The Cost of Discipleship: Why the Cross is Not a Burden but a Blessing

• The Identity of Jesus [00:09:46 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor discusses Peter's confession that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, contrasting this divine revelation with worldly opinions.
• The Nature of the Church [00:06:09 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor explains that Jesus builds, sustains, and defends His church, emphasizing that it is Christ's church, not the ministers' church.
• The Suffering of Christ [00:13:03 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor details the physical, mental, and spiritual agony Jesus endured, including being forsaken by God, to purchase the church.
• Worldly vs. Godly Thinking [00:21:16 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor contrasts Peter's attempt to rebuke Jesus' prediction of suffering with Jesus' command to set one's mind on the things of God rather than man.
• The Cost of Salvation and Christ's Suffering [00:23:02 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor describes the agony of Christ being made sin and forsaken by the Father, contrasting it with the blessing believers receive, using the Aaronic benediction to illustrate the cost of God's favor.
• The Keys of the Kingdom (The Gospel) [00:25:58 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor interprets the 'keys' not as physical objects but as the proclamation of the gospel, which has the power to free believers from the curse of the law or bind them in bondage if rejected.
• Self-Denial and Cross-Bearing [00:29:31 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor argues that following Jesus requires denying oneself and taking up the cross, illustrated by his personal conversion story where he expected troubles to disappear but instead faced new spiritual battles and social rejection.
• Dying to Self and Mortifying Sin [00:33:09 ▶️ 📄]
  > Using examples from Bonhoeffer and Thomas Goodwin, the pastor emphasizes the necessity of being ready to die to sin, fame, and glamour, rejecting the 'health and wealth gospel' in favor of a life of mortification.
• Humility and Renouncing Rights [00:36:38 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor contrasts Jesus emptying Himself with human entitlement, teaching that Christians must not stand upon their rights in relationships or society, but take the path of suffering and humility.
• Victory Over Hell and the Value of Suffering [00:40:11 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor uses an illustration from Lord of the Rings to describe the church being built at the gates of hell, asserting that while suffering is inevitable for believers, it is worth it because of the eternal reward and union with Christ.
• Sacrifice and Reward [00:43:43 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor contrasts giving up lands and family with receiving a hundredfold in the world to come, asserting that this exchange is 'worth it.'
• Focus on Christ [00:44:09 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor describes how looking into Jesus' face causes worldly things to lose their significance and grow 'strangely dim' in His glory.
• Self-Denial [00:44:24 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor transitions to a prayer acknowledging the difficulty of taking up a cross and denying oneself, contrasting it with the human desire to fulfill oneself and know one's rights.

• Sermon Illustration [00:24:06 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor shares a personal anecdote about his three-year-old granddaughter asking him to say 'the countenance pops' during bedtime prayers, which led to a discussion of the Aaronic benediction.
• Sermon Illustration [00:24:06 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor shares a personal anecdote about his three-year-old granddaughter asking him to say the 'countenance pops' (Aaronic benediction), which he uses to contrast the blessing of God's face shining upon us with the curse Jesus bore.
• Sermon Illustration [00:30:05 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor recounts his personal conversion in 1971, expecting his troubles to disappear, but instead finding new troubles such as his mother thinking he had a mental breakdown and losing friends who rejected his new faith.
• Sermon Illustration [00:33:09 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor references Dietrich Bonhoeffer's diary entry 'Jesus bids us come to him and die' and his subsequent execution by the Nazis.
• Sermon Illustration [00:33:25 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor tells a story about Puritan Thomas Goodwin asking prospective Oxford students 'are you ready to die?', causing them to flee in terror, to illustrate the seriousness of dying to sin.
• Sermon Illustration [00:37:20 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor creates a hypothetical conversation between the Father and Son in the covenant of redemption, where Jesus rejects comfort and prestige to become the Savior, emphasizing His self-emptying.
• Sermon Illustration [00:40:33 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor uses a scene from the extended version of Lord of the Rings, where Sam, Frodo, and Gollum view the black gates of Mordor, to illustrate that Jesus builds His church right up against the gates of hell in enemy-occupied territory.

• Pastoral Charge [00:28:56 ▶️ 📄]
  > To stop using closed doors as excuses and actively proclaim the gospel.
• Pastoral Charge [00:33:53 ▶️ 📄]
  > To be prepared to die to self, sin, and worldly prestige for the sake of Christ.
• Pastoral Charge [00:35:05 ▶️ 📄]
  > To daily mortify sin and kill sinful habits at their root.
