Holding Life Loosely

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Transcript:

Just to level with you, I’ve been a pastor for a number of years, and I’ve filled in at a number of churches outside of that. And I’m used to being at places for multiple weeks, and it’s a little outside of my comfort zone. It’s happened before, but it’s a little out of my comfort zone to go into a place and know, oh, I’m speaking there one time.

When you’re speaking someplace one time, you have to really make it count. and that makes me nervous. So I racked my brain for days and days thinking, what am I going to speak to them about if I’ve got one shot to make it count?

And I went through a number of passages and looked at a number of things I could share with you tonight. I just thought, after a lot of prayer about it, what better thing could I do than just to speak from the heart and share with you some areas where God’s been working in my life over the last couple of years, some things that are near and dear to my heart. And we’ll be in Mark chapter 8 tonight, if you want to turn there with me.

We’ll be there in just a second. Most of you have probably seen my kids at some point or another when we come on Wednesday nights running around here. I think all of you saw my daughter two weeks ago when she did that gravity-defying stunt out of the chair.

When he said she was the stunt baby, he was not wrong. But I spent a lot of time with my kids, as you should. I spent a lot of time with my kids, and I remember a while back I took them to an agricultural exposition.

We are city people, and yet I want them to know things like where food comes from. Because I’m not convinced that we won’t at some point be back in a time where we have to be a little more self-reliant than we are today. So I want them to at least be familiar with these things.

I took them a while back to an agricultural expo, and they did different things. Got to milk a goat, got to hold baby chickens, got to see where the eggs come from in the nest and pick them up and hold them. And, you know, you’ve got to be careful with little kids, because you hand them anything, and what do they immediately think it is?

Four-letter word starts with M, ends with Ein. Anybody? Mine.

Mine. That’s mine. You put it in my hand.

Even if I didn’t put it in your hand, I specifically told you, leave it alone. It’s mine. And I became very nervous as they pick up the egg and hold the egg.

Now, we get them out of the refrigerator from the store. They’re pasteurized. You know, there’s not a baby chicken.

No big deal. You go to something like that where they’ve just laid them on the farm, and it’s for the purpose of raising chickens, and there’s a baby chicken there. There’s life in there. And yet you put it in the hands of a little child, and they want to squeeze.

They want to hold it tightly. Well, you’re going to end up with a dead baby chicken and yolk all over the place. And it’s just a big mess.

And so I learned very quickly, You’ve got to be careful about putting something fragile and valuable like life in the hands of a small child. But we act the same way. Or at least I do.

Maybe I’m alone in this, but I don’t think I am. I think it’s human nature. We tend to take life, something valuable, something fragile, something that God has placed in our hands.

We tend to take it and want to hold it very tightly in its mind. We run the risk of squashing it, of destroying everything that God intended it to be. And so from my children and from the scriptures, I’ve learned, and when I say learned, please hear that as I know it up here, and sometimes it’s very hard to practice.

But I’ve learned we have to be intentional about holding our lives very loosely. Our lives are on loan to us from God. That’s a hard thing for me to remember.

I don’t like surprises. I like everything planned out. I drive Charlie crazy sometimes.

We walk into a restaurant and they’ve changed the menu and I have to pray and speak to myself in calm, soothing tones until I calm down because what’s been on the menu all this time is supposed to still be there. I like everything planned out and thought ahead. Saved me a lot of trouble when I was younger and dumber and thought ahead.

What is this action going to mean for me 15 years down the road? You stay out of trouble that way. But I like everything planned out and neat and in order and my plans.

And it’s very hard to get to a place in life, or very hard to stay at a place in life, unless you’re intentional about it, and you’re constantly looking to God’s Word. It’s hard to get to and stay at a place in life where you learn to hold your life loosely, remembering it’s not mine. It’s on loan from God.

And I want to look at a passage tonight from Mark chapter 8, where the disciples dealt with this a little bit as well. Try to show you where that is tonight. And then, if I can, just to personalize a little bit more, just to share with you about how God has worked on this in my life and how he continues to do so.

