Lord, this is the quiz and the mystery of our own lives. But the way up is down. The way forward is backwards. And the way of self-exploration and freedom is self-denial.
We are learning these mysteries together in the workshops and as Jim shares, and now as I share. Help us, Lord, to understand these wonderful aspects of the life in Christ Jesus. We are so thankful everybody could be joined here tonight. Refresh our bodies, our hearts, and our minds to take in these things, and to recover ground that we have already been through. We are so thankful, Lord. We praise You for this night, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
All right. Thanks so much. All right, here we go.
Questions often plague the new Christian. Questions like, “All the time, I still feel like God is displeased with me. I know that should not be the case.” Or, “I know I should be happy, but there is often too much guilt to enjoy the love of God.” “Oh, I love God. Oh, but I’m…” Yeah, something is going on there.
“I have had some good moments with God, but I usually find that I am up and down like a yo-yo.” There is a yo-yo champion right there.
Behind our questions, there is a mystery at work deep in our lives. There is always something going on deeper than we understand. Isn’t that wonderful? You have got to embrace mystery after a certain period of time. I know those of you who are especially logical hate mystery, but it is there. It is going to keep on being there.
Something is always saying no to you, and something is always saying yes. And it is the same thing.
“I feel like I am on the outside. There is life on the other side of the door. Everybody is inside; I am outside. I heard everybody singing tonight. I know everybody is one hundred percent ready to be raptured, and here I am.”
Would you know that another 156 of the 174 people are in that same spot right now?
“I have surges of faith. Ah, God is great. I can do anything.” But usually the surge turns into the drought. What is going on here?
The mystery of the cross: we lose to find. We go down to go up. We deny ourselves to find ourselves. How many of you want to find yourselves? Well, you will not find it by looking at yourselves. That is a funny thing. You have got to look away; then you discover yourself. Yeah, this thing is a real mystery. Maybe I should quit now. But no, I have more slides.
Now, we are just beginning tonight, and I know Jim jumped way ahead. I mean, he went into graduate school, and now I am back in grade school talking about the cross. But I want to catch everybody up, because I was amazed at the hands that went up last night. Some hands looked like this—first-timers, you know—and others like this. Some were surrendering; some, you know. But there are a lot of first-timers here, and I just want to get everybody on the same page.
Victor gave such a message last night. That was actually quite a deep message he gave. But I think by the end we will all be on that same page. I just wanted to back up a little bit.
It is a mystery. The answer, of course, is yes and no.
First, let us talk about the work of the cross in general. Let us lay a little groundwork here very simply. The cross’s work is both objective and subjective.
The objective work of the cross is this: when Jesus died on the cross, you were forgiven of sins—before you ever acknowledged it, before you were old enough to know about it. Objective means it was done. It is a fact in eternity. You were made holy by His blood.
As Jim said, as he was ready to die on the airplane, God said to him, “You have never been nearer.” As soon as you are saved, these objective facts are your eternal reality. You were made a glorious son.
It was finished by His perfect death for you on the cross, His resurrection, and His ascension. We call it the perfect work. We call it the finished work. It is because, you know what? It is finished. It is done.
One day in heaven, we will all rejoice that we could count on this wonderful, tremendous objective work of what Jesus did on the cross. It is inestimable, how wonderful this whole thing is. The end is guaranteed.
The subjective side of this work of the cross has to do with our experience of it. Jesus died on the cross two thousand years ago, but I was saved when I was twenty years old, in 1964. So you can figure out how old I am. I cannot—all right, with an abacus or whatever you want. There you are.
It became real to me when I was twenty years old. So, when we are talking about the subjective work of the cross, we are talking about our experience. What do we come to?
When you believed in Jesus, from that moment the Holy Spirit began to make the cross’s work effective in your life. He saved you to the uttermost; now He is going to work that salvation out. Changes start taking place within your life by the Spirit’s power, giving you life to do things and pressing you down in things that you have been doing that are wrong.
The subjective work of the cross includes cleansing, separating, renewing, strengthening, deepening, and capturing. It is all part of this tremendous subjective work that has been going on in your lives since you became a believer—for those of you who have.
He takes the perfect objective work and perfectly works it out in our experience. So that is what is going on right now.
Sometimes the Bible talks about that perfect work, and sometimes the Bible talks about the subjective work. Here is a precious verse that we all probably know, and it shows both sides.
Philippians 2:12-13:
So then, my beloved, just as ye have always obeyed,
not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence,
work out your own salvation with fear and trembling;
for it is God who worketh in you both to will and to work, for His good pleasure.
“Work out your salvation with fear and trembling”—that is the subjective side. You have to work out your salvation. There is some denial of self, getting rid of sin, change of character, and all of that.
