Come...Follow Me (2)
Notes
Transcript
Doxology:
This is my Bible. It is God’s Holy Word. It is a lamp unto my feet, a light unto my path, and I will hide its words within my heart, that I might not sin against God. Amen!
Scripture Reference: Matthew 16:24
Context
Context
Last week, we started looking at this concept of “Come...Follow Me”. We didn’t quite finish it up, but that’s ok because the Lord moved in a mighty way regardless… Amen!
In that message, we began breaking down the call of discipleship. We discussed how the call to come to Jesus is also a call to follow Jesus, and to be a follower is to be a disciple. We have almost 300 verses in Scripture that directly mention the word disciple, so it is something of great importance to God.
And right here in this verse, Matthew 16:24, we have Jesus Himself breaking down exactly why it is so important.
24 Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.
Let’s Pray!
Content
Content
A Call of Acknowledgment
A Call of Acknowledgment
24 Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.
We discussed last week that the call of discipleship is “A Call to Acknowledgment”. Before we can decide to follow Jesus, we must acknowledge who we are, and we must acknowledge who He is. We are far from God, but He is God. Even as God, He loves us so much that He gave His life at Calvary so that we might have life and have it more abundantly. He did what we could not by living a perfect life and fulfilling the Law of God… He took the punishment of our sin in being crucified on the cross…He was buried and then rose again the third day signifying that sin and death can be defeated through righteousness… and He did it all for us so that we might be saved. Praise God!
So once we admit that we are lost and headed for hell and that we have no power to change that course for ourselves, and then place our faith in Jesus, the One who accomplished what we could not, then we will be saved. The call of discipleship is “A Call of Acknowledgment”.
But the call of discipleship is also “A Call of Awareness”.
A Call of Awareness
A Call of Awareness
24 Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.
Jesus makes Himself very clear in this text that someone must come to a place to where they will admit their sinfulness, as well as His righteousness, but they must also understand that in order to follow Him, they must first deny themselves.
They must understand that to become a disciple of Christ and a child of God, a transformation must take place. And as a transformed individual, they are no longer citizens of this world, but citizens of the Kingdom of God. And in the Kingdom of God, there is only one King… Amen! God’s Kingdom is not run like the worldly kingdom, so in order for us to move and operate efficiently in His Kingdom, we must do it His way.
In His Kingdom, you must be humbled before you can be exalted.
In His Kingdom, you must die before you can live.
In His Kingdom, you must walk by faith and not by sight.
We can’t follow Jesus and lead ourselves at the same time. We must be willing to deny self and look to Jesus as the Master of our lives.
So, the call of discipleship is “A Call of Acknowledgment” and a “A Call of Awareness”.
But what we want to focus on today is that it is “A Call To Action”.
A Call To Action
A Call To Action
24 Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.
So in this verse, we see three things that Jesus says an individual must be willing to do in order to be a follower of His:
They must desire to come after Him.
The desire to come after Him is accomplished when we are willing to acknowledge who we are and who He is.
They must Deny themselves.
This is accomplished when we acknowledge that we have no power whatsoever to lead ourselves. Being the God of our own lives is what led to sin and brokenness in the first place, so we must abandon all thoughts of being able to lead ourselves effectively.
We must be willing to dig in and get to work.
This is the call to action. It is a call to work for Christ.
It is easy to look at the lives of the disciples and think that their main task was that of observance. Just sit and watch what I do. And to be fair, they did do a lot of that. They watched Jesus work.
But we also have to understand the level of intentionality that went along with that. Because there came a time when Jesus said, “Ok. Now I send you out two by two… and I want you to go do what I did. Now you have the power to heal the sick and cast out demons. Get to work.”
We must be careful not to become satisfied as a spectator. Jesus says that to follow Him is to become like Him. As Jesus bore His own cross, we too must pick up our cross and follow Him.
If we are being honest, this can be a little confusing. Jesus tells us that in order to follow Him, we must take up our cross, or bare our own cross, just as He did. But wait a minute… I thought Jesus suffered on the cross so that I wouldn’t have to. I thought Jesus went to Golgotha so that I could go to Glory. Why must I bare my own cross if Jesus bore it for me?
That is a fantastic question! It really is, because it forces us to get to the heart of the Gospel.
We must understand that as Jesus bore His own cross, we too must bare ours. But we must also understand that the cross we bare is not the same cross that He bore.
