We finish our series this morning on the discipleship in the Gospel of Mark. Before us is the call of Jesus in cross bearing as we look through the reading of God’s word. If you please join with me in prayer, Father. Indeed, we thank you that you have given to us your words, that you have had them written down for our learning. And we ask, Lord God, that you would indeed help us to hear them, mark them, to learn them, that we would embrace and ever hold fast the hope of everlasting life which you have given to us in our Savior Jesus Christ, in whose name we now pray, Amen.
Beginning in verse 34 and calling the crowd to him with his disciples, Jesus said to them, 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 in the Gospel’s will, save it. For what? Does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?
For what can a man give in return for his soul? For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation of him, will the Son of man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father? Carry your cross. This belongs to the sayings of Jesus that are widely known even to those who’ve never read the Gospels. Bearing your cross has become a universal expression after the first service.
I was reminded, of course, of the other great universal expression, Jesus take the wheel. That’s technically not in scripture, in case you’re wondering, but taking up your cross certainly is. And like the sayings that just get lifted up out of their context, it loses its meaning when it simply becomes an expression of a personal burden bearing, if that is what you mean by it. People might think of their family as a burden. Someone could say things like, you know, my family are all rednecks and I want to be a metropolitan socialite.
And then you have the other one going, my family are all metropolitan socialites and I want to live out duck dynasty. You have this ability to take whatever circumstance you’re in, whatever family you’re a part of, and see it as a burden you must carry. The good news there is you’re somebody else’s cross.
But this burning passion or cause, that’s not what Jesus is talking about. He’s saying something much more. For Christians, these words of Jesus are all about the burden of following Jesus. The denial of self means the center of gravity has shifted from my own self interest to the single minded pursuit of Jesus interests. And if you’ve been a Christian for more than a week, you know how difficult this is.
It’s a very real struggle. At a very simple level, two people looking at the last piece of cake, they feel that. At a very simple level, two people locked in a heated disagreement. At a greater level feel this. You feel it when temptation rises before you and you’re struggling to say no.
All of this involves a death to our desires. It’s a no to me and say yes to God. We are called to submit ourselves to God’s desires. It’s more than saying no to evil. It is also saying yes to righteousness, yes to the desires that the Lord has.
And because Jesus calls his disciples to follow him, to go to the same place that he went, to go in the same manner that he went, we must then die to ourselves and live for Christ. The synoptic gospels all record these words of Jesus about taking up your cross. Synoptic refers to Matthew, Mark, and Luke. And the word simply means seeing together. It’s the word used to describe the three Gospels.
And in all of them, the context is the confession of Peter. Jesus had essentially asked the question, who do people say that I am? Who am I? And Peter gives the right answer, you are the Christ. And then immediately he gets it wrong.
Jesus, after this expression of being the Messiah, begins to tell them that it is necessary for him to suffer and to die. Peter then interrupts him and begins to rebuke Jesus. Jesus then says the famous statement, get behind me, Satan, for you do not know the things of God. What Peter had got wrong was the necessity of Jesus to suffer and to die. His entire life, he was firmly believing that the Messiah would one day come and he would defeat Israel’s enemies and he would set things right.
And that is what all of them had in mind. And here Jesus is saying something that was really near blasphemous for them, at least for Jewish sensibilities. He’s saying, there will be a suffering Messiah. Nobody thought that. And then Jesus lays out this very high cost of discipleship for what it means to follow him in this way, along with this immeasurable gift of his grace.
So the high cost of discipleship, verse 34. And calling the crowd to him and his disciples, he said, he, if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me. Now, this comes in the context of Peter having been dressed down by Jesus in a very public way. Now, Jesus was not insensitive to Peter. And normally when you do something like that, you do it privately.
But because of the grave manner of Peter’s heir, he felt it necessary to speak publicly. A wrong view of what it means to be the Messiah will lead to a wrong view of what it means to be a disciple. And now he’s calling the crowds together with the disciples to hear what he has to say about this. And by doing so, he makes it very clear that this is for everyone. It’s not just for the 12, it’s not for the apostles.
