Glory of the Calvary Road Matthew 16:24-28 Part II

Last week, we began to look at the text, Matthew 16, verses 24 -28.

And what we saw one week ago is Jesus say the words, if anyone must come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.

The conversation before this one, Jesus told his disciples that he was going to be executed by the

Jewish leaders and rise again. What the disciples understood by this message and previous messages from Jesus is that it would not be easy to follow him.

Jesus compared following him to carrying one's cross, something that he would do not long after this, as he carried his cross on the road to Calvary.

In other words, if everyone who is thinking about becoming his disciples must understand that it is going to be the hard road.

It is going to be the Calvary road. It is the road where you need to deny your own selfish desires and submit rather to the

Lordship of Jesus Christ. He is in charge of your life now, not you.

Jesus is not calling people to have their cake and eat it too. It's okay, some people think, to have one foot with Christ and one foot with the world, but Jesus is saying no.

You must have both feet in with me. To follow him means denying yourself.

It means embracing the hard road that he will send you down. And our big idea for this

Two Sundays sermon, what this text is calling you to do is to travel down the path where true life is found.

Last week we saw the difficulty of this path and this Sunday morning we are going to focus on why wise people take this arduous road and why fools do not.

Wise people take this road and fools do not. Let's begin once again by reading the text.

Matthew 16, verses 24 -28. Then Jesus told his disciples, if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.

For whoever would save his life will lose it. But whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? For the

Son of Man is going to come with his angels in the glory of his

Father. And then he will repay each person according to what he has done. Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the

Son of Man coming in his kingdom. Our big idea once again is travel down the path where true life is found.

And the second focus how in your outlines is through giving up one dream for a better one.

So the second focus how you are to travel down the path where true life is found is by giving up one dream for a better one.

So this is the offer Jesus is making. This offer is meant to make people think carefully.

But as Jesus talks about the hard part, He explains in verse 25 and 26 why people choose to deny themselves and take up their cross.

Let me read this again. For whoever would save his life will lose it. But whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?

As we read verse 24, the cost, denying yourself, taking up your cross, you might wonder, why in the world would anyone choose this?

The answer is given by Jesus. Jesus makes it crystal clear that to truly have life, you need to follow

Him. In verse 25, Jesus tells everyone listening to Him that whoever saves his life will lose it.

And whoever loses his life will find it. Now, let's first look at how does one lose one's life by saving it?

Jesus is obviously not talking about protective measures to save yourself from danger.

If a tornado is barreling toward your house, the wisest thing to do, the right thing to do, is to take cover in your basement.

He's not saying go outside and stand and let that tornado suck you up. He's not saying that here.

But the type of preservation that Jesus is speaking against is living for yourself. We looked at this last week.

Instead of denying yourself of desires, you gratify them. The Apostle Paul warns us not to do this very thing in Galatians 5 .16

where he writes, walk by the Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.

What this means is that your highest aim is not to live for God and for other people.

That's the selfish life. Live for yourself. Don't live for God. Don't live for other people.

The goal is self -preservation. The goal is gaining as much happiness for yourself as you can, even at the expense of others.

We hear those voices about saving one's life in this world all the time. We hear these messages on television and magazines, on billboards, and you hear it from people you know.

The message that we so often hear is that you have one life to live, so make the most of it.

It's everywhere. People have a bucket list, right?

Let's check off all those items on the bucket list. Let's get the most out of this life as we possibly can before we die.

Of course, it's fun to have adventures, right? It's fun to do fun things. But the goal is not, let's accomplish every selfish desire that I have.

That's not the goal that Jesus has for people. We should make the most of our life.

But the question is, what trajectory are you following? Are you following God's or your own?

To live for your own desires is to say to God, I don't want that.

I want to go my own way. Isaiah describes this fallen human experience in Isaiah 53 .6.

All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way. People go lots of paths away from God.

We see this take place in all kinds of experiences in life. One of those is marriage. It is common for people to get into a marriage and they decide they're not happy.

And so the desire is to end the marriage. The thinking is, my spouse was supposed to make me happy, and I'm not happy.

If this path is not happiness, then there must be another path out there that will make me happy.

Did you know that according to one study, 41 % of first marriages end in divorce? You go to a wedding, all the glitz and glamour and excitement, years down the road, doesn't last.

