Biblical Discipleship

Scripture Reading - Mark 8:34-38

New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update Chapter 8

34 And He summoned the crowd with His disciples, and said to them, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me.

35 “For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s will save it.

36 “For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and forfeit his soul?

37 “For what will a man give in exchange for his soul?

38 “For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will also be ashamed of him when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels.”

Welcome to OHBC, we are glad you are here!

Good morning everyone! My name is Jason, and I have the privilege of bringing the living and active Word to you this morning. For those who are new to OHBC, we live by a simple rule in preaching which comes from 2 Timothy 4:1-2

New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update Chapter 4

1 I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by His appearing and His kingdom:

2 preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction.

Why do I say this to you today?

Many people, maybe some of you are going to have a difficult time with the passage we are looking at today. It has been like this from the very beginning of the church. Paul actually anticipates this reaction by many people when instructing Timothy of the necessity of teaching sound doctrine in the verses right after vs2. Look at 2 Timothy 4:3,4 with me.

New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update Chapter 4

3 For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires,

4 and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths.

My goal is to give you the truth of the Word of God, so that you may be changed, transformed into the image of our Messiah and King, into His likeness, so that when the world - sin sick, full of shame, and needing an answer to life’s biggest questions - they would see you and ask about Jesus.

Your transformation glorifies and honors the Triune god, this is goal of the sermon, your transformation and His glory.

so, lets begin. We are in a key section of Mark’s gospel as Mark the brilliant, Holy Spirit inspired story teller is concluding one major section of his story of the gospel, and bringing us into the next section of the story. As we talked about last week, the new section is focused on Jesus three passion predictions, and His discipleship of the 12 in light of His own mission as stated in Mark 10:45.

The second section of Mark’s gospel story

Mark 10:45 - For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom price for many.

For many of us, when Jesus predicts His own death and resurrection, we say “YES, AMEN” But then we read or hear this current passage is think, disturbing. It would have been the same for the 12, and the early church. I think this is a good thing. If you look around at our world, the amount of evil and hell bound people, should disturb us.

The lack of loyalty to our Messiah, Savior, and Lord should disturb us.

If we are believers, be disturbed , convicted, and repentant if this passage and your life do not line up. Jesus wants many things for us, but apathy to the spreading of the gospel, and making faithful disciples are not in that category. The truth is as I hope to show in this passage, Jesus considers following Him as giving Him your entire life, He demands our absolute allegiance, all of what we have been given by our heavenly Father, at His disposal. Paul says it like this in Romans 12:1-2.

New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update Chapter 12

Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.

So, as we begin to look at this passage, submit to the Spirit’s convicting, correcting, and teaching us how to be prepared for every good work. Let’s look at vs 34

34 And He summoned the crowd with His disciples, and said to them, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me.

New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update (La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995), Mk 8:34.

Jesus, in the preceding context has just predicted His suffering, betrayal and murder, and then rising three days later. Peter for reasons we discussed last week, can not imagine His Messiah to suffer and die and then rise before the end of the world. So, he does what any well meaning disciple would never do…he tries to rebuke the King. Jesus then staring down the 12 while rebuking Peter as if to say, your all thinking the same thing, and says some piercing words. Get behind me, satan, why would Jesus say this? Because Peter had is mind set on earthly things, the things that people get consumed with…their own comfort, fortune, and fame, the destruction of their enemies. But, Jesus in this moment says, the way of the cross is the way of God, so follow Me there.

This is a powerful word, but so many people who go to church and claim Christ as King yet either think this passage is only for “serious Christians, fanatics, but not for normal people.” The problem with this view is that Jesus does not allow us to think this by what He actually says. in vs34 Jesus changes the audience to now include a crowd following Him and the 12 at a distance. What Jesus says, He says to me (have them say this) , or anyone for that matter, look at the text with me, Jesus also says, if anyone desires to follow behind Me, what does this mean? It means there is a chance that some will not desire to follow Jesus in the way Jesus demands. This is critical to get. So many people think they make the terms of how they want to “follow” Jesus and expect Jesus to go along with their plans. This is actually the opposite of biblical discipleship, which demands(command in the greek) we deny ourselves, what does this mean? Notice the position of the disciple to Jesus. the disciple is not the first priority, Jesus is.Self denial is putting someone other and self as the top priority in ones life. We are commanded to follow behind the King, out of reverence and thankfulness and love for the One who died in our place, freeing us from bondage to sin, shame, and the flesh. We can not follow Jesus if we are out in front of Jesus. We will never see Him. We will simply pursue our desires and look back every now an then to see Jesus is still there in case we need a little extra help along the way. Jesus though, is not a security blanket, He is Lord. now, looking again at this word deny, in the context this command is something that seems to be an active decision on our part. It is not something that just occurs automatically. for example, Daniel 1:8 (NASB) 8  But Daniel made up his mind that he would not defile himself with the king's choice food or with the wine which he drank; so he sought permission from the commander of the officials that he might not defile himself. Will you makeup you mind today that Jesus is worth denying your own plans, wants, desires, comforts, or anything else that we may idolize over Jesus.

