You want new life. So what are you still clinging to? /// The Way: Part 2

Welcome to the Plum Creek Church Podcast.

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Now, before we get into the message, we want to remind you of one thing.

We really believe that if Jesus is right about God, about life, about the soul, then it only makes sense to rearrange our lives around what he says is true.

Because when you choose to follow Jesus like that, it really does change everything, including the lives around you.

Okay, let's posture our hearts for what God has in store.

This message.

And physically I would be there, but mentally I'd be staring at the air duct and thinking, man, if ninjas dropped out of that thing right now, how can I slow them down just enough that all of my friends can make it out safely?

Or like I'd be walking down the massive staircase at the entrance of our high school, and I'm like, man, if a bear just started charging up these steps right now, could I like parkour jump over the railing and grab the light fixture and swing myself to safety?

So you know, like really practical what-if kind of scenarios that might save a life someday.

My name's Tommy Cummins.

I'm on the student team here at Plum Creek, and uh, I think that overactive imagination was one of the three ingredients that led me to where I was asking and kind of mulling over a singular question for much of my early adolescence.

The second ingredient that we would add to that overactive imagination was a book by the band called DC Talk, where my Jesus freaks at, real quick.

Anyone?

Okay.

Let's go.

So DC Talk, in conjunction with the voice of the martyrs, wrote a book called Jesus Freaks.

And this book outlined different stories of people throughout history who were martyred for their faith, who were literally given a choice saying, Hey, either you deny Jesus or we're gonna kill you right now, and they chose death.

And I was inspired, I was captivated by their stories.

It made me want to live that kind of a bold faith myself.

And then you add to those two the third ingredient, which was the tragic and horrific Columbine school shooting that happened just up the road from us.

And in particular, the stories of a young lady named Rachel Joyce Scott.

I'm sure many of you are already familiar with her story.

Rachel was a bold follower of Jesus.

She was 17 years old.

She was the first one killed at Columbine.

And in the stories that spread about Rachel after her death, she became this embodiment for me of a singular question, which was this idea that if following Jesus ever cost me my life, would I still choose him?

I think that's maybe a worthwhile question for each of us to ask ourselves.

If if following after Jesus ever cost us our lives, would we still choose him?

Last week we kicked off a brand new series.

Pastor Eric did an incredible job of talking about the way of Jesus.

What does it mean to follow the way of Jesus?

And if you've been around here at Plum Creek for the last year, you've heard us say it over and over again that if Jesus was right about God, about life, about the soul, then it only makes sense for us to rearrange our lives around what he says is true.

Well, we're gonna continue in that line of thinking today by doing something that Jesus said that every single one of his disciples has to do, which is to weigh the cost of discipleship.

Because if we're gonna follow after Jesus, it is going to cost us something.

If we're truly going to radically rearrange our lives around his kingdom, there will be a cost associated with that.

I think for a lot of us, we probably hear that idea, and once again, our minds, it would be natural if they immediately went towards ideas like persecution and martyrdom.

And to be certain, we have brothers and sisters in Christ all over the world who every single day face some horrific and violent persecution.

There will be people today who are asked to give up their life for the sake of the gospel and they will lay it down gladly.

In fact, conservative estimates would say that in 2025, somewhere around 8,000 people laid down their life as martyrs for Jesus.

Where others would say, actually, that number is probably far higher if you consider that at least 30,000 people who are Christians died in Nigeria alone last year.

And yet we don't really think about these kinds of things all that often because we're just not really forced to.

And we should be incredibly grateful where we live in a country where most of us, unless something were to radically change in our context, most of us will never face that level of persecution.

Very few, if any, of us, will be asked to die for the gospel.

And yet, friends, make no mistake that every single one of us is asked to die to ourselves for the sake of the gospel.

If we're gonna start talking about the cost of discipleship, Jesus, he talks about this in a lot of different places.

And we're gonna look at Matthew chapter 10 today, where we're gonna see that he says, hey, you gotta pick up your cross and follow after me.

Matthew 10 · chapter mention

And we're gonna see what he means by that.

But if you have your Bibles, I'd love for you to turn with me to Matthew chapter 10, and we're gonna pick up in verse 34 here, and I'm just gonna kind of tell you to brace yourselves because Jesus' words in this passage are kind of difficult, okay?

Matthew 10 · chapter mention

In verse 34 of Matthew 10, Jesus says, Don't imagine that I came to bring peace to the earth.

I came not to bring peace, but a sword.

I've come to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.

Your enemies will be right in your own household.

