The Hard Thing | Week 4 | Pastor Jay Stewart

Been in for the last three weeks. Called the Hard Thing. I want you to take out the Refuge app. We've put notes there for you, as we always do. Take your device or your Bible, go to Luke chapter nine.

We're going to look at some verses there in a few moments. But today is what's called Palm Sunday. Palm Sunday, named because of the day before his crucifixion, or days before his crucifixion, when Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey and people began taking off their coats and laying them down on the ground and waving palm branches, shouting, hosanna. That word, hosanna, means the Lord saves, or the one who saves. Now, the people there, the Jewish people in Jerusalem, had an agenda and a thought about why Jesus was coming in and what Jesus was going to do for them.

And they were shouting, hosanna. The Lord saves because they thought that Jesus was going to save them from. From Roman oppression. And Jesus had a bigger agenda. Jesus came riding in because he wanted to save them from the oppression of Satan.

He wanted to deliver them and you and I from the bondages of sin. So, yeah, Jesus does save, but not in the way that they thought he was going to save them. And so today is called Palm Sunday because it was that day as Jesus rode in on a donkey, that they waved their palm branches. It's the beginning of Passion Week. This week leading up to Resurrection Weekend is called Passion Week.

Why? Because of the passion that Jesus demonstrated and the willingness to go to the cross and to be beaten and tortured so that he could bear on himself the sin of mankind. He willingly went through one of the most horrific deaths known to man to take upon himself our sin. So what should our response be to that? Here in Passion Week, as we lead up to Resurrection Sunday, I believe that there should be an expression of passion on our parts, that we proclaim Jesus and the good news of the Gospel and that we worship him with passion.

And as Jesus suffered for us, so should we be willing to suffer for the cause of following him and proclaiming the message of his death and of his resurrection. Obviously, next weekend we celebrate. We celebrate Resurrection Sunday. And listen, it is the centerpiece of Christianity. It's the thing that differentiates Christianity from every other religion in the world.

But listen to me close closely. We cannot celebrate his resurrection without being willing to acknowledge and focus on his crucifixion as well.

We love the celebration of his resurrection and I'm all about it. But listen to me. There would be no resurrection were there first not a crucifixion The Apostle Paul In Philippians chapter 3, verse 10 says some words that may be difficult for us in this is not our text. But I want to share this with you because I believe it's pertinent and lays a foundation for where we're going. This morning Paul says this.

I want to know Christ and the power that raised him from the dead. Now if we just stop right there, everybody's like, yes, sign me up. Because I want to know Jesus. I want to know his power. I want to know that resurrection power that raised Jesus from the dead.

But it gets a little tougher when we continue on and read the remaining words of the Apostle Paul when he says this. I want to share in his sufferings and become like him in his death. And that's where a lot of people go, no, no thank you. No, thank you. Withdraw my membership, please.

I want to know the power of his resurrection. But I don't know about this whole suffering thing. I don't know about this whole dying thing. It's interesting that the cross is rejected by so many other religions. Islam rejects cross.

Islam declares that it's inappropriate for a prophet of God to come to such a horrific death and end. The Quran sees no need for a sin bearing death of a savior. At least five times. The Quran declares categorically that no soul shall bear another's burden. Hinduism rejects the saving significance of the cross.

Humanism rejects the notion of the cross entirely. I love what Oswald Chambers said. He said, all heaven is interested in the cross of Christ. All hell is terribly afraid of it. While men are the only beings who more or less ignore its meaning, the cross is significant for us today.

If we really want to know the power of his resurrection, we have to be willing to embrace the fellowship of His Son. Suffering. It's a hard thing. Jesus has some hard words to say in Luke, chapter nine, beginning of verse 23. Would you take your device and go there?

Would you stand to honor the word of God? This morning as we look at a few verses together, some hard sayings of Jesus.

If you have what's called a red letter edition of the Bible, then these words I'm about to read are in red because they were spoken by Jesus. He says in verse 23. Then he said to them all, whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross. Say this word. Come on, say it and follow me.

For whoever wants to save their life will lose. It sounds like an oxymoron, but whoever loses their life for me will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world and yet lose or forfeit their very soul? Whoever is ashamed of me and my words, the Son of man will be ashamed of them when he comes in his glory and in the glory of the Father and of the holy angels. Hard words by Jesus.

Hard requirements. He says if we want to be true disciples, we gotta die. Will you make some declarations with me before you're seated today? Everybody out loud, good and strong. You ready?

