“Jesus’ Cross And Your Cross”
Mark
SCRIPTURE INTRO: We started studying Gospel of Mark one
year ago.
First Sunday in
September of 2006—finished first half of Mark.
The big question of the first half of Mark is: Who is Jesus?
The answer is in
chapter 8. Jesus, “Who do men say that I
am?”
Peter, “You are the
Christ.”
Now, today we begin our study of the second half of Mark.
And the big
question is not who is Jesus?
But, what did the
Christ come to do? That will dominate
second half.
INTRO: We have some old
friends—
he’s a minister and she’s and occupational
therapist.
Once they decided they needed a
get-away.
He had lots of demands at church.
Every day she worked with people crippled from accidents and burns.
They just needed a break. A couple nights away.
So she found a bed and breakfast a
few hours from home, on a lake.
That sounded perfect. Just what they needed.
Got there late afternoon, restful night.
Then went to
breakfast the next morning.
And were a unpleasantly surprised to find the whole family who owned the
B&B,
three generations, sitting at the breakfast
table, waiting for them.
But they decided to be good sports,
sat down.
Woman who owned the place was very talkative.
Tell me about yourselves. What do you do?
I’m a pastor. Oh, that’s
wonderful.
My daughter here is separated from
her husband,
she is just in desperate need of counseling.
Well, her daughter started bending
his ear about her problems.
Then she turned to our other
friend—Now, what about you.
I’m an occupational therapist.
Oh, that is wonderful!
Daddy here is all stove up from farming accident he had several years
ago.
Now, let me tell you about his
therapy—you tell me what you think.
Isn’t it wonderful that you two are here, thank God, this is just
perfect.
They got their two night get-away,
but it was not anything like what they
expected.
Just before this passage in chapter
8, Jesus asked his disciples.
Who do people say that I am?
Peter replied: You are the
Christ.
Christ means Anointed One, Messiah.
The Messiah is not just any king.
He is the true King who will set all things right.
Peter was saying: You are the promised King who will set all
things right.
Jesus agreed with Peter. He said, Peter, you are right.
I am the Christ who has come to set all things right.
But then Jesus turned around and
said some thing
that was not anything like that Peter expected
to hear.
Jesus says: Yes, I’m the Anointed One, I’m the King.
But I’m not going to
I’m going to
And if you want to follow me—you
have to go to the cross too.
And you see how Peter reacted to
this—violently.
He rebuked Jesus—same word used for rebuking evil spirits.
This was not at all what Peter
expected of the Messiah—
and it was not at all what he expected it meant
to follow the Christ.
But Jesus said, Yes, it is by
suffering and dying that I will make things right—
and if you are going to be my disciple, you
have to walk in my steps.
It’s hard to overstate the
importance of this passage.
There is probably no passage in the
Gospels that states more clearly
what Jesus came to do and what it means to be a
follower of Christ.
And right at the center is not a throne but a cross.
What does that mean for you?
Let’s look at this passage under
two heading:
Jesus’ cross and your cross.
Credit: Dr. Timothy Keller’s sermon on this passage
help in many ways.
MP#1 Jesus’
cross
The most significant thing this
passage tells us about Jesus’ cross is in verse 31.
“He began to teach them that the Son of man must suffer many
things.”
This word “must” is a strong word of absolute necessity.
Jesus was saying. If I don’t die, things cannot be set right
and you cannot be saved.
Why? Why did Jesus have to die on
the cross? Three
reasons.
1. Jesus had to die so the power
of the Devil over you could be broken.
Who sent Jesus to the cross? The chief priests, teachers of law. The authorities.
Roman and Jewish authorities. The civil and religions
authorities.
The very authorities that should have promoted justice, promoted
injustice,
executed Jesus unjustly.
In Colossians 2 Paul says that when
Jesus died on the cross he disarmed the powers
and authorities, made a public spectacle of
them, and triumphed over them.
Paul was saying that behind the
human power structure are demonic forces.
Behind the injustice and evil of Pilate and Herod and the Sanhedrin was
Satan.
By submitting to that unjust death,
by allowing the powers and authorities
to do their worst to him, accusing him,
crucifying him, and then rising again,
Jesus exposed and defeated the forces of demonic evil.
If you had lived
in the early church—first 300 years, during persecution.
This is what you would have mostly heard preached about the cross.
Not so much that through the cross Jesus secured our forgiveness.
Through the cross, Jesus defeated the power of the Devil.
Christians being persecuted for
their faith could look at persecutors and say:
“You have no power over me. The
very worst thing you can do to me,
calling me a criminal, killing me—is the very
best thing that can happen to me.
Because Jesus has already faced
that death, and exposed and defeated
the evil
powers and authorities through his death and resurrection.
That is just as true today.
Through the cross the power of
death and evil over you is broken.
