Grosey's Messages

Fickle Followers  Luke 9:44-62

The Majesty of Jesus Outshines Pride, Prejudice, Possessions,

Luke 9: An argument started among the disciples as to which of them would be the greatest.

Jesus, knowing their thoughts, took a little child and had him stand beside him. Then he

said to them, "Whoever welcomes this little child in my name welcomes me; and

whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. For he who is least among you

all—he is the greatest."

"Master," said John, "we saw a man driving out demons in your name and we tried to

stop him, because he is not one of us." "Do not stop him," Jesus said, "for whoever is not

against you is for you." As the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus

resolutely set his face toward Jerusalem. And he sent messengers on ahead, who went

into a Samaritan village to get things ready for him; but the people there did not welcome

him, because he was heading for Jerusalem. When the disciples James and John saw this,

they asked, "Lord do you want us to call down fire from heaven to destroy them?" [even

as Elijah did] But Jesus turned and rebuked them, and [said, "You do not know what kind

of spirit you are of, for the Son of Man did not come to destroy men's lives, but to save

them."] they went to another village.

As they were walking along the road, a man said to him, "I will follow you wherever you

go." Jesus replied, "Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man

has no place to lay his head." He said to another man, "Follow me." But the man replied,

"Lord, first let me go and bury my father." Jesus said to him, "Let the dead bury their

own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God." Still another said, "I will

follow you, Lord, but first let me go back and say good-by to my family." Jesus replied,

"No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God."

Last Sunday we saw that the Glimpse of the Glory of God in Jesus on the Mount of transfiguration solved all the problems that come in life. Is there Power in Jesus to save the demon possessed?

A glimpse here tells us yes!

The Majesty of the Lord Jesus shines through all the matters of life

It also reveals the fickleness of people's hearts. One minute they are for Him, and another their soul wanders so far away from Christ.  But the true measure of it all is the Lord Jesus.

Jesus is standing in Pilate's hall—Friendless, forsaken, betrayed by all:
Hearken! what meaneth the sudden call?  What will you do with Jesus

What will you do with Jesus?  Neutral you cannot be;
                Some day your heart will be asking,    "What will He do with me?"

Jesus is standing on trial still,You can be false to Him if you will,
You can be faithful through good or ill:  What will you do with Jesus

Will you evade Him as Pilate tried? Or will you choose Him, whate'er betide?
Vainly you struggle from Him to hide:  What will you do with Jesus?

"Jesus, I give Thee my heart today! Jesus, I'll follow Thee all the way,
Gladly obeying Thee!" will you say:   "This will I do with Jesus!

Our Savior never refused anybody who came to Him. His own words were, "Him that cometh to me, I will in no wise cast out." That is a true description of his dealing with men at all times. If they do but come sincerely and truly, he always welcomes them.

But something is lacking in these three would be followers.

There seems no real sense of the repentance.

There seems no real sense of understanding the work of the Saviour.

There seems no real sense of them appreciating the majesty of Christ.

Here is a warning to the pretentious.  Here is a warning to the self-deceived who, through ignorance, professed what was not really true.

They seem to jump into their religion as men do into their morning bath, and then jump out again just as quickly, converted by the dozen, and unconverted one by one till the dozen has melted away.

We should always be anxious to receive all who profess to come to Christ. At the same time, we must exercise judgment. No one is converted simply because he says that he is.

Lets look at these three men that the Lord dealt with one on one.

1. The Volunteer.

The first man, and he was a scribe, too, said, "Lord, I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest." What that might mean, what that might involve, he did not ask, and therefore did not know. He was sincere as far as he knew; but then he did not know much. Had he known more, he would have said less. Like our Lord, we meet with many persons who are great at resolving. They are willing to make that declaration as publicly as you like; and stand up, or fall down, be baptised or do anything else to declare that they have resolved.

But some people are very great at resolving rather than repenting and believing. These people show, generally, very great confidence in themselves. This man said, "Lord, I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest." There is no prayer, "Lord, help me to follow You," "Please hold me up, only then shall I be safe," "Lord please don't leave me, for I shall wander from you," but it is just this, "I have made up my mind to this, and I am a strong-minded person, and able to carry out what I determine. Lord, I will follow you anywhere." That is our duty; but that duty we shall never attain apart from God's help. "He that trusteth in his own heart is"-what? A convert? No, "a fool", and "a fool" is another name for a sinner.

