Mark 8 vv 34 to38
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Slides to accompany the talk on Mark 8:34-38 on the Grace Wales Online channel on YouTube
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Mark 8 vv 34 to38
- 1. Welcome to Grace! ‘Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Matthew 6:19-21
- 3. Mark 8:34-38 • Introduction • The point, v. 34 “Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: ‘Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”
- 4. Mark 8:34-38 • Introduction • The point, v. 34 – Who? V. 34a
- 5. Mark 8:34-38 • Introduction • The point, v. 34 – Who? V. 34a • Crowd
- 6. Mark 8:34-38 • Introduction • The point, v. 34 – Who? V. 34a • Crowd • Whosoever
- 7. Mark 8:34-38 • Introduction • The point, v. 34 – Who? V. 34a • Crowd • Whosoever – What? V. 34b “‘Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”
- 8. Mark 8:34-38 • Introduction • The point, v. 34 • The rationale, vv. 35-37 “For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it. 36 What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? 37 Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?”
- 9. Mark 8:34-38 • Introduction • The point, v. 34 – Who? V. 34a • Crowd • Whosoever – What? V. 34b • The rationale, vv. 35-37 – Why? Vv. 35-37 • Principle, v. 35 • Appeal to reason, vv. 36-37
- 10. Mark 8:34-38 • Introduction • The point, v. 34 – Who? V. 34a • Crowd • Whosoever – What? V. 34b – Why? Vv. 35-37 • The rationale, vv. 35-37 – Principle, v. 35 – Appeal to reason, vv. 36-37 • The consequence, v. 38 “If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of them when he comes in his Father’s glory with the holy angels.’
- 11. Mark 8:34-38 • Introduction • The point, v. 34 – Who? V. 34a • Crowd • Whosoever – What? V. 34b • The rationale, vv. 35-37 – Why? Vv. 35-37 • Principle, v. 35 • Appeal to reason, vv. 36-37 • The consequence, v. 38 • Conclusion
- 12. Mark 8:34-38 • Introduction • The point, v. 34 – Who? V. 34a • Crowd • Whosoever – What? V. 34b – The rationale, vv. 35-37 – Why? Vv. 35-37 • Principle, v. 35 • Appeal to reason, vv. 36-37 • The consequence, v. 38 • Conclusion http://adam4d.com/radical/
Editor's Notes
- So here is a question that mebbe ought to be exercising any free society today …. Should you be allowed to insult freely what someone else holds dear? The secularist says ‘Yes’, because he doesn’t hold anyone but himself to be that dear. He doesn’t understand the person of faith who is deeply motivated by love for a cause outside the material or self-appeasing things that he holds dear. The nearest you can get to letting the secularist understand is to question whether someone else has the right to mock his mother, or his wife, or his child … but it’s still nowhere near the same sort of thing. So the secularist says it is PERFECTLY legitimate, in fact it is one of his essential freedoms, to be allowed to mock and insult the things the faithful hold dear … they have no experience to teach them why not! Now when it comes to people of faith and THEIR view of this question, the cake gets cut one of two ways. Most religions do not have a very adequate theology of suffering … So, Islam for example does not see any merit in making anything but a confrontational response to its detractors. Christianity on the other hand takes a very different view, which is precisely the point of the passage before us today …
- In Mark 8:34 the focus moves from the cost to Jesus to what it will cost disciples to follow Him. The Greek text here make it absolutely clear that Jesus is announcing here a basic condition or implication of discipleship. Christians are expected (in the words of R.T. France) to join Jesus on the way to execution. He goes on: “The metaphor of taking up one’s cross is not to be domesticated into an exhortation merely to endure hardship patiently … while it may no doubt be legitimately applied to other and lesser aspects of the suffering involved in following Jesus, the primary reference in the context must be to the possibility of literal death.” And yet … the immediate context is one of denying oneself, saying no to one’s self. You want to be my disciple? My follower? Following Jesus, according to Jesus, means not being self-centred and self-serving. Following Jesus, according to Jesus, entails: denying your self Taking up your OWN Cross And following Jesus The latter is dependant on the previous two. You cannot have the latter without the former. Did anyone ever mention that? It’s the point Jesus makes as soon as they have realised that Jesus is the suffering and rejected Messiah, the crucified Saviour. He wasn’t cool. This isn’t moralistic, therapeutic Deism that He is advocating and calling people to. It’s following a crucified Messiah, gladly, willingly, embracing it and walking gladly in the way of the Cross. Because He didn’t have to, but His doing so was not only my only hope, but also my present salvation. So I embrace the suffering that is sent me, for the Gospel’s sake. You realise this isn’t the stuff that comes my way because of the Fall … sickness, child-bearing and rearing, death? This is the stuff that comes my way because of the Gospel of salvation, for faithfulness and for following of Christ. It is EVERYONE who wants to be His disciple. By calling the crowd Jesus shows that the conditions for following Him are for all believers not just the 12. This stringent demand of denying oneself and taking up the Cross applies NOT only to church leaders but to all who confess that Jesus is the Messiah. Jesus is saying that those who wish to follow Him must be prepared to shift the centre of gravity of their lives away from living pleasing themselves to concern themselves with reckless abandon to the will of God. What is this ‘deny themselves’ thing? Lane: It is “… a sustained willingness to say ‘No’ to oneself in order to be able to say ‘Yes’ to God.” Self-idolatry has to be deliberately killed off if you are going to worship Jesus! The seriousness of this demand is reinforced by this description of the Christ-following life as a sustained death march … dead men walking into eternal life! The picture is of a condemned man going out to die, forced to carry on his back the cross beam he is going to be nailed to when he finally gets it to the place of execution. By the time Mark writes this, the image has become stark reality, both for the Lord and for the church Mark is writing to in Rome. Why ON EARTH would anyone ever be ready to commit to that?!
