ROADBLOCKS IN FOLLOWING
Posted by Pastor Greg Allen on September 2, 2020 under AM Bible Study |
AM Bible Study Group: September 2, 2020 from Luke 9:57-62
Theme: We need to beware of the ways we hinder ourselves from following Jesus as we should.
(All Scripture is taken from The New King James Version, unless otherwise indicated).
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This morning’s section of Luke’s Gospel begins—in Luke 9:57—with these words concerning the Lord Jesus and His disciples: “Now it happened as they journeyed on the road …” Jesus was going somewhere up the road; and His disciples were following with Him. And it’s important that we understand what road it was that they were journeying on.
It was the road to Jerusalem—where He would give His life on the cross.
Just shortly before, Jesus had told His disciples in Luke 9:22 that He must “suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised the third day”. And by verse 44, He made it very clear to them that they were—right then—heading to the place where all of that would happen, and where He would be betrayed into the hands of men. Jesus was, in other words, leading His disciples along with Him on the narrow path toward the cross.
They didn’t quite understand the significance of that. And sometimes, we don’t either. We often think that following Jesus is the pathway to self-fulfillment and personal enrichment. And of course, in an ultimate sense, it is. But we often forget that we obtain ultimate ‘self-fulfillment’ and ‘enrichment’ by dying to self completely, and by laying down our lives for Him. Jesus made this clear in Luke 9:23-26, when—as they traveled along behind Him—He turned to His followers and said;
“If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will save it. For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and himself is destroyed and lost? For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words, of him, the Son of Man will be ashamed when He comes in His own glory, and in His Father’s, and of the holy angels” (Luke 9:23-26).
He, therefore, lets us know—at the beginning of the journey—that following Him means taking up our cross.
It’s important, then, that we are clear on this. Many people have started off following Jesus; but afterward became disillusioned. They forsook Him along the way and said, “I tried following Jesus; but it just didn’t work out for me.” And it’s not that, somehow, Jesus had failed them. The truth of the matter is that they had not understood properly what was involved in following Him.
In this morning’s portion of Luke’s Gospel—in Luke 9:57-62, we find the stories of three people who started to follow Jesus, but who were hindered in going further. Luke tells us;
Now it happened as they journeyed on the road that someone said to Him, “Lord, I will follow You wherever You go.” And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.” Then He said to another, “Follow Me.” But he said, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.” Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and preach the kingdom of God.” And another also said, “Lord, I will follow You, but let me first go and bid them farewell who are at my house.” But Jesus said to him, “No one, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:57-62).
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So; looking at this passage, what were the roadblocks that these three individuals encountered? And what hindrances might you and I encounter to going forward with Jesus as we should?
First, we can become hindered because …
1. WE FAILED TO CONSIDER THE COST OF FOLLOWING JESUS (vv. 57-58).
Luke tells us in verse 57, “Now it happened as they journeyed on the road that someone said to Him, “Lord, I will follow You wherever You go.” According to the Gospel of Matthew, this man was “a certain scribe” (Matthew 8:19). A scribe was a man, in Jewish culture, who was very educated and cultured; a man well trained in the Scriptures and the law of Moses. Scribes were accustomed to being highly respected as scholarly members of society.
What might have motivated such a man to take up and follow Jesus? It might be that he had heard of the miracles that Jesus performed, and that he knew the Old Testament promises concerning the Messiah, and that he realized Jesus was the promised King of the Jews. It may be that he was sincerely eager to follow Jesus, because he knew that Jesus was destined to reign—and perhaps hoped to reign with Him. And there was nothing wrong with that. Jesus is destined to reign as King of kings and Lord of lords over this earth; and we, as His followers will reign with Him. But that will happen at His return. First comes the cross.
