Luke 9:23-27
Please turn in the New Testament
to the book of Luke. Our reading today from Luke is
chapter nine, verses 23 to 27. As we’ve mentioned in recent
weeks, the ministry of Jesus and his disciples is shifting
from the area of Galilee. And it’s going to shift in a
little bit, in a few passages to the area of Perea. Jesus geographically is going
to be moving towards Jerusalem. where he will ultimately suffer
and die. But there’s a little break in
the ministry of Galilee and before the next ministry where Jesus
gathers his disciples, he pulls them aside and he teaches them
some things. And one of the things he’s going
to teach them today is the radical nature of being a disciple. And in a sense, if we were to
paraphrase in our own words, Jesus is going to say to them,
if you’re a true disciple, you can’t be self-centered. You can’t
be self-indulgent. You can’t be looking out for
number one. And so let us give our attention
to God’s holy and inspired and inerrant word. This is Luke’s
gospel chapter nine, beginning at verse 23. Jesus said to all,
if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take
up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his
life will lose it. But whoever loses his life for
my sake will save it. For what does it profit a man
if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself? For whoever is ashamed of me
and my words, of him will the son of man be ashamed when he
comes in his glory and the glory of the father and of the holy
angels. But I tell you truly, there are
some standing here who will not taste death until they see the
kingdom of God. Amen. This is God’s word. Let
us pray together. Lord, we need eyes that see the
truth. We need ears that hear your holy
will. We need hearts that perceive
and believe and trust. And we need most of all, hands
and feet, bodies, wills, intellects that will leave this place to
go and do what you call us as your disciples to be and do.
So help us, strengthen us, Open our eyes, unstop our ears, soften
our hearts, and give us willingness to go and to be your disciples,
even if it costs us everything. This we pray in Jesus’ name,
amen. If you open your Bibles, I’m
not saying open your Bibles, turn there, but if you open your
Bibles to the book of Genesis, and you begin reading in chapters
one and two of Adam and Eve, their life in the garden, You’ll
read about Adam and Eve living in paradise. They had everything
imaginable at their fingertips. They had beauty. They had provision. They had God. They had everything
that God had just made. And it was brand new. It was
not scratched. It was not dented. It was not
yet marred by sin. Their marriages were meaningful.
Their walk with God was pleasurable. They were at work in the garden,
making it productive. They were dressing the earth
and keeping it. And everything was wonderful.
And as the children’s catechism so wonderfully says, Adam and
Eve were happy and holy so long as they served and obeyed God
perfectly. So long as they lived in submission
to his holy will, life for Adam and Eve was happy and holy. Now in Genesis 2, verse 18, there
is what we call the probation. The probation was given to Adam
and Eve in this way. Of all the trees of the garden,
Adam and Eve, you may eat. But of the tree that is in the
midst of the garden, you shall not eat. Of the tree of the knowledge
of good and evil, you shall not eat. Or you will die. And so in this probation of Adam
and Eve in the garden, the probation was this eat and die or don’t
eat and live. And we have to wonder. In our theology, we believe that
if Adam and Eve continued to live in perfect obedience to
God and did not eat the tree from the tree of the knowledge
of good and evil, this probation would have ended at some point
and Adam and Eve would have taken hold of the tree of life and
they would have lived forever happy and holy. But we know the
rest of the story. We know the beginning of chapter
three. We know that the serpent was more crafty than any other
beast of the field. And he came to Adam and Eve in
the garden and he circumvented Adam and his leadership and went
straight to Eve. And he said, basically, God is
trying to keep you from being happy. God is trying to keep
something from you, which would bring you great joy. If you really
want to be happy, don’t listen to God. Listen to yourself. And so Eve took the fruit and
ate. She gave some to Adam who was
with her and they realized their shame. They realized their nakedness. They hid from God. They sowed
fig leaves and covered up or attempted to, at least, to cover
their shame. And thanks be to God, God came
looking for them. And friends, this illustrates
to us, doesn’t it, the danger of self-indulgence. the danger
of living for yourself and not keeping in mind others who will
be affected by the way you live. It’s short-sighted. For we know
in our catechism, we know in our theology, we know from the
end of chapter three of Genesis that in Adam’s transgression,
all mankind fell with him. We know that in Adam’s first
sin, that all who were born after him by ordinary generation We’re
born with a sin nature. We were born in sin. We were
born to sin. And so isn’t it interesting to
consider what Adam did and how it affected so many? There’s
a website that I follow that’s kind of a Christian satirical
website. Some of you have probably looked
at it or heard of it. It’s called the Babylon Bee.
