Step Forward Part 2

Intro:

Last week we kicked off our New Series Step Forward

Where we are discussing how to grow in our lives

Everyone wants to be successful

Everyone wants to grow

Few do what’s necessary to accomplish that

This is true in all areas of our lives but especially in our Spiritual walk and journey with the Lord

And So last week we kicked off by stating that following Jesus is not a one and done decision but a big decision that’s followed by a bunch of tiny decisions that fill each day

And the first decision we must face every day is the decision to put Jesus over everything

Jesus is giving us an invitation that we cannot get on our own

Scripture says that without Jesus we are in the dark

In the darkness of our sin, eph 2 will actually tell us that we are “dead in our sin”

And here is what happens: in the darkness of our sin Jesus calls out, come after me.”

And we said last week that the metaphorical meaning of that word in the original language is to “come into being, to be known.”

We are in the dark. Nowhere to go. Left for dead or more specifically we are dead. And Jesus breaks through the darkness of our sin and says “come after me.”

And so our options are come after Jesus and live, or stay dead in our sins

And when we realize what that means in its totality, then one decision we should make is to put Jesus over everything else

But, we only touched on one part of what Jesus says last week

This week we will discuss another step we must take in following Jesus

So remember we are in Matthew 16:24-26. And this is Jesus’ elevator pitch on discipleship

So, based on the context of what has just happened and the conversation Jesus is having with His disciples He says, ok listen up, if you want to follow me, if you want to come after me

If you want life, if you want to be known, if you want peace, if you want hope, if you want to come into being then this is what you must do and here is what He says:

Matthew 16:24–26 NIV

24 Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 25 For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. 26 What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?

1. In Matthew 16:24, after inviting the disciples to follow him, Jesus gives instruction on how to do so.

“my disciple must deny themselves,” Jesus says about the people who will follow him in the future.

The Greek word for “deny” is aparneomai (a par nay o may), which means to utterly disown or renounce.

The word conveys a heightened sense of feeling and action.

I don’t know about you but between thanksgiving and Christmas, I ate too many meals

And I don’t mean like thanksgiving meal and Christmas meal was too much

I mean, I ate whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted and it got out of hand

So, like most of us, decided it was time to start eating right again and working out and the normal stuff people do at the beginning of each year

Now, my biggest temptation when it comes to food is the midnight snack. I can do good all day long but something in my mind tells me that I need to be completely stuffed to be able to sleep at night

And one of the usual suspects of my nightly snacking is a big bowl of cinnamon toast crunch

I never eat cereal in the morning but buddy can I do some damage on some CTC at night

But im trying to be good.

So every night I’ve got to convince myself that it’s actually ok to go to sleep not completely stuffed

And that I will actually wake up in the morning feeling better if I do

Now, when Jesus says deny yourself, it is not simply like walking by the pantry and saying no to the cereal in there

Rather, Jesus means that the person you were before you followed him can no longer exist.

Don’t say just say no, get rid of it all together.

Elsewhere, Jesus calls his followers to be “born again.”

There’s actually a story in John 3 where Jesus has this encounter with one of the most religious and righteous men around named nicodemus

And Jesus tells him: “unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God”

And nicodemus is baffled by this response of Jesus

But it goes hand and hand with all of Jesus’ teaching

2. Jesus is insistent on renouncing your former life and starting new in Him or being “born again” and it may seem radical.

Perhaps you may even become slightly defensive: “Surely that isn’t what Jesus is asking me to do when he says to deny myself.”

Examples from Scripture support the strength of the Greek word.

Last week, we read about Jesus telling a rich man to sell everything he had.

Mark’s Gospel also includes a story of Jesus calling his first disciples to follow him.

The invitation to Peter leads to a strong reaction of aparneomai (a par nay o may) from Peter, Andrew, James, and John.

All of them worked as fishermen, and yet when Jesus called them to follow him, they did so immediately, leaving their livelihood behind and with it, all they had ever known.

Mark 1:16–20 NIV

16 As Jesus walked beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. 17 “Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will send you out to fish for people.” 18 At once they left their nets and followed him. 19 When he had gone a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John in a boat, preparing their nets. 20 Without delay he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men and followed him.

A lot of us in this room grew up in Perry or have been here a long time.

Some of us have had the same jobs our whole lives

Same friends, same situations

Now, imagine if I came up to you and said hey follow me, we are going to Europe to preach the gospel, I don’t know how long it’s going to take and it may cost you your life

Everything these men ever knew, their identity, their life, Jesus asks them to drop and come

And the crazy thing is, they do.

I mean James and John just leave their dad in the boat

3. Sometimes we view self-denial in a negative sense: “What bad thing do I need to give up?” There was nothing wrong with Simon and Andrew’s vocation.

Yet they left it for Jesus. Leaving your father behind in a boat to follow Jesus doesn’t mean James and John had an unhealthy relationship with their father; it could have been perfectly fine.

