In the sermon titled 'Take Up Your Cross' by Scott Brown, the core message revolves around the biblical call to deny oneself, take up one's cross, and follow Jesus, as highlighted in Mark 8:34. Scott Brown emphasizes that following Jesus requires a radical rejection of personal autonomy and self-will in favor of embracing the teachings and path laid out by Christ. The cross, a symbol of Christianity, signifies a call to die to oneself and live for Christ, resulting in a life characterized by spiritual abundance and joy. The sermon contrasts this with societal messages that promote self-indulgence and autonomy, labeling them as satanic. Brown explains that true discipleship involves a daily commitment to crucify personal desires and follow Jesus, leading to a transformative life and everlasting joy. Throughout the sermon, Brown uses biblical examples and teachings to illustrate the significance of the cross in a believer's life and the ultimate value of the soul.

Please open to mark 8 Beginning at verse 34 and I'll read Through 38 the focus of the sermon this morning will be on this one verse 34 in the afternoon. I'll finish it up the rest of these verses verse 34 mark 8 When he had called the people to himself with his disciples also, he said to them, whoever desires to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the Gospels will save it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?

For whoever is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation of him the Son of Man also will be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his father with his holy angels. Let's pray. Oh father you have declared to us the everlasting, inestimable value of a soul. We pray that you would help us to understand exactly what you're saying to us and have said to hundreds of millions throughout the years who have adored or hated these words here. Help us to adore them.

Amen. Please be seated. Continuing in our series on the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ, this is the seventh message on this. We preach Christ crucified. It is the power of God and the salvation.

It is the sweetest and most helpful doctrine. And we've been trying to define what the cross says. The writer of Hebrews says that the blood speaks. What does it say? And We've recognized that the word cross comes from the Latin word crux, which means the central thing, the most important thing, the most pivotal thing.

And here in Christianity, we see the cross as the symbol of our faith. And of course, every philosophy, the great ones in religions, they have their symbols. Islam has the crescent and the moon. Nazi Germany had the swastika. The rainbow flag is the flag of the sexual revolution.

And the cross sends a message of shame and loss and death and censure and killing and destruction and abuse. And the central idea of this text is, deny yourself and take up your cross and follow me." And so the cross says to you, to me, deny yourself and follow someone else. You take up that cross, it's your cross, and what does it mean? Well I'm going to spend the next minutes here trying to define what that means but it means to give up your autonomy. It means to turn away from your sin and to deny your own ways.

We all know that that runs completely contrary to the entertainers and our own hearts. Most movie makers send the message that you should follow your heart. The Bible tells you differently. The Bible says to mortify the flesh and to deny yourself. Autonomy.

Well maybe you haven't run across that word in your education yet, but I hope you young children learn the word autonomy today, maybe for the first time. Autonomy is doing your own thing. It's independence. It is following your own thoughts in your own ways, and creating your life out of your own emotions and your own culture. But the problem with following your own ways and seeking your own pleasure is the erosion of happiness.

It is the fabrication of pleasure. It is the theft of the wholeness of the soul. And this passage here makes it very clear that your soul has Everlasting value it's very valuable to God but God through his spirit in the new birth opens the gates of refreshment and forgiveness through the power of the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ, pouring his spirit of love and joy and peace and patience and kindness into the soul of the believer. This is the consolation of the Scriptures that the Apostle Paul speaks about. It's the everlasting joy that just accelerates as your life goes on and increases exponentially in hyperspace in heaven.

And this text speaks of the significance of the value of the cross and what it means to take up your cross and follow Jesus Christ and I hope by the time we get to the end of this you'll see how this works in your life. The things that are crucified in your life are very very important. You need to know what they are It's been very interesting over the last two months The world has been crucified To public sports gatherings concerts bars crucified to various kinds of public gatherings, theaters, NASCAR. The world has been crucified to these things in a way. But in Mark chapter 834 we find on of me your own do your own thingy in your heart and the cross Ends up giving you a new life though a new life not your life.

He gives you a new life your life is replaced And you when you heard the words of Jesus that said take my yoke upon Take my my yoke upon you and learn for me. You said oh, yes, Lord. That's what I want. I need to learn from you. I've been learning for myself and my culture for far too long And I need I need a different kind of learning so the cross Delivers you from yourself It gives you an abundant life You Taking up your cross gives you a wisdom and a happiness and a consolation that's not dependent on your riches, it's not dependent on your comforts, it's not dependent on your reputation, It's not even dependent on your health.

