Mark 8:34

Mark 8.34
Theme: Being a Disciple is an Essential to True Revival

You’re going to die! How does that change the way that you that you will live out what’s left of your life? How will you be known as a disciple? Better yet, how will Christ recognize you as one of his own?

Let’s suppose you had a visitation from Jesus so that any doubt you may have had about his existence was completely removed and the reality of Christ now appeared more real to you then anyything else. And then he delivered the shocking news, you are going to die in 1 week painlessly in your sleep; but Jesus wants you to get on a plane and head to Pakistan to preach the gospel to the Al Qaida militants who are hiding in the mountains up in the North. Getting there will be treacherous enough, but you will likely have your head removed very shortly after your arrival. You’re going to die either way, but dying at the hands of a terrorist for the cause of the gospel will ensure you a martyr’s crown, what would you choose?

Jesus is real! And he did say something like that:
34 When He had called the people to Himself, with His disciples also, He said to them, Whoever desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.35 For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s will save it. 36 For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? 37 Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul? 38 For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him the Son of Man also will be ashamed when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels.” (Mark 8:34-39).

The key phrase is in verse 34: “Whoever desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.”
The original Greek is even more imperative than our English translation. It literally reads like this: “If anyone has resolved to come behind/after my path, having [already] denounced and repudiated himself and having [already] lifted upon himself his cross [then let him] unite himself to my path.”

Jesus has defined the Christian faith here and what it means to be a Christian. There is no other way of being a follower of Jesus. Your cross is your passport. Jesus has not said, “if anyone wishes to follow me he must either take the hard path of self denial and cross bearing, or he can have the easier path with all the comforts and pleasures of the world and that’s okay too because all roads lead to me!” There is one path for the Christian; have you taken it yet?

I like the analogy that Paul Washer gives that if you are Christian, it’s like having been hit by a tractor trailer. If you’ve been hit by a tractor trailer, you’re going to be different- otherwise you are a false convert- a pretender! If you’re a Christian, your life cannot continue the same way that it would have if you had not converted. You did not become a Christian so that you could live the American dream (a two car garage, Super Bowl Sunday parties, retirement savings, and trips to Disneyland every spring break).

What Jesus is saying here is a conditional statement. He’s saying “if you want to be my disciple, you need to do these things.” And these things are essential to us having true revival at Gateway.

Another use for Jesus’ description of discipleship here is that Jesus has given us a way of spotting a true disciple. A true disciple is someone who has denied himself and taken up his cross to unite his path to Jesus’ path. And this is important; because if the church is to be pure, it must not be yoked to false believers. The question we should ask all membership applicants and all baptism candidates is “what have you given up for Christ? How has it cost you to be a Christian? How have you taken up your cross?”

There are some key words in this text that are essential if we are going to apply Jesus’ words to our life and use them to spot other true believers. Let’s unpack some of the key words:

1. Desire
The first key word is desire: “If anyone desires”. I believe that we are created with an innate desire for God. Whenever people desire mercy, or empathy, or goodness, or love, or peace, or power, or justice, or vengeance, or wrath- they desire God. Unfortunately, because of our overriding sin nature, that desire has been corrupted so that in place of desiring the Living God who made all things, we desire instead to make gods of ourselves and our pleasures and our ambitions. Our lust for power and prestige and revenge are our gods- unless God changes our nature and overcomes our proclivity to self divination we can never desire God in a saving way.

But anyone who truly desires God and seeks him will find him. The word has a range of meaning in the Greek that includes “to purpose,” “to be ready,” “to resolve,” “to desire,” “to wish,” “to prefer.” Jesus is saying if “you are ready to follow me than here’s how….”
2. Come After
The next key word is come after. The Greek word is a compound word that is a redundancy in the Greek (literally follow after). But it’s an idiom because the word means to be united to my way or locked into the same path after me. In secular Greek use, it carries the idea of a slave following his master and attending to his commands.