• Pastoral Charge [00:35:33 ▶️ 📄]
  > To speak out for truth and orthodoxy, even when it conflicts with the church or popular opinion.

[00:00:01] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_00]
[00:00:01] Turn with me to Matthew chapter 16. Matthew chapter 16 and beginning at the 13th verse, R.C. referred briefly to this passage before we heard his exposition of Isaiah 53 this morning.
[00:00:23] Matthew, chapter 16, beginning at verse 13.
[00:00:29] Now, this is God's holy and inerrant Word.
[00:00:40] Now, when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, He asked His disciples, who do people say that the Son of Man is?
[00:01:03] And they said, some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.
[00:01:15] He said to them, but who do you say that I am?
[00:01:23] Simon Peter replied, you are the Christ, the Son of the living God.
[00:01:34] And Jesus answered him, Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.
[00:01:49] And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
[00:02:04] I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." Then He strictly charged the disciples to tell no one that He was the Christ.
[00:02:29] From that time, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed and on the third day be raised.
[00:02:52] And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him saying, far be it from you, Lord.
[00:03:03] This shall never happen to you." But he turned and said to Peter, get behind me Satan, you are a hindrance to me, for you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.
[00:03:25] Then Jesus told his disciples, if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up His cross and follow me, for whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
[00:03:54] For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?
[00:04:04] What shall a man give in return for his soul?
[00:04:09] For the Son of Man is going to come with His angels in the glory of His Father, and then He will repay each person according to what He has done.
[00:04:25] Truly I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom.
[00:04:45] Amen.
[00:04:48] Now, this is the seminal passage that speaks of cross-bearing and self-denial as the pathway for Christians to follow.
[00:05:14] It's a turning point in this Gospel of Matthew.
[00:05:20] We see, for example, in verse 21, from that time Jesus began to show His disciples that he must needs go to Jerusalem and so on.
[00:05:32] Seemingly before Caesarea Philippi, the allusions to the eventual purpose of Jesus' coming, His crucifixion, His death in Jerusalem were only barely alluded to, but from here onwards The focus of Jesus' mission is now identified and exposed in a crystal clear fashion.
[00:06:09] It's a passage in which for the first time in the Gospel of Matthew, the word church ecclesia comes.
[00:06:22] familiar enough with this term, of course, in the epistles of Paul and Peter and John and so on, but these are not references that you find in the Gospels except here.
[00:06:39] Jesus comes preaching the kingdom of God, the rule of God, the dominion of God.
[00:06:49] But now at Caesarea Philippi, he also intends to build a church using a term in its linguistic origins refers back to events and circumstances in the Old Testament, a word derived from a Hebrew word to call, or to call out, or to call together into fellowship.
[00:07:19] The very term synagogue, for example, is a derivative of this very word that Jesus is using here.
[00:07:30] He intends not only to build His church, but He intends to defend His church.
[00:07:42] I will build my church.
[00:07:50] It's curious, isn't it?
[00:07:53] We ministers tend to refer to the church as our church.
[00:07:57] This is R.C.'s church.
[00:08:02] First Prayers Jackson I refer to as my church, but in another sense, it is Jesus' church.
[00:08:13] This is Christ's church.
[00:08:17] He built it.
[00:08:19] He sustains it.
[00:08:21] He defends it against all His and our enemies.
[00:08:29] However concerned you may be about the state of the church in the 21st century, and we are concerned about the state of the church in the 21st century, Jesus is more concerned than you are or than I am.
[00:08:53] This is His church.
[00:08:55] This is what He came to establish.
[00:09:00] It's a reminder, the passage is a reminder of the corporate dimension of Jesus' redemptive mission, not just to save individuals here and there, but to gather them together, not just to call them out of the world, but to call them together into a fellowship, into
[00:09:29] a body of which He is the head, and to defend that church against every hostile force.
[00:09:46] It's the passage in which Peter makes, as we were reminded this morning, the great confession.
[00:09:56] Jesus comes asking, what are people saying about me?
[00:10:04] Who do men say that I am?
[00:10:07] They're way up north in Caesarea Philippi, and he wants to know, what's the scoop?
[00:10:17] What's the talk?
[00:10:18] What are people saying about me?
[00:10:20] And some are saying that he's John the Baptist.
[00:10:28] Some are saying that he's Elijah.
[00:10:30] The Jews always had a thing for Elijah.
[00:10:34] They still do.
[00:10:36] Elijah didn't die.
[00:10:39] He wasn't buried.
