What Does It Mean to "Take Up Your Cross"?

 We had the great fortune of hearing from one of our volunteer leaders for the message last night as we looked at what it means to "take up your cross and follow [Jesus]".

    Before we dive into the passage, let's look at some context. In the chapters leading up to our passage for today, Jesus is seen feeding a crowd of 5,000 men (plus women and children), walking on water, healing a demon-possessed girl, and feeding another crowd of 4,000 men (plus women and children). His disciples are with Him the entire time and witness all of these things firsthand. Each of these miracles by themselves are incredible, and when linked together they are a powerful display of Jesus' authority over creation. This brings us to the first part of our passage:

Matthew 16:13-20 - "When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, 'Who do people say the Son of Man is?'

They replied, 'Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.'

'But what about you?' he asked. 'Who do you say I am?'

Simon Peter answered, 'You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.'

Jesus replied, 'Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven. And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.' Then he ordered his disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah."

    Following those amazing miracles Jesus sits down for a conversation with His disciples and He asks about the rumors that are going around about Him. "What are the people saying about me?" And the disciples tell him - the people recognize that He is someone of great importance, like a prophet of old. The crowds have seen His miracles and they have heard His teachings and they can see that He is someone sent from God. And they are partially right - Jesus was sent by God.

    But then He takes the question and makes it personal: "What about you? You have been with me and heard my teaching and seen my power - who do you say that I am?" After everything they have seen and heard, He wants to know if they understand who He really is yet. And Peter replies, "You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God." "Messiah", also known as the "Christ", means "anointed one". That's right, "Christ" is not Jesus' last name. It is a title. Peter calls Jesus the anointed one from God, the one promised in the Old Testament who would come and bring salvation and liberation to the world. And, even more importantly, Peter calls Him the "Son of the living God." Essentially, Peter calls Jesus God.

    And how does Jesus respond? "You're right." He gives Peter high praise for understanding who Jesus really is, and then blesses him by saying that He will establish the church and give Peter the keys of the kingdom of heaven. A quick side note here: "Peter" means "little rock", and the word used for "rock" when Jesus says "on this rock I will build my church" means more of a "big rock". So He is saying here that Peter will be part of the foundation of the church, but ultimately it will be built on Jesus Himself as the "chief cornerstone" (Ephesians 2:19-20).

    This is very high praise for Peter, and he must have felt awesome after hearing it. Unfortunately, that awesome feeling didn't last very long.

Matthew 16:21-23 - "From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.

Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. 'Never, Lord!' he said. 'This shall never happen to you!'

Jesus turned and said to Peter, 'Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.'"

    He goes from being a part of the foundation of the church and holding the keys of the kingdom of heaven to being called "Satan" (which means "adversary" or "one who resists"). He went from being a key player in the establishment of the church to an adversary of Jesus. Why? Because his mind was set on human concerns rather than Godly concerns.

    We know that Jesus' death and resurrection payed the penalty for our sin and bought us from the power of sin and death into eternal life. If Peter had been right, or had convinced Jesus not to go down that path, then we would not have access to eternal life or a relationship with God. Without Jesus' death and resurrection, the Christian faith would mean nothing. Jesus' concern was for our redemption, even though it meant His death. I think Peter stopped listening after he heard Jesus say He was going to die. "But Jesus, if you die, then how are we going to establish the church? How is this kingdom thing going to work if you're not around?" It was a human concern, thinking only about this life and what was happening here. Jesus warned Peter that his thinking needed to change. He needed to get on board with Jesus' death, or he was only going to be a stumbling block in Jesus' mission.

This brings us to our final piece of the passage:

Matthew 16:24-28 - "Then Jesus said to his disciples, 'Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father's glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what they have done. Truly I tell you, some of you who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.'"

    This is one of Jesus' hardest teachings. What do you think it means to deny yourself? Well, this one is pretty straightforward - rather than go after what we want, we instead go after what Jesus wants. Whatever my heart's desires, wants, or future goals may be, my priority as a disciple of Jesus Christ is to pursue His desires, wants, and future goals, even if it costs me my life. This is where the next part comes in. Today, a "cross" is symbol for the church of what Jesus did for us when He died. It is a symbol of hope for us. But in His day, the cross was a symbol of humiliation, submission, and execution.

