Training Ground
Carry Your Cross
Sunday, April 6, 2025
Welcome:
I encourage you to read some of the Gospels this week and next and prepare your hearts for why we remember, give thanks, and celebrate. Be taken through all the events leading up to Easter Sunday. Be in those encounters and let your heart feel what was happening with the religious leaders growing fear of loss of power, the crowds rejoicing and then turning on Jesus, the disciples anticipating Jesus overthrowing the Roman power and taking His rightful place as their king and their confusion when Jesus’ words weren’t affirming that plan at all, and Jesus the man, experiencing all of this and continuing to press forward to fulfill the purpose for which He came. Spend time and take it in from all the viewpoints. Ready your heart for Holy Week.
Call to Worship: Joy, wonder, delight –Doubt, peace, restlessness –Sorrow, contentedness, anxiety –Confidence, hope, pardon: We lay our hearts, full of these things, before our God. Unburdened and awaiting, let us worship God.
Pray, God of Wonder and Might; God of love and mercy; God of all hope and peace, we come before You and lay open our hearts before You on Your altar. We are here no matter where we are at in our faith walk- something stirs in us, telling us we need something more than ourselves. It is Your voice and Your Spirit calling out to us to come home, to You. So here we are Lord; whatever our condition, we are here before You. Come and let Your love wash over us and settle all our troubles as we lift up our praise to You.
Come Holy Spirit and fill us with the Light of Life and shine Your Truth into our tangled minds. Come, Jesus, Come and fill us with Your strength and lift our eyes up to remind us the victory we share with You. We are here, expecting, seeking, and inviting Your presence this morning.
Praise Songs
We just sang out a profession of faith that through Jesus and because of Jesus, we are made for more than just existing in this world, more than to have breath for a set number of years and then just fade away into the ground solely to return to dust. Because of Jesus, we have been saved from our death sentence both in the eternal reality and in our living here and now. We have been rescued from the grave, we have been redeemed through His blood, we have been given a new name of child of God, son and daughter to the Most High God, sister and brother to our
Lord Jesus, and through the Holy Spirit-joined together into the most beautiful family, God’s family, that we all share in. Because of Jesus we have a new purpose for living; we have a hope to hold on to, an anchor for our soul and we are no longer wandering in this life wondering what it all means, what we’re here for, what matters, we don’t ask any longer is life worth the living-we know it is! Because we are no longer living just to please self and searching to find lasting fulfillment in that, we are living through Christ, and we are surrendering to let Him show us our part in bringing about His kingdom. We are shining His light to those around us and demonstrating His love in this very broken world. We are enjoying Him, and we come to understand, simply knowing Him makes
life worth living! This is the MORE we were singing about! This is the MORE Jesus is calling us all to come to know and live out.
But to do this, we must be willing to die to self; we have to be willing to walk in His shoes, and we have to pick up our own cross in this world and carry it on our backs. The beautiful thing is that we were never called to do it alone as He had to. He shoulders the burden for us; He asks us to carry the cross-to be willing to follow-to go into the hard places, the dark places, the places of persecution and injustice. We learn to trust as we say yes where You lead Jesus, I will go and shine Your light, that He will always go ahead of us, shield us, equip us, and be our defense. Always.
We just sang, The cross of salvation is only the start, now we are chosen, free, and forgiven, we have a future and it’s worth the living! How Jesus calls us to live is very different than the world models, and it may at first seem like we’re losing out, but I assure you, to truly follow Christ with all your heart is, in fact, where we experience the fullness of living! We are continuing in Mark 8; there is much to share from this chapter alone. Jesus and the disciples were continuing to move about, teaching and healing people in the surrounding areas. Then as the time is drawing closer for Jesus to make His way into Jerusalem and towards His death, He asks a pointed question to reveal who He is for certain in the disciples’ hearts. He wants them to know without a doubt, for they will be shaken to their core in the days ahead. Then He tells them plainly what is about to happen, and as you can imagine, that didn’t sit well, and the disciples did not want to hear it.
