Carry Your Cross || Nolan Cannon || Matthew 16

This Sunday, as part of his farewell to DCC, Nolan Cannon spoke on taking up your cross and what Christ has called us to in order to do so. The call to be a disciple of Jesus, and not merely a believer in Him, is one that we can opt out of, consciously or unconsciously. To opt in, we say yes to disciple, death and being transformed. Jesus invites us to deny ourselves, he is inviting us to discipline the identity we have constructed for ourselves. The call to take up our cross is a call to death to our flesh and the call to follow Jesus is a call to being transformed. As you go through your week, reflect on these key questions from Sundays Message:

• What parts of your life have you opted out of following Jesus in?How is God inviting you to surrender?
• How is God inviting you into surrender to him and to his Kingdom?
• Where does your Flesh rule your life?
• How is God working new life in you in this season of your life?
• In what part of your life is God gently reminding you to remember your place?

Transcript

Copy

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hey, and welcome to Downtown Community Church. We are so glad that you decided to listen in today. At DCC, our mission is to love God, make disciples, and be great neighbors. And one way we live that out is through generosity. Giving includes our tithes and offerings, but generosity is not limited to just finances. It can also mean our time, talents, and a willingness to serve. If you are looking for a way to serve, meet people, or become more connected at DCC, visit downtowncommunitychurch.com to discover your next step. You can also stay updated on everything happening here at DCC by following DCC Tally on Instagram and Downtown Community Church on Facebook. Today's message, named Carrying Your Cross, comes from Matthew 16, 21 to 27. And as part of his farewell to DCC, Nolan Cannon explores the difference between simply believing in Jesus and living as one of his disciples. Jesus invites his followers to deny themselves, take up their crosses, and follow him. Nolan explains that denying oneself means surrendering to the identity, desires, and priorities that have been constructed apart from Christ. Taking up your cross is a call to put the flesh to death, while following Jesus is an invitation to be continually transformed into his likeness. Although people may consciously or unconsciously choose to step away from the cost of discipleship, Jesus continues to invite them into a life shaped by surrender, obedience, and transformation. Thanks again for tuning in, and we pray that this message challenges and encourages you to follow Jesus more closely and consider what it truly means to carry your cross. Now here is Nolan Cannon with today's message.

SPEAKER_00 1:55

From that time, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed, and on the third day be raised. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, Far be it from you, Lord, this shall never happen to you. But he turned and said to Peter, Get behind me, Satan. You are a hindrance to me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man. Then Jesus told his disciples, If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul? For the Son of Man is going to come with his angels in the glory of his father, and then he will repay each person according to what he has done. You may be seated, and kids you are dismissed to the kids' hallway.

