...And he said to them, "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me."...

We have been walking through Mark's gospel together over the past several months.

Mark is one of the four authors who writes about the life and death and burial and resurrection and ascension of Jesus.

And uh and as we uh start off our time this morning, I want to just backtrack us a little bit uh because the passage that we are walking through today is one of my most favorite passages in the Bible.

It's actually repeated in Matthew, Mark, and Luke's gospel accounts.

And the reason I am so passionate about this passage is it's because it's one of the most clear spaces where Jesus tells us what it actually means, what it actually looks like to be his disciple.

We throw this term out disciple all the time, and many of us don't really understand what it means.

Well, today what we're gonna see is Jesus is going to unpack it for us.

And as he does so, he's going to anchor it in who he is and what he does so that we can understand what it actually means for us to be a disciple and how we live that discipleship out in the everyday stuff of life.

Before we dig into that though, I want to remind us a little bit of something I talked about a couple weeks ago that Mark is doing history here, but he's not doing history like you and I do history.

So when you and I think about history, we think about it in this linear fashion.

And so we think about it chronologically.

I woke up this morning, I brushed my teeth, I had whatever it is for you, right?

We think about that way.

Ancient first century historians did not think about things in a linear fashion.

For them, the most important thing to communicate was the truth of the matter.

They wanted to help you understand the significance, the meaning of a situation.

And so, as history tells us, Mark was not necessarily an eyewitness account to all these things, but he sat at the feet of the apostle Peter, who was an eyewitness, and the apostle Peter would tell him stories.

And at a certain point, Mark began to construct these stories into a cohesive narrative.

And so he does so with intentionality because his first and primary objective is to help you and I not just know the facts, but know what the facts about Jesus mean.

And why is that important?

Because last week you may remember that Andrew Johnson led us through a story about a blind man, and it's kind of a weird story.

Jesus heals him, but it's a progression.

He heals him, but then he can't still see clearly.

He looks around, he's like, everything just looks like foggy giants.

And then after that, Jesus finally heals him.

Now, there's a reason that the story that we're going to go through today is actually put right next to that story.

It's because Jesus is using, or Mark is using that story to help us see what it actually looks like for us to progressively have the blindness lifted from our eyes into about who the identity of Jesus is.

And when the blindness leaves us about who Jesus is, then we can start to properly understand who He's called us to be.

So if you have your Bibles, we're going to be in Mark chapter 8, and we're going to go from verse 27 to 9.1.

Mark 8 · chapter mention

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Mark chapter 8, starting in verse 27.

Mark 8 · chapter mention

This is what Mark writes.

They came, uh sorry.

Uh Jesus and his disciples went on to the villages around Caesarea Philippi.

And on the way, he asked them, Who do people say that I am?

So here's what's happening.

Jesus has been on this like intense, fast-paced mission trip.

He's been healing people, he's been casting out demons.

And then he does what every good leader of a mission trip does.

He does the team debrief.

So they go off to this other city.

It's more of a Gentile kind of pagan city.

They're not in the city, they're around it.

And he brings his disciples together and he starts to unpack with them what they've experienced, what they've seen.

And he asks them this simple question: What are people saying about me?

He wants them to start to think through what his identity is.

And this is what they say.

Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and still others one of the prophets.

So are they getting it right?

Well, the answer is no.

The crowds are blind to who Jesus actually is.

Now they they see some aspects of who he is, but they don't see the fullness of who he is.

But what about you?

He asked.

Who do you say I am?

And Peter answered, You are the Messiah.

And Jesus warned them not to tell anyone about him.

Now I want to pause here for a second.

As I mentioned, the crowds are the blind ones, they are the ones who don't see who Jesus is.

Now, they're not indifferent to Jesus.

The crowds actually are attracted to Jesus, they're fascinated by him, they like him, they're not rejecting him.

The problem is they can't really see him.

And so what they do is they start to impose their particular picture of who they think he ought to be.

They try and redefine him as someone that they can understand and therefore embrace.

