Your Cross Has Arrived
“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.” Mark 8:34
Intro: This week we celebrated Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the season of Lent.
Lent is a the 40 days, (not counting Sundays) from Ash Wednesday till Easter.
Lent is a time of fasting, moderation, and self-denial.
During Lent, we are called to eat sparingly or give up a particular food or habit.
It’s six weeks of self-discipline.
I want to talk to you today about what it means to deny yourself, take up your cross and follow Jesus
And how to do so in some practical everyday situations.
Many years ago I was pastor of an average church that had about 65 in Sunday morning worship.
It was a church that had a sense of value from everyone knowing each other on a personal level
and by calling one another by their first name.
There was a senior member by the name of Bob who kept to himself mostly on Sunday morning.
He did not serve on any church committee.
He did not express his opinion very often. Usually not even when asked.
I did notice his car at the church fairly frequently and he and I became great friends.
Into my third year as pastor the man became ill with cancer
and after a very a short time developed pneumonia and passed away.
Everyone at his funeral expressed kind words.
Things like, “He never complained about anything.”
“He was always faithful to be at church every time the doors were open.”
And other comments about his “being a very private person who mostly stayed to himself.”
A couple of months after his passing I was still missing our talks and just seeing him around the church.
Then one day, a member of the congregation approached me about the light
on the outside church sign not shining at night.
I called the chairperson of the Trustees to inform him of the need to check the light.
He told me that in all his years at the church he had never known the bulb to burn out
and did not even know where the key was to unlock the lid to change it.
A few weeks later the clock on the wall in the sanctuary stopped working.
I took the clock down and it turned out to simply to be that the batteries needed changing.
When it was pointed out one lady said that in all her years of coming to church
she never knew the clock to stop working or the batteries to need changing.
Sometime later I noticed a hinge on one of the cabinet doors in the fellowship hall was loose.
I heard many people complain about the hinge being loose but no one took time to fix it.
After several more similar incidents occurred it became more and more apparent
that Bob was the one who fixed things and kept things going smoothly at the church.
No one was aware of just how much Bob had done.
The quiet old man who had kept mostly to himself
was the one who kept the light bulbs changed,
the batteries in the clock changed,
the broken hinges repaired, and the list went on and on.
The Season of Lent is a time to reflect on how we live out discipleship in the world around us every day.
For forty days before Easter excluding Sundays because every Sunday is like a little Easter.
We are tested,
and tempted,
our sins exposed before us.
Repenting,
searching for purpose and passion in our faith.
This cloudy journey through the 40 days of wilderness prepares us for what happens next.
At the end of Lent we will see Jesus during his last week in Jerusalem.
“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.” Mark 8:34
A little boy was playing in the yard. He fell and scraped his elbow.
It was bleeding a little.
It was hurting enough he went in crying to his mother.
She took him to the sink, with water she washed away the dirt from his arm. She took a band aide and carefully put on his elbow. She kissed the little boys elbow.
Then she sat in a chair and held him in her lap till he fell asleep.
She sat there in the chair not moving.
It took at least ten minutes before he fell asleep.
What made the little boy feel better?
Was it the cool water she uses to clean the elbow?
Was it the band aide she carefully put on the elbow?
Was there some magic salvia from her kiss that made the elbow stop hurting and the pain to go away?
No it was none of these.
It was the mothers own hurting elbow that made the little boys elbow stop hurting.
Have you ever sat still holding someone until they fell asleep?
Then you know what I am talking about.
You sit there.
Trying not to move in fear you will wake them up.
Before long your arm starts to fall asleep about the time they start to fall asleep.
You know if you move they are going to wake up.
So, you endure the pain in order to take away their pain.
That sounds like a cross to me.
Jesus said, you cannot be a Christian without one.
“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.” Mark 8:34
Sounds like an imperative to me.
When I say the word “cross” what comes to your mind?
When Jesus was hanging on the cross,
He prayed, “Father, forgive them for they do not know what they were doing.”
