Sermon Tone Analysis

Intro

Alright everyone, let’s get into the message tonight.

We are continuing in the gospel of Luke, and continuing to see what Luke is revealing to us about Jesus.

Now…I’ll tell you.

I had a hard time naming this message today.

I was brainstorming with Calvin and our Admin…and I was looking for one word descriptions of Jesus as someone who is going to bear a cross, be a death on row, suffer a death as a humiliating punishment.

We had some good ones...

Jesus is damned.

Jesus is accursed.

and we had some bad ones...

Jesus is a goner.

Jesus is an inmate.

But none of them described exactly what we are talking about tonight…so I went with the most obvious one…Jesus as a Cross-Bearer.

That’s the title of the message tonight.

Jesus as a Cross-Bearer.

And the reason that this one makes sense is because the title of the message needs to help you understand the response required.

And the response that the word requires of us tonight is this...

Jesus bore a cross.

And you should too.

That’s the bottom line for tonight.

That’s the major application point that I want you to write down.

Jesus bore a cross…and you should too.

Now that we’ve got that framework in mind, and you know the bottom line…let’s see how we get there.

Open you bibles up to the Gospel of Luke.

Today we are in Chapter 9 and verses 23-26.

In this chapter, Jesus has been teaching his disciples what it means for him to be the Christ.

The chosen one.

The savior.

And it’s here that he begins telling them the details of what he is going to do.

Not just that he is going to save them…but the explanation for how that is going to happen.

He acknowledges to Peter in 18-20 that he is indeed the Christ and in 21-22 he tells them he is going to have to die.

And that brings us to 23.

Let’s look at it together.

Okay.

So what we see here in the text is a purpose statement.

A command.

An imperative to do something.

Followed by three points of purpose.

Three “for” statements.

You can see them there at the start of each verse.

For, for, for.

So here’s how I decided to structure the message tonight.

We are going to go verse by verse and we will start by explaining the imperative and then the “for statements”.

So if you’re taking notes tonight.

One command.

And three because.

Let’s start with the command.

What is it?

The command is to take up your cross daily, and follow Christ.

And he starts this command with a qualifier.

The verse starts with “if anyone would follow me.”

Meaning, if your heart’s desire is to follow Jesus, if you claim to be a disciple, a student, a lover of Christ…if you are one of those people who would follow Jesus…then listen up.

And right there, Jesus already divides his audience into two types of people.

The first being people who don’t desire to follow Jesus.

We call them unbelievers.

And the second group, are the disciples of Christ.

So go ahead and place yourself in one of those categories, alright?

And if for any reason, there are those of you in this room that would place yourself in the first category, I don’t want to follow Jesus, then I pray you listen to the rest of this message to see just how foolish that is.

Because the things Jesus has to say about those that don’t choose to follow is pretty scary.

So Jesus starts with this qualifier, and then moves on to the meat now that he’s drawn them in.

He says “let this person deny themselves and take up his cross Daily, and follow Christ.

Let’s take this verse a few words at a time.

And let’s start with the cross.

This is new info for the disciples!

Jesus has been saying he’s the Christ, he’s been telling them he’s going to die…and then he mentions the cross to them.

The cross, that he hasn’t gone to yet.

The cross, that he hasn’t been crucified on yet.

The cross, that he hadn’t even mentioned yet to them…so this is completely new information to the disciples and we need to understand that this would have completely shocked the disciples...

Shocked them that the man they love.

Their teacher, there mentor, and a man that they highly respected would find himself dying on a cross.

Let’s put ourselves back into their culture.

The cross was the pinnacle of humiliation.

If you went to the cross you died naked, you died exposed, and died very publicly.

And often, you were left on the cross for your body to rot so all could see it and know the type of person you were in life was deserving of this awful death.

Not only that, but the cross was unbeatable.

No one had ever survived a roman execution on the cross.

To say that you were going to the cross meant you were going not only to a humiliating and excruciatingly painful death, but you were headed towards certain death with no way of escape.

If that wasn’t enough…to these Jewish men, the roman process of executing someone on a cross was a constant reminder of Rome’s dominance and rule over the Jewish people.

I mean they would walk down the road on their way into Jerusalem to celebrate a Jewish holiday, and littered along the path were the physical evidence of Rome’s dominance as criminals were hung on crosses and left there to die for all to see.

You can understand how the disciples would have been completely appalled at the thought of their teacher, lord, savior being hung on a cross like that.

In today’s culture it would be like using the electric chair or lethal injection.

Pictures of Chair and Lethal injection

These are rooms where someone is executed for a crime…and not only are they put to death, but there is a room in which certain people can watch it happen…can watch the punishment and death happen.

Now imagine that outside and open to any and all that would like to see it.

And you’ve got what the cross was to the disciples in that moment.

The images that came to their mind.

Not to mention that it wasn’t just the cross that brought discomfort, it was the idea of Jesus being on it.

Let me ask you..Can you imagine someone you admire, respect, have been mentored by…a parent, a teacher, a pastor...someone that you can never imagine doing anything worthy of a death sentence…can you imagine them ending up on the lethal injection table?

If you’re answer is no…then you’re in the same place the disciples would have been.

Yet here is Jesus saying that he’s heading to the cross…and not only that…but his expectation is that they will follow him there.

That they too would find themselves under the same forms of humiliation and punishment.

On top of that…Luke adds a word to his gospel account here that isn’t found in Mark or Matthew.

He adds this simple word that gives it a double meaning…it’s a slight change in wording but it’s a huge implication for us...

He records that Jesus wants us to take the cross like he did…daily.

Essentially meaning, he wants us to take up our electric chair daily.

He wants us to be willing to not only follow him to our death, but to be willing to experience constant and ongoing humiliating and persecution for the sake of following him.

What Luke is stating here is that we don’t just follow Jesus once.

Following Jesus is not just a moment of decision you made a few years ago in a church pew, or a summer camp, or beside your bed...

Following Jesus is something that we do on a DAILY basis.

Dying to ourselves, laying down our pride, giving up our rights, going through humiliation and persecution is something that we must be willing to do not once, but everyday.