Sermons

Introduction

Will you open your Bible to Luke chapter 9? Luke chapter 9 is my assignment today. It's always a joy to be with you and a privilege to study the word of God and to visit the sovereign nation of Texas from my incarceration in California, and it's it's good to be here and experience freedoms. But the high privilege is this text that was assigned to me, Luke 9:18-27. This is such an important passage. It occurs in all three synoptic gospels. In other words, you find it in Matthew and Mark and Luke where Peter confesses that Jesus is the Christ when Jesus asks him, "Who do men say that I am?" and then He says, "Who do you say that I am?" and then where Jesus calls His disciples to to die to themselves, take up their crosses and follow Him. It's some of the most famous words of Christ, one of His most famous, kind of, mini sermons. And I just love the way Luke presents it, and it was a joy to work through this, and I'm eager to share it with you this morning. So let me read the text, pray, and then we'll we'll jump right in. It's Luke chapter 9, verses 18 to 27.

The word of God says, "And it happened that while He was praying alone, the disciples were with Him, and He questioned them, saying, 'Who did the crowd say that I am?" And they answered and said, 'John the Baptist, and others say Elijah; but others, that one of the prophets of old has risen again.' And He said to them, 'But who do you say that I am?' And Peter answered and said, 'The Christ of God.' But He warned them and directed them not to tell this to anyone, saying, 'The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed and raised up on the third day.'

"And He was saying to all, 'If anyone wishes to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake, he is the one who will save it. For what is a man profited if he gains the whole world, and loses or forfeits his own soul? For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when He comes in His glory, and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels. But I say to you truthfully, there are some of those standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God.'" This is the very word of the living God. Let's ask Him to bless His word.

[Prayer] Father, would You, by Your Spirit, instruct us and illuminate Your word. Help us to understand it. Help us to diligently and carefully listen to it, not just hear it, but listen to it, and to do what You say. Show us how we need to turn away from sin in our life, how we need to love Jesus more sincerely, how we need to serve one another from the heart. Show us what it means to truly know the identity of the Son of God and to call ourselves His disciples. We ask this in His matchless name. Amen. [End]

We all have lots of questions that we face every day, some of them are inconsequential. As I perused, one of the Texas freedoms I enjoyed yesterday was I perused a gun store. I had no desire – I only had desire. I had no means to purchase a gun. I'm flying on an airplane. Guns aren't allowed in California, et cetera, but I entertained the possibilities. Imagine if I had a pistol that shot shotgun shells, stuff like that, and just for fun, just looking. And I asked myself some of those not deep, not existential questions: "Which one is shinier? Which one do I like better?"

We face lots of questions every day: "What are you going to have for lunch? Is it chicken or is it beef? What are you going to have for lunch?" You're thinking about it even now. It's dangerous to bring up that subject. But we also face more profound questions, don't we, more ultimate questions. And that's the title of today's sermon on Luke chapter 9, verses 18 to 27. I want to call it "Ultimate Questions."

Ultimate questions are those questions that people ask when they're being very honest with themselves, like, "Who really am I, and what's the purpose of my life? What does God want from me? What am I doing with the gifts and talents that God has given me? What am I doing with my sin and the wrong things that I've done?" These are ultimate kind of questions, questions that people ask in those darker moments, "Where is God when I'm suffering?" those kind of questions.

Well, in Luke chapter 9, what we find are questions that are best described as ultimate, ultimate, because the Lord Himself poses a question to His disciples about His own identity: "Who do men say that I am?" And after hearing those popular answers, He asks them and every disciple who would ever assume to follow Jesus, "Who do you say that I am?" And that can only be described as an ultimate kind of question. And so we're asking those kind of questions this morning. And I want you to hold that question as your own question. If the Lord were to look at you and say, "Who do you say that Jesus is?" how would you answer that question?

But there's another ultimate question in this passage in verses 23 to 27 that has to do with, "What does it mean to follow Jesus? What's it mean to call yourself a Christian, a follower of Christ?" These are ultimate questions that define not only the ultimate reality of, "Who is God? Who is Jesus Christ?" but, "What are you going to do about it? What are the responsibilities that you have in light of that truth?"

This is a pressing and probing kind of section of scripture that shows us not only who this One we're celebrating at Christmas really is, "Who is the Lord Jesus Christ?" but,  "What are we supposed to respond to His claims with?" And it's all here for us in these passages. So I think we just look at it in the natural division of this text.

The Question That Jesus Poses To All His Disciples

If you look down at your Bible, Luke 9:18-22, let's call that "The question that Jesus poses to all His disciples. The question that Jesus poses to all His disciples." And then we'll look at verses 23 to 27, and let's call that "The commitment that Jesus requires from all His disciples." Both are asking us, really, "Who is Christ to you? Who is He, and how have you responded to His claims on your life?"

