SPEAKER_00: Matthew 10 verses 34 through 39.
SPEAKER_00: Actually, before I read it, one more thing.
SPEAKER_00: Tonight at 5.15, and we'll be back.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna be preaching on the uh triumphal entry, where Jesus enters Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: You know, in Christmas we often do like a month or so of sermons leading to Christmas, so this year I thought I'd throw in a like an intro to Easter sermon tonight with the triumphal entry.
SPEAKER_00: So please join us back at 5.15 uh tonight.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew 10, verse 34 through 39.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says, Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth.
SPEAKER_00: I haven't come to bring peace but a sword.
SPEAKER_00: I've come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law, and a person's enemies will be those of his own household.
SPEAKER_00: Whoever loves father or mother more than me isn't worthy of me.
SPEAKER_00: Whoever loves son or daughter more than me isn't worthy of me.
SPEAKER_00: Whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.
SPEAKER_00: Whoever finds his life will lose it.
SPEAKER_00: Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
SPEAKER_00: This is the word of God.
SPEAKER_00: When Moses was called by God out of the desert to go lead Israel to deliverance and freedom, his first response was that they won't listen to me.
SPEAKER_00: Moses argued with God and said, I don't want to do it, nobody will follow, they won't listen.
SPEAKER_00: God told him to go anyway.
SPEAKER_00: Moses went in faithfulness with his brother Aaron.
SPEAKER_00: They asked Pharaoh to let the people go, and Pharaoh responded by saying, You guys are idle.
SPEAKER_00: That's why you're asking for this.
SPEAKER_00: He withdrew straw from them, told them to keep making the same amount of bricks, and then had them all whipped for not working hard enough.
SPEAKER_00: At the end of Exodus chapter 5, Moses goes back to God and says, What gives?
SPEAKER_00: I told you I didn't want to do this, I told you they wouldn't listen, and I've only been obedient to you.
SPEAKER_00: I did what you said, exactly what you said, and now we're being whipped for it.
SPEAKER_00: If we're being honest, we respond worse than Moses.
SPEAKER_00: When anything difficult happens to us for our faithfulness, if we're faithful to God at work or at home or in our neighborhood or whatever, and it produces opposition or conflict or hostility, somebody calls us names or we lose a promotion or we lose a job or anything like that.
SPEAKER_00: A family divides over it, we respond as if we had been physically whipped.
SPEAKER_00: God, are you?
SPEAKER_00: You got to be kidding.
SPEAKER_00: I only did what you told me to do, and now this person won't talk to me anymore.
SPEAKER_00: I knew I shouldn't have stood for you.
SPEAKER_00: I knew I shouldn't have been faithful in this instance.
SPEAKER_00: I knew I shouldn't have honored you in this way.
SPEAKER_00: I knew I should have compromised.
SPEAKER_00: Now I've done what you told me to do, and now look what's happened.
SPEAKER_00: They won't even talk to me anymore.
SPEAKER_00: Moses, it's not just that people wouldn't talk to him, it's that he was physically whipped, along with so many of the other Jews who, of course, blamed Moses and Aaron.
SPEAKER_00: We weren't being whipped yesterday.
SPEAKER_00: Today Moses and Aaron show up.
SPEAKER_00: Now we're being whipped.
SPEAKER_00: Moses complained to the Lord, and the Lord's response to Moses is really a paradigm shifting.
SPEAKER_00: It's a penetrating statement where God tells Moses, Who do you think did this to you, Moses?
SPEAKER_00: Who do you think hardened Pharaoh's heart?
SPEAKER_00: God didn't respond to Moses and say, Oh, because you're being faithful tomorrow, your problems will go away.
SPEAKER_00: God responded to Moses and said, Because you're being faithful, yeah, you got ten plagues in the horizon.
SPEAKER_00: Let me tell you something else, Moses.
SPEAKER_00: After every one of those plagues, I'm gonna harden Pharaoh's heart even more.
SPEAKER_00: It's gonna clarify where you stand in the world.
SPEAKER_00: That reminds me of Jesus' introduction here in verse 34.
