Gospel Driven | Mark 8:34 - 9:1 (July 3) Myles Holmes

Hello and welcome to the Redemption Church Podcast.

We're a church in Newmarket, Ontario, Canada that exists to glorify God for the fulfillment of the Great Commission.

The spirit of the Great Commandment.

Thanks for joining us today.

Let's pray church.

Psalm 33.

Shout for joy in the Lord, O you righteous.

Praise befits the upright.

Give thanks to the Lord with the lear.

Make melody to him with harp of ten strings.

Sing to him a new song.

Play skillfully on the string with loud shouts.

Father, we pray these words back to you, God.

That praise is due to your name.

Lord, exaltation is what you deserve because of who you are.

Because of the greatness of your character.

Because of the fullness of your grace.

Because of the outpouring of your mercy, Lord, praise is due to you.

Praise befits the upright.

And so, Father, we pray that you would find in this place, as you have just now, Lord, hearts that are praising you.

Hearts that desire to give their lives as an active spiritual worshipership.

Lord, as we open your word, all that you have to say to us.

God, that you find hearts that want to praise you for submission to your faith.

Father, we love you.

We're so thankful that you're here with us.

Lord, you are present.

Your Holy Spirit is active among us.

And so, God, this is our prayer.

Work, Lord.

Work in us.

We pray this all in the name of your Son.

Amen.

Amen.

If you guys have your Bibles, and I hope that you do, you can open them up to Mark chapter 8.

Mark 8 · chapter mention

We're going to be in verses 34 and into some of chapter 9 this morning as we continue our series called Gospel Driven.

In 1839, two missionaries, their names were John Williams and James Harris, they felt the call from God to take the gospel to an unreached people, a people from the island of New Hebrides.

This is a series of islands just off the coast of Australia.

Before this time, to the best of our knowledge, the best of historians' knowledge, I guess I should say, there was no Christian influence on these islands.

And so these two missionaries went out with great hope, being commissioned by God to take the gospel to unreached nations.

However, with mint within minutes of landing, they were killed and eaten by cannibals.

But over the next coming years, God would do this amazing work on this island, such a work that today, according to estimates, 85% of the island identifies as Christian.

From this time that these two missionaries would go and be killed by this people, until today, there's been this magnificent work of God carried out by many missionaries who took up the call of God at great cost at times to their own life to bring the gospel to the New Hebrides.

Over the coming years, God would send missionary after missionary, and one of these missionaries' names was John G.

Patton.

And John G.

Patton was really consumed with this gospel drive that we've been aiming to uncover during this series.

This idea that when the gospel takes a hold of us, it drives us somewhere.

When the gospel grips us, it calls us to live a certain way.

And for John G.

Patton, it called him to the island of Annuwa.

Now, some of us might hear of a trip to an island off the coast of Australia, and we might think, wow, what a vacation.

I could take that kind of missionary call.

I'll take a calling to the beach any day.

But that's not so much what John G.

Patton's calling was.

The natives of this island were cannibals.

Occasionally they would eat the flesh of their enemies, defeated enemies.

They practiced infanticide and they would often sacrifice widows, believing that these widows could serve their husbands in the next world.

And so this was a place that was scary.

And as Patton thought about going here, it was only 19 years earlier that these two missionaries were had given their life to the cause of this mission.

And so as John G.

Patton told the people around him that he was going to these islands, people couldn't come to grips with why he would choose to make such a costly decision.

And he writes in his autobiography of a man named Mr.

Dixon who exploded when Patton told him where he'd be going.

He said, You'll be eaten by cannibals.

Probably the same way we'd react if maybe one of our children told us they were going there.

But Patton was a man who was courageous, and his courage often led him to speak maybe without filter and to say things he shouldn't say.

And so he said to the old and aged Mr.

Dixon, he replied, These words, Mr.

Dixon, you are advanced in years now.

Now let me just give this as a little uh little life tip.

Never tell an old p person that.

The gospel is also about the work that Jesus came to do in us through discipleship.

That you can't have one without the other.

That if you're going to place your faith in the work that Jesus did for you on the cross, it requires that you then live a life of faithfulness.

And yet this message of the cost of the gospel, the cost of discipleship, is so contradictory to our modern world, isn't it?

We live in a world that is laughably convenient.

I couldn't believe it.

