St Michaels Church Podcast
A message from the heart: Jesus is the best thing that can happen to you | Dan Cook | 7.07.24
We're reading today from Mark's Gospel, chapter 8 verses 27 to 38, which is on page 10, 12, a thousand and 12 of the church Bibles. So that's chapter 8 starting at verse 27. Jesus and his disciples went on to the villages around Caesarea Philippi. On the way, he asked them, "Who do people say I am?" They replied, "Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and still others, one of the prophets. But what about you?" he asked, "Who do you say I am?" Peter answered, "You are the Messiah." Jesus warned them not to tell anyone about him. He then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed, and after three days rise again. He spoke plainly about this, and Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But when Jesus turned and looked at his disciples, he rebuked Peter, "Get behind me, Satan," he said, "You do not have in mind the concerns of God but merely human concerns." 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, but whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it." What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? If anyone has ashamed of me in 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. If you guys have been doing messages from the heart, is that right? Yeah, I guess to sum up what I want to say, my message from my heart is that Jesus is just the best thing that ever happened to me. He's the greatest, he's the only one that is worth building our lives on, and I just want to know Jesus more this morning. Are we up for a bit of that? I've got to say that in church. I don't know where you're at with Jesus. You might have known him for a long time. You might have known him for a short time. Maybe you don't actually feel like you know him at all. The wonderful thing about the Bible is that wherever we're at, God has a word for us. So if we're willing to be open to him this morning, he can speak to us. He can do new things in us right now, right now. Jesus is better than anything this world has to offer, isn't he? He's better than football. He's better than winning an election. He's better than losing an election, definitely. I don't know what side you're on, but he's the only one that's worth building our life on. There's this great hymn that sprang to mind when I read this passage, it's by Fanny Crosby. It goes like this, "Take the world but give me Jesus. All its joys are but a name, but his love abides forever through eternal years the same. Take the world but give me Jesus. All its joys are but a name, though his love abides forever through eternal years the same." I guess I wanted us to cast the vision this morning of the greatness, the greatness of Jesus that we get to be caught up in his story. I don't know what your weeks being like, what your plans for your life are like, where you think you're tracking right now. But Sunday is great, the Lord's Day is great, isn't it? Because we get to reorientate ourselves, is that even a word? We get to put ourselves back into God's story, we get to say, "Yeah, actually God, sometimes I get this wrong, sometimes I make myself the centre of this thing." And it's not working, it's not working, "I need you Jesus. Can I be part of your story?" And he says, "Yes, that's what you were made for, that's what you were made for." So I've got some challenging things to say today, they're challenging for me as well, please don't think that I've got all this stuff sorted. But I want us to hear that challenge in the scope of God's love and his call for us and his mercy and him being the one that we were made for. As we look at Mark 8, we're going to see that Jesus is calling us to give it all up for him. And we're going to see that he's worth it, that he's worth it. He's looking for people who are going to go against the flow of this, the culture that we're in, revolutionaries if you like, the early church talked about how they turned the world upside down. You want to turn the world upside down for Jesus, sounds good, doesn't it? He's looking for people who will radically commit themselves to a narrow way, not an easy way, who are going to count the cost and they're going to pay it anyway. He said in his own words, "Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me, for whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it." What good is it for someone to gain the whole world yet forfeit their soul or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? I wonder how do you feel as you hear that? As I hear that, I think of all those things that I kind of maybe put above Jesus, all the ways that the world has its kind of hold on me. But can we agree that we're going to let God's Word challenge us today? We're going to be honest with ourselves and with him and with each other as part of a church family. Let's open ourselves up to his power because the wonderful thing about Jesus is he knows us already. There's no point in hiding where we're at. He knows us already and he loves us exactly where we're at. With all our mistakes, all our kind of confused motivations, all our misdirection, with all our idols, all our struggles, all our brokenness, he