The Cost of Discipleship
Notes
Transcript
34 And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.
35 For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it.
36 For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?
37 For what can a man give in return for his soul?
38 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 with the holy angels.”
1 And he said to them, “Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God after it has come with power.”
The cost of discipleship. This time of year, it seems that our spending gets a little more drastic because we feel like we have to buy stuff for other people. If I had a time machine, I would go back and change the idea of buying multiple presents for anyone and everyone. Because Christmas has become so commercialized. The cost has become so great.
There are so much greater things that cost us in our life. One of which today we will be discussing. That is the cost of following Jesus. The cost of discipleship. Salvation is free but the life that comes from salvation has a cost.
Main Idea: The cost of discipleship is death
Main Idea: The cost of discipleship is death
Are you willing to pay this price. Are you willing to give up all the comforts of this life in order to follow Jesus? My prayer is that the answer is yes.
In our passage, we are going to look at two ways that we must die in order to follow Jesus.
Our Self Must Die
Our Self Must Die
Leading up to this first verse, Jesus is teaching his disciples about the cross. He is telling them that he must suffer and die. Peter does not like this and instinctively rebukes Jesus for what he said and Peter in turn is put in his place by Jesus. So we are coming right off of that interaction when Jesus calls the larger crowd to come in. He has the 12 but he also has a larger following as well. So he brings them all together to teach them.
34 And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.
Pursuit. There are things in life that are worth pursuing. I pursue to grow in relationship with people in this church. I pursue growing closer with my family. I pursue to provide for and care for and protect my family. These are all great things to pursue. But the greatest thing to pursue in life is Jesus.
That is what Jesus is talking about here when he says that if anyone would come after him. To come after him is to pursue him. This is the call of every Christian. This is what biblical Christianity looks like.
A dilemma that we face though is that biblical Christianity is now viewed as Radical Christianity. The call that Jesus makes here is to deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow him. So let’s see how that is viewed today.
Deny yourself - We live in a culture that has been teaching for years that we need to live our lives in a way that makes us happy. This means that we need to do whatever we need to in order to be this way. But what happens with this is that we make ourselves the authority over our lives. We take God off the throne and put ourselves there. This is the opposite of denying ourselves. We are denying the authority of God instead of denying ourselves.
Take up your cross - To take up your cross means that you follow in the footsteps of Jesus. The world, going along with doing what makes you feel happy, wants you to ignore what Jesus teaches. To deny the validity of the teaching of Jesus. To say things like, well I don’t think that Jesus would do this, or I don’t think that Jesus really meant that when he said this. This is shifting from taking up your cross to laying down the cross. You are denying the faith.
Follow me - The opposite of this is to walk away from Jesus. To pursue things that are against Jesus. Things that are worldly things and not Godly things. And this is the central idea of the religion of the world. To do what you want, deny the teachings of Jesus, and pursue the things of this world.
As Christians, we are to live different. And in the world we live in, to be a biblical Christian is to be a radical Christian. To deny ourselves is to say that Jesus is the one that is in charge. That what he says goes. To take up our cross means that we are willing to go to death to be like him. That we will follow in the footsteps of Jesus. And to follow him means that we will leave behind the things of this world.
This is not average Christianity today. This is radical Christianity. But in the New Testament, this was the average Christian. We must get back to this. We wonder why the church in America is hurting so bad. People are leaving and not coming back. We have people say that they believe in God, they get baptized, join the church, and then we never see them again. Why? Because they have been given a picture of a Christianity that is not true.
People cannot reconcile the Christianity they see in the world with the Christianity that is in scripture. So they leave it behind. To follow Christ means that we are to die. To use the words that Jesus uses, we are to lose our life.
35 For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it.
Jesus uses opposites here to describe what it means to live a Christian life. We use this word salvation to describe use going from a life of death to a life that has been redeemed by Jesus. The word salvation means that Jesus has saved us on the cross(justification), is saving us(sanctification), and is going to save us(glorification). Salvation is free. It is offered to everyone through the message of the gospel. What is the gospel?
(gospel presentation)
If you believe the gospel, you are saved. It is free. But it causes something in us. It is what Jesus described in verse 34, to deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow him. When we do this, we are laying down the life here in the flesh for the life that Jesus has promised us.
20 I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who 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.
When Jesus saves us, we are giving up our life. Verse 35 here is explaining that. If you are trying to save your life, as in keeping the life that you want, then you will lose it. This means that you want Christ without the price. See, salvation is free. But following Jesus is going to cost you. It will cost you friends, family, maybe even jobs. It will cost a life of comfort and ease. It will cost a luxurious lifestyle that is self centered.
But. If you lose you life, for the sake of Jesus, then you will save it. If you live your life for Jesus. If you do the things that he tells you to do, follow Jesus where he leads, befriend the people that he wants you to befriend, then you will save your life. And this is not a works based salvation.
You don’t give up your life to be able to earn salvation. Salvation is not something that you earn by doing these things. These things are by products of salvation. They are fruits of a changed root. This is something that you cannot get wrong. You cannot think that if you are good enough that you will earn salvation. That is not what the bible teaches us. We believe, that causes us to give up the life that we have once desired and in turn, we gain a new life. But what happens to someone who does not give up their life?