This was even years ago now, and things have only become more convenient.

I couldn't believe it when I drove into a McDonald's one day, which is pretty much about as close to heaven as you can get on earth, and I drove into a McDonald's, and I saw that you can just park and they'll just bring your food out to you.

But then that wasn't even the beginning of it because now I can just poke a button on my phone and they'll bring it to my door.

The world is getting more and more convenient.

Self-driving cars.

Soon enough that won't even need us to be in them in order to self-drive.

This is the world we live in.

It's convenient, and yet we're here this morning worshiping a God centered on the gospel, and the reality is that that gospel is not convenient to your life.

That gospel is costly to your life.

And the question for us as followers of Christ is this are we willing to accept the cost?

Are we willing to embrace the cost of discipleship?

Now, Mark 8.31 is a turning point in the gospel of Mark.

Up until this point, time and time again, Jesus has been doing miracles and participating in ministry.

And people have been asking this question well, who is this guy?

Where did this guy come from?

Where did he show up?

Who gave him such power?

And they're a little bit confused about who Jesus is.

But in Mark 8, Jesus flips the question on the disciples.

And he asks Peter in verse 29, you'll see it there.

He says, Who do you say that I am?

This is the question of utmost significance.

It was a question that was important 2,000 years ago.

You need to know that it's a question that's important for you.

One of the most important questions that you can be asked is this Who do you, what do you think about Jesus?

Who do you think that Jesus is?

See, the reality is that it is a historical fact.

No matter what you believe about Jesus, you cannot deny the historical fact that 2,000 years ago a man named Jesus Christ of Nazareth lived and walked this earth.

And the reality is that he made some pretty significant claims about himself.

He claimed to be God, and he claimed to be king.

Not just a king.

Jesus claimed to be the king of kings.

And the reality is that today, 2,000 years later, because Jesus made these claims, you're required to do something with them.

You have to choose either to believe that Jesus was right in his claims, or to believe that Jesus was wrong in his claims.

I love what C.S.

Lewis says.

He says that you either believe that Jesus is Lord, or you believe that he's a liar or a lunatic.

The question for you this morning that's of utmost significance is who is Jesus?

This was the question that Jesus had asked to Peter, and Peter responds in verse 29.

He says, This, you are the Christ.

To be the Christ means to be the anointed one.

It was filled with meaning and significance for the Jewish person.

It referred to the king that the people of Israel were waiting for.

This wasn't just any king, it was the king of kings.

It was the king that would deliver them from their captivity and ultimately deliver them to the promised land that was promised to them.

It was a king that was promised in 2 Samuel 7, 16, of which his throne would never end, his rule would never fade.

Israel was waiting for this king.

And here Peter is standing before Jesus, the king in the flesh, declaring, You are the king we've been waiting for, you are the Messiah, you are the anointed one, you are the king of kings.

It's the correct answer, but Jesus will take the rest of the Gospel of Mark really to unf to flesh out what does that really mean?

What does it mean that Jesus is the Christ?

What does it mean that he is the Messiah?

And in a really dense way, in verses 31 to really the end of chapter 8, Jesus fleshes out what it means that he is the king.

First, he says that he's the kind of king that will die on a cross.

You see that in verse 31?

I want to focus our time on verse 34 and following, but I want you to see this in verse 31, that as Jesus is defining what it means that he's king, he says this he must, he, and he began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer.

You hear that word?

Must.

What a strong word.

Must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed.

And after three days rise again.

Two more times after this in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus will come back to this teaching, and each time he will unfold a little more truth to reveal that the king, the Christ, the anointed one, the Messiah, the King of kings, is the King who will die on a cross.

But Jesus' message of what it means to be his follower doesn't end there.

See, the first thing that Jesus reveals about him being the Messiah, about him being the Christ, is that he is the king, the Messiah, the Christ who will die on a cross.

But the second thing that Jesus reveals, and that's what I want us to draw our attention to this morning, is that not only will the king die on a cross, the king will also call his followers to carry a cross.

This is really how you could summarize the kingdom of Christ by the cross.

The cross is the instrument of torture that the king himself will die on.

The cross is the instrument of sacrifice that the king calls his followers to carry.

And all throughout Jesus' ministry, we find shock that the crucified king would call us to hold a cross of our own.

This is the costiness of discipleship.