This is one of the most significant teaching passages in the entire Bible. These are the reddest of red letters. These are the words of Christ Himself about who He is and what we are to do with Him, what it means to follow Him. And the beautiful thing about this is is on our very subjective age, an age where everybody has their own answer to questions, right: "Well, who's Jesus to me? Well, what does my faith look like?" It's very personal, very private, very subjective, everybody has a different answer. That just doesn't hold up in a passage like this. Jesus tells us exactly who He is and exactly what it means to follow Him. You don't get to define what it means to be a Christian, Christ does, and that's what this passage is all about.

So, let's dive into this first section, verses 18 to 22, "The question Jesus poses to all His disciples." Let me take you there, verse 18: "And it happened that while He was praying alone, the disciples were with Him." That's probably enough for now. "It happened while Jesus was praying." I already told you that this little incident, Jesus asking, "Who do people say that I am?" is covered by all the synoptic gospels, by Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Matthew and Mark set it up way, way different. And I was talking to somebody between services about this. This is called harmonizing the gospels.

Critics of the Bible say, "Well, these things aren't presented in exactly the same way." Well, that's actually proof of the truthfulness and historicity of the Bible. And there's a purpose why it's not set up the same way. The set up that Matthew and Mark have for this conversation takes place in a specific geographic location, and they make a big deal of it. They say, "At Caesarea Philippi." It's a place in northern Israel. You could visit there today. You might need to bring a fat jacket. But you could go there.

And lots of tourists visit. It's kind of a beautiful national park area. And there's this gigantic carved area in the stone where there was this ancient idol worship that went on in Jesus' day. All these different gods and goddesses were revered and worshiped and sacrificed to in this particular spot, likely the place where Jesus was having this question about His own identity, a place where people were worshiping false gods and goddesses. And for Matthew and Mark, that's a big deal because here is Christ, the one who claims to be God and who has exclusive claims on deity. There is not many gods, there's one God, one true God, and if you do not worship Jesus, you do not worship God. And so they're emphasizing the exclusivity of Christ.

Luke arranges it a little different. He's not telling us that it happened in a different place, he's putting His story a particular way for the shape of it, for the narrative function of it. And as we heard from Brother Paul last week, we just saw Jesus' greatest miracle. His greatest miracle wasn't the resurrection of the young person, the son of the grieving widow. His greatest miracle wasn't healing a withered hand or restoring sight to the blind. His greatest miracle on scale, like, the size of it, was the feeding of the five thousand. This is a crowd, in the way biblical numbers work, of likely fifteen-twenty thousand people, and Jesus provided food for all of them, met their needs in a very practical, tangible way. This demonstrated the scope of Jesus' power, the influence that He could have in not only providing for that many people, but directing all those people.

Remember, He put them in groups, and organized the disciples to give out the food and then collected the remainders. I mean, this is an organizational and administrative function that Jesus is demonstrating His divine power and provision. But the scale of it is what's so remarkable. It really shows the potential in the people's minds of Jesus as a leader, Jesus as a king, Jesus as a provider. And so the potential here for the people assessing who Jesus is, it's got to be at an all-time high because of this great miracle. And so that's part of that context of verse 18, "And it happened while He was with the disciples who were with Him."

The other thing Luke emphasizes is that Jesus was praying. And all the gospel writers remark on the prayer life of Jesus throughout His ministry. Luke does it more than anybody else. Did you know that? Luke talks more about Jesus praying privately and with His disciples than any other writer by quite a lot.

The "when" of Jesus praying is in the gospel of Luke, always associated with these great moments of redemptive history. Jesus is praying right before His baptism, and the Spirit comes down and lights on Him, and the Lord identifies Him as His beloved Son. Jesus is praying before the transfiguration. Jesus is praying in these significant moments in salvation history. This is one of those moments.

Before Jesus has the disciples disclose His true identity and before He challenges them to what it means to be a disciple, Jesus is spending time in communion with His Father. He's praying to God, He's by Himself. He's preparing His own heart for what's about to happen. In other words, Luke is telling us not just where this happened, that's not as big of a concern for him, he's telling us why this is happening. It is the time in Jesus' ministry for Him to, for His closest followers, unveil His mission and identity in a next level kind of a way to ensure the secrecy of His identity and mission stays, at this point, just with them, and then challenge everyone who will ever follow Jesus to follow Him in a way that Jesus says He must be followed. That's the setup, the prayer of Jesus Himself to God His Father in light of this massive miracle that demonstrated Jesus' power and ability to sway and provide and govern a massive amount of people. If there was any time where Jesus could have made Himself the king, it would have been this moment.

But look what happens, verse 18: "He questioned the disciples and He asked them, 'Who do the crowds' – it's the word "crowds" – 'say that I am?'" And He uses that word "crowds" because that's the exact word from earlier in chapter 9 that describes that mass of people that He was feeding with the basket and the fish and the loaves. "Who do the crowds say that I am?" ochloi. It's like hoi polloi. It's "crowds," it's "masses of people." It's, "What's the popular opinion about Jesus?" And His question is, "What do the crowds say?" and it's asked in the context of the feeding of the five thousand.

