Sermon Tone Analysis

Mark: The Cost of Discipleship []

Stand for the reading of the word of God []

The other day I was going to download an app when a message popped up reading, “you must read and agree to the terms and conditions for service” and following that was about 30 plus pages of terms and conditions.

You know what I’m talking about right?

If you’ve tried downloading an app or an update or something on those terms, there’s these terms and conditions pages pop up.

Well, to use the app or update you must check the box that reads, “I agree to these terms” so I agreed to the terms without reading the terms and conditions, I mean they can’t be that different from the original terms and conditions that I didn’t read in the first place…so click and carry on.

Don’t act like I’m the only one who doesn’t read those things???

After agreeing to the terms a message was sent back, “thank you for agree to the terms and conditions of service.”

and I was off using the app.

We’re all familiar with this scenario.

I bring this up because we’ve come to a place in Mark’s gospel where we see the terms and conditions for following Jesus.

And I wonder how many of us have read the terms and conditions for following Jesus or have we just clicked the box so to speak and looked past the fine print.

Let me just say, we can’t do that, you can’t say, “I’m not all into that denying self and dying bit, I’ll just be an average follower of Jesus”…well it doesn’t work that way.

Well first, Jesus terms and conditions for discipleship cannot be changed or modified according to our desires.

We must agree to His terms, and whatever ideas we may have about discipleship must be brought under the jurisdiction of this passage.

Second, the strength to follow Jesus’ commands come from Jesus Himself, it’s important to point that out right at the beginning or we will go wrong immediately.

We’ll be tempted to have this notion that in order to be a Christian you have to do something, as a result of that something happens, and as a result of that you try your very hardest in order to hang in there…then we have it completely upside down if that’s our idea.

We trust in Jesus as a response of His initiative and grace in our lives.

The same grace that brings us to faith in Him, sustains us and makes it possible to follow Him.

Therefore, the distinguishing feature of a life that beliefs is in a life that follows.

The strength to both belief and follow is found in the grace of God alone.

Very important we understand that first before we move on, so we are not view this as some check off list.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, “Discipleship means adherence to Christ”

I will reference Bonhoeffer often because he was a German pastor/theologian who was struggling to follow Christ in the midst of the Nazi rule in Germany during WWII, in the midst of all that was happening around him in Germany he wrote one of the most influential Christian books of the 20th century, and definitely one of the greatest books on discipleship, “the cost of discipleship.”

In it he wrote that the first call every Christian experiences is the call to abandon the attachments of this world.

And the entire book could be summarized in one powerful sentence: “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.”

He wrote, for the Christian, the old life is left behind and completely surrendered.

The disciple is dragged out of his relative security into a life of absolute insecurity.

Bonhoeffer would not only write these amazing and powerful words and ideas, he would live them and he would die for the sake of the gospel, as he was executed in a concentration camp for standing for Christ and opposing the third Reich.

While it is true that many of us, if not most of us will not be called upon to pay the ultimate price for Christ in the laying down our life for the faith.

But, does that mean that this passage in Mark is really not applicable for us today?

Not at all, because the terms and conditions have not changed for following Jesus, they’re still the same, deny yourself, take up the cross, and follow Jesus.

So let’s look at these verses closer.

The cost of discipleship []

If we recall last week we said there were three major questions that we are all faced with, who is Jesus, what did Jesus come to do, and what does Jesus demand from us?

We answered the first two in that Jesus, as Peter said, is the Christ, God’s son sent to fulfill God’s will, and Christ came into the world to suffer, be rejected, be killed, and rise on the third day.

Jesus came to atone or sin, to be the propitiation for God’s wrath toward sinners.

It’s important that the disciples got this and that we get this because if Peter and the disciples could not grasp the conditions of Messiahship for Christ, they would not be able to grasp the conditions of discipleship for themselves.

i.e. the way of the Messiah was the way of the cross, and the way the the disciples of Christ is the same.

1.

The definition of a disciple [v.34a]: Jesus had been teaching the disciples but note here Jesus calls the people with the disciples to himself, this is a little different.

It’s important to note this special lesson, Jesus is going to further develop the way in which he would walk and that would be the way His followers would walk as well.