We're called to take up the cross.

And if we can't embrace the cost of discipleship, we can't embrace the call to discipleship.

And so I want us to see this morning that following Christ requires us to embrace the cost of discipleship.

And the first thing I want you to see about following Christ is that it calls following Christ requires that we examine the call of discipleship.

Following Christ requires that we examine the call of discipleship.

Look what it says there in verse 34.

After teaching Jesus, Jesus teaching the disciples about the fact that he would have to die on a cross, in verse 34, it says, calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.

And so notice what Jesus does in verse 34.

It's so significant.

He calls the crowd to him with his disciples.

That's really significant.

There's some really powerful application for us in that the beginning of verse 34.

And the application is this is that Jesus calls everybody to be his disciple.

See, at this very point, when Jesus is talking about what it means to be a follower of Christ, he doesn't just talk to a select group of disciples, he calls the whole crowd.

Come and hear what it means to be my follower.

And that's significant because I've talked to many people that kind of set up their own barrier for what it means to be, for what needs to happen in order for you to even initiate that relationship with Jesus Christ.

And there are some who will hear the call to follow Christ and they'll say, okay, well, I'll follow Christ once I have my life uh together a bit more.

You ever share the gospel with someone and invite them to come up to church and they're like, I'm not, I can't come to church yet.

If I do that, lightning bolts are gonna come from heaven.

The church is not ready for me.

But Jesus doesn't put that barrier that we often so often put on our own, the requirement of us being in a relationship with him.

Jesus calls all the crowd to him as he's about to teach what it means to be his follower.

And it's so relevant for us this morning.

It's not an accident that you're here this morning.

It's not an accident that you are sitting right now listening to the word of God.

It's not an accident that you are worshiping together with the church.

This is on purpose.

God has a word for you.

Every time we open up this book, God wants to teach each of us about himself.

This is who God is.

He loves to reveal himself, and he's revealing himself to us right now.

And so Jesus draws the crowd to him and he wants to teach them three things about the call of discipleship.

I want you to see three truths about the call to discipleship.

First is that it's a call to self-forgetfulness.

You see that there?

See what Jesus says?

He said it says, if anyone would come after me, if anyone would follow me, let him deny himself.

Jesus says, if we're going to follow him, the call is really a call to deny ourselves.

So often we think about following Jesus in terms of the things we need to do.

We have a checklist of what it means to be a follower of Christ.

And here Jesus is defining what it means to be a follower of Christ by the things we need to forget.

He says, if you want to follow me, you need to deny yourself.

You accept who Jesus is as the one who would die on the cross, and you deny who you are, you deny your own kingdom.

Another way to say this is there's no way to follow Jesus apart from the way of self-denial.

To follow Jesus is to put aside your own goals, your own desires, your own will, and to say, your will be done.

This is why when Jesus teaches us to pray in Matthew chapter 5, the thing that we are to repeat day after day is not my will, but your will, sorry, the kingdom of heaven come.

Matthew 5 · chapter mention

This is why Jesus prays in the garden.

Not my will, but your will be done.

Because Jesus is modeling for us that to follow him is to give up our own will so that his will can be accomplished through us.

We're denying ourselves in order to serve Jesus.

This is why the call is so difficult.

This is the reality of being a human being, isn't it?

One of the most foremost markers of being a human being is that we want what we want.

If you have a baby, you don't have to teach them how to tell you what they want.

They come out of the womb screaming about exactly what they want.

And kids are experts from the day that they're born that needs no practice at telling you exactly what they want.

This is our human condition.

We want what we want.

Jesus is calling us as we follow him to give up our wants, to give up our desires, to forget ourselves in order to follow him.

See, we're called to self-forgetfulness.

The second thing that we're called to is to sacrifice.

And so Jesus says that whoever would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross.

And that's all fine, but the reality is it kind of takes us away from what someone in the first century would think about when they think it thought about a cross.

The cross was this brutal instrument of torture.

There was no light thought about it.

It wasn't this cozy decoration to be put in our living room.

The cross was an instrument of torture and death.

It'd be equivalent to someone handing you an electric chair and saying, hey, if you want to follow me, carry this around with you because you might need it someday.

And most of us would respond to that, no way, you're crazy.

I'm not doing that.

Because in order to take that electric chair, you'd be saying, I'm willing to give my life to you.

