BROKEN FOR US: Suffering

Pastor Steven Osborne
Transcribed by DaVinci Resolve 18

Eating Vegetables

I have a very challenging task, because I have to give you vegetables. I got to give you some good stuff. But who likes vegetables, right? Okay, there’s some hands. All right, all right. Well good, then my task might be a little easier. We were sitting last night in our kitchen, and it’s one of my favorite spots in the house, and just there by the countertop, and we’ve got some bar stools there, and Vanessa was sitting and she was eating celery. And I just—I hate celery. There’s like terrible taste. And even if you make, like, the ants on a stick type of deal on it, it’s like, yeah, that doesn’t help, right? Even if you put like really a piece of steak on top of it with steak sauce, it is—I still will struggle. I heard this week on Life 97, they were sharing stories about parents being sneaky or creative on how to get different veggies and stuff in their kids’ bodies, right? And so one parent called and said, yeah, they used to do like sweet potatoes in macaroni and cheese. And we’ve all done some of those things. And yeah, it doesn’t always feel the greatest, but we know that it is important and healthy for us.

And I know this morning’s message can be challenging as we look at it. It might look like, “Oh, this is broccoli. This is celery.” But it is good. I even learned last night—so we were, Venessa’s eating this and I’m just like, “How are you putting this into your body?” And I was like, “What is that even good for?” And so we have a Google up there, and I’m like, “Hey Google, why do we need to eat celery? Why is it good for us?” And then I learned about vitamins K12. Like I didn’t even know there was such a thing. Just give that to me in a gummy. I don’t want to eat any celery. So I might not have—if it’s not in my gummies, I might not have vitamins K12. I’ve been doing okay so far.

Following Jesus

And another part of why I think this message is so important, that just by the way, I really think this is an important message, not because of me, but because of the words of Jesus. And he gives us some really important things to ponder in what it means to be a disciple.

Now, as I was reading this scripture over and over and just reflecting on our world, I think it is accurate to say if we take this passage, and it’s almost like a binocular, right? When you if you have a good, expensive pair of binoculars and you have to kind of—I don’t know what’s the technical word for that wheel, where you kind of turn that and then things become clear. In the same way, I think with this passage, if we apply it and we turn that wheel and we allow that scripture to become clear in our life, man, it can really solve a lot of issues in this world. So I want you to turn your Bible with me to Matthew 16. Matthew 16, and we will start in verse 21, and we’ll read up to verse 28. So you ready for veggies? All right.

From that time on, Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priest, and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day, may be raised to life.

Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.

Just to kind of pause there, we can understand why Peter did such a thing, right? He didn’t have the big picture. It’s been going so well, they’ve been hanging out with Jesus, they’ve been seeing all of these miracles, and they’ve got a crowd, and Jesus is the King that is gonna save them from Roman rule, right, and he’s gonna change things upside down, and suddenly there is these crazy words that come out of the mouth of Jesus Christ. And Peter is like, “No way, don’t say that! Nobody’s dying here.” And then Jesus rebukes him. Just kind of an interesting moment in time here.

Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. “Never, Lord!” he said. “This shall never happen to you!”

Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”

So it’s like Jesus is saying, “Peter, you’re in the flesh here, right? You don’t see the big picture, and you’re making fleshly discernment and choices here, and get behind me.” And so he’s rebuking him.

Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what they have done.

“Truly, I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”

I shared before, I think this is such an important passage for all of us this morning, and I don’t want you to miss it. And the important piece, aspect of this, is Jesus lays out a crucial principle of discipleship, challenging us to consider the cost of following him. Let me just say that again, because you’re not hearing. Some of you are still with the celery. All right, forget the celery in the broccoli and the peanut butter right now, right? Right here, focus. It says “Jesus lays out a crucial principle of discipleship, challenging us to consider the cost of following him.” Anybody in this building that would consider yourself a disciple of Jesus Christ? Anybody? All right, some hands. If you don’t have your hand up, good for you, because then you don’t have to apply this passage today for you. You can have a cup of coffee. We’ll see you afterwards. Or if you’re just kind of curious this morning, like, “Hey, what does this mean to be a disciple?” Because a lot of times in our evangelical world, we think that just being a disciple of Jesus Christ means that I say yes with that salvation prayer—which is important, right? We have to come in faith, give our life to Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit come and fills us. But what then? It doesn’t end there. When we give our life to Jesus Christ, we are called in to be followers of Jesus, to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. And so what does that all mean? And it is really important that we get that right. Right? I mean, I don’t want to lie to you this morning. I don’t want the world, and sometimes even the church and stuff, lie to you and say, “Oh, it is just, it’s easy. There’s not a price to pay in being a disciple.” There’s a huge price to pay in being a disciple of Jesus Christ, right? And I think because of the Prosperity Gospel and in our Western culture today, we have made it so easy that some of these passages are really gonna be hard. Actually, I was wondering this week if we can actually, in our context here in America, if we are capable of actually living this out. And I’m not sure.

