It must be a terrible thing when our subject is denying yourself, and then you have a guy come up here who is big, wearing black, and carrying a big black Bible. It has got to be a frightening thing, isn’t it?
But I am not like an undertaker. I am worse. I am a schoolteacher.
For those who do not know me—for you first-time people—I am Jim Boggedown. I am a schoolteacher from Virginia. To begin with, let us read some verses.
Let us start with our theme verse, Luke 9:23:
And he said unto all,
If any man would come after me,
let him deny himself,
and take up his cross daily,
and follow me.
Then Hebrews 7:25:
Wherefore also he is able to save to the uttermost
them that draw near unto God through him,
seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them.
And one more set of verses, from 1 Peter 1:3 and 1 Peter 1:20-21:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
who according to his great mercy begat us again
unto a living hope
by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
Who verily was foreknown indeed before the foundation of the world,
but was manifested at the end of the times for your sake,
who through him are believers in God,
that raised him from the dead,
and gave him glory;
so that your faith and hope might be in God.
Our Father, we want to thank You for letting us come into Your presence. We know that it was at great cost that this has been allowed, and we thank You. We thank You, Lord, for the blood of Christ, which cleanses us from all our sins and allows us entrance into Your very presence.
Now we are in Your presence, and we glory in You. We thank You and praise You for who You are and for bringing us to Yourself.
Lord, this morning we are encouraged so much by this morning’s devotion, to see Your beauty. Lord, that is what we are asking this morning: that You, O Father, would reveal Your Son to us in such a way that He would become beautiful to us.
We want to see Him, Lord. Just like those Greeks came to Philip when You were on Your way to Jerusalem to be crucified, they said, “We would see Jesus.” Lord, that is our prayer this morning: we want to see Jesus.
So we ask that You will open our hearts, our eyes, our spirits, and our minds to see Him. Lord, we know that only You can reveal Him. We cannot talk about Him or anything; only You can reveal Him. We are trusting You to do that. We are asking You to do this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Deny yourself. Boy, what a topic. It is a daunting topic to look at. But before looking at it, I want to put us on a firm foundation.
I think that, as young Christians, when we come to something about denying yourself, all of a sudden we take on a burden that is not meant to be a burden. We have to realize that what Jesus is saying about denying yourself is not what we think: “Oh, He is going to take things away.”
We have got to get away from that and just rest that He means something good. It is not all loss for us.
I remember my wife and I used to hear Floyd Pulis preach the cross when I was a young Christian in my twenties. Floyd preached the cross. When I got married and my wife started coming to some of the meetings, it was, “Boy, get the cross, get the cross.”
Then one time another brother came and said, “You know, there is a balance. It is not all cross, cross, cross. There is also joy, joy, joy. For the joy that was set before Him, He endured the cross.”
So we need to have our minds transformed.
When we look at this idea of denying yourself, consider all these religions. These are the five major religions of the world, and all of them have some teaching about self-denial.
Muslims, in order to be good with God, have to deny themselves some things. They cannot eat pork, drink wine, or gamble. Buddhists have an eightfold path of denying yourself, even to the point of denying yourself so much that yourself disappears. Hindus have the same thing with dharma and karma. Jews have things they must do. Even Christianity can take some of these things and make them a law.
We think that by denying ourselves, we get closer to God or please God. These are the things that get us close to God. But brothers and sisters, let me share one thing at the very outset.
Did you know that if you are a born-again Christian, right now you can get no closer to God than you are right now? Do you realize that?
When He puts you into Christ, He judges all your sin. Not merely forgiven in the sense that someone does something wrong and says, “Oh, I am sorry,” and you say, “Oh yeah, I forgive you.” No, He did not just forgive. In order for Him to forgive, He had to judge your sin.
He did that by putting His Son to death. But when He put His Son to death, He put you into Him, so that your sins—all of you, all the sin that is in you—were judged. Because of that, there is no sin now against you.
Not only has your sin been judged, but after Jesus died, He was raised from the dead and seated at the right hand of God. So even now, not only are your sins judged, but right now you are in the presence of God.
