The Cost of Following the Servant / Mark 8:34-9:50

Go ahead and pick up your Bibles and turn to Matthew chapter 7. I probably threw you off a little bit there because we’ve been going through the gospel of Mark. Go ahead and put your finger in Mark chapter 8 as well. We are going to be looking at Mark 8, starting with verse 34, but I wanted us to look at Matthew 7 first.

I was reminded of this passage again last week. If you were here last week, Jared dealt with the verses right before Mark 8:34. If you remember, it was about Peter making that great confession about Jesus Christ—declaring that He is the Christ. Near the very end of Jared’s message, he said something critical: having a correct view of Jesus is essential, but having the right knowledge about Jesus, knowing who Jesus is, isn’t enough. It is not enough. There is something else, and that is what we are going to look at tonight.

The Sobering Reality of Knowing About Jesus

It reminded me of Matthew 7. These are sobering words. I remember when I first saw this passage years ago. I was talking to somebody earlier today and they said, “I don’t like those verses.” You know those passages in scripture where your first reaction is, I really don’t like these verses? This is one of them.

Look at Matthew chapter 7, verse 21. Jesus is speaking at the conclusion of the Sermon on the Mount, and He says:

Matthew 7:21 (NASB)

’Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven [will enter].

Do you hear what He is saying? He is saying there will be people standing before Jesus at the end of time—and we will all stand before Him one day—who will know exactly who Jesus is. They will cry out, “Lord! Oh, I know you! You’re Jesus. I know all about you. You’re Lord, Master, King, Christ, the Messiah—you’re everything! That’s who you are!” And Jesus is going to say that not everyone who is able to say that will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only those who do the will of His Father in heaven.

At first glance, that looks works-oriented. It looks like you have to perform a checklist of what God wants you to do to earn your way in, rather than just knowing Jesus. But so that we don’t misunderstand, Jesus clears that up in the very next sentence to show us that it is not about works at all.

Matthew 7:22-23 (NASB)

’Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ ’And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; DEPART FROM ME, YOU WHO PRACTICE LAWLESSNESS.’

Notice that word: many. Not a few, not a couple—many. There will be people who have done incredible things in Jesus’ name, performing miracles and casting out demons, and they still will not be right with God. Jesus says, “I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you. We don’t have a relationship. Depart from me.’”

Knowing who Jesus is and doing religious things for Jesus does not make you right with God. So what does it mean to do the will of the Father if it isn’t about performing religious works?

In John chapter 6, a group of people ask Jesus directly, “What must we do to do the works God requires?” Jesus answers them plainly: “This is the work of God: to believe in the one he has sent.” Later in that same chapter, He says, “For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life.”

John 6:29 (NASB)

Jesus answered and said to them, ‘This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent.’

John 6:40 (NASB)

‘For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life, and I Myself will raise him up on the last day.’

See, the issue isn’t just knowing about Jesus. That knowledge is critical, but there is a profound difference between knowing about Him and truly believing in Him.

What was terrifying for me to realize was that between the ages of five years old and the middle of my freshman year of college, if something had happened to me and I had stood before Jesus Christ, that would have been me. I would have said, “Jesus! Lord!” And He would have said, “I never knew you.” And what’s worse is that I didn’t even realize I was one of those people. Many will know who Jesus is, but something vital is missing.

A Five-Year-Old’s Decision

Let me tell you my story between age five and my freshman year in college. When I was five years old, my mom decided to take our family to church. We went to a little Baptist church, and I remember sitting in Sunday school. Through the lens of my five-year-old perspective, I vaguely remember the teacher asking the class, “Who here wants to go to hell?”

I thought, Well, that’s an odd question. She had just finished describing hell—fire, pain, being completely alone, separated from everyone for eternity. I thought, I definitely don’t want to be there.

Then she turned around and asked, “Well, who here would like to go to heaven?”

I thought, These are the easiest questions I’ve ever heard in my life. She had just described heaven—streets of gold, endless joy, no harm, eternal bliss. I thought, That’s exactly what I want.

Then she asked, “How would you like to accept Jesus?” She had talked about Jesus too—a wonderful Savior who died for our sins, God who became man because He loved us so much. I thought, This God is so loving. Absolutely. She told us to bow our heads and pray: “Thank you, Jesus, for dying for us on the cross, for being buried, and for rising from the dead for our sins.” We opened our eyes and she said, “Congratulations! You’re going to heaven!”

I thought, This is fantastic! It’s that simple!

My mother actually became a follower of Jesus at forty-seven years old when I was five, and for the next several years, we were always at church. I learned so much. I grew in knowledge about Jesus and about God. We read the Bible, and I never doubted what it said.

Reading the Words of Jesus for Myself

When I was a junior or senior in high school, I did something radical that changed everything. I decided to actually read this Book for myself.

I hated reading. But around that time, I started thinking, If I’m really a Christian, if I’m a follower of Jesus, I should actually get to know who He is and understand what He said. Before that, I only read what other people led me to read. If we were studying Mark at church, I read a few verses of Mark. I did quick daily devotions because I was supposed to—read a verse here, read a chapter there—but I never truly dug in for myself.