Jesus is saying, “if anyone wants to attach themselves to my destiny.” Paul’s exhortation in Philippians echoes this; he writes,
Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, 6 who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, 7 but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross (Phil 2:5-8).

Following Jesus means following him to your death; leaving whatever treasures of this life you may cling to and taking on the certainly of shame and poverty of the things of this world even unto death. That does not mean you will actually be nailed to the cross or die the death of a martyr. Nor does it mean living your life on social assistance. Some Christians need to be wealthy in order to underwrite the spread of the gospel (but they do not cling to their wealth nor is it a means to their own ends). It means that if you do die the old way that cherished things that perish (and even if you lose everything) you’re okay with it! Not only that, but it means that, whether you continue living or you are put to death for your faith, you have nevertheless been crucified with Christ so that you no longer live for yourself, but for Christ!

How does your current lifestyle reflect that you have chosen the fate of Jesus?
Jesus, and shall it ever be,
A mortal man ashamed of Thee?
Ashamed of Thee, whom angels praise,
Whose glories shine through endless days?
3. Deny and Take up your cross
The next key phrase is “deny yourself and take up your cross.” This phrase is in the aorist tense indicating an action that has occurred in the past and is now completed. This is important because if we mistake this as a present continuous action we may confuse the Christian life as one of overcoming rather than one of having overcome (this is not works- Jesus has won our salvation for us). Even though the price of admission is already paid, you still can’t get in unless something has changed inside of you so that, even if you had to give your life to get in, you would because you have come to despise this life so much and recognize your debt so greatly that no price would be too high to see the glory of God (indeed, our motive is not to save ourselves from hell, our motive is to see the glory of heaven).

A Christian is someone who has already denied himself and his pleasure seeking and taken up the shame and mockery of the cross (not someone who is planning to or is in the process of doing- that’s works). This is a miraculous act of God that has been wrought in the soul of the individual that happens when we are spiritually reborn because no one can come to the Son unless the Father is drawing them. J.I. Packer says,
Jesus links self-denial with cross-bearing. Cross-bearing is far more than enduring this or that hardship. Carrying one’s cross in Jesus’ day, as we learn from the story of Jesus’ own crucifixion, was required of those whom society had condemned, whose rights were forfeit, and who were now being led out to their execution. The cross they carried was the instrument of death. Jesus represents discipleship as a matter of following him, and following him as based on taking up one’s cross in self-negation.

I am sometimes disappointed with the way Christians in North America relentlessly pursue their own personal comfort while at the same time ignoring the call to self denial as though it were a suggestion on the same level as greeting one another with a holy kiss (yuck). Some Christians actually build whole theologies around their self idolatry and teach that Christ suffered the brutality and violence of the cross so that we could live in luxury. True disciples do not covet first-class VIP luxury seat gourmet living! They spurn it!

Twelve men heard this command from Jesus; we call them the Apostles. You would think that if any group of men who ever lived who deserve fame and luxury and comfort it would be the men who spent time with the living incarnate miracle working God the Son. They should have been doing the talk show circuit and writing how-to books. Even James and John felt that way, after all, they did use their mothers to try to persuade Jesus to give them a place of prestige in his kingdom. But listen to the fate these men suffered in the years that followed Pentecost:
• James the son of Zebedee was beheaded in Jerusalem, the first of the apostles to die, during the Easter season in about the year A.D. 44.
• Matthew was slain with the sword in a city in Ethiopia.
• Mark was dragged through the streets of Alexandria until he expired
• James the Less was thrown from a pinnacle or wing of the temple.
• Bartholomew was flayed alive.
• Andrew was scourged then tied to a cross where he preached to the people for two days before dying.
• Jude was shot to death with arrows.
• Thomas was run through the body with a lance.
• Simon Zelotes was crucified.
• Peter was crucified upside down.
• Matthias was stoned and beheaded.
• John was exiled to the penal island of Patmos and later became the only apostle to die a natural death.

