The Life of the Early Church - Part 2

Father, we come before you now in the precious name of Jesus. And Lord, we ask that you would speak, that you would speak. Holy Spirit, that you would speak. Lord, you have the ability to penetrate the hardest heart, but yet you have in your infinite genius and in the design of this whole thing called salvation, you have required that we play a role in it. That we must open ourselves up. And so we can close that door and keep you out, or we can welcome you in and all that you are. And Lord, just as even Nate was speaking, is when you come in, when you begin to reveal yourself, it can be devastating because it starts showing us what we really are. But until we're willing to deal with that, we are not really wanting a holy God to come into us. And so Lord, I'm asking that you'd speak to us and that today you would change lives in the precious name of Jesus. Acts chapter two, verses 41 and 42. Those who accepted his message were baptized and about 3,000 were added to their number that day. They devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. 3,000 were added to the church. And what is that spoken about? It's spoken that they devoted themselves. And so really what I'm getting into for the rest of the messages and what I really was trying to get into all along and had to lay the foundation because we cannot be devoted until we're converted, until we're truly born again, until we're the real thing. And so this series is really about devotion. What it means to be a Christian. What does Christianity really look like? And I guarantee you, you have a lot of baggage that is on you, lies that you have believed, that you've been told about what Christianity is that has no biblical basis. So we're going to look at the Bible and we're gonna look at what the word of God has to say about devotion. What does it mean to be a Christian? Why did the early church turn the world upside down? Because their Christianity was real. It was biblical. It was not some fantasy world, some religious ideology that had no power. You see the power in the early church because the life was there. Christ was living in and through them. The power of the Holy Spirit was operating in their lives and the evidence was seen. Now, when we look at devotion, that first generation of believers and devotion they had, where did they get that concept from? Where did it come from? And that becomes very, very important because if we don't understand this then we're gonna miss it all. And this is why we're missing what Christianity is in America. We are missing it because we failed to go to the source. The early church understood devotion from Jesus. Their concept of devotion came directly from Christ's teaching on devotion. And if we don't look at Christ's teaching on devotion then we will never ever understand what it is. And we have to take it at what it says, not what we want it to say. We have to believe what it says and either we're gonna accept it or reject it, but we cannot alter the truth of it. We can't alter what it is. And so we're going to begin by looking in Luke chapter 14 for a couple of minutes. And then from there, we will go to Luke chapter nine. In this portion of scripture, we're gonna look at in Luke chapter 14, it is probably some of the most radical teaching that Jesus gives. And I guarantee you that what Jesus taught, all of it is radical. And if you don't see the radical nature and the radical truth that's within that, it's because you have not taken the time to really understand what he's teaching. Jesus didn't come to give us cute little homilies that was going to leave us just as we were and give us fuzzy warm feelings and think we're all gonna go to heaven. He brought to us the truth. He brought to us the truth to shake us, to disturb us because that is what mankind needs. That's literally what mankind needs. And so he came and spoke the truth and disturbed us. And it's strange how you can take the raw truth that Jesus would give and how we wanna somehow rewrite it, redefine it, say that it's other than what it is or that he didn't mean what he said. But I'm foolish enough just to happen to believe that Jesus meant what he said. I believe that what he said is the truth and we are not to take it and to try and rewrite it and redefine it and try and fit it into our culture because the reality is this man has not changed in the last 2000 years. What man was when Jesus walked this planet, man still is. The only difference is we got technology and they didn't. And through our technology, we can live out our evil in a greater way than what they did. That's the only difference. We are still flesh and blood. We still have the same nature. We are still on our way to hell unless Jesus rescues us and he will not rescue us unless we invite him in and allow him to do that. And so in Luke chapter 14, verse 25, it says large crowds were traveling with Jesus and turning to them, he said, now it is so interesting. Jesus is so interesting if you really look at him and he is so disturbing. I think it was C.S. Lewis that went and says, God is so good and we are so ungood that if he showed us our goodness, we would flee from it in absolute horror. We don't understand what holiness is. We don't understand what goodness is. We have this watered down compromise version of it. That's why you can think you're good people when you are hell deserving evil individuals left to yourself. That's the reality of it. Try and argue against the word of God. I challenge you if I'm wrong, show me, prove it to me in the word of God that you're a good person. And I can show you through Paul and through a host of scriptures, Old Testament and New Testament, that you are not good people. There's not a good person on this planet. They do not exist. They are only lies and illusions in the minds of men. The truth is we are all hell deserving sinners that need a savior. What are Christians? Hell deserving sinners that was given a pardon and have now received forgiveness and mercy from God. And so a large crowd was following them and Jesus turns to them and upsets their world. So what he did, you know, he didn't go and whisper sweet nothings to them. He wasn't trying to build a whole big following in the way that we want to do, the way that big name preachers wanna do today. He turned to them and told them the truth and I guarantee you it shook them. You go to John chapter six and what does he do? He is the cause of the first church split. He goes to his disciples, he says, eat my flesh, drink my blood. And his disciples forsook him. He did that on purpose because he had to bring to them the reality of the faith because they were not understanding what it was. So let's look at the 26th verse. If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters, yes, even his own life, understand the next words, he cannot, he cannot be my disciple. He didn't say, if you didn't do this, you'd be a poor disciple, a weak disciple, a baby disciple. He said, if you don't do that, you cannot be his disciple. So what this means is that you must love him more than any other person in your life, more than any possession, more than anything, more than any desire. And your love for him must make everything in comparison as if you hated them. He is not wanting us to hate people. What he's saying is you have to love me supremely. You have to fulfill