Following Jesus requires denying oneself and taking up one's cross daily, a commitment exemplified by the five missionaries martyred in Ecuador. The sermon unpacks Jesus' call to discipleship by first highlighting the sincere ambition to follow Christ, evidenced by his perfect example of victory, purity, usefulness, and even loneliness and pain. It then details the necessity of denying one's very self, settling the matters of ownership and dictatorship with God, and embracing servitude. Finally, the message emphasizes that taking up one's cross is not a sentimental emblem but an instrument of death, a daily, moment-by-moment surrender to God's will, leading to true allegiance and a life of joy, profit, and satisfaction in Christ.
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Let's turn please to Luke chapter nine and verse twenty-three. Luke nine and twenty-three. Now before I read the verse to you, we're with you a little preamble to the message. Not very long after my wife and I were married, maybe a couple of years, We found ourselves in Canada living and for five years we lived in Brantford, Ontario and during those five years I used to take a train every Monday morning at eight o'clock and take it home on Wednesday night and teach Monday, Tuesday and Wednesdays at Emmaus Bible School when it was in Toronto.
The last two years of those five years a very persistent man, a very determined man, wrote to me and kept writing to me to say, God is telling us that you should be here and not way up in Canada. Or he would say, we have a need for you. Can you not come and live down here? How could I do that? I was teaching at least four classes at Emmaus, three days a week. And I still had my responsibilities there at the Assembly in Brantford. However, he not only wrote me, he must have prayed.
His name, by the way, was Walsh. And he happened to be the brother-in-law of Lila Walsh. He wouldn't take no for an answer. Suddenly, unexpectedly, we heard that Emmaus Bible School was closing the school in Toronto and going to combine with the school in Chicago, and very soon they were engaged in a very large expansion. And Bill Walsh wrote me and said, You don't have any excuse now.
Toronto said goodbye to you, why don't you come down to Hackensack, New Jersey? We had prayed about it and we prayed about it still and then we made up our minds we would do that. And so we moved lock, stock and barrel out of Canada and down into New Jersey. We had been there about five months Well, it was actually at the turn of the year, I suppose, perhaps a little earlier than that. And I'm talking about the year, nineteen fifty-six. Maybe it was at the end of fifty-five.
I got an invitation for a meeting of young people in Calvary Baptist Church in New York City. The brethren, once a year, used to hire that church. for a united young people's gathering, and that was a big church. It not only had a huge area downstairs, it had a wide gallery that ran all around the second floor. And I said, I'll be happy to do it.
The very week that we were to have that meeting news struck the Christian world that staggered it. Five young men had been slain in Ecuador, and they were five missionaries. Three of them were commended assembly missionaries, and I was to stand before this huge group of hundreds of missionary kids. and it was decided we should turn that service into a memorial service for the five martyrs in Ecuador.
And when that announcement was made, there wasn't a seat vacant in the building. When I came out from the pastor's study onto the platform, from the back of the platform, I looked over the sear faces downstairs. and the seer faces upstairs and I sweat at the responsibility. Young men and women, Christian young men and women, but I believe that I had the greatest challenge, missionary challenge that I've ever had in my life.
Now I said to Marge, who was Nate Shant's wife, at one time, Mrs. St., now she's Mrs. Vanderpoy, I said to a Marge, do you know what I found this week? This was just maybe three weeks or so ago. She said, no, what did you find? I said, I found my notes on the message that I preached. at the memorial service for the five fellows the first week of January, nineteen fifty six. She said to me, will you preach it again?
And that's what I'm going to do this this morning. Now I don't believe that I can do it the way I did it then. When a man, when a preacher preaches a sermon a second time, he always changes things around. I don't want to do that. But I do want you to imagine that you're not seventy, you're not eighty, you're not ninety. You're one of these young people sitting in the congregation listening to a challenge from the Word of God. Because what I told those young people, I can say to you today, and it is still apropos. Of course, There was a big missionary emphasis in that meeting, but those young men and young women, they gave me a wonderful ear, although I had a very solemn message for them.
Now let's go to our verse in chapter nine of Luke and verse twenty-three. And he said to them all, if any man will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me." After some details of what was a tragedy and a triumph, Those five young men were so devoted to God.
