SPEAKER_00: It was a hundred years before Jesus died when Rome put down the famous slave revolt led by Spartacus.
SPEAKER_00: After that rebellion was crushed, Roman general Crassus captured 6,000 of the surviving slaves.
SPEAKER_00: As a warning to the rest of the empire, he lined the road from Capua to Rome with crosses, 6,000 of them, and crucified every one of the captured slaves.
SPEAKER_00: Travelers walking on that road would have seen thousands of men hanging in agony.
SPEAKER_00: It was a highly traveled road, one of the main arteries in and out of Rome.
SPEAKER_00: The crosses were left up for over a month.
SPEAKER_00: It was a public declaration to the whole world, really, of what would happen if you revolted against the Roman Empire.
SPEAKER_00: It was a message that Rome reserved the most brutal form of punishment for rebels.
SPEAKER_00: Now, Rome had not invented crucifixion, but Rome perfected it as an act of terror.
SPEAKER_00: By the time of Jesus, crucifixion was the empire's ultimate punishment for traitors, insurrectionists, and slaves.
SPEAKER_00: Roman citizens were spared it, but all those who challenged Rome's authority could be nailed to a cross.
SPEAKER_00: Crucifixion was deliberately cruel.
SPEAKER_00: Victims could be tied or nailed, often nailed through the wrists and the feet.
SPEAKER_00: Death would come slowly through suffocation or shock.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes blood loss for those that were nailed, sometimes exposure or hunger for those that were tied up.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes soldiers would hasten the death by breaking a man's legs.
SPEAKER_00: Other times they would just leave him to hang for days, which is what Crassus did.
SPEAKER_00: The highway was lined with them for a long period of time.
SPEAKER_00: What's shocking about crucifixion is just the public brutality of it.
SPEAKER_00: It's meant to be a warning to the watching world of what the power of the Roman Empire would do to not just their enemies, but to their worst enemies.
SPEAKER_00: There's no real American equivalent to this.
SPEAKER_00: There's nothing in our culture that even approximates the government-orchestrated brutality that is prolonged in such a way like this.
SPEAKER_00: Because of that, it's easy for us to lose sight of one of the most jarring verses in the Bible that we just read.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus takes that very public and well-known image of brutality.
SPEAKER_00: All of the Romans knew about this.
SPEAKER_00: Everybody in Israel knew about crucifixion and knew who Rome used it on and why they did it.
SPEAKER_00: They all knew how brutal it was.
SPEAKER_00: Everybody understood this.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus takes that image and uses it here as an image of salvation.
SPEAKER_00: Which is really stunning.
SPEAKER_00: This is not the first time in Matthew's gospel Jesus has referenced crucifixion.
SPEAKER_00: Earlier in Matthew 10, he said, Whoever loves his mother or father more than me is not worthy of me.
SPEAKER_00: Whoever loves son and daughter more than me is not worthy of me.
SPEAKER_00: Whoever does not take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.
SPEAKER_00: Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
SPEAKER_00: That's the first mention of the cross in the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: The first mention of it is not even in the context of how Jesus will die.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew's first use of it here is more of a description of how Jesus' followers will live.
SPEAKER_00: They will live carrying their cross.
SPEAKER_00: Back in Matthew 10, Jesus just dropped out like a bomb and moved on.
SPEAKER_00: But now he picks it back up again.
SPEAKER_00: He circled back to it.
SPEAKER_00: This section in Matthew 16 begins with Jesus telling his disciples that he's going to build his church and that the gates of hell will not overcome it.
SPEAKER_00: He took his disciples aside, he took them up to the mountain in Caesarea Philippi, up in the northern part of Israel here, the very border of Lebanon.
SPEAKER_00: And that's where he says, I'm going to build my church.
SPEAKER_00: The very gates of hell will not be able to oppose it.
SPEAKER_00: He's going to build it on the confession of him as the Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Then Peter is the one who made that confession, if you recall.
SPEAKER_00: He said, You're the Christ, the Son of the living God.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus says, Blessed are you.
