How are you guys this morning? Hey, let's remember to share a motto with the world. No matter your story, you are welcome, you are wanted, and you are loved. Lot going on today and this week we have the picnic today. That is from 3 to 6 p.m. If you show up looking to eat exactly at 3, we're probably not going to be quite ready for that. But I'm just giving a shout out to the folks who have been organizing this. This is the first cookout we've had that I didn't have to organize. God bless you people, you know who you are. Many are your rewards in heaven, many, many, many. Thank you. There's going to be so much furniture in your mansion in heaven, you'll be tripping over it. I'm sure the Lord will come up with something for that. Maybe you just glide right over it, you're so graceful. Okay, this Friday, the ladies fellowship in craft night, heavenly handmade, that's just Friday at 6.30 here. If you have not signed up for that and you want to be a part of that, be sure you sign up on the sheet so we can make sure we have enough materials. You don't have to, there's no charge for it. You don't have to bring any crafting materials. That's all going to be provided. So we want to make sure there's enough. Do bring a snack of some kind to share, savory or sweet or whatever is in between. Maybe it's both. I don't know. Now, meanwhile, because the men are not invited to that, which I think is a big thumbs down. I like crafts. Come on. We get to do something even more fun, in my opinion. We're going to go to Hutch's house and do manly things. We'll throw darts and shoot pool, pitch horse shoes, tell manly stories, you know. That's going to be fun. So if you're going to be a part of that, let Hutch, way better, Hutch is a saxophone player. So let him know so he can make sure and prepare for that many, but it's going to be a lot of fun. We had a great time last time. We found out who's the pool shark around here and I'm going to name names, but he could have whooped all of us, but he held back on us because he's showing some grace to the rest of us. So hey, I want to tell you guys a story as we get into the message. You know I love stories. One chilly morning on the rugged coast of the eastern sea, a man sat at a wooden table sawing off pieces of stale bread and nibbling at a lump of cheese. He picked up a mug of tea when there was a knock at the door. Very few people. In fact, no one had ever come knocking at his door at his little driftwood hut up on the cliff by the sea. So he took the knife that he was using for bread and held it behind his back and he crept up to the door quietly and he yanked it open. Nobody there. But on his doorstep, there was a scroll of parchment. He looks around and picks it up and he goes back inside and shuts the door. It's fancy parchment. It's been sealed with a deep red wax seal bearing the emblem of a crown and across the outside of the scroll. His name is written. Who would be sending him such a fancy letter? He goes back to the table. He breaks the seal with the knife. He unfurls the scroll and it's a letter. You want to know what it says? You want to know what the letter says? Are you into this story yet? Okay. Here's what the story is. Here's what the letter says. "Dear Thomas, I've heard your voice crying in the night and I offer you something more. Leave behind the life you know and sail to my kingdom. A life of peace, joy, purpose and fulfillment awaits. The blessings are worth the sacrifice. The difficulties of the journey are worth it. Take courage and release what you've known if you follow I will carry you. Yours in hope, the king beyond the eastern sea." Now Thomas had heard about this king beyond the eastern sea and I heard that people have followed him off into the wild blue yonder and there's a stirring in his heart to go but something held him back. His life was not especially fulfilling, it wasn't especially meaningful but it was predictable. He knew what he was doing from day to day. Yes it was lonely up there on the driftwood, in the driftwood hut on the cliff on the side of the sea but he knew it. The thought of leaving behind this familiar place, this familiar rut really, it was scary. So he tucked the scroll inside his jacket and he made the walk down to the village because he needed some more bread and more cheese. He's thinking about it the whole time. He could not stop thinking about the letter. What if there really was something better across the sea? He was so distracted that on his way back he stumbled over a pile of sticks except it wasn't just a pile of sticks. He figured out that this was the remains of his hut while he was gone. A huge wave from the sea had come and crashed upon his hut and torn it all to pieces. The life he thought was so secure was now in ruins. The invitation of the king beyond the eastern sea started to look pretty good. So he scrounged around in the mess and he picked out the few valuables he could find in the wreckage of his home and he sold them and he bought a little boat and he set sail. He said goodbye to his friends in the village and he set out across the sea. As the shore faded behind him he felt the weight of what he was leaving behind. He ever knew was back there on that shore but it was gone. He was going