And it catches you up in the wisdom of God for everything you ever face. And It ushers your soul into the beginning of everlasting consolation and what the Bible calls everlasting joy. It ushers you into this moment that's referred to at the very end of this text, that when he comes in the glory of his father with his holy angels, what will be the state of your soul? But in crucifying the flesh, in crucifying you to the world, in crucifying your autonomy, God uses it to save your soul and to open up the gates that is life, that is truly life, just like the figure in Pilgrim's Progress crying out, running down the road, life, life, eternal life. So to come to the cross and to deny yourself is to die to yourself.

This is the radical call of the Christian. And of course we've been covering that radical call in every element of the doctrine of Christ that we've covered so far as we continue this study, which really began in our expository studies in the Gospel of John when we reached John 19 and encountered the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. And in John 19, we learned that he's the man of sorrows He was crucified his whole life long and he carried our sorrows and our griefs in the second message we we went to Galatians 6 14 And we learned that the cross gives us reason to boast, to boast in a hundred ways. And Paul says, God forbid that I should boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. And then in the third message we talked about why it's important to know nothing else but the cross.

And we learned that we don't really need any other message other than the power of the cross. And the apostle Paul says in 2 Corinthians 2 12, "'For I determined to know nothing among you "'except Christ and him crucified.'" In the fourth message, we talked about the forsakenness of the cross that this word forsaken is central to the gospel message. Jesus cried out with a loud voice, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And we examined the truth that the Christian is unforsaken because God's son was forsaken. And then in the fifth message, we spoke about the power of the cross to break down walls of division among us, that it collapses walls of division.

It makes the ground level, it makes us one family, one culture, one spiritual relational ethnicity. And then last week, sixth, we spoke about the cross crucifying you to the world, that you're crucified to the world and the world is also crucified to you. You lose your love for the world and the world loses its love for you at the same time. And we talked about the fact that the cross is really like a diamond, you know, with hundreds and hundreds of refractions of the beauties in the diamond. We talked about it as like a mountain.

It looks one way far away, another way when you walk around it, and another way when you walk up it. There's just more and more beauty in more and more detail. We talked about it in terms of an electron microscope where an electron microscope you know begins and probes deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper and you can't even get to the end of the beauty and so that's the power of the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ and so now in this seventh message in our series we encounter these words, deny yourself and take up your cross and follow me. And this is the critical and defining section in Scripture on the power of the cross in Christian discipleship and it answers the question, what does it really mean to follow Jesus? If you say I have decided to follow Jesus, then what does that mean?

And it's all laid out right here, and it means that you lose your life, but you save your soul. Every man has a soul. And the soul exists in only one of two conditions. Your soul today is in one of two conditions. It is either lost or it is saved.

That's it. There are only two kinds of people in the world. There are sheep and there are goats. They're lost and they're saved. There's light and there's darkness.

That's all you have. And how do we know if our soul is lost? And what we find from this passage is how you know is by looking at how you think about yourself and about your autonomy. What you think about your autonomy, your own ideas, your own thoughts really tells you whether your soul is lost or whether your soul is saved. And so we have a very helpful verse here realizing that there really only two ways to think and it's precious and you should take good care of your soul and God in this passage is showing you how to take good care of your soul.

If you know me every once in a while I'll ask you how's your soul. I want to ask that question to everybody today. Okay so you find this call to discipleship beginning in verse 34 You see your outline in front of you where I'm going on this when he called the people to himself With his disciples. He said to them Well, we'll stop right there. This really speaks of the of the context here many people are gathered the disciples and a large crowd apparently and this location is taking place at the foot of Mount Hermon it's a 9, 000 foot mountain snow-capped mountain north of Jerusalem in a region called Caesarea of the word of God the Bible is not a book of fables there are real places you can go there you can go to them today you can visit these places and you can and you can walk the streets pretty much of where these people walk the Bible is not mythology it doesn't read anything like mythology and that speaks of real people in real places, in real nations, in real regions, with real political leaders, and you can trust the Bible in all those things.