And they have pretty interesting things. They comment on culture
and politics and all kinds of things. But about every year
at Easter, they post the same simple message. And it says simply
this, couple follows heart, billions dead. And then there’s a picture. It’s an artist rendering of Adam
and Eve naked and ashamed and hiding from God. And isn’t that
interesting to ponder, to think about? It’s rather poignant,
isn’t it? Couple follows their heart. Oh, and we think, isn’t
that wonderful? We love to see headlines. I’m
sure if your Facebook feed says couple follows their heart, you
just get warm fuzzies in you and think, isn’t that neat? Couple
follows their heart. But the billions dead sends chills
into our body and our bones. Friends, it is short sighted.
It is. It is small thinking to be self-indulgent. For not only
was all mankind fallen in Adam, but creation, Paul tells us in
the book of Romans, creation was subjected to futility and
all creation groans under the weight of the curses of sin.
And Paul says to us in Romans 8, creation is eagerly waiting
for the adoption of the sons and daughters of God. For creation
itself was subjected to futility. It did not choose it, it was
done to it. And God comes to make all things
new. He comes to change our hearts, our lives as Christians, but
he comes to give us a new heavens and a new earth. And so when
Adam and Eve were short sighted, When they were self-indulgent,
it cost many, it cost so many so much. Think of another example
in the scriptures where someone was self-indulgent, where they
were Only after their own good, King David, for some reason,
was not off at war. And one day when he was on the
roof of his house, he saw at a distance a woman named Bathsheba,
who was not his wife. He, in the long run, committed
adultery with her. He lied to cover it up. He had
her husband murdered on the front lines of battle. And David in
that moment of short-sightedness, but self-indulgence, he sinned
against God. He sinned against Uriah. He sinned
against Bathsheba. He sinned against the child who
would ultimately die. But he sinned against Israel,
the people of God. He took a vow to lead. and ultimately
Israel would see a kingdom split. Israel and Judah in their split
kingdoms would over time see a continual decline in their
love for God and their obedience to his commandments. Israel would
be exiled by Assyria, Judah would be exiled by Babylon, Jerusalem
and the temple would be destroyed and God’s people would suffer
from the sin of David from many years ago. And I’m sure you can
think about in your own life how you’ve been self-centered,
self-indulgent, and you have hurt others because of your short-sightedness. And dear friends, Jesus is calling
us in our passage today to something radical. If you’re going to be
his disciple, you can’t live that way. And the reality is this, because
of Adam and Eve and the sin nature that is in us and because of
Adam and Eve and the futility which this world is subjected
to, we live lives full of futility. We live with relational struggles.
Our children suffer. It’s hard to work and our bodies
are wasting away. And we say, is there any hope?
