I’ll Follow You, but…

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Transcript:

We’re going to be in Luke chapter 9 this morning. You know, when I was in the youth group at Southgate, it was sort of drilled into us. We heard this phrase many times.

I’ve lost count now how many times I heard it. In speaking about when God would tell us to do something, that delayed obedience was disobedience. And the reason I heard that is because a friend of mine who was in the youth group with me had it drilled into her head by her dad when it came to dealing with her parents.

that delayed obedience. When I tell you to do it, you do it now. Otherwise, it’s disobedience.

Delayed obedience is disobedience. And that’s sort of what we’re going to talk about this morning. I’ve seen that so many times this week.

Several of you have asked me already how Vacation Bible School went. I worked with Vacation Bible School at the church in Moore, and it went fine until Thursday night. It was a wild animal safari theme for the week, and they hired a big snake for the kids to get their pictures made with on Thursday.

and the romance went right out of it for me at that point. And it was between me and my car when I saw it, so I couldn’t make a hasty retreat. But I saw so many times this week, you tell kids to do something, and you’ve seen this too, tell kids to do something, and you have to tell them two or three times.

I don’t know about you. I see it with my own kids. That wouldn’t have flown when I was growing up.

I was scared of my parents. And maybe my kids will be too at some point. But my son especially has gotten real bad about this the last couple of months, I tell him, you know, I need you to pick up your cars.

I just watching this show. I know you’re just watching the show, but I told you to pick up your car. What you’re saying is not an appropriate response to what I just said.

And he doesn’t understand the problem because I’ll do what you said in my timing. I’ll pick up my cars. I’ll eat my dinner.

I’ll do whatever just as soon as what I’m up to is done with. Oh, it drives me crazy. Any of you experience that with your kids or grandkids?

Oh, my goodness. Y’all have perfect children, don’t you? Oh, my goodness.

That drives me crazy. Yeah, I’ll do it. He’s not being rebellious necessarily.

Sometimes he is, but not being rebellious necessarily, but I’ll do it just in my own sweet time. And it drives me up the wall. But we do that with God.

We do that with God. We say, you know, I really want to serve God. I think, honestly, if you’re here in church this morning, that you are here in church, it would be so easy for you not to be.

Now one or two of you may be here because somebody dragged you in and we’re glad you’re here anyway. But most of you, it would just be much easier to be watching TV or sitting on the porch or on the golf course or at a game or something this morning rather than getting up early and getting dressed up and being here. There are much easier things you could be doing.

And so I have to just assume that if you’re here in church this morning, there’s some part of you that says, I want to please God. I want to know what He wants me to do. I want to do what he wants me to do.

And we talked a little bit about God’s will this morning and the difficulty sometimes of knowing what God’s will is in Sunday school. And for me, the difficulty, yeah, it can be difficult at times to know what God’s will is. But the more difficult part for me has always been, okay, now that I know it, am I going to do it?

See, we think in theory, yeah, I want to serve God. I want to follow you. I want to do what you tell me to do.

I want my whole life to be devoted to you. Until he starts to ask us things that don’t meet up with what we had planned for that day or for our lives. And then we say, okay, yeah, God, that’s great.

I’ll do that when I get done with this over here. We do the same thing to God that my kids do to me. We’ve been talking for the last couple weeks about the cost of following Christ. And there is a cost. Make no mistake, there is a cost involved in following Christ. There is not a cost for salvation.

Let me rephrase that. There’s not a cost to us for salvation. It was very costly to God.

Cost in the death of His only Son. But there’s no cost to us for salvation. If you’re here this morning thinking, well, if I come to church enough, or if I’m a good enough person, or give money to the church, or give money to the poor, or I’m nice and help people, and don’t run over small animals if I can help it, then I’ll get into heaven.

That’s not the way it works. And that’s not just my opinion. That’s what the Bible says.

There is no price we can pay for salvation. There is no cost to us for salvation. Jesus has already paid all of it.