And so Jesus has just fed 15 or 25, 000 people. He's announced that he'll suffer and be crucified. He will suffer. Peter says, Peter says, no you won't. And Jesus says, get behind me Satan.

That's the whole context here. And Jesus is identifying Peter's avoidance of suffering and he's telling Peter that his avoidance of this kind of self-denial is satanic. It is satanic. It's the satanic force in your soul. And let's be very clear, the press for autonomy in your soul is a satanic pressure.

To do your own thing, to follow your own heart is a satanic message. And when The entertainers of this world tell you that they're speaking the words of Satan. Understand that. Let it go, let it go. No, don't let it go.

That's not what you want to do with your life. So the voice of Satan is a voice of interdependence, self-indulgence, self-actualization, self, self, self, self-improvement, the selfie life, and the great deceiver makes you really believe that your way is the best way and people even sing songs about it I did it my way and it wasn't the best way frankly don't follow your dreams follow God's Word and that's really the whole message here so he speaks of his desires in this first section whoever desires to come after me let him deny himself so I wanted to just pause on this this issue of desires And the language that Jesus uses indicates strong and mighty wants and wishes and inclinations. Whoever desires to come after me." And I read a Greek dictionary that says that the word describes psychological events and states, strong desires. And if you want to, if you want to follow Jesus Christ that's the issue here in Christianity you don't come kicking and screaming you come because you want to you come because God changed your heart and you want him and you don't want this world anymore. Autonomy ain't so much to you anymore.

Now you do spend the rest of your world fighting it, but you cross a line and you See that your desires are to come after Jesus. Come after me. It's language that indicates lining up after. To come after, to line up, to line up behind Jesus and to follow him. Now, in the sovereignty of God, we're not robots.

God gives us desires and he gives us, we are willing, made willing in the day of his power God God plants within our hearts the will to turn to him and to desire to follow him And we make real choices, but God is in control and he leads us. And your desires will always shape your life, they'll always take you in a certain direction. And that direction is identified here. So here in Mark eight, you have this definition of what is Christianity. And first there's a call to discipleship, and then there's the definition of that call.

And then we learn that the Christian has denied himself. Second, he's taken up his cross, and third he follows Jesus. That is this definition in this verse. So let's take the first one. The first mark of a Christian is that he has denied self.

Now what does it mean to deny yourself? Is it like giving up a pleasure? Is it like giving up a pleasure? Is it like giving up a necessity? Is it like giving up sugar or caffeine?

Or is it like giving up something at Lent? Or Is it like the Muslim Ramadan procedures where you give up food and smoking and medication from dawn to sunset, is that what it is? And I do not believe that Jesus is referring to these kinds of things. I take it that he's referring to denying yourself to mean gladly and happily and trustingly repudiating your right to live an autonomous life. It's giving up.

Throwing up your hands on yourself and saying, I'm done with that guy. Let's put him to death. To deny is to say no to. I'll give you some words just to try to speak around it. It's to disavow, to distance yourself.

It's to separate. It's to refuse to pay attention to yourself, your autonomy. It is to say that Jesus Christ is Lord and that actually means everything about how I conduct my life. It is a call to die. This is the heart of Christianity.

You die but you live. In 2nd Corinthians 514 the Apostle Paul makes this crystal clear. Well he talks about the love And he says that Christ died for all and he died that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died and rose again. This is the call to deny. Now, somebody said this to me, I might have said it in Bible study, the problem in most marriages today is that you follow your own heart.

You follow your own emotions. You follow your own pride. The problem in the workplace often is just pride, following your own pride. And most problems in the church come from that same thing. And so if you think, if you think wrongly about self-denial, you'll do some things that really aren't really pleasing to God if you think your self-denial means but if you think that denying yourself and and picking up your cross means that you ignore your wife or your children or your church then you are sadly mistaken.

When you deny yourself you gladly on his yoke and learning from him you were bought with a price and when you take up your cross you take up the the responsibilities that God has laid upon you and you're not your own anymore. Like what I tell people who are married is, look, husband, you're not your own, you're bought with a price. You are called to do the work of Jesus Christ. You have to know who you are. And wives the same way, they have to know who they are.

