The Christ-Life
Part 4 of series Life Management 101
Wildwind Community Church
David Flowers
July 16, 2006
Luke 9:57-62 (NIV)
57 As they were walking along the road, a man said to him, "I will follow you wherever you go."
58 Jesus replied, "Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head."
59 He said to another man, "Follow me." But the man replied, "Lord, first let me go and bury my father."
60 Jesus said to him, "Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God."
61 Still another said, "I will follow you, Lord; but first let me go back and say good-by to my family."
62 Jesus replied, "No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God."
I want to talk to you about a critical component of life management. In fact, it’s so critical that until you get this, you will never get any of the rest of it. I want to talk to you today about discipleship, which means following Jesus Christ and learning how to live our lives the way he lived his life – not just in terms of doing what he did, but of valuing what he valued, of spending our time the way he spent his time, of prioritizing the things (and the kinds of people) he prioritized, of having the kind of attitudes he had.
Did our passage make you uncomfortable this morning? Do you hear this and think, “How could Jesus be so cruel as to not let a grieving man bury his father, or say good-bye to his own family.” We are dealing today with one of the most troubling things Jesus said, and I want to be honest about that. I’ll also say that I think the sorry state of the American church today is due almost entirely to the way this passage, and passages like it, have been neglected.
There is a cost to following Jesus. In fact, should you actually choose to follow Jesus, it will cost you everything. And I do mean everything. I don’t know if you’ve been sensing it or not, but in the sermons I’ve been preaching in this series, what I have actually been calling for is a massive re-orientation of how we live in this world. Because that is what is required to follow Jesus. The messages in this series should be getting under your skin – they should be agitating you – maybe making you uncomfortable. Preparing them has certainly had that effect on me.
Let me tell you why this stuff hits us so hard. Somewhere along the line, we got our theology screwed up. Somewhere along the line, many of us learned that our salvation depends on one thing and one thing only – that is, saying a prayer to Jesus and asking him to forgive our sins. That’s it. Anytime anyone has suggested that there’s a certain kind of life we must live after that, they have been accused of promoting a “works theology,” using this verse as an argument:
Ephesians 2:8-9 (NIV)
8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith--and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God--
9 not by works, so that no one can boast.
The argument has been, “Ephesians says we are saved by grace through our faith in Christ – and that’s it. It’s not by works, in other words, there’s nothing WE can do to earn our salvation. Therefore don’t be telling me that I have to put Christ in the driver’s seat of my life, that I have to follow him in every possible sense – my Bible says I am saved by God’s grace as his gift to me.”
So what has happened is that literally millions of Christians have come to believe that Jesus can play two roles in our lives, and that they are separate roles – Savior, and Lord. In other words, forgiver of our sins, and leader of our lives. Many think they can allow Christ to forgive their sin and keep them out of hell without also giving their lives to him, and learning from him what life really is. These are the Christians who might be prepared for life after death, but they are sorely prepared for life before death, as they claim to be Christians, yet demonstrate almost exactly the same lives that non-Christians live. Our divorce rates are actually a little higher. Many of our marriages go on in shambles year after year. We don’t have any lower rates of domestic violence. As a group Christians are known not for our love, but for our lack of love. We go on for years carrying resentments and bitterness, struggling with rage or lust, and even find ways to justify it. And in all this we rely on God’s saving grace – “Thank God Jesus died to save me from all this sin I’m carrying around.” Have we thought about what that’s really saying? “Thank God Jesus suffered and died so that I could remain mired in my sin for the rest of my life, and use his death to justify it.”
Folks, a lot of us have really missed something. See, the argument that grace is opposed to our own effort is false. Grace is not opposed to effort. Grace is opposed to earning. We are saved by grace, that means there’s not a single thing we can do to earn our salvation, no effort we can make that will put us in right relationship to God. But having been saved by grace, we must enter into a lifestyle of intentional effort to learn how to live like Jesus lived. Jesus assumed when he called people to follow him that they were leaving behind their old lives and taking on a new one that would be shaped by what He said and did and taught and lived.
