[Machine transcription]
Jesus says, “Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.” You may be seated. In the name of Jesus, Amen.
Dear Saints, Jesus has put a difficult text before us again today. He says, “Unless you hate your father and your mother, your wife and your children, your brothers and your sisters, you cannot follow me.” We want to spend our time and give some attention to that particular text. But I think if you would indulge me to warm up for that text, a couple of words about the epistle lesson in Philemon would give us great joy.
It’s an obscure little book. In fact, we read verses 1 to 21, and there were only four more verses to get to the end of the entire text. It’s one chapter. And it’s a little letter written by St. Paul to Philemon, the only personal letter we have from St. Paul to a man who’s not the pastor.
Here’s the story. Apparently, Philemon, I think he lived in Ephesus, and he was a Christian, probably a wealthy man who had a big home, a home big enough for the church to meet in, and he had a number of servants that lived in the home and served the home. One of those servants was Onesimus, who was an unbeliever. Onesimus, the servant of Philemon, ran away; he just left and wandered by himself to Rome, where he met St. Paul in prison. As St. Paul was preaching, Onesimus, this servant of Philemon, becomes a Christian and believes in Jesus. Not only does he become a Christian, but he also becomes extremely helpful to St. Paul in prison and in his distress.
But Paul now learns that Onesimus is a servant who ran away from Philemon, and so he’s sending the servant back. He sends him with this letter: “I’m sending Onesimus back to you, and I know that you will receive him as a brother now, not simply as a runaway slave.” Paul says, “Perhaps this was why he ran away in the first place, so that he could come back to you helpful and useful.”
In fact, when we understand the context, we see that Paul is a little bit cheeky in the letter. He says, “I could command you to receive him back, but I’m not going to do that, although I could. I’m going to ask you nicely to do it.” And then Paul says, “If he owes you anything, charge it to my account and remember that you owe me your life.”
Now, how about this for a beautiful picture of how it is in the church? There’s reconciliation, peace, love, and harmony, one Christian to another. That’s why we greet each other in the service, not just with a “Hey, how’s it going?” but with “God’s peace be with you.” We share the peace, and the peace we share is not the peace we have from ourselves, it’s the peace that we have from Jesus, the peace that we have with God, the peace that Jesus makes in the cross. It’s the peace Paul talks about when he says, “Having been justified by faith, we have peace with God,” and we share that peace with one another. God be praised.
Well, let’s turn our attention to the words of Jesus. We want to remember that starting at about Luke chapter 10, Luke chapter 9, verse 51, in fact, Jesus has set His face to go to Jerusalem. He’s traveling north to south, from Galilee down to Jericho and then up into Jerusalem. He’s got His eyes fixed on what will happen there, on His death and His resurrection. He’s headed, in other words, to the whip and to the scourge; he’s headed to the cross.
As He heads that way, there’s a crowd that gathers around Him. In fact, that’s the context of the sermon. Jesus has a crowd that’s following after Him. This is a little bit funny; we should notice this. When scholars look at the Gospels, they divide the ministry of Jesus basically into three parts: you have the early Judean ministry, which is the stuff that Jesus does right at the beginning down south; then you have the bulk of the ministry of Jesus, about two, maybe two and a half years, and that’s the Galilean ministry, which happens up north around the Lake of Galilee.
In fact, so much happens in this ministry that they’ve divided it into three parts: early Galilean, mid-Galilean, late Galilean. Then Jesus sets His face to Jerusalem and travels down, and then we have the Parian ministry down around Jericho, and then the last part in Jerusalem.
Now, the reason why this is important for this text is because normally when we hear about the crowds surrounding Jesus, it’s from the early part of His ministry. It’s from Galilee, where He’s first preaching the Sermon on the Mount and gathering people around Himself, feeding the 5,000. That’s when the crowds are there, and as His ministry continues, the crowds grow less and less, so that there are very few followers, maybe 70, 12, 120, but not that many—not these crowds of thousands and thousands like there are at the beginning, which is strange because in this text, for whatever reason, as Jesus is traveling around, there’s this moment when all of a sudden, a bunch of people gather around Him. There are crowds that are bigger than usual, and Jesus turns to them and says, “I want you to know where I’m going. If you’re going to follow me, you should know where I’m headed. If you’re going to be my disciple—that’s what a disciple means, a follower—if you’re going to be my disciple, then I want you to know the path that I’m taking.”