that first and greatest commandment. And until you do that, you will never ever love another person correctly then. Now, I want you to understand how radical this is. They didn't know who Jesus was. They didn't understand he was God incarnate, all right? They didn't understand that. Now they were probably believing he was a prophet because of all the things he was saying and all the miracles that were taking place. And he is going to them and he's saying, you must love me more than your wife. You must love me more than your parents. You must love me more than your children. You must love me more than your possessions. You must love me more than your religion. Get an idea of how radical it was, what he was really saying there? I mean, it was radical to the bone. And he says, if you don't do that, you can't be my disciple. Well, there goes three quarters of you, right? You're not good people. You have not loved God with all of your heart, mind, soul, and strength. You loved your sin. Otherwise you wouldn't be here. That's just a fact. You can argue it all you want. You can lie behind, you know, hide behind all your lies and illusions, but the reality is still there. You loved your sin. And in the epistle of John, it says, he that practices sin does not know God. You came here not knowing God. And as long as you think you did, you are being deceived. You can argue it away any way you want. You can talk to your counselor and try and convince them otherwise. But the fact is you are in the practice of sin. You lived it, you loved it, you wanted it, even though you hated yourself while you were doing it. And so he says, if you will not love me more than your sin, love me more than your family, friends, everything else, you cannot be my disciple. You are not his disciple. Then he goes on in the 27th verse, very next verse, he says, and anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me, once again, cannot be my disciple. Now we have to remove 21st century America out of this whole statement here. Because if you put yourself in ancient Israel at that time, they only had one view of what a cross was. It was not a piece of art. It was not pretty. It was not put upon the walls of buildings. It was instruments of death. It was ugly. It was brutal. It was bloody. Everything about the cross was a horrifying thought to them. If we could only understand the concept of how they saw it, their streets were, the hills lined with crosses. One time, there were so many people crucified by the Romans that they ran out of wood and they nailed them to the walls of Jerusalem. They had only one idea of the cross, ugly, horrifying, brutal, slow, torturous death. And Jesus says, if you don't pick up my cross, you can't be my disciple. Right, isn't that Christianity? Not your Christianity maybe, but it's Christ's Christianity and his is the only Christianity that matters. That's just the fact that you can try and get out of it all you want. But is Jesus telling us the truth? And if he is, what are we gonna do with the truth? What are we gonna do with it? I think the wisest thing is to give a right answer to the truth and to say, God, I have not carried my cross. You see, you're not here because you were carrying your cross. You're here because you weren't carrying your cross. Therefore, you are not a disciple. Right? That's the nitty-gritty. You can't get any further. You can't get any further in the faith until you start coming to the reality of this and understand what discipleship is. Because if you wanna be a disciple, if you really wanna be a disciple of Jesus, this is what you must understand. Because if you read what follows, Jesus ends up going to them and teaching them the absolute necessity that they count the cost. You have to. So he teaches these two points about discipleship. And then he says, you must count the cost. You must count the cost. And there's two ways that we count the cost. The first way we count the cost is we better start counting the cost of our sin. We better start looking at what it really is, what it really does, what it has done. We better start counting the cost, because if we don't, we're gonna continue to practice a sin, lying to ourselves that it's not that big of a deal. But the second way we need to count the cost, what is the cost to serve Jesus? What is it you have to love him more than anything and anyone in your life? And you have to pick up your cross and you have to die to your sinful desires and ambitions. And guess how long you have to do that? Until you breathe your last breath on this planet. When you breathe your last and you carried your cross all the way to the very end, that cross is removed from you for eternity. Then you are in the joy of this God. Until that time, you are commanded to carry your cross. And if at any point you stop carrying that cross, you cease to be a disciple. Now, what Jesus said, he says, if you don't pick up your cross and carry it, you can't be his disciple. So if you're carrying it, you stop carrying it. I mean, I don't care what your theology says. You better understand what this is really saying. If you stop carrying your cross, you do not belong to him. You are not his disciple. Because you cannot serve two masters. You can't go in two ways at once. Either you're gonna serve Jesus or you're not gonna serve Jesus. There's no demilitarized zone. There's no place that you can just kind of be your own thing and do your own thing. You're on one side or the other. You're serving one or the other. And we are forced to make that decision. Then after Jesus goes and says, count the cost of your salvation, count the cost of the practice of your sin, of what it does to you and what you've done to your family. Then he says this in verse 33. In the same way, any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple. Did Jesus mean what he just said? So what do you have to give up? Are you willing? You wanna know it? Honestly, we're not. That's why we need this revolution on the inside. That's why we need this work of grace because we can't. What I have just shown you and what we will look at further is absolutely impossible for the natural man to live. If Christianity was able to be lived without Christ and Jesus died on the cross in vain, it is impossible. What you was living was not Christianity. That's why you could live it. What he calls you to is impossible to live and can be only lived through the grace of God. And so he calls us to give up everything, everything, all of our possessions, all of our wants, all of our dreams, all of our desires, everything to give it all up. And then what we do is we go and we take and we put it all in our hand. We hold it out to him. We say, okay, Jesus, this is yours. Take what you want, put into what you want and I will adore no matter what it is. Now let's look at Luke chapter nine, beginning in verse 57. And I'd shared a version of this about three years ago. So there may be a couple of you that have on staff that have heard a portion of this or some of the thought of it. But this is on devotion. So Jesus is gonna teach devotion. And it begins in verse 57. So keep your Bibles open. We're just gonna walk through it a little bit at a time. You know, just a few verses here through verse 62. It says, as they were walking along the road. Now let's look at a scenario, very similar to what we just looked at. All right, in