forward now. Thomas grew up on the coast. He had been on boats before but he quickly learned that the open sea is another matter and it was such a challenge. The days were long and the nights were lonely and cold and filled with fear and trembling. Was it wise for him to let it all go and follow the king beyond the eastern sea who he'd never met. Months into the voyage a terrible storm rolled over, waves crashed upon his little boat breaking off peace after peace as he held on for dear life. He cursed his choice to leave the warmth of his little hut and the life that he knew. The embrace of his friends and the predictability of life and when the storm passed his boat was hardly more than a few planks held together. He lay there in despair wondering what to do. That's when he reached inside his jacket and he pulled out the letter again and he read it again. He read these words by the light of the full moon, "A life of peace, joy, purpose and fulfillment awaits. The blessings are worth the sacrifice and difficulty. Take courage and release what you've known. If you follow I will carry you." And he wiped his tears and pulled together the remains of his boat and he made it to the morning determined to reach the kingdom beyond the eastern sea and as the sun rose it illuminated the mountainous land of emerald green and someone was standing on the shore waving him in. Now, now they got you hooked on that story, I'm going to go to something completely different and we'll come back to that at the end. We're going to finish that story, I promise, but let's talk about somebody else who left behind the life that he knew. Let's go to Matthew, I'm going to kind of a prequel verse here, Matthew 2, 16, 24, "Then Jesus said to his disciples, 'If anyone desires to come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow after me.'" We're going to be talking about a man who did this in a literal way, he was the first one to carry across for Jesus. His name was Simon, not the famous Simon Peter, this was Simon of Cyrene and I don't think I've ever heard anybody preach on this guy, but his story is fascinating and we read his story in one verse in Mark 15, Mark 1521, but before that, this is the core of the message this week, this is what Simon will show us, when you carry the cross, the cross carries you, when you carry the cross, the cross carries you, now Mark 1521 and we'll pray. Then they compelled a certain man, Simon, a Cyrenean, the father of Alexander and Rufus as he was coming out of the country and passing by to bear his cross, the cross of Jesus. Lord, please in Jesus' name help us to focus on this and help us to understand and may we answer your call to deny ourselves and take up the cross and follow in Jesus' name we pray, amen. So at this point in the story, Jesus has been arrested, he has been put through a trial, he has been prosecuted on false charges, beaten with fists, beaten with sticks, whipped with a scourge until his back was torn to shreds, had a crown of thorns pressed on his head. Horrible shape, awful things have been done and after all of this, they made him carry his cross to the execution site. Scholars are divided as to whether the cross that he carried was the full cross or just the cross beam, but either way, for someone who has been beaten to within an inch of his life, it was a heavy burden to bear. It would have been a heavy burden for a healthy fit person who hadn't been beaten. It was about a half a mile, maybe a little less than half a mile from the Praetorium where he was, winding through the streets of Jerusalem outside the gate until the hill called Golgotha where the execution site was. Jesus struggled under the weight of the cross. It's a reminder to us that even though Jesus was and is God incarnate, he took on the fullness of humanity, and during his time on earth, he was human as well as God so he could feel things like pain, he could feel things like exhaustion. There's not an emotion or sensation that you've felt of grief that he has not felt to. He knows what it's like. That's part of the reason he came to earth, so we would know we have a Savior who is touched with the same infirmities that we have. So at some point, he stumbles under the weight of the cross and he cannot get up and the soldiers try to get him moving again and they can't. So they pull a guy out of the crowd, seemingly at random, but it was not at random. God had a plan for this man pulled out of the crowd. His name was Simon. He grew up in a city called Cyrene. That's not in Israel. That is in what is now Libya in North Africa. Now some have said, well, maybe Simon was an ethnic African who had converted to Judaism. That's possible. But it's just as likely that he was a Jew who was living in the area because that was very common too. There was a lot of Jews in North Africa at the time. We can't be sure. Simon, though, was in town for the holy festival. All Jewish males were supposed to come to Jerusalem a few times a year and the biggest one was Passover, which was happening right at that time, but it was difficult and it was expensive for people living so far away as places. Cyrene. So that tells us a couple of things about Simon. First of all, he was a pretty committed believer to take