(Transcribed by TurboScribe. Go Unlimited to remove this message.)

Hey, you're listening to Cut For Time, a podcast from Faith Church, located on the north side of Indianapolis. My name is Claire Kingsley. And I'm Dan Breitwieser. 

Each week, one of us will sit down with the person who gave Sunday's sermon to discuss their message. Cut For Time is a look behind the scenes of sermon preparation, and they'll share with us a few things that we didn't hear from the sermon on Sunday. Thanks for listening.

Welcome into another edition of Cut For Time, the extra podcast from Faith Church Indy, where you get to hear more from our preaching pastor. Today, I am your preaching pastor, joined by the host of the show, Claire Kingsley. Thank you for doing my least favorite part for me. 

All right, so I was talking to somebody on Sunday, and they said, we should just mention that we're married. So if there's like, a different dynamic than people are usually used to listening to, it would make sense to them. Yes, you and I are married. 

That is, in fact, our relationship. Yet we still have to record this over Zoom, because to record it in the same room is maybe not always the easiest thing. I think they just, our kids would just see both of us and think we're both available to answer questions and get them snacks.

Exactly. All right. Let's talk about your sermon on Sunday. 

You covered Matthew chapter 16, verses 24 to 28, and opened up our new sermon series. Go ahead. Indeed, yeah. 

Hard Sayings of a Kind Savior is the series we're in for the summer, where we're looking at different stories, specifically things that Jesus said throughout the Gospels, where they're difficult to maybe understand, difficult to apply, maybe difficult to live out in certain ways, or just hard to live out. And so this passage from Matthew 16 comes with a threefold command. If anyone wants to come after me, he has to, one, deny himself, two, take up his cross, three, follow me. 

And so that's the essence of what Jesus is saying. Now, we had to do a little bit of context, looking at what this comes on the heels of, of Peter's both confession of Jesus as the Christ at Caesarea Philippi, but then also Peter rebuking Jesus because Jesus said, hey, I'm going to have to suffer and die. And Peter said, no, you don't. 

That's not what the Messiah does. And Jesus was showing Peter and the disciples that the path of the Messiah is suffering and is denial of self. And so to follow Jesus looks like that. 

Now, our denial of self, our taking up our cross, is not for the sake of, we're not paying off our sins, right? We're not paying off our debts. We're not dealing with the curse of sin. That is completely done in Jesus. 

But that doesn't mean that to follow Jesus, we're just like fans of his. We're just, oh yeah, like, oh yeah, I like Jesus. I like the things he taught. 

No, to truly follow Jesus is sacrificial work, where we surrender everything about who we are to his will and that we are no longer the primary, but he becomes primary in our life and we become secondary. All right. So one of the things that we say often is, cup for time is a look behind the scenes of sermon preparation. 

And sometimes, I mean, sometimes we get that. And this is a little bit different because it's something that I even got a look behind the scenes of sermon preparation. Eight years in, you learned something new about how I write my sermons. 

Yeah. So it happened in real time. And I'm like, we're covering this on cup for time. 

So it was Friday or Saturday night. I had just finished putting the kids to bed and came out to our kitchen or dining table. And there's like music blasting. 

I'd say, not like soft quiet, but not like you're going to hurt your ears either, somewhere in between. And I just said, what are you watching on your computer? I thought you were watching something. And you said? Yeah. 

No, that's the type of music I listen to when I write my sermons. I like all types of music. Well, most types of music, I should say. 

And I have different varieties of what I listen to when I do different tasks. But specifically when I'm writing, I mean, this goes back to high school and college, when I'm writing a paper. And then now in my job currently, when I'm writing a sermon, it's hard for me to listen to music that has words in it.

But I don't go classical because that's what put me to sleep. So I had to even look up the genre of it because you're like, how would you describe this? I'm like, I don't know. It falls under the category or genre of epic orchestral music or like trailer music. 

