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FOLLOWING WITH OUR CROSS

Posted by Pastor Greg Allen on July 15, 2020 under AM Bible Study |

AM Bible Study Group: July 15, 2020 from Luke 9:21-26

Theme: Because our Lord gave His life on the cross for us, we must take up our cross in order to follow Him.

(All Scripture is taken from The New King James Version, unless otherwise indicated).

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In our last time in Luke’s Gospel, we read of an important conclusion that the disciples had come to concerning the Lord Jesus. It came about because of a question that puts us all on the crossroads of a decision.

In that passage—in Luke 9:18-20—we found that the Lord Jesus asked the disciples who people said that He was. The disciples responded that other people were saying that He was this, or that He was that. Everyone, it seemed, had their opinion about Him. And then Jesus asked, “But who do you say that I am?” That’s a question that we must all answer.

Now; the disciples had seen many things about Him firsthand. They had heard His teaching. They had seen Him perform miracles. And most immediately, they had seen Him feed a multitude of people with only five loaves of bread and two small fish—resulting in twelve baskets of leftovers. They knew that He was much more than what people were saying about Him. And so, when asked who they thought He was, Peter answered for all of the disciples and said, “The Christ of God.” This was Peter’s way of affirming that Jesus is the Son of God in human flesh. It was a conclusion that all who look carefully and honestly into Jesus’ life and teaching must inevitably come to.

But what do we do with that? Is it enough simply to make that declaration? No. It also requires action from us. If we confess that He is who He truly is—the Son of God in human flesh—then, as a consequence, we must respond to that confession with appropriate devotion. Luke goes on to tell us how Jesus described that devotion:

And He strictly warned and commanded them to tell this to no one, saying, “The Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised the third day.”

Then He said to them all, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will save it. For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and is himself destroyed or lost? For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words, of him the Son of Man will be ashamed when He comes in His own glory, and in His Father’s, and of the holy angels (Luke 9:21-26).

This passage is quite a jolt; isn’t it? Many people decide to follow Jesus because they believe that following Him will make their life better. And in many ways, it does. But really, following Jesus means much more than that. It means that we suffer the loss of our lives for something better. The way that Jesus put it was that we must take up our cross—the instrument of our own death to self—and follow Him.

* * * * * * * * * *

Perhaps you’ve heard of the great theologian from the mid-twentieth century Dietrich Bonhoeffer. In his famous book, The Cost of Discipleship, he spoke of what happens when we come to terms with who Jesus really is. He put the matter this way:

“The cross is laid on every Christian. The first Christ-suffering which every man must experience is the call to abandon the attachments of this world. It is that dying of the old man which is the result of his encounter with Christ. As we embark upon discipleship we surrender ourselves to Christ in union with his death—we give over our lives to death. Thus it begins; the cross is not the terrible end to an otherwise god-fearing and happy life, but it meets us at the beginning of our communion with Christ. When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die” (p. 79).

Now; let’s make a few things clear. First, this is not talking about salvation. We are not saved by suffering for Jesus. We are not saved by taking up our cross. Rather, we are saved by placing our faith in the suffering He underwent for us on His cross—when He took the full guilt of our sins upon Himself and paid the death penalty on our behalf. Instead of salvation, this is talking about discipleship. This is talking about what it means to follow Him. We follow Him by—in love—doing as He did for us, and by taking up the very instrument of our own death to self, and following where He leads. That has to happen if we encounter Him as He really is. There is no discipleship with Jesus without knowing Jesus; and there’s no knowing Jesus without taking up the cross. There is no life with Him without death to self.

But another thing to remember is that ‘taking up our cross’ isn’t what people popularly mean by that phrase. That phrase—unfortunately—has come to mean, in the minds of some, the whole idea of suffering one’s lot in life. “Oh well; I guess this is just the cross I must bear.” That’s not what Jesus meant at all. What He meant was that we willingly take up our instrument of self-execution. We take ‘self’—that very thing which everyone in the world says that we need to pursue and exalt and gratify—and nail it to the cross.

That’s not a popular message today. It’s the opposite of what many want to hear. But it is an unavoidable requirement of following Jesus. And in the passage from Luke that is before us, our Lord makes this very clear. He literally took up His cross in order to save us. And now, we must figurative take up our cross if we would follow Him.

Now; notice how our Lord put this to us. First, He plainly set before us …

1. THE PRICE HE WOULD PAY TO SAVE US (vv. 21-22).

The disciples had just announced—rightly—that He is the Christ of God. They recognized the truth of what His works had declared concerning Him; and rightly concluded that He is the Son of God in human flesh. But strangely, we then find these words in verse 21: “And He strictly warned and commanded them to tell this to no one …”

Why would He say this to them? In fact, why would He sternly warn them not to say who He was? Aren’t we supposed to tell the world about Him? Well; it’s important to see this command in the context of where He was at this time in His earthly ministry. At this point, He was doing the works the Father had sent Him to do in order to show forth who He was. But His greatest work was yet to be done. He would soon lay down His life on the cross for us. He went on to explain:

The Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised the third day” (v. 22);

and that must happen. Nothing must be allowed to interfere with that important, saving work.

Do you remember when John—in his Gospel—told us about Jesus’ feeding of the multitude? We’re told that He looked at the crowds and “perceived that they were about to come and take Him by force to make Him king” (John 6:15). He departed from them; because that was not why He had come. He would indeed eventually be their King; but first, He must be their Savior. He had to suffer many things, and be rejected by the leaders of His people, and be killed, and be raised on the third day. It was absolutely necessary that He minister to us by becoming the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

Now; Jesus paid that price for us. And He paid it to the full. We do not now need to die in order to atone for our own sins. He has already accomplished that atonement for us. But if we recognize that He is the Son of God in human flesh, and if we recognize that He—as the sinless Son of God—paid the death penalty for us on the cross; then it leads us to the matter of our discipleship.

