Northside Church - Sydney
Did Jesus Really Say That? The Dead Burying the Dead
You're listening to another great message from Northside Community Church. Well, guys, all I can say is that, wow, wow, what a contrast. What a contrast we have here in Luke chapter 9 to how it was in the early stages of Jesus' ministry. He started out, he specifically and intentionally calls certain followers, Matthew, James, John, Peter, Andrew, it's all listed there in the early part of the Gospels. He confronted them with a challenge and invited them to come on board. Now here we are in Luke chapter 9 and already it's obvious Jesus has people actually clamoring to get on board and be part of his team and, yeah, hey, Jesus, notice me, I'll be with you. It's in your party, but it's a little bit, it's actually not surprising when you realize where Jesus is up to in his ministry. I mean, things have really started to go places, this ninth chapter alone has some incredibly significant moments in his life. The first six verses Jesus sends out his disciples to preach and to heal. They come back with some great reports. Verse 10 to 17 is the feeding of the 5,000, one of the most remarkable of all the miracles of Jesus. Verses 8 into 20, Peter's great, you are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God, that great statement of faith. And then verses 28 to 36, the transfiguration, that very, very bizarre moment when Jesus goes to the top of a mountain with Peter, James and John. And in some astounding way, he's transformed his whole appearance, he's changed, he's kind of like a superhero, and the voice of God says, "This is my son with whom I am well pleased. Listen to him." It's an amazing moment, it's all here in Luke chapter 9. And then verses 37 to 43, there's a spectacular healing with a boy who's got evil spirits. So, you know, between these moments there are some other teaching from Jesus about the future and other teachings about life in the kingdom. And you get the feeling that, you know, his ministry is really getting some traction now, that's what's happening. And people are wanting to get on board, they want to share in the limelight. But what is staggeringly surprising in all of this is the way Jesus seems to vigorously discourage people from getting on board. I mean, you think he'd be excited about all the help that's available. I thought he'd be wrapped to get this kind of adulation, but look at how he responds to these three men. The first guy said, "I'll follow you wherever you go." Now, that's impressive, wherever you go. There's a commendable, there's a rather commendable statement, it's a very enthusiastic devotee we've got here, one who's likely to be pretty full on, an excellent addition to the band of disciples. But then Jesus goes and spoils the whole thing by saying, "Look, you know, I've got nowhere to sleep, nowhere to stay, nowhere to live, there's no three-star hotels involved in this little traveling exercise I'm involved in." In fact, for the most part, it's basically homelessness. That's what I'm offering, homelessness. And we might say, "Well, come on, Lord." I mean, how do you expect to attract any followers if that's the first thing you're going to say to people? It might be going to be tough, but maybe soften it down a little bit. That's a very scary picture. Second guy says, "I'll follow you, but let me go first and bury my father." I think, "Well, that's reasonable. Let me go, I'm burying my father. What's the word of Jesus? Let the dead bury their own dead." You get out there and preach the gospel. And we might say, "Well, look, love the emphasis on urgency, Lord. That's good. We're getting the message that there's really work to be done, but how insensitive." In response to somebody who says, "I want to bury my own father." Now, of course, the generally accepted explanation of this passage is that the man hasn't literally died yet. It's a euphemistic way of saying, "Look, my dad is getting old. He's in his senior years. He's not got long to go. If I can go home and just spend the last little bit of time with him, then when he's gone, I'll be in a much better position to get on board." That's what the guy's really saying. But irrespective, it seems a very harsh response on the part of our Lord. We might have expected, "Oh, how old are you dead? Tell me about it. What's that mean?" It's just like, "Let the dead bury their own dead." It's the same with the third guy who wants to simply go and say goodbye to his family. What's wrong with that? What could possibly be wrong with that? I mean, he couldn't send a letter. There was no Australia post-no express delivery in those days. Couldn't make a phone call. If he didn't go home and tell them what he was doing, they might have reported him as a missing person. What's wrong with going home and saying goodbye to the family? And Jesus' response is, "It's the question this guy's stickability." And the question is dependability. Jesus says, "Anyone who starts to plow and keeps looking back is of no use to the kingdom of God." Wow. Did Jesus really say that? It seems so harsh. It seems very confronting. It seems very discouraging for someone in response to three people who appear to be genuine. Now, look, friends, in reality, none of this should surprise us, really, because Jesus consistently placed high demands on his would-be followers. Earlier in the ninth chapter, he actually says some of the harshest words recorded in his ministry, verse 23. Look at this. He