00:00
00:00
00:01
Transkrypcja
1/0
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. This is the word of God. Well, if you had just 25 words, what is a story you would tell that would announce to the world or your family and friends who you are? 25 words telling a story from your life that would reflect something of your character and person. Maybe you think that sounds a little proud or self-centered to tell a story about yourself. So what's a story you might tell about someone near you? Someone you love that would in a single sentence announce to everyone around who they really are. Our family in recent weeks has dealt with a great variety of sicknesses, and so I might be able to tell from the last month or so this story about my wife. My wife, Orlina, has cared with great skill and without complaints and with much joy in the Lord for her tired and ailing husband and children. And I would really tell you a lot about who my wife is. You could do it with more famous people. Neil Armstrong, Purdue graduate, walked on the moon and declared, one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. That tells you the main thing you need to know about that individual's life. Well, Mark 15, 21, 25 words in the English translation I just read, 19 words only in the original Greek. Speaking of the action of Simon of Cyrene, it's all we hear about Simon in the scriptures, and we love what we hear. 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. It's a story you could readily pass over, a story you might miss in your reading of the Gospels, but it packs a punch. It packs a punch in announcing to us something of service to Jesus Christ. It gives, say, 25 words that should shape your coming week, that should shape your service to Jesus Christ in the week to come and beyond. Every one of you, I would pray, could come back to church next Lord's Day and someone next to you asks, well how was your week? And in some way you could say in response just a sentence that reflects that your week patterned after Simon in carrying Jesus's cross or maybe you would say someone else walked in Jesus's footsteps and carried the cross and you got to see it and wasn't that wonderful? There's a very simple point or summary statement we could make that would announce to us what Simon did. Here it is, one short sentence to summarize really the whole sermon here this morning. Simon carried Jesus' cross and left a legacy. Simon carried Jesus' cross and left a legacy. Here's what I want to do. I want to explore that statement two prongs to the statement I just made. Simon carried Jesus' cross, one, two, he left a legacy. We want to see that that is the argument of the text, and then we'll explore with some applications what it means for you and I to do the same thing. So Simon carried Jesus' cross and left a legacy. One, Simon carried the cross. It does seem, maybe on first reading, that it's just a story. Jesus is too weak to carry that cross up the hill, the hill of Golgotha. The tradition or the pattern in The culture at that time was for a convict who was condemned to carry the instruments of his own execution to the place of that execution. It's a horrifying scene that should be fixed in your mind. Something like carrying your own electric chair. This is what Jesus has been tasked to do. And Jesus, it seems, is too weak to do it. So Simon is called off the road to do it for him. He's grabbed from the side of the road. Simon is going to do this. And at this point, you might be able to leave it just as that, a sort of simple anecdote of the story. By the way, here's what happened. And if that's all it is, at this point, the sermon would be over. But it's not. And it's not over, because what this is describing, carrying the cross, has been the motif that has actually shaped the whole book of Mark. Stories, books, at least by good storytellers, have motifs and themes that carry through the whole story. Pinocchio. What traces through that? Let your conscience be your guide. Or the Spider-Man movie made a few decades ago, where every few minutes or so there was that line, with great power comes great responsibility. You know the theme. It just pounds its way through the story. Well, Mark's theme is carry the cross, or follow Jesus on the road to the cross. Jesus calls people to follow him and then sets his way toward the cross, and he sets his way on the road of suffering, and he invites people to do the same with him. At the very pivot of the book of Mark, Mark 8, 34, If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. Deny yourself, take up the cross, follow Jesus. Jesus says this right in context of announcing that he himself was going to a cross to be crucified and true disciples, Jesus said, would go with him to that exact cross. And we often hear that verse, and rightly so, with a spiritual or whole life application. All my life is to be taking up the cross and