And this morning, I can honestly say to you that I fall short in many areas of this passage. I don’t want you for one second to think, oh, I’m standing here and I’m just pointing fingers. I am preaching to me and I’ve been preaching to myself all week long. And it was “ouch.” I didn’t like it. It was eating celery, like bowls and bowls of celery. Spiritually, I’ve got a lot of vitamin K12.

Pick Up Your Cross

So if this is so important, if these are the words of Jesus, and he is telling us what it means to be a disciple, then we got to really pay close attention. Because again, all of this will be very important for us in the coming days, in the coming years, as we’re dealing with challenges in this world and with trials and persecution. And so young people, especially all of our young people, I really want you to give me your full attention. Hailey, you guys, give me your full attention, please. This is so important to me, because I don’t want us to miss this and to again be deceived and miss out on what it actually means. So let’s look at this passage.

It says, “Then Jesus said to his disciples,” and I believe that these words are accurate and applies to us as well, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves.” Well, that is absolutely no fun, right? Who wants to talk at all about denying oneself? Because we live in a culture and society where we say, “It is all about me. It’s all about me.” So what is Jesus now talking about saying, “Man, deny yourself”? And then he says, “…and deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.”

So let’s just take a moment. This is Jesus saying, “Take up the cross.” Let’s just take a moment and let’s reflect on the cross. This is from a sermon with Timothy W. Ross in one of the chapels in a university. And he says,

As we ponder the cross, the cross was an instrument of torture and death designed to inflict maximum physical suffering along with ultimate shame for the person nailed to it. Those sentenced by the Romans to death were stripped of their clothes and hoisted naked before the jeering crowds. There they dangled for hours, sometimes days, fighting for breath, suffering exposure, blood loss, shock, and trauma. There they hung until death finally, mercifully swallowed them.

That is the cross. That is what Jesus endured. And so it’s important for us to reflect on this cross. It is so easy to look at this beautiful cross, right? And it looks so clean, and it looks so neat, and it’s easy for us to carry our little crosses, right? I know Hailey loves cross necklaces, and Venessa just bought her a beautiful necklace for Valentine’s Day. And it is beautiful. We see it, right? But we, in a sense, make it so clean. We forget what it really represents and what it actually means to take up the cross.

Now, again, within Roman culture and times of Jesus, people that were crucified endured shame, right? To be there, humiliated in front of all those people, at least for—it was criminals, right? But when we think about the life of Jesus here, somebody that was perfect, without blame, without sin, and humiliated him and placing all of this guilt and shame on him. It involved suffering, and it involved death.

And so now Jesus is asking his disciples to say, “I want you to pick up your cross and follow me.” In the same way, he’s saying, are we willing to endure shame for the sake of the gospel? Are we willing to endure suffering for the sake of the gospel? And ultimately, are we willing to lay down our lives, self-denial for the sake of the gospel?

And I had to look at this passage all week and reflect on it, and it’s like, man, there’s moments that I’m willing to do this, but there’s so many moments that I’m not willing to do it, where it is all about my convenience, right? We don’t like to be inconvenienced for different things. Who likes suffering? Nobody likes suffering. And it’s no wonder when we think about why our world, why America is becoming such a secular nation, because we’re not willing to suffer, to stand up for the gospel. We are a lot of times so concerned and worried about what people will say, and that we’re not willing to take up that cross and to say, “Man, I’m willing to die for Jesus. I’m willing to walk through this shame because of the cross.”

And it was just challenging. It was hard to reflect on that because, again, I’ve got to tell you, I like being comfortable. I don’t like being put in uncomfortable situations when God calls me and says, “Oh, I need you to go and share the gospel with so-and-so. Steven, I need you to pull over.” And some days I succeed, and some days I fail. And I just with, as you, I deal with the, “But what are they gonna think, Lord? They’re gonna think I’m a fool if I just stop. What am I going to say? Is this going to be weird for me to just share the gospel or to stand up for my faith in school, to stand up for my faith in colleges?”

But as we ponder the cross, it is so much more than just this beautiful, clean cross that we have in front of us. It represents so much more. And for us as believers, boy, it also represents the victory and the joy that we have in Jesus Christ overcoming the cross. Praise the Lord that the cross is empty now for us, right? And we’re gonna be able to celebrate Easter here one of these days, but yet we are still called as disciples to say, “Man, pick up your cross.”

