Blog : Luke 9:57-62

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8/5/2010 12:36 am

Luke 9:57-62

And it came to pass, that, as they went in the way, a certain man said unto him, Lord, I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest. And Jesus said unto him, Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the of man hath not where to lay his head. And he said unto another, Follow me. But he said, Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father. Jesus said
unto him, Let the dead bury their dead: but go thou and preach the kingdom of God. And another also said, Lord I will follow thee; but let me first go bid them farewell, which are at home at my house. And Jesus said unto him, No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God (Luke 9:57 - 62).

Now I WONDER WHETHER YOU WERE SURPRISED as you read this paragraph? Here is our Lord actually discouraging a man that wants to follow Him and speaking with what appears at first sight to be real harshness to the three men. It should come as a surprise. It certainly came as a surprise to the people who heard it, to His early followers. Our Lord here seems to be behaving in a manner that is so unlike everything that we are accustomed to. We are used to the Christian Church doing everything she can to attract people, bringing great pressure upon people to come and join—and making it easy for them to do so. Here, however, our Lord seems to be doing the exact opposite. It is indeed very surprising.
But that is what we have already discovered: everything about Him is surprising. He was always doing this to people, always shocking them. This is because He is so altogether different from everything that the human race has ever produced and has ever known. But the important question for us is this: why does our Lord handle these three people in this particular way? Read again His response to each of them. Why does He speak to them in what appears to us to be a harsh and almost cruel manner? There is only one answer: He does it because He can see so clearly that they do not realize the truth of what He is saying; they do not understand His message of the kingdom. They are moved and animated by wrong motives and ideas, they are in a state of confusion and He wants them to know exactly what they are doing. That is the only explanation. Therefore, as we watch our Lord handling these three men, we can gather very valuable instruction and information concerning the nature of His kingdom, and concerning the truth as to what it means to be a Christian and how one becomes one.
Let us look back at this picture again. Here are three men who are actually following our Lord, They are in His company, they see His miracles and they are listening to Him. They are obviously interested, and yet our Lord is unhappy about them. He detects that they are all, the three of them, still in a state of fundamental ignorance about Him and about the kingdom of God. They show it in different ways, but that does not matter. And it is in order to put them right that our Lord handles the three men in this particular manner. Let us look at each of them.
Take the first: ‘A certain man said unto him, Lord, I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest. And Jesus said unto him, Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the of man hath not where to lay his head.” What is the message here? Well, let me extract it and put it before you as a principle.
What our Lord is emphasizing in His statement to this man is the importance of a right understanding of the nature of the kingdom of God. Is he not obviously a case of false enthusiasm? He comes rushing up to our Lord and says, “Lord, I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest.” He volunteers; he is ready for anything; full of keenness and excitement. “Let me come,” he says, “I do not care where you go, I am going with you.” He is ready to leave everything whatever the cost may be. Wonderful! And yet our Lord discourages him.
Now, do we feel, as we read this story, that this is just the kind of man that the Church needs, just the sort who makes an excellent Christian? This is the very type that, surely, should please our Lord most of all. And yet there is no question about it at all, our Lord administers a rebuff to him. He checks him and He tests him.
Why is this? Well, our Lord is able to read the minds of men and women and understands them better than they understand themselves. He is able to search the hidden recesses of the mind and the heart and to detect motives and ideas and thoughts— He recognizes exactly what He is dealing with and He can see that, as he is, a man like this is no man for the kingdom of God.
Now this young man is a very common type, found today as in all ages since our Lord was here on earth. He was obviously attracted to our Lord, and by His preaching, and His miracles. This incident took place just after our Lord had performed a miracle at the foot of the Mount of Transfiguration. There was a poor boy suffering from devil-possession, a condition that was very similar, obviously, to what we now call epilepsy. The poor father of the boy, in his utter distraction and despair, had approached the disciples of our Lord while He was up on the Mount of Transfiguration with Peter and James and John. He had said, “Cannot you people do something for me? I have been hearing about this master of yours, and I have been hearing about the gifts He has given you; you have been going round and preaching and working miracles—can you heal my ?” So they had tried, and they failed. Then the father, now in a terrible condition, approached our Lord, and our Lord said, “Bring thy hither. And as he was yet coming, the devil threw him down, and tare him. And Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit, and healed the , and delivered him again to his father. And they were all amazed at the mighty power of God” (verses 37 - 43).