following Jesus. But as you read that verse in Mark 8 directly in context, You can't help but read it in sort of a brutally realistic sense for Jesus and the disciples he was talking to. They, too, would go to a cross. Jesus is saying, we're all going to be condemned to death. We'll all be called, as it were, to carry our execution instruments up the hill. And the true disciples, what are the true disciples going to do? They're going to put the cross on their back and they're going to follow me up the hill. And throughout the gospel, Jesus has taught the way of life that leads there. What kind of life takes up the cross and follows Jesus up the mountain? And we get to this critical point in the book of Mark, and there's only one guy that we find that does it. Simon of Cyrene carries the cross up the hill. He goes with Jesus up to Golgotha. At minimum, We have to say that Simon pictures, pictures you might say, literarily what it means to follow Jesus. Simon is like Mark's sermon illustration. What does it look like to follow Jesus? How about this guy? Look at him, cross on his back, walks up the hill, follows Jesus, carries the cross. But it seems that there's more than just sort of a sermon illustration here for Mark. That there is in Simon a true following, a true obedience as he himself goes up with Jesus Christ. Because you know what happens, what happens in the Book of Mark, what happens in real life, but just for now, what happens in the Book of Mark, when people are compelled by civil or legal authorities to be identified with Jesus and follow Him toward the cross. You know what happens? They get up and run. Everyone gets up and run. You look over in your Bible at Mark 14, 51 and 52. There they are. They're seizing Christ, the same legal authorities that would be sending Jesus to the cross even now. And as they seize him, they seize this other guy. And a young man followed him with nothing but a linen cloth about his body. And they seized him. They grab him. You are identified with Jesus. What does he do? He leaves the linen cloth and runs away naked. Or you get another guy. Perhaps the second main character, as it were, in this book. You get Simon Peter. Simon Peter, he follows Jesus all his life. He's there side by side with Jesus in this ministry. And at the end of Mark 14, he's there, and he should be identified with Jesus. He should, as it were, be on trial with Jesus. And a young girl comes and almost puts him on trial and says, Peter, weren't you with Jesus? Weren't you with Jesus? Weren't you with Jesus? Peter, deny, deny, deny. Wouldn't it be a great movie script if you were writing the story? There it is. You've got Jesus and Peter and all of Peter's life. And as he's following Jesus, he's not quite getting it. He's not quite understanding it. But there in a sudden moment of need, as Jesus is unable to take the cross, Simon Peter is right there. And the cross gets put on Simon's back, the disciple who would never leave him. And he carries the cross up the hill. That would be a great story. But we have no idea where Simon Peter is. He's run away. He has no interest in being next to Jesus. So they find not Simon Peter. They have to find another Simon. But this Simon doesn't run away naked. He would have had that option. They try to grab him. I'm leaving. This Simon doesn't deny Jesus. This Simon is compelled and carries the cross of Jesus Christ. He does the opposite of the young man. He does the opposite of the crowd. He does the opposite of Simon Peter. He carries the cross and joins Jesus in the events of suffering. And the argument that Simon here is more than just a random guy who happened to carry the cross, it's bolstered by the second prong of the arguments here. Simon, one, carried the cross, two, Simon left a legacy. Simon left a legacy. Note here that Simon is highlighted as the father of Alexander and Rufus. Mark, you might know this, likes to be short on words. He likes to be concise. And so when Mark adds a seemingly extraneous detail to a text, you should go ahead and assume it's not extraneous, but maybe vitally important to its meaning. You may know someone. You may have a close friend who doesn't say a whole lot. Doesn't have much to say and is very content to be silent. But then you say or then you know that when that person speaks up and adds a word or adds a statement to a conversation, you know you should pay attention. And that's a bit maybe like Mark. He adds this interesting detail. He's the father of Alexander and Rufus. Mark and the rest of the gospel writers, this is rare for them. They rarely highlight someone's children and their names and all of that sort of thing. You don't get, think about it, you don't get genealogies of all the off chance people that Jesus encounters, but you do here. You get this recognition of father of Alexander and Rufus. Why do you get that recognition? Well, think about