He went on to explain …

2. THE COST WE MUST NOW EMBRACE IN ORDER TO FOLLOW HIM (vv. 23-26).

And we can see this in three ways. First, it is required that we die daily to self. In verse 23, we read, “Then He said to them all, ‘If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me.’” We can see plainly from this that Jesus is not calling upon us to take up a literal cross; because it must be done ‘daily’. Nor do we understand Him to be speaking necessarily of a literal ‘dying’—because He describes it as an expression of denying one’s self. Rather, it is describing a perpetual, regular, repeated laying of one’s own self upon the altar of whole-hearted commitment to Him and following where He leads.

If you were to be living in those days, and if you were to see a man staggering down the road as he carried a heavy cross, you would not have been impressed with his Christian testimony. Instead, you would have understood that this man was a condemned criminal being marched to his own execution. He was on his way to die. All of his own plans and ambitions—all of his own pursuit of his own agenda—were gone. He had nothing for himself and he was nothing unto himself. And that’s what the Lord Jesus says is required if we would follow Him.

Now; this kind of talk is not something that would inspire people to follow Jesus casually. In fact, it would turn some people away. The Lord said a similar thing precisely to put people on the fork of the road; and to make them decide whether or not they would go with Him any further. Luke 14:25-33 tells us;

Now great multitudes went with Him. And He turned and said to them, “If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple. And whoever does not bear his cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple. For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not sit down first and count the cost, whether he has enough to finish it—lest, after he has laid the foundation, and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish’? Or what king, going to make war against another king, does not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? Or else, while the other is still a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks conditions of peace. So likewise, whoever of you does not forsake all that he has cannot be My disciple” (Luke 14:25-33).

Do you notice His words? He plainly said, “cannot be My disciple”. He said it three times. It’s not that we would simply find it hard. Rather, it’s that it cannot be done at all unless we take up the cross, completely die to self, and follow where He leads.

Are we willing to pay that price in order to follow Him?

Another thing we find is that it requires that we let go of the benefits of this world. Jesus put the matter this way: “For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will save it” (v. 24). He was not necessarily talking about the actual loss of physical life—although, for some of us, He may call us to pay that ultimate price. Rather, He is saying that we must let go of our desire for the ‘good life’ of this world—the things that this world considers to be a part of a fulfilling existence—in order to follow Him. We must follow the hard path that He leads us on, even if that path leads to what looks—from this world’s standpoint—as an utter and tragic waste of life. Jesus asks in verse 25, “For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and is himself destroyed or lost?”

Jesus told a parable that illustrates this. In Luke 12:15-21, He said;

“Take heed and beware of covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of the things he possesses.”

Then He spoke a parable to them, saying: “The ground of a certain rich man yielded plentifully. And he thought within himself, saying, ‘What shall I do, since I have no room to store my crops?’ So he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build greater, and there I will store all my crops and my goods. And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years; take your ease; eat, drink, and be merry.”’ But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul will be required of you; then whose will those things be which you have provided?’ So is he who lays up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God” (Luke 12:15-21).

Jesus is not saying that we must not have any of the comforts of life. He is not calling all of His followers to a life of poverty and asceticism. Rather, He is telling us that following Him is to take precedence over everything else in life. He calls us to take up our cross and follow Him with such a loose hold on the things of this world that—if He calls us to leave them behind—we do not cling to them but open our hand and let them drop.

Are we willing to follow Him at the cost of everything else in this world?

And finally, we find that following Him requires that we chose to suffer shame for His sake. In verse 26, He said, “For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words, of him the Son of Man will be ashamed when He comes in His own glory, and in His Father’s, and of the holy angels.”

In the eyes of this world, it is a shame to follow Jesus. It is an embarrassment to this world whenever anyone is devoted to Jesus as they should be. It is a contemptible thing to identify ourselves with His death on the cross. One of the most worldly men of modern times—Ted Turner—once declared that Christianity is a religion for losers. And from a perspective of life viewed from this world only, he was right. If we take up our cross and follow Jesus as we must, that’s how the world will think of us.

The apostle Paul wrote about this in 1 Corinthians 1:18-25; and said,

For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written:

I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
And bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.”

Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. For Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men (1 Corinthians 1:18-25).

But what greater foolishness it would be to be ashamed of Jesus—the Son of God in human flesh; crucified, raised and exalted—who will one day rule as King of kings and Lord of Lords! How foolish to be ashamed of Him who the Father in heaven exalts to His right hand; and who the angels of heaven fall down and worship! We suffer shame for a time; but we look ahead to sharing in His glory at His return throughout eternity.

Are we willing to follow Him if it means we must suffer shame for a brief while?

* * * * * * * * * *

It costs to follow Jesus. He has told us so in advance. It involves nothing less than daily death to self, the denial of the pleasures and riches of this world, and the enduring of shame from a Christ-hating world. If someone were to look it all over and decide that they didn’t want to pay the price, then they should not think that they may become one of His disciples.

But if you are like me—and you know that you must follow Him as imperfectly as you may; and that love for Him and for His sacrifice on the cross compels you—then we should pray together that we may be helped by Him to grow increasingly to pay the price.

As the apostle Paul wrote;

Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus (Philippians 3:12-14).

EA

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