Now this young man had seen that, as he had seen, probably, other miracles also. He had heard our Lord’s amazing preaching. There had never been a preacher like Him. The officers of the Temple, you remember, had said what was so perfectly true, “Never man spake like this man.” Here was one who spoke with authority, not as the Pharisees and Scribes. He did not fumble and suppose this and think that; He just said, “I say unto you.” There was an authority and a power in His preaching, and this man had heard it, and was obviously fascinated. Furthermore, our Lord was standing up, defying the Pharisees and Scribes and doctors of the law with an absolutely new teaching and this always appeals to young people. “Here is one,” the man thought, “who is not one of these professionals, but who comes from the outside and puts them all in their place—He has got something new!” And so he said to our Lord, “I am coming with you! This is what I want, this is life.” He was going to turn the world upside down; He was going to introduce a new order and everything would be put right: “I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest.”
Is not that the picture? The picture of an idealist, of a most excellent young man who wants to do good in this world. He was starting out in life, he saw the problems and the misery and the unhappiness, and he said, “All these old people have not understood. These old fogies are all wrong. We want something new; we want a new young leader. Now here He is, so let us go after Him.” And he obviously, of course, pictured a life of excitement, of wonder, of glamour and of great success.
Now I am not being unfair to him, because he had the same spirit in him as was in the disciples. Earlier in this chapter, in verse 46, we read, “Then there arose a reasoning among them, which of them should be greatest”—for it was obvious that this young Master of theirs was going to silence everybody, and then, when the time came, would undoubtedly set up His kingdom, gather an army, and become King of Israel. Then, of course, those who had been with Him were going to be given the chief posts in His government, as it were, the most important positions. And the same thing appealed to this young man—this new leader with His strange teaching, His wonderful power, and all the possibilities...!
This is a very common misunderstanding of the kingdom of God even today. There are many young people who think that Christ is just some leader like this of a popular movement that is against the powers that be; against authority, against the failures of the old people; something new and fresh. A movement, a crusade, a march! And off they go with high idealism—they are going to put the world right. I remember very well when I was a young man listening to addresses by two preachers; both spoke on the same subject which had been prescribed for them. It was a religious conference, and this was a Saturday night, which was always devoted to the young people. The subject was “The appeal of Christ to the heroism and the enthusiasm of young people”. I did not understand very much about the Gospel then, but I had a feeling, even then, that there was something wrong about such a title.
You see the idea? Young people, come after Him! He will appeal to your heroism, He will appeal to your zeal. You are young, you have not lost your enthusiasm yet; you are prepared to sacrifice; you have the heroic note still in you; you have not become blase and cynical and calculating like the middle-aged and the old. You are ready to risk, and you are ready to follow Him.
Now the incident we are studying should have been enough to make those conference authorities see that their subject was quite ‘wrong. It was because he felt that Christ was appealing to his natural idealism and heroism that this man said, “I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest.” But our Lord’s treatment of him shows him that that is not the kingdom of God at all, but something that is based on ignorance. Our Lord, in effect, is saying to this young man, “Look here, you have got it all wrong, you are misunderstanding what I have come to do; and as you are,” He tells him, “you are not fit to enter into my kingdom. My kingdom is not like the kingdoms of this world. All human movements do their best to attract followers; they appeal to them and make it easy for them; they will bribe them if necessary. All political parties do it. They want a crowd, they want support. I do not, I am different.”
So He shocks him deliberately. Our Lord does not want followers, He is not interested in numbers as such. What He has come into the ‘world to do is to save men and women and to produce new characters in a new kingdom; for we cannot enter the kingdom as we are. We may be idealistic, but it is no use here. We may be full of heroism; it is valueless. We may be full of enthusiasm; it will be damped by the of God. He does not want the natural man to take up His kingdom. He is the very opposite of that. Such a man has got to be changed before he can enter.
But then He goes on. “Listen,” He says to this young man, “foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the of man bath not where to lay his head.” He says, “Do you realize who I am? Do you think that I am just a popular political agitator or social reformer? Do you think I am just another man who has come to set up a movement and who is proposing to do this and that? I am not! I am the of man!”
Now this is His favorite title for Himself. It is a great connotation, with a profound meaning. It is another way of saying that He is the of God. He is the new man, the beginning of a new humanity, the start of a new race. Adam was the first man. Here is another man, the “ of man”! A new creation is beginning. He is not merely man, He is more than man. He is the Man! He is God-Man!