    The Romans used crucifixion (death on a cross) as way of executing the worst of criminals in the most painful and humiliating way possible. If you look forward in the gospel of Matthew (27:27-37), you will see that it was normal for the Romans to force the prisoner to carry the beam of wood that would be his cross up to the place of his execution. This was both humiliating for the prisoner as well as a forced symbol of his submission to the Romans. Jesus had been so brutally beaten and tortured before this point, however, that they had to get someone else to carry it for him. This is where we get the phrase "my cross to bear".

    So, when Jesus says that those who want to be His disciples must "take up their cross and follow me", He is saying that those who want to be His disciples will have to bear humiliation and death. In Luke's gospel, he adds that this is something they have to do daily. So every day Christians are called to carry death and humiliation as they follow Jesus.

    If that's the whole sales pitch - "Follow me and die" - which of you is taking Jesus up on His offer? "Follow me to death" is not the end of the discipleship under Jesus, however. This is the cost. This is what it will take to follow Jesus. You have to be willing to give up your own desires and wants, and even your life, to follow Jesus as His disciple. If you are unwilling to give up your life, or as He puts it, "whoever wants to save his life", then you are not fit to be His disciple. That's why this is such a hard teaching.

    Praise be to God that death is not the end! Jesus says, "Whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it". The reason why we deny ourselves, and take up our cross and follow Jesus is that through Him we have everlasting life and salvation for our souls!

    There have been times where I have gone to a restaurant and think, "oh, that looks really good maybe I'll get that". Then I see the price and think, "Nevermind, that's not worth it". Many people look at what Jesus calls His disciples to do - deny themselves and take up their cross - and they think its not worth it. They have their minds set on earthly things; they want all the things this world has to offer like sex, money, success and power and they want those things more than they want life eternal with God. But Jesus says, "What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?"

    When we have our minds set on human concerns, like Peter did, we lose sight of what's truly important and what is ultimately going to be for our good. It is absolutely worth it to give up what I want out of this life in order to obtain eternal life with Jesus. The reward is worth the cost.

Some questions for you to think about:

1. Have you put your faith in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior? Have you recognized Him, as Peter did, as the anointed Son of God?

2. What desires, wants, or aspirations are you holding onto or refusing to deny? Jesus didn't say "Deny bits and pieces of yourself". He has called you to surrender everything.

3. Are you willing to take up death on a daily basis, offering your very life in submission to Jesus? Paul phrases it like this in Romans 12:1 - "Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God - this is your true and proper worship". Have you offered your life as a living sacrifice to God? In other words:

Are you living for God or yourself?

The Kingdom of Heaven is Like...

 So I had to apologize last night about one of my earlier messages (I will be commenting on the related post to fix the error). We had done an activity where I put out a statement and yall had to determine if it was true or false biblically. Well, I had claimed one of those statements was false because I didn't think there was any part of the Bible that said that Jesus lived in our hearts. Then, this past week I came across Ephesians 3:17 - "so that Christ [the Messiah, the anointed one] may dwell in your hearts through faith...". That section of Ephesians goes on to talk about being filled with the fullness of God. Jesus is the Christ, so if Christ dwells in the hearts of Christians through faith, then I was wrong. And I'm sorry. The main challenge from that message was to read the Bible and know it. Clearly, I needed that challenge, too.

Moving on, I have 3 questions for you. Grab a piece of paper or pull up a memo on your phone - in some way write down your answers for these, please.

1. When you have money to spend as you please (not on essentials like bills or whatever), where does the majority of your money go? To put it another way, when you get to choose how to spend your money, what do you tend to spend it on the most?

2. When you have free time (time that you get to choose what to do with) what do you tend to spend most of it doing? School/work and sleeping don't count, so pick something else besides those.

3. When you have a choice, who do you choose to spend the most time with?

Once you have answered each of these questions, look over your answers. Your answers should give you a sense of what you value, or where your priorities are.

For me, the majority of my "spending" money goes toward snacks and coffee and stuff like that. Most of my free time goes toward videogames, social media, and TV. And the person that I choose to spend the most time with is my wife. From these answers you can see that I prioritize comfort/satisfaction, entertainment, and my wife over other things. What do your answers say about your priorities?