says, "If you want to come with me, you must forget yourself. Take up your cross every day and follow me. For if you want to save your own life, you'll lose it. But if you lose your life for my sake, you'll save it." Now, we think of a cross. We see nice crosses on churches and we have crosses here on Easter Sunday. It doesn't have the same sort of terror for us as it did for these people. These people knew what crosses were about. These people had seen people hanging on crosses. They lived with the constant threat of being hung on a cross themselves at the hands of the Romans. They've been a very confronting statement from Jesus. Now, look, friends, I've got to be honest here. Well, I'm being honest through the whole message, but particularly, this is me revealing something I struggle with. Look, I find it hard to get my head around the huge disparity that there is between being a Christian in a country like Australia and being a Christian, what it must be like to be a Christian in other countries around the world where to be a follower of Jesus Christ may well cost you big time. And some of you know what I'm talking about because you've been to those countries. I spoke to a young man in India once who told me in great glowing terms about his decision to follow Christ. He must have been about 30, a teacher up in a remote part of one of our mission fields over there. And I said, "Wow, how'd your family respond to that?" And his face sort of was a little crestfallen for me, "I don't have a family anymore." To my family, my Hindu family, I'm dead. I don't have any dealings with any family member at all. And to be in that way, since he was a teenager. And we find it hard to relate to that. In those areas where religious extremists have control or are attempting to have control of the social and the political process, it may well cost you your life to be a Christian. Some of you have come from those countries. You know exactly what I'm talking about. And I've been really appalled and sickened at heart by some of the reports over the last few years coming out of places like Egypt, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, parts of Asia, where churches are being burned and Christians are being killed or imprisoned. And you won't read it on the headlines. You've got to really search in the papers, that page five or six, or look in other sources on the internet to find out the real facts. Because it's not politically correct to attribute some of these atrocities to certain religious groups because it's not where you can't appear to be discriminatory. But there are certain forces, extremist forces, behind most of this persecution. And if you've read, you know exactly what I'm talking about. And so against this sort of backdrop, we can well understand our lord issuing some specific challenges, some warnings about what it's going to be, what it's going to be involved in being a disciple, as well as the urgency of the call. I remember years ago, seeing a very provocative cartoon strip. It was in a leadership magazine. And the first few panels of the cartoon strip showed a clearly a very successful Western businessman. And he was giving a little testimony. And he was saying, you know, since I've come to Christ, my business has never been done. My family is so united and we're just praising God. And he said, in terms of my well-being, I've never felt better, more a piece in myself. It was a great testimony. Then the next little panels in the cartoon had a businessman from a Middle Eastern country. And his testimony was, well, since I became a Christian, I actually lost my business. My family is totally divided because some of my relatives are deeply offended that I've become a Christian. And my sense of well-being is under threat because I'm very anxious about a pending court case because of my refusal to stop talking about my faith in Jesus Christ. And like this little card, it had a really powerful impact. I mean, I've never forgotten it. And the message is clear, you know, responding to Jesus Christ means different things for different people in different parts of the world. What a contrast in circumstances between those two guys. And in light of this particular illustration, I can't help but think of the words of Martin Marty, the U.S. theologian, I've quoted them many times here, it's hard to be a Christian where it's easy to be a Christian. And it's easy to be a Christian where it's hard to be a Christian. And of course, the message is clear. In those countries where Christians are under threat of persecution, you are either in or you're out. I mean, you are distinguishable if you bear the name of Jesus. But in a more nominal setting like we have here, where if you're into religion, okay, that's cool. You know, I've got my own beliefs. I go Christmas and Easter as well. That's fine. Don't get too passionate about that. I don't want to hear. But if you're a Christian, that's okay. It's that's really, it can be quite difficult to have a quite clear and defining witness in a country or in a context where everybody has a certain degree of faith or many do. Well, how do you reconcile? How do we reconcile these words of Jesus, which on the surface of it seem to be so insensitive? They seem to be so anti-family, forget your family, just come with me. I mean, it doesn't make, you know, world, how do we reconcile these in a world like ours, where family is vital, we all love our families, where friendships are special. Of