Welcome Summit Church. Good morning at all of our campus locations around the triangle from North Raleigh on one side to our Alamance County campus in the other side and everywhere in between. If you have your Bible this morning, I'd love for you to take it out and open it to Mark Chapter 8.
Mark Chapter 8 in your New Testament if you have it. As you're turning there, most of you or many of you hopefully know what an oxymoron is, correct? You know what an oxymoron is?
Hopefully it hadn't been that long since English class. An oxymoron is when contradictory terms appear in conjunction. Something like jumbo shrimp or act naturally. Genuine imitation, tight slacks, airline food would be a good one.
Adorable cat, one of my favorites. Government efficiency or Microsoft works. These would all be oxymoron. Today I want to talk with you in our last of our series here called Phantom Faith. I want to talk with you on what is probably the worst oxymoron of them all and that is half committed Christian. Many people try to be half committed Christians.
They want just enough of Jesus it seems to get them to heaven but not enough to make them radical, not enough to make them a fanatic. According to Jesus, as I hope to show you this weekend, there is no such thing as a half committed follower of his. This is our final week in a series that we are calling Phantom Faith because we're talking about people who go through the motions of Christianity but do so without the soul. I really wanted to call this series Zombie Faith but our creative director told me there was no way in any chance we were going to call any message series with the word zombie in it.
We settled on phantom but my passive aggressive nature has worked that as an illustration into every single message so I could stick it to her. Anyway, Phantom Faith, the idea is a zombie is a body without a soul. It's a body separated from a soul. There are many people who are going through the motions of Christianity but they're doing so without the soul and they know something's missing. There's joy missing in your life. There's motivation missing in your life.
You just feel like you're going through the motions and there's a lot of people that that would describe. So we've looked at three misconceptions that keep people from the soul of Christianity. The very first week what we looked at was how so few people understand what it actually means to be saved by faith. The idea that salvation is received not achieved.
There are very few people or a lot of people that just don't understand exactly what that means. The second week we explored how Christian salvation is about more than just forgiveness. It is forgiveness but it's also resurrection power that transforms your life from the inside out. This week I want to look at what is perhaps the biggest contributor of them all to Phantom Faith. Before I unpack what that is I want to remind you that we are following up each week with an invitation to be baptized. There are many people that are listening to me this weekend that you've never been baptized. Some of you, you just came to Christ recently. In fact we've had some people come to Christ this weekend at our previous services.
Some of you have been the last few weeks. Others of you, you've been Christians for years. But for whatever reason you've just never taken that step to publicly profess your faith in Christ through baptism which is the first command that Jesus gives you when you become a disabled Christian. Last week we had 130 people at our campuses come forward to be baptized. I'm sorry I just said last week we had 130 people come forward to be baptized.
I know we had at least 15 last night and several more in the previous services today and so we're just looking forward to those of you that are going to take that step today. The largest contributor to Phantom Faith of them all is the idea that you can be partially committed to Jesus. The misconception begins with how most of you felt like you needed religion to have a stable family. I can't tell you how many people I see as a pastor who, you know, it's when they have kids they start getting back in church. When it was just you, you know, you weren't really worried about it. When it was just you and your wife, you know, dual income, no kids, you weren't worried about it. Then you had kids and you're like, my kids are growing up to be pagans and I don't want them to grow up outside of the faith and so I've got to get back in church. And that's what brought you back. Or maybe you just felt like you needed religion to be a good person, a complete balanced person. Whatever it was, you came to Jesus because you believed that he had something that you needed, that he could supply something that you needed. And honestly, listen, there's nothing really wrong with that. God uses our need to show us that we can't make it on our own.
That's the way that he works. But here was the mistake that we made. We thought that Christianity primarily consisted in us getting something from Jesus rather than surrendering ourselves to Jesus. We assumed that Jesus was someone that we could add to our lives rather than someone to whom we offered our lives.
Jesus seems to have dealt with that all the time. The reason I say that is because what we're going to look at today in Mark chapter eight is a series of statements that every single gospel writer includes. Which may not be that significant to you, but realize how many things didn't get included in all four gospels. John 3 16 only appears one time. God so loved the world he gave his only son. What you're looking at is something that appears in all four gospels.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the guy who was a German pastor who was executed for a failed assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler. Dietrich Bonhoeffer in a book called The Cost of Discipleship said the fact that it's recorded in all four gospels indicates that it must be something that Jesus just repeatedly worked into every sermon. Some of y'all are irritated that I tell the same stories and make the same points in a certain sermon. Jesus did it, so deal with it. It's central to his message. It's a conversation he has with the future head of the church himself, Peter. Here we go, Mark eight verse 27.