We're looking at two short parables from Jesus today, and they are found in Mark 13:44-46 - "The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, who, on finding one pearl of great value, went and sold all that he had and bought it."

Jesus is using these parables to describe "the kingdom of heaven". What is He talking about with that phrase? Well, if you go back further in the chapter you'll find His parable of the Sower, where a man tosses seed out and it scatters across 4 different types of soil. He actually explains the meaning of this parable to His disciples, and says that the seed is the word about the kingdom, and the soil represents the people who hear the word and how they receive it. We can take this to understand that "the kingdom of heaven" is the message about Jesus - the Gospel.

With that in mind, let's look at these parables again. In both cases, we have a person who encounters the Gospel (the kingdom of heaven) and sells everything he has to obtain it. Whether it was the treasure in the field or the pearl, both people determined that these things were worth giving up everything they had to obtain. So what we find in these parables is Jesus demonstrating the value of the Gospel - it is worth giving up everything to obtain.

By these choices, we get to see their priorities. They valued those things (the treasure in the field and the pearl) and so they were willing to put everything else aside to get them.

Let's think about the treasure in the modern setting. Imagine you stumble across Blackbeard's treasure buried in the back yard of an old house. It's worth millions of dollars, so you go and sell your house and everything else you own so you can buy the property. We'll say it cost around $300,000. Well, now that you own the land, you can lay claim to the treasure which is worth millions. You gave up everything to obtain something of far greater value. That is the point Jesus is making in these parables. The kingdom of heaven, the Gospel, eternal life with Jesus, is worth far more than anything we could possibly get from this life or this world. It is worth sacrificing everything we have in this world to obtain. Later in the book of Matthew Jesus says this:

Matthew 16:24-26 - "Then Jesus told His disciples, 'If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?'"

Taking up your cross is a symbol for offering up your life. When Jesus took up the cross, it was to walk up the hill of Golgotha and die on that cross for our sin. Jesus is saying that if we want to follow Him, we have to sacrifice our very lives. We have to give up everything. And if we are willing to do that for Him, we will find eternal life. When we put our faith in Jesus and accept the Gospel, we die to ourselves and become new in Him - born again. He gives us new life, a new identity, as children of God. We become coheirs with Him in the Kingdom of God and we have eternal life to look forward to. This is a far greater gift than anything we could gain from the world. The world cannot offer us eternal life.

So, the kingdom of heaven has far greater value than anything we might be asked to sacrifice for it.

The kingdom of heaven will last longer than anything we sacrifice to gain it. Money, time, resources, energy, desires, dreams, ambitions, thoughts, wills, emotions - all of these are worth sacrificing, giving up, to follow Jesus and gain what He has to offer.

Think about, what benefit is money in the next life? None. It does not go with you, ad it cannot buy anything in the next life, no matter where you're going.

What benefit is videogames, or sports, or TV, or fancy shoes, or jobs, or careers? These might offer you something in this life, like a sense of accomplishment, or enjoyment, or power or authority. But when you die, they are all left behind.

What benefit is time? In this life, time is limited. We are all going to die someday. Having more or less time here won't help you in the next life.

Jesus asks an important question: What benefit is it for you to gain the whole world, yet forfeit your soul? The whole world is not as valuable as eternal life with God. So, if God asked you to give up your time, or your money, or your ambitions, for Him, and He offered you eternal life in return, wouldn't you accept that trade?

Everything this world has to offer us can satisfy only a small part of us, and that only for a time. God satisfies our whole being. The point of these parables is to show the great value of the Gospel, and what people who find it are willing to give up to obtain it. They are willing to give up everything they have because they can see the value in the kingdom of heaven.

Look back at your answers from earlier. What does your lifestyle say about your values?

Calendars, bank accounts, schedules - all of these can say a lot about what you truly value. This is because when you value something, your time, money and energy are put toward it. When you look at where you are spending your money, your time, and your energy, does it show that you value the Gospel? Does it show that you value God? Or does it reveal that your priorities are elsewhere?

Ask yourself this: What is eternal life with Jesus worth to you? What are you willing to sacrifice to follow Jesus?

According to Jesus Himself, the answer has to be everything.