Now, what we're gonna see in a moment is that Peter's confession, though true, is only partial.

It's like the blind man when he got partially sight.

But I want to just think about the crowds for a second.

Because if we're being really honest, we live in a day and an era where there are actually a lot of people that are big fans of Jesus.

Like literally, I was watching YouTube and I saw a YouTube channel where Miss Rachel, the famous kids uh entertainer, uh, was talking about how she's in support of pride.

Why?

Because it's an outworking of her faith in Jesus.

I listened to a podcast episode where uh Joe Rogan was interviewing the investigative journalist Michael Schellenberger, and they were having a whole conversation together about how awesome Jesus is as a teacher and how much wisdom Jesus has.

And then I listened to a podcast where someone was interviewing J.D.

Vance, the vice president of the United States of America, and he was talking about how the Americans had cut all this abortion funding overseas, and that was an outworking of his Catholic faith and his relationship with Jesus.

News flash in 2026, Jesus is cool again.

No claps, no.

But here's the problem.

Yes, Jesus is everywhere, everyone's like interested in him, everyone's fascinated in him.

But what we're seeing time and time and time again in many of the examples I just gave you are people who are trying to fit Jesus in a digestible box because they're actually blind to who he really is.

We have co-opted Jesus in our culture in a variety of ways.

Maybe some of these characters will resonate with you.

There's the therapeutic Jesus.

Do you know what I'm talking about?

The Jesus who is there to make me feel better about myself, the Jesus who's going to rescue me from my anxiety, from my depression, who's gonna make me not feel lonely anymore.

Now, in each of these cases, here's the reality.

We're gonna take an aspect of Jesus, but we're gonna ignore a whole lot of him in the same way that the crowds were seeing aspects of who Jesus was.

Was Jesus a prophet in the sense that he came and spoke the words of God?

Yes, but he was so much more.

See, the problem when we take an aspect of Jesus, and that's the Jesus to us, like in the case of the therapeutic Jesus, is that what we miss is that Jesus is less concerned about our happiness than our holiness.

Does Jesus want you to feel whole?

Yes.

Does Jesus care deeply about you?

Yes.

Does the perfect love of God cast out all fear?

Yes.

But guess what?

Jesus is far more concerned about our holiness than our happiness.

And so there is going to be moments when out of his deep and abiding love for us, he disciplines us and it is going to cause us to go through suffering and hardship.

Why?

Because he actually wants to make us holy.

And if you compartmentalize Jesus to this therapeutic version, you're gonna miss him and you're actually blind to who he is.

Another version of Jesus that we have is the success Jesus, the Jesus who's there to make me live my best life, who's going to help me reach my highest potential.

Now, again, is there truth to that?

Does Jesus want you to be the best version of yourself?

The answer is yes, he does.

But guess what?

He is the one who gets to define what that is.

And again, if you are there and you are striving and you're trying to get ahead in this world, Jesus' actual act of love might be to humble you and cause you to go into failure so you can come and sit at the feet of him, because the highest good is knowing and submitting your life to him.

And if we think the highest goal for Jesus is to make us accomplish all of our dreams and all of our desires, we're gonna have no place for the cross or for suffering.

And then there's what we call, what I like to call the spiritual guru Jesus.

And this is like the quittential victoria Jesus, because I swear, like we coined spiritual but not religious in this town, didn't we?

Like so many people are like, man, I love Jesus.

He was a great teacher, and I love Buddha, and I love Muhammad, and I read all of these extra like Hindu works, and I'm all about mindfulness and meditation.

And Jesus becomes one teacher alongside a list of great ancient wisdom teachers.

Here's what we miss if we treat Jesus just like he's a teacher, like everyone else.

We miss what he actually said about himself.

I am the way, I am the truth, I am the life.

No one comes to the Father except for me, through me.

And so we've actually become completely blind to who he is.

So we have a culture, just like in Jesus' day and age, where the crowds were like, oh, there's something special about you, there's something good about you, there's something we want to grab onto from you.