Well, I think that's pretty straightforward and self-explanatory.

And so as we close our sermon today, I would like.

Guys, I I get it.

This these are hard words.

And maybe, maybe there is a spectrum that these words might kind of create where some people would hear these words, and it kind of fires you up, and you're like, come on.

Like Jesus says it himself that like he came to bring a sword.

So let's pick up our swords, our guns, our social media account, and let's get out there and fight for Jesus.

And if there's any inkling of that in you, I want to say, hey, I appreciate your passion for standing up for the gospel, but let's slow our roll just a little bit to see what exactly is Jesus saying here.

Because I also have to imagine that there's a bunch of people who on the other end of the spectrum hear these words and you're like, this is hard.

Like I it it creates tension within me because how in the world is the Prince of Peace saying that he didn't come to bring peace but a sword?

How is the very architect of family saying that he came to rip families apart and set them against one another?

It just doesn't compute.

Didn't Jesus essentially start his most famous sermon by saying, Blessed are the peacemakers and the meek?

Didn't he call himself gentle and lowly?

What in the world are we supposed to do with these kinds of words?

And if that's you, listen, believe me, I'm just a couple weeks ahead of you and kind of wrestling through this as I've been preparing for this message is difficult.

I think one of the things, though, that can help us when we find ourselves face to face with a difficult passage like this is to ask ourselves, are these words intended to be prescriptive or descriptive?

And if you've never heard that language before, here's what it means.

There are certain Bible verses.

So when Paul is writing, when Jesus is speaking, when others are writing, that are very much meant to be prescriptive, meaning I am prescribing you a way of life, I am telling you what you should be doing, I'm telling you if you're going to be part of my kingdom, here's how it's going to operate.

It's a prescription.

And then there are other passages that are more descriptive where it's like, no, I'm just telling you what has happened, what is happening, what will happen.

So, like when we read the story of King David, we're not supposed to walk away thinking, well, I'm supposed to go out there and be an adulterer and a murderer, because that's what King David did.

Like, of course not.

That's descriptive, not prescriptive.

And I think this particular passage would fall in that category of descriptive.

Jesus is saying, Hey, if you're gonna be my followers, I just need you to be aware this is what is coming.

And we're gonna actually back up and take a look.

If you back up to verse five, it gives us a little bit of context of specifically what he's talking about in this particular moment.

As he says in verse five, Jesus sent out the twelve apostles with these instructions don't go to the Gentiles or the Samaritans, but only to the people of Israel, God's lost sheep.

Go and announce to them that the kingdom of heaven is near.

This is the gospel they were going out to preach.

Hey, the Messiah that we've been waiting for, he's here.

His kingdom is coming.

It's near, it is at hand.

It's significant that he says, Hey, we're not going to the Gentiles yet.

That's coming.

They will be grafted onto this family tree.

We're not going to the Samaritans yet.

For this particular missionary journey, we are going to God's people, specifically the lost sheep, those that may be strayed away a little bit, because these are the ones that should already feel like they have a stake in my kingdom.

They are stakeholders.

And yet, we're going to see Jesus here in just a second saying, You just gotta prepare yourself though, because we're gonna essentially be drawing a line in the sand here.

And as as we go out, he's not prescribing violence, he's describing what is going to happen when they go out and tell people about his kingdom, and they are forced to decide what they are gonna do with Jesus and his message.

And he tells them a little bit of what it's gonna look like.

If you skip down to verse 16, look, I am sending you out as sheep among wolves, so be as shrewd as snakes and harmless as doves.

But beware, for you will be handed over to the courts and will be flogged with whips in the synagogues, you will stand trial before governors and kings because you are my followers.

And then if we skip down to verse 21, it says, A brother will betray his brother to death, a father will betray his own child, and children will rebel against their parents and cause them to be killed.

And all nations will hate you because you are my followers.

Can I just say I don't think this is exactly Jesus' best recruitment pitch?

And yet he's like, hey, I just need you to be aware of what's coming.

You are going out as sheep among wolves, because again, there's gonna be some people out there, they're gonna hear this message and they're gonna be like, Finally, we have been waiting, we have been praying for this moment for generations.

The Messiah is finally here, and they're gonna want to follow after me.

And also there will be people in those very same families who will want to kill them for wanting to follow after me because they have too much at stake.

There's too much that they have built into their own kingdoms to want to surrender themselves to my kingdom.

And so I just need you to be aware this is the kind of division it's going to cause.

And so again, he's not like, hey, you should probably stop calling me the Prince of Peace.