I turned to the Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—to see what Jesus said and did. I remember coming to the first passage where someone walked up to Jesus and asked, “How do I get eternal life?”

Before reading His response, I thought I already knew the answer. I assumed Jesus would say, “If you believe that I’m going to die for your sins, be buried, and rise from the dead as your substitutionary atonement, you will be saved.” But not once did He answer that way.

In Mark chapter 10, the rich young ruler comes running to Jesus with that exact question: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” He wasn’t asking how to become a missionary or go to the next spiritual level; he was asking how to be saved. Jesus looked at him and said, “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

Mark 10:17-21 (NASB)

As He was setting out on a journey, a man ran up to Him and knelt before Him, and asked Him, ‘Good Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?’ And Jesus said to him, ’Why do you call Me good? No one is good except God alone. ’You know the commandments, ‘DO NOT MURDER, DO NOT COMMIT ADULTERY, DO NOT STEAL, DO NOT BEAR FALSE WITNESS, Do not defraud, HONOR YOUR FATHER AND MOTHER.’’ And he said to Him, ‘Teacher, I have kept all these things from my youth up.’ Looking at him, Jesus felt a love for him and said to him, ‘One thing you lack: go and sell all you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.’

I read that and thought, Nobody told me that when I was five years old! What is this?

In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus said you cannot be His disciple unless you place Him above every relationship you have, above your very self, and above all your possessions. He wasn’t describing how to become a “super-disciple”; He was describing the baseline of what it means to follow Him.

Luke 14:26-33 (NASB)

’If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple. ’Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple. ’For which one of you, when he wants to build a tower, does not first sit down and calculate the cost to see if he has enough to complete it? ’Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who observe it begin to ridicule him, saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’ ’Or what king, when he sets out to meet another king in battle, will not first sit down and consider whether he is strong enough with ten thousand [men] to encounter the one coming against him with twenty thousand? ’Or else, while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace. ’So then, none of you can be My disciple who does not give up all his own possessions.

Then I came to the passage in Mark chapter 8 that we are looking at tonight. Jesus says that if anyone wishes to come after Him, he must deny himself, pick up his cross, and follow Him. It felt like God was having a direct conversation with me through His Spirit and His Word. I found myself crying out, “God, this doesn’t feel right! What did you expect me to do to get eternal life? I thought I just had to believe in you!”

And it was as if Jesus asked me, “What did you think that meant?”

I said, “It means I believe that You came to earth, lived a perfect life, died for our sins because I could never pay for them on my own, and rose from the dead with power over sin.” And the conviction that hit my heart was profound: That sounds like you believe a lot of facts about Me, but you don’t believe in Me.

The Gospel and the Power of Sin

I pushed back. I remembered John 3:16, the verse I had memorized as a child. I pulled it out like a defense card. “John 3:16 tells me that God gave His only Son, and whoever believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life!”

John 3:16 (NASB)

’For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.

Why did God, out of boundless love, give His Son to die on a cross, be buried, and rise again? We have to understand the problem.

First, we all have a problem with sin. We have all sinned—saying, thinking, or doing anything contrary to God’s holy standard. But second, as Jesus says in John 8, everyone who sins is a slave to sin.

John 8:34 (NASB)

Jesus answered them, ’Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin.

When we are honest with ourselves, we recognize that we cannot control our sin. Sin is our master. It deceives us into thinking we are free while slowly leading us into destruction and death. It gives us what our flesh craves, but never what our soul needs. It separates us from a holy God, who is the only source of life. And separated from the source of life, all that remains is eternal death.

Sin is far more powerful than our willpower. We cannot simply resolve to conquer it on our own. That is why God so loved the world that He gave His Son—the only One more powerful than sin. In His death, Jesus paid the penalty for our sin as our substitute, ransoming us from slavery to give us a new Master. When He rose from the dead, He proved His complete victory.

And what does the verse say? It does not say, “Whoever believes all these facts about God will have eternal life.” It says that whoever believes in Him shall not perish. That little word in is the most significant word in that verse. Over and over in scripture, Jesus calls people to believe in Him.

Believing About vs. Believing In

For years, I had redefined “believing in Jesus” into an intellectual agreement with theological statements. But deep down, we all intuitively know what it means to believe in someone.

If my dad were to walk through the door of this auditorium right now, interrupt me, and say, “PJ, I know you’re doing something important, but we have to leave immediately. I don’t have time to explain, but you need to come with me right now,” and I took off my microphone and walked out the door with him, what would you say? You would look at each other and say, “Wow, he really believes in his dad.” You wouldn’t need a dictionary definition; you would recognize trust in action.

Consider this: I believe that Barack Obama served as the President of the United States. I believe he lived in the White House, is married to Michelle, served two terms, and was the head of the executive branch. Have I told you whether I believe in him? No. I have only told you the facts I believe about him. You can know all those facts and either trust him deeply or not trust him at all.

In the same way, I can declare: I believe Jesus is God. I believe He is the Christ, the Messiah, the Lord, the King. I believe He was born of a virgin, lived without sin, died as our substitutionary atonement on the cross, rose on the third day, ascended to heaven, and is seated right now at the right hand of the Father with all authority.