Cross bearing is not simply for Christian leaders. It is for Christians, for all Christians before Jesus, before his death and his resurrection, taking up your cross would have been a very strange thing to say.
People would have heard this for the first time and thought, what in the world is Jesus talking about? Because the cross wasn’t like it is for us. It wasn’t a nice piece of jewelry, beautiful decoration. Crucifixion was humiliating. It was excessively cruel.
It was one of the most feared forms of execution. That’s exactly why the Romans did it. Not only the Romans, the Persians, the Carthians, and sometimes the Greeks. It was a deterrent to rebellion, a powerful statement about the strength of their rule. It was very public, it was very gruesome.
Roman governor of Syria, Julius varus, he crucified 2000 Jews outside of Jerusalem because of a messianic revolt in the year 4 BC lots of people have been crucified, sometimes hundreds, sometimes thousands, over a period of time. Everybody was aware of crucifixion. It could take days for some people to die. And they would die and often just leave the body hanging on the cross. The condemned person would be seen carrying the traverse beam to the place of execution.
And people publicly watched this. You couldn’t help but walking by because it was done in prominent places. It was abhorrent. And to the Jews particularly, they thought of someone crucified as cursed by God. And that’s why the apostle Paul, when he is speaking about the cross, he’s giving somewhat of an apology, a defense of Jesus dying on the cross.
Because it was foolishness, both to Greeks and to Jews. It was a scandal. The cross was a scandal. And Jesus is using this as the image of discipleship. This instrument of death and cruelty turns into a symbol of grace and discipleship.
Discipleship summed up here in three separate commands, but certainly overlapping in meaning. To deny oneself, to take up your cross and to follow Jesus. Bearing up under adversity and hardship is a part of our lives as Christians. We all know that. But this is not what Jesus is talking about here.
It certainly can include that. But what Jesus is saying is more than that. One commentator put it well. He said the cross is not the ordinary human trouble, sorrows and disappointments, disease, death, poverty and the like, but the things which have to be suffered, endured and lost in the service of Christ. Persecution, self sacrifice, suffering even to the point of death as a result of true faith and obedience to Jesus.
It’s specific. All people endure sickness and broken bodies. That’s universal. But only Christians suffer for being Christians. And even with the universal suffering, we are called to do so in a Christlike way.
To take up your cross is, as one has said, is to tread a lonely road, to bear man’s hatred. And we are called to follow Jesus continually. We follow his way, we follow where he goes. A wrong view of Jesus will lead you to a wrong view of following. And the reality is that God needs to direct us.
Because we will not and cannot direct ourselves very well. We need God to direct us. To deny, to cross, bear, to follow is to serve. In it is to sacrifice on behalf of Christ. We are willing to give up that which is most precious to us.
We make Jesus the very pattern for which we set our own lives. And he says, verse 35. Whoever would save his life will lose it. Whoever loses his life for my sake. And the Gospels will save it.
You cannot cling to this life and serve his redemptive plan. There’s a big no to me and a yes to God. And this word for life or soul, it’s the word in Greek, psyche, which we take directly into English, is also where we get the word psychology. It speaks of either a life or a soul. And here speaks of the totality of who we are.
Our whole being is what Jesus is speaking to. And Jesus makes a total and exclusive claim on the lives of his disciples. Think about that. Nobody else can do this without it being very weird. No one can tell you something like this without you immediately thinking.
This is a cult leader who would tell you to follow them in this way, that their suffering now becomes your suffering. And the reason Jesus says this is because of what was already proclaimed. Because of who he is. He’s the Messiah. He is God with us.
He alone can make this an imperative for you and I that we would do as he commands. And in this, he makes a total and exclusive claim on our lives. You cannot compartmentalize your life with Jesus. He says, all of it is mine. To lose my life for Christ means that you and I discover God’s will as the Very central driving force of our lives.
We discover new life only in giving our old lives to him. We’re wonderfully told we are new creatures in Christ. 2nd Corinthians 5. The old has gone. And Paul in Galatians 2, verse 30, he says, I have been crucified with Christ.
