Called to Follow: A Savior for the Hopeful

Amen. So my journey to become a pastor started in my first year of college in the second semester. We took a preaching class, and that was the first sermon that I had ever preached was in this particular preaching class. The next year, as I came back to college after going home for the summer, the guy who organized sort of the preaching program came and said, "Are you ready to go preach?" And I said, "No, absolutely not. I don't want to do that." He sends me for my very first Sunday to his home church, which he was also the dean of students, so there was no pressure at all for my first sermon in front of like a real group of people that weren't either classmates or people I knew very, very well. And so after that, I began to do what is called supply preaching. And our college had relationships with churches all over Missouri and in kind of the edge of Iowa and into the edge of Illinois.

And the way supply preaching worked is on Monday or Tuesday, you would go to your mailbox and you would open it. And if there was a church, local church in need of somebody to come and preach that Sunday, and you seemed like you were a good fit for it, there'd be a little note in your box that says, "You are preaching at such and such a place Sunday morning." And then you would go by the office and talk to the person in charge of organizing. They'd say, "Here's a sheet with the information, the service times, and the directions." And this was in the days before readily available GPS and also maps on your computer weren't the greatest. I don't know if you ever remember having to print out maps to drive somewhere, and you're flipping through and you're trying to drive.

Forget texting and driving. Driving and looking at your MapQuest directions was probably more dangerous. And so they always had directions on these maps, but you never really knew how far away this was, and so you would try to look it up and guess. And one Sunday in particular, I saw this church. It's a church I had never been to. I had no idea where it was. I'd mainly preached in sort of the northern part of Missouri, and this was in the southern part. And so I asked the guy who lived across the hall from me in the dorm. I said, "Have you ever preached?" He's like, "Oh yeah, I go like every other week." And he's like, "They're looking for a preacher right now, so they're having students fill in." And he said, "Well, how long does it take to get there?" He's like, "Oh, I can do it an hour and 20 minutes."

And that should have been the warning sign when I heard, "Well, I can do it in an hour and 20 minutes." And so by the time I arrived at this church, they had finished Sunday school, they were into the first Song, and there were three elders standing outside going, "What are we going to do if the preacher doesn't show up?" And they said, "You are so late." He said, "Do you guys know?" And they said, "Oh, yeah, we know him." I said, "Well, I asked him how long it took." And they immediately understood, because this guy had a reputation for driving just about as fast as you could possibly drive. And so I realized something from that point on. I got back to school, and I was like, "Why didn't you tell me it's like 150 miles, and you're saying you can do it an hour and 20 minutes?"

He said, "Well, I wasn't giving you advice. I was just telling you how I do it." And our text this morning, as we come to it, it seems a little wild. There's three people who want to follow Jesus. And Jesus has some pretty seemingly stern things to say to each of them, including the one that Jesus calls himself. And he says, "Hey, I want you to follow me." And then he seems like he rebukes him in kind of maybe one of the rudest ways we've heard. And I want you to understand as we come to this text, this text is not a text full of advice. This is not a text on how to do this or how not to do that. And it's so important we understand because if we try to follow this as advice,

we're going to find ourselves, just like I did in college, in a difficult situation. Either we're going to find ourselves sort of puffed up by pride, saying, "Look at the good that I have done," or we're going to find ourselves in the depths of discouragement going, "I can't do this at all." The purpose of this text, as I think the purpose of all of Scripture is, is to point us to Jesus, to help us see His goodness, and to be transformed by Him. This is not a text saying here's a list. It's rather a text that says, "Fix your eyes and fix your hope." Not on who you are, not on the fears about your future, not on your comfort in where you are right now, but fix your heart and your hope on Jesus.

And I want to give us just a little bit of context before we dive into that this morning. Is that Luke, as we read earlier, is on his way, Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem. He's just walked through a Samaritan village. They're upset that he's going to Jerusalem. He's talked to the disciples about the difficulty of following him. And what we're going to find is three people, two who volunteer, one who is invited to follow Jesus. And in the midst of this, these three people, they almost seem like almost followers, right? Not quite there, not quite following Jesus, but maybe close. And so let's take a look. We're going to begin in Luke 9:57. And we're going to begin with the guy who is really excited about following Jesus. We're going to start with the guy who is, he's just overflowing with excitement.

