THE CROSS (CC)
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Rise for the reading of this morning's Sermon Text
recorded for us in Matthew's Gospel where we read from
Chapter 16, beginning with Verse 21:
FROM THAT TIME ON
JESUS BEGAN TO EXPLAIN TO HIS DISCIPLES
THAT HE MUST GO TO JERUSALEM AND
SUFFER MANY THINGS AT THE HANDS OF THE ELDERS,
CHIEF PRIESTS AND TEACHERS OF THE LAW, AND THAT HE MUST
BE KILLED AND ON THE THIRD DAY BE
RAISED TO LIFE. PETER TOOK HIM ASIDE AND BEGAN
TO REBUKE HIM. "NEVER, LORD!" HE SAID.
"THIS SHALL NEVER HAPPEN TO YOU!" JESUS TURNED AND
SAID TO PETER, ["GET BEHIND ME, SATAN!] OUT OF MY SIGHT,
YOU ARE A STUMBLING BLOCK TO ME; YOU DO NOT
HAVE IN MIND THE THINGS OF GOD, BUT THE THINGS OF MEN."
THEN JESUS SAID TO HIS DISCIPLES,
"IF ANYONE WOULD COME AFTER ME, HE MUST
DENY HIMSELF AND TAKE UP HIS CROSS
AND FOLLOW ME. FOR WHOEVER WANTS TO SAVE
HIS LIFE WILL LOSE IT, BUT WHOEVER LOSES HIS LIFE
FOR ME WILL FIND IT. WHAT GOOD
WILL IT BE FOR A MAN IF HE GAINS THE WHOLE WORLD,
YET FORFEITS HIS SOUL?
OR WHAT CAN A MAN GIVE IN EXCHANGE FOR HIS SOUL?
This is the Word of our Lord. Let us pray:
Glorious and gracious God, may the words of
my mouth, and the meditation of each of our hearts
be acceptable in Your sight, our only source of
hope and comfort. Amen.
[Text taken from the HOLY BIBLE:
NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION 1973, 1978, 1984,
used by permission of Zondervan Bible Publishers.]
Dear Followers
of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ:
The time that the disciples spent
with Jesus was a time of discovery.
It was a time of learning for them.
It was a time of watching Him,
seeing the things that He did.
Those wonderful and miraculous things
that pointed to His deity. The fact that
He could heal the sick.
That He could give sight to the blind. That He could
make the deaf hear. That He could raise
the dead. That He spoke to them and
taught them as One who had authority.
That there were thousands of people
clamoring to hear
what He had to say. Jesus would take
His disciples away with Him; would spend time with them
in prayer; be alone with them to continue
to teach them and to tell them
what He meant by the parables that He had been using
as illustrations of what the kingdom of heaven was like.
Or what God Himself was like.
What a wonderful experience
that must have been for the disciples.
And then we hear, in our account from Matthew
this morning, that Jesus sat down
with His disciples
to tell them exactly what was
going to happen. And Jesus did not
spare them any of the gory details.
He looked at His disciples and He said to them:
I must go to Jerusalem.
And when I go to Jerusalem
I am going to suffer
many things at the hands of the head elders ...
the teachers of the Law.
Suffer so many things that, in fact,
that I will die ... and on the third day
be raised to life.
The culmination of Jesus' ministry
in this world was His sacrificial death.
But there He was carrying
the sins of all people to make
atonement for them. To shed His blood
so that the punishment that should have been placed
on every single individual
had been placed on Him. And He took it to that cross
of Calvary and there by His death
destroyed it.
Shattering that yoke of slavery
to sin and giving freedom
and forgiveness and the Gospel Message
that His work would continue.
That He rose from the dead on the third day
destroying death proving that Satan had lost
all of his hold and that
Christ was the victor.
And that those who trusted and believed in Him
would also rise.
The glorious work of Jesus Christ
that He taught to His disciples
that He laid out before them so that they
would understand that the things that they were hearing
and the things that they were seeing
were leading to this end.
To go to Jerusalem.
The cross of Calvary;
the empty grave.
And Peter, as always, has something to say.
And in response to what Christ had said, by saying:
Never! That is never ever going to happen
to You. And Jesus turned to him and
slapped him in the face
with the reality of what was going on.
Imagine Peter's shock as Jesus turned to him
and said: Get behind Me, Satan!
You do not have in mind
the things of God, but you have in mind
the things of men.
And this ... is
not about you, Peter.
This is about God.
God's plan of salvation.
God working out
His love that He had promised to Adam and Eve.
That He had called a people to be His own.
To love them.
To have the Messiah of the world come.
That Jesus had come to those very people.
To show them that He WAS
the promised Savior.
And Jesus wanted it clear to Peter
and the other disciples that
THIS is what was going to happen.
This is what HAD to happen.
Because this was the work of Christ.
And with that as the background,
Jesus looked at His disciples and said:
Think about this.
If anyone is going to follow Me ...
he has to pick up his cross;
he has to deny himself;
because the road is not
going to be easy.
