Why Aren’t More Of Us Dying?
When you read the Title in the Bulletin this morning, did it make you think “what is the preacher going to preach about today”? I hope that he doesn’t want us to die! I want to tell you today that yes; I really do want all of you to die today.
Now before you throw me out or leave, bear with me and I will explain exactly why I want you all to die. I don’t want you all to die physically I want all of us to die to ourselves in a spiritual manner. And I don’t just want you to die to yourself once but I want you all to die to yourself every single day that you live and here’s another thing this is not optional!
This is a very important biblical subject. It is so important that there are many Scripture verses and passages that deal with it. And if we can’t or don’t get our hearts and minds around this mandate from Jesus then we will find ourselves in a huge amount of trouble and pain.
How do I know that this subject is so important to Jesus? I know that dying to self is important to Jesus because He did it too and here is one example of what He did to “die to Himself”. This is what Jesus prayed while He was in the Garden of Gethsemane just before His arrest in Matthew 26 verses 36-45: 36 Then Jesus came with them to a place called Gethsemane, and said to the disciples, "Sit here while I go and pray over there."
37 And He took with Him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and He began to be sorrowful and deeply distressed.
38 Then He said to them, "My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death. Stay here and watch with Me."
39 He went a little farther and fell on His face, and prayed, saying, "O My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will."
40 Then He came to the disciples and found them asleep, and said to Peter, "What, could you not watch with Me one hour?
41 "Watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak."
42 He went away again a second time and prayed, saying, "O My Father, if this cup cannot pass away from Me unless I drink it, Your will be done."
43 And He came and found them asleep again, for their eyes were heavy.
44 So He left them, went away again, and prayed the third time, saying the same words.
45 Then He came to His disciples and said to them, "Are you still sleeping and resting? Behold, the hour is at hand, and the Son of Man is being betrayed into the hands of sinners.
I want you to notice that Jesus was, in His humanness, struggling with the crucifixion that was coming and it’s not wrong to struggle with our humanness but it is wrong and sinful to allow our will or ourselves to win the struggle.
Notice that Jesus asks the Father that if it’s possible for the “cup” (which is symbolic of His being crucified) to pass from Him to let it be so, the first time he talks to the Father about His situation. And even though He is asking for the “cup” to pass from Him Jesus also says, and this is important, “not my will but your will be done”. This is the beginning of Jesus’ example to us about how to die to ourselves.
The second time that Jesus prays to the Father about having the “cup” pass from Him I want you to notice that He prays in such a way that it appears that He has already gotten the answer from the Father. Notice again what Jesus prayed in verse 42: He went away again a second time and prayed, saying, "O My Father, if this cup cannot pass away from Me unless I drink it, Your will be done."
Jesus is acknowledging here that He knows that the “cup” cannot pass from Him unless He drinks it and in so doing is submitting Himself and His will to the will of the Father. Jesus is teaching us by His own example how to die to ourselves. And while we will never face the circumstances that Jesus faced then, we are to die to ourselves because He did die on the cross and we share in that death just as when we accepted Him as our personal Lord and Savior we will share in His resurrection too.
And while this is a crucial and vital example of Jesus teaching us to die to ourselves and to submit our wills to that of the Father it is by no means all that Jesus had to say about on this subject.
In the Gospel of Matthew chapter 16 verses 24-26 Jesus said this to us: 24 Then Jesus said to His disciples, "If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. 25 "For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. 26 "For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?
What Jesus is saying to all of us here is not for the faint of heart or for the uncommitted Christian, this is grown up stuff and it is really some broccoli and cauliflower teaching for us. Jesus is challenging all Christians that if we want to follow Him, be true born again believers in Him, then we MUST deny ourselves. Does to “deny oneself” simply mean to tell ourselves no every once in awhile? No, the word “deny” here literally means to die to yourself.
Do we as people like to tell ourselves no? I am here to tell you from my own personal experience that telling myself no is very difficult. Sometimes I fail and I give in and the flesh wins. But Jesus already knows that the Spirit is willing but our flesh is weak.
I want to say here that I know that when we think about dying in any context it is not a pleasant topic. But I want to remind you that when you die to yourself in a spiritual context that you are gaining true and real life and you can only experience this wonderful life when you surrender your will to Jesus’ will and let Him have complete control over your mind, body and soul just like he did in the garden when He surrendered His will to that of the Father’s will.
But I have a couple of questions for you: How many of us here sometimes think that we know better how to live our lives than God does? How many times do we tell the Father “this cup WILL pass from me because I am refusing to drink it and you’ll like it”!?
If we want to follow Jesus’ example of complete submission then we have to put down our pride and our stubbornness. None of us have either of those things in our lives do we? Naw, I didn’t think so!
