Jesus Is Our Example
A Myriad of Beauty: A Look at Who Jesus Is • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Series Intro:
How many of you have noticed that most people act differently in different situations or contexts? Like how we act in front of our parents is usually different than how we act among our friends. How we are at work or at school is often very different than how we are at home.
Some might view this as hypocrisy, but I think it’s only hypocritical if the way you behave in a situation is counter to how you actually see yourself - like if you are doing something just to fit in but you know it’s not really you.
But because we are multifaceted people - because we have a myriad of sides to us, it is natural to present ourselves different in different situations. And, in reading the gospels, I see that’s what Jesus did - he presents himself differently in different situations.
To some people, he presents himself as a healer. To others, a teacher. To others a rebel fighting the religious culture of his day. There is a myriad of beautiful aspects of Jesus and all of them are true. So, for this teaching series we are going to look at six different aspects of who Jesus is as we head towards Easter.
Last week, our friend David Booker, started this series by looking at how Jesus is our confidence. We learned that we can be confident in our faith because of who Jesus is and that confidence plays out in trust and faith.
Today, we are going to look at how Jesus is our example. When I was preparing this series, a number of Bible verses about Jesus as our example that came to mind.
1 Follow God’s example, therefore, as dearly loved children 2 and walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
15 I have given you an example to follow. Do as I have done to you.
21 For God called you to do good, even if it means suffering, just as Christ suffered for you. He is your example, and you must follow in his steps.
But I didn’t choose any of those. I chose the passage in Mark that Violet read today because although it doesn’t explicitly teach us that Jesus is our example, it gives a command from Jesus that we see him live out. Jesus doesn’t call us to do anything he wouldn’t do. Every command he gives us is one that he obeyed first.
So in the passage from Mark, there at three things that Jesus commands for us to do that he also lived out - showing us that he is our example and that by following that example, we become more fully alive.
1. Deny yourself
1. Deny yourself
To deny yourself is to deny your own selfish ambitions and desires and submit your life to God’s will.
Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane
34 He told them, “My soul is crushed with grief to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.”
Mark 14:36a (NLT)
36 “Abba, Father,” he cried out, “everything is possible for you. Please take this cup of suffering away from me.
Jesus wasn’t thrilled with the idea of crucifixion. He was terrified. He knew exactly how excruciating it would be. So he prayed to God, asking if there was any other way.
But ultimately, he denied what he wanted and surrendered his will to the Fathers.
“Yet I want your will to be done, not mine.”
What will it mean for us to deny ourselves, like Jesus did?
We deny our desire for self-preservation
Through serving people who aren’t easy to serve
Through sharing Jesus’ love with others, even though it terrifies you.
To show up and be present, even when you don’t want to. (Playing with Kids after working at Roof Centre).
We deny the things that might make us feel good for the moment, but ultimately disconnect us from Jesus.
1 Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, 2 fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
We say no to allowing our anger to explode on others.
We say no to sexual immorality
We say no to the unhealthy pursuit of wealth where we never have enough.
We say no to unhealthy coping devices like drinking, drugs, or emotional eating.
We say no to everything that hurts our relationship with Jesus.
But why does Jesus command us to deny ourselves? Is it because God doesn’t want us to be happy? Is God anti-fun? Far from it.
Our world’s definition of happiness is often rooted in self-pleasure. But God’s definition of happiness is rooted in holiness. We deny our selfish ambitions and hedonistic pleasures, not because God wants us to suffer, but because God wants what’s best for us.
True happiness is found when we walk intimately with God. Our self-denial is rooted in His amazing love for us.
In the garden of Gethsemane, and on the cross, Jesus denied himself and he gave his life for the glory of God and for your salvation. And he commands us to do the same. He lived out what he commands of us, setting us an example for us to live out.
2. Take up your cross
2. Take up your cross
It’s interesting that Jesus used this figure of speech even before his own crucifixion was on the radar.
In the Jewish world, the normal means of executing criminals would be by stoning. In the Roman world, the norm is death by decapitation, by being burned alive, or thrown to the beasts in the games. Crucifixion was reserved for slaves, thieves and rebels. It was a political statement to crucify someone -
a humiliating way of showing power.
Despite this, public executions by crucifixion were common. The condemned would have to carry the cross beam through the city up to the crucifixion site, where it would be attached to the vertical beam.
