SPEAKER_00: I'll just you to open your Bibles now to Luke chapter 9, and we are going to be looking at verses 23 through 27.
SPEAKER_00: Luke 9, 23 through 27.
SPEAKER_00: If someone or something, I'm putting you on notice, I'm putting the world on notice.
SPEAKER_00: If someone or something were to threaten my wife and children, I would do everything in my power to protect them.
SPEAKER_00: I would even lay down my life for them.
SPEAKER_00: That's my duty as a husband and a father.
SPEAKER_00: It's what a man does.
SPEAKER_00: That's what I'm supposed to do.
SPEAKER_00: And I don't think that's a controversial thing to say.
SPEAKER_00: I don't really think it's an exceptional thing to say.
SPEAKER_00: I think, I suspect all of the husbands and fathers in the room would say the same thing.
SPEAKER_00: We would gladly lay down our lives for our people.
SPEAKER_00: Now, in a way, that's not a difficult thing to say.
SPEAKER_00: It's a fairly easy thing to say when laying down your life means taking a bullet or stepping in front of a bear or something like that.
SPEAKER_00: But what if laying down your life meant something less like dying and something more like waking up in the middle of the night to change a diaper?
SPEAKER_00: Or not taking your dream job in another city because you know it's going to uproot your family and cause unnecessary pain.
SPEAKER_00: Or turning on your listening ears after a long day at the office when all you want to do is sit on the couch and watch the game.
SPEAKER_00: See, sacrificing your life is easy.
SPEAKER_00: Surrendering your life is hard.
SPEAKER_00: And that's the kind of thing we're going to consider today in our passage of Scripture.
SPEAKER_00: We're looking at another well-known passage where Jesus says to any and everyone that if we want to be his disciples, if we want to follow him, then we're going to have to deny ourselves and take up our cross, not just once, but daily.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus calls some to literally lay down their lives, to literally die for him.
SPEAKER_00: But for the vast majority of us, especially in 21st century Wilson County, he calls us not to sacrifice our lives so much as to surrender them.
SPEAKER_00: In a way that's much harder.
SPEAKER_00: Because it requires a radical and comprehensive reorientation of everything that we hold dear.
SPEAKER_00: If I'm going to follow Jesus, I need to die to my own sense of self-preservation.
SPEAKER_00: I need to die to my own worldly ideas about wealth.
SPEAKER_00: I need to die to my own desire to be approved and applauded by the world around me.
SPEAKER_00: I need to die to myself in order to come alive in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: That's what Jesus tells us in this passage.
SPEAKER_00: And the promise is that if we do that, if we deny ourselves, if we take up our cross, if we follow Jesus, then we will share with him in the kingdom of God and glory forever.
SPEAKER_00: So it's with that in mind that I'll invite you to rise as I read this morning's sermon text.
SPEAKER_00: Again, this is Luke 9, verses 23 through 27.
SPEAKER_00: And he said to all, If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.
SPEAKER_00: For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.
SPEAKER_00: For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself?
SPEAKER_00: For whoever is ashamed of me and my words, of him will the Son of Man be ashamed when he comes in his glory, in the glory of the Father and of the holy angels.
SPEAKER_00: But I tell you truly, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_00: The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.
SPEAKER_00: Father, thank you for your word.
SPEAKER_00: We are so dependent as always upon your Holy Spirit to shed light on it so that we can read it rightly and apply it in the way that you would have us apply it.
SPEAKER_00: So send your spirit now to help us, we pray.
SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: You may be seated.
SPEAKER_00: So last week Jesus revealed something significant.
SPEAKER_00: He revealed that he's not just a prophet, he is the Christ.
SPEAKER_00: But he's not the Christ that the Jews expected.
SPEAKER_00: He's not here to conquer all their enemies, at least not in the way that they thought he would.
SPEAKER_00: The Christ would conquer, truly, but he would conquer by first being conquered himself.
SPEAKER_00: He would ascend his throne, but only after descending into the grave.
SPEAKER_00: And that's the bit of the story that the twelve were missing.
SPEAKER_00: And it's something that they would ultimately have to see to believe.