So Jesus turns to them and preaches this sermon. Now, it seems like Jesus knew, and it doesn’t tell us in the text, but it seems like Jesus had the idea that these large crowds were following Him for the wrong reason. Maybe they wanted some benefit from His miracles. Remember, that’s what happened after He fed the 5,000; they all wanted to make Him king so that He could feed them bread without their working every day. Jesus preaches His sermon in John chapter 6 so that they all leave.
Or perhaps they think—this is my guess—perhaps they think that Jesus is gathering a revolt against the Romans. This seems to be the messianic expectation of the time. They thought that the Messiah would come and throw off Roman rule. But whatever it was, whatever was motivating them, it was wrong. They were, at least we can say this, they were in it for themselves. They were following Jesus so that they could get something out of it themselves and have some sort of benefit from it.
And Jesus turns to them and says, “Look, the road that I’m on, this road, this path, it leads to death. If you’re going to follow me, you’re going to have to take up your cross to do it.” Jesus is saying to the crowd, “I want you all to think about these things. I want you to know what you’re getting into before you get into it. I want you to count the cost. I want you to deliberate. I want you to know what is in the road before you.” And Jesus is preaching the same thing to us.
Now, before we get too far into it, I want you to see the particular structure of Jesus’ sermon, and for this it might be helpful to actually look at the text in your bulletin if you want to pull it out because there is a phrase that Jesus repeats three times in this little sermon. The phrase is, “Cannot be my disciple.” You see it, for example, first at the end of verse 26: “If anyone comes to me and doesn’t hate his own father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters, even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.”
And then look at the end of the next verse: “Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.” And then, if you skip down to verse 33, Jesus says it again: “Anyone of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.”
Now that’s the theme of the sermon that Jesus is preaching. Jesus is saying that there are things that will stand in the way, that will be obstructions to us being His disciples, His followers. In fact, there are three things that stand in the way, but they all are around this particular theme. Again, Jesus is saying that to be my disciple, we have to hold on to Him as our highest good and forsake everything else.
In fact, the first obstacle is the obstacle of family and the obstacle of life. Jesus says, “If anyone doesn’t hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters, he cannot be my disciple. Even if he does not hate his own life, he cannot be my disciple.”
The second obstacle is a life of ease, also clinging to the good things in life. Verse 27: “Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.” The third obstacle is the stuff of this world. Jesus says in verse 33, “Anyone who does not renounce everything that he has cannot be my disciple.”
That’s the structure. In the middle of this sermon, He’s going to give two examples: the example of building a tower and the example of fighting a war. He asks, “Who starts building a tower without first sorting out how much it’s going to cost? If you do that—if you just start building without knowing how much it’s going to cost and how long it’s going to take and what you’re going to need to finish it—you’ll never finish it, and then everyone will stand there looking at your half-built tower and make fun of you. Or, Jesus says, who goes to war? What king goes to war without first sorting out if he can defeat the army of 20,000 with his 10,000 guys? If you know you’re going to lose, you go and negotiate; you don’t start the war.
So Jesus says, “You’re about to start something here. You’re about to start following me, and you need to count the cost.” And what is the cost? It’s everything. There’s a line that runs through the sermon: Jesus is expanding on this one particular thought that the one who would be His disciple will hate his family, will hate his life, will bear the cross, will count the cost, will deliberate, and will renounce all that he has.
Now, you can imagine that the crowd following Jesus after the sermon is a little bit smaller. Wait a minute, it seems to me like—and maybe this is an aside—but it seems to me like Jesus is always preaching so that the crowds would get smaller. I mean, we are always preaching so that there are more people that come to church, but Jesus is always preaching in such a way that there’s a division that happens. People know if they should be there or not. Remember the rich young ruler? “What do I have to do to get into heaven?” he asked. And Jesus says, “Keep the commandments.” He says, “Okay, I did that.” Then Jesus says, “Well, now go and sell everything you’ve got.” The text says he went away sad.
I just think there were probably a lot of people who went away from the preaching of Jesus sad because they don’t want to give up the stuff because His words are too hard. Now, just again, we’re a little off the rail here, but as an aside, I think it’s helpful for us to think about because one of the marks of the church in our day is we are always thinking about how to grow and how to be bigger. We lament the fact that the church is shrinking—at least in the West, and in the United States, and in Europe, the church is getting smaller and smaller. The number of people that identify as non-Christian is getting bigger and bigger. In fact, the biggest group of religious classification is the nones, you know, the N-O-N-E-S—the people who say, “I have no religion,” none—they’re growing.