And as we look through Luke, as we have done so for the last
year, we see that Jesus has come to make all things new. Jesus
has come to make his blessings known as far as the curse is
found. And little by little in Luke’s
gospel, the kingdom of God is being revealed to us by Jesus. As he heals, as he raises the
dead, as he cast out demons, as he preaches of his kingdom
and teaches of his values, He comes to bring hope of a better
way of life. He comes to those east of Eden
who are suffering because of Adam’s sin. And he comes to tell
us of a future Eden, a new heavens and a new earth where all things
will be made new. There will be no more pain and
suffering, no more sorrow and struggles and hardship. But until
then, we have a way of discipleship. We have a way of living as God’s
children. Jesus’ message to his disciples
today is really the fine print. You know the fine print. You
go to the Verizon store and you get your new phone and you get
your new contract for the next year and they have thousands
of words and you just scroll through it and you hit the agree
button and you sign your name real messy. Right? That’s how we do it. I just got
my new car insurance policy over the email. They don’t mail the
thing anymore, thankfully. And guess what I used to do when
they mailed it? I would file it. And guess what they do now
when I email it? I look for the price and make
sure it hadn’t gone up. That’s about it. We don’t like
to read the fine print, but Jesus is giving to us full disclosure. And he’s saying to us, he’s saying
to his disciples who were with him at the time, if you desire
to be my disciple, you need to read the fine print and sign
on the dotted line. The Christian life will not be
easy. It is a cross bearing life. Now stop there. Jesus had not
yet gone to the cross. Jesus had not yet walked the
way of the cross through Jerusalem. Simon of Cyrene had not yet carried
the beam of the cross for Jesus, who had been beaten too badly
to carry it himself. But for sure, the disciples were
very keenly aware that they lived in an occupied territory. In
fact, in our reading a few moments ago of Daniel, you were probably
wondering, who are these four beasts? probably refers to Babylon,
probably to Persia, probably to Egypt, probably to the big
four of the countries who surrounded Israel at that time. But that
fourth beast, who Daniel was wondering who it was, is often
considered to be the Roman Empire. It had ten horns. It was big. It was bad. It was it was nation
of all nations. And the disciples were keenly
aware when Jesus says to them, you must deny yourself, take
up your cross. and follow me that they lived
in an occupied territory that Romans executed with the cross. And that if you were to be executed,
you carried the beam of your cross over your shoulders through
the city, bearing the shame and the scoffs and the taunts. Ha
ha, you’ve been caught. You’re going to die for your
sin. Your punishment is due you. They were well aware of what
Jesus was asking of them. And so as Christians, when we
come to faith in Jesus and he promises that we are justified,
it’s just as if we’ve never sinned, just as if we’ve always obeyed.
And he promises that one day we’ll be glorified. All sin will
be taken from us and we’ll live in heaven forever. What of the
in-between? What about the fine print? What
about the Christian life between now and heaven? Well, it’s a
life of sanctification. It’s a life of discipleship.
God is at work in us by his word and spirit, removing the sin,
removing the impurities from our lives, calling us to live
for him, doing the heart work that is necessary. And the heart
work that Jesus is doing in today’s passage is this. You cannot live
a self-indulgent life. You’re a child of the king. You
are not your own. You’ve been bought at a price.
And he’s going to say to them, there are three steps for daily
Christian living. And so we want to catch a quick
glimpse of these steps, these daily threes, as it were. Notice in verse 23 of our passage,
it says that Jesus said to all, if anyone would come after me,
let him deny himself. There’s the first. Take up his
cross. There’s the second. And follow
me. Here’s the third. This is what
we might call the daily three. Some of you have your Monday
through Sunday pill box and you get your vitamins, you get your
heart pills, you get your whatever the doctor has prescribed. You’re
sure you’re regimented. Every day you take your pills.
And Jesus is saying to you, you need a daily dose of three practices
as a disciple of Jesus. First of the daily three is you
must deny yourself. What does he mean by that? Well,
you’re going to make moment by moment, day by day judgments
and deny yourself. Some of you are dieting. You
count your calories, you know, your sugars, you know, your fats,
you know, your, um, uh, whatever else, your carbs, whatever else
you’re worried about. And you’re counting them and
you deny yourself because you know that if you eat too much
of this or too much of that, You’re going to pay for it. And
that’s what Jesus is saying here in this daily three. You’re going
to make judgments and you’re going to deny yourself and your
fleshly desires to sin. You’re going to deny yourself
the pleasures of the world and you’re going to follow the way
of Jesus. You’re going to deny yourself following Satan, the
prince of the power of this air. And you’re going to follow the
Lord Jesus Christ. There’s judgments to be made.