SPEAKER_00: And here he doesn't just address the twelve.
SPEAKER_00: In verse 23, he addresses everyone within earshot.
SPEAKER_00: If anyone would come after him, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.
SPEAKER_00: That's what Jesus says.
SPEAKER_00: That if word at the front of the verse, it's very important.
SPEAKER_00: If you want to come after Jesus, that is, if you want to be one of his disciples, then this is what you're going to do.
SPEAKER_00: You're going to deny yourself.
SPEAKER_00: You're going to take up your cross, not just once, but day after day after death, day.
SPEAKER_00: That's what following Christ, that's what faith in Christ looks like.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this is the first time in Luke where Jesus or anybody else has mentioned the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: Or sorry, not the gospel, the cross.
SPEAKER_00: This is the first time anyone's mentioned the cross.
SPEAKER_00: And his audience would have known it.
SPEAKER_00: He would have known it as Rome's favorite method for executing criminals.
SPEAKER_00: When someone was sentenced to death in Rome, what they would do is they would take this rough, heavy beam, weighed 75 to 125 pounds, heavy, called a patibulum.
SPEAKER_00: And they'd take it and they'd place it across the shoulders of the criminal.
SPEAKER_00: And they would bind the criminal's hands to both sides of the cross.
SPEAKER_00: And they did that for two reasons.
SPEAKER_00: One, so that when the crowds kind of pressed in and tried to hit the criminal or threw things at him, he couldn't do anything to defend himself.
SPEAKER_00: He just had to take it.
SPEAKER_00: And the second is so that carrying this hundred-pound piece of timber, when the person fell, which they would fall, they had no way of bracing themselves.
SPEAKER_00: So an added element of pain, an added element of shame.
SPEAKER_00: And when that person would arrive at the execution site carrying this patibulum, they would use ropes and ladders and crude machinery to hoist him up on the crossbar.
SPEAKER_00: And they would nail his hands to that crossbar.
SPEAKER_00: And they'd put a little ledge under his feet and nail his feet to the little ledge so that he could push himself up and breathe.
SPEAKER_00: Now that sounds merciful, right?
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't merciful.
SPEAKER_00: They did it so that they could game the survival instinct of the criminal and not allow them to just hang and asphyxiate quickly.
SPEAKER_00: They did it so that the person would stand up, breathe longer, and experience a longer and more excruciating death.
SPEAKER_00: They would die slowly, they would die painfully, they would die shamefully.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus' hearers knew this.
SPEAKER_00: Crucifixions weren't some private thing that happened on death row in a room that only a few people are able to witness.
SPEAKER_00: They were a public spectacle.
SPEAKER_00: They were one of the means by which the Romans maintained their power over the people.
SPEAKER_00: Hey, you mess around, you find out on the cross.
SPEAKER_00: So consider the scandal of that.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is telling them that in order to follow him, they have to take up the pain and the shame of a Roman cross daily.
SPEAKER_00: Daily.
SPEAKER_00: So of course, Jesus doesn't mean it in a literal sense.
SPEAKER_00: He can't be executed more than once.
SPEAKER_00: It's a one and done kind of deal.
SPEAKER_00: But what Jesus does mean is that in order to follow him, you have to be willing to die.
SPEAKER_00: Not just in a physical sense, but socially, culturally, economically, emotionally, psychologically, religiously, in all the ways, you have to be willing to die.
SPEAKER_00: The world, he's saying, is going to despise you for his sake and everything inside of you.
SPEAKER_00: It's going to want to renounce Jesus in order to save your own skin.
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus says that if you want to be his disciple, you're going to push all that down, you're going to set it all aside, and you're going to press on.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Now that's a heck of an ask, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus isn't inviting us to fill out a form and pledge 10% of our income to join his exclusive club.
SPEAKER_00: He's asking us to come and die.
SPEAKER_00: And as the Son of Man, Jesus has every right to ask that of us without any sort of explanation.
SPEAKER_00: It's our duty, it's our obligation, it's what we owe him.