But God never intended for us just to be saved and then sit there. I mean, as far as I understand it, you can be saved and sit and occupy a pew for the rest of your natural life if that’s what you want to do, but that was never God’s intention for us. God intended for us to go a step further and say, now that I’ve been bought with this price that Jesus Christ paid, now that I’m no longer my own, I’m going to start to act like it.

Start to act like I belong to Him. I’m going to follow Him. And there is a definite cost to us when it comes to following him.

That’s what we’ve been talking about the last few weeks. And we’ve just sort of started out by looking at some of the people who were forced to count that cost, who were faced with that decision. Am I really going to give up what’s necessary, not for salvation, but to follow him on the other side of salvation?

And we come to another point this morning where someone else was put to the test in Luke chapter 9. It starts in verse 57 and says, It came to pass that as they went in the way, a certain man said unto him, Lord, I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest. And that word whithersoever just means wherever. So a man comes to Jesus as they’re traveling and says, we’ve talked about the rest of this chapter several, several, several weeks ago on a different topic, and how they were on their way to Samaria.

If you’ll recall, this is right after the people turned Jesus away in Samaria And James and John said, do you want us to call down fire from heaven on them? And Jesus said, you don’t understand what you’re here for. You don’t understand this because the Son of Man didn’t come to destroy lives but to save them.

So right after this, we get to this point where they’re continuing to travel because Jesus has set his mind to go to Jerusalem. He knows what’s coming. He knows that the cross awaits him.

And yet he is still determined to do his father’s will and his father’s bidding and go to Jerusalem. He’s not going to be deterred from that. And so they’re on their way.

They’re traveling. And as they travel, a man comes to Jesus and says, Lord, I am willing to go with you wherever you go. Okay, great sentiment.

Great sentiment. Not probably well thought out because I don’t think he was going. I don’t think he thought.

Make sure I say this the most confusing way possible. I don’t think Jesus was going where he thought Jesus was going. Does that make sense?

This man probably thought, like Jesus’ disciples, that he was about to enter into his kingdom, that he was about to run the Romans out of Judea and set up a Jewish kingdom where he would be the Messiah, where he would sit on the throne. And it wasn’t time for that yet. So yeah, it’s real easy to say, Lord, I will follow you wherever, when he’s talking about storming the halls of power, when he’s talking about wealth and influence, he doesn’t realize that Jesus is bound and determined to go to Jerusalem because he’s about to be crucified.

So this man had obviously not thought through where Jesus was going and the cost of following him. When he says, I will follow you wherever. And in the three exchanges this morning, just in this short passage, it’s just like last week with the rich young ruler when he says, I followed all the law from the very beginning.

And Jesus said, one thing you lack, take everything you have, sell it, and give the money away to the poor, take up your cross and follow me. And the man went away sad because he had much possessions. Jesus was not saying you can’t be saved if you own things.

What he was doing was pointing out what was in the man’s heart that he didn’t even recognize, that there were some things that he was putting ahead of God and that he was putting ahead of following Jesus. Same thing goes on here. Jesus is not going to tell us in this passage and is not telling them that you can’t be my disciple if you have a home.

What he’s doing is pointing out to the man, there is something that you are not willing to give up to follow me. When he answers the man in verse 58, by saying it, it says, And Jesus said unto him, Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head. So the man says, I will follow you, Lord, wherever you go.

Again, probably thinking he’s on his way to the palace in Jerusalem. And Jesus says to him, you know, foxes have burrows that they can live in. They can go underground, they can hide, they can rest, they can eat their dinner in peace, raise their young, that sort of thing.

And birds, they have their nests. They prepare a place where they can go up in the trees and be away from the cats and snakes and other things that like to eat them. He said, but the Son of Man has no place.

He has no place to lay his hand. He’s not saying here literally either that he has no place to lay down at night. People were always giving him a place to stay, a place to rest himself.

