Discipleship is Costly
Sermon • Submitted • Presented
0 ratings
· 1 viewNotes
Transcript
Matthew 16:24-28
Matthew 16:24-28
Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me.
If anyone chooses to come after Christ, we must be sure it will not be under conditions that the carnal heart desires.
We must be ready to totally surrender to be true followers of Christ.
We must be ready to submit 100% to Christ’s will in our lives.
If anyone wishes to go after Jesus, we must agree to share His sufferings and die with Him.
He died on the cross and was selfless, and we must die to self.
The cross means shame, hatred, persecution and death.
We choose to be recruited in the army of the Lord.
Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.
And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.
But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ.
More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ,
and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith,
that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death;
“I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.
At the door of the Roman court of justice, crosses were piled and and it was left to the condemned to carry his cross to the place of execution.
The Christian must follow Christ in His path.
The most difficult obstacle in the life of any Christian is to die to self.
In this, it takes total surrender to Christ.
This is why Romans 12:1 is one of my favorite Scriptures.
This is crucial to come to the place where we have favorite Scriptures and they come to life in our hearts.
Sin can be actually washed and cleansed, with the sinner forgiven, delivered, and restored in quick order, that is , if the Word is fully obeyed.
If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
However, self submitted in Christ is not so easy or quickly done.
Thus 2 approaches to life:
Deny yourself OR Live for yourself
Take up your cross OR Ignore the cross
Follow Christ OR Follow the world
Lose your life for His sake OR Save your life for your own sake
Forsake the world OR Gain the world
Keep your soul OR Lose your soul
Share His reward in glory OR Lose His reward in glory
Too much of what we give to the world in the name of Christ is self, which will draw no one to the Lord, and reap o spiritual benefits.
We bring self in the mix so much and not Christ!
Self must properly be placed in Christ in order that God’s will be carried out in all things.
Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.
Suffering always leads to glory.
“For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.
This means that it is lost in relation to this world, but is found in relationship to the next.
Those who refuse to safeguard their life in this world will suffer eternal loss in the next.
The individual who sets out on this life journey to carry out his own will, of “necessity”, must deny the will of God.
To do that will bring in no lasting satisfaction in this world, and no eternal life in the world to come.
It is tragic that most of the world follows the footsteps of self-will instead of following Christ.
If this is the choice one makes they will be little remembered on things that matter little, if not at all.