SPEAKER_00: Flesh and blood didn't reveal that to you, but my Father who's in heaven, this is an act of the Holy Spirit, you confess him as Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Based upon that kind of confession, he's going to build his church.
SPEAKER_00: It's going to conquer the world.
SPEAKER_00: The very next verse, he began to tell them that in order to build his church, he would be killed, and on the third day rise from the grave.
SPEAKER_00: And Peter, without even knowing what kind of death Jesus would face, remember, said, We forbid it, Lord, you will not be killed.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says, Get behind me, Satan.
SPEAKER_00: This is the next verse.
SPEAKER_00: That whoever wants to follow him should deny himself and pick up his cross.
SPEAKER_00: Now he doesn't clearly say that he's going to be crucified, but it is a very fair inference from this.
SPEAKER_00: He says, if you want to be a Christian, you have to follow him, and you follow him by carrying your cross.
SPEAKER_00: This is prophetic of the kind of death of which he's going to die.
SPEAKER_00: If Peter rebuked him for saying he would die, imagine what Peter's response would have been had he realized the means of that death.
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus makes it clear it's not a death for him alone.
SPEAKER_00: Whoever is one of his disciples, whoever is going to follow him, whoever is going to be like him, whoever is going to pursue Christ's likeness is going to pick up his own cross and follow Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Now the expression, pick up your cross, was a Jewish expression.
SPEAKER_00: They had a saying that approximated this.
SPEAKER_00: It came from when Abraham had Isaac carry the wood up the mountain for his own sacrifice.
SPEAKER_00: The Jews turned that into an expression.
SPEAKER_00: They meant it ironically.
SPEAKER_00: It was an expression that meant you're carrying around the means of your own death.
SPEAKER_00: That's the idea behind it.
SPEAKER_00: It was tied, of course, to the Roman practice of persecution of crucifixion, so that when Jesus uses it here, he's using a saying that Romans and specifically Jews understood that somebody is carrying the means of their own death.
SPEAKER_00: Only here, Jesus doesn't mean it ironically, he means it favorably.
SPEAKER_00: If you want to follow him, if you want to be like him, if you want to be a Christian, you have to be willing to carry your own cross.
SPEAKER_00: What follows is a word picture, a metaphor of what it means to go from living for yourself to living for Christ.
SPEAKER_00: This becomes a picture of conversion.
SPEAKER_00: To be converted to Christ, it's not merely about mental ascent, it's not merely about saying, I think Jesus is true and the Bible is true.
SPEAKER_00: To be converted to Christ means that you are committing yourself.
SPEAKER_00: It's a commitment to follow Jesus all the way to death.
SPEAKER_00: Following Jesus to death.
SPEAKER_00: A student is someone who will be like his master.
SPEAKER_00: A student is someone who follows his teacher.
SPEAKER_00: In this case, you're following him to death.
SPEAKER_00: If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross.
SPEAKER_00: The first part of that is denying himself, surrendering himself.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is laying out a command of what it means to be his follower.
SPEAKER_00: And if you recall earlier in Matthew's gospel, the passage I read earlier, he said, Whoever loves family more than me isn't worthy of me.
SPEAKER_00: And so Jesus has this way of prioritizing himself.
SPEAKER_00: To follow Christ is to value and treasure Christ more than your family, more than this world, more than your own life.
SPEAKER_00: That's self-surrender.
SPEAKER_00: It's a decision that you make, a calculation that you figure out in your own heart.
SPEAKER_00: Do you love Christ more than you love your life?
SPEAKER_00: Do you love Jesus more than the world?
SPEAKER_00: That's the bottom line.
SPEAKER_00: That's what it means to be a Christian.
SPEAKER_00: Again, this is less about mental ascent, less about somebody saying, I finally got to the point where I think the Bible is on the preponderance of evidence standard, more likely than not true.
SPEAKER_00: That's not conversion.
SPEAKER_00: I believe there's miracles.
SPEAKER_00: I believe God is God.
SPEAKER_00: I believe Jesus is Jesus, a good teacher and a good messenger from God.
SPEAKER_00: I believe that.
SPEAKER_00: That's not conversion.
SPEAKER_00: You know, if you can close off that kind of saying with quotes and follow it with said Judas, then it's not conversion.