SPEAKER_00: But here's the surprising thing about today's passage.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus doesn't just command us to take up our cross, Jesus gives us reasons.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus actually appeals to our own sense of self-interest and explains to us why no matter what happens, denying ourselves and following Him will ultimately be better for us than anything else the world has to offer.
SPEAKER_00: He offers three reasons specifically in verses 24, 25, and 26, each one signaled by that little word for.
SPEAKER_00: And we're going to consider each of them under three headings preservation, profit, pressure.
SPEAKER_00: Preservation, profit, pressure.
SPEAKER_00: And we'll begin with preservation in verse 24.
SPEAKER_00: There's a tech entrepreneur and venture capitalist out there in the world by the name of Brian Johnson.
SPEAKER_00: Have you heard of Brian Johnson?
SPEAKER_00: Brian Johnson's personal mantra is this don't die.
SPEAKER_00: Don't die.
SPEAKER_00: It's pretty good.
SPEAKER_00: It sounds like something that you would say as a response to someone else saying, hold my beer, watch this.
SPEAKER_00: Don't die.
SPEAKER_00: Sorry, hold my grape juice.
SPEAKER_00: Hold.
SPEAKER_00: Don't die.
SPEAKER_00: Johnson believes that thanks to AI and medical technology, our generation, or maybe our kids' generation, will be the one that finally conquers death.
SPEAKER_00: And so he's turned his entire life into a kind of science experiment.
SPEAKER_00: He's taken plasma infusions from his teenage son.
SPEAKER_00: He's very strictly regulated his diet.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't eat after 11 a.m.
SPEAKER_00: because he wants digestion to be done by bedtime so that it doesn't interrupt his sleep.
SPEAKER_00: He takes over a hundred pills and powders every day as supplements, and he adjusts them dynamically based on an analysis of his urine, his stool, his saliva, and who knows what else, his blood.
SPEAKER_00: Gene therapy, stem cells, sensory deprivation or deprivation.
SPEAKER_00: Johnson has taken basically every trend in biohacking and he's given it a go.
SPEAKER_00: He's poured all of his time, all of his energy, a whole lot of his money into making his life this highly structured, highly regulated lab experiment, all so that he could find a way to beat death.
SPEAKER_00: Let me ask you.
SPEAKER_00: Johnson may be breathing, but is he truly alive?
SPEAKER_00: It seems to me that in trying to save his life, he's lost it.
SPEAKER_00: See, Jesus taps into that paradoxical reality in verse 24, when he says, for whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.
SPEAKER_00: As Johnson shows and Jesus tells, there's a way to live that falls short of living.
SPEAKER_00: There's a way to live that will ultimately only end up in death.
SPEAKER_00: And it's the way that focuses on preserving our lives at any and every cost.
SPEAKER_00: And it's only when we lay down our lives, when we deny ourselves, when we take up our cross, that we find life in its fullest and truest sense.
SPEAKER_00: We find a life that actually outstrips death because it does not come from us.
SPEAKER_00: It does not come from our feeble and frail bodies.
SPEAKER_00: It comes from the one who is the author of life.
SPEAKER_00: So what does that mean practically?
SPEAKER_00: Well, we'll see what Jesus has to say about worldly possessions and status, reputation, that kind of thing in a bit.
SPEAKER_00: But the first thing we need to see, the first thing we need to say, is that only Jesus can preserve our lives in an eternal sense.
SPEAKER_00: Healthcare is good, exercise is good, supplements are good, I do all those things myself, and I am not against breakthroughs in medicine, and I don't think Christians should be.
SPEAKER_00: There's nothing wrong with trying to survive, but the question is, what are we surviving for?
SPEAKER_00: And what are we willing to sacrifice for the sake of survival?
SPEAKER_00: Because if our lives are ordered toward anything but Jesus, the cold hard truth is it doesn't matter how long we live.
SPEAKER_00: The bell will toll for every single one of us, and at that point, the only thing that will matter is whether we follow Jesus or not.
SPEAKER_00: And so Jesus says to every single one of us, whoever will lose his life for my sake will save it.
SPEAKER_00: So if you really want to survive, in an ultimate sense, if you really want to make it out of this life alive, then surrender your life to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Die to yourself if you really want to avoid death.