Now this young enthusiast had not understood that. That was the trouble with all of them. They would persist in regarding Him as just a teacher amongst teachers, as they are still doing. And so they misunderstand the whole point of His teaching. “Look at me,” He says, “I have not come into this world merely to teach; not merely to work miracles; not merely to create a following or to be an agitator. No,” He says, “recognize who I am and that I am absolutely different. I am the of man, but I have neither a home, nor a house. Even the foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but I have got nothing.”
So here H is, Lord of Glory, yet He has nothing! He is the paradox and the mystery. The moment you make a man of Him and put Him amongst other teachers you have lost Him. He is the enigma! God! Man! The ruler, the owner of everything! The one who has nothing! And you start by facing that most momentous fact concerning Him.
But He means more than that. We have seen how He has just healed the boy at the foot of the mount; he has shown His mastery over the elements and over every disease, and yet He says, “Let these sayings sink down into your ears; for the of man shall be delivered into the hands of men” (v 44).
You see, the disciples were getting a bit excited. They could see the crowds gathering round, crowds that liked the miracles and were excited by phenomena; the crowds that were interested in His discomfiture of the Pharisees and Scribes and Sadducees and doctors of the law. And there was excitement! “But” He says, “wait a minute: ‘Let these things sink down into your ears.’ I am going to die! I am going to be tried and condemned, I am going to die in utter helplessness and in apparent failure. Are you ready for that?”
Now that precisely, of course, is the thing that this young man had not understood at all. In his enthusiasm and excitement he wanted to be with Him, to share in this wonderful success, and to see this brilliant idealism coming into practice. “This man,” he said, “will change everything. He will bring in new ideas, and He will set up His wonderful kingdom.” “Oh no,” says Christ, “you do not understand. I do not save men and women by teaching, by gathering armies, or by legislation. I will save them by being arrested, by being condemned, by doing nothing, by being led as a lamb to the slaughter. I save men and women by dying on a Cross! I save them by breaking my heart, by being buried in a grave, and then by rising from it! Do you accept that? No,” He says to this young man, “you are too idealistic; you do not understand my kingdom. It is the opposite of what you think. It will end in apparent failure, yet in that failure I defeat the enemy, and thereby save the human race.” “The of man is come to seek and to save that which is lost” (Luke 19:10).
Another time He put it like this: “The of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Mk 10:45). “If you follow me,” says Christ, “you will bear the shame that I bore. Far from receiving universal adulation and applause, you will be laughed at as a fool; you will be ridiculed as one who has a religious complex. They will say to you, ‘Do you believe in a Christ that died? Do you still believe in a theology of blood?’ You will get scorn and derision, you will get shame and persecution—are you ready for it? You and these others are thinking about receiving the chiefest place in my kingdom; you are arguing as to which is the greatest. No,” He says, “‘In the world ye shall have tribulation’ (John 16:33)—Are you ready for it?”
So there was the first man. Let us now look at the second. Here is someone whom our Lord invites to follow Him. “He said to another, Follow me. But he said, Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father. Jesus said unto him, Let the dead bury their dead: but go thou and preach the kingdom of God.” Here in a sense is the exact opposite of the first man. He was guilty of precipitancy, excitement and enthusiasm, but our Lord, looking at this second one, could see that while he was very much attracted, and interested in the teaching and in what was happening, yet he was hesitant; there was a spirit of non-committal about him and so our Lord challenged him and said, “Follow me!” And the man, you remember, responded by saying, “All right, I am coming, but ‘suffer me first to go and bury my Father’.”
What, then, is the principle here? Well, our Lord is teaching this man the urgency of entering the kingdom of God at once, without a moment’s delay. You must be right in your understanding of it, and then you must enter it immediately. Now let us be clear about that. Our Lord’s statement sounds terrible; does it not? On the surface it sounds as if He was refusing this man permission to go home to bury his poor father who was dying. But it does not mean anything of the sort. If this man’s father had been ill and had died, then the would no longer be with the Lord. The Jews were very strict about this.
No, the position was that this young man had at home an old father, who, quite conceivably, was not in good health. And so what he was really saying was this: “All right, I will come, but I cannot come now, because my father is very ill; he is old and can die almost at any moment. Let me go home and stay there until he is dead and I have buried him; then I will come and follow you.”
Here, in fact, is the case of a man who says, “Yes, I am going to be a Christian, but not just now. I will be a Christian later on, when I have time. I am very busy at the moment. I am at the top of the ladder; I have great success ahead of me, I am beginning in my profession, or in my trade, or in my industry. Not yet! Oh, I like this teaching! I believe it is right; but I cannot do anything about it now.”