Luke 14, very similar. So Jesus walking along, a large crowd was following him there. Jesus walking along and a large crowd is following him here. And Jesus, just the very nature of who he was made the most of every opportunity. So as he's walking along, what's he doing? He's teaching. He's pouring into these people, whether disciples or apostles or whether just wannabes. He's just sharing with them. This event is not a parable, though he is going to speak three parables, a parable to each of the men. And so what's gonna go on here is this interaction, this brief interaction. This whole event may have taken only five minutes. I mean, it's that quick of a thing. But it was so profound and what was given here was so important that the Lord made sure this was put in the Gospel of Luke. And so we have this crowd going along and just try and imagine the setting here. Jesus evoked all kinds of emotion, whether it was just love or hate or just this ecstatic desire to follow him because it was exciting or whatever. I mean, all of these emotions are there. And so Jesus walking along and whatever miracles he did just prior to this, the people are geeked. They're wound up, man. They're following him, wanting to see what other miracles. Doesn't mean they were followers of Jesus, but they were interested in what was going on. And so here's these young guys walking by him and in the excitement of whatever Jesus teaching as he's walking along, this young man says, I will follow you wherever you go. Easy thing to say, isn't it? But Jesus replied, foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the son of man has no place to lay his head. This man volunteers to follow Jesus. And it sounds like a good resolution, but we have this really, really difficult problem. You see, he's talking with God incarnate. He doesn't know that, but he is. And that means Jesus knows the truth about this man. You can't lie to an all knowing God. I mean, you can't, you can't get away. You can't manipulate him, you can't count him. He knows the truth. You may manipulate and count others, but you can't do that to Jesus. And so Jesus knows what's going on in the inside life of this man. He knows where this man is really at. And so this good resolution says, I will follow Jesus, or we could say it in a modern sense. I want to pray the sinner's prayer, right? I mean, we could do it however we want, trying to go and speak of this concept of pop Christianity today. But really that's all it was. He was offering a pop religious view, a pop religious idea. Because he had a selfish, self-centered understanding of discipleship. What was this, what was going on? Now I will venture to say, though it doesn't say this, I will venture to say that maybe the man did believe that Jesus was Messiah. But the problem that they had back then is that in the Old Testament, you have these prophecies in the Old Testament about the first coming of Messiah. And then you have the prophecies about the second coming of Messiah. And they had no ability to separate the two, so they mingled them. And you know what that did? That gave them the idea that the Messiah was going to come into Jerusalem victorious, sit upon the throne, make Israel, the praise of the world, and people would come there to worship God. And in their mindset, Jesus would come in, kick Herod off the throne, because he had no right to be on that throne, kick the Romans out, and Israel would be a free nation. Now this man's coming to him, that's Messiah. He's gonna be king, he's gonna sit on the throne. I'll follow you wherever you go. He's going to the White House. I mean, you understand what's going on with this? Exactly, the selfish thing, I will follow him, I'll get power, I'll get prestige, I'll get money, I'll be blessed, all the things I want, I'll get. And we use Jesus as being a sugar daddy, just wanting him to do something for us where we don't want to surrender, we just want to get stuff out of him. We want him to take care of our problem, but we don't really want him. And so he was a very selfish man, and selfishness never allows us to lay our life down for Christ or for others, never allows, because whatever we do through selfishness, it may seem noble, it may be giving billions of dollars to charity, but everything that we do is done with selfish ambition for our own vain glory and desires. Takes that spiritual revolution on the inside to change any of that. So he was willing to follow a popular leader. But would he follow a rejected one? He says, you want to go to the White House, but foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, and I don't have anywhere to lay my head, you're gonna follow me still? You're gonna follow me going to the cross? You know, Peter had that bold proclamation. Now, there was sincerity in Peter, though there was deception about himself. And when Jesus went to the cross, he took Peter with him and did a major crucifying in that man's life through his betrayal of Jesus and everything. I mean, so God did a good work even in the midst of all that. But yet we can go and say, I'll follow you, I'll follow you, I'll lay my life down for you. But if you won't lay your sin down, you won't lay your life down. If you won't lay your selfish ambition down, you won't lay your life down. If you won't love your wife, as Paul teaches us in Ephesians, in the sacrificial manner as Christ loved the church, then you will not lay your life down for Christ. You see, if we can't live the basics of what the gospel is, then you're not gonna die for Christ because you haven't even learned how to live for Christ. That's why it begins with the radical statements of Luke 14 there, that we have to love him more than anything. We have to be willing to crucify our own sinful desires, and we have to give up everything we have that we might follow him. But yet we want to rewrite that and say that it's something other than what we really think it is. Last week, I shared with you a story from a book by John Patton or about John Patton, which was a frontier missionary, a pioneer missionary. He was a wild man. I mean, you read a book on John Patton, I love the guy, just, he was wild. I mean, just a man on fire for Jesus and gave himself up for the glory of God. And this is his personal life. I gave you a story that he gave about two missionaries that were eaten by cannibals and how God went and poured out his, their blood was poured out, and God went and says, that's my islands now. I'm gonna take those for my own, and he did. And so this pioneer missionary was going to the South seas and he was out to try and reach cannibals. You want that kind of ministry? He made the statement, with regard to my life among the cannibals, I have only once to die. I am content to leave the time, place, and means in the hands of God. Before he left, there was this old Christian gentleman that exhorted him again and again, cannibals, you will be eaten by cannibals. You can't go there. You can't go there. And finally he replied. He said, Mr. Dixon, you are advanced in years and you will soon be laid in the grave there to be eaten by worms. I confess to you that if I can but live and die, serving and honoring the Lord Jesus, it will make no difference to me whether I'm eaten by cannibals or by worms. Do you understand? There's devotion. Devotion, it's not about the aspect of you having a happy life and having