SPEAKER_02 3:02

I'm not the normal guy. And so if you're here and you're thinking like that was a little intense, um come back another Sunday, it'll be better, or at least you'll feel less like somebody wants to beat you over the head with something. Um and that'll be nice. That'll be nice for you. Um so who am I? I am uh Nolan Cannon. Once upon a time, I worked here as the director of spiritual formation and leadership. Um but two months ago I was fired. Um, that's not true. I was not fired. Um I am moving actually. So I have a wife and son. Uh my wife's name is Kinsey, my son's name is Nathaniel. That's him. He's two and a half, he's a ticker. Um, but in like a good way. Uh and um so my my wife is is watching right now from Oklahoma City. Um, and that's where I'm moving to tomorrow morning. Um I'm going to join them. Uh and uh there, right, I don't know actually what's waiting for me there, other than um a set of family members who are in the next probably 10 years going to pass away. Um and they're all my wife's family. Uh and I do know one thing though. I know that um as I go there, I'm going to stand in the presence of God. And that makes uh whatever is to come an easy thing. Why don't you pray with me? Holy Spirit, will you come? Will you just open us up? All that we are, to all that you have for us today. Amen. When I think when Jesus talks to us about a cross, I think he's talking to us about um he's talking to us about life in the presence of God. And uh the first thing I think about is a conversation I was having with someone one time is a friend of mine, um, and he wasn't fully there for following Jesus yet. And uh we were sitting down in a coffee shop having a conversation about um life, about security, uh, job, and comfort. And at some point during that uh conversation, he says something that has just stuck with me as a kind of like, I think we all believe this a little bit. Um it's the way I see it is if Jesus did die and he rose again, then he's got my afterlife covered. But I've got to take care of me and this life. And in some subtle way, I think somewhere in our core, many, probably most, more than likely all of us believe that. And it informs our basic modes of thought and acting. And so we are grateful for Jesus' sacrifice and for the grace that God gives us so that we get to go to heaven, but we are in love with the things of this world. And so we pour ourselves out into a job, uh, into a degree, into our family, uh, maybe especially our kids, uh, and we try to project a certain kind of status onto the world about ourselves, or a certain kind of image of ourselves onto the world, uh, whether that's on social media or in our social circles or to your colleagues. Um we do all that so that we can um have a certain kind of status uh or feel more secure against all of the misfortunes that this world has to offer us. Um so that we can chase a next vacation uh or a next thrill or a next hookup. And in the course of pursuing all of that, we're plagued by everything that ails this world, the most prominent and widespread of which are anxiety, loneliness, rage, and shame. And this isn't about you being bad, actually. This is about you and me not realizing that Jesus isn't offering us simply a way to get to heaven. He is offering us a whole new way to be human. And that whole new way to be human starts when we are in love with God and not the things that this world has to offer. And I think that offering comes by way of what Jesus here in Matthew 16 calls a cross. So in verse 24 he says, if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. Would come after me is an idiom of discipleship. Um, it is, in other words, if anyone would be my disciple. And that's kind of a strange thing to say to your disciples, the people who've already bought in, the people who've already left everything and followed you, the people who not a little bit before said, Where else could we go? You have the words of eternal life. But I think that this clues us into something that's really, really important about following Jesus, right? Not being merely a believer in him, but also being his disciple or his follower, taking him on as our master of life and not simply as our savior. It's that this is not a one-time decision. Following Jesus does not happen once for all, and then you just coast. In other words, Jesus' teaching here is not about becoming a member of the household of God. That is a one-time thing, right? The whole being saved bit is a one-time thing. God will grant you entrance into heaven when you say yes to him, right? So becoming a member of the household of God is one thing. But Jesus here is talking about becoming perfect or holy, even as your father in heaven is perfect or holy, as he says on the Sermon on the Mount. And so this is not about being a believer. It doesn't tell that, right? You are gonna be a believer in Jesus. Um, but this is about the fact that we can opt out of being his follower at any point in our life. And so following Jesus is a thing that we have to do intentionally over and over and over again. Because at any point you can retreat into your woundedness or your misaligned and misdirected desires or into the desires of your flesh, and you can just live that way. And you can take Jesus up on his offer to go to heaven, or you can choose to take hold of what Jesus elsewhere calls eternal life, to know God and Jesus Christ, whom he has sent, to really know them, not just know about them, not just to have a bunch of beliefs about him, but to meet him face to face, to know his presence in your life, to be filled with his spirit, and to be caught up into his presence. So as you're in some of the some of the people here are still in grade school, even then. As you go into college and you choose your major and your social activities and your organizations, and as you later get a job and maybe a spouse