Because you are in Christ, you cannot get any closer. For in the presence of His Son, I am as close as He is. That is a liberating thing.
I remember one time when I was in a bad place with the Lord—a really bad place. Then the Lord started showing me some things. I was in an airplane, and we were going through a storm. It was really rocky, and the pilots started to land us. We were in the middle of the ocean.
A lot of us on the plane thought, “This is it. We are going to die.” You saw some of the guys turning sheet white.
Do you know what my thought was at that time? “Oh, my God, I have not done anything for You. I am so far away from You, and here I am going to die. This is it.”
It was like the Lord spoke into my heart at that very moment: “You cannot get any closer to Me. You are in My Son.”
For us to think that denying ourselves is going to get us closer to God, we have got to get off that ground, because that is not the right ground. We start already close to God.
When He spoke this to the apostles, the apostles were with Him. They had already been walking around with Him for a year and a half, at least. When He spoke this, it was not as though they were far away from Him. They were already right with Him.
We need to be of this mind: we are as close to God right now as we ever can be. We need to realize that, because that is life-changing. We have got to get off the idea that, “I have got to do something.” We start on different ground because we are in Christ, and that is a wonderful ground to be on.
Secondly, denying yourself does not mean that all of a sudden you become more spiritual. “If I want to become more spiritual, I have got to deny myself. I am not going to do this, and I am not going to do that.”
In Colossians 2:20-23, it says:
If ye died with Christ from the rudiments of the world,
why, as though living in the world, do ye subject yourselves to ordinances,
Handle not, nor taste, nor touch
(all which things are to perish with the using),
after the precepts and doctrines of men?
Which things have indeed a show of wisdom
in will-worship, and humility, and severity to the body;
but are not of any value against the indulgence of the flesh.
These things have an appearance of wisdom in self-imposed religion and neglect of the body, but they are of no value against the indulgence of the flesh. Denying ourselves does not make us holier.
If we think we become holy this way, we can become like the Pharisee. Here is the prayer of the Pharisee in Luke 18:
God, I thank thee, that I am not as the rest of men,
extortioners, unjust, adulterers,
or even as this publican.
I fast twice in the week;
I give tithes of all that I get.
That does not mean he is holy. The law is higher than merely the outward things; it is the heart. You can tell by this man’s heart that he is lifted up with himself: “I am. I am. I am something else. I am something to be emulated. Oh, look at me.”
Finally, we need to see that this is not just another thing Christians are supposed to do. What are we supposed to do? We are Christians. Well, we go to church, read the Bible, pray, get baptized, and, depending on the type of church, maybe get confirmed. Then we add another thing onto it: we deny ourselves.
That is how we define Christianity. But we need to see that denying yourself has nothing to do with, “This is what Christians are. This is what I have to be. This is how I get close to God.” We have got to erase all that, because that is not the right foundation.
The right foundation is that we are followers; we are disciples.
A lot of times we are like this. I do not know—you guys in Canada, do you have beaches? Well, that is right, Canada goes from coast to coast.
This is a tide pool. The beach where I proposed to my wife had great tide pools. There is so much little life in a tide pool; it is wonderful. It is a microcosm of things.
But a lot of times we fixate on what is in front of us. We look at a tide pool and see what is in it, but we do not really see what is behind us: how big the ocean is and how much more there is in the ocean.
When we look at denying yourself, we look at what is in front of us. “What do I have to deny? What is it I have to get rid of in my life? What is the Lord telling me I need to stop?”
I am not going to stand here and tell you, “Hey, do not play a lot of Candy Crush. It will just eat you up alive. You will be sucked into the phone.” I am not here to tell you that, because that is not what denying yourself is all about.
Denying yourself is not about taking things away from you. Denying yourself is about something much, much greater than that. There is a greater purpose behind this whole saying: “If you want to follow Me, you need to deny yourself.”
That is what we want to look at this morning. I want to show you some pictures and talk about a greater purpose, and then we will get into the meat of things.
