And what was His vision of the church? He showed us that through His power, He would make of everyone in His kingdom, even the least of them, greater than John the Baptist and the saints of the Old Testament. He will take ordinary people like you and me, and through His transforming power, through the power of the Holy Spirit, He will make us so equipped with His power that the world will see His glory. He will make us shine forth His power and His glory, manifesting His light and His glory. God is light, blazing with glory. Yet the church is to be so clothed with this light that we become the light of the world. He will make everyone in His church to become a mighty man or woman of God.
The Bible has a very high concept of man. We take a very low concept, a low view of man. God takes a very high view of man. Yet when we look around, we wonder: where are these men of God? Not to say the least, being greater than John the Baptist—not even the greatest is up to the level of John the Baptist in most cases. What has happened to the church? Why is God's power not being manifested in the church? Put it in another way: why is God's power not being manifested in you?
"He who believes in Me." Remember last week, we were looking at this verse. "He who believes in Me, out of his innermost being will flow rivers of living water." He didn't say "out of the innermost being of the apostles will flow this kind of living water." He was saying, "He who believes. Anyone who believes in Me." That's what He will do. He also said, "He who believes in Me, the works that I do, he will do also. Even greater works." Even greater works. We look at these sayings and we look around at the church. We see two different realities. Why is this saying, or these sayings, not becoming reality in the church? Or in your life? This is very disturbing. Either Jesus is wrong in His optimism or His expectations, or there is something wrong with us. Now shall we say that Jesus is wrong, or shall we say that we are wrong? Because one of us has to be wrong. This is what we need to look at today.
We must seek the root of this weakness, this powerlessness in the life of the Christian. Why is this the case that so many Christians can barely survive the Christian life? Why do so many people find they can't live the Christian life, let alone manifest this kind of power? Don't be afraid to show this kind of power. Everywhere I see Christians, as soon as they leave the warmth of a fellowship, they leave the warmth of a living church, they decline, they go downhill as quickly as possible. We see this constantly. They don't seem to have the power even to maintain themselves, let alone become great in the work and the service of God.
What's the reason for this? That's why we are looking at this verse. The root of the problem lies in the fact that we did not apply the words of the Lord Jesus here into our lives. Why do we not hear what the Lord is saying to us? Or can it be that we hear but we don't understand? Maybe the kindest thing we can say is that our hearts wanted to do it but we didn't know what we were supposed to do. And I intend by today that no one will say that he didn't know what the Lord Jesus was saying here. I would have no one say, "I did not become what Jesus wanted me to become because I couldn't understand what He was saying." I want to face you with a clear choice today of what the Lord is saying here. I want you to face a clear choice, that having understood what the Lord says, you will face the choice: will I obey it? Will I do it, or will I not?
When you do it, then you will see that what the Lord says is true. You will begin to experience what is the power of the new life. We must finish with a church that is forever crawling along, barely trying to survive in spiritual life. We want to see this church kindled with the fire and the power of God. We want the world to be able to say what Jesus said was true, because when I look at you, I see that His words are true. Because what is happening today is the reverse. When they look at the church, they say what Jesus said is rubbish, because I can see these people—they have nothing. They have nothing worth talking about. Even worse, many people say, "I don't want to become Christians. Look at this bunch of people. I am better than they." When was the last time somebody looked at your life and said, "You've got something that I want. You've got something that I need. Tell me what it is." Have you ever had a schoolmate say, "Why are you different? Why do you have a special power about you?" Or the person in your office—did he say, "Tell me about becoming a Christian because I see that you have life"? If that hasn't happened, there's something wrong with your Christian life. Because you are not shining in the dark. You are not a light.
Let's look carefully at these words. "If any man"—any person. He's not talking just to the apostles, talking to pastors—"If any man would come after me, let him deny himself." You have no power because you haven't denied yourself. You haven't fulfilled what the Lord said. Do you dare to say you have denied yourself? Or do you even know what denying yourself means?