Now, there are biblical grounds for divorce and remarriage, but that is not why most divorces take place.

The voice from society that men and women hear is that you only have one life to live, so find someone you'll be happy with.

This leads people to do the easy thing, giving up, and not the hard thing, staying together. Because you made a promise to God and to everyone present that no matter what, for better or for worse, you're sticking with this person.

The fact that so many marriages end in divorce tells us that many people are not serious about their marriage vows.

And why aren't they? This is so because they listen to the message of the world, and that message is, get the most out of your life.

And a difficult marriage is not in the plans. The truth is that every marriage will have difficulties.

And the only ones that will survive and be healthy over the long haul are the ones with God at the center, living out the design

He has for marriage. Of course, if you don't do it God's way, how could you expect it to work? He created this.

So marriage is one area where selfishness is shown, but you see this in other areas also.

Selfishness spans the whole spectrum of an unbeliever's life. To the unbeliever, the whole world revolves around you.

To save your life in this world is to do what you want and not what God wants.

It is not surrendering to God like one should do, but rather rebellion against Him. The worldly person's highest aim is not loving

God and living for other people. Rather, the highest aim is one's own self -centered happiness.

Worldly people love that people love them and don't actually love people. Ever thought about that? If the appearance of love happens, it is only in a superficial sense.

True love involves giving. Is love a feeling? Well, yes, partly.

But true love always involves action. If you love someone, you will do anything for that person and expect nothing in return.

That's what love is. You don't do things for your own glory, but for God's glory.

It is your aim to please Him. Love is really put to the test when you love someone who is not likable.

It's easy to love people who are lovable, right? But what about the person who is not likable?

Do you pray for those in leadership you don't like? The Bible tells you to. You should hate evil, but we should also pray for people we don't love that aren't lovable.

Since the worldly person is engulfed in one's sinful desires, these are people who do not deny themselves as verse 24 says, but rather indulge their sinful desires.

The goal in life for this first group which traveled on the wide path is their own personal renown and their own personal comfort and their own survival.

They want to preserve their life. When the ship goes down, they want to be on the lifeboat and not go down with the ship.

I remember once when I was a security officer going to a training session, they like to call us security officers because it sounded more important, right?

I was a security guard. That's the other title. The instructor asked the question, who is the most important person in your life?

And his answer was, you are. And I'm thinking, that's not right.

The most important person in your life is not you. God is the most important person in your life.

And since God is the most important person in your life, you count others more significant than yourself as Philippians 2 .3

says. To be a true Christian, this needs to be you. A while back, we looked at the parable of the sower in Matthew 13.

The second seed and the second soil describes professing Christians who fall away over time.

And the reason they fall away is because once they are faced with hardship as a result of being a

Christian, they no longer want to continue as a Christian. These so -called

Christians fall away from Jesus because their highest aim is not to live for Jesus. It's to live for self.

It's about self -preservation. It's about getting the most out of this life. And following Jesus is not getting me the most out of this life.

This talk of denying oneself and taking up one's cross has no appeal. And this is why it's so important to share the whole

Gospel to someone so that people understand what they're signing up for. Otherwise, you have lots of false conversions.

People don't want to say no to their sinful desires and they don't want to face opposition from the world.

To be a Christian means that you will be called all kinds of names. None of them are true, but you will be called them.

And one might even face physical persecution. We have a guy who's coming to speak here in June.

His name is John Harris. He has a podcast called Conversations That Matter. And he is a really solid guy, really solid

Christian guy who has really good discernment about what's going on in the American church.

And we're having him speak here. And I got a message this week from someone saying, why are you inviting that racist to your church?

And I'm thinking, okay, this is a guy who tells the truth and he's called all kinds of names.

And my guess is we'll get more of these calls as we get closer to him coming, okay? Are we gonna revoke the invitation?

You better believe we're not gonna revoke that invitation. He's coming here because he's a good guy who speaks the truth and we can all benefit from hearing from him.

But the point in me bringing this up is that you will hear all kinds of names. None of them are true.

In the first century, they were called haters of mankind. They were called child molesters because adults were meeting with children in the same location.

