ENGAGE
This morning, I’m going to begin by taking you through a very quick history of some prevailing ideas about discipleship over the last 600 years or so.
I’ll begin in the early 16th century, with a German monk named Martin Luther. Here is what he wrote this about being a disciple of Jesus:
A religion that gives nothing, costs nothing, and suffers nothing, is worth nothing.
Now we’ll fast forward to the first half of the 20th century to a German pastor named Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who authored a classic book titled The Cost of Discipleship. Near the beginning of that book, he writes these words:
Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession...Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.
Later in that book, he wrote the one sentence that he is best known for:
When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.
Now let’s fast forward one more time to our generation. If you go to your local Christian bookstore or to online companies like Amazon or CBD you’ll find that some of the most popular contemporary Christian books have titles like this:
• Your Best Life Now
• Think Better Live Better
• Change Your Words, Change Your Life
• Destiny, Step into Your Purpose
• The Believer’s Authority
TENSION
Do you see the difference? Instead of discipleship being about commitment, sacrifice, and surrender for the purpose of bringing glory to God, it has largely become a path of comfort and prosperity that is all about what’s in it for me. So who is right – Martin Luther and Dietrich Bonhoeffer or the authors of these contemporary books? I think most of us instinctively know the answer to that question, but this morning, we’ll let Jesus answer it for us.
TRUTH
Today’s message is the second in a series of five messages about our church’s discipleship path.
THORNYDALE FAMILY CHURCH
DISCIPLESHIP PATH
Hopefully you were with us last week, when we talked about the first step in the process – Come. We learned that our invitation to others to “come and see” Jesus ought to be the natural outflow of our own personal relationship with Jesus.
This week, we’re going to focus on the second step in the process – Commit. Before we do that, let me just remind you that even though we’re dealing with each of the five steps in this process separately, there is a lot of overlap between these steps in our lives, which is one of the reasons we’ve pictured this process as a circle and not a series of steps in a straight line.
Before we look at this morning’s passage, let me remind you of the four questions we’ll be answering this morning:
FOUR QUESTIONS:
1. Have I already taken this step in my personal relationship with Jesus?
• If not, I then I need to answer the next question:
2. What concrete actions can I take right now to take this next step in my relationship with Jesus?
3. How can I help someone else I know take this step in his or her life?
4. What can we do as a church to help people take this step in their lives?
In order to help us answer those questions, we’re going to look at a passage that is found in chapter 8 of Mark’s gospel account. The book of Mark is the second book in the New Testament, right after Matthew’s gospel account. Many of you will recognize that both Matthew and Luke include similar accounts of this event in Matthew chapter 10 and Luke chapter 9.
[34] And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. [35] For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's will save it. [36] For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? [37] For what can a man give in return for his soul? [38] For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”
(Mark 8:34-38 ESV)
Let me set the stage for you here. On the way to Caesarea, Jesus asked His disciples who other people were saying that He was. And then He pointedly asked them. “Who do you say that I am?” Peter correctly identified Jesus as the Christ, the long-awaited Messiah. But then Jesus proceeds to tell His disciples that He is not the kind of Messiah that they were expecting. He had not come to be a political leader who would free them from the oppressive rule of the Romans, but rather a suffering Savior who would die and rise from the grave three days later to free them from their sins.
After Peter attempted to rebuke Jesus for that explanation, Jesus spoke these words to teach His disciples, and us, about what is required in order to to be His genuine disciple. Although I read five verses to make sure we could put Jesus’ words in their proper context, Jesus essentially describes what it means to be His disciple in just one verse – verse 34:
“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”
Although we’re going to take time to study this verse in some detail this morning, here is essentially what Jesus is saying here:
If I want to be Jesus’ disciple
I need to be “all in”
Being a disciple of Jesus is not about just fitting Jesus into my existing life. It’s not even about making Jesus the number one priority in my life. Perhaps some of you have seen a pyramid that looks something like this that expresses that idea:
Nor is it merely making Jesus the foundation of my life, an idea that is pictured by a different pyramid with Jesus at the bottom:
While pictures like that may have some usefulness in helping us to make choices in life from time to time, they certainly fall shirt in describing what it means to be “all in” for Jesus.