One of the greatest missionaries outside of sacred history was David Brainerd. David wrestled more with the need to sacrifice for the Christian faith than most Christians do after their conversion. While we Christians are complaining about our hurt feelings and the failed realization of our personal ambitions, David Brainerd laboured for 6 years until his death in 1747, knowing he was dying of TB, to preach the gospel to the North American Indians. Close to the end of his life, Brainerd made this entry into his journal,
for it appeared to me, that God’s dealings towards me had fitted me for a life of solitariness and hardship; and that I had nothing to lose, nothing to do with earth, and consequently nothing to lose by a total renunciation of it. It appeared to me just right, that I should be destitute of house and home, and many comforts of life, which I rejoiced to see others of God’s people enjoy. And at the same time, I saw so much of the excellency of Christ’s kingdom, and the infinite desirableness of its advancement in the world, that it swallowed up all my other thoughts; and made me willing, yea, even rejoice, to be made a pilgrim or hermit in the wilderness, to my dying moment, if I might thereby promote the blessed interest of the great Redeemer.

Brainerd is not alone in his willingness to suffer loss for the excellent and surpassing knowledge of the glories of Christ. In fact, persecution and affliction are the distinguishing traits of Christianity.

In AD 155 Polycarp, the disciple of John was commanded to renounce Christ by a Roman officer. Polycarp replied, “Eighty and six years have I served him and he has done me no wrong. Can I revile my King that saved me?” The officer threatened to burn him alive but Polycarp was impassive; he replied, “You try to frighten me with fire that burns for an hour and you forget the fire of hell that never goes out.” Shortly afterwards, Polycarp was a living torch.

In 1994, Gideon Akaluka, a Nigerian Christian, was accused of desecrating the Koran. He was imprisoned, but a mob forced their way into the prison and tool Akaluka by force, dragging him into the streets where he was beheaded and his head was paraded around the city and eventually brought before the local Islamic leader.

Last week, seven Christians were beheaded in Somalia; in Karnataka, India, four Christians were beaten and imprisoned on charges of having been forcibly converted; in Orissa, a 23 years Christian was run over and killed by a tractor driven by a Hindu who intentionally ran him over; In China, pastor Hua Huiqi was beaten for preaching the gospel and many house churches have been raided by authorities and leaders are serving long prison terms for teaching the bible. All of this was going on last week. How did you spend this week? What did it cost you to be a Christian this week?

Being a “Christian” is not what got them killed and beaten and imprisoned; preaching Christ did! Jesus is not calling us to be Christians. He’s calling us to preach Christ. That’s the mark of revival.

If you’re not experiencing persecution and rejection and shame as a Christian it is because you are not preaching the gospel. And if you are not preaching the gospel, you have failed to deny yourself and take up your cross and follow him. The faith you claim to hold is in peril at the heart of what it truly means to be a Christian; in fact, you are living a life professing to be a believer while at the same time being ashamed of the one who paid the ultimate price for your salvation.

Jesus said, “For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him the Son of Man also will be ashamed when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels”.
I have decided to follow Jesus;
I have decided to follow Jesus;
I have decided to follow Jesus;
No turning back, no turning back.

Tho’ none go with me, I still will follow,
Tho’ none go with me I still will follow,
Tho’ none go with me, I still will follow;
No turning back, no turning back.

My cross I’ll carry, till I see Jesus;
My cross I’ll carry till I see Jesus,
my cross I’ll carry till I see Jesus;
No turning back, No turning back.

The world behind me, the cross before me,
The world behind me, the cross before me;
The world behind me, the cross before me;
No turning back, no turning back.

You’re going to die!


Benediction:
May you desire Christ all the more as all your other desires melt away in light of his excellent glory and grace. May you never be ashamed of him who paid such a price, but may you always be ready to give an answer for the faith that lies within no matter what it may cost you.