To Be Christ-Centered IS to be Cross Centered

Introduction

Good morning and thank you for joining us at Cross Church. My name is TJ and I’m the Growth Pastor here at Cross Church. This fall, we have been in a series called The Way. Moving from Shallow to Deep, Knowing Ourselves to Know God, and Being before we Do.

Last week, I preached on rejecting the world’s version of Jesus. On how easy it is to get wrapped up in the comfort and success and popularity, and how hard it is to follow the crucified Jesus. And then I went home and less than 24 hours later, things started to fall apart. Monday and Tuesday were some of the hardest, most complicated days I’ve had in a long time. I felt overwhelmed with stress and uncertainty. I was tempted, and in some cases gave in to success, popularity, and comfort. I tried to avoid suffering.

So, I just want to begin on this note. I know that in real life, following the crucified Jesus is harder than it sounds. It’s easy to stand up here and say Follow the Crucified Jesus. It’s easy to come here and say Amen, but it’s hard to live it. So, I want to continue talking this morning about what it means to follow the crucified Jesus, but I want to remind us that we can only do that through the power and the sustaining of God. He is the one who holds us through whatever comes our way. He is the one who makes it possible to truly follow him.

With that in mind, let’s take a moment to rest in him, to seek his power, to prepare to hear from him.

BREATH

Open our ears that we might hear, open our eyes that we might see, open our hearts that we might receive, open our minds that we might understand what you have for us today.

So, we’re talking about following the crucified Jesus, and that is really the only way to follow Jesus. You can separate out following Jesus from following the Jesus that was crucified. That’s the point of this morning’s sermon:

To be Christ-Centered is to be Cross-Centered.

It would be nice, wouldn’t it, if we could always separate out the parts of something we liked from the things we didn’t like. You know, like I would love to be in really good shape, really fit, but I would like to not have to work out to get there. I would like to eat really healthy, but I don’t want to give up french fries, or brownies, or soda. I can keep going. I don’t know if you’ve seen the billboards around Denton for Beyond Meat, the synthetic meat company. They advertise plant-based food that tastes just like the meat. They even say, no compromise needed. Here’s the thing, and I know maybe some of you may love it and I shouldn’t knock it before I try it, but I gotta admit I’m a little skeptical. Anytime you say you can have it all, no compromise, separate out what I want and what I don’t want, I don’t know. But we’re always trying.

I think we try when it comes to faith too. We say, I want all the blessing and the comfort of God, but I don’t want to have give anything up. I want Jesus to love me, to save me, to fix my circumstances, but I don’t want to have to do anything different. One of the things that’s come up a few times in my small group lately is this phrase, “be careful what you pray for.” It’s a little tongue in cheek, but it means that we often pray for something but then we don’t like the way that God answers it. Maybe you’re praying for patience. So God gives you someone to practice being patient with. You ask God to use you, but then he calls you into a situation that is way over your head complicated. Maybe you pray for God to resolve a situation with your boss, but the way God wants to resolve that is for YOU to change.

When it comes to Jesus, to be Christ-centered IS to be cross-centered. If we want the blessings of the Christ, we have to be willing to endure the cross.

We’re going to look at a story about a conversation Jesus had with his disciples, and look at how he thought about himself and his mission in the world.

So, if you have a Bible, turn to Matthew 16.

Jesus is the Christ

Matthew 16:13–19 NLT

When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” “Well,” they replied, “some say John the Baptist, some say Elijah, and others say Jeremiah or one of the other prophets.” Then he asked them, “But who do you say I am?” Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” Jesus replied, “You are blessed, Simon son of John, because my Father in heaven has revealed this to you. You did not learn this from any human being. Now I say to you that you are Peter (which means ‘rock’), and upon this rock I will build my church, and all the powers of hell will not conquer it. And I will give you the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven. Whatever you forbid on earth will be forbidden in heaven, and whatever you permit on earth will be permitted in heaven.”

The whole of Christianity comes down to this question: Who is Jesus?

Jesus asks the disciples who other people say he is. Everyone has a lot of ideas about who Jesus might be. This is largely what we talked about last week—who is Jesus not, he’s not somebody who helps us get success or popularity or comfort. There are all kinds of ideas about who Jesus might be and what Jesus might be interested in. Here, the disciples say that he’s John the Baptist or Elijah or Jeremiah or one fo the other prophets. They are comparing him to other people, misunderstanding that he is someone entirely new.