They're representing the church. And if you don't know who you are, then you really aren't gonna have much of a marriage. I think this has to do with so many things. You might not think this, but I do think that it's related to the cultural mandate To take dominion. It's to be the person that God has called you to be in the world that God put you in To deny yourself is not is You shouldn't think first of taking a vow of poverty It's not It's not the denial of your body the way that God created it.

It's not asceticism. It's not Gnosticism that disregards the body. In Gnosticism, the body doesn't matter. Only the spirit matters. In fact, The whole LGBT movement matters is what you feel about it.

But actually, God gave you a body, and your body defines almost everything about your life. If you're born a male, it means that you are a boy and a man and a brother, and you may be a father and you may be a husband but you are a man if you're born a woman your body actually defines everything about your life because it makes you a son or it makes you a daughter it makes you a sister it makes you possibly a wife possibly a mother but it makes it makes you something your body actually matters. To deny yourself doesn't mean that you deny your body. We're not Gnostics. We think the body actually means something.

And we have many examples of this, you know, from Genesis to Revelation, of what it means to deny yourself. And it looks differently in different kinds of men. It looks like Noah or Job or Abraham or Sarah or David or Nehemiah. It looks like the poor man Lazarus or it looks like the wealthy man Matthew. It looks like like Mark and Luke and John looks like the woman at the well.

It looks like the demoniac. It looks like the wealthy Joseph of Arimathea and the woman who spent her wealth on her bleeding. And it looks like Peter and Paul and Priscilla and Aquila. It looks differently in different people. But it all comes down to the same thing, the rejection of your autonomy.

In whatever state you exist in, whatever family you were born in, whatever church you're in, whatever city you live in, you give up your autonomy. And it means that every square inch of creation belongs to God and we're stewards of it. That's what it means to deny yourself, is to take dominion as a Christian would take dominion. And it means that your body belongs to God and you can't self-define it. God defines it.

God defines church life. God defines family life. God defines it all. You don't make up your own life. That's what it means to deny yourself.

It means to take up his cross and follow him. It means to learn from him. It means to take his yoke upon you. And in that, we have various callings. I'm just gonna call them jurisdictional callings and responsibilities.

You're a worker, you're a father, you're a mother, you're a church member, you're a citizen. And all of those things are, they all function according to denying yourself. And you know denying yourself is often misapplied. You know during the 20th century the missionary movement had a terrible understanding of this and They completely misapplied the work of a church planter and a missionary and an evangelist. And their error was leaving their children behind when they went on the mission field.

Thousands and thousands of children were put in boarding schools. That came very close to my family years ago. And it was an abandonment. Under the guise or under actually the cultural milieu of self-denial, they denied their children. Self-denial can look like one thing, but when really it is another.

You know the situation that has just happened, the tragic situation that just happened in Minneapolis of the police killing a man on that seven minute video. It just shows how self-denial is not working in America. What happens to a culture when this is the brutality, the unbiblical systems that surround it, the unbiblical justice system, the unbiblical punishment system of crimes and prisons, all these things applied in ways completely contrary to the law of God. And what happens is that sorrows are always piled up when you reject the law of God. And this is such a clear and tragic expression of what happens when you reject the truth of God for a lie and you think wrongly about law and justice and personhood And that's what happens.

God has given us his word to rescue us from that. And what a blessing it is that that has happened. He has given us a way. So denying self has more to do with crucifying your autonomy than anything else and if you follow Jesus Christ, you cannot be autonomous, you can't go with your gut instincts, you are called to a greater glory to glorify God by obeying his commandments. So when you pick up your cross, it's a sign that you've been crucified to your autonomy.

That's the chief sign. And the world no longer moves you, the world no longer satisfies you, and the world will probably not appreciate you either. You renounce, you want to renounce worldly systems. You, they present themselves everywhere around us in politics, in the culture, in media, in morality, and they present themselves everywhere. The Bible says, John says later in 1 John that the whole world lies in the power of the evil one, but there is hope.

There's something very interesting about the language that's used in communication with the gospel. In Romans 1 it says that that God gave them over to their passions and he uses a word there, gave them over, and it's the same root word that Jesus uses in John 3 16 or John uses in John 3 16 for God's soul of the world that he gave or he gave over his only son. God gives you up to your vile passions and then he gives you his son so that you would have life. You're rescued from your idolatry, from your lusts, from your homosexuality, from your exchanging the truth of God for a lie. He gave you over to your lusts and then he gave over his son to save you.