I love this quote by Carl Henry. It says, “The transformation of the blood-stained wooden cross of Calvary to the diamond-studded gold cross of a cathedral may well signify humankind’s attempt to remove the offense of the cross.” We want to make it so clean and so neat, right? And to say, “Man, this is what it stands for, that I have a savior that died, that his body was broken, his blood was shed on that cross.” It means something.

I was so—I emailed our council. We had a really profound council meeting on Tuesday evening, and as we’re wrestling with theological conversations around some tough topics, and all week the Lord has just been allowing me to hear different stories. And I was listening to a podcast about what happened in New York—if you followed maybe with the Catholic Church, what happened in New York, there was kind of a LGBTQ+ funeral, activist there, and it was a total disaster in what happened in this church. They so defiled that building. And I guess that the priests and stuff had to, after this funeral and stuff, they had to clean it, spiritually clean it. Not sure what that all means and what happens and what’s part of that ritual. But so they go into, in this podcast, they go into great details, kind of a theological conversation and podcast, and I was so heartbroken. I was driving as I was listening to this. And I got so, just emotional and so sad, to say, “Lord, how did we get there?”

And then I was watching, there was kind of some YouTube videos. They unfortunately made fun—and again, I don’t have all of the full context of all of these churches—but they were showing all of the churches—and again, you got to watch this kind of in context, I’m not trying to be mean here—but churches who are trying to have or did Super Bowl Sundays, which is fine, right? But some of the crazy things that they did to attract people and to make church fun—one kicking the Bible and just doing some crazy things, right?

And so I’m just pondering all of these things with this passage. And it was like, “Lord, let your cross still mean something.” I am not willing to kick the Bible to get more visitors. I want the Holy Spirit and the holiness of God to be so present that that will be the drawing in of people. And even if we’re ten or fifteen people—of course we would love to grow. Our community and our world needs churches that are growing, that are preaching the Gospel, but we can’t sacrifice the holiness of God, and to be on a place where we are kicking Bibles and doing worldly things to attract people on the outside. At what point do we say, “Scripture is enough”? At what point do we say that my life and the way my testimony and the way that the Holy Spirit is working through me is enough? I don’t want to be on stage and do weird dances and stuff to attract because it won’t have the impact in the same way that God’s Word will have an impact.

And at some point—and I’m just preaching to the choir this morning. Way to go for being here this morning. You are awesome. But I want to encourage you to go a little deeper. And this morning, I’m not gonna give you all of the answers to say, “Here is how you do it.” I want you to wrestle with this. What does it mean then to be a disciple of God? What does it mean for me then as a believer to take up my cross? If this is so important, then what does it mean in my life?

Deny Yourself

What does Scripture tell us? So again, it tells us, it says, “To deny oneself.” Now, this doesn’t mean self-hatred, but it is to surrender or deny our desires (man, that’s hard), ambitions (that’s really hard), and comfort. It involves putting the will of God above our own, surrendering our lives God’s purpose. That is part of what it means to deny ourselves, right? To put aside our feelings, to put aside our ambitions for the sake of the gospel, for God’s purpose in my life.

Now again, we struggle with this in our culture. All of our culture is, in a way, set up to say that it’s all about me. I mean, just think about—I was off social media, and I’ve been trying to really stay off social media, and then with this book thing that’s coming up, it’s like, “Okay, I’m going to try and get at least on Instagram. I’m not gonna go back to Facebook.” And yesterday we were taking the dogs and, you know, just pictures like, man, it’s so convenient with cell phones, and took a picture of the dog. But it is, you know, when you look around, there by Canal, it’s like people taking these selfies, right? And I’ve been there, right? It is like, we want to ruin every good nature scene. It’s like, “Okay, let me just put myself into that picture.” Right? And again, man, I’ve been there and I’m still there. You might still see a selfie on my Instagram. I’m sorry already, I apologize. I’m trying. Luckily at this point, I’ve got three photos on there—well, there’s a photo of the cover of my book on there, so now I don’t know if that’s a selfie or not. But in any case, I was just determined to say, “I really want whatever social media I use to make it not about me,” and to say, “How can I uplift other people?” How can I make it about other people, and most importantly, like what Christo shared, how do we make it about God? Because it’s not about us.

