What does First B Jackson teach about carrying your cross?
Drawn from the messages where it was actually addressed: the words said from the front, the passages taught, and where to hear the whole thing.
At First B Jackson, the teaching on carrying your cross starts with what that image would have meant to people who first heard it. Both Pastor Craig and Pastor Ray have pointed out that in the Roman world, when someone from a village picked up a cross and walked off with a band of soldiers, everyone watching knew he was not coming back. That is the picture Jesus is using when he tells the crowd in Luke 14 that anyone who does not carry his own cross and follow him cannot be his disciple. It is a one-way journey, a death to a whole way of life.
Luke is also the gospel writer who adds the word "daily" to this command, and the teaching here has pressed on that detail more than once. Carrying your cross is not only the moment a person first comes to faith. It is the ongoing work of dying to self, tied to the daily rhythm of sanctification. The three conditions Jesus lays out in Luke 14, loving him above every other relationship, taking up your cross, and holding your possessions with an open hand, all point to the same thing: Jesus is asking for everything, and he is asking for it consistently, not just once.
Pastor Josh brought a different angle to the same truth while teaching through John 19. He noted that when Jesus is literally carrying his cross to Golgotha, he is doing exactly what he had told his disciples to do. That moment in John, Josh said, solidifies the teaching in a way that is hard to miss. The cross Jesus calls his followers to carry is not abstract. It is grounded in what he himself did first.
Taught from Luke 14:25-35 · Luke 9:23 · Matthew 10 · Philippians 3:7-11 · John 19:16-42
The passage taught · 1 Peter 2:20
20 For what glory is it if, when you sin, you patiently endure beating? But if, when you do well, you patiently endure suffering, this is commendable with God.
World English Bible
Messages that go deeper
- May 28, 2023 He Is No Fool Who Gives What He Cannot Keep Luke 14 sermon on the cost of discipleship: putting Jesus first, carrying your cross daily, and renouncing all else to truly follow Him.
- May 28, 2023 He Is No Fool Who Gives What He Cannot Keep Jesus lays out three plain conditions for discipleship in Luke 14: putting Him first, carrying your cross daily, and renouncing all else. Pastor Ray walks through each one.
- February 22, 2021 It Is Finished The pastor walks through John 19, the crucifixion and burial of Jesus, inviting readers to feel the full weight of what Christ endured before the resurrection.