SPEAKER_00: Do not think that I have come to bring peace on the earth.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is sending his disciples out into the world where they're gonna be doing miracles, they're gonna be preaching the gospel, and they're going to run into opposition.
SPEAKER_00: The disciples don't have a grid for this in this conversation, remember?
SPEAKER_00: In fact, even after this first mission, they're gonna come back celebrating.
SPEAKER_00: But their second mission will be harder, and their third mission, they're gonna die as martyrs.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus is setting them up for that.
SPEAKER_00: So they won't be able to say, hey, why do people hate us?
SPEAKER_00: We are only being faithful.
SPEAKER_00: Oh no.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says, You're gonna go out there and people are going to hate you because I didn't come to bring peace to the earth.
SPEAKER_00: Now we understand there's a uh dichotomy here.
SPEAKER_00: When Jesus was born, we have the song, peace on earth, goodwill among men.
SPEAKER_00: Every year at the Christmas concert, we sing peace, peace, peace.
SPEAKER_00: But we have a good enough eschatology to understand that peace on earth doesn't come until the second coming of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: We sing about it at his first coming because he is, in that sense, representing peace, but he won't establish peace on the earth until he returns a second time.
SPEAKER_00: As a result of his first coming, he makes peace between God and man, certainly.
SPEAKER_00: You're at enmity with God because of your sin, you deserve God's judgment.
SPEAKER_00: There's hostility between you and the Lord because of sin.
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus, through his death on the cross, makes a way for your sins to be forgiven and for you to be reconciled to God.
SPEAKER_00: And through your faith in Christ, you can have peace with God.
SPEAKER_00: But that does not translate into a horizontal peace at all.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, the opposite is often true.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it produces conflict through opposition.
SPEAKER_00: And we're tempted to go, why, Lord?
SPEAKER_00: Why do I have this conflict?
SPEAKER_00: Why do I have this division in my family?
SPEAKER_00: I've only been faithful, and that's our outline this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus responds to that implicit question by saying that he designed the world that way.
SPEAKER_00: There's three God-designed effects of persecution in the home.
SPEAKER_00: The circles here have been telescoping smaller.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus starts by saying people will hate you generically.
SPEAKER_00: Religious leaders will oppose you.
SPEAKER_00: Governments in particular will put you on trial.
SPEAKER_00: You'll have to give an account for your testimony before them.
SPEAKER_00: But now we've gone all the way even more narrow than that.
SPEAKER_00: Now we're to the family.
SPEAKER_00: We're not talking about persecution by false religious leaders.
SPEAKER_00: We're not talking about persecution by governors and governments and mayors and lesser magistrates, although that was in view earlier.
SPEAKER_00: Now we're down to the level of, well, what he says here, a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.
SPEAKER_00: These little circles where you would expect the family relationship to be the strongest.
SPEAKER_00: You'd expect a son to respect his father.
SPEAKER_00: You would expect a mother to respect, uh, you would expect a daughter to respect her mother, maybe after the teenage years.
SPEAKER_00: It gets there eventually.
SPEAKER_00: But you would expect those those relationships to be strong and vibrant.
SPEAKER_00: You would expect a a daughter-in-law to respect her mother-in-law.
SPEAKER_00: Just out of for no other reason, you know, help me help me understand my husband.
SPEAKER_00: You would respect there to be a warm relationship there.
SPEAKER_00: And instead, those are the those are the close relationships inside the home, inside the family, that Jesus says he's coming to divide.
SPEAKER_00: He's coming to divide.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Why is he going to do that?
SPEAKER_00: Well, there's three reasons the text gives.
SPEAKER_00: The first is that it clarifies the gospel family.
SPEAKER_00: It clarifies who the gospel family is.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 35, I've told, I'm telling you, I've come to set a man against his father and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.
SPEAKER_00: We enter into this relationship with this estimation or this expectation about how, you know, all we want is a happy, healthy family.
SPEAKER_00: It's our closest relationship.
SPEAKER_00: That's really all we want, God.
SPEAKER_00: Is that too much to ask?
SPEAKER_00: That's because the family is supposed to be the most secure place on the earth.
