Leaving My Life at the Cross
What I Leave at the Cross • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Why would I give up anything I like about my life?
For it is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God’s will, than for doing evil.
Why should a Christian accept suffering?
Today’s Riddle: Everyone is going to die. And everyone is going to live. The order is up to you.
In that day the Lord God of hosts
called for weeping and mourning,
for baldness and wearing sackcloth;
and behold, joy and gladness,
killing oxen and slaughtering sheep,
eating flesh and drinking wine.
“Let us eat and drink,
for tomorrow we die.”
The Lord of hosts has revealed himself in my ears:
“Surely this iniquity will not be atoned for you until you die,”
says the Lord God of hosts.
The world chooses to enjoy every pleasure of this life now and then die later. “You only live once.”
If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.
Why are we in danger every hour? I protest, brothers, by my pride in you, which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I die every day! What do I gain if, humanly speaking, I fought with beasts at Ephesus? If the dead are not raised, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.”
If life cannot follow death, then there is no reason not to live it up now.
For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit,
Christ showed us that life can follow death.
in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison,
because they formerly did not obey, when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water.
The people of Noah’s age chose to live it up and die in the flood.
Noah chose to die to the world and then live.
Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ,
who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him.
Baptism is a reenacting of the gospel: the death, burial, and resurrection.
Baptism is also a proclamation of our faith that life comes after death.
“Die before you die; there’s no chance after.” - C.S. Lewis
Accept the cross of self-denial, and begin the life that is only in Jesus.