Follow The Footsteps of Jesus

[00:00:00] This audio sermon is provided by AnabaptistSermons.com and may be freely copied and distributed. You may not sell or edit this sermon. Our prayer is that you would be blessed by this ministry. Father in heaven, we bow before you again just now. Father, we thank you for being with us here. Thank you for the expression that we heard, the worship that we had. Father, I pray especially now that you would just take these few words that I have here and bless them [00:00:34] and that they would connect and that they would bring fruit for your kingdom. Father, I give this to you. I want to give everything to you, Father, this morning. Just pray that you would be heard and that your spirit would move among us. We just again invite your presence here. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. For a scripture reading this morning, I would like for, if you desire, you can turn your Bibles to Luke chapter 9. [00:01:09] And I will say from the outset here that I struggle a little bit with this message because probably God had a work to do in my own life. And I was aware of some things that in my own life that maybe were not quite the way they should have been. Maybe there was still some self rising up. Luke chapter 9, I would like to break in at verse 18, start, begin reading at verse 18. [00:01:44] The setting of this is right after he had sent the disciples out. He had fed the multitude there, 5,000 people, possibly 10,000 people. And then here he was with his disciples alone. Verse 18, Luke chapter 9, And it came to pass as he was alone praying, his disciples were with him, and he asked them, saying, Whom say the people that I am? They answering said, John the Baptist, but some say Elias, and others say that one of the old prophets is risen again. [00:02:25] He said unto them, But whom say ye that I am? Peter answering said, The Christ of God. And he straightly charged them and commanded them to tell no man that thing, saying, The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected of the elders and chief priests and scribes and be slain and be raised the third day. And he said to them all, If any man will come after me and deny himself and take up his cross and follow me, for whosoever will save his life shall lose it. [00:02:58] But whosoever will lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it. For what is a man advantaged if he gain the whole world and lose himself or be cast away? For whosoever shall be ashamed of me and of my words, of him shall the Son of Man be ashamed, when he shall come in his own glory and in his Father's and of the holy angels. These are the words of Jesus. If you have a red letter edition, you will see that most of what I read is in red letters. [00:03:31] and Jesus' own words. This passage is pointing out directly what has been called the upside-down kingdom. It's not what the carnal man... It doesn't make sense to the world around us. What Jesus is saying here goes directly against my human nature or the way that I think. Maybe in terms that we can understand better, Jesus is saying that in order to save our souls, we have to give up those things in life that we crave the most. [00:04:12] Those things that serve what pleases my senses. I don't know about you, but there's times when I, maybe more than I like to admit, I would like to have a life that's well-ordered, that's comfortable, that's safe, and where we feel secure. But when we follow Jesus, and He's calling us to follow Him here, [00:04:43] we might find ourselves in an uncomfortable position sometimes, maybe some dangerous position, some places that we did not think that we're going to go. and yet we're called to do that and when we do this when we follow Jesus our eternal destiny takes precedence over our physical life our comforts that we have [00:05:13] there's and I'm just picking out here for right now a little bit What good does it do if we gain the whole world and lose our own soul? You know, we heard about gathering at the river this morning. And I can assure you that the king and the beggar will be on the same level that day. It doesn't matter what our bank account holds or how rich we are. [00:05:45] We're all going to be on the same level. And that's a blessing. I've titled this message, Following the Footsteps of Jesus, and I trust that the choir this morning was here because they're following the footsteps of Jesus, and they have a desire to serve Him. This passage makes mention of some of the things that we do when we follow Jesus, when we're following in the footsteps of Jesus. [00:06:17] And I would like to notice some phrases in verse 23 here. It says, if any man will come after me, come after me. If we want to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. If we want to come after him, we have to do several things. We have to deny ourselves and we have to take up our cross, not just one day, but daily, every day, and then it calls to follow Him. [00:06:53] It's a call to action. We can't sit around if we have chosen to follow Jesus Christ. It's not something that we sit back and it just happens. It's a call to action. It occurred to me as I was studying this that, and I know that there's parallel scriptures that you can look up. This is the only one that says, that I could see that says we have to take our cross, we have to take up our cross daily. [00:07:27] The rest of them said take up thy cross, but I don't think any of the others say daily, but it doesn't matter, that's