it. If you are telling a story about someone, when would you naturally let your audience know the names of their children? You would do it, you would let the audience know, the person you're talking to, you would do it, if the names of the children proved a point of contact to the audience. A few weeks ago, my mother encountered the father and a few children of a family that's well known to our family. And as the dad was trying to make the connection to my mom, he looked at his children and said, this is David and Jenny's grandmother. And then they knew it. Oh, this is David and Jenny's grandmother. They know my kids. Now they know this woman they're talking to. The identity of the children gave an identification for my own mother. Now, here is Mark, and he is saying, hey, guys, this is Rufus and Alexander's father, as if they knew Rufus and Alexander's father. The strong implication is that Rufus and Alexander would actually be known to Mark's audience. Now, work with me for another minute. It might help you to turn in your Bible to Romans 16, verse 13, and I'll read that in just a moment as I set this up. The book of Mark is classically known as being written to an audience in Rome. Mark is known to have done ministry in Rome, for example. 1 Peter 5 suggests this. The themes of Mark seem to address church, the early church, as it faced the persecution in Rome. Say, people in Rome facing literal crosses. And for other reasons as well, the church is long held. Marks have been written to the early church in Rome. Now, Romans 16, 13. Some of you are there in your Bibles. Of course, Romans addressed to the church at Rome. And Paul is greeting a list of people there in Rome, and he has this to say in verse 13. Greet Rufus, chosen in the Lord, also his mother, who has been a mother to me as well. A known family of service to the Lord, highlighting a man named Rufus. A man named Rufus, there in the church at Rome, Paul writing the book of Romans right around the time Mark would have written the book of Mark. Rufus being highlighted, it seems Rufus is a known servant, likely a leader in the church at Rome to whom Mark is writing there in Mark chapter 15. And you can turn back to Mark in your Bible if you'd like to have that in front of you. We must admit that we can't be absolutely 100% certain of the connection here, though it seems quite likely. What we can see is that Mark is tying Simon's story to a known child to his audience. And the testimony is that the life of Simon is not just that he did something one morning, that Simon did something significant. The testimony is that his cross-carrying passed on a legacy. It passed on a story that defined not just his action, but a story that would pass on to the next generation. Mark is saying, hey guys, when you think of Rufus, When you think of Alexander, when you greet them, when you see them at church on a Lord's Day morning, think of the cross carrier. Think of the one that went before them. Think of the story of that father of theirs that passed on the legacy of carrying the cross of Jesus Christ. You see, it is almost as though the imprints of the cross on the back of Simon was passed on into a legacy for Alexander Rufus and the generation to come. You see, Simon's story is not just some lone event. It's a story of a man that took up his cross and shaped his family for a generation. He left a legacy. Simon took up the cross and left a legacy. And the message, of course, for us is we're called to do likewise. We're called to do likewise. We often think of our life maybe in terms of a list of achievements, perhaps like some record. We're going to look in our background. We're going to look at the story of our life in a backwards-facing direction, sort of what is the list of things I'm going to do that is going to show up in my obituary, the backward-looking read on my life. And that's fine in one sense. Simon had a list. Simon's obituary. This is the man that carried Jesus' cross. But you see, here's what you have to see this morning. Our life of cross bearing is to have a constant forward looking aim to it. What legacy, what way of life, what way of service will be passed on to the next generation by your choices and mine, by your resolve to follow Jesus Christ and carry the cross. If the next generation or just a few people in the next generation had my life as their example or pattern, what are they gonna inherit? What are they gonna inherit? Would they inherit selfishness? Would they inherit laziness? Would they inherit backbiting? Would they inherit an angry personality? Or would they inherit cross-bearing? Would they inherit a lifestyle that follows Jesus up the hill when nobody else? does. Now we're going to talk about in some applications about how to do it. How do we carry our cross like Simon, but every one of you right now can think about three things or three questions that are going to