Jesus accomplished things on that cross that you and I were never called or equipped to accomplish. Yes, Jesus’s cross was a means of death, but it was so much more than that. Jesus was not the only thing that was nailed to that cross. Did you know that? It wasn’t just Jesus hanging there on that cross.
13 And you, being dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He has made alive together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses,
14 having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us. And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.
Did you see it? The Word of God tells us that Jesus was not the only thing hanging on the cross. It says that He nailed something else to the cross as well. It was the Law… “the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us… He has taken… out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.”
It is the Law that brings condemnation because it is the Law that shows our imperfections. Apostle Paul said:
7 What shall we say then? Is the law sin? Certainly not! On the contrary, I would not have known sin except through the law. For I would not have known covetousness unless the law had said, “You shall not covet.”
8 But sin, taking opportunity by the commandment, produced in me all manner of evil desire. For apart from the law sin was dead.
In other words, Apostle Paul says that if it were not for the Law, we would not know what was right and what was wrong. That is exactly how we got to where we are today. People are doing all kinds of evil, and they don’t even know that it is evil, because they have abandoned the Word of God.
The cross of Jesus was not just about dying, though that sealed the deal for everything else, it was also about fulfilling the Old Covenant so that a New Covenant could be instituted. The Law was fulfilled in Christ, so anyone who places their faith in Christ is now no longer condemned by the Law which He fulfilled.
1 There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.
So now one might ask, “If we in Christ are no longer bound by the Law, how is that different from those outside of Christ who do not follow the Law?”
This too is also a great question. The answer is multilayered.
We must understand that the Law of God is God’s righteousness on paper. In other words, if someone could fulfill the Law of God perfectly without ever breaking a single command, they would indeed be perfect.
It also needs to be understood that perfection is the requirement of God in order to get to Heaven. Once must be perfect in order to make it in. Therein lies the problem. None of us are perfect.
The grace of God through salvation is only granted to those who believe in Jesus, because it is only through Jesus that the Law was fulfilled. Those who are outside of Christ are still bound by the Law of God, whether they realize it or not, whether they acknowledge it or not. But those who have trusted in Christ as their Savior are considered righteous in Him, because their sins have been covered by His righteousness.
To say that Christians will not be condemned by the Law is not to say that there is no Law. After becoming Christians, we do not live as if there is no Law of God, but rather in every way possible to fulfill it. When Jesus, the sinless, spotless Lamb of God, says “Come…Follow Me”, He does not lead us in a way that is contrary to the will of God, but rather shows us how to live in the will of God. And in doing so, He made it as simple as He possibly could, by boiling all of the Law down to two very easy to understand principles:
37 Jesus said to him, “ ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’
38 This is the first and great commandment.
39 And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’
40 On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”
Jesus said that our entire lives should be driven by these two commandments… Love God with every fiber of your being and love your neighbor as much as you love yourself.
24 Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.
Deny yourself and follow Me.
So it comes full circle. Do you see it?
So we understand that the cross that we are to bear is not the same as the cross that He bore, but what does it mean to take up one’s cross and follow Jesus?
We are very far removed from this, but for those in Jesus’ day, this would have made perfect sense. It is estimated that during the lifetime of Jesus, some 30,000 crucifixions took place. There was no confusion to them as to what it meant to bear a cross. They had seen it happen over, and over, and over again.
What the cross means to us is not what the cross meant to them. Today, we see crosses everywhere. We hang them around our necks, put them on our walls, post them on our signs, and even get them tattooed on our skin. This would have been a totally foreign concept to them. They would have never done this.
To them, the cross only had one meaning...death. It was the means by which the Romans executed the death sentence. It was an excruciating way to die, and it was meant to send a message...if you cross the line, you will die a most horrible death. After witnessing someone else die a slow, agonizing death on the cross, you would think twice before crossing the line.
The cross was the point of no return. Once a man had been nailed to the cross, there was no going back. At that point, there was only one logical conclusion...death. He would remain on that cross until he was dead. Death was the only way to be separated from the cross. And just like in the case of Jesus, the person being crucified was forced to carry their own cross. It was a death march. When someone picked up that cross, there was no turning back. It was the beginning of the end.
But it was even more than that. Death was only the last thing to happen. Being nailed to the cross, meant four things for that individual:
Abandonment
Once someone was nailed to the cross, everyone abandoned them. Their friends and even their family would separate themselves from the accused because they didn’t want to end up in the same place. It was such a public spectacle that noone wanted to be seen with the one being crucified, because then they might also end up being crucified.