You can say: Bring it on. Devil do your
worst.
Jesus has gone this way before me and defeated you.
Jesus had to go to the cross so
that the power of the Devil could be broken.
2. Jesus had to die so that your
life could be transformed by his love.
What is true love?
True love is using yourself for the happiness
of another person.
True love is when your greatest joy is the other person’s joy.
True love is unconditional—you love whether or not your needs are being
met.
True love is radically vulnerable—it holds nothing back.
Do you love like that? Sometimes we try.
But if you are honest, you know you aren’t capable of true love.
Your affection is conditional.
You do love people more when they are affirming you, meeting your needs.
You do invest your love with people who you think are going to give good
return.
You do hold back part of yourself so you can pull out if necessary.
None of us are capable of completely
giving true love.
And that’s why Jesus had to die on the cross—so that we could see true
love,
and experience it, and be transformed and
enabled to love like that.
Jesus doesn’t need your
affirmation.
From all eternity, the Trinity—God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
have known and loved. God has all the love in himself that he could
want.
So why did he create you? Why is he redeeming you at great cost?
Because he loves you. Because he wants your joy..
When you know that—both intellectually and experientially—
I am truly loved—unconditionally, fully, by Jesus Christ who wants my
joy.
That will transform you and enable
you to start to love truly.
You can look at a person and say:
I can love this person for his or her own sake—
not as an investment in my own
affirmation.
I can love this person whether or
not my needs are being met.
I can give myself for this person’s joy.
And it is the cross alone that makes that possible.
“This is how we know what love is,” John says,
“Jesus Christ laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our
lives for our brothers.”
Jesus had to die so that your live
could be transformed by his love.
3. Jesus had to die so that you
could receive forgiveness and pardon.
How does forgiveness work?
This is how forgiveness works—somebody
has to pay.
If a boy in your neighborhood puts
a baseball through windshield of car—
you can make him pay, or you can forgive him—
and that means that you pay, you absorb the
cost.
On a deeper level, when a person
really wrongs you.
When a person wrongs your reputation, or takes your opportunities or
happiness
by betraying you, or stealing from you, tearing
you down.
There is a sense of debt.
He owes you. And you can do one
of two things.
You
can try to make him pay. You can try to
hurt his opportunities, happiness.
You can try to make him suffer what you have suffered.
But there is one problem. As you are trying to make him pay—
you are harming yourself, becoming like
him—harder, colder.
Talking to a man recently, I am
filled with hate, it’s destroying me.
His wife had been unfaithful.
There was a moment, after all of this had come out—I had strong sense
that if I forgave her, our marriage could be
saved—but I didn’t want to forgive
her, I wanted her to hurt. For years, been trying to
make her pay.
You can do that, you can try to
make them pay, our you can pay, you can forgive.
When you forgive, the debt doesn’t disappear you pay it.
You pay through the agony and the struggle
of refusing vengeful thoughts and actions.
And that costs you great emotional
pain.
But the only hope of ever making
things right is through forgiveness.
You will never be able to go to the person who
has wronged you,
and try to show them what they have done wrong
if you have vengeance in heart.
Only if you have suffering cost of
forgiveness, only if you have felt
the agony of refraining from vengeance, can you
hope to show them the truth,
and perhaps bring them to repentance and reconciliation.
If we know at a human level that
forgiveness always requires suffering—
and the only way that reconciliation can ever
happen is through suffering—
how much more must Jesus Christ suffer if he
came to forgive the sins of world?
That is why Jesus said I must
suffer. Either you pay for your sins or he pays.
Only way Jesus could not make us pay, was by going to the cross and
paying.
Jesus said to his disciples, I must
suffer. I must go to the cross.
It is the only way to break power of Devil,
and bring true love to human race,
and the forgiveness of sins. Then he said:
If you are going to be my disciple,
you must take up your cross and follow me.
So now let’s consider
MP#2 Your
cross
What does it mean to take up your cross and follow Christ? Three things.
1. It means you get a new
identity.
Jesus says that whoever wants to
save his life will lose it.
The word for life there is not biological life—it’s the word soul,
psyche.
Jesus is talking about your identity, your selfhood.
Taking up your cross means you quit
building your identity on your performance.
Every family, every culture has a
list of things and says—
if you gain these, then you are somebody—you
have an identity.
It might be marriage and
family. It might be career and
achievement.
The lists are different, but the point is the same.
You gain your identity through your performance.
That is how you know who you are.
Jesus says: If you gain the whole world, you don’t have
an identity.
You can never have enough to make you sure of who you are.
The proof is that when you face the loss of those things, you fall
apart.
He says the way you save your
life—way gain true identity—
is by losing yourself for me and for the
Gospel.
This is so important.
Jesus is not saying, I want you to
quit trying to get your identity from money,
and start getting your identity from religion
and morality.
That’s not what taking up your cross means.
