Character Study: Simon of Cyrene

Simon of Cyrene in the Synoptic Gospels

Okay, so we're doing a character study, and there's a cross there, so who do you think we're going to be studying this morning? Jesus, okay, that's a good. That's a good one. Who else? Us. How about Simon of Cyrene?

Who is.

Simon of Cyrene? All right, anybody know? He carried the cross of Jesus for a little while. So this morning in this study, I'd like to do two things, accomplish two things. First, I want to learn about Simon of Cyrene.

Right, and then at the same time, I want to model how we do Bible study, because there's not a lot of information about Simon of Cyrene in the scriptures. So I want to show how we pull the scriptures out, what we do in looking at the scriptures, and then the questions we ask in order to come to some conclusions.

So the first verse that we hear about Simon is in Mark 15 21, and it says,. And they compelled a passerby, Simon of Cyrene, who was coming in from the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to carry his cross.

Okay, so that gives us a little bit of information about Simon. Now, we're going to add to it, Matthew 27 32. As they went out, they found a man of Cyrene, Simon by name. They compelled this man to carry his cross.

A little bit more information. Luke 23 26. As they led him away, they seized one Simon of Cyrene, who was coming in from the country, and laid on him the cross to carry it behind Jesus. All right, so we have three separate verses about Simon, and each one of them give us a little bit of information to chew on.

And then, although John doesn't mention Simon, he does say this, So he, Pilate, delivered him, Jesus, over to them to be crucified. So they took Jesus, and he went out, bearing his own cross to the place called the place of a skull, which in Aramaic is called Golgotha.

Okay, so that gives us a little bit more information with regards to the cross and where they were going with it. So, what do we know about Simon of Cyrene? So what I did was I looked at those three verses, and I said, okay, what information can I pull out of that?

Well, number one, his name is Simon, and he was from Cyrene. Pretty easy to understand that, right? He was just passing by. Think about that. He had two sons, Alexander and Rufus. More information. He was coming in from the country.

So maybe his direction is going to play a part in what we know about him. He was seized and compelled to carry the cross of Christ. This wasn't voluntary. He had the cross laid on him. He walked behind Jesus.

Is his position behind Jesus significant? We'll see. The cross was brought to Golgotha, and really, this is all we really know about Simon of Cyrene. Not much. I mean, is there anything I missed? I mean, it's possible I missed some stuff based on those three verses, but I think we can safely conclude that these facts that I pulled out of those three verses are true.

So, and then this is important. His name is never mentioned again after the crucifixion, nor in any of the epistles. So after this event, there's no more mention of Simon. Is that done on purpose? Okay, so when we do Bible study, we look at these verses, we come up with a list of facts, things that we know that the scripture positively says about Simon, and then we start asking questions, right?

Pastor Jensen was a Suffolk County detective. His job was to ask questions, keep the person talking, keep getting information out of the purp, so that you know, you can ascertain more of what actually happened at the crime scene.

So I came up with a list of questions, and we'll go through them, and at the end, I'm going to ask you, are there any more questions that you might want to ask? So one question I want to ask is, was Simon there for the Passover or something else?

Right? This was the time of the Passover, and now they're bringing Jesus to the cross, but why was Simon there? Was he there to celebrate the Passover? Was he doing something else in that area? Something I want to know.

Was he living nearby, or did he travel there from Cyrene? Was he a resident of Jerusalem, or somewhere close, or did he come all the way from Cyrene, which is the northern part of Africa? We'll look at that in a second.

Did he travel all that way to get here? Was his direction, coming in from the country, significant? Why didn't Jesus carry the cross the whole way? All right, so that doesn't pertain to Simon necessarily, but if Simon picked up the cross, well, wasn't Jesus supposed to carry the cross?

Why didn't he carry the cross the whole way? Why pick Simon if there were other people around? I mean, there were crowds of people as, after they scourged Jesus, and as they walked him out on the way to Golgotha, there was a bunch of people.

Why Simon? Why specifically just him? Was Simon's position behind Jesus, walking behind him, was that important? Why did Mark mention Simon's sons, Alexander and Rufus? Why mention this guy's sons, who no one in the scripture knows up until this point, nor has he mentioned any point after this.

Why did John mention Golgotha? Hmm. Why is Simon of Cyrene, his name, not mentioned ever again in the scripture? Why did God give us this account? What is he trying to tell us? Now, we know that God has a purpose for every word in the scriptures, and he doesn't waste any words, right?