The disciples, remember, are not just observers anymore, they're apostles. They've been commissioned at the beginning of chapter 9. They've been given jobs. They're part of Jesus's ministry team. And so they've been sent out to preach the kingdom of God, chapter 9, verse 2. They've been instructed in how they are to go and make these presentations about who Jesus is and how they're to conduct themselves. And then they've been enlisted in this massive effort to find provision for all these people as Jesus gives them fish and bread. And their job, remember, was to distribute all this food. And so they would have done that not in silence but in gracious Middle Eastern hospitality, right? They're talking to the people. They're handing out the lunches. The people are abuzz about this great miracle about who Jesus is. They've listened to His teaching, and they're interacting with Him.

So Jesus asks His disciples, "What's the buzz? What's the crowd say about who I am?" And there's one answer that most of the people in the crowd all were hanging onto, and they provide that to Jesus in verse 19: "John the Baptist." Record scratch. What? Why would they think He's John the Baptist? They're clearly two different people. I mean, some of them were there the day that Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist. So how does that work? Two different people.

Well, John the Baptist was such a legend in Israel at this point, and he had become so famous and so popular and so prophetic, and he had so many disciples and followers, that upon the news of his death, because he's died at this point in the narrative, people thought, "Perhaps John the Baptist has raised again. Maybe this is John the Baptist." In some kind of weird conflation in their minds, that's the popular opinion: "Jesus is resurrected John the Baptist."

But there would have been other people in the crowd that said, "That doesn't make sense," and the reason they said that is because, well, it doesn't make sense. And so they said, "He's maybe" – verse 19 – "Elijah." And this isn't a bad guess either because there's so much Elijah-ness about Jesus. Elijah was that prophet who raised the widow's son and provided for her livelihood by giving this supernatural flour and oil. Remember, we talked about that a few weeks ago. And Jesus did miracles in this same exact place that Elijah ministered. And Elijah also had this bent in his ministry for outsiders, and he welcomed them in and ministered to them, and Jesus was doing that, and so people thought, "This is very Elijah-like." And they're not wrong. But they are wrong that He's Elijah because He's not Elijah. There was a lot of popular thinking about Elijah returning and bringing about the messianic reign, and so they thought maybe this is him.

And then a third speculation in verse 19, "He's one of the prophets of old has risen again." Well, in our world, old is bad. I have teenage kids, they'll tell you right now, "Old? Not cool." New is good. It was the opposite back then. Back then, old stuff was the best. As we say, "There's no school like the old school." You know what I'm talking about. So that's how they thought. They thought something that's old is something that's been proven, something that's faithful, something that's sure and trusted. And so a prophet of old wasn't some rusty, junky old prophet. A prophet of old is the good stuff. This is the best. This is God bringing back that which is most authenticated and most valid and most truthful.

So, every single opinion the crowd had of these three opinions, none of them are negative, they're all positive opinions, but they're not the truth. They don't go far enough. And so in verse 19, these opinions are listed. And then Jesus looks more closely at His disciples, specifically at Peter, who so often functioned as the leader of the disciples, and He says to them, "Who do you" – and in Greek, "you" is underlined, emphasized emphatically – "Who do you say that I am?" And that question should ring in the ears of every would-be disciple. It is a provocative, it's an important, it's a timeless, it's an ultimate question, "Who do you say that Jesus is?"

Peter speaks on behalf of the group as he often does. John MacArthur calls him "the apostle with the foot-shaped mouth." John MacArthur's also called me Peter-like before, so I'm starting to put that together as maybe not a compliment. But anyway, he had a tendency to say stuff. In the next paragraph, the transfiguration where God gloriously shines down, and Moses and Elijah appear in conversation with Christ, and James and Peter and John are all in awe of the thing. Peter speaks famously dumb words when he says – I mean, in response to visible, theophanic, divine glory. This is a big deal, transfiguration. Peter goes, "Let's build three tents." Dumb, bad idea, miss the mark, swinging amiss, strike your out, the whole deal.

This is not one of those moments. Here, Peter speaks exactly right. "Who do you say that I am?" Peter answers and says, "The Christ of God," Ton Christon tou Theou, a simple little phrase in Greek: "The Christ of God." It's the Messiah of God.

Christ, we hear the word "Christ" and we think it's Jesus' last name, right? It said Christ on His mailbox. That's not what it means. Christ is a title in the Old Testament, and the Greek word Christos is the Greek translation of the Hebrew word "Messiah." The Hebrew word "Messiah" means "Anointed One." And this is where things get maybe less clear before they get more clear, but let me help you. As a former charismatic, let me help you, because the word "anointed" is totally misused in that world, and I think, largely, Christians misunderstand it.

