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 I’d like again to teach another message about the cross, and I’m calling our teaching today ‘My Cross Isn’t My Trial ‘.  Now yes you have heard correctly and yes I don’t believe I have made a mistake because I want us just to go back and learn again what actually the cross is about.

What was Jesus to do with His cross?  He had set His heart as a flint towards Jerusalem, and we know that the enemy tried to stop Him and hinder Him through Peter, but he had set his heart upon the Father’s will to go to Jerusalem where He was going to be murdered, crucified by His own people. So what was Jesus to do with His cross?  One thing, to die upon it.  That was the ultimate goal and aim of His ministry in which to die in flesh – in His humanity in order to be raised in glory in a new body.

My Cross Is To Die On

What do men do with a cross?  What do you do with your cross that you too are daily to take up and follow Christ?  One thing – the same as Jesus – die upon it.

Where was Jesus going with His cross? Well there was a set place, location called Calvary, and there on that hill He was placed there for the world to see and His people, to die.  An humiliation, the worst form of death the Romans used to inflict upon the worst of libertines, and there our saviour – God in flesh – was to die.

‘my cross’ is key to discipleship

Now turn with me if you will, bearing that in mind to Luke 14 verses 27 and 28 which you know very well, but I want us just to look at this again …

Luke 14:27  And whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple.
28  For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it?

…. Now we’ll just pause for a second and look at these two verses.  He is speaking to “whosoever” – whoever has an ear and wants to hear. …. We are [here] already beginning to understand the conditions of discipleship. Discipleship isn’t just merely getting saved and responding to John 3.16 which has an importance, but how many are pressing on into discipleship?  My bible tells me that it is disciples who also take their cross up are the ones who will enter the Kingdom of God.

 

To take up my cross is a Decision not an Emotion

So it means that this cross that you take up – your cross – is not something that is merely accidental.  It’s not something that sounds a good idea theologically ….. we are to sit and count the cost, in other words is it something that we want?  Is it the way I want to walk with Christ? ….. This isn’t something that is just a good idea, or sounds good, it is something that is real, remember the title I’ve given today –  ‘ My Cross Isn’t My Trial ‘

Now bearing the cross daily isn’t one thing for Jesus and something different for us. If you are going to be a disciple and follower of the Lord then you walk in the same footsteps as Jesus.  And so His cross that He took up and died upon is exactly the same for you and I…

… The Devil is trying to stop believers taking their cross up also the same as he tried to stop Jesus through Peter …. Peter was showing humanity, he was showing the flesh – showing emotions,feelings.  Jesus had to come against that, because emotions – feelings stop you from becoming a disciple …

…You see the pathway is deliberately chosen. You have sat down – as it says in verse 28 and you have counted the cost, you have deliberately chosen this walk – to walk the way of the cross. Jesus deliberately chose the way to Calvary and nothing was going to deter Him. And that is why you see the enemy tries to trip you up; he’ll try any way he can to not let you experience you also taking your cross daily and following the Lord.

Why does the enemy tremble at this? Because this is where breakthroughs begin to happen….

My Cross Isn’t My Trial

… Your trial isn’t ‘the cross I am bearing’, that is not what the cross is about and yet you hear this so often –    ‘this is my cross ‘ – it isn’t your cross, it’s your trial that you go through;  all humanity goes through some form of trial ….

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