So he gives us his word for a reason, but we're also cautioned to not go beyond what is written. So although we can speculate on some of these answers, okay, we want to know what the scripture says and how the scripture answers these questions.

So let me ask you, are there any other questions that I didn't list that you would ask? I mean, I don't necessarily think I exhausted the amount of questions we could ask. There's probably other questions out there.

Yes, Jerry? Why are we told so little, right? The absence of his name going forward may actually be telling us something, right? So let's see. Let's explore these questions and see what we can conclude.

Simon's Origins, Direction, and the Meaning of Compulsion

So first, I'm going to go through the first two quickly. Was Simon there for the Passover or something else? Was he living nearby or did he have to travel to Jerusalem from Cyrene? To be honest, the scripture doesn't answer either of these questions conclusively.

There's no definitive answer that he traveled there or that he was from that region or he was there to celebrate the Passover. Simon was from Cyrene. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John each say he was of Cyrene, a city with a population close to 5 ,000.

It's in the region of Cyrenasia, a coastal town on the Mediterranean Sea. Cyrene contained a number of Jewish settlers and it is listed among the nations in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost. People from Cyrene heard Peter preach as if in their own language.

I think that's significant because this would tell us that there were Jews who lived in Cyrene, who traveled to Jerusalem and were there at Pentecost. They were there because they were celebrating the Passover.

This was 50 days after the ascension of Jesus. So they were in that area. So there were Jewish people in Cyrene. Yes. So yeah, there would be people from all different nations. So Cyrene was one of those nations.

We don't know. Again, it doesn't say specifically Simon traveled to Jerusalem from Cyrene. We don't know. It doesn't say that he didn't live in Jerusalem. It doesn't tell us. So I don't want to go that far and speculate because that's going to cause us to fall into error.

Cyrene sits in modern day Libya on the northern tip of Africa. So many conclude that Simon was a dark-skinned man, but we cannot know for sure because the Bible is not definitive about his race. Look, there's many people, there's many dark-skinned people who were born in America, right?

That doesn't mean that they're from Africa or some other India or some other place where dark-skinned people are born. They may be of African or Indian descent, but it doesn't mean they weren't born in America.

So maybe Simon was born in Jerusalem or somewhere in Israel. We don't know. Simon may have been African, but he could have been a transplanted Jew or of some other descent. Scripture does not say and we must not assert something unintended by the writers of Scripture.

So this is not an avenue that we should go down to start discerning biblical truth from. Let's go on to the next question. Was his direction coming in from the country significant? Now I say yes, it must have some significance.

God wouldn't put it there if it didn't. If Jesus is going out of the city and toward the country, uphill to Golgotha, and Simon is coming in from the country and walking toward the city, he's coming downhill and they're walking directly towards one another.

This is kind of like going to be a head-to-head type situation. Either way, they're walking towards one another. Golgotha is on the way up. Wherever he is in the country is coming the other way. They're going to come head on.

So assuming Jesus is walking up and Simon is walking down, what do we hear about walking up and walking down in the Scriptures? Where did they usually go down into? What else? In the Old Testament, they went down into Egypt.

You go up into Israel. What about Jonah? He descended down in the ship. Anytime you hear somebody's descending down, it's always a sign of sin. Jonah going down, he's hiding from God. You're going down into Egypt, you're going back to the place where you were delivered from.

We sing songs of ascent. You're going up to Jerusalem, you're climbing up the mountain, you're moving towards God. Then their paths meet and Simon is seized and compelled to carry Jesus' cross in the opposite direction.

He was coming in one way, now he's going to carry the cross and go the opposite direction. In other words, he had a change of course that he wasn't expecting, nor did he choose this by his own free will.

His direction was downhill, but now it's uphill. Or if you want to say from the side, whatever. He's going in a different direction than he intended to go. He did it about face. Now, there's certain things that we can infer, maybe not concretely, but think about when we talk about the man born blind in John chapter 9.

He was born blind, yet he could see, understand who Jesus was. The Jews in chapter 8 who had physical sight could see who Jesus was, but didn't know who he was. So they had physical sight, but couldn't see spiritually.

The man born blind didn't have physical sight, but he saw spiritually who Jesus was because it was revealed to him. And we think about Peter walking on the water. Does the teach us explicitly that when Peter took his eyes off Jesus and focused on the waves, that that's why he fell into the water?