stuff and possessions and things and all the desires you have. It's about the aspect of this God, this great, magnificent, glorious God that has stooped down to you, a rebel, hustled to him and adopted you as a son because you repented and you cried out for mercy. And what do you do? He says, I got a calling for you. And you're gonna go and be eaten by cannibals. Or you're gonna go to the inner city. But one way or the other, whatever that call is, I guarantee you in the midst of it all, it is a holy life, free from the sexual addictions that have defined you, free from the selfishness that has consumed you, free from the pride and all the other things that are there because that's what the cross is all about. It is a wonderful place to die on, agonizing but wonderful because always out of that death comes resurrection life. To the second man in the next verse. Jesus goes to this man and he says, 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. The first man, Jesus pursues. And so just imagine, this is all taking place really quickly. And so he goes to this one man and the one man goes and says, I'll follow you wherever you go. But this man, now he says, follow me. Now let's get a good definition of what Jesus is saying here, follow me. If I go to you and say, follow me, you might think that it means, well, we're gonna go to beans and we're gonna have a coffee and one of those apple fritters. And so what's done? What happens when you're done eating and the fellowship time's done? You go your way, I go my way. That's not what Jesus is saying. When he said, follow me, it meant exactly what we looked at in Luke 14. You are to leave everything and follow me. You are to love me more than anyone. And you are to die to your selfish desires. Follow me, follow me. Do you understand what he's saying here? Follow me. You can't do what you've been doing and follow me. You've got to stop what you're doing and began something brand new that can only be done and accomplished through the grace of God. Follow me. It wasn't a cutesy little saying. It wasn't something that people could go and say, oh, I'll follow you and I'll go to church Sunday morning and the rest of my life is my own and I'll live like I want. But thank you for this salvation and letting me live the way I want to. But that's not salvation. That's our own religious indoctrination that we have embraced. And so follow me in the Greek means to start a new action. And then he said, in response to Jesus, when he said, follow me, because the man knew what Jesus was saying, okay? He knew what Jesus was saying. Because Jesus said, follow me at the beginning of his ministry to Peter and his brother Andrew. And what does it say? They left their nets and followed him. And then going on a little further, they went to the family of the Zebedees and they were probably partners in business, okay? Those two families. And so he goes to James and John and says, follow me. And there it gives even a greater expression. Okay? It says they left their nets and their father. Luke 14, they left their family. They left everything. You understand what this is, what this discipleship is all about, what devotion really is? But this man didn't want that. And so he said, first, let me go and bury my father. Now, this is a really big issue here. This is huge. You see, this is discipleship according to me. Okay? That's what it is. I mean, we want to go and write out our little agreement of discipleship. This is what I'll do. This is how I'll serve you. I'll go to church Sunday morning, maybe once a year, Sunday night. But the rest of it, it's all about me. I want to live my life. Bless me. Give me lots of money. Make me happy. And you know, I'll give you a couple of bucks in the offering occasionally. Right? We have our own version of discipleship. And then we go and hold that out. Okay, you sign that, sign it really good. I want to make sure I've got my free ticket to heaven. Okay, sign this God. And it doesn't work like that. It will not work like that. You see, he makes the terms of discipleship and either you say yes or no to it. There is no negotiating. But that's what this man wanted. I will follow you under my terms. I will do it my way. And if you don't do it my way, then I won't do it at all. I'll show you God. Right? Isn't that it? That arrogance that's in there, as if we think God is getting some deal with you or some deal with me. He didn't get a deal. He got the raw end of the deal. You understand? If we really follow Jesus, we get the full blessing and benefit of it. And so it's not that he got a treasure in any of us. And so he's trying to go to Jesus. They let me renegotiate this idea of discipleship. So what does he do? He says, let me first go and bury my father. Now that sounds pretty okay, doesn't it? I mean, daddy's dead or just dying. And so he needs to go back and take care of his father. And so in a week or two, maybe a month at the most, he'll be there following Jesus and doing his responsibility, fulfilling his responsibility. But the problem is that's not what that means. And so here's where we've got to understand the culture of the day. We've got to understand Jewish culture 2000 years ago and what was being said there. Because what this man said, others understood because what he was saying was something that was very typical. You see, to bury my father is an excuse, not a need. Daddy was not dying. He wasn't dying. This man, his name's Kenneth Bailey. He's a theologian. He was raised in the Middle East by missionaries. And then he became, had his PhD in ancient languages and has lived in the Middle East ever since. And so he is an expert in Middle Eastern culture. And that's what he writes on. And he wrote in one of his books, he said the phrase to bury one's father is a Middle Eastern traditional phrase that refers specifically to the duty of a son to remain at home and care for his parents until they were laid to rest respectfully. This was a common thing. You didn't want to do something. He says, well, let me go and bury my father. And so basically it's a nice way of saying, no, I don't want to do what you're saying. All right, that's all it was, just an excuse. So we got our own excuses. How many times I can't tell you I've heard where people say, yeah, well, I'll really begin to walk with Jesus, but I got some things I got to take care of. Well, they're just looking for an excuse. They're trying to have this discipleship contract according to me. You know, they want God to sign what they want to do. And that's not discipleship. And so what we're called to do is to follow Jesus his way, to go back to Luke 14 and to follow Jesus according to what he said devotion really is. And so this man puts off serving Jesus to a convenient time. How many of you are here just to get a fix for your problem? You destroyed your marriage or you have your parents or whatever it is, just so distraught of what you're doing one way or the other, you may have been pressured to come here, not because you so much wanted to, but you felt the pressure. So you're just trying to obey. You're just trying to do the duty so you can get on with life. And if that doesn't change, you're in really, really, really, really big trouble because you'll go back and you'll think you did the pure life thing and you'll think you're okay with Jesus and you're still at war with him. And if the