A couple of years ago I made one of my rare posts on FaceBook.  And it said, “We must be willing to lose everything in order to find what God has shaped us for.  That’s certainly been true for me as a believer but also as a builder and a pastor.” According to Jesus, THAT is the key to life. He said we must DIE to live, LOSE our life to find it, HATE our life to keep it.  The road to abundant life is through the cross. Paul said, “I have been crucified with Christ. I no longer live but Christ lives in me.”  You must give up your own life to have Christ expressing His LIFE through you. 

If we say we are Christians, then our lives must look something like Jesus going to the cross.  We suffer with him. We are crucified with Him! AND most of that will NOT be external suffering but inward daily dying to our own will, and comfort. It IS painful at times.  It DOES feel like losing your own life!  We will conquer, we will reign, but for now, our way, is the way of the cross.  It’s an attitude of heart that says, nothing is too costly for me to do the will of God in this moment.  

I believe the way of the cross is the missing ingredient in our spirituality.  When people say I tried the Christian life and it didn't work for me, THIS is almost always the problem.  Jesus said He must fall to the ground and die.  And this is the path for His disciples too.  By nature we do everything to save ourselves.  Jesus said it can't be that way if you want to follow him. This is an unbreakable spiritual law.  There is ONLY ONE DOOR to LIFE and that door says “Come and DIE”.  Even our baptism proclaims this: we are buried with Him into death, in order that we may be raised to new life. 

Why would we talk about this on what is known as the triumphal entry?  Palm Sunday?  Because that is what Jesus talked about that day he rode into Jerusalem. 

Jesus went to Jerusalem to die on a cross PRIMARILY to offer himself as a sinless sacrifice for our sins. Hebrews 9:28 “Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many.” 1 Peter 2:24 He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness.” We were released from our sins through HIS suffering and death.  By HIS wounds we are healed. This is of first importance!

But on the way to the cross he preached a message to us. He said, “A grain of wheat has to die to bear fruit.  And whoever loves his life will lose it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. If anyone serves me, he must follow me”  I’m going to the cross. If you want to be my disciple, this will have to be your pattern of life too. 

*In 30 AD Jesus rode into Jerusalem, on a donkey, the Sunday before the week of his crucifixion. It’s called the triumphal entry. He was received as a king.  Which He was, and He is!  Jesus fulfilled prophecy from Zachariah 9:9 “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king is coming to you; righteous and having salvation.”  Jesus was openly declaring to the people that He was their King.

So they celebrate Jesus. They wave their Palm branches, they spread their clothes on the road for him to ride on.  They cry out Hosanna!  Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord!”  They fulfill prophecy!  But they really don’t understand what is going on. And the disciples didn’t either! 

They didn’t understand the WAY God works or His timetable.  They expected a king who would crush their political enemies.  And someday He WILL crush all his enemies!  But NOW, was the hour for their king to be crucified.” So was this celebration wrong? Not at all! Jesus IS KING and He DOES bring salvation. But they didn’t comprehend HOW their King would save them. 

They primarily thought they just needed someone to get Rome off their backs.  They were looking for a military leader, a political savior.  They were looking for a display of glory and of raw power.  Luke 9:51 “When the days drew near for him to be received up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem.”  When some people didn’t respond well to Jesus. James and John said, “Lord, do You want us to call down fire from heaven to consume them?” vs 54 They were ready for Jesus to dish out disaster.  

But Jesus was coming to bring a much greater salvation. He said, your problem isn’t Rome! Your enemies are sin and death and Satan. Your problem is that the entire creation, all people, nature, life on his planet is under a curse. Misery saturates the world. It all around you. It’s INSIDE you.  God imposed it on you because of sin.

We’ve seen this in Ecclesiastes!  “Life is (utterly) futile!”  We are here today, gone tomorrow, and nobody will remember us. Pleasure and wealth, achievement and power are empty and meaningless; life is hard and death is the end for everyone of us.  Adam’s sin put all of us, in a terrible predicament.  Humanity is under a curse, objects of wrath.  

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For things to get better, there had to be a way to remove God’s anger toward our sin.  There had to be a way to remove the monstrous and terrible consequences of sin.  There had to be a way to reconcile us to God. 

