WWUTT 2366 Take Up Your Cross Daily (Luke 9:23-27)

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Jesus said, if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow after me.

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What does it mean to take up a cross and follow Christ when we understand the text? This is

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When We Understand The Text, a daily Bible study in the word of Christ. For he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

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Tell your friends about our ministry at www .wtt .com. Hey, once again, it's Pastor Gabe.

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Thank you, Becky. In our study of the gospel according to Luke, we come back to chapter nine, where today in the section that we'll be looking at, we will hear the call of Christ to take up a cross and follow him.

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Let me begin reading in verse 23, and I'll read through verse 27. Hear the word of the

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Lord. And he said to all, if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.

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For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.

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For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself?

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For whoever is ashamed of me and my words, of him will the son of man be ashamed when he comes in his glory and the glory of the father and of the holy angels.

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But I tell you truly, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God.

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Now, going back to last week, I mentioned that what we see here in chapter nine is this constant back and forth where first Jesus will give an instruction to his disciples, and then that will be followed with some kind of revelation about Christ, something that we get to learn about him.

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And so between today and tomorrow, we have today this instruction that Jesus gives to his disciples to take up a cross and follow him.

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And then tomorrow we see something about Jesus in the transfiguration. That'll be verses 28 to 36.

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And then the chapter will continue on in that way. Jesus healing an unclean spirit in the next section where he instructs his disciples.

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And then again, we'll talk about his death or tell his coming crucifixion, which he's even talking about with his disciples here.

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So let me go back a little bit and kind of recap what we had last read on Wednesday.

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Peter made a confession that Jesus is the Christ. That was in verse 20. Jesus said to his disciples, who do you say that I am?

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And Peter answered, you are the Christ of God. And then verse 21,

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Jesus strictly charged and commanded the disciples to tell this to no one saying, the son of man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and scribes and be killed and on the third day be raised.

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And it's that very exchange right there with Peter confessing that Jesus is the Christ and then him telling his disciples to tell no one because here's what's going to happen next.

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That plays into this next statement here that we start with in verse 23.

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It's important to keep that context in mind because Jesus says here, if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.

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It's a very commonly understood statement that Jesus makes and you've probably heard it preached about before.

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You've probably even heard this twisted before. There are people who will take this verse and they will apply it in such ways that Jesus did not intend when he said this to his disciples.

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Once again, that's why studying the context is so important. I remember several years ago, listening to Justin Peters teach on this particular passage.

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And he said that there was a woman who came up to him one time and said to him, you bear your cross well.

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In reference to Luke 9 23. Now, in case you don't know, Justin, he has cerebral palsy.

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He's had it since he was very, very young. And the older he gets, of course, the more his body deteriorates and it's very difficult for him to do things on his own, even get dressed.

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He is steadily losing the ability to use his limbs, even walk well.

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I remember when I first met Justin, he was still walking pretty well with canes, but I very rarely see him use the canes anymore.

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Most of the time he's getting around on a motorized scooter, if he even uses the canes anymore.

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But of course, Justin has a very cheerful disposition. If you've ever watched his videos, if you've seen his seminar, he certainly exudes joy and he encourages other people to live with joy.

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No matter what your circumstance, rejoice in the Lord. And when you're hearing this come from a man who's obviously been afflicted by this condition that he was born with, to hear him say that you need to be joyful, to hear him quote

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Philippians 4 .4, rejoice in the Lord always, I will say it again, rejoice. It's pretty convicting coming from a guy like Justin.

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And he also handles opponents very well. Whenever false teachers have confronted him, he is able to respond to them with gentleness as the scripture instructs us to do.

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So Justin definitely lives according to what he preaches. So it's understandable why this woman would come to Justin and say something like, you bear your cross well, but she doesn't handle this verse rightly in its application.

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Being born with a disease is not an example of taking up a cross and following Jesus.

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You don't volunteer to have that disease. You're born with it. You can't do anything about that.

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That is not a cross that has been placed upon you to bear. A cross is an instrument of death.

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And this instruction that Jesus gives to his disciples, he is telling them that they must willingly take up a cross daily and follow after Jesus.