So how do we successfully deny ourselves? The solution begins and ends with prayer. Notice that Jesus prayed about His struggles. If Jesus found it necessary to pray about these struggles, then how can we possibly think that we can successfully deny ourselves without prayer too? Prayer is where the strength to deny or to die to self comes from. Without prayer there is no way to die to ourselves. And when we pray we have to have faith and believe that we are going to receive the help we need to deal with whatever the temptation is that we are facing at that particular moment.
This is a discipline and it takes time to develop it but if you don’t start now then you will never be successful at dying to yourself and you will have to suffer the consequences that your failures will inevitably bring. I want to remind all of you again that becoming a Christian is so simple that a child can do it but growing into a mature, fulfilled, dead to yourself Christian can be as tough as we want to make it.
Jesus told us to deny ourselves but He also told us to take up our cross too. What exactly does that mean? I have been asked that question a few times in my ministry and here is what I tell folks about the cross.
In ancient Rome when a criminal was sentenced to crucifixion they were made to carry their cross at least part of the way to the crucifixion site usually through the heart of whatever city they were in. They did this to shame the person who was marching to their death and to show the power of the Empire.
Jesus was no exception to the rule. When He was about to be crucified He carried His cross part of the way through Jerusalem, through the crowds of people watching Him go to die.
When Jesus tells us to take up our cross, do you think that he means that we are marching to our deaths on the cross just like He did? YES, HE DID! Just not in a physical sense. Jesus wants us to take up our cross in a spiritual context because we are spiritually walking to our deaths. We are to share the shame and scorn that Jesus endured when He carried His cross and we are to meet the same end and we are supposed to crucify our flesh to the cross, our wills to the cross and leave them there! We are supposed to “die” on the cross that we are spiritually carrying.
And just like we are supposed to die to ourselves daily we are to take up our crosses daily. Every day we are to nail our flesh to that cross and our wills too. And this is not optional. You can’t leave your house in the morning and pop yourself on the forehead and say “I forgot my cross, oh well; I’ll pick it up later. Your cross has to be like the American Express slogan: Don’t leave home without it!
What Jesus is saying is that we have to die to ourselves and die to the world every day. And make no mistake here, when you pick up your cross you are going to a certain death just as Jesus did and our only hope or assurance is that Jesus was resurrected and so will we be both physically and spiritually.
The world doesn’t understand this dying to self and taking up your cross stuff at all either. The world looks at this doctrine as weakness. The world wants to put self on the throne instead of God and look at how the world is doing. Not a pretty picture is it? But we can be just like the world if we don’t learn to master the art of dying to self everyday and that is a scary place for a Christian to be.
Jesus told us to deny ourselves and to take up our cross. But this isn’t all that He instructs us to do here. He also told us to follow Him. This is a key instruction because if we really want to be successful in dying to ourselves and taking up our cross we need to follow the One who has already done both of those things and that is Jesus.
We have already seen that Jesus prayed that His will and the Father’s be the same, we have already seen that Jesus took up His cross and carried it like He wants us to do. This is why we need to follow Him when we are doing these things.
It is hard to follow someone who doesn’t know where they are going but feel like they can tell someone else how to get there. I want to follow a leader who has been where he is telling us to go. Jesus is that leader and if we want to find the strength and the wisdom to die to ourselves then we had better stay right on His hip. He will never lead us astray and He will meet every need that we have on this daily journey that is self denial.
And in verse 25 Jesus said this: "For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.
This verse shows us just how serious Jesus takes what He is trying to tell us. If we continue to put our will first, ourselves first then we will lose our lives. We, as Christians, won’t lose our salvation but we will lose our vibrant, victorious, joyful life that we should have when we are in right fellowship with the Father.
And if we “lose” our lives or submit to the will of the Father then we will have the best life that we could ever imagine. When we sync our wills with the Father then the blessings will flow and what joy we will experience! I want to “get lost” in the will of the Father! I want to be one with the Father because that is where Jesus wants us all to be, at one with the Father.
In verse 26 Jesus said this also: 26 "For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?
I want to ask you a question today, is there anything in this world that you would trade for your salvation, your relationship with Jesus? Good because there isn’t anything in this world that is even remotely comparable to what we have in Christ Jesus. Salvation is indeed free but it is infinitely valuable. It’s a good thing that salvation is free because according to Jesus you couldn’t buy it even if you had the whole world, pretty amazing huh!?
So to summarize, dying to yourself is hard and so is taking up your cross and following Jesus on a daily basis. I would say it is impossible to do by ourselves but the good news is that we don’t have to do it by ourselves we have a true and faithful guide who, if we will follow Him closely Jesus will lead us to where we need to go.
But I want to reiterate to us all again that this is not optional to die to yourself, it is a command and we disregard and disobey this command at our own peril. I am so glad that I don’t have to make this journey alone, not only do I have Jesus to follow but I have a great church family to walk with, grow with, and learn with. And that to me is worth all that this world has to offer Amen!?
