Called to the Cross (pt. 4)

Being called to the cross is to be called into solitude with Christ.

If the Son of God needed to step away from the busyness and people to be with His Father, why do we think we can survive any other way?

Why is it easier for us to say yes to what this world offers and struggle to long for and delight in solitude with our Creator? 

How will you respond to Christ’s call to be alone with him today?

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You're listening to the New Beginnings Church podcast from Deliver Live. To learn more about the New Beginnings Church, visit us online at Deliver NewBeginnings.com. Today's message is from Pastor David Forth.

SPEAKER_01 0:19

What's your go-to during the day? What's something that you see as priority? Maybe it's something in the morning to get up, do what you gotta do. For me, it's getting the dogs out. You know, actually, first thing, who checks their phone first thing in the morning? Some of us. Some of us look, we see who texted me, what disaster happened, or what good thing happened. We do things that we see as important in the mornings or even in the afternoons. You know, it might be your cat, your dog, your phone, your lunch, TV, watching news, taking a shower, whatever it may be. We have these things that are important in our lives. And we see them as so important. And sometimes I'll I'll do certain things before I dive deep into the day. So coffee. Coffee. Coffee. Right? Mondays are my Sabbath. It's my one day where I say I'm not going to do anything. I want to spend time with the Lord. Uh, and and I really enjoy my Monday mornings. I'll sit on the couch. I won't have any TV on. Tracy's gone, Justine's gone. I just take an hour and I sit there with coffee. So it's me got in coffee. Uh, but it's one of my favorite times of the week because I get to just drown everything out, be in complete solitude. Sometimes we are so focused on what we see as urgent that we forget the important. You hear that? What is your urgent that we forget what's important? As followers of Jesus, the things that are important in our lives begin to change. Our priorities begin to change. And yet sometimes our priorities don't change. And it becomes a little messy and it becomes a little dirty. Um, if you take a jar, like I I actually had this and I left it on my counter. I took a jar of water with dirt in there. Another kid's thing I'd like to do. And you you put dirt in there, you shake it up, and when you let it sit there, after about a half hour or so, the dirt settles to the bottom. Why? Because it's still. Think of a river. Rivers filled with dirt, but you can go to certain rivers as long as there's no pollution, and you can see through the river because all the dirt has settled. It has settled to the bottom. And and so when we step back from life, things begin to settle. The cloudiness begins to clear up. Solitude can separate the clean from the messy, the clean from the heavy, the clean from the unclean. Uh, there's this place in Amsterdam that that I heard about, and now they're popping up all over the place by different names. Uh, and it's called the Offline Club. And the offline club, this is just a screenshot from their website. Their off-line club is this, is they actually have a place whether indoor, these are most of them are indoors, but there's some outdoor places popping up where people literally leave their phones behind. Or if they go into this cafe or whatever, they lock it up so that there's no screen time. And the whole idea is to imagine this: talk to people, face to face. Or if you if you don't want to talk to people, it's it's more of a quiet area where you can be in solitude and you can read, uh, you can do art, uh, you can play games, whatever it might be. There's nothing digital. There's the whole idea is is the world is out, you know, you have boundaries and the world's out there for whatever time you have. It's about solitude. Solitude to settle your life. We live in an age of constant uh contact, constant connection. I don't know about you, but sometimes people will text me and then six minutes later go, why aren't you answering your text? Well, because I don't want to. It's okay. You know, we can live with these boundaries going that sometimes we have to disconnect. I wonder if some people could have made it in the 80s and 90s and before then when we didn't have this connection where we can connect to anything and everything we want. But here's the thing is God also wants to be connected to us. We talked about this last week, didn't we? The vine and the branches that God wants to be connected to us. We were reminded to remain in him, to love like him, to be like him, to produce good fruit like him. And that takes work. And sometimes that work means we need to rest, to go in solitude, to settle, and let everything around you just kind of go to the bottom of the jar so that we can see more clearly and hear more clearly what God is calling us to do. And called to the cross. That's that's been our theme. And and the theme is just this is we're journeying to the cross over these few weeks leading up to Easter. And and during that time, we are looking within ourselves, remembering that the cross was necessary, that Jesus was necessary, he is necessary, that his grace is necessary, that his presence is necessary, that being connected to him is necessary. And so this week, being called to the cross is to be called into solitude with Christ. Being called to the cross is us remembering that we are called into solitude with Christ, with our Lord. And we see this because Jesus emulates that, and that's what we're going to look at today. Uh, John Wesley said this: he said that in using all means, all means necessary, all the means that you have, in using all means, seek God alone. Doesn't mean we don't come to church, but there are times in our life where God just wants you and him. Where he can speak to you or be with you and you can experience him differently. Uh, and so we're looking at the gospel of Mark. We're looking at the beginning of Jesus' ministry, Mark chapter one, and how he begins ministry. Um, Jesus is baptized right away. He doesn't, Mark doesn't talk about anything except for when Jesus was about 30 years old, up to his death and resurrection. And so Jesus is baptized, and then after his baptism, he goes into the wilderness for 40 days, where he is tempted, and and and if you will, it's his first big victory, is how I like to see it, over the devil, because he doesn't sin and he's able to withstand 40 days. Any of us can withstand a couple hours? 