As you can see in your bulletin, we are nearing the end of
our Superheroes series – just one more message after today. I’ll confess that
I’ve never been a great fan of fantasy superheroes. Most of the books that I
enjoyed reading growing up were about more realistic characters – still heroic,
many of them, but with courage and abilities that I felt I could aspire to.
However, one of the main points of this whole series has been to point out how
God’s definition of a superhero is in many ways completely different, sometimes
even the opposite of how the world might imagine one to be. God’s strength is
made perfect in our weakness, as it says in 2 Corinthians 12.
I’m convinced
that God’s top superheroes are people that we never hear about. They’re not out
there leaping tall buildings in a single bound. They are quietly living out
God’s love and grace, faithfully reaching out day by day to the “least of
these” that Jesus talked about. They will receive their reward in heaven; they
don’t need to be recognized right now. In fact, I think we need to be careful
about holding someone up as a spiritual superhero. Pride is such a pitfall. Any
glory that a person receives diminishes what God receives. So if you do
something good and no one notices, be glad! God sees – and that is what really
matters.
Today we are going to talk about one of the most profound
characteristics of a superhero who is pleasing to God. I am so excited to talk
about this, because it is surely one of the most important aspects of being a
Christian. Dying to win. What does that mean? Does it bring to mind Bob versus
Daniel on the Ultimate field, both of them dying to win? No, that’s not what it
means. Dying to win is actually the crux of the Christian life, the main or
central feature. What does crux mean in Latin? It means the cross. The cross is
at the center of history, the central focus of Jesus’ life, and it is at the
center of what it means to be a superhero. That is why I have chosen this verse
to focus on today: Luke 9:23.
“Then he [Jesus] said
to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and
take up their cross daily and follow me.”
Jesus said to them all. There are no exceptions, no
shortcuts. No surrogate sacrifices. Do you want to be a disciple of Jesus? Then
you have to die. Not just once. Daily. Take up your cross and follow me. Jesus
went first. We need to follow right behind.
Let’s look at the whole context of this statement, backing
up to verse 18.
“Once when Jesus was
praying in private and his disciples were with him, he asked
them, “Who do the crowds say I am?”
They replied, “Some
say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, that one of the
prophets of long ago has come back to life.”
“But what about
you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?”
Peter answered, “God’s
Messiah.”
Jesus strictly warned
them not to tell this to anyone. And he
said, “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.”
Then he said to them
all: “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. What good is it for someone
to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit their very self? Whoever is
ashamed of me and my words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of them when he
comes in his glory and in the glory of the Father and of the holy angels.”—Luke
9:18-26
Peter recognized that Jesus was the Messiah, the Anointed
One, the Deliverer of Israel. The Messiah was like a superhero character to the
Jews. He would come someday and deliver them from all their enemies and usher
in a new era of peace and prosperity. So what was Jesus talking about when he
spoke of suffering “many things” and being rejected and killed by the important
people of the day. Jesus was identifying himself with the Suffering Servant of
Isaiah 53.
“He had no beauty or
majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should
desire him. He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of
suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people
hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.
Surely he took up our
pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken
by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he
was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us
peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.” –Isaiah 53:2-5
That doesn’t sound much like a superhero. Way too much
rejection and suffering. It certainly didn’t fit with what the disciples had in
mind. You’ll recall how Peter rebuked Jesus, and Jesus had to say, “Get thee
behind me, Satan.” The cross turns all our preconceived notions about glory and
power upside down. We have to die to win? Only God could have planned it that
way.
There is so much that we could say about the cross. We have
talked in the past about what it meant for Jesus. What does it mean for us?
What does it actually look like to deny ourselves, take up our cross daily, and
follow him? I have chosen four “S” words to help us remember this aspect of
being a superhero.
The first “S” word is Surrender. This is maybe where we differ
the most from the comic book superheroes. They would never admit to weakness.
They never give up. But surrender to God is at the heart of what it means to
deny ourselves. I have heard people say, “I’m going to give up chocolate for
Lent,” and they think that they are denying themselves. On a superficial level,
they are. They may be refusing to indulge a certain appetite, but for what?
Self-denial on its own merely shows how strong my willpower is. And it can easily
become a matter of pride. I’m thinner than you, so I must be able to control my
eating better than you can. This doesn’t necessarily bring us closer to God. In
fact, there are many people out there in the world living a good life in their
own strength and feeling good about it. They don’t need God; they are strong
enough to handle things on their own. But we can’t be a true follower of Jesus
until we give up, we surrender.
Surrender is more than submission. When we submit to God, we
just quit fighting him. We admit that he is stronger than us and we are never
going to be able to take him down. That’s submission. But surrender means
actually giving up control. It’s like turning your weapons over to your
opponent. You give him the power to do whatever he wants to with you. This is a
very difficult step. And it’s not a one-time decision. We are faced with it
again and again. Daily, according to Jesus. Our human nature wants to keep
taking back control.