If you read the writings of some of them and their loved ones, you realize those five young men were choice, young missionaries, and the whole of their lives were given to God. They had a concern about a wild tribe in Ecuador called the Alcas, and that means the killers that had not been contacted with the gospel and for months they prayed about the possibility of going into the jungle and reaching these men. Now Marge's husband at that time, Nate, was a missionary pilot and he devised a scheme whereby he could fly his plane in a circle with a weighted rope with a bucket on the end so that the bucket would stay in the same place while he circled.
It was quite a feat. It was an invention. But they had in mind, because they knew they couldn't go into the village of the killers, and they would not be able to persuade with any voice the alchis to come out. What they did, when that had been perfected, they began to put presents into the bucket and fly it over the Alca village and there while they flew around and first of course the Indians they flew into the bush the sound of the thing terrified them but one or two visits and they became much more patient with the noise and curious and then one day a bucket came down out of the sky stayed there in the air while this remarkable machine circled in the sky.
When there were those who were brave enough to come and see and look at and feel that bucket, there was something in it. In fact, those missionaries made presence, this is old news to most of you. gives a number of presents, including a model of that very plane, to the altars until their confidence was there. And they felt it was safe to do something more. And so Nate flew over the village, and with a loud speaker, he conveyed to them, I'm not quite sure what words he had learned.
but they had been learning some alka words from an alka who was converted and helped them. But the curiosity of these people, when they had taken the gifts again out of the bucket, they listened. And then the men went down onto the beach where he had told them they would be. And they waited. One day, Two days, three days, and on the third day, there was a man and two women came out of the bush on the other side of that shallow river.
And Jim Elliot went out into the water toward them, calling some of these words that they had learned. And then they came, the three of them, and was soon on the beach beside the fellows. They stayed there for hours, together, trying to communicate. And then, without a word, the three of them got up, and they went back over the river, and they disappeared into the bush. It was not long after when a spearing party came out and speared those five men to death. Two of that tribe were here.
Only a few months ago, elders in the church that he's now in that village, because there's been a transformation and they don't want to be called Alcas anymore. They've denied that name now and they call the Wuramis. They have a different name because they're a different tribe and God has made real headway among that tribe and it's a thriving church. Now why have I told you this story when you know it so well, only because I want to put it into the setting of these hundreds of young people.
They were sitting on the edge of their chairs when the story was finished. And then it was my responsibility to stand up and preach. And this was the verse that I gave them. And I divided it into four parts, and I want to give it to you. Now, you may have forty years Christian experience behind you, fifty years, sixty years behind you, but you still need the challenge of this verse, because it's very easy for us to get used to being saved. It's very easy for us to get used to the idea that we're going to heaven.
It's very easy for us to take for granted the blessings that God brings into our lives day after day after day and to lose a sense of responsibility, real responsibility toward him. Now here's what it says. If any man will come after me. Now I suppose English teachers would not make any difference, any distinction between coming after and following. But there is a distinction. There is a difference. Now if you have ever sat down quietly in a meditative attitude to ponder the issue or the fact or the wonder of the person of Christ, in all his perfection, it must have been a challenge to you.
To come after the Lord Jesus is to have that kind of goal. If you've ever sat down and pondered the judgment seat of Christ before which you must stand, one day you must surely have trembled. if you've ever stood face to face with the inadequacy of your own life, your shortcomings, your selfishness, your sin, then I'm quite sure that you had a desire to come after the Lord Jesus.
He trod the path of victory. There was never any defeat in the life of the Lord Jesus. there was never any failure in his experience. Oh, what an example. What a wonderful Savior we have, perfect in every way. But it just shows up our blemishes and our faults. You want to come after him because he trod the path of victory. You want to come after him because he went the way of purity. And how many times do you come Face to face with your own sin and your own shame in thought and word and deed?
How many times, whenever you've done it, you've always had a longing that you might come after the Lord Jesus. You want to tread the path of purity as well as the way of victory. You come after the Lord Jesus. only when you are day by day completely and totally given over to him, his touch and his will. Our lives by nature have a withering blight of selfishness. I love myself, I do.
