“Follow Me”
Luke 9:51-62
Do you remember playing the game, “Hide and Seek” growing up? Do kids still play that game or has it become an app on their phones or tablets? We would close our eyes while everyone hid and when we had counted to a hundred, we announced, “Ready or not, here I come!”
Luke begins our text this morning with the words: “As the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem.” Jesus was on His way to Jerusalem whether anybody was ready or not. For thousands of years the Jewish people had been counting the passing days thinking they were ready for His coming—and when He came, they all ran to hide and never really came out to welcome Him.
The word “resolutely” highlights Jesus’ determination to carry out to completion His mission on earth—though in the days ahead it would involve indescribable agony and suffering. He was going to Jerusalem to die, and He knew it.
In Canada I worked with a guy whose nickname was Bones [Everyone in that town went by their nickname]. Every day he would come to work with a “word for the day.” He would share the word and a demonstration on how to use it. As I’ve lived with this Scripture this week the word that keeps coming back to me is resolutely.
I was thinking back to last weekend’s golf tournament, the final round, and how the entire tournament was decided by the final shot. Professional golfers can do amazing things with golf balls. They can put crazy spins on their shots and place them just about exactly where they want them; but not always. Every shot they take goes toward setting up their next shot and they resolutely consider each shot.
I wonder what we would look like as individuals and as a church if we resolutely set out to follow Jesus? Not to just believe in Jesus but to believe Jesus. What would we look like if we resolutely adhered to our baptismal vows—or if we took seriously our membership vows [prayers, presence, gifts, service, and witness].
To be able to do this is going to require some changes. As we learned this week with our “Summer of Encouragement” series revolution begins with reform at the home office. Awakening begins with reform at the home office. For us to resolutely follow Jesus we’re going to have to do what Gideon did: “Tear down your father’s altar to Baal and cut down the Ashera pole beside it. Then build a proper kind of altar to the Lord your God on the top of this height” (Judges 6:25-26).
We need to tear down our altar to Baal [the idols in our life we put before God] and chop down the Ashera pole beside it. And on top of it, build a proper altar to the Lord our God!
Jesus is preparing Himself and those around Him for His trip home but on the way, He confronts some opposition—which by this point should be no surprise to us. After all, from the very first, from His temptation in the wilderness—to His first sermon in Nazareth—even last week with the people in the area of the Gerasenes after healing the demon possessed man—Jesus has been opposed. It’s almost as if He has preached more folks away than He has won. When we stand up and take a swing at evil, evil swings back even harder.
So, the opposition we read of today by the Samaritans should be no surprise. After Assyria invaded Israel and resettled it with its own people [2 Kings 17:24-41], the mixed race that developed became known as the Samaritans. “Purebred” Jews hated these “half-breeds,” and the Samaritans returned the favor and hated the Jews. Though most Jews refused to travel through Samaritan territory despite the difficulty this presented Jesus held no such prejudices and sent messengers ahead to get things ready for His visit to a Samaritan village. But the village refused to welcome these Jewish travelers who were headed to Jerusalem.
When this happened, James and John [Nicknamed Sons of Thunder] didn’t want to stop at merely shaking the dust from their feet. They wanted to call down fire from heaven just as Elijah had had done on the servants of a wicked king of Israel [2Kings 1]. When we feel rejected or scorned this may be our reaction as well. We would be well to remember that judgment belongs to God; and we aren’t God.
Motivational speaker Tony Robbins loves racing cars. He says the most important lesson his race car instructor taught him was how to recover from a skid. The race car instructor said, “What most people do when they start to go into a skid is focus on what they fear—the wall. Instead, you must focus on where you want to go…The reality is that whatever you focus on you move toward.”
The instructor even had a “skid car,” a training car that was specially designed to go into a skid at the push of a button. He used it to give his clients real-world experience in the spilt-second decision necessary to save themselves from a skid.
Tony was driving at high speed around the track when his instructor pushed the button. As Tony went into the skid, he stared at the wall and his car began skidding toward that wall. The instructor grabbed Tony’s head and jerked his face to look in the opposite direction. He began pulling the wheel in the direction he was facing, and his car came out of the skid.
Don’t you wish sometimes that God would grab your head and turn your focus back toward Him? [Maybe even put His hand over our mouth]. Remember what the race car instructor said to Tony: “You must focus on where you want to go.” Is that what Jesus is doing in our lesson this morning? Is He trying to help people refocus their lives on the things that really count?
I know I’ve said this before but I’m not sure we can hear it too many times: “Jesus wants followers not fans!” No, He’s not asking us to follow Him on Facebook, or Snap Chat, or Instagram. I have a book on my bookshelf that I’ll loan out to anybody as long as I get it back. The title is, Not A Fan, written by Kyle Idleman. It’s one of my favorites and I’ve read it several times.
Jesus was glad to receive new disciples, but they must realize that there is a price to pay. Christian discipleship is costly—the costliest thing in the world.
Martin Luther once said, “A religion that gives nothing, costs nothing, and suffers nothing, is worth nothing.” And Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who died in a concentration camp for his opposition to Hitler warned people about what he called “Cheap Grace.” [You can’t make withdrawals without first making deposits]
To these three men that Jesus meets on His way He says this: you will be homeless—your family will be left behind—and your past life must be forgotten. Many people have a problem with this scripture—not being able to bury your dead and not being able to say goodbye to your family. If this helps any the dead that Jesus refers to are probably the “spiritually dead” and to the man who wants to say goodbye to his family, I take it to mean to leave the past where it is—in the past.
I challenge you to find one place in the New Testament where Jesus told anybody to “Go home, think it over, and get back to me tomorrow.” It simply doesn’t happen.
The most dangerous part of following Jesus tomorrow is that tomorrow might never come. The truth is the longer you put Him off, the more likely it is that following Him will never happen. Saying tomorrow to Jesus is like hitting the snooze button on your alarm in the morning. The first day you hit it once—the second day twice—and on and on, until finally one day you never hear the alarm at all. The more you put Jesus off the less likely He is to get your attention! My spiritual guru famously says that “Sometimes we don’t even realize that we are asleep until we actually wake up.”
It takes great commitment to follow Jesus. Yes, for some of us to become a disciple meant we had to give up some of those we thought were our friends. It may have meant giving up a lifestyle that we enjoyed. For some, to become a disciple they have family members to abandon them—even spouses. In our story today Jesus is “setting His face” and the three men He encounters are “turning their heads.” This series of incidents is recorded for us with but one purpose—to set forth the supreme importance of the kingdom of God and the supreme loyalty which it demands of us. To be a true disciple requires sacrifice on our part—it requires hard work and dedication—but we need to be reminded that nothing worth anything comes to us without some type of effort on our part.
Setting your face toward Jerusalem isn’t easy. It means giving up your own agenda and comfort to follow God’s will. For Jesus, Jerusalem meant humiliation—defeat—and death. But for the human race, for you and me, Jerusalem meant reconciliation with God and eternal life.
What does Jesus want from us? Total dedication, not halfhearted commitment. We can’t pick and choose among Jesus’ ideas and follow Him selectively; we need to accept the cross along with the crown. We must count the cost and be willing to abandon everything else that has given us security—without looking back. With our focus resolutely on Jesus, we should allow nothing to distract us from following Him!
Eastman First Methodist Church 