that much time to come to Jerusalem. Time that he would not be home and with his family and working. So he was probably a fairly prosperous guy because it would have meant, I mean, how many, I can't take a month off of work with no paycheck. Maybe you guys can, but I cannot to say, Hey, honey, I'll be back. I wouldn't see you in a month because that's about how long it would take about a month. Total round trip between travel there, the festival and travel back. But in today's money, paying all that out of pocket might have been something two, three, four, $5,000. Now I can't speak to anyone else's experience, but the Shockley budget will not absorb a month long, $5,000 trip, at least not yet. We're going to get there, baby. Yeah, sure. Okay. So this guy was mine in his business, taking in the festival, it said he had just come into the city. He just came from the countryside and now he's there and he doesn't even know what's going on here. He's just kind of part of the crowd seeing who is this guy that the Romans are dragging out to be executed because everybody knew what a cross meant. We think of a cross as a jewelry or a decoration or, or, you know, some beautiful symbol. It was just death to these people across was just death and it still is in a way. We'll see that. They grab him and they say, Hey, you carry this. And the Roman soldiers could compel a local person, a non-citizen to carry a burden for up to a mile. You've heard the go the extra mile. That's because they could make you do one mile and you didn't have to do second mile. But that was a show that you were really quite a remarkable person. If you went the second mile, that's where that came from. Simon has two sons, Alexander and Rufus, Mark tells us that it is possible that his sons were there with him that day. We don't know, but it's possible. And I can imagine him protesting and saying, wait, no, I can't leave my boys. I can't leave my boys on the crowd, but the Romans did not care about anything like that. He didn't know that God had a plan for his sons as well. There's a reason Mark knows these guys. Simon didn't ask for a cross, did he? He didn't even know what was going on, but a cross was given to him. Please understand, if you follow Jesus, you will bear a cross. Jesus said, John 1624, where we started, if anyone desires to come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow after me. What does that even mean? To deny yourself means to no longer live for yourself. Now that goes against our programming. Even beings, human nature, we live for ourselves. We look out for number one. Even when we think we're looking out for others, sometimes it's kind of like I'm looking out. I'm looking out for them because if I don't, I won't have them, thus looking out for number one again. It means to surrender your desires and your ambitions to God. Does that mean you won't do important things? Some people are like, if I follow God, I won't get to do good things, great things. I'll just send me as a missionary to Africa. What's wrong with Africa? It's a beautiful place. That's what everybody's like. I don't want to be sent to Africa. There's a lot of places. It's one place. Calm down. You will do great things if you live for the Lord. I promise you that. It may not be what you had in mind, but you'll do some great things. It means no longer being about your glory or your comfort or your pleasure or your preferences or your accomplishment. It's about seeing yourself as a part of the amazing story that God is going. It's no longer being this person kind of out there by themselves, but it's being a part of this amazing thing that God got started when He said, "Let there be light," and it's choosing to be part of that light, choosing to be part of something that's forever, not just now, not just you, something much bigger. It doesn't necessarily mean giving up all your dreams and your comforts. We'll say, "If I follow God, I can't have this or that," not necessarily. God knows you need a house, God knows you need a car that runs, you know, God knows you need a career. Look, a lot of your dreams can honor God. Now, if it is your dream of becoming the most prosperous meth dealer this side of the Mississippi, I'm afraid that is not going to be compatible with God's plans for your life. Look, you might say, "Well, what about this? What are I going to support? What if I tithe off my meth money? Honey, we don't want it. It'll be fine. We'll be all right. We started with nothing and we still got most of it. We're going to be okay. It's going to be okay. Look, but there's a lot of things that you can do with your life that it's not like signing up to live for God is to sign up for an unfulfilling life. That's the opposite of the truth. God calls people to be teachers and cops and construction workers and factory workers and farmers for His glory and to do great things. It's not about to say, "Now I'm not going to do anything now. I'm going to God know it's about prioritizing God's will over your will and finding that His will is even better." What does it mean to take up your cross? Sometimes we use the phrase, "It's my cross to bear," or something like that, to refer to having to endure something unpleasant or burdensome like a physical