Take Up Your Cross and Follow Jesus

WE ARE STUDYING THE FOUR GOSPELS MATTHEW, MARK, LUKE AND JOHN TO KNOW THE LORD AND SAVIOUR JESUS CHRIST. 
TO KNOW HIM IS TO LOVE HIM.

Our Savior was rejected in Nazareth see;
Jesus Rejected at Nazareth.
The Wedding at Cana.
Then He;
Cleanses the Temple.
We see that He;
Knows What Is in Man.
He then tells us how to get saved;
You Must Be Born Again!
For God So Loved the World!
Jesus ends His Ministry in Judea and;
John the Baptist Exalts Christ.

Jesus finished His Ministry in Judea and went up to Galilee but did not take the long road the Jews normally take to avoid going through Samaria but went straight to a place called Sychar near to the parcel of  ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. Now Jacob’s well was there.
Jesus and the Woman of Samaria.

Jesus returned via Samaria to Galilee and we see The Rewards Of Service John 4:28-38, The Growth Of Faith John 4:39-45 and lastly The Reward Of Trusting Jesus’ Word John4:46-54.
The Rewards Of Service

Back in Galilee after a year in Judea;
Jesus Ministers to Great Crowds.

Nazareth’s loss was Capernaum’s gain. The people in the latter city recognized that His teaching was authoritative. His words were convicting and impelling.
The Sermon on the Mount.
And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain: and when he was set, his disciples came unto him: 
The Beatitudes. Salt and Light.
Lust-Divorce-Oaths.
Retaliation and Love Your Enemies
Secret giving and secret praying
How to pray and how to fast
What to Seek and Whom to Serve
Do Not Be Anxious
Judging Others
Ask, and It will Be Given & The Golden Rule.
A Tree and Its Fruit
I Never Knew You
Build your House on the Rock.
The Authority of Jesus
Rewards Of Faith, The Great Physician
The Helper Of The Needy And The Friend Of Sinners
a Sermon Christ in Me by Dr. Sidlow J. Baxter.            
Jairus daughter Restored to Life, a Woman Healed, Jesus Heals Two Blind men, Jesus Heals a Man Unable to speak.
Hope for the hopeless. Tender Ministry to Maid and Women. Curing the Incurable and Raising the Dead

The sending forth of the twelve in Chapter 9 opens the third year Jesus’ public ministry
The Harvest Is Plentiful, the Laborers Few
The Mission to Israel.
Not Peace, but a Sword
Messengers from John the Baptist
Woe to Unrepentant Cities
Come to Me, and I Will Give You Rest
Jesus Is Lord of the Sabbath
God’s Chosen Servant
The Sign of Jonah
Return of an Unclean Spirit
Jesus’ Mother and Brothers
The Parable of the Sower
The Purpose of the Parables
The Parable of the Sower Explained
The Parable of the Weeds
The Mustard Seed and the Leaven
The Parable of the Weeds Explained.
Jesus’ Parables of the Hidden Treasure-The Pearl of Great Value-Fishing Net.
New and Old Treasures.
Jesus Rejected at Nazareth
The Death of John the Baptist told to Jesus
Jesus Feeds the Five Thousand men plus women and children.
Jesus Walks on the Water.
Jesus Heals the Sick in Gennesaret
Traditions and Commandments
What Defiles a Person
The Faith of a Canaanite Woman
Healing and feeding the multitudes
The Pharisees and Sadducees Demand Signs
The Leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees
Peter Confesses Jesus as the Christ
Jesus Foretells His Death and Resurrection

Matthew 16 ;24-28
Then said Jesus unto his disciples;
If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.
For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.


For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?


For the Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels; and then he shall reward every man according to his works.
Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.

Frederick Brotherton Meyer, a contemporary and friend of D. L. Moody and A. C. Dixon, was a Baptist pastor and evangelist in England involved in ministry and inner city mission work on both sides of the Atlantic presents it to us this way regarding Matthew 16:24-28.

BEAR THE CROSS FOR JESUS

The gospel has two parts: Jesus is the Christ; and the Christ must suffer, if He shall enter His glory. Our Lord made sure of the first, before He held to the second. There had been veiled hints of His death before, as in Joh_2:19; Mat_9:15; Mat_12:40; but henceforth it was taught without a veil. The Cross had always cast its shadow over our Lord’s path. He did not die as the martyr on whom death comes unexpectedly, but He stepped from the throne and became incarnate that He might die. Notice that solemn must, Mat_16:21.