SPEAKER_00: And Judas would have said all those things.
SPEAKER_00: He believed Jesus was sent from God, that Jesus did miracles and signs and wonders that he saw and experienced.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus did so many miracles in front of Judas.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus washed Judas's feet.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, he saw it all and then walked away.
SPEAKER_00: He was unwilling to surrender himself.
SPEAKER_00: That was the missing piece.
SPEAKER_00: Judas loved money.
SPEAKER_00: He loved the idea of power.
SPEAKER_00: He loved the idea of Jesus being victorious more than he loved Jesus himself.
SPEAKER_00: He's not worthy of following him.
SPEAKER_00: He wasn't willing to make that self-surrender.
SPEAKER_00: But this is how Jesus leads his followers.
SPEAKER_00: He leads them by binding them together through the common act of self-surrender.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't lead them with a rope.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you maybe you've seen the little kids being led around VBS or led out to the playground or whatever here on Sunday school.
SPEAKER_00: They are all lined up with a rope and the teacher leads them along.
SPEAKER_00: That's not how Jesus leads us.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't, we're not holding onto a rope and he follows us.
SPEAKER_00: We're holding on to crosses and we're following, we're following him.
SPEAKER_00: It's something that you do willingly.
SPEAKER_00: Salvation is something the Christian feels inwardly compelled to do, but is compelled by his own volition.
SPEAKER_00: This is not the way Roman criminals carry crosses.
SPEAKER_00: No Roman criminal willingly carried his cross, but this is what it means to follow Christ you willingly submit your life to him.
SPEAKER_00: And this starts to tease out a paradox or a tension in the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: The tension is that salvation is free, but that it costs you everything.
SPEAKER_00: It's not for sale, and you can't buy it, but it's more valuable than all the riches of the world.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's the paradox here.
SPEAKER_00: It's free, but it costs you everything.
SPEAKER_00: If you want to come after Jesus, because you value your soul, that's the idea.
SPEAKER_00: You value your soul, so you want to come after Jesus, you deny yourself.
SPEAKER_00: It's self-denial.
SPEAKER_00: It's about affiliating with Jesus throughout your life at the point of his death.
SPEAKER_00: That's what it means to be a Christian.
SPEAKER_00: Believers were first called Christians, by the way, in Acts chapter 11.
SPEAKER_00: Christians is the diminutive word, you know, for Christ, a little Christian.
SPEAKER_00: It's the same in English.
SPEAKER_00: Christian, like a little Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Christ is the Greek word Christos.
SPEAKER_00: It means Messiah.
SPEAKER_00: It's the anointed one, sent from heaven to earth, anointed with God's Spirit to be the king in the line of David, the prophet like Moses, the high priest.
SPEAKER_00: He was all of those, fulfilling all those prophecies.
SPEAKER_00: We looked at that over the last several weeks because you've seen that reiterated throughout this whole section in Matthew 16, that Jesus would be the king and the prophet and the priest.
SPEAKER_00: He's lifted up to die, he's confesses to Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Christians were called Christians in Acts chapter 11 in a derogatory sense.
SPEAKER_00: It was meant by the world to make fun of them.
SPEAKER_00: Like, oh, you're following Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: What happened to him?
SPEAKER_00: He died on a cross.
SPEAKER_00: What do you think will happen to you?
SPEAKER_00: And so they were calling them little Christs.
SPEAKER_00: How do you think you're going to end up?
SPEAKER_00: Now, what the world meant as an insult, Christians, of course, took as a compliment.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus foresaw it.
SPEAKER_00: He says, if you want to be like him, you'll have to follow him at the point of his death.
SPEAKER_00: The point of his death.
SPEAKER_00: It means you affiliate yourself with the one who lost his life for the sake of eternal life.
SPEAKER_00: The point is not that every believer will be a martyr, but the point is that every believer will follow Christ unreservedly.
SPEAKER_00: Some of them, of course, will be martyrs.
SPEAKER_00: Peter would be a martyr here.
SPEAKER_00: Peter is, this conversation is to all the disciples, but it's primarily targeted at him.