This is a big deal. The Jewish people have been waiting for the Christ for 3,000 years. Christ just means the promised one.
It's the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew word Messiah. That Christ God had said would overthrow Roman oppression or whoever was oppressing the Jews at the time. That Messiah would right all wrongs. The Christ would stop injustice. The Christ would put an end to the curse and restore the kingdom of God on earth.
Peter says this is a big deal. Jesus we recognize that the one we've been talking about for three thousand years, that one is you. Verse 31. Jesus 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. Then after three days, he would rise again. He said this very plainly without metaphor or nuance.
He just came out and said it. That didn't make any sense to Peter. A Messiah that suffers?
No, no. The Christ was supposed to put an end to suffering, not actually suffer himself. So Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. Every week after the first service we do here at four o'clock, I have a little team of people that meets me backstage and we go over the sermon line by line. At what point they tell me what I said that didn't make sense, what I said that was wrong.
They tell me jokes that I've made that were lame and I should not repeat again. It takes a lot of nerve to do that with Jesus. After he gets done teaching, Peter takes him aside and does sermon critique with him and says you shouldn't have said that.
It was wrong. Verse 33. He said, get behind me, Satan, for you are not setting your mind on the things of God.
You're setting your mind on the things of man. By the way, one of the reasons that we know the Bible is authentic is that it includes stories like this one. We're talking about the future head of the church and Jesus calls him Satan.
Let me ask you this. If you were making up stories to try to bolster your floundering religious movement, is that the kind of story that you would make up? If you were trying to get a cynic here in the triangle to come visit our church, would you be like, oh yeah, our pastor flunked out a seminary for cheating and Jesus once called him the great Satan. No, that's not the kind of thing he would make up. The only reason he put it in there is because it's true.
It's true. Now, usually when you rebuke somebody, you do it privately. That's just polite, right? The fact that Jesus does this publicly means that whatever Peter said was so dangerous and so wrong that Jesus felt like it needed a public rebuke. You see where it says he saw his disciples?
He saw, he's like, we gotta correct this in front of everybody. We're calling the crowd to him with his disciples. He's not just a disciple.
He's gotta bring everybody in on Peter's stupidity. He's gonna be like, Peter, I'm gonna embarrass you in front of all these people and we're gonna write it down in the Bible so for 2,000 years you're gonna be talking about what a dumb thing you said. He said to them, if anyone would come after me, they're gonna deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. Now, y'all, what Jesus said here was shocking and sometimes I feel like we lose the impact of it because cross, that word just does not conjure up the same images for us that it did for them. For us, the cross is a sentimental symbol of our faith. We decorate our houses with it. I knew somebody who, you know, their goal was to collect a decorative cross from every continent in the world and have them all displayed in their living room. For you, the cross is a piece of jewelry you wear around your neck that's made out of gold or diamond.
In fact, let me ask this. How many of you right now on some place on your body, whether it's in your ear or around your neck or you got it tattooed or the grills in your teeth, I don't know, whatever, you have a cross either on your body or displayed somewhere decoratively in your home? Raise your hand, all canvases.
All right, so that's probably three quarters of us. Now, I'm not trying to say that you shouldn't have that. I'm just trying to say there was something nothing, there was nothing sentimental or decorative for them about the cross. It was an image of oppression, of death, of horror, of torture. It'd be like a freed slave in the 19th century wearing a little lynching rope around their neck. Today, you go over to somebody's house and they have a cross above their kitchen table or they have one above in their baby's room above the crib and you don't think anything about it. But imagine going over to somebody's house and above their table, they have a picture of somebody standing in front of a firing squad. And then you go into their nursery and dangling from the mobile above their baby's crib are some little hangman's nooses. You're not gonna be like, oh, how sweet, they're religious. You're gonna say, kids, we don't really play at this person's house, right?
We don't spend any time alone there unattended. Now, again, I'm not trying to tell you that you shouldn't wear a cross or decorate your house with it. I'm just trying to make sure that you don't lose the shock of what Jesus said. Because Jesus uses this image to confront a satanic perversion of faith.
The one that is still commonly held by Christians, Christians who have the cross tattooed to their body or are wearing it around their neck or have it hanging up in their home. A satanic perversion of faith, one that is held even by Peter at this point in his life. It is called consumer faith. Consumer faith and it has three elements. Here they are.
Just taking notes. Number one, you have consumer faith if you expect Christ to remove all hardship from your life. Peter assumed that the Messiah would end suffering for God's people.
Y'all, and this wasn't without warrants. The Old Testament repeatedly promised that a Messiah was going to come who would end injustice, right wrongs, end suffering, restore the kingdom. But see, there was also a lot of talk in the Old Testament about a suffering servant. And the identity of the suffering servant confused the Jewish people, but they never in a million years imagined that the suffering servant and the conquering Christ were the same person.