So what the definition of a disciple?

Jesus lays it out for us in verse 34.

“whoever desires to come after me.” emphasis on after me or behind me.

i.e. what Jesus is making clear, a disciple of Jesus is, by definition, one who is following after Jesus.

Disciple simply means learner or student, every person who has ever lived is a disciple, the question is who do you follow?

Illustration: Chris Farley is still regarded as one of the funniest comedians of our generation.

From his Saturday Night Live skits to his movies he starred in, Farley was a huge success in the entertainment business.

Chris Farley was impacted by the example and influence of another famous comedian: John Belushi. in a real sense Farley was a disciple of Belushi.

Farley even admitted that he wanted to be like him in every way.

They both starred on Saturday night live and in movies, Farley followed the same career path of Belushi.

Sadly that’s not all he emulated about Belushi.

Both men struggled with obesity and had a reputation of wild living.

The real sad part is Belushi was found dead of a drug overdose at the age of 33, and years later Farley would be found the same way dead of a drug overdose at the age of 33.

It goes without saying not all discipleship is the right kind…be careful who you follow after.

2. The demands of discipleship [v.34b]: Are summarized for us in the rest of verse 34; to deny oneself, to take up the cross, and to follow Jesus.

All three are requirements of discipleship.

The first two (deny and take up cross) in the Greek are [aorist tense] i.e. decisive; the third (follow) is in the Greek [present tense] indicating ongoing, i.e. it’s a way of life.

The first condition...

a. deny himself; is to reject or refuse, often of the claims of someone.

To deny oneself is apparently just that: to reject one’s own claims to one’s life, both whether to live or die and how to live if that is what happens.

i.e. practically it means to give up one’s assumed right to run one’s own life, to turn away from the idolatry of self-centeredness.

To give up one’s rights?

Do we do that?

We live in a day and age where we fight for our rights, I am entitled to ______.

Jesus says give up your claim on your own life?

That’s radical!

That’s counter cultural.

in 1978 Billy Joel released his song My Life which reached #2 on the charts.

It was used as the theme song to ABC’s hit series Bosom Buddies in 1980-1982, it was a big hit for Joel, but why was it so appealing to the culture?

Here’s the chorus...

, don't need you to worry for me 'cause I'm alright

I don't want you to tell me it's time to come home

I don't care what you say anymore this is my life

Go ahead with your own life leave me alone

“I don't need you to worry for me 'cause I'm alright

I don't want you to tell me it's time to come home

I don't care what you say anymore this is my life

Go ahead with your own life leave me alone”

It was so appealing because it spoke to man at his core, the self-centered self-loving core.

Don’t you tell me what to do this is my life, go ahead with your own life and leave me alone…that’s man as man.

That appeals to the natural man.

Man doesn’t have to work at be selfish, that comes natural.

You don’t have to go to the book store and ask, “I trying to learn how to be extremely self-centered and cantankerous towards others, is there a book for that?” they don’t make them, we don’t need them.

What’s not natural is…denying oneself.

That goes against our nature.

Remember in Christ you are not your own, you were bought at a price…the price was Christ blood.

Jesus says anyone who wants to follow me must deny himself…and

b. take up his cross; if denying oneself wasn’t unnatural enough now Jesus uses the image of condemnation; when a person was condemned by the Romans they would be condemned to death by the cross.

The cross, in that day, meant one thing…death.

To take up one’s cross after Christ, then, doesn’t mean to bear some burden but to put one’s life on the block.

We tend to use this phrase very casually today, “we all our our crosses to bear” as if it’s some minor burden or inconvenience but that was never the intent Jesus had in mind.

In Jesus day, those condemned to die on a cross would have to carry that cross, usually the cross beam, on their back.

When someone saw that person carrying their cross they knew that man was going one way and would never return.

That’s the picture there, not bearing some burden but, those bearing the cross are going one way and will never return.

As Christians we are called to go one way and never return…and that one way is in the footsteps of Jesus.

As one commentator wrote, “For the believer, every hour is the last hour.

Every successive hour and day after that, self is to be found by being lost.

Let the disciple refuse himself: let him think constantly as one who feels the weight of the hateful beam across his back and knows himself condemned to die.”

c.