SPEAKER_00: But instead, the sword divides it.
SPEAKER_00: The sword is the word Jesus uses in verse 34.
SPEAKER_00: It's not a literal sword here.
SPEAKER_00: It's, you know, this idea of division in the home, division in the family over Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Where you would least expect it to find it, to find that kind of division, Christ divides even those relationships.
SPEAKER_00: And that's because the love we're expected to have for Christ is greater than that of family.
SPEAKER_00: So the gospel comes to a family, and people in the family don't receive the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: And it's not that they don't like their mom or their dad or their brother or their sister, it's that they don't like Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: They live for themselves.
SPEAKER_00: They have their own sense of their identity that's different than Christ.
SPEAKER_00: They have their own sense of ethics that's different than what the Bible says, they have their own sense of life that is independent of who Jesus is.
SPEAKER_00: And so a family member comes to faith in Christ and things get reoriented around Christ.
SPEAKER_00: The family that doesn't come to Christ sees their worldview confronted.
SPEAKER_00: They love their sin, they love their self, they love the way their life is going.
SPEAKER_00: And here comes a Christian who says, I can't love the things that you love.
SPEAKER_00: You're living in sin.
SPEAKER_00: I can't love that sin because I have an allegiance to Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And so the line, the way the family always gets placed then is the line: if you loved me, you would love me like this.
SPEAKER_00: If you'd love me, you'd love me as I am, living for myself.
SPEAKER_00: If you love me, you'd love me in what you call sin.
SPEAKER_00: Which is actually very well said.
SPEAKER_00: The believer responds to that with, No, I love, I do love you, and the most loving thing to do is to speak the truth to you.
SPEAKER_00: I do love you, but I love the Lord more than you.
SPEAKER_00: That's how the believer responds, but the unbeliever doesn't have the grid for that.
SPEAKER_00: They don't have the category distinctions of that.
SPEAKER_00: In their mind, if you don't love me, how I'm living my life, if you don't love me in my sin and in my own sense of self, then you don't love me at all.
SPEAKER_00: And so the believer is put at a fork there.
SPEAKER_00: Like, what am I supposed to do?
SPEAKER_00: Am I supposed to honor the Lord and follow the Lord and risk losing my family?
SPEAKER_00: And you think that's too much to ask, Lord.
SPEAKER_00: That's too much.
SPEAKER_00: What's going on in the non-believer's mind?
SPEAKER_00: It's not like it's not like they stop loving their mom or their dad.
SPEAKER_00: In their minds, they, you know, they have hostility towards the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Hostility against Christians results not from Christians themselves being obnoxious, although I'm sure in many cases that's true.
SPEAKER_00: But the kind of hostility Jesus is talking about in Matthew 10 is not hostility because the believer is obnoxious, but the sad fact that despite the peacemaking teaching that was from the Sermon on the Mount, sometimes the gospel so alienates unbelievers that they lash out against those who love them for Christ's sake.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says, Blessed are the peacemakers.
SPEAKER_00: And you remember from the Sermon on the Mount that you help people make peace with God by reconciling them to God through Christ.
SPEAKER_00: You have peacemaking tendencies in you.
SPEAKER_00: You have the desire to have serpent-like wisdom, but eventually the fork is in the road, and eventually the family member says, You either love me in my sin or you don't love me at all, and then what?
SPEAKER_00: And you have to remember that at that moment they're not lashing out against you because they don't like you.
SPEAKER_00: They're lashing at, they're giving you the ultimatum, they're lashing out at you in that sense because they don't like the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: This is Psalm 2, verse what, seven?
SPEAKER_00: And even at the beginning of Psalm 2, why do the nations rage?
SPEAKER_00: Why do the people plot a vain thing?
SPEAKER_00: Why do the nation, I mean, answer the question from Psalm 2.
SPEAKER_00: Why do the nations rage?
SPEAKER_00: Because they don't want the king, the son of God, to reign over them.
SPEAKER_00: And what does God say?
SPEAKER_00: I've set my son on his holy hill.
SPEAKER_00: I put my son in Zion.