But here is the objective side: “For it is God who is at work in you.” He is doing that perfecting work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure. He has got a will, and He is going to carry it out by working it out in your life.
You say, “It is impossible for me to become a glorious son, sinless and all of that.” Well, it is only impossible unless you grab hold of the God of the impossible, because He will do it. He has decided to do it according to His good pleasure.
When we say the cross’s work, we mean the Holy Spirit working in you the salvation won at Calvary’s cross. This is the subjective side of salvation, and this has very much to do with this:
If any man would come after Me, let him deny himself,
and take up his cross daily, and follow Me.
As Jim said this morning—and it will be reiterated time and time again in your classes and everything—you cannot take up your cross and follow Him unless you have first come to Him and been saved.
Luke 9:23 is not a verse for non-Christians. It is a verse for Christians, and it involves and entails this working out of salvation.
Now we want to see the difference between His cross and yours. In Matthew 16, which is another version of Luke 9:23, Jesus said to His disciples:
If any man would come after Me,
let him deny himself,
and take up his cross,
and follow Me.
Notice that He does not say, “Take up My cross,” but, “Take up his cross.” So everyone has his own cross. Only as a Christian do you discover that, and it is necessary, if you want to follow Him, to pick that very specific cross up in your life.
There are three things in common between the two crosses—that is, Jesus’ cross and our cross.
Both are preceded by denial of self. Jesus went to the cross by denying Himself, with great sweat drops of blood, as He did in the Garden of Gethsemane. He denied Himself to take that cross, and so do you to take your cross.
Both are endured with suffering and death. Of course Jesus suffered and died. What you may not recognize is that, when you take up your cross, you also die. Something happens.
Both result in victorious life gained on the other side. Just as Jesus came out of the tomb in resurrection life, every time you die, something is brought to life. There is a further gain in your spiritual life.
But the two crosses are eternally different.
His cross was historic and physical. It was a wooden cross. It was objective; you could see that cross out there. Ours is subjective and spiritual. You cannot see your cross. It is not that piece of wood just outside the door, but it is a spiritual cross that has an effect in your life as that cross is worked out in you.
His cross He chose because He loves us. Our cross we choose because we love Him. So there is choice involved in it. “If any man would come after Me”—that is a subjunctive of choice—“he must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me.”
His cross was physically suffered with brutal anguish, as we all know. As we meditate on that, sometimes around the Lord’s table, how tremendous was His suffering. Our cross involves suffering meted out and measured by His loving hand. He never gives us more than we are able to handle, but He brings us to this crisis of the cross as we are able to bear it.
He gives us these crises as we are ready for them. He does not give them when we are not ready. But when we are ready, He metes it out to us and measures it.
In that sense, there is no comparison between His cross and our cross. The suffering we go through is, as Paul says, nothing to be compared with the great glory to be revealed in Christ in the future. How can we compare it with Christ’s suffering?
Finally, His cross was taken once for all. Hebrews keeps emphasizing that once for all He died for our sins. Our cross is taken daily as a Christian.
Now let us start back with an unbeliever. When an unbeliever is approaching the Lord, he comes by the word of the cross.
Paul says:
The word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing;
but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.
When Paul preached the gospel, he preached the word of the cross to those who would come to be saved. You remember what he said about that word of the cross. To the Greeks it was foolishness; to the Jews it was a scandal.
Why? The Greeks liked philosophy and logic. But where is the logic in this? God came down in the flesh and died for you. It is not logical. A god, if he were god, would never do something like that. But this God of love, whom we know, He did it. To the Greeks, that is foolishness.
To the Jews, it is a scandal, because the gospel—the word of the cross—says nobody can get to heaven by being righteous in themselves. They cannot. The law condemns everyone. The Jews say, “No, no, no. That is a scandal. That is scandalous.”
The word of the cross comes and confronts somebody. When we got saved, something confronted us.
When Nicodemus came to Jesus, he had a philosophical, religious question about the kingdom, most likely. He never got to the question, because Jesus gave him the born-again word of the cross: “Sorry, I cannot give you an answer, because until you are born of the Spirit, you cannot understand spiritual things.”
Nick says, “Hey, I have come to ask You a question. Why are You blocking the way?” He says, “I am sorry. You have got to come to the end of yourself if you are ever going to understand spiritual things. I am sorry. No answer for you.”
Or consider the woman at the well. She asks for water, and Jesus says, “Sure. Go call your husband.” Her sins immediately came to her mind, and she realized, as she confessed, that she had been married five times and was living with a sixth man. Jesus had her at the end of herself and could explain the word of His Messiahship.
Then there was the bedridden man at the pool. He says, “Will You heal me?” Jesus says, “Do you want to be healed?” Boom—He hit him with the word of the cross. He was not expecting that. He was expecting alms.