irrelative I suppose. Jesus is calling us to action and I struggle a bit with this this morning. I'm not asking, I'm not saying that we work our way to heaven and yet I believe that we have responsibility if we have committed our lives to God to put action to our faith. [00:08:01] We believe that our actions validate our experience with the Lord. It's not necessarily that we're going to work our way into heaven. And maybe as a side note, as we think about works here a little bit, there's something that Brother Elmer Miller shared at the area-wide ministers meeting. He said simply this, that all of us can preach a better message than we can live. I really appreciated that. That kind of struck me. You know, I can speak, I can say a lot of things, but if I'm not willing to put them into practice, then I doubt if I should be speaking. Maybe that's a little too harsh. [00:08:47] Also, this is not really what I had planned to say, but as I was studying this, I noticed that, and I think I'm speaking to a group this morning that is primarily, we claim the Anabaptist heritage, and we spoke a little bit about the Anabaptist heritage. And I think that our Anabaptist forefathers, it just struck me that maybe I shouldn't be claiming that if I'm not willing to follow the way that my forefathers did. [00:09:21] Maybe I shouldn't even be claiming that heritage if I am not willing to surrender everything and follow wherever that leads. And that's just, I didn't plan on saying that, but I do think that it's important that we surrender our rights to God. Now, let me make a little analogy about following. What do we know about following someone? I have a little story here, and maybe I should have asked permission from Brother Wendell before I shared this, [00:09:53] But I was studying this and I remembered that several years ago we went on a trip and we went with Wendell's. Well, we didn't drive the same van. We followed them. We followed them. We were going to Virginia. And you know what? I didn't look at my map because I knew Brother Wendell knew where we were going. and I followed that blue van and I was intent on following that blue van [00:10:24] and when he made a U-turn, I made a U-turn. I did not, you know, I wanted to get to my destination and I knew that I had to follow if I was going to get there. Now I suppose we could say all kinds of things. Of course, we could have pulled our map out and looked at the map We could have gotten there. We didn't need to follow. I'm just saying this this morning because I wonder if we sometimes get in trouble [00:10:57] when we try to follow at a distance and we lose our way. And let me say something else. If you need a road map to heaven, right here is your road map. Make sure that you know where you're going. You know, sometimes it feels like we're losing our way, Okay, but right here's the map. Let's make sure that we're looking. Make sure that we're on the right road. I would like to talk a little bit more about following at a distance. You know, Jesus asked that we follow him. We are called to follow him and then he gives instruction on how we should follow, what we need to do if we follow. [00:11:38] And I know that the question, how we follow, the question could be, is there something like following Jesus at a distance? Just kind of hanging back, following at a distance. You know, we say that we're either in this kingdom or in this kingdom. We're either lost or we're saved. And I don't know if there's something like following at a distance. But I suppose that all of us would recognize that human nature at least is to try that. [00:12:13] You know, there's things that we can do. And my mind went to the church at, well, the Laodicean church. And I know that that's very familiar. And Revelations 3.14, I don't think I'm going to read that. But for some reason that went through my head as I was thinking about this. I would guess that these people probably still had some form and they still gathered and they still worshiped and they still had their kept doing the same thing that they had been doing all along from the beginning. [00:12:54] They were following Jesus, weren't they? But something was missing. There are several phrases that jumped out at me as I read this account. And one of them was simply this. They had need of nothing. They felt fulfilled where they were. They had need of nothing. They were satisfied with where they were. And I, well let me just say this. They were neither hot nor cold, the scripture says. They were neither following closely, and I'm not sure. [00:13:27] But it seems like they weren't following too far behind either. They were at least making an effort. But you know what? There was some harsh judgment on them. It says, I will spew them out of my mouth. You know, we have to follow. Could it be that we try to follow Jesus at a comfortable distance? Something that makes us feel good or makes us comfortable. How do we do that? You know, we blend in with our church family. We fill our place at church. We may even have a good testimony. But are we still feeling that fire for the Lord? Are we following the way that we should or are we trying to follow at a distance? It's just a question I want to leave with you. [00:14:19] Now I would just like to look at some things. But I'd like to look at the cross just a little bit. And I don't profess to know everything that it takes to follow Jesus. You know, and I think it's wonderful that we're part of a brotherhood to remind ourselves, to remind