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna kiss the son, or you're gonna get hit with the wrath of God.
SPEAKER_00: People don't want to kiss the son, they don't want to bow before his scepter.
SPEAKER_00: They reject the kingship of Christ over them, they reject the authority of Jesus Christ, and so they rage against his authority.
SPEAKER_00: And Christians in that sense are caught in the middle.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this varies in every cultural circumstance.
SPEAKER_00: Every culture is going to see division in the family differently, for sure.
SPEAKER_00: I think in the current American scene, the most common kind of persecution you're likely to face is probably in the family.
SPEAKER_00: At least that's the kind I hear about the most from people at Emmanuel, where they have family members that say, if you, you know, if you love me, you'd receive me in my ungodly relationships, you'd see me, you'd receive me in my sin, you would join me in celebrating my sexually immoral lifestyle.
SPEAKER_00: Shouldn't you have celebrated that and affirmed that if you loved me, you would, kind of language.
SPEAKER_00: I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that's arguably the most common form of persecution that American believers face.
SPEAKER_00: But it does look different in every culture.
SPEAKER_00: I read a book by Christopher Yuan, who's a professor at Moody, Chinese American, and he says the way this plays out in most many Chinese cultures is that in the Chinese world, you show your love and affection for your parents by giving them money.
SPEAKER_00: And that in a in a if you have a couple brothers or sisters and they're in married relationships, you show which family member you love more by which one you give money.
SPEAKER_00: Do you give your dad more money than your father-in-law?
SPEAKER_00: Imagine how that's going to play out at home.
SPEAKER_00: Imagine the pressure on the wife in that scenario.
SPEAKER_00: And so a lot of Christian families respond by not doing that, by not giving money up the flow chart, so to speak.
SPEAKER_00: And that creates huge division in the family.
SPEAKER_00: Because if you love, I raised you, if you loved me, you would be honoring me the way all of my non-Christian family is honoring me.
SPEAKER_00: Again, that we don't have an equivalence to that in the American culture that I'm aware of.
SPEAKER_00: My dad might be sending me a text message right now letting me know something different.
SPEAKER_00: It looks different in every culture.
SPEAKER_00: Of course it does.
SPEAKER_00: The bottom line, though, is that there is going to be division at home.
SPEAKER_00: And you even, frankly, see this in some Christian families.
SPEAKER_00: I've seen Christian families where you know parents say to their kid who's going to go be a missionary somewhere.
SPEAKER_00: Why would you do that?
SPEAKER_00: You know, we paid for you to go to a private school, we paid for you to go to a good university, and you're going to go be, you know, a minister of the gospel with people that are barely literate?
SPEAKER_00: That's not what we paid.
SPEAKER_00: Or you how about this?
SPEAKER_00: Parents who say say to their daughter, you know, we paid for you to go to a private school, we paid for you to go to a good university, so you can go marry someone who's going to go minister to the gospel in some barely literate place of the world?
SPEAKER_00: Where exactly do you think you're taking my future grandkids?
SPEAKER_00: And how dare you?
SPEAKER_00: Very common language I've heard.
SPEAKER_00: Or people who, you know, are in the ministry, they're going to move somewhere to follow Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And there's this attitude of what are you doing?
SPEAKER_00: Don't you see what you're doing to your family?
SPEAKER_00: I'm sure military families run into that.
SPEAKER_00: For the cause of country.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus here is talking about for the cause of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus here is talking about those like the apostles who will follow their call into the world.
SPEAKER_00: And that will bring division in the family.
SPEAKER_00: And he he drills this home.
SPEAKER_00: He drills this home by saying, If you love father and mother more than me, you are not worthy of me.
SPEAKER_00: That's verse 37, which leads to our second point.
SPEAKER_00: It confirms true discipleship.
SPEAKER_00: Many times in the ministry, the Lord compares true disciples to false ones.
SPEAKER_00: This is all through Matthew's gospel.
SPEAKER_00: You remember this in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Not everyone who calls Jesus Lord will see him.
SPEAKER_00: In this, you're dealing with people who say they love the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, they might even have some kind of superficial love to the Lord in their life.