40 days, and and then he calls his first disciples, Simon and Andrew and James and John, Jesus is declaring, he said, the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent. Repent. This is this is how Jesus kickstarts his ministry. Dives right in, if you will, makes momentum. Um our verses we're going to key on is 35 to 39, but I wanted to read some things that lead up to that because just to see the busyness of Jesus. Verses one, uh chapter 1, verses 21 to 28. First part here. Jesus and his companions, he's talking about his four disciples, he just called here. Jesus and his companions went to the town of Capernaum, about 1,200, 1,500 people. When the Sabbath day came, he went into the synagogue and began to teach. The people were amazed at his teaching, for he taught with real authority, quite unlike the teachers of the religious law. So one of the things that Jesus does in his ministry is what? Teach. And not just teach well, but teach with authority. Mark is uh is telling us here the difference between Jesus' teaching and and those of the leaders. And from what I what I think with this is sometimes we can get in such a routine that we speak what we know that, you know, we we don't really sometimes live or teach or what we believe in Jesus with authority. And so Jesus here is emulating of teaching with authority here. So much so, verse 23. Suddenly a man in the synagogue who was possessed by an evil spirit cried out, Why are you interfering with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God. Now, this is an interesting piece because now we have someone who is possessed with an evil spirit, or other translations shall say an unclean spirit, who is Jesus hasn't made himself known yet. He hasn't told the people, I am the Son of God. And here the devil knows who Jesus is, and he's declaring it. And he says, Why are you interfering with us? Are you trying to mess with our traditions? Are you gonna mess with our hierarchy? Why are you interfering with what's being taught here in the temple right now? Jesus' response, uh verse 25, Jesus reprimanded him, be quiet, come out of the man, he ordered, and that the evil spirit screamed through the man to convulsion and then came out of him. Amazement gripped the audience and they began to discuss what had happened. What sort of new teaching is this? They asked excitedly. It has such authority, even evil spirits obey his orders. And the news about Jesus spread quickly throughout the entire region of Galilee. So we see what Jesus is doing here. He's teaching, and now they see that he has the authority to even drive out demons. And they're amazed by that. They're amazed that it was a new teaching, is what's interesting to me. But I guess it is new to them because it's a little different, even though it's not counterproductive to what they've already learned and already knew. And so, like all things, it spreads like wildfire. Everybody starts to know there's this guy doing different things, miracles, and things like that. So let's continue. Verse 29. After Jesus left the synagogue with James and John, they went to Simon and Andrew's home. Now Simon's mother-in-law was sick in bed with a high fever. They told Jesus about her right away. Well, wouldn't you, if you you saw what Jesus could do? Hey, my mom's not feeling well. My sister's not feeling well. Would you come see her? So he went to her bedside, visiting, going to places. He went to her bedside, took her by the hand, and helped her sit up. Then the fever left her and she prepared a meal for them. That evening after sunset, remember where they're at? 1,200, 1,500 people. That evening after sunset, many sick and demon-possessed people were brought to Jesus. The whole town gathered at the door to watch. Imagine that. Imagine the whole town coming to your house. How about you? My house isn't very big. 20 people feels like a crowd. 1,500. 15, 12 to, you know, that's that's what they think. Historians believe was Capernaum was around 1,200 to 1,500 people. And they all go to the house. And so Jesus, verse 34, healed many people who were sick with various diseases. And he cast out many demons. But because the demons knew who he was, he did not allow them to speak. That speaks to the power of Jesus, that speaks to the authority of Jesus. That speaks to the will of Jesus. It is not yet time for his name to be known. You see what Jesus is doing here? He's busy. Jesus is busy. He's healing people. He's driving out demons. I didn't hear anything about a dinner in there in between, except for that she made one. We know he had one meal. But the important piece, I believe, is this next part, verse 35. Before daybreak the next morning, Jesus got up and went out to an isolated place to pray. Before daybreak, the next morning, before all the busyness of the world began, before the busyness of his ministry began, Jesus got up, went out to an isolated place to pray. Solitude. Jesus went to solitude. Even with all the need around him, he went to solitude. And how what was the response? Verse 36 later, Simon and others went out to find him. When they found him, they said, Everyone is looking for you. Well, imagine that. Imagine that. Jesus, Jesus is fulfilling needs, not just the physical need, but the spiritual need of