So Peter, along with most Jews of his time, could not conceive of a suffering Messiah. And so he expresses what I consider to be the heart of Christian immaturity. The heart of Christian immaturity is this. Jesus Christ came so that I would not suffer. And in the same way, I'm not going to stop your pain in this life. I'm going to redeem that pain, and I'm going to give that pain meaning, and I'm going to use that pain to bring life to yourself and your family and the world, just like I'm going to use my suffering and my pain to bring life to you. And Jesus tells Peter that until he understands that, he should stop speaking for the Messiah.
You think it's harsh. Get behind me, Satan. That's Jesus saying shut your mouth until you understand this. In fact, literally, look in your Bible in verse 30.
In verse 30, it says, Jesus said, do not talk about me any longer until you get this. You see, there's a lot of immature Christians today who still believe, and many who stand in pulpits. And they stand in pulpits, but they're still immature Christians who teach that salvation means an end to all suffering in your life. And if you suffer, God is somehow not keeping up his end of the deal, or you just don't have enough faith to end the suffering. But Jesus says salvation does not end the problems in your life. In fact, sometimes, salvation means the problems in your life intensify. My problem is not, my promise is not that all these problems are going to disappear.
My promise is that in these problems, I'm going to be working to produce life. When you discover, when you find out that he may not remove every problem from your life, you're going to go through a defining moment in your faith. You're going to go through a test like Peter did. And that test, that defining moment is essentially this question.
Why? Are you following Jesus? Are you following Jesus, because of something that you thought that he could do for you? Or are you following him because you believe knowing him was more valuable than anything else that life could give? You see, every single one of us has certain expectations when we come to Jesus. Your expectations are not the same as Peter had. I mean, Peter believed the Messiah would overthrow Rome and give freedom to Israel.
Most of you didn't grow up dreaming about war with Rome, unless you're like a video gamer, and then you probably thought about it a lot. But most of us did grow up with a view of Jesus that responds to our American consumeristic culture. Our American consumeristic Jesus was part genie in a bottle. He's part therapist. He's part life coach. He's part personal cheerleader and part financial advisor. He's a Jesus who exists for our purposes, a Jesus who completes our life, a Jesus who makes everything better, a Jesus who is at our beck and call.
Here is the question. What are you going to do? What are you going to do when Jesus doesn't quite live up to those expectations? There's going to be a moment of truth. If you haven't gone through it already, you're going to go through it. Are you going to throw up your hands and walk away? Are you going to be the one with the words of eternal life? In other words, no, you haven't lived up to my expectations, and there's some things I don't understand why you didn't do them, and I don't understand why you say them, and I don't understand why you didn't do this, but I don't know anywhere else I can go because I know that ultimately life means knowing you, and that everything without you is nothing, and I've got to know you even if it means it costs me everything. Peter passed his test.
Are you going to pass your test? Because if you haven't gone through it yet, you're going to go through it where he doesn't do something you thought he should do. The cancer doesn't go into remission. Your kids never gets better. Your husband never comes back. Your kids don't quite turn out the way that you thought they were going to turn out. You don't get the job.
You don't get the raise. Whatever it was that you thought he was going to give to you, and that you can't understand why he didn't give to you. If you love me, why wouldn't you give me this?
And at that point, it's going to be a defining moment. Why are you in this? Because it's a test from him. Are you in it because you were in it for him, or are you in it because of something you thought he could give you? Because the greatest gift he gives.
Here is number two. You have consumer faith if you think of discipleship in terms of self-fulfillment instead of sacrifice. Peter thought of the Christ as somebody who would make his life better, but now Jesus is talking about willingly picking up a cross. Why are you in this, Peter?
Are you thinking that following me completes your life, or are you thinking of following me as being an offering of your life for others the way I'm offering mine for you? I've been there for about a year, and honestly, all things were not going well. It had not turned out the way that I thought it was going to turn out. I was lonely relationally. I was not fulfilled. I didn't feel like I was growing spiritually. I wasn't fruitful on the mission field. Just nothing was happening the way I thought was supposed to happen. And honestly, I was mad at Jesus. I'm like, you got me all the way over here, and nothing's turning out the way I thought. Thousands of people were supposed to be getting saved.
I'm supposed to be writing books, and it's just not happening. I remember a friend of mine invited me to a ritual sacrifice, a Muslim sacrifice. Obviously, I didn't go as a Muslim. I didn't go to worship. I wanted to observe.
