[Introductory remarks by Brother McClish:]
I ask you to please be long-suffering with me about your names. One dear lady has already asked me tonight what her name was and put me on the spot. I won’t call her name. I could. But I told her that I was going to tell a story that I thought provided the perfect answer to people like her, who like to put preachers on the spot.
My wife’s older brother lives in Springfield, Tennessee, just north of Nashville. When my father-in-law was preaching in Centerville, Tennessee, a few miles south of Nashville, back in the 1940’s—World War II days—there was a family there that became very, very dear to them called the “Chesser” family, and Sister Chesser became a third grandmother to my wife and her siblings. And they just called her “Chesser.”
Well, she had her 90th birthday celebration a few years ago in Centerville. And so my brother-in-law, Tom, went down for the 90th birthday party. He had not seen Chesser in a while, and so when he came into her presence, he hugged her, and he could tell there was a distant look in her eyes. He said, “Chesser, you don’t know who I am, do you?” She didn’t answer at first. They talked a little bit, and then Tom said, “Come on, Chesser, just admit it. You don’t know who I am, do you?” And she looked him right in the eye and said, “Why, I certainly do! It’s either you, or somebody that looks just like you!”
Now, that’s come in handy a few times over the years when people say, “I bet you don’t know who I am, do you?”
[Brother McClish begins his sermon:]
Tonight, we are studying discipleship. What does the Bible teach about discipleship? In the American Standard Version, the word “disciple,” or one of its cognates [from a common original form, as two words; related, similar], is found 269 times. And in a book no larger than the New Testament, that makes it a very important subject. By far, the great majority of those occurrences are to be found in the first four books of the New Testament. The word “disciple” is most frequently employed by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John to describe those whom Jesus was gathering about Him as He went from place to place preaching and doing His wonderful works.
But when we come to the close of Jesus’ stay here on earth, He issued the Great Commission, and in the Matthew account of the Great Commission, He put a little different emphasis upon what a “disciple” was going to be from the time that the apostles began to carry out the Commission. In Matthew 28, verse 19, Jesus told the apostles, “Go and make disciples (the American Standard Version says—and it is a little bit more accurate than the King James that says, “Go and teach all nations….”) “Go ye therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit; teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I commanded you: and lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.” In other words, He was saying that, “From the time that you begin preaching the Gospel, carrying out this Commission, a disciple is going to be one according to GOSPEL terms, according to the terms of the Gospel, which will be ratified and certified by the shedding of My blood, where full and complete remission of sins will be obtainable.”
And so, we should not be surprised when we begin reading in the early chapters of Acts that the word “disciple” begins to appear in that very connection and with that definition. Thus, we read in Acts, chapter 6, and verse 1, that the number of disciples in Jerusalem was multiplying. Then we read in verse 7 of that chapter that the number of disciples multiplied in Jerusalem exceedingly, and a great company of the priests were obedient to the faith.
Now, to what group of people do you suppose the term “disciples” referred? Well, it referred to the church, of course—those who were hearing and obeying the Gospel Message and being added to the church, as Acts 2 documents.
When we get to the 8th chapter of Acts, the chapter opens by talking about Saul of Tarsus, this young man who’d given his consent to the stoning of Stephen, at the close of the 7th chapter. And it tells us that a great persecution broke out against the CHURCH, and Saul was leading that persecution, verse 3 tells us. And yet, when we flip to the 9th chapter and the first verse, we read that Saul was “yet breathing threatening and slaughter against the DISCIPLES….” So, there you see the “church” and “disciples” are identified as the same body of people. To be a disciple after Pentecost was to be a New Testament Christian, one who had been added to the church.
We read the occurrence of this term a few more times until we get to Acts 11:26, which becomes somewhat of a “watershed passage” as to the use of the term “disciple” in the New Testament. This is where Luke says “that the disciples were called Christians first in Antioch.” We read the term “disciple” only 18 more times in all of the New Testament after Acts 11:26. We begin reading, instead, of the term “Christian,” which occurs two other times in the New Testament after Acts 11:26. “Brethren,” “saints” and other terms are used to describe those who are members of the Lord’s church.