or kids, and you go for that promotion, and um you age and have grandkids and then eventually die. At every moment, you have to say yes. We are being either transformed into the love and beauty of Jesus, or malformed by the entropy of sin and death. We become either agents of God's healing and liberating grace, or carriers of sickness of the world. To believe otherwise is an illusion, and to give no thought to this is to come dangerously close to wasting your life. And so in this first part of verse 24, we see anticipated already verse 25, um, where Jesus says, forever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life because of me will find it. And the word that you see is life in there, in the Greek is psyche. Uh and psyche is actually ambiguous between two different things. One is your physical life, your living, you're moving around, seeing, snoring, physical life, right? Um, and then the other one is your soul. Psyche also means soul. And here, think this is the place, right? The part of you, that deep part of you that just longs for meaning and fulfillment. Or uh what I think is pretty much the same thing is union to the transcendent. And so, in effect, so when Jesus says, whoever wants to save his life, he's saying, whoever wants to save their physical life, whoever just wants to pursue the things of this world and to have comfort and control and security, you're going to lose your soul. But whoever would lose their physical life, whoever would give up the desires of their flesh and yield all that they are to me, you will find your soul. You will have life with me. And this is, like I said, I'm not the normal guy. It's probably kind of intense at the moment. And some of you are thinking, I don't know, is it really that serious? I'm just trying to like do my thing right now, get my degree, get that promotion, I'm gonna move in a couple years. Um, you know, like I'm about to get married, gotta save up for that. Um, want that house, you know. And and I'm gonna do my thing, and then afterward, I'm gonna lock in. I'm gonna do exactly what Jesus says that I should do. I'm gonna re-up on scripture and prayer and all of that. Let me tell you right now. I thought so too. I thought it wasn't that serious. You see, when I got here, um I was just admitted into the FSU PhD program. Um, and so I'd been pursuing a PhD for something like five years already. Um yeah. Uh and uh I'm not done today, so that's 10 years. Um think about that. Uh and uh so I come here pursuing a PhD. And at some point before I started the PhD route, I kind of thought this was a call from God. I was gonna get my PhD, I was gonna go for a job in a university, and I was gonna be an influence for the kingdom of God on campus, just in an ordinary teaching position. But at some point in the pursuit of that PhD, really, like really early on, it stopped being about that call, it stopped becoming, it stopped being a means to that, and it instead became the whole goal. And so my pursuit of that PhD became obsessive. And as a result, I um and as a result, I obs I was really controlling of my time. And I would lash out at constant, persistent, or sustained interruptions to that. That was most often my wife. And I became stingy with more things in my time. The control of time led to a control of money, where I thought if I couldn't get done what I needed done, then I would not be uh I would not be the person I wanted to be. And then I just fed into, I don't think I have enough here at any point. I think I just need to make sure we're saving, and I'm stingy, not generous, anything like that. And my life with God started to consistently take a backseat to my life in uh in a book, reading or writing about philosophy. And it was costing me my soul. And so just hear this, which is really important. The choices that you make in your life will either have a tendency to draw you into the presence of the Father, or they will have a tendency to draw you away from God. And it is never too late. You can always reverse course and start to come back to God. But the longer that you fall away, the longer that you make seemingly harmless choices and go further and further from the presence of God, the harder it gets to return. And it's more painful and more full of facing a person that you don't like in yourself. And so just one question, our first question for today. What parts of your life have you opted out of following Jesus? And Jesus does tell us how to be his disciple, how to opt into life with him in every part of life and at every stage of life. We can say yes to being his disciple insofar as we say yes to discipline, death, and being transformed. Discipline first. When Jesus invites us to deny ourselves, he is inviting us to discipline the identity we have constructed for ourselves. And so he calls us to uh uh we all have a self, right? U basically a system of attachments that are constituted by our relationships and by the core things that we believe about ourselves, others, and God. And it's really important that you know that the self, that system of attachments, is not sin or sinful. It's really good to have desires, goals, things you want to do. Um this self can lead to sin or sinful ways of operating. And some ways that we conceive of ourself are inconsistent with what God says is true about us. Um and so disciplining the self is a call to uh order our attachments, those things, those ways that we define ourselves, under a single organizing motivational aim. Something that you feel in your gut is like the thing that you are going for all the time, no matter what whatever else you're going for. And it is to first love the Lord your God, or sorry, seek first the kingdom of righteousness, kingdom of God and his righteousness, or love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself. These are equivalent ideas for Jesus. Um, and these are the things