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Now, once again, remember that Jesus has asked his disciples, who do the people say that I am?

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Who do you say that I am? And it's Peter who answered, you are the Christ of God.

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As I've said before, even when we were going through Matthew and Mark, the disciples are expecting that Jesus is going to go into Jerusalem and he's going to rule.

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He's going to reign there. That's what they are hoping is going to take place. He's our

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Messiah. When Peter makes the confession that you are the Christ of God, you are the

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Messiah that was foretold in the ancient scriptures. They're all with him because they think they're going to reign together.

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Jesus is going to kick the Herod's out. He's going to free Israel from the tyranny of Rome.

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And we're going to be a great superpower once again. Finally, the kingdom of God has come to earth and here is our

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King, Christ of God. But what does Jesus then say to his disciples?

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Now, what's going to happen next is the son of man is going to suffer many things.

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He's going to be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the scribes and be killed. And on the third day be raised.

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There's the good news about that, of course. But as we have reviewed previously in Matthew and Mark, the disciples didn't get that.

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It's like they didn't even hear that part when Jesus said that he would be raised again from the dead.

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And it's in that context that Jesus says, if anyone would come after me, like if you think you're going to rule with me or reign with me, and the scripture tells us that we certainly will, we will reign together with Christ.

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As Jesus says in Revelation chapter three, to the one who conquers, I will give to him a place to sit with me on my throne as I conquered and sat down with my father on his throne.

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So we will indeed reign with Christ. But Jesus is saying here, if you want to reign with me, you think you're going to reign in an earthly kingdom here that we're going to set up in the next few days or whatever.

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If you want to reign, if anybody wants to come after me, you have to deny yourself.

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You cannot think of yourself as somebody who is deserving to ascend to some kind of throne.

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You have to take up a cross, an instrument of death, an instrument of shame, not take up a sword, not take up a scepter, not take up a decree in your hand.

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You are going to take up your cross daily, every day, not just this occasion in which we're going to head to Jerusalem, you must take up a cross daily and follow me, which also implies daily.

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You take up a cross daily, you follow Jesus daily. And after Jesus says this, we have three, four statements that flow from this statement in verse 23.

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In verse 24, for whoever would save his life will lose it. Verse 25, for what does it profit a man?

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Verse 26, for whoever is ashamed of me and my words. And that one really sheds light on the connection between all three of these fours.

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Whoever is ashamed of me and my words, of him will the son of man be ashamed when he comes in his glory and in the glory of his father and of the holy angels.

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What does it mean to follow Jesus? You must know him and his words and do what it is that he says.

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If you were ashamed of Christ, you deny him, you must deny yourself. But if you deny

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Christ and if you are ashamed of his words, then you won't receive any part of the kingdom of God.

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The son of man will even be ashamed of you. And in that glory that he comes, you will perish in the judgment that the

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Messiah will bring upon the earth, which of course the disciples were expecting in their day. They didn't think it was gonna be some future time, but you will have no part in the kingdom of God if you are not with Christ, if you do not have his word and follow it and keep what it is that he has said.

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All of this explains what Jesus means when he says, if you wanna come after me, if you wanna rule with me, reign with me, if you wanna inherit the kingdom of God with me, then you must deny yourself.

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It is not about you. It is not about pursuing the things that you want or you desire. You have to deny yourself and take up a cross, an instrument of death, not desiring to exalt yourself, but to humble yourself, to become a servant and a slave unto

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Christ and follow him. And so looking at the first four in verse 24, for whoever would save his life will lose it.

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But whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.

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Now, why would a person lose his life? Well, because he would be a follower of Jesus.

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And just as Jesus is going to be put to death, the son of man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed.

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And just as Jesus is going to be killed, then those who follow after him will be killed as well.

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Most of the disciples that are sitting right there, listening to him talk are going to be killed.

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John, according to tradition, is the only one who did not die a martyr, but lived to an old age.

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It's even talked about in the scripture. It's mentioned at the end of the gospel of John that his end would not be the same as Peter's end, for example.