I suppose we’re right to lament that because the fewer people there are who believe in Jesus, the fewer people there are who rejoice in the joys of eternal life. But there’s a way that we can see the Lord shrinking His church on purpose, especially now think about this: as it becomes less and less comfortable to be a Christian in our culture, it becomes less and less comfortable to raise our hand and say, “I’m baptized and I believe in Jesus,” especially out in public. It becomes less and less easy to confess the name of Jesus to the people that we work with or the people that we go to school with and so forth. As it becomes harder to be a Christian in our culture, there are fewer and fewer people who, those who lack true conviction, will want to sign up for what we have going on here.
If it’s easier to stay home and not come to church, then it’s a clarifying shrinking. In fact, here’s a quote from a guy who looks at these things. He says, “Christianity is not collapsing; it’s being clarified.” As those who were in it, who were claiming the name Christian for their own benefit, to receive some sort of good out of it—all of them seeing that instead of being good for them or being easy for them, that it actually is more difficult and makes life more difficult, they say, “I’m out.” That’s what happened when Jesus preached the sermon.
I think that’s the point, and it’s the point of Jesus preaching the sermon to us. Now here’s the point: with Jesus, there is no other. There is no “and.” It is with Jesus, Jesus only. Those who want to follow Jesus, who want to tack Jesus on as part of their life, who want to add Jesus on to their already successful endeavors, who want to make Jesus part of their team, along with all the other things they’ve got going on— to them, to us, Jesus says, “No. It’s Jesus and Jesus alone.”
So we say, “Well, Jesus, can’t it be You and my family?” “My father and my mother and my wife and my children and my brothers and my sisters?” “Can’t it be You and my family?” And Jesus says, “No, just Me.”
Or we say, “Jesus, can it be my life, you know, my heart beating and my breathing and all my stuff like staying alive?” And Jesus says, “No, just Me.” “Unless you hate your life, you cannot be my disciple.”
We say, “Well, Jesus, can it be You and a few good times? Or You and a little bit of ease, or You and a little bit of comfort in life?” And Jesus says, “No, unless you take up your cross, you cannot be my disciple.”
We say, “Jesus, can’t it be You and a couple of things, like a house is great, or just clothes and shoes and food and drink? Can’t it be You and the things that we need for this life?” And Jesus says, “No, just Me. Unless, listen to these words, this is what Jesus says: if you do not renounce all that you have, you cannot be my disciple.”
So that everything—all of the things that we want to hold on to—we not—and look, Jesus is not even just getting after our sins here. We would understand that if He says, “Hey, all your sins you got to let go, all your idolatry and all your covetousness and all this sort of stuff, you’ve got to let go of all that.” No, He’s talking about the good stuff. That’s what the first commandment does: You shall have no other gods.
In the commandment, the Lord wants us to take all the things that we fear, and all the things that we love, and all the things that we trust, and He wants us to put them in a box and dump them at His feet, so that the only thing we have left is God. We’re not holding on to anything else. We’re not holding on to our life; we’re not holding on to our family; we’re not holding on to our good name; we’re not holding on to our reputation; we’re not holding on to ease; we’re not holding on to comfort; we’re not holding on to any of these things—we’re just dumping them all at the feet of Jesus.
And this, dear saints, is what it means to live a life of repentance, to see all the things that we hold on to, that we cling to— all the things that make up our identity—all the things that we treasure, all the things that we love, all the things that we grab onto and cling to so tightly—and simply to open our hands and to let them go at the feet of Jesus.
This is why repentance is death, and a particular kind of death. Repentance is death to self—the death of our own life, the death of our own treasures, the death of all the things that we hold most precious and dear. It is a crucifixion of all of these things. Jesus says, “Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. You have to let it go.”
Now, this is hard, but maybe it would be helpful to look at one of the benefits of such repentance—one of the side effects of it—of not clinging to all these things of this life. One of the side effects is that it makes us, in a lot of ways, devil-proof.
I’ll give you an example. A number of years ago, we went to visit the seminary in South Africa, in Pretoria, and as part of that trip, we drove up to visit the missionaries in Botswana. The vicar was driving us, and there was a handful of us in the car. When we got to the missionary’s house in Botswana, we all got out of the car, and the vicar pressed the button to lock the car. The missionary looked at us with this funny look on his face and said, “What are you locking the car for? Do you think you’re in South Africa?”
It turns out that there are no thieves in Botswana, and the reason there’s no thieves in Botswana is because there’s nothing to steal in Botswana. Anyone who has anything worth stealing lives in South Africa, so all the thieves also went down to South Africa to steal there. You don’t have to lock your car in Botswana; you don’t have to lock your house; you don’t have to worry about it. If there’s nothing to steal, then you don’t have to worry about thieves.
