In this sin sick world we live in, the prevailing attitude is “What’s in it for me?” Even in the church, people choose their church as to what will benefit me the most. Where can I get my needs met. Rarely do you hear of people who feel called to a church because of what they can contribute vice what I can get.
We are dealing with what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. We may say we follow Jesus, but do we try to imitate the Master? Or are we in church just because we have no better place to be? Are we in church following the crowds (the crowds in church are getting fewer and fewer.) Are we only in church when it does not cost us much in terms of time and resources?
We are going to look at our “Call to Discipleship” over the next few weeks. We follow Jesus based on our image of Jesus.
There’s TV Jesus, who says: "If you follow me, you will have the life you always wanted. Money! Wealth! Big house! Fancy plane! Unending health!"
There’s Hollywood Jesus who is mild and kind and never asks for anything difficult.
There’s the Magic Eight Ball Jesus who’s good for quick guidance or the life preserver Jesus who rescues us when we get into trouble.
Then there’s the Political Jesus, who wants to take over the American government with Christians and transform the entire nation into a "Christian Nation."
The fact is we all have an image of who Jesus is and the roles we want him to play for our benefit. Jesus challenges us when he says, “You don’t seek me for who I really am, you seek me because I give you bread.” (John 6:26ff) And, if we’re honest, our view of Jesus and the role we want him to play in our lives doesn’t quite match up with the Jesus of the Gospels.[1]
Let look at our call to discipleship. As we look at the real of Jesus of the Gospels, we will see that His call to us is not for the faint hearted. Dietrich Bonhoeffer said in his book “The Cost of Discipleship,” “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.”
We want to think of the Christian life as all happiness and roses, but that only shows that we have not read the Word. Today we will read from the Gospel of Mark at what Jesus had to say to those who would follow Him.
Mark 8:34–38
Today, August 8th, marks a kind of anniversary for me. It was 48 years ago today, August 8, 1973, fresh out of high school, I signed the papers and swore an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States and was officially inducted into the Army and that same day I was shipped straight off to basic training at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri.
I spent 7½ years in the Army and a little over 17 years in the Air Force. Most of you know I had spent most of those years, both in the Army and in the Air Force as a pilot. Many regard those in the military as just a another job with a regimented lifestyle. But it has been pointed out time and time again, there is a huge difference between civilians and the military member, whether they be a soldier, airman, or sailor. They are someone who, at one point in their life, wrote a blank check made payable to "The United States of America," for an amount of "up to and including THEIR LIFE."
There are those who gave their all on the battlefield or training field. There are even more who were marked for life by wounds received, whether physical or mental.
To those of us who truly follow Jesus, we have written a similar blank check. We have committed to Jesus all, even if it cost us our health, wealth, prosperity and our very lives. To follow Jesus, to be his disciple, is much like the Army today. You have to volunteer. There are no draftees today. I was at the very beginning of the all-volunteer Army, because they stopped the draft the year I volunteered. No one is Christian because they were drafted.
I do believe there are a few, like I had in my basic training platoon, those who “volunteered” because the local judge gave them a choice between jail time or the Army. There are those who come to Christ because there was nowhere else to go. there are those who came to Christ because God allowed to to fall so low that the only way they could see daylight was to look up. Nevertheless, without pushing the comparison too far, all volunteered to be a Christian. No one made you believe. As someone once said: “Salvation is free, but discipleship is to the death.”
But Jesus never sugar coated the call to follow Him.
Mark 8:34 And He summoned the crowd with His disciples, and said to them, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me.
That was a harsh call. It was not for those who are faint hearted. To “take up your cross” was not a figure of speech in Jesus’ day. The very idea of carrying a cross was quite repugnant to the Jew. The cross was an instrument of cruelty, pain, dehumanization, and shame. The cross symbolized hated Roman oppression and was reserved for the lowest social classes. It was the most visible and omnipresent aspect of Rome’s terror apparatus, designed especially to punish criminals and quash slave rebellions.[2]
The cross brings to mind “the sight of a condemned man who was forced to demonstrate his submission to Rome by carrying part of his cross through the city to his place of execution. Thus “to take up one’s cross” was to demonstrate publicly one’s submission/obedience to the authority against which he had previously rebelled.” [3]
And such is our cross. We trivialize cross bearing to equate with everyday struggles, with which all, believer and non-believer, struggles. Let us be very clear about this cross Jesus calls us to carry. In the parallel passage in Luke, it says we are take up our cross daily (Luke 9:23). The cross is the struggles, the persecutions, the slander we will endure, the prosecutions, the loss of possessions, and for some, even death, all because we openly follow Jesus, because of the testimony we boldly bear.
Revelation 12:11 And they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb and because of the word of their testimony, and they did not love their life even when faced with death.
Let us not trivialize our cross bearing. This is serious business our Lord has called for us who chooses to follow Him.
To put our passage today into context, we have to back up a few verses. Peter had just made the confession to Jesus, “You are the Christ” (Mark 8:29). Then Jesus proceeds to teach them what was to come:
Mark 8:31 And He began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.
But Peter and the other disciples did not get it. They still had in mind that the Messiah would rule over all. Peter tried to rebuke Jesus saying that Jesus had it all wrong.