Jesus road into Jerusalem to solve all that is wrong with us, in one week, in one event, on the cross.  He came to redeem all of creation, to fix everything since the fall, to forgive our sins and set us free from our bondage to sin. He came as the complete answer to sin, sorrow, misery, death and judgment. He was the King! Coming with salvation!  

BUT he was going to save in a different WAY than anybody imagined.  He would deliver them by dying for them.  Their king would be glorified, NOT by going to a glorious earthly throne but by going to a humiliating cross. Verse 23 The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.  That hour was His crucifixion.

Just before this event in Matthew 20:18 Jesus told his disciples,  “Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem and the Son of Man will be delivered to the chief priests and scribes, and they will condemn him to death, and will hand him over to the Gentiles to mock and scourge and crucify him.”.  This was the plan.  He understood it fully and openly spoke about it. 

Why DIDN’T they understand?  Because it is SO counter intuitive. It is SO counter to the world.  Men are looking for God to work by force, God chooses to work by the cross.  

Carl Truman “God reveals himself under his opposite; or, to express this another way, God achieves his intended purposes by doing the exact opposite of that which humans might expect. The supreme example of this is the cross itself: God triumphs over sin and evil by allowing sin and evil to triumph (apparently) over him.  (God’s) real strength is demonstrated through apparent weakness.”  

People assume that the way of the world and the way of God is the same.  “If strength is demonstrated through raw power on earth, then God’s strength must be the same. To such (thinking), the cross is simply foolishness, a piece of nonsense.”  

*So what does this mean for us?  Piper “It means, first of all, that a mistaken view of Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem can lead to a mistaken view of discipleship.”...“The (big) surprise about Jesus the Messiah is that he came to live a life of sacrificial, dying service before he comes a second time to reign in glory. And the (big) surprise about discipleship is that it demands a life of sacrificial, dying service before we can reign with Christ in glory.”

Jesus accomplished our salvation by going to the cross, an instrument of death and shame.  But He was also setting the pattern for us as his followers. THIS is how you go live your life! 

CT said “This is an explosive truth. “Elders, for example, are not to be those renowned for throwing their weight around, for badgering others, and for using their position or wealth or credentials to enforce their own opinions. No, the truly Christian elder is the one who devotes his whole life to the painful, inconvenient, and humiliating service of others”... in so doing he demonstrates the kind of life Jesus demonstrated on the cross at Calvary.” 

That is the way of the cross applied to elders, but it applies to every single one of us.  “Painful, inconvenient humiliating service to others”. Some of us might choke on that. But isn’t that what we are called to?   Of course that is not all that serving Jesus is, but it IS an essential ingredient!  Jesus showed us how to do that. 

Jesus refused to back away from this path of suffering.  Verse 27 “What shall I say, Father, save me from this hour?  No, it is for this very purpose that I have come!”  He doesn’t want to suffer. But he accepts it.  He knows this is the way to glory! Verse 23 “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Jesus great work for us is accomplished by His wounds and by His death! 

Verse 24Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”  A seed that DOESN’T die, just lays there on the ground. It produces no fruit, it feeds no one, it does nothing for anybody! ONLY by dying it becomes fruitful!

Jesus was saying, “I am the grain of wheat. If I don’t die there is no salvation for anyone.  But out of my death will come much fruit, a great harvest of men and women from every tribe and tongue and people and nation!

He states this as an unbreakable spiritual principle. We also are that grain of wheat that must die. JC Ryle, “It is as true of Christians as it is of Christ – there can be no life without death.”  Verse25 “Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.”  

First the warning, then the promise! The warning is: Whoever loves his life will lose it.  Loving your life is to protect yourself, your reputation, your own desires, to do things your own way. It is making everything about you, your feelings, plans and pleasures instead of Christ’s interests. We can easily spot this quality of loving self in others, it’s harder to see in ourselves.  

Most of our problems come from loving our own life.  I see it all the time. Loving your own life causes you to be turned inward, it causes you to be unhappy, frustrated, disappointed, and to miss out on the life God has for you.  This is not talking about some abstract willingness to suffer for Christ at some time in the future.  At every moment we seek first to save and love his own life we are actually losing it. 

Then the promise: “Whoever hates his life in this world will keep in for eternal life”.  Jesus is so unafraid to make the hard statement if he knows that’s what we need to hear. He’s willing to say the hard thing to us because he loves us. Jesus meant this to be shocking, to awaken us to how important this is.  This is not some sick behavior of putting yourself down, by saying I hate myself, I hate myself.  It is not complaining about your life, saying, “I hate my job, I hate my marriage, I hate my car.”   It’s not ONLY doing things you hate to do.

