Second Sunday in Lent (2024)

Lovely flowers moving in the fresh breeze send their elegant fragrance your way, as the warming rays of the sun fill your body with the feeling of health and beautiful harmony with God and nature.

As God’s special person, He spares you from pain, problems, and scarceness.

Sounds fantastic, doesn’t it! But it is the biggest lie ever told. There is a theological word to describe this lie: “Hogwash, unmitigated hogwash”. Actually, it is more like heresy.

If Christianity is as I have just described, then all of us must be wondering whether we really are Christians. Although our walk with Jesus brings us many blessings, the Evil One does not roll over and play dead when we follow Christ. Instead the devil continues to dog us as we make our way through life, just like he continually brought temptation to our Lord. Following Jesus Christ brings with it a degree of suffering as our selfishness is lost to service and discipleship.

Today our theme is: “Rethinking Suffering Under the Cross,” the next installment in our “Rethinking Religion” series. We know suffering and the cross was an instrument of torture and execution, which our Lord endured this for our salvation. However, Scripture also uses the term “cross” to refer to any suffering that one endures because he is a believer: the painful denial of the desires of the flesh; ridicule and persecution from unbelievers; etc. This is one reason people reject religion. They see Christians struggling in life with these crosses, while non-Christians often seem perfectly happy. Even the prophet Jeremiah asked, “Why do all the faithless live at ease?” (12:1).

Jesus asks us to rethink suffering under the cross, because any suffering believers face under the cross is only good, the way Christ connects us tightly to himself with fire-tested faith.

Suffering Under The Cross is Good

Peter had a problem. Christ was saying things that this disciple didn’t like to hear. He hadn’t followed the Lord with the expectation that its leader would suffer, be rejected, and killed. Such statements were foreign to Peter, so he began to rebuke the Lord. “Hey, wait a minute, Lord,” Peter might have said. “What are You saying? Don't You know there is a better way? Use the power You have just demonstrated in providing an abundance of food from seven measly loaves of bread. Use Your power to demonstrate to our thickheaded brothers that You will drive the Romans from our land and restore Your kingdom in the grandeur of David and Solomon. And remember, Lord, all of us gave up everything to follow You. My fishing business is now sunk. You can be sure we’re ready to help You rule the world.”

Then Jesus interrupted Peter, “Get behind Me, Satan! For you are not on the side of God, but of men.” Jesus then called the crowds and His disciples together and taught them.

“If any of you wants to be My follower,” He told them, “you must put aside your own pleasures and shoulder your cross, and follow me closely. But if you insist on saving your life, you will lose it. Only those who throw away their lives for My sake and for the sake of the Good News will ever know what it means to really live. And how does a man benefit if he gains the whole world and loses his soul in the process? For is anything worth more than his soul?”

These words must have been as hard for Peter as they are for us. Peter was anxious to be on a winning team, and Jesus was talking like such a loser. From his later behavior in the courtyard following Jesus’ arrest, it appears that Peter didn’t fully understand what Jesus was saying until after His death.

Jesus was saying that winning means losing. You must be willing to turn your life over to God for His use—to lose it—in order to effectively share the Good News of life with God. Yes, to have life with God, you must be willing to put yourself second:

To lose your selfishness,

To carry the cross of Christ as a banner proclaiming forgiveness from sin, death, and the Evil One.

To be a Christian, winning means losing for Christ's sake.

Suffering Under the Cross Is Life

And as we struggle to be what we are—children of God through Holy Baptism and faith—it’s often hard and painful. Christ suffered. His followers suffered. We too will have the privilege of suffering.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Christian-Pastor martyred in 1945 by the Nazi’s, wrote, “When Christ calls a man, He bids him to come and die.”

Perhaps more than any of us, our Christian brothers and sisters in hostel Muslim countries understand today’s text. Many are imprisoned for the faith. Many are executed. Some women are brutally gang-raped, and their breast cut off, sometimes while their children and husbands watch, then they are murdered. All are ostracized. Why? Because they Christ as Lord and Savior.

In this country we have it so easy by comparison. Yet those who are actively serving the Lord often experience exhaustion over long hours of work. We often do not have the success we’d like when so much time is devoted to our ministry efforts. Suffering results in the form of criticism, and refusal to offer the slightest bit of help. All the while being snubbed when God’s Word is elevated above the cultural norm.

Then we who try to live a sexually moral life in this society—as God requires in the Sixth Commandment—in contrast to the society that is so permissive to the point of encouraging the activity; those faithful believers know the suffering that sometimes accompanies our uniqueness.

And what about the pain in the voice of the young woman who spends lonely, dateless nights at home because she knows that bedding down with a boyfriend is the contemporary equivalent to a good-night kiss. Not the mention the pressure of saying “NO” to living together without being married.

Then there is ethical businessman who is not always the richest one today.

An honest politician is often a one-term public servant.

Faithful spouses are viewed by some as unimaginative and rather boring people. Don’t you know that society winks at open marriages, something God condemns?

Or, blowing the whistle on government excesses has been rewarded with unemployment checks for many.

Then there is faithful Christian who stands under the authority of God’s inerrant and infallible Word—one who is willing to point out the Truth of God, while sounding the warning against heresy—often results in squabbles with friends and family, and sometimes even criticized by their “Christian” congregation.

50 years ago the Battle for the Bible was rumbling down the tracks at full steam. On one side of the track were the faithful, orthodox believers, who live the life of faith believing that 100% of what God has given in His Word, the Bible, is absolute truth—without error, and the only authority that we can count on for all matters of faith and life.