[00:10:40] He was taken in a chariot into heaven, only Elijah and Enoch in the Old Testament.
[00:10:45] These are the two guys who didn't die.
[00:10:50] And there develops then this expectation that if He disappears into a cloud, one day He might reappear again.
[00:11:00] At Passover, there's an empty seat, a bit like that one over there, the tall one.
[00:11:07] An empty seat for Elijah.
[00:11:12] We're still waiting for Elijah to come.
[00:11:16] Some say he's Jeremiah, or one of the prophets, or maybe that he's prophet-like.
[00:11:27] Who is Jesus?
[00:11:33] Is he the panacea for all ills?
[00:11:38] Is he just one of a series of individuals who brings civility into humanity?
[00:11:48] But he's just one of many.
[00:11:50] Who is this Jesus of Nazareth?
[00:11:53] What can we know about him?
[00:11:57] And Peter says, and don't you love it that it's Peter?
[00:12:04] You know, it's one of these blinding moments of revelation for Peter, and that's exactly what it is because Jesus goes on to say that flesh and blood hasn't revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven, you are the Christ.
[00:12:21] You are Messiah.
[00:12:23] You are the promised one, the Son of the living God.
[00:12:31] Wonderful.
[00:12:34] Whole in one.
[00:12:38] He's got the identity of Jesus right.
[00:12:42] He's Lord.
[00:12:46] He's the Son of the living God.
[00:12:48] He's the sovereign Lord of heaven and earth.
[00:12:51] There are four things in this passage that this sovereign Lord does.
[00:13:03] He purchases, first of all, the church at the cost of His death.
[00:13:09] That's the first thing.
[00:13:11] He purchases the church at the cost of His death.
[00:13:15] Look at verse 21.
[00:13:18] It says, from that time Jesus began to show His disciples that He must needs go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed.
[00:13:39] That is why He has come.
[00:13:42] He has come in order that His life might be taken away.
[00:13:47] He has come to die.
[00:13:50] He has come to be brutalized by this world, to suffer, the suffering servant of the Lord, to suffer physically, to have a crown of thorns pressed down upon His brow, to have nails driven into His hands and feet, to be spat upon and scoffed at and ridiculed, to be hoisted
[00:14:32] above the ground on a cross with all of the excruciating physical pain of that, to suffer mentally.
[00:14:59] He cries from the cross, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
[00:15:11] We mustn't interpret that as some kind of pretense language.
[00:15:17] This is the finite mind of the human nature of Christ, a finite mind that wasn't omniscient.
[00:15:29] His divine mind is omniscient, but His human mind is not omniscient.
[00:15:35] He tells the disciples on one occasion that He doesn't know the date of the second coming, although Christians seem to be able to tell Him, of that day and hour.
[00:15:47] No man knows, not even the Son, but only the Father who is in heaven.
[00:15:55] It said in Gethsemane, the psychological suffering of the impending weight and burden of what was about to transpire as he identifies himself more and more and more as the servant of the Lord, and he was obedient, as Paul says, right up to the point of death.
[00:16:24] So that he cries in Gethsemane, Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me.
[00:16:39] You understand that the whole of redemption hangs in the balance at that point.
[00:16:51] That He knows suffering to such a degree that from a human perspective, He asks the question, is there some other way?
[00:17:07] I know He goes on to say, not my will, but Thy will be done.
[00:17:14] But He asks that question, Father, is there some other way?
[00:17:22] Because this way is so engulfing in its consequences.
[00:17:31] It's devastating in its consequences.
[00:17:39] He's brought psychologically to the very edge without going into despair.
[00:17:46] He's on the edge, but on the cross.
[00:17:51] He doesn't say, my father, my father, as though the assurance of his relationship to his father has been obliterated, as he has identified with our sin, as sin has been imputed and reckoned to him so that, as Luther says, he has become legally the most guilty sinner
[00:18:26] the world has ever known. And at that moment, he has no consciousness, no human awareness of his relationship to his Father. And so he cries, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
[00:18:56] He has lost not just human companionship. Have you noticed in the Gospel of Mark when When Mark describes the way Jesus calls the disciples, He calls them in order to be with Him, Mark says, just like that.
[00:19:14] He called these disciples in order that they might be with Him, as though Jesus needed the warmth of human companionship, the rapport, the fellowship, the camaraderie of human companionship.
[00:19:31] on the cross, they have all forsaken Him now, only John.
[00:19:40] And then John takes Jesus' mother, and He is alone.
[00:19:47] The world has refused Him.
[00:19:49] He's lifted above the ground.