And look what it says in Luke 9:57. As they were going along the road, so Jesus has left Samaria. They're walking down the road, and this guy in the crowd just sort of pops out and goes, "I'll follow you wherever you go." He seems very excited. He's enthusiastic. And we might say, "Well, isn't this a good thing?" Shouldn't we all be excited about following Jesus? Shouldn't we all be jumping out to volunteer to follow Jesus? And there's a lot in Luke to be excited about when it comes to following Jesus. He's taught in a way that nobody else has. He's healed in a way that nobody else can. He's fed in a way that to anyone else is impossible. There is a lot to be excited about with Jesus. From the way he teaches, to the miracles he's done, to the way he deals with the hurt and the broken, to the way he rebukes the proud and the arrogant, there is a lot to be excited.

And we hear this excited guy, and we go, "That's not a bad picture of how it should be to follow Jesus." But Jesus responds in a really surprising way. Jesus says this to him, "Foxes have holes, birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head." And we might be just a little bit confused when we hear this response. Because we get the impression that Jesus is not very excited about this guy's excitement. And we might object to that and say, "What's wrong with being excited, Jesus?" Imagine you go to buy a car, and you get there, and you see this car, and it's exactly what you want, and it's exactly what you've been looking for. And you're sitting there, and you're beginning to get excited, and you can kind of picture yourself driving away in this car.

And the guy who's selling the car comes out to you and immediately begins to tell you how terrible this car is. And he says, "Well, this is wrong, and don't do this, and look at this problem." And all of a sudden, our excitement just sort of drains away. And here is Jesus. And this guy jumps out of nowhere and goes, "I want to follow you." And he's full of excitement, and Jesus goes, "Yeah, but I don't have any place to stay." Birds have it better than I do. Foxes have it better than I do. I don't even know where I'm putting my head down to sleep at night. And Jesus says, "I have nothing." And the question we might have is, "Why does it seem like Jesus discourages this man from following him?" And I think there's three things going on here.

The first is this: that discipleship is more than simple excitement. Over time, our excitement fades. We get a new job, and we're excited. And two weeks later, we're complaining about it. Look at the music that we've listened to through the years, that when it first is released, we're excited about it. And then a few months or a year later, we're on to something new. We are a people whose excitement constantly goes from one thing to another. You can see it in music. You can see it in fashion. You can even see it in the cars we drive. Discipleship and following Jesus is more than just being really excited about Jesus. The second thing is that this man has not considered what it really means to follow Jesus. Luke 9:57 says this, "As they were going along the road," and the question is the road to where?

The road to Jerusalem. Luke has just said about Jesus that he has set his face to go to Jerusalem. And we know what happens in Jerusalem. In fact, just right after that, Jesus says like twice in this chapter that I'm going to go to Jerusalem and I'm going to die. And here's a guy who goes, "I'll follow you wherever you go." And Jesus says, "I don't think you understand where it is I am truly about to go." And so not only does excitement fade, but this man hasn't necessarily considered what his commitment truly means. The third thing is, is this man truly seeking to follow Jesus? And you might say, "Well, what do you mean? He's just said that he's going to follow Jesus." It's not very Christian of you to doubt this guy wanting to follow Jesus.

This man has a lot of confidence in himself. I will follow you wherever you go. Don't know where it is, but I will follow you. One of the things that we see throughout Scripture is the more that you know God, the less you look at yourself. And it's almost as if, in this man's words, he's bragging about how great he is, and how he'll be able to follow Jesus no matter where it is that Jesus goes. If you go back to John chapter 6 and compare to Jesus' disciples in the midst of this, what has to be a discouraging situation, Jesus has just fed the 5,000 along with their wives and their children. He begins to teach, and then everybody leaves, and it's down to just the disciples. John 6 says this, "After many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him,

Jesus said to the twelve, 'Do you want to go away as well?' And Simon Peter answered him, and he said, 'Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.' And we have believed and we have come to know that you are the Holy One of God. And Jesus says to these guys, "In the midst of the struggle, are you still going to follow me? Are you still going to walk with me?" And Peter goes, "We don't have any other hope, Jesus. You are our only hope. You have the words of eternal life. And we believe in you and we know you." And in this moment of deep faithfulness, standing with Jesus as everyone else walks away, "There is no pride. There is just this statement that you are everything." Sometimes we can be like this man in Luke chapter 9.

"I've got it. I'll take care of it. I'll figure it out." Ultimately, what we find is that if our eyes are on ourself and on our strength, it's never going to ultimately work. In the end, we won't be as strong as we think we are. We won't be as smart as we think we are, or as powerful as we think we are. And we will find ourselves in the midst of this struggle. You see, at the heart of this man's declaration is this hope that is in himself. I, Jesus, I will follow you. And we move from this man to one that Jesus calls, one who is fearful about the future. To another, Jesus said, "Follow me." But he said, "Lord, let me first go and bury my father." Now, there's an immediate contrast. The first guy kind of jumps out of nowhere.