The passage in Luke 14 is one of the comprehensive passages where Jesus challenges men to become His disciples [“25 Now there went with Him great multitudes: and He turned, and said unto them, 26 If any man cometh unto Me, and hateth not his own father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple. 27 Whosoever doth not bear his own cross, and come after Me, cannot be My disciple…33 So therefore whosoever he be of you that renounceth not all that he hath, he cannot be My disciple,” Luke 14:25-27, 33].
But there isone statement from the lips of our Lord that encapsulates in just one verse the real challenge of discipleship, in my judgment. It’s in Luke 9, verse 23, and it will serve as the basis of our study from here on tonight. Luke writes, “And He [Jesus] said unto all, If any man would come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me.” Now, that’s not very many words, but, my! What a powerful challenge lies within them!
Before we start examining this passage, statement by statement, I think we would do well to look at a definition of the word “disciple” itself. The world “disciple” basically means “a learner or a student,” but with the connotation of one who is a very serious student, an avid learner, an ambitious student. He is not who just dabbles in what he is studying. He’s not a “C” or a “D” or maybe even a “B” student. This is an “A” and an “A+” student. A disciple is one who has really gotten serious about what he’s trying to learn and what he’s studying.
We get the essence of it in one of Jesus’ beatitudes, I think. In Matthew 5, and verse 6, He said, “Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.” The “hunger” in this passage and the “thirst” in this passage are really stronger terms in the Greek language than they are in those English terms. They mean the hunger of a man who is mal-nourished to the degree that he’s about to starve to death. And the thirst is of a person who is perishing for lack of moisture for his system. Such a person as that does not have to be begged to eat or to drink. They would almost do anything to find nourishment; to find moisture. That is what the term “disciple” implies, and the kind of student one should be as a disciple.
This morning, we talked a little bit about Martin Luther, the 16th Century reformation leader. Suppose one wanted to be a disciple of Martin Luther. He would need to be a student of Martin Luther. He would need to learn everything he could about Martin Luther to really qualify as a disciple of Luther. He would be able to tell you what Luther believed; he could tell you biographical material about Luther, because he would be an avid student of Luther.
The same would be true about one who would claim to be a disciple of Jesus. He needs to be a student. How could a person be a real disciple of Martin Luther in all that that term connotes (as we shall see later in this sermon), in addition to being a student, if he were not that earnest student? You see, he could claim to be a disciple of Luther, but when he studied a little bit more (if he hadn’t studied very much) he might find a number of things that Luther taught that he didn’t agree with at all.
And of the multiplied millions of people in our world today who claim to be disciples of Jesus, I fear this is true. They have heard a few things about Jesus, and the person that He was, and some of things that He taught, and those were attractive to them. And so they say, “I’m a disciple of Jesus,” but they really know very little at all about what Jesus really taught, about what He stood for, about how He really lived. And if you try to help some of them see those things, they’ll reject them out of hand because what you try to teach them doesn’t agree with their preconceived ideas. So, you see the significance of being a real student of One Who we claim to be our Master, as a disciple.
Now, to be a real student does not make one a disciple. Every real disciple must be a real student, but not every avid student is, thereby, a disciple. One could go to school and get advanced degrees in church history, and he could have fixed most of his attention upon Martin Luther and the Reformation Period, and learned everything there was to learn about the man and what he taught, and still not be his disciple. The same is true about claiming to be a disciple of Jesus. In fact, the same IS true in the lives of some men when speaking of their “discipleship” to Jesus. There are men who have doctoral degrees in “Christology.” That is, they’ve studied about Christ. And they teach it in theological schools, but they’re infidels! They don’t even believe that Christ is the Son of God, many of them! They don’t believe that the Bible is the Word of God! Oh, they know, back and forth, what Jesus taught, but they don’t believe a word of it, as far as authority is concerned! And such men in the “divinity schools” and the “theological seminaries” have been turning out preachers in denominational pulpits for three or four generations! Is there any wonder so few people believe the Bible is the Word of God anymore!?! One must be an avid student to be a disciple, but being a student does not make one a disciple in and of itself.