It is a great picture, is it not? That is my students when I say, “Pop quiz.”
Does anybody know what this is from? Shame on you. You are very close; it is in the same area. But it is Michelangelo. Very good. He passes the pop quiz. The rest of you are just like that.
If you look at this image by itself, you might say, “Oh, gee whiz, that person has bad news. He must have just heard, ‘You need to deny yourself.’” But you have no idea what this really means if you only see this small picture.
It is part of a bigger picture. This is Michelangelo’s Last Judgment behind the altar in the Sistine Chapel. We can look at it as the coming of Christ.
You do not get the full meaning of that person until you see him in the context of the bigger picture. Then you can understand that person is saying, “Oh my gosh, what have I done with my life?” You see a glorious Christ in the center coming down.
Michelangelo painted himself into the painting. That little skin-like thing is like, “I am getting rid of the old man, and I have the new and glorious body.” He is a new man. That is wonderful.
Now consider another picture: the D-Day invasion at Omaha Beach. You see all these men. How many of them do you think got killed? You watched Saving Private Ryan, did you not? You hear that pinging on the front, the door slams open, and those first guys are dead.
That is the greatest form of self-denial, is it not? But then you have to ask: what is the purpose of their self-denial? What is the purpose for them being there?
You have to see a bigger picture. Hitler comes to power in Europe, and as a result, look what happens to Europe. All that darkened area, Hitler conquered. By the summer of 1941, that was what Hitler and the Nazis had conquered.
Then these men come and make the invasion at D-Day. The first pictures show why this sacrifice was called for, and with the invasion we see the sacrifice. But we only see part of the sacrifice.
Some of these men were drafted or joined the army. Many enlisted, saying, “We have got to be in this fight.” Then they were taken away from their families, girlfriends, and loved ones for the duration of the war, however long that might be.
Then they had to be trained. If you have ever gone to boot camp, you know that is self-denial. You get up at four o’clock in the morning, run when you do not want to run, eat what you do not want to eat, and drill when you do not want to drill.
But all of this makes you ready for that moment. After that moment, there are other sacrifices, because there are other battles to be fought. But the end is this: the enemy was defeated. Glorious. A glorious picture.
So when we think about denying ourselves, what is the greater picture?
Remember Hebrews 7:25: He is able to save to the uttermost those who come to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them.
The bigger picture is this: saved to the uttermost. You may say, “I thought being saved was that Jesus died for your sins, and that is being saved. What does this mean, ‘to the uttermost’?”
Having your sins forgiven—what can be greater than that? What can be more uttermost than that? But being saved and having sins forgiven is just the opening of a door, as great as it is.
There cannot be any salvation without that door being opened. It is a great work, but it is the beginning of an even greater work.
What is that greater work? What do we mean by saved to the uttermost? Victor mentioned something last night: the soul being saved.
The soul is really us—the whole package: our mind, desires, will, intellect, bodies, everything. All of it comes under the soul.
What does it mean to be saved to the uttermost? Romans 8:29 says:
For whom he foreknew, he also foreordained
to be conformed to the image of his Son,
that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.
If we want to see what the many brethren are to be—which is being saved to the uttermost—we have to see the Son first. This verse defines what saving the soul is: being conformed to the image of His Son.
What does this being conformed look like? It looks like Jesus.
I do not know how you look at Jesus. When I was a young Christian reading the New Testament, the focus was on Jesus teaching, Jesus doing miracles, and Him being the Lamb of God.
But Jesus is much bigger than just teaching. Jesus is much bigger than just miracles. Jesus is much bigger than just being a sacrificial Lamb.
We need to see Jesus as the disciples saw Him. The disciples had no idea when they started following Him—until the passage in Luke 9—that Jesus was going to go and die. They did not have the foggiest idea.
So why were they following Him? They must have seen something. You can be drawn by a teaching, but after a while teaching only goes so far. Once you see miracles all the time, miracles lose their glitter.
What did they see in Jesus as a man? When we are talking about being conformed to His image, we are not talking about becoming deity. We are talking about manhood, humanity—being conformed to His humanity.
