What is the absolute number one thing in your
life?
Now don’t say “God” just because you’re in church and it’s
what you’re supposed to say. Actually think about it. Be honest with yourself. I’m not going to make you say it out
loud. But really think about it.
What is the absolute number one thing in your life?
Is it your spouse? Is it your kids or
grandkids? Is it your friends? Is
it your job? Is it your land, especially if you’re a farmer? Is it
a material possession? Is it something
you really like to do? What is it?
Now, when I said don’t say “God” just because you’re in
church, I did not mean to criticize you or to imply that your faith in God is
not sincere. I know each of you cares about God--that’s why you’re here
on a Sunday morning when there are a lot of other places you could be. But for most of us, including me, it’s not
all that clear-cut that God is the number one thing in our lives. God is
important. In fact, God is very
important. But for most of us--again,
including me--God is one of many things that are important to us.
And while we might think that
God is number one, and we might hope that God is number one, I think the only
way we can know for sure is if we’re put to the test. It’s only if we
have to choose between God and something else that’s very important to us that
we can truly know whether God is the most important. And most of us will probably not be put to
that test. And I don’t know about you, but I’m kind of happy that I
probably won’t be put to that test, because I don’t know whether I’d pass.
But this is what Jesus was
talking about in our Bible reading for today. People keep coming up to
Jesus and saying they want to follow him.
Saying that they will follow him. They’ll follow him no
matter what. Buuuut…. But first
let me do this. First let me do
that. First let me do something else.
And after that, I’ll be right back here and follow you, Jesus. Yes
sirree, no doubt about it. I’ll follow
you completely. After I take care of
some other things first.
Jesus rejects that. He
does not accept the people who say they’ll follow him “but”. He’s nice
about it. He does not get mad at them. He does not say they’re going to hell or
anything like that. But Jesus does not accept them, either. Jesus knows an excuse when he hears one. And Jesus knows that what he’s hearing from
these people is excuses.
Let’s look at some of the
things people say. The first one says, “I will follow you wherever you
go.” And Jesus says oh, really?
You say that like you’ll be gone for a specific time and you’ll go to a
specific place. That’s not how it works.
I’m going to keep moving. The
only specific place I’m going to go to is the cross. And I know you’re not going to follow me
there.
The next one says, “Lord,
please let me go and bury my father.” A reasonable request, right? But you see, from what I’ve read, this was a
figure of speech. The man’s father was not dead. What he was saying was, I need to stay with
my family now. Just wait until someday,
when my father is gone, and then I’ll be free to follow you. And Jesus
says that’s not gonna work. If you want
to follow me, you need to follow me now, not wait until a far off someday.
The third one says, “First let
me go back and say good-bye to my family.” Again, sounds reasonable. But Jesus says, look, you can’t move forward
with me if you’re looking backward at someone else. Even your family. You either follow me, and follow me now, or
you don’t. There’s no middle ground.
Jesus says it’s not good enough
to make him one priority out of many. It’s not even good enough to make
him the top priority. Jesus says our
entire life needs to be centered around following him. Every aspect of
it. No excuses. No “buts”.
No “let me do this first”. Our
entire life needs to be centered around following Jesus.
That’s a tough standard.
Jesus is asking a lot. Is he asking too
much? I don’t know. Can you
honestly say that your entire life is centered around following Jesus?
Maybe you can. But I don’t think I can. Some of the time, maybe, but not all the
time. There are too many other things
that I allow to get in the way. They’re not bad things, necessarily. Sometimes they’re even good things. But they’re not necessarily Christ-centered
things, either.
What does it even mean for us
to have our entire life centered around following Jesus? Is it even
possible? A lot of us have jobs. If we don’t have jobs, we do things as
volunteers. Or we have family responsibilities. How can we do all the things that life
requires us to do every day and still have our entire lives centered around
Jesus?
Well, here’s what I
think. First of all, I don’t think Jesus requires everyone to quit their
jobs and start wandering around the country sharing the gospel the way he
did. After all, if everyone did that, there’d be no one to grow the food
or to process it or to transport it.