loves us and he knows us, but he loves us too much to leave us like that. Even if we're like a super mature Holy Christian, he's got more for us. I suspect most of us probably don't feel like a super mature Holy Christian most of the time. Now that we've got that agreed, I just want to take a few steps back just to give us a bit of context about what's going on in Mark's gospel. So how have we got to this point where Jesus has this interaction with his friends? Well, Mark's gospel begins with this like earth shattering statement in chapter one, verse one, it says, "The beginning of the good news about Jesus Christ, the Son of God." It's a revolution right there. And then Jesus himself bursts onto the scene and he says, "The time has come, repent and believe the good news." And immediately you see people, they're attracted to him, they're drawn to him. John the Baptist says, "Hey, I baptize you with water." But one is he's going to baptize you with the Holy Spirit. And he starts doing these miracles like the lame they can walk, the blind they can see, the hungry are fed and crowds and crowds of people are drawn to him and attracted to him. But no one has quite yet worked out who he is exactly, apart from the demons, that is. They know who he is, they know who he is and they're worried. Then there's this ragtag bunch of twelve guys that Jesus calls and they're his disciples and you might know a lot of the time, they seem very confused. Anyone feel confused when they're following Jesus sometimes? Yeah, that's good, isn't it? The disciples, I think, their great gift to us is that they exist to make us feel better about ourselves with all their mistakes and all their getting it wrong. So they're called to be his closest friends, his followers, but they're just not getting it at all. In fact, you see that it's outsiders to the Jewish community who seem closer to realize in who Jesus is and what he's come to do. So that's happening in the first half of Mark's gospel and all of this builds and it peaks in chapter eight and we reach the centre of the gospel, kind of the hinge of Mark's gospel and where Jesus is now, he's sort of cornered them, he's good like that. You ever feel cornered by Jesus, like ah, he's got me, I've got nowhere to hide now. So he starts and he says, well guys, who do people say I am, who do people say, well, I've heard some stuff, Jesus, they say maybe you're John the Baptist, they say maybe you're a Elijah, they say maybe you're one of the prophets and he's like, okay, that's interesting. Anyone know by the way that people often might have an opinion about Jesus? It's fun that people have an opinion about Jesus, like he sort of demands an opinion doesn't he? It's difficult to be sort of like meh about him. I find that if I'm trying to talk to people about my faith and I say I'd love to pray for you or I believe in God or I go to church or something, people still sort of, they might think, oh that's really nice. If I mention Jesus, all of a sudden like he's challenging. People sort of instinctively get that he demands a response, he demands a response. So people then had opinions about who he was and people now will do and we got to know that it is hard to stand there and say hey Jesus is Lord. That, you know, tomorrow morning in the office you go around with a badge, Jesus is Lord. People might look at you funny, right? On the school run, at the school gates, chatting, oh what do you do, we can just spend some time with Jesus hanging out with my mate Jesus, he's great, what do you think about him? We know that, that that's going to have a response doesn't it? It's always been like that. But Jesus keeps zeroing in on them and he says next, okay, so people have their opinions. But here's the most important question for anyone, anywhere, anytime, who do you say I am? Who do you say I am? Jesus says. And Peter's like me, me, I'm here, I'm here, I'm in Sunday school, I've got to get the right answer, you're the Messiah. And we sort of read that and we're like yes, come on Peter, good man, you've got it, excellent right answer. And maybe we sometimes treat our journey with Jesus as just like well if I can just kind of get the right answers, like then I can sort of have my own little corner of my world that is still what I want to do. If I just think the right stuff and say the right stuff, when I'm in church or with my Christian mates or whatever, then that's going to be okay. But of course it isn't just about what we say, is it? Jesus has got them now, he's like well, okay, you say I'm the Messiah, but I'm not going to be the kind of Messiah you think I'm going to be. You say I'm the King, I'm actually I'm going to be a crucified King. I'm not going to overcome by violence, I'm actually going to let violence overcome me. I'm going to let sin and death and evil attack me, that's how I'm going to overcome. Are you up for this journey too guys? He goes on to say verse 31, he began to teach them that the Son of Man, that's him, must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law and that he must be killed and after three days rise again. He spoke plainly about this and this is one of my favourite verses in the Bible and Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, imagine that. I mean Peter's got some guts, we've got to say like Jesus is there, you know saying hey this is God's plan for the universe, the saving of the whole of mankind and everything ever and Peter's like actually, I think you should do it my way Jesus, do you ever have that kind of conversation with Jesus where you're like I hear you, I hear what you're saying about my life but here's some other things, this is how I think we should proceed from here on and Jesus is just like, nah, he's actually more forceful than that with Peter isn't he? Get behind me Satan, like he's not messing about, sometimes like we have this image of Jesus as like kind of cuddly and kind and he just like you know wants what best he wants what's best for us and he does but usually what's best for us we don't actually know, he does and sometimes he's going to be really firm about that, get behind me Satan. We've got to remember as well that this is the temptation that Jesus has been battling with from the start is if you remember the temptation in the wilderness and Satan comes to him and he says hey you can, yeah you can have to all the kingdoms of the earth, I can give him to you if you just bow down to me we can miss out that like cross bit, you can kind of skip over all the hard stuff and you can just have the glory at the end, anyone ever feel like we want to skip over all that hard stuff and have all the glory at the end, yeah but Jesus says no, get behind me Satan. The cross isn't just like the sort of last task I've got to do, it's everything about who I am, it's everything about who I am and here's the kicker, it's got to be everything about who you are as well. So it's not just a question of giving the right answer to Jesus saying who do you say I am, it's about backing it up with our lives as well, what does he say? Those who save their lives will lose it and those who lose their life for me and for the gospel will save it. You know in the first century they knew what was going to happen when they saw someone carrying a cross, they knew where they were going, they're going to die, right? Like if Jesus wanted to communicate something different about what the life of discipleship and following him was about, he probably would have chosen a different metaphor than take up your cross and follow me. Like he's trying to say something there about what it's going to be like. You know he's not saying like take out your nice comfy sofa, get on Netflix, order a pizza in, do some doom scrolling on your phone, that's what life following me is about. It's not what he's saying, he's saying I've died for you and you're going to die for me, that's what being my family is. Sometimes we maybe want to just kind of project that we get it and we can do that in church currently we can just sort of say all the right things like we've said before. My friend Eddie has a phrase for that, he calls it being a plastic Christian, he's great we were. It's a plastic Christian, you want to be a plastic Christian? Just like all mouths and no trousers when it comes to following Jesus? No, that's not what we want, is it like what a waste, what a waste is actually a lot more stuff that you could do with your life in this world than kind of be in church, if you just going to kind of do it half heartedly there's no point, it's all or nothing, what's the old phrase? Jesus is Lord of all or he's not Lord at all, I remember when I was a teenager, do you remember those wwjd bracelets, what would Jesus do, like I had loads of them, I thought I was so cool, I had other ones as well, for those of you who are here this morning, anyone know a frog, you know what that stands for, shout out for the Ryan God exit, push, pray until something happens, so I had these lined up my forearm, extremely cool, great for the girls as well, and looking back, if I'm honest with myself, it was me trying to put like a label on myself as a substitute for actually a life sold out for Jesus, well if I just kind of wear the right stuff or a t-shirt or something that says I'm a Christian then that's that will do, but of course it won't do, and now presumably you're not going to go away from this and like buy loads of wwjd bracelets, but you might have other things, you might have other ways that you sort of protect yourself from the full challenge that Jesus wants to bring to you, from the full call that he's giving you of laying your life down for him, I don't know what it is for you, but he does, and he wants to bring you on from there, Dietrich Bonhoeffer the German martyr in the Second World War, he says when Christ calls a person, he bids them come and die, you enjoy this so far, good pep talk, give yourself a steam, excellent yeah, I don't know what it might be for you, it might be your money, it might be your politics, it might be your family, the people that you spend time with, it might be like literally the way you spend time, maybe you've got a very busy job, family life or whatever, and you find that like you just don't have anything left for anyone else and you just sort of turning onto your phone or screens or whatever, and actually if you're honest with yourself you think, I think Jesus might