But they weren't willing to embrace who Jesus actually was.

We have a culture that is open to Jesus, that is excited about Jesus, but is actually blind to him.

Now, here's what's so interesting.

Here's Peter.

And on the front end, it looks like he's got it right.

What does he say?

You are the Messiah.

Now, Mark has started off his gospel account by saying, This is the account of Jesus, the good news, the gospel about Jesus Christ, Jesus the Messiah.

So, Mark, this is a pivotal moment in his gospel account.

Everything up to this point is Mark's case.

He's saying, Hey, I want to show you that Jesus is the Messiah.

Everything after this is explaining what the Messiah does, is Jesus marches towards the cross.

But in Peter's day and age, in Jesus' day and age, this concept of Messiah had a wide variety of application.

And preeminently, the way that people thought about the Messiah was this is the guy who's going to come and kick some butt.

He is going to be a king in the line of David who's going to come.

He's going to uh deal with the corruption of the religious elite and the power brokers in Jerusalem.

He's going to kick out the Romans.

He's going to bring about the restoration to steal from our good friend Donald Trump.

Guys, this is not a political endorsement, okay?

I'm not, okay, none of that.

But he was going to make Israel great again.

That was what Peter thought when he thought about Messiah.

Did he get it right?

Well, Jesus is gonna tell him, no, you miss some things.

See, it's possible for us to know all the right theology, it's possible for us to know all the right language and to still miss the person.

To still miss who Jesus actually is.

And this is why Jesus tells them not to tell anyone this, because this was such a politically loaded term in Jesus' day and age.

And what he wanted was for him to be able to define what Messiah meant.

So who is God or who is Jesus?

He's the Messiah.

What does he do?

Well, this is what Mark records.

Verse 31.

He then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again.

Does that sound like Peter's vision for the Messiah?

No.

Peter is suddenly having his mind blown because he's just made this declaration about how Jesus is gonna go out and kick some butt, and then Jesus says, I'm gonna get my butt kicked.

I'm gonna suffer at the hands of these religious elite.

I am going to be killed.

And I will rise again three days later.

He spoke plainly about this.

Then Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.

So it was just think about the irony of this.

Jesus is the teacher, the rabbi, the one who everyone's supposed to follow.

And Peter steps out in front and says, Ah, Jesus, that plan sucks.

I got a way better plan.

Jesus, that's that's foolhardy.

Can you imagine just how crazy that is?

Peter comes and he starts to correct Jesus.

What does that show you?

Well, it shows you that Peter in his heart wasn't as interested about following Jesus as he was actually having Jesus be a means to bring about his vision for the future or the good life.

Now there's a couple of things I want to just pause here for a second because this is important.

Jesus says that he must do these things.

There's all these passages of scripture in which God talks about how he's going to come and he's going to crush evil and he's going to bring about a restoration of the nation of Israel and He's going to cast out all the Gentiles, all this stuff that's actually in the Bible.

But there's a whole other swath of scripture that actually speaks to the means by which this happens.

If you go right back to the very beginning book of the Bible, the book of Genesis, it tells the story of how God created human beings in his image and likeness, that he was in relationship with them, that he called them to trust him, and yet they violated that trust.

They listened to the serpent who's representative of the devil, and they said, We are going to reject you and rebel against you, God.

And God confronts them.

He says, Because you've rebelled against me, you're going to suffer the consequence of death.

You're going to be cut off from me, the author of life.

But God is not content to leave human beings in that state.

And so he makes this promise.

He says, There is going to come a human being that I am going to send.

He says, the snake, the devil, the evil, it's going to bite him.

It's going to wound him, but he will crush its head.

And you continue on and you see this imagery continued on and on and on.

You get so really explicit verses.

Like Isaiah 53, where Isaiah is literally saying that a servant is going to come, a representative of Israel, who will bear our iniquities.

By his wounds, we are healed.

But see, Peter had ignored, like many of his contemporaries, had ignored all these aspects of who the Messiah was.