Have I told you yet if I believe in Him? No. I have only told you what I believe about Him.

Many will stand before Jesus and recite accurate theology, and He will say, “We never had a relationship. You believed facts about Me, but you never trusted Me with your life.”

The Cost of Discipleship

So how do we actually believe in Jesus as our Lord, King, and Savior? Jesus answers that question directly in Mark 8.

Mark 8:34 (NASB)

And He summoned the crowd with His disciples, and said to them, ’If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me.

Notice the context. Peter had just confessed that Jesus was the Christ. He had the right doctrine. But the moment Jesus explained what that meant, Peter rebuked Him, revealing that he was still operating on his own agenda. So Jesus called the crowd together to make the standard clear: “If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me.”

What does it mean to deny yourself? It doesn’t mean giving up chocolate for Lent. Denying yourself means saying no to yourself. All our lives, we have said yes to our own desires, our own plans, and our own sovereignty. To deny yourself is to realize that the universe does not revolve around you anymore.

Then He says to take up your cross. In the first century, that was not jewelry or a metaphor for a minor hardship. That was death-row language. If someone saw a man carrying a cross beam through the streets of Jerusalem, they knew he was walking to his execution. Jesus was telling them: you must put yourself to death. Not physical suicide, because the next command is “follow me.”

How many decisions does a dead person make for himself? None. How much authority does a dead person claim over his own schedule, plans, or future? None. To take up your cross means transferring the ownership of your life from yourself to Jesus Christ. You stop trusting in yourself and start trusting completely in Him.

The Four Reasons

I remember struggling with this, asking, “Jesus, why does it have to be so radical? Why can’t it just be a simple prayer?”

Jesus gives four statements in the following verses, each beginning with the word for—meaning because. He doesn’t drop the demand and walk away; He explains the reality of our condition.

Mark 8:35 (NASB)

’For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s will save it.

First, Jesus says that whoever clutches their life and tries to save it for themselves will lose it. If you hand your life over to Him by faith, you will find true life. That sounds completely backward to human logic. But the truth is, you were never meant to be your own master. If you refuse to surrender to Jesus, you remain enslaved to sin, and sin leads to death. Surrendering your life to Jesus is the only way to be rescued.

Mark 8:36 (NASB)

’For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and forfeit his soul?

Second, Jesus asks what profit there is if you gain the entire world but lose your own soul. You could accumulate all the wealth, prestige, and pleasure this world offers, but if you forfeit your eternal life in the process, what good is any of it? You can’t enjoy the world if you are spiritually dead.

Mark 8:37 (NASB)

’For what will a man give in exchange for his soul?

Third, what could anyone ever give in exchange for their soul? Your life is priceless. If someone offered you ten trillion dollars for your life, it would be a worthless transaction because you have to be alive to enjoy anything. Jesus’ point is this: If your life is that valuable, why would you keep managing it yourself when you know your own management leads to spiritual ruin? Entrust your priceless life to the One who created it and redeemed it.

Mark 8:38 (NASB)

‘For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will also be ashamed of him when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels.’

Finally, Jesus warns that whoever is ashamed of Him and His words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him the Son of Man will also be ashamed when He comes in glory. How we respond to Jesus in this life has eternal consequences.

Surrendering the Wheel

During my freshman year of college, I wrestled with this reality. I remember having this internal conversation with God. I said, “Jesus, I have plans for my life. If I hand my life over to You, You’re probably going to change my plans.” And He made it clear: You’re right, I will.

There was a girl in my life at the time whom I wanted to be with, and I knew deep down that if I surrendered my life to Jesus, that relationship would have to end. I had placed more faith in her and in my own desires than I had in Him. I said, “Lord, my life is precious to me, and You are asking me to completely let go.”

And Jesus gently asked, “Will you trust Me?”

Sitting in my room, looking at what my life was without Him and what He had done on the cross to rescue me from sin, I did what felt like the scariest thing in the world. I said, “Okay. Here is my life. I trust You.”

Jesus took my life, and it has never been the same. I haven’t gotten everything I thought I wanted, but He has given me everything I truly need. Sin was a master that treated me like a slave, but when I surrendered to Jesus as Lord, He called me His child. He showed me what real, purposeful, eternal life actually is.

Maybe you are here tonight and you have believed all the right facts about Jesus your entire life. You know the doctrine, you attend church, and you know the stories. But if you are honest, you are still trusting in yourself. You have never handed over the title deed of your life to Him.

Let tonight be the moment where you move from merely knowing about Him to truly placing your faith in Him.

Let’s pray together.

Lord, thank You for Your Word. It is living, active, and sharper than any two-edged sword. For some of us, You have cleared away the confusion tonight about what it means to follow You. You are calling us to stop trusting in our own strength, our own plans, and our own righteousness, and to place our complete trust in Your Son, Jesus Christ.

Father, if there is anyone in this room who has only known facts about Jesus, draw them by Your Spirit tonight to surrender their life to Him. May we not be among the many who say “Lord, Lord” without ever knowing You, but among those who genuinely place our faith in the Savior. In the name of Jesus Christ we pray. Amen.