The second one, Jesus comes to and asks personally to follow him. And discipleship is a call to follow Jesus above everything else. A call to put Jesus first in all areas of our life. And this guy immediately has his attention elsewhere. His response is, "Follow you?" Yes, I'd love to, but there's something that I have to do first. Maybe you haven't experienced this, but I know when we're talking to our children and we say, "Hey, I need you to do this." And they go, "Yeah, but I've got to do this other thing first." As a parent, there is a frustration that says, "Well, this thing is more important. That's why I asked you to do it right now." And here comes this guy to Jesus, and Jesus says, "Please follow me." And this guy goes, "Yeah, I'd love to, but there is something else I have to do first."

You might say, "Well, we're being a little too hard on this guy." Seems like he has a pretty good reason to delay following Jesus. And he says, "First, let me go and bury my father." Now, if you want to hear it worse, listen to how Jesus responds to him. And Jesus said to him, "Leave the dead to bury their own dead, but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God." Now, does this seem a little bit harsh? Here is a guy. Jesus says, "Follow me." He says, "I need to go bury my father first." And Jesus goes, "Let the dead bury their own dead. You go and preach the gospel." It seems that Jesus is being pretty hard. And if we were to do this in a situation where there is a family who is hurting and suffering,

I can't imagine the response would be very good. But I need you to understand Jesus' response. Because it's likely that this man's father is not dead. Because if he was dead, why hadn't he buried his father and then come to see Jesus? Why is he saying, "Well, I need to go back." It's not as if this man's father has died, and then this guy has run to see Jesus. He's like, "All right, go back and get Dad in the ground, and then I can come follow you." That's not the way it works in Jewish life in the first century. If you were around and in contact with a dead body, which he would have been if his father had already died, he would have been ceremonially unclean for at least a week. And he's not going to be out in the crowd.

It's very likely this guy's father is alive and well in this situation. The chance of this guy having a dead dad at home, but coming to the parade of Jesus passing through town is very slim. What this man is really saying at the heart is, "I need to stay home in case something happens to my dad." And even that's understandable, right? I understand that. You likely understand that as well. And God is all about family. In fact, honoring your father and mother makes the top ten. But what this man really is saying, even under all of that, is, "What if something happens to my dad while I'm following you?" At heart, the heart of this man's objection is a fear of the future. The behavior that results from fear is a continual, fearful wondering about what might happen in the future.

And that's where this man is when he says, "Let me stay until my dad dies." What he's saying is, "I don't know what's going to happen to my dad. I don't know if he's going to need me." And what he is doing is looking at Jesus through this lens of fear, saying, "I don't know what the future holds, but I have a lot of ideas about how bad it's going to be." And maybe we found ourselves in that scenario where we constantly look at the future, fearful about what might happen. I want you to understand Jesus' response here is not harsh, and I would say, in fact, it's not even harsh. It's biblically familiar, just in other words. What Jesus is saying is, "Let the future take care of himself." In Matthew chapter 6, as Jesus is dealing with anxiety and the fear of the future, and the fear of not knowing what the future holds,

he says this, "Therefore, do not be anxious, saying, 'What shall we eat, or what shall we drink, or what shall we wear?' For the Gentiles seek all of these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you." Do you hear what Jesus says in Matthew 6? He says, "I know you're worried about the future." In fact, right before this, he gives them a bunch of illustrations from creation that show how God takes care of things like birds and flowers. And he's saying, "Your heavenly Father knows the future that you see is so uncertain, and he takes care of it." And in not so many words, that's what Jesus is saying again here. You see, the response of this man, I think, for us might be very familiar.

What happens if I do this? And what happens if I do that? And we're always worried, and we're always fearful, and we never end up acting because we're always asking, "What if something bad happens?" And it's not just us as individuals, right? We do this as churches, too. What if I say something to my friend and invite them to hear about Jesus, and they get angry? What if I invite people to my church to hear about Jesus, and they make it all weird? What if I do this? What if I invest my energy in this, and it just doesn't work? It's easy to live with a fear of what might happen. And sometimes we devote great energy to try to make sure we're prepared and we're ready. And so instead of asking the question that this young man asks, where he says,

"What if something bad happens in the future?" Let us ask another question. What if we trusted that Jesus would provide, and we followed him? Instead of looking through the fear of uncertainty, what if we trusted Jesus and let him provide? So we've seen this excited guy whose hope is in himself. We've seen a fearful guy whose uncertainty about the future has taken his eyes off of his hope. And now here's a guy who finds himself somewhere in between, the one who is half-hearted. Yet another said, "I will follow you, Lord, but let me first say farewell to those at my home." If you're following along, this guy already has two strikes, right? One is he's a little like the first guy, and he goes, "Hey, I'll follow you." And he's a little like the second guy, because he says, "Hey, I need to go home first and say goodbye to everybody before I follow you."