But this is why some folks start-off following Jesus but then fall away. They think that the blessings and prosperities of Jesus’ kingdom rule would begin immediately—not realizing that the hard work of taking up His cross comes first. And so, Jesus had to go on to tell the man, “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head” (v. 58). Even the creatures of this earth—at this time—have a comfortable home in this world. But the Son of Man—the Messiah, who is destined to reign over this earth—does not, in this age, have such a place in this world. He walked on the earth as a stranger and an alien—“despised and rejected by men” (Isaiah 53:3). And if someone is seeking to follow Jesus because they believe that doing so is the immediate pathway to prosperity and comfort on this earth, they are going to be disappointed. They will have failed to count the cost.
Later on in Luke 14, Jesus urged His potential followers to consider carefully the cost in terms of the comforts and connections of this world. He said;
“If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, even his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. And whoever does not bear his cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple. For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not sit down first and count the cost, whether he has enough to finish it—lest, after he has laid the foundation, and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’ Or what king, going to make war against another king, does not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? Or else, while the other is still a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks conditions of peace. So likewise, whoever of you does not forsake all that he has cannot be My disciple” (Luke 14:25-33).
Have you counted the cost? Following Jesus does not immediately give us the riches of this present world. Instead, it costs all we have—even our very selves. It’s important that this scribe knew this before he went any further. It’s also important that we know it; lest we become hindered because we failed to consider the high cost of following Jesus in this world.
Another way that we might be hindered is because …
2. WE FAILED TO GIVE JESUS FIRST PLACE OVER EVERYTHING ELSE (vv. 59-60).
In this second story, it wasn’t that someone came to Jesus and asked to follow. It’s instead that Jesus came to them and asked them to follow Him. In verse 59, we’re told, “Then He said to another, ‘Follow Me.’” The form of Jesus’ words in the original language is interesting. They can be translated, “Be following Me”—that is, in a present, ongoing sense. And it may be that Jesus is speaking to someone who had already begun to follow; and was now being exhorted to keep on following. Perhaps Jesus was inviting him to follow in a deeper level of ‘following’ than he had followed before.
But then came the hindrance. “But he said, ‘Lord, let me first go and bury my father.’” The ties of devotion to his father held him back. And then came our Lord’s response in verse 60—words that may even seem a bit shocking to us; “Jesus said to him, ‘Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and preach the kingdom of God.’” Those certainly seem like harsh words; don’t they? Might it be that this man’s father had just passed away, and that the Lord Jesus was speaking disrespectfully of him?—or speaking dismissively of the man’s natural sense of duty as a son? Wasn’t the man commanded in the Scriptures to ‘honor his father and mother’?
It’s certainly possible that the man’s father had died at about the same time as Jesus gave this command. Ordinarily, when someone died in that part of the world, a burial needed to happen immediately. And, according to Old Testament law, the one who did the actual handling of the burial would be considered “unclean” for seven days (see Numbers 19:11-13); and this would have required this man to observe a strict process of ceremonial purification. If that was the case, then this man would have to make himself unavailable to Jesus for a time if he sought to see to the burial of his father first. But personally, I find it hard to imagine Jesus would have made his strong comment to a man whose father had actually just died.
There’s another possibility, however. The Bible teacher G. Campbell Morgan once wrote about a friend of his who was seeking to travel in some unfamiliar territory in the land of Israel. The man went to a friend of his in that land—a wealthy Arab—who he tried to persuade to go on the journey with him as a guide. The young Arab wanted to go, but he insisted that he couldn’t accompany the man right then. He turned and pointed to his father—a stately, robust-looking old man sitting at the door of his tent in what appeared to be perfectly good health; and said, “Sir, suffer me first to go and bury my father.” The old man was not dead; but the young man was expressing his devotion to his father—in a typically eastern manner of speaking—by saying that he couldn’t go on such a journey so long as his father was still alive.
I suspect that this describes the case with this man who was called by Jesus. The man was telling Jesus that he would like to follow; but he felt a greater obligation to his father that took precedence over everything else—even over Jesus’ call on his life. Jesus responded to the man’s words by telling him that anyone can bury the physically dead. Such things—as important as they may seem—should be left for those whom Jesus hadn’t called. It wasn’t that such things aren’t important to do. It’s just that it was not essential that this particular man depart from the call of Jesus to do them. Jesus’ call took supremacy over every other call of life.