Or he may put it in terms of age alone. He may say, “I am young now and I want to have a little enjoyment in life. Life is wonderful, it has many glittering prizes—am I going to give all these up? Why should I not sow my wild oats while am I young? Why should I not get a kick out of life? Later on, of course, when I get middle-aged or old, or when I am facing death—then is the time to think about becoming a Christian.”
That is the sort of picture we have here. It is the case of men and women who can see that there is truth in the Christian message and who are troubled by it, and say—”Yes, of course that is what I really must do—but not yet.” Take the prayer of St Augustine. He was not “Saint” Augustine when he prayed it; he was a brilliant philosopher, but he was troubled. He was listening to the preaching of Ambrose, that great preacher in Milan, and he was disturbed by it. He knew it was right and that he was wrong, but he was living with his mistress. Of course! And here, you see, is the fight and the conflict: he knew it was right, so he offered this prayer: “Lord make me good: but not yet.”
Do you know something about that? “I want to be good but I also want to have this other thing. ‘Suffer me first...’” And how many have done this! “Let me make my name first. I do not believe in some of the things I am doing, but they have to be done, and once I have got on—then I will be a thorough Christian. I really will!” And so our Lord pulls this man up immediately and shows him that he, too, is all wrong, and He puts it in a very striking manner—”Let the dead bury their dead: but go thou and preach the kingdom of God.”
What does that mean? Let me try to summarize it like this. The first thing He tells this man is that we must realize that the Gospel, this kingdom, is something which is absolutely new. He says, “if you are in my kingdom, if you are going to be a Christian, then you must realize that this is something that an ordinary man or woman cannot do. Everybody can bury the dead. You do not need to be a citizen of the kingdom of God to do that. There are people staying at home looking after their fathers who are old and dying. But that is what they are suited for, because they know nothing else and they can do nothing else. “Let the dead bury their dead.” That is what the world is doing. That is the natural man and his life. He lives for this world and this life only, he knows of nothing else. He is dying, they are dying; they bury one another, they praise one another; anybody can do that and they are all doing so. But that is not the kingdom of God.
“No, the kingdom of God,” He says in effect, “is for live people, not for dead ones. I am not in this world to deal with matters like that. They are all right; there is nothing wrong in a man looking after his aged parents and burying them, but, you know, that is not the first thing in life. The first thing in life is the soul! it is the life of the soul! It is the fact that men and women are not just animals who live and eat and die. No, there is a soul within them and they do not know that; the dead do not realize it. The men and women who are in my kingdom do; they are alive, awakened to the fact of the soul and its eternal destiny and its relationship to God.”
“You see,” says our Lord, “in a sense anybody can bury your father; but it is only a man who is a Christian who can tell your father that he has a soul that needs to be saved. ‘Go thou and preach the kingdom of God.’ You go and tell people about the soul; tell them that they are made in the image of God and that they have sinned and that they are under condemnation, and that if they die like that they go to hell. Awaken them! Go and tell them! They do not know it! You alone can do that, the dead cannot. You know about the soul if you understand me. I have not come to bury them! I have not come to save their bodies, but to save their souls.”
“This is life! The soul needs a new life! I have come,” He says, “to tell men and women that ‘it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment’ (Heb 9:27). I have not come into this world to reform politics or morals: that is not the business of Christianity.”
Now many people are doing that. They are always talking about some recent scandals and they condemn them and talk about morals. But that is not Christianity! Christianity is here to save souls! It is an easy thing to condemn immorality. You do not need to be a Christian to do that. Many people who are not Christians do this; you can read their articles, and listen to their speeches. But that is not what Christ has come to do. Christ has come to save the immoral, to give them life anew! He has not come to do what the dead can do, He has come to do what only he who is Life itself can do! He is the Giver of life! And those who belong to His kingdom are those who realize that they have immortal souls and that they are lost, and that He alone can save them. That is the first thing.
Then, secondly, the moment you realize the truth about yourself and your soul, and the judgment of God and the possibility of hell, you do not say, “I am going to. . . but first let me do something else,” because you know you may not have the time. The moment you realize that your soul is in terrible danger of everlasting destruction, the moment you realize the insecurity of life in this world, the moment you put these two things together, you say, “There is not a moment to be lost. I do not go back to do anything! I must be certain that my soul is saved!” You believe on Him, you enter into the kingdom; immediately, not after doing something else. Nothing can come before this.
Is this not obvious? Our Lord Himself exemplified it. When His mother and His brothers came and tried to stop Him doing things, He rebuked them. The people came and said, “Your mother and your brethren want to see you,” and He replied, “Who are my brethren? Who is my mother? These who believe in me and follow me, they are my mother and my brethren” (Mt 12 :48—49). And He put it very plainly later in these tremendous words: “If any man come unto me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and , and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:25 - 26).