But what he’s talking about is if you are looking for a place of comfort, if you’re looking for a place where you know every night where you’re going to be sleeping, that you know this is where I belong, this is where I can go for refuge, where you really don’t, and we probably understand that a little bit, where we get so comfortable in our home, our job, whatever it is, where we forget how dependent we really are on God because I’ve got this all taken care of, I’ve got this all figured out. But in the times where we think, I don’t know where I’m going to sleep tonight, I don’t know where my next meal is coming from, we realize how dependent we are on God all the time Because we’re just as dependent on God when we think we’ve got things figured out. We just don’t realize it.

What he’s pointing out to the man is if you’re looking for that kind of life where you think you’ve got it all figured out and you don’t realize how dependent you are on God for every necessity, if you’re not willing to have a life where so much is up in the air and you literally have to depend on God for the next meal, then you’re not ready to follow. And we don’t see where this man says another word about it. Because they move on to the next.

Jesus looks at this man in verse 59 and where the first man in verse 57 came running to Jesus and said, I will follow you. Jesus looks in verse 59 to another. He said unto another, follow me.

Jesus looked at one of the men who was with him and said, follow me. And the man doesn’t say no. As a matter of fact, he implies in his response, I’m willing to do that. That’s a great idea, Lord.

I will do that. But he says, Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father. Let me first go and attend to my father’s burial. Sounds like a reasonable request. In verse 60, though, Jesus said unto him, Let the dead bury their dead, but go thou and preach the kingdom of God.

The short answer, the short translation or paraphrase of that would be, No, if you’re going to follow me, come follow me. Let the dead attend to their dead. And that sounds like such a harsh and selfish thing for Jesus to ask of him.

But it’s not as though the man was talking about the funerals today. As a matter of fact, once I started studying yesterday into the culture and the rituals that they had surrounding burial, it’s likely his father was still alive. You see, I’ve been around funerals where it takes a week, eight days, nine days.

That’s a long time in between somebody’s demise and their burial. But we’re able to do that now because of technologies they didn’t necessarily have. Still a long time, though. That would be unheard of in their day and age.

In the Jewish culture at that time, according to the books that I read yesterday, in the Jewish culture at that time, the day someone died, they would bury them. That same day. They wouldn’t go through the process of scheduling it and embalming necessarily, and we’ve got to wait for people to come in from out of state.

They would do it that day. So if this man’s father had already died, and he’s saying, Jesus, do I have time to go attend the funeral? First of all, I think Jesus would have probably let him.

I have no basis for thinking that other than just think he would. It wouldn’t be an unreasonable request. But I also don’t see where he would be there with Jesus at that point if his father had died that day. And he was talking about, do I have time to go attend the funeral?

They didn’t do anything between somebody’s death and their burial. They were even exempted from some of the prayers and some of the washings. They didn’t have to say the Shema every morning, hero Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord. They didn’t have to go through some of the rituals that were expected.

life stopped until the burial for that whole day. And so the fact that this man is out running around with Jesus tells me his father was still alive. It was part of their culture that as their parents aged and got ill and got close to death, okay, I really need to go take care of business up in Galilee or I need to run down to Egypt.

You know, you’ll be gone for months at a time. But my parents are really getting on in years. I’m going to wait until they’ve passed on.

So what he’s really asking here when he says, Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father. Suffer me first to go and bury my father. What he’s asking is, Lord, can I follow you in a few months, a year, two, maybe, after my father’s passed on?

Now, I don’t believe Jesus is, I don’t believe God is inclined to break up families and such. It’s not a repudiation of his family and his ability to be there for them at this point. But Jesus, when he says, let the dead bury their dead, go thou and preach the kingdom of God, What he’s saying is, if you are going to follow me, you can’t wait a year or two years or three years until everything in your life is convenient, until everything in your life is sorted out, until everybody in your family is dealt with before you can follow me.

And along those lines, if we’re waiting for everything to be sorted out, there’s never going to be a perfect time for you to start serving the Lord. There’s never going to be a perfect, convenient time for us to start following. So he says, go thou and preach the kingdom of God.

If you’re going to follow me, you need to follow me now. Then in verse 61, it says, and another also said, Lord, I will follow thee. Got another one here who volunteers.