Mark 8:32–33 And He was stating the matter plainly. And Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him. 33 But turning around and seeing His disciples, He rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind Me, Satan; for you are not setting your mind on God’s interests, but man’s.”
The suffering Servant must come first. And if the Master is called to suffer and be rejected, so must the Master’s disciples as well. It is not about us. It is all about the will of God.
John 15:18–19 “If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you. 19 If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this the world hates you.
Let’s go back and look at that call of Jesus again.
Mark 8:34 And He summoned the crowd with His disciples, and said to them, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me.
Jesus saw this as a teachable moment. For both the crowds and his inner circle of disciples, Jesus needed to covey what it means in real terms to follow Him. Okay we understand the cross, but closely related is the command “he must deny himself.”
Kent Hughes makes the comment: “Nothing could be more opposed to the spirit of our age. The world today says, Look out for Numero Uno. Save yourself. Love yourself. Pamper yourself. Live for yourself.” Look at the ad campaigns: “I believe in my car, my friends, my team, and beer!” Whereas primitive men used to drink the blood of their victims to capture their soul, our society thinks it can ingest virtue by what we wear, eat, and drink. Narcissism is the order of the day as multitudes ease their souls into a living death by the respectable vice of selfishness. A society of keepers inevitably becomes a society of losers. Ours is a society of losers!” [4]
Warren Wiersbe further comments: “Denying self is not the same as self-denial. We practice self-denial when, for a good purpose, we occasionally give up things or activities. But we deny self when we surrender ourselves to Christ and determine to obey His will. This once-for-all dedication is followed by a daily “dying to self” as we take up the cross and follow Him. From the human point of view, we are losing ourselves, but from the divine perspective, we are finding ourselves. When we live for Christ, we become more like Him, and this brings out our own unique individuality.” [5]
And verse 34 end with the command “follow Me.” In the Greek it in the present active imperative tense meaning it is saying, we are commanded to “keep on following Him.” The next few verses start with the word “for” (“gar” in the Greek), expounding on what was said in verse 34.
Mark 8:35 For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s will save it.
Because we are such a selfish society, because we, as a culture, believe we are the very center of our universe, we are out for ourselves. Jesus says if we are out to save our own necks, we will lose it. Remember Jesus is speaking with all eternity in mind here. We may be in it for ourselves in this life, but what is that compared to eternity.
James tells us the we are like a mere vapor, here today and gone tomorrow (James 4:14). Yes, we may save ourselves today but what about eternity. Jesus say we are to give our lives over to Him. If our lives are lost to Him we will save our lives for eternity.
Mark 8:36–37 For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and forfeit his soul? 37 For what will a man give in exchange for his soul?
“Soul” here is an interesting word. In the Greek it is “psyche” translated as “life” in the previous verse. The word means more than our physical bodies. It includes who we are as a person, our personality, our psychological make up. We have this tendency to give ourselves over to stuff, to the ways of the world, to lose our very souls to the world. We exchange our souls for things of this world.
Here again, we must keep eternity in mind. We may gain the whole world, but none of it follows us at death. I may have a hundred dollars in my wallet and if I should die right now, my kids will have it spent before my body turns cold. None of the things of this life will follow us at death. Only those things that last for eternity matters.
We can be successful in the eyes of the world, yet have nothing to show when we one day stand before God. All we do in this life affects our eternity. What have we to show the Lord when He comes for us? I believe the greatest reward will be to hear Jesus say, “Well done my good and faithful servant.” So where do we stand in this life?
Mark 8:38 For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will also be ashamed of him when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels.”
Herein is the thing. This adulterous and sinful generation that has turned their backs on God, who are against anything Christian, how will we stand? We will boldly proclaim Jesus regardless of the penalties in this life? I cannot imagine anything worse than Jesus to be ashamed of me. And He will be if I am ashamed of Him.
Jesus asks (verse 34) “If anyone wishes to follow Me…” being a follower of Jesus, being His disciple is a choice. Being a follower of Jesus is not an easy thing. It is not an easy road, it is filled with trouble. Is there any reward for the person who is a true disciple?
Yes, there is: he becomes more like Jesus Christ and one day shares in His glory.
Satan promises you glory, but in the end, you receive suffering. God promises you suffering, but in the end, that suffering is transformed into glory. If we acknowledge Christ and live for Him, He will one day acknowledge us and share His glory with us.[6]
Our question this morning is whether we will waste our lives on the things of this world, or will we invest our lives. Come the end of our lives, what will we have that is of eternal significance? We cannot buy back time. What will we do with the time we have remaining?
[1] www.sermoncentral.com/sermon-illustrations/84004/barriers-to-growth-by-tim-smith
[2] James R. Edwards, The Gospel according to Mark, The Pillar New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI; Leicester, England: Eerdmans; Apollos, 2002), 256.
[3] John D. Grassmick, “Mark,” in The Bible Knowledge Commentary: An Exposition of the Scriptures, ed. J. F. Walvoord and R. B. Zuck, vol. 2 (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1985), 141.
[4] R. Kent Hughes, Mark: Jesus, Servant and Savior, vol. 1, Preaching the Word (Westchester, IL: Crossway Books, 1989), 202.
[5] Warren W. Wiersbe, The Bible Exposition Commentary, vol. 1 (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1996), 140.
[6] Ibid.