You're called all kinds of things. You're not. But that's what it means to be a

Christian in this world, in this world that is ruled by Satan. But if the goal is living for this life, then persecution's not an option.

Their eyes are not on heaven, but on having their own personal heaven on earth. Every choice these people make is about them.

There's no cost and the goal in life is ease and comforts and to be liked.

What is important to understand is that the one who wants to avoid difficulty is not qualified to be

Jesus' disciple. That's what Jesus is saying here. If anyone will come after me,

I require this of you. You must deny yourself. You must take up your cross.

And if you don't do that, I won't take you. There's an interesting passage in the

Gospel of John in John chapter two. Jesus did this very thing to people who had supposedly started to follow him.

In John two, verses 23 through 25, the Apostle John writes, many believed in his name when they saw the signs he was doing.

But Jesus on his part did not entrust himself to them because he knew all people.

He needed no one to bear witness about man for he himself knew what was in man. These people thought they were his, but Jesus knew they weren't.

They didn't count the cost. Why did they follow him? He was doing all these miracles. He was the talk of the town.

They wanted to attach themselves to this famous person who was making his way around this region.

And Jesus told them, you don't understand what it means to follow me. You're not denying yourself. You're not taking up your cross.

And so he doesn't consider them his followers. The one who lives for this world cannot be his follower.

To follow Jesus means difficulty. It means being maligned by society. It means saying no to your sin.

It means Satan is constantly throwing his arrows at you. As Ephesians 6 .16 says, it means being a fool for Christ and not wise according to worldly standards.

A number of years ago, there was a documentary put out called Expelled. A number of creationist professors, science professors, were getting let go of their positions.

Why? They didn't believe in evolution. They weren't wise according to worldly standards.

They were fools according to worldly standards. So let's get rid of these people. That's what it means to be a

Christian. But if you want to be safe, cool, accepted, comfortable, then you're not qualified to be one of Jesus' disciples.

That's what he's telling us here. But on the other side, is the one who truly wants to have true life.

These people are willing to go through the hardships to experience this true life because they understand that to follow

Jesus is to save your life. As Jesus once again says in verse 25, whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.

When you give up life in this world, you find true life. What Jesus is saying here is if you want to live forever, then follow

Me. In John 3 .36, Jesus said, whoever believes in Me has eternal life.

And by the way, this eternal life is not just some future event. You have it now as the Holy Spirit dwells with you.

You have eternal life now and you'll have it forever. Jesus says in John 11 .25,

I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in Me, though he dies, yet shall he live.

The Apostle Paul explains this true life very well in Colossians 3 .1 -4 where he writes, if then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above.

Where Christ is. Seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things that are above, not on things that are on earth.

For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory.

Do you remember what Paul said there? Jesus is your life. Sometimes you hear people say, my spouse is my life, or my children are my life, or my job is my life, or my hobbies are my life.

Remember those shirts they used to have? Baseball is life. Or football is life.

What Paul is saying is Jesus is your life. None of these things can be your life.

If they are, they are idols. And you need to repent and make sure Jesus is your life.

Everything in your life will be stripped away from you one day. But if you have Jesus, you have everything.

And that can never be taken away from you. Every human wants happiness.

Every human desires to be fully happy forever. But what Jesus is saying here is that this will only come through Me.

That's His Word. You want to save your life forever? Follow Me. And it means losing your life in this world.

It means denying yourself. It means taking up your cross. But people in this world who try to have it all without Christ do so to their own demise.

In verse 26, Jesus makes this wise observation. What will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?

He's asking a question here. The answer is obvious. There is no profit. It doesn't matter how famous one is or wealthy or powerful.

If you reach the top of the ladder in the world, what good is it for you if you don't have the

Author of life? If you don't have Christ? There are people in this world right now who are multi -billionaires.

Should a Christian envy that person? There are people who are famous and treasured by society.

Should a Christian envy that person? There are people who have reached the top of their fields and have numerous accomplishments to their name.

Should a Christian envy that person? The answer to all these is, of course, no.

If you don't have Jesus, you have nothing. And all that awaits you is an eternity of misery apart from the

Author of life. Then Jesus asks the question in the second half of verse 26,

What shall a man give in return for his soul? What he's saying here is that nothing in the world is worth giving your soul for and neglecting

Christ in the process. There's an old saying that says that sometimes people sell their soul to the devil.