- Let us be clear who this call comes to. Jesus is evidently talking to the crowd now too (v. 34).
- By calling the crowd to Him – and it is by no means clear where they came from or what they’d been doing there – Jesus really makes it clear that the conditions for following Him that he’s spelling out here are relevant for all believers, and not for the disciples alone. This is obviously relevant to the pressurised Christians in Rome that this Gospel is written for! The message is clear … ALL disciples must reckon with following a crucified Messiah, and must also expect to make sacrifices and also to suffer themselves. To refuse to live a self-centred existence, to deny oneself in order to follow Christ, plainly hurts one’s SELF! William Lane has a perceptive thing to say here: “It was the Lord’s intention that those who follow Him should not be detached observers of His passion, but men who grow in faith and understanding through participation in His sufferings.”
- Which is why in straightforward terms Jesus addresses the crowd on this subject and says: ‘whosoever’.
- People who take up a Cross are accepting the possibility that they will follow Him to a martyr’s death. According to Jesus, this is what following Jesus means. The point is that you will need to deny yourself and take up your cross if you want to be a follower of Jesus. Not that this will EARN you your salvation, but that this is what is entailed in the call of 1:15 (based in the big change tat has taken place … the Kingdom of God is now at hand) That call is the call to turn from the self-centredness of living for sin and to trust in the Lord Jesus … and as a consequence of that turning and trusting to follow Him as a fellow fisher of men. Why do that? Why set out on the road that follows Jesus on the way to the Cross? If you think about it … a good bunch of those Christians living in persecuting Rome at the heart of its’ evil empire would surely have entertained that question, wouldn’t they? Don’t you think Kurdish Christians are asking themselves that question today? Don’t you think believers in Northern Nigeria, or North East Kenya, or Somalia are asking themselves that question today? And don’t you think normally prolific Christian tweeters who normally have plenty too say but have gone remarkably quiet since the recent events in Paris have also had this thought strike them already: ‘what is the rationale for embracing this following of Jesus in the way of the Cross?’!
- Previously in this Gospel, Jesus has called people to commitment to His message, but now the locus of commitment is Jesus Himself. He is the acknowledged Messiah now. He is the CONTENT of the message. It’s all about YOU, Jesus … the underlying theme of the second half of this Gospel of Mark. It’s HIM.
- Here’s the principle: “For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it. And here’s the appeal to reason: “36 What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? 37 Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?” There’s nothing much to add, now, is there?! It’s plain, it’s clear, it’s unmistakeable! Christian discipleship does NOT mean confirmation class or ceremonies or certificates! It means following a rejected, suffering, crucified Messiah … who saves His people by His suffering and calls them to understand ad appreciate and REJOICE in that by following Him in the way of the Cross. Tell me, are you really getting ANY of what I’m saying here?! Jesus uses the language of trade – of commerce profit, loss, gain, exchange. Here’s the transaction: A comparison of values is made – how do the profit and loss projections look on this one? Lane: “When a man has forfeited eternal life, he experiences absolute loss, even though he may have won the approval of the whole world with his denial of Jesus and the Gospel.” Last Thursday (January 8th.) saw the anniversary of the death of a group of young man including the missionary Jim Elliot – I think 5 of them left Wheaton as bright young missionaries who felt called by God to the fearsome, cannibalistic Auca Indians – the Huaoroni people of Ecuador. He and four other young men were martyred almost immediately they arrived, but within years almost all of the tribe had themselves turned from sin to follow the crucified Messiah. His journal entry for October 28, 1949, expresses his belief that work dedicated to Jesus was more important than his life (see Luke 9:24 in the Bible). "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose." This is the quote that is most often attributed to Elliot, but apparently it is very close to the English nonconformist preacher Philip Henry (1631–1696) who said "He is no fool who parts with that which he cannot keep, when he is sure to be recompensed with that which he cannot lose.“ There’s the logic of it. Do you get it? It is crucial that those who call themselves Christians DO get this, because getting or not getting it carries consequences …
- Jesus is very plain about the consequence of NOT following Him in a committed fashion. Jesus – by the way – is claiming here to be more than the Son of Man … by talking about coming in ‘His Father’s Glory’ He is also explicitly calling Himself the Son of God. Moreover, He is using language that makes clear reference to the coming of the Son of Man into the Heavenly throne room to share the seat of sovereignty and power there with the Ancient of Days. And He is using the language of SHAME here … “If anyone is ASHAMED of me and my words …” at this time, in this sinful era, then He (the Son of Man) will be ashamed of that person at the big salvation time.
- It’s not being able to mouth the summaries of the Gospel that save you. It’s seeing and living the implications of them. WHY is that all so important? The criterion for a man’s acceptance or rejection before the Son of Man is his loyalty or disloyalty to Jesus now.
- I saw this cartoon on the website adam4d.com There’s the difference between a Christian and a Moslem theology of power and powerlessness, of suffering, of insult, of rejection and of revenge.