light that's in you is darkness, how great is that darkness? If you think you're right when you're at war with him, you are really, really in dangerous place. And so this man had a greater commitment to his father and culture than to Christ. You know what, that's the way it works. With whatever we're addicted to, that's what begins to define our life. That's what moves us. A drug addict is what? Driven by drugs. That's what defines his life. According to his addiction to drugs is according to how he treats his family. You understand? That's how he treats a wife, children. That's how he treats friends. Your addiction to sex, your addiction to anything. Because all sin, all sin is addictive to the fallen human personality. All sin, gossip, hate, bitterness, you name it. Whatever sin you can name, it's addictive. You start giving yourself over to it, it starts getting ahold of you, it starts defining you, it starts dictating to you, and it controls everything about your life. That's the nature of it. And so he had a greater commitment to his father, to his culture, to his addictions than what he had to Jesus. But in that culture, you see the father had supreme authority. It was what's called a patriarchal society. And so the man, the father ruled the family. And he ruled the family to the third and fourth generation. That would be son, grandson, great-grandson. And when you look at that, if you have a godly man, he's influencing the third and fourth generation. If you have an ungodly man, he's influencing the third or fourth generation with his ungodliness. When you look at the Old Testament speaks of the curses, all kinds of group ball teaching out there on it, and it gets totally away from the word of God. That third or fourth generation is a father, or grandfather, or great-grandfather that's still alive, cursing his family through his sin. And when the blessings come to the third or fourth generation is because a godly man is blessing. Why? Because he's bringing the truth and with this God is to the third or fourth generation. And so that's really what it comes down to be. This man was demanding that he have authority over his life and that Jesus didn't. But Jesus demands that he has absolute authority. He demands it. He doesn't ask it. He demands it. And either we say yes, sir, or no. It's one or the other. I mean, there's no middle ground. You're either gonna say yes to him or no to him. You wanna try and make this, you wanna take this narrow road and make it some 10 lane highway type of thing because you wanna live your own life and hope that you can wander back and forth and occasionally cross the line. And when you die, you hope you're at the right place at the right time. What Jesus is saying to this man, go and proclaim the kingdom of God, is he's taken this man out of the aspect of the selfish pursuit of his own life and what he wanted for discipleship. He says, I have something else for you. I have something greater for you. You have looked at your life so small. You have lived just for the here and now to the job, to the home, to the family, to your possessions and wants. He says, I got something greater for you. You haven't even begun to see what it is that I wanna do. And it doesn't mean you're gonna be somebody famous, but he says, I wanna use you to change eternity. And that is bigger than you can imagine. Even one soul, if your whole life was spent for the saving of one soul, you have changed eternity. You have depopulated hell and populated heaven because you were available to God to be used by him. And so he says, stop living this selfish life. Discipleship is how I define it. And I have a greater calling than you could ever imagine. But the man was too consumed with self. Jesus will not accept our cultural excuses of why we don't serve him. While I was passing in Detroit, I had a young man in the church that he needed to be a pure life. Okay, he needed to be there. I don't know if pure life at that time was, that would have been in the very early 80s, probably, when did PLM start? Okay, so he needed pure life, but it wasn't there. And so, you know, I confront this guy about his sex addiction and he ends up saying, well, you know, I just got a really high testosterone count and so I can't help myself. I says, no, it isn't, you love your sin. It was a lie. He was using this as an excuse for his sexual addiction. You gave in your sexual addiction because you wanted to. Period. You have no excuse. Because if God is God, and he is, he offers grace to any who want victory. It's available to live the victorious Christian life. He makes it available to you. There was this man, he was an editor of a communist newspaper. And he was talking to a Christian and he made this confession to him. He said, the gospel is much more powerful a weapon for the renovation of society than our Marxist view is. Yet we, yet it is we who shall conquer in the end. We communists do not play with words. We are realists that are determined to reach our end. We also know how to provide the necessary means. And when he began to speak of the sacrifices that the communists are willing to make for their communist agenda, he said of our salaries and wages, we keep only what is absolutely necessary. American communists give up to 38% of their income and the rest we give for propaganda purposes. To the same propaganda, we also devote the leisure time and part of our vacation. You, however, give only a little time and scarcely any money for spreading the gospel of Christ. The angry editor then sneered and said, how can anyone believe the all surpassing value of this gospel if you do not practice it, if you do not spread it, if you do not sacrifice neither your time nor your money for that purpose. Believe me, it is we who shall conquer because we believe in our communist gospel and we were willing to sacrifice everything, even life itself. But you, you are afraid of soiling your hands. You know, the reality is all our schools of higher education are steeped in communism because they have done it and the church has not. We have lived for prosperity, we have lived for self, we've lived for our own agendas because we didn't understand what biblical discipleship really is. And so we've given our world, we've given our nation, we've given our schools, we've given our children to the world, letting hell educate them and take them down paths of absolute evil because we wanted to sleep in the light and we wanted a comfortable Christianity so we could practice our sin. The third parable. Now, you have the first guy that says, I'll follow you anywhere you go. The second guy, Jesus goes and recruits him, says, come follow me. But then another guy pops into the story here and he is willing to follow, he's volunteering to follow Jesus and he says, I will follow you, Lord, but first let me go back and say goodbye to my family. Jesus replied, no one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God. So this third man volunteers to follow Jesus. I will follow you wherever you go. And he even called him Lord. Lord. Old words, cheap promises, no action. How many times have you made the promises? How many times have you made the promises? You called him Lord, but never meant it. You asked for forgiveness, but never repented. You see, there's a big difference. You can say, I'm sorry to your blue in the face and never repent. How many times