help you process carrying the cross of Jesus Christ. Three questions. Number one, whose pattern, whose 25 word stories have shaped who you are? who you became and what you've been taught about life. Whose 25-word stories are shaping you right now? Your parents, of course, should be a part of your answer to that question. And some of you, when you get to talk about your parents, you've got a very good story to tell. This is the exciting part. You say, they showed the pattern. I would say this about my own parents, teaching me the way of following Jesus. For some of you, that's the painful parts. The testimony is your parents haven't taught you the way of Jesus Christ. You haven't inherited that dynamic that Alexander and Rufus would. But even that to you is a proof that this kind of thing matters. It matters who is shaping you in the way of carrying the cross. And just a brief side application here. If you stand here this morning and you think, I don't have a good set of people, whose 25-word stories are shaping my life. Go find someone, maybe someone else in this room. Say, look, I don't have the kind of mentors or parents in my life that have given me this pattern of following Jesus. Could we get coffee and talk together? Could we find a way where you might help me follow in the footsteps of Jesus Christ? So who's guiding you? Whose stories are impacting your life? Second question, who is Rufus and Alexander to you? Who is Rufus and Alexander to you? Who's gonna receive an impression from your lifestyle? Of course, if you're a parent here this morning, you've got a very easy answer to this question, don't you? Your own kids. How significant parents? Your children will follow, they'll see, they'll know your story. Rufus and Alexander all their life would know the story. Dad carried Jesus' cross. That's a pattern. And even if you don't have children this morning, of course, many of you don't have children, but you have siblings, younger siblings, there are other people in this room paying attention to the style of life you lead. At Columbus RP, I've been very impressed The older children in the church, of course, don't have children of their own. The older high school children take my children under their wing as it were. They're playing in the backyard of the church or playing on the swings and they're drawing them in. There's a pattern that's being led of love. I praise God for that type of example. Who is Rufus and Alexander to you? And then question number three is, how are you doing? How are you doing in this following in a pattern of Simon? The blunt reality about my life and the blunt reality about all our life is that Simon's legacy isn't always ours. Mark again and again in this gospel exposes humanity as a mass of sinners. There's a crowd that's following Jesus that ends up choosing to put him on the cross. And then there are those who are out of the crowd, disciples, who should be following a different direction. But as we've said, they fall away. Like Peter, many of us would look at our life or just look at the past week and say, yeah, when that chance came to take up the cross of Jesus, I looked more like the young man running away than Simon of Cyrene. When that chance came to stand up for the name and honor of Jesus in my house or my workplace or among my friends or wherever it is, you say, well, I came across a bit like Peter. I didn't have much to say about Jesus. I wasn't very ready to carry his cross. We have a real guilt before God that gets exposed by the simple act of someone like Simon. Our guilt gets exposed in a question like this. If your children or others watching you followed your patterns, is there anything you'd be ashamed to see them follow? And all of us say, oh dear, oh dear. Because yes, there is. There is this sense where our own guilts we recognize our own sin and failure. If that were to be passed down and it gets passed down, we recognize a general rate generational record, not of cross bearing, but of something far worse. There are families who create a legacy. not of cross-bearing, but of drunkenness, or immorality, or idolatry of entertainment, or of sports, or of anger, or of workaholism. And the 25-word story that would get told for generation after generation is anything but Mark 15 21. It's a story of living for self. And you may look at your own life. You may even wonder, am I in a cycle? Am I in the middle of this? And since we all are, we all recognize ourselves exposed in our failure to take up the cross. So where do we go with this? Where do we go with this? As we look at Simon and we look at ourselves and we look at those around us and we wonder, so what am I supposed to do? Three applications for you here this morning. The first application is this, get out of the crowd. Get out of the crowd. Mark's humanity, as I've said, is a crowd that huddles around Jesus Christ. Humanity in Mark is people