What did Jesus look like, not physically, but as a man? That is what we want to spend the rest of this time looking at.
The first thing is that He was a man without blemish.
Peter, in 1 Peter 1, speaks of Jesus as God’s sacrificial Lamb, a lamb without blemish. A sacrificial lamb could have no physical defect or imperfection. Even in the grain offerings, there could be no leaven.
What does that mean? What is the blemish that man has? We might say it is sin. No, it is deeper than sin. Sin is a manifestation of the blemish.
The blemish of man is his self-life—a self-life that is not under the control of God. Man whose self-life is not under the rule of God. Because it is not under the rule of God, sin and disobedience come.
Man decides, “I will decide what I want.” That is the first sin: disobedience. The soul-life, the self-life, not being under the control of God, is what leads to disobedience.
It started in the heavens with Lucifer: “I will be like the Most High.” Even his temptation to Adam and Eve was the same: “You will be like God. You will be able to choose what is right and what is wrong. That will be up to you.”
But the Lord Jesus had a self-life. We often think He was all divine, but no—He was a man just like you and me, and He had a self-life. The difference was that His self-life was under the rule of God.
As a boy, He said, “I must be about my Father’s business.” At twelve years old, sitting in the temple and talking with teachers and priests about the Word of God, He knew who He was. He knew He was the Son of God.
Yet Luke 2 tells us that He went home and submitted to His parents. It is pretty tough, when you think you are something else, to submit to your parents. How many of us think we know better than our parents?
But this young man, knowing who He was, submitted that self-life and bowed to the will of His parents.
He was baptized. Why would Jesus have to be baptized, since John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance? What did Jesus have to repent from? Would people not think, when He went into the water, “Well, He is a sinner just like me”?
Even John the Baptist said, “I have need to be baptized of thee.” But Jesus said:
Suffer it now:
for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness.
He bowed the knee to His Father, saying, “I am identifying with man in this way.”
When He was tempted in the wilderness, Satan said, “Turn these stones into bread. Jump off this building; let God save You. Bow down and worship me.”
Each time, He did not take it into His own hands:
Man shall not live by bread alone,
but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.
After He was transfigured, the glory of His humanity came out. I think it was much like what Adam and Eve would have been. They had a glory about them; that is why they did not know they were naked.
He could have walked right into heaven then. The Father was pleased with Him. Yet after His transfiguration, He spoke with Moses and Elijah about His departure, and then He set His face like flint to go to Jerusalem, where He would be crucified.
Again, He bowed the knee.
At Gethsemane, He prayed, “Father, if this cup can pass, let it pass. But not My will, but Yours be done.” Self-life under the rule of God.
Finally, when He was led to the cross, there is a hymn that says, “How did You let Yourself be taken, led by Your creatures, and nailed to the cross?” It was not His own will to go to the cross; it was His Father’s will, and He would be led to it.
All of these ways show that Jesus was a man without blemish. His self-life was under the Spirit. As a man, He was without blemish. It was not His deity; it was His manhood. His manhood was offered up for us.
He was a man who pleased God. He had a character and a nature that were pleasing to God.
In 2 Peter 1:5-7, Peter mentions seven things to add to faith. If you look at those seven things, they are really a picture of Jesus.
The first is virtue. When we think of virtue, we may think of someone being pure. But the Greek means more than that. It means excellence.
Consider a saw. What is the excellence of a saw? It is that it cuts. That is what it is meant to do.
What is the excellence of man? We were created in God’s image to show all creation what God is like. That is why man was created.
As man, we are to show forth who God is. Jesus the man came and served His Father. Through that service, men could see who God was. The excellence of man is to show forth who God is.
When Adam sinned and put himself first, he said, “Look at who I am.” The Renaissance ideal of virtù was to use all one’s talents to the full so people could see how great man is. But that is not the virtue we are talking about.
The virtue we are talking about is showing what God is like. Jesus, as a man, was able to do that.
