The Cross

Scripture: Mark 8:31-38

Mark 8:31–38 NIV

31 He then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again. 32 He spoke plainly about this, and Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. 33 But when Jesus turned and looked at his disciples, he rebuked Peter. “Get behind me, Satan!” he said. “You do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.” 34 Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 35 For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it. 36 What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? 37 Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? 38 If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of them when he comes in his Father’s glory with the holy angels.”

2/25/2024

Order of Service:

Announcements

Opening Worship

Prayer Requests

Prayer Song

Pastoral Prayer

Kid’s Time

Ministry Celebration - Gideon Speaker - Marty Padgett

Offering (Doxology and Offering Prayer)

Scripture Reading

Sermon

Closing Song

Benediction

Special Notes:

Week 4: Ministry Celebration

Gideon Speaker - Marty Padgett

Opening Prayer:

Gracious God, as we come and worship You together today, show us who You are and remind us of who we are when we follow You. Help us to bear one another’s burdens as we come today and receive the blessings and challenges You share with us. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

The Cross

The Cross

I thought crosses looked cool when I was young. As a young teenager in a rock band, I wore what looked like a silver cross around my neck with punk rock t-shirts and flannel jackets. It was a trend. You might have noticed it wasn’t a cross if you got close enough. It was a dagger with a skull.

A lot of life happened in a few short years, and I traded in my dagger cross for a Chrysalis cross right before my senior year of high school, going from daggers to butterflies. It was a new day, and I was learning to become a new person. That year was packed to the brim with blessings and change, and I could barely keep up with all that was happening each day as God moved me from the waters of acceptance onto the path of learning who I was in Him.

It is not an exaggeration to say that God stepped in that year, removed the temptations that held me back for many years, brought me healing, and showed me revival breaking out in our local church, school, and community. I saw people praying for salvation in our schoolyard, and our youth group grew from three students to nearly thirty each week. I witnessed people younger than me stepping up, leading in worship and bible studies, and being loved by a congregation that was grateful to share this experience with them.

Emmaus was not a mountaintop experience for me, nor was that time. Instead, it was a time of incredible focus, where I got rid of everything God did not want in my life. It was a year-long spring cleaning, a year-long Lent season. God was doing all that around me, but all I could see was my Bible that I carried everywhere with me, the small handful of new friends I had from church that I trusted with my life, and that cross. Those things kept me so focused on Jesus that I didn’t notice anything else.

The following year, I moved away from home and started college. God met me there and brought me some new friends who would hold me close to Him in those years when temptation returned, trials commenced, and I learned to follow Jesus when it wasn’t so easy.

One of the first people I met was a young man named Shannon. Shannon did not look or act like the small group of Christian friends I had at home, and some of his beliefs challenged me to think deeper about my own beliefs. The first of those challenges occurred in one of our bible studies when he told us he did not believe in wearing crosses. I looked down at the Chrysalis cross I wore, and we asked him why. He stated without judgment that he wanted others to see Jesus in him based on how he lived, not on what he wore. You may notice now that I don’t wear crosses often, either as clothing or other items. Now you know why. Shannon gave me a new way of thinking about the cross and how I interact with it.

We are following Jesus on His journey to the cross, but the cross is not just a destination on our journey. It is also something we take with us. How we use it makes a difference in our lives.

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Death and the Cross

Death

Dr. Richter shared in our bible study video a couple of weeks ago that we all know, deep in our souls, that we were made for eternity. Our bodies sometimes tell us a different story in how we feel at the beginning and end of each day. But our hearts and souls know otherwise. She said we know it when we hear about every car accident fatality, every cancer diagnosis, and every lost loved one. Our hearts and souls, formed by God Himself, know this is not the Master’s plan.

I cannot imagine what must have gone through Peter’s head that day as they traveled toward Jerusalem. Jesus suddenly said that He was going there to die. Peter, one of Jesus’ closest friends, recoiled at this word like an allergic reaction. He quickly moved from following right in step with Jesus to jumping right in front of Him, saying, “No. Lord, this shall never be! Over my dead body!”

We understand that. The good day is the day that nobody dies. The better day is when Jesus brings healing and raises the dead. How terrible is even the thought of the day when the healer and Lord of life dies? We do whatever we can to protect our Jesus, the only one who is truly good and worthy and the one we need more than anything else. We will go to war with the world to protect our Lord and Savior alongside Peter. And that makes the following words sting so much more.

“Get behind me, Satan!” he said. “You do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”

Before understanding the cross, brothers, and sisters, we must know that death is a human concern. It is not a concern for God. Death, our last and greatest enemy, the thing we spend our entire lives trying to keep away, does not even cause God to blink.

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The Cross

The cross has always been a symbol. Centuries before Jesus, powerful people used long poles to hang their enemies in gruesome, humiliating deaths. They may not have looked quite like the crosses as we know them, but they functioned the same way. They were instruments of torture and shame that focused the hatred of the community upon one of their own, drawing out the worst of humanity against itself. They inspired fear and terror in those without power and were the instruments of wrath that the powerful used to attack anyone who opposed them. As a method of execution, it was something that would have gone against the Law of God, who made sure that livestock butchered for food were treated more humanely.

