Anchored to the Cross | Matthew 16:24-27 & Galatians 2:19-20

Transcript is automatically produced. Errors may be present.

Morning friends. My name’s Alex. I’m one of the pastors here. If you knew, it’s really great to have you here. We’d love to say hi after the service because it’s summer if you’re watching online. If you’re watching online some months from now. Welcome to you as well. I’m gonna start today with a story actually really with an idiom, a piece of language that gets thrown into the mix, just almost trips off the top of the tongue in certain situations.

The story is this. My wife and I were visiting England just recently with our kids. The mothership called, we went home for a while and then. We came back and England has a reputation for certain things. Some undeserved. It does have good food, less than America, but some, somewhere it does have dentists.

Regardless of what people have told you. It does not rain all the time, all those sorts of things. But one of the things it does struggle with is mattresses. It does not have good mattresses. You can get them occasionally in houses, but if you go and stay in an Airbnb, you’ll get put up in a guest room.

You’re sure to find yourself on a fairly terrible mattress, as we did for three weeks. We stayed in an Airbnb with my family, terrible mattress. We stayed at my parents’ house in the guest room. Terrible mattress of which we have complained before. And so my mother being the generous spirit that she is said to my brother, what I need you to do is when you’re on your way back from work, I need you to stop into a store and I need you to pick up a mattress topper.

There’s extra three or four inches that turn a terrible mattress into a fairly comfortable. And so my brother as a dutiful son went out and shopped and came back with a mattress protector, not a mattress topper. So we were still really uncomfortable, but on the plus side, if either of us wet the bed, it was actually fine.

And so when you land in those situations, there’s an idiom that gets thrown out, and it’s this one just. Another cross to bear and just another thing to deal with. Now, think about that for a moment from a Christian perspective, from a follower of Jesus, which many of us in the room would call ourselves.

It’s a strange saying, right? It implies that people could bear many crosses that actually just continue to load them on and everything will be fine. Life might get harder, but it’s a doable feat. And yet. I know from personal experience the impossibility of carrying just one cross. We have several stored out in different parts of the church.

Aaron resident man, mountain worship pastor can lift them fairly easily, but me cannot lift them at all. One cross is beyond me, and then to imagine what it is to die upon one cross. That goes far beyond just carrying one it’s a strange expression, but one that I started to think of when I thought about today’s subject in the midst of our anchored series, which is this anchored to the cross strange because in actual fact, the cross has three very visceral anchor points.

You are very physically anchored to a cross, and then all choice of putting that cross down is removed from you. It gives it a different kind of image than the other things that we’ve talked about being anchored to things that come entirely out of choice. Can you choose to be anchored to cross and once you’ve chosen that path.

Can you un choose it? How do we have that conversation? In the midst of our light breezy summer series that we called Anchored I started to think about this and I thought about this story 60 56 years ago. Today, actually July 20th. People landed on the moon. Unless you’re one of the 20% of people that believe that took place in a studio in Arizona, which is entirely your call.

When people stepped onto the moon surface for the first time, 650 million people watched as Neil Armstrong uttered those famous words. One small step for man, 94% of American homes turned on that moment as something that had never happened before happened, and then the cameras turned off and there was this private moment.

Where Buzz Aldrin, the second man to follow. Neil Armstrong on the moon sat in the capsule and took out a small box that he’d brought with him. The 240,000 miles to the moon took out a wafer of bread and a cup of wine, and on the moon surface, 240,000 miles away celebrated that 2000 years ago. Jesus had laid a stir, had been nailed to a cross for him.

What was it about this moment in history, the crucifixion that would suggest to a man that traveling further than any of us will ever travel potentially in our lifetime, that he should take a moment to remember that moment. Something about that moment was so important. It told Buzz Aldrin, I’m gonna do this intentionally.

Remember the cross anchor myself to this one moment in history. And how do we, knowing something like that, how do we go about doing that in our own lives? When we think about this series, we thought about it from the lens of the busyness. Of summer, some of us ha have been traveling to Costa Rica.

Again. Welcome back. Some of us are dotting all over the place. Some of us, I was always told by one person just the other day, didn’t know we did church in the summer and are now watching online. She was joking. In fairness, how do we go about taking the cross? Seriously. And processing that together. A few things maybe to know about before we talk about something that can feel at times heavy.

And so if you’re new to church, welcome to this week. It’s gonna be fun, evangelicals, which broadly might be many of us in the room. Some of us might wrestle with that title. Some of us may have wanted to put it down. Some of us may have picked it back up again, but evangelicals historically have been people of the cross about.