that encounter the living God through the person of Jesus Christ and they react to Jesus. Some give worship, many more within the book, may give false worship or fall away in anger or disgust. And the crowd proves to fail and puts Jesus on the cross. And this startling arc or narrative that unfolds is that the disciples and others who should be out of the crowd following Jesus, by the end of the book, they're falling back into the crowd. They're joining in as opposed to standing from it. What we see in Mark is Simon doing the opposite. He stands from the crowd. He's compelled from the crowd and he joins in. and gets an individual name as one who follows Jesus Christ. He's compelled. It's not so much that this was his idea. He didn't think of this on that morning, but when the chance came, he became the one, whether it was his decision or not, who carried the cross of Jesus Christ. The reality is so many, so many of our failures and cross bearing are this. We choose to stay in the crowd so we don't carry our cross. Everyone around me, you say, puts in 70 hours at work and ignores their family. It would be kind of weird if I took a different road. So I'll stay in the crowd. And you fail to take up your cross. Everyone around me, you say, and my friend group or my peer group watches these movies or looks at these websites. And that's what we plan to do here on Saturday night. So it would be strange and I might lose my friends, you say, if I don't join them. So I think at this point I'll stay in the crowd and you fail to take up the cross of Jesus Christ. Or you say, you know, the crowd around me doesn't talk about Jesus very much, and I would certainly appear to be strange. If I started talking about Jesus, the crowd is talking about many other things. I think I'll go with them. You stay in the crowd. on the Tour de France, the several-week, difficult, beyond-measure bike race that goes through the country of France there in the Tour de France, and individual legs of the race, there's always a peloton. You got hundreds of riders, and you have these group of cyclists that end up riding together. And one of the dynamics of the peloton and the legs of the race is that they all finish together. They all finish together side by side as they go across the finish line. And no matter where they finish, if you are in the peloton, you get the same time for that leg of the race. Your time gets recorded as all the same. The goal is, at least on some legs of the race, just stay in the group. Stay in the bundle. Stay together with the crowd, and we'll get through to the finish line. It's a strategy. Stay in the crowd, and maybe at some point at another time, you'll break free in one leg and win. Many live their life thinking that the goal of the Christian faith is to stay in the peloton. Just stay in the crowd. Never stand out, and we'll get across the finish line at some day. Just stay in the crowd. Simon reveals this, if you want a legacy, if you want a legacy of following Jesus Christ, you're gonna have to get out of the Peloton. You're gonna have to get out of the Peloton of this world. In a world where nobody talks about Jesus anymore, guess what? You're gonna have to talk about Jesus. In a world where your coworkers behave this way, you're gonna have to behave the Jesus way. In a world where the crowd around you chooses one way of being, you're going to have to be centered on a different angle, a different way of thinking, and it's going to cause you to stand out of the crowd. Now, of course, that doesn't mean just be a contrarian for the sake of being a contrarian. Some of us get excited about that idea. And guess what? You suddenly join the crowd of sinful contrarians. The call is much deeper. to have your eyes so fixed on Jesus Christ that there's only one crowd that matters to you. It's a crowd of one. It's Jesus Christ. And you're going to get out and you're going to follow him and you're going to go where he leads you. And as you go, you may sit and wonder, now, what is the crowd going to think about me? You know, in Columbus, Indiana, it's a Cummins town, which means that so many, a large percentage of the crowd works at Cummins, is related to someone that works at Cummins, used to work at Cummins, has friends that go there, and on and on. And the question that people find themselves asking there is, if I get seen in public identifying with Jesus, what will my Cummins connections think about me as I'm doing that? West Lafayette is a Purdue town, right? And the questions might be similar in a different direction. What will professors or classmates or those around me tied to that community think if I am found among that crowd, stepping out of the crowd to follow Jesus? You may wonder that. And the better question, though, to ask is not what will my local mid-sized city in Indianapolis crowd think. The better question is, what will God think? What will