each other what we need to do. And we need to be aware of what it takes to follow Jesus. But I would like to talk about the cross just a little bit. [00:14:53] We know what the cross is. The cross is an instrument of death. And I know that speaking about, preaching about the cross is not a popular thing. And Paul says as much in 1 Corinthians 1.18, he says, For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness, but unto us who are saved it is the power of God. and so I guess maybe I'll say this yet it may not seem popular but I want to say this [00:15:26] if we are saved this morning, if we are in tune with God then I guess it is popular there is no, there is it doesn't seem like it's unpopular in our hearts at least but it does run counter to human wisdom bringing something to death Bringing our human reasoning, our wants, our desires to death. We are at a point when we like to do what feels good. [00:16:01] And I don't think it's just happened in 2008. I think it's always been that way. We like to do what feels good. I'm not ahead of you. I would say I'm not ahead of you. I do say this though, that I guess I didn't really plan on saying this, but the cross also has, there's power in the cross. There's resurrection power in the cross. When we lay everything down, we have power to do things that we thought weren't possible. [00:16:32] Let's remember that. So what really is the cross in our day? I think maybe we should talk about some wrong ideas of the cross. Maybe that's, I feel kind of out of place even talking about this. This is kind of a deep thing for me. The cross, I don't believe the cross is necessarily just suffering. Because if the cross was just suffering, [00:17:03] Then the carnal man that doesn't care about God would have a cross too Because they suffer too They lose loved ones They have sickness comes in They have poor health I've heard people say that we're in an uncomfortable position Or had maybe death in the family Or had you name it And they said well I guess that's my cross But I beg to differ. [00:17:36] You know, I'm not saying that God doesn't send those things to test us, to see where we're at. But I think the cross is something a little different than this yet. And I'll give opportunity for expression at the end of this message, so I guess you'd be ready to correct me here. What is the cross? And I'm sure that the home congregation at least remembers what Brother Paul Weaver said. I think he said this, and I didn't listen to this specifically, but I think he said that the cross in our day, let's see, the cross is between us and the world. [00:18:20] And the cross in our day should be how in every situation that we come into, how will this affect my relationship with Jesus Christ? We put that cross between us and the world, and we measure it up against that. How will this affect my life? Paul said this in Galatians 2.20, and I don't know if this fits in here. He said, I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live. Yet not I, but Christ liveth in me, and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, [00:18:53] who loved me and gave himself for me. You know what? Now, Paul lost his identity. The Lord was in control of his life. He had crucified the flesh. And whatever pleased his flesh no longer controlled him. And I think that's where we need to be. Whatever pleases our flesh has to be put to death, put on the cross. When we are serious about taking up the cross and following Jesus, [00:19:29] I think it's very good that we ask, what would Jesus do in this situation? How will this affect my walk with the Lord? If we're serious about it, I think we give due consideration in whatever situation We enter in. And you know what? If we do that from now on, from that point on, we always confer with the one that is in control with our lives. You know, it's so important that we don't build on what feels good to me, what I like to do, or what comes easy to me. [00:20:12] Now, I would like to look at some different aspects of applying the cross. And there's another phrase in here that Jesus talks about here in Luke chapter 9. If I can lay my eyes on it. He talks about self-denial. And, you know, I don't know what self-denial means to you today. But as I thought back over the years, centuries, self-denial today may not be what it used to be. [00:20:49] Self-denial at one time may have been a prison wall for some of our forefathers. You know, they knew when they made that step, they knew exactly what was going to happen. And many of those men ended up in prison. And it was not an easy road. I'm afraid sometimes it's self-denial. We don't understand what self-denial means. And I don't mean to say this morning that if we don't have that, we can't be close to God or we can't follow Him closely. [00:21:22] But let's be careful. Let's be very careful that we know what that means. The disciples knew what the cross was all about. Well, they had seen many times the Romans would take the people that they wanted to crucify. And let me tell you, when somebody was doomed to be crucified, there was no coming back. They said goodbye to their friends and it was all over. And so when Jesus used this word picture with his disciples, they knew exactly what it meant to bury the cross. [00:22:00] Well, I think they did. I think he had their attention. And it must have been very important to him to convey this to them because he said it to them privately if I understand this scripture. But nevertheless, the physical cross