And Paul teaches us that in Titus chapter 2 verse 11 through 15. He says, for the grace of God that brings salvation teaches us that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for himself for his own special people, zealous for good works. And then the Apostle urges Titus, who's an elder in a church, he says speak these things, exhort, rebuke with all authority and don't let anybody despise you. Don't despise a sermon that is a call to holiness and to renounce your autonomy. Don't despise me for that.

Don't despise the preacher for telling you that you should turn away from every worldly manifestation in your life, every one of them, to let no unclean thing be seen in your house, like David said in the Psalms. But what this means is that the worst part of you, it's the autonomous part of you dies. That's the best news. That it's not the best part of you that's crucified, it's the worst part of you that's crucified. That's the gospel of Jesus Christ.

So when you read deny yourself, you're denying the worst part. You're denying, you're turning away from the worst trajectory of your life. The cross is a killing instrument. It first of all kills sin and guilt and then it Breaks the power of sin and then it progressively kills sin in your life over time until you're taken to heaven The second mark of redemption is that you take up your cross. What does it mean to take up your cross?

Some have suggested that to take up your cross is to endure a trial or some kind of hardship. And you might hear someone say, well my mother-in-law is my cross. You know, my headache, that's the cross I have to bear. That child, that rebellious child is the cross I have to bear. No, no, no, no, no.

That's not what this is. The cross is not the pain in your back. Your cross is not your boss. It's not your governor. I don't believe that's what Jesus is referring to.

To help us understand that I think we need to just go back to what a cross is and crucifixion brings death to the crucified. That was the purpose of the Roman crucifixion. A crucifixion separated man completely from the world. They put you on a cross to say, we don't want you in this world anymore. Crucifixion brings death to the crucified.

And this was a custom that the Romans created for prolonged suffering. The entire crucifixion from beginning to end took hours and it was an intentional, deliberate imposition of suffering, it was progressive. They tried to continue the suffering by doing different things. They wanted to drag out the suffering in that sense. And You can kill a man in an instant or you can make him suffer for hours.

And that's what the Romans did. And so the cross is not your mother-in-law, but the cross is the death to sin. It's our death to sin. And taking up that cross costs everything. Luther said a religion that gives nothing, costs nothing, suffers nothing is worth nothing.

And that's why the cross is so valuable to the soul. It costs everything but gives more than everything back. Pick up your cross, take up your cross, pick it up, pick it up. That's the admonition today. Pick it, pick up that cross.

Now don't let it lie. Own, pick it up. Whatever it means, pick up that cross. Whatever autonomy that needs to die, pick it up, kill it. God says, do you want me to kill it?

Luke adds, take up his cross daily. Daily. It's something that has to happen every day. We all know that. You know, you have the cross of carnal Christianity.

This is kind of the new cross that's being preached and it's judgment-free. It's live and let live. It's love song kind of Christianity. There's no death of the old man in that cross. It keeps you okay with who you are.

And you know, some people when they quote unquote come to Christ, they come tearfully. They walk down an aisle singing just as I am. But that cross, that cross left them just as they were and they never changed. And Tozer says that the old cross slew a man. The old cross puts a man's affections to death.

The old rugged cross gives a man new desires. And that's how you know if you're a Christian or not. You find a person who says that they came to the cross and was saved, but they still think the same way and they live the same way. They embrace the new cross. They did not embrace the old rugged cross of Jesus Christ where you deny yourself and you turn away from your autonomy and you say, Lord, I want your yoke upon me.

I wanna learn from you. I'm so tired of me. I'm so tired of this culture. I want to learn from you. And this is all about a cross that does not change your life.

The apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 1.17 said, that's a cross that has no effect. So, You take up your cross. The third mark of the Christian is that he is a follower of Christ. He lines up behind Jesus Christ. He comes.

And this is what theologians call the way of the cross. You have the word of the cross, you have the way of the cross. And there are various passages of scripture that line up under that. This statement here following speaks of the way of the cross. Jesus said, I am the way, the truth and the life.

And so you follow him. Wherever you find the cross of Jesus Christ, you always find a disrupted life. It forces changes, it interrupts your patterns. It changes the trajectory of your life. And what happens is you start reading different things, you start listening to different things, you start saying different things.