It’s no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me and the life I now live in the flesh, in the body. I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself up for me. Paul is saying, the very animating principle of my life is now Jesus. Because of what he has done for me, I am crucified with him. I am now directed by the mission and the purpose of Christ.
We see in verse 35, he says, for my sake and the Gospel’s the purpose and the mission of Jesus becomes the controlling force of our lives that animates us. This call to discipleship is not a call to follow Jesus when it’s convenient or comfortable. We are to live in a way that pleases the Lord and not ourselves that he is in control.
From CS Lewis in his screwtaped letters, he says people rarely pray for the thing God wants them to pray for. They simply want enough grace to see them through some moment or time of trouble. They conjure up a vision of the future they want and appeal for that outcome. They persist in wrapping their anxious hands around life’s steering wheel as if it’s going to work this time only if they clutch it more tightly. The most difficult prayer for us is not my will, but your will be done.
You do see where the phrase Jesus takes the wheel come from?
And again, even that is used wrongly. It’s like, oh, things are going crazy here. Jesus, it’s your turn. No, it’s Jesus turn all the time.
And the firmer grasp that we had trying to hold on to and how we want to direct things, the tighter and the wider our knuckles get, actually the more out of control we become to pray thy will be done. And this is a very high cost of discipleship. And it comes, though, with the immeasurable gift of Jesus himself. The gift that we receive is life. Jesus words here come in a warning.
But that’s the overarching message. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? And the question, of course, is nothing. For what can a man give in return for his soul? Nothing for whoever’s ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation of him, the Son of Man will be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with all of his holy angels.
We looked at the discipleship in the End Times last week. The promise of Christ return, that the Father alone knows and that we’re to be about the Father’s business, not concerned with the dates and the times. And this very point is what we are to be concerned with is that we are living for the purpose of Christ, not for ourselves. Nothing we can do will add a moment to. To our life.
Now. Many think this is something fearful or. Or joyless in living and wrongly have been those who have actually made it seem like this. I think I’ve mentioned before the humorous writer H.L. mencken.
He defined Puritanism as a haunting fear that someone somewhere may be happy. And sometimes people think of that as Christianity, that there’s this fear that somebody out there is having fun and they must put an end to it. No, that’s not what Jesus is about. He’s not joyless.
Following him is not having a face that has a permanent look like you’re smelling something bad. There’s joy in following Jesus and enduring hardship for Christ. It’s not easy, but it’s not without Joy. In Acts 5 it says that the apostles, because they were preaching about Christ and they got called into the council. And so when they call the apostles, they beat them and charged them not to speak in the name of Jesus, and they let them go.
And then the apostles left the presence of the council rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name of Jesus. And every day in the temple, from house to house, they did not see from teaching and preaching that Jesus is the Christ. They love Jesus. They love the One who had set them free from the power of sin and death. It was a privilege to suffer for Him.
This is not some kind of sick celebration of pain and misery. It’s rejoicing in Jesus. How much more the joy of serving the Lord of glory who gave his life for us. That’s why Paul writes in Romans 5, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus. Not only that, we rejoice in our suffering, knowing that suffering produces endurance.
Endurance, character, character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. That is an amazing promise and declaration. The Holy Spirit given to us. God’s love poured into our hearts.
The good news of the Gospel is that you and I don’t have to be the same. We don’t have to be stuck in rotten sinful patterns of life. The ultimate triumph of the cross, good over evil, means that the Lord can now even use evil for his good purposes. Paul also says that we know that for those who Love God. Romans 8 All things work together for good for those who are called according to his purpose.
Now it’s not saying that every bad thing is good, but that even bad things the Lord can use for the good of his people. That is good and joyful news and is costly along with being gracious. I think Dietrich Bonhoeffer is probably best known work is the cost of discipleship. The German title Nakfoga means following or succession, like succeeding someone on the throne, following after Jesus. And this is what he writes.
He says costly grace is a gospel which must be sought again and again. The gift which means to be asked for the door at which a man must knock. Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow. It is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It’s cost because it costs a man his life.
It is grace that because it gives the man the only true life. It’s costly because it condemns sin and grace because it justifies the sinner. Costly grace is the incarnation of God. Incredible statement. Costly and grace filled.