But if you’re not already there, Mark 8, 27. And Jesus went out and his disciples into the towns of Caesarea Philippi. And by the way, he asked his disciples, saying unto them, Whom do men say that I am?

And they answered, John the Baptist. But some say, Elias or Elijah, and others, one of the prophets. And he saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am? Whom say ye that I am?

So he asked them the question, Who do men say that I am? And that was very easy for them to answer. Oh, this is about other people and their relationship to you.

And what do they say you are? Some people say you’re John the Baptist. That’s a neat trick because John the Baptist and Jesus were around each other sometimes. So he was in two bodies at one time, I guess.

But some people thought that. John the Baptist. Other people said, well, you’re Elijah. Malachi had said that in the latter days, the prophet Elijah would come back.

And so some people thought he was the fulfillment of that prophecy. Others, one of the prophets, it probably means Jeremiah. Well, Jesus said, okay, this is an easy intellectual exercise.

It’s real easy to tell me who do other people think Jesus is. Now I’m going to ask you, who do you say that I am? That’s a more personal question.

Who do you say that I am? Who is Jesus to you? And I’ve always imagined that a hush falls over the disciples, and they all sort of look at each other.

If I’m asked this question, I’m probably right there with him. Is this a trick? Is this a trick question?

What does he want us to say? Until Peter, who’s the loud mouth of the group, speaks up. It says, And Peter answereth and saith unto them, Thou art the Christ. Now, in another gospel, it says, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.

He’s, you know, we think of that word Christ, that’s part of his name. Christ is a title. Christ is the Greek translation of the word Messiah.

He’s identifying Jesus as being the anointed one that God promised all throughout the Old Testament from the earliest days. You go back to Genesis chapter 3 and he talks about bruising the serpent’s head. That’s the first mention of Christ in the Old Testament.

And it goes straight through prophecies and pictures and shadows. Christ is prophesied all throughout the Old Testament. And Peter here is not just saying, yeah, you’re Jesus Christ. That’s your name.

He’s saying you are the one that God has promised all this time. You are the son of the living God. You are in effect God himself.

And he charged them. In other gospels it tells us, it fills in more details of the story and says that he said how Peter was blessed because it was the spirit of God that had revealed that to him, not flesh. But in here it skips ahead and says, and he charged them that they should tell no man of him.

Now that’s kind of backwards from what we hear in church today. Don’t tell anybody who Jesus is. We’re told to go and tell, go and tell, go and tell, but they were in a different time.

Jesus had not yet accomplished what he came to do. He said he came to seek and to save that which was lost, and for him to do that, it required his death on the cross. And there’s been a lot of speculation over the years, theologians like to battle back and forth over what was the purpose of him telling them not to do.

Was it this? Was it that it was too early? Was it that they would kill him too early?

Was it that they wouldn’t kill him? You know what? To me, it doesn’t matter.

The timing wasn’t right. I don’t have to know. Oh, that’s hard for me to say.

But I don’t have to know all the details of God’s thinking and his planning. God just said the timing wasn’t right. Don’t tell them yet.

And he began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected of the elders and of the chief priests and scribes and be killed and after three days rise again. So from there, Jesus used that sort of as a segue to begin to teach them, as he’d done before, about how really his mission was to come and to die. to die on the cross for our sins.

They still were thinking before this, and even as he’s teaching them this, they’re thinking he’s the Messiah in the sense that everybody was expecting the Messiah, not really the sense that the Old Testament taught the Messiah, but that he was coming to set up an earthly kingdom. They were looking for their rock star leader. Everybody this week, don’t get mad at me because I’m not telling you how I feel one way or the other, but everybody this week seems to be talking about Donald Trump.

There are people all over this country that are just flocking to him and think he’s the guy that’s going to make America great again, as the campaign slogan goes. And they think he’s going to set up this wonderful golden age in America. That’s sort of how Jesus’ followers felt about him at the moment.

I’m not saying Jesus is on par with Donald Trump. Please understand that. But they were looking for, who’s the guy?

Who’s the guy that we can put our trust in who’s going to make everything great? He’s going to make Israel great again. He’s going to kick out the Romans.

It’s just going to be a golden age. And Jesus is telling them, hey, I came to die. Not only to die, but I came to be crucified on a Roman cross.