But what good will it do you if you
gain the entire world
yet forfeit your soul?
yet forfeit your soul?
What
can you give in exchange
for your soul?
And the disciples, as we,
know the answer. There is nothing
that I could give to win my salvation.
There is nothing that I could do
to be able to gain eternal life
but it has come to me by the gracious gift of God.
It has come into my life by
the power of the Holy Spirit with the Word of God
working faith in me in my baptism ...
keeping me in that faith.
And Jesus says to us today to take up our cross,
to deny ourselves,
and to follow Him.
Because the reality of the life of a Christian
is the reality of Christ's life.
It was never proclaimed to be one
that was going to be easy.
But it is always going to be a struggle.
We STILL struggle with sin.
Even within our very selves, each and every day,
we struggle against our OWN
sinful nature that wants us to disobey God.
That wants us to ignore what God has said.
That wants us to put ourselves first.
To make it about ME.
To make it about what I want. To make it about MY pleasure.
To put in my mind the things
of Dave because that is what
my sinful nature wants. And that's what YOUR
sinful nature wants.
To get what you think you need to have or deserve
no matter how you do it and to put God
in the background.
But Jesus reminds us today that if we are going to
follow Him, a life of service is one
that will have its unique hardships.
And those are the crosses
that we bear on account of our faith.
The difficulties that we have in life
because we are Christians.
And they will come to us because we live
in a world that is against Christ.
We come into contact with people
who do not belive that Jesus is their Lord
and Savior. And they are going to punish us.
They are going to attack us. They are going to
want to hurt us and disprove our faith.
They are not going to make our lives easy,
nor are they going to make our lives comfortable.
But we remind ourselves it is
not about ME. It is about God.
It is about what God has given me
through His Son. What Jesus Christ
has accomplished for me
is my eternal salvation.
Something I couldn't do on my own, but it is
something that is the greatest of gifts.
And brings me the most tremendous comfort
in my life of knowing that even though
I may be in the midst of the most wicked battle,
with the world, with Satan,
and struggling even with myself ...
my faith tells me to NOT trust in me,
but to rely on Christ.
To trust in Him and His promises and
to rest secure that He is my Lord.
That He has redeemed me
a lost and condemned creature.
That He has purchased and won me.
That He has given to me eternal life.
And I realize I put
in practice the things of God
and not the things of myself.
I stop thinking of myself more highly
than I ought. And realize
what is important is Christ.
And I bear Him in my life.
I take up His cross because it is
my salvation and I willingly pick up my cross ...
those hardships and difficulties in my life
and not deny Christ.
But bear them because He is
my Lord and Savior. And in my life
I will follow Him.
I follow Him into death
with the forgiveness of sins knowing that I follow Him
into eternal life.
Raised from that grave that I will not
remain in that grave.
That I will see with my own eyes my Lord and
Savior. That on that Last Great Day,
I will be raised to eternal life.
My body will be transformed to be like His Holy body
and I will live with Him
in all glory and all splendor.
And therefore I follow Him.
And as I mature in my faith,
I realize each and every day
that every step I take
is one that may contain difficulties.
That I'm not running to God
asking for some "get out of this world
with a happy-life card for free."
But knowing,
that following Christ,
is going to bless me beyond what I can imagine.
Because what can I give in exchange for my soul?
What good is
it going to do if I had
all of the money on the face of the earth
and had no faith?
If I had all of the comforts of this life
only to
suffer the discomforts of hell forever.
That if I had an easy and
pleasurable life here and did exactly
what I wanted to do
and ended up under the control
of Satan for all eternity
where there's weeping and gnashing of teeth.
where there's weeping and gnashing of teeth.
It is for us a reality check.
Because so often
our sinful nature wants to complain.
And wants us to think that God somehow doesn't
love us or doesn't care for us.
But that is not the truth.
God's love is constant. It is eternal.
He has promised us tremendous blessings.
He has also given us gifts
to use in this world. The Apostle Paul
reminded us of those in our Epistle Lesson for today.
He said we are the Body of Christ.
And just like the human body is made up of many members
that have different functions,
we all have different gifts and abilities.
Paul reminds us to use them
in worship. To be living
sacrifices offering our bodies to God.
Following Him.
Taking those gifts that He has given to us
and using them for His Church
and for His good and doing
what God has asked of us. No matter what the difficulty.
No matter what happens from sin or the world
or our own insecurity.
But to realize
we are to follow Christ.
But we take up our cross,
that we deny ourselves,
and we follow Him.
For His purpose in coming was
to save us.
He has saved us. We are His own.
Let us live in His grace.
Let us die in His peace.
Let us rise to eternal life,
mindful of the fact that He has loved us
beyond all measure.
So as we wait for that blessed end,
let us take up our cross
and follow Him. Amen.
Let us rise.
Now may the peace of God
which goes beyond all of our understanding, keep your
hearts and your minds and especially your lives,
in the one true faith unto life everlasting. Amen.