It’s certainly not the perfect picture, but probably the closest we can come to illustrating what Jesus is saying here would be to picture discipleship as a wheel with Jesus at the hub and the spokes representing every area of our lives:
So with that big picture in mind, let’s take a few minutes to look at the words of Jesus in some more detail here and learn…
HOW TO TELL IF I’M “ALL IN” FOR JESUS
1. I take pleasure in my relationship with Jesus
If anyone would come after me…
The ESV translation that we’re using actually obscures an important truth here. Literally this phrase should be translated something more like this:
If anyone desires to come after me…
The verb “desire” conveys the idea of enjoying or finding pleasure in something or someone. It is also a present tense verb, which means that Jesus was indicating here that the first step in being “all in” for Him is to continually take pleasure in my relationship with Him.
A lot of people in Jesus’ day and a lot of people still today have missed out on the joy of being a disciple of Jesus because they are always thinking about what they are going to miss out on if they become a disciple of Jesus rather than focusing on the deep abiding joy that relationship could bring to their lives.
But that would be like being in a marriage where all I ever thought about is all the other girls I could no longer date because I’m married to my wife. Not only would I not be “all in” in that marriage, that mindset would rob both of us of the intimacy and joy that God intended for us to have in that marriage relationship.
Frankly, until I come to the point where I continually find joy in my relationship with Jesus and where getting to know Him better is my highest priority, then I’ll never be able to move on to the next two steps that we’ll look at this morning.
2. I consistently say “no” to self and “yes” to Jesus
…let him deny himself and take up his cross…
Unfortunately, many of us have been subjected to some very inaccurate ideas about what it means to deny oneself and to carry one’s cross, so let me deal with those misperceptions briefly.
Denying oneself is not, as some have made it out to be, the same thing as self-denial. It is not a call to withdraw from the world or to withhold certain things from myself, like some people do during Lent. While there could be some benefit in doing that from time to time, that is not what Jesus is talking about here. So what does He mean? I’ll come back to that in a moment.
There is also a lot of misunderstanding about what it means to “take up my cross”. Many mistakenly think it refers to the burdens that they must bear in life. So they will comment that their wayward child, or their cruel boss, or their unruly neighbor or some chronic health issue is their “cross to bear”. But again, I’m very confident in saying that is not what Jesus had on mind here. So what does he mean? We’re ready to address that now.
Let’s first look at the idea of denying myself. The verb “deny” means to “disown” or to “renounce”. It is the same verb used to describe Peter’s denial of Jesus on the night Jesus was arrested. It is almost always used in connection with a person and not a thing. In very simple terms, what Jesus is saying here is that I have to say “no” to myself. But where I think the problem comes in is that in this culture, we have come to define who I am as a person by the things I own and the things I do. So the natural inclination when I think about denying myself is to think of it in terms of withholding some possession or abstaining from some activity.
But what Jesus is calling us to do is to disown, renounce and say “no” to my right to determine how to live my life and to give that authority to Him. Eugene Peterson really captures the essence of what Jesus is saying here in terms that we can relate to in his paraphrase of verse 34 in The Message:
Anyone who intends to come with me has to let me lead. You’re not in the driver’s seat; I am.
They aren’t near as popular as they once were, but occasionally I’ll still see one of those “Jesus is my co-pilot” bumper stickers. But being “all in” for Jesus means that He’s not the co-pilot, He’s the pilot. And you’re not even the co-pilot, you’re merely a passenger who is along for the ride.