want some of that time that I take for myself, I don't know, I don't know what it might be, remember this is not me saying that I have got all this sorted, Bonhoeffer again, he called it cheap grace, when we try and accept like the gift of Jesus and his forgiveness without realizing we are called to lay our life down too, so in a massive boost to our self-esteem we've worked out a little bit about what Jesus is saying, but I just, just to finish I want to give us four reasons why, why we should listen, number one, Jesus is the boss, anyone like being boss of themselves, I'm quite a fan of that, I'm Sarah, my wife is like yeah, we like being in charge, we like doing what we want to do, don't we, no one likes being told what to do by someone else, but Jesus is God and he gets to tell you what to do, that's kind of the beginning and end of it really, and that's actually, I mean it seems a really obvious thing to say, but I think it bears saying, particularly in the world that we live in, which is extremely individualistic, like it's all about what you want, you do you and all that kind of stuff, and also possibly in this kind of area of the world where there's a lot of kind of competence and togetherness going on with people, like those two things together, that's a recipe for putting ourselves on a pedestal that we were not made for, a recipe for putting ourselves as lord of our lives, and that's not what we're built for, it's that's disaster coming fast, right, and we know that, I'm sure many of you know that, but it's easy for us to kind of go off track and think yeah, I'm actually on the bus, actually on the bus, Paul says to the Corinth, to the Corinthian church, our lives are not our own, our lives are not our own, we are bought with a price, so honor God with your body, that means like everything, like Jesus first, okay, Jesus is a boss, second, you're like, Dan, you said this was going to get more encouraging, this is still like a bit, Jesus is a boss, second, Jesus knows better than you, and he knows better than me, anyone feel like they kind of know quite a lot of stuff, we're not that clever are we, really, even the best of us, like we're a bit thick, we get stuff wrong all the time, I tell you what has helped me really kind of understand this more, having children, so there's so many instances where as a dad, even as a very imperfect dad, I know that I know better than my kids, like when they were really little and changing nappies, we had, we had riglers, excuse me, we had riglers, when a child is wriggling and you're changing a nappy, it's not a great thing, everyone's like I don't know what you mean, you know what I mean, it gets messy, it gets messy, don't make me spell it out of you, it gets messy and it's unpleasant, like you know it's not nice, and you're there going oh don't you know that I'm doing this because I love you and to help you and so you don't have like you know it cheaters all day or whatever, this is, you need this is for your own good, and there they're going ha ha no I just want to wriggle around and run around with, that's like, isn't that like us, if we're on, if I know a little bit better than my kids then how much more does our father in heaven know better than us, so much more, so much more, sometimes maybe what God wants to do today in us is humble us, just humble us and say hey you don't know much, listen to me, listen to me, I love what he says to Job, you ever read Job, in that amazing speech that God responds to Job at the end of the book, he says where were you when I laid the earth's foundation, tell me if you understand, he's like yeah, you got to come back on that one Job, like you got anything for me, no, listen to me, okay, third, why should we listen to Jesus, because the alternatives don't provide what they promise, we listen to Jesus, because he's the one we were made for, and last week at Grace Church we baptized Hayden, my friend Hayden, 19 year old kid, and honestly like it was just amazing, like hearing him tell his story of how, how he discovered like he'd been through serious mental, he was hospitalized with mental health issues, addiction to drugs and alcohol and stuff, and he just stood up and in front of his family who aren't Christians, he said like Jesus has saved me from that stuff, like I was trying to find satisfaction, whatever you might want to call it, in I tried all sorts of things, Jesus is the only one who can live with our hopes and our dreams, who can sustain us, who, he's the only one that we need, he's the only one that can live up to what, what we need from, from this world, and if we, all of us have ways that we're going to veer off, and inclinations that aren't going to help us, right, but they're all dead ends, they're all dead ends, only Jesus is the one that we were made for, Augustine in his famous phrase said, "You have made us for yourself and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you, don't we need God's rest and peace in this world, ain't that peaceful and restful of place, and if we look for those things in all the stuff whatever it might be, that they won't give it to us, they're just fleeting, someone might be super excited about the election result this