Our text again today is Mark 15, 21. This will be our third message on this topic of how to bear the cross. And they compel one Simon, a Cyrenian, who passed by. coming out of the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to bear his cross. My father, we gather here today as a people corrupted by sin, unperceiving, falling so short of the holiness to which we are called. in all but darkness, except that by thy grace we're lifted from it. We understand the God of this world blinds the minds of them that believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ should shine unto them. We also know that the Lord can open hearts. The Lord can give understanding. The Lord can reveal himself to us. The Lord can cause us to comprehend the gospel, the way of reconciliation with God, and how we should then live. Oh, there is one God, only one God, and one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus, who gave his life a ransom for all to be testified in due time. How we pray today that by the Spirit of God, we find ourselves withdrawing from the world, focusing on the Lord and His will and His instruction. How we ask that we would be flooded with love for God and for His people, that we would find ourselves more equipped with clear assignments, We pray, Lord, that there are souls who hear the message today who don't know the way to salvation or have not submitted to it, or may think they have, but they have not. Please, we pray that the gospel would go forth with power, for we are not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believe it, the Jew first, also to the Greek. So we pray, Lord, that thou would lead us now, humbly, accurately, to understand the word of God, the will of God, the way of God. In Jesus' name, amen. Again, the topic is how to bear the cross. We're leaning on a work by Dr. Elliot Maxwell, the founder and longtime president of Prairie Bible Institute in Three Hills, Alberta, a school which was known for having sent out more missionaries than perhaps any other institution on earth at that time, sent out several thousand missionaries, and Maxwell gave them this message as the foundation for all their work, the message of the cross. So I trust it'll be helpful for us. Given this peculiar and remarkable verse, Mark chapter 15, 21, there's something just provocative about it to me and almost humorous in some ways and very serious in other ways. But here's this Simon, he's described as a Cyrenian. Who else? We don't know who he is. There's not a clear connection between him and any other person, any else in the scriptures. He's passing by, coming out of the country. He's a family man. He's the father of Alexander and Rufus. And he's compelled to bear the cross of Jesus Christ. And so there's this mundane intersecting with the glorious eternal. There is this didn't know anything, finding himself then in the middle of everything. Reminds me a little bit of one occasion when I was walking a street in New Orleans and there was a man, a very large man trying to get out of his car and into his wheelchair where there was a curve with stuff flowing down it. I was just walking by and I just got into the need and here I was struggling with this man so close you could just smell his perspiration and we're grabbing onto each other and I'm trying to help. How did I get into this? All of a sudden you're there, you're in it. And I think that's the way Simon is. All of a sudden he's carrying the cross of Christ. He can feel it. He knows the weight of it on his shoulder. Maybe he saw the cross later, could see the blood on it. It's just a remarkable thing. Here's the way of God, the election of God. Compelling this one, who was just going about his business, and all of a sudden he's in the center of the story of the redemption, of the crucifixion and redemption. So he bears the cross. And that's significant because the scriptures do tell us we don't bear our cross, we're not his disciple. Cross bearing is at the very heart of what it is for you and me to be a Christian. We go, well, that's just something that's above my pay grade or some other cliche we might throw at it like that and say, I really don't know. Well, we write well better. And maybe we know more than we think we do. But I tell you what. Any man would come after me, let him take up his cross daily and follow me, Jesus said. And if a person does not bear the cross, we cannot be his disciple. It's clearly a central issue. Clearly it's something God would have us to comprehend and to carry out in practice. So that's why we're spending several weeks on it. What I'd like to do today is provide five observations, not in his words exactly. They're my organizing principles. I'm trying to make this as comprehensible as I, by God's grace, can for all of us. Trying to put them in layman's terms and in clear categories. So five observations from what we're learning about how to bear our cross. and here I'm gonna list them up front and I'll go through them one at a time. Bearing our cross is essential. It's essential. We cannot be on the Lord's side, in his family, born again, his disciples, if we don't do this. It's clearly essential that we do it. Secondly, it is, I know this is kind of an awkward, it is a word, I looked it up, experienceable. This is not something above and beyond what normal people can enter into. This book is written, this calling