And Jesus is just bringing them back and saying, This is actually how it always had to be.

When God said he was going to send his Messiah, this was always part of it.

Because God's primary goal, it's not our happiness.

It's not our ultimate earthly success.

It's not that we simply get wisdom.

It's that he wants to make us whole.

He wants to restore relationship with us.

And for that to happen, he has to deal with our rebellion.

And the means by which he promises to do that is the cross.

And then listen to how he responds to Peter.

But when Jesus turned and looked at his disciples, he rebuked Peter.

How many of you are married?

Put your hand up if you're married.

Have you ever tried that line on your spouse?

I have not yet had the courage.

And it's probably good because I might not have a spouse if I did.

Jesus confronts Peter and he says, Get behind me, Satan! You do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.

Just imagine how Peter feels in that moment.

He's stepping up, he's like, Jesus, this is never gonna happen.

I'm with you.

We're gonna fight it.

And Peter just gets rebuked.

He gets like rhetorically slapped across the face.

Now there's two things that Jesus is saying here.

Number one, he's calling Peter Satan.

Now, what does he mean by that?

Does he mean that in this moment Peter is co-opted by Satan, that he's possessed by Satan?

No, no.

When you look at Mark's gospel, there are these three pivotal moments that Mark highlights where Jesus experiences temptation.

And in each case, the temptation is the same: it's the crown without the cross.

In the beginning of Mark's gospel, you hear this account of how Jesus is led out into the wilderness and the devil comes and tempts him.

And for Matthew's gospel, we know what that temptation was.

It was that you can have all the power without any of the suffering.

Every single time, Satan is trying to derail Jesus from obeying the Father's plan to bring about our redemption and restoration.

And this is another one of those pivotal moments.

And what Jesus is saying is, Peter, right now, you are actually aligning yourself with Satan.

Because your perspective is limited.

You are looking at this through human mind, through a human mind.

And guess what?

You are not qualified as a human being to make a decisive decision on God's plan.

But guys, isn't this true of us sometimes?

Don't we start looking around at what God's doing and we start to be like, uh, I don't know about that, God.

I think I might have a better plan.

You should maybe come and consult with me.

It's like my daughter Emerson, we're driving somewhere, and she starts telling me, hey daddy, you're going the wrong way.

Oh, Emmy, when was the last time you drove?

Some of you know what I'm talking about.

Your kids are giving you the whole gears about something, and you're like, you are not qualified to make that call.

Oh, this is what Jesus is saying.

He's saying, Peter, you are looking at this from a human perspective.

You are not qualified to make a call in the plan of God.

And when you do this, you are actually aligning yourself with Satan.

The accuser, the tempter, the deceiver.

Church, we have to be so careful.

Because sometimes when we look around at reality and it doesn't look the way like we sh it doesn't look the way we think it should, and we start to like criticize it and there's something subtle that is going on.

We're starting to say in our hearts, God, I think I'm gonna do a better job than you.

I think I should be in control, and maybe you should come and consult with me.

Now, the second thing that Jesus says to Peter is, get behind me.

Now, when we read it in English, it sounds like he's he's simply just being like harsh with Peter.

But if we continue on in verse 34, Jesus says, He then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said, Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.

Now I'm gonna dig into this in a second, but the thing I want to highlight for you is the very same words in Greek that are follow me is the very same words that Peter's uh that Jesus says to Peter, which is get behind me.

Jesus is simply saying, You have a place, Peter.

Your place is to follow after me.

You've stepped out of line.

And then he's gonna go on, and what we're gonna see is in light of who he is, he's the Messiah, in light of what he does, he suffers and dies for the sins of humanity.

Now he's gonna tell us who we are in light of that.

Before I get there though, I want to just stop for a second and just take a moment to reflect on our own hearts because I think what's going on here is this this is exposing the places in our life where we have partial blindness.

There are places in our hearts and our lives where, yes, we know all the right things to say about Jesus, and yet our hearts are still blind to who he is.