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But whoever is attempting to save his life by denying me, by rejecting

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Christ, by saying, I don't know him, we know that's coming up from Peter, right? Peter has just made this confession that the

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Christ is God, that Jesus is the Christ of God. But later on, of course, after Jesus is arrested, then

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Peter is going to deny Christ three times. And so surely these words are piercing, penetrating to Peter when he's convicted over his sin and he weeps bitterly.

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Whoever would save his life will lose it. If you try to save your life by denying me, you would end up losing your life.

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But whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. Now with Peter, that's eventually what's going to happen because Peter repents of his sin,

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Christ restores him, and it's later as an apostle of the gospel of Christ that he's going to lose his life for Christ's sake.

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Now, most of us will probably not be put in a position where our life is going to be on the line, either reject

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Christ or die. Most of us will probably not be faced with that decision, but we still must with our whole lives, confess

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Christ. And if we enter into those occasions in which, you know, friends or family or somebody else in the world may ridicule us because of the

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Christian convictions that we have, if we try to soften what it is that we believe, oh,

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I don't believe that, I'm not like those Christians, and then you start to change your doctrine into something that's a little bit more palatable with the world, then you're denying

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Christ. You're rejecting his word. You're trying to shape that word into something else that's, it's going to soften the ridicule that you are experiencing.

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And really your fear is not of God, your fear is of man. You're trying to save yourself, trying to save face in the presence of others who would make fun of you because of what you believe.

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But if you'd rather lose faith, if you'd rather have a low reputation among others because of the

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Christ whom you follow and whom you worship, well, this is how you will save your life. So there's certainly an application.

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There's an everyday application for us here, taking up a cross daily and following Christ, dying to yourself and living unto him.

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The next four comes in verse 25, four, what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself?

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See a lot of people, a lot of times that'll get really rich and they'll climb that ladder and they'll ascend the ranks of fame and fortune.

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There are many, even among the rich and wealthy and powerful who will claim to be Christians, but you look at their lives and the lives that they live don't look anything like Christ.

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It doesn't look anything like what a Christian should do, how we should live.

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And it's because they really like their wealth. They like their prestige. They understand that confessing

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Christ to a certain degree, oh, I love Jesus. Yeah, I'm a follower of Jesus. That can carry some kind of social capital with it.

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I can gain some favor with that. I really do think that there are a lot of Hollywood celebrities and stars out there who will strategically wear

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Christian t -shirts and go out in public and be seen in that shirt so that they get their picture taken and it appears in the tabloids.

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And even Christians out there will look at that and go, oh, hey, look, so -and -so is a Christian. I remember this happening with Ben Affleck several years ago.

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Ben Affleck is nothing of a Christian, but he was wearing a Christian -like t -shirt one time and people were taking pictures of it and it was circulating online.

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And for a while, I saw a lot of Christians out there were going, oh, look, Ben Affleck is one of us. Folks, he was doing it to promote a movie.

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These things are strategically done. And if he could get a picture out there, then there are even Christians that will see that and will go, oh,

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Ben Affleck is one of us, and they'll go see his film. Yeah, they strategically do stuff just like this.

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I'm not saying that anytime that a celebrity claims that they're a follower of Christ that we should doubt it, but I think that we should definitely be cautious.

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So we've been burned a lot. If you'll remember the thing that happened with Kanye West several years back,

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I guess this was 2019, wasn't it, when he came out with his Christ is King album? And was that what it was?

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Christ, Jesus is Lord, whatever it was called. But he went through his gospel period and everybody thought, well,

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Kanye West is saved. He is just as hellbound now as he was then. So there are many out there, even with fame and celebrity and things like that, who will proclaim

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Christ, but the version of Christ that they proclaim is one that is very friendly to the world.

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And there may be many, many ways that the rest of us who will never be famous, we'll never have these fortunes, but there are ways that even normal people, middle -class poor, that's what

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I'm going for, those who are in poverty even, the poor even, you could forfeit something about your

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Christian faith and lose it, thinking that you would be gaining something by forfeiting this, but instead you just forfeit yourself.

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I don't know if you've seen, there's that romance show on Netflix. I've never watched this.