SPEAKER_00: That's what he's saying to us here.
SPEAKER_00: So that's preservation.
SPEAKER_00: Now let's talk about profit.
SPEAKER_00: In verse 25, Jesus asks a rhetorical question: For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself?
SPEAKER_00: In other words, what use is it if you amass to yourself everything this world has to offer?
SPEAKER_00: Every good thing, every flashy thing, every exciting thing.
SPEAKER_00: What good is it if you accrue all of that to yourself but you lose yourself in the process?
SPEAKER_00: If you can't take it with you when you go, then you should care more about where you're going than what you leave behind.
SPEAKER_00: That's what Jesus is getting at here.
SPEAKER_00: And it's something we all desperately need to hear again and again.
SPEAKER_00: We live in a fundamentally consumerist world.
SPEAKER_00: Our economy is driven by consumption, and so much in our lives is ordered toward the relentless quest for better and more, a better education for ourselves and our kids, a higher paying job, a bigger house, a nicer car, a better vacation, and so on.
SPEAKER_00: Don't get me wrong, it's okay to want to improve your station in life.
SPEAKER_00: A lot of the things I just listed aren't wrong in and of themselves.
SPEAKER_00: They're not sinful in and of themselves.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus, he praises the man who invests his master's money and makes a good return on investment.
SPEAKER_00: That's not inherently wrong, but in the same way we can bend our God-given desire for life and get it all out of whack, so can we distort our God-given ambition.
SPEAKER_00: We can live in such a way where we stop trying to steward the good gifts that God has given us and instead we start building our lives around them.
SPEAKER_00: Or, like Paul says in Romans 1.25, we worship and serve the creature rather than the creator who is blessed forever.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: It's the definition of idolatry.
SPEAKER_00: And the truth is that the things of this world are constantly making promises that they can't keep.
SPEAKER_00: They're whispering in our ears saying, if you just get more, if you just get enough, you'll be okay.
SPEAKER_00: And when we listen, we become slaves to the grind.
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus speaks the truth here that sets us free.
SPEAKER_00: If you're living for more, then sorry, you're never going to have enough.
SPEAKER_00: You're never going to feel fulfilled, you're never going to be content.
SPEAKER_00: You're never going to have rest.
SPEAKER_00: More and enough will always be out on the horizon.
SPEAKER_00: But if you deny yourself, if you deny yourself and take up your cross, if you lay it all down at the feet of Jesus and you count him as the prize above all prize, then what are you going to find?
SPEAKER_00: You're going to find that all of the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden in him.
SPEAKER_00: You're going to find that everything you need for life and godliness is in him.
SPEAKER_00: Every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, every one of God's promises, everything true, everything beautiful, everything good, all of it is contained in him.
SPEAKER_00: And so when Satan takes you up in the pinnacle and he promises you all the kingdoms of the world, like he did with Jesus, when your job tempts you to compromise for the sake of a paycheck, when that potential car or mortgage note threatens to imprison you at work, when your desires prompt you to grasp for something that does not belong to you, Jesus steps in and reminds you.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus steps in and reminds me that all the goodies that this world has to offer will profit us nothing if we forsake the one who is our greatest reward.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, we've talked about how following Jesus is the only way to preserve our lives.
SPEAKER_00: We've seen how worldly profit is nothing if we don't have him.
SPEAKER_00: And now we come to the pressure.
SPEAKER_00: We come to the pressure that we face as disciples and the promise that Jesus makes to those who follow him all the way to the end.
SPEAKER_00: In verse 26, Jesus says, For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words, of him will the Son of Man be ashamed when he comes in his glory, in the glory of the Father and of the holy angels.
SPEAKER_00: Shame.
SPEAKER_00: This is a really important word here because it has to do with our subjective response to the loss of status we can expect when we take up our cross.
SPEAKER_00: This is what Jesus has been pushing toward.
SPEAKER_00: At the end of the day, taking up the cross is not just about undergoing this internal change of philosophy or change of view.