did you go to your wife and say, I'm sorry, I won't do this again. I'm sorry, I won't do this again. I'm sorry, I won't do this again. I mean, that's the way it is with any addiction. So it's not just with your addiction, it's drug addicts and so on. It's what goes on. You become manipulators to try and cover up your own sins so you don't have to be exposed as much. And when you finally are, then you try and lie your way out or you try and condemn your wife into submission so that she won't rise up against you. It's all the craziness that sin produces in us. I mean, we can be some really, really, really evil people and the craziness of it, then we think we're Christian. It's insane, it really is. It's insane. And so these are bold words with cheap promises, but let's begin to look at this. Here, we got to get into the culture and understand something here. And we also got to get into the Greek language, all right? This word that is translated here is goodbye. And this is the 1984 NIV. And I do like the 1984 NIV. I think it's a pretty good translation, but they all have their little issues where somebody got it wrong or whatever, didn't make it strong enough or whatever. So we'll look at something else here in the 1984 NIV. That's a mistake, but they shouldn't have translated as goodbye because everywhere that Greek word is used in the rest of the New Testament is translated as take leave, all right? And that's a very big, huge difference, okay? There's huge difference from goodbye to take leave. And the reason is it's a cultural thing. So let's say you're in the Middle East and you are invited to, you're in the country, rural setting, and you're invited to the home of some prominent person there. And it's irrelevant whether he's Muslim or Christian or Jew or whatever, but you're invited there and you're this prominent individual. Others are gonna come from the village and be there for this event. And so it goes on for a couple hours, great food, and you're just talking or whatever. And what do we do in America? When it's time to go, you just go and say, well, thank you, and you maybe give him a handshake or a hug or whatever, and you go and you leave. If you did that in that culture, you have absolutely insulted your host. It's a total insult. You don't do that in that culture. What you do is you go to the host and you say, may I take leave? And the host decides when you leave. If he says no, you sit there until he gives you leave. On a bigger scale, if you're a son, you wanna do something, you have to go to your father and say, father, may I take leave? May I take leave to follow the prophet? And now the father, as the supreme authority in that family, earthly wise, he will either give you leave or no. You see, this is a very big thing. So he's saying, let me go back and take leave of my father. Let me go back and get permission from him to see if he will let me follow you. Now, the reality is, is in that culture, you had sons, and this was probably not the firstborn son, so he'd be one of the other sons. And he would have been an integral part of the family business, whatever business that would have been. It could have been shepherding, it could have been farming, it could be some merchant or whatever, whatever kind of business he was in, the entire family was involved in that. Now, if the son goes to the father and say, father, let me take leave, that means that father has to go and hire a servant in your place. He has to hire somebody to take your place to do the job that you were supposed to do as a son. And so now you have the expense and the burden that's brought upon the family because you're leaving, and what would go on in that culture, they know that the father would say no to him. They knew that's what would go on. And so this man is just making an excuse, says, I'll follow you, I'm excited, this is great. Oh no, maybe let me think about this now. Let me take leave of my father. I'll come after I take leave of my father. And so all those listening to this story and this account of this man, what he's saying in the parable that follows would understand that this man was not serious in following Jesus. He was excited for the moment, but was not serious. Now, as an evangelist, I love giving altar calls because you know what? I see some people at altar calls that really are changed. But I also know that there's a lot of crocodile tears that are prayed that have no real meaning behind it. They walk out the doors of the church and there's no change. I can't do anything about that. You know who I'm out after? Those who want it. Those are the only ones I can do anything about, because the rest don't want to hear. And they may come up here and pray prayers or whatever. That mean nothing, but I'm out after those who will say yes. Those who are aching for that revolution in their life that comes along to Jesus. And so this man was letting his father decide whether or not he would follow Jesus. How does this play out in our culture though? You see, there's a way we can take this and apply it correctly in our culture. And I think one of the big ways that we can apply it is all the blame shifting that we do and how we blame others. We blame others. So you look at the breakdown of a marriage, ends up in divorce, you go to the wife, what happens is it was his fault. And you go to the husband, it was her fault. So all they do is point fingers at each other and they do all the blame shifting. So you know what that does? It leaves you in your sin, only entrenches it more because you don't take the path of repentance that can bring a transformation in your life. And so we blame people. I'm like this, I was an alcoholic because my father was an alcoholic. No, he didn't pour the alcohol down your throat. And even if he did, when you became an adult, you made the choice. You did what you did because that's what you wanted to do. Nobody can make you sin. The devil can't make you sin. We sin because we choose to sin. Temptation may offer us the opportunity, but does not force us. We're the ones who say yes. We're the ones who give over. We're the ones that do that. So there's all the host of ways that we can blame people and why we're not walking with cheese, why we're having this problem, but it's all just excuses. And you know, Jesus knows that it's an excuse. He knows it. And so here again, this man wants to write his own terms of discipleship. And that's what those two words are, but first, but first. Okay, but first, here's my terms of discipleship. And it's just a lot. What have your terms of discipleship been over the years? What has it been? Because you've made it yourself. That's why you've lived in compromise because you rewrote what discipleship is. You rewrote what it meant to be a true authentic Christian. And you wrote it in a way that fit your own desires and lusts and wants and doctrines, not according to the word of God. And so those need to be seriously dismantled. I mean, there's a lot of dismantling that needs to go on in the hearts of people when they really want to come to Jesus after they have lived a life of compromise. I mean, they have all this junk. I used to be a musician. I used to play guitar. And so as a kid, I took like three years of lessons. And one of the things I learned was the proper way to hold a guitar. And so, you know, the majority of guys, rock and rolls, they hold it