But it's once a year they do a sacrifice that commemorates Abraham's offering of his son. And so you have to dress in white, and so they put me on the front row. There's like 500 people there, and somehow I'm on the front row.
And I'm already like a foot and a half taller than everybody. And so it's like, it's just like, I'm just really, one of these things does not belong. These seven men take this bull. They do it the same way the Jews used to do it. They take this bull, and they lay the bull in the ground. They force the bull down on the ground.
And this Islamic version of a priest takes a knife, and he begins to say these ritual prayers over it. And then at some point, he reaches down, and he begins to cut through the neck of this bull. Now, y'all, I do not want to give you the gruesome details, but it was the most horrendous thing I have ever seen in my life.
I know they did it all the time in the Old Testament, and I knew about it in the Old Testament. Literally, I mean, they begin to cut through that neck, and blood just goes everywhere. I was like four feet from it on the front row, and I'm covered in blood. And for about 90 seconds, that animal, as they cut through its trachea, just lays there and thrashes and kicks as blood spews everywhere and wheezes and gasps and dies. And I know that 90 seconds doesn't sound like a long time, but when you're standing there with nothing else to look at, it seems like an eternity. Here's that thought in my heart.
Here's that thought. He said, this is the picture that I gave to Israel about what I was going to go through for their sin. This is the sacrifice I was going to make so that you could have me forever. It is also the picture that I gave to you about what following me was going to look like. Is this what you signed up for right here?
Because this is what you signed up for, then it doesn't make sense why you're complaining and mad at me because I haven't lived up to my end of the deal. You see, when Jesus bids a man to come and follow, Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, he bids him come and die. Is that what you signed up for?
Is that what you thought you were getting into? When you came to Jesus, are you ready for this to be the picture of your life? What did you think Jesus' purpose was in saving you? Many people assume that it's just becoming a Christian means you clean up your life a little bit morally, and in response, you get God's help and he takes you to heaven. Jesus said that coming to him means offering your life to him without restriction. Offering up your life for the world in sacrifice and service the way that Jesus did his. Here is my question. I know you say you come to Jesus.
Have you ever offered yourself to God this way? A lot of times I'll say that you need to have a Copernican revolution of the soul, and I don't take time to explain what I mean by that. Here's what I mean. Copernicus was the guy who figured out that the earth wasn't in the middle of the universe. Up until that point, everybody thought that the universe is rotated around the earth because that's what it looked like. Copernicus said no. The sun is at the middle, at least of our solar system, and we rotate around it. It was the Copernican revolution in science, the discovery that we're not at the center, that we orbit around something much bigger than ourselves.
A Copernican revolution of the soul is when you finally discover that Jesus is not somebody that you get into orbit in your life, but what you do is you discover how you get into orbit in his. You see, some of you came to Jesus because you're like, I need the sun to shine on my career. I need the sun to shine on my family. I need the sun to shine on my relationships.
And Jesus said, nice start, but that's not anywhere close to being complete. You don't come to me to add me to your life. You come to offer me to your life.
You don't come to get me in orbit in your life. You come to say, God, everything I have belongs to you, and I want to know what you want to do with it, and I have no expectations because I'm laying it down as a sacrifice in front of you. Consumer faith says, God, I need you to give me this. Discipleship says, it all exists for you, and I offer my life as a blank check to you. Or to quote my friend David Platt, Jesus did not save us to disinfect us and put us on the sanctified shelf. Jesus saved us to put us into service. My question for you is, have you ever offered yourself to God this way? Is Jesus someone that you tried to add to your life, or is Jesus somebody to whom you offered your life?
Here is number three. You have consumer faith if your obedience to Christ has limits. You're a consumer of faith if your obedience to Christ has limits. Peter had been excited about following Jesus when it meant healing and power and popularity. And if you remember, he'd been willing to pay a hefty price to be identified with Jesus. He'd walked away from a lucrative fishing career.
He's not JV. I mean, he's left everything. But now Jesus is talking about following him into a life of suffering, a life of sacrifice, a life of service, a life where you give everything and get nothing back. And so Jesus confronted Peter with a question. Peter, are you following me because of what you thought I could do for you? Are you following me to be with me? Because really following me means going with me through the highs and the lows, not because of what you can get out of it, but for who you get to be with. Peter, is there a limit to, is there a condition on your surrender to me?
Write this down. Salvation is free. It costs us nothing. But following Jesus will eventually cost you everything.
Or let me rephrase it. Following Jesus will eventually cost you something, maybe everything. Salvation is free. It's a gift that he gives you.
It costs you nothing. But following Jesus will eventually cost you something, maybe everything. You see, at some point, your desires are going to go one way and Jesus is going to tell you to go the other. And at that point, you're going to have to decide how valuable Jesus is to you. You see, here's what I see happening in our church.