Go. I will hide this word in my heart that I might not sin against God. This word is life to my body and health to my bones. I will be a doer of the word and not a hearer only. And I am confident of this will complete it.

In Jesus name, amen. You can be seated, lean in this morning and hear what the spirit of the Lord would desire to say to us. Because I believe it is absolutely life giving. It's absolutely crucial to you and I tapping into the abundant life that Jesus has provided for us. Companies will spend millions of dollars looking for a logo and or a slogan that will really register in the minds of consumers.

We've been familiar with many of those. In fact, one of the most recent that has really grabbed my attention and the attention of many other people that I feel like it's just genius. It's from an insurance company and they created this character by the name of Dr. Rick. And Dr. Rick's whole mission in life is to protect millennials from becoming their parents. Come on.

How many of you have seen the progressive insurance? They're so funny. There's just brilliant advertising. And they probably spent millions of dollars to come up with something that would register in the minds of consumers. Back in 1984, a fast food chain came up with three words that stuck in the minds of people.

And if you were around back then, it's still in your mind today. And when I say these three words, you're going to remember the commerc. Where's the beef? Come on. How many of you remember that you're going to date yourself?

That's okay. Where's the beef? It was a brilliant campaign in 1984, Nike came up with three words that we all are familiar with. Just. Just do it.

There's another insurance company that says, hey, with us you are in good hands with. Right? It sticks in our brains. Coca Cola has come up with many campaigns and slogans that have stuck with us. There was a battery company that decided to use a bunny rabbit to illustrate that their batteries last longer than anybody else's and they had the Energizer Bunny and they said, our batteries keep going and going and going and going.

And we remember the Energizer Bunny beating the drum, marching back and forth. How many? That brilliant campaign that has stuck with us to this day. One of my favorites that we see on billboards and television commercials nowadays says, america runs on.

Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

Listen, many times when I'm getting on my bicycle for one of these 40 or 50 mile training rides, I am running on Duncan, baby.

Chances are Jesus did not win any awards when it comes to some brilliant marketing strategy. He didn't pick a slogan or a logo that really was popular. I mean, think about it. He could have chosen the duff precious, nice pure white dove that would represent peace. He could have chosen a rainbow that would remind us of the promises of God.

Maybe a shepherd's staff that would remind us that he is the good shepherd. But no, he chose a device of torture called the cross and he invites us to die. So much for marketing. Not a real popular campaign. But the hard truth is that Jesus is inviting us into a lifestyle.

Not just one time when you receive Jesus into your life, but every single day. And he emphasizes, if you want to be one of my true disciples, you've got to take up your cross daily and follow me. That's a hard truth. We can try to glamorize the cross. We can make it more ornate, and a lot of people have done that.

We can gold plate the cross and make it nice and shiny. But the reality is that it represents death and so much more. Let me give you three things that I believe the cross symbolizes for us today. Number one, the cross represents humility. Listen, back in the day, there were much cheaper methods of executing somebody or killing somebody.

Much cheaper. You could stone them, really cost nothing. It could burn them at the stake. Didn't cost anything. Maybe a little fuel, run them through with a sword, behead them much faster.

Much cheaper than crucifixion. Crucifixion required four Roman soldiers and a centurion. But there was a reason that they would choose crucifixion to execute someone, him. It was a way to humiliate them. It was a way to show the world that that person that's hanging on that cross is nothing compared to the power of Rome.

Jesus was humiliated. We know that. He was stripped down. He was beaten by the Roman soldiers. Yet the Apostle Paul tells us in Philippians chapter two that we should take on the same nature of Jesus.

We should have the same attitude. Who made himself nothing. Think about it. He's God. He's the King of kings, he's the Lord of lords, he has a position of royalty and power in heaven.

But he takes off his royal robe, he lays down his titles, he lays down his crown, and he comes to the earth and he takes on the form of a servant. And the apostle Paul says that he humbles himself even to the point of death. And then he adds an exclamation point or two by saying, even death on a cross, of all things humiliated in front of the world. The attitude of Jesus should be the attitude that we adopt in our own lives. And it's this.

That this journey of following Jesus is not at all about me, but it is all about him. And one of the ways that we forfeit the abundant life that Jesus has provided for us is that we make it too often about us. What's God going to do for me? How's the Lord going to bless me? What are people going to think about me?

And Jesus says, you've got to die to all of that stuff. You've got to humble yourself under the mighty hand of God. You've got to allow yourself to be humiliated for my sake. And then when you do that, I know it sounds like an oxymoron, but if you'll do that, if you'll lay down your life, that's when you find life. That's when you discover what real life looks like.