SPEAKER_00: That's the way verse 37 reads to me.
SPEAKER_00: Whoever loves father and mother more than me, it's the greater than sign.
SPEAKER_00: You love your own family, greater than sign, the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: So that it's the way I read that is the love for the Lord is a non-zero value here.
SPEAKER_00: There's some kind of superficial love for the Lord going on.
SPEAKER_00: The problem is this person who would say they love the Lord, they would call him Lord, to use the language of Matthew 7.
SPEAKER_00: They would say, Lord, Lord, didn't we do this in your name?
SPEAKER_00: Didn't we do this that in your name?
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus will say, You love this world more than you love me.
SPEAKER_00: Depart from me.
SPEAKER_00: I don't even know who you are.
SPEAKER_00: Or the language of Matthew 10 right here.
SPEAKER_00: If you love the world or you love your family more than me, you are not worthy of me.
SPEAKER_00: This hits right at the heart.
SPEAKER_00: I talked about cultural differences.
SPEAKER_00: This hits right at the heart of the American idolatry of family.
SPEAKER_00: Well, we have in our culture, you know, the most important thing is having a strong family life at home and just loving one another at home.
SPEAKER_00: There's some, you know, some sense that that's true, but Jesus here insists on ordering that to where you can legitimately look at your family and say, I love Jesus more than you.
SPEAKER_00: I've mentioned this before through Matthew 10, our sermons, but I'll repeat it again today.
SPEAKER_00: Whenever I do a Christian wedding, I will say, what makes this such an unusual wedding is that the two people standing here both confess to loving someone else more than each other.
SPEAKER_00: And you can hear the non-Christians in the crowd that go, they look to the back door to see who's gonna burst through.
SPEAKER_00: No, they love the Lord more than each other.
SPEAKER_00: I tell my kids that all the time.
SPEAKER_00: I love them, but I love the Lord more than them.
SPEAKER_00: And in God's kindness, that's what strengthens a family.
SPEAKER_00: A Christian family gets strengthened by that.
SPEAKER_00: You know, when kids see how they fit in the hierarchy here.
SPEAKER_00: The mom and dad love Jesus more than me, that causes the kids to love Jesus because the kids love Jesus, they love their parents out of obedience to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: So it all grows.
SPEAKER_00: It all just amplifies love.
SPEAKER_00: When you love, when love is in the right order, it amplifies every category of love.
SPEAKER_00: But idolatry of family tears that down.
SPEAKER_00: It pushes down the love of Christ to subservient to love of family.
SPEAKER_00: It says what's most important is I love my family well.
SPEAKER_00: That pushes the Lord down.
SPEAKER_00: That has a sense of deflating love in the family.
SPEAKER_00: And so how clarifying is it?
SPEAKER_00: How clarifying is it?
SPEAKER_00: When you have somebody who is just on the fence, they don't know if they're a believer or not, the kind of person that's always doubting their salvation.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if I love the Lord enough, I don't know if I pray enough, I don't know if I'm enough, enough, enough.
SPEAKER_00: I hate the word enough, but that's the word they always use.
SPEAKER_00: And then they're in a situation where there's a fork in the road and they have to choose to honor the Lord or honor their family, and they choose to honor the Lord and their family bites them for it.
SPEAKER_00: That should be so clarifying and confirming to that person.
SPEAKER_00: They should draw so much encouragement from that.
SPEAKER_00: You know, yesterday they were like, I don't know if I'm a Christian, and today they're being bit by non-Christians for their Christianity.
SPEAKER_00: They're like, well, okay then.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Lord, for answering that prayer.
SPEAKER_00: You should draw encouragement from that.
SPEAKER_00: I really do believe that's why Jesus puts it here in Matthew 10.
SPEAKER_00: To let you know that when you love him more than family, you are in fact, in that sense, worthy of him.
SPEAKER_00: Which means he knows you and he recognizes you and he has redeemed you, and he's in a relationship with you.
SPEAKER_00: This has the effect here of forming, in that sense, a new family.
