The Enemy Within | Matthew 16:24-26
Del Fehsenfeld | July 16, 2017

Good morning, everyone. My name is Del, for those of you who don’t know me. I’m on the teaching team here. Pastor Brian is having a great month to refresh in lots of different ways, including in the ability to get out to see some other churches and just receive in different ways, so let’s be praying for his continued refreshment.

Anyway, I am looking forward to spending a few moments with you here. Some texts that you prepare as a teacher or whatever you read, and then other texts really read you. This is one of those texts that has been beating me up for the summer. I can’t get away from it, and I need to call out and just give an assist here to A.W. Tozer, it was actually some of his writings that put me onto this in the first place.

I want to say at the outset that if you guys get anything out of this this morning, that would be incidental to the process that I’m in. I just wanted to speak authentically out of where I’m at right now. So that’s part of what I wanted to say, kind of an introduction there. This one’s for me, okay, and I hope that the Lord will bless it.

Let me just start with an illustration here. I thought this was an urban legend when I first heard this, or a jungle legend, when I first heard this story. Have you guys heard the illustration of trapping monkeys, that actually one of the ways to do that is to actually construct a hole that is small enough for their hands to go in, but not their fist, and then to put something in there, you know, and then they grab hold of it and literally, in their desire to have whatever’s in there, the food, or the object, will not let go to the point of someone being able to walk up and throw a rope around their neck.

So I didn’t know if this was true. I got on YouTube and actually found old footage of an African bushman doing this. I mean, literally, the monkey would not let go, okay? I thought about bringing the footage, but it was a little long and the narration was horrible. It would have been a little weird.

But I want to give you the sermon with that illustration in mind, in a sentence, and it’s this, the next slide: even good things will trap you if you refuse to let go of them. Even good things will trap you if you refuse to let go of them.

We’re going to use Matthew 16:24-26 this morning, the words of Jesus. Again, our commitment here in the way of Jesus is to be his disciples, right? So we are all in the process of learning from Jesus how to be like him as we’re with him. Part of that firm commitment to be a disciple is that we take seriously the things that Jesus says and the wisdom, because he, as the master of life, the one who knows the way, actually has wisdom for the way life works, okay?

So with that in mind, let’s read the short text here.

“Then Jesus told his disciples, ‘If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me, for whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul, or what shall a man give in return for his soul?’”

This is the word of the Lord.

Now in Luke there’s a parallel passage that says almost identically the same thing, Luke 9:23, and it just adds one word. It says, “If anybody is going to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily,” daily, “and follow me.”

Now, with that text in mind I want to give you three or four principles and then illustrate, okay?

1. There is an enemy within each of us

Here’s the first principle: according to Jesus, in his wisdom, there is an enemy within each of us; my heart, your heart, every human being.

He addresses his words to anyone, okay. There is an enemy actually is not primarily on the outside of you; it’s actually within, right? Jesus moves around this enemy, identifies it in several ways here. He talks about the need for anyone who would follow him to deny what? Themselves, right? And then he talks, throughout the remainder of these verses, about what characterizes all human behavior. So all of us, all of us, come hard-wired to seek what? Ourselves, right? We come hard-wired to seek after ourselves.

The characteristics of self are pretty evident in all of life. You know, if you look at the news or you look at your neighbors or you look at your own biography. We see certain characteristics. We all act almost automatically, and certainly persistently, for what we believe will benefit ourselves, right? I mean, we’re wired—in fact, self-preservation is so basic to human life that it’s almost second nature, and in some ways it’s what keeps us alive. We look out for ourselves.

The chief characteristic Jesus names here of self is that we attempt to save our lives, right? There is a certain possessiveness or protectiveness to self-orientation, so that we can say that people act in what they believe to be their best self-interest, right? That’s part of being human, and Jesus, as the master of life, introduces a very, very powerful idea here, that that self-orientation, left unchecked, leads to a certain kind of life, both in its quality and its ultimate end. We’re going to get to that in a second.