No, but it's an implication. So in this case, if we see Simon coming down into the city and Jesus walking up, he does a 180 and now he's walking towards Golgotha, not away from it. Could that be a sign of repentance of what happens to somebody?

They're seized, they're compelled to now carry the cross and follow Jesus? Possible. So why didn't Jesus carry the cross the whole way? What do you guys think? Why? Scourging. Right, exactly. So after being beaten and scourged the way Jesus was, he was probably barely able to walk.

Scourging in many cases led to death. Some people didn't even survive the scourging. He would not make it to the cross if he had to carry it by himself. This is a reminder to us that Jesus is truly human.

Right? We often, and because we're fighting so many different cults that deny the deity of Jesus, we're constantly fighting, Jesus was God, Jesus was God. And we almost do that and forget he was truly a man also.

He learned obedience through suffering, the scripture said. He was tempted in every way, but didn't sin. So we can relate to Jesus because we're humans. This is a perfect picture of the fact that Jesus couldn't get to the cross in his humanity.

Jesus was Emmanuel, God with us. He was the creator of all things, Colossians 1 .16. Through him, all things were created, things on heaven and earth, visible and invisible, thrones, dominions, rulers, authorities, all things were created by him and for him.

Right? And he is the one who carries our burdens, Psalm 55. And he also emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men, and being found in human form. He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Right? This is the king of the universe, taking on flesh, coming into the world, and now he can't even get to the cross in his humanity. If Jesus didn't go to the cross, we didn't still be in our sins.

God wouldn't be sovereign, prophecy would have been broken, and God would not be God. So in God's providence, he places Simon in that place to carry the cross beam up the hill for Jesus. So does that mean we participate in our salvation?

No. Right? That's an honor to carry the cross of Jesus. And guess what? He didn't want to do it. Who would want to do it? No one. Right? It's an honor to carry the cross. And guess what? This also tells us that what we do matters.

Right? What we do in this life matters for eternity. I'm sick of people who say, well, God is sovereign, it doesn't matter. It does matter. You're going to be held responsible for your obedience to the moral will of God.

Don't think that, well, because God's sovereign, you're going to get away with doing something because, well, that's what he decreed me to do. He didn't decree you to sin, you chose to sin. You're going to be held responsible for that.

So don't get into that mindset, well, because God is sovereign, I can do whatever I want, it's according to his will. You're going to be held responsible for what the scriptures teach you. So don't think like that.

So in God's providence, he uses Simon to facilitate Jesus getting to the cross. Think about this also. The bride of Christ is to be what? A suitable helpmate like Eve was to Adam. So here you have a picture of Simon being called to carry the cross, which helps Jesus get to Golgotha, eventually be crucified, and pay for the sins of the world.

So we, in a certain sense, when we're given the commission to go into all the nations, teaching them everything to do, we're a suitable helpmate. We're co-laborers with Christ. And in that way, God uses his church to bring the kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.

Jesus will also tell us, Luke 9, and he said to all, if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

Now, I don't know any human being on the planet who would voluntarily do this. I think God, because he's God and because we're depraved, needs to change our hearts first to give us that desire to do this.

I don't know any human being apart from the Holy Spirit who says, woohoo, I want to die to self. Every one of them says, I want to live for me. YOLO, you only live once, right? He who dies with the most toys wins.

You got bumper stickers like that, right? So we all live in this world trying to feed ourselves and get it all in before we go, but not the Christian, not the Christian who was called to pick up his own cross daily.

Is there anybody in here who feels like you're walking uphill with a big cross on your shoulders, getting ready to die? It's like every day, especially on Long Island. It's tough, tough, but when we do this, we know who we're following, right?

He'll also say in Luke 14, whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. There goes the health, wealth, and prosperity gospel. You have to bear your own cross, and if you don't, you can't be his disciple.

Matthew 10, whoever does not take the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. We truly, truly have to die to self. Difficult to understand? No. Difficult to swallow? Yes. Apart from the Holy Spirit? Impossible, right?

We need the Spirit's help to subdue our desires and live for God's desires. John 12, 25, whoever loses his life, whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.

If anyone serves me, he must follow me. John Gill says something really good. He says, one of the most profound paradoxes in Christianity is to be found in the fact that the one who was not able to carry his own cross is the one who enables us to carry ours.