that we are meant to order who we are after. So when you go for that, that degree, kingdom of God and his righteousness. When you try and buy that house, kingdom of God and his righteousness. When you have a kid, kingdom of God, not yours. His righteousness, not yours. And as we do this, we will find that we are caught up, right? Our souls find their answer by being caught up into the divine life of the Trinity. What Jesus in John 15 calls abiding in the vine. We find that we can live in the presence of God more and more. And for me, I had kind of like a big moment in my life where I realized that what I had been up to was being informed by a self that didn't answer to what God said about me, but answered to my deepest fears. And namely that I just wouldn't be good enough. And so I had this core belief in me that said something along the lines of, you are only a value insofar as you achieve what you're aiming to achieve. And I was living in that while I was also trying to read scripture and pray and go to church. And all that felt incredibly dry. Like I was just reading some words, giving God a laundry list of things I needed or wanted. Uh and what my friends too, I'd pray for my friends. I'm a good person. Um but uh I just didn't really feel like it was anything other than obligations. And one time I'm like, you know, let's see. Let's just see if there's more to this than I realize. And so I decide one lent to uh Sabbath uh every Sunday. A full day where I'm not working. And for every Sunday of Lent, I would wake up on Sunday morning having accomplished far less than I wanted to that week. I'm talking like stuff that has impact on my future, right? And I would just have this clenched jaw and a headache. I'd be so stressed out. And then one day, just like a week before, so it's Holy Week Sundays, right before Easter, I wake up and I am just at peace. Nothing about my week had changed. I still had accomplished far less than I wanted to. I felt behind, like I wasn't gonna ever finish a PhD. I still don't think I'm gonna finish it. Um but uh nothing had changed, but I just was relaxed. And that whole day I just felt God saying to me, this is a gift for you because I love you, not because you earned it. There's no earning this. And this is the first time in at least a decade that I believed that I was of value because I was made lovingly and loved by a good father. And so the second question here is how is God inviting you to into surrender to him and to his kingdom? To rethink yourself. And for some people, you feel that essential dryness, and you just gotta sit with this question, look for it, find God. And some of you, you're kind of living in his presence already, and you're like, I got it covered, man. Thanks. Think too. This question's for everyone. And then there's death. The call to take up your cross is a call to death. Bonhoeffer writes, the call to discipleship is laid on every Christian. It is the death of the old self in the encounter with Jesus Christ. Those who enter into discipleship enter into Jesus' death. The cross is not the terrible end of a pious, happy life. Instead, it stands at the beginning of community with Jesus Christ. When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die. And the reality is that Jesus' words in Matthew 16 are a deep well. And there's a lot there. There's definitely some external death he's thinking about. He's about to go to Jerusalem, suffer, and die. But for us, primary for us today, is the internal. I have been crucified with Christ, Paul says in Galatians. And it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. The flesh is our animal desires, especially for power, pleasure, and wealth. And when those desires dominate, we live in what Christianity has called for a really long time, sin. And this goes well beyond our systems of attachment to the core of our disordered ways of life. And when you die to flesh, when you let God kill that in you by offering yourself up on a cross, it gives your attachments, those things that you love, the ways that you think about yourself a foothold, to be rightly ordered under the identity that God has given you. Someone made to love him with everything you are and to love your neighbor as yourself. In discipleship to Jesus here, right, this is really important. Discipleship to Jesus does not happen in our places of strength, not primarily. It does happen there because our strength is drawn from the Spirit. But it doesn't happen there first. You don't get more of what you're already good at all the time. But it happens primarily and first in our places of weakness, in our places, places of weddedness to the world and bondage to sin. Psychologist and theologian Robert Muhalin writes, our cross is the point of our unlikeness to the image of Christ, where we must die to self in order to be raised by God into wholeness of life in the image of Christ. Right there at that point. And that Sabbath day, I had that revelation that I was loved not because of what I could do and achieve, but because I was made by God into his image, saved by his grace to become like his son. I was his son too. To the way the flesh had latched onto that desire and drawn so much out of me that I wanted to be rid of and that I wasn't proud of, and that I was ashamed of, and that I hid from a lot of people. And so I began as I was experiencing the presence of God on Sunday and longing for that presence every day. I would wake up in the mornings, I'd leave my phone where it sat all night, I wouldn't touch it. And I would make myself a really good cup of coffee, not like Duncan or something. Um I would sit on the floor and like there's not a method here, but I would just yield my workaholism, the fount of rage that it had cultivated in me, and the stinginess that it had produced to God. And I would just be in his presence, seeking to behold his face until that cup