Now, Jesus also says that this characteristic of this self-pursuit is after what he calls gain. Gain. So in other words, benefit. What we think actually adds to our well-being. This quest for gain, or profit, Jesus say, actually never ends. He actually mentions here that some people actually set their sights on the whole world, right? So, how much is enough, that proverbial question, and the answer? Just a little bit more, right? Just a little bit more.

So Jesus says some, in this pursuit of self-orientation for gain, have varying degrees of success. Some acquire more, some acquire less, some are bitter about their inability to gain or profit. They feel like their life has shipwrecked because those self dreams and self pursuits, the things that they hoped would actually bring them fulfillment and whatever, never materialized. Others that would call a success, actually get a lot more toys, and they get a lot more fame, and they get a lot more wealth, and they gather…

And Jesus says, “Even if you were to gain the whole world, what I am about to tell you is still true.” So, there’s actually an enemy within: it is the self-orientation, this craving, this desiring, this desiring to possess, to gain, and from this orientation, we could say over-orientation, over-commitment in human nature to self, comes all of the self sins.

So think about this in life. Selfishness, self-aggrandizement, self-pity, self-confidence, which can be easily what? Pride, right? Self-righteousness sometimes, right? Even in the way of religion or in the way of Jesus. Religion of the self.

So Jesus, as the master of the human personality, says, “I have something to say here about self and about the way to peace and about what actually really fulfills.”

2. This enemy will destroy everything worth having

Now here’s the second wisdom from Jesus: this enemy of self-orientation, of self-commitment, will destroy everything worth having in the end, and Jesus is very clear about this. He says if you make your first commitment to save your life, what will happen? You’ll lose it. If you go after gain, even to the whole world, as your primary commitment, what do you end up doing with your life? You forfeit what actually really matters. This is strange wisdom; this is upside-down thinking. I mean, what else would you go after, would be the question, right? If it’s not self, Jesus, what…?

He’s giving us this warning, that there is an irony to life. We actually lose when we try to save. If we make getting what we want the first priority of our lives, we actually can never get it. And in fact, instead we become slaves to desire. It’s never enough. There’s always more. When we get what we think we want, it doesn’t bring the satisfaction that we hoped.

I think that we see this all around us in the misery that can be documented sociologically to those who are rich and famous, right? It’s just an irony. Wouldn’t you think that if you actually gain the whole world you would automatically get with it happiness? We have lots of illustrations, don’t we, all around of how it’s possible to have everything that one would have thought would bring peace and to have everything but what? Peace.

This is true—I want to tell you this just as an aside, as a counselor type. The research, when you look at things like boredom and you drill all the way down, “Why does life have no interest? Why are people bored in an era when we have more access to everything and more stimulation, why are we so empty?” Well, when you drill all the way down on that sociologically, you know what the definition of boredom is? The self stuffed on the self leads to boredom.

When you study optimal experience, in other words, what actually makes people—what are they doing when they report being happy? People that actually report happiness, what’s true about them? There have been 20 or 30 studies by Csikszentmihalyi and a really fascinating work that he wrote called Flow. What is the quality of life, of actually optimal experience? Well here’s what it turns out: there is no way, psychologically, to be happy without the ability to self-direct the attention away from what? Yourself.

When you look at studies on happiness, you know the people who actually end up happy in life are the ones who make someone else the object of their lives and not themselves. So, Jesus, as the master of life, not only as the Son of God and the master of the spiritual life, knows how life works, and whether you are a Christian or not Jesus’ words ring true, that when you make the object of your life saving your life, when you make the object of life getting what you want, the irony of life is that you never find what you’re looking for. You actually lose your life.

Now, Jesus, who knew how to give quality and quantity of life that is eternal, also gives a warning here. You not only lose life now, in many respects, but this kind of commitment doesn’t last; it doesn’t stand the test of time. It does not last, and that’s why he says, actually, you run the risk of losing your what? Your soul. He says, in many places, “And what can a man give for his soul?” What is the value of your soul? What is the value of your soul?

What is at stake here is not simply the quality of your life, but actually your very life, your soul, the thing about you that was actually made for something more than what? Yourself. Yourself. Okay?