We all in this life have difficulties, and we have a cross to carry. We are to bring the name of Jesus wherever we go, and in dying, we have eternal life. We are to die to self. We know that the world is catechizing us every day, and they're saying, live for self, live for self.

Jesus is telling you, do not live for yourself. Live for the kingdom. Yes. Yes. Again, I tell people all the time, and they say, how could you say that? I would never choose Christianity. Never. Apart from God's spirit.

Why? Bless my enemy? Bless and not persecute? Die to self? Forgive those who persecute me? No. I'm not choosing that. I want vengeance. I want them to get what they're due, but in that mindset, obviously, if they get what they're due, I'm going to get what I'm due.

Again, Christianity turns that on its head. No, no, no, no, no. The me, Jesus, the king of kings, right? God in heaven takes on flesh to become like you, to die in your place. You need to do the same for others.

I don't think any human being in their natural sinful state is going to choose that. Yes, Jerry. The next two questions we want to ask and answer, why pick Simon if there were other people around, and was Simon's position behind Jesus important?

Why Simon Was Chosen and What His Position Behind Jesus Means

Yeah, I would, again, God's telling us that for a reason. So the scripture does not say why God picked Simon of Cyrene to carry the cross, but we do know that God chose him and has a purpose for all things.

So here's my question for you. If you're a Christian, do you know why God chose you? Anybody know why God chose you? He has a purpose, sure. Five letters. If you're a Christian, it's by grace, right? Some people say grace is God's riches at Christ's expense.

Grace is the unmerited favor of God. This was not something you decided or came up with on your own. Hey, you know what? I'm going to follow Jesus. This is a great idea. That's the complete antithesis of everything that your sinful heart wants.

God has to go in and change your sinful heart first so that you now see who Jesus is, you recognize and see your own sinfulness, and then you cry out and cling to the only solution there is, Christ. So the only reason God chose Simon is because he had a purpose, and obviously we're going to find out that Simon does become a Christian.

Simon's position behind Jesus is intentional. This is a picture of follow me, pick up your cross, and follow me. All the disciples of Jesus are called to pick up their crosses and follow him. Yes? Could you imagine the things Simon saw and heard on the way to the cross walking behind Jesus?

The mocking, the cursing, the crying, and maybe even Jesus praying. Maybe as he's walking up that hill, he's praying, and Simon hears Jesus' prayers. Maybe he hears Jesus blessing people and not reviling them, right?

Remember he said to the women on the side, daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and your children. He's not even concerned about himself at that point. He's telling them, weep for yourself.

If you don't have a savior, you're still in your sins. Imagine carrying the cross behind Jesus, like Jerry said, with his blood all over his back, stumbling. Maybe he was talking, we don't know, but imagine just that view, walking behind him all the way up that hill till Golgotha, all because he was coming in from the country.

He was a passerby. Yes. So John 8 tells us again, Jesus spoke to them saying, not that this wasn't on his way to the cross, but he said, I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.

So walking behind Jesus, right? Seeing these things, knowing that you're going to, you're following him, but it's going to, it's going to lead to the light, not darkness. All right, let's move on. Why did Mark mention Simon's sons, Alexander and Rufus?

There's a reason for the space given to Simon in Luke's account. Simon of Cyrene became a Christian and followed Christ. All three synoptic gospels give the impression that Simon was both unknown and coerced into carrying the cross beam.

Yet Mark's gospel lists the name of Simon's sons, Alexander and Rufus. Now, why do you think he would do that? Yeah. Okay, let's go. Mark would not have named Simon's sons had he not subsequently come to know Simon.

And why would he have gotten to know Simon unless Simon became a follower of Christ? Okay. So Mark is writing this gospel after the crucifixion, right? He now knows that Simon has two sons. How would he know that he has two sons if he was just observing the crucifixion?

He must have spoke to Simon after the crucifixion because Simon came to the disciples, right? He became known to the disciples. Mark is writing this to a Roman audience, and we're going to see that in a second.

So the people in Rome would have known who Alexander and Rufus are. The church would have easily recognized their names. If Mark's putting them there, the people who he wrote the letter to would know the names of these people.

Ken Hughes says this, and this is the man who wrote Disciplines of a Godly Man. He says, significantly, Mark's gospel, which lists Simon's sons, was written to the church in Rome. And in Romans 16, 13, Paul writes, greet Rufus, chosen in the Lord, and his mother, who has been a mother to me too.

