Embracing the Cross: The Cost of Discipleship
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"From that time Jesus began to show His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. And Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him, saying, 'Far be it from You, Lord! This shall never happen to You.' But He turned and said to Peter, 'Get behind Me, Satan! You are a hindrance to Me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.'" [00:01:29]
"He must go because this is His purpose, this is His function, this is His mission, this is what He had covenanted to do before the foundation of the world in that covenant of redemption between the Father and the Son. 'I will go,' He would have said to His Father. He had come for one purpose. He had come to die as the last Adam, as the second man. He had come to lay down His life on behalf of sinners." [00:03:14]
"He had come to be the substitute, because we cannot provide for our own salvation. So, He would be the substitutionary Lamb offered in our place. He would be the one to provide penal substitution to satisfy the demands of divine justice, to propitiate our sins, to perform an act of obedience. 'He was obedient even to the point of death,' Paul says in Philippians 2." [00:03:39]
"And so, Peter objects; he took Him aside. Imagine that! Perhaps, he doesn't want Him to be embarrassed or perhaps he doesn't want to be embarrassed, but who takes Jesus aside and began to rebuke Him. Imagine! 'Far be it from You, Lord! This shall never happen to You.' He utters two things out of both sides of His mouth at the same time. 'You are my Master. You are my Lord. I am completely obedient to You. I am Your servant. But You are wrong and You are mistaken and this will never happen to You.'" [00:06:18]
"Now, Jesus didn't speak like that to His disciples. I can't think of another instance where He spoke to His disciples like that where He addresses Peter, looks him in the face and calls him Satan. What is it? It is as though Peter has touched a raw nerve. Something comes into the mind of Jesus that reminds Him of a similar voice that once said to Him, 'You can have a crown without a cross.'" [00:07:45]
"These temptations are real. You know, don't think that because He was God that somehow or other these temptations were not real. These temptations come to Him in His human nature. How tempting it must have been to have all that authority, to have all that glory and not to have to die for it, not to have to be crucified for it." [00:09:18]
"There are versions of Christianity. They are not Christianity at all, but there are versions of Christianity that purport that the death of Jesus is unnecessary, that it isn't necessary for Jesus to die, He was just simply the fate of forces beyond His control, that you don't have to believe in a bloody sacrifice on a cross. But, my dear friend, whatever that is, it is not Christianity, because without the cross there is no Christianity." [00:13:08]
"He begins to teach them and to teach them about taking up a cross, 'If anyone would come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me.' He is calling His disciples to a life of cross-bearing and self-denial. There is a marvelous section in Book Three 3 of The Institutes by John Calvin and he is talking about the Christian life. And he says it consists of three things: cross-bearing, self-denial, and meditation on the future life." [00:14:04]
"Jesus bids us, take up a cross and die. And then a few days later the Nazis, just before the end of the Second World War, the Nazis took him out and hanged him. Jesus bids us, 'Take up a cross and die.' And it was Thomas à Kempis, I think, who said at some point, 'If you will bear the cross, it will bear you.' If you will bear the cross, it will bear you." [00:15:28]
"We live so much for ourselves, for our comfort. We want things to be comfortable. We want things to be nice. We want things to go in our own way. And here is this massive worldview that cuts right across that small narrow thinking of ours and says, 'You've got to give it all. You've got to give it all. You must deny yourself. You must say no to sin.'" [00:17:07]
"If you're going to be My followers, you've got to be prepared to die. You've got to be prepared to deny yourself and your comfort. You must put Me first," Jesus is saying. It is hard, isn't it? There is no compromising. We want to take a text like this and we want to sort of arrange it, reshape it a little, make it a little softer." [00:18:09]
"Peter, well, he is displayed warts and all; you know the good, the bad, and the ugly. But in AD 64, he was captured at the behest of Nero, partly to do with the fires, and so on, in Rome and he blamed the Christians for it. And some said that Nero set the fires himself or he didn't do it himself. He wasn't in the city. He was out of the city when it happened." [00:20:03]
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"He must go because this is His purpose, this is His function, this is His mission, this is what He had covenanted to do before the foundation of the world in that covenant of redemption between the Father and the Son. 'I will go,' He would have said to His Father. He had come for one purpose. He had come to die as the last Adam, as the second man. He had come to lay down His life on behalf of sinners." [00:03:14]
"He had come to be the substitute, because we cannot provide for our own salvation. So, He would be the substitutionary Lamb offered in our place. He would be the one to provide penal substitution to satisfy the demands of divine justice, to propitiate our sins, to perform an act of obedience. 'He was obedient even to the point of death,' Paul says in Philippians 2." [00:03:39]
"And so, Peter objects; he took Him aside. Imagine that! Perhaps, he doesn't want Him to be embarrassed or perhaps he doesn't want to be embarrassed, but who takes Jesus aside and began to rebuke Him. Imagine! 'Far be it from You, Lord! This shall never happen to You.' He utters two things out of both sides of His mouth at the same time. 'You are my Master. You are my Lord. I am completely obedient to You. I am Your servant. But You are wrong and You are mistaken and this will never happen to You.'" [00:06:18]
"Now, Jesus didn't speak like that to His disciples. I can't think of another instance where He spoke to His disciples like that where He addresses Peter, looks him in the face and calls him Satan. What is it? It is as though Peter has touched a raw nerve. Something comes into the mind of Jesus that reminds Him of a similar voice that once said to Him, 'You can have a crown without a cross.'" [00:07:45]
"These temptations are real. You know, don't think that because He was God that somehow or other these temptations were not real. These temptations come to Him in His human nature. How tempting it must have been to have all that authority, to have all that glory and not to have to die for it, not to have to be crucified for it." [00:09:18]
"There are versions of Christianity. They are not Christianity at all, but there are versions of Christianity that purport that the death of Jesus is unnecessary, that it isn't necessary for Jesus to die, He was just simply the fate of forces beyond His control, that you don't have to believe in a bloody sacrifice on a cross. But, my dear friend, whatever that is, it is not Christianity, because without the cross there is no Christianity." [00:13:08]
"He begins to teach them and to teach them about taking up a cross, 'If anyone would come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me.' He is calling His disciples to a life of cross-bearing and self-denial. There is a marvelous section in Book Three 3 of The Institutes by John Calvin and he is talking about the Christian life. And he says it consists of three things: cross-bearing, self-denial, and meditation on the future life." [00:14:04]
"Jesus bids us, take up a cross and die. And then a few days later the Nazis, just before the end of the Second World War, the Nazis took him out and hanged him. Jesus bids us, 'Take up a cross and die.' And it was Thomas à Kempis, I think, who said at some point, 'If you will bear the cross, it will bear you.' If you will bear the cross, it will bear you." [00:15:28]
"We live so much for ourselves, for our comfort. We want things to be comfortable. We want things to be nice. We want things to go in our own way. And here is this massive worldview that cuts right across that small narrow thinking of ours and says, 'You've got to give it all. You've got to give it all. You must deny yourself. You must say no to sin.'" [00:17:07]
"If you're going to be My followers, you've got to be prepared to die. You've got to be prepared to deny yourself and your comfort. You must put Me first," Jesus is saying. It is hard, isn't it? There is no compromising. We want to take a text like this and we want to sort of arrange it, reshape it a little, make it a little softer." [00:18:09]
"Peter, well, he is displayed warts and all; you know the good, the bad, and the ugly. But in AD 64, he was captured at the behest of Nero, partly to do with the fires, and so on, in Rome and he blamed the Christians for it. And some said that Nero set the fires himself or he didn't do it himself. He wasn't in the city. He was out of the city when it happened." [00:20:03]
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