So, then Jesus turns the question on them: Who do YOU say that I am?

It’s easy for our understanding of Jesus to be influenced by what other people say. Someone asked me a really good question after service about this. We want to come to our own understanding of Jesus, not meaning that we create Jesus to be whatever we want, but that we understand who Jesus is on our own, without just using someone else’s answer. Well, my parents think Jesus is cool so I guess I’ll go to church. Or Pastor Vincent or TJ say Jesus is God, so I guess I’ll go with that. I hope you believe me and are convinced when I say that Jesus is the most amazing person you could ever know or follow, but you have to believe that yourself.

This is how Peter responds: “You are the Messiah.” What is the Messiah? First of all, I want to point out, just because I didn’t know this for a long time, that Messiah and Christ are the same thing, just different languages. When we say Jesus Christ, we’re saying Jesus the Messiah. When we talk about Messiah now, it’s synonymous with “savior”, but in the Bible, it’s more than that. The easiest way to describe it is this: A coming king—like David but better—who will rule exactly like God would, saving the nation of Israel and the whole world. Peter and the people of Israel had been waiting for this king for a long time. And they had a lot of expectations for him. He’s going to fix everything. He’s the Messiah, the Christ, the one they’d been waiting for. So Peter is pumped. He’s ready to go take over the kingdom, to get free from Rome and the religious elite.

You guys ever wait for something for a long time, and you imagine it a certain way in your mind, and then when it finally happens, it’s not how you expected? When I was in college, I couldn’t wait to graduate. I was like…I’m done with this kiddie stuff, I’m ready to be an adult. And then I became an adult and I’m like man…this is rough. Having a job is hard. Taking care of other humans is hard. Getting insurance and paying taxes, like way harder than it should be. Sometimes I miss the good old days, when I came home from class, fell asleep while doing my assigned reading, woke up for dinner and then watched a movie before bed. And that doesn’t even necessarily mean that life now is bad. My work is hard, but fulfilling. My kids WEAR ME OUT, but I love them more than I ever would have thought possible. My expectations were flipped. I thought I would have more freedom as an adult. I actually have less because I’m responsible to other people. But I’m okay with it because God gave me a love for the people and things I’m responsible to.

That’s Peter. He’s about to get his expectations flipped.

Jesus is a Crucified Christ

Matthew 16:20–23 NLT

Then he sternly warned the disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah. From then on Jesus began to tell his disciples plainly that it was necessary for him to go to Jerusalem, and that he would suffer many terrible things at the hands of the elders, the leading priests, and the teachers of religious law. He would be killed, but on the third day he would be raised from the dead. But Peter took him aside and began to reprimand him for saying such things. “Heaven forbid, Lord,” he said. “This will never happen to you!” Jesus turned to Peter and said, “Get away from me, Satan! You are a dangerous trap to me. You are seeing things merely from a human point of view, not from God’s.”

We know that Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah. So the next question is what kind of Christ is Jesus? And the answer is surprising. It’s the not the kind of Christ that the disciples were expecting.

Jesus immediately rejects all the false versions of Jesus we talked about last week. He warns the disciples not to tell anyone about him, rejecting popularity. He says that he is going to be rejected by the leading authorities, the people with power, rejecting success. He tells them that he’s going to suffer and ultimately die, rejecting comfort.

And then I think the story gets super funny. Peter is like okay Jesus, you’re the Messiah, the king, the Son of God, so let me tell you how this thing works. I know you’re like all-knowing or whatever but here’s some advice. And then Jesus calls him Satan, which is pretty intense. I’ve often wondered what this is about. Why call him Satan, and I think it’s connected to the earlier temptation in the desert. Jesus is saying that Satan is using Peter’s rebuke to tempt him away from the cross. You see, Peter wanted to be Christ-Centered, but he didn’t want to be Cross-Centered.

He then makes this amazing statement, and I think this idea is really beneath this entire idea of following the crucified Jesus. He says, you are seeing things from a human point of view, not from God’s. From a human perspective, what Jesus is saying really doesn’t make sense. From a human perspective, giving up the things of this world doesn’t make sense.

