Find Your Life by Losing It

The Hard Sayings of Jesus M3

Date: February 17, 2013

Title: Find Your Life by Losing It

Text: Luke 14: 25-27; Luke 9: 23-25

Big Idea: When we take up our cross and lay down our life, we find our true life...

​I remember, when it was time to bring Joey home from the hospital after he had been born, how we placed him in his car seat for the very first time, and the car seat looked way too big for his little body. We had towels that we placed under his bum, at his sides, and behind his neck to keep him from flopping around. I'm not usually a particularly careful driver (there's a reason, I don't have a “honk if you love Jesus” bumper sticker on our car – I don't want to deter people from the Christian faith), but that day I drove down Oak Street and turned onto King Edward with great caution - under the speed limit - to be sure that I was aware of what was happening on the road. If you are a parent, you know that driving your newborn baby from the hospital to your home - especially your first - is a scary experience.

I hear that another scary day for a parent is the day you turn over the keys of your vehicle to your child when they get their license at age 16. While our son Joey, since the time he has been able to crawl, has expressed an interest in being in the driver's seat and holding the steering wheel, he won't be driving - hopefully - for at least another 12 years. But the day will come when we place the keys of our car into his hands.

A lot of us enjoy the thought of Jesus being in their car as a passenger, as someone who can provide advice from time to time, as someone whose presence can make us feel less alone, and gives us peace of mind by just being with us. But a less pleasant thought for many people is to think of Jesus in the driver's seat of our life; where we let go of the control of our lives and Jesus determines where we go and the speed of our travel - where Jesus is in charge our habits, our money, our ambitions. That can be a scary thought.

We are in a series called The Hard Sayings of Jesus: sayings that are hard in some cases because they are hard to understand and, in other cases, hard because they are hard to swallow – and hard to live out - impossible to live out without God's help.

The text that we are going to be looking at today would not have been difficult for people in the first century to understand, but it would have been even more difficult to swallow and live out.

Last week we looked at Luke, Chapter 14, verses 25-26, where Jesus says: “If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even life itself—such a person cannot be my disciple. (And if you were away last weekend for the long weekend or Chinese New Year the sermon focused how hating our parents serves as a sword which divides our families, but in many cases can actually make our relationship with them more healthy. (It is available on our website). Then in the very next verse Jesus says, “Whoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.”

In Luke 9: 23-25, Jesus echoes similar words and we’ll be looking at this text today:

23 Then he said to them all: "Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. 24 For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it. 25 What good is it for you to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit your very self?" (TNIV)

Pray

When Jesus says, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me,” he is saying “You’ve got to be ready for a violent death," if you’re my follower. When we first read this it sounds crazy.

Can you imagine a politician like Christy Cark or Adrian Dix saying to a group of people, "If you vote for me and our party, you will lose your families, your homes - all that you love. So, who wants to sign on to my campaign?" However, as one of the commentators points out, instead of being a politician, we should imagine Jesus as a leader of a great expedition, making his way through a high and dangerous mountain pass to bring urgent medical aid to villagers cut off from the rest of the world. We can imagine our leader Jesus saying, "If you want to come any further, you will have to leave your packs behind. From here on, the path is too steep to bring all that stuff." It is not an easy message, but it makes more sense. And it's one that brings life.

When Jesus calls us to follow Him, He calls us to surrender control of our life to Him, and to even be willing to lay down our life for Him.

In Jesus' first century world, when He called on those who were considering following Him to take up their cross, that would not have been interpreted as a simple figure of speech. People would have heard that as an invitation to be seen as a condemned criminal, then to die a disgraceful, violent death. If we heard the expression, “Take up your cross many times,” we can immune to it. Ann Voscamp, the Canadian author, describes how she struggled with depression and at times would say to herself, “I'd be better off dead.” But, when she actually contracted cancer and was facing the real possibility of death – she realized how hard it was and how much she wanted to live.

In Jesus calls us to face some kind of death and follow him. Death to an old way of life, death to our way of life.

But Jesus says: "Whoever wants to save their life will eventually lose it, but whoever loses their life for me, will find it." Jesus then says, “What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet lose or forfeit their very self.”

So here is the paradox: following Jesus will cost us our life. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it in his classic book The Cost of Discipleship: "When Christ calls a person, He bids them come and die." But it is in following Christ and offering our life to him, laying ourselves down for Him, that we find true life. As Bonhoeffer said "Following Christ is costly, because it will cost us our life, but it is grace, for it will give us our true life." The paradox is that it's only in losing our life for Christ that we truly find it.

In our culture--and I find myself talking like this as well--we often speak of two tiers of Christians: "Christians in general," and "committed Christians." But with Jesus, He makes no such distinction between "Christians," and "committed Christians." With Jesus, a follower of Christ must be willing to pick up their cross and lay down their life, and in so doing will find it in the end. As C.S. Lewis says, it's not so much that Christ wants some of our time, some of our talent, or some of our money--he wants all of us. And if he has all of us to have our time, our talent, our money. Christ doesn't want to cut off a branch here and there. He wants the whole tree.