SPEAKER_00: It's about surrendering your life to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And by definition, that surrender is not the kind of thing that you can keep quiet.
SPEAKER_00: It's not the kind of thing that you can keep to yourself.
SPEAKER_00: It's the kind of thing that you see and hear in person.
SPEAKER_00: And in a fallen world that's rebelled against Jesus, it's the kind of thing that will get you in trouble.
SPEAKER_00: Now that may not sound like something we have to worry about much here in the buckle of the Bible belt.
SPEAKER_00: About 80% of people in Wilson County identify as Christian.
SPEAKER_00: For the vast majority of us, if we were to walk into church tomorrow, or sorry, into work tomorrow and let everyone know that we have decided to follow Jesus, most of them would yawn.
SPEAKER_00: Big deal.
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the club.
SPEAKER_00: Everyone's already a Christian.
SPEAKER_00: Except when you look at the numbers, and you see that only about half of those professing Christians attend church with any sort of regularity.
SPEAKER_00: Half of them deny that the Bible is the inspired and inerrant word of God.
SPEAKER_00: Almost a third of them deny the deity of Christ and the historicity of the resurrection.
SPEAKER_00: And so a ton of our neighbors, a ton of our friends, a ton of our coworkers may identify as Christians.
SPEAKER_00: But taking up your cross is about more than checking a box on a form.
SPEAKER_00: It's about following the Son of Man and listening to what he has to say in his word and conforming your life with his help to it.
SPEAKER_00: See, that's when things get sticky.
SPEAKER_00: That's when the people who yawned at your profession start to wake up.
SPEAKER_00: When you say things like, I believe every word in the Bible is a word of Jesus, not just the ones printed in red.
SPEAKER_00: I believe in the supreme dignity of every human life, including the unborn.
SPEAKER_00: I believe the Bible says that marriage ought to be between one man, one woman for life.
SPEAKER_00: I believe that men are men and women are women, and the most compassionate way to love those who are struggling with matters of gender and sexual identity is to lovingly shepherd them toward the truth and not away from it.
SPEAKER_00: See, Jesus is going in a direction that a whole lot of people in our culture, even in Wilson County, Tennessee, don't want him to go.
SPEAKER_00: And if you try to follow him there, you will experience rejection.
SPEAKER_00: People will look at you sideways.
SPEAKER_00: Some of them will even try to put a metaphorical cross on your back.
SPEAKER_00: And many of those people would label themselves Christian.
SPEAKER_00: But what does Jesus say?
SPEAKER_00: Deny yourself.
SPEAKER_00: Take up that cross.
SPEAKER_00: Bear the shame, but do not be ashamed.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is the way, Jesus is the truth, Jesus is the life.
SPEAKER_00: And the place where he's leading us is infinitely better than any and any other destination.
SPEAKER_00: And the warning is if we allow ourselves to be shamed into laying down the cross, then we will not make it all the way home.
SPEAKER_00: If we are ashamed of him, he will be ashamed of us.
SPEAKER_00: If we deny him, he will deny us.
SPEAKER_00: And so we have to choose.
SPEAKER_00: Who do we want to be rejected by?
SPEAKER_00: The world or by Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: It's a stark warning.
SPEAKER_00: I won't pretend it's not.
SPEAKER_00: It's a stark warning that Jesus offers anyone who would be his disciple.
SPEAKER_00: And it ought to put us on our heels.
SPEAKER_00: But even as we find ourselves in this place, we're like, whoa, Jesus, it's really important that we don't lose sight that there's a promise wrapped up in what he's saying here.
SPEAKER_00: Because the flip side of this warning is true.
SPEAKER_00: If we take up our cross, if we follow Jesus to the very end, then when the Son of Man comes in his glory, in the glory of the Father, in the glory of the holy angels, he will not be ashamed of us.
SPEAKER_00: He will rejoice with us, even with loud singing, Zephaniah 3 says.
SPEAKER_00: He will welcome us into the place that He has prepared for us.
SPEAKER_00: And on our way in, He will take that heavy crossbar off our backs and throw it in the pile with all the others.
SPEAKER_00: When the Son of Man comes in glory, he will be vindicated, and so will we.