SPEAKER_00: He's the one who is named in this communication here.
SPEAKER_00: He, of course, will literally be crucified.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus' point is not that every believer will be crucified, though, but that every believer surrenders his life, treasuring Christ more than life.
SPEAKER_00: That tension, the salvation is free, but it costs you everything.
SPEAKER_00: It's played out even further.
SPEAKER_00: Salvation is something you come as you are, but you recognize as you are, you're not qualified.
SPEAKER_00: You don't prepare yourself to follow Christ.
SPEAKER_00: You come as you are now with a recognition that you won't stay as you are, that salvation changes you.
SPEAKER_00: So that's the tension there.
SPEAKER_00: You don't have to clean yourself up to be a Christian, of course not.
SPEAKER_00: But you recognize that by becoming a Christian, you're going to be cleaned up.
SPEAKER_00: And so at the very outset, you say, Am I willing to submit and surrender my desires, to renounce my past life and to submit my future life to the authority of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: So the person who says, I want to be a Christian, but I don't want to give up this sin or this goal or that objective or this desire, that's a person who's not surrendering their life.
SPEAKER_00: It's not that you have to give up this sin in order to become a Christian.
SPEAKER_00: It's that you recognize the Lordship of Christ and you surrender your desires to the Lordship of Christ, and he will work inside of you to sanctify you from those desires.
SPEAKER_00: And so the person who says, I'll be a Christian, but I won't give up this, that, or the other thing is not a true convert because a true convert says, I renounce my past and I submit my future.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not qualified to come like I am right now, of course not.
SPEAKER_00: But I want the Lord to change me.
SPEAKER_00: You could say it this way: you come as you are, but you leave who you are behind.
SPEAKER_00: You might be willing to crucify the flesh, mortify the lusts that rule in your life, give them over to the Lord, to oppose the devil daily, fight the flesh continually, and leave this world behind.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's what Jesus did.
SPEAKER_00: He went toe-to-toe with the devil, he resisted temptation and lived a sinless life.
SPEAKER_00: Your requirement is not to lead a sinless life.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus led that for you.
SPEAKER_00: Your requirement is to deny yourself, pick up your cross, and follow Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Many times in Matthew's gospel, Jesus has compared and contrasted true disciples from false disciples.
SPEAKER_00: Most clearly in Matthew 7.
SPEAKER_00: Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Many people will die who, having called Jesus Lord in this life, will open their eyes in eternity to judgment in hell.
SPEAKER_00: And they'll say, Lord, didn't I do this for you and did I do that for you?
SPEAKER_00: But that's not what conversion means.
SPEAKER_00: It's not doing this and that for the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Conversion is denying yourself, picking up your cross and following Christ.
SPEAKER_00: He compares in the parables the wheat to the weeds.
SPEAKER_00: They both grow in the church.
SPEAKER_00: And you can't miss this.
SPEAKER_00: Again, it's all over the New Testament.
SPEAKER_00: The demons know that Jesus is Lord.
SPEAKER_00: The masses knew that he was the Messiah.
SPEAKER_00: The crowds cheered him on.
SPEAKER_00: Even Judas believed in him.
SPEAKER_00: But that's not what conversion is.
SPEAKER_00: What's the difference between those with empty hearts and faithful hearts?
SPEAKER_00: What's the difference between those who call him Lord and those whom Jesus calls his children?
SPEAKER_00: What's the difference between those who call Jesus their friend versus those whom Jesus calls friends?
SPEAKER_00: The difference is regeneration, turning from darkness to light, blindness to sight, repenting from your sins, finding the narrow road, building your house on the rock, being saved, being reconciled to God, receiving the Lord Jesus Christ, coming to Him and having your burdens removed.
SPEAKER_00: Those are all descriptions from Matthew's gospel.
SPEAKER_00: Or here, picking up your cross.
SPEAKER_00: This is not a phrase that means some kind of suffering you have in this life.
SPEAKER_00: I've heard people use it like that.
SPEAKER_00: You know, I have this hard relationship or home, or, you know, my brother-in-law or whatever is mean to me, but staying in our basement for a week, but we all have our crosses to bear.
