What About YOU? Part 3

[1]

Friday, September 14, 2018

Then, calling the crowd to join his disciples, he said, “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must give up your own way, take up your cross, and follow me.  If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it.  But if you give up your life for my sake and for the sake of the Good News, you will save it.  And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul?  Is anything worth more than your soul?  If anyone is ashamed of me and my message in these adulterous and sinful days, the Son of Man will be ashamed of that person when he returns in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”  Mark 8:34-38(NLT)

Boy, Jesus sure knows how to give an invitation!

When I was a young seminarian the description amongst preachers about what a sermon should look like was gimmie three points and a poem.  The “points” are movements or shifts in the direction of a sermon, usually building a bit more on the previous movement to arrive at a conclusion.  The poem came in at the end…to give the heart something to which the listener would aspire.  Three building-blocks, if you will, cemented together with a rhyme at the end, like vinyl siding on a new home to make it pretty.  The sermon was always supposed to have an over-arching goal that would help us know what God wanted us to do, and tell us the beginning steps (at least), of how to go about doing God’s bidding.  The poem was the lead-in to the invitation.

Of course Jesus’ message was about the Kingdom of God, and the point was that we should all follow Him.  The “poem” in Mark’s text has Jesus’ strong, logical, motivating bomb…we’re talking about your SOUL here…is anything more valuable?

And then his tagline … if you want to hang on to this life you can do that…but in the end it will slip right through your fingers like beach sand!

Being a follower of Jesus means you must put your agenda on the scrap pile, accept the call to follow Him, and don’t look back. 

Well…what do you know…Mark uncovered the author of this concept we’ve heard so often misquoted about leadership:  It’s my way or the highway!

Really!

Jesus makes no excuse for his demand here; elsewhere Scripture tells us there is salvation nowhere else in the universe than in the name of Jesus the Christ[2].  And since that is the bedrock truth of the Gospel, it really IS His highway, or the not-so-pleasant low-way.

And so…for the three-points-and-a-poem crowd, Jesus said to put all the Fake News aside and listen to three truths you cannot live without:

·      Following me will be DIFFICULT

·      Following me will be WORTH IT

·      Following me is NECESSARY if you want to live.

You can’t find it in any of the four Gospel accounts, but I believe this might have been the poem if Jesus wanted us to walk out singing a hymn that inspires these three points to his My Way or the Highway sermon:

Jesus had a sermon

Its truth was hard to deny 

If I want to go to Heaven

I really do have  to die

For You Today

We’ve looked at this Sunday’s text in an expositional way these past three days.  I’ve tried to help us be prepared for the sermon this Sunday.  If you have walked through these with us, and are praying, I’ll expect some pushback on the sermon. 

After all, that’s how we grow, by meditating on His Word, and, as Solomon put it:

As iron sharpens iron, so a friend sharpens a friend.  Proverbs 27:17(NLT)

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day.

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[1] Title Image: Photo Courtesy of Pixabay.com

[2] Acts 4:12