Walk This Way Part 4

Walk This Way

Part 4

"Your 'Cross' Walk"

Luke 9:23 "Then he said to them all, 'If anyone wants to become my follower, he must deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me.'"

So far we've talked about our UPWARD walk (how we live our faith out toward God),

Our OUTWARD walk (how we live our faith out toward others),

And our INWARD walk, (how we live out our faith in cooperation with the Holy Spirit within).

Now today I want to explore our CROSS walk, (how we live out our faith in response to Jesus' command to "take up your cross daily" and follow Him.)

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Interestingly, Jesus uses the example of a cross well before He himself was crucified!

“If anyone wants to become my follower, he must deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me.”

In using that example, Jesus let on that He full well knew how He would die.

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The Psalmist David had vividly described in Ps 22 the crucifixion of God’s Messiah before the cross was even invented!

Ps 22:16-18 "For dogs have surrounded Me; The congregation of the wicked has enclosed Me. They pierced My hands and My feet; 17 I can count all My bones. They look and stare at Me. 18 They divide My garments among them, And for My clothing they cast lots."

So Jesus borrowed from the picture of a death on the cross to describe the kind of self-denial His true disciples must practice.

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Now, the minute we hear him use this analogy, it conjures an unappealing picture.

Pick up my cross?

Deny myself?

And do it daily?

That’s not what I would call a strong selling point!

Crucifixion was not only one of the most painful and disgraceful forms of death, it was one of the most dreaded methods of execution in the ancient world.

As you know, victims of this form of capital punishment had their hands and feet bound and nailed to a cross.

We find accounts of crucifixions recorded as early as the 6th century BC among some ancient civilizations.

Crucifixion was primarily reserved for traitors, captive armies, slaves and the worst of criminals.

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But far from being a negative, the cross we are to pick up is the only means by which we will successfully follow Jesus to the end.

Now, Jesus began His statement with a hypothetical:

If any man wants to come after me.

At the time Jesus said these things, a crowd of thousands had been following him.

He had healed them, taught them, and then performed the great miracle of the multiplication of fish and loaves.

So to these folks, following Jesus was great!

No more sickness, free food, great teaching…

Who wouldn’t love being His disciple!

So, lest they get the wrong idea, Jesus told the vast crowd what it would take to truly be His disciple. ____________________________________________________

Now, let me pause here and clarify something very important.

Following Him is what it means to be a Christian.

It’s more than a ticket to heaven when you die.

It’s more than fire insurance.

It’s more than simply acknowledging a historical figure.

It’s more than simply saying you believe in Him.

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We used to sing a song when I first came to Christ as a teenager.

“I have decided to follow Jesus (3x)

No turning back, no turning back

The world behind me, the cross before me (3x)

No turning back, no turning back

Though none go with me, still I will follow (3x)

No turning back, no turning back”

It was a song of total surrender, total discipleship.

It meant that, He is not just my Savior, but He is my teacher, my guide, my Lord, the Boss…

What He says I will do, where He leads I will go.

I’m all in, sold out, totally committed, fully His.

Jesus said, “If any man wants to FOLLOW ME…”

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Then He gave the gave us the only way we will succeed at doing that:

First:

He must deny himself.

Denying yourself is part of the CROSS walk to which every true Christian has been called.

Now, the word “deny” is a strong word.

It’s the same word Jesus used when he told Peter that before the rooster crowed, he would deny Him three times.

Let’s look at Peter’s denial…

He denied Jesus fiercely, passionately, and completely.

To follow Him, we must completely, wholeheartedly DENY OURSELVES with the same intensity.

Please understand, Jesus is not speaking here of self-hatred or self-abuse.

He is not teaching us to be self-mutilating masochists.

To deny yourself means to deny your selfish self, your willful self, your self-seeking self must take a back seat.

The person who denies himself is the person who no longer lives for themselves.

Listen to Peter out of the Message Bible:

“Think of your sufferings as a weaning from that old sinful habit of always expecting to get your own way. Then you’ll be able to live out your days free to pursue what God wants instead of being tyrannized by what you want” (1 Pet 4:2).

It is our selfish self that demands to have things our way, that insists on what we want, when we want it, the way we want it…

And it is that selfish self inside us all that stands in the way of God’s plan for our lives, and that threatens to derail our purpose.

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Denying yourself means getting your self out of the way of yourself, because it is your selfish self that gets you in all your trouble anyway!

One commentator wrote, “A man's self is to him the prime cause of most of his miseries.”

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One of the reasons our culture is so messed up, so confused, and so decadent, is because their philosophy is “indulge yourself!”

But Jesus said, “Don’t indulge yourself, deny yourself!”

So God has a remedy for our selfish self, and that is to DENY IT.

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But just denying it isn’t enough, because sooner or later it will win the fight and you’ll be back to living for your selfish self.

To really get rid of that selfish, self-serving self-will, it must be CRUCIFIED.

Jesus said,

Pick up your cross daily and follow me.

God’s solution for our selfish self is to crucify it with Jesus.

This is what Paul was talking about when he said,

“My old self has been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal.2:20).

Now let me tell you what your cross is not…

It is not some physical affliction or disease

It is not your marriage

It is not your mean boss

It is not any of the negatives of life where we hear people say, “Oh it’s just the cross I have to bear.

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The CROSS simply means that when faced with a contest between your will and God’s will, you deny yourself and choose God’s will.

The perfect picture of this is Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane:

As the suffering of the Cross loomed before Him, Jesus went to a quiet garden and prayed the same prayer three times:

“O My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will.”

That is the prayer of a person that picks up his or her cross!

Notice, Jesus added that little word, “daily.”

The person that wants to follow Jesus must deny himself and pick up his cross on a daily basis.

Why daily?

Because we have battles with a seductive world daily.

The tempter spins his webs of temptation daily.

The temptation to hide Jesus under a bushel rather than speak up for him openly comes daily.

Our own selfish self wants its own selfish way daily.

FACT: Without this daily cross-walk it won’t be long before someone, or some thing, or some place successfully wins over your selfish self, and you are lured out of the path of discipleship.

As Paul said of Demas, his one-time partner in ministry:

“Demas has deserted me because he loves the things of this world…” (2 Tim. 4:10)

So Jesus says, “Do you want to follow Me?”

Walk this way!

“Deny yourself, pick up your cross on a daily basis, and follow after me.”