So what about this idea of taking up my cross? I don’t think that those listening to Jesus that day had any problem understanding what He meant. That is because to them the cross was not a piece of jewelry or a church decoration. It was an instrument of shame, humiliation, suffering, torture and death. Historians estimate that over 30,000 people were crucified by the Romans during Jesus’ lifetime. Thus, every person who heard Jesus say these words knew what He was saying to them.
Jesus tells us that if we’re going to be “all in” for Him, we have to die to ourselves, to our desires, to our will. And we need to do that knowing that it might very well bring with it the very same humiliation, suffering and torture that Jesus experienced on the cross.
Without going into a lot of boring detail, there are some grammatical similarities here that make it pretty clear that the ideas of denying oneself and taking up one’s cross are just two different ways of saying the same thing about what it means to be “all in” for Jesus. Together they show us that being “all in” means saying “no” to self – to my ideas, my priorities, my strength, my ways and my desires – and saying “yes” to Jesus – to His ideas, His priorities, to His strength, to His ways and to His desires. It means getting out of the driver’s seat and relinquishing control completely to Him.
3. I have developed habits to help me walk with Jesus
…and follow me.
The verb “follow” that Jesus uses here is frequently used in the New Testament to describe a disciple of Jesus. It is a compound word that literally means “to walk the same road”, so it could also be translated “accompany”.
The other important thing to note is that it is a present tense verb, which means that it indicates a continuing action. We could accurately translate this phase…
…and keep on following me.
or
---and keep on accompanying me.
So the idea here is that being “all in” for Jesus means that I don’t just make a one-time decision to say “yes” to Him and then just move on. If I’m truly “all-in” then my day-to-day life will be characterized by doing my very best to walk step-by-step with Jesus throughout the day each and every day. I think the picture of Jesus being the pilot and me just accompanying Him on His trip as a passenger in the back seat is probably a pretty good way to understand what Jesus had in mind here.
This last part of verse 34 is actually a very good bridge into the next step of the discipleship path that we’ll be discussing next week – Grow. That is because if I’m “all-in” for Jesus, I will develop some habits in my life that enable me to grow in my relationship with Jesus – to know Him better and obey Him and therefore be able to walk with Him in a consistent manner. So we’ll definitely spend some more time talking about how to develop those kinds of habits next week.
APPLICATION
Let’s see if we can take what we’ve learned from these two passages and apply it as we answer the four questions that I posed to you earlier:
FOUR QUESTIONS:
1. Have I already taken this step in my personal relationship with Jesus?
Obviously, I can’t answer this question for any of you. Each one of you have to do that on your own. But as you consider that question, let me remind you that, as we’ve seen this morning, the kind of commitment that is required to be a disciple of Jesus is more than some outward action like raising your hand or walking down to the front of the church or even praying a prayer. It is putting Jesus completely in control of your life. Only you and Jesus know for sure if you’ve done that
2. What concrete actions can I take right now to take this next step in my relationship with Jesus?
As I just mentioned, the kind of commitment that is required to be a disciple of Jesus is certainly more than just some outward action. It is a commitment to be “all in” for Jesus. However, there are some actions that each disciple can take that evidence the fact that that he or she is “all in” for Jesus:
• Make a commitment to the person of Jesus.
AS we’ve seen this morning, that is what it means to deny yourself and take up your cross. So if you have never made that commitment to the person of Jesus, we invite you to do that this morning.
• Be baptized by immersion.
Baptism is important to Jesus. I know that for two reasons. First, Jesus gave a command to His disciples to go and baptize disciples in His name. That command was not a suggestion or an option. The second reason I know it is important to Jesus is because even though He had no need for repentance, He submitted to baptism by immersion as an example for all of His disciples.
I can’t tell you that baptism is required for salvation because I don’t find that idea anywhere in the Bible. But I will say this. If you’re truly “all in” for Jesus and baptism is important to Him, then it ought to be important to you, too.
• Commit to membership in a local church.