course you want to go and say goodbye, where social responsibility has taken seriously, friends, I believe that here's Jesus in his usual manner, speaking some words of absolute brilliance because he's saying things that are designed to cover all scenarios, all potential situations. Let me unpack what I'm saying here. You see, no matter where we live and the specific social and political circumstance in which we find ourselves, our decision to follow Jesus will inevitably involve a number of things. First of all, it will involve difficult circumstances invariably. We may not be able to relate to the extreme circumstances in those countries where it could cost you your life, but I know people here listen to me now for whom their Christian faith has cost them friendships and I know it's the same with myself. My faith in Jesus Christ has cost me some friendships over the years. And then there are difficult choices when moral imperatives call us to make decisions which may fly in the face of what people want us to do or would expect us to do, think we ought to do. A couple of extreme examples, Martin Luther King, like he defied the civil authorities of Birmingham, Alabama when he decided to organize a protest march during the civil rights movement and he got extreme criticism from the local minister's fraternal saying that he should not disobey the Christian, he should be not disobey in the laws of the land. And in a series of letters which are simply called letters from a Birmingham jail, Martin Luther King spills that exposition, fascinating reading where he makes the point sometimes. He's just got to choose to go against even the laws of the land, to be true to your calling in Jesus Christ. We're a deeply bonhoeffer, wow. One of the heroes of the faith, a Lutheran pastor who during the Second World War agreed to be part of a plot to assassinate Hitler, pastor, going to be involved in killing a boy, a person. He thought it was the only way out, sadly discovered in the closing days of the war and hanged in Berlin. Well, both are extreme examples. As is the one with the guy wanting to go back and bury his father, that's pretty extreme. Look, friends, our choices may be simpler, like choosing whether to support or not support a shady business deal. I know a lot of Christian business people get confronted with that all the time. Or whether they go along with a process and a procedure which you know is designed to really disadvantage the clients, but really be advantageous to the firm. I work in business. I know what that feels like. And then in some situations, there are different loyalties. That was the case with the third guy in the reading. He wanted to follow Jesus. He also had a strong sense of family. He wanted to say farewell. You know, this dilemma came in the sharp focus for me a number of years ago. I had a guy working on my team back in Adelaide who had been disinherited because of his Christian faith. He had a very wealthy grandmother who could just cope with him being a Christian, barely cope with issues, a militant atheist. But she said to him, "If you go ahead with your plan to become a minister, I will disinherit you." And my friend went ahead and responded to the call of Christ to be a minister. And he told me the legal process that he was advised of, which actually had him written out of the will. So he had a choice in that situation, a choice of loyalties, and I had great admiration for him. There was a lot of turbulence in that family. And friends, based on what I said earlier, we can see that difficult circumstances, difficult choices, difficult loyalties, they'll vary greatly depending on which country you're living in, on which social setting you're sort of involved in, which political system you're working under. But that is something that all Christians have in common to a greater or lesser extent. They'll be part of the course. So there's a sense in which Jesus is his teaching. He's ready for any scenario, you see, like I said earlier. He's covering all scenarios and all possible situations. And I've got the thinking further. And yes, I bring this message to a close, I think there are three clear messages for would-be followers of Jesus in these words of our Lord, three messages that are as relevant today as they have been ever, as they were in the first century. The first is this, count the cost, count the cost. Jesus wanted to be sure the first guy realized there was nothing glamorous about being a disciple. You know, harking back to my college days at the College of the Bible in Melbourne, I remember we were in a class setting one day and the lecturer asked us to talk about our motivation for ministry. Why do we come into ministry? What was the motivation? And some of those answers were predictable, one served, one helped people. And one guy said, "Oh, I like being on stage." He was blatantly honest. He said, "Oh yeah, I just love it with the microphone and the crowds and stuff." I mean, even I knew enough about the ministry in those early days to know that he was way off-course. And I happened to catch up with him several years down the track in his first ministry. He was having huge problems in this country church. We had a bit of a laugh. I said, "Man, how's that stage work going?" You know, I don't think he even had a microphone, it was a small church. We had a really good lie. He learnt the hardware. There's not much glamour in most forms of discipleship and most forms of service. Not this side of