So what is Jesus saying when he says we are to take up our cross?
Jesus is saying that we, his disciples, need to be willing to join the ranks of the despised and doomed. We must be ready to deny ourselves even to the point of giving our lives.
And Jesus did this literally.
Falsely accused of blasphemy, Jesus was sentenced to death by the High Priest and the upper echelon of Pharisees because Jesus threatened their power structure as he challenged their views of God and the kingdom. So they manipulated the Romans into killing him for them.
He was arrested, interrogated and beaten. He was whipped repeatedly by a whip that had 9 leather strands with glass and bone tied in to it in order to rip his back to shreds. They made a crown out of spiky thorns, shoved it on his head, put a robe on his bleeding back and mocked him and hit him.
He was forced to carry his crossbeam through the city, while people stared at his bloody and broken body. When he couldn’t carry it anymore because he was so weakened from his torture, the soldiers forced another person to finish carrying for him to the site of his death.
They nailed his hands and feet to the cross, erected it and left him there for 6 hours in agony and he died. And through his death, Jesus changed everything.
24 He personally carried our sins in his body on the cross so that we can be dead to sin and live for what is right. By his wounds you are healed.
Jesus literally took his cross in obedience to God the Father and out of love for you and for me.
And he calls us to figuratively do the same. We are to be willing to give our lives for the sake of Jesus. We are to endure the scorn and shame that can come when we publicly declare that Jesus is our Lord and Saviour. We are to prioritize following God’s commands OVER our own desires.
Jesus commands us to take up our cross. That might feel impossible if he hadn’t first done it himself. But He set us an example to follow.
3. Follow me
3. Follow me
My dad was a bit of an outdoorsman. He loved hunting and fishing. I remember, when I was a young child, following my dad when he went hunting. It was winter and the snow was deep.
Being significantly shorter than him, soon my dad was 100 ft. ahead of me and I was getting tired dragging my feet through the snow that was mid calf for me. So I stepped into my dad’s footprint and then kept hopping to the next one. Because he had gone ahead of me, the way was much easier when I followed him.
Jesus wants us to walk in his footsteps - to follow him. In Greek, the word used for “follow” indicates a continuation with no end. We start following and we keep going forever. Every day we have to get up and choose to follow Jesus.
But what does it mean to follow Jesus?
1. It means to obey his commands.
15 “If you love me, obey my commandments.
2. It means to become like him in your character.
6 Those who say they live in God should live their lives as Jesus did.
3. It means to prioritize your life around the things that Jesus prioritized.
Did Jesus prioritize time spent in prayer? Yes. Did Jesus prioritize the Word of God? Yes. Did Jesus prioritize helping people? Yes. Whatever Jesus prioritized, you should prioritize.
To follow Jesus is to pattern your life after his example.
But why should we pattern our lives after Jesus? Why should we follow his example?
Because he lived a life worth following.
He cared for the “least of these” - the poor, the lepers, the prostitutes, and the tax-collectors.
He fought for economic and racial justice and abhorred it when spiritual leaders took advantage of people.
He treated women as equal with men in a culture that oppressed them.
He spent significant time in prayer and reflection with God his Father.
He loved his enemies - even those who crucified him.
Jesus forgave Peter after he was betrayed.
Jesus lived out God’s commands perfectly, without ever sinning.
What Jesus commands of us, Jesus did. And that’s why he’s such a great example for us to follow.
Conclusion - 3 stories
Story # 1
In 1986, Alan Barnhart was 25 and planning to go into business with his brother. An evangelical Christian, he wondered what Scripture had to say about the profits he hoped to make. So he combed the Bible for whatever advice it had to offer about money. That’s when he came across verses like this:
“The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil…”
“Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth…”
“It is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven…”
No matter where he turned, it seemed to him that Scripture was sending a very clear warning: Money can be dangerous.
“I read all these verses, and I thought: ‘I want to be good in business, and I’m competitive,’” Barnhart says. “But I didn’t want to make a lot of money if doing so would damage my life. And I could see where it really could.”
So Alan and his brother Eric decided to do something unusual: They vowed to cap their income, earning no more than the middle-class members of their Memphis, Tennessee, Sunday school class did, and give much of their company’s profits to charity. In their first year of business, they gave away $50,000—more than Alan’s salary.