Jesus said, “Do you want to be healed?” He says, “What do You mean, do I want to be healed? Of course I want to be healed.” But the more he talked, the more it was that chatter that John has come to hate. That was a blathering ass.
Jesus was saying, “You see, you have been lying here all this time, and you have lost your faith that you are going to be healed. You are just sitting here waiting for a handout.” He came to the end of himself and realized that he did not have faith. Then Jesus said, “Okay, take up your bed. Believe in Me. Take up that bed.” And he was healed.
People flocked to Jesus. They wanted messages on the kingdom of God, but He always gave them parables, which were a blockage. They were mysteries—the kingdom of God packaged in a mystery. They were like, “No, no, no. Give us the plain truth. Do not give us these parabolic little mysteries.”
He says, “I am sorry. You need to understand mystery itself, including the mystery of the cross, before you can understand the kingdom.”
Why does the word of the cross seem to block those who try to come? Here is this poor soul trying to come, and he comes and Jesus says, “Sorry.” Here is that rich man Victor talked about. He is trying to come: “Please, what can I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus says, “Sorry, Charlie. Unless you sell everything, you cannot follow Me.”
Bingo. That was it. That is what did him in. He came to the end of himself right there. There is the blockage. The word of the cross says you have to deny something, or you cannot come in.
The kingdom door opens only after all grounds of self-righteousness and human wisdom have been removed. If you are trying to figure out how you are going to be saved by human wisdom, it is going to block you all the way from getting saved. You have to come as a child.
If you think you can be a Christian just by being good, fine, but you will never be a Christian that way. You will be blocked by the word of the cross, which says that until you give up all hope of self-righteousness, all hope of figuring it out, and simply come to Him, the door remains closed. That is the mystery of this cross.
When we come to the Lord, the cross is the door that leads to life. We have to come through this cross by denying ourselves. There is something that needs to be denied, and it is different in everybody’s life.
I wonder what it was in yours. Maybe it was your mind’s demand for answers: “I have got to have all the answers before I get saved.” Sorry, Charlie. You need to surrender your mind to God, and He will explain things to you with time.
Maybe it is a friendship that is taking you into darkness, and the Lord says, “You want to follow Me? You want to be saved? You have got to cut off that friend.”
I remember a man whose wife was saved. He wanted to be saved for such a long time, but he could not until the day he closed his bar. The Lord told him, “You need to leave that bar.” The day he closed it was the day he got saved.
There is a cost in terms of our old man. We are not really losing anything; we are just losing sin. But there is something to be denied.
Giving up your stubborn will: there are some people, especially kids who grew up in the church, who know everything about the gospel. They know how they should be saved and everything, but they are so stubborn. They are just not doing it just to not do it.
The Lord waits. He is not going to push. “All right, you do not want to be saved? Go ahead. Just be on the outside pretending you are saved.” But when you really give up your stubborn will, then you will be saved.
Our dear brother Stephen Kahn was just out on the West Coast sharing. He was raised in the home of a Methodist minister, so he knew the gospel backwards and forwards. Whenever he went to special meetings for teenagers, he knew more than the preachers, because he knew the gospel. His father had told him the whole thing.
He was probably fifteen or sixteen, and he still was not saved. He knew the gospel; he knew this and that. But most of the time he thought he was good enough to be a Christian. Then God’s conviction came, and for one year he knew he was the worst of sinners and could never be saved. He searched and struggled for ways to be saved.
Finally, one day in a conference meeting, he surrendered himself and his stubborn will and believed the Lord, who says in His Word that you are saved. He believed it, and that was the moment of his salvation.
It is a very unique thing to be raised in the church and not be saved. But there are some of you here who know exactly what that is talking about. There comes a day when you have to come out of the shadows and quit your fooling around. Mean business with the Lord.
There is a timetable in this thing. Some people think they have got forever, and you do not.
What happened to me at twenty years old? I did not have to give up much, but I tell you what I did have to give up: my pride.
I wanted to get saved. I heard the gospel, and I was getting quite convinced of it. But the one thing I would not do—it sounds like a silly thing—I would not get down on my knees and pray. I would close my eyes and pray. I did not even close my eyes and pray out loud, but I would not get down on my knees. That was my thing.
That is why, on April Fool’s Day, 1964, I got down on my knees. Immediately, a rush of the life and forgiveness of God came upon me. I began to weep like a baby.
I just took that knee-bending. That is silly. There are so many silly things that keep us away from being saved. If you are holding on to something silly, I just want to counsel you tonight: you need to come to Jesus.
That word of the cross is sitting there. He is not going to let you through just by saying, “Oh yeah, I love Jesus.” That is not going to work. What is He asking for?
