February 19, 2012: Follow Jesus into the Darkness of the Cross
Series: Follow Me into the Darkness
Luke 9:23
Intro: Today we finish up a series
about following Jesus into the Dark…which is one of the most
difficult but important of spiritual lessons. Quite frankly, I like
the idea that I can follow Jesus into abundant joyful living. And
this is one of his promises:
Rich and Satisfying Life
The thief’s purpose is to steal
and kill and destroy. My purpose is to give them a rich and
satisfying life.
John 10:10 (NLT)
Satan may want to take everything from
you…but not Jesus. He wants to discover your life’s purpose and
in doing so have full, abundant life. Jesus wants you to join his
Kingdom… to come underneath his rule and authority and values.
It doesn’t matter where you have
been or what you have done…that rich and satisfying life is offered
to every one of us. In the ancient world, there was no greater byword
for living on the edge than the city of Corinth. Maybe the closest we
can come to it in the United States is Las Vegas. What goes on in
Corinth stays in Corinth. A seafaring city, brothels and brouhahas
were the order of the day. So Paul warns the new church that was made
up of Corinthians:
Kingdom of God
Don’t fool yourselves. Those who
indulge in sexual sin, or who worship idols, or commit adultery, or
are male prostitutes, or practice homosexuality, or are thieves, or
greedy people, or drunkards, or are abusive, or cheat people—none
of these will inherit the Kingdom of God. Some of you were once like
that. But you were cleansed; you were made holy; you were made right
with God by calling on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the
Spirit of our God.
2 Corinthians 6:9-11 (NLT)
Let me ask you, why do people engage in
sexual immorality? Why do they get drunk? Or use drugs? Why do they
steal and cheat from others? Is it just because they are bad? No, the
truth of the matter is that they are filled with the pain of shame or
guilt or regret or lonliness…and they are willing to go to great
extremes to stop the pain. They are willing to take great risks to
their own bodies and souls to stop the pain. They are willing to
inflict sometimes great pain on others so they can stop the pain
inside.
But when you cry out to Jesus Christ,
something happens inside of your soul. His Spirit will enter into
you. No longer are you alone in your pain. No longer is escaping your
pain the driving force of your life. The purpose of your life is now
to calling on Jesus and to allow his Spirit to guide you and protect
you.
The Apostle Paul goes on to say when
he was writing to the Galatians that a pain driven life leads to
immorality, and drunkenness and quarreling and jealousy. But a
Spirit-filled life leads to everything that is rich and satisfying:
Love, Joy, Peace
When you follow
the desires of your sinful nature, the results are very clear: sexual
immorality, impurity, lustful pleasures, idolatry, sorcery,
hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish
ambition, dissension, division, envy, drunkenness, wild parties, and
other sins like these…But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of
fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness,
faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
Galatians
5:19-23 (NLT)
For so many of us,
our lives have been stolen… it has been stolen by a compulsive
desire to alleviate pain. Satan has lied to you about what will fill
that terrible void, that awful pain that weighs you down. Meanwhile
God wants to restore it everything that Satan has stolen. That is
what salvation is all about. That is what the gospel is all about.
That is what church is supposed to be all about.
Now here is the
kicker. The path to Jesus, to this new life, to this rich and
satisfying life, to this life of love and joy and peace… this
path is through the cross…which is the darkest part of the
Christian life. Jesus challenged his disciples to accept the fact
that Jesus was going to the cross. This was his destiny:
Jesus’ Destiny
“The Son of Man must suffer many
things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the
teachers of the law, and he must be killed and on the third day be
raised to life.”
Luke 9:22 (NIV)
Then Jesus said to his disciples: The
truth of the matter is that it doesn’t get any better for you. If
you are going to be my disciple, if you are going to follow me, if
you are going to follow me into a rich and satisfying life, then you
are going to have to pick up your cross as well.
Take Up Your Cross
“Whoever wants to be my disciple
must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For
whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses
their life for me will save it.”
Luke 9:23-24 (NIV)
Jesus’ life was
the way of the cross. To follow Jesus is to follow him to the cross.
As long as you try to avoid the cross, you will lose your life. But
when you follow the way of the cross, you will actually save your
life.
But the way of the
cross is the way of suffering. The way of the cross is the way of
Jesus’ type suffering. And let’s make no bones about it, Jesus
path was dark and painful beyond measure.
Remember that Jesus
gathered his disciples to eat with him one last time? He talked with
them and shared with them and prayed with them… and then he took
Peter, James and John to the Garden of Gethsemane with him to pray
more intensively.
Praying More Fervently
He walked away,
about a stone’s throw, and knelt down and prayed, “Father, if you
are willing, please take this cup of suffering away from me. Yet I
want your will to be done, not mine.” Then an angel from heaven
appeared and strengthened him. He prayed more fervently, and he was
in such agony of spirit that his sweat fell to the ground like great
drops of blood.