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I've just seen that this thing is in the news right now. I think it's called Love is Blind. It's a dating show.

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It's something like The Bachelor or The Bachelorette. But there was a woman that left a guy at the altar on this show.

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And she said that the reason why she left him is because she found out that he attends a church that is not accepting of gay marriage.

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And so then at the season finale of the show, they interviewed the guy and he decided, instead of standing firm on what the

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Bible says and his Christian convictions, he decided to go, I didn't know that my church believed that.

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And even the host of the show said, are you sure? Or are you just saying that now? You're trying to save face.

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That isn't the way that he phrased the question, but it was something like that. And the guy said, no, no, genuinely, I didn't know that's where my church was.

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He had a great opportunity to stand on the truth of God's word, Christ teaching right there in front of a huge audience, one of the largest streaming platforms on the planet.

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And instead he forfeited himself. He forfeited his faith.

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And man, the day of judgment's gonna go really bad for that guy if he doesn't realize what he has done and repent.

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And so lastly, we have verse 26, for whoever is ashamed of me and my words, of him will the son of man be ashamed when he comes in his glory and the glory of the father and of the holy angels.

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That's a reference to judgment. So if you wanna be with me on that day, when we judge the world in righteousness, you wanna be on the side of righteousness and not on the side of those who are going to be judged, then you must follow

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Christ, take up a cross and follow him. And following him means knowing his word and doing what he has said.

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Now there's a final statement that Jesus makes here in verse 27, but I tell you truly, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God.

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And that's foreshadowing to the next portion that we're gonna read. And we'll come to that tomorrow, verses 28 to 36, where we have the transfiguration of Jesus.

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My friends, following Jesus is not easy. It demands sacrifice. That's in the very nature of Jesus saying that if you wanna follow me, if you wanna come after me, you have to deny yourself.

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You have to die to yourself. Your own desires, your own fleshly carnal inclinations, you have to put those things to death and you have to do it every day.

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There are things every day that are going to attempt to tempt you away from Jesus, that are gonna try to draw you into the world and away from Christ.

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We must resist. We must cling all the more to Christ. We must crucify the flesh, as the apostle

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Paul said in Colossians 3, 5, put to death what is earthly in you.

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Those sinful desires, tendencies, temptations, everything that is contrary to God and to his word.

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Everything that we would naturally go after in our naturally sinful selves. Now, those of us who are followers of Christ, we have put to death the earthly man.

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We have been brought to life through his Holy Spirit that lives within us, but there is still a daily sacrifice that must be made.

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This is being disciplined. This is growing in the Lord. This is imitating Christ, who himself took up a cross and died for us and came back to life for us.

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That we may be a living sacrifice unto him. Living sacrifice, the language that's used in Romans 12, 1.

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Jesus died for us so that we might live for him. But in our spirits, in our minds, in our convictions, in our hearts, we must be crucified daily.

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Take up a cross daily and follow after Jesus. Those things that in the eyes of the world are shameful because the cross not only was an instrument of death, it was an instrument of shame.

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It was a shameful thing to be crucified upon a cross. It may be shameful to the rest of the world, but for us who are in Christ Jesus, knowing what we will receive at the end, it is our delight to take up a cross and follow him for great will be our reward in heaven.

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Heavenly Father, we thank you for what we have read and I pray that we would today put to death what is earthly in us, desire to take up a cross, putting our own desires, our own selfish tendencies to death that we may follow after Christ, Jesus who marked out the way for us to go, who is even with us as we go, whose strength carries us along the way.

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May we desire to be more like him and rejoice that we have been given this opportunity to take up a cross and follow him.

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Let us not go after the things of this world which ultimately entangle and destroy us.

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Let us not think that we can gain the world and think that we have accomplished something great if it causes us to lose our soul.

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And may we not be ashamed of Christ or of his word, but do what he has said. And it's in Jesus' name that we pray, amen.

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Thank you for listening to When We Understand The Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. If you'd like to support this ministry, visit our website, www .wutt

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.com, and click on the Give tab in the top right corner of the page. Join us again tomorrow as we continue our