Jesus then teaches a truth for them and anyone who chooses to follow Christ. This is what we’ll be unpacking today as we are preparing our hearts for Holy Week.
Mark 8:27-38 NIV
27 Jesus and his disciples went on to the villages around Caesarea Philippi. On the way he asked them, “Who do people say I am?” 28 They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.”
29 “But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?” Peter answered, “You are the Messiah.” 30 Jesus warned them not to tell anyone about him. 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. 32 He spoke plainly about this, and Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. 33 But when Jesus turned and looked at his disciples, he rebuked Peter. “Get behind me, Satan!” he said. “You do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”
34 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. 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. 36 What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? 37 Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? 38 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 with the holy angels.”
- Salvation is Free. Discipleship Costs Everything.
Jesus was about to show the disciples the true cost of following Him.
Mark 8:31 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.
To hear Jesus speak like this was an absolute shock to anyone expecting or hoping He came to overthrow the Roman empire and be their political Messiah. To them, the Messiah was a symbol of strength, not suffering. We know He holds all strength, including the strength to willingly suffer for a sinful people who would mostly reject Him and endure the horrible death He did. That was not a strength they understood or wanted to see in their coming Messiah at that time. Jesus continued teaching about what we are to do as we follow Him. He calls us to lose our life for His sake, and as we do, we will save it. Confusing at first, right?
Mark 8:35-36 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. 36 What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?
The disciples would directly follow Jesus and some truly did carry their own cross to their deaths. Most were martyred. Some Christians today in other nations are martyred. For most, Jesus is talking about laying down our lives- not so much in the physical sense, but in our will; our personal agendas; chasing after our every desire because what He is saying is if that is all you live for in this life-you will lose it. You will lose yourself always chasing after that which never satisfies. You will go down paths of destruction that will destroy you. You will come up empty, and when your days are over, there will be nothing joyful to look forward to.
On the flip side, if you willingly lay your life down for Me and follow Me, you will not only save your life for eternity- you will gain far more in this life than you could ever hope for. Think of a seed that is planted. We don’t lose a seed that is planted into the ground. Though it seems dead and buried at first. Instead, we are setting it free to become what it was always intended to be! This is what happens to us as we lay our lives down for Jesus. We become what we were always intended to be!
Romans 6:16 NKJV 16 Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are that one’s slaves whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death, or of obedience leading to righteousness?
Don’t fool yourself thinking you aren’t a slave to anyone or anything. We all are. We have a choice. I would far rather willingly enslave myself to obedience in Christ to live in His righteousness than stubbornly leave myself enslaved to sin that will only ever lead to death. There is no life that comes through sin-only death.
- Deny Yourself. Take Up Your Cross.
Mark 8:34 34 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.
Everyone in that day knew exactly what Jesus meant when He said this. The cross was an unrelenting instrument of death. It had no other purpose but execution is the most horrific way. At that time, the cross was not about a religious ceremony or spiritual feelings. It was a one-way trip with a very dark ending. The person carrying their cross knew they could not save themselves. So this was a statement that would grab their attention and most assuredly cause some rightful apprehension.
When Jesus said, deny yourself and take up your cross. He was making those two phrases equal because they would understand the latter phrase. Denying the self is not about self-promotion. It is also not the same as self-denial. Sometimes we practice self-denial- some of you might be doing it right now if you are accustomed to giving something up for the Lenten season. This is an example of self-denial. When we are denying self, though they sound close in terminology, there is a great difference of heart. We are surrendering ourselves to Christ and purposing to obey His will. So first we seek His will to gain an understanding of what it is, then we surrender and say Yes Lord, I will follow You. This involves living an others-centered lifestyle. We live to love and serve others as Jesus did and to further His kingdom. So we offer ourselves up as living sacrifices to the will of Christ lived out through us.
Romans 12:1-2 Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. 2 Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.
