Amen. And please be seated. Now, if you have a Bible, let me invite you to turn with me to Matthew chapter 16. This morning in verses 24 through 28, we return to our study of Matthew's gospel, which we put on pause during Advent and Christmas.
This morning, we really turn a corner in the book as Jesus here turns a corner in his teaching, and this morning we hear him invite us to be his disciples. Jesus says, who wants to follow me? Well, then let me tell you what that looks like, he says, verse 24. And why you ought to, verses 25 to 28.
Let me invite you to give your attention to God's holy and inspired word, Matthew chapter 16 beginning at verse 24. Then Jesus told his disciples, if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me for whoever would save his life will lose it. But whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man?
If he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul, or what shall a man give in return for his soul? For the son of man is going to come with his angels in the glory of his father, and then he will repay each according to what he has done. Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the son of man coming in his kingdom. Amen, this is the Lord of God.
May he cut our heart with it. Let's look to him in prayer. Our Lord and our God. But we know not, we ask that you would teach us.
And what we have not, we ask that you would give to us. And what we are not. We ask that you would make us in Jesus' name. Amen.
Let me ask you a question. What's going on here at Reheamer? I don't know if you're a guest today visiting maybe this is your first time. Maybe you've been here a long time.
What is it we're doing? What's happening? What agenda has God set for us? Well, on the one hand, we're Lord willing, proclaiming Christ.
We're preaching Christ and him crucified. We're claiming Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, the Savior of sinners who reconciles us to God. You might say that's our God word focus. Preaching Christ.
But of course to people. And what are we doing there? Well, we have a man word focus in a sense too. We're carrying out the great commission.
Jesus commanded his church to go and make disciples of Jesus. That's what we're doing. Ah, but what is a disciple? What's going on in the life of a disciple?
Why would we want to be a disciple? Well, that's what Jesus is addressing here. And let me invite you to consider what he says to us in three parts. First, Jesus invites us to be his disciple, verse 24.
And then he reveals to us what it means to be a disciple, the first part of verse 25. And then he gives us reasons to be his disciple, verse 25 to the end. And we'll only have time for just verse 25. So first place, Jesus invites us to be his disciple, verse 24.
If anyone, Jesus told us disciples, if anyone would come after me, he says, well, now, who's he talking to? Well, he invites his disciples and he invites his disciples to be his disciples. That is to reenlist as his disciples. Now that they know some new things, he has recently revealed to them along the way.
If you follow college athletics at all, you know that the expanded transfer portal has really changed things. It used to be an athlete, you know, would get recruited out of high school by a coach. And he'd be pitched on the merits of the school. And then he would join up, commit to a team, a coaching staff, a school.
And then he would be loyal in practice. And if good enough, get to play until the scholarship was up. That's how it kind of used to be. But now the transfer portal is a wide open.
Athletes are jumping ship, right and left. And there are reasons for that. One of course is now money is openly involved. And the rewards may be higher elsewhere.
And the best athletes are looking for those rewards. But also athletes are just freer to pursue the next best thing, the next level, or the better, more competitive school with a higher chance of winning, a better coach, a better team, a better outcome, a better reward. And boom, they're gone. Well, Jesus knows that's human nature.
And I'm not saying that in the world of college athletics, there's anything immoral about it. But when it comes to Jesus, think of the situation his disciples are in. They've traveled with him. They have slowly realized that he's more than just a great rabbi, more even than just a prophet, better even than the great prophets.
And they've seen him, you've sighted to the blind, and hearing to the deaf, and a voice to the mutant, and restored health to the crippled. They've seen Jesus walk on water. They've seen Jesus feed 5,000 with just a little bit of bread. They've seen all the miracles.
And then Jesus here in chapter 16, he turns to them and he says, well, who do people say that I am? And there are all kinds of nonsense answers given. And he says, but who do you say that I am? And Peter answers for the disciples and says, you are the Christ.
That is the Messiah, the Son of the living God. That's who you are. And just as they get it, and even Jesus says, you're blessed Peter because the Father in heaven revealed that to you. You know who I am, really am.
Just as they get it. Just as they get him, he says to them, now let me tell you how it's going to go in my kingdom. Verse 22, I'm going to Jerusalem to suffer and to be killed. And Peter, shocked by that, says never, Lord, right?
Far be it from you, Lord. This will never happen to you. And Jesus rebukes him. Get behind me, Satan.
Your hindrance to me. You don't have in mind the things of God, but you have in mind the things of man. So here we are. That's right before this passage.