I will follow thee, but let me first go bid them farewell, which are at home at my house. Let me first go and say my goodbyes at home. And Jesus said unto him, no man having put his hand to the plow and looking back is fit for the kingdom of God.

Again, what sounds like a very harsh response from Jesus until you realize what they’re really talking about here. He’s not just talking about swinging by his house and saying, bye, see y’all later, I’m going with Jesus. He’s talking about going and dealing with his family and getting all of the loose ends tied up.

We’re talking about, from what I understand, from what I studied, inheritance things and financial things and getting possessions sold off, which would be a good thing, but property divided up and all of that, you know, all of the loose ends when they tell us, get your affairs in order. That’s basically what he’s talking about. And it would be, it would be a good thing because then he could walk away untangled at the end of all of that and serve Jesus.

But how long really was that going to take? It’s going to take a while. I worked for a short time at the, at the court clerk’s office in Oklahoma County.

Hated that job, But I was in charge of the, not in charge, but I sort of was at the counter that did the probate, the wills and stuff, and then I got to handle adoptions and guardianships and that sort of thing. But I remember at one point somebody came in during my time there, came to me and filed in a will, filed in a will to open a probate case when the person had passed away like 15 years before. And they were still dealing with filings in the case and dealing with, okay, this property goes here and these loose ends are here.

And the person had a will. They should have had their affairs in order, and yet still it was a complicated mess. I tell you, some of the most interesting reading I ever had was when I worked at the court clerk’s office.

It was a mess. Fifteen years, and they were still trying to straighten out the legal matters and the property stuff. How long was it going to take for this man to get to the point where he said, I’ve taken care of everything I need to do at home.

All the loose ends are tied up. I’m good to go with you, Jesus. He was talking about a considerable amount of time and saying, hey, I will follow you.

I will do it. When you tell me to go, I’m going to go there. But first I need to go make sure everything is squared away.

Everything’s convenient in my life. And Jesus said to him, no man having put his hand to the plow and looking back is fit for the kingdom of God. Now, as far as heaven, I would like to add there, none of us are fit for the kingdom of God in the first place.

That’s kind of the whole point of what Jesus did for us. But he talked about serving in the kingdom of God. He talked about laborers for the kingdom of God.

I honestly don’t believe he’s saying that if you look back, if you look back at home and family, that you’re not going to heaven. What I understand this to mean is he’s talking about these people in their office, their calling of ministry, that if they would put their hand to the plow, And they’ve committed, shortly before he passed away, I heard Brother Hodges and Brother Brewer up at Southgate talking about plowing. And when they broke ground on the new building there, and Brother Hodges was pastor at the time and had the people.

I can’t imagine me ever doing something like this and getting away with it. But Brother Hodges had all the people at Southgate hooked up to a plow back in the late 90s on a big rope, and they pulled the plow as they were breaking ground. And Brother Hodges had his hand, and I only throw these names around because most of y’all know them, had the plow and was steering it and let Brother Doug come and take it for a minute.

He said when he took it, that plow got away from him and the people started to drag it. And Brother Hodges told him, push down. You know, you’ve got to commit to it.

You’ve got to push the plow deep. And I’ve only ever used a rototiller. I don’t know if I’m working a plow, but I’ll go with what he told me.

You’ve got to push deep. You’ve got to commit to it. And so somebody, having put their hand to the plow and pushed deep and committed to it, to then turn back and think, you know, I sort of miss my old life.

Really at that point, Jesus said there’s something questionable about their commitment and their service, their fitness to serve in this cause. And I thank God that he’s also gracious to us in spite of our mistakes, in spite of our shortcomings. What he’s telling us here is somebody who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is not fit for the kingdom.

I believe he’s talking about that is not, that should not, that kind of part of my mind is over here and part of my mind is over here. That kind of double-mindedness should not be a characteristic of people who have surrendered and said, yes, I will serve you, I will follow you, and I will work for you. So we get to a point in life as Christians, once you’ve trusted Christ. Remember a minute ago I said this all what we’re talking about here comes after salvation.

The cost of following him after salvation. There comes a point which should come sooner rather than later. After we’ve trusted him.