the living God think in his summons to follow him? Or maybe ask this question, what are Rufus and Alexander going to think? What legacy will you give your children? What legacy will be given to those around you? When is the last time you stepped out of the crowd? When's the last time your children would say, he was stepping out of the crowd. She was stepping out of the crowd. She was identifying with Jesus Christ. If you never step out of the crowd, if you live your life in the Peloton, you'll just finish in the middle of the pack. You won't be found standing with Jesus Christ. Get out of the crowd. Second application, take real active action for Jesus. Take real active action for Jesus. This flows from the first application. We got to think about this picture of cross-bearing here. The picture of cross-bearing is literally bearing a Roman cross on your back and taking it up a hill while being mocked and taunted and so forth. One commentator speaks of the Christian life here as being depicted as concrete, real-life behavior or action in following Jesus. Because we don't have real crosses these days, sometimes we don't think this way. Or maybe because we're wimps, we don't think this way. Sometimes maybe we think cross-bearing is having hard stuff happen to you. Having hard stuff happen to you. If the AC in my car is not very good, which is true in my own car and it's 95 degrees, well, that's pretty tough. That's cross-bearing. I'm going through a difficulty. Or maybe it's even on much more difficult things that come your way. Something hard, a suffering hits you, a crisis hits your life, and you think, well, now I'm cross-bearing, life isn't as easy as it was last Thursday morning. But cross-bearing, cross-bearing in this sense is not receiving a hard break. The cross bearing in this sense is taking on a burden. It's putting the cross on the back and going up the hill. I'm going to take concrete action of self-denial to follow Jesus Christ. And maybe it starts with the small annoyances. An email from your boss tomorrow morning that feels like one of those emails that's a little tiny hammer pounding on your forehead. You're not carrying the cross if you're replying in anger, frustration, and cursing under your breath, but you're carrying the cross because, well, that's hard. That's not carrying the cross that's joining the crown. You carry the cross by denying yourself and responding with Jesus-filled, grace-filled love. Or a relationship in your life gets challenged, your marriage, or a friendship in your life, and it's a kind of cross that comes your way, and you're being compelled to take up that cross. There's still a chance, though, as that comes your way, that you're just going to be the young man fleeing away naked. You're going to be Peter denying Jesus Christ. You are the young man. You are Peter. You are not Simon of Cyrene until you walk in Jesus' footsteps and carry that cross in self-denying love. You move in that relationship with the gentleness of Jesus Christ. You shut your mouth of vain criticism. You speak tender words, even as there's a fire in your belly. You confess sin and vulnerability. You offer forgiveness and love. You're taking concrete action in the name of Jesus Christ. And this works at an individual level, and this functions at a church level as well. Of course, this church I know is, you yourselves have gone through some great difficulties and the Lord has a cross that he is indeed calling you to bear. And the reality is, just because there's a burden out there, and it's a heavy burden, That's not yet cross bearing until you are found in the footsteps of Jesus Christ. You're found in the footsteps of Jesus Christ, carrying the cross and taking real concrete action, real concrete action in the name of Jesus to suffer well with him. And you ought to be doing it, and you ought to be thinking about it in a way of leaving a legacy that will tell the children of this church, that will tell the grandchildren of this church. And maybe for you in your mind right now, it's not a church difficulty, it's a marriage difficulty, or it's a personal difficulty at work. But you ought to be thinking, what testimony about Jesus Christ can we or I give ourselves to, give myself to, in a way that would communicate to the Alexanders and the Rufuses and every other child in this room, Jesus Christ is worth following up the hill. It is worth it to follow Jesus Christ. He is glorious. He is the Son of God sent for sinners. He is the Son of Man who will come in glory on the clouds of heaven, and I You are going to take action that follows Jesus Christ. And the children are going to say they thought Jesus was worth it. They thought Jesus Christ was worth suffering for. They thought his glory and his name were worth it. And they had chances to run away like Peter. And they thought Jesus Christ was more worthy than that. That's your calling