"Anointed." We usually mean, like, "That guy's sweating and yelling and preaching; he's anointed," right? That's not what the word "anointed" means. It literally meant someone had oil poured on them. They were literally and symbolically anointed.

And three categories of people were anointed in the Old Testament. Prophets were anointed. In other words, they were commissioned by God to speak on His behalf and represent Him to the people. Prophets spoke on behalf of God. They prophesied they were anointed at a point of their service beginning. It was like a certification.

Priests were anointed. Priests were those who ministered on behalf of God's people and to God's people, and they offered sacrifices, and part of their ritual cleansing was to be anointed. In fact, the high priest was anointed at the start of his service. He was in charge of all the other priests. And they would pour fragrant olive oil on his head as a symbol of God's blessing and presence and appointment. That's what anointing meant.

So, prophets and priests and kings. Kings were anointed in the Old Testament. When David got the nod and Saul was replaced in 1 Samuel, that happened not in a private ceremony but publicly in front of the family, and in a way that acknowledged that the prophet Samuel was anointing David because he was God's chosen king. Anointing has to do with being chosen. It has to do with being validated. It has to do with being acknowledged and commissioned. That's what anointed means.

And that's what the word "Messiah" means. It's the Anointed One, the Chosen One, the Appointed One. That's the prophecies in the Old Testament that would culminate in the coming of Jesus were messianic prophecies. In other words, they were about the one that God had chosen, about the one that God had appointed, the One who would be a better king than King David but in his same line, the One who would reign forever, the One who would save His people from their sins, the One who would be Immanuel, God with us. And fill in all the Old Testament prophecies that you think about at Christmas time that remind us of the coming of Christ. We're talking about His messiahship, His anointing.

And so Peter and the disciples, they believe that Jesus is "the Messiah of God," not a messiah of God because there was plenty of those. Judas the Zealot, one of the characters in the New Testament, they were guys who had tried to raise up an army against Rome. And that effort was considered to be messianic, leading an army, leading a rebellion. Different leaders would pop up, and people would say, "Oh, this guy's probably the Messiah." They didn't think, "Well, the Messiah, He's going to be both God and fully man. He's going to die on a cross. He'll form a church stitched together by the Holy Spirit in subjection to His word."

That's how we think about the Messiah. That's not how they thought. They thought He was some kind of kingly prophet figure that would come on the scene and get rid of all their problems. And that's why Peter's answer is absolutely right and inadequate, because Peter didn't understand what it meant for Him to be the Messiah of God. He's right, He's the Christ of God. He's wrong in all the freightage and all the weight of what these people thought a messiah was.

And so Jesus rightly, in verse 21, rebukes Peter. That's kind of a wild thing, right? Verse 21, "He" – the LSB says – "warned them." But that's the word for "rebuked." It's the same word earlier in the New Testament, earlier in the gospel when the disciples were blocking children from coming to Jesus. Parents were bringing kids to be blessed by Jesus, and the disciples rebuked to the parents, like, "Stop doing that." And then Jesus rebuked the disciples, and said, "I like the babies." That's rebuke. That's what Jesus says to Peter.

And then He directs or commands them not to tell this to anyone. He's saying it not because they've identified Him wrongly, He's saying it because they need this full understanding of what it means that He's the Christ of God. And the full understanding is given in verse 22. Look what it says: "The Son of Man" – another divine title for Jesus – "must suffer many things for" – personals here – "He must suffer many things, be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, be killed, and be raised upon the third day."

So, whatever you think about Messiah, He's not the Messiah unless these four things are going on. And Jesus here is fulfilling and enhancing and deepening their understanding, which was so superficial and political and just limited in, "Well, we've got to get Rome off our backs, and we've got to get the land back, and we need a king in our place, and we've got to restore the tribes to their environs," and they're thinking so small. And they're also thinking pure victorious stuff like, "We're in charge, and and Israel's center, and we're God's people, and everything wrong will be made right." And so they have this eschatological future kind of understanding that's way too premature, and they don't understand that the Son of Man must suffer many things.

The suffering servant in Isaiah clearly portrays God's Chosen One being one who will endure much suffering. And Jesus suffered, didn't He? He suffered when He was beaten and scorned and abused. He suffered all kinds of opposition and blasphemy. He suffered.

Not only would He have to suffer, He had to be rejected. And it specifically says, "rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes." Those three parties make up something called the Sanhedrin. It's basically the religious supreme court in Israel, seventy of them, and they were in charge of everything religious in Israel. And there's a lot of religion in Israel, right? They also could interface with the Roman government and do things like put someone to death on a cross. So they were a ruling court. And this word is "rejected." It means "to be examined and scrutinized and tossed out."