That was a punishment reserved for the lowest of the low. As a Roman citizen, you couldn’t even be killed on the cross. So it was for slaves and traitors.

He’s coming to die on the cross and then rise again three days later. That doesn’t really happen very often. I’ve never seen it.

And he spake that saying openly. and Peter took him and began to rebuke him. That’s pretty gutsy.

You’ve just said that this is God in human flesh and you’re going to pull him aside and rebuke him? That’s a pretty gutsy move. But Peter pulls him aside and begins to rebuke him.

No, no, Lord, this will never happen. We won’t stand for this. They can’t kill you.

Begins to argue because he’s still got in the back of his mind this is what’s going to happen. He’s going to set up this messianic kingdom. This is what we’ve wanted.

This is what we’ve been looking for. And Peter is still here invested in his thoughts and his plans and his hopes and dreams. But when he turned about, verse 33, but when he turned about and looked on his disciples, he rebuked Peter, he rebuked him right back, saying, Get thee behind me, Satan, for thou savest not the things that be of God, but the things that be of men. And as I read this, I don’t get the sense really, the more that I’ve dug into this, because it has bothered me for a long time.

He just said, blessed are you, Peter, and now he’s calling Peter Satan. The more I’ve dug into this, I don’t get the sense that he’s calling Peter a name, that he’s saying, you’re Satan. I get the sense from this that he’s saying, you are speaking on behalf of Satan.

The things that, Satan would love nothing more than for me to just come and set up an earthly kingdom. Are you kidding? That’s one of the things Satan offered him when he tempted him after his baptism.

He offered him all the kingdoms of the world. Hey, he’d be glad if Jesus came just to be a political leader and didn’t die for our sins. And so what he’s saying here basically is you’re being Satan’s mouthpiece.

Because you don’t savor the things of God. You’re not interested in what God’s plans are. You’re still looking at what man’s plans are.

Folks, that’s a trap I fall into a lot. And I suspect I’m not alone in that. Verse 34 says, And when he had called the people unto him with his disciples also, he said unto them, Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.

See, they’ve been following him around many of these people. This is a highlight, a high point in Jesus’ ministry. When the people are following him because they really believe he’s going to come into power soon.

It’s around the time of the huge miracles where he fed 5,000 men and their families. And it’s just shortly before the time where the crowds welcome him into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey, shouting, Hosanna, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. They were about ready to sweep him into power.

So everybody wanted to be on the bandwagon. And Jesus calls them together and says, wait a minute, you’ve got this wrong. He said, whoever will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.

It’s not whoever wants to be on my side, whoever wants to come with me, get ready because we’re going to take power. And we need to be arguing about who’s going to be the greatest in the kingdom. And that happened too.

He says, if you’re going to come and follow me, you need to be ready to die. You need to be prepared to die. You need to be prepared to give everything up.

We say a lot of times that such and such is my cross to bear. It could be a difficult situation. It could be a difficult person.

It could be a number of things. That’s my cross to bear. And I’ve said that myself, and I get what we’re saying by it, but we need to be careful not to trivialize that statement.

He’s asking them to be prepared to die. Yes, you’ve got to be prepared to deal with all those other things, all those other minor irritations. You’ve got to be prepared to give up anything else that are your plans and not God’s.

But he’s asking you, would you be willing to go so far as to die? Would you be willing to give it all up? And I hope for me the answer would be yes.

I hope for all of us the answer would be yes. but that’s something he has to give us the strength to do and the willingness to do. Whoever will come after me, let him deny himself.

To deny himself means I don’t get to assert my rights and privileges. It’s whatever you want. Take up his cross and follow me.

For whosoever will save his life shall lose it. But whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospels, the same shall save it. For what shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?

Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? The question really that he’s asking here, as I’ve already alluded to, is would you be willing to die? Would you be willing to give up your life for my sake?

Now we can ask the same question of ourselves, and we should ask the same question of ourselves. But for most of us, living where we live, living when we live, that’s probably not ever going to be the case. I mean, as things go different directions in our country, that may be the case at some point.