We have people who come to Jesus. And then as you begin to follow Jesus, Jesus begins to point out that there's a certain relationship that you need to end. Maybe it's that you're dating a non-Christian and he says, I don't want you to have a family that's comprised of people who are not both following Jesus. And so I want you to end this dating relationship and you don't want to.
Your desires are going one way and the lordship of Jesus is going the other. And you were hoping to have this relationship and Jesus and Jesus says, nope, I want this and you want that. And you've got to decide whether or not you're going to follow him or follow the relationship. He calls you to go somewhere in mission. He tells you to change your career or your major.
And it scares you. He tells you to make a financial sacrifice. He tells you to forgive and you don't want to forgive because this person hurts you deeply and your desires are not to forgive. He tells you to speak to a certain person about the gospel. For some of you, what he's telling you is to get off the sidelines and join the church. There's very few things in scripture as clear as the fact that Jesus does not want to create an audience of spectators.
He doesn't want people who come and sit in the audience each week and take notes and come back in a couple weeks for another religious lecture that inspires them. He said the church is a community that you covenant with. You belong to it.
You offer yourself to it and you become a part of the service. And I'm speaking to a bunch of people that you've never followed Jesus there. You come and you sit and you're like, well, I like Jesus. I like taking notes, man.
I love the music. But no, I don't really like being a part of groups like that. Yeah, I know Jesus said that, but I'd just rather not do it. So that's where you stop.
That's the point at which you're like, nope, I'm not doing that any longer. He told me to do that. My desires are not to be in the church, to be covenant, just to come and attend. And his desires for me to commit.
And I choose me over him. For some people, it honestly is the question to get baptized. He said this is your first act of obedience. And you're like, I don't know. I don't really want to do that.
So I'm just going to sit this one out. We're talking about getting wet for Jesus. And I'm going to humbly submit to you that if you can't get wet for Jesus, you don't really have what it takes to go the distance to carry the cross. Jesus said when you come, you don't come with a bunch of expectations.
You don't come with a bunch of conditions. You come to lay down your life. And at some point, I'm telling you, salvation is free.
It costs you nothing. But at some point, following Jesus is going to cost you something. And obedience to Jesus is going to take you in a direction 180 degrees opposite of what you want. And in that moment, you're going to have to answer the question, did I come to Jesus to get something from him?
Or did I come to offer myself fully to him? I put this in my pocket right before I walked up here. All right, this. For those of you that are under the age of 35, this is called a check. This is how in the old days when we were horse and buggy, we used to give money to each other. Now we just pull this thing out right here and you put out that little thing in your iPhone and swipe my card and then I give you 50 cents.
But this is how we used to do it. I have here a check that is from my bank account. And it just has my name on it right there. I just signed my name on the bottom. This piece of paper is pretty haggard, but this piece of paper, if I gave it to you, you could fill in whatever amount you want and you would have access to the entirety of my bank account.
Now it's not that awesome, but everything that I have, you could have. This is a blank check. Some of you know that at some point in your life, you were asked to give a blank check to somebody else because you owed them money. You ever done this? I owed a friend money and I didn't know how much it was going to be. And so they said, why don't you just give me a check, sign your name to it, and later I'll fill in the amount. You ever have to do this?
It is a defining moment in your relationship with that person because you ask, do I really? Because I think I know you, but I've also seen enough movies to know that you might not be who you say you are. You might work for the CIA or might be a terrorist.
I saw Blacklist and the girl's husband was like a terrorist. And so I don't even know who you are. So maybe, maybe you're not who you say you are. Am I really going to give you something that which you can empty out every single thing that I have?
It's scary. When you come to Jesus, what he says is this is what I want. This is the only thing that I'll take.
Oh, wait a minute. How about I give you a gift card? Because a gift card, I can be really generous. I can give you a huge amount on a gift card, but the thing about a gift card is you're in control of it. If I fill out this check and I give you a certain amount, then I'm still in control of it. What Jesus said is I don't want your gift card. I don't want your check pre-filled out. I'm going to take as a blank check, Peter. In other words, there's got to be no expectations. Everything you have, everything you are, everything that you have ever hoped to be, you are going to lay down and say, I have no expectations.
It all belongs to you. Jesus' demands on you are total. And y'all, that's huge. It's huge. It's the biggest thing that you've ever been asked in your life.
And if it doesn't scare you to death, you haven't taken it seriously. And so Jesus uses three motivations to try to move you to it. And that's the last several verses there. This one's in verse 35. You see, whoever would save his life will lose it. Whoever loses his life for my sake, though, and the gospels, will actually save it. Let me focus on the last part of that verse.