Simon's family may well have ended up as pillars of the church in Rome. Now elsewhere, the scriptures mention Alexander, but not in a good way. Alexander and Hymenaeus, who teach that the resurrection happened already.

Now, no one knows if that's the actual son of Simon. Alexander was a very common name at that point. So it may or may not have been one of Simon's sons. But Rufus is not a common name. And obviously, since Mark was in Rome when he wrote that letter, wrote the Gospel of Mark, and this was written to Romans, they would know Rufus's name.

He sends his greetings to them at the end. What we have here is a huge surprise of sovereign grace during one of the most outwardly and helpless moments of Christ's life. Simon of Cyrene happened upon the gruesome parade at the precise moment of Christ's extremity.

He was forced to carry the loathsome cross beam, unwillingly saw every movement, and heard every word of Jesus who staggered before him, observed the execution, and at some time during that day, or the following days, believed in Jesus Christ.

Amazing grace coming into the country as Jesus was walking out of the city, opposite directions. And think about what happened with Simon. He becomes a follower of Christ, and what happens to his children?

We know at least Rufus became a Christian. What does a faithful father, how he models that to his children, what does that say? Right? That Rufus became a Christian. Yes. Definitely. There's two other places in Scripture that talk about the word compel.

One is in Ezekiel 36, right? I will write my laws upon your heart and compel you to follow them. And then what does he say about the wedding feast when the guests of the bride don't want to come? He says, go out, grab people, and compel them to come in.

And here we see that same word compel. I don't know if it's the exact same word in Greek, but it's the same connotation. Yes. See, those are the questions that as you're reading through the Scriptures and you're starting to unearth what God is telling us, that you want to write down.

That's a great question. Who was it that compelled him? Was it the soldiers? Was it the crowd? Who compelled him to do this? Right? So let's move on to our next question. Those are good questions. Why did John, who doesn't mention Simon, why did he mention Golgotha?

And Golgotha is only mentioned in John's Gospel. Golgotha is called the place of the skull. That's what the Scripture tells us. Why? Christ cutting, yeah, we're going to get to that. Definitely. What is the prefix Gol?

What is, what might that refer us to? All right, let me just tell you. Golgotha is just a contraction of Goliath of Gath, Goli of Gath. All right. In 1 Samuel 17, it says that David took the head of Goliath to Jerusalem.

But since Jerusalem was to be a holy city, this dead corpse, obviously the head of Goliath, would not have been set up inside the city, but someplace outside. The Mount of Olives was right in front of the city, first kings and second kings, and a place of ready access.

Jesus was crucified at the place where Goliath's head had been exhibited. That's, James Jordan comes up with that. So think about it. Goli of Gath, Goliath, okay. Jesus is climbing the hill of Golgotha.

What's it prophesied in Genesis 3 .15 that the seed of the woman was going to do? Crush the head of the serpent. And what does he do at the cross? Even as his foot was bruised, he was crushing the enemy's head.

As he was being crucified, he defeats Satan. Yes. It could, right, I don't know that Scripture says that the skull was there and it pierced it. Oh, symbolically? Oh, yeah, of course. Yeah, this was the fulfillment of the prophecy.

This is where Jesus crushes the head of the serpent, right? Now the ruler of this world has been judged, right? He was judged at the cross, found guilty. This is it. His doom is sealed. Definitely, right?

Exactly. And he severs the head, right? This head is severed from the body, right? And watch what happens at the end of Romans. In Romans 16, right after Paul says to greet Rufus and his mother, he says, the God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet.

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Now, when Mark's writing this, the crucifixion has taken place already, right? This might be him talking about what's going to happen in 70 AD. So the question is, well, was Satan defeated at the cross or was he defeated at 70 AD?

What do you guys think? Yes. Great, great answer. And that was Pastor Jensen, just in case you're watching the video and you didn't know who gave that very intelligent, stimulating answer. Yes. Okay, why yes?

What are we told about our salvation? Right, so we have been saved, we are being saved, and we will be saved. So Satan was judged and defeated. The ongoing stomping of his head goes on and will culminate in the ultimate fulfillment of him being cut off from the rest of us, right?

So every time we evangelize or we help the poor or we do something, we're bringing the kingdom to earth, right? And that's the ongoing stomping of Satan and his influence on the earth, right? So yes, Satan was defeated at the cross.

Him and his minions were put to open display of shame, but the ongoing stomping continues. And we get to do that as Christians. We get to tread on his head. Okay, let's continue on. Why is Simon of Cyrene never mentioned again?