week, but I mean who knows where we're going to be in like ten years, where's Jesus going to be in ten years, where's Jesus going to be in a hundred years, in a thousand years, on the throne, let's put our hope in him, he's the only one that can provide what we need, and just to say like it's really hard doing that day by day isn't it, and the Barna group who are a kind of Christian like stats people, very clever people, they came up with this phrase for the kind of culture that we live in now, they called it digital Babylon, so you know in the Old Testament the people of God they're exiled in Babylon and it's this foreign place where there isn't conducive to being God's people, it's really hard for God's people to stay faithful to him while they're in Babylon, because everything around them is telling them to do something different, to the Barna group they said, we're now, you know, we've maybe grown up thinking like the UK, the West is like a kind of Christian place, but it's not now, it's like Babylon, it's not conducive to it, it doesn't, the world, the water we swim in, the air we breathe does not help us follow Jesus, and we need to wake up to that, it's not just Babylon, it's a kind of digital Babylon, and that means that it's coming at us from all sorts of directions that unless we wake up to them like we're gonna be lost, unless we wake up to the fact that you know this thing here that I've got my sermon notes on and the stuff that you've got in your pocket, your phone, unless we wake up to the fact that that isn't, wasn't created to help you follow Jesus, then we're probably going to be fighting a losing battle in following him, so it's why the classic spiritual disciplines of prayer, fasting, Bible reading, community, why they're absolutely crucial, so I'd encourage you when you find yourself struggling, when you find yourself like being distracted by things that aren't Jesus, that's not the moment to go, oh this is all too much, I'm gonna just kind of like, I'll give church a miss this week, that's the moment to press in further and say hey, I'm in need, like I need my brothers and sisters to help me do this thing, that was a little bit extra for you, digital Babylon, fourth and finally, why do we listen to Jesus because, because he is worth it, he's worth it, he's worth it, Jesus, he's worth it. One of my heroes is, is Jim Alia, the American missionary to the orca tribe in Ecuador and I think he was 28 years old, him and his friends flew out there leaving his new wife and all the life that he knew and you might know that very soon after they arrived with the hope and the vision of sharing the gospel with these people who didn't know it yet, they were spear to death and you might think well that was a bit of a waste, what a waste, but actually if you read some of his story and some of what he wrote before that you realize he wouldn't have seen it as a waste, do you know his words, he is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose, he is no fool, she is no fool who gives what they cannot keep to gain what they cannot lose or is my, the church warden in the first church I was ever part of in in Bolton called Harry, he said there ain't no pockets in a shroud, but you can't take it with you, take the world but give me Jesus, he is the only one who lasts, he is the only one who is worth it, like it was worth Jim Alia giving his life for, that wasn't a waste because he was being obedient to Jesus, who knows, he might be calling some of us to the same story or it might be faithfulness exactly where we are for the rest of our days, radical faithfulness and obedience to him in the office at school with my family who don't know him, so that's about all I wanted to say really, he is worth it and he deserves it right, this is the final thing I want to say, so it's interesting that Peter, he gets the right answer here doesn't he, but when do we see him actually, his life actually changing, the penny really dropping for him, it's when he is filled with the power of the spirit and the spirit enables him to see who Jesus really is and what he really has for his life and I think that needs to be our prayer too today, spirit of God would you show me more of Jesus, show me how great Jesus transformed my heart by the good news of the gospel, that God became man and he died for me so that my life could mean something, so that I could be saved, so that I could play his part in God's big story of saving the world, spirit of God, transform me, fill me right now with your power and your love so that I can see Jesus, it's only going to be if we're transformed by a vision of how great Jesus is that we're going to be able to live this life that he's calling us to, take the world but give me Jesus, all its joys are but a name, his love abides forever through eternal years, the same, let's pray, yes Lord that is our prayer, spirit of God we invite you now to come and fill us, we need you, we sang earlier didn't we without you I fall apart, do we mean those words, oh we need you Jesus, would you come and fill us right now, fill us with your spirit so that we can live for you, so that we can die for you, just as you died for us, thank you Jesus, thank you Lord. [ Silence ]