This is what brings us, now, back to Jesus’ challenge. Here we find the outworking of that sincere study of Jesus and of what He taught and of what He was and Who He is. In bringing one in a practical way to be a disciple, what does it mean, Lord?
In the first place, a disciple is not just one who does the studying, but after doing the studying, he does the following. “If any man will come after Me…” And then, later in the verse, He says, “…let him take up his cross daily and follow Me.” A disciple, by Jesus’ definition, is one who has done his homework and then begins to follow.
When we talk about following Jesus, it takes us in two directions—not two different directions, but two complementary directions. The first element of following Jesus means following Him in the sense of living as He lived—of learning Who Jesus was, how He lived, how He reacted to various circumstances, what His personality was. John said it this way in 1 John 2, and verse 6: “…he that saith he abideth in Him…” (now, that’s a claim to be a disciple, you see). “…he that saith he abideth in Him ought himself also to walk even as He walked.” Now, I think sometimes we believe it’s a modern-day expression to say, “You’ve not only got to talk the talk, you’ve got to walk the walk.” But John had it two thousand years ago in that very passage!
But the second element here of following Jesus is not just following His example of life, but following what He teaches in His Word—be receptive, submissive and obedient to it. We’re well familiar with John 8, verse 32, “…ye shall know the Truth, and the Truth shall make you free.” But I think we would have the fuller meaning of that 32nd verse if we kept the 31st verse with it. John says, “Jesus therefore said to those Jews that had believed Him, If ye abide in My Word, (then) are ye truly My disciples; 32 and ye shall know the Truth, and the Truth shall make you free.”
Does not Jesus admit in verse 31 that there are such things as pretending disciples? False disciples? He said, “Here is what true discipleship involves. It’s abiding in My Word; and ye shall know the Truth, and the Truth shall make you free.”
When we think of these two areas, that of following Jesus as He lived, that of following Jesus by obeying His Word, we can observe instantly that there are many, again, who claim to be His disciples and who may even know much about Jesus and His Word, who are not willing, then, to take that step to put in to practice the things that they have learned about Him. So, one though may read of the life of Jesus and see what kind of man He was, the ultimate servant of mankind that He was, there are still many, even among the Lord’s people, who have not learned the Message of service. They want to be served all of the time. They do not think of serving others.
I suppose in every place where I’ve lived through the years and did local work, something, at least similar to this, occurred. I would learn of someone who had gone to the hospital. I would get there as soon as I could. I must confess—I’ll interrupt right here—that I was not around when the Lord passed out the “sixth sense.” You know, preachers are supposed to know, even before the family does, that somebody is going to the hospital. But I was just absent the day that talent was passed out. But I would get there as soon as I could and be greeted with hostility when I walked in the room. “Why did you take so long to get here? Where have you been?” And inevitably, it would be some brother or sister, or member of their family, who hadn’t thought about visiting anybody in the hospital for fifteen years! But, brother—others better serve them! That’s not following Jesus, brethren. That’s following self.
There are those who look at our Lord and see the boldness with which He lived His life, and with which He spoke. And they somehow cannot harmonize that boldness with, at the same time, the kindness that balanced His life. And all they want to see is the kind part. They don’t see the bold part, where He could, on occasion, stab the hearts of those evil men in His generation. But we need to have the same balance in our lives.