SPEAKER_00: Not that your family in the church replaces your earthly family, or not, you know, you know, my your kids don't speak to you anymore because of your Christianity, or your parents don't speak to you, or your brother doesn't speak to you anymore because of the stands you've taken for the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: Having friends in the church doesn't atone for that or doesn't fill that hole in your heart, but in a sense, it does supplement it.
SPEAKER_00: You do have brothers and sisters in the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: You do have adopted grandparents and adopted parents and adopted kids in the church, and you do have a family unit in the church with people that love each other because they love the Lord more than each other.
SPEAKER_00: It has a way of knitting your hearts together, confirming that you are in the family of God.
SPEAKER_00: This is why a very common New Testament description of believers is brothers and sisters with one another.
SPEAKER_00: You don't call anyone father because the Lord's your father, but there is a sense in which you are brothers and sisters with other believers.
SPEAKER_00: You have that kind of family dynamic in the church.
SPEAKER_00: You have adopted grandparents in the church, and some of the church grandparents are adorable and lovely.
SPEAKER_00: And it's a healthy dynamic in the church and it confirms your presence in the family of God.
SPEAKER_00: Thirdly, it calls you to follow Christ.
SPEAKER_00: It calls you to follow Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 38 Whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.
SPEAKER_00: This is the first mention of the word cross in the New Testament.
SPEAKER_00: At this point, if you're reading the New Testament for the first time, you don't know how Jesus dies yet.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you can deduce from the Old Testament that maybe the Savior is going to die.
SPEAKER_00: You'd like to think you could deduce that.
SPEAKER_00: But then you look at the disciples and they didn't really land the plane on there yet.
SPEAKER_00: But you would like to think there's enough prophetic material in the Old Testament that the Savior would die and be resurrected.
SPEAKER_00: You looking back on it, you see it, but at the time, I don't know how much they saw of that.
SPEAKER_00: And maybe you could even deduce some kind of crucifixion from Isaiah 53 that he'll be wounded, and that word can be rendered pierced for our transgressions.
SPEAKER_00: Zechariah 12 is the word for impaled, the Savior will be impaled.
SPEAKER_00: So maybe you could deduce from that that he would have some kind of death involving impalement or something.
SPEAKER_00: But they don't have a grid for Jesus dying on the cross.
SPEAKER_00: And here's the first use of the word cross in the New Testament.
SPEAKER_00: And it is not about how Jesus is going to die, it's about how disciples are supposed to live.
SPEAKER_00: You're supposed to pick up your cross and follow Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: The cross is something the Greeks and Jews would know.
SPEAKER_00: A hundred years before Jesus, uh before his death, 70 years before he was born or so, there was a Greek revolt led by Spartacus, if you remember.
SPEAKER_00: And the general, the Roman general Crassus, put down the revolt, took 6,000 of the rebels, lined the highway back to Rome with crosses, and had all 6,000 of them crucified along the Highway back to Rome.
SPEAKER_00: This is steered in the mind of every part of the Roman Empire.
SPEAKER_00: They all know the story.
SPEAKER_00: They all know what happens to rebels as you get crucified.
SPEAKER_00: The cross then takes on this image of a means of death, of putting down rebels.
SPEAKER_00: That's the context in which Jesus is using it here.
SPEAKER_00: That your family is going to divide.
SPEAKER_00: It's going to bring a sword to the family.
SPEAKER_00: You, meanwhile, pick up your cross and follow him in obedience.
SPEAKER_00: That's the image Jesus uses for salvation.
SPEAKER_00: And as a side note, the cross kills, you know, nails and the hands and the feet.
SPEAKER_00: It kills people.
SPEAKER_00: You know, some of them die by suffocation.
SPEAKER_00: Of course, their lungs fill with fluid and they, you know, they they suffocate that way.
SPEAKER_00: They can't physically bring themselves up to breathe.
SPEAKER_00: But that is not the way majority of people die on the cross.
SPEAKER_00: Majority of the people who are crucified die from exposure.
SPEAKER_00: They die from hunger.
SPEAKER_00: They die from birds or animals attacking them.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's a horrible way to die.