It is seeing “self” as a potential enemy of the LIFE Jesus wants to give you.  Hating your life means to choose against your own self-centered way of doing things whenever it is required. It is bearing whatever cost there is to be faithful to Christ, and his church and to his kingdom. It is choosing against yourself to do the will of God.  It is a daily practice.  That’s why Jesus said, if you want to follow me you must take up your cross daily and deny yourself.

I realize self-love is the philosophy of the day, the cure for everything that is wrong with you.  So when Jesus speaks this way we hurry up to soften what he said, or to ignore it altogether.

FS “We are surrounded by a world that says “no” to nothing.  When we encounter Jesus teaching us to say “no” to self, “no” to things, it seems hard to us.  And if it does not seem hard to us, we are not really letting it speak to us”.   It was teaching like this that caused many of Jesus' disciples to walk away.  But....If we want to know anything of the reality of Christ, if we want to know anything of the power of Christ living in us we must take up our cross daily.”  

Please think about what Jesus said! Dying leads to fruit. Doing life your own way just leads to you being by yourself. Losing your life is finding your life.  Loving your life is losing it. Hating your life is keeping it. There is a way of giving up yourself to Jesus, that looks like hating yourself, if that’s required. And that leads to a life so profound that it’s like finding real life! It’s finally finding what LIFE looks like and feels like. Life is in sacrifice for Christ and others. Profound sacrifice lead’s to profound and fruitful life. And once you’ve seen that it how you want to live. 

So even these are hard words Jesus is teaching us the way to real life and fruitfulness. If you want to be the man or woman God wants you to be, if you want to be free from a bondage or addiction or a demon, or from just plain self-focused living, if you want to be healed and made whole, there is something about your own life that you HAVE to stop loving.  If you want to bless others, then you have to see your life as something to be given up, FOR Jesus sake.  

*Jesus isn’t done!  Jesus keeps pressing the issue!  Verse 26 “If anyone serves me, he must follow me”…. Where was Jesus going?  Jesus was on his way to the cross. The disciples may have thought well I’m glad I don’t have to do that.  Jesus said, but you do.  You must take up your cross too.  Jesus adds “for where I am, my servant also will be”.  A servant follows his master. 

So we follow Jesus when it is inconvenient or humiliating, or painful. We follow even when it leads us into danger, or being reproached, or rejected or hated. Following Jesus means we go with Him, all the way. 

*But this is the path to unspeakable honor. Verse 26, “My father will honor the one who serves me.”  God who spoke the universe into existence, God, whose opinion is all that matters, will honor you if you serve Jesus His Son, in this way that we have been talking about this morning. 

Sometime in your life you probably got, a ribbon, a trophy.  Does anybody care?  Do you even care anymore?  But honor that comes from God is Eternal and unending. 

I always write as part of my message to the graduating Senior.  Remember Jesus said, “If any one serves me My Father will honor him (or her).”   I do that because I want those graduates to know that what really matters in life is to have the honor of the Father and that comes through serving Jesus.  That is true success!  You may be nothing in the eyes of other people all your life.  They may not even notice you.  But when the Father honors you, that is all that matters!

*So we need to keep two inseparable truths in our hearts this morning.  The first is that Jesus suffered and died for our sins.   He went down the via delorosa, the road of suffering. We are the fruit if that death. You are here today, you are saved today, because of what he did.  All glory and honor to him!!!

*The second truth is that Jesus invites you to come and lay down your life with him.  The question is: Do you want that LIFE?  Do you want to bear fruit? Do you want to make an impact on others?  Do you want to be used by God?... I think if you are a child of God you do.  How do you do that?  Jesus said, come follow me. Take the way of the cross. 

*Jesus offers this life as an invitation. Jesus doesn’t beat people up with this truth.  He simply states it as a matter of fact: if you love your life you will lose it.  If you give if up to me, you’ll keep it to eternal life. If you serve me, then you must follow me.    So what do you want to do?  What do you want to do with these words of Jesus.  I pray that the Holy Spirit would stir in your heart a cry that says, “yes, I want to leave everything and follow Jesus.”