40 years ago, a person way smarter than anybody in this room called Dave Beddington bebington wrote what he called the Bebington quadrilateral. He said, broadly, evangelicals seem to be focused on these four things. Bism conversion is activism and Cru centrism. Now, if those words are confusing, let me translate them just for a moment.

They read the Bible and they try to obey it. They take it seriously. They believe in a personal faith. It’s a decision not made by your parents, not made by your upbringing, but made by you and I. They do good works. They are in the community, for the community and last, they are people of the cross.

They value that particular moment where Jesus did something. Second thing as we get to this, it’s impossible. I would suggest to speak of the cross. Without speaking about resurrection, depending on the church background you come in, the two may highlight, one may highlight, or the other may highlight.

That may sound unusual to us if we grew up in that evangelical moment where broadly the cross seems to be the thing that is talked about the most. But if you were say, in something like the Greek Orthodox Church, you would feel very differently about that spectrum. And there’s a famous conversation that you can find online where NT Wright, the famous New Testament professor asked a Greek Orthodox metropolitan, what is the importance of the cross?

What is its value? And he replied nothing simply as a way of getting to resurrection. For them. The resurrection is the big talking point. Whereas we may find the cross, the big talking point, just something to be aware of as we talk through this. Third, to the first Christians, the cross was a horror, not an ornament to us today, it’s perhaps something to wear around a neck to show what we believe.

It’s something to put on top of a church. To the first Christians, that would’ve been no different than if I were to today have a electric chair on stage. This instrument of death would’ve shocked them to be seen scattered all over the place. So depending on when you were born your period of time how you see it changes Just a little bit.

Before we get to the passage that Jen beautifully read for us, I’d like us to look at another passage. This is Matthew 16, one of the biographies of Jesus life. It’s a conversation that begins positively and then runs a little bit negative. It centers around Jesus and one of his first followers, Peter.

There’s been all sorts of rumors as to who exactly Jesus is. People have all sorts of guesses, and then Jesus in Matthew chapter 16 says to them who do you say that I am, Peter. Brilliantly correctly answers like this, you are the Messiah, the Son of a living God in his mind, A future king, a future ruler, someone who had saved them from the current situation.

And Jesus gives him a at it. Boy, a reply. Jesus replied, blessed to you, Simon, son of Jonah. This was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my father in heaven. And I tell you that you are Peter and on this rock, I will build my church and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. Good job, Peter.

You’ve heard something from God. You know who Jesus is because you were told in directly, you didn’t figure it out yourself. You were informed. But then we read on in verse 21, which is the change point in Matthew’s gospel. Up until this point, everything has been fairly happy, fairly healthy, and now Jesus will talk about a shift from the disciple’s perspective that he’s unhealthy.

From that time on, Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed. And on the third day, be raised to life. And now Peter will make a second reply in this conversation.

That is not so good. As it turns out, Peter took him aside, verse 22, and began to rebuke him. Watch for the kind of physical language in this ’cause. It’s very distinct. It doesn’t happen anywhere else really. In any of the gospels. There’s actually a movement of imagine taking someone aside for a quiet word in their ear to give them a talking to almost and began to rebuke him.

Never, Lord. He said, this shall never happen to you. It shall never happen to you. And now we get Jesus’ second reply to Peter. Peter tries to protect Jesus from the cross. No death for you Jesus. You’re gonna live a long, healthy life. You’re gonna become the ruler that I imagine you can become. He tries to protect Jesus from the cross with a beautiful secondary benefit that it will protect Peter.

From any cross too, if you were in the midst of a rebellion in that time period where the leader could easily be killed, but the Roman rulers would have no problem killing everyone that had supported them too. If you can kill the leader, you can kill his followers, it’s not a problem. And now Jesus replied.

Jesus turned and said to Peter, get behind me. Satan. A very different kind of response. You are a stumbling block to me. Nice little poetic phrase there. Earlier, he called him the rock and now he’s the stumbling block. I don’t think he works as well in Greek, but it works for us, you do not have in mind the concerns of God.

So remember he was told, you’ve heard this from God directly. Now he’s heard it from someone else. You do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns first, Peter tries to protect Jesus from a cross and now watch what happens. As Jesus surprisingly to his followers, calls them to a cross.

Surprisingly, Jesus scores Peter and by extension everyone else to a cross. Not what they expected to hear in the culture of their day. Normal to us now, but certainly not to them. And then Jesus says this in verse 24, whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves, take up their cross and follow me.

Whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. This passage is a shift in all of the expected narratives around following a Messiah figure in the first century, following a rabbi in the first century, they had hoped to experience life, peace, potentially liberty, all those sorts of things.

And now they’re expecting something very different. Indeed, Jesus flips everything as to where their expectations on his head. Jesus reveals his followers should prepare. To lose their lives. Something that has become normal to us today, again, but not normal to them. Hans s Van Beltazar theologian said this, it is to the cross that the Christian is challenged to follow his master.

No other path of redemption can make a detour around it. His suggestion is this, that the first followers were called there, and that now applies to everyone who was followed Jesus in subsequent centuries. Somewhere we will all have to deal with this thing called a cross, but this is the interesting nuance that I’m fascinated as we get to talk about the cross all day.

With the offer of actually gaining their lives. They’re called to surrender. Their lives with the idea that they might gain them. And that’s an idea we’re not used to hearing anywhere else. We’re often told that you might have to surrender your life for some greater purpose. This is the legendary Winston Churchill Prime Minister of Britain during World War ii.

We shall fight on the beaches. We shall fight on the landing rounds. We shall fight in the fields and in the streets. We shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender, or something like that. It’s a speech that’s gone down in legend. A speech that tried to lift the morale of a people that were fearful of what might happen, but there’s no certainty of victory.

Just that we won’t surrender. No certainty that anything will happen after defeat just ends there potentially in giving everything you have with nothing in return somewhere. Jesus promise is different. He promises this, that you will give your life for this thing and counterintuitively with no certainty, but a promise from Jesus, you will really gain it in the midst of losing it.

Here is, I think our problem as we read this text, this is my problem. At least it may be your problem, so you get to decide on that suggestion, description, not prescription of how I feel about life. I. Often associate life with as scent. For Peter, that meant that in following Jesus, he was hoping for Jesus kingship, which would mean good things for him.

Sure, he wanted his whole nation to be free, but he also wanted to be part of what was happening and so did the other followers that they’re very clear about it. At different points, they’ll say things like this, Jesus, can we, me and my brother, sit on your right hand and your left hand When you have a kingdom?

There’s definitely a sense of something is in it for them. And I kind of hope for those kind of things in life too. I hope over life. I think to gradually get wealthier, to get more sort of sense of no debt or those kind of good things. I hope, and I did hope to have kids and I now have kids. I hoped to get married and I did.

I hoped to have some degree of happiness, which I think is normal. And he gets, I think, gets thrown into question when we read some of these words of Jesus. We hope that life is generally good. We hope that the things that seem normal happen. I heard from a physician that generally people handle a diagnosis of a sickness if a few things have happened, if they have got married, if they have kids.

If they have grandkids, and usually at that point when people are told they are desperately sick, they say something like this I guess it was going to happen at some point, but if the diagnosis comes before that, their life gets thrown into flux. The seems to be a promise that we will have certain things at some point, and when we don’t get them, everything seems to fall out of place and yet it seems Jesus doesn’t expect us.

To get a scent in life and certainly wasn’t what he believed about his own life. I, in the book, brave New World by Als, Huckley Huxley there’s this change in the culture. He describes it this way. All crosses had their tops cut off and became ts. There also used to be a thing called God. In that culture in the world, he creates consumerism.

He is worshiped, and so the T represents the Ford model T he wrote in 1932, so it was everywhere. Henry Ford is worshiped as a God. He’s called his Ford ship in the book. It’s a consumer driven culture. So potentially it seems by believing that we can just chase a scent or believing, I can just cha chase a scent.

A worst case scenario is that I start following a different faith all together. Jesus will give the example of decent, the example of what it is to be divine and come down to this level, even to the point of a cross. Very different story to the one Peter. Had hoped for. Henry Nowan in his brilliant way, says this, the society in which we live suggests in countless ways that the way to go is up, making it to the top, entering the limelight, breaking the record.

That’s what draws attention, gets us on the front page of the newspaper and offers the rewards of money and fame. The way of Jesus is radically different. It is the way not to upward mobility, but of downward mobility is going to the bottom, staying between the sets. Choosing the last place, why is the way of Jesus worth choosing?

Because it is the way to the kingdom, the way Jesus took, the way that brings everlasting life. Jesus is the only preacher who’s been brave enough to pitch dissent as being the way to go. Now Ascent actually works out fine for some people. You can actually follow Jesus. You can actually, it seems become fairly spiritual doing the ascent thing.

There’s ways in which the goodness of God leads us to follow him in new ways. But what happens then if descent gets forced upon you? What happens if you have no choice? I was recently reading a book by this lady called Radiance in the Gulag. She ni Joel Nita was a nun during the communist era in the Soviet Union.

