August 30, 2020 ~ Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost Sermon & Sermon Video Link

https://youtu.be/pdfyq1r-yZ0

                                                                                                08/30/20—Highland—Meute

“Cross-Training”

Exodus 3: 1-15; Matthew 16: 21-28

Pearl: Following Jesus by picking up your cross.

Function: To motivate listeners to accept the hard calling of Jesus to deny self and to enter into the difficult work of cross-bearing.

What do you know about cross-training? This is where you have one main exercise that you engage in, such as running, and in order to work other muscle groups within your body and to improve your overall conditioning you add some other activities such as swimming, weight-training, and something else like elliptical or rowing.

1. So you have one main activity that is your favorite and you add others to compliment your “main thing.”
2. If your main thing is to “glorify God and to enjoy God forever” as it says in the Catechism; that is, if your main thing is to worship and to follow Jesus Christ then you need to add some other activities which will cause you to suffer, maybe even to die, as you enter into the suffering of others, just as Jesus did.
   1. As a British soldier during World War II, Ernest Gordon was a prisoner of war of the Japanese in Burma. Later, he became a Church of Scotland minister, eventually coming to America and serving as chaplain at Princeton University.
      
      It was in the prisoner of war camp that Gordon met a soldier nicknamed “Dodger.” Dodger suffered from serious stomach ulcers, a condition that caused him almost unbearable pain. More than that, he suffered from a despair so [deep], his fellow prisoners feared it would kill him before the ulcers did.
      
      But then Dodger came to trust Jesus Christ in a special way. He became a Christian there in the camp; and one of the first things he did was to look around for a way he could be of service.
      
      The filthiest job in camp was collecting the rags the prisoners used as bandages to cover the sores on their arms and legs. The rags had to be collected, scraped clean of infection, and then boiled, before being returned so others could use them. “A smelly, unpleasant job it was,” writes Gordon, “but Dodger volunteered for it. Regularly I would see him going from hut to hut, carrying his can of rags, and whistling as he walked.”
      
      Who but a Christian would whistle as he carried a cross?
      
      –Ernest Gordon, To End All Wars: A True Story about the Will to Survive and the Courage to Forgive (Zondervan, 2013), 136-37.

The question for the follower of Christ is: “Will you turn aside and heed the call of Christ to daily enter into the suffering of others?”

Moses turned aside to investigate this phenomenon which caught his eye. A bush that was burning but not being consumed. It turned out to be the presence of the Lord and God spoke to him as he “turned aside.”

1. What if Moses had not turned aside? Maybe God would have chosen someone else to enter into the suffering of the Israelites to deliver them. Maybe it would have been Aaron or Miriam?
   1. But Moses did turn aside and God “called” him to service.
2. Jesus turned the disciples aside to ask them, as we read last week: “Who do you say that I am?”
   1. Peter asserted himself and shined like a star pupil that day when he confessed “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God!” Jesus decreed that upon the rock, Peter, Jesus would build his church.
3. When you go to worship you “turn aside” week in and week out. You go to worship to “take off the shoes of your feet,” so to speak, and to meet with God and to get direction from God.
   1. But you are not to stay there “turned aside.”
   1. You are called to go from the “thin place” of closeness to God, to follow Christ into a suffering world and to be a force of compassion, care, consolation, and new life for others!
   1. God spoke to Moses from the burning bush to give him a task. God called him to plunge into a mission of mercy and deliverance of a suffering people.
      1. Worshipping Jews today continue to thank God for this deliverance provided through the servant Moses.
   1. All because Moses finally heeded the call of God.
      1. Moses had questions and concerns and hesitations. But finally he chose to trust God and to enter into this seemingly impossible mission.
   1. As you turn aside what mission of mercy is God calling you to? What way is God calling you to “pick up your cross and follow him?” Your main thing is “cross-training” in the Way of Christ. You are called to enter into the suffering yourself, sacrificing yourself, as a follower of Christ.
      1. This is your calling. This is my calling. We are called to on-going “cross-training.”

From that place of turning aside “Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and scribes and chief priests, and be killed, and on the third day be raised” (Matthew 16:21).

1. At this notion Peter spoke up and said, “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you!” (Matt. 16:22). And to this Jesus rebuked him in a chilling way saying, “Get behind me Satan!”
2. Peter had just gotten the praise of Jesus as we read last week and in the next breath Jesus found himself rebuking Peter as a stumbling block to the Gospel.
   1. In one breath Peter was the rock on which to build the church and in the next breath he was a stumbling rock in the way of Jesus’ program.
      1. Peter was so very human and so like us!
      1. We know the right words to say but don’t really understand the “cost of discipleship” as Bonhoeffer described it.
   1. Douglas Hare wrote in his commentary on Matthew: “It is not enough to confess Jesus as Messiah and Lord. He must be acknowledged as suffering and crucified Lord, and this acknowledgement must not be one of theory but of practice. To confess Jesus truly means to walk the way of the cross in one’s daily life” (Interpretation, p. 196).
3. The words of Jesus to his followers: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me” (Matt. 16:24); in Luke’s gospel (9:23) is added that this is a “daily” call.

As you take up your cross daily by sacrificing yourself for others and to suffer with others in their suffering you are not by any means alone. God is with you!

1. When Moses accepted his calling from God, the Lord made a promise to him: “I will be with you.” Jill Duffield wrote “God’s call is accompanied by God’s self. Jesus reminds his followers, ‘Lo, I am with you always.’ We are never abandoned or orphaned by the One who names and sends us. God tells Moses: ‘I AM.’ Present. Present tense. Perpetual. Is that enough for us? Is God’s presence enough for us to live boldly in faith? Is Emmanuel, God with us, enough for us to deny ourselves, take up our cross and follow?” (“The Presbyterian Outlook,” 8/24/20).
2. If you want to follow Jesus, you are called to “cross-training.”
   1. It is a difficult task.
   1. It is not easy.
      1. Your cross is not the illness or chronic physical problem that you may have, as difficult as it may be to endure the suffering it causes. “Cross-bearing,” “cross-training” is a voluntary act of discipleship where we “pick up” or “take part” in a suffering world as Jesus did.
   1. You will be misunderstood, misinterpreted, possibly put-down, maybe put in jail, sometimes by your own people, but then Jesus said, “For those who want to save their life will lose it and those wo lose their life for my sake will find it” (16:25).
3. Thomas a Kempis wrote “If you bear the cross gladly, it will bear you” (The Imitation of Christ,” 2.12.5).
   1. If you want to call yourself a disciple of Jesus Christ, you have to daily take up your cross and enter into the suffering of others.
      1. That is what God did in the Christmas miracle.
      1. It is what we do who follow the Lord Jesus Christ!
4. Not only will taking up your cross daily bear you up but indeed you will dazzle with beauty!
   1. Indian Christian Missionary of the late 19^th century and early 20^th century, Sadhu Sundar Singh said, “Diamonds do not dazzle with beauty unless they are cut. When cut, the rays of the sun fall on them and make them shine with wonderful colors. So when we are cut by cross, we shall shine as jewels in the kingdom of God.” As we sacrifice ourselves and enter into the suffering of others, we shine as jewels in the kingdom of God. Jesus said, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me” (Matt. 16:24). Will you heed the call of Christ to daily enter the suffering of others? Christ calls you!