Sermon Tone Analysis
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Big Idea
Tension: How does Christ reassure his disciples that it is worth it to pick up their cross and follow him?
Resolution: By foreshadowing the Resurrection through his transfiguration.
Exegetical Idea: Christ reassures his disciples that it is worth it to pick up their cross and follow him through foreshadowing the Resurrection in his transfiguration.
Theological Idea: Christ’s transfiguration reassures Christians that the glory to come outweighs their contextual costs of discipleship.
Homiletical Idea: Christ shows us that the costs of discipleship are worth it through the glory to come.
Big Idea: We endure the costs of discipleship with hope because we have a glimpse of the coming Resurrection.
Objective: To instill believers with a sense of hope in the life to come.
Introduction: How can we have hope?
It was an ecstatic day.
The politicians had finally managed to get their act together.
They had passed a major education reform bill that guaranteed education for almost everyone in the Empire.
The politicians invoked Biblical imagery to talk about how their education initiative would usher in a golden age for humanity, a utopia, peace on earth and a new garden of Eden.
This hope for a political aim had driven them and animated them.
They had a great hope, and they had achieved their goal.
Their society seemed to be on the cusp of eternal, sacred greatness.
Hope is a powerful motivator.
The secularist Rebecca Solnit says this about hope, “Your opponents would love you to believe that it’s hopeless, that you have no power, that there’s no reason to act, that you can’t win.
Hope is a gift you don’t have to surrender, a power you don’t have to throw away.”
The problem is that hope is often fickle, misplaced, and unrealized.
The story I opened with was from the 1800’s.
And it was describing what was one of the most powerful empire of the world, the Hapsburg Empire.
It was one of the first secular empires in modern Europe.
It came to its own in the period of the Enlightenment and it exploded in creativity.
They made many social gains and established many social conventions which today we would be jealous of.
THey were a hope-filled today.
The problem was that the hopes of so many in this empire never were met.
The Empire fizzled in the second part of that century and was dismembered after World War I. Today, many of the poorest, most dangerous, and most backward countries in Europe come from what was once the Hapsburg Empire.
Yet, hope lives on.
And, as we will see today, the hope that Christ offers is true and genuine hope.
One that does not fail to meet our expectations, but exceeds them.
One that does not fail us, but does not stop surprising us.
One that does not point us towards our own achievement, but one that points us towards Christ’s.
The Cost of Discipleship
Deny himself and take up our cross: So Christ begins this instruction to teh disciples and says, “Hey if you want to follow me, you should deny yourself and take up your cross and follow me.”
Now there are two things that are being said there.
The first one ist hat Christ tells us we must “deny ourselves.”
That phrase “deny” is the phrase that sometimes describes “disown.”
So you need to disown your own interests.
You need to give it up.
You need to say, “This is no longer important to me.”
You need to say with Christ in teh garden, “Not my will be done, but yours’.”
The second phrase he uses is to “take up your cross”.
The cross was the most brutal form of execution ever created.
It was a symbol of power and of shame and of fear.
And Jesus says, “Hey if you are going to follow me, you had better mount shame on y our back.
You should get used to having a cost to follow me.”
Christ openly admits that to follow him will bring costs, it will bring strain, it will mean saying “no” to things in our lives so that we can say “yes” to him.
Take up his cross
follow Christ
We must lose our lives: Jesus is even more explicit about this in vs. 25.
He says, “Whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”
To gain in the kingdom is to lose.
To lose in the kingdom is to gain.
Do you want to save your soul?
Do you want to be spared?
Jesus says, “well, surrender it.”
Give it up.
This is why he says in teh next verse, “What will it profit a man if he gains teh whole world and forfeits his soul?
Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?”
Jesus says, do the math.
If you get everything in the world for a couple of years here on earth, but then spend eternity in Hell, is this really a worthwhile endeavor?
But if you lose everything in the entire world for a few years, but you gain eternity with immeasurable wealth, why would you choose anything else?
I mean, if you weigh those two possibilities against each other, is that even an option.
Discipleship here on earth will cost us: So we should just note right now.
Discipleship, following Christ, will cost us.
Our church’s vision statement starts out with this sentence, “We follow Christ.”
We know that vision will cost us.
There is a cost to following Christ.
There is the heartbreak of having family who do not know Jesus.
There is the pain of people thinking your strange for your faith.
There are teh simple sacrifices of our time and energy and money.
But there are much more profound relational sacrifices.
Viz: Two weeks ago there was a ruling in England where a group of refugee Christians were denied asylum.
What was the reason?
Was it that their profession of faith was not credible?
Was it because they had caused problems?
No, it was because they believed in the bible.
It was because they believed that the God of Scripture was both loving and holy.
It was because they believed that the Bible was true.
Listen, this is a Western nation who denied asylum to Christians because of their Christian beliefs.
That is what it means to pick up the cross and follow Christ.
It will be worth it in the life to come: Here is the assurance that Christ provides.
It will be worth it.
He says in vs. 27-28… He says, I am going to go to glory, and then I will repay to each what he owes.
I am going to make sure that what you gave up here on earth will be repaid in glory.
He says, I promise, some of you are going to see the glory of God and you will know that it is worth it.
And the question that you know the disciples were asking is how in the world do we know?
How can we have hope?
What does that even look like?
This is not an abstract question.
When your child cuts off communication with you because you have shared the gospel with them.
When you are fired from your job because you refuse to act without integrity.
When your friends ostracize you, how do you know that God has something waiting for you?
Now, let me be honest.
God does not have to give us an answer to this question.
If God were to say, “You’re going to have to trust me,” then that would be justified, and holy, and warranted.
But God in his grace and love towards us, says, “Let me give you some assurances for this.
The Assurance of the Glory to Come
So Jesus leads the three disciples up on top of the mountain.
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