This first man is very big; he talks big talk, he talks up a big game, and he feels that he can do what he says, and in the simplicity of his ignorant heart, he says, "Lord, I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest."

His problem was pride. Much like the disciples. He may have thought that Jesus Christ had come to set up an earthly kingdom, and that, by following him, he would get a good seat in that new kingdom? Perhaps he heard Christ's apostles arguing about who should be the greatest, one sitting on his right hand and the other on his left.

The Pure Glorious Majesty of Jesus' person should take all pride from us.

There was the Glimpse of His Glory on the Mount of transfiguration. That Glimpse of Glory knocked much of the pride out of Peter.

Notice how the Lord Jesus undeceived this man: "Foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man has nowhere to lay his head."

He told that scribe that, if he became his follower he would have what the Lord had. For the disciple is not above his Lord, nor the servant above his Master. What will you have to share if you follow Christ? You will have to follow a friendless Man without a home, and often with no one to understand him. If you take him to be your Leader, you will have to travel over a rough road.  If he followed Christ, not only would he gain no wealth by it, but he would get very little kindness as the result of it, for our Saviour had no home of his own.  "You will be treated like that; you will lose many of your friends; those who are of your own household will become your enemies; those who now admire you will then abhor you; and those who now call you a fine fellow, and are pleased to entertain you, will then shut the door in your face. That is what you have to expect."

Become truly and really a follower of Christ. The Lord Jesus took this would be disciple into Basic Basic Training. A friend of mine was a Presbyterian Army Chaplain at Basic Training at Kappooka near Wagga.  The aim of the three months basic Training is to find out what sort of person the person is who comes to the Army. It breaks a person down and then rebuilds him he says. Many decide after the three months that they don't want to do this anymore. Anyone can quit after three months. The Lord confronted this would be disciple and took him through Basic Training. This is what being a disciple of Jesus looks like. And the guy bailed. He quit!

2. There is the Conscript.

THERE ARE SOME WOULD-BE FOLLOWERS OF CHRIST WHO DO NOT PUT CHRIST FIRST.

The second case mentioned in this chapter is different from the first: "And He said to another, Follow me." This man was not a volunteer. The first man was, and he broke down in Basic Training.

This man heard the Lord's call: "Follow me!" Every true volunteer into the army of Christ is press ganged. The English and other navies would send a band of thugs ( a gang) to conscript men into the navy. They would press gang men, put them in chains, men that they saw in the streets and make them sailors. Under compulsion. It was stronger than conscription. That is how my ancestors came to Australia. 

The grace of God press gangs each true Christian into discipleship. But every one who is impressed into the army of Christ is also a volunteer, for he is made willing in the day of God's power; so that, in the kingdom of Christ, the pressed man and the volunteer are the same.

This man had a distinct command from the Lord: "Follow me." That is a very solemn thing, to have a command from the Lord coming to the heart, and then to repel it. Be very cautious when you hear the Word of God preached, or when you read it. If, at any time, it comes to you with unusual power, if it lays an iron hand upon your shoulder, if you feel it difficult to get away from it, do not try to get away from it; for, if you do, you will add very greatly to your guilt. When Jesus himself seems to say to you, "Follow me," do not harden your heart to Him.

But this man gave a very natural excuse: "He said, Lord, allow me first to go and bury my father."

"First, I must bury my father" refers to the duty of a firstborn son to stay close to his home until his father died. Now, we can be certain this man's father had not just died in the past few hours. Jewish burial customs dictated a corpse be buried within 24 hours of death, because they didn't embalm like the Egyptians had done for years. So, if the man's father recently died, he wouldn't have been out in the setting where Jesus was calling for disciples; he would have been following the carefully prescribed burial customs. No, this man's father was still alive. He was telling Jesus one day he would follow Jesus. That day would be sometime in the future after his father died, then he would follow Jesus.  "Allow me first"-indicated where his heart was. He was willing to be a Christian; that is to say, a Christian and something else; but the something else must be written in large capitals, and then, at the bottom, in very small type, and a Christian.''

Do you not know a great many people of that sort? Businessman and Christian, but the Christian is secondary. They are like the man whose child was asked, "Is your father a Christian?" and who replied, "He is a Christian, I think; but he has not worked much at it lately." You are no Christian unless you put Christ first. If you have understood His Majesty and had a Glimpse of His glory you cannot allow Him second place to anything.

