Considering Christ and Counting the Cost
A lay sermon delivered in Yangon, Myanmar, February, 2019

In whichever way we might characterize the world at the start of Genesis 3, by the end of the chapter we are left with fallen humanity in a corrupted world. Man had sinned in seeking to usurp God’s rightful authority in defining what is good or evil. We chose to put ourselves in the place of God, leading to alienation in our relationships; within ourselves, with others, with creation, and with God. The consequences have been devastating and continue to be seen and experienced to this day.

But even within that same early chapter of Genesis we see a hint of hope toward redemption, though one that is always based on faith and not on our own good works or ability to save ourselves. Our first hint of that hope is seen in the passing of judgment upon the evil one who had deceived the woman. God says,

‘And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.’—Genesis 3:15

Much of the rest of the Old Testament prepares us for an offspring of the woman who will crush the head of this evil one. We understand from the narrative and from our experience throughout history that we cannot save or redeem ourselves from our fallen state and its unfolding consequences. The Old Testament teaches generation after generation that we need a Savior, one that would be revealed to us in real history within a real human culture in “the fullness of time.”

The question the Gospels ask us to consider is who Jesus is. Is he the Savior long-awaited by the people of the Old Testament, and does He offer a viable solution to the problem of human fallenness? My own conclusion is that Jesus is in fact this long-awaited Savior (or Messiah, also known as The Christ) who is foreshadowed throughout the Old Testament. How I had come to that conclusion is something I will address in a moment. For me, it is not a matter of having had a miraculous conversion experience, or from having gone from some horrible state of existence to the picture of personal success. These kinds of stories may serve as helpful or encouraging anecdotes, though I do not think they provide a strong basis for another person to believe or change their world view. I think we ultimately need to choose our beliefs based on an honest response to God’s Spirit touching our hearts (and our thinking) in a way that no other person’s well-intended prompting can.

For me this comes in the way of propositional revelation, or a scriptural revealing of what God intends to do before He does it in human history. There is a great deal of this throughout the Old Testament, though one of the strongest examples of it may be found in Isaiah 53, which was written somewhere between 700 and 750 years before Jesus walked this earth in human flesh... [Isaiah 53 read aloud]

You’ll recognize this as a description of Jesus’ life, though while that form of propositional revelation is enough to satisfy me, you may need some further proof. I’ll leave that to God’s guidance through the course of your life, and I pray that He will speak to your heart in a way that makes most sense to you, either through your own experience, your reading, though your relationships with others, some combination of these things, or perhaps even through what we’d understand as a miraculous intervention.

But if you’re one to seek God’s truth, and you come to the same conclusion about who Jesus is as I have, this brings us to a point of application that we find in Matthew 16:24, which reads, “Then Jesus told his disciples, ‘If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.’”

Sadly, in America many of us have embraced a false gospel that suggests following Christ is a path to wealth or personal success. I know this as “the prosperity gospel,” which is partly based on a tendency we’ve cultivated where we try to claim promises that God has not made.

God does not promise that in trusting Jesus and following Him we will necessarily experience personal success in this world. He does not promise that our path through life will be easy, or that we’ll get all the things in life that we might dream of, whether it be marriage and family, a meaningful career, fame, wealth, etc.

What God does promise is that He’ll complete the work that He has started in us (Philippians 1:6), and that He will be with us through life’s various trials... [Philippians 1:6 quoted]

So, we can anticipate that the way forward in trusting Christ as our true Lord will be one of great personal challenge, as noted in Mark 10:29-31: “Jesus said, ‘Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life, but many who are first will be last, and the last first.’”

We should count the cost of following Christ. If you’re like me, that cost may include having to rethink the understanding of the Biblical narrative that you grew up with. As we study His Word and seek to draw closer to Jesus, we may be challenged to new and sometimes uncomfortable perspectives on these things. The lifelong challenge, though, will be in trusting God to lead us in continually prying ourselves from the throne of our hearts while rightly placing Jesus there instead. For some of us this can be an especially painful and often humiliating ordeal, especially where our life has been characterized by a great deal of pride.

Yet whatever one’s challenge in turning from our own ways to following Jesus, it’s one that we’re called to in trusting Him as our one true Lord, but if we count the cost and are willing to submit to Jesus’ Lordship of our life, here’s where Paul tells us begin: “...if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” (Romans 10:9)

Jim Kenaston