Deny Yourself | Ken McIntyre

Discover why following Jesus requires being completely conquered by His love and leadership and how this decision impacts every area of our lives.

This week, we begin our series “Follow Me,” exploring what it truly means to follow Jesus. Pastor Ken dives into Matthew 16:13-26, unpacking Jesus’ radical call to deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow Him wholeheartedly. 

 🏆 Challenge for the Week: 
This week, identify one specific habit or mindset that competes with your loyalty to Jesus. Take a concrete step to eliminate or change it, such as setting aside time daily for prayer or forgiving someone you've held a grudge against. Tell a close friend or send us a message. 

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Transcript

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Well, today we're starting a short two week series called Follow Me. But just because it's short doesn't mean it is not important. And all the short people said amen.

The next two weeks are going to be centered on one question. And the question is so important. It's, what does it mean to follow Jesus? We say around here that following Jesus is the best decision that anyone could ever make, which is saying a lot because I'm sure you have made some really great decisions in your life. Following Jesus has been my best decision.

Many of you would say the same. Some of you wouldn't, though. Not that following Jesus has been a bad decision for you, but maybe you'd say, you know what? When I zoom out and look at all the decisions that make me, me following Jesus is just one of many. Some people here are in a different boat altogether.

You're not here because you're following Jesus. You're here because you're searching. You're searching for something and you're hoping that you might find it. But really, whatever category that you put yourself into, the next two weeks are going to be at least two things. Number one, clarifying and number two, challenging.

Clarifying. Because, well, what does it mean exactly to follow Jesus? We follow all sorts of things, right? Some of us follow the news religiously. Is that what it means to follow Jesus?

We sort of just observe and not really participate. Some of us follow the stock market. Is that how we follow Jesus? Like we follow stock market? We just make an informed bet and sort of hope things work out over time?

Some of us follow a sports team. Do we follow Jesus the same way we follow the Oilers, right? Full of anxiety and frustration all the time, you know? Or me. We just kind of.

We're bandwagon when things are good, right? We kind of. We kind of do it. How do we follow Jesus? And so it's going to be clarifying on that question, but it's also going to be challenging because I'm going to raise the bar.

I'm not going to raise it higher than Jesus did, but I want to show you just how high Jesus did raise the bar when it comes to following him. And that is going to cause you some discomfort, My guess is, and I'm okay with that because I would rather that you be uncomfortable than uninformed when it comes to following Jesus. Because I really don't like the alternative and I don't think you will either. This is what Jesus says in Matthew 7. He says, Many will say to me on that day the Day that we're standing before the Lord, giving an account for our life, many will say to me on that day, lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?

You know, they're saying, listen, we're doing all these things for you. So obviously that's what it means to follow you. Listen how Jesus responds. Verse 23, I will tell them plainly, I never knew you. None of us want that.

And so we're going to dive into Matthew chapter 16, where Jesus gives us the clearest explanation in all of Scripture of what it means to follow him. Let's start in verse 13. It says this. When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, who do people say that the Son of man is? Now Jesus is referring to himself here as the Son of Man.

He's asking his disciples, what's the word on the street? You know, I've gone through a lot of ministry. I've healed people. I've done a lot of things. I'm doing these teaching that's kind of upending things around this region, like what are people saying about me?

Now, Son of Man is an interesting title for Jesus, and maybe you're kind of thinking, I don't get it. I thought Christians believe that Jesus was the Son of God, but here's Jesus referring to himself as the Son of Man. Well, Christians believe both. We believe, yes, of course, Jesus is the Son of God. He is co equal and co eternal with his heavenly Father.

You know, you look at the ancient creeds of Christianity, they talk about it like this, that Jesus is God from God, light from light, begotten, not made. He is of the same substance of the Father, meaning he's not inferior to his heavenly Father in the same sort of way that a human son is not inferior in essence to his human Father. And so maybe you've heard this referred to Jesus as being the second person of the Trinity. This is a difficult, no doubt, but vital concept to our faith. And really this is what separates Christianity from all other adjacent world religions.

Adjacent in the sense that Christianity is incorporated into the religion in some degree at least, like Islam or Jehovah's Witnesses or Mormonism. But adjacent is also misleading because it makes the other world religion seem closer to Christianity than it actually is. Because the reality is they are worlds apart. They're not even the same playing field. When Jesus asked these disciples this question, who do you say that I am?