On and on we could go, talking about the Lord, and the kind of man He was, and how we must learn those things, and try to emulate them. But when it comes to His Word, there are many who do not want to follow what His Word teaches. Oh, there are many who will follow His Word, even in the world at large out there—until it gets up to a certain point, like “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; he that believeth not shall be damned.” And they quit following Jesus right there. No sir, that’s not for them. But the Lord said that about baptism in the same breath He said it about faith—[“believeth” + “baptized” = “saved”].
There are those who have been willing to follow Him into baptism—what He teaches in His Word about it. But when they’ve come up out of the baptistery, they have not liked what Jesus said about “giving as they have been prospered.” Or they have not agreed with what Jesus teaches in His Word on marriage, divorce and remarriage. They want it their way instead of His Way. Or, they do not even want others to obey what the Lord has taught, in some respects. They don’t want elders to lead the church in withdrawing from unruly members, when it is necessary. And they will not participate in what the Lord teaches through His Word to do on such things.
Brethren, we cannot pick and choose out of the teachings of Christ what we want to do. It’s NOT a cafeteria where you go down the line and get what you want, and leave the rest of it there. That’s NOT the way we can approach the Bible and be disciples! We’ve got to take the WHOLE THING, or we don’t take any of it. “If any man would come after ME…—the way that I live, the things that I teach—THEN he can be My disciple.” That’s what He’s telling us.
But, He says something further: “…if any man will come after Me, let him DENY HIMSELF….” Now, what does that mean? Does it mean, “I’d like to have that nice, four-bedroom, split-level house, but I’m going to settle for just a three-bedroom house”? Does it mean, “I’d like that $40,000 automobile or truck, but I’m going to take that cheapie that costs only $25,000”? Just what does it mean, “DENY SELF”? It doesn’t mean those things, though there are some ways, some circumstances, in which it could involve those things. The Lord’s going far, far DEEPER than just denying ourselves OF some things. That’s not what He said. He said, “Deny SELF.”
I think that it’s very interesting that in Luke, chapter 22, verse 57, the Lord, in giving us the record of Jesus in Caiaphas court just after He’d been arrested—brought from Gethsemane—gave the account of Peter, who had followed afar off and finally caught up with them and was admitted to the house. And they came around and started saying, “Aren’t you one of His disciples? Didn’t we see you out there in the garden? Why, you talk like one of those Galileans.” In exasperation, Peter said, in this verse I mentioned, “And he denied, and said, ‘I KNOW HIM NOT.’”
That’s the same word “deny” here, or a form of it in Luke 22:57 that we read in Jesus’ Own Words in Luke 9:23[…let him DENY himself…”]. So, there we have the definition of “deny.” It means to say, “I don’t KNOW You.” It means to DISOWN someone that we have once known. It means to cut someone off that we have formerly embraced. It means to say, “I don’t recognize who you are.”
That’s what Jesus is saying we must do to SELF. He’s striking at the very heart of all sin here, brethren. I challenge you before this meeting is over, if you possibly can, to find a single sin—except one of ignorance—that is NOT motivated by SELFISHNESS. I don’t think you can find one, because there isn’t one. You name anything you want to—adultery, murder—just name the whole list of sins that you can think of, and SELFISHNESS is at the ROOT of it! The Lord is aiming at the very ROOT of what we must divest ourselves of if we’re really going to be His disciples; if we’re really serious about it!
That’s why He went on as long as He did in that Luke 14 passage that was read a little earlier [before Brother McClish began speaking, all of Luke 14 was read]. Unless you hate your father, your mother, your brother, your sister, your husband, your wife, your son or daughter… He doesn’t mean hate in the sense of detest. But “hate” is used here, as it often is in the Bible, in the sense of loving less. “You must love ME more than ANY…OTHER…PERSON…OR…THING!” And so, He concluded the passage by saying, “If you don’t renounce everything to follow Me, you cannot be My disciple.”