Think not like, not soundtracks like The Greatest Showman, but like The Dark Knight Rises or Inception. But also just there are bands that are orchestras that are like semi-electronic. And anyway, maybe you can include a clip of some of the type of music that I listen to while I listen to sermons. 

And normally I have headphones, but my headphones had, the batteries had died. So you got to hear it maybe for the first time, what I listened to when I write my sermons. Yeah. 

There's no way that I could do such focused work and listen to that music at the same time, but every brain is different. That's how my brain works. And it works apparently. 

All right. Another thing I just want to mention is just give you a hard time for saying shablam in second service. It's not, it's was just for no reason other than to give you a hard time.

Yeah. So that was, that was a choice. I'm surprised you take more issue with that than the 6-7 joke, but I guess the 6-7 joke was a joke that you recommended that I make. 

So that originated with you and it went over well, both services, but shablam. Yeah. I think that was, you know, when I, when I write sermons, there are times where you need to, you need to let people come up for air a little bit. 

You need to bring a little bit of levity. That's often where humor can work really well, or sometimes a personal story. Sometimes it's just to like, kind of ease the tension a little bit, you know, in terms of how people are listening. 

And sometimes it's to just wake people up, you know, it's at that, you know, 20 minute mark where probably some people were nodding off and shablam might get them to just kind of wake up again. Like that's not a word I've probably heard in a sermon before. So.

What's another word that we probably hadn't heard before that you introduced to us in the sermon? Oh yeah. The word cruciformity. It was a word that was new to me that came from, I think Michael Gorman was the author and some of the commentaries I was reading and some of the other writings I was reading about this Matthew 16 passage of deny yourself, take up your cross to follow me. 

It's about living this cruciform life, right? That a life formed by the cross so that your interactions with other people in your church, in your community, the way you show hospitality, the way you love your spouse, the way you love your kids is formed by the cross. And the cross is the ultimate symbol of humility and sacrificial love and grace and forgiveness that extends beyond what we would normally want to offer. And so it's letting the cross form and shape your life. 

So yeah, that was a new word to me as well this week that I just felt like, how have I never heard this word? Because it's so it captures the essence of what Jesus is calling us to. And it makes me want to buy the book and actually read it. I have not read the book, but I read enough about the book to at least get the gist of what that word means.

Gotcha. All right. So you did mention that you had to cut something for the sake of time in your sermon. 

Tell us more about that. Yeah. The part of the passage, which included all the way up to verse 28, where Jesus says, there are some who, verse 28, truly I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the son of man coming in his kingdom. 

There's a variety of different options or suggestions of what this could mean, depending on which commentary you read, because it's not exactly clear what Jesus meant. And it wasn't the main point of the sermon and or what Jesus is saying in verse 24 and 25. And so I didn't devote a whole lot of time to talking about all the different options. 

And I don't even know if you want to go into depth about what each option is, but essentially there's options where some people think that Jesus is talking about the transfiguration because the transfiguration follows this passage or this invitation to the disciples to take up your cross and follow me both in Mark and in Matthew, the next thing that happens. And Matthew says even six days later, the transfiguration happens. So yeah, like there's part of God's glory or Jesus's glory is revealed with Moses and Elijah there.

And some of the disciples saw that some are thinking that Jesus is pointing to Pentecost when the Holy spirit comes and descends in power like tongues of fire. And then the disciples are able to speak in tongues and that's how the church starts. So spirit coming on Pentecost is an option. 

Others think that it refers to the fall of Jerusalem, that that is a time keyed in 70 AD. That's kind of a sign that Jesus's new kingdom is coming in and is kind of already here. The last age we're already in it. 

And so they saw the fall of Jerusalem by the Romans. And that is a way in which they see partly the son of man coming into his kingdom. Yeah. 

I mean, I could go on and on, but essentially it does seem like Jesus isn't probably thinking about one specific moment. Oh, another option is the apostle John, right? Who writes revelation and sees all these visions of Jesus coming in his kingdom. He wrote revelation while he was still alive. 