There used to be a song like that. I love myself, I do. We all love ourselves. And we become very selfish. because of it. The Lord Jesus trod the path of usefulness. Every hour that he lived his life was productive. How different, how very different from ours. If you've ever had experiences like that, I know that you've sat still and said, Lord, why did you love me the way that you loved me?
Here I am. I'm naked before you. There's nothing I can hide from you. My selfishness, my sin, my frustration, my unwillingness, all of these things, Lord, make me yearn to be more like you, if any man will come after me. Do you know what that is? That is a sincere ambition. any man, any woman who is a believer and realizes their own insufficiency are going to say, I want to come after the Lord Jesus. I want to be like him. So you suddenly wake up and say, the Lord Jesus is to mean more to me than just my Savior.
He's my example. He's the one who can empower me. I want to come after the Lord Jesus. But then you went to the Word of God and you found that the Lord Jesus also trod on the path of loneliness. There were times when the Lord Jesus was alone and he didn't want to be alone. Three men on the mountain top, watch you hear and pray, he said, and he went away alone and they fell asleep. The Lord Jesus said, He went the path, he trod the path of loneliness. He trod the path of pain.
And you cannot read the gospel story without realizing that. And when you think about these things, you want to come after the Lord Jesus. But, is it going to mean loneliness for me? Is it going to mean pain for me? For him, his life was a life of sacrifice. You mean I've got to keep on giving up and giving up? You don't have to give up things. You just have to give up yourself. You just have to let God have everything that you have and that you are. You say, if Jesus was lonely, if Jesus had pain, if Jesus suffered and sacrificed, if Jesus had to die, And then you stopped and said, I can't do it.
And you backed off. That's the challenge of the verse. You have the desire, but do you have the willingness to come after the Lord Jesus, to follow the example of the Lord Jesus? Five young men, choice young men, have laid down their lives. And now they need to be replaced. Who's going to stand in the gap? If any man will come after me, that is sincere ambition. You couldn't have a higher one than to follow in the footsteps of the Lord Jesus, but it costs.
Look at the next phrase, will you? He said to them all, if any man will come after me, Let him deny himself. Now, the established church has a period called Lent when people are supposed to deny themselves this or that or the other. That's what you do in Lent. But that's not what this verse means. It says this. Let him deny himself. Let him deny his very self. There are three thoughts here, three things. The man who comes after the Lord Jesus and to do it denies himself, once and for all, he does, number one, he settles the matter of ownership.
I thought everything that I have was mine and nothing that I have is mine. It all belongs to him. The matter of ownership. Ye are not your own, the scripture says. Ye are bought with a price. The precious blood of Christ, therefore glorify God in your bodies, which are his. Let a man deny himself, not things, but his very self. It decides the matter of ownership. God owns you. If you're a Christian, God owns you. Secondly, it resolves the question of dictatorship.
You say, does God have a right to expect me to do this, or to do that, or to give this, or to give that? Yes, He does. You say, if all that I have belongs to Him, and I hold anything back, I'm cheating Him. If He owns me in everything that I have, then He has the right of dictatorship. He can tell me to do what he chooses to tell me to do, and it is my responsibility to do it. Five young men knew that they were hazarding their lives when that little plane touched down on the Kray River there right on the beach, and they climbed out of that little plane. They knew that they were laying their lives on the line.
and you ought to realize that every day you've got to come to the place of total commitment to God what already belongs to him. You settle a matter of ownership and you resolve the question of dictatorship. God has a right to demand of you what he will. But one thing is certain, you do what God wants you to do, you do his will, and he'll give you every bit of strength you need to do it to carry it out and to carry it out successfully. It resolves the question of dictatorship. And thirdly, it welcomes the experience of servitude.
Nobody likes to be a slave. The Apostle Paul in his letters always introduced himself, or almost always, as a bond slave of Jesus Christ. To be a slave and to be glad about it? To be a slave and to rejoice in it? Yes. Not only does God own you, not only does he have the right to dictate to you, but you ought to joy in the experience of being a slave. that's going all the way let a man deny his very self let him refuse to acknowledge any connection with that self of which he is so ashamed if a man will come after me let him deny himself and take up his cross First, we had sincere ambition.