So, what happened to Jesus in His trial wasn't just these bad actors making a willy-nilly decision. Instead, the religious leaders of Jesus' day genuinely and thoroughly considered His claims and rejected Him. It's remarkable to think about that. It's the fulfillment of prophecy because He had to be the stone that the builders rejected. These people who thought they were building God's house wanted to build it without God's chosen cornerstone. And so His rejection was a fulfillment of prophecy. The religious leaders had an expectation that they would maintain their power and privilege, and they'd do it without this kind of Messiah. And so with full information, they fully rejected Christ, and then they had Him killed.

And this was the thing that Peter couldn't understand. In other accounts, this was one of the several times where Peter rebukes Jesus and says, "No, You're not going to be killed. I mean, I'll defend you. I won't let you be killed. I'll take the bullet for you. I'll stand in front of you." But he doesn't know what he's trying to stop because the death of Christ is the only way that sinful people can receive full forgiveness in the atonement for their sins.

The shed blood of Christ. is our only hope, brothers and sisters, for our sins to be forgiven. And so it's necessary that the Lamb of God is killed. But not just killed; after three days, Jesus says He'll be raised. And they don't have a category for His death, much less for His resurrection. In fact, when Jesus is killed, when He's actually killed on the cross, they still don't understand this. And so they certainly can't understand it now, but the third day, resurrection is the vindication of everything that Jesus said. It's proof that He was God's own Son, proof that He was divine, proof that the Spirit was at work in and through Him. And so, here we have the true identity of Jesus, rebuked their silence because their expectations were all wrong, but mindful that the full gospel – and these words of Christ are so close to an actual gospel message, to the apostolic creeds and confessions, that the Son of God must suffer, be rejected, be killed, and raised on the third day.

Here's the thing, let's talk about today. There are lots and lots and lots of muddled views about Jesus floating around. Time magazine – if they still make magazines, I don't know why they would – but they always put a picture of Jesus on the cover at Christmas and Easter and some lame history channel kind of take about what kind of a philosopher He was. There's people who are living in your town and they say, "Well Jesus, He was just someone who really understood spirituality." There's some documentary that says, "Well, Jesus was actually married and He had kids." "Well, I think Jesus was this. I think Jesus was this. I think He was like a superhero. I think He was like a guru. I think He was a failed prophet, a moral philosopher, a revolutionary figure."

Jesus' question, "Who do you say that I am?" is not asking for you to just air out an opinion. Mark Twain says, "Opinions is what makes horse races work." And that's true. Just because you have an opinion doesn't mean you're right. And just because you think, "Well, this is who Jesus is to me," that's not what Jesus is calling for. He's calling for a clarified view of divine revelation that says, "Jesus is the Christ." Yes, that's the confession. "And the Christ must suffer, be rejected, killed, and raised on the third day." That's the gospel. If that's not the Jesus that you know, then maybe you have a false Jesus, like the Jesus of Mormonism, or the Jesus of Jehovah Witnesses, or the Jesus of all kinds of subjective thinkers that say, "This is who Jesus is to me."

Well, that's a very dangerous place to be spiritually. And Jesus wouldn't allow that kind of subjectivity. He clarified the wrong views. And He even clarified the right view to show that the only Jesus that saves is the Jesus revealed to us in Scripture, the Jesus who suffered, was rejected, died on the cross, and was raised on the third day. No other Jesus will save you from your sins. So that's the starting point of who Jesus is.

Now we move into this next section. The question Jesus poses to all His disciples has been answered: Jesus is the Christ of God. But now we've got to look at this next little paragraph which asks us the question, "What's the commitment required?" In other words, "What is the commitment that Jesus requires from all His disciples?" And I want you to underline that word "all" because look at verse 23: "And He was saying to them all."

So the prior conversation was just with Jesus' disciples like the smaller group. Now He's turning to a larger group of disciples. I don't think He's talking to the crowd like He was in the Sermon on the Mount, but I think He's talking to a larger group of disciples, maybe even hundreds of disciples, people who keep on following Jesus, not just people who come get fed, watch the miracles, and go home. These are people who are committed beyond the twelve. A larger group of disciples are described for us. They include men and women in Luke 8:1-3.

And Jesus looks at them. These are people who identify with Jesus, people who believe His words, people who want to follow Him, people who associate with Jesus. These are people like you and I, people who call themselves followers of Jesus. And Jesus clarifies for them exactly what it means to follow Him. And this is the most important thing.

The Commitment Jesus Requires For All His Disciples

Look at verse 23: "The commitment Jesus requires for all His disciples." It starts with an invitation: "If anyone wishes to come after Me." That's the start of it. Jesus is not closed off in this invitation to be His disciple, He is wide open. This is the same Jesus who says, "Any who are weary, any who are heavy-laden, come to Me, and I'll give you rest." This is the Jesus who offers the thirsty living water that will satisfy. This is the Jesus who came not to save righteous, healthy people, but to save sinners. This is meek and gentle Jesus, the Savior of all who would come. And Jesus is offering Himself in these words: "If anyone wishes to come to Me." If you have in your heart a desire to follow Jesus, a desire to have your sins forgiven, a desire to live for Jesus Christ, He invites you to come. He's a savior by His very nature. He's a compassionate shepherd. "If anyone wishes to come after Me."

