What does it mean to follow Jesus?
Passage Mark 8:31 – 9:1
Speaker Chris Steynor
Service Evening
Series Christianity Explored
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31 He then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again. 32 He spoke plainly about this, and Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.
33 But when Jesus turned and looked at his disciples, he rebuked Peter. ‘Get behind me, Satan!’ he said. ‘You do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.’
34 Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: ‘Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 35 For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it. 36 What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? 37 Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? 38 If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of them when he comes in his Father’s glory with the holy angels.’
9 And he said to them, ‘Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see that the kingdom of God has come with power.’
Holy Bible, New International Version® Anglicized, NIV® Copyright © 1979, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
This transcript has been automatically generated, and therefore may not be 100% accurate.
Thank you, Mark. Good evening, everyone. Particularly welcome if you're new here tonight. My name's Chris. I'm one of the ministers here and we're delighted that you're here worshipping with us.
Before we dive in to that passage which Mark read to us, let's pray. So, dear Lord Jesus, teach us what it means to be disciples. Lord, teach us what it means to follow you. And Lord, may we just be captured by the vision of Lord living for you your way. And Lord, be teaching us what it means for us and how you want to live our lives.
Speak to us now, we pray by your spirit. Amen. Amen. John, I'm just echoing around the back here. If you turn the back ones off, that'll be grand.
Thank you. Well, many of you know we're looking at a Christianity Explored series. Some of you have been with us for many weeks and thank you for holding on. At my previous church, I worked for seven years as a youth worker. And Friday night was the big youth work night, where we did all our stuff, where we welcomed young people in from around the community, where we wanted to tell them about Jesus and actually, have we got the PowerPoint.
Ollie, that'd be grand. Thank you. Brilliant. And as leaders, we realised coming out on Friday night had its challenges. And there was a danger zone somewhere between 630 and 07:00 on Friday night where you had done a whole week's work.
You were tired and you would sit down on the sofa and everything in your body and soul did not want to get up. But we had to put some disciplines in mind that we know that we love the Lord Jesus and we want to do this youth work for him. We know that we love the young people and we want them to know about the Lord Jesus as well. And not only that, we know that when it's all done we get to go to the pub. And it was often the more immediate motivations that would speak to us.
But in all seriousness, those times with our team of about 1213 of us having ministered together, having worked among the young people, having spoken with them, putting on the games and activities that hour afterwards were some of the best times of friendship, of camaraderie, of community that I've ever had. Now, one time during this season I got a call from an old school friend of mine. We've known each other since we were ten years old. And he said to me, Chris, I've met someone and I'd love you to meet her, she's wonderful. And we're coming down south, can we come and see you for the weekend?
And I said, yeah, absolutely, that'll be great. Come down on Friday night. We're doing a youth worship service that evening. Why don't you just slip in the back, you can see what goes on. And then we're all going to go out to the pub afterwards as a team and you can get to know us.
And so they did that. And afterwards we all sat down with our drinks. The team are sort of grilling my friend about our school days and so forth. And then one of them turns to the girlfriend who seems lovely, very unassuming, and says, well, tell us about you, tell us about your family. And she says, I'm not in touch with my family.
When I chose to become a Christian, they tried to kill me. And all of a sudden the twelve of us around that table were it stopped. And all of a sudden it put the cost of getting up off the sofa at 630 on a Friday night into perspective. This girl had had to move house 43 times in six years to escape her family and that was the cost of following Christ for her. And tonight we're talking about what does it mean to follow Jesus, and I want to talk about particularly the cost of following Jesus.
Some of you may or may not remember this brand gamestation. If you haven't heard of it, don't worry, it's not been in existence for over ten years. But in 2010, gamestation as an April Fool's prank included in their terms and conditions for buying goods on their site a sole clause which stated that the buyer agreed to surrender their soul to the company. There was even an opt out clause to nullify the soul transfer and receive five pounds instead. 12% of buyers paid enough attention to click on the opt out clause and the company managed to collect seven and a half thousand souls on one day.
It's important to read the small prints. And if you've been with us on this journey of Christianity, explored, you might be thinking similar to one of the young people on our weekends away. They said to me, you know what, all this stuff about Christianity, about God coming down in Jesus, about dying for us so that we could know God again and following Jesus, it all sounds really great, but I really feel I need to look at the small print and maybe that's you tonight. And tonight we're going to read some of the small print. There's a lot of small print you'll notice in the Bible.