If any man will come after me, if he wants to come after me, that's the very, very, that's the foremost ambition that you and I should have. The second is complete abandonment. A man denies his very self and recognizes that he is God's slave to do whatever God wants him to do. But now comes the thought of deliberate action. And take up his cross daily. If you have faced the inadequacy of self, if you've been face to face with all of the things that are wrong about yourself and all of your own needs, how inadequate a person you are without God.
If you have sought to surrender to Christ completely, so you now have denied all claims of the things that belong to yourself. In fact, to deny yourself and to take up your cross daily is to deplore the very existence of self. Now a cross is not a sentimental emblem to be worn in your lapel or hung around your neck. A cross is not an ache or a pain or a wayward son or a wayward daughter.
Sometimes people say very loosely, I'm afraid this is the cross I have to bear. It's rubbish. It's not the cross you have to bear. The ache, the pain, the things that you endure, these do not constitute the cross. The cross is not a sentimental emblem. It's not an ache or a pain. It's an instrument of death. It's an instrument of death. And when you take up your cross, you're saying in effect to God, I'm dead with Christ. My life today, as God enables me, is going to be totally for him and none for myself. We never seem to get there perfectly. but that should be our aim that should be our object that should be our constant ambition to lay everything at the feet of the Lord Jesus did you notice he took his cross once but he says you've got to pick up your cross daily every day every day you've got to acknowledge your the debt of self and your total dependence upon the Lord you've got to face A willingness or no willingness to do what God wants you to do.
And you've got to put an end to yourself in the presence of God. This seems impossible, doesn't it? But it's not impossible. Because the way God does this is not giving you a day at a time. It's not giving it to you an hour at a time. It's a moment by moment. fellowship and communion with Him that keeps you from slipping back into your selfish ways, that keeps you from thinking that you have any right to make any claims for yourself. It's a deliberate action.
I, my cross, have taken, one of the hymn writers wrote, all to leave and follow thee. Not an easy thing. This is what produces real devotion. This is what produces real love for the Lord Jesus. When a man comes to an end of himself, looks up into the face of the Lord Jesus, you know, the Lord said to Peter, follow me. And then, just before he died, he said to Peter, follow me. Or be following me. Peter said, I lay down my life for you.
The Lord Jesus said, before the cock crow thrice, or twice, thou shalt deny me thrice. You lay down your life for me, you're going to say, I don't know him. You're going to say, I don't know him. And you're going to betray him as surely as Judas. The cross that is not a sentimental emblem, is not an ache or a pain or a trial, but it is a way of life and it's lived moment by moment in surrender to the Lord Jesus.
Don't say this is impossible. If it's possible for one moment and you know it is, then it can be possible for the next moment. Please don't look to me for an example. I struggle too with these things. But the way of real life is found here. If any man will come after me if he wants joy and happiness and usefulness and all of these things in his own life, he's got to deny himself. He doesn't belong to him. Nothing belongs to him. He's got to deny his very self and his every claim and take up his cross. Be prepared.
willing to die not only physically but also spiritually. The Lord Jesus doesn't tell us that his claims are light ones. God doesn't want some of you. He wants all of you, every bit of you. Now this is the challenge to the heart that he's saved. If there's someone here and you're not saved, Don't let these things shake you. The Christian life is a life of self-abnegation, but you don't have to do it by yourself. Once the Lord saves you, and you know He wants to do that.
He wants to do that. He went to the cross and He died for you. He spread out His hands willingly, though He knew everything that was going to take place. They spat upon Him. They brutally arrested Him. They cruelly... beat him and they wickedly shamed him by taking away his clothes and hanging him naked on the cross. The Lord Jesus went that way because there was no other way that he could pay the price for your sins. So that to the Christians he says, take up your cross daily and follow me.
And the last is of course a resultant allegiance. If you have the ambition and you complete the abandonment moment by moment, hour by hour, day by day, day by week, week by week, If you take the step of taking up your cross, then, and only then, do you become a real follower of the Lord Jesus. This is all the preparation. If any man will come after me, he has to have the desire. Let him deny himself.