is given to people who are human beings, not super duper intelligence, this or that. And it's not something that's just scholastic, not just something on paper. We don't pursue an experience, but I tell you, we are to experience the reality of bearing the cross. Thirdly, bearing our cross is encompassing. One theme we see throughout this book, Born Crucified, is everything is affected. It's all encompassing. You don't put this aside and that aside and you do these things, this slice of the pie. It is encompassing. It's essential, it's experienceable, it's encompassing. What other ease would there be? Well, it is emancipating. We are taught that this is liberation. How do I get free from sin? I've been a Christian for five years, 23 years, 40 years, and I still can't seem to have lasting victory over some besetting sin. Well, here's the answer. The emancipation, the liberation, the freedom comes with the right application of the cross. And the fifth E stands for enraging. might sound like an interesting topic, but this we see as we go through this work here, that if we have embraced the reality of the cross, there are certain things that enrage us and there are certain things that enrage the world. The passions flow on both sides. So those are the five topics we're going to look at today. We're talking about Behringer Cross as essential, experienceable, encompassing, emancipating, and enraging. So let's take that first one. And we'll go through these fairly swiftly, I trust. Behringer Cross is essential. Again, I'm quoting the book, Dr. Maxwell, He notes that bearing a cross is the key, the key in all life situations. How do I witness to this person? How do I stop being lazy? How can I have the right thought life? How do I handle my mind? Go to the cross. It's the key in all life situations. Take it to the cross. If there's ever a theme, if you were on the campus of that school, and I know a few people who were there, and it's changed as a school now. I'm just talking as it was. This is what you would hear. Take it to the cross. Take it to the cross. The answer is there. Take it to the cross. Second quotation, the only way of life Bearing our cross is the only way of life for every Christian to overcome sin. So it's essential. Again, to quote Jesus in Luke 14, 27, and whosoever doth not bear his cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. It is essential. It's not an elective. It is essential. That's the first thing we learn. Bearing our cross is essential. Secondly, bearing our cross is experienceable. It can be experienced. To quote the book a couple times, bearing our cross is a real, vital, deep, life union with Christ. There's something that happens at that moment when we come to Christ and when the crucifixion of Christ becomes our crucifixion. There's a real, vital, deep life union with Christ. Now this, recently, we learned as a leadership of the church that there is a person who included us in a person's will. And so we are beneficiaries and we were given some documents and I took one of those documents to the bank the other day where there's no republic and signed off on it and stamped on it my fiduciary responsibilities and doing what we need to do with deacons and so on. But the deal is there's a transfer here of assets that this party had. Now it's being transferred and that portion of it to us as a church. And that happens, you might say, like a cleric would handle it. It's on paper. This will occur whether or not you even know this person. If I don't know, if none of us knows this person, it's a document that declares a transfer from party A to a state to party B. And I'm saying that's not what happened at the cross. It's not that sterile. It's not that... legal only, on paper type of experience, there is a real, vital, deep life union that occurs at that moment. Bearing a cross, it isn't just a matter of transfer from column A to column B, what we've done wrong gets placed on Christ, what Christ's righteousness gets placed on our account. That all happens, but there's something more There's an experience there. And one phrase that we discovered the other week was this, it's not a matter of merely imitating Christ. but participating in Christ. See the difference? What would Jesus do? That's a fine question to ask, but we don't do it in our own strength now that we know what He would do, now we'll do it as best we can, but we participate in Christ doing it Himself, abiding in Christ, us in Him, He in us. as we are reminded in 2 Peter 1, 3 and 4. Now maybe this is, I'm not sure if it's the pastor or the English teacher in me, but the first thing I noticed was that five of the key words in this very well-known text, 2 Peter 1, 3 and 4, all start with the letter P. Power, pertain, precious, promises, and partakers. Got a whole sermon right there. But let's take a look at this because it explains that bearing a cross is experienceable. According as his divine power have given unto us all things. The very power that was used of the Lord could create heaven and earth. The very power that raised Christ from the dead is now devoted to this. In that abundance, in that effectualness, according as His divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain, relate to, everything that is in life. It pertains to all life, life and godliness, everything you and I need to be alive unto God, to know the fellowship