You begin to speak to one another in Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your hearts. The Lord, it changes everything. And what we find here is that Jesus doesn't conceal the cost of discipleship. He tells us exactly how to walk. His word is a lamp unto our feet.

He changes our path. We walk in the Spirit, not in the flesh. We walk on the highway of holiness. It's a highway and a road says Isaiah. We become students.

We follow a follower as a student, as a follower as a disciple. That's where we get our word disciple. Years ago in my late teens I was reading a book called The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, my pastor gave it to me. And in that book he talks about costly grace. I quote, such grace is costly because it calls us to follow.

And it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life. It is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It's costly because it condemns sin and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all it is costly because it cost God the life of his son for you were bought with a price and what has cost God much cannot be cheap grace for us.

There's a cheap grace, a cheap cross. He continues, he says, Bonhoeffer, cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, Baptism without church discipline, communion without confession, absolution without personal confession, cheap grace is without discipleship, grace without the cross. So what does it mean? What does it mean to deny yourself and take up your cross and follow Jesus Christ? Desire to walk in his ways and you follow him.

And when sorrows like sea billows roll, you cast your cares upon him, and you walk by the word of God. And you don't pray for your own name anymore, you pray in Jesus' name. You say, not my will, but thine be done. And you set your mind on things above and when you get married you walk in his ways and husbands become like Jesus Christ and wives become like an obedient and submissive church and when you get a job and when you have a baby and when you're slandered you walk in the Word of God not in your own ways And when you find someone who is sad, you weep with those who weep. And when you find someone is happy, you don't do your own thing, you rejoice with those who rejoice.

When you get money, when you have a windfall, you do what Christians do with their money. When tempted, when someone in your life dies, You don't walk in your own ways. You find your way by the cross, by the word of God. When you see the injustices that are in this world, what do you do? You open your Bible and you find what is true justice.

When you put on your clothes in the morning, you dress like a Christian, not like a harlot. You don't dress for pride. You dress for the glory of God to proclaim the robes of righteousness that Jesus Christ clothed you with. And when you go to church you do what God's God has commanded. When you're offended you do what God tells you to do, not what you want to do.

You don't tell five people about it, you go to the person. When you're brokenhearted you find all your consolation in the man of sorrows. He has enough balm for every sorrow. So do you see why Paul would only boast in the cross? Do you see why Paul would say, I dare not?

You can see why the apostle loved the cross, Why he gloried in the cross, why he boasted in the cross. So deny yourself, disavow your own will, distance yourself from your own ways, separate from your own thoughts, refuse to pay attention to this world, no longer follow the world or the ways of this world, do business with your autonomous spirit. That's the message of the cross. Your cross is not your trial, Your cross is the destruction of your autonomy. And that's what it means to take up your cross and follow Jesus Christ.

Strangely enough, when I was reading a psalm in the sequence of the Psalms to Deborah before we were going to sleep last night, just before we fell asleep, I read her Psalm 131, and I thought, there it is again. There's my sermon right there. Lord my heart is not haughty nor my eyes lofty. Neither do I concern myself with great matters, nor with things too profound for me. But I have calmed and quieted my soul like a weaned child with his mother.

Like a weaned child is my soul within me. Oh Israel, hope in the Lord from this time forth and forever. The heart of a Christian is the heart of a child submissive and quieted in his soul on his mother's breast. The picture of a Christian is the one who has a new yoke upon him. It's a light yoke.

He has a new learning he learns from Jesus. So let me close with this. Take up your cross. Do it decisively. Do it completely.

Do it wholeheartedly. Do it immediately. Do it happily. Do it thankfully. Do it by faith in the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ.

Now in my next message, as planned in this series, I want to continue with these verses to explain the consequences of refusing to take up your cross and follow Jesus. And follow Jesus. And with these words, you'll see the astonishing value of your soul. So what will you do with your soul? Would you pray with me?

Father, we are so thankful for the cross. We are so amazed at the power of the cross to take the very worst of us and first of all place it on you take the very best of you and place it on us and then continue to deliver us from the things that are not profitable by taking up our cross I pray that you give us Lord all progress in that. I pray for anyone here who's not loved his soul and cared for his soul the way that it ought to be cared for, that you would turn their soul to everlasting consolation today. Amen.