And St. Augustine said this. It was pride that changed angels into devils. It is humility that makes men as angels. James, chapter 4, verse 10. Humble yourselves before the Lord and he will lift you up in honor.

He'll lift you up. Yeah. It's an opposite philosophy. We think we've got to promote ourselves. We've got to climb to the top.

We've got to make sure that everybody notices us. And Jesus says, take the opposite pathway. Humble yourself. And if there's some exalting to be done, he says, I will exalt you way above what Instagram ever will.

I love this quote by Andrew Murray. Listen, Andrew Murray says this humility is perfect quietness of heart. It is to expect nothing, to wonder at nothing that is done to me, to feel nothing done against me. It is to be at rest when nobody praises me and when I am blamed or despised. It is the fruit of the Lord Jesus Christ's redemptive work on Calvary's cross, manifested in those of his own who are definitely subject to the Holy Spirit.

That's powerful. I think I put that in your notes, I think you ought to just meditate on that and let it marinate in your soul all week. Not only does the cross represent humility, but secondly, it represents submission. Submission. Crucifixion was a means of execution that the Romans used to force submission.

In fact, history said that there would be times they would execute as many as 2,000 people at one time. And then they would take those crosses with bodies hanging on them and they would line the streets. And the message that they wanted to send was, this is what will happen to anybody who opposes us. And by doing that, they forced submission, force submission. Listen to me.

God will never force you to submit. He'll never force that on you. But the cross represents the crossing of two wills. The horizontal beam of the cross represents the will of man, and the vertical beam of the cross represents the will of God. And there's a place that they intersect.

And at that intersection of the those two wills, Listen to me. One will has to die.

But God will never force you into submission. Where your will collides with the will of God. You have a choice to make. And the choice looks like this. I have my plans.

I have my rights. I have my opinions. I have my desires. I have my issues.

And I can hang onto those and kill the will of God in my life, or I can lay all of that down and say, even though I have a right to be angry, even though I have a right to be bitter, even though I have a right to get even, even though I have a right to these opinions, even though I have a right to fulfill my fleshly desires, I can lay all of that down and submit, commit to the perfect will of God and allow that to be alive on the inside of me. Because let me tell you something, there is no room for both. It's one or the other. It's your will or it's his will. You say, pastor, this is tough preaching.

You better believe it is tough preaching. But I love you enough that for 19 years, I've preached the entire gospel to you, the whole gospel to you. Not just the parts that make us feel good about ourselves, not just the parts that are politically correct and acceptable, but the full gospel. And Jesus said this. It's not my opinion.

We just read it. It's exactly what Jesus said. If you want to really live, then at that intersection of two wills, the pathway to life is that you die to your own will. And you accept my will, you submit to my will. Even Jesus himself battled this.

We see it hours before his crucifixion you read in Scripture, and I've been in the garden where Jesus was praying. But in Matthew 26, verse 39, it says that he fell with his face to the ground and he prayed. Listen to his prayer. My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. If it's possible.

Like, here's my will. Like, I don't want to go through this torture. I don't want to go through this pain. I don't want to go through the humiliation. And so if there's any other way that mankind can be redeemed, if there's a way for this cup of bitterness and suffering and pain to be taken away from me, let it be done, my Father.

But then he says this. Yet not as I will, but as you will. He died. Boom. Right then.

They thought they killed him on the cross. No, he died in that garden. He said, not my will. No, no, I'm laying that down. I'm dying to your will.

And thank God that he was willing to do that, because you and I are washed in the blood of Jesus because of his willingness to lay down his will and submit to the will of God again. He'll never force his will on you. He'll never force you into submission like an MMA fighter who tries to choke you out or get you in some hold where the only choice you have is to tap out and say, okay, yeah, it's your way. No, no, no. He says, I'm setting before you life and death.

Choose life. Choose the way of the Lord. It's up to you. You can have it your way. You can hang on to your rights if you want.

You can hang on to your plans and hang on to your agendas. But if you give it up for me, if you trade them in for my plans and for my ways, you're going to discover, oh, I've got so much more for you than you could ever accomplish on your own. My ways, they're higher and they're always better. Submit to his ways. Submit to his will.

Allow your flesh to die not just once, but every day. William Hendrickson says this. I love this quote. When grace changes the heart, submission out of fear changes to submission out of love. And true humility is born.