He didn't, he hasn't seen the end times, but he saw visions of it. So anyway, there's these different versions of what it could be and likely at least where I land is he's probably just making reference, general reference to any number of these things that there will be these manifestations of glimpses of Jesus's coming kingdom when he comes again and the glory that will come with that. And he could be indeed referring to any number of these things that some of his disciples see and that other people have seen as well in the 2000 years since.

Mm-hmm. Yep. You know, just something based on what you had to cut for time, but also just this whole passage. 

And even prior to this passage, the verse 23 that says, Jesus says, get behind me, Satan to Peter. I feel like this whole passage is like five hard sayings of Jesus, not just one more thing. We could cover, we could go verse by verse and pick it apart and just say, each one of these is hard for a different reason. 

Like you've said hard to understand or like verse 28 or hard to receive like verse 23 and anywhere in between and then just hard to apply. So anyways, it's the whole thing feels tricky. Yeah. 

And that's kind of where the tension of this whole sermon series is hopefully going to land for each of us is that we love Jesus. We want to follow him. We want to listen to what he has to say. 

And there's lots of great messages that Jesus has of love and grace and forgiveness. And those are all true, but you do have to balance that with some of the more challenging things that he also said. And once again, sometimes he says it to the crowds or the Pharisees when they're trying to trap him, right? When Jesus says, render unto Caesar, that's what is Caesar. 

So you're not talking to his disciples. He's talking to this group that are trying to trap him in his words. And so when he says things specifically to his disciples like this, where the crowds are not around and it's just to the disciples, like, hey, if anyone wants to come after me, this is what it's going to cost. 

Yeah. The context is key and it should leave us feeling a little bit uneasy because not everything Jesus said was just like the ultimate positive, encouraging K-love type statement. There's some hard things that Jesus says in terms of what it requires to follow him. 

Yes. All right. So let's talk about the hard things that it requires. 

A question I have for you is for a follower who's been walking with Jesus for a long time, how would this hit differently? Or what are some challenges that a long time believer would have in laying down their life and denying themselves when they've been doing that for, let's just say, 20 or 30 or 40 years versus a new believer? Yeah. I think that's a great question. I was not talking about that question specifically, but the pastors, Pastor Jeff, Pastor Tom and myself, we get together on Tuesday mornings and we were talking about the sermon a little bit. 

And Pastor Tom even just kind of mentioned this idea of surrender, this idea of sacrificing and laying it all down for the Lord. And he's been walking with Jesus for probably longer than I've been alive. And then Pastor Jeff had this really good insight, which is this idea of the similarities, but also the difference in genuine surrender and comprehensive surrender. 

So genuine surrender looks like you get to that point in your life where you recognize you can't save yourself, no matter how good of a person you may be or how good your intentions are, you recognize your works are not going to save you and you need a savior, right? Like that you recognize you're sinful and you need Jesus as your savior, right? In that moment, you are genuinely surrendering to Jesus. But the rest of your life, until you die or until Jesus comes again, is going to be looking at this idea of how do we continually lay things down, lay things at the feet of Jesus, surrender to Him. And it's finding those pieces of your life that you haven't yet surrendered to Him. 

And that's the idea of comprehensive surrender, meaning we're actually not going to be comprehensively surrendered until we die or Jesus comes again. And the similar sense of when Jesus says, which I think we'll tackle later in this series, be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect, is this idea of, wait, how do we be perfect like God is perfect? It's like, well, we will be someday in glory, but until then, we are to surrender these aspects of our life, right? Like we want to let Him work on those things within us by the Holy Spirit to lay down those things, whether it's our finances, our future, our work, our relationships, the things that we're holding on to so tightly. We want the Holy Spirit to be at work in those things, to reveal those things to us that like, hey, I care more about what I think about this than what God thinks about this. 

I should be willing to lay that down if I'm truly following Jesus. And it's a long, long road of obedience, finding these things, letting God work on these things where the Spirit convicts us of what we're still holding on to. So yeah, for a new believer, surrender or taking up one's cross is just like actually acknowledging you need Jesus as your Savior. 