Now, more than 30 years later, the results are even more tremendous: The Barnharts oversee a $250 million crane and rigging company, and they’ve donated nearly $100 million of its profits to charity. Moreover, in 2007 they decided to go even further. They gave the entire company away. Though they still run its daily operations, the National Christian Foundation (NCF) now owns Barnhart Crane & Rigging. The brothers will never reap its accrued value; they kept none of it.
“That’s one of the things that make Alan and Eric so rare: they decided to give it all away,” says NCF president David Wills. “That was their wealth. They didn’t have three other companies. That was it.”
For the Barnharts, they chose to deny themselves a lot of money in order to honour God and serve the kingdom.
Story #2
Chuck Colson, in his book “Kingdoms in Conflict,” tells the true story of some students who took up their cross. In 1984, the government of Poland ordered all crucifixes be removed from classroom walls, just as they had been banned in factories, hospitals, and other public institutions.
Catholic bishops attacked the ban that had stirred waves of anger and resentment all across Poland. Ultimately the government relented, insisting that the law remain on the books, but agreeing not to press for removal of the crucifixes, particularly in the schoolrooms.
But one zealous Communist school administrator in Garwolin decided that the law was the law. So one evening, he had seven large crucifixes removed from lecture halls where they had hung since the school's founding in the twenties. Days later, a group of parents entered the school and hung more crosses. The administrator promptly had these taken down as well.
The next day two-thirds of the school's six hundred students staged a sit-in. When heavily armed riot police arrived, the students were forced into the streets. Then they marched, crucifixes held high, to a nearby church where they were joined by twenty-five hundred other students from nearby schools for a morning of prayer in support of the protest. Soldiers surrounded the church. But the pictures from inside of students holding crosses high above their heads flashed around the world. So did the words of the priest who delivered the message to the weeping congregation that morning. "There is no Poland without a cross."
These students literally took up their crosses to ensure that the symbol of their faith wasn’t removed from their schools.
Story # 3
Erik Cooper and his wife were accompanying thirteen students and one brave teacher from Covenant Christian High School on the adventure of a lifetime on a learning trip to Africa
Their goal was to expose the students to the culture, history, and spiritual challenges of a region where the “tectonic plates” of Islam and Christianity are colliding every day.
They visited a Mosque and talked with the Imam.
They witnessed the call to prayer.
They met a persecuted pastor and his family (their church has been burned to the ground 3 times).
They heard stories of how God has manifest His power over the witch doctors in the community.
They bartered for fruits and vegetables in the the local market.
They ate food from street vendors.
They learned the history and and experienced the culture of the area.
And they interacted with the Business as Mission workers that were utilizing the marketplace to proclaim Jesus and plant a church in this community which was 99.9% Islamic.
They found themselves in the living room of one of the worker’s homes listening to the testimony of a local Muslim man who had just given his life to Christ three months earlier. .
Since the day he chose to follow Jesus,
His father-in-law forcibly removed his pregnant wife from his home saying he only gave her to him as a Muslim man, not as a Christian. He has not seen or spoken to her since.
His mother and brothers locked him out of his home and took all of his possessions. He was left with only the clothes on his back.
His brothers threatened to stone him, a warning that could still become reality.
And yet here he was, in a room full of high school students, sharing his newfound faith in Jesus. “They have taken everything from me,” he shared. “What else can they possibly do?”
So with conviction in his heart and joy on his face, they walked with him from the house to an inlet of the Indian Ocean and witnessed his baptism! As if that wasn’t enough, the persecuted pastor we met just days before was the one who baptized him.
The man gave up everything to follow Jesus.
CONCLUDE
In our passage, Jesus calls his disciples - he calls us - to deny themselves, take up their cross and follow Jesus. We can do this because Jesus has set us an example for us to follow and he has given us the Holy Spirit to empower us to live like him.
This challenge is hard. It goes against our own nature which puts self above all. But something amazing happens when we do - we find that in self-denial and in following Jesus there is life for our souls.
35 For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it.
Jesus gave up his life when on the cross so that you and I can, by faith in him, become fully alive. In that act, Jesus became our Saviour. But to be fully alive means that we also make Jesus our Lord - the one who leads us - who directs us. That’s called discipleship and to be a disciple of Jesus means to become more like him.
So church, what areas of your life do you need to make a change in so that your life more resembles Jesus?
It’s time to die to ourselves and live for him for He is our example and our souls will find life when we pattern our lives after him.
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