Denying oneself—and we as a church and churches all over the world, we are being tested on this every Sunday. Every Sunday you can walk through these doors, and we can put our own self desires like, “Man, I hope they sing my song this morning. I hope I get something out of Pastor Steven’s message this morning. I hope he’s going to use my favorite passage,” but it’s not about us. What if we come with that perspective on a Sunday morning to say, “It is not about me, but it is about putting Jesus right there in the middle and he is the focus. And more importantly, Lord, how can you use my life to make a difference in somebody else’s life? Who can I pray for today? Who can I minister to today?” That is denying oneself. It says,

What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world and yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?

Absolutely nothing. And so Jesus is saying, “Man, don’t gain the whole world, don’t gain all of the money, don’t gain all of this world’s comforts and lose your soul.” What did you gain? We gain comfort for maybe 80 years on this earth. But it is nothing in comparison to what you and I will experience for eternity in heaven. Nothing. But yet we fall into that trap constantly to say, “Let me become comfortable. Let me take care of my future.” And there is such a balance. It is a weird balance, right? Because you have to be wise, but yet it also has got to be that balance to say, “Man, it’s got to be more than just me. It’s not just taking care of me, my family. How do I make a difference? How do I take up my cross? How do I deny myself?”

Matthew 10:38,

Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me.

Oh, more broccoli. Really, Lord? Luke 9,

Then he said to them all, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.”

David Platt says, “Choosing the cross over comfort is a requirement for following Christ.” “Choosing the cross over comfort is a requirement for following Christ.” Lord, I really like my Lazy Boy. Don’t call me to Minnesota.

“We all have a cross to carry, but it’s a cross that kills our sins, smashes our idols, and teaches us the folly of self-reliance. It’s a cross that says I’ll do anything to follow Jesus, not a cross that says I have to do everything for Jesus.”

James 1:12,

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.

And so we’re just saying, it’s like, carry your cross, right? Endure these trials and hardships that you have to stand up for Christ, because at the end of your life, when you and I are standing in front of Christ, it will all be worth it. Can I hear an amen? It will be worth it. Is it easy? Absolutely not.

John 12,

Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.

And there’s another cup of celery for you this morning. Ah, so glad you came this morning.

Galatians 2:20,

I have been crucified with Christ. 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.

Dear friends, just a reminder this morning—when we take up our cross, this is not a one-time decision, but a daily decision. It’s not one thing, one moment that you just do this when you’re 12 years old or 19 years old or 20 years old. It is a daily call to say, “Lord, let me take up my cross for you.”

The cross for Jesus was a deliberate choice. Nobody forced him. He took it on. And the same way in our lives as disciples of Jesus Christ then, how do we take up this cross in our lives and not to nag about it and moan about it? And man, I have—one of my spiritual gifts might be complaining, right? It’s like, “Ooh, I’m carrying this cross for Jesus. Today, I just got to put the flesh away and you know,” and it’s like, no. But what if we can have this attitude: “Yes, it is hard. But guess what? I get to pick up this cross for Jesus today. And I get to kill the flesh. I get to say no to some of my own sinful desires.” You guys are a little quiet this morning.

Application

Two application pieces. I don’t know what it all means for you this morning and what you’re going to do with this message when you leave here today. I know I have a lot of reflection to still do in my life, but I wanted to just give you maybe two practical things. If you’re new as a believer and just say, “Okay, Steven, where do I start?” Here’s maybe two things.

Start each day with a prayer of surrender, yielding your world to God’s will and inviting him to work in and through you for his glory. What if we just start there in the morning with a prayer and say, “Lord, I surrender. I surrender.” And allow his spirit to lead you and guide you.

Number two. Oh, here’s some more celery. I don’t like this one either. Practice sacrificial love in your relationships, prioritizing the well-being and happiness of others over your own desires and preferences. And so that’s gonna mean every day that you wake up, when you go to school, when you go to work, when you come to church, to say, “Lord, I’m gonna remove myself out of that selfie picture. How do I put somebody else in that picture? How do I put your people? How do I sacrificially love?”

Now, again, church, I’m standing here this morning and I’m just, I’m honest with you. It is not easy. And I have failed many, many times, and praise the Lord for grace that we have a new day today, right? We cannot do this in the in the flesh. We cannot do this in our own power, but we can do it with the help of the Holy Spirit and with what God did for us, what Jesus did on the cross for us. We can have the victory. We can take up our cross. Amen?

This morning I’ll pray for us, and then we will come to the Lord’s table again. And I want to just invite you to take that moment and that space to reflect on this passage, to ask yourself if you have been taking up that cross. Or has it been about you and about your desires? And maybe this morning to just have that honest conversation and to say, “God, I’m starting. I’m laying down my life this morning, and I want to take up my cross because it’s worth it.” Christ is worth it.