Here's letter A, the first motivation. God brings life through obedience. You think you're losing your life. It feels like death, but actually that's how you gain your life. It's how I give life. Obedience to Jesus, y'all listen, sometimes feels like death. Obedience to Jesus sometimes feels like death, but through that obedience, God brings life. So that forgiveness that you extend, that you don't want to extend, that feels like death, through that, God restores a relationship back to life. And he also releases you from bitterness in your own heart. The relationship that you walk away from, that you don't want to walk away from, and it feels like death.
I can't tell you how many times I've seen this. It becomes the means by which God leads you into a new relationship, a healthy life-giving relationship for you and for them. When you walked away from that relationship that Jesus was telling you not to be in, it felt like death. And you're like, I don't know how I'm going to survive without this. But you left and you followed Jesus, and Jesus said, watch what I do.
And he gave it back to you in a much better way. The ministry that you engage in, the career change, is not only going to bring life to somebody else, it's going to become a renewal of your own faith and maybe the faith of everybody in your family. God takes your financial sacrifice and he brings life through it, not just to the people that you're giving it to, not just to the ministries you support, but he brings life to your own heart and to your kids' heart. It helps them not be materialistic. When you obey and be baptized, you get engaged in a church, what happens is it feels in some ways like death.
I don't want to get wet in front of people. I don't want to be a part of a community that has problems and is messy. But God uses that as a way of bringing life to you and your family, obedience sometimes feels like death, but it is through that death that God brings life to you. That's his first motivation.
Here's the second one, verse 36. For what is a prophet a man anyway to gain the whole world if he loses his soul? What would a man give in return for his soul?
Here's his second motivation, letter B. You can't hold onto it anyway. Whatever you're holding onto that keeps you from full surrender to Jesus, inevitably at some point you're going to lose.
Let me just ask you a very logical question. What would you hang onto now that you're going to say then was worth your soul? Fast forward your life to five minutes after you die.
What is there you held onto in life now that you're going to look back then and say, yep, that was totally worth it. I'm glad I forfeited my soul for eternity so I could hang onto that while I was alive. I talk to college students who tell me the reason they won't consider the lordship of Jesus is they want to hold onto their sexual freedom.
They want to shake. They want to say, is that really worth it for you to give up your soul? They say, well, yeah, but at least I'm having fun now. I say, you really feel like five minutes into eternity the memory of a few brief sexual escapades, which were not that fulfilling anyway.
You're going to feel like five minutes into eternity, yeah, it was worth me holding onto control of my life and giving up my soul so that I could have that. I know many people who reject the lordship of Jesus because they want out of their marriage. They want to be with somebody new. I just want to ask them, is leaving your marriage for a new spouse worth your soul? If you're going to walk away from Jesus, is it really worth it? What, are you going to comfort each other in hell?
Is control over your career or your calendar or your finances, is it really worth rejecting Jesus and losing your soul? Because whatever you're hanging onto, you're going to end up losing anyway. I heard a guy say the other day, he says, you know, when they bury you, they put you in a death suit.
A death suit looks like real clothes, but a few differences, it doesn't have a back. And number two, it doesn't have any pockets, because you can't put anything in your pockets and carry with you into the grave. Whatever you're trying to hang onto, you're not going to be able to hold onto anyway in eternity. You know, Jim Elliott, the missionary who was martyred in Ecuador, he had that famous statement, he is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose. You're not a fool to give up what you can never hang onto to gain what you can't lose. You are a fool, however. You are a fool, however, if you give up your soul in order to hang onto something that you can't hang onto anyway.
You know, usually when I talk to teenagers about this, every time I talk to teenagers, every time I speak to a high school student, I end up using this illustration, because I almost always use this verse somewhere in the talk. I always say to the audience, imagine you're a group of high school students, I'm like, how valuable is your left piki to you? Okay, here's my deal. If I had $10 million in cash up here piled up on the stage, $10 million, I'm going to give it to the one person in here who will walk up here, stand here, put their left hand down on this table, and let me cut off your left piki with a butcher knife.
$10 million, who's in? Now, when I say that to a group of high school students, 99.98% of the students are like, you know, I will happily give up my piki. And I say, okay, okay, let me renegotiate, because there's so many volunteers. Not just your left piki, I want all four fingers in your left hand, who's in? About half the hands go down at that point. It's all the girls. All the girls are like, nope, I'm not giving up my four fingers. All the guys are like, I'm in.
And I say, okay, renegotiate again. I'm going to cut off your arm at your elbow here, left arm. Usually about two-thirds of the remaining guys put their hands down.
There's still a third of them. They're like, I don't know, I'm right-handed, so let me, I'm in. And I say, okay, I'm going to renegotiate one last time to you that have your hands raised. I don't want just your left arm.
