Teaching by Matt Trammell 1-4-09
25Large crowds were traveling with Jesus, and turning to them he said: 26"If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters?yes, even his own life?he cannot be my disciple. 27And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.
28"Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Will he not first sit down and estimate the cost to see if he has enough money to complete it? 29For if he lays the foundation and is not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule him, 30saying, 'This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.'
31"Or suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Will he not first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand? 32If he is not able, he will send a delegation while the other is still a long way off and will ask for terms of peace. 33In the same way, any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple.
If those verses do not grab your attention, then you need to read them again. It says we must hate our parents, families, and ourselves. Now, why would the Lord tell us we must hate, this will make more sense if you bear with me as we take it back to the greek translation, the original language the new testament was written. It originally uses the greek word miseo, which means to love less. So we must love everything less than the Lord. Then we can stay in greek and explain verse 33 it says to give up everything, but in the greek word apotessetai it means "to properly arrange" which we know as prioritizing. Now, as we look at this we must prioritize our lives and love in order to put Jesus first in our lives. We will now disect verse 27, it states we must carry our own cross, but the greek word stauros is used, which means a pole or cross a type of capital punishment and then can be implied as self-denial . So, we must be willing to carry self denial around. Why would God ask this of us? We must be willing to continually deny our fleshly impulses and do what is right for the will of God, which will be right for you. The Lord is omniscient, he knows what is best, so i will choose to take some advice from someone who already knows. Why should we continue struggling trying to figure out this life ourselves. This is another passage of scripture I want us to look at today.
Mark 8:34-36 34Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 35For whoever wants to save his life[a] will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it. 36What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?
In these verses it is pretty clear what it means. The only thing that needs to be understood is that jesus did not meant we need to actually carry a physical cross around, but he did mean the shame and persecution that took him to the cross. Jesus needs us to understand the seriousness of cost behind being his disciple. We may not realize it in this country, but we have it easy here in America. We do not have to worry about being tortured or killed just because we are worshiping Christ. This is what he meant through carrying our cross, we must be able to do that, give the ultimate sacrifice if that is what is necessary in order to glorify God and bring people to Christ.If you are not willing to carry around that cross then you can not be a disciple. I have had my times of wondering whether I would be willing to sacrifice my life for Christ and for a long time I did not know. It was when my daughter was born that I realized that if God can sacrifice his only son for uss then what is it to sacrifice ourselves in order to bring others to Christ. I realized this because I would easily sacrifice myself for my daughter, so for God to be willing to watch His Son die on the cross for us is a huge deal. This is not meant to be a morbid message, the intent of this lesson was to get you to understand the call on your life and how serious it is when you do decide to make this commitment to Christ. Not everyone or even a majority of christians are ever called to fulfill the ultimate sacrifice, but we must all be willing if the call does come. We are in the Army of God, and I want to be a good soldier and conquer and overcome this world. Our weapon is the.Word of God! It has the power to do all things. If you want to become a soldier in God's army and if you want to feel God's love pray this prayer with me. Father God, I know I am a sinner but I am righteous in your eyes and ask for the forgiveness you have already given me. I want your love to fill my heart so Jesus come into my heart and take control. I want to see myself as you see me. I believe that Jesus died on the cross for my sin and salvation.Thank you Father for accepting me the way i am.
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