And then He gives three commands here. So you want to come after Jesus, you want to follow Jesus, you want to be a Christian, well what's involved? Three things, verse 23: "Let him first deny himself," – second – "take up his cross daily and" – third – "follow Me." Self-denial, cross-carrying, and following are the three ways that Jesus defines what it means to come after Him. Do you want Jesus? Do you? If you want Jesus, this is what Jesus says you must do: You must deny yourself, you must pick up your cross daily, and you must follow Him. Those three requirements are what it means to come after Jesus. Let's look at them briefly.

"Let him deny himself." Self-denial is the opposite of the sinner's inclination of our heart. We want to take care of ourself. In fact, we have a whole industry now called self-care, right? And we all care for ourselves. Nobody opened the door when you came in this morning with your teeth, you used your hand. You think more about yourself than you think about anybody else. And to call us to self-denial is a reorientation of our selfish, self-ward, sinful life to center around His life instead of ours. To deny ourselves is, in the words of Earl Ellis, that a person must become apostate from his egocentric self – a call to apostasy from the egocentric self, a call to stop being consumed with self and lusts and sinful desires and self-exultation and ambition, and instead to abandon self and give yourself to Jesus is what it means to deny yourself, to be centered on Him instead of self.

Self-denial is the epitome of what it means to be a Christian. It's not about you, it's about Christ. It's not about your will and your desires, it's about His will and His desires. It's a reorientation of your entire life around Christ and His gospel. That is self-denial. It is turning from the sin that rightly condemns you that you've lusted on all your life and giving everything to Jesus and saying, "No longer my will be done, Your will be done." That is self-denial. It's difficult, it's not natural. Phil Ryken says it this way: "The only way to follow Jesus is to follow Him to the very death every day."

Frankly, most Christians wish there could be some other way to follow Jesus, an easier way. We'd hope that Jesus would refrain from making too many costly demands, that He would endorse the plans we already had for our lives, or at least He would let us live for Him with as little inconvenience as possible. We said we wanted to follow Jesus, but what we really meant was that we would follow Him as long as He was going, more or less, the way we were planning to go. Instead of giving up the life that we had, we wanted to find a way to add Jesus to it.

But the terms of discipleship are not ours to set. We are to "deny," the strongest Greek word of negation. That means to forget yourself entirely, to reject whatever it was that you long to please yourself with, and now you want to please God. That's what it means to deny ourselves. And Jesus calls us to turn away from that selfish, ungodly cultivation of our lusts and pleasures and to give everything to Him.

Don't get me wrong, this isn't asceticism. There's two ways you can fall off this horse. There's always two ways to fall off a horse, right? This side is called asceticism. It's self-denial for the sake of self-denial. And Buddhists do it, and health and fitness people do it, and gurus do it, and it's not fundamentally Christian just because you left some cornflakes in the bowl. That's not self-denial because it doesn't have Christ in it.

And the other side is to fall off on issues of Christian freedom and liberty. "Well, Jesus set me free, I can kind of do whatever I want to do." I mean, there's a balance here in your appetites and your proclivities and your freedoms. There's a beautiful scene in – I love C. S. Lewis. You can't get all your theology from C. S. Lewis, you'd be a mess. But you also don't go to Target to buy a pistol. So you get things from different people. So – a lot of pistol themes in this sermon, but I'm in Texas.

So, C. S. Lewis, that's what I'm talking about. In Narnia, it's the evil witch has made it always winter and never Christmas. Is that the worst, always winter and never Christmas? And as Aslan's on the move, the lion is coming back, Christmas starts to break free, and all these forest animals start to celebrate, and they have treats and Christmas goodies and Christmas beverages and Christmas presents. And the white witch shows up on her sleigh, and she lops off a squirrel's head and says, "What's the meaning of all this indulgence? Where did you get all these things?"

That's not self-denial. We can still enjoy God's good gifts, but we enjoy them centered around God. We still brush our teeth and not somebody else's. We still take care of ourselves, but ultimately we deny ourselves anything that would come between a devotion to the will and work and center, that is, Jesus for the Christian life. That's what self-denial means.

Secondly, carrying your cross. What does that mean? Well, to carry your cross was – I mean, we use that phrase all the time and we've completely changed it. I live ten minutes from from the church I work at, and it's just my cross to bear. I got to cross railroad tracks, you know, "Oh, it's my cross to bear. Oh," – I don't know – "I don't like to drive in the rain, it's my cross to bear. I have a small cough, it's my cross to bear."

That's not what they meant. When Jesus said, "You must take up your cross daily," the cross was an executioner's instrument. They had seen people carrying crosses to go be executed. It's the same as saying, "Take up your guillotine," – the thing to chop the neck – "take up your electric chair, take up your gas chamber, take up the lethal injection, take up the gun to your head, the firing squad." He's talking about a symbolic kind of death to self.