We can trace this back to the garden of Eden. The serpent
tempted Eve, “You will be like God.” And ever since that time, people have been
pursuing the knowledge of good and evil, wanting to be like God. In the
humanist thinking of our day, man is the ultimate being. We need to take
control. We want to take control. So it is a scary thing to give up control –
even to God. But surrender is the first step to being a Jesus follower. We need
to say, “Not my will, but yours be done. Whatever you want, God, I am willing
to do it. Here is everything you have given me; I give it back to you to do
with as you will.” We need to surrender everything: our will, our future, our
careers, our possessions, our families, our own bodies. Everything we hold dear
has to move to second place. God has to be number one.
I Surrender All. Do you know that hymn? I often thought that
it sounded rather dismal, but I think it was just the music. Surrender is
actually an incredibly joyful, exciting thing. We don’t give anything to God
that he doesn’t return a hundred fold, either in this life or the next. It’s a
hard thing to run your own life: making all the decisions, worried about making
mistakes, needing to stay on top of everything and everyone else. What a relief
to give things over to God and let him have control, knowing that he is all powerful,
he knows everything, he knows us through and through – after all, he created us
– and he loves us more than we can imagine.
So in surrender, we stop struggling. We stop struggling
against God, questioning his goodness or sovereignty. We stop struggling to
make everything work right in our lives. But does that mean we just sit back
and do nothing? Or do we just become robots, with God completely overriding all
our decision making? No, we still have to keep moving ahead – and that brings
us to the second “S” word (or phrase, actually): Step Out in Faith.
Stepping out in faith implies that we take action. We are
not passive, waiting for God to do everything – though in some cases we do need
to wait patiently for God’s timing. We move ahead by faith, allowing him to
steer us like a rudder can steer a moving ship. Stepping out in this way to
follow Jesus implies trust, and for some people trust is even more difficult
than surrender. Trust means being willing to be vulnerable in some way. Things
might turn out differently than we expect or desire – and we need to be okay
with that. Denying ourselves means not just giving up our right to control our
own destiny, it means trusting that God knows best about everything that
concerns us. It may not always make sense from a human standpoint. As Job said,
“Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him.” I would like to show you a clip
that illustrates what a step of faith might look like.
Here I showed a clip of
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade where Indiana has to trust that the
invisible bridge exists.
Just like us, Indiana Jones had a book that told him where
to go, and he could hear the voice of his father telling him to believe it. But
when it came down to it, it was his foot poised over empty space, and he had to
let go of his secure handholds and lean forward into the chasm before he
discovered the invisible bridge. God keeps asking us as well, “Do you really
trust me?” That is the primary reason that he allows hardship and confusion
into our lives. He wants to hear us say, “Yes, Lord, I believe – no matter
what.” Denying ourselves sometimes means denying our right to make sense of
things, to understand, to fit everything together in a neat package. Sometimes
life is messy, and God does not tidy it up. Did Job ever understand why he went
through what he did?
Along with denying ourselves, Jesus says that we have to
take up our cross to follow him. What does this mean? My mom tells a story from
her days in Bible school in Minneapolis, many years ago, when she was sharing
an apartment with 4 other girls, one of whom found her a frequent irritation –
for some reason. So she told my mom, “You’re the cross I have to bear!” Is that
what taking up our cross means: putting up with something that we don’t like?
It could be part of it, I suppose, but as we know, the cross meant much more
than that to Jesus. Primarily, it meant Sacrifice, our third “S” word. It was
the place where he offered his life to pay for our sins. He gave up something
so we could gain something. What does sacrifice mean for you? God will have to
show you. But it will mean doing something unselfish and costly and humble. If
it is for our benefit, it is not a sacrifice. If it doesn’t cost us anything,
then – who cares? – it’s not a sacrifice. And if there is any pride involved –
if we get any of the glory for it – then it is not a sacrifice that God will
value. The Bible talks about offering to God a sacrifice of praise. How can
praise be a sacrifice? It’s unselfish, if our focus is truly on God, and we
delight in him. It can be costly, if we do it even when we don’t feel like it,
when we praise God even in the inexplicable circumstances of our lives. And it
is humble, because we do it despite of what other people think of us.
So we surrender to God and give up control, we step out in
faith, trusting that the invisible bridge actually exists, and we sacrifice
ourselves for the benefit of others. There is one more “S” word, perhaps the
most difficult for us to understand: Suffering. The passage from Luke told us
that Jesus lived his life in expectation of suffering “many things.” The cross
was undoubtedly a place of severe, almost unimaginable suffering: not just the
physical pain of a slow death, but the emotional pain of being separated from
God the Father. Jesus had already suffered many things: severe temptation at a
moment of weakness, rejection by many people, betrayal by a disciple,
abandonment by all his friends. The perfect man had to endure incredible
suffering.