of Jesus Christ, to have victory over sin, to help in the advancing of the kingdom of God here on earth. It's all there, everything it pertains, the power is there, associated with this truth. Through the knowledge of Him that called us to glory and virtue, whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises. Yes, what we've been given exceeds merely great. Great isn't enough to describe. Knock the ceiling and it rises above that. It exceeds great. Exceeding great and precious promises. Now that might be a word there that causes something to go off in your mind, because yes, 1 Peter 1, I think it's about verse 19, Peter speaks about the precious what? The precious blood of Jesus. It's the same word in the Greek, same word in the English, only here it's precious promises. So the adjective which aptly describes the blood of Jesus Christ is also used to describe the promises of God for you and me. I'm telling you, it's rich. the precious, the sweet, the marvelous, the rich, the beyond expense of importance and wonderment, the precious promises. Everything that He has told you and me that He will do, and where He is, and where we will go, and where this is headed, and what eternity will be like, it's all laid out there. It all is involved in bearing our cross. And by that we become, and there it is, there's our word, partakers of the divine nature. Now that instance I gave you where there's a person whose estate has been directed partly to us, that's a matter of what's on paper and will be transferred to us. But this is something more. It's partaking of the very divine nature. There's something about the union. Allow me to explain it this way. I don't know how close I can get to it, but I think it merits a little more time to describe it. If I were to ask you, what were the five most profound events in your life? And so you list them, the thing that affected me more than anything else, shaped me all my life was this car accident, or that inheritance, or how I was mistreated by my uncle, or the wonderful victory that I had in athletics one day. Whatever it might be, the things that you list, I would suggest to you they probably would not be chronological. That is, the thing that's most important is the thing that just happened, and I'll back it up to that, to that, to that, to the earlier things. See, we in a Western civilization think much more stiffly chronologically than people might in other parts of the world. We notice that in the scriptures, for example, kind of an oriental approach to truth, where it's a little more scattergun, a little more loosey-doosey, a little more where this happens. And then we say, no, wait a minute. That came three chapters later, but it's actually referring to back there. Yeah, that's part of the way they do these things. They don't require everything be given the same chronological sequence. And so it could be that the most profound event you and I remember might be 20 years ago, and the stuff that happened in the recent days, we can't even remember what that was, right? But it had profound impact on us. Now, what's my point of saying that? Well, one question that we ask in seminary is when did the corruption of sin coming from Adam impact you? At what moment did you find yourselves fallen in nature? Some people might say, the moment I was born. I was a cute little baby, blah, blah, blah, but the fact is I already had the corruption, the fallen nature of Adam in me. There are some others who would say, well, it was before that. The fall of man, the corruption, the death that's passed on through Adam happened the moment I was conceived. The moment that the defilement, the corruption that was in the Father passed on through Him to me, the next generation, was the moment I was conceived and I was alive. From then on, I had the corruption of sin in me, the sentence of death in me. I want you to know it's common in seminaries to say both those answers are wrong, but rather that we were in the loins of Adam and participated in the sin in that manner. That's kind of hard to explain that, and it isn't the time to go into much detail. But see how that takes you back another 6,000 years. There's something about the intersection of the eternal with the temporal that changes the whole game, the way things are. Because you see, if that's where corruption occurred back then when we were in the loins of Adam, and in that sense are guilty of the original sin as well, Think about that in relationship to the cross, in that we were in the loins of Christ, so to speak, when he died for our sins, so that what he did also affected us if we, by faith, receive the truth. Now, I'm not presenting this all as necessary. I don't mean to be talking about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. I'm just saying there might be something more than we realize as far as how the Lord looks at time and how it vortexes into our life so that an event that occurred 2,000 years ago has a real impact, a real experience in the lives of us the moment that we believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. When you think about Christ meeting with Elijah and Moses, the three of them meet together. You've got 500 years, 1,000 years, present tense, joined together. You think about Abraham, Jesus saying of Abraham before Abraham was, verily, verily, I say unto you before Abraham was, I am. And so you