To live others focused must include this core truth and commandment:
Romans 13:8 NLT 8 Owe nothing to anyone—except for your obligation to love one another. If you love your neighbor, you will fulfill the requirements of God’s law.
Who is your neighbor? We all are neighbors. Your co-workers or classmates are neighbors. The people who serve you at any business are your neighbors. The ones you don’t agree with are your neighbors, and we are under an obligation as we follow Christ to love our neighbors. All of them. This fulfills God’s Law, and it brings glory to His great name. We won’t do this if we are living for self. We can only do this surrendered to Christ, purposing to obey, picking up our cross and carrying it in love.
- Things of God Over Things of Man.
Jesus was calling Peter and the other disciples to get beyond just their human thinking and feeling. Learn to understand the ways of God, look for the ways of God, and most of all, don’t be a stumbling block to the ways of God in motion. When Jesus asked them to speak who they thought He was, Peter was the one to say Jesus is the Christ. That didn’t come from human understanding, God revealed it to him to share and make it known. We have this added insight in Matthew.
Matthew 16:17 17 Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven.
So, as we are tuned to God and His ways, we become instruments for God to speak through and make His truth known. We gain revelation and understanding we never knew before. He will use us in powerful ways as we open ourselves to let Him reveal His truths and speak through us. Ever had that happen before, where you had just the right word, a truth you weren’t sure where it came from, and it was very timely received? That is from God. But as Jesus was teaching about what would happen to Him, in his human feelings and understanding, Peter didn’t like it and didn’t want to hear or accept what was being said. So he rebuked Jesus.
Mark 8:32-33 32 He spoke plainly about this, and Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. 33 But when Jesus turned and looked at his disciples, he rebuked Peter. “Get behind me, Satan!” he said. “You do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”
What we have to believe here, since this all happened around the same time frame-is that Peter’s intention was from a place of love and protection for His Lord. He also just heard praise from Jesus for receiving revelation from God about who Christ is, so likely he believed he was hearing from God again and spoke without considering. The problem, what Peter said went against Scripture, for Isaiah tells us exactly what is going to happen to the Messiah, which is what Jesus was telling them.
Read Isaiah 53 as we head towards Holy week. They should have known this and linked the two together, but their hearts didn’t want to hear or believe it.
We must look to the Scriptures to see what they actually say to understand the ways of God, not what we want them to say to appease our feelings. Otherwise, we won’t understand therefore, become a stumbling block to what God is doing. His ways are so much higher than our ways.
That may seem like a harsh rebuke for Jesus to say, “Get behind Me satan!” But what He was making known is it is just as easy to become a tool for satan to use us when we let our minds settle on the things of man, instead of the things of God. It may not be intentional, but he will use the opportunity nonetheless. Look up, brothers and sisters, eyes on Jesus, consider the ways of God over the ways of man, and stand bold in your faith.
Luke 9:26 26 Whoever is ashamed of me and my words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of them when he comes in his glory and in the glory of the Father and of the holy angels.
Colossians 3:2 2 Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.
Conclusion: Let us see Jesus for who He is, first a suffering servant who died to self, and through His obedience, achieved ultimate victory over sin and death as our Lord and Savior. He calls us to carry our cross so that through our obedience, we too share in His victory.
Let’s pray.
Communion:
Sam has prepared a song for us to listen to and feel free to sing along with. If you need your elements, get them now. We invite all who have received Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior to share with us in communion. You can stay seated and take this time of reflection to listen to the words of the song and let them penetrate your heart.
Remember why we share in this holy sacrament together. Remember why Jesus calls us to eat the bread and drink from the cup. By faith, receive with humble gratitude all He has done for you and the redeemed and joyous life He offers you now.
Matthew 26 26 While they were eating, Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, “Take and eat; this is my body.” 27 Then he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you. 28 This is
my blood of the [b] covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. 29 I tell you, I will not drink from this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom.”
Let’s pray.
Song
Offering:
Prayers:
Final Song
Final Blessing: 1 Corinthians 15:58 Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.