Jesus then gives another similar command to would be followers. Take up your cross! Let me restate it for us. Go sit in your electric chair, march to your firing squad, walk to your death following me as I went to mine. But there is more, crucifixion was as much about public shame and humiliation as it is suffering and execution. The cross was a sign of a person committing treason, being a shameful traitor, naked and exposed in humiliation before all. In other words, walk behind Jesus knowing it will lead to death of something. It may not be your physical life, but it most certainly must be the world’s evil influence, and your own earthly desires, and like Paul we may suffer physically. For example, paul says about the world, the earthly sinful desires, and our own marks of suffering.

New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update Chapter 6

14 But may it never be that I would boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.

New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update Chapter 3

5 Therefore consider the members of your earthly body as dead to cimmorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry.

New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update Chapter 6

17 From now on let no one cause trouble for me, for I bear on my body the brand-marks of Jesus.

And then we see the second mention of “following”. So, in other words, unless you get behind me, put to death whatever gets in your way of following me, be willing to die, or you cant follow me. Jesus sets the terms of discipleship.

And here is one other thing that is so important. Verbal tense/aspect? What? this is the way the author wants us to think about the actions he speaks of. Here we have commands to deny ourselves, pick up our crosses, in the aorist tense/aspect which means Get this done now. Make the decision. Then the verb “follow” is in the present tense/aspect which describes a process or habit, or continual way of life. Discipleship is not an every now and then way of life, it is an all consuming way of life that will cost us, and it is worth it.

vs35, anticipates what we are all thinking…Why? What is the reason that should we obey these commands and follow Jesus? Notice the “for” a term that signals for us the support of a previous idea. In fact, we see “for” in vs36, 37, and 38 all supporting the commands of following jesus His way, self denial, suffering, and the certainty of Resurrection, which He modeled. lets look now.

Lets look at the first “for” -

It is another conditional statement if/then, “anyone” universal application, this means you and I. This hypothetical statement gets to heart of why the Jesus way is better than life on our own. Lets look at the major contrast here. “save” or “lose”? I think if we translate these two words as “preserve/secure/deliver out of danger” and “destroy/lose/perish”, we can get a feel of the sense of what Jesus is saying here. Lets first ask, what needs to be preserved, and what is in danger of being destroyed? the word ψυχὴν can mean soul, life, being. I think life is the best translation. So, Jesus is saying if you will let go of the control of your life and your pursuit of all the things we all pursue for the sake of the Jesus and the good news, you will preserve or save or rescue it…from what? from destruction. What is in view here, I think we all know the answer. But 36 explains it perfectly. this question must change how we live. Jesus brilliantly asks, What does it profit, what does a person have to benefit from obtaining everything they could ever want in life (even the whole world) and yet destroy their life. The chasing of the worlds values, money, pleasure, fame, comfort, retirement, whatever else keeps us from following Jesus with all of our lives, will ultimately destroy our lives. Paul tells Timothy

New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update Chapter 6

10 For the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil, and some by longing for it have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.

11 But flee from these things, you man of God, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, perseverance and gentleness.

As a believer, do you want to look Jesus in the eye and explain to Him why you gave up following Him to pursue money? If you are an unbeliever, is money really preserving your life? We will never get time back on earth. How do we want to spend it? Do we really want to be the man in this story Jesus tells, listen, 16 And He told them a parable, saying, “The land of a rich man was very productive.

17 “And he began reasoning to himself, saying, ‘What shall I do, since I have no place to store my crops?’

18 “Then he said, ‘This is what I will do: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods.

19 ‘And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years to come; take your ease, eat, drink and be merry.” ’

20 “But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your soul is required of you; and now who will own what you have prepared?’

21 “So is the man who stores up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.”

Lk 12:16–21.

vs37 now explains vs 36,

There is nothing , no amount of money or anything else, that can we can exchange with God for our lives? For our eternity!

This question Jesus asks is meant for us to scream out, nothing! if we are chasing anything else besides the Jesus and the gospel going to the ends of the earth, we are chasing after the wind, it ultimately means nothing. And, even worse it could lead to judgement. as vs 38 shows, look with me, because many people get confused with verse. But this verse is explaining the previous verse. Here is how. This is another conditional clause. If you are ashamed of Jesus, if you are embarrassed of Jesus, if you would rather seek your own honor than His, well judgement will come. But look closely, because jesus is talking to a particular generation which is described as an adulterous and sinful generation, this is the current generation Jesus was talking to, which is described the way Judah was described before being destroyed by the Babylonians in 600 ad. Now look at the time phrase, “when” Jesus comes in the glory or honor on behalf of His Father along with the holy Angels. This is a 1st century way of describing Judgement on unbelieving Israel. This happens in AD 70, when Rome decimated Jerusalem and the Temple.

Here is the warning. If you claim to trust in Christ, but do not want to follow Him, but would rather try and preserve your own way of living, when Jesus comes again, you may be on the side of judgement and not grace. So, please, choose this day whom you will serve?

lets pray