Bearing the cross is a very lonely place to be. No one wants to help. No one wants to acknowledge who you are. Everyone you thought loved you disappears, and now you are left all by yourself as you begin this death march to your grave.
Shame
The person would be attached to the cross usually some great distance from where they would actually be crucified. This forced them to walk through the great crowds who would gather to see this gruesome act take place. Since the cross was reserved for criminals, the crowd assumed that anyone being nailed to it deserved it. So as this criminal would walk through the crowds they would throw food and drinks at them. They would spit on them. They would jump out from the side of the streets and knock them over, just so they could laugh as they attempted to get back to their feet with their hands nailed to a piece of wood across their shoulders.
To bear the cross meant public shame for that individual.
Suffering
The person bearing the cross would also experience profound suffering. Not only had nails been driven through very tender parts of the hands and feet, most people who were crucified actually died by suffocation. As one hung on the cross, the pain of the nails in their hands and feet would become to much to bear, so they would go limp and take as much pressure off of those nails as they could. But hanging with your arms up like this caused everything inside of you to be squeezed up into the upper portion of your chest. This restricted your lungs, your windpipe, and even your heart. It made it very difficult to breathe.
So they would hang there in that way as much as possible before trying to fight through the pain of then nails and push themselves up again so they could breathe. This would go on for hours, before the person finally suffocated to death. And if the process did not go quick enough, the soldiers standing by would break the legs of the person hanging on the cross so that they couldn’t hold themselves up anymore. This forced the person to smother that much quicker.
To bear the cross meant profound suffering for the individual.
Death
Finally, it meant death. The person would hang there until dead and then even longer still to make sure. They would then be taken down from the cross.
And Jesus says, “Anyone who desires to come after Me…must take up his cross and follow Me.”
Is this really what the Christian life consists of? Is this really the offer? “Come, follow Me. Everyone will abandon you, everyone will hate you, you will suffer greatly, and you will die.” That’s some pitch…huh?
Listen, you need to get this. All of what we have said is true. To follow Christ is to be hated by the world. But here is the truth of Jesus Christ that the world is missing.
The truth is, all of these things are in the world regardless. Even those who don’t know Jesus are being abandoned and shamed. They are suffering and dying. But without Christ, that is where the buck stops. Their abandonment means nothing. Their shame means nothing. Their suffering will take them nowhere...it has no purpose. And their death will have no meaning. For those without Christ, death is just that, death for all eternity.
But for those who have truly died to self; for those who chose to take on the name of Christ and be hated by the world because of it; For those who were willing to make the most difficult decision to abandon all for the glory of God… there is hope. For those brave people:
Death is not the end. Death gives way to life as we take on our true nature, the nature given to us by God. For those in Christ, death is not the end but the beginning. Death frees us from this shell and sets our spirit free. Only then, will we truly know perfection. Only then will we truly experience life without temptation, life without setbacks, and life without difficulty. When our spirit is not hindered by our flesh, we will live in the will of God, without sin, for that part of us that is prone to sin will be no more. Death is not finality, it is freedom. Death in Christ is not loss, it is liberation. Death is not defeat but victory.
57 But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
The abandonment is not final. It is unity in disguise. Once death has come and gone, those who are in Christ will be reunited in the name of Christ with all of those other brave souls who also chose to walk that most difficult path. When we stand before our Heavenly Father, we will receive an eternal embrace, never to be abandoned again by the One who loves us the most.
For those who are in Christ, the shame and the suffering is not final. It has meaning and it has purpose. Our shame will give way to glory and our suffering will give way to peace. Once death has come to those who are in Christ, there will be no more heartache, no more pain, and no more separation. We will be made complete by Him who is complete. We will be made to sit in Heavenly places, and we will reign with Him for the rest of forever.
That is why taking up the cross is so important. Because as Christians, we are set free from expectations. Grace has freed us from the written Law and instead has placed that spiritual Law inside our hearts… not as rules to follow, but as open doors to walk through. As we live out of God’s love for us, we are sharing Jesus with those around us. As we live out God’s will in our lives we are shining the light of God, and we are speaking life into a lost and dying world.
The cross represents the just penalty against our unjust sin, and Jesus bore it proudly. In response of that selfless act of love, we now choose to bare our own cross for His glory.
So let us take up our cross and bare it proudly, just as Jesus did. Let us do so for the sake of salvation and freedom in the name of Jesus.
Commitment
Commitment