I'm going to cut off your left arm and then your right arm, and then your left leg and your right leg, and then I'm going to pluck out your eyes, step up your ears, cut off your nose, and cut out your tongue. $10 million. You walk out of here, or you are wheeled out of here with $10 million. Who's in? There's always one.
There's always one. At this point, I recognize said person and say, put your hand down, man, you're an idiot, because nobody, what good is $10 million if you have no faculties with which to enjoy it? Essentially what Jesus says in Mark 8, 37, is there's a lot of people who are giving up far, far more to gain far, far less. What are you holding onto that you're going to say is worth your soul?
You know the answer to that. The answer is nothing. There's nothing that's worth your soul. So Jesus pushes that logic on you now, and he says, think about it now. What are you hanging onto that is really worth the cost of your soul of rejecting the lordship of Jesus?
There's a final motivation that he gives you. It's there in verse 38. For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with all the holy angels.
Here's the third motivation. Let her see Jesus was not ashamed of you. You see, there was some irony in this verse. And that irony is that Jesus, who should have been ashamed of us, wasn't. Jesus should have been ashamed of Peter. Jesus should have been ashamed of all the disciples.
He should have been ashamed of you and me. But the cross that he picked up for us was voluntary. Jesus was the only one with nothing to gain and everything to lose. I have to obey Jesus because he's God. Jesus didn't have to pick up a cross for me because I was just a rebel.
He could have destroyed me. Yet out of love for me, he identified himself with me and said, I refuse to be ashamed of you. And he picked up a cross to save me. And the implicit question in what Jesus says is, Is not this a God worth leaving everything for? What else would you want to give your life to? Here's God who didn't have to pick it up out of love for you. Why wouldn't you offer your life without restriction to him? That's a God you can trust.
That's a God that's worthy of your life. Time I felt like I understood this. Again, let me go back to the mission field. I've been there about a year.
No, excuse me, I've only been there about four months. And I got a call from a friend who was a Christian. He lived three hours south of me. He said, man, I need your help with something.
I said, what is it? He said, I can't tell you on the phone. So he said, come down to where I am. So I got on a bus that night and I drove three hours down to where he was. He had me meet him at a coffee shop after midnight in a back room. It was just me and him, one other guy that I'd never met. My friend says to this guy, tell him your story. And this other guy said, he said, my name is, he told me his name. He said, I'm 32 years old, I've been a Muslim all my life.
I have no ambitions of being anything but a Muslim. He said, about a month ago, he said, I just had the strangest and most disturbing dream. He said, in this dream, he said, I awoke, as it were, in this field where, as far as I could see, in front of me, behind me, to the left and to the right, he said, it was just an expanse of nothingness. And I walked what felt like years. He said, you know, this kind of felt like my life.
I just walked with nothing. He said, and so I just kept walking and kept walking. And he said, after what felt like years, suddenly I heard a voice behind me call my name. He says, I turned around and there was somebody there who hadn't been there before. And it was a man, he said, he said he was dressed in radiant white clothing.
His face was shining, sparti matahari, like the sun. And he said, he called my name and he reached inside of his robe and he pulled out a copy of the Injil, which is their word, the Arabic word for gospel. He reached this out to me and he handed it to me and he said, this is the only thing that will get you out of this field. He said, immediately I recoiled because that's a Christian book and I didn't want anything to do with a Christian book. He said, and when I recoiled, immediately I woke up.
It was 3 o'clock in the morning and I knew that I'd made a terrible mistake. He said, the second night I went to sleep and I had the exact same dream, same deal, I walked for what seemed like days. Again, he calls my name, I turn and he hands me the copy of the gospel. And he said, this time though, he said, this time I wanted to take it. He said, but I just couldn't, I couldn't do it.
I couldn't get the willpower to reach my hands up and take it. So I just stood there paralyzed, he said, and then I woke up. He said, it was again middle of the night and I knew that I was making a terrible mistake.
He said, third night I went to sleep. He said, there was no walking to the field this time. I just appeared in the field and there he stood right in front of me. And he called my name and he said, this is the last time I will tell you this is the only thing that can get you out of this field. He said, this time I watched my hands. He said, they were just shaking and it was like it was involuntary.
I just reached up and I took this copy of the gospel and I took it and I clung it to my chest. He said, and then I woke up. He said, I woke up, I was in a cold sweat. He said, now my friend here tells me that you are from America and you are an expert at the gospel, at the end jail.
He says, can you tell me what my dream means? Now, I grew up a really conservative Baptist. We didn't roll with the whole dreams and visions thing. We didn't have a class on that in seminary. And so I was like, well, I was like, bro, you are so in luck.