You know, depending on the rules of a game, it might change your strategy. Sometimes the kids and I play PIG or HORSE, and I’ve played it sometimes where if everyone makes the shot, then person who shot it gets a letter. If you play like that, it changes your strategy. If I’m playing like that, I’m not gonna do a shot that’s too easy because I’ll lose. Or in ping-pong, some people play that you can’t lose on a serve. If you can’t lose on a serve, you’ll be way more aggressive than normal on the final point. When we play by God’s rules, our strategy is different than if we play by human rules. But the most accurate example is the card game Mao. Have you played this? I played with some friends in college. And this is what happens in Mao. You sit down to play the game, and the people who are teaching you don’t tell you the rules. You just start playing and they keep making you draw and you’re just supposed to figure out why and what the rules are. So you’re guessing. This seems like the right thing to do, but who knows? Not me.

That’s life from a human perspective, we don’t know the rules. We don’t know the right way to live, to act, to be. So we guess and we hope that we’re right. But because we’ve been doing it for so long, we just assume it’s right, even if it keeps messing us up. And then Jesus comes along to show us a different way. He comes along to show us the rules, and the rule is that the way to life is through death. The way to the “Christ” is through the Cross. To be Christ-Centered IS to be Cross-Centered

To Be Christ-Centered IS to be Cross-Centered

Jesus goes on to explain God’s perspective to the disciples:

Matthew 16:24–28 NLT

Then Jesus said to his disciples, “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must give up your own way, take up your cross, and follow me. If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake, you will save it. And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul? Is anything worth more than your soul? For the Son of Man will come with his angels in the glory of his Father and will judge all people according to their deeds. And I tell you the truth, some standing here right now will not die before they see the Son of Man coming in his Kingdom.”

Jesus is telling the disciples, if you want to be Christ-Centered, then you need to be Cross-Centered. If we’re going to follow Jesus, the real Jesus, we need to be willing to embrace Suffering & Failure.

We try so hard to avoid suffering. Think about how many of our modern inventions are about avoiding even a minimal amount of difficulty or suffering. I don’t want to suffer washing the dishes when I’m tired after a long day, so I put them in the dishwasher and I let it do the work. I don’t want to suffer by walking to work, so I take my car. And then I don’t want to suffer by waiting in traffic, so I pull up google maps and have it find me a faster way. I don’t want to have to suffer by doing math, so I use my phone calculator.

We also try really hard to avoid failure. We have meetings on meetings on meetings so that we can improve our effectiveness and efficiency. We work and overwork so that we don’t fail. I try really hard to avoid failure.

I was thinking about this as I was preparing for this message. I spend a lot of time praying, studying, thinking, crafting sermons. And I think that’s good and right because I take seriously God’s word and the call to speak his Word to you. But there’s also part of me that just doesn’t want to fail. I don’t want to get up here and sound stupid or say something heretical or whatever.

So here’s what I need to remind myself, and I think we all need to remind ourselves—sometimes God uses our suffering and our failure for good both for us and for others. That doesn’t necessarily mean we go out looking for suffering and failure, but that when it comes, we don’t run from it. We embrace it. We try to become aware of God in it. We learn from it.

Here’s what that looks like. Here are three practices from the book Emotionally Healthy Discipleship.

Relax in Jesus

Now, I know just saying “RELAX” to someone who is stressed is like the opposite of helpful, so here’s what this means: trust Jesus. When I’m relaxed, I’m not worried about things going sideways. I’m not running through every negative scenario in my head. I trust that things are going to be okay. When we relax in Jesus, we can trust him with the results.

In this passage, Jesus is talking about how we try to gain the world. This is what most of us spend our lives doing, running around, driving our bodies and our souls into the ground to finish all the stuff we’re “supposed” to finish, to achieve the results we want out of life. When we relax in Jesus, we can trust Jesus with the results—and here’s the hard part—even if the results look like suffering and failure. I am faithful to what God calls me to, and I leave the results up to him.

Adoniram Judson was an missionary to Burma in in the 1800s and in 12 years, he made 18 converts. If somebody planted a new church and took 12 years to get to 20 people, I’m pretty sure we would have stopped funding them.

This idea of trusting in Jesus, relaxing in God, is exactly what the Sabbath was about in the Old Testament. The people of Israel were supposed to work hard throughout the week, but take one day off to relax in God. They trusted him with the results instead of trying to gain more, achieve more, get more. When we trust the results to God, we can be more aware of him, we can be present for our families, we can truly care for our souls.