[00:19:51] The sun has refused Him.
[00:19:53] It grows dark in Jerusalem.
[00:19:56] His Father seems to have forsaken Him to purchase the church, to purchase the church.
[00:20:12] It cost the blood of Jesus.
[00:20:18] There was no other way.
[00:20:22] There was no other good enough to pay the price of sin.
[00:20:25] He only can unlock the gates of heaven and let us in.
[00:20:33] And Peter, here in Caesarea Philippi, when Jesus is alluding to what lies before Him, Peter can't take it in.
[00:20:42] He, as R.C. was reminding us this morning, Peter takes him aside.
[00:20:53] He perhaps grabbed hold of part of his garment and pulled him over to the side to have a private word.
[00:21:00] You can't be talking like this, Lord.
[00:21:07] This is going to discourage people, Lord.
[00:21:12] You're mistaken, Lord.
[00:21:15] You've got it wrong.
[00:21:16] got to be more upbeat. You've got to speak more positively. And what does Jesus say to him? You're thinking like the world. You mind the things of the world rather than the things of God. Do you see the contrast? There's a worldly point of view. There's a worldly way
[00:21:42] of thinking. And there's a godly way of thinking. And the worldly way of thinking has no place for a suffering Messiah, a suffering Savior, so that the preaching of the cross is foolishness.
[00:22:06] It doesn't make sense.
[00:22:09] And Peter utters those two words that cannot go together, never, Lord.
[00:22:23] You're mistaken, Lord.
[00:22:34] My dear friends, we haven't begun to fathom the depths of the sufferings of Christ on our behalf, of what it cost Him that He was made sin for us, reckoned sin for us who knew
[00:23:02] no sin.
[00:23:06] I ponder sometimes how the divine nature, holy divine nature of Jesus recoils in revulsion at His own human nature, now reckoned sin in God's sight. This torment, this agony as Jesus Jesus suffers the pangs of hell, but there upon the cross, He suffers the pangs of the
[00:23:52] torments of hell as His Father has forsaken Him and turned His back upon Him.
[00:24:06] My three-year-old granddaughter, a few weeks ago, I was taking her to bed and saying her prayers and reading a Bible story, and she wanted me to say, the countenance pops, the countenance, and I had no idea what countenance was, and I had to ask her mother, and it was
[00:24:28] the Aaronic benediction, the Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you, the Lord lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace.
[00:24:45] Do you know what it costs for you to hear those words?
[00:24:52] The Lord curse you, Jesus.
[00:24:58] The Lord turn His face away from you, Jesus.
[00:25:07] The Lord lift up His wrath, His anger, His unmitigated anger, and pour it down upon you, Jesus.
[00:25:20] Lord cast you away and make you suffer the torments of hell so that we might know the blessings of those words being justified by faith, we have peace, peace with God.
[00:25:45] He purchases the church at the cost of His death.
[00:25:49] Secondly, He expands it through the proclamation of the gospel.
[00:25:58] It's this passage, isn't it?
[00:25:59] In verse 19, I give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and there has been a long debate between the Roman Catholic church and the Protestant church as to the meaning of the keys of the kingdom, and there can be no way that Jesus is saying that the keys are those
[00:26:19] that hang from Peter's waist in heaven.
[00:26:25] What is he saying?
[00:26:27] He is saying this, I am going to give you a key, I am going to give you a key and it will be a key that will unlock and it will be a key that will lock, a key that frees
[00:26:48] and a key that binds.
[00:26:51] What is that key?
[00:26:52] It is the gospel, isn't it?
[00:27:02] What does the gospel do?
[00:27:03] What does the preaching of the gospel do?
[00:27:07] It sets free or it binds.
[00:27:12] If you believe the gospel, if you trust in Jesus only, by faith only, you say, nothing in my hands I bring, simply to thy cross I cling, you are free, free from the curse of
[00:27:29] the law, free from the guilt of sin, free to be what God intends you to be.
[00:27:37] And if we are free in Christ, we are free indeed.
[00:27:41] But if you say no to the gospel, if you say something in my hands I bring, also to your cross I cling, then it's bondage, it's prison, it's incarceration.
[00:28:07] One frees, the other binds.
[00:28:11] And it seems to me that Jesus is saying to the disciples, I'm giving you a key.
[00:28:20] It's the key that unlocks the way to heaven.
[00:28:26] It's the key of the proclamation of the gospel.
[00:28:29] It's the key that proclaims Jesus not only as Lord, but also as one who died upon a cross on behalf of sinners, in whom alone there is salvation, and apart from Him there is only damnation.
