1.
Let
us pray. May the words of my mouth and
the meditation of our hearts be pleasing in Your sight, O Lord, our Rock, and
our Redeemer. Amen. The
text is from Mark’s Gospel, chapter 8:34: “If
anyone would come after Me, he must deny himself, take up his cross and follow
Me.” This morning is the second
message in our Stewardship series, “Stewards
Living a God-Pleasing Life.” Today our
theme is, “Discipleship is the Path.” Many people don’t know what they’re living
for. They lack a sense of worth,
purpose, and direction. Sometimes you
may feel as if you’re just a number, just a social security number, or as if
you’re just a small cog in a great big piece of machinery. Maybe you feel like the person who works at a
machine 8 hours a day making some small part for a car but not having any idea
as to what the purpose of that part is.
2.
In
a book called The Christian Calling,
the author tells of a group of laborers who were working every single day,
digging holes 5 feet deep in the street.
The boss didn’t tell them why they were digging the holes. After they were done digging, he would come
over and he’d look at the holes and he would say, “OK, fill ‘er up.” They
would fill the holes back up again.
Finally at noon the
men said, “We quit, this doesn’t make
sense. Give us the money you owe us;
we’re quitting.” The boss asked why
they were quitting, and they said, “Well,
digging holes doesn’t make a lot of sense just to fill them back up again. It’s really dumb, and furthermore we look
like fools.” Then he told them why
they were digging the holes. They were
trying to locate a water main.
3.
Every
human being wants to know that there’s some point to what he’s doing. God has called us to a life of
discipleship. A disciple is a follower
of Jesus Christ, a believer in Him, a student of His. The word disciple occurs some 260 times in
the Gospels and in the Book of Acts.
When we think of a disciple, we probably think of one of the 12 apostles
as disciples. But the word is only used
30 times in reference to them. Today
we’re more likely to use the word “Christian” instead of the word “disciple,”
although the term “Christian” comes into use much later and is only found in 3
verses in the Bible. Maybe that’s
because a disciple is much more than just a “Christian,” a believer, a church
member. Being a disciple always involves
a personal relationship. It literally
means “to be a devoted follower of a
person.” In the Bible, there were
people who were disciples of John the Baptist, disciples of St. Paul, and
others. Among the philosophers, there
were those who were disciples of Plato and disciples of Aristotle. Discipleship means to follow a person. 4. Martin
Luther understood discipleship. He said,
“If anyone were to rap at the door of my
heart and ask who lives there, I would have to say ‘Martin Luther used to live
here, but he doesn’t live here any longer.
Now it’s Jesus Christ who lives here.’ ” This is a personal
relationship. A disciple recognizes that
man doesn’t live by bread alone, sports alone, entertainment alone, fast food
alone, computers alone, investments alone, work alone, or whatever, but by
every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.
5.
Being a disciple of Jesus Christ isn’t
something you choose to be. We don’t
choose Christ, but He chooses us. Jesus
said to his disciples in John 15, “You
did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit.” By His grace, He enables us to do what He
calls us to do, to take up the cross, to follow Him, to be His disciple. He is the One Who gives us the reason – the
purpose for living. It’s Christ who
calls us to carry out His mission. To be
called by God to follow Him is both humbling and exhilarating. It’s humbling in the sense of why He calls
us, sinful, weak human beings, to carry out His message, and yet, it’s exhilarating
to know that He calls us to carry out His holy work and empowers us to do
so. The One Who calls us is also the One
Who enables us to fulfill that calling in faith and trust and obedience. When God calls a person through the Gospel to
follow Him, He calls the whole person.
You can’t separate your life into little segments. You can’t say, “Well, this part here will be faithful to Christ and ignore Him with
the other part of my life at the same time.” Martin Luther said that we live in two
kingdoms, in two worlds – the kingdom of grace and the kingdom of this world. He says both of those are God’s – we serve
God in both of them.
6.
The
life of discipleship isn’t for everyone, because being a disciple involves
commitment. It’s not about seeing what
options you have, but it’s devoting your whole life and service to Jesus. That’s true whether you are a husband or
wife, a father or mother, a son or daughter, whether you’re a man or woman,
neighbor or friend, employer or employee, or whatever.
7.