And the disciples are at a crossroads, we might say. Jesus has just pulled the carpet out from under their feet, so to speak. Gone are the hopes of Jesus marching into Jerusalem, establishing a kingdom of glory on earth with all his defeated foes lying at his feet and his disciples enjoying the triumph, the victory, the spoils of their conquering king, Messiah. No, Jesus says, I'm going to Jerusalem to suffer and to be killed.
Now to be sure, Jesus is the conquering and reigning king promised in the Davidic covenant, but all that is not yet in their experience. First will come shame and suffering and the scorning of the Son of Man. So Jesus says, well, now that you've heard the truth, now that you know who I am and now that you know that the cross comes before the crown, are you in? Do you want to continue to be my disciples?
And notice what's underneath this invitation here. It's not on the surface, but it surfaces when you ask the question. Who is the right to ask this kind of thing from their disciples? I mean, who is the right to tell people you need to deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me?
Who can make such a demand? Well, God, of course, no mere man, though. No human spiritual guru, if that's all he is, could make this and be worthy of it. But Jesus can and be worthy of it because he's God.
Now notice that this invitation is not exclusive. Did you hear that language? If anyone, he says, he says to his disciples, he's saying it to them, but he knows they're going to then preach this to others. If anyone wants to be my disciple, it's not exclusive.
Ah, but then it is exclusive. If anyone means anyone wants to follow him, it certainly also means, and there is no other way to follow me. There is it one way for Peter, one way for Matthew, and a different way for you, a different way for me. No, if anyone wants to be my disciple, this is how it has to go.
All who are Christians, all who confess Christ as the Messiah, all who look to him, who died for their sins and rose from the dead, to reconcile us to God, all who have been given the eyes to see, all who have been made alive by the Spirit of God, all who have tasted saving grace, all are called. In the language of Ephesians chapter 4, verse 1, to walk in a manner worthy of the calling that you have received. Jesus here, notice also uses the language of wants or wish or desire. If anyone would come after me or desires to come after me, desires wants to, if you want to, to what, to come after me, that is behind me, to be to my disciple, to have me be your leader, your Savior, your Lord.
Well, who is it that wants that? I mean, who has this kind of a desire from the heart, a genuine desire? Well, it's those who've been given new life in Christ, those who have their eyes opened. Jesus is not teaching here what we do to save ourselves, as if salvation is ultimately in our hands based on our deeds.
If he was teaching that, why the prior verses about his own cross and suffering and death only to rise? No, he did that for us. But those who look to Christ crucified, those who put their trust in Christ to be their Lord and Savior, you are called to follow him, to trust in him, to learn from him, to live for him. And this call we might also have is not burdensome because, as Augustine and others have noted, the God who gives saving grace gives the enabling grace that we might do when he is commanded.
I mean, what God calls us to, he helps us do. So what is this life of discipleship? What is it we're called to? All of us are called to who are in Christ.
And if you come to Christ, this is what you're called to. Well, Jesus reveals what it means to be a disciple. First part of verse 25, three things. First, there's self-denial.
If anyone would come after me, he says, let him deny himself. To deny is to disown or to repudiate or to disregard. You remember, later on, Peter will deny the Lord to his face. He repudiates Jesus.
I don't know him, he says. But what he hadn't just recently done in telling the Lord, never Lord in rebuke, what he hadn't done was repudiate himself. Deny himself. No, Peter had his own thoughts ahead of the Lord's thoughts.
He had in mind the things of man, not the things of God, the things of Peter, not the things of Jesus. He put his own agenda ahead of the Lord's agenda. He told the Lord what the Lord should do. Instead of receiving from the Lord, what the Lord said the Lord would do.
Peter hadn't disowned or repudiated himself, and he's called to it. Now notice this, who must you repudiate? Let him deny himself. Who must you repudiate yourself?
Say no to yourself. Disown yourself. He doesn't say, it's interesting. He doesn't say deny yourself things.
He doesn't come after me. He must deny himself chocken certain times of the year or a warm winter hat on a cold day. He doesn't say you need to deny yourself things, but he says you need to look at yourself and say no. Not anymore.
I don't want to be ruled by me. I don't want to be governed by me. I don't want to obey me anymore. I don't want to prioritize me or worship me.
I turn my back on me or in the language of Augustine's famous prayer from myself, Lord. Save me. You're denying yourself, as I said, in order to earn your way into heaven. You're not collecting spiritual merit badges when you say no to self, but you renounce yourself as part of the work of God in you in giving you regenerating grace, a new heart.