There’d be nobody to keep the lights on. There’d be no one to make
the clothes or to pick up the trash or to do all the other things that are
necessarily to keep a society functioning.
So that’s not what we’re talking about here.
What I think we’re talking
about, really, is an attitude. When you go to do your job, do you think
about how doing your job can be a way of serving God? When you’re with
your family, do you think about how taking care of your family can be a way of
serving God? When you do whatever it is that you do to relax, do you
think about how doing that can be a way of serving God? As you go about
your daily life, doing all the things we do every day, do you think about how
doing those things can be a way of serving God?
I think that’s what Jesus is
talking about here. Everything we do, every aspect of our lives, should
have to do with serving God in some way. Even when we’re taking a little
down time, even when we’re just having fun and relaxing, there should still
somehow be a way in which that serves God.
That’s still a tough
standard. That’s still asking a lot of us. And I don’t think I can
honestly say I do that, either. But here’s something to remember.
The twelve disciples were the
people closest to Jesus when he was on earth, right? They traveled with
him for about three years. If there was
ever anyone who followed Jesus, it was them, right?
And yet, how many times did
Jesus have to straighten them out? How many times did they make mistakes? How many times did they misunderstand?
We have one right in our reading for today.
They go to a Samaritan village and the people don’t welcome them.
And James and John, the two disciples who were probably closest to Jesus, ask
if Jesus will let them call fire down from heaven to destroy those people.
And Jesus says, “What in the
world are you guys talking about? Have you not learned anything from your
time with me? Are you dumb as a box of
rocks or what?”
Well, the Bible does not
actually say that. It just says that Jesus rebuked the disciples.
But if Jesus did not say that, I suspect he thought it. At that time, the
disciples were not interested in following Jesus. They were interested in
getting revenge on these Samaritans.
These people, who they really did not like anyway just because they were
Samaritans, had rejected them, and they wanted to make them pay.
There are so many times where
stuff like this happened. There’s the time in Matthew Sixteen where Jesus
is trying to tell the disciples that he’s going to be killed, and Peter says,
hey, Jesus don’t talk like that. And Jesus tells Peter that he does not
understand because his mind is on human concerns rather than heavenly concerns.
That, right there, is the problem
we have. Our minds are on human concerns.
But the good news is that Jesus does not condemn Peter. He sounds
a little upset with him at the moment--if you remember, he says to Peter “Get
behind me, Satan”. It’s hard to think of a worse name Jesus could call
you than to call you Satan. But still,
Jesus does not send Peter away. He knows that Peter is doing the best he
can. He’s doing his best to follow
Jesus. He’s doing his best to keep Jesus
at the center of his life.
Peter fails sometimes, because
he’s human. That’s why our minds fall back on human concerns so
much--because we’re human. But Jesus forgives Peter. Jesus even forgives Peter when Peter denies
knowing Jesus. That’s when Peter had the ultimate human concern,
right? He was concerned with saving his
neck, even at the expense of denying knowing the Savior. But Jesus even
forgave Peter for that.
Jesus forgave Peter for those
times when he failed to keep Jesus at the center of his life, because Jesus
knew what was in Peter’s heart. And Jesus will forgive us for those times
when we fail to keep Jesus at the center of our lives, because Jesus knows
what’s in our hearts. Jesus knows we’re
not perfect and we cannot be. If our hearts are focused on keeping Jesus
at the center of our lives, Jesus will forgive us when we fail.
But that does not give us an
excuse. Because if our hearts are not focused on keeping Jesus at the
center of our lives, Jesus will know that, too. We still have to do our best. We don’t have to beat ourselves up when we
fail, but we should not make excuses for ourselves, either. When we don’t
keep Jesus at the center of our lives, we need to confess that to God and ask
for forgiveness. And then we need to try
again. And again and again, always trying to keep Jesus at the center of
our lives.
Jesus gave us a tough
standard. And Jesus knows it’s a tough standard. But Jesus does not
accept a number two position in our lives. He tells us it’s no good to
say that we’ll follow him but…. Our
lives need to be centered around Jesus Christ, not just sometimes, but all the
time.
No comments:
Post a Comment