It's true. People throw away their eternity for short -term selfish desires in this life.

This is what the foolish person does. But the wise person has the big picture in mind. The wise person thinks, where am

I going to be 100 years from now? I remember hearing the story of Kirk Cameron.

Of course, Kirk Cameron was a young star. He was on the Growing Pains show in the late 80s and 90s.

And Mike Severson was his name on the show. He became a Christian. And his story is this.

He told people, he said, you know what, I knew that I was one in this statistic.

That's a hard word to say. Ten out of ten people die.

And Kirk Cameron's like, I'm one of them. And so he was wise. He's thinking, well, what do

I do about this? Well, there's only one place to look. Jesus Christ. Ten out of ten people die.

There's 100 % chance, unless, of course, Christ comes first, and you're raptured. But if that doesn't happen, ten out of ten people die.

The wise person listens closely to Jesus' words and says, I want that.

To the one who sincerely wants Jesus to walk with him no matter what, knowing that this is the path of glory, this person

Jesus will gladly take. This is so beautiful.

In John 6 .37, Jesus says, all the Father gives me will come to me.

And whoever comes to me, I will never cast out. If you want

Him, you have Him. No person has ever regretted following Jesus.

But every person will forever regret rejecting Him. To the one who lives for this world, a dark future awaits.

This person will realize that he or she missed the whole point of life. To be in this place, words cannot describe how horrible it is.

What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Jesus describes hell in several places as a future destination where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Some in hell will be sorrowful and others will be sorrowful and angry. This is the lot of the one who tried the game the whole world, but ended up losing everything in the process.

But the one who loses his or her life in this world and in fact gains it in Christ, this person will never lose one's soul, but be bound to Him forever.

Travel down the path where true life is found. The second focus how is through giving up one dream for a better one.

Giving up one dream for a better one. And here's the third and final focus how that you are to travel down the path where true life is found.

And that is by realizing that you will reap what you sow. And we'll see this in verse 27.

To this point, we have seen the cost of following Jesus and how one gains life by following Him and how one loses one's life by rejecting

Him. Now we get to verse 27 where Jesus points ahead to the future event that this world is barreling toward.

Let's read this again. For the Son of Man is going to come with His angels in the glory of His Father, and then

He will repay each person according to what He has done. Now it's always important to read the other two

Gospels that are most like Matthew, which is Luke and Mark. Lots of similarities.

Lots of similar stories in these three Gospels. That's why they're called the Synoptic Gospels.

When you do this, you get more insight into this conversation that Jesus had with His disciples and the crowd that surrounded

Him. In Mark 8 .38, Jesus says this after calling people to deny oneself and take up one's cross.

He says, For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the

Son of Man also be ashamed when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels.

I find this interesting. What does the Lord Jesus think about the world we live in? Well, we just found out. Adulterous and sinful generation.

That describes the unbelieving world very well. And what He's saying here, that if you're cowardly in this pathetic, adulterous, sinful world,

I'm going to be ashamed of you as well. Luke says that.

Mark says that. And in our text, He's talking about the Son of Man coming.

So this is the period of the final judgment when the Son of Man comes to the earth. And He gives everyone each according to what

He is due. Putting this together,

He's talking about the final judgment. At the final judgment, everyone's works will be evaluated.

Maybe the most sobering verse in the Bible. I know that I say there's a lot of sobering verses, but Revelation 20, verse 12, tells us that all of our works are being written down.

The believer's works are being written down. The unbeliever's works are being written down. And at the final judgment, you're going to see whether you're truly a believer or whether you're not.

Okay, so if you have a profession of faith, but there's no works, it's going to show. Because your works show whether you're saved.

And the unbeliever's works will show that this person did not know Christ. That this person did not take up their cross.

That this person did not deny Him or herself. Based on the life that people lived, verse 27 tells us that He will repay each person according to what

He has done. This is such an important reality for each of us to understand.

Everyone gets what they deserve. Now, in one sense, all of us deserve hell. But once you come to faith in Christ, Jesus will reward you for your faithfulness.

That's such a marvelous truth of Scripture. You will be rewarded for the good works that you do. Not every experience in heaven will be the same.