3. This enemy can be defeated

Here’s the third principle. This enemy, this fierce enemy of our souls, the enemy within you and me can be defeated; that’s the good news. But it can only be defeated through the wisdom that Jesus gives us in this text. What did Jesus say? “If anyone would come after me,” he has to do what? Deny himself and what? Take up the cross. Luke adds “daily,” “and follow me.”

Now listen to me, folks: voluntarily denying self is giving up the demand to get what I want. In other words, to deny self is to get up in the morning, because Luke said this is daily, and basically do what with the agenda of my life? Remember the monkey?

To say, “The goal of my life is actually not what I think I want,” because what I think I want because of my self-orientation is going to lead to what? The forfeiture of actually what is possible to have. Denying self means entrusting the outcomes of my life to someone other than myself, to God; entrusting the outcomes to God. Now, this is a lot easier said than done.

Remember I told you I had a bad summer? A really bad summer, because on all kinds of fronts, I don’t want to go into the details; it wouldn’t be respectful to me or to all the different arenas of my life right now, but in all kinds of ways one thing became really apparent: despite 46 years of working really hard and making lots of achievements, I was getting data that, over and over, told me what? “You can’t control the outcomes. You can’t control the outcomes. You cannot control the outcomes.”

Now, have you ever been there in your life? It’s the definition of a bad day. You know why? Because at the point that I begin to realize that I can’t get what I want, I’m at a fork in the road. I have to decide whether to double down and resort to all kinds of sideways behavior to control the situation, which generally doesn’t help—remember the monkey? It generally doesn’t help. You got it; you’re getting the point of the sermon, right? I’m the monkey, alright?

Or I can choose to trust and, even more excruciatingly, I can choose to love, right? Love someone other than who? I’m already good at that part; I’m already good at that part. Do you see how the wisdom of Jesus here lays our hearts bare? It brings us to the very root of our lives. Who are we trusting in? What do we really love? What’s actually our agenda?

Jesus says, “If anyone’s going to be my disciple, he has to do,” what? He or she has to deny self, take up a cross. Now the reason that it feels so bad is that this is actually a death. Jesus doesn’t mince words here, does he? Crosses are for what? Not hanging around our necks, not painting on bumper stickers on our cars, not sticking up in front of a church, primarily; they are a symbol of what? Of death, yes. It feels like death. It feels like death.

You know when it feels like death? Every single day. Every single day it feels like death. And the pattern of the Christian life is what? Death and resurrection. Death and resurrection.

Jesus would ultimately walk out the truth of these words, didn’t he, all the way to the end, submitting to the Father’s will, trusting himself to the Father. What happened? God, as he emptied himself to the point of death, God gave it back to him again, with an imperishable quality and power to his life that lasts forever. So he knew of what he spoke, okay, but he’s saying, “In my steps, the way of life is a continual opening of hands, continual receiving of wisdom that comes by faith, a continual dying to myself, a continual reminder that actually what I want will kill me, and that the only way to actually get what I truly want is to let go of my life.”

Ooh! Thank you, A.W. Tozer!

Now, we might call this dying to self the voluntary surrender of our will to God, and in this scandalous, counterintuitive, upside-down way of wisdom that is Jesus’ way, the secret of life is actually that the voluntary surrender of my will and of your will to God actually is the way to peace. So Jesus talks about that here at the end of this text. He says if anybody will lose their life will actually save it, that if they will deny themselves and take up their cross they will find it. So there is a way to peace, but the way to peace, the secret of life, is that surrender to God is the only true path to self-fulfillment.

When I die to myself, when you die to yourself, God gives back life. He gives it in a form that actually can be enjoyed forever. As the master of life Jesus knows how to give peace, true peace, lasting peace to the human heart.

Now, this is the point in the sermon where I realize that I’ve prepared two sermons, okay, and I’m going to cut the second half. I was going to tell you a story of a father and a son. That father’s name was Abraham and his son was Isaac, laughter. I was going to tell you a story about a really long journey, like a life journey for Abraham, that didn’t begin until he was age 70, actually, and lasted way into his early 100s.