How soon Peter fell from his high estate! Beware! The voice that bids us spare ourselves is Satan’s. Self-pleasing ends in destruction. Self-denial and self-sacrifice are the divine path to life. Let us be more eager to lose ourselves than to find ourselves; more set on the cross than on the glory; more eager to promote the well-being of others than our own. We do not choose or make our cross; Christ gives each a little bit of His true Cross to bear as He pleases.

We thank William MacDonald (1917-2007) who, for more than forty years, written directly about the key issues of Christianity. Leaving a promising business career as an employed investment analyst with First National Bank of Boston “at the foot of the Cross”, he had travelled worldwide, proclaiming the unsearchable riches of Christ for the Believer’s Bible Commentary on Matthew 16:24-28.

Preparation for True Discipleship

16:24 Now the Lord Jesus plainly states what is involved in being His disciple: denial of self, cross-bearing, and following Him. To deny self is not the same as self-denial; it means to yield to His control so completely that self has no rights whatever. To take up the cross means the willingness to endure shame, suffering, and perhaps martyrdom for His sake; to die to sin, self, and the world. To follow Him means to live as He lived with all that involves of humility, poverty, compassion, love, grace, and every other godly virtue.

16:25 The Lord anticipates two hindrances to discipleship. The first is the natural temptation to save oneself from discomfort, pain, loneliness, or loss. The other is to become wealthy. As to the first, Jesus warned that those who hug their lives for selfish purposes would never find fulfillment; those who recklessly abandon their lives to Him, not counting the cost, would find the reason for their existence.

16:26 The second temptation—that of getting rich—is irrational. “Suppose,” said Jesus, “that a man became so successful in business that he owned the whole world. This mad quest would absorb so much of his time and energy that he would miss the central purpose of his life. What good would it do to make all that money, then die, leave it all behind, and spend eternity empty-handed?” Man is here for bigger business than to make money. He is called to represent the interests of his King. If he misses that, he misses everything.

In verse 24, Jesus told them the worst. That is characteristic of Christianity; you know the worst at the outset. But you never cease discovering the treasures and the blessings.

Barnhouse put it well:


When one has seen all that is forbidding in the Scriptures, there is nothing left hidden that can come as a surprise. Every new thing which we shall ever learn in this life or the next will come as a delight.

16:27 Now the Lord reminds His own of the glory that follows the suffering. He points forward to His Second Advent when He will return to earth with His angels in the transcendent glory of His Father. Then He will reward those who live for Him. The only way to have a successful life is to project oneself forward to that glorious time, decide what will really be important then, and then go after that with all one’s strength.

16:28 He next made the startling statement that there were some standing there with Him who would not taste death before they saw Him coming in His kingdom. The problem, of course, is that those disciples have all died, yet Christ has not come in power and glory to set up His kingdom. The problem is solved if we disregard the chapter break and consider the first eight verses of the next chapter as an explanation of His enigmatic statement. These verses describe the incident on the Mount of Transfiguration. There Peter, James, and John saw Christ transfigured. They were actually privileged to have a preview of Christ in the glory of His kingdom. We are justified in viewing Christ’s transfiguration as a prepicture of His coming kingdom. Peter describes the event as “the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ” (2Pe_1:16). The power and coming of the Lord Jesus refer to His Second Advent. And John speaks of the Mount experience as the time when “ … we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father” (Joh_1:14). Christ’s First Coming was in humiliation; it is His Second Coming that will be in glory. Thus, the prediction of verse 28 was fulfilled on the Mount; Peter, James, and John saw the Son of Man, no longer as the humble Nazarene, but as the glorified King.

Please pray the Holy Spirit-The Paraclete will use these sermons and studies to bring many to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.
Tell someone today how much you Love Jesus Christ!

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By Philippus Schutte

New Covenant Israelite! "And if some of the branches be broken off, and thou, being a wild olive tree, wert grafted in among them, and with them partakest of the root and fatness of the olive tree;  Boast not against the branches. But if thou boast, thou bearest not the root, but the root thee."  Rom 11:17 -18