have the eternal intersecting with time. And so there can be a way, don't know how to explain it entirely, but let's not cut it short. You and I can be in contact with the living God, I say. There's a way in which we are in fellowship, bound with Christ, and it occurred there somehow on the cross. Bearing our cross, I say, is essential, it must happen, and it is experienceable. It's not just textbook, it's a reality, a real thing that occurs. Thirdly, bearing a cross is encompassing. To quote the book again, bearing a cross is a transformational process which does not stop until there is a complete eradication of the old nature, views, and desires. Everything is affected. All the old nature, all the views, all the desires, it's a transformational process one by one we go through and conquer. So we're told in Galatians 6.14, that God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified under me, and I enter the world. I tell you, that is transformation. When everything, the world is here, everything I hear, and we've been separated apart. And so, to a familiar text, I thought we should look at this, Romans 12, 1 and 2. I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which surely is reasonable service, and be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. It encompasses everything. You don't just dip your toe into this Christianity thing, but you want to hold on to these areas of your life which you enjoy, which are not biblical. It's all or nothing. If you're not willing to bear your cross, you can't even be his disciple. So, it is essential, it is experienceable, it is encompassing, it is emancipating. Bearing a cross is liberating. How can I be free from the burden of sin Bear your cross. Grasp the reality of your salvation. Access the power to serve God. See, when we get saved, we get saved from, but we also get saved to. How can we find ourselves being drawn in and bound to Christ? Well, here's how. Jesus said you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free, emancipate you. We need to know what happened at the cross and how it applies to our lives because then we shall be free. Now a number of analogies are given. I'll give them each briefly. These all come from that book. Part of the process is to relate to the Old Testament Levitical priest who, when he is consecrated unto his labor for the Lord, would have blood put on his ear, on his thumb, on his toe, and then he would have blood sprinkled on all of him. I trust you see this picture of consecration. To have blood on the ear means that this ear is consecrated to God. In fact, all the avenues of stuff coming, information coming into me, it's all consecrated unto God. As if I were slain, the blood of a substitute put on my ear, meaning this, I'm going to guard my heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life. Blood on the ear represents consecration of all that I hear. I'm not going to listen to that. I'm not going to listen to that. I'm going to flee that. I'm going to listen to this. I'm going to give my ear unto these things. So it is with my ear, which represents reception of truth, and the thumb. Thumb represents doing. The blood on my thumb represents all that I do is consecrated unto the Lord. Toe represents walk. Everywhere I walk, where I travel, where I go, every place, it's all devoted, consecrated to the Lord. And the sprinkling on all just represents from head to toe, I am the Lord's. So that's an encouragement for emancipation. And then there is this, I know it's kind of hard to even hear about it. I'm sure it's quite effective. But this is an illustration that is given. See self-bound to Christ as Romans were bound criminal to victim. Have you heard that before? I think I've shared it here in church before. If a person did a particularly heinous crime and the victim has died as a result, then the Romans would have the criminal be bound face-to-face, body-to-body with that corpse and thrown on the side of the road and left there to die. That would send quite a message. Talk about being brought face-to-face with your sin and the consequences. But relate to the priest who gives total consecration to Christ. Relate to this. See yourself bound to Christ. Bound to Him, Romans 6, that we've been joined together, planted together with Him, bound in a way we can never be extricated, never be separated. We're bound forever to Him. See yourself bound to Christ as surely as the Romans were bound, binding criminals to victims. A third illustration that was given, bind self as a sacrifice with cords to the altar. That's a quoting of Psalm 118. That's how the psalm ends. It's a wonderful, encouraging psalm. It says, God is the Lord, which hath showed us light. Bind the sacrifice with cords, even unto the horns of the altar. Thou art my God, and I will praise thee. Thou art my God, I will exalt thee. O give thanks unto the Lord, for he is good, for his mercy endureth forever. See yourself bound on the altar of the sacrifice, the horns of the altar. And then, fourthly, superimpose yourself over Christ on the cross so you recognize that's me. Back when I used to teach writing, one of the first assignments I would give these young men and women was to describe a recurring dream that they'd experienced. Ever had a recurring dream? Some people, it's about once every year or once every month or once every day in some cases, but a