[00:28:47] I give you a key, Jesus says.
[00:28:53] It's in your pocket.
[00:28:56] in your pocket. Take it out and use it. We speak, don't we, about certain doors being closed.
[00:29:13] Sometimes, sometimes that's just an excuse. We need to take out the key, the key of the gospel and proclaim it. But there's a third thing I want us to see, and it's the burden of what I want to
[00:29:31] say, and that is that He calls us to a life of cross-bearing.
[00:29:39] You'll see that in verses 24 and 25, if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.
[00:29:51] Self-denial and cross-bearing.
[00:29:56] You know, what does the Christian life look like to you?
[00:30:01] What does coming to Jesus look like for you?
[00:30:05] When I was first evangelized in 1971, I was 18.
[00:30:11] I hadn't been raised in a church, wasn't raised in a Christian family, I didn't possess a Bible, I'd never read one.
[00:30:19] I didn't know anything.
[00:30:21] I was studying physics and mathematics, but I knew absolutely nothing about Christianity.
[00:30:27] But I was troubled.
[00:30:28] My parents were going through a divorce and had all of those angsts that some of you can relate to all too well.
[00:30:34] And I was ready for a message that says, if you do this, all your troubles will disappear.
[00:30:39] And that's what I was told, come to Jesus and all your troubles will disappear.
[00:30:45] I liked that message.
[00:30:49] It was a message I wanted to hear.
[00:30:51] Come to Jesus and all your troubles will disappear.
[00:30:54] You've got to identify, first of all, what troubles are going to disappear.
[00:31:01] The trouble of the guilt of sin disappears.
[00:31:07] Though my sins are red like crimson, in Jesus Christ they're as white as snow.
[00:31:11] But you know, when I came to Jesus Christ in 1971, I discovered trouble that I never had before.
[00:31:25] On the night I was converted, I stayed up all night trying to evangelize my mother.
[00:31:30] All night long I tried to evangelize her.
[00:31:32] She thought I was having a mental breakdown, and she called the doctor.
[00:31:36] It was a day when doctors actually came to the home.
[00:31:39] He prescribed tranquilizers because he thought I was on the verge of some kind of nervous disorder.
[00:31:46] I lost certain friends that I'd had before that.
[00:31:51] They didn't want to know this religious Jesus freak.
[00:31:59] You come to Jesus, and Jesus says, you must take up a cross.
[00:32:03] You must identify with Him.
[00:32:06] You are in union with Christ now.
[00:32:10] You're part of His body now.
[00:32:12] As He suffers, so His children suffer too.
[00:32:20] In this world, you will have tribulation, Jesus says, losses and crosses as the Puritans called them, a part of what it means to identify with a crucified Messiah, self-denial and cross-bearing.
[00:32:45] Bonhoeffer, whose theology wasn't altogether orthodox for sure, but he wrote in his diary one day in prison as the Nazis had arrested him, Jesus bids us come to him and die.
[00:33:09] And three days later they took him out and hanged him.
[00:33:13] I love the story of Thomas Goodwin, Puritan Chancellor of Oxford University for a time.
[00:33:25] And when prospective students would come, you can imagine Oxford University, dark, medieval buildings, wintertime gets dark at three o'clock in the afternoon, and the student comes into Thomas Goodwin's office and he says in typical Puritan fashion, are you ready to die?
[00:33:47] And the student fled in terror.
[00:33:53] But you know, it's a great question, are you ready to die, to die to the ongoing temptations to sin?
[00:34:11] Are you ready to die for that?
[00:34:14] Are you ready to dive to fame and glamour and prestige?
[00:34:26] This is not the health and wealth gospel, you see.
[00:34:30] I don't know what health and wealth gospelers do with a passage like this.
[00:34:37] What are you prepared to give up for the sake of the gospel, for the sake of Christ, for the sake of maintaining a godly testimony to Jesus Christ?
[00:34:56] If you come to me, Jesus says, you've got to be ready to die.
[00:35:05] You've got to be ready to put remaining sin to death.
[00:35:09] You've got to be ready to mortify sin, to kill a sin or a part of a sin every day, to lay that ax at the root of that tree until that tree comes down.
[00:35:24] It's a lifelong calling.
[00:35:33] It may mean, you see, that you have to speak out, to speak out for truth, to speak out for orthodoxy, to speak out for the gospel, to speak out for the honor and integrity of
[00:35:55] Christ, not just against the world, but sometimes against the church, sometimes against those who should know better.