He has to have the guts. Let him take up his cross. He has to turn his back on fear. And then... follow me. I can think of five men, there may be more, to whom the Lord Jesus said, follow me. He said it one day to a man named Philip. And Philip left that meeting with the Lord Jesus and straightway went to his brother Nathaniel and he said, I found the Messiah. Now there was a man who knew what he'd done. He found the Lord Jesus, and he had to spread it to everybody else. Maybe you're not a very good witness.
Maybe you're a little ashamed sometimes to confess the Lord. Of course, I find as you get older, it doesn't matter... But how big a fool they may think you are. I think it gets easier for us as the road goes by to witness for the Lord to just as you meet somebody say, can I give you a little tract or to say if you're in conversation. You know, there's a day in my life when I made the Lord Jesus my Savior. You know, and then talk about it. I don't know how often you say, I don't meet a lot of people. Well, the few that you do, that you now do not know, the Lord, talk about it. Talk about him. It's part of your responsibility. Jesus said to Philip, follow me, so we left the Lord Jesus.
But he went to Nathaniel and said, I found the Christ. That was Philip. And then there was Matthew. Now Matthew was a man who was making money. He was a tax gatherer and what a challenge this was. The Lord Jesus said to that publican, and it really means tax gatherer, follow me. You know what he did? He rose from his table and he went after the Lord Jesus. There are too many people in this world making what they call good money, but it's bad money because it's coming between them and God and a full life in the Lord Jesus. Money can be a curse.
I have a little poem in the front of my Bible. I'm not going to read it now. It's about gold. And I am, it's spoken from gold's position. I am what you make me. One verse says. You can make money, you're God. You can make things, you're God. But as surely as you do, they'll come between you and the Lord Jesus, even though you're saved and on your way to heaven. Follow me. There was a rich young ruler, and the Lord Jesus said to him, follow me. And do you know what the Bible says? He went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.
and they probably landed him in hell. Or possibly anyway. Maybe, later on, who knows. But at that point, he went away sorrowful. At least he went sorrowfully away. Maybe in the end that was his redemption, I don't know. Don't let anything. Don't let anybody stand between you and the Lord Jesus. Trust him. because he died for you. There are such things as gains, and there are such things as losses. Sometimes we get them mixed up.
We get a gain, we think it's a loss. What we gain spiritually we may lose materially, but we've still got the best of the bargain. The challenge is not only to trust the Lord Jesus, but that's the first thing you must do. You must be able to say, I have accepted into my heart and life the Lord Jesus who died for me, that he might be my very own Savior. Don't stop there. As you read the Word of God, you'll find more and more the Lord Jesus will make demands upon you, but he'll never make a demand, but if you let him, he will supply the strength to you to carry out.
There is no loss, even though there may seem to be, in following in the footsteps of the Lord Jesus, in coming after him. I'll read the verse to you again. And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. That was a challenge in that big meeting. At the end of that meeting, forty young people stood to their feet and said, If it's God's will for my life, I'll be one of those to stand in the gap.
You say, I'm too old to be a missionary. You can be a missionary where you live and you're expected to be. If you have become tongue tied and you're not witnessing for the Lord, Not talking about the Lord. Get embarrassed when you talk about the Lord. There's something wrong in your life if you're a Christian. Let's get it out into the open. Let's talk about it with the Lord and let's get rid of it because there is no life so happy. There is no life so profitable. There is no life so satisfying as to know the Lord Jesus as Saviour and accept and serve him as total master of your life.
Let's pray. Oh, Father, we tremble as we read a verse like this, but because we are conscious of our own weaknesses, and yet we know, Lord, that whether we are eight or eighty, The challenge comes to us day by day. Take up your cross after denying yourself and then follow me. Probably every one of us here want Lord Jesus to come after you. But some of us are counting the cost. As you dismiss us with your blessing, granted our hearts shall not forget the challenge of this verse as it reads in the Scriptures.
If any man wills to come after me, if he wants to come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily and follow me. We ask it, Lord Jesus, seeking your glory and a blessing for each of our hearts. And if there is someone here who doesn't know you, who has never deliberately yielded to you, grant that they might take away with them the realization until they have you in their hearts, they have nothing.