After we’ve been born again. After we’ve been bought with that price. Where we realize there’s something more than just staying a baby Christian forever.

And that we’re supposed to serve him. We’re supposed to follow him. We’re supposed to take up our cross and follow him as he says.

Supposed to grow up. where we really are faced with a choice. Are we going to do what He wants us to do?

Are we going to follow Him? Or are we going to hang back here and stay babies forever? And when we try to make that decision to follow Him, there is a tendency.

I’m guilty of it. You’re probably guilty of it. Just about all of us are guilty of it, I would expect.

There’s a tendency of saying, God, I really want to do that, especially if we’ve just been to church and somebody’s spoken eloquently on it, unlike me who gets tongue-tied, but spoken well on it, and has really whipped us up into an emotional frenzy, and we think, yeah, I really want to do that. I really want to serve you, but I’ve got this I need to take care of. God, once my health is a little better, I’ll start to serve you.

God, once my kids are a little older and don’t need quite so much attention, then I’ll serve you. God, once I’ve got more money, well, I’ll sure serve you then. Once things settle down at my job, I’ll serve you.

You know I will. You know what? The perfect circumstances never come.

And these things that we look to and say, if I could just take care of this first, those hinder us from doing what, not only what our obligation is, guys, I don’t want to just think about this in terms of obligation. We really do have a responsibility as Christians to serve Him, to follow Him, to be His disciples. But you know what?

More than we have the responsibility, we have the privilege of being His disciples. I won’t tell you it’s fun all the time. I won’t tell you that it’s always the most joyful.

Well, it’s joyful. I won’t tell you it’s always the happiest thing. I certainly won’t tell you it’s glamorous.

But there is a joy and a fulfillment that comes from serving Christ. Even in difficult times. Folks, I can attest to you in that even in difficult times, there is something joyful about being able to say, you know what, I serve Him. All this other stuff, it hurts.

It’s annoying. It’s irritating. It makes me mad sometimes.

All of this junk that the world throws at us in the meantime. And ultimately, it doesn’t matter because our eyes are fixed right there where we’ve got the hand of the plow and where we’re going because we serve him. And if we serve him, it means he’s in charge.

That’s what being a servant and him being a master means. We serve him. But these three things that are sort of fleshed out in this passage and these three exchanges between Jesus and these other men really encapsulate the things that hinder us from making that final commitment.

I am going to serve you. And just to recap what they are, those three things that hinder us from following Jesus come when we prioritize our comfort, first of all. We prioritize our comfort.

We say, you know, just like the man who Jesus said, foxes have holes, birds have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head. Well, God, it’s not comfortable to do what you’re calling me to do. God, you’re calling me to, God, maybe you’re calling me to give up my house and go to Africa.

That would be hard. God, maybe you’re calling me to give up my house and go to South America. That would be hard.

God, maybe you’re calling me to give up my home and family and move to Arkansas. That’s not comfortable. It became comfortable.

Sorry. But it wasn’t at first. I don’t want to do that. God, you’re calling me to give up some things and do some things that are really uncomfortable.

God, you’re calling me to work in areas that are not comfortable. When I first surrendered to preach, or I should say first surrendered publicly to preach, Because I surrendered to God and then didn’t tell anybody about it for a few minutes. Wanted to make sure.

I was told, you know what, I was given advice by another preacher. Why don’t you start out in children’s church? Why don’t you try preaching to that group?

I was 16 years old. I thought I didn’t even like myself when I was a little kid. And you want me, God wants me to go work with little kids?

I love my children, and because of my children, I’m learning to love other people’s children. But I still don’t understand little children. Teach a lesson and look at them and say, do you have any questions?

And one of them raises their hand and says, how many teeth do you have? I don’t understand that mindset. And I suspect I never will.

God, you want me to go work with little kids? That is not comfortable. People think I’m crazy when I say I would rather work with teenagers than small children because I think most people are the opposite.

Oh, my goodness. God, you want me to go teach little kids? I don’t think so.

That’s not comfortable. You know what? It wasn’t.