recurring dream. I just remember this one lady who described her recurring dream where she said that she would be walking along and there he was, or this person was, kind of strangely dressed and had a green and a red shade on her sunglasses. And when the person blinked, the red would change the green, the green would change the red. And anyway, she would go over here, and oh, there's that person again. And over here, just kept following her. Then finally she had a confrontation with that person. The person took off the glasses, and the dreamer said, that's me! Herself, she was following herself. Now, I have no idea what that means. But something like that occurs on the cross. Well, finally, when we see that writhing in pain body up there on the cross, we recognize that's me on that cross. And so we need to discover self as dead to sin as is Christ. That's the key. How dead is Jesus Christ to sin? You're bound to him as he is, so are you dead to him in Christ. And that is the way, God's way to freedom. And we could spend a whole message of course just on that. I'm just summarizing what we're learning here. And here's a poem by Oliver Goldsmith which is to capture that idea. Like some tall cliff that lifts its awful form, swells from the veil but midway leaves the storm. Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread, all storm and darkness and lightning and raining the lower half of the mountain. But you get above that and the top half of the mountain, eternal sunshine settles on its head. So that's the way that you and I can be freed in the midst of all of our trials founded on the Lord and all this trouble down here, but all this wonderful peace up here. Which leads us to the fifth and final observation. Bearing our cross is essential, experienceable, encompassing, emancipating, and enraging in two manners. The enraging of Christians in their hatred of sin and self, and the enraging of the world in their hatred of Christians. Okay, if you're accurately conveying the cross and implementing the cross in your life, it's not lukewarm, everything's going fine with you and the world, no trouble. No, there's a stirring up. You know, when the cross as a symbol of Christianity, as I mentioned before, what would be the symbol of French Revolution? The 1789? I think it wouldn't be the cross, it'd probably be the guillotine. Now can you picture the lady wears these earrings, they got little guillotines hanging off her earlobes and bloody ones at that. Oh, I mean, that's a horrible thought. Yes, why? Because the guillotine still carries the sting, the offense. But the cross for some of us as Christians has kind of lost that sting and offense. But it needs to be there, you see, because you look at that cross and it stirs up your hatred of your sin and yourself, which put him up on that tree. So we must never forget the horror of the cross. Any more than a gentleman could forget the horror of atomic bombs. I was reading about a gentleman by the name of Yamaguchi. He's one of the only people known to have experienced both Nagasaki and Hiroshima and lived to tell about it. He was in the military. He saw both of them happen. He lived to be an older man in his 80s. He wrote a book about this. But the horror, even though he lived all this time after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he never forgot it and hated the atomic bomb. encouraged the eradication of atomic warfare and all of that. Why? Because the horror of what he saw, and he describes it, where there used to be eyeballs, now it's just sockets. He saw flesh falling off of bones, and he saw this inconceivable agony of people just slowly dying. It was so horrifying to him. He never could forget that horror is always in front of him. You and I should never forget the horror of the cross. We should be enraged. We should be offended. We don't have a buddy-buddy with sin that put him on the cross and nailed him there. No, so we bear our cross, understand what is the cross. It will maintain a zeal for us for righteousness and a hatred of sin and self. So we are ever to abhor and forsake sin. As Paul says in Ephesians 5.3, let it not be once named among you, as is in keeping with being a saint, as becometh saints. I love this work by Christina Grozzetti. God hardened me against myself, the coward with pathetic voice who craves for ease and rest and joys. Myself, arch traitor to myself, my hollowest friend, my deadliest foe, my clog whatever road I go. Yet one there is can curb myself, can roll the strangling load from me, break off the yoke, and set me free. Bearing of our cross is enraging to Christians, stirring up the passions that is hating sin wherever it's found, but also enraging for the world and their hatred of Christians. Christians are at odds with the world at nearly every turn. For example, The world, by and large, embraces relative values. Relative values. It depends on the situation. It depends upon the person. It might be all right for them to have marriage defined this way or in that time period. At that time, the Constitution was written, blah, blah, blah. But now this. Things have changed. And so we change with it. We shift with it. What I used to believe, now what I believe is something different. And all that is the way it should be. Nothing is founded. Everything is relative. The Christian point of view would draw a line right through that