as they pictured it in their minds was anything but glamorous. It was not glamorous to them at all. And I know there's times... Now this morning I think it would be, how should I say this, we would feel comfortable in expressing ourselves for the Lord, but you know what, we get to a place where these things are uncomfortable. [00:22:48] Tomorrow we will be in the work world. Next week some of you will be in different directions. How will we bear that cross? It's not as easy when we're around people that don't. The cross looks like foolishness. A life lived for God looks like foolishness. But we're called to do that. It's not just for this morning. It's for tomorrow. It's for next week. May I say it's for the rest of our lives if we are committed. It's not a light thing to make a commitment to follow Jesus. [00:23:23] The cross was the most cruel way of ending someone's life. And as I said already, our rights are so important in our society today. You know, we are our society around us. Wherever we go, it seems like people demand their rights. They and not only do they demand their rights, but they encourage other people. You need to stand up for yourself. You need to demand your rights. And it goes directly against what Jesus taught here. [00:23:59] But when we follow Jesus, we surrender. It's no longer me, but it's Jesus. Paul said this in Romans 12, verse 1, and I'm sure that most of you could quote this. He says, I beseech ye therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. You know, that little line right there, if we analyze that, packs a lot of punch. [00:24:36] How do we present our bodies a living sacrifice? Well, I'll let you think about that. But I do know this. When we present our bodies as a living sacrifice, we put our energy, we put all our resources, all the money, whatever we have at God's disposal. Our energy is all at God's disposal. [00:25:09] And I think that's very important. We can make a difference. We make a difference. The second thing I would like to notice here is the cost of following Jesus. You know, chapter 14 of Luke, I believe it is, and I'm not sure, yeah, Luke chapter 14, verse 26 and 27 at least say this, If any man come to me and hate not his father and mother, his father, mother, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, [00:25:46] So he cannot be my disciple. And whosoever does not bear his cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. Does it cost anything to follow Jesus? It does. It does cost. And I know this has parallel scriptures as well. I looked it up in Matthew. Hate, hating father and mother may not necessarily be the correct term there. As I looked up the meaning in the original Greek there, and it sounds a little strong, I think, hating. [00:26:22] I don't think we're called to hate. And yet, well, I guess God's love, love of family is a law of God. And I think the word of God does say that. But I think what he's saying here is even this love, love of family, can be self-serving if we hold that above serving the Lord and doing the Lord's work. And I know that some people have had to lose family and had to leave family to follow the Lord. [00:26:55] And I would like to encourage you, if you are in that position, take courage. God will bless you for that. If you are faithful, if you are sincere about following, following God. What about our commitment when it comes to our friends? You know what? Christian commitment can separate us from friends. It can. If we are serious about committing our lives to God, it can separate us from friends. [00:27:33] And I don't think that Jesus is promoting conflict here or asking us to be obstinate in our homes or with our parents. Simply, he's pointing out that there is a cost involved. And I think at times we're forced to make some tough decisions. When all of our friends are still going their way, but we have seen Jesus, we have chosen something different. His presence in our lives makes us choose something different. [00:28:11] As we take up our cross and we follow him, we will have a different set of values. There will be different, we will have different goals. There will be different moral values and I think Jesus is simply calling us to a higher level of accountability, a higher mission than where we had been. And I don't know if Matthew 18, 8 and 9 factor into this. I wasn't really planning to read this, but maybe I'll just look at that briefly. [00:28:50] This is the scripture that says about cutting off your hand. I'll read it. Wherefore, if thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut them off and cast them from thee. It is better for thee to enter into life halt or maimed, rather than having two hands or two feet to be cast into everlasting fire. And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee. It is better for thee to enter into life with one eye rather than having two eyes to be cast into hellfire. [00:29:21] Now, this doesn't talk at all about carrying the cross, but I think it does say something about following the Lord, following Jesus' footsteps. And I don't know if he's talking about cutting my hand off or taking my eye out physically, As much as he is asking that, or saying that we must be willing to remove any stumbling block, anything that stands in the way of following the Lord the way that we should. [00:29:52] Maybe I'm making it sound too hard this morning. That's not my desire. I think God has made it easy to follow him. His yoke is easy, his burden is light. But we have to