It costs something. I’m tired of hearing people tell me our membership commitments are too stringent. Look at the commitments people make to things in this world. The commitments people make to their jobs often wear them out, leave them eaten alive sometimes, unable to find peace anywhere around them, ask them to compromise their values, sacrifice their spouses and children on the altar of success 60, 70 hours or more per week. And yet we make those commitments because Ben Franklin calls us to. And not only do we make that commitment, but then we schedule the rest of our lives around it, and uncompromisingly so. But the church? Do we really have a right to ask people to take their discipleship to Christ seriously, to prioritize their lives around it, to make it the primary pursuit of their lives?
You’d think by listening to some people that we don’t! I met with a friend the other day who told me, “I hear at your church that you ask members to reaffirm their membership every two years as a sign of their continuing commitment to Christ and his church. If I attended there I’d never sign something like that – I’d just step out of all my ministries and stop being involved.” I didn’t say this but I thought, “And you’re sitting there bragging about that attitude?” Another of my closest friends told me a while back, in regard to our membership commitments, “I sure am glad I don’t go to your church.” Of course upon hearing that I thought, “I’m glad you don’t, too.”
Folks, I want to tell you something loud and clear and I want to make sure you hear me. I have taken several beatings for our membership commitments at Wildwind – some from inside this church, probably more from people outside this church. And I will keep taking those beatings before I will ask less of our members. I will never apologize for raising the standard for the church of Jesus Christ. I will never apologize for asking people to give their lives to what they have already said they will give their lives to. I will never apologize for wanting this church – this little branch of the kingdom of God – to be a place full of people who have set aside their petty concerns and the exasperations of their former ways of life and embraced a call that is bigger than all of us. I will never apologize for asking our members to live their lives with God at the center – to stop making excuses and finding reasons to NOT follow and to start prioritizing their lives around following Jesus. And if someday enough people get fed up with my doing that, you will have to run me out of here on a rail. And the whole way out I’ll be insisting that as followers of Jesus we are to live our lives for him, embrace his agenda, get on board with his plan for our lives, stop whining and making excuses, and bear witness to the miracles God will do in the lives of people who give themselves to him like that. And I don’t have patience for whining and excuse-making. The excuse I get the sickest of is the one where people say, “Well, there’s what he says, and then there’s life in the real world. Somehow there must be a balance.” It’s kind of a patronizing thing, like, “Dave means well, but he just doesn’t get it.” Folks, there are a lot of things in this world I don’t get, but here’s what I do get, and it’s what you pay me for getting! For followers of Jesus, there’s the call of Jesus and that’s it. There is one simple fact – not always easy, but simple: If we are to learn to be Christ-followers in this world, we MUST orient our lives around Christ. Period. You can say I don’t get it, but then you have to figure out how to reconcile the strong words of Jesus on this issue.
Remember, Jesus prayed, “Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” and taught us to pray likewise.
Matthew 6:10 (NIV)
10 your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Jesus’ focus was on glorifying God through bringing God’s kingdom to the world of men and women. That happened primarily in two ways.
First, he set out for us how we tend to be – we get mad, we lust, we are jealous, we seek revenge, we hate those who do harm to us, we harbor bitterness toward those who do better than us, basically we’re only okay when our external circumstances are okay. Second, he set out for us the proper way of being for those who are immersed and living in the Kingdom of God – to not be mastered by anger and lust, to not be jealous, to not seek revenge, to love those who seek to harm us, to wish people well even when they eclipse us with their success, to learn, as Paul said, to be content in any and every situation.
Philippians 4:12 (NIV)
12 I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.
This is the entire thrust of Christ’s Sermon on the Mount – to lay out these two parallel but opposing kinds of lives and urge us to seek the second kind – the kind that comes only from God and from a life rooted in God’s prescriptions for living. This is the power that is intended for us as followers of Jesus.