and would say, no, there are absolutes. The Bible says, thou shalt, thou shalt, thou shalt, thou shalt not, thou shalt not, thou shalt not. Absolutes, these are wrong, these are right. No compromise. Well, the world hates that. Secondly, the world would pursue more and more pleasure. Live for pleasure. What makes you happy? What is pleasing to you? Where do you want to go? It's all about having you enjoy. Yes. Well, this is what makes me happy, so I'm just going to do it because my pleasure is the important issue. Well, Christianity draws a line through that. No, it's a matter of we submit to the will of God, even if it means fasting every week, even if it means getting beat up, even if it means we give away our fortunes or whatever it might be. It's all a matter of not personal pleasure. Some people are lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God, the Bible says. but we believe in submission to the Lord and His will. We live for His pleasure. The world wants no final accountability. We'll live, we'll die, and we won't give answer to anybody. It's our life, we'll do and be what we want. Well, of course Christianity would draw a line through that and say it's appointed to man once to die, and then the judgment. That's the reality. The world believes in globalism more and more. I'm going to talk about that to some degree this afternoon. But the scriptures teach there should be boundaries. God raises up one, God puts down another, draws the lines through the generations where there's independence and ability to make decisions according to local government. The world believes in socialism, government having more and more and more and more and more control, wrested out of the hands of people who don't know what they're doing anyway. But the Christian is taught there's a place for private property and us having our own domain to do what we want to with that which is ours. Government control, personal liberty. Not on a list could go. Most of all, apart from specific issues, the world has a deep, old, wordless visceral hatred for God and his people. You can list all these things you see, but there's something even more gut level. And by the way, that's what visceral means. Did you know that? Viscous is the Latin word for guts. It's for internal organs. Visceral then means all that is inside, the large intestine, small intestine. There's something in the gut the world hates, a Christian. When I was driving on Highway 19 one day, I hit a deer that was crossing the road, and the carcass went right in the ditch, but right there in the center of the highway was this steaming, very clean pile of viscera. Somebody hit that deer just right where it gutted the deer, and there was the large and small intestines, just one little neat pile. Well, there's something about the world hating God and it just takes the right experience, the right set of circumstances for it to be exposed. Even that which they cannot explain why. Jesus speaks about it in John 15. If the world hate you, know that it hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world could love his own, would love his own. But because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you. See, that's more than socialism. That's more than globalism. That's more than variables and absolutes. There's something visceral in the hatred for God and his people. We'll conclude with this. Is there a time in this age when the cross loses its scandal? The answer given in the book is only if the world feels no longer rebuked. We're to be the salt of the world. We're to be the light of the world. The church will most impact the world when the church will have nothing to do with the world. Oh, this sad poem here. And they of the church and they of the world journeyed closely hand in heart, and none but the master who knoweth all could discern the two apart. Love not the world, friends, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is of the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the heart and eyes, the pride of life, is not of God, but is of the world. I'm crucified unto the world, the world's crucified unto me. So I think that's enough for today. Five observations about bearing our cross. It is essential, experienceable, encompassing, emancipating, and enraging. Paul says, I personally, nor will anybody else, but I, we're all accountable. There'll be people here who think they're crucified with Christ and aren't. There are people here who may know they aren't crucified with Christ and need to make the right decision today. I am, see that confirmation there, I am crucified with Christ. Nevertheless, I live. And here's the perplexity, here's the wonderment, here's that goes beyond the clerical. Not I, but Christ liveth in me. And the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God who left me and gave himself for me. May we pray. O Lord, only the Spirit of God can open up the eyes of man to comprehend this in ways that we should comprehend it. And so I pray, may thy Holy Spirit be poured out among us. May thy Holy Spirit open our eyes to see as never before the cross and how to implement it in our own lives. We surrender ourselves to thee, Lord. And if there are those who have not done that, give them grace to do so even today, to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ as the only hope for salvation. And that we ask in Jesus' name. Amen.