people. It's a new way of understanding, a new teaching that they haven't witnessed or experienced before. And here we have this man who's able to do it. And so, yes, they're going to go and look for him. But Jesus replied, We must go on to other towns as well, and I will preach to them too. That is why I came. So he traveled throughout the region of Galilee, preaching in the synagogues and casting out demons. Friends, in the midst, we we we we would call this momentum. If you're in a business or in a sports league and everything's going well, we call it momentum. And what do we do in the business? We don't stop momentum. We don't stop momentum. I've worked in the secular field with computers and sales of computers, and the momentum part was between Thanksgiving and Christmas, and it was six days a week, 10 to 12 hours a day, because you don't lose momentum. Jesus has momentum. He has people coming to him, looking for him to experience him and his teaching in a whole new way. And what does Jesus do? Well, you can say he broke momentum. He broke momentum in that part. He didn't break his ministry, he didn't stop his ministry. He just walks away for a moment. I mean, think of what Mark's painting here. I think he's painting us this beautiful picture. He's being of the Savior and the power of the Savior, but also who is able to step away from the busyness, from the momentum, from the demands of people of the world, in order, not because he doesn't want to be with them, but what's he do? He prays. It's about focus, refocusing, recentering himself through solitude with his father, with his Lord. This is what we're called to do, right? Emulate Jesus. And so Jesus spends a lot of time emulating or showing us how to emulate him through isolation. Jesus shows us a lot of time within the Gospels of Him isolating Himself, even when people are looking for Him. Jesus is modeling what it's like to be in a relationship with God the Father. Luke chapter 5, verse 16. Luke tells us this that Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed. It didn't mean that he didn't withdraw two people. It didn't mean that he didn't go to church. It didn't mean that. But there were times where he needed to be in solitude and alone time with God. He models for us what is most important for me, anyways, on how we can handle exhaustion, stress, anxiety, depletion, pouring out our own selves, whether it's into our job, into the ministry, into whatever it might be. It's to be able to take that step back and be alone, to be in solitude and be in relationship with God through prayer, through whatever it is. It was how Jesus kept himself grounded in his relationship with his father. And so we see that. I don't think that's any different than when we, if we're married or in our relationships. Tracy and I, we, we need time for us just to be alone, to go shopping, go on a date, whatever it might be. But we need that solitude so that we can build and grow in love with each other. And it's the same thing with God with us is we need that alone time. He knows us intimately. It's our time to learn and know him and love him more intimately. And so these personal refueling moments with God are important for us to notice throughout scripture. It may seem like, oh, Jesus went and rest. Yeah, he's fully human, he needs to rest, but there's a reason behind it. Think of Gethsemane before He goes to the cross. If you knew that your life was only about 12 to 14 hours before being completed, what would you do? Some of us will go and see family, some of us will go around, some of us may go jump out of an airplane and parachute for the first time, right? You know, some of those last things that maybe we can do. Jesus goes to solitude. Jesus goes to be alone. He he brings his disciples with him and he says, Stay here and pray while I go over here. What do they do? Remember? Jesus comes back after praying. And you just stay awake a little bit. The spirit's willing, but the flesh is awake, and you just stay awake for a little bit. He goes back and prays, and he sees they're asleep. And it's like, okay, I need my solitude with God. I think sometimes there are things in the outside that want to pull us away from solitude with God, that Jesus in the garden could have kept going back to the disciples, but finally he just let them sleep because God had called him to be in solitude and prayer at that time. Gethsemane is a great thing. Time of solitude is so very important. It's an intimate time that we get to spend with God. And we learn to do that. It's not easy the first couple times you do it when you just sit there, you're like, click click, a click, a click, the click, click. Just breathe. Just breathe. Jesus knows the importance of solitude. But we also see the response from the solitude in our reading as well. What does he do? He goes back to work, he goes back to ministry. He traveled through Galilee, continued to preach, continued to teach, continued to heal, continued to drive out demons, continued to do what his mission, what God has called him to do. It's just what? Solitude is part of that calling. And this isn't something new that Jesus is teaching because throughout the Old Testament, once again, Jesus being Jewish and Son of God would know the Old Testament. Psalm 62. Here's verses 1 and 2, 5 and 6. I don't have these on the screen. I wait quietly. This is King David. I wait quietly before God, for my victory comes for from him. I wait quietly before God. He alone is my rock and salvation, my fortress where I will never be shaken. Verses five and six say, Let all that I am wait quietly before God. Solitude. For my hope is in him. He alone is my rock and my salvation. My fortress where I will never be shaken. Lamentations 3, verse 28. Let him sit alone in silence, for the Lord has laid it on him. In Habakkuk 2, verse 20, but the Lord is in his holy temple. Let all the earth keep silence before him. Even creation is called to be