Now think about that: if there’s nothing to steal, you don’t have to worry about thieves. If there’s nothing to kill, you don’t have to worry about murderers. If you’ve let go of all these things, then what can the devil take from you? What’s he going to steal? How is he going to hurt you? Take your life, your goods, your fame, your child, your wife? These things are already handed over to the Lord. They yet have nothing. “The kingdom ours remaineth.” You see? If you don’t love your life, if you do not love your life, how can the devil possibly intimidate you? He comes up and says, “I’m going to kill you,” and you say, “Finally! I’ve been waiting for this. For me to live is Christ; to die is gain. I sleep in the Lord, and I awake to see His face.”
In fact, in Revelation 12, when it says that the saints overcome the devil, it says that there are three things that overcome him: “They overcame him with the blood of the Lamb, with the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives unto death.” That letting these things go is overcoming the devil. So, Jesus says, “Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.”
Now, it is an amazing thing that Jesus—the first mention of the cross in the Bible, you know this—the first mention of the cross in the Bible is not actually the cross of Jesus. It’s this cross—the cross of the disciple—but before we take up the cross, Jesus does, in fact, take up His cross to win salvation for us, and this is why it matters.
When Jesus says that He wants us to open up our hands and let go of those things that we so tightly cling to, it’s because He wants to give us something even more precious. It’s like the child who’s clinging so tightly to a toy or to a corn dog or something like this. We say, “Let it go! Hand it over! Because you need to have open hands so I can give you a key to the house, or keys to the new car, or the will that gives you all the inheritance of everything you need—you’ve got to let go of these other things so that I can give you this thing more precious.”
So Jesus says, “You’re letting go of these things so I can give you Myself, so that I can give you My blood and My kindness and My love and My mercy.” You have to give up this life that we have right now; you have to give that up because Jesus wants to give you life eternal. That’s why He goes to the cross first before He gives His cross to you.
Here’s how Paul says it in Philippians chapter 2: “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God as something to be grasped, as something to be held on to, as something to not be let go, but rather He emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”
So that Jesus gives to you His life, His kingdom, His riches, His treasure, His spirit, His name, His love, His salvation, His righteousness, and His peace. That’s what He has for all of His followers. And after He gives you those things, He starts to give us everything else as well. After He gives you the keys to the house, He gives you the corn dog back. In fact, I think that’s what happens in the Ten Commandments.
We face up to God in the first commandment, and He says, “Nothing else! You got nothing but Me! Nothing to love, nothing to fear, nothing to trust, nothing to cling to, but Me alone.” And finally, after He’s torn all of these idols out of our hands and we have Him alone, then He starts to give us things back.
In the second commandment, He gives us His name and prayer. In the third commandment, He gives us His Word. In the fourth commandment, He gives us our parents back. In the fifth commandment, He gives us our life. In the sixth commandment, He gives us our husband or our wife—our spouse. In the seventh commandment, He gives us house and home and everything that we need.
In the eighth commandment, He gives us our good name. And in the ninth commandment, He gives us joy and contentment. But now we receive all of these things, not as those things which we’ve earned and we’re grabbing onto and holding, but rather we receive them all as gifts from Jesus so that we can rejoice in Him—if we have them or not.
Like Job, remember this? The Lord gives; the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. So we have our father and our mother, and we rejoice, but then it’s time for mom and dad to die and go to heaven, and we don’t have them anymore— and still, we rejoice. The Lord gives us husband or wife, and we rejoice, and then the Lord takes away our husband or our wife, and we still rejoice.
The Lord gives children—or maybe He doesn’t—and still we rejoice. The Lord gives us health, and then we have sickness; it’s taken away, and still we rejoice. Sometimes we have a home and something to eat; sometimes we’re cold and we’re hungry, and we rejoice in all of it because no matter what we have or we don’t have, we have Jesus, and He has you. He has you as His disciple.
So we take up the words of Jesus: the hating father and mother, the hating wife and children, the hating brothers and sisters, the hating our own life. We take up these words with joy and confidence, knowing that Jesus has done everything for us and that He has set us free. He’s forgiven our sins, He’s given us His kingdom, and He has brought us today to be His disciples. God be praised. Amen.
Please stand. Now may the God of all grace, who has given our Lord Jesus Christ to death for you, give you His Holy Spirit to have the strength to trust in His mercy and to follow Him all the days of your life. Amen.