Then on the other side of the track are well-meaning believers—but deceived by Satan himself—who are convinced that this Bible is not 100% God’s Word, believing some of it is made up by man. Additionally, they tell us we have to interpret the message within in light of our current circumstances. They bit down on the lie of the devil and he hooked them, just as he did with Adam and Eve when he said, “Did God really say?”

The sad truth is that this battle which started over 50 years ago, still rages on, and has gotten worse. Now some supposed Christians believe Jesus is not the only way unto salvations. God can save through other individuals too. They will say the Muslim God will get you to heaven. The Buddhist God will do the same. And the congregations who subscribe to this heresy exist today and are growing here in the Chippewa Valley. And some of our loved ones and friends are attending this congregations. We need to warn them, even urge them to leave those places, because their souls may very well depend on it.

Standing for the Truth of what Jesus has said—“I am the way, the truth, and the life; no man comes unto the Father except through me”—will result in criticism, name calling, and even persecution.

Christ Jesus is calling us to do what is right rather than what is expedient. Other may look on in disbelief, but truth is still the Truth.

For us to do any less less would be to march to a different drum-beat than the one Jesus sounds. Jesus puts it to us today, “If any man would come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me." And when we do not, Jesus’ rebuke of Peter is pointed in our direction: “you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.”

The early Christians in the first few Centuries of the Church considered suffering for Christ not as a burden or misfortune but as a great honor—a blessing—for in their suffering they could bear witness to the faith. Tacitus, a Roman historian, writing of the early Christian martyrs said, “Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths.” Imagine what many went through:

Covered with skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished,

or were nailed to crosses,

or were doomed to the flames and burned to serve as nightly illumination after the sun had gone down.

Nero offered his gardens for the spectacle.

We are told that the martyrs went rejoicing to their deaths, as if they were going to a marriage feast.

They bathed their hands in the fire kindled for them and shouted with gladness.

They marched into the arena where the lions awaited them, as if marching into heaven.

When Ignatius, an elderly martyr, was about to die for the faith in A.D. 110, he cried out, “Nearer the sword, then nearer to God. In company with wild beasts, in company with God.”

Now I am not trying to be grotesque, nor am I saying anyone should seek such a death. Rather, I am saying that the Christian life often involves suffering.

At this point we are tempted to ask, “How am I suffering for the sake of the Gospel?” Later in his life after he repented, Peter wrote two of our New Testament books. In the first he writes that suffering and Christianity go together — you cannot have one without the other. It is part of the Christian’s life-style. Quite a change of attitude on his part. By the time he wrote his book, he had learned Jesus’ lesson.

If we are truly being a Christian in our daily encounters, we must be feeling some opposition—some oppression. It is impossible to walk over the devil unscratched. Are we hurting for the Lord? Are we suffering for the Lord? Jesus bore the cross for mankind. Where is our cross? We must suffer if we are truly serving.

Suffering Under the Cross Is Eternity

Our text ends with a warning from our Lord Jesus: Mark 8:38

“And if anyone is ashamed of Me and My message in these days of unbelief and sin, I, the Messiah, will be ashamed of him when I return in the glory of My Father, with all the angels.”

In Matthew's gospel Jesus also makes the promise that, “If anyone publicly acknowledges Me as his friend, I will also acknowledge him as My friend before My Father in heaven."

Winning the crown of life means losing our selfishness for Christ’s sake.

Friends, our march through life does not end at the grave but moves beyond. Our vision is both present and future, in this world and in the next. It would be a grave mistake to see our life as just here and now.

Because of what Jesus did for you and for me, He enables us to courageously meet the world, proclaiming His glory in word and deed, finding strength through Him to overcome the present, whatever conflicts our faith might encounter.

Pastor John Fawcett, an 18th Century preacher understood this very well, for he penned the beautiful lyrics of this hymn:

VERSE 1 Afflicted saint, to Christ draw near, Your Savior’s gracious promise hear; His faithful Word you can believe: That as your days your strength shall be.

VERSE 2 Your faith is weak, your foes are strong, And if the conflict should be long, The Lord will make the tempter flee That as your days your strength shall be.

VERSE 3 Should persecution rage and flame, Still trust in your Redeemer’s name. In fiery trials you shall see That as your days your strength shall be.

VERSE 4 When called to bear your weighty cross Or sore affliction, pain, or loss, Or deep distress or poverty, Still as your days your strength shall be.

REFRAIN So, sing with joy, afflicted one; The battle’s fierce, but the victory’s won! God shall supply all that you need; Yes, as your days your strength shall be.

God does supply our every need and gives us strength to meet the days ahead when He blew off the lid of a borrowed grave as His Son, Jesus, cast death aside, filled His lungs again, and put heaven in faith’s grasp. That same resurrection power—power that brought a man out of death—is available to those who would risk it.

Yes, risk it! Come Creator Holy Spirit, the courageous among us dare pray—re-create us, remake us, empower us in our daily living so that whether we are winners or losers in the world’s eyes, we are spiritually strong.

What is important is that we lean on Him seeking the Holy Spirit’s power to help us deny ourselves, to bear the cross and to even suffer for the Gospel’s sake. We desire with Him that all whom He loves might become His children through faith and might join Him and us at the Father's house in eternity.

And when we arrive, God will look us over—not for medals, or awards, or degrees, but for scars. Finding them, He will declare, “Ah, there’s a wise person who understood that crosses equal life.”