We'll just look at this first part. The word "deny" here in the original is a very strong word. This word is a strong word. It has a strengthening prefix. It means to deny totally. It means to say, "I have nothing more to do with myself. I will not have any further relationship." In the Greek Old Testament, in Isaiah 31, verse 7, it is used to express what will happen one day when Israel denies, utterly repudiates, and casts away its gold and silver idols. So that they will turn wholly, utterly, completely to God. These idols are gold and silver, very valuable idols. They will throw away their idols. They will do away with them completely. That is what the Lord is using that word there.
It is the word that is used in Matthew 26, verse 34 onward, where Peter utterly denies that he knows Jesus. "Even with oaths, I swear I don't know this man." Three times—out of his desire to save himself. Notice this: if you try to save yourself, you will deny Jesus. So either you deny yourself, or you will deny Jesus. That is why so many Christians are, by their lives—not necessarily by their words, but by their lives—denying Jesus.
Now here then comes this matter. The Lord is saying this: this is a remarkable statement. "Unless you utterly reject yourself, and finish with yourself, you cannot be My disciple." He is asking something quite astonishing. He is asking me to reject me. Since this is an impossibility—people say it's an impossible thing. "How can I reject me? How can I deny myself? I mean, I would have lost all my identity. I will have lost my self-respect. I can't understand this thing. I really don't understand this." This is truly a hard saying.
This is very true. When you get up in the morning, and you brush your teeth, and you comb your hair, and you look in the mirror, and you see this handsome guy looking back at you in the mirror. And you look at your beautiful self, and you see—I have to deny myself? You see this clever guy I see in the mirror there? He even managed to graduate from university. I look at this clever and handsome guy in the mirror, and I am going to say no to this fellow? Jesus, what are You asking of me? This fellow in the mirror there is too good to say no to. I have worked so hard to bring this "me" that I see in the mirror to the place where I am now today. I have worked so long. Look at this clever guy. Look at the money that I have made up to now. This good job that I have. I have worked so hard to get this good job. What are You asking of me to do?
Even more so, the whole society is built on this matter of self. You will say to the Lord Jesus, "Okay, Your teaching is really idealistic, but how can I practice this? It is not realistic." The whole society is built on this principle of self. This whole philosophy of the society in which you live, in which we live, is based on the principle of self. Look at the advertisements. The picture there is of a nice shiny car, and they want you to buy this nice shiny car. It's already not very hard to persuade you to buy that car. The sheer shininess is already enough to attract you. But they make it even more tempting. Why? Because as you look, you don't just see the car there. You see the background. And you see this car driving up the hill. And you see these people beautifully dressed coming out of this shiny car, going into the Hilton. What's the suggestion being made to you? The suggestion is that if you drive this kind of car, you'll be in the class of those people who go to the Hilton. That is to say, by buying this car, you actually come to a higher class.
How do they sell watches? They tell you so-and-so wears this watch. So if you like to play tennis, they will tell you Borg wears this watch. You see? There's a picture of Borg with the watch there. If you don't care much for tennis, then they've got somebody else for you. Ah, the manager of this great company. You see a picture of him there and this watch shining at you. The idea is that by buying this watch, you come into the class of these high-ranking people.
And so the tailor tells you, "If you wear this suit that I made, you will look like the Prince of Monaco." Do you remember when you put on the new suit or the new dress, you felt like the Prince or like the Queen? It's wonderful what a dress can do to a woman—she really feels like the Queen. And really amazing what a new suit can do to a man. The self has gone up several notches. In the world, this is the way the world thinks. It is the appeal to self that gets anything going.
How do you make people work harder? Give them more money. Work harder, more money. They work day and night—never have you seen such grateful slaves. The whole thinking of this society is self. You are brought up in this society. This is what the Bible means by "the world." The world is entirely based on the principle of self. Even morality—the whole morality of this world is based on self. Without this self they would not even be moral. The philosophy is: if I am kind to you, you will be kind to me. Why should I be kind? Because if I am kind to you, you will be kind to me. So it's quite worthwhile to be kind. Or like the phrase, "Honesty is the best policy." So even the appeal to honesty is based on self. It tells you to be honest because like that you stay out of trouble. Good policy. Do you want to get into trouble? Yes or no? So be honest. What kind of morality? A self-centered morality.