He had knowledge, and He gained knowledge just like the rest of us. When He became a man, He put aside His omniscience. He had to learn as we learn. He had to gain knowledge as we gain it.
He gained knowledge of God. It was not merely, “I was in heaven with God, and this is what He is like.” No, He had to gain it as a man gains it. He read the Scriptures and communed with God.
As He knew God, He began to know God’s ways, will, character, and heart. He began to know what was good because He saw what God thought was good. He knew His place as a man under God.
He did not grasp at being God in order to show everybody. He said, “I take the place of man,” and He was man.
Out of this knowledge, faith was drawn out of Him. A lot of times we do not think of the Lord Jesus having to have faith, but He did because He was a man.
Paul speaks of living by the faith of the Son of God. Jesus had believing faith. Why was God able to do all these things through Him? Because of His faith.
He had self-control. He put His body, His soul, everything, under the control of God. He did not let those things control Him. Yes, the body needs food. Satan said, “Turn these stones into bread.” But Jesus had self-control.
He had patience. Patience does not merely mean waiting. Patience means that you abide under trial. You stick to the path. You stay the course.
He stayed the course. All things were against Him. People were trying to kill Him, but He stayed the course. He set His face like flint to go to Jerusalem.
He had godliness. Godliness means devotion to God. It means more than reading your Bible and praying. In all His life and everything in His life, He looked Godward.
“I am not trusting in myself. I am looking to God. I am looking to God to provide. I am looking for God to be the light for me before I make decisions about where I go.”
He had brotherly kindness. Look in the Gospels at the way Jesus treats other men and women. He was kind to them.
Finally, He had love—agape. This is not merely the love men have for one another; it is a love divine in nature and divine in motive.
It is a love that says:
He maketh his sun to rise on the evil and the good,
and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust.
This is who Jesus was as a man.
He was a man at rest. First of all, He had no sin, so there was no condemnation. He was not saying, “Oh, I feel condemned.” He was free from that. He was at rest from that.
Also, He took His proper place with God: man to God. “I am in this place. I am not striving to be more than what I should be. I am at rest because I have the place that God wants me to have.”
He fully trusted His Father—trusted Him to protect Him and to provide for Him. People were after His life. In Luke 4, they were going to run Him off a hill, but He trusted that His time had not yet come.
He could trust that His Father would provide everything He needed. He said:
The foxes have holes,
and the birds of the heaven have nests;
but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head.
As a man, that is how He lived.
He was a man in communion with God. Communion is give and take, sharing. He could share with His Father the things on His heart, and the Father could share with Him what was on His heart.
It was a communion that did not leave Him. Sometimes we have our quiet time, read our book, say, “I am so blessed,” shut the book, and that is it. We go out and do our things, and by night we cannot even remember what we read.
Jesus was one who could hold that communion. At any time He could go to the Father and say, “I know You are here. I know You are near Me. I am in communion with You.” He lived in the sense of His Father’s presence.
He was a man who did the works of God. He did the works of God because He was in communion with God and knew what His Father wanted.
You do not do the works of God without knowing what God wants you to do. Otherwise, they are the works of you. Even denying yourself can become the works of you: “I am trying to do something I think God wants, but I have not been in communion with God.”
He was a man on whom Satan had no claim. John 14:30 says:
I will no more speak much with you,
for the prince of the world cometh:
and he hath nothing in me.
Why? Because His self-life was in the proper place. Satan had nowhere to grab hold of Him. He was like a greased pole. Have you ever tried to grab a greased pole? You cannot. Have you ever tried to pick up a watermelon seed? You cannot get hold of it.
Satan could not get hold of Jesus.
Lastly, He was full of grace. Look at the way He treated all people with graciousness. He did not upbraid people.
I saw a movie once, a Marxist view of Jesus in the Gospel of Mark. They never showed His face; they just showed feet walking. Every time Jesus gave teachings, such as the Sermon on the Mount, He was yelling at people. Jesus was always yelling.
Jesus was not like that. He was gracious. He was gracious when He spoke to men, even when He was rebuking Pharisees. He was gracious in doing it.