The real issue behind this whole thing is: who is the Lord of our lives? That is the issue. Who is lord of your life? It is down to either you or Him. Forget even money and all this other stuff. Who is your master? Is it you, or is it Him?
All this other stuff is just smoke screens—friends, bad habits, sins, and all that. It is just because you are the master of your own life. So you come to this end of yourself, and you have to make that choice.
I ask the question because we have many new people here this year, and I do not know everybody here: have you come to the door of salvation? Have you come there? Have you heard Jesus saying, “Come unto Me,” and you want to come, but He is asking something from you?
I do not know if it is as simple as just coming out from hiding. I do not know if you have to ask forgiveness from your parents. There are many different things. That sin you are doing on the sly, sneaking around—that is the end.
Have you heard the Lord speaking to you: “Lay down your guilt and shame”? Some people do not know how to get out of it. I was not a religious kid. When I got saved at twenty, I got saved out of a background that was not religious. So I did not carry around a lot of guilt and shame.
Our brother Stephen Kahn carried that guilt and shame for more than a year before he finally laid it down and got saved. Maybe there is something self-righteous about having a lot of guilt and shame—feeling, “I am on the outside,” and all that.
Jesus says:
Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden,
and I will give you rest.
That is My business. That is My love. That is My salvation.
Let Jesus be your Master. Jesus is Lord. That was the confession they made in the early church before they were baptized: “Jesus is Lord.”
It meant a lot back there among the Gentiles. When they said Christos Kyrios—Christ is Lord—they were not saying Kaisar Kyrios—Caesar is Lord. Whenever Caesar came by in a parade, it was something like “Heil Hitler” back in World War II. It was, “Kaisar Kyrios. Caesar is Lord. Caesar is a god. Caesar is divine.”
But here was a Christian who said, “No. Christos Kyrios. Christ is Lord.” That is the confession that many went to the grave as martyrs saying.
The Bible says, “When is the day of salvation?” Today is the day of salvation. “No, no, no. I have got to wait until next week.” No, today is the day of your salvation. “Well, let me wait until the end of the conference.” No, today is the day of your salvation.
There is a funny story. There were two rock stars, and one of them got saved. This was a true story back in the 1960s. He was a pretty well-known rock star. His other rock-star friend came to his house one day, and he had not gotten saved.
The Christian guy said, “Now, are you saved?” He said, “No, no, no. I am not ready.” So the Christian rock star cooked supper for a minute and said, “Now, are you ready?” The man said, “No, no. I am not ready yet.” Then he cooked a little more, boiled the water, and said, “Are you ready now?”
After about the fourth time, the guy got it. You are never ready, but you are ready right now if you are willing to do it.
Randy Stonehill, one of the famous rock musicians, got saved there in Larry Norman’s apartment because he said, “Today is the day of your salvation. It is now. When the Spirit rushes on you, the time is now to do business with God.”
To come to Him, you must embrace His cross. You cannot take up your cross until you have embraced His cross.
The Moravians were a wonderful bunch of Lutherans in Germany who had quite a revival in the eighteenth century. They would always talk about coming in. This is the way they put it—of course, it was in German: “Come into the wounds of Jesus.”
That is what they would say: “Come into the wounds of Jesus.” He was wounded for you, and His scars remain forever. Come into His wounds and be saved.
Now you have come to the Lord. Praise God. We got through that first door. You denied yourself and embraced the cross. You simply say, “Jesus, I do not understand it. Jesus, I need help. Jesus, I believe You died for me.” That is what it means to embrace the cross: “I believe You died for me.”
When you come to the Lord, a big change takes place. We cannot possibly imagine the difference that changed from April Fool’s Day, 1964, to the second of April, 1964. I had no idea what had just happened, but I had become a new creation. Old things were passing away; new things were coming. Things were changing.
I felt grace, peace, forgiveness—boy, did I feel forgiveness. I never felt so good. It was wonderful.
But from the day you are saved, the cross starts to deal mysteriously with the residual issues that need changing. You have a little residue from your old life that the cross begins to work on very simply. This first phase of the cross is trying to remove some of those residual things.
I had a good friend I used to witness with a lot. He was a former alcoholic—a very bad alcoholic at that. He was just a wretched guy. He had gotten in a fight one time and had a knife scar from his cheek all the way down here. It was a big, ugly, wide scar.
He said, “Every day I look in the mirror and I think of my old life, and I thank Jesus He saved me.”
People asked him, “What happened when you got saved? You were an alcoholic.”
He said, “Yeah, but when I got saved, Jesus changed my wanter. I used to want to drink. Now I no longer wanted to drink, and so Jesus delivered me of it.”
He found himself free from alcohol within a couple of weeks, but he said, “It is because Jesus changed my wanter.”