The way that you answer that question for The Christian is the difference between heaven and hell. How you answer that question is the difference between peace with God or the wrath of God, friendship or hostility? So this is a really big deal. The divinity or the godness of Jesus is foundational. It's essential to the Christian faith.

It's central to salvation. And here's why. People screw up. I screw up, you screw up. Everybody here has said something, done something, thought something that you know ain't right.

It's not good. And maybe if other people kind of saw behind the scenes of your life in all of those crevices and that you never show, there'd be shame there, there'd be guilt over how you've lived, over what you have done. You know, we hurt ourselves, we hurt other people. We live lives that reveal that we don't live according to God's perfect ways that bring life and joy and peace. We reject his leadership in our life, which is the essence of sin, the rejection of God's authority.

And since we reject him, it results in separation from him. So let's say you're hearing. You say, well, how do I. I don't want that. How do I close that gap?

Well, every other world religion answers that question virtually the same way. You want to close that gap between you and God. You want him to notice you. You want to be in his good graces. Okay, here's what you need to do.

Behave. If you behave, you will earn friendship with God. You'll be in his good books. But Christianity is fundamentally different because the Christian response to the question, how can I make things right between God and myself? Is this.

You can't. You can't make things right between you and God. You can't do anything about it. But God can and he did. And he did it in the cross of Jesus Christ.

So how does that work? I want to consider this on a human level for a moment. Imagine that someone has deeply hurt you, that someone has betrayed you, that someone has lied to you. Now, in order for there to be reconciliation in that relationship, assuming that's what you want, they can say sorry to you, they can buy you flowers, they can behave. But at the end of the day, you have to choose to forgive them or not.

At the end of the day, you have to choose to absorb the pain, to absorb the hurt, to absorb the anger of the situation. You can't just close your eyes and wave a wand and all of a sudden that relationship is repaired. That's not the way that it works. Now, this is similar between us and God. When we reject God's leadership when we sin.

And every single person does it. There's a real cost now to that broken relationship and you can't do anything about it. Only God can. So here's where Jesus comes in as our substitute. Jesus as fully God, chooses to forgive you, chooses to absorb the pain and the hurt and the anger of the situation, not because of what you can do for him, but simply because that's who he is.

Jesus. He didn't cancel your debt, that relational debt, by waving a wand and seeing it disappear. No, he absorbed it on the cross into himself. The anger, the hurt, the sin. And that's why the apostle Paul says this about Jesus.

God made him Jesus, who had no sin, to be sin for us. So that in him, in Jesus, we might become the righteousness of God. We might have right standing before God. Only Jesus as fully God, could offer a sacrifice of infinite worth that was capable of covering all people through all time. If Jesus isn't God, his death on a cross might be inspirational, it might just be totally tragic.

But it wouldn't have any effect on your standing with God. If Jesus is not God, he is just like us. He actually needs redemption. He's part of the problem, not the solution to it. But because Jesus is fully God, sin is dealt with by God himself.

Jesus is not an innocent third party on the cross that God chose to put him there in our place. That's not how it works. Listen to what Jesus says. He says, the reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life only to take it up again. No one takes it from me.

I lay it down on my own accord and I have the authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again because he is God. This command I received from my Father. So yeah, Jesus, we believe absolutely. It rests on him being the Son of God, but also the Son of Man. So what does that mean?

Matthew uses this term, son of man 30 times in his book to refer to Jesus. So it's a layered term. Matthew's trying to communicate something to us. When the disciples would have heard Jesus refer to himself this way, they would have immediately interpreted it as a reference to the Old Testament, Book of Daniel, chapter seven that says this. It says Daniel.

He says, in my vision at night, I looked and there before me was one, like a son of man coming with the clouds of heaven. He was given authority, glory and sovereign power. All nations and peoples of every language worshiped him. So the Son of Man was this human like royal figure, had divine power and Worthy of worship. It sounds a lot like Jesus.

So, yeah, Jesus was fully God, but he was also fully man. Jesus was not God in a bod, okay? Sometimes that's what we think. That is God just sort of in this shell, in this frame. No, he had a dual nature.

He was fully God and at the exact same time he was fully man. He didn't stop being God when he became man. He has this dual nation now, dual nature. In Christian theology, this is called the hypostatic union. Okay, it's a complicated term, but hypostatic just means essence.