In Canada we have a supermarket chain called Steinberg. And it appeals exactly to this type of reasoning. It is using this kind of mentality to get other people to do something that you want them to do. You don't say, "I want you to do it." No, no. You want to ask people to help you do something? You won't say, "You will help me," or "I command you to do it." That's bad psychology. You convince him that it is very good for him to do what you want him to do. So the advertisement goes: "Steinberg is on your side." On my side? What does that mean? That company is on my side? The idea is: buy my stuff because I am on your side.
The Royal Bank of Canada is very frank about this point. Their motto is: "We succeed when you succeed." So why do I want you to succeed? Because I succeed. Very honest. "When you succeed, I succeed. So I want you to succeed." That's why I am here. Because the more money you have, the more money you put in the bank. So you see the very desire for the other person's success—in this case, in the case of a bank—is because they succeed. Their selfish interest is frankly stated.
When you are brought up in this whole self-centered thinking, you don't even know how to think in any other way. So when the Lord Jesus says, "Deny yourself," you don't know what He is talking about. This kind of thinking is unintelligible to the natural mind. So some people try to understand: maybe "deny yourself" means I fast one or two days. I deny myself some food. That is not what the Lord Jesus is talking about. The Christian life is not a question of whether you fast one or two days or not. You see, He is striking at the very root of our thinking. Not until you are prepared to say, "I am finished with myself," is Jesus prepared to accept you as His disciple.
Why is this so? Let's think a little bit more deeply into this. You do not reject, you do not deny, something that you are satisfied with. Let's say you go into a restaurant and you order a bowl of noodles. The waiter brings you the noodles, and you smell it—delicious! You don't say, "Waiter, take it away. I don't want this." You grab the chopsticks quickly. But supposing he brings you this bowl of noodles, and floating on the top is a big fly. You lose your appetite. You are not satisfied. So you reject it. "Take it away. Give me something else." So you do not reject what you are satisfied with. You reject what you are dissatisfied with.
Now, if you are very satisfied with yourself—this handsome or this beautiful person in the mirror—then of course you do not want to reject yourself. You say to me, "I can't help myself that I am so beautiful. I mean, it's not my fault that I am beautiful. You should have made me born ugly—then it would be easy to say I reject myself." The Lord, of course, is not asking you to reject your face. Or is He asking you to reject your hairstyle? He is not saying that you shouldn't brush your teeth in the morning. He is asking you to reject your way of thinking. To be dissatisfied with the way you think.
You say, "What is wrong with my thinking? I have been to school such a long time, and I learned to think. And now You are asking me to reject my thinking?" We are talking about the whole basis. It is the self-centeredness that you must see is the root of your corruption. So when the Lord is saying "deny yourself," He means just that: that selfish self within you. As long as you are satisfied with that way of thinking, then of course you don't want to change. If you don't want to change, then God cannot transform you. If you cannot be transformed, then how can God's power come into your life? Is it becoming clear to you? God's power cannot come into your life so long as you retain this self-centered way of thinking. Put in other words, the new cannot come so long as the old is there. You cannot have the spiritual when the carnal is still there, the fleshly is still there.
Becoming a Christian has to do with a total transformation. As Paul says in Romans 12, verses 1 and 2: "Be transformed." How? "By the renewing of your mind." Your whole mind has to be changed, otherwise it can't be transformed. Only when you are transformed—what do you transform to? You are transformed into His likeness. As the Lord says, and as Paul says again and again, we are transformed through the new nature into His likeness. Becoming a Christian has to do with becoming like Christ. That is basically what it is.
I am saying to those who intend to get baptized: look carefully at what the Lord is saying here. And don't get baptized unless you intend to be transformed by His power. In our church, especially in Montreal, we try to hold people back from getting baptized until they clearly understand what is being expected of them by the Lord. So that every Christian in the church is a true Christian. This is vital when you can understand. You need to be transformed. You will not become anything at all in the spiritual life until God's power comes to work in you.