We're just going to look at some of it diving very briefly tonight. And the three points I want to make are summed up by a song. It was written in 2001 by Chris Tomlin. He wrote a chorus that said this. He said, o the wonderful cross, the wonderful cross bids me come and die and find that I may truly live.
The wonderful cross bids me come and die and find that I may truly live. So let's dive in. Let's remind ourselves about the cross of Jesus. This was the beginning of that passage which Mark read for us. Mark, chapter eight.
Jesus began to teach them that the Son of man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again. Let's remind ourselves of what's at the heart of the Christian message. At heart of Christianity is the person of Jesus. And at the centre of that message is that Jesus Christ came to die to pay the penalty for our sin, a debt we could never pay ourselves in response to our rebellion to God, our selfishness towards others, so that we could receive the forgiveness of God. And that in rising again, jesus Christ gives us a hope for eternity and a life with Him forever, as well as a new life that starts right here, right now, on this earth.
That is the victory that Jesus Christ has won for us at great cost to Himself. It is the victory Jesus Christ has won at great cost by his crucifixion. Now, here in the west, we're very used to the symbol of the cross and we're very used to seeing a symbol of the cross and thinking religion and thinking Christianity. But we forget that in the Roman world, before Christ came, and as Christ came, it was rightly and appropriately a symbol of terror and curse and torture. And for Jesus to claim that I am the Son of God, I am the same one that flung stars into space, that spoke the universe into being, that created humankind.
For him to claim to be that same God and come down to be crucified just wouldn't have computed in the minds of those people. The historian, Tom Holland. He's not a Christian. He's intrigued by Christianity, but he's not a Christian. But he helps us get into the mindset of those Jewish listeners.
He says this divinity was for the very greatest of the great, for victors and heroes and kings. That a man who had himself been crucified might be hailed as a God, but could not help to be seen by people everywhere across the Roman world as scandalous, obscene and grotesque. But the ultimate offensiveness was to one particular group of people Jesus' own. That God might have a son and that his son, suffering the fate of a slave, might have been tortured to death on a cross were claims as stupefying as they were to most Jews repellent. No more.
Shocking, a reversal of their devoutly held assumptions could possibly have been imagined, not merely blasphemy. It was madness.
The fact that Jesus' message, that he is God come down as man and that he would die on a cross just simply could not be held together. And we see a bit of what Tom Holland is talking about in Peter's response in the next few verses. Jesus spoke plainly about this, and Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But when Jesus turned and looked at his disciples, jesus rebuked Peter. Get behind me, Satan.
He said, you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.
We are all like Peter. The human heart is magnetised to the nearest source of power and greatness. If we're not feeling powerful and great ourselves, if we don't feel that in ourselves, we attach ourselves to something that will make us feel powerful and great, whether that's a religious leader or financial institution or sports team or a gang or elite group of some sort, or money. Nobody voluntarily wants to join a team that looks like it's losing. But if Christianity is Christ and Jesus is a suffering servant, then the call to follow him is a call to suffer and a call to serve.
It is a completely different type of belief of religion, if we can call it that. The wonderful cross. Jesus' mission to die on the cross. Secondly, that this cross bids his followers to come and die. Let's read on.
He called the crowd to him, along with his disciples, and said, whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. Take up their cross and follow me. Jesus says according to who you are, where you live, what your gifts are, what your opportunities are, where the Spirit leads you. And according to his sovereign choice, the life of the Christian is going to be one of regularly denying self. For some, living this life might cost you years worth of Friday nights.
For others, it might cost their family and their home. For some, it might mean slashing your salary by 90%. For others, it might mean leaving your home to be missionaries. For others, it might be missing out on a job or promotion. For others, it might be facing bullying at school or college.
For some, it might mean a life resisting revenge. For others, it might mean reconciling with people where wounds are deep. For all Christians, it's going to mean parting with finance in a way that is costly. For all Christians, it's going to mean sacrificing your time so that you can invest in your church family. For all Christians, it means doing the work of prayer and reading the Bible and pursuing the life live more like Christ.
It is denying self. There are so many voices within Christianity and without of Christianity saying, don't preach this, right? It's a really, really bad sales technique, right? If this is the small print of Christianity, there's a reason why companies keep their small print small, right? Just minimise that.