in Jesus Christ. What legacy is going to be left by your willingness to take concrete action for Jesus Christ? I don't know all the particulars of what that means for your life and even for my own. It's a question that I must pray about every morning. How are you going to call me, Lord? How are you going to compel me to take up the cross? And some of you, well, maybe all of us, it needs to be this every morning kind of thing. Before you hear the footsteps of the kids walking down the stairs or before you open the door to walk into your workplace or before whatever it is that comes your way, you say, Lord, you may be just about to put a cross on my back. Let me take it. Let me take it for your glory and follow Jesus Christ in a way that would leave a legacy for him. If I ever take up my cross, if I ever take up my cross, it will only be through the power that God gives me to serve and follow in the way of Simon and the way of so many, the way of so many. You all can testify of those who've gone before, who have taken up the cross, and now it's your calling. Take the action for Jesus Christ. And number three, and do not miss the third application. get out of the crowd, we're gonna take concrete application, concrete action, but do not miss the third application. Remember whose cross it is. Remember whose cross it is. Simon, verse 21, took Jesus's cross. He took Jesus's cross. Most of us, even say your best spiritual mentors or pastors or whoever would say at the end of the day, yeah, but I haven't done it all the way right. I'm sure Simon would have said the same thing about his own testimony in life. So the message for us can't really be be Simon. The message can't be be the best cross bearing version of yourself. kind of a self-help kind of mentality, it'll just be better for me. The message is see Simon following Jesus. See Simon following Jesus. See the cross of Jesus Christ. You see, and I read this from someone a few weeks back, and this is really just something of a paraphrase, but Simon carried Jesus' burden because Jesus was carrying the world's burden. Jesus. Mark 14 is found sweating, as it were, drops of blood. He is before the Father in immense agony, going through the fullest of physical and spiritual torments, substituting his own life, his own perfect life, for the people like the very sinners who are running away when they had a chance to be identified with him. Jesus's cross, Jesus is carrying the wrath of the Father Almighty to die this death. He didn't deserve to pay this penalty. And the message is not just, well, Christians are supposed to do hard stuff. The message is, look at Jesus Christ and find yourself in his footsteps, because one, Jesus Christ paid the penalty I could never pay. Simon could carry that cross up to Golgotha a hundred times. He could go up and turn around and come back down and do it back and forth. He could have done it all day long and not paid for a single sin of anybody in this room or his own. But Jesus went through a death, carrying the weights of the world on his shoulders and receiving a true death there, crucified on the cross, paying the penalty for your sin and mine. And you see and you remember that, it's not me, it's what Jesus did, that's what we celebrate. And then you say, as we've already been thinking about, so then Jesus is worth following, right? Jesus is worth following because His cross, His cross, not Simon's cross, His cross that Jesus willingly took on Himself, His cross reveals the glory of God to you and me. Why take up my cross? Because Jesus has already. Why take up my cross? Jesus is worth it. Jesus is of greater value than my reputation, my happiness, my life. Jesus cross Jesus glory. That's the way for me and for you. So whatever it takes, I'm going to proclaim Jesus Christ and join with the likes of Simon and carry the cross. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for the cross of Jesus Christ. We thank you for Jesus Christ and him crucified. Let us live a life rooted in the Savior. Thank you for his work. May we be strong in you and the tasks that are before us. In Jesus' name, amen. We're going to turn to 91C. I think in giving the Psalms for this week, I had meant to say B, C, D and sing through 91. This is okay, it's the providence of God. We've already sung all of 91. 91 is a Psalm about just trusting in God through suffering and difficulty. And as we carry the cross, we need the comfort of the kinds of things 91 sings about. So we're gonna sing some of these verses for the second time to the praise of God. 91C now, 91D will be a little later. Let's stand for 91C.
Immanuel RPC Morning Worship: A Cross and a Legacy (Mark 15:21)
ID kazania | 724221357542825 |
Czas trwania | 41:21 |
Data | |
Kategoria | Niedzielne nabożeństwo |
Tekst biblijny | Ocena 15:21 |
Język | angielski |
Dodaj komentarz
Komentarze
Brak Komentarzy
© Prawo autorskie
2025 SermonAudio.