He's not prescribing violence, he's not prescribing this combative edge that we're supposed to take.

He's saying, I just need you to be aware that this is what's going to happen.

And so we can kind of think sometimes of like, yeah, I think maybe we get into this attitude of especially when it comes to like social media, which is probably where a lot of us will experience the most persecution, if you want to call it that.

Where people will like post nasty things because we're saying things about Jesus on social media.

And sometimes that is that's really hard.

And I will say that that is persecution sometimes.

And also, if I can just be really honest for a second, if I'm going to social media with this really combative attitude from the get, maybe that's not always persecution, maybe it's just cause and effect.

Because if we're honest, let's call a spade a spade.

Sometimes it's like that's kind of what I'm hoping for as I post these things.

So again, he's not prescribing violence.

He's not saying I want you to take this sort of combative attitude.

I'm just telling you, when you start living for my kingdom, when you start telling people about my kingdom, here's what it's gonna look like.

And yeah, what else does he say?

He says, in the midst of all of that, I want you to be harmless as doves.

I want you to take this posture that, like, again, we're not out there trying to fight people, but the fight's probably gonna come to you.

But then he continues in verse 24.

He tells us why we should expect this.

He says, Students are not greater than their teacher, and slaves are not greater than their master.

Students are to be like their teacher, and slaves are to be like their master.

And since I, the master of the household, have been called the prince of demons, the members of my own household will be called by even worse names.

Essentially, he's just saying, Hey, they did it to me, they're going to do it to you.

In fact, when they reject you, it's not really you they're rejecting, it's me that they're rejecting.

If if you're gonna be my servant, I just need you to be prepared.

This is what it's going to look like.

And so I hope this maybe helps give us a little better picture that when we again come to verse 34, don't imagine that I came to bring peace to the earth.

I came not to bring peace, but a sword.

I have come to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.

Your enemies will be right in your own household.

The sword here, it's not a command.

He's saying, Hey, when you start to live for the gospel, when you start to share the gospel, at times it is going to feel like a sword passing between these relationships that we thought could never be divided.

It means that there's no relationship, there is no authority, there is no allegiance that gets to trump your allegiance to me if you are going to be my follower.

This is this is what Jesus is telling us.

It has to be this way, and that can sound so extreme in our context.

And yet, on March 8th, 2023, I received an anonymous email from a student that we'll call Emily.

I had never met Emily before, but she was friends with some of our students at the Creek Student Ministry who come on Sunday night.

And she was struggling with her mental health.

And so her friends were like, hey, Pastor Tommy talks about mental health a lot.

Maybe reach out to him.

He might be a great resource for you.

And so we began emailing back and forth, and I encouraged Emily early on.

Hey, I think it would be really helpful for you to show up on a Sunday night because having a support system, having people that are trying to move in the same direction as you will be really helpful on this mental health journey.

But she just kept saying, I can't come on Sunday nights.

And eventually, like literally a couple of months into this back and forth via email, she told me why she couldn't come on Sunday nights, which is because her family was a different religion.

And she said, if I ever came to church, they they would disown me, they would kick me out of the house.

And it's why, in fact, I've only ever been emailing back and forth and not like calling or texting or whatever, because they check my phone all the time.

And so I the email is the only way that I can be in touch with you.

Because if they even knew I was talking to a pastor, I'd be kicked out of my house and disowned.

But she did have a request.

She was like, Do you think there's any way that you could get me a Bible?

And I was like, We'll figure it out one way or another.

And so about a week later, I showed up at the place where she worked every day after school.

And at reception, I dropped off this beautiful study Bible and asked if they could get it to her.

And I continued to try to support her the best that I could via email and telling her what was the next best things to read.

And as she was wrestling through some things, trying to answer some questions.

And then eventually, a few months after that, she emailed me again and said, Pastor Tommy, will you please pray for me?

I have to tell my parents.

Like I can't hold this in anymore.

But I also want you to pray for them that their hearts would be softened.

But I kind of I feel like I know what's probably coming.

And so she had gone through to make sure that her car was in her own name and that her job was secure and that she had a place that she could go if the inevitable happened.

But again, will you please pray for my parents?

But sadly, her parents' hearts remained hard.

So in this moment, it felt like Emily's life as she knew it was over.

She was walking through exactly what Jesus is talking about here.

And I have to imagine there's probably some of you here today that have experienced similar things.

But he says in verse 37, if you love your father or mother more than you love me, you are not worthy of being mine.