And we're kind of coming along and we're saying, Jesus, um, I don't trust your plan.

I think I have a better plan.

And I want to just pause and ask this question.

How do you know if that's an area of your life?

Well, a simple, simple way to gauge it is is there an aspect of of faith in Jesus, an aspect of discipleship, an aspect of Christianity that you're looking at where your expectations around that aspect haven't been fulfilled and you're disappointed?

Is there a place in your heart in your life where you're like, Jesus, I expected this and you haven't come through?

If so, it's it's possible that those might be places where we've actually stepped out of line with Jesus, and we're coming to him, we're saying, Jesus, get behind me.

I have an awesome plan.

You'd be a great person to help bring it to fruition, but I got the plan.

You'd make a great sidekick, Jesus, but I think we should I know where we should go.

But Jesus will not allow us to stay in that place.

Why?

Because he actually loves us and wants to see us be who he has made us to be.

And so again, verse 34, then Jesus called the crowd to him along with the disciples, and he said, Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow me.

So he's having this conversation with Peter, but then he broadens it out.

He doesn't just have his inner circle.

He says, This is for everyone who wants to follow me.

He says, You need to be a disciple.

A disciple isn't a super Christian, a disciple isn't the people who go overseas.

Jesus' metric for disciple is binary.

You're either a disciple or you're not.

You're either for me or you're against me.

There are no uh there are no um, there's no uh spectrum of Christians.

There's either disciples or there's not disciples.

So Jesus says, if you want to follow me, you are a disciple.

And this is what it actually looks like to be one.

You must A, deny yourself.

B, take up your cross, C, follow me.

These are all virtually saying the same thing over and over again.

Essentially, Jesus is saying, you have to get behind me.

You cannot be the person in charge.

That needs to be me.

And his language is very, very, very explicit.

He says, you need to take up your cross.

Now, again, we live here in the 21st century, but in the first century, the cross wasn't just the thing that Jesus died on.

The cross was symbolic.

In AD 70, when the Romans sacked uh Jerusalem and conquered the Jewish people for their rebellion against Rome, the Romans took 60,000 Jews and they nailed them to crosses every mile of the road for 60,000 miles or something like that.

See, the cross was a symbol that Rome had of rebellion and what happened to rebels.

So when Jesus is using this picture of the cross, he's not simply saying, This is the thing I'm gonna die on.

He's saying, There is a part of your heart that is rebellious, that wants to be at the front.

And every single day you gotta crucify it.

You gotta crucify that rebel heart.

See, Peter's rebel heart had come to the surface.

He said, Jesus, I don't want you to be in charge.

I don't want you to be the one that I follow.

I want you to follow me.

And if we're being really, really honest, isn't this true of us many aspects of the time?

So so why does Jesus call us to this?

Is it because he's just egotistical?

No.

Listen to what he says next in verse 35.

For whoever wants to save their life will lose it.

But whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it.

For what good is it for someone to gain their whole world yet forfeit their soul?

Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?

If anyone is ashamed of me and my words, in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of them when he comes in his Father's glory and of the holy angels.

Here's what Jesus is saying.

He's saying, I actually want you to experience life.

I actually want you to have life.

And here's the problem.

If you cling to you being at the head of your life, eventually it will destroy you.

If we cling to anything else but him, it only leads to one place death.

But when we put our hope in him, when we we kill ourselves, when we kill the ego, when we kill the self, and we put ourselves under the authority of Jesus, then and only then can we truly live.

Why is that?

Well, the ancient Christian thinker St.

Augustine put it this way: He said, You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.

See, the claim of the scriptures is that God made us for himself.

He actually made us to be in relationship with him.

He made us to live under his righteous rule, reign, and authority in our lives.

And when we rebel, we have a disordered love.

We've actually put something in a place that only God can occupy in our life.

And what happens is when we put something there, it cannot bear the weight of that, even ourselves.

And then what will happen is everything else around us will start to disintegrate and die.

Our hearts yearn to worship.