ailment, chronic illness that certainly feels like a cross to bear or a thankless job or a strained relationship. I just got to give a shout out. Some people bear. I cannot imagine bearing the burden of being as beautiful as my wife. I think that would be a struggle for me, but you bear it well, sweetheart. That's so I can have brownie points when I say something stupid later. She's like, "Oh, he was sweet earlier." I just try to like go ahead. Like when I was in fifth grade, they took corporal punishment out of schools in this area. If you don't know what that is, I'm not going to tell you, but instead we had to write sentences. We had to write sentences, okay, which is probably good for me. My penmanship was bad. Still is. I guess the sentences didn't work, but I was hedging my bets, so I went ahead and had nothing else to do. I will not talk in class. I just went ahead and wrote sentences. Anybody has to have to write sentences? I just went out talking class. I was like, "Hey, you got to write sentences." There you go. Think in ahead. You got to think ahead. That was before I knew Jesus, okay, or right after, right about the time I met Jesus, okay, so we're going to blame that on the flesh. That's what was the flesh doing that, so look, when Jesus spoke these words, a cross did not, people did not associate a cross with an annoyance or a symbolic or a metaphorical burden. It meant death. It meant execution by crucifixion. A cross still means death in a manner. In order to follow Jesus, we must die. Not a physical death, but we must die to self, die to selfishness. It's the ultimate surrender to God. Now in Christ, the cross became something bigger than just a symbol of death. It became a symbol of atonement and forgiveness, grace, unconditional love, eternal life. To take up your cross absolutely means surrender and self-sacrifice, but it doesn't stop there. It means support and help and redemption and peace at a level and a duration that cannot be obtained in any other way. What is it that's the core idea I want to communicate to you today? When you carry the cross, the cross carries you. Let's read some more in that Matthew passage. Matthew 16, 24, we're going to pick up verses 25 and 26, too, this time. Then Jesus said to his disciples, "If anyone desires to come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me, for whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul, or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?" The call to take up your cross is difficult. It may be the hardest thing you ever do, but the rewards are like nothing else. Nothing in this world is worth passing up spiritual life. Nothing in this world is worth clinging to at the expense of true peace in your soul. Look, you can have all the money, you can have all the stuff, you can have whatever person you want to be in a relationship with, possibly. You can claw and scratch and fight and dig and get everything that you can possibly get and not have peace in your soul, and it's worthless. Hey, we've all got to have enough money to pay the bills. I get that. It's hard to have peace when you got no electricity, but at a certain point, it does not bring more peace. It does not bring more fulfillment. You've got to have something bigger than that. What does it mean to follow after Jesus? The crowds followed Jesus early in his ministry for the wrong reasons. Remember, thousands of people followed him across the hills. But why were they following him? They thought he was going to set up an earthly kingdom, a political empire that would overthrow the Roman oppressors. The Roman empire ruled everything at the time. They hated the Romans. They wanted rid of the Romans. They thought the Messiah was there mostly to get rid of the Romans. They thought he would keep feeding them for free, a free lunch, you know, fish and bread. He multiplied those loaves and fishes. They thought they'd never need to go to the doctor again. They did not crucify their own interests. They held their own interests high. They followed Jesus because of just what they could get out of him in an earthly way. They thought, "Oh, I can get political freedom. I can get food, so I don't have to go to work every day." And he'll heal me, so, "Hey, no big deal. No more doctors bills." They're in it for the earthly tangible benefits. But I understand that if that's all you're in it for, you're missing it so much. You're missing the whole thing. Look, following Jesus means commitment. It means leaving other things behind. Remember, Thomas and the story that we began with, he left everything behind. It can mean risking the loss of the things that we count valuable. So let's stop and ask the tough questions. Are you willing to follow Jesus if it means some of your close friends won't have anything to do with you anymore? I remember when my dad got saved, I was old enough to remember, and he said, "The boy's a used to run." He said, "He didn't have to leave any of his old friends behind." He left him behind because he wasn't that guy anymore. He wasn't living that rowdy life anymore. Are you willing to follow Jesus if some of your family turns their back on you? The indication is that the great Apostle Paul, that his biological family, abandoned