Deny himself. Jesus says of his disciples.
And then take up the cross. Now, I doubt if any or any one
of us will ever carry the beam of a cross through the town to
a hill where we will die. But Jesus is speaking figuratively
here. He’s speaking metaphorically. Your attitude must be this. You’re
willing to endure whatever it takes to seek the incomparable
glory that is ours forever. in the Lord Jesus Christ. As
you make judgments and deny yourself and disown sin, your attitude
is a willingness to endure all, to take up your cross. Now, we
speak of taking up our cross or bearing our cross. And what
do we mean when we say we’re bearing a cross? We talk about
our mother-in-law. She’s a cross to bear. We talk
about standing in line at the grocery store. And that was my
cross to bear today. Well, lucky you, you had it that
easy. I could deal with a mother-in-law or standing in the grocery line
every day. But what about your suffering for being a Christian?
What about the persecution you endure by your friends? Because
you call on the name of the Lord. You live a certain way. You hate
the flesh and love the way of the spirit. It’s an attitude. But there’s a direction. That’s
the third thing in this daily three. Let him deny himself,
take up his cross, and third, follow me. It’s a direction.
It’s a pattern of life. You make judgments. You deny
yourself. You have an attitude of cross
bearing, willing to endure anything for the sake of the future glory
that is ours in Christ. But your life is moving in a
direction. You’re following Jesus. The pattern
of your life is one of discipleship. Now, let’s stop there for just
a moment. No one in the Christian life is perfect. It’s often said,
why should I come to church? Because church is full of hypocrites.
Now, churches are full of sinners and churches are full of hypocrites
when they aren’t followers of Jesus. They still live a self-indulgent
life and they check the box of I came to church. I put a little
change in the offering box or, you know, I had the Bible on
the coffee table. So should anyone come over, they
might see that I’m a Christian. No, that’s not discipleship.
What Jesus is saying here is the direction of your life is
following Jesus. People can look at your life
and say, look at so and so from 10 years ago, five years ago,
three years ago, two years ago, one year ago, one week ago. And
they can tell it’s obvious. It’s obvious to them. It’s obvious
to you that the direction of your life is marching towards
Zion in the ways of Jesus. And no, of course you’re not
perfect. And yes, you may do some hypocritical things, but
by God’s grace, you are marching to Zion, looking more and more
like the Savior, like Jesus Christ, as you are being conformed to
his image. And so the direction of our life must include the
word. It must include the sacraments.
It must include gathering when the elders call the church together.
It must include fellowship with others and prayer and suffering.
Remember, Jesus, after all, says, I am the vine, you are the branches,
abide in me. For apart from me, you can do
nothing. And so, dear friends, this daily three that we need,
that we find in verse 23, it’s making judgments, denying ourselves
that which will not help us. Taking up our cross, a willingness
to endure suffering, and following Jesus as we serve him in this. world. It’s a radical call, isn’t
it? It’s a radical call to leave
everything and to follow him. It’s a radical call to. As Jim Elliott said back in the
days before his missionary efforts in Ecuador and his ultimate death,
he said something like this, he is no fool who gives up what
he cannot keep to gain what he can never lose. Or how about
his friend who also died as a martyr, Nate Saint. Nate Saint’s dream
was to be a pilot for the military. And he watched all his friends
with perfect eyesight and perfect piloting skills able to go to
the military and fly airplanes for the United States. And he
knew that some of his friends, as he watched them, would not
come back from war. And he realized that they were
expendable. Their lives were as of nothing
for the sake of the cause of the United States. And he realized
that in time, as he was unable to make it into the military,
he was not fit to be in the military. He realized that he could be
like his friends who are expendable for the sake of the United States.