You deny your reliance upon yourself as you are by nature, and you say no, I need to depend on Christ and his grace alone for salvation. You give up being wrapped up in yourself. That is you turn from it, and you get wrapped up in the things of God and God the Savior. You say no to self, their self-denial.
And then Jesus says the second thing. If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross. Now, obviously, he's not speaking of the cross that Jesus himself will take up, but taking up our own cross. So he's not talking about doing what Jesus did to accomplish what Jesus did.
None of us could do that. Jesus took up the cross to die upon it in our place on our behalf and for our sins that we might be forgiven. We don't take up a cross to die on it so that we can be forgiven. We're forgiven in him because of his finished work.
We believe in penal substitutionary atonement. That is he substitutes himself in our place and suffers the penalty we deserve for our sins to reconcile us to God. We don't believe in an atonement by self-effort, and that's not what Jesus is talking about. We don't believe in atonement by following the example of Jesus as if our efforts would be sufficient.
They're not. So what is he talking about when he says, take up your cross? Well think of the cross. Well, you know, in our own day, the world sees the cross as a religious symbol that we might hang on a wall or make into a beautiful piece of jewelry and hang around our neck.
Crosses tend to be polished and beautiful. But in the first century, the first hearers of this, it evoked feelings of disgust, dread, horror, revulsion, shame. The closest equivalent, I suppose in the last hundred years or so to what Jesus is saying to them when he said it is if he said to us, you need to deny yourself and take up your news or you need to deny yourself and take up your electric chair and follow me. That is taking up the cross doesn't mean merely you're going to endure some kind of difficulty in life.
This I have to tell you is probably the most common interpretation of what Jesus is saying. Now folks will be quick to say as we all ought that we shouldn't use that flippantly but sometimes it is, you know, somebody gets a cold and all over cross to bear. That's not the kind of thing Jesus is talking about. But I also don't think Jesus is talking about the enduring difficulties and trials of life, not to deny that we'll have those or that Jesus in other places says in this life you will have trouble.
But again, what does it mean to carry across? Well think of a person in Jesus day carrying across. This was a common thing in the Roman Empire. They crucified all kinds of people.
Thinking that cross Jesus carried on the way to his own crucifixion when the soldiers made him carry the cross piece to his execution until he was so weary from torture and blood loss that he couldn't carry himself and they made Simon of Cyrene carry it for him. They made all who were to be crucified to carry the cross beam upon their shoulders to the place of execution to a post that was presumably already dug in or laid on the ground to where it would be dug in. But the cross beam was laid on the shoulder of the condemned and why did they do that? They did it to prepare that person who was about to be crucified to help it sink in that they were on a one way journey and they were not coming back, right?
To put them in a frame of mind that their life was over. Their life was as good as dead and gone and all that awaited them yet was actual physical death. So what is Jesus saying? To be my disciple you need to consider yourself dead.
You need to consider your life as already over. For in fact what we learn elsewhere in the gospel is that in union with Christ, in trusting in Christ we become one with Christ and we have died with Christ. Second Corinthians 5, 17 may be the best commentary on this. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ he is a new creation.
The old has gone. The new has come. The old has passed away. Behold, all things are new.
Consider your life already over. That is the life that you had before being saved by him. Your old life, that old life in union with Adam. For now you have a new life in union with Christ.
This was preached from Romans 6 the other day. You have died with Christ. Christ died for you and God accounts you who believe in him to be in union with him and his death. And you have died with him.
Why? That just as Christ was raised from the dead you might be raised to walk in newness of life. Your commentary on this might be Galatians 2, 20. I have been crucified with Christ.
It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. Count yourself dead. Your old life is already over.
And then thirdly, follow me. If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me. The other two are decisive once and for all. Be it yourself that we say that to ourselves again and again.
Deny yourself once and for all. Count your old life as dead. Count it to be true because it is true. But here it is present.
Continue us. Keep on following me. Keep on walking with me. And you do it.
It's a singular pronoun. You follow me, he says. I mean, no, we can follow Jesus for you. Children, your parents can't follow Jesus for you.
Your spouse can't follow Jesus for you. You have to follow Jesus yourself. Notice of course the Jesus you follow, the assumption here, it's that he's alive and that he expects to be alive. That is, in the way that he puts it, he knows he's going to continue to be alive.
Yes, he'll die, but then he'll rise. And so Jesus doesn't say, now, I want you and all the future generations to follow my teachings. We'll leave those behind. You know, follow my teachings.