Notice the first words of Jesus from the cross recorded in Luke 23:34 are a prayer. “Father”
Jesus often prayed to His Father.
In Luke 10:21, Jesus prayed, full of joy through the Holy Spirit,
I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth.”
Shortly before His arrest, Jesus had prayed, “Father, the time has come.
Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you.”
John 17:1 And in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus had prayed,
“Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.”
Luke 22:42 Jesus had also taught His disciples to pray to “Our Father in heaven.”
Now, hanging on the cross, Jesus prays to His Father.
But Jesus is not praying for Himself.
Jesus is praying for others.
“Father, forgive them.”
Who is Jesus referring to when He prays, “Father, forgive THEM”?
It was the Roman soldiers who have just pounded those huge spike nails through his hands and his feet.
It was those same soldiers who stood at the foot of the cross and mocked Jesus.
“If you’re the king of the Jews, save yourself!”
Cold, words from calloused hearts.
Yet Jesus prays, “Father, forgive THEM.”
What do you think?
Do you pray to forgive the people who hurt you?
Yet there is your cross.
In the Greek text, that verb is in the imperfect tense.
The imperfect tense implies repetition or continued action.
In English, we might say, “Jesus kept on saying, ‘Father, forgive them.’”
Your Cross Has Arrived!
Turn to someone sitting next to you and just say it. Your Cross Has Arrived!
As part of the Christian life we are called to carry the cross.
A soldier was frantically digging in during battle as shells fell all around him.
Suddenly his hand felt something made of metal in his pocket so he grabbed it.
It was a cross.
Another bomb exploded and he buried his head in his hands.
Just then, someone else jumped in the foxhole with him
he looked over and it was an army chaplain.
The soldier held the cross up to the chaplain’s face
and said, “I sure am glad to see you. How do you work this thing?”
There is an old saying, there are no atheist in fox holes.
In other words in times of life and death
When faced with fears and stress
people will believe in or hope to believe in a higher power.
Whenever people are in danger and trouble they will often turn to God.
There is no argument here from me.
But I don’t believe in waiting until the last minute to decide whether I believe in God or not.
I don’t want to run the risk that I want be able to figure that out in my dying moments.
Do you want to run that risk?
The Latin word for cross is “crux”
It means “a vital, or pivotal point.”
It is the moment when everything changes,
The cross is the intersection where a person decides whether or not they believe in God
The cross is where your whole eternal future is determined.
Jesus calls you to follow him.
Not to simply look up to him but to truly be his disciple.
How do we live a life that is truly surrendered to God?
When we think about this issue of denying self that is almost a foreign term to us.
We don’t think in terms of denying our self.
We live in a world of Me rules, Me goals, Me dreams, Me plans, Me money, Me toys and Me gadgets.
When people -- and the behavior of people -- disrupt life in "Me," "me" gets very upset.
Cross bearing changes that all together.
Cross bearing is not about me but about what Jesus the Lord of Your Life want you to do.
When Jesus carried His cross up Golgotha to be crucified,
no one was thinking of the cross as symbolic of a burden to carry.
To a person in the first-century, the cross meant one thing and one thing only:
death by the most painful and humiliating means human beings could develop.
The cross represented nothing but torturous death.
Because the Romans forced convicted criminals to carry their own crosses to the place of crucifixion,
bearing a cross meant carrying their own execution device while facing ridicule along the way to death.
Therefore, “Take up your cross and follow Me” means being willing to die in order to follow Jesus.
This is called “dying to self.”
It’s a call to absolute surrender.
After each time Jesus commanded cross bearing,
He said, “For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it. What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit his very self?” (Luke 9:24-25).
Although the call is tough, the reward is matchless.
Following Jesus is easy when life runs smoothly;
our true test of commitment to Him is revealed during trials.
Jesus assured us that trials will come to His followers (John 16:33).
Discipleship demands sacrifice, and Jesus never hid that cost.
In Luke 9:57-62, three people seemed willing to follow Jesus.