It's the union of two distinct essences without division, human and divine. Now why does that matter? Why does the humanity of Jesus matter? Well, firstly, it matters because Jesus is human, allowing him to fully identify with you. He fully identifies because he has experienced the range of human experience.

He has experienced hunger and joy and grief and sadness and temptation and even death. So this makes Jesus our God. Someone who knows exactly what you're walking through. Hebrews 4:15 says this. For we do not have a high priest, Jesus, who is unable to empathize with our weakness, but we have one who is tempted in every way, just as we are, yet he did not sin.

So again, why does this matter that Jesus is both God and fully human? Why does that matter? Let's imagine, okay, a thought experiment. Two friends. There's Adam and there's Bill.

I was going to call him person A and person B, but I thought it would be better to actually give them names. Okay, Adam and there's Bill. And they were really good friends. But let's say they had a falling out over complicated. There was something that happened in their relationship and they're no longer friends.

And Adam is convinced that it's Bill's fault. And Bill. Ah, no, he's convinced it's Adam's fault. They're both so adamant that the other person's to blame, they just stop talking. The relationship is totally broken.

How can Adam and how can Bill be reconciled? What's the solution? Well, the situation demands a go between, right? A mediator of some sort. So who's qualified to act as a mediator between Adam and Bill?

Well, the best person, the best scenario would be someone who knows them both perfectly. You want a mediator who knows and can identify with Adam. If they only identify with Adam, though, that's not going to go well for Bill, is it? And you don't want someone who could only identify with Bill. That's not going to go well for Adam.

You want somebody a Go between a mediator who fully can represent and understand and identify with both Adam and Bill, who can mediate between God and you. Only someone who can identify with both of you perfectly. Jesus Christ. This is why Paul says this. For there is one God and one mediator between God and humanity.

The man Christ Jesus. There is one God, the man Christ Jesus. There you see it. Two natures. Jesus knows you because at one point in history he became human.

Jesus knows God because he has always been God. So here's Jesus, the God man. Wild. And he's having this conversation with his disciples here in Matthew 16. And again he says, who do people say the Son of man is?

Verse 14, they replied. Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets. But what about you? He asks, who do you say that I am? And that's the question.

I mean, that's it. I mean, that's what it all hangs on for you. Who do you say that I? If you have never wrestled with that question, I urge you, wrestle with that question. Wrestle with it now.

Your opinion of Jesus doesn't change who he is, but your opinion of Jesus changes who you are. And I encourage you, wrestle with that question. Who do you say that Jesus is? Verse 16. Simon Peter answers correctly.

He says this, you are the Messiah, the Son of the living God. Verse 17. Jesus replied, Blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven. Now, this is really important. Peter's correct declaration of who Jesus is.

It sort of changes everything. And it has this new kind of turn in Jesus ministry, because once we realize who Jesus really is, it does change everything in your life. That's why we say following him is the best decision you can make. We read this immediately in verse 21. Remember, Jesus is now identified as the Son of God.

So listen to what Jesus says next. It's wild. He says, from that time on, since the correct declaration of who Jesus is, from that time on, Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer the Messiah, the Son of God. This is not what the disciples expected to hear. Must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law that made up the ruling council, the Sanhedrin in Jewish religious life.

And that he must be killed and on a third day be raised to life. Verse 22. This is fascinating and hilarious. Peter took him aside, took Jesus aside and began to rebuke the Son of the living God. Never, Lord, he said, this shall never happen to you.

Can you imagine that? Jesus rebuking or Peter rebuking Jesus? You know, if you have little kids, you've done this before. You know, you're out in public and they do something that you don't like. And so you get that weird parent voice that sort of displays your seriousness.

But also you don't want anyone to know, right, that you're doing this to your kid. So you kind of bend down and you're like, no, you stump. You stop. You don't stop. I'm going to eat all your Halloween candy.

Right? That's the voice, right? We've all done that voice before. Now, I'm taking poetic license here, but I'm just imagining that that's the voice that Peter is using on Jesus. Probably not true.

Verse 23 says this. Jesus turned and said to Peter, get behind me, Satan. You are a stumbling block to me and do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns. Man, how quickly things change for Peter. He was just rewarded by Jesus for correctly identifying who he is.

And now, five verses later, he's the recipient of the sternest rebuke in all of scripture. Get behind me, Satan. The last time that Jesus used those words was in fact to Satan. In Matthew chapter 4. Jesus is being tempted in the desert by Satan.