Detach for Jesus

The second thing is to detach for Jesus. In this world, it’s easy to get attached to so much. It’s easy to get attached to our homes or our routines or our favorite pizza place. Sometimes it seems like we’re literally attached to our phones. It’s easy for us to get attached to our health or our security or our jobs. Jesus calls us to detach from the world and attach ourselves to him and him alone. What good is it to gain the whole world, he asks, if we lose our soul.

We can try to hold onto these things that we think we want, but in many ways, they are actually destroying us. When I was a kid, my favorite books and movies were the Lord of the Rings series. In that story, the ring is this thing of great power, and everyone who carries it gets attached to it, Gollum calls it “mine, my precious.” Even Bilbo and Frodo don’t want to give it up. But it also takes this toll on them, wearing them down, destroying them from the inside out.

Often there’s nothing wrong with the things we have that we like. The problem comes when God asks us to give that thing up. One time a young man comes to Jesus and asks him how to get eternal life. Jesus tells him he needs to sell all he has and give it to the poor. And he can’t do it. He’s too attached to his stuff and he can’t give it up for Jesus. If God asked me to sell everything I had and give it to the poor, I feel like I would all the sudden have a lot of trouble discerning God’s voice. What’s that God? I can’t hear you; you’re breaking up.

But Jesus tells us that the kingdom of God is like a valuable pearl or a treasure in a field; it’s worth getting rid of everything else so that we can have it. It’s worth it to lose the world to gain life in Jesus. It’s worth it.

Listen to Jesus

The last way we can embrace suffering and failure is to listen to Jesus. Sometimes, we trust God, and we’re not really that attached to things of this world, but we aren’t really following Jesus because we’re listening to everyone except him. Who are you listening to most of all?

Are you listening to your heart? Are you listening to your friends? Are you listening to TikTok? Are you listening to podcasts or news programs or etc? I’ve noticed this. I have certain people that I like their perspective, their way of thinking. And whatever they say, I have this tendency to be like “oh yeah that seems right.” I listen to them, I will try to do what they say. But really the most important person to listen to is Jesus. We do what he calls us to, not what anyone else says.

Now, we have to be sure Jesus is saying it and we’re not just using it as an excuse. We can’t just be like, “God told me” and then go do whatever we want. Often, God is speaking through wise counsel of others. So we have to be discerning about the voice of Jesus, but we follow his voice above all else, even if it leads us into suffering. Maybe God is calling you to do something radically generous, and there are all these voices telling you that you have be safe and secure. Listen to Jesus. Maybe God is calling you to serve other in some way, and other voices are telling you that you don’t have time or it’s not that important.

Listen to Jesus and follow him above all else.

Conclusion

The band can come. When you decide to follow Jesus, you are deciding to follow a crucified Jesus.

Before we even got married, my wife Karly told me about how she felt God calling her to become a foster parent. As we prepared to get licensed, we took all the classes, and there’s this huge fear. What is going to happen? What’s it going to be like? etc. And there’s everybody’s opinion about what’s right and what you should do and all that. And all these horror stories about behavior and whatever. And I just feel like it would have been easy to try to avoid all that. And this isn’t to say that I have done or am doing this perfectly, or even well, because it wasn’t my idea, and I have spent much of the time in suffering and failure and trying to avoid more suffering and failure. It’s simply to say this. I’m glad we said yes to God even though there was suffering and failure involved. He has sustained us through it all, taught us more through our relationship with our kids than anything I learned in seminary, and has given us the great gift and joy of knowing our kids.

God is asking you today, to follow the crucified Jesus, to give your life away for Him. To trust him, to hold on only to him, to listen to his voice—even when it means suffering and failure will come your way. And what he promises in return, is your soul. Not just your soul saved for heaven, but a full, spirit-filled soul here, now, in the midst of whatever suffering and failure come your way.

Come to Jesus this morning. Follow him wherever he leads, into crucifixion or glory or both. Jesus took up the cross—he embraced suffering and failure—to save your soul, to return it to you whole and healed. He is the glorious Christ who was miserably crucified. Follow him.

If you want to make a decision for this Crucified Jesus, come pray with someone today. Amen.