And this is what Jesus is saying to his disciples.

Many in the crowd likely had experienced multiple crucifixions.

They had seen the horror of the cross.

They had seen how it had been used as an instrument of torture and death, and now this man stands in front of them who says he's the king and calls them to pick up one of these instruments of torture and to carry it.

And says that this would define their discipleship.

See, Jesus is defining what it means to follow him as what we're willing to lose.

For us to pick up the cross and to follow him is to say this to Jesus, Jesus, I'm willing to lose everything.

I'll even lose my life if that's your call.

You're starting to get a sense of the cost of discipleship?

It can cost you everything.

And this gospel that Jesus preaches about discipleship is so foreign to us in a world where often what we're trying to do with the gospel is kind of like shand down the edges.

We want to preach the gospel in a way that's not so offensive.

We want to preach a gospel of easy believism.

If you just place your faith in Jesus, you'll be good.

We preach a gospel of forgiveness without repentance.

We preach a gospel of cleansing without confession.

We preach a gospel of faith without faithfulness.

And we try to take away the cost and just talk about the call.

But the gospel, the gospel that emphasizes all that Christ does for you without calling you to live for Christ isn't the gospel at all.

This isn't the gospel that Jesus preaches.

This isn't the gospel that's given to us in the Word.

This isn't the gospel that saved you if you're in Christ.

The gospel emphasizes not only all that Christ did for us, but also all that Christ will do in us as we deny ourselves, as we give our all for Him.

What Jesus is telling us is that living a life of sacrifice is not optional.

And some of us have begun to think about the cost of discipleship as though it's optional.

And so we think about other people who are pursuing Jesus and they're doing hard things for Jesus and they're doing scary things for Jesus and they're living their life for Jesus.

And we think, well, that's really nice for that person.

But my faith is just different.

And Jesus is teaching us that when we're saved, we're saved to a life of sacrifice.

Jesus is building a theology of the gospel's work in your life.

This is why Paul says in Galatians 2.20, he says, I've been crucified with Christ.

Because when Paul thinks about salvation, he thinks about crucifixion.

He thinks about the fact that when he decided to place his faith in Jesus Christ, he was deciding to crucify himself on the cross.

He died to his old self.

He says in Galatians 2.20, it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.

Your old self sought to serve yourself, is dead.

Now you are alive to Christ.

This is what Jesus is doing here he's teaching us about discipleship.

He's resetting our expectations about what it means to follow Him.

See, following Jesus is a simple call.

In fact, Jesus boiled it down to two words, didn't he?

When he preached, he preached a gospel of repentance and belief.

But Jesus is just showing us here that it's certainly not an easy call.

Dying to your desires, it's a daily sacrifice.

Following the Lord is hard because it's not natural to man.

What's natural to us is the desire to want to serve ourself.

This is why I'm so encouraged by many people in our church who are constantly putting this on display for us.

They're constantly denying themselves in order to serve the Lord.

I think of the people who are serving in kids' ministry right now.

And if you want to go and talk to them about sacrifice, I'm sure that they could preach a great message right now, about half an hour, 40 minutes in to kids' ministry about sacrifice.

But they've committed to sacrifice their Sunday morning, to sacrifice their time to serve the church.

You know what's easier than serving on the worship team or in setup or in production or as a small group leader?

You know what's easier than that?

Not doing it.

Doing nothing is much easier than that.

And yet these people have chosen to live a life of sacrifice, sacrificing their time, sacrificing their talents, sacrificing their energy in order to serve the Lord, to give glory to him.

This is what it means to follow Christ.

This is the cost of discipleship.

That we practice both self-forgetfulness and sacrifice in order to do thirdly what Jesus calls us to do, to serve him.

You see that there in verse 34?

He says three things about the call to discipleship.

He says that you must deny yourself, he says that you must take up your cross, and he ultimately says that you do this in order to follow him.

This is the call of discipleship that Christ is asking us to examine.

It's a call to self-denial, it's a call to sacrifice, and that's the way that Jesus is teaching us that we serve Him.

Question for you this morning is Has God done a work in your life where you're willing to commit to the hard call that He gives you of discipleship, where you're willing to embrace the cost?

This is the question we need to continue to ask, and this is why the next thing we must do as we think about following Christ is realizing that following Christ requires that I evaluate the cost of discipleship.