Don't you think the Lord knew this fellows home situation? Surely if He knew it then He understood when the guys would need to bury his dad.  It appears this fellow may have been more concerned for the family inheritance. The Saviour who knew everything saw that there was no force in his argument; for He said, "There are other people to bury your father; but I have called upon you now to come and follow me. Nobody else can do that for you; but the burial of your father can be done by others whom I have never called, and who know nothing about the divine life. Let the dead bury their dead."

The Lord Jesus won't come into your heart to sit in the worst chair in the house. He will not come into your soul to be put in the closet. He is majestic in glory. He must have the best room, and the best seat in the room; he must be first, and not even father and mother may come before the Lord Jesus Christ.

If Christ isn't first with you, Christ is nothing to you. You can't play with Him; you must surrender your whole life to him, and make Him the first and last of your life's ambition, if you have Him at all.

 "Follow me," said Christ, "I must be first; and as for these other things, there are other people who can properly attend to them. It is more in their line. The dead know where the graves are; the dead know all about funerals. Follow me, and let the dead bury their dead."

This man's first concern was his pride of place in the family pecking order. Burying his father was code for take the place as the dutiful son who inherits the lot. The Majesty of Jesus trumps any pride of place anyone offers you. It is more important to be in His service than to be promoted into any other place. I have met pastors who wanted to be politicians. Why? Preaching the gospel is much more important work. They feel they can "change society." Why? The only way to change society is to change peope one person at a time under the power of the gospel.

I know a pastor offered a job in a TAFE at triple his current pay. Why did he turn it down? He said "There is nothing more important than gospel work. The wages might not be great but the retirement benefits are out of this world!"

We have very questionable discipleship towards Christ, where somebody or something is put before Christ!

Jerome (347 -420 AD) was a scholar. He studied under Apollinarius of Laodicea (who was later condemned as a heretic for teaching Christ had only human flesh, not a human mind or will). But his Greek studies were interrupted by a dream—one of the most famous in church history—during Lent 375: dragged before a tribunal of God, he was found guilty of preferring classic pagan literature to Christian: "Ciceronianus es, non Christianus," (You are a follower of Cicero, not of Christ) said his judge.

He writes in a letter to a young lady Eustochium "Meantime preparations for my funeral went on; my body grew gradually colder, and the warmth of life lingered only in my throbbing breast. Suddenly I was caught up in the spirit and dragged before the judgment seat of the Judge; and here the light was so bright, and those who stood around were so radiant, that I cast myself upon the ground and did not dare to look up. Asked who and what I was I replied: I am a Christian. But He who presided said: You lie. You are a follower of Cicero and not of Christ. For 'where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.' Matthew 6:21 Instantly I became dumb, and amid the strokes of the lash — for He had ordered me to be scourged — I was tortured more severely still by the fire of conscience, considering with myself that verse, In the grave who shall give you thanks? Yet for all that I began to cry and to bewail myself, saying: Have mercy upon me, O Lord: have mercy upon me. Amid the sound of the scourges this cry still made itself heard. At last the bystanders, falling down before the knees of Him who presided, prayed that He would have pity on my youth, and that He would give me space to repent of my error. He might still, they urged, inflict torture on me, should I ever again read the works of the Gentiles. Under the stress of that awful moment I should have been ready to make even still larger promises than these. Accordingly I made oath and called upon His name, saying: Lord, if ever again I possess worldly books, or if ever again I read such, I have denied You." Letter 22  to To Eustochium

Shaken, Jerome vowed never to read or own pagan literature again.

A wealthy student of Jerome's founded a monastery in Bethlehem for him to administer (it also included three cloisters for women and a hostel for pilgrims). Here he finished his greatest contribution (begun in 382 at Damasus's instruction): translating the Bible into everyday Latin (later to be called the Vulgate, meaning "common"). Though there were Latin versions available, they varied widely in accuracy. At first Jerome worked from the Greek Old Testament, the Septuagint. But then he established a precedent for later translators: the Old Testament would have to be translated from the original Hebrew. In his quest for accuracy, he consulted Jewish rabbis and others.

One of the biggest differences he saw between the Septuagint and the original Hebrew was that the Jews did not include the books now known as the Apocrypha in their canon of Holy Scripture. Though he still felt obligated to include them, Jerome made it clear that he thought them to be church books, not fully inspired canonical books. (Reformation leaders would later remove them entirely from their Bibles.)