SPEAKER_00: That's the image Jesus uses.
SPEAKER_00: When you love him more than family, you are picking up your cross, denying your own life and following him.
SPEAKER_00: The phrase denying your own life or losing your life in verse 39.
SPEAKER_00: That word lose, it can mean to deny, it can mean to renounce.
SPEAKER_00: That's another word in the kind of the umbrella of meanings of that word.
SPEAKER_00: You renounce your own life.
SPEAKER_00: It's a statement of repentance, that you are turning your back on the way you were living and what you were loving and picking up your cross and following Christ.
SPEAKER_00: It's saying I love Jesus more than this world to the point that I'm willing to die for him.
SPEAKER_00: Here the cross is obviously metaphorical, although it won't remain that way, just like the sword is obviously metaphorical, it won't remain that way either.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus will be crucified, Peter will be crucified, the sword will come, some disciples will be put to death by the sword.
SPEAKER_00: That's all gonna happen.
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus says at the outset, he's talking about conversion kind of language.
SPEAKER_00: When you're signing up to follow Jesus, you are taking all that into consideration and saying, I'm gonna pick up my cross and be faithful to Jesus and follow him, even though it's heavy.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, holding a cross doesn't help you in any way, shape, or form doing anything else in life.
SPEAKER_00: You can't garden holding a cross, you can't take out the trash holding a cross, you can't cook dinner holding a cross.
SPEAKER_00: The point is you're gonna do your whole life now with the cross of Christ on your back.
SPEAKER_00: Everything you do is following him.
SPEAKER_00: You're giving up your life and hoisting your own cross.
SPEAKER_00: You're surrendering your future, disavowing your past, and following Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus uses this present tense of it.
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna take, you're gonna be taking the cross.
SPEAKER_00: This is what you're doing all the time now.
SPEAKER_00: Lugging it wherever you go, and you're following him in verse 38.
SPEAKER_00: You're not following phantoms, you're not following materialism, you're not following success in this world, you're not following your family or following yourself, you're following Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And when you follow him, verse 39, you will, you're gonna find your true life.
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna lose your life in this world, but find it in the next.
SPEAKER_00: And if you hold on to your life in this world, you're gonna lose your life in the next.
SPEAKER_00: This is as simple as saying if you live for this life, you lose your next life.
SPEAKER_00: But if you lose this life, you find true eternal life.
SPEAKER_00: That's the promise.
SPEAKER_00: You wanna live for the success of this world?
SPEAKER_00: You want to live for your house or your family, and you have the perfect American family, the you know, the happy wife and the two and a half kids and the labrador and all that.
SPEAKER_00: You know, you could get those things, you could get the second car, you could get the vacation house, you can get the promotion at work, and you lose your soul.
SPEAKER_00: It's not a good trade.
SPEAKER_00: Not a good trade.
SPEAKER_00: You don't want to lose your soul, you don't want to lose your life.
SPEAKER_00: In Mark's telling of the story, Jesus uses the Greek word psyche, which means soul.
SPEAKER_00: So Jesus used both the word life and soul.
SPEAKER_00: I'm sure he said this multiple different ways.
SPEAKER_00: Your soul stands for all of who you are.
SPEAKER_00: Losing your soul means you're cast into hell.
SPEAKER_00: That's the phrase Jesus used in Matthew's uh the Sermon on the Mount.
SPEAKER_00: Better to lose your hand or your eye than have your soul cast into hell.
SPEAKER_00: And there's lots of ways to kill your soul.
SPEAKER_00: You can kill your soul.
SPEAKER_00: If you live for this life, you murder your soul.
SPEAKER_00: If you invest yourself in this world too much, you you drown your soul.
SPEAKER_00: You can murder your soul by loving the world.
SPEAKER_00: You can poison your soul by following false religions, you can starve your soul by neglecting the means of grace at church, you can slay your soul outright by rejecting the gospel, but the most deluded thing you can do to your soul is to lose it with a lie.
SPEAKER_00: To tell yourself you're a Christian or you're following Christ when you're not.