He could become expendable for the missionary cause. And expendable
he was, he gave his life to fly his friends, his comrades, his
colleagues into the jungles of Ecuador, where they would all
meet their death. And so this daily three is important
for us. We deny ourselves. We take up
our cross. We follow Jesus. Well, Jesus
speaks of the balance sheet. That’s the next thing we want
to consider. The balance sheet for the Christian. We find it
in verses 24 to 26. If he thought he was nuts already
telling you to deny yourself, take up your cross and follow
him, he’s going to give you the mathematics of the kingdom. Whoever
would save his life would lose it. Whoever loses his life for
my sake will save it. For what does it profit a man
if he gains the whole world and loses and forfeits himself? For
whoever is ashamed of me and my words, of him will the son
of man be ashamed when he comes in his glory. Some of you, I
can imagine, have visions of winning the lottery. And why
is it that we have visions of winning the lottery? Years ago,
I remember my great grandmother used to think that Ed McMahon
was going to knock on her door and deliver her the publisher’s
clearing house millions. And why is it that we believe
or have these grand visions? It’s because we believe that
money will solve everything. If we have money, we can buy
our way out of our troubles and we can buy things that will bring
us great pleasure. And so we have visions of winning
the lottery because money will buy us what we want. But Jesus
is saying not so fast. He’s saying to us, you can gain
the world, but lose your soul. You ever see these houses on
the market, if you’re thumbing through a real estate magazine,
or you’re looking at Zillow, or you’re reading the Saturday
paper with real estate, and you see these houses that are for
sale, they got a gazillion square feet, and they have like 19 garages,
and five hot tubs and all this, they’re NASCAR houses, you might
call them. And you begin to scratch your head and say, who would
want something that big? Well, every one of us does at some
point in our lives. And we come to our senses because
one, we can’t afford it. Two, we can’t heat it. And three,
we can’t clean it. So we come to our senses and
we’re happy with our 1800 modest square feet, no hot tub, no garages,
all the rest. But we get it in our minds, don’t
we? That money can buy anything and everything. And it can buy
happiness. And Jesus is saying to us, you can have garages full
of cars. You can have bedrooms and dining
rooms and dish cabinets. You can have a wine cellar with
every vintage bottle. You can have this and that. And
yet your soul will be lost forever. And he tells us about the opposite. He says, you can follow me and
you can lose everything. But in the end, in glory, you
can have everything. You know, many Christians, I
believe, are chasing the world, professing Christians in America
number a great percentage of our population. But, you know,
it’s very interesting fact that church. Attendance, this is in
the South. Church attendance in the South,
where everybody’s a Christian, right, is declining at seven
percent per year. You do the math. How many seven
percents will it take before the churches are empty? Another
trip to the beach, another sports trip for the children. We’re
chasing the world. We’re chasing earthly pleasures. And here’s something interesting.
A colleague in the ministry said this, and I think it’s very true
and gets us thinking. If we don’t like Sundays, if
we don’t like the Sabbath, if we don’t like church, if we don’t
like singing, if we don’t like being with God’s people in God’s
presence, then guess what? We’re not going to like heaven.
Because Sabbath or Sunday or worship is supposed to be a little
picture of what eternity will be like. And it’s very interesting
that the church is even chasing the world. We acknowledge Jesus
enough to get our salvation, our ticket punch to heaven. But
we spend the rest of our lives chasing the world and chasing
earthly pleasures. And Jesus is warning us of that
danger. Friends, you don’t want to wake
up one day spiritually bankrupt. For that is a bankruptcy from
which no one can climb out of such a great hole. The third
thing this passage shows us is a promise. We find it in verse
27. And Jesus promises this, I tell
you truly, there are some standing here who will not taste death
until they see the kingdom of God. He’s speaking of his disciples
and he’s speaking of the next passage we’ll consider next week,
his transfiguration, God revealing who Jesus is. But in this promise,
we are reminded that in Adam’s fall, all mankind fell. All mankind
are born in sin and misery. We suffer under the futility
of this earth and this life until Christ comes. And the gospel
is proclaimed throughout the earth. The gospel is preached
and proclaimed. Good news is offered and many
will reject the call. Many will be ashamed of Jesus.