The more faithful you are, the better it'll be. The less faithful you are, the less you will receive. This is how

God works. He's fair. He gives people what they deserve. Same thing in hell.

Some people will have a greater punishment in hell. Think about Adolf Hitler. His punishment will be great.

But then think about the person who didn't cause a lot of damage maybe, but they never believed in Christ.

That person will receive a light beating. The more severe person will receive a severe beating. God gives people what they deserve.

But what Jesus focuses on by talking about being ashamed and not ashamed of Him is allegiance.

To whom is your allegiance? And does this allegiance show in your life?

I remember reconnecting with a child friend about 10 years ago. We were both runners, so we went on a run together.

And we started to talk about lots of things, but eventually the conversation turned to that which matters. I talked to him about where his faith was at, and it was clear that he was no longer a biblical

Christian. This was someone who grew up in the church, was involved in Bible quizzing, went to a

Christian college, but it was clear from our conversation that he had walked away from the

Lord. He still held on to a form of Christianity, but it was a worldly version of Christianity, not biblical

Christianity. What I remember telling him is that my allegiance is to Christ. I remember that moment.

I made it clear to him. My allegiance is to the Lord Jesus Christ, and his was not.

It was so real in that moment. There were only two ways to live. Either you are not ashamed of Christ or you are.

The total body of your life will show where your true allegiance lies. Now, I just mentioned that I was not ashamed of Christ, but before I paint too good of a picture about myself, there's been lots of times where I have been ashamed of Christ.

Where an open door was given to me and I haven't talked about Christ where I should have. True Christians do have moments where they are ashamed of Christ in his words, but there will be clear evidence from outsiders that this person is a

Christian. Imagine an unbeliever who knows

Mike Braun, for example. And you ask this person, does Mike follow

Jesus? They'll say, of course he does. Look at his life. He talks to us about him.

He lives it. The same can be said of so many of you in this room. If you are not ashamed of Christ and his words, it will show.

What this means is that all Christians, in some sense, are public about their faith. Your relationship with Christ means that much to you that it will be shown in your life.

As Paul said in Colossians 3 -4, Jesus is your life. Think about the time when you meet your spouse, for those of you who are married, and you just want to tell people about how wonderful your spouse is.

You're so excited to tell people because you love your spouse. Same thing with Jesus. You love

Christ, and you just want to tell people. And if people ask you, are you a Christian? Yes, I am.

And it's the most important thing in my life. I want you to know that. And what you are showing is that I am not ashamed of Jesus Christ.

Romans 1 -16 says, I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God to those who believe.

Why does Paul say that, by the way? Because the guy he follows, Jesus, was just brutally murdered on the cross decades before he wrote this.

And of course, Romans are thinking, oh, the one you follow, the God you follow was crucified. And of course, they don't understand the meaning of the cross.

But Paul is saying, I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God to those who believe.

But this is not so for the unbeliever. The one who rejects Christ wholeheartedly is showing that he or she is ashamed of Him.

The ashamed hear about whom people say that He is. They hear about His teaching, but they reject it.

They don't think it's worth it to follow Him because this means giving up one's dreams in the world.

It means giving up one's comfort and giving up the applause of the world that people so desperately want to receive.

I want these mainstream media outlets to love me. Some of these

Christian compromisers, I tell you, the worst day of their life is if MSNBC insulted them.

I mean, to be frank, that'd be quite a badge of honor to be insulted by a godless company like that.

What is interesting is that the more one is in love with the world, the harder it will be to leave the world behind.

Can you imagine an A -list actor in Hollywood becoming a Christian? I mentioned

Kirk Cameron. He did it. Hard to do. I'm not sure if he was ever an A -list actor, but he was pretty popular.

The world has those people in the palm of their hands. They worship them. They have their stars in Hollywood.

To follow Christ would be to give up all that fame and all that worship from the world.

But every unbeliever belongs to the world at some level. In order to follow

Christ, you have to give that up. To the one who loves the world,

Jesus means nothing to this person. They are ashamed of Him, as Jesus says in the parallel passages in Mark and Luke.

The unbeliever will never speak well of Jesus in front of others. Never defend Him if His name is defamed.

