Matthew 10:39 “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”

Many people are on a quest to find themselves. “Who am I?” “What am I here for?” Sometimes that quest has a very spiritual flavor to it. But more and more Americans prefer to go searching without the help of “organized religion.” Through personal meditation, private prayer, time dedicated to volunteering and helping others, limitations on their spending to accumulate things, sensitivity to the ecology of our planet (you know, concerns about things like recycling and pollution and sustainability), they are trying to become “a better person.” The pot of gold at the end of their rainbow is to get to the place where they can say, “I feel good about myself. I like myself. In fact, I love myself. If there is a god I have to stand before someday, I think I am ready to face him on my own.”

For others, “finding life” is all about material success. I want to be rich. I want to be famous. I want to have a great career. I want to travel all over the world. At the very least, I want to have a happy, decent middle class family. The pot of gold at the end of their rainbow is simply to enjoy the good things the world has to offer.

It may sound cruel, but we need to hope that none of these people is successful in their search. “Whoever finds his life will lose it,” Jesus says. A life without Jesus at the very center is always lost in the end.

 “And whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” Maybe you never made enough money to get your picture in the society pages. Your “15 minutes of fame” doesn’t interest the tabloids, or never happened at all.

Perhaps you didn’t get to spend all your time pursuing your favorite hobby or interest. You were so busy serving, and being treated like a servant, that all your strength and energy were used up loving others and spreading the gospel.

Sometimes the “golden years” do not turn out so golden. You spend your money and your health taking care of others and serving at church. Maybe life itself is being shortened in some way from putting your Savior first. Some Christians face martyrdom, but the wear and tear of a hard life lived sacrificially also takes its toll. The cumulative result of late nights and early mornings and little time for the doctor and a not-so-careful diet because of time given to the kingdom, and to the Savior, results in fewer years on earth.

You have lost nothing. “Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” With Jesus there is always grace, always forgiveness. That means heaven is always waiting with a life there that will never end. There we will find more love than we ever dreamed possible. There each of us will find who I really am, what I am really here for, because there we will find the God who made us, and then made us his own a second time by the blood of his Son.

Along the way between here and there we discover that the life of serving and sacrificing has more positive things than we might have imagined. Lose your life following Jesus, and you will find the only life worth having.

Matthew 10:38 “…anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.”

Following Jesus means carrying a cross. This is unavoidable for the Christian. In order to follow Jesus, we give up certain things, and that always pinches a little, sometimes a lot. We pass up some opportunities for pleasures. Sometimes they are sinful. Sometimes they simply fall down the Christian’s priority list and we don’t get to them. We may give up business advantages at times because we are no longer looking out only for ourselves, but for what serves my neighbor.

Depending on where they live, Christians may not get to be popular. Others may not accept them. Those who are open about their faith on university campuses may find themselves accused of bigotry or ignorance. Those who live their faith at work may jeopardize their careers. A friend of mine was criticized, and eventually let go from his job, because he “wasn’t making an effort to be a part of the team.” His employer’s issue with him? He didn’t join his coworkers in visiting strip clubs each night after work.  

One Christian blogger shared some of the hate mail he received in a blog post. While accusing this blogger of being hateful, the emails expressed a desire for the man to be dead, hurt, or sexually brutalized. Some wished for him to burn in Hell for all eternity. A few threatened to kill him for his ideology.

Jesus is worth it. When he says that those who refuse the cross are “not worthy of me,” he is not saying that we “earn” something by our suffering. God’s grace is still free. But you can’t “have” Jesus, you can’t believe in him and follow him, without there being consequences. If I gave you some free food, you can’t eat the food without also ingesting the calories that come along with it (though we may wish that were possible). The food was free, but the calories come along as a consequence. The only way to avoid the calories is not to eat the food.

If I had a swimming pool, I could let you swim in it for free, but you can’t swim in it without getting wet. The swimming is free, but you get wet as a consequence. The only way to avoid getting wet is not to swim.

If two countries were at war, you may be free to pick a side. But you can’t pick sides without making the other country your enemy. You get the picture.

It is possible to avoid the cross that comes with following Jesus. But you have to give him up in order to do it. It’s a package deal.

Jesus promises he is worth it. Crosses come into our lives as a consequence, but that is not the only consequence. Your 70, 80, or 90 years of earthly trouble will be replaced by an eternity of heavenly bliss. That’s a no-risk guarantee. Even now he promises freedom from carrying your guilt with you everywhere. You have been justified. He promises relief from the uncertainty and frustration of trying to work your way into God’s favor. Forgiveness is free. He promises peace in knowing that all of life is lived under the umbrella of God’s love. Angels are always protecting and watching. Prayer gives immediate access to God at all times. The Holy Spirit permanently resides in Christian hearts to help with resisting temptation and understanding God’s word.

            These things, too, belong to the package deal, so value your Savior. He is worth all your crosses.

Matthew 10:37 “Anyone who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.”

“Family values” are practically universal. Parents will do almost anything to save their children, whether animal or human. On one of my morning runs I saw a mother bird attacking a cat that had gotten hold of her young. I don’t mean merely dive-bombing the cat. This mother bird was hopping around on the ground next to the cat, pecking at its head, as though it were trying to start a fight.

I know of one mom with cancer who declined chemotherapy in order to save the baby in her womb. She needed the chemotherapy to save her own life. She declined to take it because it certainly would have taken the life of her child.