But Jesus tells us to utterly renounce the person we were, to disown that identity, when following him.

But hear this clearly this morning, it’s an invitation not just to say no to something but also to say yes to a relationship with the only perfect human.

The kingdom of God is often described as an upside down kingdom

Because often what you think should happen doesn’t or how something should happen doesn’t happen that way

And for finite beings with little brain capacity for cosmic eternal spiritual things, we often can’t make sense of the things and kingdom of God

Especially on a matter like this when our culture opposes it so starkly

Culture tells you that the way for you to be happy, for you to be fulfilled, for you to be sustained through life is to find what makes you happy, chase that or find what numbs the pain and give into it

You look after you because no one else will

It’s your body, your truth, your happiness, your life, you, you you you

Now, if Jesus wanted to be popular He would have said a similar thing.

But Jesus isn’t interested in your opinion, He’s interest in your heart

And just like any good Father who actually love His kids, He’s willing to do the hard things, say the hard things for the good of His children

Jesus’ invitation although may seem negative, for those that obey, it becomes a positive.

You see, Jesus knows that the way to human satisfaction is not continuing to inflate your ego.

He also knows that it does no good to deflate it either

Because on one hand you’ve created prideful selfish people who only live for themselves

Or you’ve created depressed, hardened people who only try to protect themselves

Either way, culture creates people who only think about themselves

And what you find at some point or another is that you cannot sustain you

You cannot fulfill you

And many people have spent their lives trying to find what can and all have realized that they can’t

money cant, careers cant, drugs cant, alcohol cant, sex cant, religion cant, relationships cant

only one can and it isn’t you

I love how Tim Keller puts it which is a spin from what C.S. Lewis wrote

“the essence of gospel-humility is not thinking more of myself or thinking less of myself, it is thinking of myself less.”

I’d say it this way this morning: “the essence of self-denial is not thinking more of myself or thinking less of myself, but thinking of myself less.”

4. This step in following Jesus may well be the hardest.

It’s a step that we truly take inch by inch, day by day.

Self-denial doesn’t come naturally; in fact it is so unnatural and completely against everything that makes sense to us.

ultimately though Jesus invites us to do it, it will only happen through the gift of his Spirit growing the fruit of self-control in our life.

That doesn’t mean we can’t nurture it by incorporating a practice of self-control into the rhythm of our day, but this will look different for every person.

It isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach.

6. Believe it or not I used to run track in high school

And back when eating as many bowls of CTC didn’t effect my body like it does now I used to run in a few event but the worst one I did was the 4x400

If you are unfamiliar with track a 400 meter is one time around a normal track that you see around football fields

It was the worst because it was just short enough to where you needed to pretty much sprint the whole way to be successful but it was just long enough to hurt really bad

It was also a relay race, meaning you ran with a baton and there would be 4 people on your team and each time around the track you would pass that baton to the next racer and they would run their 400 meters

And often, if the teams were close to even, it all came down to the anchor, the last person.

I usually ran anchor and that was usually because I ran my fastest times when I was trying to chase someone down.

But sometimes after the other 3 members run, the other team might be ahead and they hand the baton to the anchor in hopes that he can catch the others and still win the race

In the life of faith, Scripture compares it to a race

And the book of Hebrews specifically will say that we are by nature terrible runners and the diagnoses to our problem is that we are carrying with us backpacks full of bricks while trying to run

And while we have backpacks of brick we also have rope tied around our feet

And while we have backpacks full of bricks, and ropes tied around our feet, we also have blindfolds on.

We are tied up, tied down, and we are blinded by sin

Hebrews is going to tell us “throw it off!”

Throw it off so that you can run the race and do your part

But Jesus is gonna remind us who’s running anchor on our team

Jesus calls us to pass the baton of our life to him.

But unlike in a 4x400 where the anchor gets it one time this act of passing needs to happen repeatedly.

There’s a tension of doing what you can, doing what you must, working toward holiness, but also resting and relying on Jesus

And I don’t know exactly how this works together

And I’m still trying to figure it out

but what I can tell you is that if you’re someone who works and runs and goes and hardly ever rests and reads and leans on and gives space for Jesus in your life than you need to be more intentional about finding rest in Jesus and giving space for the Holy Spirit and allowing Him to guide you

If you are someone who has a tendency to sit back and wait for God to do something really big in your life before you ever do anything productive. If you are one of those “too heavenly minded to be any earthly good.” Then you probably need to get up and do some kingdom work

But the invitation is the same for us, deny yourself, pass Jesus the baton, and come after Him

And no matter the gap, Jesus always wins

But just like every other race, at some point the race is over, so don’t wait until it’s too late.

What do you need to give up?

What do you need to loosen control over?

What do you need to throw off?

Do you think of yourself too highly?

Do you think of yourself too lowly?

How can you work to think of yourself less?

The invitation is available, you just have to deny yourself.

Intro into the next song