Jesus never intended for His disciples to function on their own. While He was here on earth, He invested His life into a group of disciples that gathered regularly to be with Him. And He made it clear that once He rose from the dead and returned to His Father that it is His plan for His disciples to continue to gather with other disciples on a regular basis for the purposes of worship, spiritual growth, service and evangelism.
Making a commitment to be a member of a local church shows that the church, the body of Christ, which is so important to Him, is also important to you. And the good news is that we’re going to be having a new members’ class in just a few weeks on February 4. I’m excited about those of you who have already signed up for that class. If you’d like to take part, but for some reason that date or time doesn’t work for you, then let me know and we’ll make arrangements to accommodate your schedule.
3. How can I help someone else I know take this step in his or her life?
• Walk with Jesus personally
Our world is full of people who are living for themselves. So when we genuinely walk with Jesus and become more selfless, the people around us begin to take notice because that is so foreign to what they usually see. Obviously none of us will ever get this idea of being “all in” for Jesus completely right as long as we’re here on this earth. But I’m convinced that the more consistently we do that, the more opportunities we’ll get to tell other people why our lives are different and how theirs can be different, too. But we can’t do that unless we also…
• Make time to develop relationships with unbelievers
We spent a fair amount of time talking about this last week, so I won’t tarry hear. Developing relationships with those who are not yet disciples of Jesus requires us to be intentional about that and it also requires time. So that means I might need to evaluate my schedule and see if there are some things I need to eliminate so that I’ll have an opportunity to develop relationships with unbelievers.
4. What can we do as a church to help people take this step in their lives?
• Our discipleship path
One of the primary reasons that we’ve developed the discipleship path that we’re introducing here at the beginning of a new year is because it is a tool that encourages each of us to make an honest evaluation of our walk with Jesus and to identify concrete steps we can take to mature in our relationship with Him, including any of the commitments we mentioned earlier that any of us haven’t taken yet.
• Our New Members’ Class
Since I’ve already mentioned this I’ll be real brief here. But one of the purposes of our New Members’ Class is to clearly explain the entire gospel so that people can make an informed decision about being “all in” for Jesus and take the practical steps that we’ve outline this morning.
INSPIRATION
Now that we’ve taken some time to look at the words of Jesus, let me ask you again the question that I posed earlier. When it comes to discipleship, who is at least closer to the truth – the people from the past like Martin Luther and Dietrich Bonhoeffer who wrote about the sacrifice required to be a disciple of Jesus or our modern day Christian authors who focus on how becoming a disciple of Jesus is going to make my life better? I think we probably all knew that answer earlier, but I hope know we understand a little better why that is that case.
I think Dietrich Bonhoeffer did a pretty good job of summarizing the words of Jesus that we studied this morning didn’t he?
When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.
[Prayer]
ACTION
We need your help this morning. Please go ahead and take out your bulletins and tear off the Connection Card on the flap. For the next several weeks, I’m going to be asking you to help the Elders do some evaluation of where we’re at as a church body when it comes to the steps of our discipleship path so that we can determine where we need to focus our efforts and resources.
On the inside flap of that bulletin, there is a place for you to just check off some boxes to indicate whether you’ve already made the three commitments that we’ve talked about this morning:
• A personal commitment to the person of Jesus
• Baptism by immersion
• Church membership
There is also a place for you to indicate if you’re ready to make one or more of those commitments that you haven’t previously made. If you’re checking one of those boxes, we’ll need your contact information so that we can contact you to follow up. Otherwise, we don’t need that information and you can just submit the information anonymously.
Discussion questions for the Bible Roundtable
1. How would you respond to someone who says that the kind of discipleship we’re talking about today is just for the “super committed” and that it’s not required for a “normal” Christian?
2. What is the difference, if any, between denying oneself and self-denial? Is there a legitimate place for self-denial in the life of a Christian?
3. What are some benefits of the pyramid depictions of the Christian life that were mentioned this morning? What are some of the drawbacks? Same question for the wheel illustration.
4. How would you explain in your own words what it means to be “all in” for Jesus?