When Jesus questioned them further, their commitment was half-hearted at best.
They failed to count the cost of following Him.
None was willing to take up his cross and crucify upon it his own interests.
Therefore, Jesus appeared to dissuade them.
How different from the typical Gospel presentation!
How many people would respond to an altar call that went,
“Come follow Jesus, and you may face the loss of friends, family, reputation, career,
and possibly even your life”?
Such a call is what Jesus meant when He said, “Take up your cross and follow Me.”
If you wonder if you are ready to take up your cross, consider these questions:
• Are you willing to follow Jesus if it means losing some of your closest friends?
• Are you willing to follow Jesus if it means alienation from your family?
• Are you willing to follow Jesus if it means the loss of your reputation?
• Are you willing to follow Jesus if it means losing your job?
• Are you willing to follow Jesus if it means losing your life?
In some places of the world, these consequences are reality.
Are you willing?
Commitment to Christ means taking up your cross daily, giving up your hopes, dreams, possessions, even your very life if need be for the cause of Christ.
Only if you willingly take up your cross may you be called His disciple (Luke 14:27).
The reward is worth the price.
There is story about a man traveling through the country.
He had with him a rooster, a lamp and a cross.
At nightfall he reached a village where he sought shelter for the night.
But no one would take him in.
“Love Jesus Above All,” said the man,
and he proceeding toward the forest, where he would spend the night.
He lit his lamp, but the wind blew it out.
“Love Jesus Above All,”he said.
The next morning the man woke later than usual
to discover the rooster had been eaten by some wild animal;
yet still he said no more than, “Love Jesus Above All.”
He walked a short distance
and learned that a troop of enemy's soldiers had passed through the forest that night.
If the rooster had crowed, or if the soldiers had seen his light, if they had discovered his cross.
he would surely have been taken a prisoner of war and would likely have met his death.
Again he said, “Love Jesus Above All.”
How often has God watched over us and we were not even aware of how close the enemy was?
The reward of taking up the cross is worth it.
What is it about the “self” that needs to be denied?
Disciples we must embrace the will of the Father just as Jesus did.
“Obey Jesus”
Given the close attention to this phrase “deny yourself” and “take up your cross”
“Join in Jesus’ Mission”
Jesus says, if you are not willing to deny self and take up the cross you cannot be my follower.
You see we would like something cheaper and easier.
But the truth is there have been a lot of people who will follow Jesus so far, and then go no farther.
If you take up the cross it means Jesus becomes Lord of your life.
It means you must become a Jesus’ learner
Jesus’ disciple
And you must do what Jesus commands.
A lot of people will do that to a certain point and then they will turn away.
Why because they think the cost is to great.
When you believe in God you realize you have a tendency to sin.
You are a sinner and cannot save yourself.
God cannot let sin go unpunished
But God being a merciful God and doesn’t want to punish you
Has provided the sacrifice for your forgiveness.
Your Cross Has Arrived
Jesus died on the cross and rose from the dead to pay the penalty for our sins
And purchase a place in Heaven for us.
He was wounded and crushed for us
He was beaten so that we might have peace
He was whipped so that we might be healed. Isaiah 53:5
He was hung on a cross so to give us the free gift of forgiveness and salvation
Closing: It is these moments in between life and death,
in between Lent and Easter that we ask does our lives have meaning?
Does our faith have value?
Are our hands like Jesus’ nail pierced hands reaching out to invite and encourage those who are in need?
Do our feet like Jesus’ nail pierced feet take us to serve the least, the last, the lost?
“Your Cross Has Arrived.”
These are the questions that Lent imposes upon us.
How do you answer the call of Lent?
The cross has to do with all that we do in this world as followers of Jesus.
Suffering for sure, but also helping a neighbor, doing ministry, sharing the Gospel
When we see our shiny crosses that symbolize this past event,
we must remember that it was really an “Old Rugged Cross”, as the song says, that Jesus bled and died on.