really sloppy and their thumbs hanging over. You know, that's like, okay, try and play a classical piece with that. You know, buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz. You know, that's all it's gonna be. It's just gonna be noise because there's a right way to hold it. But you know, to try and teach somebody that has had bad habits of that for so long is a nightmare because that's what they're so used to. Trying to get them to break that habit is 10 times the work of what it is to try and teach them how to do it right. When you get Christianity so twisted and demented and distorted in your mind, the hard work is getting these lies out, getting these lies out, getting ourselves free from all these prejudice, these religious prejudice that we have inside of us to begin to see the word for what it really is and then begin to say, God helped me to live it as you said it instead of how I dream it to be. And so Jesus responded to the man. And he said, no man who puts his hand to the plow and looks back. I'll finish the rest of that in just a moment. But what we have to see is Jesus giving a very vivid word picture for an agricultural people. They knew what plowing is. And if you're a city boy, you don't know what plowing is. I was a city boy. I was, you know, I don't know what it is. I mean, I played with a tractor before and did a little bit of plowing and disking, but nobody would have trust me with a field that they were gonna plant something in. You know, I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't know how to do it. Those of you who have done some plowing, you know a little bit of it, unless you've come from an Amish background or something where you don't use tractors. Now you're beginning to understand a little bit more of what it's all about. You go to plow that way and you're talking about some serious work. I mean, today you got tractors. You just put in the GPS coordinates. It goes on, turns around. You just have to sit there and watch, you know, whatever it is or listen to music. And it does everything. You just have to make sure it doesn't go haywire. So, I mean, you know, to do it their way, it was serious. Now, as if you don't pay attention to what you're doing and you're behind these two big old oxen and you got the plow, you're fighting to stay behind them and keep the plow at the right depth and to keep the furrows nice and straight. And if you don't do it right, what happens is the animal starts going like this or the plow starts going like this and you can lose two thirds of your whole crop as a result of it. And that could mean death for your family. You see, it was serious. He says, you put your hand in that plow, you keep your eyes on the prize. You keep your eyes on the furrow. You keep looking to what you're doing. You keep those lines straight and you keep the depth right. You pay attention. You pay attention. Jesus did not portray Christianity as some happy, fun-filled experience. He portrayed it as hard work. Is there joy? Absolutely, tremendous joy. I'll tell you what, I'm so glad I'm not a slave to sin. I'm so glad. There is no joy, no happiness, no pleasure in that. It is misery and agony. What I have in Christ is infinitely beyond anything I had in the world. There's not even a comparison between the two. But it is hard work. It is hard work to keep your heart, your affections where they should be upon Christ is hard work because your heart wants to wander. To live the crucified life is hard work. To take everything and give it all up to him is hard work because your heart keeps wanting to go after the things of this life. And so there's the hard work that's involved in it. But the King James, well, excuse me, the NIV, 1984 NIV, adds a word in that little phrase that Jesus said that's really incorrect. He says, no one who puts his hand to plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God. But that's not what the Greek said. The Greek does not have that word service anywhere in it. That is a doctrinal commentary that's added in. I hate to say it, okay? It was a doctrinal commentary. Somebody put that in there because that's how they viewed it. So you can still be a Christian, but you're making a mess of everything. Jesus never said that. He said, you put your hand to the plow, you're not fit for the kingdom of heaven. You won't make heaven your home. I mean, Jesus wasn't wearing this down. We try to do it. We wanna add the little stuff and go and say, well, I can live how I want and still go to heaven. Well, I prayed the sinner's prayer. Well, one saved, always saved. But the reality is if we don't live it, we're not gonna make it. And you can have all the doctrine, all the arguments you want, but you better look at what the word of God really says free from all the doctrine and say, what did you say, Jesus? The Chinese were coming into, were embracing communism and the communist Chinese were overthrowing the nation. And the persecution was tremendous, the amount of people that died. And that's what's so strange. You have communism in our schools, taking over our schools. And the push of it in our government is unbelievable. People don't even understand what's going on. And they fail to understand how absolutely utterly bloody it is. The millions and millions, 10s and 10s and 10s of millions that have been slaughtered in the name of communism. People don't know the truth. There is a great deception that's going on. Here's this missionary, her name's Gladys Allward. And she was there at this event. So this is an eyewitness event. It says during the beginning of the communist takeover of China, a revival came to a small university town where many were converted, including 200 students. The communists tried hard to break the Christian students so they would deny Christ and pledge their loyalty to the new government. Finally, the townspeople were forced to gather in the market and the newly converted university students were brought out. The communist leader began to call the students names and giving them a chance to renounce Christ. One after the other of those 200 names were called out and not one faltered, though they knew enough of their persecutors by now to know that they would be made to suffer. Every one of them was beheaded that day in the marketplace for everyone to see. Before each execution, the victim was given one last chance to recant. But even those at the end who were forced to watch the terrible butchery of all the others did not flinch. That's Christianity. That's devotion. That's what comes out of being truly born again. When it is lived out like that, it is lived out in the home. It's lived out in the place of holiness, not giving over to our sins. It is lived out because that is the true faith and that's what grace is given to live out, not to practice sin. So what does it mean to be devoted? What does it mean? It means a disciple must leave all to follow Jesus, totally abandoning himself to Jesus, to his teachings, to his kingdom, to his mission. It means you leave all, you leave it all behind. All your ideas, all your attitudes, all your hurts, all your pains, all your struggles, all your lusts and everything else, you leave it all behind because you're beginning something new. You are beginning to follow Jesus. It means to give yourself totally over to. It means that you are fully and completely consecrated to Christ, that