And Satan is trying to get Jesus to achieve greatness without dying first. Now he's hearing this exact same message from Peter. Peter can't get it. He can't understand how the greatness of God is going to be seen through his death. So he says, no, no, Jesus losing your life, that's not going to do anything for anyone.

And it's this conversation between Jesus and Peter that reveals the clearest explanation of what it really means to follow Jesus in all of scripture. So it says this starting in verse 24. Then Jesus said to his disciples, whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it. But whoever loses their life for me will find it.

What good will it be if someone. For someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? So there it is. No fine print, no reading between the lines. If you want to follow me, deny yourself and take up your cross.

That's how you follow. Now, we all know this. Denying yourself is not something easy, is it? I mentioned before that we all follow something. We follow something.

Maybe it's the news or the stock market or a sports Team. But the reality is we all have this in common, every single one of us. We all follow ourselves. We do what we want. We spend our time the way we want.

We spend our money the way that we want. The natural gravitational pull of every human heart is to do what they want. Because we think that in doing what we want, we will get what we want, which is happiness. So to deny yourself is counterintuitive at the most basic fundamental human. And yet Jesus says, I know that's a prerequisite.

If you don't do that, it's not going to work. If you don't deny yourself. And just to double down, Jesus then says this, and you're gonna have to take up your cross and follow me too. Now, maybe you've heard this term. You know, this is a cross I have to bear.

When someone has a small nuisance in their life, right? If they have a thankless job or they have a widow's peak, you know, or they're a flames fan, right? There's as if there's a cross I have to bear. That's not what Jesus is referring to here. Jesus is referring to the Roman punishment of crucifixion.

To take up one's cross was when a condemned person had to carry their heavy cross beam to their place of execution. It was the ultimate symbol of somebody who was totally defeated. It was the ultimate symbol of someone who has been completely conquered. So when Jesus says, in order to follow me, you're gonna have to take up your cross, he's saying, the only way that it works, the only way that you can follow me, is if you consider yourself completely conquered by him, by Jesus. That's the only way for those of you here who follow Jesus, but you don't consider it the best decision that you've ever made.

It's because you're not living totally conquered. You are trying to share the leadership of your life with Jesus, and it's not going to work for you. It will not work. Here's why you cannot follow two things at the same time. You can't do it.

You can't follow two things at the same time. I want to demonstrate this by showing you a couple of my dad's favorite songs. So I remember I was around, around 10 years old, and I'm driving. My dad's driving in the backseat of his car, and we're going down Deerfoot. And this song comes on and my dad's like, ken, listen to this.

The feels. First time you hear that song. So good.

You know, everyone can Follow along in the song. There's not a lot of distraction. We get it. But it's a lot harder if a second song begins to play at the exact same time. My dad's all time favorite band was the Beatles.

It was always on in my house. I probably know all the lyrics to at least 89% of the songs. And so I'm gonna show you one of his favorite Beatles songs as well. I need somebody else.

I'm trying to make this uncomfortable.

You know, you're sort of being pulled in one direction, you're sort of being pulled in the other direction. And it's not only. It's not only hard, this is probably miserable for you, but I'm gonna make you sit a little longer.

The only way that this is gonna work is if I kill one so you can follow the other. There's so many people that are trying to follow two things at the same time. You're trying to follow Jesus, and you're also trying to follow you, and it's miserable. It's not working. It's like you're being pulled in two different directions.

Your heart is divided. You want to live in the forgiveness of God, but you're not willing to kill the unforgiveness you have in your life towards your parents or your ex or someone else. And it's like you're just being torn in two. Your finances are divided. You want to live a generous life.

You want to trust God completely, but you're not willing to kill the death grip that you have on every single cent. You're divided in your finances and it's miserable. You're divided in your emotions. You want to live in the peace and joy that comes being conquered by Jesus, but you're not willing to kill the anger and the bitterness and the jealousy that you've been dealing with with all these years. And you're living divided.

It's tearing you in two. Your mind is divided. You want to live in sexual purity. You don't want to live in this shame anymore, but you're not willing to kill what's going on behind closed doors. You're not willing to admit that you have an addiction, that you have a problem, that sexual immorality has a grip on your heart.

You're not willing to do anything about it. And so you're living divided. You're torn in two. And if you want to follow Jesus, he's saying you have to kill whatever is competing with your loyalty. You have to.

