickedness. That's where our Lord is going.
We know that because that's how He came to me.
That's how he came. To you.
This text says if. You're going to follow Jesus
Christ, then follow Him. How do you know where He's
going? We see it in the Word.
And what does a Word teach us? The Word teaches us that we
follow after Jesus where He is going to the most sorrowful,
broken, wounded places of this world.
That's where we're supposed to be.
If Jesus were here in this world today, where would he go?
That's where we need. To be.
What a. Recruiting toll.
This was for Jesus, you know? Can you imagine this?
Hey, come join my team. You get to deny yourself, all of
you, everything you want. You get to take up your cross
experience suffering, shame and lack of everything you blessed
with. And you get to go with me into
all the most miserable places in this world.
Come join my team, OK? Luckily, blessedly, God does add
motivation. He tells us the incentives for
what it means to follow after Him.
Because immediately following verse 24 is 252627 where each
one of those verses starts with the word for and you get 3
reasons, 3 motivations, 3 incentives.
First one is this verse 25. For whoever would save his life
will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find
it. OK, now this sounds a little bit
like nonsense. If you will lose your, if you
find your light, if you save your life, you lose it.
If you lose your life, you find it.
So you know, what do you kind of do this?
This is what I call the watermelon principle.
My mother used to always serve as watermelon and the seeds, you
know how those things are slippery and stuff like that,
and you put them in. So as soon as she we'd have the
watermelon, Ted and I, my brother and I would dig around,
find all the seeds and then shoot them across the table at
each other, you know, squeeze them really hard.
The harder you squeeze them, the quicker they fly out of your
hand. We try to get them stuck in my
sister's hair. That was always a victory, you
know. So you squeeze them really hard,
you squeeze, you spin them out and that kind of stuff.
If you squeeze really hard to hold on to your life, you will
lose it. But.
If you lose your. Life, you will find it.
It sounds like complete nonsense.
Until you realize. The caveat that I skipped over
in verse 25 if you lose your life for my sake.
You will find it. Find it.
What's the IT? There?
It is life. The first incentive to deny
yourself, to take up that cross, to follow Jesus, is that we will
find life. What is life in the Scriptures?
It is the abundant outpouring of the fulfillment of everything
that God intended for you. What's your purpose?
What's your goal? What's your life plan?
Everything that the Lord has laid out for you, that is life.
It is an abundant. It is filled with joy.
It is filled with satisfaction. It is filled with devotion and
love and blessedness. That's what life really is.
That's what you experience when you deny yourself, when you take
up the cross, when you follow after Jesus.
I'm going to go a little bit long here because the second
four, statement 4, is simply that it's an accounting
principle. It's kind of this idea.
Imagine a major scale. This is in verse 2726.
For what shall profit a man if he gains the whole world and
forfeits his soul? So imagine a big scale here.
If you put on the scale everything of this world and
don't picture a little blue marble and say you know the
world on this side and your soul on this side.
How do they balance out here? You have to picture what Jesus
says is imagine everything of this world, all of your
pleasure, all of your joys, all of your satisfaction, all
treasure, everything you could possibly want, every
satisfaction you could ever want, every approval you could
ever seek, everything good that you could ever have.
Imagine that on this side of the scale and put it on this side,
your eternal soul. It's it's.
Jesus doesn't even have to spell it out.
It's self-evident that nothing compares.
You can't give anything compares to the value of your eternal
soul. And so Jesus says yes, deny
yourself, take up your cross. You know why?
Because on this side of the scale is your eternal life.
It is your soul and nothing will ever tip the balance like that.
And finally in verse 27, for the Son of Man is going to come with
the angels in glory as of his Father, and then he will repay
each person according to what he has done.
The final motivation, the final incentive that he gives to
everybody in this room to take seriously the call to deny
yourself, to figure out, to ask yourself not to be, not to take
it lightly, but to say, God, tell me.
Show me how it is that I don't deny myself.
Show me where that old self keeps popping up and insisting
on being present. Show me what it is so I can deny
it. Show me that, Lord, where the
cross is. Show me where I need to embrace
the rejection of this world. Show me where I have to
anticipate the suffering and the shame of this world.
Show me where I have to embrace the dangers of following after
you, Lord Jesus Christ. We have to go in and ask all of
those questions. Why?
Jesus says, here's the greatest reason, because I am coming in
my glory. I am coming in my glory.
And so till will all those who fall all after me, we are
following after Jesus where's he's going?
He's coming here and he's coming here in glory now.
If this text doesn't. Challenge you?
You're not paying any. Attention, this check text
doesn't challenge you. Don't try to make it challenge
you. Come up and talk to me about the
fundamentals of the gospel of Jesus Christ because you're
missing the love of the Lord Jesus Christ.
You're missing his sacrifice for you.
If you haven't embraced the blessedness of your salvation,
and if you have, then there is no other recourse but to become
a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ.
And to be a disciple is to confront every day your old
self, that self that rises up, that nudges you in other
directions, that takes your eyes off of Jesus Christ, pick up
that cross and to follow after him.
If you're like me and you desperately want to keep your
eyes on Jesus. Get in a Bible.
Study. If you're worried.
About your time, if you're worried about your comfort
level, if you're worried about your that's all yourself.
Deny all those things. Get in the study so you can be
exposed to who Jesus Christ is, so you can follow Him
faithfully, giving completely of yourself all that you have.
If you feel like. Me you feel like there's a need
right now to communicate to the Lord and to say, God show me
what I need to see. Memorize this.
Text and let's go before the Lord.
Jesus, show me what it means.
That I need to. Deny myself.
Show us what it. Means that we need to deny
ourselves. Show Hebburn Church what it
means that we need to deny ourselves.
Lord Jesus, show us what it means to pick up the cross.
Show us. What it means to embrace the
rejection of this world to. Embrace.
The shame of the cross to embrace the suffering of
following after you. To embrace the.
Danger of turning our back on the safety of this world and
embrace the safety of our souls which are locked in your
embrace. Lord teach us.
Show us through Christ our Lord, we pray.
Amen.