But I did it and he blessed out of that. Sometimes God is going to call us to work in areas and serve in areas that aren’t comfortable. And we miss out on following him and doing what he calls us to do when we’re more concerned about our own comfort than we are about his will.

It’s that point. There’s nothing wrong with being comfortable sometimes. I like being comfortable.

But there’s something wrong when we prioritize our own comfort over his will because then we make our comfort an idol and say, God, that’s what I really worship because it’s ahead of you. Second of all, we’re hindered from following Jesus we prioritize our relationships. I’m not saying our relationships shouldn’t be a priority.

You know what? Next to your relationship with God, your husband or your wife ought to be the number two person in your whole world. If they’re not, there’s something out of luck there.

Your children ought to come a close third behind that. I’m not saying when I say we shouldn’t prioritize when our relationship shouldn’t be the priority. I’m not telling you that you need to treat everybody else in your world like they’re expendable.

I’m sick and tired of the way our society does that. I heard on the radio just as I turned in here this morning that God created people to love and things to use, and somewhere we’ve gotten that backwards where we act as though people are to use and things are to love. I’m not telling you your relationships are expendable.

Just toss them aside. What I’m saying is they cannot be the top priority. God and our relationship to Him and His will has got to be the top priority.

This man was all too willing to follow Jesus. This second man was all too willing to follow Jesus when he got all of his relationships sorted out, when he dealt with his father, when he dealt with his family, when he dealt with the burial. There’s never going to be a time. There’s never going to be a time where everybody else in our world falls into place just so that we can follow Christ the way we need to and everybody’s going to be 100% on board with that.

There are going to be times we have to make choices. You know what? It doesn’t mean that we don’t love our families.

It doesn’t mean we love them any less. It just means our love for Christ is so much more. And it should be.

It should be. You know what? I cannot love my children the way I should if I don’t first love Christ the way I should.

And then let him love them through me. I cannot love you. I cannot love anybody I meet on the street the way I should, the way God expects me to, if I do not love him first and foremost. And then let him love others through me.

I don’t have the capacity. And you know what? But as nice as you may be, you don’t have the capacity to love people the way God expects you to love them, which is with God’s kind of love, unless we love Him first and let Him do the rest. So we shouldn’t let our comfort or our relationships hinder our willingness to follow Him.

And I suspect probably the biggest one is convenience. We’re hindered from following Jesus by prioritizing our convenience. It’s nice when things are convenient.

I love it when I can drive all the way down here and not get stuck behind a single person going 50 when there’s no passing. You know, if I can do that, if I can make it all the way down here and not get stuck behind somebody like that, it is convenient and I know it’s going to be a wonderful day. That did not happen this morning.

That doesn’t happen very often. I hate inconvenience just as much as the rest of you. Convenience is a good thing, but it’s not a good thing to put ahead of God’s will.

It’s just not. I used to have a very smart mouth response to people about convenience until I realized it could be turned on me at the same point. When I was in college, it bothered me that so many of the people from our college Sunday school class did not come to church on Wednesday nights.

Well, why aren’t you there on Wednesday nights? Well, I had something better to do. Oh, really?

And my response to them always, well, it’s a good thing that Jesus didn’t have anything better to do than die on the cross for you. Okay, that’s probably not the best response. I’ve mullered a lot in the last few years.

Guilting somebody into coming to church is not a good thing. Why don’t you help us out in VBS? Well, it won’t work.

I’ve got other stuff to do. Well, good thing Jesus didn’t have anything other to do. You know, it got to where people could say it to me before I said it to them.

You know what? That’s the way I act sometimes as well, as though the Lord and his work are an inconvenience. You know what?

as much as I’ve said it to other people, I deserve to have it said to me. It’s a good thing that it wasn’t inconvenient for Jesus what it cost Him for me to be able to have a relationship with Him and follow Him. You know what?

I have no room. I have no room whatsoever to talk about inconvenience after the horrible inconvenience that Jesus went through for me. Dying on the cross the way He did.

Living among us the way He did. I’

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