Giving up ain't always losing
Mark 8:27-38 (various versions) There is a difference in saying you are a Christian and actually being one it seems as if suddenly ever politician on TV is declaring their faith in Christ Strange how we have not heard this from any of them before. They boast of a convenient superficial faith and we are not called to a convenient superficial Christianity. Where we drag our faith or lack thereof, out of the closet for use as a weapon�quick draw Christians just pull out our Bible when it is the most benefit to us. To appear faithful and true only when we can see where it will take us. There is more to it than that we have been singled out each of us to be Christ's disciple. The New Testament has many instructions concerning discipleship�in Mark's Gospel, we find Jesus beginning to teach His disciples just what discipleship is all about. He called them that much they were sure of...They were willingly following him and that they were seeking to be his disciples�.But you have to wonder did they really know what following Him was gonna be all about? That call to discipleship. That call to Jesus. Where was He really taking them? Jesus challenges the Twelve to think for themselves to gain understanding of who He was�He teaches them how it is to be to really, truly follow after Him. Are you a follower of Christ? Do you see yourself as a disciple? When we talk about discipleship, we have to figure out just exactly what that means. What do we mean when we say we are Christians? Far too many believers don�t consider what discipleship means in their Christian walk. Many people make a claim to Christ but they are only deceiving themselves. What they have is a sentimental attachment and a fondness for sweet encounters with the blessings of the Lord with polite sermons that don�t challenge them to be more that just a warm spot on the pew. They will do a lot of things volunteer for every program and attend services every time the doors are open but�.When it comes to following Jesus and denying self and laying down their lives, they pull up short. When the world see this it decides all Christians as the same. That is the Christian they remember not the faithful truth teller but the hypocrite will remain in their mind for a life time. What we need to be and what we need to show the world are people who actively pursue Jesus and follow Him completely. The text has two vital characteristics of discipleship. I�ve been looking at it for a few days now I had intended use another piece of scripture I was reading in Mark when this caught my attention. Coming to Christ is our coming to a place where we can confess Him as our Savior and Lord. That acknowledgement�that moment we personally take Christ as our Savior and give ourselves to live for Him. That confession of discipleship is the cornerstone of our Christian faith. Jesus is asking probing questions trying to bring truth to the twelve allowing them to come to understand what they have known all along. "And Jesus went out, along with His disciples, to the villages of Caesarea Philippi; and on the way He questioned His disciples, saying to them, 'Who do people say that I am?' And they told Him, saying, 'John the Baptist; and others say Elijah; but still others, one of the prophets.' And He continued by questioning them, 'But who do you say that I am?' Peter answered and said to Him, 'Thou art the Christ.' And He warned them to tell no one about Him." (vv. 27-30) Jesus continually teaching and while they were heading to Caesarea Philippi, He throws a bunch of questions to His disciples. �What do the people say?� The opinions varied. Maybe John the Baptist risen from the dead. Could be he was the He was the coming Elijah. The Jews expected Elijah to come before the Messiah. People speculated that He was one prophet or another. These were the opinions of people. They are interesting, but not accurate. The world has its opinion of Christ. The world was as usual inaccurate. What every one else thought was interesting, but irrelevant. Jesus and His disciples knew what the world was saying about Him�Jesus wanted to know what the Twelve thought� So as seems to be his nature He says, "But who do you say that I am?" That "but" stops them in mid thought it the power of this question must have stunned them had they even thought about what they thought He might be to them He was Jesus their Rabbi, leader and friend. He says in essence "I know what the world thinks but what about you� Who do you say that I am?" It is important for us to understand that�what the world has to say about Jesus should not shape our thinking about Him. Faith is a personal matter. When we come to Christ it is as an individual with individual thought and ideas that define our relationship with Him. We Should not just accept popular opinion about Jesus. Popular opinion does not define Him. What have you seen? What have I seen? What do we believe about Jesus? That question Jesus asked the twelve is one we need ask ourselves today and every day. It is just as relevant right now�today�as the first time Jesus asked it. It�s amazing how many self-proclaimed Christians don't understand who Jesus is. In the last generation or two�a vast change has taken over the country. When the name of Jesus is mentioned, people's of the world find their minds are clouded with conflicting images. "Which Jesus?� Do you mean the Jesus of the prosperity theology? Or the Jesus the liberal church and liberation theology shove at them? How about the one from those hyper-fundamentalists and militant, mean-spirited separationists? Just what Jesus do you mean?" People need to understand who Jesus is. We should be able to answer for ourselves who Jesus is now Today and then When he walked among us. His persistent question eventually turned on the light of thought among them "But who do you say that I am?" Peter�.you got to love Peter�Peter replied, "Thou art the Christ." Peter he got it he knew who Jesus was. Jesus had lived His life before His disciples prior to asking them who He was�Peter had come to His revelation by a personal experience of Jesus. We can�t rely upon other people's opinions. We have to experience Christ ourselves. The world needs to come to this understanding as well. And that is what the Church needs to be all about. We need to be introducing people to Jesus. You can argue about the concept of God all day long. But when people meet Jesus, they receive something more than an intellectual argument. They receive faith to believe in Him. Matthew records for us a commendation given to Peter by the Lord Jesus based on Peter's revelation. It is found in Matthew 16, verses 17 through 19. "And Jesus answered and said to him, 'Blessed are you, Simon Barjona, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but My Father who is in heaven. And I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades shall not overpower it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatever you shall bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven, and whatever you shall loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven.'" Why did Mark not include this important part of the story? Mark came to Christ after the resurrection of Jesus and became one of Peter's traveling companions. The Gospel of Mark is, in reality, Peter's account of the life of Jesus. Mark's Gospel is really the Gospel according to Peter. Peter would not include such a testimony