Not long ago, I read a biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the pastor who was a key leader in the underground resistance movement which sought to resist Hitler. When it looked like his life was clearly in danger, Bonhoeffer—the pastor who was also a brilliant theologian--had the opportunity to take a distinguished teaching post at Union Seminary in New York City. Through his connections, he was able to leave Germany and find residence at Union Seminary. But he felt restless. In June of 1939, as he was reading the Scriptures he read in Isaiah 28:16, "The one who believes does not flee." Under Hitler things were becoming more scary in Germany. His friends told him, "Do not come back.” He was wanted by the Gestapo.But, he felt increasingly restless in NYC, and as he prayed about it, he felt God calling him back to Germany. So on July 7, 1939, just 26 days after arriving in New York, he boarded a ship and returned to Germany.

He was really living out his own paraphrase of Jesus' words in his book The Cost of Discipleship where he wrote: "When Jesus calls a man, He bids him come and die." Bonhoeffer would go on to lead the resistance movement against Hitler. He was discovered, arrested, imprisoned, and at age 39, engaged to be married. He was executed.

A couple of years ago, we featured the testimony of an 18 year old Korean girl on the screen named Kyung Ju (show the image).





Her dad had occupied a high-ranking position in the government of North Korea. Then, likely because of his commitment to Christ, he strangely went missing one day. He was likely martyred for his faith in Christ. Kyung Ju talked about how she was studying political science in South Korea. She talked about wanting to move to North Korea, to be engaged in the political sphere, as an ambassador for Jesus Christ -- fully aware that it may cost her life. As was true for Dietrich, and as may be true for Kyung Ju one day, there are times when taking up our cross, and laying down our life, will culminate in a one-time act. Someone said that you can only use the gift of martyrdom once.

But for most of us, taking up our cross will be an ongoing thing. Notice that Jesus says, in verse 23: "Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily." In Romans, Chapter 12, Paul, likely alluding back to Jesus' words, says: "Therefore I urge you to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice."

Typically, in the ancient world, when an animal was sacrificed, it was first killed, and then the body would get placed on the altar, and then it would be consumed. If you were to put a live creature on the altar, and then light a fire on that altar, what is the creature going to do? It will get off the altar! But what Paul is saying is to get back on the altar, to surrender. There are times when it will feel that you are going to die, but it is the only way to life.

Sometimes, surrendering to Jesus, taking up our cross, means that we give up a way of life that is sinful, and dishonouring to God. In John 8, we see that Jesus approaches a woman caught in adultery. He doesn't condemn her like the other people around her who have brought her to him. He says: "I don't condemn you, now go and sin no more. Surrender your sexuality to me, your thoughts, your habits, your actions." Sometimes the sin, as in the case of this woman, is more dramatic and more scandalous, but at other times sin is small and seemingly innocuous -- but something that Jesus is calling us to surrender and crucify.

Not long ago, after waking up I went downstairs, let our puppy Sasha out of the kennel she sleeps in and fed her breakfast, and then went upstairs to do some home work. I ended up coming back downstairs about half an hour later, and noticed that she was chewing something. I opened up her mouth, and discovered that she was chewing one of the Lego figures that Joey had been given for Christmas. Before leaving Sasha on her own downstairs, where it was dark and I should have turned on the lights and checked to see if there were any chewable toys of Joey's left laying around on the floor. I pulled it out of her mouth, and then Sakiko and Joey came down for breakfast. I explained what had happened to Sakiko, and she said, "Ok well, this figure is a little damaged, but it still looks okay. Here are a couple more, but one is still missing." So, I went back into the living room while they were still in the kitchen, and discovered what looked like a chewed over blue stick figure. The once robust plastic lego man been now looked a shredded skeleton, I thought it looks like it has been through a bomb explosion! Sakiko asked if I had found the other figure, and I felt inner conflict as my first impulse was to say, “No... have you?” but then I felt convicted -- that it was a lie -- sounds like such a trivial incident, but in that moment I felt that it was a matter of surrendering to Christ and so I showed her. We were able to replace the figure.

God not only addresses sin as in the case of the woman who was caught in adultery.

We see in the gospels again and again, people like the tax collector named Zacchaeus, who calls people to surrender their money to him. Jesus spoke about money a great deal during His ministry because He knew it held so much sway over people.

I was recently going through some statements about spiritual practices—what we call a rule of life—from some people, who were in a small group of mine, each of whom had given me their Rule of Life. I was reading one by someone who was recently married, about to buy a home and start a family, and I knew that finances were tight. Yet, when I saw what they were committing to give as a percentage of their income, I thought, "Wow, this person has surrendered their financial life to God, and God will honour them."