This is the second thing we need to understand this morning that following Christ requires that I evaluate the cost of discipleship.

And so look at what Jesus says in verse 35.

After calling us to such a high call, he shows us the cost.

He says, For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake in the gospels will save it.

There's some math going on here.

There's some investment going on here.

Jesus is teaching us about the right place and the wrong place to invest our life.

And Jesus teaches us that there's really two investments.

As we think about our life, as we think about the way that we live, there's two investments that we can make.

There's really only two responses.

The first is at the beginning of verse 35, and he teaches us about this life investment and shows us the reward.

He says, For whoever would save his life will lose it.

You see the first option here?

The first option is that hearing Jesus' call to discipleship, hearing how hard it is, you decide that that's not for me.

This is the most popular decision.

That people hear what Jesus calls them to and they say, That's not the life for me.

You decide I'm gonna work to keep my life.

I'm not giving my life to Jesus.

Jesus unfolds the return of that investment.

He says, in the end, whoever seeks to save his life will lose it.

This is the thing that will cause us to embrace the cost of discipleship.

It's understanding the greater cost of non-discipleship.

The reason why we follow Christ is because we recognize that to follow him is true gain, is eternal gain.

We recognize that whatever we seek to gain in this world will someday be lost.

When we choose to deny Jesus' call to discipleship, we it's like trying to grab onto sand is trying to grab onto the things of this world.

They're just constantly slipping through your fingers.

You can never have enough.

You can never really hold on to it.

And Jesus is promising that to us this morning that whatever we pursue that is not Jesus will not last.

That those who try to keep their life end up losing it because everything apart from Jesus is temporary.

Everything apart from Jesus is fading away.

Maybe you're here this morning, and the thing that's keeping you from following the Lord is this desire to gain something else from the world.

Maybe it's material possessions.

And you're like the rich young ruler who Jesus calls to follow and you leave saddened because you're just you just love things too much.

You want more and more things.

Jesus is calling you to step back for a moment and think about the eternal nature of the things that you're accumulating.

Recognize that no one can take their U-Haul to the grave, to recognize that all of these things will rust and rot away, and one thing will remain.

It's Jesus Christ.

Think about the history of humanity.

Thousands of years, humans have lived on this world, and everyone who has passed away has lost all of their things.

They've tried to find life outside of Jesus, but they've lost it.

Jesus's call to discipleship is a call to give us life.

And so he says, whoever loses his life for my sake, remember, this is the call of discipleship, is that you deny yourself, you pick up your cross, you follow him, and so Jesus here is telling us the reward.

He says, Whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospels will save it.

The word life here, it's not just speaking of physical life.

It refers to more than that.

It refers to our soul.

Really, it refers to our identity.

It's everything that we are.

Jesus is calling us to give up who we are and to find a new identity as his follower.

Jesus is saying, give up everything.

You no longer have your own identity, you are now identified as a follower of Christ.

And in verse 35, he goes on to explain that really, sorry, verse 36, really our greatest problem is that as humans, we seek to gain our identity in the things of the world rather than gaining our identity in Jesus Christ.

And so look what he says in verse 36.

For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?

This is the pursuit of every human being to look at the world and to seek gain from the world.

To look at the world and to try their to build their identity from the things of the world.

So that each of us could point to something in the world that ultimately we struggle.

Maybe we're not doing it now, but we struggle with because we believe that maybe if we just got more of this thing, we'd truly be happy.

Maybe if we just got more of this thing, then we'd be living the life.

And so there are those of us like myself that seek to gain the pleasure of people out of the world.

And you live your life seeking the applause of people.

You're unwilling to give your life to Jesus because life is all about what other people think of you.

When you live life like this, you're willing to sacrifice whatever you need to in order to get the praise of other people.

Well, maybe that's not what you're trying to gain into the world.

Maybe others of us are seeking an opportunity from the world just to be entertained.

And life is all about entertainment.

So we need to make sure we always have the newest, fastest device.

We need to make sure we always see the newest movie.

We need to make sure that we always are up to date with the newest Netflix show because we are looking for moment after moment to be entertained.

Trying to look to this world to find satisfaction through entertainment.

This is the temptation of us all.

Whether it's pleasing people, whether it's seeking entertainment, whatever it is, all of us are looking to the world for gain.