you are set apart for him and for his purposes. It means loyal commitment. It means loyalty, which is almost a cuss word in our country today, loyal. Do we know what that means anymore? Do we have an idea of what loyalty is, that we're loyal to him and we will be loyal to him even if it costs us our life? That's not understood anymore because we have such a selfish, self-centered approach to Christianity. We can live any way we want and then we take the love of God, we blow it up out of proportion, we make a caricature of it, an ugly monstrosity of this God who loves us and doesn't really care how we live. And that's not love. That is not what love is. Just like a father cares about how a son lives, so God truly cares about how we live. It matters. It means that we pledge ourself completely to Jesus. I love those old pictures that we could see of this knight, you know, going before a king of ancient days in Europe and he bows down, takes his sword, puts it in front of him and he swears fealty to the king. He swears loyalty to the king. He says, I give you my life, I give you my sword, I give you my blood if need be. All my wealth and all my possessions are under you. In some of the cultures and more ancient ones, the warrior would go and take himself and get on his knee and put his head to the thigh of the king where he is just swearing this allegiance to him. I give my everything to you. What does manhood mean today in America? He's looking for some faithful sons and daughters that will swear allegiance to him and mean it. See, our allegiance is to another king and to another kingdom and to another family. Now, should we love America? Absolutely, we should. We should love America. And we should pray for our country that is so far fallen, so far from God. But our allegiance to Christ has to be allegiance that is greater than allegiance to a nation, to a family, to a spouse. He must be the definer of all that we do and how we live. And when a nation goes against our allegiance to God, we stand faithful to God, even if it means that we are beheaded. Jesus demands that we grant him absolute authority over us. Absolute authority. How am I to live in this world? How am I to treat my wife? Just had a man the other day, went through a texting time with him. And he was out working way too much, way too much. I mean, gone. And his wife had been a serious drug addict before she became a Christian, and she fell back into her drugs and possibly into adultery. And the man can't forgive her, can't forgive her. And so I just texted him a few things to do. And part of that is to study out 1 Corinthians 13 and what it is in Ephesians 5 to be, to love a spouse like Christ. And then I said, I want you to study the book of Hosea. Study the book of Hosea and see how Jesus loves us because you have played the whore yourself. I'm not saying that's easy. I can't imagine what it would be. I'm so thankful I've had a faithful, loving wife for over 40 years. He demands everything. Everything is subordinated to him. How we love another person, how we respond in each situation, he demands total allegiance and subordination to him. But here's the final and the favorite. I love this verse. I absolutely love this verse. I love the way the 1984 NIV translates it. It's probably the best translation I've heard of this verse. It's the very last verse in the book of Ephesians, Ephesians 6, 24. It says, grace to all who love our Lord Jesus Christ with an undying love. Do you understand what the promise is? Grace comes because we are willing to love him with an undying love. Grace to live the Christian life that cannot be lived without grace is available to those who are willing to love them more than themselves, love them more than their possessions, love them more than their own life, that they would even be willing to crucify their sinful nature with all of his affections and lusts. A love that is greater, a love that burns. There was a missionary, his name was Jack Vinson. He was martyred in China in 1931, which was probably during the Boxer Rebellion. He told his captors in perfect calmness and peace, he said, kill me if you wish, I will go straight to God. There was a fellow missionary, E.H. Hamilton, wrote a poem in response to Vinson's bold, brave testimony that was given in such a loving and compassionate way for those people who were abusing him and going to kill him. I wanna read this poem to you. Afraid of what? To feel the Spirit's glad release? To pass from pain to perfect peace? The strife and strain of life to cease? Afraid of that? Afraid of what? Afraid to see the Savior's face? To hear his welcome and to trace the glory gleam of wounds of grace? Afraid of that? Afraid of what? A flash, a crash, a pierced heart? Darkness, light, or heaven's art? A wound of his counterpart? Afraid of that? Afraid of what? To do by death what life could not? Baptize with blood a stony plot? Till souls shall blossom from the spot? Afraid of that? We have a calling that is higher than you can even imagine. And he's calling you to it now. Father, we come before you now in the precious and wonderful name of Jesus. And Lord, I am asking for that spiritual revolution in men. I'm asking, Lord, for the true biblical radical faith that is radical in this world because this faith in America has become so twisted and watered down and diluted, oh God. Lord, I'm asking for men that would come to repentance, true salvation today, men that have been hardened in sin and hardened in their self-righteousness and hardened through their doctrine, blind and oblivious to what the true faith is because they have all this baggage in it rather than seeing the truth of your word and just embracing what it says. God, I'm asking for men that have come to faith, but Lord, they need to understand the radical nature of this faith, that they would come and swear loyalty to you, fealty to you, absolute, and Lord, then they would see their inability to fulfill such a commitment and cry out for the grace to live it out, cry out for the grace to walk holy, to walk in fellowship with you, to walk in a place where their hearts burn with a passion for you. God, that they would rise up with the love of God as a result in their lives, a love spouse or children and friends or even strangers with the laying down of their lives that others might know the wonder of what it means to be a true follower of Jesus. May the mark of what it means to be a true follower of Jesus be upon their lives, not some watered down compromise faith, but the true faith, the reality of what it means to serve Jesus. Lord, I'm asking for radicals. Our nation does not need tame believers. We got tame believers galore that are rushing to hell. We need biblical disciples, New Testament saints that you grab a hold of and they wanna be grabbed a hold of and they allow your life to flow in them and through them to make an eternal difference in this world that is rushing to hell. Yes, this is in the precious name of Jesus. Millions upon millions of Christian men are being enslaved by sexual lust. But in 1986, God raised up Pure Life Ministries to offer a way of escape to those taken captive by pornography and sexual addiction. Everything this ministry teaches, preaches, writes and counsels is built upon the unwavering truth of the word of God. This is why we exist, to lead people into the truth that will set them free.