SPEAKER_00: I chose that one because I don't have a brother-in-law, so I feel safe there.
SPEAKER_00: We all have our crosses to bear.
SPEAKER_00: That's not what it means.
SPEAKER_00: To use Jesus' language from this passage, it means denying yourself.
SPEAKER_00: That's the difference between a true convert and a false convert.
SPEAKER_00: Here's a quote I found very helpful in this.
SPEAKER_00: A true believer here no longer thinks of Christ as one who helps us live our life, but rather Jesus Christ takes over.
SPEAKER_00: Our body now becomes Christ's body to use as he wills.
SPEAKER_00: Our mind becomes his mind to think his thoughts.
SPEAKER_00: Our will is now controlled by his will.
SPEAKER_00: Our total personality, time, and talents are now completely his.
SPEAKER_00: That's an image of conversion.
SPEAKER_00: It's not mental ascent, it's having Christ take over your whole life.
SPEAKER_00: The quote goes on: if you're not willing to take up the cross, then you shall never wear the crown.
SPEAKER_00: That's Bill Bright.
SPEAKER_00: If you're not denying yourself, picking up your cross, you're never going to get the crown of glory.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean when you pick up the cross that all life's problems go away.
SPEAKER_00: It means that you have a new Lord and a new destination in light of the cross.
SPEAKER_00: The wicked have troubles in this life, of course they do, but they don't have crosses.
SPEAKER_00: The word for deny in this passage is the word for renounce.
SPEAKER_00: It's stronger than the English word deny.
SPEAKER_00: You know, did you eat the last cookie?
SPEAKER_00: I deny it.
SPEAKER_00: That's the English word deny.
SPEAKER_00: This is a stronger word than that.
SPEAKER_00: It's the word for renounce.
SPEAKER_00: It's like, did you eat the last cookie?
SPEAKER_00: I deny it.
SPEAKER_00: I defy it.
SPEAKER_00: I deny the allegation.
SPEAKER_00: I defy the alligator.
SPEAKER_00: How dare you?
SPEAKER_00: That's this word here.
SPEAKER_00: You completely deny and renounce your whole previous way of living.
SPEAKER_00: You renounce yourself, your own life.
SPEAKER_00: That's what it means to pick up your cross.
SPEAKER_00: You renounce who you are.
SPEAKER_00: You nullify yourself.
SPEAKER_00: You disavow your past.
SPEAKER_00: And it's not only backwards looking, you disavow who you were, you're renouncing all of your past, but it's also forward-looking.
SPEAKER_00: You're surrendering your future to follow Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: You give up your life, you hoist up your cross, and you continue your Christian life by following.
SPEAKER_00: This is what it means to be converted to Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Again, it's not some decision you make intellectually, it's this concept of counting the cost, of summing up all of your goals in life and saying, I nullify them, I multiply them times zero in exchange for the infinite value of knowing Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And it is a spiritual catastrophe if someone confuses this kind of intellectual assent for saving faith.
SPEAKER_00: For somebody to say, Oh, I I I believe in Jesus or I put my faith in Jesus, therefore I'm I'm a Christian, if by that it doesn't involve repentance and surrendering your life to Christ.
SPEAKER_00: It's an artificial decision.
SPEAKER_00: And to confuse an intellectual decision for saving faith, as I said, is catastrophic.
SPEAKER_00: Here's John Stott.
SPEAKER_00: The Christian landscape is strewn with a wreckage of derelict half built towers, the ruins of those who began to build but were unable to finish.
SPEAKER_00: For thousands of people still ignore Christ's warning and undertake to follow him without first pausing to reflect on the cost of doing so.
SPEAKER_00: That's what it means to deny yourself.
SPEAKER_00: John Stock goes.
SPEAKER_00: On to say.
SPEAKER_00: The result is the great scandal of Christian civilization.
SPEAKER_00: Large numbers of people who have covered themselves with a decent but thin veneer of Christianity.
SPEAKER_00: They are involved but not uncomfortable.
SPEAKER_00: Stott's point that following Jesus will make you uncomfortable.
SPEAKER_00: You're marching to your own death.
