Matthew 16
22 Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. “Never, Lord!” he said. “This shall never happen to you!”
23 Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”
24 Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 25 For whoever wants to save their life[a] will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.
Many people want to follow the Lord Jesus but they don’t realise that it means complete commitment and denying yourself. A very bright, young man applied to teach at a Bible College. He had done very well in his studies. The director gave him pruning shears and took him to an orchard. He told him to prune a tree in the wrong way. Then he waited to see what the young man would do; whether he would follow his knowledge or do what the director had told him to do. The young man did as he had been told and received the post. He was highly qualified but if he had not been able to bow and obey, he would have been unfit for the post. In the College of the Holy Spirit you will not succeed if you do it your own way. You have to be able to obey.
The Lord said who ever wants to follow me, must deny himself. If you want to gain life, you have to lose your life. This is a Biblical principle. If you want to be lifted up, you must first go down. You have to take up your cross before you can obtain a crown. If you want glory, you have to first accept suffering. You can only have true gain by sacrificing all on the altar. In 1955, Nicolas Bengu preached that there is no shortcut to blessing. You first have to suffer. When he started to preach, he had nothing. He and his wife would walk the roads to different places. On the way, his infant child died. He could only bury it in a blanket along the side of the road.
Very few endure because they are not willing to deny themselves.
Many people in Africa are not willing to do lowly jobs and in this way lose out. The Jews of that time wanted political liberation from the Romans. The Lord Jesus said that he had to suffer and be killed. Peter took him aside and said it won’t happen to him. Jesus said, “Get behind me, Satan. You are a stumbling block. You are only mindful of the things of men.” To be a true disciple of the Lord Jesus, there is a great price to pay. Therefore many people fail. If you love parents or children more than the Lord Jesus, you are not worthy of Him. Many Christians side with their children and not with the Lord Jesus. If you do not deny yourself, you can’t follow the Lord Jesus.
The rich young ruler asked Jesus what he must do to inherit the kingdom of God. The Lord Jesus told him to go and sell all he had and come and follow him. The young man was sullen and walked away and the Lord Jesus said that it was difficult for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Maybe you are rich in something like family and friends. If you are not willing to leave them, you can not follow the Lord Jesus. Imagine how blessed he would have been if he had left all. Maybe he would have been an apostle or some of his writings would have been in the Bible but his story stopped there. Unless he repented, today, 2000 years later, he is still in hell.
If you do not deny all, take up your cross and follow the Lord Jesus, you can not succeed. You might have to consecrate and surrender things to God. A husband has to live as if he has no wife, and a rich person as if he has no money. When a Russian preacher was arrested by the KGB, and was taken from his family, he felt as if he could have died. He had to separate from them in his heart. When he surrendered his human love, God gave him His godly love for them and he could still do effective ministry for the Lord in Siberia. You can not hold on to good things and follow Christ – not even to mention those that are holding on to sinful things.