Now our Lord does not say that as a Christian you must hate your father and mother or wife or husband. What He does say is that comparatively you have to; that He must come even before them. If your father or your mother try to stand between you and belief in Christ, put Christ first, not them; yes, even if it is your wife or husband! And if you realize the danger of your soul, you will have no need to hesitate about this, you will see that it is inevitable. You will do it at once, you cannot take the risk of being lost.
Have you seen the urgency? What is your relationship to Christianity? Is it a detachment? Are you saying, I am going - sometime - to be a Christian? If you are, you know nothing about it, you have never seen it. The message of the Lord Jesus Christ is, “Flee from the wrath to come!” Do it at once!
Finally, we come to the third and the last case. Here is another man who volunteers and says, “I will follow thee: but let me first go and bid them farewell, which are at my house.” Again it seems a very reasonable request, does it not? “All right, I am coming, but I want to go home, to have a farewell party with my old friends. We have been together for years and we have had a remarkably fine time.” Our Lord replies, “No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.”
The principle here is the importance of realizing the totalitarian demands of the kingdom of God. Our Lord calls for an unconditional surrender. And once you realize the nature of His kingdom, and of what He has come to do, once you realize that it is a question of your soul’s salvation, then you not only do not hesitate, you surrender unconditionally. This man was in trouble at this point, he was half-hearted. He said, “I will follow you, but I want first of all...” It is a’ case of divided interest and loyalty. Yes, he is going to follow Christ, but he does not want to leave the world. He wants to go with this new Master, but he would like to have just a last party with the others.
But our Lord says, “You cannot strike a straight furrow if you are looking back. It demands concentration; you must be all out. You must look ahead and do so constantly; you must never turn back again, you have finished with all that.”
This is our Lord’s own statement. If you want to enter this kingdom and receive its blessings and its joys, you must leave the world. You must make a clean break and turn your back irrevocably on certain things. It is a totalitarian demand. You cannot do the two things; “you cannot serve God and mammon” (Mt 6:24). “Whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God” (James 4:4)—that is the statement of the Scripture. “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world . . . the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life” (1 John 2:15—16). You see it round and about you. If you love that, then you are not a citizen of the kingdom of God. You cannot mix light and darkness.
There is a terrifying illustration of this very thing in the Old, Testament. It is the case of Lot’s wife. Sodom and Gomorrah, where they had been living, were going to be destroyed but by the grace of God they were brought out forcibly, it was the only way of escape. And off they went, Lot and his wife and daughters, and the destruction was about to come. But “Lot’s wife looked back.” Why? Well, she had rather liked that life. She knew it was wrong, but she still did not want to leave it. Where were they going? To some mountain, to some wilderness. They would have to live in a cave, how miserable after the wonderful house they lived in and all the luxury! Her loyalty was divided; she looked back with longing eyes, so she was punished and became a pillar of salt (Gen 19). And it was our Lord who said to such people later on, “Remember Lot’s wife!” (Luke 17:32).
Now, if you understand these things this will appeal to your logic. If you really believe that you have a soul and that it is lost; and if you believe it is lost because it conforms to the world and the flesh and the devil; if you believe that if you die like that you go to hell and spend your eternity in misery; if you believe that the of God has so loved you that He left the glory and the courts of Heaven and divested Himself of this glory and was born as a Babe; if you believe that He lived as a man and endured the shame, the agony, and the death, the Cross and the burial, and all that it involved—if you believe that He did all that to save you, to redeem you from the world, then can you still look with longing eyes upon the world that led to all that?
Can you still hanker after the things that ruined your soul and produced the death of the of God? Where is your logic? Where is your fairness? Where is your common sense?
That is what our Lord was saying to this young man; and He was saying something further. He said, “You think you want to go back to have a farewell party and then you will come after me. I know you better than you know yourself. If you go back you will so enjoy that party that you will never come after me. You start playing with it and dabbling with it, it is no good. You have seen something of what I have got; but if you have not seen the utter wrongness of all the rest and turned your back upon it and said, ‘I don’t want it any more’, then once you go home and begin to toy with it, you will be back in the midst of it again!”
So many have said that they will be Christians “after” they have had some enjoyment. But these things do not go together, they are utterly incompatible. If you believe that the of God has so loved you then you will say to Him:
Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all.
Isaac Watts

