Sermon Tone Analysis

*Intro* – Remember Richie Hebner?

Played 3rd for the Pirates and Phils in 70’s and 80’s.

He was a gravedigger off-season and proud of it.

He once said, “I’m good at it.

In 10 years no one’s ever dug out of one of my graves yet!” Impressive, right?

I wish I could say the same.

When we accept Christ, He makes a new creation inside us.

Paul says in Rom 6:6, “We know that our old self was crucified with him.”

So, if I am a new me, and the old me was crucified with Christ, why does that old me keep digging itself out of its grave?

Do you have the same issue?

If you’re honest, you know you do.

So did Paul.

He says in Rom 7:19, “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.”

That old self keeps kicking off the dirt and getting out of the grave.

What is going on?

I thought the old me was dead!

Well, Paul answers, but first we must understand that death in the Bible doesn’t mean cease to exist.

It means separation.

The old me is dead in that we’re no longer joined at the hip!

It’s not who I am.

BUT I can still choose to give him control.

Rom 6:6: “We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.” Death to self doesn’t mean old self ceases to exist; it means we are no longer slaves to it.

That means there is a war going on inside every believer all the time.

Our old self, the flesh, wars against our new self – both vying to get our will to obey them.

God says it this way in Gal 5:17, “For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.”

We are war with our old self.

It turns out we are not very good grave diggers.

He keeps kicking the dirt off!

So what are we to do? Jesus tells us: “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.”

To be truly saved is costly.

It cost God the Father His Son.

It cost God the Son a life of suffering and a devastating physical and spiritual death to pay for our sins.

It costs us, in simple terms, ourselves.

To be truly saved requires 3 things of us.

Deny self.

Take up our cross daily.

Follow Him.

*III.

What Must I Do?*

*A.

Deny Myself*

At some point in time I renounce my old self in favor of His new creation and an unseen, unfelt, spiritual miracle takes place inside me.

I become a new creation.

But it does not end there.

That commitment is only the beginning.

For to be truly saved is to be truly changed.

It’s just like getting married.

It takes as long as it takes to say “I do” to make the commitment.

But life is never the change thereafter.

When you leave that church, you have a new identity.

*B.

Take Up My Cross Daily*

“Take up” is another point in time action.

But this action is to happen daily.

Jesus followers must take up their cross daily.

Why?

Because once I’ve actually accepted Christ, the battle begins in earnest.

Was it difficult to accept Christ in the first place?

Well, get ready.

That battle was nothing compared to what comes next.

Now the old self and the new self go to war.

And followers of Christ crucify the old self daily.

So what does that mean?

*1.

What it Does Not Mean*

Well, it doesn’t mean life’s hardships.

We often talk of life’s adversity as one’s cross.

So, for example, people talk about their job, or boss, or junker of a car, or mother-in-law, or arthritis as their cross to bear.

Any hardship gets this definition.

And life does throw us curves that are difficult to deal with – hard to bear.

But that’s not what Jesus means here.

Yes, we have to deal with those tough circumstances.

But that is not what it means to take up our cross daily.

*2.

What It Does Mean*

“Take up your cross daily,” would have conjured up a vivid image.

They knew crucifixion was the most painful and humiliating type of execution known to man.

It was used by the hated Romans specifically for the worst kinds of criminals – foreigners, enemies of the state, rebellious slaves, spies.

Men condemned to “take up their cross” were beaten and then required to carry the crossbeam of the cross to the place of execution in a final act of submission to the state.

Anyone who was carrying his cross was on a one-way journey.

He would not be back.

This was the utmost in self-denial, for the criminal was now doing everything the state wanted and nothing he wanted.

He was very dead to self, even as he walked.

Galileans knew all about crucifixion.

When Jesus was 11 years of age a man named Judas raided the Roman armory at Sepphoris, 2 miles north of Nazareth.

Roman vengeance was swift.

Sepphoris was burned to the ground; its inhabitants sold into slavery and 2,000 rebels were crucified along the roadside and left to die and rot in place as a dreadful warning to others.

The cross meant submission to a higher authority and death to self.

And Jesus is saying, “That’s what it is to be truly saved.

Taking one’s cross daily– denying personal agendas in favor of a divine agenda.

Submissive to the kingdom of God instead of building the kingdom of Dave or Patty or Lisa or Mike or Diane.”

This separates the pretenders from the contenders.

That’s what Jesus meant it to do.

He’d have made a poor modern day evangelist, begging people to just come to Christ.

He emphasized the price rather than the prize.

The reward is great, but the cross is first.

Jesus never told it any other way.

Saved people have a daily bloodbath to see who is going to rule in our heart – me or Christ.

If that battle is not going on, we are not truly saved.

We will not be perfect at this!

The disciples weren’t and neither will we be.

We will have periods like they where we lose more than we win.