The 50 years in between was the story of leaving, letting go, like of his homeland, going to a new country, letting go again with Lot, his nephew, letting go of greed, letting go of lust, letting go of manipulation, letting go of lying. It was a story that had a happy ending, you know, except it didn’t. It was a story of a man who woke up one morning and God tested, not just the evil in his life, but actually the good, when he asked for his son Isaac on the altar.

Abraham’s story came to a crashing halt over a three-day period as he contemplated this final act of relinquishment, because to him Isaac did not represent simply the evil that was in him, it represented all of his hopes, it represented his interaction with God, it represented the way that he thought blessing was really going to come to his life. I’m not sure what happened on that night before the altar, but somewhere, we know from commentary other places in the Scripture, that Abraham, although he did not understand, ultimately decided to trust God, that even if this terribly misguided and horrible, horrendous thing ended in the worst way possible, God would somehow make it right.

We know, if you’ve read the story, you know that God did step in, he was testing Abraham, he was testing his love, he was testing his allegiance.

I didn’t have time to tell you that story, so let me just skip to the application. I’m going to ask you four or five question, okay, and this is the invitation, we’re going right into communion, the whole nine yards right here, okay? So just open up to the Lord.

What’s the most important thing to you this morning? Could be things. Is it a person? Is it a possession? Is it a position? Is it a pleasure? Is it a dream? Is it a desire or a habit? What’s the most important thing to you this morning? What are your “Isaacs”?

Could be something sinful or secret or forbidden, something prideful; it could be that. Lustful, greed, common to man. Likely, in this room, it’s probably something precious and good. Probably something good, like Isaac was to Abraham.

Here’s the question that’s been resounding in my heart this summer, over and over again on so many fronts: has whatever it is become more exalted in your heart than your love for God? Are you hanging onto your life?

God, he’s a lover and he’s wise and he’s powerful and he has provision and he has peace; he’s always, always good. But he’s also relentless. He’s always testing the heart of man. He’s always probing, because he knows the monkey trap, right? He knows the monkey trap of life. He knows that even good things, when we make them ultimate, when we won’t let go, destroy everything that we truly need.

So I think that he would ask us this morning, I know he’s asking me, will you sacrifice that love for a greater love? Will you be willing to open your hand, and in that feel the pain of death to that, to possess in that moment actually nothing except what God gives back, so that you can truly have everything, everything that’s worth having? This is the shape of our faith. This is the story of Christianity, that one has gone before and actually shown the way.

Because, see, there was actually another Father and there was another Son, and there was another mountain. God himself, Jesus the Son, the altar was the cross. And in this version of the story that would come hundreds of years later the Father looked past as love what would ultimately benefit himself, and he gave; he gave his only Son for you and me, right? And the Son, the Son submitted to the Father’s will, and there was no ram in the thicket, there was no substitute this time, and he possessed nothing.

Therefore the Father has given him everything, including the power to forgive our sins, including the power to have life in himself, to give us the quality and quantity of life that lasts forever, and to take us all the way home; because in the end, giving everything to God, because Jesus paid it all, actually is an ultimate loss of nothing to us, and a gain of everything.

We’re going to have a time to celebrate that. The whole Christian story is symbolized right here in a Son given and broken and blood poured out, and life eternal given for free to anyone who will come.

We’ll give you a couple minutes to prepare your hearts. We’re going to do communion a little differently this morning. I asked Brian if it would be okay if we, instead of passing elements down the rows, would actually come forward. I wanted our whole bodies to be involved this morning, because what I’m asking you this morning to do is if you’ve put your faith in Jesus Christ in this way, want to be his disciple, that you would come to the front to take the elements, and with your step of obedience to him in this way would you bring your Isaacs with you to the altar?

So as you grab the cup and the bread, you can take it here, you can move to the altar, you can go back to your seat to pray, but this is going to a little bit of an extended, open time. I’m not going to lead you through anything; this is it, alright? If you’re a baptized believer in Jesus, our church belief is that the table’s open for you, okay? This is our invitation. So take a few minutes to pray silently at your seat. When you hear the music begin, communion is open. The table is open for you.