And at the last day, Jesus is making a promise. Those who reject
me, I will reject. If you’re ashamed of me, then
on the day of my coming, then I will be ashamed of you. You know, friends, we hear this
gospel preached throughout the world. And it’s this gospel that
goes this way. Come to Jesus and all your problems
will go away. There’s no mention of suffering.
There’s no mention of cross bearing. There’s no mention of persecution.
There’s no mention of all the things that Jesus teaches. In
fact, the gospel goes on to say something like this. You can
be happy. You can be healthy. You can be
wealthy. You can be empowered. You can have a self-fulfilling
life. You just need to name it and claim it. And it’s a false
gospel. It’s not a gospel of Jesus. It’s
not a kingdom with values of Jesus values. No, God calls us
through Christ to the daily three self-denial, taking up our cross. and following Jesus. And that’s
a really tough way of life. Some of you are in the middle
right now of cross bearing and I don’t mean standing in line
at the grocery or you’ve got a tough mother-in-law. No, you’re
in the middle of suffering under which you feel like the hair
on your head is scorched. Your soul is being ripped out
of your body and you don’t know how you will make it. And friends,
one of the things we have to understand in this idea of disciples
bearing a cross is we must go the way the master went in order
to reach heaven. And if Jesus suffered, if Jesus
had to bear the cross, we have to suffer and we have to bear
the cross. And while you were in the thick
of hardship, while you were in the thick of pain, while you
were in the thick of bearing the cross, you need simply to
trust God and let him work out his purposes. You need to let
him do his holy work and achieve his holy ends. And maybe some
of you are in the midst of a couple of months of hardship. Some of
you are in the midst of a decade of hardship. Some of you look
at the math. And say, where’s my money, where’s
my value, where’s my retirement, where’s my this or that or other
that you have been called by Christ to lose? And you need
to stop there and to change your math. And to say, whatever I
gain on earth will be lost. But whatever I gain in Christ,
I can keep that forever and ever in his glorious presence. Friends,
God’s purposes, his purposes for the cross that you bear are
to remove your draws, to refine your gold and to conform you
into the image of the Lord Jesus Christ. When I was a freshman
in college, we had to read St. Augustine’s Confessions. And one of the things that we
had to learn over and over and reading Augustine’s Confessions,
he was a wicked sinner. He was a man of, oh, he did it. If there was a sin, he did it.
And he drove his mother crazy. Monica, St. Monica, she’s known
as, she prayed for her son daily. And by the time he was 18 years
old, he had illegitimate children. His father did not raise him
in the fear and nurture of the Lord. He raised him in the public
baths of the Roman world. He raised him to be a licentious
man, but his mother faithfully prayed for him. And one of the
things St. Augustine says over and over
in his autobiography is this, the way down is the way up. I’ve never forgotten that. And
so, dear friends, when you are in the thick of hardship, when
you are bearing a cross, you must remember that if you want
to go up, if you want to enter in the glorious presence of Almighty
God, the way down is the way up. That is so different from
what the world teaches. It is so different from the Contra
gospel that is being proclaimed in American churches. But it
is the way of the master and it is the way which he calls
us to live. Amen. Let us pray together. Lord,
give us grace to deny ourselves, to take up our crosses daily,
to follow Christ, to discipline our bodies and keep them under
control. Lord, keep us from being lovers
of ourselves and from being wise in our own eyes and leaning on
our own understanding. Give us to seek not our own good
only, but also the good of our neighbors and grant that we may
not live to ourselves or die to ourselves, but whether we
live or die, that we may be the Lord’s and we may live and die
to him. We need your help and your grace
to do this. We pray for it in Jesus name.
Amen.