It’s not giving up things and
getting religion.
Religion and morality can be just as much a performance based identity
as money and career. You can base your identity on getting God’s
approval
or your parent’s approval—there is no
difference at all.
No, Jesus is saying that there is a
whole new way. It’s me and the Gospel.
I want you to find your identity in what I have done—in my performance.
On the cross Jesus lost his
identity—lost his relationship with his Father.
He was forsaken in those hours of
darkness—
so that you can have a relationship with God as
your heavenly Father.
To the degree that you can see the
Son of God doing that for you,
to that degree your sense of value and identity
will not be based
on how you are doing, or how you look,
or your success in business or marriage or
anything else.
Your cross is the life-long fight
to find your identity in Christ and the Gospel,
and not in your performance. Leads to the next point.
2. Taking up your cross means
you get a new agenda.
Why did Peter react so furiously
when Jesus said he was going to suffer and die?
Because from the time Peter was a little boy on his mother’s knee,
he had been taught that when the Messiah came,
he would set all things right.
In Peter’s mind that meant one
thing—the Messiah would go to
raise a mighty army to throw off Roman rule,
re-establish David’s throne.
Remember what the disciples were
often arguing about.
The positions they would have in the new kingdom.
Who is going to set at Jesus’ right and left.
Do you see why Jesus’ words upset
Peter so badly?
Suffering and crucifixion was not on his agenda.
He had totally different plans for his life.
But Jesus said: Deny yourself and follow me.
You can’t use Jesus.
You can’t say: Jesus, I’m serving you, now you do this for
me.
He’s a king. You don’t negotiate
with a king.
You bow before him and if he says, I’m sending you to fight and die—
you kiss his feet and you go to fight and die
because he is your king.
But he’s not just a king—he’s a
king on a cross.
That means you can trust him.
When Jesus was in the
he said to God, “Not my will, but yours be
done.” And he went to the cross.
If he said that for you, can’t you
trust him enough to say the same from him?
I’ve got a seminary buddy who
always said.
I will never live in my old home town.
Any church, but not there.
He had lots of reasons for not
wanting to go back.
That was his agenda, but Jesus had
another agenda.
And now he is there—and it’s not easy.
He has all the struggles that he worried about and more.
But each day he knows he is
following the king who went to the cross for him.
The cross means that you say, Lord,
whatever you say, I will do.
Whatever you send I will accept.
And if this is not the agenda I
have for my comfortable life,
and future plans, so be it. You said, not my will but yours be done.
I will deny myself and do the same.
3. Taking up your cross means
you get a new hope.
Jesus ends by talking about his
Second Coming.
Gives a warning. If you are ashamed of me and my words before
this sinful generation, I will be ashamed of
you before my holy angels on that day.
Then he says something
wonderful—some of you will see the kingdom
come with power. Talking about this transfiguration—happens
after this.
Transfiguration was a foretaste of Jesus glory.
Probably also talking about his
resurrection.
Jesus way of saying—I’ve shown you the future.
This is what you have to look forward to.
Whatever it costs you to follow me
now—it will be worth it.
Yes it’s hard. Yes there are things you have to give up.
Every serious Christian thinks at
times about what he could do with all the money
he would have to spend if he was not investing
so much in the
But Jesus says that the little we
invest will explode in future glory.
Few months ago my brother-in-law
showed me a document he found in old
filing cabinet at work. It was the in initial public offering of
Microsoft.
$22 a share. I asked him what one original share was worth
now.
He said about $250,000. If I had
only known 20 years ago what we know now.
Guess what, we’ve seen the
future.
We’ve seen the glory of Jesus Christ in the transfiguration and
resurrection.
The way of the cross is the way of glory. Don’t forget that.
Every time you deny yourself, take
up your cross, investing in that life.
CONC: I want to take you
back to our friends at the B&B.
It was hilarious story. We’ve laughed about it for years.
But it was funny because it happened to someone else.
Put yourself in their shoes.
What if that was you in the B&B?
What if you had planned two days away from people with problems?
How would you have responded to the
Lord’s change of agenda?
You might say:
I have a right to a vacation.
Everybody has to have a break.
How can you expect me to do the
important work if I can’t get time away?
You might say:
This woman has no right to ask this of me.
I am a paying customer—I’m not here to deal with her problems.
Taking up your cross and following
Christ will probably not mean
being burned at the stake or thrown to the
lions for your faith.
It will mean thousands of
challenges just like this one,
to look at the cross of Jesus—the evil he has
broken, the love he has shown,
and the forgiveness he has extended—and then to
say—
It’s not about my rights and my
plans—but I will follow my king
wherever he leads me. I will give up my money and my time
and my vacation if he calls me to do so—knowing
that he gave it all for me.
And that he will not forget my service—
but will reward me richly when he comes on the
last day.