Now, you realize you have a wanter in you? What does that wanter really say? Remember, before you were saved, whenever we heard a command, we automatically wanted to disobey.
Your parents have been using that on you for years—reverse psychology. They say, “Stay in, stay in.” You say, “No, I want to go out.” They say, “Okay, go on out.” “No, I want to stay in.” “Okay, stay in.”
All you have to hear is the word of God. Paul says, “When I heard the word of God say, ‘Do not covet,’ immediately I said, ‘I need a new Cadillac. I need a big-screen television.’” All he heard was “Do not covet,” and he had to covet everything.
Whenever we saw authority, we automatically wanted to rebel. We have one of those bumper stickers: “Question authority.” Well, they use those in the United States. You Canadians are free from all this stuff.
Whenever we saw a pure, religious person, we basically did not like them. There was just something in us. “Wow, that person is like a Christian. Gives me the creepy crawlers.” It is because we used to be sons of disobedience.
Ephesians 2:1-2 says:
And you were dead through your trespasses and sins,
wherein ye once walked according to the course of this world,
according to the prince of the powers of the air,
of the spirit that now worketh in the sons of disobedience.
Everybody who is not a believer is a son of disobedience. They do not realize it, but basically they are disobeying everything that is righteous and true.
We used to be rebels like Satan. “You are like your father, the devil.” “What do You mean? My father is not the devil.” There used to be a comedian on television who claimed that he did things because “the devil made me do it.” “I am a nice guy, but the devil made me do that.”
Yes, we were rebels just like him, and we used to hate anything godly. As Jesus told His disciples, “If the world hates you, you know that it hath hated Me before it hated you.” The world hates godliness. There is something there that causes fear and judgment.
As soon as you believe, you must deny yourself in three ways. The first big deal when we become a Christian is our identity crisis.
To obey and follow God, we first have to deny our old rebellious identity—all that old “sons of disobedience” stuff. You do not always realize this as a new Christian, but actually you want to obey, and actually you do want to submit to authority. That is your inner being—what we call your spirit. But your soul is still like an old renegade, and that is why it has to be dealt with in these matters of self-denial.
Peter says:
Seeing ye have purified your souls in your obedience to the truth.
Obeying the truth involves a purifying process, including a denial of things from the past.
By this we know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments.
There is a wanter changed inside of you that wants to keep the commandments. We will have to talk about that next time, but there it is. It is in you now.
Jesus said:
Ye are My friends, if ye do the things which I command you.
Obedience is an issue.
In the issue of identity, the question is: to whom do you belong—the world or the Lord? Here, you can wear Christian T-shirts. But whether you do that back at college, junior high, or high school—aha—that is another question.
Unrenewed stinking thinking includes some of those lies we still believe. God says you are a new creation in Christ Jesus. You have been saved; you are a new creation. But you say, “Yeah, yeah, you know what? I still feel like the old creation. I still like my old worldly friends. I like the old habits.”
One of the things about not being a Christian is that you can get up whatever time you want in the morning. But if you are a new Christian, like Jim Boggs, you have got to get up early. Self-denial involves a little discipline there.
Sometimes we think, “I do not feel very Christian.” That is old-man thinking, by the way. It is not the new man’s thought.
The Word says, “I live in Christ,” but you say, “I feel much more at home in the world.” Well, do you? The fact of the matter is, you do not. Your new creation does not feel more at home in the world, but you are used to that old way.
We come up with deals like this: “Hopefully I can walk in a way that is neither too religious nor too worldly—the perfect balance. I will be the first Christian who is able to do this.”
But praise God, the cross takes us through our identity crisis by a little thing that is niggling in us. Part of this wonderful mystery is that God, by the Spirit, is renewing your mind.
That means you are learning that the old lies are lies, and the truth is quite different. As we lay our lives down as a living sacrifice, as we know from Romans 12:2:
And be not fashioned according to this world:
but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.
It is very important that our minds are renewed to the truth and stop believing those lies. The Spirit can do that in you if you will let Him and lay down your life so He can.
In Ephesians 4, as it talks about putting off the old man and putting on the new, it says:
And that ye be renewed in the spirit of your mind,
and put on the new man.
You are a new creation in Christ, but how do you put it on? Something has to happen in the spirit of your mind. In the depth of your mind, a revelation needs to take place, and you realize that you really are a new man.
Here you are, Christian: how do you really realize that you are completely changed, that you are a new creation in Christ, and that the old is really passing away and new things are coming in?
I hope you will stand in that reality and not stand in your old sense of defeat and worldliness, wondering where you are going. Let your mind be renewed. The Word of God is so valuable in renewing your mind to understand who you really are.
The first step in a crisis-of-identity breakthrough is baptism. Have you been baptized?