him entirely when he followed Christ. Are you willing to follow Jesus if it means losing your reputation? Are you willing to follow Jesus if it means losing your source of income? You got to stop cooking meth. If you follow Jesus, nope, not one more batch. Nope, you got to stop right now. But there's a lot of other things that we do that maybe it's not in that category. But there's some shady things that people do to get or keep a little more money, being so dishonest about this or that. Are you willing to follow Jesus if it means giving up your plans? Are you willing to follow Jesus if it means giving up your life? Life as you know it, and maybe even your own mortal life. See, these weren't theoretical questions to the first few generations of believers for several hundred years at least. For the apostles, it cost them dearly to follow Jesus. It still costs people dearly in many parts of the world today. If you become a Jesus follower in certain parts of the Middle East, for example, you will lose everything, maybe your life. Look, it's different here in America. But it's less of a friendly place towards Christianity than it once was. I mean, that right now today, if you publicly identify with certain biblical principles of right and wrong, the culture will not get it. You'll be mocked and ridiculed and called all sorts of names. Now, look, nobody stoned us to the lions. So maybe we should just take a breather there and understand we are not experiencing anything like the persecution of our spiritual forefathers. It's not anything like that. So we need to not see ourselves as these woeful martyrs, you know, but we need to understand that we live in a world that is, you know, it's the devil's world in a lot of ways. We need to understand that we don't need to be surprised when things don't go our way. Look, I'm telling you that following Jesus is not some easy way out. It always makes me laugh when somebody says that following Jesus is some kind of crutch for the weak. I'm telling you, Your Honor, you can't do this life without some strength that comes from God. It's pretty amazing what some of the strongest people that I know are people who are physically not very strong, but spiritually are people I look up to all the time. You know, sweet Carolyn is someone I look up to, sweet Miss Carolyn, whose I hope she's back with us pretty soon because her faith is so big. When you carry the cross, the cross carries you. So what are you waiting on? Following Jesus is the best thing a person can do. It can bring a level of peace and security that is impossible on earth. It could transform your whole life and the whole history of your family. That's exactly what it did with Simon. His family was impacted, at least for generations. Look, Simon was pulled out of the crowd seemingly at random, was not random, God knew. And he carried the cross of Jesus up the hill and that's sort of all the description we get. He carried the cross of Jesus to the place of the execution and it seems that he faded back into the crowd, probably happy to get out of there, but he did not fade into history. Simon was the first to take up the cross for him. It was literal at first, but then it became spiritual. Notice the detail there in, in Mark 15, 21, just pull that back up again, then they compelled a certain man, Simon of Cyrenian, the father of Alexander and Rufus. Simon had two sons named Alexander and Rufus. These boys could have been with him today, he carried the cross for Jesus, we don't know. But get this, John Mark, the author of the Gospel of Mark, writing, he was really writing the memoirs of Simon Peter. That's who, Simon Peter was his protege and they were both in Rome at the time and writing down the story of Jesus to first give to the believers in Rome. Mark and Peter in Rome, writing to the Roman believers and they reference Alexander and Rufus. Why? Because they know these guys, they're part of the church at Rome. They're seemingly some kind of prominent or leadership people in the church at Rome. That's not our only evidence. The Apostle Paul is writing the letter to the Romans, he specifically mentions Rufus. Rufus sounds like a name of a hound dog, I love that name, Rufus. It's a great name. If your grandpa was Rufus, I don't mean no disrespect, that's just a good name. Romans 1613, Romans 1613, Paul says, "Great Rufus chosen in the Lord and who else? His mother in mine." Not that Rufus was the Apostle Paul's brother, literally. It's that Rufus's mother loved Paul with a motherly love, and remember Paul's biological mother abandoned him after he became a follower of Jesus. So if it's Rufus's mother, it's whose wife, Simon of Cyrene, and we put all this together. Simon of Cyrene did not merely carry the cross for Jesus. He evidently became a follower of Jesus, or at least his sons did. Some believe that Simon went back to Cyrene and started a Christian community there. We don't really know. We know for sure that his family became very involved in ministry. Years later, probably after his death, since he's not mentioned here as someone who was present with them, they moved to Rome where they became ministry partners with people like Simon Peter and John Mark and the church at Rome. And Simon's wife, probably