SPEAKER_00: To tell yourself in the faith that you're in the faith while never repenting of your sin, never abandoning your life, never picking up your cross and never following Christ.
SPEAKER_00: There's so many different ways to lose your soul, but only one way to save it: by renouncing yourself and picking up your cross and giving your life to Christ.
SPEAKER_00: By recognizing there's a higher love for your own life, an eternal love for Christ, which leads to eternal life.
SPEAKER_00: Think of people in the Bible who sold their life.
SPEAKER_00: Esau sold his life for a bowl of stew.
SPEAKER_00: Saul sold his life for public praise.
SPEAKER_00: Ahab sold his life for a vineyard.
SPEAKER_00: Judas sold his life for 30 pieces of silver.
SPEAKER_00: What strikes me about Judas is that he was willing to follow Jesus when Jesus was meeting his demands.
SPEAKER_00: But once they got in Jerusalem and Judas realized, no, he's actually going to die.
SPEAKER_00: Judas said, I'm out.
SPEAKER_00: Remember the lady broke the perfume and the anointment on his feet?
SPEAKER_00: And Judas said that money should have been sold and given to the poor.
SPEAKER_00: Judas had named his own wallet, the poor.
SPEAKER_00: That money should have been sold and given to the poor.
SPEAKER_00: And then Jesus said, No, it's she's anointing me for burial.
SPEAKER_00: And Judas said, I'm out.
SPEAKER_00: Sold him for 30 pieces of silver.
SPEAKER_00: He loved$30 more than Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: What do you love more than Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: And be aware of that.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's your price tag.
SPEAKER_00: You live for fame if the if the devil offers it, would you take it?
SPEAKER_00: You can gain the whole world and it can be meaningless without your soul being purchased by Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: You can get the promotion, you can buy the house, you can get the second house, you can have the two and a half kids and the dog and all that.
SPEAKER_00: You can win the next election, you can win the election after that, you can become the expert they put on TV, all of that, and without loving Christ more than those things, it is all worthless.
SPEAKER_00: You can be the most famous and successful person in the world, and if you love that more than Jesus, you will just be an anonymous person in hell.
SPEAKER_00: That's the reality.
SPEAKER_00: But you die to yourself and you say, I'd rather have Jesus in silver and gold.
SPEAKER_00: I'd rather have Jesus than riches untold.
SPEAKER_00: I'd rather have Jesus than men's acclaim, men's applause.
SPEAKER_00: I'd rather be true to his holy name.
SPEAKER_00: When you turn your life to Christ and you pick up your cross and you say, I love Jesus more than this world, then you remember that great riches await those in glory who treasure Christ.
SPEAKER_00: The devil's temptation is to rob you of eternal riches by letting you cash out now.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus responds by saying, if you lose your life in this world, for my sake, verse 39, you will find it.
SPEAKER_00: He tells Peter, you leave family in this world, houses and lands in this world, you get many more in this world.
SPEAKER_00: Speaking of family, you get in the church and all of that, and the life to come, eternal life.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we're grateful for the clarity of your gospel message.
SPEAKER_00: I pray for the hearts of those in this congregation and ask that their hearts would be sold out to you, that they would love you more than each other.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we ask, just as a pastor, my prayer is that our congregation would love you more than ourself, love you more than church, love you more than family, love you more than wealth and food and everything.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, knit our hearts together as a body because you are our head.
SPEAKER_00: Knit our life together because you are our life.
SPEAKER_00: I pray for those in the congregation that are going through divisions in family.
SPEAKER_00: I pray that you would encourage them with the love of Christ that surpasses understanding.
SPEAKER_00: You'd encourage them with the indwelling of the Holy Spirit that surpasses understanding.
SPEAKER_00: And you would give them a confirmation of their calling by the internal conviction their love for you defines their life.
SPEAKER_00: We're thankful for the love of Christ above all, in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: And now for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for joining us.
SPEAKER_00: If you're in the Washington, DC area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.
SPEAKER_00: For more information on our church or our current service times, go to IBC.church.
SPEAKER_00: For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_00: location, go to TMS.edu.
SPEAKER_00: I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with boldness.