And Jesus here is showing us what that investment will get for us.

Jesus is stopping us in this moment of pursuit.

Asking us to evaluate what we're pursuing right now.

Asking us to ask this question: what is the way that I'm living ultimately going to lead to?

What gain is it going to provide for me?

And so you think about the person who's a people pleaser.

What do they ultimately gain in the end?

Maybe for a time they can please people, but that boss that you're working so hard to please right now is probably not going to be your boss forever.

And that workplace that you're sacrificing your family on the altar for is not going to be your job forever.

The people that you please, let's apply John G.

Patton's word to them and remind ourselves that they will eventually pass away and be eaten by worms.

Ultimately, we'll never get gain from people pleasing people.

What about pursuing entertainment?

Isn't it true that those who pursue to be entertained constantly are often the most bored?

They can never satisfy the itch.

They always need more.

They always need the next new video game.

They always need to watch the newest show.

They always need to see the newest movie, and they are yet they're never entertained.

The more you commit to entertainment, the hungrier you become.

The most bored people on the planet are those who are most entertained.

And so we see that Jesus' words are true, aren't they?

That we're seeking gain in this world, but we never find it in this world.

This is why Jesus is calling us next to embrace the commitment of discipleship.

After seeing the investment of seeking gain in the world and the reward of seeking gain in the world, Jesus calls us to embrace the commitment of discipleship.

You see this in verse 38.

He says, For whoever is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.

Jesus ends this chapter with condemnation.

Who's he condemning?

Well, you see it in verse 38.

He says, This adulterous and sinful generation.

Jesus is saying something about this world that we live in.

He's saying that this world we live in, and it wasn't just the first generation of the first century, it's our world too.

It's adulterous and sinful.

It's committed to this spiritual idolatry.

And as soon as Jesus spoke these words, the Israelite would understand where Jesus is pulling this from.

Time and time again, the prophets spoke of Israel with this word, that they were adulterers.

And it wasn't that their marriages were a wreck.

What the prophets were accusing Israel of was this spiritual idolatry, that Israel and us were created to follow God, but instead of following God, what we've done is we've given our hearts to the things of this world.

And Jesus points out this temptation that in a world full of soul-destroying pursuits, Jesus' voice can be drowned out.

Instead of confessing Jesus' voice like Peter does in chapter 8, we can be ashamed of his voice.

Jesus spent the last ten verses explaining exactly who he is, expositing Peter's words in verse 29 when he says, You are the Christ.

And here he ends this section speaking of shame.

And you wonder how do you how do you get to this?

How do you get from confession to shame?

And in reality, as we think about it, confession and shame are really opposites, aren't they?

To confess something is to boldly declare it.

To be ashamed of something is to try to hide it.

Jesus spent these verses teaching us what Peter's confession actually means.

It means two things that Jesus came to die on a cross and he calls his followers to carry a cross.

My question for you this morning is have you confessed Jesus this way?

Have you confessed Jesus this way?

Do you believe that Jesus came to die on a cross?

This is the very essence of what it means to be a Christian.

It means that you've placed your faith in the work that Jesus has done.

Do you understand why Jesus says what he says in verse 31?

These are such strong words.

I don't think we could ever understand the weight of these words.

That the Son of Man must suffer.

He must suffer.

If we want to be freed from our sin, Jesus must suffer.

The thing that we believe when we believe in the cross is that Jesus did that for us because our sin required it.

Our punishment had to be paid.

Our debt had to be paid.

It was required.

It must happen.

And this is the work that Jesus came to do.

This is our confession as disciples of Christ.

This is what we place our faith in.

But Jesus is teaching us here that our confession doesn't stop there.

Our confession continues with what Jesus calls us to.

That if we truly confess Christ, we pick up our cross, we follow him.

Faith is following.

This is what Jesus is commanding us to do.

It's laying down our life to follow Jesus.

And so this following Jesus, it becomes our daily pursuit.

Daily we wake up and we ask this question, Jesus, how can I follow you today?

This informs the way that we read the Bible.

You know what my fear is?

My fear is that some of us will read the Bible just to kind of like build up this head knowledge.

But that's not Bible reading that honors God.

Bible reading that honors God picks up this book and reads it like a manual.