And so, He says the starting place is DENYING YOURSELF, cutting off those selfish motives and ambitions to lose ourselves in service to Christ and to one another. That’s what He means by denying self. And that’s the hardest thing in the world for anyone of us to do. And there’s not a one of us that lives, even though we may live on that selfless plain for a time, but we’ll lapse back into that selfishness from time to time. We just have to work on it our entire lives.
But we must work on it! That’s what the Lord is telling us here. He’s talking about repentance when He says, “Deny self,” because repentance is an act that begins in the mind as a thought process in making a conscious decision, “I will no longer live this way. I will, henceforth, live that way. I will give up any sin, any error, anything in my life that’s out of harmony with the Will of Christ, and I will serve HIM.” The beginning point is in the mind, where the decision is made, and then the definition is finished in putting that into practice. That means the thief decides, “I’ll steal no more,” and then he quits stealing. The adulterer decides, “I will not commit adultery anymore,” and then he lives a pure life. That’s what Peter was telling the people on Pentecost to do when he said, “Repent ye and be baptized….” They had to turn away from everything that would separate them from Christ. That’s self denial. The Lord does not bat an eye as He says, “This…we…must…do.”
But He is still not through. And the next statement of this challenge may be the hardest of all. “If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself and TAKE UP HIS CROSS DAILY and follow Me.” Now, what does He mean when He says, “TAKE UP HIS CROSS”? We read a like expression from Luke 14, verse 27: “And whosoever doth not bear his own cross, and come after Me, cannot be My disciple.” The Lord said, “You cannot BE my disciple if you don’t take up your own cross and follow Me.” That’s how important this is! “You can claim to be, you can profess to be, you can pretend to be, but you cannot be My disciple, unless you bear…your…own…cross.”
Now, there are some who have the idea that “bearing a cross” is wearing a pendant shaped like a cross around the neck on a chain. We see these on some athletes—these big gold crosses they wear. That’s not what Jesus had in mind, brethren.
The Lord was looking ahead, and He knew that the instrument of His Own torture and death would be a literal cross. And He took that literal cross upon which He was going to be affixed, and He made it a “figure” of something that we must bear. Now what was it?
Someone says, “Well, it’s the suffering that we have. We have terrible diseases and pain. We have terrible accidents, and things of that kind.” No, that won’t work. That’s way too general, because atheists and infidels have all those things. We suffer those things, not because we’re Christians, but because we’re human beings. We live in a physical world. God has instituted physical laws that keep us within certain boundaries—the law of gravity, for instance. The saintliest person on earth can jump out of a 10-story building, and they’ll die just like an infidel if they don’t have some means of keeping them from bouncing off the ground. So, it’s not just the suffering that general human kind undergoes that is the “cross.”
Well, someone says, “It’s the sufferings of those kinds that Christians undergo.” Well, no, that still will not work. There’s something far more specific that the Lord has in mind, I believe.
Now, when He was nailed to the cross, it was the ultimate act of persecution, or suffering, FOR the RIGHT CAUSE. And I believe this takes us right to what He meant when He said that WE have a cross, and WE must bear that cross. He is telling those disciples to whom He spoke on that occasion and to those modern-day disciples that, “There will come times when your faith will be tried. There will come times when you will be put to the test. The pressure will mount for you to compromise, to quit following ME, to do the wrong thing. But unless you bear your cross in those circumstances, you can’t be My disciple.”
You might do well, sometime, to study your New Testament and just mark every passage in it that has to do with “suffering for righteousness sake,” with “persecution.” I think you’d be surprised at how often the subject occurs. The last of the beatitudes has to do with this very subject. “Blessed are they that are persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,” Matthew 5:10. And have you observed, as you’ve studied your Bible, that this is the ONLY beatitude upon which the Lord gives further information and commentary?