Baptism is basically saying no to your former life and yes to life in Christ. Baptism is a direct obedience, a public confession, and a testimony that the King, Jesus, has captured your heart.
What a great testimony. I love the baptisms we have there in Flushing. Somebody comes up and stands there, and you see such a change in their life. Baptism is so important.
The reason we get baptized in water—plunged underneath—is to show that we have died to our whole way of life and have been buried. That is why you get held under the water for a long, long time.
Then you get resurrected back up, and you come up out of the water. If you have been under the water for thirty seconds, what do you say? “Thank God!” You are alive. Praise God.
To me, it is a shame that we do these in little pools, huddled in our little churches somewhere. We have got this little basement down there, you know. It is much better if we do it in the ocean.
I meet with a bunch of folks in Manhattan, and we do not have any fancy-schmancy building. We baptize people out on Coney Island, out in the ocean. There are hundreds of people around saying, “What the—?” They are watching, and somebody gets plunged down.
Our brother Albert here—Albert the Baptist over here—has plunged a number of the guys there in Coney Island drink. Sometimes we get pressed into baptizing people in a bathtub, but that is another story.
The testimony is there. It would be nice if it were seen down at the river, like it was in the early church, and people could see, “Wow, this is really something.”
For the person doing it, that obedience brings you out on the other side. I was saved, and probably two months later I was baptized. I remember the baptism because I came out of the water and felt, “Wow, this is really new life.” It is a good thing.
But it demands some denial of self. Some people just do not like to get their hair wet. Some people get baptized like this. Some people are afraid they are going to slip and fall or make a fool out of themselves.
Listen, deny yourself. This is such a small denial of yourself to be a testimony for the Lord. It is time to be baptized. If you are a believer and you really believe, now is the time. It is time to quit fooling around.
People waste six months or a year of their lives because we progress by a denial of self and obedience. The more you hold up on these obediences, the more you stall your own Christian life. Stop stalling. Be obedient.
Baptism is your testimony before the Lord and the church. Wonderful. The Lord sees it, people in heaven see it, angels see it, and whatever else is up there sees it—yeah, the cosmonauts, everybody.
After baptism, the cross continues to work in this matter of identity. We have got to get this identity through to the other side. You have come through the Red Sea, but you still think you are a slave in Egypt. But no, you are not. You are a child of God now, in a whole new covenant.
The second thing is testifying among God’s people that you have been redeemed.
Let the redeemed of the Lord say so,
whom He hath redeemed from the hand of the adversary,
and gathered out of the lands,
from the east and from the west,
from the north and from the south.
That includes everybody here: east, west, north, and south—unless you are from up, in which case you are already gone.
In Psalm 107, there is a wonderful story. It pictures four rascals, just like you and me, who got redeemed and delivered by the Lord. Now they are asked to go before the assembly and say so: “The Lord has redeemed you.”
The first rascal is the depressed loner. There are some people who say, “Oh, poor me. Oh, my circumstances are so bad. I have not got any friends. I am just…” The poor old loner ends up all alone. Guess what? They have self-fulfilled their own prophecy.
They are starving spiritually, but then it says that in the midst of their sickness they cried out to the Lord, and the Lord delivered them from their loneliness and brought them to a city where they could fellowship with the people of God.
Now it is time to give thanks to the Lord for delivering you from your lonely, lonely fog. Let the redeemed of the Lord say so.
The second man is the angry rebel. There are some people who are just angry. They are angry and stubborn. The Word of God says this, and they say, “I am not going to do that.”
They end up in chains—the chains and prison of anger and rebellion. They cannot get loose until they cry out to the Lord. The Lord delivers them from their chains and sets them free.
What is the first thing an angry person who has been stubborn and repents and comes to the Lord should do? Go into the assembly and say, “I have been redeemed. I was chained in my stubbornness and my pride, and then God delivered me. I want to thank Him for redeeming me. The Lord is good.” That is his testimony.
The third man is the foolish wanderer. Some people are just foolish. They do stupid things, get into trouble, and are willing to try anything. “I will try a little of that.” Next thing you know, they are in trouble. “Hey, I am just a good guy.” “Yeah, you are a good guy—you are stupid.”
This man in Psalm 107 was so foolish that he burned himself out. He burned out his emotions. He was an adventure seeker, heart-bound, doing stuff out of his emotions all the time. You know where that gets you, right? It gets you bound and gets you sick.
In his sickness, he cried out to the Lord, and the Lord delivered him. Are you that person? I do not know. Are you the angry rebel? I do not know. Whatever you are, when you get saved, you need to let the redeemed of the Lord know that you were delivered from the hand of the enemy.