Ephesians 1:18-23 (NIV)
18 I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints,
19 and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength,
20 which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms,
See that? The same power that raised Christ from the dead is the power Paul prays the Ephesians will come to know in their own experience. But how do we come to know this power? Paul prays that the eyes of the Ephesians will be enlightened – that God will show them the hope and the power they have! In other words, it’s easy to miss. You have to learn to see it. You have to put yourself in the flow of God’s activity in this world and be rooted enough in God to recognize it when it comes around. That comes through discipleship. Are we experiencing God’s power first-hand? Do our lives show evidence of the same power that Jesus had? We can’t become like Jesus overnight, the Holy Spirit won’t clean sin out of our hearts in an instant. We’ll have to struggle along the way with this stuff. But when we encounter sin in our lives, do we make excuses for it, or do we draw near to God and beg God to exchange our hearts for his own, to help us be the people we need to be? And if we do, do we spend time in prayer and in silence and in solitude to allow God to actually answer our prayers?
Galatians 4:19 (NCV)
19 My little children, again I feel the pain of childbirth for you until you truly become like Christ.
I do not get nervous around imperfect Christians. That’s the only kind of Christian there is. I get nervous around Christians who seem content not being like Jesus, who are just okay and want to be left alone in their stuck-ness. I get nervous around Christians who are scornful of growth, would maybe never take a single step forward in life that they weren’t pushed to take, and who then turn around and grumble and complain that someone pushed them.
So I have to tell you that churches have the responsibility to call their members and attendees to follow Jesus, and then to expect those who call themselves Christ-followers to actually be willing to learn to do it. Quite simply, it is not the church’s job to reinforce all the reasons you give for holding out on God. Our job is to call you to follow Jesus. Why, because we want to control and manipulate people? Because we just don’t get it? No, the church calls you to follow Jesus because Jesus has already called us to himself, and the church’s job is to echo that call, and then provide opportunities for people to learn to respond to it – to teach them to share their faith with others, to give them opportunities to serve, to teach them a proper perspective on money and possessions, on the use of time, to ask them to put their lives on the line for this call. In our text for today, Luke 9:57-62,one guy offers to follow Christ and Christ says, “Are you sure about that? I’m homeless and if you follow me, you will be too.” Jesus calls the next guy and that guy says, “Let me bury my dad.” In truth this guy’s dad wasn’t actually dead at the moment or else he’d have been home taking care of burial arrangements, not following Jesus around. Most likely his dad was ill and thought likely to die soon. Jesus’ response is “There are in your family those who know nothing of spiritual life – allow the spiritually dead to attend to the physically dead – you come and preach new life to people.” The third guy said, “Let me say goodbye to my family.” Jesus response isn’t necessarily to prohibit this guy from going home, but to caution him to make a choice and to stick to that choice – to take up a new way of life and make a decisive break from his old way of life.
No matter how you interpret it, three things are clear here. First is that each of these three men was genuinely willing to follow Jesus, or believed he was. Second is that each had an excuse that would keep them from doing so. Third is that for various reasons, none of the excuses was acceptable. In this room there are many who believe they are willing to follow Christ. Also in this room are dozens of excuses that keep us from actually doing so – work this and the kids that and soccer this and golf that, etc. etc. Clearly we can think we are willing to follow Jesus but have all kinds of resistance to actually doing it, and I think that’s what this passage gets to. And our excuses are not acceptable.
Dallas Willard writes that the biggest problem in contemporary American churches today is that the members have not decided to follow Christ. Christians at Wildwind, have you decided to follow Christ? I’m not asking if you prayed a salvation prayer once. I’m not asking if you attend a certain church or are in a small group, or if you’re a member here. I’m asking if you have made a decision to follow Jesus in the same way you once made a decision to have children. With that decision came a certain lifestyle that was necessary in order for you to keep the commitment you had made. Having children determines when we do and don’t sleep, what we can and cannot have on the TV screen, what music we can listen to, what we can leave sitting around the house, when we can be by ourselves, when – and where – and if – we can make love, when we can have company, how often we can go out to eat, whether we can take vacations, and practically every other detail of life.