When
a person becomes a U.S. citizen, he must renounce all allegiance to the country
of his birth and pledge 100% commitment to the United States. Only then will the U.S. government grant him
citizenship. That’s the way it is with
Jesus. When you become a follower of
Jesus, you renounce Satan completely and entirely. You can’t divide your loyalties, splitting
half the time with Satan and half the time with Christ. When you were baptized, you, your sponsors
and your parents made that same commitment – to be a follower of Jesus all your
life and renounce the devil and all his works and all his ways.
8.
The
call to follow Christ Jesus isn’t for everyone.
At one time there were 5,000 men as well as women and children who were
fed by Jesus. When He told them what was
involved in following Him, there was only a handful left. Oh, the people listened and some of them even
agreed with what He said, but they weren’t willing to pay the price – the cost
of discipleship. Following Jesus isn’t
some half-hearted effort. It takes
courage, commitment, and determination.
9.
Our
Lord doesn’t force us to follow Him. By
His grace, He simply invites us to follow Him – to deny ourselves, to take up
the cross, and to follow Him. To follow
Him means that we have to deny ourselves.
We would much rather focus on ourselves, our issues, problems, and
challenges, rather than on the call of Jesus.
Jesus said, “If anyone would come
after Me, he must deny himself and follow Me.” That’s hard to do, because, you see, the self
is contrary to Jesus. The self wants the
things that the self is interested in—what I can get out of it and what’s good
for me. The self doesn’t want to put itself
aside in favor of God. To deny the self
is more than just giving up your favorite food or entertainment. It’s fully giving yourself to Jesus in
willing obedience to follow His call of discipleship.
10.
As
disciples, there may be times when we have to suffer for Jesus. Jesus Himself knew that He would have to do
that for us. Jesus was going to have to
die so that our sins could be paid for and forgiven. It would be ugly, it would be painful, and it
would have to hurt. The cross was
filthy, full of all the muck and the mire of all of the people of all the times
in all the world, including your sins and mine.
He knew that the cross held our greed, our pride, our self-righteousness. It held our deception and disobedience and
everything else, and yet Jesus still chose to go the way of the cross. Jesus was perfect, sinless, and yet He would
suffer for all of our crimes. In fact,
He knew that He must suffer rejection at the hands of many. It was absolutely necessary for Jesus to do
this. There were no options, no choices,
and no alternatives. He simply
must. It was necessary. In fact, it was necessary for the forgiveness
of our sins and our salvation.
11.
You
know, that day when you told your mother that you had already cleaned the
bathroom sink and you hadn’t. That’s one
of those times it was necessary for Jesus to die for your sins. That night when you were sexually intimate
with your boyfriend or girlfriend, it became necessary for Jesus to give His
life for you. That time when you fudged
on your income tax by taking a deduction you really weren’t entitled to, it
became necessary for Jesus to give His life for you. That day when you made fun of a classmate in
front of the whole class, then it became necessary for Jesus to die for you. That day when you were mad at your brother or
sister and wished they were dead, then it became necessary for Jesus to die for
you. That Sunday morning when you woke
up with no thought towards God or towards worship, then it became necessary for
Jesus to die for you.
12.
You
see, for Jesus, it was total commitment.
He knew that He must die. Jesus
had to do it in order to pay for the forgiveness of our sins. Now He calls us to deny ourselves, to take up
the cross and to follow Him. He enables
us to do that by His Word and Sacrament.
He empowers us to live our lives for Him. Through Christ’s body and blood in the Lord’s
Supper, we get a new start. We start
again as disciples with a new life. Jesus
assures us that all our sin is forgiven, so that we can start all over with a
clean slate. He gives us the strength so
that we can live a God-pleasing life.
Jesus gives us courage to invite others to become disciples. There’s a desire to make disciples of all
people.
13.
Jesus
calls us to a life of discipleship. The
first disciples heard the call and followed Him. When we’re uncertain, unclear about our
purpose in life, some things get fuzzy.
It's the same with our congregation.
If we think only of ourselves and are uncertain about the mission Jesus
has given us, then we flounder and fail.
Our lives are given to us for only one purpose – to follow Christ
wherever He leads. We only have one life
to give and discipleship is the path. So
let us deny ourselves, take up the cross, and follow Him. Amen. Now may the peace of God, which goes beyond
all of our understanding, keep our hearts and minds safe and secure in Christ
Jesus, so that we are enabled and empowered to follow Him all the days of our
lives, committing ourselves to Him, even to life everlasting. Amen.
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