We are constantly looking for something that is going to satisfy our need for purpose, identity, security, meaning, hope, love.

And so often the thing that we put in that spot is ourself.

And Jesus says, not only will you experience the destruction of your own internal life, the destruction of life around you, but ultimately if you cling to that heart and that attitude, he says, that's the same problem of this adulterous and sinful generation.

Like Peter, Peter, you're ashamed of me.

You're ashamed of my plan.

You're ashamed that I'm going to suffer.

You think you have a better plan.

If you cling to that better plan, when I return ultimately to restore all things, you have shown me that you are not with me.

And I will give you your way.

It's a hard word.

Because we live in a culture that is obsessed with the elevation of self, that is constantly giving us the message that the most important person in any given situation is me.

Just think about some of our slogans.

Follow your heart, live your truth, be authentic to yourself.

Love is love.

You do you, protect your peace, speak your truth, believe in yourself.

What's the common thread in all of these?

It's that you are the ultimate arbiter of what is right.

It is that you are God.

This is our culture, is it not?

Think about we're in June.

What is June?

June is Pride Month.

Pride month.

Like we we literally post it like pride.

What is that pride?

It's elevation of self.

Who I love, how I identify myself.

That is what Jesus is talking about.

The elevation of self.

Our culture is obsessed with it.

And Jesus says that when self is in the place of ultimacy in our life, it will lead to destruction and death.

In church, I I could I could go on and talk about the evils out there.

But if we're really being honest, we're not immune in here.

How many of us come to a place like this, a church gathering?

And the first question we are really asking our heart is, like, what's in it for me?

Did I like the preaching?

Did the killed kids' ministry meet my needs?

Was the music my style?

Did I feel fulfilled today?

Subtly, what we're saying is, hey, Jesus, you'd make a great sidekick in my plan.

But I'm the most important person in the room.

I have a friend.

Her name's Jenna Allen.

She was part of our missional community for a season.

And she uh she's a young Christian and she's like wanting to share her faith with people.

And so she started a podcast where she interviews different people and just uh listens to their faith stories.

And she asked me to come on this podcast.

She's in the Naimo now.

So I did.

I got it, I got to go on this podcast and share a bit of my story.

And I mean, I didn't know what I was going to say on the front end, but as I did start talking to her, I started to unpack my life.

And in church, I am literally the product of like the Christian bubble.

I grew up in a Christian family, went to Christian school, went to Christian college, youth pastored.

Now I'm here at West Village.

I have literally been in Christian things my whole entire life.

And yet, when I went back and recalled my story, the subtle places where I continue to say, God, you have a great plan, but my plan's better.

And I would be awesome if you want to get on board with my plan showed up over and over and over again.

And there's one moment particular that has stood out to me.

A place where God came and exposed me, again, the person who's been in the Christian bubble, who's been in church leadership, who's been doing ministry things for my entire life, that I had suddenly been saying, Jesus, I have a better plan.

And I was tricking myself into thinking my work for Jesus was about him, when suddenly what I was actually doing was asking him in my work for him that he would do something for me.

And here's the problem: every time we get into this place where we are ultimate, everything around us becomes instrumental to raise us up, to prop us up.

And in my ministry, that was the case.

The people around me, the people that I worked with, the people that I worked for, they became means to the end to build the kingdom of Andrew.

And as a youth pastor, it got to this point where I told myself, man, I want to create this incredible, impactful ministry.

I want to see people come to know Jesus.

I want to see hundreds of people join our youth ministry and grow.

And because I had this vision of building this empire for myself, I told myself it was for Jesus, but it was really for me.

When people were doing things that seemed to get in the way of that, I would attack them.

And I had a particular coworker.

She was new to our team.

She was part-time doing worship metership.

And I just didn't like, I didn't like the way she was doing it.

And so I decided to spend an entire afternoon telling her how bad I thought she was at her job.

Well, newsflash, that's not a good approach.

And about a year and a half later, there was a conflict over some space usage, and it turned into this big thing.