She was arrested at an early age, about 1718 was dragged off to the Gulag and continued throughout years in prison to maintain this beautiful presence of what it was to follow Jesus. She was one who could hold this idea that her life was not her own, and potentially she would have to deny herself, take up a cross and follow Jesus.

She in the midst of imprisonment, in the midst of loss, said this, ah, I’ve lost my quote. That’s so frustrating. Ah, there it is. And how good is it that the small boat of our life is steered? By the hand of our good father when he’s at the wheel, nothing is frightening. She’s an example of thousands of followers of Jesus who experienced descend, not necessarily by choice, but because they chose the path of following Jesus and would accept any con consequence for doing so.

We have a dear friend of this community named Murda. He’s a missionary from Iran. Who came here through all sorts of immigration pathways legally, but in the midst of some of the conflicts recently was arrested as all Iranians that have come over the last few years. And the purpose isn’t to talk about necessarily the why and the what of that, but to talk about him in the midst of it.

Him who came and joyfully read the Christian scriptures during advent from this stage in Farsi, his native language, and came who in the midst of imprisonment. Continues to read the scriptures and share his faith with anybody it seems, who will listen to him. The hard part about this story is not all of us will be called to descend.

We just have to be open to it. And when we experience the gift of asset, when we experience life, that is easy, it seems and good. We get to remember those that are experienced dissent, even dissent to the point of death. To carrying their cross and following Jesus. Here’s the question I have in the midst of all this.

How do you live this kind of life? It’s an uncomfortable message, but the best I could do with the subject in a, again, light breezy series. In writing this, it reminded me somewhat of. A Bob Newhart skit back about 50, 60 years ago. He was a comedian who would imagine scenarios, and he imagined a scenario where a publicist would try to create, Abraham Lincoln would try to convince him to do all of the things that Abraham Lincoln did while convinced while the man was convinced that he should do something else.

And I started imagining what a publicist would say to Jesus in the midst of his message. It is too much, right? You’ve gotta tone it down. People may have to go to the cross, but don’t let them know before they get there. Jesus is the other level he’s already warned them twice at this point in Matthew’s Gospel that following him may cost them their lives and still he keeps insisting on it, keeps saying, no, this thing to follow me.

Pick up your cross. Follow me. Pick up your cross, not mine, but yours and follow me. That’s the language of Jesus. But we get to see a picture of how to do it. I would suggest in the second text, the one that Jen read. This is Galatians chapter two, verse 20. I says, Paul have been crucified with Christ. I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.

The life I now live in the body. I live by faith in the son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. In our second passage, we get to see what it is to choose descent, to choose to go downwards when you have given a life at the top of the mountain. In our second passage, Paul, where he chooses the path of descent.

This is Paul’s life before following Jesus. If someone thinks they have reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more circumcised on the eighth day of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews as touching the law of Pharisee, all things that put him in the upper class of his society, all things that would’ve made him comfortably wealthy, part of the state.

All things good. Concerning Zeal, persecuting the church, touching the righteousness, which is in the law. Blameless ascent ascent. And now this, I have been crucified with Christ. I no longer live. That’s what Paul sees as the journey of following Jesus. That’s how Paul understands. It seems being anchored to the cross.

And why can he do this? Because I don’t think you can do this for any other reason than the reason he shares. You can’t do it because you try really hard. Can’t do it because you want something. I think it only comes from this thing that he’s about to share. But Christ and lives in me. The life I now live in, the body I love.

I live by faith in the son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. Never is Paul so personal as this. It’s always we or you or something else but me in this moment. It seems all Paul has in mind is that the God of the universe loves him and him particularly. I think for a lot of us, if we’re honest, our language for how God feels about us, he tolerates our loves.

Instead, he’ll have us because, he’d rather have someone else. But it’ll take us. And yet Paul’s language is this. No. He distinctly loves me and he’s distinctly for me, and that is the reason that I can give up everything else simply because of that. He loved me. He gave himself for me. It’s the understanding, I think Paul hopes that we all have of this passage to Paul, Jesus has demonstrated.

What it is to die for one’s enemies. And interestingly, Paul has so many examples of the very opposite of that. Paul lives in the middle of a culture that created this. This is in a town just down the road from glacier to whom Paul is writing. This is in a town called Pergamum. It’s the altar of Zeus or a replica of it.

The smoke went up on it all day long, every single day. And Paul has all these examples of all these different guts, Jupiter, Zeus, rah, who are the opposite of that, who come to kill, to destroy, to take. This was honestly the best example of this. So it seems ridiculous. Go with me on it. Who looked like this?

