If You Want to Follow Jesus

Background to passage: This teaching about what is necessary to follow Jesus took place up in Galilee after the feeding of the 5000 and Peter’s confession of Jesus as the Christ. Jesus then predicts his death and gives this description of what it means to follow him.

Luke 9:23–27 ESV

23 And he said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. 24 For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. 25 For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself? 26 For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words, of him will the Son of Man be ashamed when he comes in his glory and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels. 27 But I tell you truly, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God.”

Opening illustration: "Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ...Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will gladly go and sell all that he has. It is the pearl of great price to buy which the merchant will sell all his goods. It is the kingly rule of Christ, for whose sake a man will pluck out the eye which causes him to stumble; it is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows him." -Bonhoeffer

Main thought: we will look at one of the first statements about what it means to follow Jesus

1) Three Demands (v. 23)

Luke 9:23 ESV

23 And he said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.

1) Three Demands (v. 23)

Three Demands

Explanation: There is a conditional statement about these words of Jesus, a choice, a take it or leave it, but it is not in the demands, it is the question. If...then proposition. However, the conditional nature stops at the point where a person says, “yes, I want to follow Jesus.” The non-negotiable demands begin there. “Disciples do not have a “both … and” choice—both Christ and their own lives. They stand before an “either … or” choice. The claim of Jesus is a total and exclusive claim. It does not allow a convenient compartmentalization of secular and sacred, of natural life and religious life.”

Deny yourself: we all have desires, agendas, pursuits, but Jesus teaches that if we want to be a follower of his, we must look at these priorities and elevate him above all of these things. The word deny actually means to refuse to associate with. What that will require is to deny your flesh, mind, time, money, ambition, status, for the sake of following Jesus. Refuse to associate with yourself, your sin, your desires, you nature.

Take up your cross: this was a symbol of rejection, a symbol of shame, a message of wrath and control and bloodshed. It was dehumanizing and cruel. It was a symbol of death, not a piece of jewelry or a t-shirt. There was never a known survivor of crucifixion. Jesus says if you want to follow me, come and die. You must die to self.

Follow me: This word means to accompany or go with, go after or obey. The call to follow Jesus was to be seen, an action, an obedience. There was not a stationary angle for the follower of Jesus. It would have been silly for Matthew to let Jesus know he would follow him from the tax booth. To follow him with no action, no service, no transformation, no ministry, no movement is not to follow, it’s self-deception.

Mark 10:17–22 ESV

17 And as he was setting out on his journey, a man ran up and knelt before him and asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” 18 And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. 19 You know the commandments: ‘Do not murder, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, Honor your father and mother.’ ” 20 And he said to him, “Teacher, all these I have kept from my youth.” 21 And Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, “You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” 22 Disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.

Matthew 7:13–14 ESV

13 “Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. 14 For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.

Illustration: Marriage, commitment, and the prenuptial agreements. Martin Burnham and the Abu Sayyaf group and his murder, Davy and Natalie Lloyd killed in 2024 by gangs in Haiti. Trapped, beaten, preaching the gospel in Creole, burned down the compound with them and one other missionary.

Application: Jesus could have drawn great crowds, pandered to them, made the gospel easy and palatable. Churches these days are full of ways to make everything so attractive that they lower the bar for the gospel. We all have a tendency to make the gospel, God, religion, faith about us. This is in diametric opposition to Jesus’s terms.

These aren’t optional; they are commands. You MUST deny yourself, you MUST take up your cross. You MUST follow Jesus. Casual Christianity is not real Christianity. There is no room for Christian sissies, or sideline fans, or pew warmers; the quota is filled.

Do you deny, take up, follow? What has your faith cost you? What have you had to die to? Have you lost friends? Have you put down habits and sins? Have you been alienated from family? Many of us won’t give up one Saturday morning a month to feed the hungry. We are unwilling to sacrifice our time or resources because of our love for self and this world over Jesus. We are not followers.

2) Three Explanations (v. 24-26)

Luke 9:24–26 ESV

24 For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. 25 For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself? 26 For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words, of him will the Son of Man be ashamed when he comes in his glory and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels.

2) Three Explanations (v. 24-26)

Three Explanations

Explanation: These three statements explain, clarify, and solidify the severity and significance of Jesus’s perquisites to follow him. Let’s look at them.

For whoever would save his life: this is one of the many paradoxical statements of the Christian life. It is related back to a life of self-denial and self-crucifixion. It means that if a person works to save his life in this world, to build up life with things, pleasures, accomplishments, securities, and possessions of this earth, of this life, he will lose his eternal reward. However, if we live with reckless abandon for the kingdom and the King, not amassing earthly things, but fixing our eyes and lives on kingdom things, we will find true life. Odd - cling to your life and it slips away and you lose, cling to Christ without a strong grip on the world, and your life is fulfilling, joyful, purposeful, pleasing to Christ, and will bring eternal reward.

For what does it profit a man: Jesus teaches the value of a soul. This makes concrete the “ultimate reality: the soul and the world. Suppose one were to gain “the whole world”—everything one could possibly hope for—at the cost of one’s soul. It would be a poor bargain, according to Jesus. “The world” one can live without, but when one loses one’s personhood or being, what can one give in exchange for it (see Ps 49:6–8; Sir 26:14)? There is a further paradox in this verse, for those who strive desperately to preserve their souls do not in fact know the value of the soul.”

Philippians 3:8 ESV

8 Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ

3. For whoever is ashamed of me: This may be the scariest of all the statements of explanation. When we shrink back from acknowledging Christ as our Lord and Master, ashamed of me/deny me, he will be ashamed of us and deny us before the Father. Think about the context, think about Jerusalem and what their final trip would be. Think of the tens of millions of men and women who have clung to the faith in the face of a sword, bullet, a noose, or a stake.

Matthew 10:32–33 ESV

32 So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven, 33 but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven.

Illustration: To the one for whom the way of Jesus is more important than his own existence, his eternal existence will be secured.” -Edwards, Pillar NTC

Application: We must understand the difficult nature of the call to follow Jesus. Your following may not look like everyone else’s. However, it must look like self-denial, self-sacrifice, and movement as your Master moves. You will destroy yourself if you cling to this world, and lose your eternal life. What things are you unwilling to give up in light of the ultimate reality that Jesus is worth more than anything you could gain on earth? The children and Camp Viola every year cling to chicken tenders over true riches.

Closing illustration: The SBC campaign in the early ‘50s called “A Million More in ‘54” was designed as an evangelism push to increase numbers in the church. Other than the fact that it didn’t make it’s goal (only about 600,000), it also didn’t increase attendance or discipleship. It has contributed to an easy-believism that Bonhoeffer called cheap grace a decade before that while he sat in a Nazi prison. Now, for decades SBC churches have seen nominal believers with little transformation and fruit, meaningless membership, decline in attendance in just about all discipleship indicators. In fact, the evangelist Vance Havner said, “if we get a million more like we did in ‘54, we’re sunk.” “Christianity without the living Jesus Christ remains necessarily a Christianity without discipleship; and a Christianity without discipleship is always a Christianity without Jesus Christ. It is an idea, a myth.” -Bonhoeffer

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