his widow at this point, is sharing hospitality and encouragement with people like Paul. It cost Simon something to carry the cross that day. It would have been humiliating, would it not, certainly. As they laid that cross on him, all the blood that Jesus had already gotten on that cross beam would have got all over his clothes. But he bore the cross of Jesus. He was covered in the blood of Jesus, and that's some of the covered in the blood of Jesus, the first guy, very literal there. And then it became spiritual. It seems that he became a follower of Jesus, and it cost him more than the humiliation of the moment. It very likely would have cost him his business and his reputation back home in Cyrene. It could have cost his life. We really don't know his story, but a lot of the early believers were killed for following Jesus. And yet it brought him so much more, it brought redemption to his family. It had generational impact on his family. So understand the changes that you make now can impact generation after generation after generation. Don't underestimate that. They became an amazing part of this story that God's telling. And more important than that, they received eternal life. When you carry the cross, the cross carries you. There's good things that come from it. So hey, I promise to finish the story of Thomas, right? You've been waiting. You've been suffering through the rest just to get back to see what happened to Thomas. When Thomas landed on the shore, he was greeted by a tall, noble figure with kind eyes. It was the king beyond the eastern sea who was there for him. Thomas presented the scroll. He said, "This is my invitation," and the king said, "Follow me." The king ascended the mountains, and Thomas followed. The climb was more difficult than anything he had faced before him, worse than the storms at sea. He often lagged behind, often stumbled, often collapsed with terrible cramps in his legs. And at these times, the king would wait for him to catch up, or would carry him through the rough parts until he could walk again. Took forever, it seemed, Thomas lost track of time. He felt like weeks or months or even years they were climbing, and at long last, he lost his footing and slid into a deep ravine, and he could not get up, and he wept with exhaustion. The king climbed down into the ravine with him and extended a hand. Thomas had no strength to take it. He said, "I'll just stay here till I die." The king lifted him to his feet and said, "Dear Thomas, you didn't leave your old life, just to be defeated by this moment of struggle. Keep going. Every step you take brings you closer to what I promised you. Peace, joy, purpose, and fulfillment." So the king took his hand, and they climbed the last slope, and when they reached the summit, a breathtaking sight was revealed, a beautiful crystal city nestled in a lush valley. It was the fulfillment, the place of the promises, the peace, and joy, and purpose and fulfillment. And Thomas had denied himself. He'd endured the hardships of the journey, followed the footsteps of the king long and difficult it was, but no pain or trouble compared to what he was seeing then. His life was everything that was promised, everything that was destined and far greater than anything he was left behind. And when he was healed up in that city, the king sent him back with more scrolls of parchment to leave on doorsteps, with more invitations. Jesus said, "If anyone desires to come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow after me. Whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it." I know I'm the preacher guy, I know I'm supposed to say these things, but that doesn't stop it from being true. Life is waiting on you. Choose to live for Jesus above all else. Lay down everything that is not compatible with that life. Let it go. It is not good for you. It will only cause you pain. Let it go and follow Jesus. Leave that down, take up the cross, when you carry the cross, the cross carries you. It's a sacrifice, it's a struggle, but there is peace, joy, and purpose and fulfillment that cannot come from anywhere else. Let's go to the Lord in prayer, Heavenly Father, it's so hard to let go of the things of this world, to let go of what we know, to even let go of the things we know are destroying us. Today we drop those things, Lord, and take up the cross. Lord, I pray for everyone receiving this message that they would turn to you and believe and take up the cross and follow Jesus. Lord, to live this new life, leaving the old behind, to receive the peace that is promised and the joy and the fulfillment and the purpose that comes through Him. God would give you the glory, and as we carry that cross, I pray that you carry us in Jesus' prayer. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Thank you for being a part of this today. We pray that you would be here, and here you are, so you're an answer to prayer. You just let somebody know. If you see them later today, you can say, "I'm just an answer to prayer." Didn't you know that about me? Because it's true. Because it's true. Because it's true. God bless you all. I hope to see many of you at the Cookout this afternoon, and see you all when I see you. God bless. Take care. [BLANK_AUDIO]