about himself in his account. Peter was impulsive and headstrong, he had come to know his own fallibility. By the time Peter shared his gospel with Mark, he had come to realize that Peter was nothing, but Christ everything. You know he had to remember how right after this he would be rebuked. And that he had denied Christ just before the crucifixion. In Acts, Peter tells the men in the household of Cornelius who knelt at his feet "Stand up! I too am just a man." So Peter did not want to put himself forward as someone special. The fact that Peter was a fallible human being is graphically illustrated by what happens next. On the heels of this perceptive insight that Jesus was the Christ, we find A Parochial Interest. "And He began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. And He was stating the matter plainly. And Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him. But turning around and seeing His disciples, He rebuked Peter, and said, 'Get behind Me, Satan; for you are not setting your mind on God's interests, but man's.'" (vv. 31-33) Though God used Peter mightily on the day of Pentecost, he didn't take the church in the Jerusalem. When the church council convened in the book of Acts, it is James, the Lord's brother, who stands as the chief elder to give the opinion of the body. Here we see a parochial interest emerge when Jesus began to talk about His death on the Cross. Peter would have none of it. His plans for Jess did not include the Cross. But the confession of discipleship cannot be separated from the Cross of Christ. This is what Jesus was pointing out. A Crossless Christ has no power to save. Jesus was trying to reveal to them the truth of His sacrificial death for the sins of mankind. The Gospel is not the story of the Son of God and His life on this earth to set a good example. The Gospel is the sinless Son of God dying as the Lamb of God on the Cross. Jesus could not be preached apart from His Cross. He would not be believed in apart from His Cross. The message of the Gospel is the vicarious substitutionary atonement of Christ on the Cross. Jesus' death on the Cross is our death to sin. When He died there, we died with Him. He paid the penalty for our sins. Jesus, has made us right with God. And to believe in Him, what He did on the Cross will become effective for us. His death for our sin cannot be left out of any Gospel message. Because without His death on the Cross, we could not receive forgiveness of sins. That is why Jesus came. And that is why He rebuked Peter. "Get behind Me Satan." That a pretty serious rebuke. It shows us that Jesus' death on the Cross was of the utmost importance. A disciple can�t get past that cross. If we claim Christ as our Savior and Lord we have to accept what He did for us on the Cross at Calvary as our only hope for eternal life. It is indeed essential to our salvation. We have the confession of discipleship made by Peter and some of its implications. Jesus explains that there a cost to belong to Him. "And He summoned the multitude with His disciples, and said to them, 'If anyone wishes to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me." (v. 34) The Cross is not just an event in history. The Cross ought to be a way of life. It should be the goal of every believer. When Jesus says take up the cross. What does that mean? The disciples knew what the implication of taking up the Cross� They knew what the cross was they had seen crucifixion. In Luke's Gospel, He adds the word "daily." Taking up your cross is a daily commitment to follow Jesus, a daily commitment to live for Him. To take up our cross means to submit to His will for our lives and to allow Him to live His life through us. Notice what Jesus says in verse 34. "If anyone wishes to come after Me..." In other words, if you want to be Jesus' disciple, heed what follows. "Let him deny himself..." it don�t say "deny yourself something or other." It says "deny yourself." � Living for self will not bring us closer to Christ. "take up his cross..." The cross we are to bear is similar to the Cross Jesus bore. When Jesus died on the Cross, He laid down His life for us. When we bear our cross, we lay down our life for Him. He laid it down when He died; we lay ours down when we live for Him. This is what it means to follow Jesus. Jesus continues to explain the cost of discipleship in what you might call A Paradoxical Instruction. It is paradoxical in that it's not the way the world thinks. But to the believer, the beauty of its logic will be apparent. "For whoever wishes to save his life shall lose it; and whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel's shall save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and forfeit his soul? For what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? (vv. 35-37) What does Jesus mean that if we try to "save our life we will lose it; if we try to lose our life for His sake, we will save it?" Why, everyone knows that if we don't take care of ourselves, no one will. If we let others use us, we will be used up. This doesn't make sense. True, it doesn't to the worldly mind. We are taught in this world that we only go around once, and we need to grab for all the we can. But that is not the way of the Kingdom of God. To take up the Cross of Christ means renouncing my life and finding my life in the life of another�. Jesus Christ we must give our lives to Jesus. And in return, He will give us His life. Consider the alternative. We can live in this life as grasping individuals, seeking to amass all the material and worldly possessions we think are necessary for a fulfilling life. But to what end? That may be a sensible philosophy if indeed we only go around once. But we are eternal creatures? The Bible tells us that we are. What about the life to come? "For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?" We can have everything this world has to offer, but when we die, it will all be worthless. We need to look to eternal things now if we would prepare for eternity. By living our lives for ourselves, we forfeit eternal life. But by living our lives for Jesus, we inherit eternal life. We may gain the whole world, but if we lose our soul, we haven't gained anything. Only in Christ can we be satisfied. Only in Christ can we find purpose. Only in Christ can our lives have true meaning and true fulfillment. This passage ends with A Perplexing Implication. It centers around the fact that confessing Christ means more than lip service. It means living for Him, unashamedly before others. "For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will also be ashamed of him when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels.'" (v. 38) Confessing Christ cannot be separated from living for Christ. Christianity is not secret service. God has called us to be His ambassadors. As such, we must boldly proclaim, unashamedly, our allegiance to Christ and the need the world has of Him. We must ask them the question Jesus posed to His disciples, "Who do you say that Jesus is?" And then we must share with them the reality of who He is and what He can do in their lives. Notice Jesus says that we should not be ashamed of Him or of His words. The word of God still has the power to liberate souls from the bondage to sin. We must boldly take our stand for Jesus and for His word. Confessing Christ means living out our confession before this watching world.
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