Suffering is a mystery. We are never (this side of heaven)
going to understand it completely. Why did Jesus have to suffer? Why do we have
to suffer? Yes, we can talk about the global consequences of sin and fallen
human nature that are the source of suffering in the world. But why doesn’t God
just make it all better? I remember Carl pointing out that so many of our
prayers can be boiled down to “God, please give me an easy life.” Why doesn’t
he just do that? It would be so much easier. But we continue to have to suffer.
Sometimes God wants us to suffer for the benefit of others.
We get a clue about this in Hebrews 2:
“For this reason he [Jesus]
had to be made like them [Abraham’s descendants], fully human in every
way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high
priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the
sins of the people. Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able
to help those who are being tempted.”—Hebrews 2:17-18
Jesus understands our suffering because of what he suffered.
This is comfort for anyone who is hurting: Jesus hurt, too. He knows – really
knows – what you are going through. Second Corinthians 1:
“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts
us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with
the comfort we ourselves receive from God. For just as we share abundantly in
the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ.” –2 Corinthians 1:3-5
Our comfort abounds through Christ – so that we can comfort
those in any trouble. If we haven’t suffered, we can’t really comfort others
who are suffering. We receive comfort from God, and we pass it on to a
suffering world.
A second clue about suffering comes a little earlier in
Hebrews 2, if we jump back to verse 9:
“But we do see Jesus,
who was made lower than the angels for a little while, now crowned with glory
and honor because he suffered death, so that by the grace of God he
might taste death for everyone.
In bringing many sons
and daughters to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom
everything exists, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect
through what he suffered. Both the one who makes people holy and those who
are made holy are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them
brothers and sisters.”—Hebrews 2:9-11
By the grace of God, it says, Jesus tasted death for all of
us. Somehow he was “made perfect” through what he suffered. He was already
without any sin, we know that, but he needed to suffer to truly become one of
us. So when we take up our cross daily, we commit to that same kind of
incarnational ministry that Jesus is our example for. We must become like those
whom we are trying to help, to understand, and to reach with the gospel.
God wants us to grow through suffering. We know that he can
use everything for good – we have to accept that by faith. So we can glory in
our sufferings, as it says in Romans 5:
“And we boast in
the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in
our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance,
character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because
God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy
Spirit, who has been given to us.” –Romans 5:2-5
So we can have hope in our suffering, because it is not
meaningless, even if it is inexplicable and apparently unfair. Suffering
produces perseverance, character, and hope if we continue to trust in God’s
love. When that love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit,
we see beyond the suffering to everything good that God has for us. We have to
keep that perspective, otherwise the world can be a pretty grim place
sometimes.
God has been teaching me a lesson in this recently. A month
ago, when I was running down a mountain in California, I glanced up at the
wrong moment and my foot slipped off the trail. I came down on my right knee
and lost a good patch of skin. However, I was having so much fun I kept running
and hardly cared about the blood running down that eventually glued my sock to
my ankle. It was something I could handle. I even got back to my room, got
cleaned up, and made it to my meeting only 5 minutes late.
However, two days
later, running on a smooth, wide, level concrete bike path I happened to trip
over a tiny tab of metal sticking up, and down I went, landing on the same knee
in exactly the same place. It hurt much worse this time, but I think I felt the
pain of the unbelievable unfairness of it even more. I was angry with myself,
and I was angry with God. Why did I have to do it again? (And incidentally, I
fell once more during Ultimate last Sunday and removed the scabs that were just
about to heal. So my knee is still wounded.) So anyway, I was feeling a little
upset as I cleaned myself up the second time. But I sensed God saying something
to me. And it was a question that he has asked me many times before: Do you
really trust me? If I lead you into a time of suffering, are you going to keep
trusting me?
Suffering doesn’t make sense; it doesn’t seem fair. That’s
why we struggle with something like Emily’s death, much more devastating than a
scraped knee. Why did she have to die? She had been through so much, and things
were looking somewhat hopeful. It seems so unfair. But Jesus asks us all the
same question: Are you going to trust me? Do you want to be my follower? Are
you willing to take up your cross daily, a cross of self-denial and suffering?
Do you want to be that kind of superhero?
The human side of Jesus wanted to avoid the cross. In the
Garden of Gethsemane he pleaded for a different way. But we know that it was
for the “joy set before him” that he endured it. It was the joy of the
resurrection and the victory that he won for all time. In the same way we are
dying to win. What do we win? We win life, eternal life. In James 1 it says:
“Blessed is the one
who perseveres under trial because, having stood the test, that person
will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who
love him.”—James 1:12
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