Leon Morris says it this way: "The follower of Jesus must deny himself, not just his sins himself. He cannot be self-centered. There's nothing self-indulgent about being a Christian. But the disciples had probably seen a man take up his cross, and they knew what it meant. When a man from one of their villages took up a cross and went off with a little band of Roman soldiers, he was on a one-way journey, he would not be back. Taking up the cross meant the utmost in self-denial. This is Luke's first use of the word 'cross,' and it comes with striking effect. Christ's follower has died to a whole way of life, and Luke tells us that this is not something that can be finished and got out of the way, it must be done daily. So says Jesus: 'He will follow Me.'" This is always about loss and gain. And as Jesus describes what it means to follow Him, we understand that to follow Him will cost us everything, and we receive Him in exchange.

Later in Luke 14:27, Jesus says, "Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple." And then He encourages His followers they need to "count the cost," count the cost of what it means to follow Jesus. And if you're not willing to follow Him on His terms, then you will not follow Him at all.

To carry your cross means the ultimate expression of self-denial, to die to your own will and wishes, and to give everything in your ambitions and heart and volition to Jesus who is the one you, thirdly, follow. "Deny yourself, carry your cross, and follow after Me." A mathétés, the Greek word for "disciple" is just an adherent, a follower. They literally would walk behind their teachers. It meant that they would go where their teacher went. And because Jesus has said that He must be killed, He has an actual cross that He will face. So why would it surprise His disciples that they too need to take up an instrument of death? Theirs may not be a literal cross – but for some of the apostles it was – but it will be a daily dying to self, a daily denial of self-promotion and self-indulgence and self-luxuriance and self-commitment, and instead a commitment to Christ and to go where He goes.

The commitment that Jesus requires from all His disciples is that command, "If anyone would come after Me must deny himself, carry his cross daily and follow after Me." And then He gives some powerful reasons. Three uses of that causal word "for," verse 24, and He gives us a paradox: "For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul?" It's simply the paradox of how possibly could – I'm sorry, verse 24, "For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, whoever loses his life for My sake is the one who will save it."

That's the paradoxical statement. The way that you gain your life is by giving your life. This is a beautiful portrait of what it means to be a Christian. This is exactly what the apostle Paul had in mind when he said, "I count everything as loss" – Philippians 3:8 – "because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ my Lord. For His sake I've suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish in order that I may gain Christ."

So, when we give up our lives for Christ, we receive Christ in exchange, and it's a good trade. You get that? It's a good trade, to give up the popularity, to give up the esteem of unbelievers thinking well of you, to give up the denial of fleshly pleasures, of sin's enticements. Why is it worth it for the Christian? Well, it's a cost-benefit analysis for us. Everything is worth it. In the paradox, if we want to save our life, we lose it; and if we lose our life, we save it. And so everything that allures our sinful nature needs to be balanced and said, "Here's what sin is promising you, or you can have Christ."

And Christ is worth it. Christ is better. He's our treasure. And in Him, "We find that treasure hidden in a field, which a man finds and carries up, and in his joy, he sells all he has to buy that field." The language of losing our lives and selling and forfeiting and denying is all because of gain, because we gain Christ, and His worth is far higher than anything else. So verse 24 is a paradox. That's the "for" reason.

Verse 25 is another "for" reason. It's the profit. It says, "For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses, or forfeits, himself?" Pile it all up.

When I was a little kid, about your age, young man, I had a poster in my room, a nerdy Christian poster that I got at Sunday school class, and it was a guy in a hot air balloon, like a cartoon of a guy in a hot air balloon. I lived in Albuquerque, hot air balloons are big there. And he was in the hot air balloon, and it had all his stuff, like his bike and his skateboard and all his stuff in the gondola of this hot air balloon, and he couldn't fly because he had all this stuff. And this verse was written on the poster – such a weird association from some Baptist curriculum or something.

But there's a point there in gaining everything. I don't know if you can picture everything on your Christmas shopping list and then multiply that by everything in the world. That's what Jesus is saying: "Everything, to gain everything – all prestige, all possessions, everything – but you lose your soul, it's not worth it." That's the profit-loss statement: "What is it profit a man if he gains a whole world and loses or forfeits himself?"

That quote by Jim Elliot, the missionary who went and died with his buddies to try to minister to the Auca Indians and they speared him to death on the beach in Ecuador in the 1950s. In his journal he wrote, "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose." That's what's being described here. It's the profit-loss of following Jesus. Following Jesus is worth giving everything else up for because He is more valuable treasure.

Verse 26 is another "for" statement. It is, "For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when He comes in His glory, and the glory of the Father and the holy angels." This is talking about final judgment – God coming with His holy angels to set everything right. And you someday, friend, will stand before God. And if you have faith in Christ, if you have denied yourself – that what it means to have faith in Christ – if you have trusted Him, if you've risked it all for Jesus, if you've committed to Him, then you will be the object of acceptance by Jesus.