SPEAKER_00: In the Roman world, nobody who carried a cross was respected.
SPEAKER_00: You didn't look at somebody carrying a cross and go, he made good choices in life.
SPEAKER_00: That's the idea, that somebody who follows Christ is not going to be respected in this world.
SPEAKER_00: What's being emphasized in this passage is not the road to martyrdom, but the continual following of Jesus Christ until he returns.
SPEAKER_00: And unless you're carrying a cross, you're not following him.
SPEAKER_00: There were many in church history who have taught that this passage means salvation by martyrdom, that of those who are martyred inherit salvation automatically or something.
SPEAKER_00: But that has more in common with Islam than with Christianity.
SPEAKER_00: Christianity is not about the means in which you die, it's connecting the means by which you live with prioritizing the death of Christ over your own life.
SPEAKER_00: It's saying I'm willing to forfeit, I renounce the way I previously lived, and I'm forfeiting all of my goals and objectives and agendas to put myself under submission to the Lordship of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: So first, you surrender yourself.
SPEAKER_00: Second, you secure your soul.
SPEAKER_00: What will it profit a man?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus asks in verse 26.
SPEAKER_00: If he gains the whole world but loses his soul.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 25, whoever would save his life would lose it.
SPEAKER_00: Notice this tension again.
SPEAKER_00: What would it profit your man?
SPEAKER_00: Your soul is the most valuable thing you have.
SPEAKER_00: But if you don't submit it to Christ, it's worth nothing.
SPEAKER_00: That's that paradox again.
SPEAKER_00: Salvation is free, but costs everything.
SPEAKER_00: Your soul is the most valuable thing you have, but when you mix it with the love of the world, it nullifies all of it.
SPEAKER_00: If you're carrying a cross, there's no way you can bring with you your baggage.
SPEAKER_00: You can't carry a cross and the love for the world.
SPEAKER_00: You have to drop your love for the world to pick up your cross.
SPEAKER_00: And when you set down what's in your hands, you're setting down materialism, you're setting down moralism, you're setting down all the goals and things you could have had in your life in order to follow Christ.
SPEAKER_00: You know, not all those objectives and goals are even bad.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, some people live for materialism is more or less transparently bad, but some people live for moralism.
SPEAKER_00: Some people have goals in life, like they want the promotion, they want the more authority, they want to win the election or win the next election, or they want to just be respected by their family.
SPEAKER_00: They work so hard to build a home and a house and a family that loves them as it too much to be respected by my own family, kind of thing.
SPEAKER_00: Or you have all of these goals and agendas, and you know, some of them are better than others, of course.
SPEAKER_00: But the point is that unless they're all brought into submission and subordination to Christ, they're all meaningless.
SPEAKER_00: That's why Jesus said, if you love father and mother more than me, you're not worthy of me.
SPEAKER_00: Son and daughter more than me, you're not worthy of me.
SPEAKER_00: You can't carry the world and your family and the cross.
SPEAKER_00: Apart from God, the soul has no worth.
SPEAKER_00: And that's the irony.
SPEAKER_00: You can gain the whole world.
SPEAKER_00: You can gain all the riches of the world, but if you lose your soul, the riches of the world are canceled out by the soul.
SPEAKER_00: You've lost everything.
SPEAKER_00: You have a soul and it will live forever.
SPEAKER_00: That's verse 26.
SPEAKER_00: Your soul will live forever.
SPEAKER_00: You can gain the whole world if you forfeit your soul.
SPEAKER_00: Your soul goes on living, but just enduring hell.
SPEAKER_00: Your body lies decomposing in your ground, your soul yet lives.
SPEAKER_00: There's nothing you can do to save it after this life.
SPEAKER_00: You can only lose it in this life by grasping and holding onto the world over Christ.
SPEAKER_00: There's so many ways to kill your soul.
SPEAKER_00: So many ways to murder your soul.
SPEAKER_00: You can murder your soul by loving the world.
SPEAKER_00: That chokes out your soul right away.
SPEAKER_00: You can poison your soul by believing false religions.
SPEAKER_00: You can starve your soul by cutting off the means of grace, not reading the Bible, not praying.