SPEAKER_00: And every hint of rejection that we experienced in this life will melt away and give way to the greatest acceptance any of us could ever hope to hear.
SPEAKER_00: That is the divine welcome of a heavenly Father who loves us so much that he gave his only begotten Son so that we could eternally be a part of his family.
SPEAKER_00: I want that.
SPEAKER_00: And if that means you people think I'm crazy, I don't care what you think.
SPEAKER_00: That's how Jesus is calling us to live.
SPEAKER_00: Now, eight days after Jesus said these things to his disciples, he was kind enough to give three of them a glimpse of what that coming glory would look like.
SPEAKER_00: Just as he promises in verse 27, the kingdom of God appears in the momentarily glorified Christ of the transfiguration.
SPEAKER_00: We'll get into that next week.
SPEAKER_00: But the thing that we need to grasp today as we move toward a conclusion is that we are not in the same position they were.
SPEAKER_00: For them, for the disciples, for the ones who were listening to Jesus as he said these things, Christ's suffering was still in the future.
SPEAKER_00: And this command to take up their cross was still dwelling in the realm of metaphor.
SPEAKER_00: But we live on the other side of Jesus' suffering.
SPEAKER_00: And we know that for him, the cross was not just a metaphor.
SPEAKER_00: It was the real fate that Jesus faced in our place and for our sins.
SPEAKER_00: We also know what happened on the third day after he faced that fate.
SPEAKER_00: Death did not defeat him, it could not hold him.
SPEAKER_00: He lost his life, he gave up his life in order that he might take it back up again and freely share it with everyone who puts their trust in him.
SPEAKER_00: Hebrews 12 says that it was for the joy that Jesus despised the shame of the cross.
SPEAKER_00: And in his resurrection, he experienced the ultimate vindication and he promises to share that vindication with everyone who follows him to the end.
SPEAKER_00: And so if that cross on your back is feeling extra heavy right now, remember, you're not losing your life.
SPEAKER_00: You're finding it.
SPEAKER_00: You're not missing out on all the toys.
SPEAKER_00: You're laying up your treasure in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: And you won't always be on the outside.
SPEAKER_00: You won't always be rejected, ostracized, cast aside.
SPEAKER_00: On the final day when the Son of Man comes in glory and you stand before the throne of God's judgment, the only person whose opinion ever really mattered will look at you and say, This one's with me.
SPEAKER_00: That's the encouragement.
SPEAKER_00: That's the encouragement for those who've taken up their cross.
SPEAKER_00: But for those who haven't, I want to encourage you to take Jesus' words seriously.
SPEAKER_00: How tight are you hanging on to your life?
SPEAKER_00: How much of your identity, how much of your security is bound up with the number on your bank account or the car in your driveway?
SPEAKER_00: Whose opinion matters to you most?
SPEAKER_00: Whoever saves his life will lose it.
SPEAKER_00: What does a profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses or forfeits himself?
SPEAKER_00: Whoever is ashamed of the son of him will the son of man be ashamed.
SPEAKER_00: This is hard stuff to hear.
SPEAKER_00: How could it not be?
SPEAKER_00: Everything in our culture says that we need to affirm ourselves in every way, and we need to make other people affirm us too.
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus says, deny yourself.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because apart from him, our twisted desires will lead us straight into the fire.
SPEAKER_00: And so to deny ourselves is to deny that very thing that will lead us to eternal destruction.
SPEAKER_00: To deny ourselves is to listen to Jesus' call and to turn back before we go over the cliff.
SPEAKER_00: And that may feel like death, but the promise Jesus makes is that it is truly life.
SPEAKER_00: So you might be wondering, how can I possibly do that?
SPEAKER_00: The kingdom of God sounds great, but I don't think I can bear the weight of the cross.
SPEAKER_00: Well, let me let you in on the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: You can't.
SPEAKER_00: You can't bear the weight of the cross.
SPEAKER_00: But guess what?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus did.
SPEAKER_00: The cross of Christ is the key that unlocks this passage for all of us.