Never stand for righteousness. Never tell people how wonderful He is. They do this because they have supposedly chosen something better, something happier, something more wise according to worldly standards, something more acceptable by mainstream society.

And what is interesting is that Jesus is saying all unbelievers are cowards.

That's the most fascinating thing I noticed in this passage. This is what he chose to talk about here.

The litmus test of whether you're a true believer is, do you have courage? Do you love

Christ? Are you willing to display Him in public? Or are you a coward? You would never defend

Him. Never speak well of Him. There's a lot of phony Christians who are in this unbelieving category.

They might have the name of Christ attached to them, but they're ashamed of Him. And it shows of all the things

Jesus could have mentioned here, He chooses the issue of courage. Do you stand for me when it counts?

Or do you throw me under the bus? Do you throw my words under the bus?

When you're asked, is homosexuality a sin? You say, yes, because Jesus' word says it is.

You don't bounce around the bush trying to survive and look good in front of the world.

Because if you stand for Christ, you're going to stand for what He taught. At the end of the day, this is what unbelievers are described as.

Revelation 21, verses 7 and 8. The one who conquers will have this heritage. And I will be his

God and he will be my son. But as for the cowardly... Okay, look at the list that this is next to.

The cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.

All unbelievers are cowards. What's interesting, though, you might say, well,

I know some people are unbelievers who have courage, but when push comes to shove, when it comes to the most important issue in the world, what do you do with Jesus?

They will not stand for Him. They will not stand for Him. Look at a guy like Ben Shapiro.

We agree with a lot of his politics, right? This is a conservative man. Ben Shapiro is a coward.

Why is he a coward? Because he denies Jesus Christ. Okay? I mean, just to be frank with you, he might not be cowardly in some areas, but on the most important issue, he is.

And let's pray for him, by the way. Pray that he would no longer be that way. Right now, he is. But pray that he would come to know

Christ in the future and many others. The sin of cowardice is put aside all these other sins.

In a country that is sliding further and further from Christianity, the sin of cowardice can be seen in more abundance than ever.

What we are seeing in our country is that people are showing to whom their true allegiance lies. And one observation is that the path is narrow.

How many people will stand for Jesus? How many people will not compromise on His word? Lots of people are ashamed of Christ, and a much smaller number are not ashamed.

We need to say, you know what? I don't care what you say about me. I am not ashamed of Christ. I am not ashamed of the gospel.

I am not ashamed of the whole counsel of God. But what

Jesus says is that both cowardice and faithfulness are observed by Him. This has been written down in books in heaven.

He is keeping track and He will punish and He will reward based on people's allegiance. A man indeed reaps what he sows.

Galatians 6, verses 7 and 8, Do not be deceived. God is not mocked. For whatever one sows, that will he also reap.

For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption. But the one who sows to the

Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life. You can't fool God. If you lived a faithful life,

He notices that. If you lived a faithless, cowardly life, He notices that too.

Each one will get what they deserve, as verse 27 clearly says. So, to summarize this sermon, travel down the path where true life is found.

And in this Tuesday Sunday sermon, we've seen three focuses how, through setting a pattern of daily obedience, giving up one dream for a better one, and as we have just seen, realizing that you will reap what you sow.

In this fallen world that we all live in, Jesus lays this out clearly. The wise choose

Jesus to gain life, while fools go their own way to their own destruction.

Now, next Sunday, we will look at the beginning of chapter 17, where Jesus shows

His glory to a few of His disciples. And to whet your appetite, let's read the first verse at the end of this chapter that leads its way into this glorious event known as the

Transfiguration. In verse 28, Jesus says, Truly I say to you, there are some staying in here who will not taste death until they see the

Son of Man coming in this kingdom. This event, we will look at next

Sunday. But this time, let's bow our heads in prayer. Father in heaven, what a wonderful God You are.

We give You praise. Lord, help us not to be cowards. Help us to stand with You.

Help us to choose the path where it is losing our life in this world. That we would not live for this life.

That we would not live for praise. That we would not live for the comfort that would come avoiding conflict for being a

Christian. But that we would live a life sold out for You, surrendered to You, and that You would be glorified in the life that we live.

So I pray that this challenge, Lord, that everyone here would take that up and live this and be encouraged by this.