I know the world has things that can sound wonderful and look very attractive, but I do not want them, I hate them, even though I know there is a hankering in me after them! But, Lord, when I see your love—

See, from His head, His hands, His feet,
Sorrow and love flow mingled down;
Did e’er such love and sorrow meet,
Or thorns compose so rich a crown?
Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were an offering far too small;
Ibid

The whole realm of nature! Yes, it is nothing by contrast with Heaven; I would give it all up! How much more would I give up the novelettes, the filthy cases in the newspaper that stimulate my evil nature and the things on radio and television that drag me down and tempt me to evil thoughts and imaginations! I will say to Him, “I am coming after you as I am! I want nothing else. You have a right to me; you have bought me with a price, I am not my own. I must glorify you in my body as well as in my spirit. I give myself to you unconditionally. You have won me, you have captivated me! I have nothing to say, except, Lord I am yours and my chief desire is to live to your glory and praise.”

Fading is the worldlings pleasure,
All his boasted pomp and show;
Solid joys and lasting treasure
None but Zion’s known.
John Newton

Have you learned the lessons of these three men? Have you realized the tremendous importance of understanding the nature of His kingdom and seen the urgency of entering in without a moment’s delay? Have you given yourself unreservedly unto Him, who gave Himself that you and I might live and enjoy the blessings and the glories of the Kingdom of God here in this world and for ever in the glory everlasting.

Tropical_Man 68M

6389 posts
8/5/2010 4:20 am

I love your passion. Dear I just think it is simple. God desires relationship with us. Everyone is not going to seek the same kindm and yet over time through God's wonderful plan and prayer we come to these places.