The cross was a tool of the devil used to desecrate and destroy God’s children. And, like many of the devil’s tools, he taught them to use it on themselves. It was a tool to be used on the enemy, the other, the one who threatened your life. No one volunteered to receive a cross themselves. That was insane. And that is precisely what Jesus did. He sought out and took the cross that we, as humanity, built for ourselves.

And then, He invited His disciples to follow Him and do the same.

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Father’s Tools and Our Cross

Father’s Tools

Paul wrote in Romans that God uses all things for the good of those who love Him. Isaiah 54:17 says, “No weapon forged against you will prevail, and you will refute every tongue that accuses you. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, and this is their vindication from me,” declares the Lord. Peter probably thought he understood these passages when he stood in Jesus’s way. But I believe Jesus understood them differently.

From the beginning, God formed that cross for Him. That was the Father’s plan. Sin and death were weapons uniquely set against Him. Did those weapons prosper? They killed the Son of God. The condemnation shouted by the crowd, the beatings, the spitting, and the ridicule given to Jesus... it was all everything Peter had feared and more as Peter himself denied even knowing Jesus. Can you imagine being remembered forever as the one who became a stumbling block for Jesus and abandoned Him when Jesus needed him the most?

The cross killed Jesus. It stripped Him of every bit of life and dignity and hung Him up as an example and focal point of the world’s scorn. At that moment, it prevailed against the son of God, just as our crosses, in their moments, prevail against us. But God redeemed it. God redeemed every bit of it.

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Our Cross

There is a cross made for me and you as well. Jesus calls us not only to go to it but to carry it because it is more than a destination; it is a tool of our Father’s trade. It can be an awful thing to bear as it strips us of our life and dignity. But God redeems our crosses just like the cross of Jesus and makes them instruments of righteousness and vindication.

If we are honest with ourselves, most of the time, it is not the suffering that takes us away from God. Our sufferings are constant reminders of our need for God. Those of us who live easy lives often find our blessings of wealth and luxury prospering against them, looking back years later and wondering how we and our families strayed so far from God when we were so good at enjoying life in Jesus’ name. We can so easily win the world and lose our souls. But not if we lay down our lives, pick up our crosses, and follow Jesus.

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Carrying Your Cross

So, how exactly do we figure out what cross Jesus wants us to carry?

Knowing the scripture helps with that, but God does not want us to use our Bibles like magic eight balls or fortune cookies, turning to a random page and expecting it to give us an oracle that tells us precisely what to do. That is not how God ever asked His people to use scripture. Talking with good Christian friends can also be helpful, but that can be another way to put someone or something between us and Jesus. Sometimes, we feel the urge to do that when we know the answer to our question, but we don’t like that answer. True Christian friends will call us on that when we go to them to get a different answer that we like better than the one we have from God. We need to check our motives before venturing off to find our cross.

The only person who can give you your cross to bear is Jesus. Other people will try. You may feel the urge to go “cross-shopping” and trade what you have for something you think may fit you better. But the truth is, your cross needs to come from Jesus, and He is the one who will help you know how to carry it.

You get that knowledge from Jesus when you go to Him and pray at His feet, just listening to His voice. In 1 Kings 19, Elijah was running from the cross God had for him. He hid in a cave and listened to a storm and an earthquake but did not hear God. After the excitement finally died down, he heard God in a still, small voice, telling him to get over himself, pick up his cross, and follow where God was leading him.

That was the same still, small voice that spoke to Mary when she sat at the feet of Jesus while the disciples talked all around her, and her sister gave her looks of disdain as Martha played hostess to them all in the kitchen. It was the same feet Mary would return to later, anointing with expensive perfume and her tears of gratitude after Jesus raised her brother from the grave. Jesus told her that what she had received from Him would never be taken away. He gave her the cross He wanted her to bear for Him, and she allowed Him to use that cross to change her life forever.

Their crosses changed the lives of each disciple, and Mark tells us that Jesus gave that word, that teaching, to the crowds, not just to his twelve. God has a cross for you, too, and you will only receive it from Jesus. It may start small, but it will grow with you as it changes you, and you too will come to a point, just like Jesus, where you have to ask for help carrying it as Jesus leads you to the end of your mortal life and into the eternal life He created you for from the very beginning.

Brothers and sisters, will you seek Jesus, lay down your lives, and take up the cross He has made for you? Will you allow God to redeem that cross to change you forever for His glory and remake you in His image?

Closing Prayer

Lord Jesus,

We come to You today as poor sinners, ashamed of our sins, who want to receive Your invitation to be adopted into Your family as brothers and sisters. We know we are not worthy of this gift, yet we want to make room for You to make us able to receive it. We know there is no life outside of You, yet we cling so desperately to our worldly ways and temporary things. We need You in our lives to guide and shape us.

We have heard Your call to pick up our crosses and follow You. Help us this week to see the cross You have put before us. Help us not to fear or despise it but to see it with a sense of love and joy because we know it is the instrument You are using to remold and make us in Your perfect image. Redeem our brokenness, Lord, and make us Yours.

In Jesus’ name. Amen.

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