So it's like, well, how do I do that? You have to make a decision. That's how you do it. You have to make a call. I don't want to oversimplify your situation, but I don't want to over spiritualize it either, because Jesus didn't.

Jesus was very practical about this. In a parallel passage that Luke records in his Gospel, you'll hear Jesus say something really similar, but also something a little bit different. I want to read to you from Luke 14. It says this, whoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. We've heard that before.

Then Jesus says this, suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won't you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it? Jesus saying, listen, you gotta count the cost of following me again. I'm not hiding the fine print. I'm not trying to pull the wool over your eyes.

There's no bait in switch here. Here are the terms of following me. So make a decision. If you wanna follow me, it's going to cost you you. Are you willing to pay that price?

You have to make a decision because no one can deny yourself for you. No one can pick up your cross for you. You have to voluntarily choose to do it the same way that Jesus did. So, no, following Jesus is not like following the news or the stock market or sports team. It's very, very different.

The bar is high, but the reward is great. Jesus says this in verse 25, whoever loses their life for me will find it. Here's the thing, you are going to lose your life no matter what. You just have to decide what you're gonna lose it to. You're gonna lose your life no matter what.

But you get to decide today, what are you gonna lose it to? You can lose your life trying to save it on your own terms and organizing your life to collect all the things that you think will make you happy. But maybe you'd admit you've been doing that and it's just like slipping. You're just never quite getting it. And so you're losing your life chasing a lie.

Maybe you'd say, you know what? I'm perfectly happy being in charge of my own life. And if what it means to follow Jesus is me, the cost is me. I'm not willing to do that. It's like, okay, well, you made a choice at least.

But you have to understand, you are going to lose your life to the grave and everything that you've gained is going to be lost. So what does it profit a person to gain the whole world, yet lose their soul. So you can lose your life to you. You can lose your life to a lie, you can lose your life to the grave, or you can lose your life to Jesus and live completely conquered by him. And Jesus promises that if you make that choice, you're actually going to find what you're looking for all along, and you'll exchange your life for eternal life.

And so I want to urge you, don't waste your life with one foot going this way and another foot going that way, trying to follow two things at the same time. Don't waste your life don't waste your life in frustration and disappointment, in misery, trying to hold on and keep control. Don't waste your life going through the motions of a lukewarm faith. Don't waste your life trying to find the things in life that only Jesus can bring you. And so Jesus would say to you today directly, if you want to be my disciple, then you have to deny yourself and take up your cross to follow me.

And so now that you know what it means to follow him, you have a decision. Who are you going to follow? Let's pray.

God, I'm so thankful for your clarity that we can know what it is you're asking. We don't have to guess. I'm thankful for your son who stepped into time and took on human flesh in order to be the perfect mediator between humanity and you, that Jesus Christ represented both you, Heavenly Father and us perfectly and you know us both. And Jesus took on all of the weight of the separation, all of the pain of relational brokenness in order to bring us together. So we thank you that by faith, not by works, by faith alone, we, we can have relationship with you, God.

Lord, but your terms are in order to follow you. It's not something we do part time, Lord. It's not something we do on the side. You are not looking for divided loyalty. Your word tells us what we need to do to deny ourselves, to pick up our cross in order to follow you.

So for those in the room today who have put their faith in you, who have received the love of God through Christ, who are saved, but there is division in their life. God, I pray that you would highlight what that is and that it would be so uncomfortable that there would be a decision that is made today to follow you with undivided loyalty. Lord, for those here today who are not following you, but now there's greater clarity on what that means, and they're not sure if they can do that. God, I pray by your Holy Spirit, that they would just sense your love in such a powerful way right now that they would know that you are true. That they would know that you are the life, and they would know that you are the way.

And all of the other ways that we try to gain happiness and meaning in this life would just feel so shallow and empty. Towards the love of God that we see in Christ. God help us to live sold out, undivided to you. We pray this in the wonderful name of Jesus Christ, your son and our Savior. Amen.

Amen. If you're here today and you do not know Jesus, but you want to begin that, I would love for you to do that. We're gonna have pastors here on the front left who would love to know your name and speak with you, pray with you. If you're here today, but you maybe don't want to do that, you gotta leave or you're just not comfortable yet. We have a QR code in the seat back or on the screen.

If you're watching online, you can scan that. That's going to put a digital booklet in your hand to help you take your next steps in following Jesus. Thank you so much for listening to my music and my dad would be happy about that. Have a great week and live undivided for Jesus.