And that’s true for you and me. In Matthew 10, our Lord put it this way:
He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who does not take his cross and follow after me is not worthy of Me. He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for My sake will find it” (Matthew 10:37-39).
This means that, when it comes to following Jesus, His call is to be our first priority. If the direct call from Jesus to follow Him in some specific way conflicts with something else that this world demands—even something as important as the obligation one feels to one’s own father or to his father’s household—then following Jesus and His call on our life is to take first place. Does Jesus and His authority over you have first place in your heart’s devotion? Failure to keep the call of Jesus first in our lives is another reason why we may be hindered from following Him as we should.
A third way is because once we began to follow …
3. WE FAILED TO BE UNDIVIDIED IN OUR COMMITMENT TO JESUS (vv. 61-62).
Luke goes on to tell us in verse 61, “And another also said, ‘Lord, I will follow You, but let me first go and bid them farewell who are at my house.’”
What did the man mean by this? What did he mean by “bidding farewell” to those who were at his house? There’s a story in the Old Testament of how the prophet Elijah once called his replacement, Elisha, to the prophetic ministry by casting his own mantle on him. Elisha knew that this meant he was to now follow Elijah into the prophetic ministry. But he said, “Please let me kiss my father and my mother, and then I will follow you” (1 Kings 19:20). In that case, Elijah permitted him to do this. But in the case of the man Jesus’ called, we can tell that there’s more involved than just saying goodbye to his immediate family. We can see this by the way that Jesus reacted to what he said.
In verse 62, we read, “But Jesus said to him, ‘No one, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.’” Jesus used the picture of a plowman grabbing hold of the plow as if to do his work in the field. In order to do his job right, such a plowman had to set his hands firmly to the plow, set his animal in the proper direction, and keep his eyes fixed straight ahead of himself as he plowed without distraction. This was so that the furrows he plowed would be straight and true. If he had the habit of looking backward to where had been—dividing his attention between the field and the farmhouse—he’d only succeed in making crooked patterns all over the field, and would soon prove himself useless as a plowman.
Now; we can be sure that that Jesus was not calling this man away from the legitimate responsibilities of a wife and children. Rather, this was a man who was otherwise free, but who had allowed the material concerns of an earthly estate or family connections to keep such a hold on him as to divide his heart. He truly wanted to follow Jesus; but he also wanted to keep his interests at home well maintained, because that’s where half of his heart really still was. This man would not be whole-heartedly devoted to following Jesus, because he’d always be looking backward in a homeward direction. He would not be singular in his devotion to Jesus.
This is another reason why some become hindered in following Jesus. Not everyone has been given the freedom by God to enter full-time ministry or full-time missionary work. But when someone is, they need to be prepared to give their full commitment to it. As the apostle Paul put it in 2 Timothy 2:4;
“No one engaged in warfare entangles himself with the affairs of this life, that he may please him who enlisted him as a soldier” (2 Timothy 2:4).
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Now; perhaps you’ve found today that you’ve become hindered from following Jesus because of one of these reasons.
Perhaps you have tried to work in the Lord’s field while looking backward longingly to what you may have left behind. This would be because you started following without first becoming singular in your commitment to Him. Or perhaps you have not followed on with Jesus because you feel the pull of the responsibilities that others in this world place on you. This would be because you started following without having given the call of Jesus first place in your life. Or perhaps you have not followed on because you feel it involves too much hardship and loss. This would be because you started following Jesus without first properly counting the high cost of becoming one of His followers.
The good news of these stories is that we are not told what happened afterward. It may be that every one of these three persons repented from these hindrances; and followed on with Jesus to greater levels of devotion and service.
By God’s grace, may we overcome these roadblocks in our own lives, and follow on as our Lord calls.
EA