SPEAKER_00: You can slay your soul outright by rejecting the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: But the most deluded thing you can do to your soul is lose it with a lie.
SPEAKER_00: To tell yourself you're in the faith without repenting your sin, without abandoning your life for Christ.
SPEAKER_00: There's so many ways to harm your soul, in fact, but there's only one to gain it.
SPEAKER_00: The only way to gain your soul is to surrender your life to Christ.
SPEAKER_00: There's a higher love for your own life than anything else in the world, and you have to bring that love subordinate to loving Christ, to love Christ more than this life.
SPEAKER_00: Think of people in the Bible that have sold their soul.
SPEAKER_00: Think of what bad bargains they got.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, some of them are comical.
SPEAKER_00: Esau sold his soul for a bowl of stew.
SPEAKER_00: It's meant to be a make you just kind of, it's repeated in the New Testament.
SPEAKER_00: It's meant, Hebrews 12, reminds you of that.
SPEAKER_00: That's how easy bitterness grows in your heart.
SPEAKER_00: You won't forgive someone, you're angry at someone, you value that anger and that hostility above your love for Christ.
SPEAKER_00: You may as well get soup out of it.
SPEAKER_00: King Saul sold his soul for public praise.
SPEAKER_00: Ahab, this is the silliest one.
SPEAKER_00: Ahab sold his soul for a vineyard closer to his house.
SPEAKER_00: Judas sold his soul for 30 pieces of silver.
SPEAKER_00: And he's listening to this.
SPEAKER_00: You might ask your soul, Soul, are you for sale or are you off the market?
SPEAKER_00: Because you can gain the whole world.
SPEAKER_00: You might just ask yourself, what would you roll your eyes at Ahab and chuckle at Saul and just look at Esau and go, what in the world?
SPEAKER_00: But what would it take to get you to do something sinful, to exalt your own will above the will of Christ?
SPEAKER_00: You want this sin or that experience, this promotion, that new house.
SPEAKER_00: You can own the company, buy the house, win the election, buy the second house, win the next election.
SPEAKER_00: You can be the expert they put on TV, and none of it means anything if your life isn't submitted to Christ.
SPEAKER_00: You can be the most famous and successful person in the world, and apart from submitting your life to Christ, all that will translate in is to being the most famous and successful person in hell.
SPEAKER_00: Because salvation is never seen in your accomplishments in this world.
SPEAKER_00: It is always seen in losing this world for the sake of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: So the question is pretty basic.
SPEAKER_00: Do you love Christ more than life?
SPEAKER_00: Will you lose your life for the sake of eternal life?
SPEAKER_00: You have to remember those decisions and those commitments in the moment of temptation.
SPEAKER_00: Because there is great treasure and great glory that awaits those who value Christ over this life.
SPEAKER_00: That's the next verse.
SPEAKER_00: We'll save it for next week, but the Son of Man is going to come with his angels and the glory of his Father, and he will repay every person to how they've lived.
SPEAKER_00: So that's a promise of reward.
SPEAKER_00: For those who say, I'm going to pick up my cross and surrender my life to Christ, you're exchanging the glories of this world for the next.
SPEAKER_00: Temptation wants you to sell now.
SPEAKER_00: Because the cross is shameful.
SPEAKER_00: Christians are mocked in the world.
SPEAKER_00: And so temptation wants you to settle for the world's applause and the world's success and the world's adoration.
SPEAKER_00: And when I say the world here, I don't, I'm not even honestly even meaning it negatively.
SPEAKER_00: I know sometimes the word the world has negative connotations of the boogeyman out there.
SPEAKER_00: I don't even mean it negatively.
SPEAKER_00: Like when you're exchanging love of Christ because you're pursuing adoration or accomplishments in the world and your work or in your family, those are just, it's a form of common grace where people succeed in the world and they have good families and all that.
SPEAKER_00: But when you value that over Christ, you're losing anything that matters.
SPEAKER_00: You can gain for yourself friends that honor you in this life.
SPEAKER_00: And they might honor you legitimately in a moment.