In the two adjoining verses [verses 11 and 12], He does so. He says, “Blessed are THEY,” first of all, “who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake”; and then He turns to those in His immediate company and says, “Blessed are YE when (men) shall reproach you, and persecute you, and say all manner of evil against you falsely, FOR MY SAKE.” Now there’s the KEY right there. It’s not just any and all persecution. It’s persecution for the SAKE of our Master! It’s persecution we endure to be true to HIM. And so, He says, “Blessed are YE when YE are reproached—men shall reproach YOU and persecute YOU falsely for MY sake. REJOICE,” He says, “and be exceedingly glad…” and here’s the hard part: “Rejoice and be exceedingly glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for SO persecuted they the prophets that were before you.” Well, I think the Lord is discussing this cross that He’s saying we must all bear.
Persecution takes different forms in different times and in different places. There was very, very rugged physical persecution of those who belonged to God in the 1st Century. We know the case of Paul and all that he suffered for the sake of Christ, and, of course, the Lord before him. James was put to the sword, Acts, chapter 12. Stephen was stoned to death, Acts, chapter 7. On and on the stories go. The prophets of old were persecuted, as we mentioned in a passage from Jesus this morning, Matthew, chapter 23 and verse 37. The Lord said of Jerusalem that they “killeth the prophets, and stoneth them that are sent unto her.” Why, that’s history in a nutshell of how Israel reacted to the prophets God sent to them, trying to call them back from their apostasy! And so, in their rejection of the Message, they “shot the messengers.”
The Lord is saying, “It doesn’t matter what the world tries to do to you. You be faithful to ME.” Well, just how far is that to go? Does that mean, if I write a letter to the editor against the abomination of homosexuality and someone drives by and throws a fire bomb through my house and burns it down—am I supposed to go that FAR, Lord? Well, does that mean, if on the job my supervisor demands moral compromises of me if I want to keep my job—I have to give up my job? Do I have to go that FAR, Lord? Does that mean, if I’m a student and the pressure is great upon me to smoke pot or take some other kind of drugs or get involved in other things that the Lord does not allow us to be involved in, and I can’t be in that crowd anymore—I have to give up my friends? What does it MEAN? It means ALL of those things, and any other thing you can mention that the world will try to deliver to those who love the Lord.
I am not a prophet, but I do think that, if one looks around him a little bit and sees much of what’s been going on the last few years, the great turn against principles of righteousness and Truth and honor, morality, integrity—things that are part of the very bedrock and the fabric of the Gospel of Christ—that unless there is something to change the direction that our nation is going, particularly in its judicial system at the Federal level, some who are now living may suffer physical persecution one of these days, in our own nation, for being faithful to Christ.
There are a few outbreaks of it every once in a while already. I’m not trying to alarm anybody or scare anybody, but I do think that what I’ve just said is realistic. We may as well be thinking in these terms and be knowledgeable of the fact that we may have to face such challenge as that may bring.
When the Lord wrote His letters to the seven churches of Asia, He addressed one of them to a church—Revelation 2:10—in which He said, “Be thou faithful unto death, and I’ll give thee the crown of life.” Now, that passage is frequently quoted by preachers at funerals of elderly persons who have fought the good fight and died faithful. But that’s to rip that passage out of context. Now, the Bible teaches that we ought to live out all of our lives faithful to the very end, and I want to praise those who’ve so done, but this passage is not where that comes from in the Bible. This passage is talking about persecution. If you’ll read the adjoining statements in that context, you’ll see that the Lord says that “the devil is about to cast some of you into prison, that ye may be tried…. But you be faithful unto death. You’d DIE rather than renounce Me.” That’s what He’s saying. “Don’t just go to prison, but you DIE rather than quit following Me, and I’ll give you the crown of life.”
When we think of the things that men have suffered, the prices men have paid for the sake of God’s Truth, both in Old Testament and New Testament times, and we look at the world in which we live and how easy we’ve had it, we can scarcely imagine what some of them went through and the prices that they paid.
