Title: The Way of the Cross
Text: Mark 8: 34 – 38 (ESV)
Speaker: Mr Yap Chee Kai
Walking the Way of the Cross (Mark 8: 34 – 38)
1.0 Introduction
1.1 Have you witnessed or heard one’s willingness to lay down one’s life for Jesus?
1.2 Last October, Bishop T. Jeyakumar’s sermon “Following Jesus Unreservedly,” conveyed a powerful testament of a missionary and his family who laid down their lives for the gospel. The indelible lines delineate: “The Cross before me, the world behind me. No turning back.”
1.3 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a martyr who took the stand against Hitler and his infamous policies of slaughtering six million Jews. He warned the Church, seized by cheap grace.
1.4 Today’s text is the pinnacle of Mark’s Gospel, exemplifying the cost of discipleship.
2.0 The Setting
2.1 Chapters 8:31; 9:31; 10:33-34 is the pinnacle of Mark’s Gospel, accentuates the gravity: there shall be no kingdom of God without the way of the Cross.
2.2 Two observations emerged from these three texts. First, Jesus is to be killed and he will rise from the dead; and second, Jesus must suffer and be rejected.
2.3 Suffering and rejection is the central of Mark’s motif in 10:45: “to serve, and give his life as a ransom for many.”
2.4 Only Jesus can ransom our soul from the power of Sheol (Ps. 49:15), and not man (Ps. 49:7-8); demonstrates God’s perfect redemptive plan.
2.5 God’s ultimatum plan cannot be thwarted. Jesus rebuked Peter (8:33); clearly explicates the division of godliness and godlessness.
2.6 Like Jesus’ disciples, we must partake in Jesus’ suffering, rejection and crucifixion. True discipleship places the disciples and us under the way of the Cross.
2.7 If you are being ransomed by Jesus, are you willing to follow him solely on his term? Today’s text is the central message to all of us.
3.0 The Cost of Following Christ (v.34)
3.1 Jesus demands one’s willingness to either obey or reject his three discipleship demands (Application).
3.2 Firstly, to deny oneself. If you follow Jesus you must reject all other offers which come your way.
3.3 Reject approval, honor, comfort, pleasure and security of the world (drown your old self Adam). Yet, embrace opposition, shame, sufferings and death (allow new Adam-Christ to emerge).
3.4 Self-denial means knowing only Christ, no longer knowing oneself…self-denial says only he is going ahead, hold fast to him–Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
3.5 When you have denied yourself, you will say: “Not my will but thine be done.” It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me (Gal. 2:20). This is the way of the Cross.
3.6 Secondly, only when a man has really forgotten himself completely and no longer know himself, but he sees only Jesus and know only Jesus, only then he is ready to take up his cross for Christ’s sake.
3.7 Jesus prepares and enables us to receive this hard Word as grace as the means to bear our cross.
3.8 To take up one’s cross means to bear one’s allotted share of suffering and rejection – for this is the way of the Cross.
3.9 Thirdly, Jesus tells his disciples to follow the way he has chosen.
3.10 It means to abandon the attachments of this world; this includes all of our self-idolatry, and self-independence denunciation. Instead, to depend on Christ alone.
3.11 Jesus’ word in v.34 demands our willingness (not under any compulsion) to come to him and surrendering our lives completely under his lordship.
3.12 Is it worth to follow him? Indeed, it is. Jesus elucidates four “fors” (vv.35-38) as a rationale/motivation to follow him.
4.0 The Promises of Following Christ
4.1 Promise 1: Eternal Life (v.35)
* The way of the Cross is laid down on every Christian. If we choose to avoid the Cross, we will be destined to fail and lose our lives forever.
* Following Jesus to death actually is the way to life (John 11:25). Indeed, those who lose their lives will save it (by following Jesus to death): this is the grand paradox.
* But if we refuse to follow him because we love our own lives in this world, then we eventually lose it. For indeed, no man can redeem his soul from God.
* On the contrary, if we follow Jesus and trust in his gospel (even it means death today), we have eternal life.
* You want to save your life, you lose it. You lose your life for Jesus and the gospel’s, you save it.
* Jim Elliot’s motto: “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”
4.2 Promise 2: Eternal Soul (vv.36–37)
* For v.36: let’s compare the value of the world and the soul. Two lessons to draw from here.
A. First: Worthless things.
* If all possessions in this world including honorary titles, power, pleasures and the like are your idol, what is the point of being the richest people in this world if eventually you die and go to hell forever?
* Likewise, your career, or your family or even your life partner is keeping you away from walking the way of the Cross, what is the point of embracing it while you die and lose your soul eternally?
* What is keeping you from Jesus?
B. Second: Perishable things.
* The soul, which people appear to hold so cheap.
* Have we forgotten that is God who birthed man to become a living soul?
* And it was the soul, Christ was content to take our nature on him, and suffered death upon the Cross.
* The irony is we choose not to walk the narrow gate (the way of the Cross) where it leads to eternal life.
* If we choose to walk the way of the Cross, our soul shall never perish.
* Your soul is worth more than anything in this world. There is no price for your soul except the provision of Jesus Christ on the Cross.
* V. 37: The answer to this is none, absolutely nothing. Because Jesus has paid for that infinite price: the gift of salvation.
* Will you walk the way of the Cross? It is costly and foolish mistake if you choose not to take heed of Jesus’ stern warning in the final verse 38.
4.3 Promise 3: Eternal Judgment or Glory? (v.38)
* Jesus’ hard-piercing warning: impending judgment in this verse.
* Do not trade your soul with the perishing world and with the doomed rejecters who is ashamed of the gospel and Christ; you will face an eternal judgment.
* Do not let anything or anyone hinder you from coming to Jesus. Embrace the way of the Cross, though it may cost your life.
* Listen to this: if you are willing to die for Jesus and his gospel and follow him on his term, then consider your old Adam dead already. You are now living under his lordship.
* You live now to serve him, to please him, to bring him glory and to fulfill his plan.
* And so, is it worth to walk the way of the Cross? Indeed, it is.
* Remember: the sufferings, the shame and the death are all temporal, but the glory that awaits us is eternal.
5.0 Closing
* I end here with a famous painting by Domenico Fetti: Ecce Homo. The translation of the Latin words means: “This have I suffered for you, now what will you do for Me.”
* This painting has inspired countless unsung heroes, like Frances Havergal, Count Zinzendorf, and possibly you too.
* If the Lord is asking you now, the same word in the painting, what would be your response? Will you trust him to walk the way of the Cross?
Let’s pray.
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