So what I’m asking is, have you decided to follow Jesus in the way you decided to have children, knowing that your whole life would be based around that priority? If the answer is no for you, don’t feel too bad. Most of us did not enter into the Christian life prepared to build our entire lives around it, to allow it to determine the way we live the rest of our lives. And that’s the reason why so many Christians live powerless lives – because we have been willing to constrain our lives to some of the things that come with following Jesus (church attendance, small group, perhaps, membership, etc.), yet we do not structure our lives principally around that priority and thus are disconnected from most of the power Paul prayed that the Ephesians would come to know firsthand. Some Christians want to do this but don’t know how, and the church needs to be teaching it. Folks, every single class we offer is a chance to learn how to follow Jesus closer.
See, there are essential things in your life only the church can teach you. It is the church’s job to teach you about the role of the church, the church’s job to set up a framework for living out a commitment to Christ in your everyday life, the church’s job to develop in you a hunger for the things of God, to hold you accountable – if you have chosen to follow Jesus – for staying on the journey. Have you been willing to learn to share your faith with others, as the church has made that teaching available to you? Have you been willing to learn God’s perspective on money as the church has made it available to you? Have you been willing to take Discovery and learn about the role of the church in your life? Have you been willing to support your Christian brothers and sisters in a small group? Have you been willing to do these things, or have you found one excuse after another to avoid it? Have you found away to convince yourself it’s not important?
And I’m not saying that you should do all of these at once, I’m saying these are all essential elements in the Christ-following life (things Jesus taught to his followers and commanded them to pass on forever and ever in the church), and what has been the pattern of excuses? Have you been making excuses to neglect serving in your ministry, a vital element of learning to follow Christ? Have you been making excuses to neglect showing up to receive the very kinds of training and teaching you need to live exactly the life Christ called you to – the life you willingly signed on for? Have you been making excuses for showing up late to serve in your area, saying, “It’s just church, no big deal?” Have you approached your commitment to Christ with a “show-me” attitude – God, show me how to serve you and follow you. Or have you approached it begrudgingly – “Who is Dave, who is this leadership team, to ask these things of me? I’ll do exactly what I want to do, thank you very much.”
My friends, if you are a Christ-follower, there is no room for that attitude in your life. It has to go, and it has to be the first thing that goes, because it will prevent you from taking any other steps forward. Even if you WANT to grow, it will be like pulling teeth if you don’t lose that attitude. And how do you know if I’m talking to you right now? Because you’re probably sitting there mad at me, that’s how. You might even be thinking, “I am never coming back here again.” You’re already folding your arms (at least emotionally) and huffing and thinking, “What gives this guy the right…?”
I will acknowledge that anger, and still say that if you are a Christ-follower, Jesus has called you to follow him, to prioritize your life around him, to make the pursuit of him your primary goal.
What I hope I’ve done today (and I know there have been some pretty tough words here) is get you to think about your relationship to God. Those here who are not Christ-followers, this is where I tell you that following Christ requires something and that requirement will be reflected in this church. It requires a lifestyle of pursuing him, learning to hear God’s voice, and learning to bring our lives into conformity with God’s desires for us, because only in that context can we receive Christ’s promises of peace, of rest, of freedom from anxiety, of love and joy. Following Christ is not always easy, but it’s a lot easier than the selfishness some of us are living in every day. It’s a lot easier than the guilt many so-called Christ-followers carry around because they claim to serve an awesome, powerful God and yet sense they are living dull, powerless lives.
So let me lay this out clearly in case anyone is still unclear how this stacks up in their life on a daily basis. The pursuit of God must come first in your life if you are a Christ-follower and that pursuit needs to consist of the following prongs, based on two thousand years of experience from saints much more knowledgeable about this stuff than you and I will probably ever be:
1. Regular prayer and reading of God’s Word.
2. Faithful attendance at your local church, showing up prepared to worship God and learn something new about how to follow Him, and willingness to immediately apply it to your life when you leave.
3. A regular commitment to serve other people.
4. Committed relationships with other Christians who will encourage you, pray for you, and challenge you when you need it.
5. Willingness (even enthusiasm) to be taught how to follow Jesus in key areas where the church has the privilege and responsibility to teach the Christ-life to you.
These things are essential in learning to follow Christ.