The fourth man is the self-centered achiever. That is a picture of me. These are people doing business, so self-confident: “I have got my whole life together. I have got the whole plan laid.” So the Lord takes them out in a ship where they are tossed up and down and about to die. They lose all confidence, come to their wits’ end, and finally cry out to the Lord.
The Lord says, “You see? You are not such a big shot.” The Lord says, “Now you are My little baby. When you get back to port, go tell everybody that you are a little baby, and you thought you were a big shot.”
Now, which one of these are you? Of course, there are other fools too, but this is good enough. The idea is, if you have been redeemed and delivered, say so. It seals it up.
The saints now know that you are a fool. Ah, they will watch out. The saints know that you are an angry rebel. The next time they see you moving that way, they say, “Ah, ah, ah, ah. Remember what you have been redeemed from?”
This helps our identity: to understand how great is His redemption and the things we have been delivered from. In every one of those four cases, they said, “I cried out to the Lord, and He delivered me.” Then it gives a different result each time.
You might look up that psalm. It is a wonderful psalm, especially if you are a scoundrel like one of these four.
The cross works to conform our identity before the world. You have denied yourself and been baptized. That is a testimony before God and the saints. Then you have denied yourself by standing up and saying, “I have been redeemed and delivered by the Lord.” It is a humbling thing to say that, but it is awfully good for you.
Now, how does the Lord secure your identity before the world? You are a witness now. You are a witness.
But ye are an elect race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation,
a people for God’s own possession,
that ye may show forth the excellencies of Him
who called you out of darkness into His marvellous light.
This is why you have been made these wonderful things: that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.
There are some people in Romania playing an accordion. Anybody here play accordion? We have a sister in Manhattan who plays accordion. This is amazing.
She goes down to the old folks’ home. We have an old folks’ home full of Cantonese-speaking Chinese, and we have a number of brothers and sisters who are Mandarin-speaking Chinese. They go down there with the accordion, sing Mandarin songs, and all the Cantonese people go, “Oh yeah, hoya, hoya.”
There is some kind of communication going on. I am not sure what, but there we are.
Now listen, here is the deal. You are a Christian. Here is the fact: you are a witness. Maybe you are a lousy witness, but people are looking at you and saying, “Hey, what is the matter with them?” Or you are a good witness, and people say, “Oh, this person really loves the Lord.” But you are a witness.
It is important that you witness, especially during the young time, because that is the time people are most open to hearing the truth of the testimony in your life. You are at a prime time to be a witness.
Do you think witnessing involves a denial of self? Oh, yeah. That is why you have a workshop.
Here is the upside of witnessing: witnessing aligns you with the Lord. The more you witness, the more firmly you feel that you are a Christian.
As you witness, sometimes you will find antagonism from the world. But speaking up for the Lord develops gifts within you to be used later in the church. If you will be faithful as a witness, you will learn many important lessons that come out in spades later on in church life.
But if you are not going to be a witness, then you are not really standing up for the Lord yet. Too many of you are in that Christian cocoon, just afraid to speak up.
There is no mechanical mechanism for witnessing. It is a matter of a heart that loves Jesus finding something to say about the Lord.
Of course, you have to deny your self-image. Some of you are hipsters. You need to be a Christian, not a hipster.
Some of you are “plastics,” as they are called, or mean girls. Ah, we have got some mean girls in here. You have got that identity where you never smile, where the boys see you and cower away. Why do you not get over that? Just be a Christian.
Of course, you can wear your geek costume. I actually have one of these shirts with the four packages for the pens. I think it is wonderful being a geek. Maybe it is better to be a Christian than a geek, right? I do not know. What do you think? What is your real identity here?
There are the scenesters. Scenesters are always into the in thing. “What is the latest thing? I have got to wear the thing. What is the latest bag?” “The latest bag is a no-bag, a ladies’ bag, a rubber bag”—whatever it is. “I am into it. I am a scenester.”
Emo versus prep—I have no idea what that is. Somehow, I take it the girl on the left must be preppy, but an emo, I am not quite sure. “It is goth light.” Oh, okay.
Why not just be a Christian? I do not know why we love these kinds of things so much. We all like to be something, even an outsider.
“Are you an outsider?” “That is my identity. I am an outsider. I am not a Christian. I am not a non-Christian. I am not in a group. I am not a jock. I am not this. I am nothing. I am an outsider.” That is an identity, is it not?
Or there is the rude boy. Look at the way he is dressed up, man. This guy has got attitude. Some of you guys have some attitude—I can see it. How about having the Christ-itude? How about conveying Christ more than having an attitude?
Then there is the worst: a crazy-acting CBC Christian. This is an identity in itself. Fortunately, you do not know one of them. I took it from another fellowship, do not you? Actually, these are ABCs, but that is another point.
Listen, I know there are no CBCs acting like this. Come on—crazy acting, crazy. You can tell them from a mile off. These are crazy Christians. They hang out together. They actually hang out on each other together.