heaven anyway. Here's the second thing, leave it behind. There's a message for all Christians of all times. You commitment to Christ, my commitment to Christ must involve a willingness, if called upon, if called upon, to leave all sources of security and comfort behind. Now, unlike our brothers and sisters in the persecuted nations, it's probably unlikely that many of us are going to be asked to do that. But this realisation should be a significant component to our walk with Christ if we're called upon to do that. And until you're called upon, I guess it's hard to imagine how you'd react, but some people have left and do leave careers behind, certain lifestyles behind. We've seen that in this church. A range of exciting future options because they want to respond to the call of Jesus, to do what they believe he wants them to do. We've seen it recently. I was really quite saddened to read of the death of Irene Gleeson. I know she's known a many of you in this church. She's a lady, an ordinary housewife on the northern beaches, who just remarkably got this call of God to go to Uganda in her middle years to work, not just in some nice clinical refined sort of mission station, to go and work among the child's army. Right there where these little 10 and 12-year-old kids are being asked to shoot parents and shoot friends, she's in there and did a remarkable job. Just left everything and just people just went, "What?" Oh, the privilege of meeting her a few years ago. She died recently after a long battle with cancer, but an amazing lady. Finally, the clear message for me is don't look back. Don't look back. Since over the years of ministry, it really cuts me to sort of say that I've talked to people who've just given up on being a Christian. Some people have not been able to handle some of the disappointments they've had in life. What they consider to be the harsh cards that God has built them, this kind of stuff I've heard it all, they've been to a series of failures, maybe deep disappointments, and they just say, "Look, we're out of here, we've not been around for awhile because we're not going to be around for awhile. We're not going to be around ever again." Very sad. Jesus says, "Don't look back." When she decided to get on board with me, keep pressing on. I will give you the strength to enable you to do that. Jim Elliot's comment comes to mind, it kind of summarizes all of this really. Jim Elliot, we looked at him I think last year, a man who was part of a group of missionaries who landed in a very remote part of the Amazon basin back in the early '50s. I was just a little boy, I remember this, a very little boy in the early '50s. Very young. Can barely remember this. It was my first memory of anything actually. No, I thought this was very young. These men just felt called by God to go and minister to these primitive Amazonian tribesmen. They did it really well, they flew over the village over a number of weeks and they dropped leaflets and they dropped gifts and they sort of put all the planning into it. And then on this momentous day, they actually landed on the strip, but this is well documented in books and they've made a movie about it as well, it's incredible. Something just hadn't quite connected with these natives, these primitive tribespeople. And on the very first landing, on the very first afternoon, all of those men were spared to death, three of them, all left beautiful families back in America. And it was just a stunning, shocking story that stripped around the world. And they found in Jim Elliot, Jim Elliot was one of the three guys, they found in his diary, he'd written this some years before as part of his motivation for following Jesus, no matter where. He wrote this, "He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose." That's powerful, isn't it? The fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose. Don't look back, leave it behind and what was the third one? Count the cost. Jim Elliot, powerful. Did Jesus really say these harsh things? That's a bit out of character, yes he did. He said, "And only these three guys," he said it to us as well friends, "people respond to these words in accordance with their circumstances, but everyone knows that following Jesus, you'll inevitably find some difficult circumstances, some difficult choices to make, some difficult loyalties to cope with. Count the cost, leave it behind. Don't look back." Look, I'm going to give the final word to the Apostle Paul because this is one of my favourite Bible verses, because it again neatly summarises everything that's being said here. It's his Paul's words that deal with all scenarios and all circumstances. You know this passage so well. This is from Philippians chapter 4 and verses 12 onwards, look at this, "I have learnt this secret so that anywhere at any time I am content, whether I am full or hungry, whether I have too much or too little, I have the strength to face all conditions by the power that Christ gives me." There's a verse that embraces all Christians no matter where you are, in a persecuted country or in a country like Australia, the idea of readiness for anything. And who knows? What lies ahead for you? What lies ahead for me? I don't know. The friends, I take that verse with me into every day, you know, like, she's on ready. I pray to God that I'll be ready for anything as part of my discipleship, part of my decision that I made long ago to follow Him no matter what. Let's bow and pray. [BLANK_AUDIO]