Jesus doesn’t say it’s wrong to love family and friends. He simply insists he is worth more. Because family affections run so strong, all these relationships pose a potential temptation. Would you compromise your faith in Jesus for someone close to you? Some of the sadder chapters in my ministry have come from counseling or calling on spouses who have given in to that temptation. One spouse is a believer. The other is not. For the sake of peace in the house the believer stops going to church. A wife I know not only tolerated, but even participated in, her husband’s pornography addiction to keep him in the relationship.

Parents dote on their children to the point of compromising their faith. Spanking may not be the appropriate response to every misbehavior. But can you deny that the Bible calls for us to discipline the children that God has entrusted to us? “He who loves him is careful to discipline him.” Yet a worldly affection may set in that just can’t bear to see the little princess suffer. Parents end up making excuses for them instead of holding them responsible.

In other cases, parents’ dreams for their children get in the way of their love for Jesus, too. They are so sure junior has what it takes to play professionally that church is set aside. In its place they haul their little one to to every tournament, every game, every practice or workout that invades the Sunday morning schedule.

Children become guilty of the same thing. The fourth commandment says, “Honor your father and your mother,” but even God’s own command can be taken too far. I worked for over two years with one man, trying to lead him to see Jesus as his God and Lord. He was drawn, he was troubled. But the beliefs of his Jewish father, a man he seemed to revere more than Scripture, kept getting in the way.

Jesus’ conclusion when we bump him out of first place is clear: “Not worthy of me.” None of us is ever “worthy” of Jesus in the sense that we have done so much good that he is obligated to love and accept us. Salvation does not come by putting family second, but it could be lost by putting family first. That is against the first commandment, “You shall have no other Gods.” Giving ourselves over to such false values and priorities, is toxic to faith and cuts us off from grace.

Why is Jesus worth so much more? No family member ever has or will sacrifice what he sacrificed to save you. None of them ever traded heaven for earth, but he did. In extreme cases, a family member may give up their life to spare another. But no one else ever carried the full weight of our guilt, and endured the full punishment of hell for our sins, as Jesus did on the cross.

Some dear member of the family may claim they love you so much. Big nut-brown hare may love little nut-brown hare all the way to the moon and back in the popular children’s book. But Jesus loved us all the way to hell and back, and all the way to heaven and back, to save us.

No human family member will ever give us what Jesus gives. Parents give their children a home, the necessities of life, a place to belong, but only Jesus gives a place in the family of God. Members of the family can supply what is needed to keep you alive, but only so long. Someday all their resources will be useless to give you another breath.

But Jesus gives life after death. He gives life that never ends. He takes his people home to heaven. Family is worth a lot, but Jesus is worth even more. Let your love for him reflect his superior value.

2 Corinthians 8:6-9 “So we urged Titus, since he had earlier made a beginning, to bring also to completion this act of grace on your part. But just as you excel in everything— in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in complete earnestness and in your love for us— see that you also excel in this grace of giving. I am not commanding you, but I want to test the sincerity of your love by comparing it with the earnestness of others. For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich.”

Paul encouraged the Christians in Corinth to complete an offering that had been begun. Notice how careful he is to make his encouragement in the spirit of the gospel. “I am not commanding you,” he tells them. There is not a list of rules about how much each one should give and when they must have it turned in. Giving that deserves the name Christian (even more, all living that deserves the name Christian) isn’t a mere matter of rule keeping. God doesn’t want to go on treating us like criminals who need bars, and guns, and razor wire to keep them in line.

No, “It is for freedom that Christ has set you free,” Paul told the Galatians. Martin Luther was fond of saying that Christians become “little Christs.” As children of the heavenly Father, we have inherited what our world would consider our Father’s “idiosyncrasies.” He has always related to us in grace. We have experienced his grace uninterrupted since the day he claimed us by faith. He keeps on giving and loving regardless of what we have done.

So now Paul describes our giving as “this act of grace on your part.” He encourages us to “excel in this grace of giving.” Like Father, like son— sons and daughters, that is. Our gifts aren’t “obeying the rule.” They are family traits. They are expressions of one of the most significant ways in which we have become like our heavenly Father: grace. Giving and generosity have become a part of us. They flow from faith in God’s giving and generosity to you and me.

But someone might object, “Doesn’t Paul say that he wants to test the sincerity of the Corinthians’ love by comparing them to the Macedonians? Doesn’t that suggest some kind of mild threat?” Let’s not think our Lord deals with us like a teacher threatening grade school children with a test. The Greek word for “test” in this verse focuses on the results of the test. This was testing so that something could be proved genuine and true. This was not a threat. It was a means by which the sincere faith and grace-filled hearts of the Christians in Corinth could be made clear for all to see. Paul had every reason to be confident. Why?

“For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich.” We know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, too. We know his grace not like we know multiplication tables or state capitals. We know grace like we know the laugh of our dearest friend, or the difference between our baby’s dirty diaper cry and hungry cry, or the smell of grandmother’s kitchen. You and I have experienced this grace.

You and I have been awed by the depths to which Jesus descended to save us. We can imagine what it would be like to have lots of money. It is difficult for us to imagine the kind of riches Jesus gave up. Rich people we know still get sick. Their money can’t always keep them alive. They still do unethical things, and their money can’t always keep them out of jail. They still say mean and hurtful things, and their money can’t always save their relationships.

Jesus freely left riches where there was no sin, sickness, or sadness. He did so to suffer pain, be rejected, and finally die as his gift to save us. It was grace, purely a gift on his part. and now we thrill to think about the riches that are waiting for us as the last installment of Jesus’ gracious gift.            

Children of the heavenly Father, little Christs, know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. I trust that this has made you generous people, whether or not I reminded you of Paul’s encouragement today.