Why?

Because me and my pride decided that she was an instrument for my kingdom.

Instead of me humbly saying, my role here is for his kingdom.

Well, I was completely blind to this.

I completely told the story in my head that the reason that my ministry didn't grow the way I thought, the reason I didn't have the success that I thought I should have was because everyone around me had failed.

And I got to West Village.

I was maybe a few months in, and I got invited to go to this conference in Vancouver called Multiply.

And I got there.

And they were having this response time.

Now, church, I mean, I know we call you guys to come up to the front and pray, and that's awesome.

And I hope you do.

But I'm German.

Like I don't come to the front for anything.

I'm like, hey, you know what?

No one's gonna emotionally manipulate me to come and have a response time.

Like, I'm good.

If Jesus wants something, he can come down and tell me himself.

I don't need you to tell me.

That's my heart.

That's my posture.

That's like the way I act.

I'm like, I don't want anyone to tell me how to do anything.

But in this moment, the spirit of God confronted me and convicted me in a potent and powerful way.

And for whatever reason, that normal defense was gone.

And I had to, I was compelled to come to the front of this conference.

So I was up in this balcony.

It actually took some work.

I had to go all the way down.

And then I got to the front and I was like, I am going to find the deepest, darkest corner because I don't want anyone to see me up here because I probably shouldn't be here anyway.

That's for all those like emotionally driven people.

And so I got there and I found this deepest, darkest corner.

And I was sitting there and then I felt compelled.

I had to get on my knees.

So I was on my knees and I started to pray.

And then this thing happened.

It has not happened to me before, it's not happened to me since.

I got a vision.

I got a vision of myself.

I was spread out.

And all throughout my body was this root system as black as night.

And it shot deeper than I could see out of my toes and shot deeper or higher than I could see out of my fingers.

I was like, what the heck is this?

And then the Holy Spirit spoke to me and he said, This is a picture of what you are like.

Everything you touch is destructive by your pride.

That root system was my pride.

It was me saying, Jesus, I'm doing things for you.

But really subtly I was saying, Jesus, I want you to do things for me.

I want to have a great ministry.

I want to have a great platform.

I want to have great success.

And it'd be really great if you showed up so I could do that.

And suddenly, the conviction of the Holy Spirit helped me look back on my past and see with fresh eyes the destruction that my pride had wrought.

Why?

Because I started treating people like they were instruments for my kingdom instead of stepping behind Jesus as a disciple, recognizing I was there to follow him.

I had failed to carry my cross.

Church.

So often, this is true of us.

We say we're disciples of Jesus.

We say we want to follow him, but subtly our heart actually wants him just simply to get in line with our plan.

We do this in our marriages.

And our culture says you should go and find someone to make you happy.

And then we get frustrated when we marry an imperfect person and our marriage isn't going the way that we thought it would.

But the problem is that when self is king, guess what happens?

Conflict becomes not a growth opportunity, becomes unbearable.

Forgiveness becomes optional because why should I have to forgive you when you have hurt me?

Sacrifice becomes unfair because you were there to make me happy.

Commitment becomes conditional because if it's not working out, I should be able to go and find something better.

And eventually, a marriage will collapse under the weight of two people demanding to be served.

Because two sovereign selves cannot build a flourishing marriage.

And we wonder why our divorce rate in our culture is incredibly high.

But newsflash, there's a high divorce rate in the church.

Why?

Because subtly, instead of following Jesus, we're asking Jesus to baptize our plans, our desires.

We are still saying, I want to be on the throne of my life.

When we listen to Jesus, when we get behind him, what does he say?

He says, in your marriage, you ought to submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.

He's saying, when I'm at the highest point of authority in your life, it's going to change the way you enter into this institution of marriage.

You are going to come to serve each other.

Why?

Because we are supposed to, in our marriage, show a picture of who he is.

And what did Jesus do?

Did he come and lead by saying, hey, everyone out there build my plan?