If you’re an Avengers fan, you get it. If you don’t, maybe too niche, but that’s okay. Who has this line? I am inevitable. That’s how Paul understood all the other gods that came with that kind of culture. To destroy, to take, came to have victory. And now it seems that Paul lives surprised by the death and erection, resurrection of Jesus.

Surprise that God would die for him particularly. Victory for RO was a cross the enemies hunger upon and then we’re told victory for Jesus. It was across He hunger upon. It’s a completely different story and one that Paul never ceases to be shocked by, but I, if I’m honest, can cease. To be shocked by. And so if no one else, this is a reminder to me of just how shockingly good that story is.

It’s a reminder of this that he must come and be killed and on the third day be raised to life. Still shocking. 2000 years later, God’s love for Paul has left him defeated in a way that no other victory could have done. God could have come down and forced him to his knees. God could have come down and wiped away all those that were evil doers and it would not have shocked Paul in the way that the cross shocks Paul and the resurrection shocks.

Paul CS Lewis said this hearing his love, this is the diagram of love himself, the inventor of all loves. Frederick Beat has said, and now brothers, I will ask you a terrible question and God knows I ask it also of myself, is the truth beyond all truths, beyond the stars, just this, that to live without him is the real death.

That to die with him is the only life and the cross. God defeats his enemies with love. Now, why is that important? How does that help us anchor to the cross in this crazy season of some few different things. One, I think is that it’s a welcome. To whoever will come, that Jesus arms are open to all that.

He feels about all the same way he feels about Paul. That for me, I’m the one that he loves. I can say because of the son of God who love me and gave himself for me, but it’s also for people like me, a reminder of just how important that story is and how it can be taken anywhere with me that I get to celebrate it.

In England, celebrate it. Fishing in the lakes of Minnesota, celebrate it at home. But also this third one that I’m gonna share fairly quickly. I think for some of us, if we’re honest, we struggle with how God handles the world around us. We have all sorts of questions and we see things and say, how can this continue to be this way?

It’s perhaps a deep frustration that hits us at specific times. Maybe we travel and notice it more. Maybe we take a break from work, we notice it more. We have space to ponder questions about God, what exactly are you doing and what exactly are you like? And I wanted to share with you this quote that’s been circling my mind for years now.

And I think it’s true.

And I use this in the context of a trinity. So I’m gonna use the term guard for father. It goes like this. God is like Jesus. God has always been like Jesus. There has never been a time when God was none like Jesus. I think that’s what it is to believe that Paul is right When he says God is the image of the invi.

Jesus is the image of the invisible God. So when I have questions about the way the world works. How God created it and what he’s doing with it. When I have those uncertainties, when I carry them and contemplate them in my free times, I get to use what Jesus did for me and for you as what’s called an interpretive lens.

I get to say with all my other questions confidently, I can say he’s like Jesus. He’s always been like Jesus. Never been a time when God has not been like Jesus. The one who loves us and gives himself for us, one who dies for his enemies rather than and destroy them. God looks like Jesus. You are welcomed anyone because of this moment of the cross.

You are reminded. It’s central to everything. You are free. Free to know that the God of the universe is the one who will die for his enemies. ’cause God looks like Jesus. He’s always looked like Jesus. There will never been a time when he doesn’t, hasn’t looked like Jesus. Jesus. We’ve been talking about you all day, and now as a community we get to talk to you.

Maybe some of us are unsure of this story. As we’ve said before, it’s a story. They’re so good. We at least want it to be true. The God of the universe isn’t inevitable, isn’t here to destroy, but to die for us to give himself. For us. It’s a reminder. I forget, it gets so busy with life, so easy for me to forget The beauty of this story, what it was when I first came to it.

And I’m free. We are free to know what you are like with no uncertainty because you, Jesus, are the image of the invisible God. You showed us your shoes, showed us what God is like, what your father is like.

We’re gonna come to the cross Jesus and be thankful. Thankful for what you did for us, for me.

I have been crucified with Christ. It’s no longer I that live, but Christ lives in me and the life I live. I live by faith and the son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. Amen. Aaron’s gonna lead us in a Psalm at different points. There’ll be people down here from the prayer team if you would like someone to pray with you.

If you’ve been wrestling with that sense of what is God even and you get to see him through the lens of Jesus, they would love to pray for you. If you’re new to faith, they would love to pray for you. If you find yourself distant like you’ve forgotten, they’re here to pray for you for anything else, for healing.

They’re here to pray for you.