From what I read in scripture, I don’t see it to be possible for someone to experience salvation and continue to life the same life they always have. There is no evidence in scripture of that being possible. So, for someone who is saved, they must give up their life. They cannot hold on to the life they have had. So when we look at the next verse, we do not need to assume that this is someone who has come to faith in Jesus and is faced with a choice of whether to surrender or not. This is someone who is not saved.
36 For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?
37 For what can a man give in return for his soul?
To give up your soul for a temporary profit. That is what our world does. We see it all around us. People are investing in the here and now and ultimately, they are paying for it for eternity. But, when we live our lives for Christ, even though we give up worldly profit, we are gaining an eternal reward.
Our lives should be all about death. Dying to the teachings of the world. Dying to the American dream. Dying to self satisfaction. Dying to our selves. Death is never easy. I say this in all of the funerals that I do. Death is not easy. But, in the life of the believer, to avoid eternal death, there must be death to everything but Christ in our lives. Our Self must die.
Our Shame Must Die
Our Shame Must Die
Our shame must die as well. Shame is a very strong emotion. When we do something that we shouldn’t do, we have this great sense of shame. We spent quite a bit in the verses before this looking at Peter. Later on, Peter is asked if he knows Jesus and 3 times he denies it. He feels this great weight of shame in his life. This is a big turning point in scripture because after this and after the resurrection, Jesus tells Peter that he is going to use him to help spread the gospel. What a wonderful story of redemption.
This next verse is one that has made its rounds especially on the internet over the last several years. You will see people on Facebook or whatever site you prefer post this verse and tell people that they aren’t ashamed. I am just going to put this out there, Jesus was not talking about facebook when he said these verses. This is taken to the extreme and people think that it is situational when it is talking about a lifestyle.
38 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 with the holy angels.”
If Jesus here is talking about singular moments instead of an entire lifestyle, then Peter would be excluded and each and every once of us would be excluded. We all have moments where we are ashamed of our beliefs. We have all had that co-worker who is just over the top about their criticism of Christians so you either keep really quiet about it or when you are confronted, you downplay it. It is shameful. It is sinful. But that is not what Jesus is saying here.
Jesus is talking about someone who lives a life that is shameful of Jesus. Someone who, for their entire life, lives against the teachings of Jesus. That is the person that Jesus will be ashamed for. And the reason that this matters is that we have the message that will change this for people.
Just think about it. What if you are someone who is ashamed of Jesus. You have lived a life that is dishonoring and and in blatant opposition. And you knew someone who had the hope of the cross, yet they never shared it with you. Scripture tells us that the world will know that we are Christians by our love. But the most unloving thing is to not share the gospel with others.
You want to know why Christianity has such negative connotations with it? You want to know why it is hard for churches to do outreach? You want to know why churches are shrinking and even closing their doors? It is because they have the hope of the gospel and they are refusing to share it with the lost and dying world around them.
And then, these people die and go to hell. And Jesus is ashamed of them in the presence of God because they never lived their life for him. And it is because they never surrendered themselves to the truth of the gospel.
I am not trying to put the blame for people going to hell solely on Christians and their resistance to sharing the gospel. But if we think that we are in the clear with this, then we are greatly wrong. We have an obligation to share the message that saved us with others. The gospel came to you when it was on its way to someone else. If the person who shared the gospel with you were not obedient, you would not be saved.
We are so caught up in the world today with how shameful it is to share our faith with someone. Yet, there are people who are suffering in Hell for all of eternity because we don’t want people to judge us for our faith. We have to get over this. I don’t want people to have to be standing before God and Jesus be ashamed of them because they did not give their life to Jesus. I want to do whatever I can to prevent this. And so should you.
We have to put shame to death. Shame holds us back. I see God really using Immanuel Baptist Church in 2025. I pray that God sends people here and they come to faith. I pray that God uses us to share the gospel with people in our community and they come to faith. I pray that we baptize more people in the next year than we have the last 10 years. I pray that we double in our worship attendance. I pray that we are able to begin to help other churches who are struggling. But none of this will happen if we hold onto the gospel like it is a blanket in the middle of a snow storm.
It is our job to build the kingdom and impact our community. We do this through sharing the gospel. In the next couple of weeks, you will hear more about a plan of action in detail for the next year. Until then, I ask that you pray for 2025 and God saving people through the ministry of Immanuel Baptist.
Discipleship is the goal. As Christians, our call is to go and make disciples. Matthew 28:19-20
19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
Discipleship has a cost. That cost is the shame that comes from the world for someone who follows Christ. But it is also the entire life of the believer. Changing their priorities to the priorities of Jesus.
This week, we will gather with friends and family to celebrate the birth of Jesus. But Jesus was much more than a sweet cuddly baby. He was the suffering savior that went to the cross to die for our sins. And we must acknowledge that this was the reason that he came as a baby. To die for us. Death is the cost that Jesus paid. Death is our cost of discipleship.