SPEAKER_00: The cross is the catalyst that transforms Jesus' words here from an impossible burden to an incredible blessing.
SPEAKER_00: Because he carried his cross, we can carry ours.
SPEAKER_00: Not because we're inspired by him, but because that cross is the place where Jesus accomplished salvation.
SPEAKER_00: The cross is the place where he paid the price for all his people's sins.
SPEAKER_00: The cross is the place where Jesus redeemed his disciples and earned the right to pour his Holy Spirit out upon us.
SPEAKER_00: So if you're in Christ, then scripture says that you died with him on the cross.
SPEAKER_00: And the same spirit that brought him back to life now dwells within you.
SPEAKER_00: The strength that allowed Jesus to bear his cross is coursing through your veins.
SPEAKER_00: So turn to Jesus and he will carry you as you bury your cross.
SPEAKER_00: Deny yourself and Jesus will affirm you.
SPEAKER_00: Lose your life and Jesus will give you his.
SPEAKER_00: Acknowledge him and he will embrace you.
SPEAKER_00: Keep your eyes on Jesus day after day after day, and you will see the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_00: That's the promise.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus is not in the business of breaking his promises.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_00: Father, it's a hard word that your son would ask us to bear our cross and to follow him.
SPEAKER_00: We thank you, Lord, that he bore his cross first.
SPEAKER_00: And because he lived and died for us, we can live and die for him.
SPEAKER_00: Encourage us, Father, give us the strength that we need to bear up under the pressure that we face every day.
SPEAKER_00: Remind us that our only profit is to be found in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And that if we want to preserve ourselves, then the only way to do that is to trust in the one who is the author of life himself.
SPEAKER_00: And Lord, for those who have not yet done that, for those who are seeking to preserve their lives by other means, who are seeking profit in worldly places, who are giving in to the pressure to say no to Jesus, I pray, Lord, that by the power of your spirit you would set them free.
SPEAKER_00: So that in losing their life they would find it.
SPEAKER_00: In forsaking the world, they would be granted heaven.
SPEAKER_00: And saying yes to Jesus, they would hear a divine yes from you.
SPEAKER_00: We pray these things in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: This is, you know, I've often compared this table to a water station in a marathon.
SPEAKER_00: Where you stop for just a second, you get replenished, you get refilled, and then you go on running.
SPEAKER_00: That's what this station is for us.
SPEAKER_00: That's what this supper is for us.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus calls us to deny ourselves, to take up our cross, to follow him all the way to the end.
SPEAKER_00: Well, that's a long journey.
SPEAKER_00: We get discouraged, we get doubts.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus gave us this table to re-encourage us, to reassure us, and to let us know that he will be with us to the very end.
SPEAKER_00: So if you've put your faith in Jesus, if you've been baptized in the triune name, if you've joined yourself in obedience to the body of Christ where the Bible is taught and proclaimed, then Jesus says, come to this table and get what you need to keep going.
SPEAKER_00: And he will give you what you need to keep going.
SPEAKER_00: But if you're not yet on that journey, if you've not yet taken that crossbar upon your back, Jesus says, wait.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says, deal with that first.
SPEAKER_00: Come to Jesus first before you come to his table.
SPEAKER_00: Surrender your life to Jesus before you ask him to give you what you need for life.
SPEAKER_00: And if you want to know more about what that looks like, if you want to talk about that, please don't hesitate to come find one of us.
SPEAKER_00: Or maybe talk to someone in the pew next to you or whoever invited you here today.
SPEAKER_00: Because that is the most important conversation you can have today, this week, this month, this life.
SPEAKER_00: Get straight with Jesus so that you can follow him all the way to eternal life with him.
SPEAKER_00: The I'm going to pray again.
SPEAKER_00: You'll come forward and receive the elements.
SPEAKER_00: After everybody's been served, you take them back to your seat and we'll partake together.
SPEAKER_00: Father, thank you for this meal.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you that we get to sit together at your table and to be strengthened and encouraged.
SPEAKER_00: Pray that you would use this bread and this wine to remind us of the communion we have with the risen Christ and the fact that we can bear our cross because He first bore his.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.