[00:36:10] Are you ready to take up a cross?
[00:36:13] Are you ready to die?
[00:36:17] Are you ready to take the road that is right if it costs you something of fame and glamour?
[00:36:33] What did Jesus do?
[00:36:38] Who being in the form of God thought it not robbery to be equal with God.
[00:36:51] He didn't have to reach out and grab hold of deity because it was already His, but He made Himself nothing.
[00:37:05] And James says, he made himself of no reputation.
[00:37:07] He literally in the Greek, he emptied himself.
[00:37:11] That needs to be interpreted.
[00:37:14] He humbled himself.
[00:37:16] He made himself nothing.
[00:37:19] Can you imagine?
[00:37:20] Can you imagine the conversation in heaven between the Father and the Son in the covenant of redemption before the foundation of the world and the Father says, Son, I want you to become the Savior.
[00:37:36] And the son says, yes, father, I will do that.
[00:37:41] And the son says, but here are my conditions.
[00:37:48] I don't want to be born in a stable in Bethlehem for a start.
[00:37:53] I want a suite of midwives and the best technology.
[00:38:00] I don't want to grow up in that hovel of a place in Nazareth.
[00:38:04] There's nothing there.
[00:38:05] I want to be in the big city where there's power and influence.
[00:38:13] I want to have friends.
[00:38:14] we could go on and on. He made himself nothing. He was made the off-scouring of the world to be ridiculed and mocked and spat upon and derided and rejected and crucified and dead and buried. He made himself nothing. He didn't stand upon his rights. We know our rights.
[00:38:56] We know our rights in the home. We know our rights as a husband. We know our rights as wives. We know our rights as parents. We know our rights in the workplace. We've got our rights. We've got a sense of entitlement. Do you know what
[00:39:16] it means to be a Christian? Not to stand upon your rights. You have your rights and you have a good conscience about your rights but you don't stand on them.
[00:39:30] You don't play one-upmanship. You take the path of suffering. You take the path of being prepared to be nothing for Jesus' sake. There's opposition for sure. Another feature of this passage, He will defeat every hostile force. I build my church, and what does He say?
[00:40:11] and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.
[00:40:18] Do you know where Jesus builds His church?
[00:40:24] I was teaching a course the week before last, one of these one-week courses, 40 hours, nonstop talking.
[00:40:33] It's awful.
[00:40:35] And in order to survive the week, in the evenings when I went back to my hotel, I took with me, forgive me, I took with me the extended version of the Lord of the Rings, not the ordinary, the extended
[00:41:01] version.
[00:41:02] It is, what, fifteen hours?
[00:41:04] Do you remember that scene where Sam and Frodo and Gollum first view the gates of Mordor with trolls and goblins and Uruk-hai and orcs and other creatures, malevolent, evil, wicked creatures.
[00:41:28] And you see those black gates right there.
[00:41:33] That's where Jesus builds His church, right up against the gates of hell in enemy-occupied territory.
[00:41:46] And Jesus says, they will not prevail.
[00:41:53] Thomas Akempis once said, if you bear the cross, it will bear you.
[00:42:05] If you bear the cross, it will bear you.
[00:42:10] He has spoiled principalities and powers, made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in the cross.
[00:42:26] The Christian life, my dear friends, is a call to suffering.
[00:42:34] You know, we get so hung up about suffering, we say, why do I suffer?
[00:42:38] But you know, if you read the New Testament, it's perfectly simple.
[00:42:45] You are united to Jesus who suffered in this world.
[00:42:50] So why do you find it odd that you also suffer?
[00:42:55] The world and the gates of hell are in opposition to Jesus and everything that is Jesus' including you and me.
[00:43:04] Don't be surprised.
[00:43:06] be surprised, my friends, if following Jesus brings suffering and trial and difficulty and hostility. But know this, know this, it's worth it. What is there that you wouldn't give up for Jesus? And you know, he says, and he takes your breath away, that no one has given up
[00:43:43] lands and family and goodness knows what, but that in the world to come, they will receive a hundredfold, I tell you it's worth it. When you keep your eyes upon Jesus and look full into His
[00:44:09] wonderful face, the things of the world grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace.
[00:44:24] Our Father, we know so little, some of us, of what it really means to take up a cross, to deny ourselves. We so often want to fulfill ourselves, and we know our rights, and we pray
[00:44:47] for that Jesus-likeness to be ready to make ourselves nothing for the sake of the gospel.
[00:45:00] For Jesus' sake we ask it. Amen.