But in most of our lifetimes, I doubt that it’s ever going to be a question. Are you willing to give up your life? Are you willing to die for Christ?

I would hope that if it comes to that, the answer is yes. But another way we could ask ourselves that question, are we willing to give up our lives for Christ? Are we willing to live for Christ?

Are we willing to give up our hopes, our dreams? Are we willing to put aside everything that’s outside of God’s will? Are we willing to deny ourselves?

Denying ourselves is hard. He talked last week about the cookies. I was really hoping he’d put them on my table.

Janice and I were talking the other day about what’s your favorite kind of cookie. And I told him my favorite kind was cookies. And if there are cookies in the house, and he was absolutely, I swear, how did he get a camera into my house to watch me at night?

You’re at home, it’s late at night, and there are cookies in the house. It’s hard to deny yourself. Because I want a cookie.

I know it’s bad for me. One, I should be okay with. But I know eating half the box is bad for me, but it doesn’t matter because I want half the box.

It’s hard to deny myself when it comes to cookies. And we all have that. Maybe your weakness is not cookies, but it’s hard to deny ourselves.

When God says, I want this, sometimes we argue with God. It’s hard to deny ourselves. So the question I think we need to ask ourselves from this passage is, are we willing to deny ourselves whatever he says no to.

Not necessarily even bad things. There’s a man that was a member of the church I pastored in Arkansas and used to come and meet me at the door every Sunday after the service and talk my ear off. And his wife and say things based on what I preached and made points to me.

And his wife thought it drove me nuts. It didn’t because, hey, somebody’s listening. I love that.

But he used to say to me all the time that the good is the enemy of the best. sometimes we can let good pursuits get in the way of what God has called us to do are we willing good, bad, are we willing to deny ourselves the things that get in the way of what God’s called us to do Peter was very close to letting his vision of this millennial kingdom get in the way of what God had in store which was much greater much harder to go through, certainly I mean, who wants to see the man that you’ve devoted your life to being brutalized on the cross And yet that’s exactly what had to happen for our forgiveness, for our salvation to be purchased in blood. That’s what had to happen. And he was very close to say, let’s just throw all of that away so we can have these temporary earthly benefits.

Ladies and gentlemen, why do we love more? Why are we more concerned about our plans or God’s plans? Are we going to insist this life is mine?

Are we going to insist on doing things our way or are we going to hold life loosely and remember that it’s a gift from God on loan to us that he can do with what he chooses. And ultimately, I don’t promise you that it’s always going to be sunny, but his plan, I believe, is always best for us. Now, it may not feel best for us at the time.

Whenever I say things like that, I always think of Voice of the Martyrs video that we showed at the school that talked about Richard Warnbrandt, who was their founder. He’s in prison in communist Romania for years, beaten on a daily basis because he wouldn’t renounce the name of Christ. Tell me that was God’s best? Certainly, you read his book, you watch the video.

Folks, I’m sure at no point did it feel like God’s best for him but looking back and seeing how God grew him through those times, through those struggles. Yeah, doing things God’s way was absolutely the best way. Are we willing to give up our rights and privileges?

Are we willing to give up our dreams and our aspirations? Are we willing to say, yeah, it doesn’t really matter what I want in this case because, God, it’s life that you’ve lent to me. Folks, God has shown me time and time again, if you just let go, just let go and do what I tell you.

So my question tonight for you is this. Are you willing to hold your life loosely? Are you willing to hold life loosely?

Not to treat it like it’s junk, like it’s trash, but to treat it like it’s so valuable you can’t hold it and protect it anyway. It’s something that God has placed on loan and something best handled by God. Are we willing to give up whatever He calls us to give up to do what He calls us to do?

He’s called each person in here to do something. I don’t know what it is. I’m not your Holy Spirit and wouldn’t presume to try to tell you what it is.

But if you’re a believer tonight, then God has called you to do something. God has called you into His service. What’s holding you back in doing what He’s called to do?

Are you willing to deny yourself the thing that’s holding you back, the thing that’s standing in your way? Are you willing to deny yourself your plans and your goals? Take up your cross.

Be willing to give up your whole life and follow Him.

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