bring that selfish will to death before we can do that. I think he's simply saying with this scripture in Matthew 18 that in order for us to reach that eternal reward, there's some things that are required. [00:30:23] Now we've talked about following Jesus and some of the costs and what it takes to follow and maybe I've simply expressed how hard it is. Now I didn't mean to do that and yet there is a cost and I want to be clear on this. There is a cost and there's a need to make known where we stand. But I would like to also, I would like to end on this note. [00:30:57] I would like to look at just several of the blessings of following Jesus. And I don't have, there could be a long list of things that we would expound on this morning. There could be many things that we would say. But I've just chosen several that I thought of that immediately came to mind. And I think one of them is very obvious. I think this morning we have gathered because we see a kingdom that's not made with hands, beyond what we can see. [00:31:36] And there were songs sung this morning about that, and I trust that we're here. We're following Jesus. We see the reward. The promise of heaven is worth it all. Jesus said himself, and that's no secret, I mean we're all Bible reading people, we know, but Jesus said in John, I'm not sure is it John 14, in my father's house are many mansions, and then I think he goes on to say if it were not so, that he would go to prepare some more. [00:32:10] Or can any of you think of any place that is more precious or that brings more comfort to you than the thought that our Heavenly Father is preparing a mansion for you in the sky? And I don't know where heaven is. It doesn't matter. But it's a blessing that comes with following Jesus. And I want to say this morning that the blessings outweigh the cost or the price that we have to put in. [00:32:44] You know, there's only one reason that our forefathers could sing as they were being burned. They saw beyond what I'm seeing this morning. Beyond the grave, it's a blessing. There's no pain, no death, no tears. I guess it was a new thought to me. I'd heard the scripture before. God will sing with us there, I believe, if we make it in. Now, maybe we're thinking about the here and now, some of the blessings. And I don't have a long list. I didn't spend a lot of time with this. [00:33:25] But I thought of the peace that we can experience. And I think several of the choir members expressed that peace. Peace, as Paul put it, peace that passeth all understanding And I just want to say this this morning If we haven't had that peace and we acquire that peace I think we will know what he's talking about But it's an immediate blessing of following the Lord With all our heart, soul, strength and mind You know, peace that comes from God is so different [00:34:00] and the peace that comes from the world. It's not found in just positive thinking. This peace is something beyond that peace. It's not the absence of conflict or just good feelings. Real peace, may I say, real peace comes from knowing that God is in control and our citizenship is in heaven. We're controlled by God. There's another thing in this and I've just been blessed in seeing, observing people that were facing death and you know death is such a, it can be such a painful experience and the blessing to me was how these people expressed themselves. [00:34:53] They had no fear of death. In fact, it almost seemed like they were looking forward to death. I'm talking about physical death now. You know what? That's the blessing of following Jesus Christ. We don't have to fear. We don't have to worry about tomorrow or what tomorrow will bring. If we follow closely, We can be in perfect harmony with God. [00:35:23] What a blessing. May I say this yet about following? Well, I thought of another blessing. The effect that it has on other people around us or people that if there's a youth group and there's one or two have made a commitment, have chosen to follow the Lord. It can make a tremendous difference in the rest of the youth group. [00:35:53] It can be a marvelous blessing to those that are around them. The blessing of following Jesus. Let's not miss that blessing. Let's encourage those that have made commitments. And not only the youth group. You know, people my age need encouragement too. It's not just for the youth or the young people. I would like to say this about following Jesus. You know, when we follow something, [00:36:24] when we have someone out ahead of us, and we're trying to follow, we're trying to keep up, and we're taking signals from that person, and I'm maybe painting a visual picture of Jesus now, But, you know, for so many, well, for so much of my life, it was, he was over there and I, a mystical being and we were trying to follow and we just didn't quite know and the signal wasn't clear. Let me say to you this morning, when we follow closely, when we're to the point where we're almost alongside the Savior and we're in contact, we're communicating with God, then it becomes a partnership and we're in tune. [00:37:10] We can move forward. We don't have to feel alone. Let's make sure that we're following closely. And in closing, I would just like to say just a few words. I would like for all of us to just ask us the question, How are we following Jesus this morning? Are we following closely behind him? Or are we following at a safe distance? What feels comfortable to us? [00:37:42] Let's make sure that we have that connection with him.