Talk about the rewards that are in Jesus. There are plenty to talk about. There's plenty of goodness to talk about in following Jesus, there absolutely is. But just minimise the small print. If you want a church growth strategy, don't talk to people about this.
The funny thing is, the exact opposite is true. The exact opposite is true. When churches preach a cheap faith, they empty. But oddly enough, when churches preach following Christ is going to mean denying self, they grow. When I got married, one of my fellow youth leaders, they bought me a book because they knew that we were going on honeymoon to Spain.
And the book was called Learn Spanish in Seven Days. Right. Now, there's a few problems with that. Firstly, I don't have seven days before I get married to learn Spanish. Secondly, where we're going in Spain, everyone's English.
And thirdly, we all know it's not true, right? It's a sales pitch. Learn Spanish in seven days. Sounds wonderful, doesn't it? It's not going to cost you much to learn Spanish.
We all know that's not how you learn a language. How do you learn a language? You take years worth of lessons and if you really want to learn it fluently, you take a university degree, you spend tens of thousands of pounds and three years of your life learning the language, reading, doing it with others. And then you spend an extra year leaving your home, leaving your culture, going living among the people so that you can hear the language used in real life. That's what it takes to learn a language at the roots of the word disciple.
And this is what Jesus calls people to, is the word discipline. And to preach that in Jesus we have the meaning of life and the world and everything and the satisfaction of our souls. And then to pretend that following him is going to cost nothing. It's a terrible sales pitch. We all know that it's not true.
It doesn't ring true.
The wonderful cross bids me come and die and lastly, find that I may truly live. Jesus goes on, whoever wants to save their life will lose it. But whoever loses their life for me and for the Gospel will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?
My friends, we all put our soul in the hands of someone. If it's not Jesus Christ, it's fate or luck, or we bury our head in our work or family, or our determination to be able to live exactly as we please, or perhaps even game station. We're all resting our soul in something. We're all betting our eternal souls on something.
But here is the thing that we need to understand about following Jesus Christ. That for Jesus, the call to enter into suffering or deprivation of some kind is always, always for the cause of seeking a greater joy. It is always for the cause of seeking greater joy. If you read the Gospels and passages just like this, you'll see Jesus appeals to self interest. He actually says, the issue is not that you're exchanging something really fun for something really dull.
It's that the things that you thought were really fun and the things that you thought were life giving, weren't. They were broken systems. They fail, they don't fill you up. Whereas in Jesus, in Jesus you can find the satisfaction of your soul. And when Jesus calls us to give up anything, it is that we might increase in our delights in Him.
And we have another example, just a couple of chapters later in Mark ten, peter spoke up we have left everything to follow you. Truly. I tell you, Jesus replied, no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the Gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age, homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields, along with persecutions. And in the age to come, christianity is not like the ascetic religions of the east, where suffering is the end to itself. Jesus promises fulfilment in him.
And note he says it's in this life as well as the life to come, it is normal for us to give up for Christ and then experience Christ giving back to us. But even when Jesus causes followers to wait, we don't ever have cause to doubt his love, because Jesus has already given us everything, more than we could ever give Him back. I'd like to end with a quote from a theologian called C. S. Lewis.
He wrote an essay called is Christianity Hard or Easy? Where he noted that Jesus says some things that make Christianity sound very you know, come to me, all who are weary, and I will give you rest. But he also says hard things like take up your cross and how can we reconcile them? This is what he says. The Christian way is different, both harder and easier.
Christ says, give me all. I don't want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work. I want you hand over the whole natural self all the desires which you think innocent as well as the ones you think wicked. The whole outfit. I will give you a new self instead.
In fact, I will give you myself. My own shall become yours. My friends, this is the invitation of the Christian Gospel. Let's pray.
Lord Jesus, we can never repay you. But, Lord, we come because you have called us through your grace. Lord, there is nothing that we can do to earn our way to you except rest on the work that you have already done through the cross. Lord, as we revel at the foot of that cross of the wonder of what you have done, Lord, let us hear that call to come and die that we might find we might truly live. We thank you that you promise us life in all its fullness.
Give us the courage and bravery to throw our lives in Your hands and watch what you do with them that we might know the joy as well as the pain and the struggle of knowing you as we wait for one day when we will see you face to face. Amen. Amen.