Dream interpretation is my spiritual gift. And for the next two hours, two hours, I just sat there and I explained to him what the gospel taught. And I got to the part about God dying on a cross for our sin.
And remember he stopped me. He said, you mean you are telling me that the creator God, Allah, actually you are saying he died on a cross for what I did wrong. I said, yeah, that's what the Bible teaches.
I remember these big tears welled up in his eyes and he kind of just looked up and he just said, Allahu Akbar, which means God is the greatest. And I kept explaining what the gospel was, what it meant. And after, again, about two hours, I said, man, do you want to trust Christ as your Savior? He said, I do. I said, well, every head bowed, every eye closed.
I guess we do this the same way over here. He bowed his head and I began to lead him in the sinner's prayer, which is what I do with you almost every weekend here, give you a chance. Go through the familiar phrases, Lord Jesus, I know that I'm a sinner. I know that you died for my sin. I got about two phrases in. I said, stop. I said, man, I'm sorry.
I could look up here at me. I said, you know what this means, right? This means that Jesus is Lord and the first command he gave is for you to be baptized. And you know in just a minute after this is over, you're going to need to get baptized. And you know, you and I both know that sometimes in your country that leads to you being kicked out of your family.
It probably is going to mean you lose your job. In fact, you and I both know stories of people who've lost their lives when this happened. I said, are you sure you want to do this? He goes, oh, yeah, yeah, I'm sure. I said, man, aren't you scared?
And you're like, you're the worst evangelist I have ever heard. I said, aren't you scared? He said, yeah, I'm scared. He said, why do you think it took me a month to work up the courage just to talk to you?
He said, but here's what I decided in that month. I knew that you were going to tell me that that was Jesus that appeared in the dream. I knew that because I knew enough of what Christians believe in.
I knew that Christians believe that Jesus was somehow God. And what I decided in that month is if Jesus really did do what the Christians said he did, and that is he died for my sin, and he had died to save me and he was calling me to follow him, then I would go with him no matter what I had to leave behind. And if I lose my family, I'm not going to want that. If I lose my job, I don't want that either, and I certainly don't want to lose my life, but I'd rather have Jesus than any of those things. And if I can't have Jesus and those things, I'll take him over those things. When you said that, I was like, I feel like I need to receive Christ.
Could you pray for me? I know your conversion was not that dramatic, but the substance of it is the same. What it means to come to Jesus is that you come saying, I'd rather have Jesus than anything. I'd rather have Jesus than silver or gold. I'd rather have Jesus than riches untold. I'd rather have Jesus than houses or lands. I'd rather be led by his nail scarred hand. I'd just rather have him.
And I don't care what I leave behind. It's just a blank check because I just want him. Have you ever come to Jesus that way? You see, for Peter, he would pass this test. One day he would actually get a real cross.
He would actually die on a cross upside down. It's going to cost you something eventually. We have people in this church that are like, I can't believe you're asking me to switch services again. Seriously, my small group is no longer meeting on the night that is preferable for me. I'm going to quit going. I can't believe this church is volunteering in the nursery, the nerve of those people.
Parking cars, giving some of my money. Are you crazy? I'm like, are we even having the same conversation? You're talking about I don't want to follow Jesus through inconvenience and meeting on a different night or going to a different service or making a financial sacrifice. And Jesus is talking about having your hands nailed to a cross and leaving and giving up your life. And I want to say, do you even understand the conversation that we're having? I don't really want to get wet in front of a bunch of people.
Then I don't even feel like you're serious yet. Because if you can't follow Jesus into a tub of water, then you certainly can't follow him to the ends of the earth with the gospel. If any man will come after me, let him pick up his cross and follow. When Jesus bids a man to follow, he bids him come and die. If you follow Jesus that way, why don't you bow your heads at all of our campuses? Have you ever given Jesus a blank check with your life? Have you?
If not, it might sound something like this. Jesus, I know that you're the Savior. I know you died for my sin. And if I've never received you before, I'm doing it right now. I trust you as my Savior. I surrender everything I have, everything I am, everything I ever hoped to be is yours.
No conditions. It's all yours. I will follow where you call.
I'm going to leave you in this for just a moment. I want you to keep your heads bowed at all of our campuses. Our campus pastors, our worship leaders are going to come in a moment. I just want you to linger in this moment with the Holy Spirit, and then our campus pastors are going to extend an invitation to those of you who need to be baptized. And through God's grace, you're going to follow that. So you just stay here with your heads bowed at all campuses, and our worship teams will come.
Whisper: medium.en / 2023-09-04 18:30:28 / 2023-09-04 18:50:22 / 20