in solitude and silence before the Creator, before God. Solitude, sometimes we feel like we have to be in a place. We feel that, oh, I've got to be still. But the idea though is you know, faith is action, and if solitude is part of our faith. Then solitude is action because we got to work to be still. Does that make sense? And sometimes it's work to be in solitude because we got to wrestle whatever's inside of us, those old habits, those old ways of life, saying, Oh, I really should be. I really should be outside picking up sticks. Thank you, wind. I really should be cleaning this or doing that. And uh it kind of goes back to the story of Mary and Martha that sometimes God just wants us to be in solitude. Now that's not permission for us to be lazy, but for us to take time out and be in solitude with God. Because solitude is not just a place. Sometimes I think of solitude, I'm like, solitude, confinement? You know, what are we talking about here? It's not just a place, it's a Christ-centered, spiritual state of heart and mind. You get that? It's spiritual. Heart, mind, solitude is what we do in the midst of doing things. We can be in solitude while doing things. We'll talk about that here in a second. But it's imperative that we step away from the chaos from time to time. To be with our Lord, to let things settle. As a father, there's times I had to step back from my child, especially Justine. Sometimes it can get a little chaotic. Let things settle, and then we go back to work. Friends, if the Son of God needed to step away from the busyness of his ministry and from people to be with his father, why do we think, why do I think that I can survive any other way? The world wants us to be busy. You got to do this, you gotta do that, you gotta do this, you gotta do that. And and Jesus knew that there were things that he had to do, but part of what he needed to do for the salvation of the world was to be in solitude with his father to emulate what it means to be in a relationship with our father. We talk about being healthy. This is a piece of being healthy. And so that leads us to wonder why is it easier for us to say yes to what this world offers and struggle to long for and to delight in solitude with our Creator. Why do we feel guilty when we take a moment just to rest and be with our Father? Because it's what we hear around us the other six days of the week. Even seven days of the week, if you count Sundays and you go and do things, it's easier for us to say yes to the world. Jesus is asking us we say yes to him. To be in solitude with him. A favorite book of mine is called The Practice of the Presence of God. By Brother Lawrence, he's uh a monk from a few hundred years ago. And and long story short, he wants he decides to go into the monastery because he wants to be in the presence of God his entire life. He wants to be a praying monk, he wants to pray for the world, all the things that, if you will, monks do. And what he does is he knows that they're going to be praying, but they also there's ways to serve. And so, would he go into the city to serve? Will he go to the orphanages to serve? Will he serve the homeless? Will he, you know, you know how he ended up serving? A dishwasher. He was a dishwasher in the monastery. And what he did was he he had to come to this peace that God, through what he had called him to, to go into the monastery, that God was with him even in washing dishes. Here's what he writes: He says, We make a chapel of our heart to which we can from time to time withdraw to have gentle, humble, loving communion with him. No matter where we're at. There's a part in the chapter that he talks about that he is practicing the presence of God while scrubbing the dishes, that he does it with joy because it's what God called him to do. And that God's presence is there, and so he can be in solitude with God doing this. That doesn't make sense to us, does it? That seems odd, don't you work? And then it's different ways that we learn to be in solitude and communion with God. And to do that, it all comes from the heart. He says, What? We make a chapel of our hearts. So another thing he writes here is the heart must be empty of all other things. You may be doing the dishes, but you empty the not wanting to do them or the frustrations of doing them, or whatever it might be. The heart must be empty of all other things because God will possess the heart alone. He cannot possess it alone without emptying it of all besides. In other words, God does not want to compete for your love. God does not want to compete with the chaos in your life, God does not want to compete with the busyness of our lives. And I will remain in you. That it's all his. That as we remain as as the branches, we remain on the vine and we're called to solitude, we sometimes we still choose to compete the loves that we have with the love that God wants us to have. But for today, it's remembering that being called to the cross is to be called into solitude with Christ, to have that time of silence, that time of stillness, the time away from the wind and the earthquake and the fire, like we heard, so that we could hear that still small voice, that whisper of God. Sometimes I want him just to shout at me. Amen. But what I've come to find out in my ears is the whispers there. You just got to be still and hear it. It's important that we take time to sit in solitude with Christ. By doing so, we live into the fullness of life that God intended, like the garden. Adam and Eve, they lived in the presence of God. And it was by sin that they separated themselves from the presence of God. That is how God intended life. And so we live in solitude in the fullness of the life that God intended for us because we are preparing for the life to come where we live in his presence forever. Amen. How will you respond to Christ's call to be alone with him today or this week?

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