He treated people the way they needed to be treated, but He was firm. To the woman caught in adultery, He said:
Neither do I condemn thee:
go thy way;
from henceforth sin no more.
To the man who had waited at the pool of Bethesda, He found him in the temple and said:
Behold, thou art made whole:
sin no more,
lest a worse thing befall thee.
He was gracious, but firm in His graciousness. Firmness does not take away from graciousness; it adds to it.
This is the person into whom we are being conformed.
When you look at this Jesus whom the disciples saw—this man we have just talked about—this is why people were attracted to Him.
They were not attracted because He was a good-looking man or because He was eloquent. That was not the attraction. Isaiah 53 says He had no form nor comeliness that we should be attracted to Him.
It was not some outward form that made people want to follow Him. It was not merely His teaching that made people want to stay with Him and continue to follow Him. It was who He was.
This type of man was behind all the teaching. This type of man was behind all the miracles. That was the attraction.
He was not just sent to teach people. He was not just sent to do miracles. He was not just sent to be a sacrifice for our sins.
He was also sent to show us what man is supposed to be. God said, “When I created man, this is what I wanted. This is him. Look at Him. Behold, I want you to see what I have planned for you.”
When we look at Jesus and see Him, we are attracted to Him because of who He is as a man. We are attracted to follow Him.
In following Him, we find ourselves denying ourselves—not to get closer to Him as though we were not already close, but because we see Him going. On the way, we find ourselves denying ourselves because we have been touched by Him.
When we think about being conformed to the image of His Son, that is not our goal in denying ourselves. “I am going to deny myself so I can be conformed to His image.” That is not the goal.
It is God’s purpose for you, but it is not our goal in denying ourselves. We do not become something by denying ourselves.
Jesus did not say, “Deny yourself so you can become something.” He said, “If you want to follow Me, you need to deny yourself.” We deny ourselves to follow Him.
It is in following Him that we find ourselves being conformed into His image. Do you see the difference? It is not us trying to be something we are not. We are trying to follow One who is all that we should be.
This is not a goal. It is a calling to follow Him. That is the salvation of our souls: this being conformed.
To put this on a further right ground, consider the verses in 1 Peter:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
who according to his great mercy begat us again
unto a living hope
by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
What is the living hope? The living hope is that we become conformed to His image.
When we are born again, we have the very seed of the life we have just seen in Jesus put into us. In following Him, we will find that life drawn out.
It is not our goal to become something we cannot be. Christ was manifested at this time for you so that you could see who He is.
Why? So that through the resurrection, after He died for our sins, we are no longer trusting in ourselves. Our faith and our hope are in God.
We are not looking to ourselves to try to do something. But as we see the beauty, we say, “Lord, this is what I want.”
We commit ourselves to God and say, “I want to follow You.” We say to the Lord, “I cannot do anything but follow You. The rest of the stuff, You have to do.”
That is not a cop-out. We will be brought into situations, and as we are going and following Jesus, the Lord will deal with us and point something out. He will say, “You need to deny yourself here.”
“To go further with Me, this has to go,” or, “This way of thinking has to go,” or whatever it may be.
But we are not discipled to a picture of Jesus: “I am going to be like this.” We are discipled to the life of Jesus that has been planted in us. That is what we will talk about tomorrow.
Heavenly Father, we want to thank You for Jesus Christ. We want to thank You for who He is. We thank You, Lord, that He was a man, that He came as a man. Lord, how much hope there is for us because He is a man.
Lord, we want to follow this man. In following Him, we want to have all that You want for us to be. We want to be conformed into His image, Lord, by Your working in us.
Lord, we do not know how to follow, but we are asking You to show us. We are asking You to reveal this life of Christ in us so that we know how to follow.
Lord, we tell You that we love You. We love You for giving us such a One as Jesus—Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ—whom You made Lord of all when You raised Him from the dead, after He did all Your will.
Him we worship. Him we say is worthy to sit at Your right hand and forever to rule. We praise Him in Jesus’ name.