What a great quote. Here's the last thing. And then we're going to pray. The cross, aside from representing humility and submission, it also represents suffering. It involved torture and bloodshed.

We know, some of us, many of us probably know the process of death. And the writer of Hebrews tells us that without the Shedding of blood. There could not, there could never be a forgiveness of sins. And Jesus shed his blood so that we could be washed from the inside out. This Roman device was a device of torture that was intended to prolong death as long as possible.

The process just leading up to the point of being nailed to the cross or tied to the cross. And many people died in the process and never even made it to the cross. But if they did, like in the case of Jesus, then they had designed a process that would cause the greatest of agony, the greatest of pain, the greatest of suffering by hanging on that cross, prolonging death as long as possible. Charles Spurgeon said, there are no crown wearers in heaven who were not cross bearers here below. And the hard truth is that we are invited into the suffering of Jesus in order that we can know the power of his resurrection.

But you'll never know that. That's what I want you to understand. You'll never know the power of his resurrection unless you're first willing to embrace the cross, willing to embrace the suffering. And true life only comes if we're willing to die. And Jesus said, it's not just a one time act.

It's not just that moment that you recognize and realize, I'm a sinner in need of grace. I need Jesus in my heart. I need to lay down my life and all of my habits and mistakes and I need to invite Jesus into my heart. That's where the journey begins. But some people have it mixed up and they think once I do that, that's it.

No, that's why Jesus said, if you want to be one of my followers and my disciples every single day of your life, you've got to pick that cross up and you've got to make a choice. I'm dying again today. I'm killing my flesh again today. I'm killing my desires, I'm killing, killing my will, I'm killing my opinions. I'm laying down my rights today.

And in the process of doing that, you're going to discover true life. Listen, death is ugly and there's something on the inside of us that just we want to live. And so this thing of crucifying your flesh, it really kicks against what's on the inside of us. And there's this war constantly between our flesh and our spirit. And I've discovered this, that anytime that I try to kill my flesh, and I preached on fasting last week and every time I fast and I said, it's one of the toughest spiritual disciplines that There is.

But every time I fast in order to try to kill some more of my flesh that's still alive, my flesh throws a big old giant temper tantrum, puts up a fight. Because the enemy never wants to give up domain. He wants you to be controlled by your flesh. He wants you to be ruled by your flesh. So when you say, I'm going to kill my flesh today, again, I'm going to crucify my flesh with its passions and desires, your flesh starts stomping its feet.

No, feed me. No, I want my way. And every time you kill the flesh, every day that you kill the flesh, you're sending a message. I am not ruled by my flesh, but I am controlled by the Holy Spirit. Every time you do it, and every time you do that, you take a little more ground.

And the flesh, man becomes weaker and weaker. And the spirit, man becomes stronger and stronger. And Jesus says to his followers, listen, I'm inviting you into life, into life, but death comes first. And it seems like it's mixed up to say that if you want life, here's the way, here's the pathway. You gotta die, you gotta kill your flesh.

But if you'll do that, Jesus says, oh, you're gonna discover true life. You're going to know what it means to live. And you can't hang on to parts of your life and say, okay, Jesus, I'm going to give you this. Let's start with 60%. How about that?

I'll give you 60. I'll keep 40. That's a pretty good deal. And Jesus says, no, I don't make bargains when it comes to life. It's all or nothing.

You give all of yourself to me, and then I'm going to give you all that I have for you. But there's no bargaining chip here. It's not some. And you hang on to some. You give me some.

You hang on to some. Jesus says, we don't play that game. We have to choose every day. We get out of the bed in the morning. Jesus, I know my flesh is going to try to dominate today.

I know my flesh is going to try to rule today. I want to be controlled by the Holy Spirit. I want to kill my flesh. I want to kill those earthly desires, those fleshly desires. I want to lay down my rights when somebody offends me.

And I have a right to be upset. I have a right to get even. I have a right to be angry. I'm gonna lay that down and I'm gonna say, just bring your life, bring your life. I want to know the power of your resurrection.

We have to choose to suffer daily if we're willing to do so. Every day that we do that, listen, when we choose that, we say, I'm giving up my will, submitting to your will. The breath of God comes into our spiritual lungs and we breathe life. We feel his presence. We come more alive than we were before.

If you want to know what it means to be fully alive, Jesus says you gotta die. You gotta take up your cross, not once, but every single day. And if you're willing to do that, that I'm going to give you true life. Bow your heads and close your eyes, would you? Father, thank you for your word.