Only Jesus can bring these two things together. And we are to follow then in the same manner as Jesus with a humble reliance on God’s power to accomplish what we could not in ourselves. Looking outward, away from us to the good of someone else, Suffering for the name of Jesus and suffering in the manner of Jesus. It’s both of those. Putting the needs of someone else before my own is costly.
It’s a death to myself. I mean, what parent does not feel the weight of this when you’re both pretending to be asleep, hoping the other one gets up with the baby or the I don’t smell anything game comes to changing diapers. Why do we do that? Because we want the other person to do it and not us.
Parenting in a Christlike manner is costly. How is Jesus served by me being a mom or being a dad? Marriage in a Christ like manner is costly. How is Jesus served by me? Being a husband or a wife and putting their needs above my own singleness is a Christ in a Christlike manner is costly.
How is Jesus served by my being romantically unattached and this is for every part of our life. For being a student, for being a worker. How is Jesus being served by me with where I’m at right now. And it’s even thinking through the repercussions of choices we make. How often it is the case that if we think of getting a promotion, we think, well, surely that’s God’s blessing in my life.
It can be. But maybe getting a promotion is actually taking you out of a field of great service for the kingdom and putting you somewhere where you haven’t been as effective.
But asking the question first and foremost is, how is Jesus being served? It’s not retaliating when someone says something hurtful to you. That’s costly. Suffering for the name of Jesus is costly. Blessing your enemies is costly for you who are coming out of or in college or looking to go on to other things.
What is it that the Lord has equipped you with with your degree for serving Him? What is the purpose of that in his kingdom? To ask that question first, as opposed to what everybody in our culture wants to ask is, what am I getting out of it? How’s it going to make me happy? You cannot have a focus of, I have a right to be happy and follow Jesus.
If you pursue Jesus, joy certainly comes with that. If you pursue happiness as its own goal, you are headed for a soulless life.
Because we were made in the image and likeness of God, who has been incarnated in the person and work of Jesus.
Thomas A. Kempis reminds us. He says, we have a thousand reasons why we want to share in Christ’s banquet, but few to share in his fasting. To love Jesus for His own sake and not for our own Christ comfort. To bless Jesus in times of trouble and heartache as much as when we are full of consolation and overflowing with blessing, that’s difficult.
And we are called to serve, to sacrifice, to die. This is the life of a disciple.
Because Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. And he has opened the eyes of our hearts to see see him in order to live for Him. And it is in him alone that we will truly be who he has created us to be. To be set free of this constant pushing our own agenda forward, first, looking out for ourselves first and foremost. And Jesus saying, if you are going to follow me, you’re going to put that to death because this is following me.
What it looks like I, as a Messiah, am going to a place of suffering to lay down my life for terrible people who deserve wrath, in order that my love would reign supreme, that they would receive atoning forgiveness through my work. And if you are following Jesus, that is the ministry which you have been called.
And this is why we pray to the Lord. Father, I believe, help my unbelief, Father, continue to purge me of this innate selfishness that constantly wants to put my own desires before anyone else. How is Jesus being glorified with where he has placed you right now to serve him? And how do you allow that question to come to the forefront of the decisions that you’re making?
That is, you see the way to Golgotha, the way of the Cross in all of its humiliating shame, and say, I too, am going that way, because that is where I see Jesus walking. And I, too, am going to go in the manner of Christ, in the humility that he has shown me, because of the love and acceptance that I have received, the forgiveness that I have from him, that my life is now crucified with Christ. Pray with me, Father Almighty, as we come before you this day, we confess with Peter there is an abhorrence to us in dying, to ourselves. And, Father, we ask that you would not only forgive us for these sinful inclinations, but, Lord God, that you would continue to transform us by your Holy Spirit in us. Father, we thank you that you have filled us with your love, that you have given to us the gift of Jesus, a costly and gracious gift.
And, Lord, we would ask then that you would be glorified in the lives of your people even as we step forth in discipleship, in following after our Master, in whose name we now pray. Amen. Please stand.