He's somewhere in between the first and the second. Look at what Jesus says. Jesus will say to him, "No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God." And what Jesus is doing is he's addressing this man's heart, and the picture he paints is of plowing a field. And I haven't done a lot of plowing on a tractor or with a horse or in any other way. But what I do know is if you have to have straight rows in your field, you can't look backwards. You've got to look at where you're going. And if you are the guy who's constantly kind of looking back and not paying attention to where you're going, you're probably not the best guy to run the plow in the spring.

And the same is true of the kingdom. Think about the distracted world we live in, right? People sort of half-heartedly drive me. One of my greatest pet peeves is you're sitting at the green arrow out here getting ready to turn left on 522 south, and that arrow doesn't last for very long. And there's somebody who's right in front of you, and they're on their phone, right? And I'm just like, "Buddy, drive or be on the phone. Don't do both." And what Jesus is saying to us in this is you can't do both, right? You can either follow me or you can chase after all of these other things, right? You can't do both. And the problem here isn't that this man loves his family. The other disciples have family and friends, but notice what they do to their family and friends.

They don't say goodbye to them and leave. In John chapter 1, John the baptizer is standing with two of his disciples, Andrew and the one who would go on to be John the apostle. And he says, "Behold the Lamb of God." And these two disciples, they hear what he says. They follow Jesus. Jesus asks them, "What are you seeking?" And they're kind of put on a spot. Instead of saying, "The Messiah." They say, "Oh, we just want to know where you're staying." And so he says, "Come and you will see." And one of those who heard John speak and followed was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother. Look what it says. Jesus says, "Come, follow me. See where I'm staying." Andrew first found his own brother Simon and said, "We have found the Messiah, which means the Christ."

And he brought him to Jesus. The next day, Jesus goes to Galilee and he finds Philip. And he says, "Follow me." And so Philip goes and finds Nathanael and says to him, "We found the one who Moses and the prophets wrote about." Jesus of Nazareth, son of Joseph. And Nathanael goes, "Does anything good come out of Nazareth?" And Philip goes, "Come and see. Do you see what's happening?" These guys go to follow Jesus, and they don't go and say goodbye to their family and friends. They go back and get them and bring them along with them. And it's a picture that you see through Scripture. That this man is sort of half-hearted. He's sort of there saying, "I want to follow Jesus." And the problem isn't his love for his family. It's that he's ultimately uncertain about following Jesus.

Let me go home and think about it. Should I do this? Should I make a pros and cons list? If the first man hopes in himself, and the second man has his hopes hidden by fear, this man's hope is in the comfort of life, is how it has always been. He wants to follow Jesus, but he doesn't want his life to change too much. You see, discipleship is more and it's deeper than simply saying, "I will follow Jesus." It takes a transformed heart. It takes a heart that is no longer focused on ourselves, or on our fears, or on our comforts. And the only way that our heart is transformed is not through the strength of our will, or the power of our decisions. It's only transformed by seeing Jesus. And the struggle here is that the first guy kind of acts like Jesus needs him.

And he hasn't seen the greatness of Jesus yet and realized his brokenness. And he doesn't understand it's not that Jesus needs him, it's that he needs Jesus. And the second guy, he's afraid of what happens if he follows Jesus. And he hasn't yet seen that Jesus is greater than all of his fears and all of his struggles. The third guy wants to follow, but at the same time, he doesn't want to leave the comfort of his life. He needs to desperately see that Jesus is his treasure. You see, the only way transformation happens in our lives, the only way that transformation happens in our churches, is by realizing that we desperately need Jesus. In the words of Peter, where else are we going to go? You have the words of eternal life. And there is, in this text, this call to hope, a hope that is greater than our pride, a hope that is greater than our fears, and a hope that is greater than our comfort.

And it is to that that Jesus calls us. Father in heaven, as we look at our lives, and we see our smallness, and we see your greatness, and we see our sinfulness, and we see your holiness, and as we see our weakness in your strength, may you convict us of those places where we have chased after ourselves, where we have stood behind our fears, or we have sought our own ease and comfort. And may you help us see Jesus. Our Savior, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, the one who is greater than our fears, the one that can calm the storms of our heart, the one that can bring us to a place where we are changed. Help us this morning to fix our eyes on the hope that is found in your Son. It is in Jesus' name.