[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, I think 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.
There was 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 letter we have, the only personal letter we have from St. Paul to a man who’s
not the pastor.
And 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
number he had a number of servants that lived in the home and served the home
and one of those servants was Onesimus who was an unbeliever and Onesimus the
servant of Philemon ran away he just left and wandered by himself to Rome
where he met st. Paul in prison and and as st. Paul was preaching Onesimus this
servant of Philemon becomes a Christian and believes in Jesus and not only becomes a Christian
but also becomes extremely helpful to St. Paul in prison and in his distress, but Paul
now learns that Onesimus is a servant that ran away from Philemon and so he’s sending
the servant back and he sends him with this letter, I’m sending Onesimus back to you and
And I know that you will receive him as a brother now, not simply as a runaway slave.”
And Paul says, perhaps this was why he ran away in the first place, so that he could
come back to you helpful and useful.
And Paul says, and this is a stunning sort of thing, he says, I pray that you will receive
him not as a servant, but rather as a brother in Christ.
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, but how about this for a beautiful picture of how it is in the church?
That there’s reconciliation, that there’s peace, that there’s love, that there’s harmony,
one Christian to another.
That’s why we greet each other.
In the service even, not just a, hey, how’s it going, but a, God’s peace be with you.
We share the peace.
peace, and the peace we share is not the peace that 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, the peace that 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 and He’s traveling north to south from Galilee
down to Jericho and then up into Jerusalem.
And 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.
And 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.
Now this is a little bit funny, we should notice this, that when scholars look at the
Gospels, they divide the ministry of Jesus basically up into three parts.
You have the early Judean ministry
That’s the stuff that Jesus does right at the beginning down south
And then you have the bulk of the ministry of Jesus about two maybe two and a half years, and that’s the Galilean ministry
It’s the stuff that 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
And then Jesus sets his face to Jerusalem, and he travels down to Jerusalem
And then we have the Parian ministry that’s 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 that are surrounding Jesus, it’s from the early part of His ministry.
It’s from Galilee.
It’s from when He’s first preaching the Sermon on the Mount and He’s gathering people around
Himself, He’s feeding the 5,000.
That’s when the crowds are there and as His ministry continues, the crowds grow less and
less and less so that there’s very few followers, maybe 70, 12, 120, but not that many, not
these crowds of thousands and thousands of people like there is 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’s crowds that are bigger than usual and Jesus turns, basically, Jesus turns around
to them and he 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
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, and they all wanted to make Him
king so that He could feed them bread without their working every day.
And 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 this 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.
it.
And Jesus turns to them and says, look, the road that I’m on, this road, this path, it
leads to death.
And if you’re going to follow me, 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 are getting 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 just 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, any one 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’s 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 his mother, his wife and his children,
his brothers and his sisters, he cannot be my disciple.
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.
And 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.
And 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 says, 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 then 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’s 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?
and Jesus says keep the commandments and he says okay I did that and Jesus says well now
go sell everything you’ve got and the text says he went away sad.
I just think there was 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.
And 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, it’s the N-O-N-E-S,
the people who say, I have no religion, none, they’re growing.
And 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, who 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, as they see that instead of being good for them
or being easy for them, that it actually is more difficult and it makes life more difficult,
then they say, I’m out.
That’s what happened when Jesus preached the sermon.
And I and I think that’s the point and it’s the point of Jesus preaching the sermon to us
Now here to put a point on it. 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 G who want to tack Jesus on as part of their life
Who want to add Jesus on to their already successful endeavors?
members, those 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 you, also, can I add you to my life?
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?
Are you in a little bit of ease?
Are you in 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, is to see all the
things that we hold on to, that we cling to, all the things that make up our own 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, 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.
We went to, a number of years ago, we went to visit the seminary in South Africa, in
Pretoria, and then as part of that trip we drove up to visit the missionaries in Botswana.
And the vicar was driving us and there was a handful of us in the car and we were driving
along and 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, you know, and the missionary looked at
us with this funny look on his face and he says, what are you locking the car for?
Do you think you’re in South Africa?
It turns out that there’s no thieves in Botswana and the reason there’s no thieves in Botswana
is because there’s nothing to steal in Botswana.
Anybody who has anything worth stealing lives in South Africa.
So all the thieves also went down to South Africa to steal there.
So 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 gonna steal? How is he gonna hurt you take?
They are life
goods
fame
child
wife
These things are already handed over to the Lord. They yet have nothing won the kingdom
hours 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 as Christ, to die
as 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
from him. They overcame him with the blood of the lamb, with the word of the 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 cross in
Bible, you know this, the first mention of 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, when 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.
And 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 and 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.
He says,
Have this mind amongst yourself, 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 and the third commandment. He gives us his word in the fourth commandment
He gives us our parents back and he gives us our children 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 so we take up the words of Jesus the hating father and mother the hating
wife and children the hating 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.