Now, we talked about this earlier with a couple of the guys. We talked about what's the most favorite word any person wants to hear? Their own name, right? Listen to this. In her article, Why Hearing Your Own Name Might Be Just the Sweetest Sound Ever, Anna Gallagher says, first things first, hearing your name is literally causing a chemical reaction inside your brain.

Feel-good hormones such as dopamine and serotonin are released into your brain when your ears encode that your name has just been said aloud. The burst of excitement makes people happy and sends unconscious signals such as empathy, trust, and compassion to the unconscious brain, right?

So the sinful man, right, with the sinful heart, self-centered, what does he want to hear? Me. It's about me. Meology, right? All unconverted sinners are all about me, self-centered. They love meology.

They want to know, oh, is this about me? How does this make me feel? And we also talked about Dale Carnegie. According to human behavior expert Dale Carnegie, remember that a person's name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.

If you want to show that you care, whether it be a new friend you meet or a future boss that interviewed you, dropping their name mid-conversation will definitely send a spark of interest from you to that person.

I think it's very caring to use people's names, especially if you're getting to know them. If you're witnessing to an unbeliever, you want them to know that you care about them and you take notice of who they are.

But why would Simon of Cyrene's name never be mentioned again? What is that to prevent? Right. The attention may go to Simon. Think about this. The first step in dying to self is wanting to hear the name of Jesus before your own.

Like I want to be known as a guy who loved Jesus. Jesus was first. Think about what Paul says. Like in all of his letters, Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus. Like I often ask myself when I walk into a room, like do I say this, hi I'm Anthony, a servant of Christ Jesus.

Do I put God's name out there right away? I don't do that. At this point we don't even know, did he even know who Jesus was? He may not have even known who Jesus was, right? So for him, for this event to happen, for their paths to cross, again this is God's sovereign providence, and putting him in the position to follow Jesus, carry the cross, and his family to become some kind of member of the church in Rome that would contribute to the ongoing stomping of Satan's head is amazing.

I like what a missionary by the name of Nicholas Zissendorf says. He says preach the gospel, die, and be forgotten. Why? Because it's not about us. This is about magnifying and glorifying the name of God.

What story in the Bible talks about a people who tried to make a name for themselves? The Tower of Babel. And what did God do? He squashed that. He dispersed them. He made them babbling fools, right? And then what does he do at Pentecost?

He gathers all these people together, and what did the apostles say that they hear him? They hear them saying, praising the name of God in all these other languages, right? So now it stopped from being about them, so now he gathers them back, and who is it about?

It's about him. They're praising his name. We have to be people who are remembered for what? Praising his name so that it doesn't draw attention to us but draws their attention to him. That's what this story is really all about.

Yes, it's a very dangerous thing. Listen, you know, I guess in the past 30, 40 years we live in a day and age of celebrity pastors, right? That's so dangerous. You don't want to be bringing accolades and glory to your name when it's really about him.

Now, I think there are certain men who are pillars, an R .C. Sproul, a John MacArthur, a Billy Graham. These are men who are called to a specific ministry, and yeah, their name is known, but they'll be the first ones to tell you it's not about me, right?

It's about God. But there's other people who are trying to draw people because of their personality and because of their giftings to their church, when in reality it's Jesus' church. It's all about him, and I just like, preach the gospel, die, and be forgotten.

You know, again, it's a double-edged sword, because you've got to take this in context. Like the pastor says all the time, you know, if our church wasn't here anymore, would the people around us, would the community around us be upset?

Well, we want them to know we're here, but we want them to know what our lives are centered on, right? Because it's not about us. It's not about our church. It's about God's church worldwide, right? We're a small part of what God is doing around the globe.

Praise God. So, we want them to know the God of the church, not the church itself, the name, the fellowship, right? We're also told he must increase, but I must decrease, right? As we walk longer and longer with the Lord, we should see less of us and more of him.

Dying to Self, the Cross, and the Glory of Christ

Okay, so why did God give us this account? What's he telling us? Luke 9, and he said to all, if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it.

Whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul? We want to magnify the name of Jesus. Philippians 2, this paragraph captures the whole essence of what God actually did.

If there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, and being in full accord and of one mind, right?

So, any of you suffering today, any of you going through trials, tribulations, there's any encouragement in Christ, do this. Do nothing from selfless ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.