Notice again the word that says, "Deny yourself." It is utter denial, not partial denial. This is a literal translation. Utter denial means: don't say to yourself, "Okay, I can see that this self-centered way of thinking is no good, so I reject some part of it." You must come with an attitude that is utterly finished with this way of thinking. Otherwise, you are going to be a double-minded person. In James chapter 1, James says, "Let not the double-minded person think that he will get anything from God." James is saying, if you are double-minded—that is, you trying to be partly spiritual and partly carnal—you might as well not even bother to pray, because God has no time to listen to this.
And many times people say, "I pray and God does not answer me." Of course He does not answer you. He already told you He will not answer you. There are people who say, "I cannot pray for you." Of course I cannot pray for you, because you are double-minded. Your heart is partly to Christ, partly denying yourself, but not wholly. But God requires the whole. That is why in the church we constantly speak of a total commitment. Because unless you are totally committed, unless you are single-minded, not double-minded, God will never become real to you. He will never become real to you because you pray and He doesn't answer. How can He become real to somebody who keeps praying and God never answers? You see, God already told us very frankly how to live the Christian life.
If God is not real to you, let me tell you it is not His fault. But try implementing the teaching of Jesus. I challenge you to try. Totally to finish with self. Finish with the self-interest in your life. "My money, my this, my job, my mother, my father, my daughter, my son"—everything is me and mine. Finish with this way of thinking. When you have determined to finish with yourself, I challenge you to see whether God is not real. I challenge you to try. If you completely finish with these things, you will see that God is real. Your eyes will open. You will begin to see what God can do.
I will not be preaching this, my dear friends, my brothers and sisters, if I did not burn with the conviction of the truth of the living God. I am not standing here to say that I have some kind of confidence in myself. I have this conviction that this is true because I know that God is true. Because I have seen that He is living by the power of His works through His great work. I have no alternative but to pursue in this path. But I am delighted and joyful to pursue in this path.
Are you prepared to reject yourself, this self-centered way of thinking? If not, Christianity, the teaching of Jesus, is not for you. You will be a churchgoer, like all these people who go into church on Sunday, actually selfish—maybe more selfish than the non-Christian. A disgrace to the Gospel. The whole thinking has to change. The self has to finish.
You see, up to this point is already hard enough. You say that from this point, it is very hard. He hasn't finished yet. But He hasn't finished yet. If it had finished at this point, we would already be perspiring. When He goes on, what does He say? "Deny himself and take up his cross daily." Not once in a while. Every day, I get up in the morning, I've got to grab hold of this cross and I've got to lug it onto my shoulder. "Lord, I already struggled to deny this beautiful guy in the mirror. And now You want me to put this ugly thing on my shoulder too?" What is He saying to us?
It is surprising how different the Lord's teaching is from those nice polished evangelists who tell us that becoming a Christian is all a piece of cake. The Lord is very honest with us. Why do we need to take up the cross? What is He saying to us? The cross is an instrument of torture and of death. You can say, "Lord, isn't it enough? You asked me to deny myself. And now also the cross?"
I will tell you why He tells us to take up the cross. What is your cross? The cross is not something that we went and made in order to crucify ourselves on it. None of those people who got crucified went and decided it was a rather good idea to get crucified, so they went and bought some wood and cut it out and then put the nail through and hammered this side and asked a friend to help them nail the other side. The cross is something that the world imposes on those who follow Jesus. It is they who make us pick it up. It is they who make us carry this thing. Did Jesus go and say, "I rather enjoy getting crucified. Give me a cross to carry"? It is the world who rejected Him. It is they who said, "Pick it up. Carry it to Calvary." And they crucified Him there.
That is the point. That is the connection between these two things. When you deny yourself, the world is going to crucify you. That is the point. And you better get ready to accept it. The church is not being crucified today. It is not worth crucifying the church because the church thinks just like the world thinks. We are great friends. I mean, you don't crucify your friends. You crucify your enemies. It is not worth crucifying the church because the church and the other people think the same way.