Or if you love your son or daughter more than you love me, you are not worthy of being mine.

If you refuse to take up your cross and follow me, you are not worthy of being mine.

Which again sounds like such incredibly harsh language.

And yet, here at Plum Creek, we for a long time would say that there's three things that's G F O, God, family, others, in that order, on purpose.

It's not God at the expense of family or others, it's just that you have to get the prioritization correct.

If you're gonna be a follower of Jesus, he's like, it has to be me, and then everything else is a distant second.

Because for some of you, that line is going to be drawn.

Emily didn't stop loving her parents.

She asked me to pray for them.

She wasn't the one that drew the line in the sand, her parents did.

And yet, once the line was drawn, Emily was like, But that's my king.

That's my Lord, that's my savior.

How can I choose anything else?

It cost her something that I could not imagine having to give up.

Picking up her cross for Emily, dying to herself looked like this.

It was painful.

And I think in some ways, we we've kind of badly domesticated this phrase of taking up your cross or or like burying a cross.

You've heard people say it, you've probably said it.

I've certainly said it of like, oh man, my bad back is just my cross to bear.

Or, man, that that difficult coworker is just my cross to bear.

There's probably some of you in this room who've had those words said to you you are just my cross to bear.

And if that's true, I'm really sorry that's harsh.

That was said to you.

And yet, make no mistake, for the disciples hearing these words coming out of Jesus' mouth, they knew that the image of a cross was not just like, hey, the image, the representation that you're gonna have to carry a burden of some kind.

They knew that the image of a cross represented suffering and death.

So picking up your cross is a call to die.

In fact, that's exactly what theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer says.

He says, when Christ calls someone, he bids them come and die.

Some disciples die literally.

Every one of us is called to die to ourselves, to die to the idea of self-rule, of saying, I don't get to choose anymore.

I'm gonna surrender everything to him instead.

Because if you're gonna pick up your cross and follow Jesus, you don't get to tell him where to make the next turn.

You're just following him wherever he might lead you.

Oswald Chambers says it this way: that dying to ourselves, it's dying to the right to ourselves.

Dying to, again, self-rule, this idea that I don't get to call the shots anymore if I'm going to be a follower of Jesus.

C.S.

Lewis in Mere Christianity, he talks about how when he was a kid and he would get a toothache, that he would want so badly to go to his mother because he would want her to give him some aspirin to take away the pain.

But the problem was he knew that his mom wouldn't be content with just giving him aspirin for the pain.

She would demand that they go to the dentist to address the pain at its source.

In fact, the dentist might start poking around and demand to address other things that hadn't even begun to hurt yet.

He's like, This is what it means to follow after Jesus because he's not going to be content with just saying, Hey, let me take away that little bit of pain that you're experiencing.

He's like, No, I want to renovate your entire person because I want to make you a new creation.

I don't want you to have to keep suffering and struggling with the same old things over and over again.

We have to address these problems at the source.

These sins in your life, they have to go if you're gonna truly experience new life in me.

And yet that can't really happen unless we are willing to surrender, to die to ourselves, to pick up our cross and follow after Him.

And it's not one singular surrender or decision, it's a thousand daily surrenders.

It's learning to follow the promptings of the Holy Spirit when it's like, hey, that's not who you are as a follower of Jesus, as a new creation, that's not who you are anymore.

And the hard part is that a lot of people will probably never see those surrenders that you are making.

But make no mistake, they will see the results of them as day by day, through the power of the Holy Spirit, we learn to surrender more and more, to die to ourselves more and more.

It will shape us more and more into the image of our Savior.

We will more and more reflect Rabbi Jesus to the world around us, but it's going to cost us a lot of something to live that kind of life.

Which is why I don't think Jesus is as concerned with a hypothetical faithfulness, like will we die for him someday?

That might happen for some of us.

But I think maybe the better question again is not about a hypothetical faithfulness, but about a practical, everyday faithfulness.

To be able to ask ourselves, are we willing to die to our need for approval?

Am I willing to die to my reputation?

Am I willing to die to my sexual autonomy, to my bitterness, to my plans for my future?

Are we willing to die to our comforts?

To saying that our possessions and our money are really all that important to us when we have a king that wants to take that place in our hearts?

Are we willing to die to our need to fit in?

Am I willing to die to my need to have things my way?

To my right to retaliate when I feel like I've been wronged?

Am I willing to die to this carefully curated version of myself that I put out there for everyone else and instead be vulnerable and authentic and to say, yeah, here's the ways in which I'm still trying to learn how to surrender more of myself to him.