Instead of asking, what do you want me to know today?

asking, How do you want me to live today?

That's the one really practical thing you can do as you pursue Jesus is every day when you wake up, get your face in his word and out of his word, get one thing to do for that day.

Not because if you don't do that thing, you're not going to be saved, but because you want to follow Jesus.

And this is the manual that God has given to us in order to follow him.

Jesus is calling us to follow him.

Notice the consequence of not living life to confess Jesus.

Jesus says the Son of Man will be ashamed when he comes in glory, the glory of his Father with the holy angels.

This is the consequence of not confessing Christ.

We miss out on the communion with Jesus when he returns.

Such a fascinating part of Scripture.

In the first verses of chapter 9, as Jesus speaks of the glory of the Father when he returns, he then says to them in verse 9, Truly I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God after it has come in power.

This verse is maybe one of the most debated verses in the New Testament.

It's a promise that the people that Jesus is standing with are going to see the kingdom of Christ come in power.

But the reason why this verse is debated is because these people are very clearly dead.

And people ask, how has the kingdom of God come in power?

And it's a good question.

Well, there are multiple things it can be, but one thing it can't be that Jesus is speaking about when he says that his kingdom of God will come with power, it can't be the second coming of Christ.

Because these people are dead, and well, Jesus hasn't returned yet.

But what happens in chapter 9, specifically in verses 2 to 8, is a really significant hint about what Jesus is talking about here.

And we'll not close our time with it because it informs us about the value of following Jesus.

In verse 2, it says, after six days, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John and led them up a high mountain by themselves, and he was transfigured before them.

And his clothes became radiant, intensely white, as no one on earth could bleach them.

It's not by mistake that directly after talking about discipleship, Jesus takes James and Peter and John to get a glimpse of his glory.

Because Jesus is teaching us that the discipleship ultimately is not defined by the cost, it's defined by the reward of being in communion with Jesus.

And James, Peter, and John, the closest followers of Christ, experience communion with the risen and glorified, the post-Cross Jesus, the resurrected Jesus.

They intimately experience communion with him.

And Jesus is teaching us this this morning that the reason that we follow him is because there's no better place to be than to be with Jesus, than to be close to Jesus.

I want to end our time with one more story from the life of John G.

Patton.

He lived his life in constant danger from the natives of this island.

And it's a really amazing biography that he writes.

I'd encourage you to read it if you have time this summer because it's very encouraging.

It's pretty funny, too.

He's got this little Scottish terrier, and this Scottish terrier saves his life almost daily.

This little tiny dog, because these natives don't know what this dog is, and it's barking and yapping like little dogs do.

And God uses this dog to save his life.

But there are multiple points where his life is endangered.

And at one point, he's carried, he's taken by some friends of the island into the middle of the jungle, and they tell him to climb into a tree and to stay there for the whole night.

And as he's up there, he hears muskets going off, he hears the sounds of war.

And he writes, I think this so defines, so helpfully defines what discipleship is all about.

He writes this I climbed into the tree and was left there alone in the bush.

The hours I spent there live all before me as if it were but yesterday.

I heard the frequent discharge of muskets and the yells of savages.

Yet I sat there among the branches, as safe in the arms of Jesus.

Never in all my sorrows did my Lord draw nearer to me and speak more soothingly to my soul than when the moonlight flickered among the chestnut leaves.

The night air played on my throbbing brow, as I told all my heart to Jesus.

Alone yet not alone.

If it be to glorify my God, I will not grudge to spend many nights alone in such a tree, to feel again my Savior's spiritual.

presence and to enjoy his consoling fellowship.

That's what it means to be a disciple of Christ.

To delight in the presence of Christ.

Let's pray together.

Father, we thank you so much for this text and for the reality that it unfolds to us that you have called each of us here to be your follower.

And Lord, we're reminded that when we think about this world and all that is in it, or that this call is of great loss to us, Lord, we.

And yet Lord, as we consider all that's available to us, Lord, the call is so worth it.

And so Lord would you help us even now as we sing, Lord, this be a time of commitment to you.

Lord of us saying Lord that it's worth following you no matter what.

God that the decision to follow you, the investment to be your disciple no matter the cost is always worth it.

Lord may that be the true declaration of our hearts.

Help us to sing this now by the power of your Holy Spirit.

We pray.

Just stand and sing with me.