Be a Christian and talk to somebody else in there. We Germans need a good witness who is willing to break the pack and speak.
We are tempted to be ashamed of our faith. Isn’t it interesting? Paul had to tell Timothy:
Therefore be not ashamed of the testimony of our Lord,
nor of me His prisoner:
but suffer hardship with the gospel.
Some people think, “Ah, yeah, this Christian thing. I know I am a Christian. I have to go because my mom and dad make me go on Sunday. But everybody thinks I just drop off the planet. All my friends think that on Sunday I am just suddenly missing.”
“But I cannot really talk about being a Christian because it is not scientific. I mean, the guy down in Kentucky says the world is four thousand years old, and he has built a museum to prove it.”
Or, “Christianity is too exclusive. I believe people get saved by all kinds of roads. You do not need to get saved only through Jesus.” You have been brainwashed by your education if that is what you believe.
Or, “It is too dogmatic. Christianity says you have got to wear head coverings and a whole lot of stuff. Man, I could never tell my friends.”
Or, “I am ashamed of my parents. Dad, please, do not go with me to the mall.” You have got to admit, some of your parents dress really funky. But you know what? They are part of you, and you are part of them. Do not be ashamed. You will find out who your friends really are, and some of your best friends dress kind of strange.
The verdict of the cross is clear regarding your identity. Your identity is bound up with the Lord and all the saints. Your new identity is that you are the Lord’s, and you are with all the saints.
Do not be ashamed of any of them. Do not be ashamed of those who are awkward. Do not be ashamed of those who have different troubles and struggles. Do not be ashamed. You are with them. You are all together.
Jesus said:
For whosoever shall be ashamed of Me and of My words,
of him shall the Son of man be ashamed,
when He cometh in His own glory.
Just four questions regarding what we have talked about.
Have you entered through His cross into eternal life? You know the gospel. I am sure, if you are here, you know the gospel. But have you called Him Lord? Have you embraced His cross? Have you stood up and denied yourself that final thing that is holding you back?
Have you denied yourself by identifying with the Lord through baptism? These are not optional things. They are very important moments in our lives where we identify with the Lord.
Have you spoken up in the assembly? I cannot believe how much you are able to talk when you are among yourselves, but how difficult it is for you to speak up in the assembly. Let the redeemed of the Lord say so.
Have you witnessed to your school friends? Do they even know you are a Christian? Are you hiding that badly? They should know. There should be no doubt. I am not saying you have to preach to them every day, but they should really know where you stand.
It is so important for your life that you deny your old identity and be found in Christ by standing by faith in who Christ is and what He has done.
That is all for tonight, except we are going to have a prayer here. Tomorrow we will look at some of the effects of the cross working in our church life.
Now, Father, we want to come to You before we finish, because we know the message is done, but Your work continues. We know the work of the cross is working, and that some who are here need the cross—that separating line—and need to go from death into life, confessing Christ as their Lord and Savior.
Now, if you are here and you know that this is your time, and you want to cross over, embrace the cross of Jesus Christ. Embrace His death for you and His love for you. Make it personal—not just objective, but something personal in your life.
Before this week is over, you need to cross that line and make it known. You need to tell somebody in your dorm room when you are having devotions. Tell somebody, or even speak up here, or at the testimony time Thursday night. But you need to cross that line.
You will not be able to do it unless you deny yourself, embrace His cross, and come to Him.
Then some are here and they are saved, and their parents know it, but they have never stepped up in baptism. This is an adult move. You need to deny yourself, stand up, and be counted: “I have died with Christ, and I live a new life in Him.”
We need to praise Him in the assembly. Are you one who has staggered with self-consciousness and shyness over this thing? It is over. If you want to move forward, you have heard it: unless you deny yourself and take up your cross, you will not be able to. This is one of those movements that moves you forward.
Let the redeemed of the Lord say so.
Then there is this matter of being a witness. We often come to the end of ourselves in this thing, and it is not necessarily easy. But it is so edifying in your life when you have stood for the Lord, because you will find, in some mysterious way, that He stands with you.
Have you committed your heart to standing up for the Lord where you live and where you go to school? These are the beginning moments of self-denial, but they will determine the forward progress of your Christian life.
Lord, please help everybody, as they sense Your Spirit convincing them to come to You, to deny themselves. Let it be real in our lives, even this week. Let there be those who are exposed in the light as children of God.
Lord, we pray that anybody here who is not saved would come to embrace this precious Jesus, our Savior and our Lord, and recognize that they do not want to live another day without our Lord and Savior.
Lord, do a work—a full work, a complete work, a wonderful work—in our midst in these days. We do pray in Jesus’ precious name. Amen.