Jesus can call us to surrender a habit, our money, and the direction of our whole lives. When Jesus called His first disciples, the fishermen who ended up dropping their nets, leaving everything to follow Jesus into what was, humanly speaking, an uncertain venture, all but one ended up dying a martyr's death. Jesus calls us to deny ourselves, pick up our cross—prepare to die—and follow Him, and part of what that means, is that we are willing to follow Jesus in a direction we would not normally take; to give up our ambitions, and follow him where He calls us.

This week, as I was thinking about this text, I asked Sakiko what it means for us to live out this text, to take up our cross. She paused for a moment and thought, and said, "In my own life, picking up the cross and following Jesus meant leaving my country, and coming to Vancouver." As someone who loved her family, her culture, her church, her job in Tokyo, she had never imagined living in a different country. And yet, God had clearly spoken to her about a major change in her life, thankfully for me before I proposed.

Ironically, the surrender of my life has been taken the opposite direction. The person who inspired me to go into the Christian ministry is someone who happened to be a speaker at Mission's Fest this year: an Argentinean evangelist named Luis Palau. Luis Palau has had a ministry where he has travelled to different parts of the world as a missionary evangelist preaching the gospel. And partly because he was the one who inspired me to enter into the vocational Christian ministry, I thought that one day, I might have a ministry of travelling in some preaching or missionary context. As a younger man I did some traveling and speaking and there is a kind a glamour in being the fresh voice, the star, and not having to deal with the problems on the ground as I jetted away.

I didn't envision that I would be pastoring in my own backyard -- this is not that far from where I grew up.

I have had to surrender that ambition, to be this travelling ministry figure, because I sensed that God has called me here, primarily as a local pastor.

In a way, God has fulfilled the desire for me because, as other people have pointed out to me, Vancouver is an international missionary context. An urban mission specialist named Ray Bakke came here to speak here at Tenth, and he told me in my office (partly tongue-in-cheek) that just when it was getting too expensive to send missionaries around the world, God has sent the world to Vancouver at their own expense.

And there have been great gifts in being rooted in a particular community.

Simone Weil, said “To be rooted [in community] is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul.”

I feel very fortunate to be in a place where I feel that I am living out my call, that I am where I feel God wants me to be.

Even though I feel I am where God wants me to be, I also don’t want to cling to a particular place or post, but release these to God.

I want to surrender my hope for the day, for next two weeks, or 6 months to him...

The more I walk with Jesus, watch Him interact with people in the gospels, the more I believe that He has our best interest at heart. We can’t even control our lives anyway, and we are best off ceding control to the one who is all powerful and loves us beyond our wildest hopes. Yes, Jesus does talk about us taking up our cross, but He says this so that in the end we may experience true life. Jesus said: "Whoever loses his life for me, my kingdom will find him."

Some of you are familiar with AA. One of the most important steps in AA is to surrender your will. The motive of the people who created AA, Bill Wilson and Sam Shoemaker, was not to shackle them in chains, but that people who struggle with drinking could truly experience freedom. Jesus' motive in calling us to give up the driver's wheel of our life is love ( Props: two chairs and a steering wheel—maybe borrow one from Carter Honda or Trembley Motors or Madjid) to give us freedom...

It says in John 10, "I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full." One of the very best examples I have for this is rappelling. (Show a PowerPoint image of someone rappelling).



When you are rappelling down the side of a cliff when you are a beginner -- and this is especially true if you are afraid of heights -- it is very scary, and your inclination, as you go over the cliff, is to hug the cliff—your "language of love" becomes touch. But if you hug the cliff as you are going down, you are going to start scraping your elbows and knees, and maybe your chin as well. You can’t move very smoothly. In order to find joy and freedom while rappelling, you need to lean back, and trust your equipment. It is very counter-intuitive because if you throw yourself back over a cliff, you feel as if you are going to die. But as you release and trust your gear, you find real freedom.

I have rappelled a number of times, enough times to know you're best off simply trusting your equipment. I have also stood at the bottom of a cliff and, seeing folks rappelling for the first time hugging the cliff, I’ve encouraged them by shouting, “Trust the equipment, lean back.” In other words surrender to it. There is a part of their brain that wants to believe me, but there is also a part of their brain that doesn't want to surrender, and wants to hug the cliff.

And not just as a pastor, but as a human being, I feel like I've walked with Christ long enough to know that the only way to follow Him is to surrender to Him. And surrender is the only path that leads to real wholeness and freedom, and the fullness of life that He offers us. And maybe you here, there is a part of you that believes in God, but there is some part of your life that you are clutching on to.

And perhaps today you, whether you are exploring or a long-time believer, say in your heart, "I want to surrender my life to You. My will, my money, the way I live, the whole direction, I surrender to You. I'm going to let go, lean back and trust you.

In fact, take over the driver's seat of my life.

Pray:

I don’t know the road ahead of me, I don’t even know where or how it will end—if I’ll make it through the journey alive, but I trust you and I will not be afraid because you are with me and my only hope in life and death is you, Jesus Christ.

Amen.

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