SPEAKER_00: Even for your Christianity, you might have neighbors like, oh, I trust this person, or you know, they seem like a moral person, they can watch my dog kind of thing.
SPEAKER_00: But ultimately, your love for Christ, people will turn against you.
SPEAKER_00: Of course they will.
SPEAKER_00: All their compliments become platitudes in the ears that don't mean anything.
SPEAKER_00: In the end, when it counts, they'll turn.
SPEAKER_00: That was a song we sang earlier.
SPEAKER_00: Friends will forsake you when troubles come, they'll bounce.
SPEAKER_00: They're not going to treat you better than they treated Christ ultimately.
SPEAKER_00: And so the flip side of that is that you have to love Christ more than them.
SPEAKER_00: You recognize the people in this world that might heap respect on you or platitudes on you now or love you now, you recognize that in a time of difficulty they may very well leave.
SPEAKER_00: And so you love Christ more than them.
SPEAKER_00: This is not, please don't hear me say Jesus requires perfection from his followers.
SPEAKER_00: He never says that.
SPEAKER_00: But what he does demand is submission.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, remember who I said he's talking to you right now?
SPEAKER_00: Peter.
SPEAKER_00: Peter's about to deny him three times.
SPEAKER_00: And then is broken by it.
SPEAKER_00: So don't hear me say that true believers don't sin, don't doubt, or don't ever fight with the fear of man.
SPEAKER_00: Of course they do.
SPEAKER_00: But know this: when you follow Jesus to the point of his death, even your failures, Jesus picks up your cross for you and helps you carry it.
SPEAKER_00: When you follow him to the point of his death, you follow him into glory as well.
SPEAKER_00: You can ask yourself this.
SPEAKER_00: Does your Christianity cost you anything?
SPEAKER_00: Or better yet, did your Christianity cost you everything?
SPEAKER_00: Does it entail sacrifice?
SPEAKER_00: Does it, as the Puritans used to say, is it scented with the scent of heaven?
SPEAKER_00: Does it have the stamp of heaven on it, or is it flavored like the earth?
SPEAKER_00: What it means to follow Christ is to see what he did for you on the cross, to recognize that he bore the penalty for your sin on the cross, that he rose from the grave to offer you new life.
SPEAKER_00: And it's not merely to believe that that's true, but it's to size it up and say, given that it's true, is that good news worth more than everything else in my life?
SPEAKER_00: And you do the math, and you come away with saying, I want to value and love Christ more than this life.
SPEAKER_00: I surrender myself to him, I turn from my sins, and I submit my life to Christ.
SPEAKER_00: That's what conversion is.
SPEAKER_00: Galatians 6.14 says it this way The world has been crucified to me through the cross, and I to the world.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we are grateful that you have made the line of demarcation clear between those with crosses and those without.
SPEAKER_00: The road is wide that leads to damnation.
SPEAKER_00: The road is narrow that leads to salvation.
SPEAKER_00: A few who find it, but they are recognizable because they're carrying crosses.
SPEAKER_00: Pray for anyone here today that has never surrendered their life to you.
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps they have come and attended for a while.
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps this is their first or second Sunday.
SPEAKER_00: But I pray that you'd give them a moment of soberness as they look at their life, a moment of clarity as they think through what they value and who they love and what they value and love most.
SPEAKER_00: And I pray that you would meet them right now and give them grace to value you more than life.
SPEAKER_00: We ask this in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: And now for a parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.
SPEAKER_00: If you have any questions about what you heard today, or if you want to learn more about what it means to follow Christ, please visit our church website, iBC.church.
SPEAKER_00: If you want more information about the Master Seminary or our location here in Washington, D.C., please go to TMS.edu.
SPEAKER_00: Now, if you're not a member of a local church and you live in the Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_00: area, we'd love to have you worship with us here at Emmanuel.
SPEAKER_00: I hope to personally meet you this Sunday after our service.
SPEAKER_00: But no matter where you live, it's our hope that everyone who uses this resource is involved in their own local church.
SPEAKER_00: Now may God bless you this week as you seek Jesus constantly, serve the Lord faithfully, and share the gospel boldly.