Follow what I say. Follow, you know, after I'm dead and gone. But he says, follow me, a living person. And don't stop following me, he says.
And so I ask you, is this the direction of your discipleship? And your life, is this the orientation of yourself? Discipleship is an orientation to yourself. It's an orientation to your past.
And it is an orientation to Jesus. You renounce yourself. You say, no to yourself. You consider yourself dead, dead in that old man, Adam, and yes to Jesus.
And you keep on saying yes to Jesus. And that of course means you begin to listen to him, to be graced by him, to be strengthened by him, to be taught by him, to learn from him. You choose to be his disciple and you let him disciple you. And so it means to care about his agenda, right?
To care about his concerns, to think about what causes he's interested in and then sign up and join his cause. This is what we pray. In the Lord's Prayer, as he taught us, Lord, your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
But your kingdom be done in my life. Your will be done in my life. I want to serve by your help. That's why we're praying.
I want to serve your agenda. My old pastor put it this way to invite you to think about this. What would you think if you were a political candidate and somebody showed up and said, I like you. I want to be part of your campaign.
I want to help you win the congressional race. I want to help promote you, put me on your campaign staff. And so the politician says, well, great. We love volunteers around here.
We can pay people who can do the work. What do you think about my policy on this? Oh, yeah, well, I don't like that policy very well. Well, what about in this area?
Well, no, that's horrible. I totally disagree with that. Well, OK. I mean, here's a policy central to my platform.
What do you think about it? That's the worst idea I've ever heard of my life. I mean, what would you think as a political candidate? Would you consider them to be a follower of their cause?
Not a chance. And so it is that the Lord Jesus is looking for disciples to take up his concerns, his cause, his agenda, and to put everything else second to him. Now, why would you? Why would you deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow him?
Jesus piles up reasons why you ought to do this in verses 25 to 28. We just have time for the first one today. It's in verse 25. He gives us a reason.
For he says, whoever would save his life will lose it. But whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. If you try to hold on to the life that you have, the life you've been living in this world outside of Christ, if you try to preserve it and cling to it and sustain it, you will find that you will lose that life in this life, as we read in the Psalm and sang in the song. Life is but a breath.
There's less of it ahead of you now than there's ever been in this world. But Jesus is saying you will lose it not only in this life but in the life to come. If you refuse to repudiate yourself to consider your life over, refuse to take up a new life, following Jesus, then you will find that you will lose what life you have and for eternity. But whoever loses his life for my sake, Jesus says, we'll find it.
If you lose your life here and now for the sake of Jesus, you will find true life here and now and for eternity. Jesus promised I have come that they might have life and have it more abundantly. That's true now and for always. So the only way of gaining true and eternal life is to lose your life.
That is, if your life is just turned in on itself, you're only looking out for your own interest, only for your own advancement, only for your own reputation, you will lose real life because life isn't really found in those things. It can only be found in a saving relationship with Jesus. This is the trade-off that led Jim Elliot to say he is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose. Many of you will know he was one of five missionaries to Ecuador killed by the Alka Indians in 1956.
They were headhunters and Elliot knew the danger of trying to bring the gospel to them but he was willing, if necessary, to give up his life in order to give them the gospel. And he prayed this, father, take my life, yay, my blood, if that will. This is in the generation where people pray in the King James you understand. Father, take my life, yay, my blood, if that will, and consume it with that enveloping fire.
I would not save it for it is not mine to save. Have it, Lord, have it all. Pour out my life as an oblation for the world. And God, answer his prayer.
His life was poured out because, well, he was no fool because in losing his life for Jesus he gained what he could never lose. Now thankfully, we're not all called to be martyrs, to be murdered in the service of Jesus to gain this prize. That's not the call. But we are all called to lose our lives.
That is we lose them as we live giving ourselves to God and giving ourselves for the blessing of others and not merely and only living for ourselves. Who are you living for? Is it for yourself or is it for this Messiah, the Son of the living God, God in the flesh, Christ crucified who reconciles you to God. Get me for all of us, for him.
Let's pray. Father, we bow before you. We thank you and praise you that there is a Savior and Lord worthy of everything we have, all that we are. And that you give great and precious promises to those who are yours who look to Jesus.
Father, you know in the secret places of our hearts and minds all our weaknesses, all our failures, all our continued self love, self-centeredness, self-seeking. If it we pray, cleanse us, we pray and transform us after the likeness of Christ that we might live wholeheartedly for God. We ask it in Jesus name. Amen.