And then for someone who's been walking with Jesus for 40, 50 years, it might look like, okay, God, I've been walking with you. I've been following you. I've been trusting you. 

Where in my life am I still holding on to something too tightly where I have not yet fully surrendered this aspect of my life? And sometimes God reveals those things, and yet it's still really, really hard to actually lay it down and surrender it. All right. Thank you. 

That's really helpful. All right. My last question for you, you said two statements, or I guess question and statement. 

You brought up a few times this question of, do you want to get well? And then another point you said, there is a cost to letting Jesus heal you. That leads me to ask you, what if someone doesn't realize that they're unwell or need healing? And what are the symptoms of our lives that show that we are unwell and we do need healing? Yeah. So you're asking from the perspective of someone who hasn't yet made that decision to follow Jesus, right? They might not even see their need for Jesus. 

Or maybe they are just kind of that fan, that there's certain aspects of what Jesus did, how he lived. He was a good model or he was a good teacher, but not to the point where they're willing to accept their need for him as their savior. Right. 

Okay. So do you want to get well? What if I don't see my need for a doctor? Right. Well, I think within each one of us, we have this innate feeling and understanding that the world is not as it should be, that things are broken within each of us. 

We know our own thoughts and desires. No matter how hard we try to do the right thing, we know that we are not perfect and that we don't often succeed in being as awesome as we think we are. And so when we look at the world around us, we look at our own lives, we recognize we can't do it on our own. 

And there's also plenty of examples throughout history and throughout the world of people who have all the money in the world, all the success, all the influence, and without Jesus, their lives are empty. And the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow of success and money and wealth and power is never there, and it's always unfulfilling. And the only thing that can truly bring joy, fulfillment, satisfaction is a relationship with God. 

And the only way to have that is through laying our lives down and surrendering it to Jesus. So there's any number of ways where you can come to the understanding that you are unwell and you need a doctor, and Jesus is the only doctor for that ailment that you have, which is your sin condition. And until you recognize that, you're not going to want to lay it down. 

If you don't see your need for a Savior, you're not going to want Jesus as your Savior. And so it might just take more time of reaching lower and lower until you get to the end of your rope before you realize, like, oh, I can't do this on my own. This is not satisfying. 

This is not fulfilling. This is what it's going to take. And then that doesn't mean that even if you get to that point where you realize you need Jesus as your Savior and you lay your life down, Jesus is not promising his disciples that, hey, once you follow me and sacrifice your life and take up your cross, then everything will be fine. 

No, that's not... Jesus promises them, in this world you will have trials, in this world you will have trouble, but take heart, I have overcome the world. So what he does promise is that in our trials, in our struggles, he will be there with us. And so once again, just kind of bringing the comparison, I would bet my life that you find genuine Christians going through the hardest of times in the world and they have more genuine joy than the most powerful wealthy people in the world living without God. 

Like, he is that joy that surpasses understanding, it surpasses human wisdom. And that is only through recognizing and living with Jesus as your Savior and your Lord. All right. 

That's a great way to end. I'm assuming most of the people who listen to this, they probably have reached the point of recognizing their need for Jesus. But if maybe, if nothing else, this encourages them because they all know people who don't yet know Jesus and love him yet. 

And so just a different perspective and some encouragement or a way to approach, talk to our friends or just context for to build our love and empathy for the people who are still walking without him. Absolutely. Yeah. 

All right. Thanks, Nathan, for your time. Thank you, Claire Kingsley.

Thanks for listening to this week's episode of Cut for Time. If you wish to submit questions to our pastors following Sunday's sermon, you can email them to podcast at faithchurchindy.com or text them into our faith church texting number, and we'll do our best to cover them in next week's episode. If this conversation blessed you in any way, we encourage you to share it with others. 

We'll be back again next week.

(Transcribed by TurboScribe. Go Unlimited to remove this message.)