But if you've been ashamed of Jesus, if you've refused to honor His name, associate with Him, if you have been ashamed of Him, When He comes in glory, He will be ashamed of you. That's what verse 26 says. This is the meaning of discipleship. This is the commitment that Jesus requires, not from pastors or leaders or big-timer Christians, there's no such thing. This is the commitment that Jesus requires from all His disciples, the greatest to the least.

And He ends with this vision of the kingdom, verse 27. Before He goes up in the mountain and reveals His glory in the transfiguration, He gives them a taste of the kingdom of God, verse 27, "I say to you truthfully, there are some of those standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God." This is a very disputed verse in commentators. The most common interpretation is a liberal one that says that, "Well, Jesus didn't really know that He would have to go through all this." He literally just said, in verse 22 He would go through all this. So that's dumb, we'll throw that one out.

Other people say, "What is He talking about seeing the kingdom of God?" There's a whole list of things. The resurrection, the ascension: is that what they would witness and see the kingdom of God? Was it Pentecost? Was it the spreading of the Christian message in the church? Was it the development of the full gospel message in the writing of the New Testament? Was it the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70? Was it the second coming? That's the one that also kind of needs to be thrown out because the second coming didn't happen yet, so these people weren't alive for it.

And I kind of take a package deal here. These disciples have been hearing about the kingdom of God since the very first sermon of Jesus. They've been watching the kingdom of God break through in the miracles and authority and teaching of Jesus. They're about to experience the kingdom of God in this visual display in the transfiguration in the next passage. And I think He's talking about all these things. These guys who are giving up everything to follow Jesus, these disciples, they will taste the kingdom of God before they taste death because the kingdom of God will be that thing that they enter into the reign of God, the rule of God. They experience it in the ascension of Christ, in the resurrection of Christ, in the death of Christ, and the spreading of His message. In all of it they will see and taste and experience the kingdom of God.

The kingdom of God's already among them, and then it's breaking through and it's breaking through, and it's a further and greater manifestation. His promise is fulfilled because they saw the kingdom of God in the consummation of the King's reign as He finished His earthly mission and rose up to be at God's right hand. They get a glimpse of it in the glorious transfiguration. I think it's all these things. But we report, you decide.

The whole question that we face is, "Who is Jesus, and what's it mean to follow Him?" The question that Jesus poses to His disciples in this passage and the challenge He gives them in the discipleship meaning is an ultimate question. And I have to ask you, "How do you answer that question? What are you going to do with Jesus? Who do you say that He is, and what does it mean to follow Him? Is this your definition of being a Christian?" because if it's not, then I don't think you know what it means to be a follower of Jesus.

Conclusion

There's an English novelist and playwright named W. Somerset Maugham, Maugham. He was an unbeliever. He lived a pretty wicked and debased life. Kent Hughes gives this illustration. And in 1965, he was 91 the year that he died. He was still very popular. He received 300 fan letters a week from people who appreciated his writing. He was also very, very wealthy.

His nephew Robin was a Christian, and he visited his uncle the year he died, and he described it like this: "I looked around the drawing room at the immensely valuable furniture and pictures and objects that Willie" – it's what he called him – "Willie's success had enabled him to acquire. I remember that the villa itself and the wonderful garden, I could see through the windows a fabulous setting on the edge of the Mediterranean were worth a fortune. Willie had 11 servants, including his cook Annette, who was the envy of all the other millionaires on the Riviera. He dined off silver plates, waited on by Marius his butler and Henry his footman. But it no longer meant anything to him.

"The following afternoon I found Willie reclining on a sofa peering through his spectacles at a Bible which had very large print. He looked horribly wizened and his face was grim. 'I've been reading the Bible you gave me and I've come across the quotation, "What shall it profit a man if he gained the whole world and lose his own soul?" I must tell you, my dear Robin, that the text used to hang opposite my bed when I was a child.' Then in that intimate moment as he weighed the trade-off of discipleship with his soul hanging in the balance, the great writer said this, 'Of course, it's all a lot of bunk.'" His nephew sadly went on to describe the bitterness of his uncle's last days when he would cry out in terror, "Go away, I'm not ready. I'm not dead yet, I'm not dead yet."

I tell you, it's a tragic example. And we're surrounded by many tragic examples of those who tried to save their life, but lost it because they forfeited their own soul. If you want to save your life, give it to Jesus. If you want to gain your life, then give it to Jesus. If you want to follow Jesus and have eternal life, then deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow Him. The gospel isn't self-denial, the gospel is faith in Jesus, and that faith leads to all of this discipleship. Follow Jesus faithfully, He is worth the risk.

[Prayer] Father, thank You for Your word. And may we risk and trust and commit by faith to follow Christ, to give up our lives in exchange for His, in Jesus' name. Amen.

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