To appear foolish for the sake of the gospel.

Because, friends, we cannot pick up our cross if our hands are already so clenched around our bitterness or our pride or our lust or whatever, any number of pet sins that we kind of keep around because it's just too hard to surrender those things.

We have to surrender those things in order to pick up our cross.

In fact, that's what it means to die to ourselves because Jesus is only ever going to ask you to die to the things that are keeping you from experiencing new life in him.

Because he's not asking all of this because he wants to make you less alive.

To experience life as a new creation.

And again, it's a thousand daily surrenders.

Because in verse 39, he says, if you cling to your life, you will lose it.

But if you give up your life for me, you will find it.

If you try to cling to all of these old ways of life, these things that, yes, they are hard to give up, things that are going to feel like a sacrifice because they are, things that are going to cost us, and yet if we keep our hands tightly gripped around those things, they are going to bring emptiness and they're going to kill us from the inside out.

And yet, if we will just surrender those things, he's like, hey, I then you will experience real life.

And not just life, but life to the fullest, abundant life, life that death itself cannot touch.

A couple of weeks after I received that last email from Emily, I was at the 11 a.m.

service here at church.

And I got a tap on my shoulder.

And I turned around and I stared into a face I had never seen before.

As Emily confirmed for me that all of her worst fears had come true, that her parents had disowned her and kicked her out of the house.

And yet I feel like on some level it was wildly appropriate that I had never seen Emily until that moment.

Because when I finally got to see her face, I was staring into the face of a new creation.

Life as she knew it was over, and yet she had found eternal life.

She had found abundant life.

I wish that I could tell you that from that point forward, Emily's life was easy.

It wasn't.

She lost something that I could not imagine what it would feel like to lose.

And yet she was like, Whatever I have to die to, I'm gonna die to it because he's my king, he's my savior.

Friends, I feel like Jesus, he's pleading with us, saying, hand me the life you are so desperately trying to control, and I will give you back the life that I created you to live.

Again, life that is abundant, life that is full, life that death itself cannot touch.

I think all those years ago, as a as an early adolescent, it wasn't bad that I was asking this question of if following Jesus ever cost me my life, would I still choose him?

I've just come to learn that I think that there's a better question.

Because I think every single day Jesus is like, Tommy.

Are you willing to die to yourself today?

Are you willing to die to your pride?

Are you willing to die to your need to appear competent and to impress others?

Are you willing to die to your passivity and to your sloth and to your insecurity?

Because if you will just let those things go, what I will hand you in return is so much better.

The life that I have designed you to live is so much better than the one that you're trying to hold on to.

And friends, believe me, I'm not batting a thousand when it comes to those thousand daily decisions, but my goodness, I'm trying so hard to surrender more of myself every day.

And I would beg you, but don't wait until some hypothetical scenario that's unlikely to ever come to decide, are you all in on following Jesus?

Because he's offering you that opportunity today to say, whatever it's going to cost, I'm willing to pay it.

I'm willing to lay my life down today to myself.

Because he already paid the cost.

He already laid his life down.

We can rest assured in knowing that the one who is asking us to take up his cross already died for you on his Heavenly Father, Father, Son, Holy Spirit.

We're so incredibly grateful for your sacrifice for us.

That you were willing to pay the cost.

You looked at us and you said, Yeah, they're worth it.

Father, I just pray that you would give us a boldness and a courage that can only come from you to live the kind of life that you have designed us to live, to let go of the chains, the cycle of addictions, the different things that are just they're eating us up from the inside out.

God, may we surrender everything to you so that we can experience new life in you.

Again, not because you want to make us an empty shell of ourselves, but because you are inviting us into new creation now.

God, may we be ambassadors for your kingdom.

And yet, may we also know and weigh the cost of knowing that rearranging our lives around you is going to cost us daily.

And yet what we will receive in return is so much greater than anything we could ever ask or imagine.

So, Father, would you be glorified in the way that we live our lives?

Would you just remove these broken things that are keeping us from experiencing that new life, keeping us dead on the inside for the sake of your kingdom?

God, we just thank you again.

We ask that in everything that we do that you would receive all the glory.

It's in your name that we pray.

Thanks again for listening.

Our prayer is that this message encouraged and challenged you in your journey to follow Jesus.

If you'd like to learn more about our church, please check us out online at plumcreek.church or if you find yourself within driving distance of Castle Rock, Colorado, we would be honored to see you in person on a weekend.

So until next time, grace and peace in the name of Jesus.