But what Paul wrote to Timothy in 2 Timothy, chapter 3, and verse 12, will be true as long and the world stands, brethren: “They that will live godly in this present world shall…suffer…persecution.” The devil’s going to see that that’s so; he cannot STAND even a righteous life and the sermon that it preaches. He cannot ABIDE the preaching of the Truth without bringing some kind of opposition and suffering and so forth upon those who preach it and who stand for it. And so, the closer you follow Jesus, the more you’d better expect to bear that cross!
And, after all, the servant is not greater that his Master. IF our Lord was willing to suffer all that He did for us, ought we not to be willing to suffer some for HIM, if we’re called upon to do so? The idea of suffering and cross-bearing on the part of some, unfortunately, in our weak-spine world is to have to come back on Sunday night instead of just staying at home! What a travesty on the great challenge the Lord gives to people who would be HIS DISCIPLES!! Let’s either BE His disciples or quit pretending that we are!
But the Lord is still not quite through. “If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, take up his cross ANNUALLY and follow Me.” Is that how your Bible reads? That’s not the way mine reads. MONTHLY! No, that doesn’t do it either. Well, surely WEEKLY will catch it! “…let him take up his cross WEEKLY….” Maybe w-E-A-k-ly would fit some, but not even w-E-E-k-ly is what Jesus is saying. He says DAILY. The very way we mark our lives off the calendars in our pockets and on our walls is the way we’re supposed to follow Jesus.
And actually, the DAILY part of this passage IMMEDIATELY modifies the BEARING OF THE CROSS!! If you have to suffer DAILY, then do it to be MY disciple. Oh, that is a challenge indeed, is it not? But that is the challenge our Lord gives us. We’re to live for Him everyday.
Being a disciple is not a suit of clothes we can hang in the closet after we get through with worship on Sunday—and leave it hanging there for a week. We’d better wear that suit of clothes to work; we’d better wear it to school; we’d better wear it when we’re shopping; we need to even wear it when we’re driving, brethren! We’ve got to be a Christian every day that we live! We’ve got to be willing to suffer every day that we live, if necessary, realizing that what ever the devil and his world brings against us cannot in any way compare with the GLORY that is to be revealed for us eventually!
Remember what Paul stated in Romans 8:18? “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not WORTHY to be compared with the GLORY which shall be revealed in us.” And in 2 Corinthians 4:16-18, he says, “Wherefore we faint not; but though our outward man is decaying, yet our inward man is renewed day by day. 17 For our light affliction, which is for the moment, worketh for us more and more exceedingly an ETERNAL WEIGHT OF GLORY; 18 while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.”
And as he wrote the final words we have from his pen, 2 Timothy, chapter 4 and verses 6-8, Paul said, “6 For I am already being offered, and the time of my departure is come. 7 I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith: 8 henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give to me at that day; and not to me only, but also to all them that have loved His appearing.” Do we look forward with great anticipation to the coming of the Lord? The older get, the longer I live, the more I look forward to it. I’m ready for Him to come right now. I don’t know of any prophecy that hasn’t been fulfilled—that has yet to be fulfilled to prevent His coming, from that standpoint, though by no means would I begin to predict any time that He will come. It’s folly for any man to do so, because no man knows that. But we ought to look forward with rejoicing to that time, if we are REAL disciples. Now, if we’re not, we ought to look forward to it with some dread and some fear—better still, we ought to get our discipleship act together!
We’re going to sing a song of invitation in just a few moments. Go ahead and get your books out and turn to that number. I have tried tonight not to raise the bar of discipleship higher than it is and make it seem impossible for anyone to reach it. I probably have not raised it as high as the Lord raised it; I’m probably not capable of doing that. But what I fear, brethren, is that, for so long we’ve kept that bar so low that it has become meaningless. We’ve just DUMBED DOWN what Christianity really means and what being a disciple of Jesus really means to where it is almost meaningless—to where almost any kind of behavior is tolerated! That just cannot be in the discipleship of Jesus.
[The invitation is offered.]