Today, some of the most worldly people—let me be honest with you—are the pastors. Sometimes when you meet some pastors, you wonder if you met the right person, because he sounds like a businessman. I am saying this to my own shame, not as though I have some pleasure in this. But you know it is true. How many genuine men of God are there around? Why should the world not think like the church, or the church think like the world? It doesn't make much difference either way.
Why is the church not going to be crucified by the world? It is actually exalted by the world. Not only is the church not going to be crucified by the world—it is extolled by the world. Those of us who are pastors in the West are regarded very highly in society. Much to my embarrassment, we get tax reductions when it comes to houses. In England, I was entitled to paying either less taxes or no taxes when it came to the land tax and the house in which you rented or lived. I refused to take advantage of that. I said, "I am the same like anybody else. I pay my taxes. I don't think because I am a pastor I shouldn't pay any taxes." So the civil government couldn't understand this—he wants to pay the taxes when he is a cleric. Also, as you know, pastors can sign certain things. They have certain authority and rights and so forth. In some countries, in case of military service, a pastor starts at the rank of captain. He doesn't start as a private. You see—the world, far from crucifying the pastors or the church, is exalting them, glorifying them.
The non-Christian scratches his head and says, "What is Jesus talking about? There is no need to take up the cross. Nobody is trying to give you a cross to carry." You see, there is the root of the problem. Because we have not been transformed in our thinking, the world has no trouble with us. The world will not be bothered by us.
Let me tell you something, my dear ones. When one day you really function in a self-denying way—when you are truly living in a spiritual way—you will see the face of the world changing towards you. So long as you think the way they think, they have no trouble with you. But one day when your thinking changes, your friends begin to say, "What is this?" You will see the world is not bothered with you so long as you behave like them. But when you start living as Jesus requires you to live, things will change very fast. If you just go to church and get baptized, maybe your parents won't worry about it. But when your thinking has changed—that you are putting Christ first and the interest of other people first, and not yourself—they say, "Hey, what is happening with you? You are getting a bit fanatic."
# Deny Yourself and Take Up the Cross (Part 2) — Luke 9:23
But as people were turning to the Lord, then the business in the temple went down. The silversmiths of Ephesus who sold these statues of their goddess Diana were losing business. Now they turned on Paul. They started to fight the people in the temple. But when it began to affect their business, then they had enough. Now wait until the church really so lives that it begins to affect the world—then you will see what happens. They will put us on the cross. They will put us on the cross. This is something that you must clearly understand. The Lord makes this connection very plain.
He is saying: if you do not reject yourself, you cannot be My disciple. But if you do reject yourself—if you are really one who belongs to God—then the world is going to put you on the cross. That day the world will put you on the cross. Think about it well. Think about it well.
This is the choice. This is your choice. You must make this choice. Are you prepared to deny yourself? Are you prepared to let God change your thinking?
Now, you will say this whole picture looks extremely gloomy and frightening. You will say this picture is very dark. "I get scared to listen to these words. I hear these words and this principle." As the Lord says in verse 24, a spiritual principle of the greatest significance for us: "For whoever will save his life"—that is, to live in this selfish way, if you have a self-interest to save your life—"he will lose it." And "whoever loses his life for My sake"—that is, he who rejects his self-interest—"he will save it." If you reject your self-interest to save your life, it is only then you are going to experience what the Lord is saying when He says that the least in the kingdom will become mighty. You will become mighty. You will see that the Lord is mighty—mighty with God's power. At last the world can see: here are true Christians. At last people will look at you and say, "Now I see what is the joy, the peace and the power of being a Christian."
This is the choice you must make. This is the choice you must make. I hope that all this is exceedingly clear to every person. And in the next week or two, we will continue to develop this teaching of the Lord, seeing it as clearly as possible by God's grace.
I pray that you will understand clearly the choices before you. And don't say to yourself you are a Christian or a disciple until you implement the Lord's teaching. Until you test the Lord's teaching. Before God. Thank you.