No, he came and he went to the cross and died for you and me.

That's the kind of image that we're supposed to demonstrate in our marriage.

And Jesus is saying, when you follow me, then your marriage is actually going to have life.

Honestly, I've done a ton of marriage counseling and I say the same thing over and over and over again.

If you're not a Christian, become a Christian, figure out that Jesus needs to be Lord, because only through that will you be able to actually do what is needed, which is die to yourself and serve your spouse.

But guess what?

When you do that, your marriage flourishes.

Why?

Because that's a path of life.

How about our kids?

I'm a parent, I got four kids, and so often the kids become a means to an end for my kingdom.

They become identity projects, right?

A picture that I want to present to the world of how awesome I am.

And so when they misbehave, oh man, that's not good.

Why?

Because you're reflecting poorly on me.

And all of us have these moments.

We do it in different ways.

Some of us are like deathly afraid that our kids are going to walk away from Jesus.

And so we hold them so tightly and we put them in all the Christian programs and we're doing all the school and stuff with them so that God forbid they don't get exposed to something that's going to pull them away.

Why?

Because at the heart of it, we are so terrified they're going to walk away and it's going to make us feel bad, or it's going to make us look bad.

But we failed to ask the question: what does he want?

What's his desire?

What does it look like to get behind him?

When our parent is controlling, fearful, performance-driven, it's probably a subtle signal that it's because our identity is in some way riding on our kids.

But Jesus has called us to raise up our children the way they should go.

And what that means is not that we're constantly worried about behavior modification, but what it actually means is that our highest priority is heart transformation.

So we become less worried about the moment.

We become more concerned about helping them regularly encounter Jesus.

Instead of just saying, hey, you're misbehaving, you're bad, you're gonna get punished, we say, hey, let me talk to you about what Jesus is like so that you know that this is not in line with him.

We don't worry so much that they're embarrassing us in front of other people.

We worry more about how they're connecting with their father in heaven.

And I could go on and on and on with examples.

We do this in our jobs.

We do this in our hobbies.

We do this in our sex life.

And ultimately, what Jesus is saying is if you cling to you being in the first spot of your life, it will lead to destruction and death.

But here is the beautiful thing.

Then comes the gospel.

Then comes the gospel.

Because Jesus is actually offering us life.

He says, if you die to yourself, if you put your hope and trust in me, then you will live.

Because true life is not found by going deeper into ourselves.

True life is actually found by being reconciled to God, by having Him step into the first place in our life.

Because that's how we were made to function.

I'm gonna invite the band to come up as I finish off here.

Now, Jesus actually affirms this in 9 chapter 9, verse 1.

He says to them, Truly I tell you, some of you are standing here that will not taste death before you see that the kingdom of God has come with power.

What's he talking about?

Well, he's talking about the reality that the disciples who were standing there listening to him would not taste death before they saw him resurrect from the grave and ascend to heaven on high, and then send the Holy Spirit to them in power so that they could actually live this transformed life that he made possible by his death.

And church, the good news is that that transformed life is available to us today.

That the Spirit of God that actually can come and breathe life into us is available to us right now.

And if you are sitting here at the crossroads and you're like, this is this is a lot.

But I want that changed life.

I am looking at how me on the throne is destroying the things around me.

I want to change.

Then the offer is come, come and die so that you can truly live.

In a few minutes, we're gonna all scooch off to a squamout lagoon.

We're gonna be by the bathrooms.

I encourage you all to come.

We're gonna have two people come and they're gonna get baptized.

And baptism is just a beautiful symbol of this made true in their reality, that as they go under the water is a picture of their death to self.

As they come up, it is a picture of the resurrected life with Jesus at the head.

And we are gonna go and we're gonna celebrate and we're gonna cheer them on because they have truly found life.

But it's not just for them, it's for all of us.

And so, my prayer for all of us today is that as we think about what it looks like to be a disciple of Jesus, that we see that Jesus is inviting us into this radical journey of dying to ourselves so we can find our true life in Him.