After 23 years, Jerome completed his translation, which Christians used for more than 1,000 years, and in 1546 the Council of Trent declared it the only authentic Latin text of the Scriptures. Sadly, the text of the Vulgate that circulated throughout the Middle Ages was a corrupt form of Jerome's work, encumbered by copyists' errors. (In the late sixteenth century, corrected editions were published.)

Jerome's work became so widely revered that until the Reformation, translators worked from the Vulgate; not for a thousand years did scholars again translate directly from the Greek New Testament. And ironically, Jerome's Bible added impetus to the use of Latin as the Western church's language, resulting centuries later in a liturgy and Bible lay people could not understand—precisely the opposite of Jerome's original intention.

For Jerome, however, his scholarship gave him an appreciation of the Word of God he carried for the rest of his life: "Make knowledge of the Scripture your love … Live with them, meditate on them, make them the sole object of your knowledge and inquiries."

Is there someething in your life that has a higher place in it than love to Christ. Judge you speech, your talk: is Christ first there? Do you have a deeper emotion in your heart caused by politics, or Christ? How are you about prayer and prayer meeting? Is it your joy? Or are you dull about that?  You are no Christian if you are not altogether a Christian. If every part of you is not consecrated to Christ, I fear that no part of you is consecrated to Him.

3. There Was The Indecisive Follower.

He is a somewhat willing volunteer.. but somewhat unwilling too.

THERE ARE SOME WOULD-BE FOLLOWERS OF CHRIST WHO LOVE POSSESSSIONS MORE THAN CHRIST 

And another also said, Lord, I will follow You." He is another volunteer; "but let me first." Something must be done first by him, too. There would have been no hurt in what he said if he had not put in that word "first." "Let me first go bid them farewell, which are at home at my house." Well, now, the objection to this was that he did not intend to come straight out from the world.

He did not mean to come out there and then for Christ; but he must go home, and bid them farewell first.

That's dangerous. Probably when he went home they would get crying over him, so that it would take a month to say farewell, and thenhe would have to say farewell again, and perhaps keep on saying it all the rest of his life.

No man leaves sin little by little. Have done with it! Cut the connection altogether by God's grace!

Some have been almost persuaded; but they have gone to their old friends just to give them the last farewell, the last handshake, and we have not seen anything more of them.

It is a dangerous trying to part with the world by degrees; gently, courteously, little by little. You will never do it. No man becomes a follower of Christ that way.

It showed his indecision. He would follow Christ, but-well, that home of his, all those dear faces at home. First, he asks to go and see them; first, as if they would not be there another week, or another month, he must go there first. So we find plenty of people who are thus undecided; they would like to go to heaven by that broad road along which the multitude of men are going down to hell. "Yes, write my name in the church-book; but I shall keep it on the books of the club where I go and do a little bit of gambling; at any rate, just for a time. I will be a Christian one of these days; but just now I have something else I have got to do!  I promised, and I must keep my promise."

It is like Elijah who spoke to the people of Israel at Mt Carmel. How long will you go limping between two opinions. If Baal is God serve him, but if God is God serve Him!

You might be like a swinging door.. Is it opened or closed?

Take the big decisive step.

This man's request showed a want of appreciation of Christ. If Jesus said to any one of us who are in our right minds, "Follow me" should we not think this the highest honour, our greatest delight, to be his followers?

We must have a little more sin, and a little more of the pleasures of this world and its possessions, it shows that we are not really brought to the Lord!

Look at what the Lord Jesus said:  "No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God."

I had a friend whose dad owned a large property at Nyngan. 20,000 acres. He said when they ploughed that 20,000 acres if he looked back over his shoulder they didn't get the furrows straight in those 1000 acre paddocks. And if they didn't get it straight once they got it crooked all the rest.

The ploughman who is always looking here and there and everywhere, instead of looking straight ahead, is a lousey ploughman.

We want men and women who will say, "I am for Christ, for him to live, for him to labor, for him to suffer, for him, if need be, to die. Straight ahead, turning neither to the right hand for this that I may gain, nor to the left hand for fear of what I may lose, but straight ahead, by that divine grace which has come into my soul, and made me feel that Christ is all my salvation, and all my desire, straight ahead I plough towards the end of the field."