of coffee was gone. And in the evenings I would stop working at a certain point. I had like a hard line, it was 7 p.m. Now it's like 2 p.m. Um I'm getting lazy. Uh and um and that was for Kinsey, just like this woman that I had not loved well, because I was sacrificing my marriage on the altar of a PhD. Or was for the community of people here at DCC and some beyond that I had chosen to uh commit to in community, to live life next to, to offend sometimes on accident, I promise. Um the people that I too had been offended by and loved and forgiven and just learned to let go of things. And I just generally just yielding to God alone and with others so that I might discipline myself and die to the flesh that was burning me up. And so, yet another question for you today. Where does your flesh rule your life? Then there is the call to be transformed. And I think the call to follow Jesus is a call to being transformed. And here I want you to notice the middle voice. Ben talked about this last week, he did a great job. I'm gonna do it again. Um the middle voice sees God working, right? And then it joins in that work in partnership and enjoys the fruit of that labor. So when the call to be transformed is later in our lives, Jesus is inviting us to notice the work that God is already doing in your life, to partner with him by yielding to that work and enjoying the presence of that work fulfilled. God is right now lovingly weaving a story about your life. And all you have to do is say yes to it, to consent, to open yourself up to him. Because God can do anything, but he very often chooses not to do something if we are not willing to let him. And that's love. He listens to you. And so we uh follow Jesus in so far as we seek to be with him by yielding all that we are, through disciplining ourselves, and uh and dying to our flesh. And as we do that, we become like Jesus through the transforming presence of God into people of love, characterized by joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control, as Paul talks about in Galatians 5. And then we do the works that he did at first. Yes, for sure, in the way that he is compassionate and loving, but also through his healing ministry, through prophecy, things like that. And there's a lot I could tell you about here. There's a ton that's changed about me by the grace of God, not because of my own power. Um, but the one that I want to sit on is uh just this last Christmas. Uh my wife is at work, and I've given up the single minor pursuit of a PhD to investigate what it looks like to teach God's people uh how to follow Him with their whole lives. And um I'm grilling on my back deck and I'm trying to keep my two-year-old from touching a hot grill or running out the front yard when it just hits me like a ton of bricks, that I have never loved my wife like Christ loves the church. I have never, not in all the things that I've done, been willing to give up myself for her. And at that same moment of terrible realization, I also feel this change where it's different now, that I will do it. And I fall to my knees, and my son runs out the front door, um, and I had to go get him. So that was short, short-lived, beautiful moment. And here just almost a final question. How is God transforming you in this season of your life? And so we have these three things, right? We have a call to discipline, to death, and a call to be transformed. And this is just a this just as constitutes life in the presence of God. And Jesus is our example. Not even Jesus gets the resurrection without first crucifixion. He must, he says in verse 21, must suffer and be killed. But then afterward is a life of greater beauty and wholeness and love. And we can opt out of this if we do as little as fail to remember our place. And so some of you it might do to hear Jesus' words to Peter. Get behind me. As a gentle reminder to remember your place behind your master of life, not in front of it. And you can do that by setting your minds on the things above, by say, memorizing 1 Corinthians 13, Philippians 4.8, or James 3, 13 through 18? And then, so just a final question, and then I'll begin to close. And I'm a little over. In what part of your life is God gently reminding you to remember your place? And today I've talked a lot about a cross, and so I want to just close with a bit of encouragement, because this is not the first time Jesus has taught us about living in his presence. The first time happens in Matthew 11. He says, Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke on you and learn from me, because I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear, and my load is not hard to carry. And our culture tells you that it's worth it. But really, that vision of the good life just burdens you with fear and regret and shame and anger and contempt and so on. And he's offering rest. And it is not the rest of having no burden. That is not the call. It is the rest of bearing alongside Jesus in his yoke. The burden of loving God, to take it seriously, and to love your neighbor as yourself. And so the invitation here is we just put all the questions back up to end. Just to take up the terrible light burden of the cross. Give all that you are to God and to call on and his call on your life and find your soul. It's not a teaching that changes your life. It is what you do with it that will. Pray with me. God, I think all of us in here can confess that we have not lived in your easy light burden. That we have not taken up our crosses, and we have not followed you. I ask that you would guide us from this moment into the rest of our lives, reminding us to say yes. Yes to you and yes to your way of life. That we might find rest for our souls. And so that anything that you ask us to bear, whether it's uncertainty or pain or loneliness or anything, will feel light in comparison to the burdens that we could cast on ourselves.