Luke 22:41-44
(NLT)
This prayer itself was excessively
painful. Jesus agonized in prayer. He sweat drops of blood. It was
like a wrestling match, a fight for his life, for his very soul…
maybe not dissimilar to time Jacob wrestled with God and said: “I
will not let you go until you bless me.” Maybe Jesus couldn’t let
go until God blessed him as well… until the words of his prayer met
the deep inner part of his spirit.
And all this time of prayer was merely
a precursor to the cross. It was just the beginning. It was just the
anticipation of those six hours one Friday.
Darkness
It was nine in the morning when they
crucified him…At noon, darkness came over the whole land until
three in the afternoon. And at three in the afternoon Jesus cried out
in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?”
(which means “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”).
Mark 15:25, 33-34 (NIV)
For Jesus it was a nightmare, the worst
of all possible scenarios. His mission to the poor, sick, weak,
disenfranchised put him in direct opposition to the wealthy,
established and secure. Those who have don’t want what they have
taken away.
If what you have is temple worship
complete with animal sacrifices that pays your salary, then you don’t
want saying that he is the temple and that his is free for one and
all.
If your position in society is
dependent upon your purity and cleanliness, you don’t want tax
collectors, and prostitutes, and sinners messing up your social
circles.
If your God is a distant tyrant that
you have learned to control by fulfilling his rules, you don’t want
someone coming along and saying God is your Abba, Daddy… and that
you and this Abba Daddy are one… and that a relationship not
legalism is what it is all about.
Jesus so infuriated the religious and
political leaders of his day that they took him to the cross. When
Jesus went to the cross, the lights went out. Finally, Jesus cried
out those words that we would never have expected him to say:
“My God, my God, why have you
forsaken me?”
How many of you have uttered those
same words at one time or another. Your agony has been so great that
you prayed that God would just take you.
Maybe Jesus uttered those words for
your sake… to let you know that he knows how bad it became… that
you were never really alone… and that by going to the cross with
Jesus, somehow he can enter the dark parts of our soul with us.
There is something natural about our
desire to avoid pain at all cost. But when we avoid Jesus’ pain,
our own becomes magnified.
Maybe that is why Paul said these
mystifying words:
Participation in Sufferings
I want to know Christ—yes, to know
the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings,
becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the
resurrection from the dead.
Philippians 3:10-11 (NIV)
I don’t think any of us want to
participate in suffering. Who does? And certainly not in Jesus’
sufferings that caused him to cry out in agony of cosmic proportions.
And yet, there is something about facing life Jesus-like that renders
the very best. We are freed from our past. We are freed to face our
present.
I think Paul chose his words carefully
when he said:
Crucified with Christ
I have been crucified with Christ
and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in
the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave
himself for me.
Galatians 2:20 (NIV)
We are no longer
alive. We are no longer protecting ourselves. We are no longer trying
to prevent pain from touching us. We are no longer allowing pain to
drive us toward drugs, or alcohol, or sex, or codependency, or
control… instead, we have followed Jesus to the cross. We live by
faith.
When Paul writes to
the church at Corinth these same themes get reiterated:
Christ Death and Ours
Since we believe that Christ died
for all, we also believe that we have all died to our old life.He died for everyone so that those who receive his new
life will no longer live for themselves. Instead, they will live for
Christ, who died and was raised for them.
2 Corinthians 5:14-15 (NLT)
Christ bids us die, and rise as well.
We are to follow Jesus to the cross.
New Person
This means that anyone who belongs
to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life
has begun!
2 Corinthians 5:17 (NLT)
But you can’t become a new person
unless the old one has gone to the cross… which we are so very
reluctant to do… even those of us who call ourselves believers.
When we come to the cross we no longer allow pain avoidance and
pleasure seeking become the guiding force in our life. We become open
to feeling and experiencing any pain that God chooses to bring to us.
We welcome it as a disciple of Jesus.
Thomas a Kempis wrote a devotional book
which is the 2nd most published book of all time. It is
called The Imitation of Christ.
Why Dread the Cross?
Why do you dread to take up the
Cross, since it is the very way to the kingdom of Heaven?
In the Cross is salvation; in the
Cross is life; in the Cross is defense against our enemies; in the
Cross is infusion of heavenly sweetness; in the Cross is strength of
mind; in the Cross is joy of spirit; in the Cross is the height of
virtue; in the Cross is the perfection of holiness.
There is no health of the soul nor
hope of eternal life, but in the Cross.
Take up your Cross, therefore, and
follow Jesus, and you will go into life eternal. He went before you
bearing His own Cross and died for you upon the Cross, that you might
also bear your Cross and that you should be ready to die on the
Cross.
For if you die with Him, you will
also live with Him. And if you are partaker of His suffering, you
will be also of His glory.
