Sermon Transcript
TRANSCRIPT: Pursue the Priority
(Luke 9:57–62)
June 21, 2026
Go ahead and turn your Bibles over to Luke 9, starting in v 57. All right. Rise with me as we read, please.
As they were traveling on the road someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.”
Jesus told him, “Foxes have dens and birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.”
Then he said to another, “Follow me.”
“Lord,” he said, “first let me go bury my father.”
But he told him, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and spread the news of the kingdom of God.”
Another said, “I will follow you, Lord, but first let me go and say goodbye to those at my house.”
But Jesus said to him, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”
This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated.
Holy Spirit, come and fill me with the words to pray this morning for Your people. Father, I pray that You would absolutely captivate our imaginations. Happy Father’s Day. And help us to love You as Your children. I ask that You would please captivate our minds so that we can truly take to heart what Jesus is teaching us here. I pray that we would take these as more than just words on paper, but to recognize them as the words they truly are—living and breathing, active, piercing soul and body and heart and mind.
I pray that You would shape us into the disciples we ought to be, ones that are not hindered by wrongfully placed priorities. I ask that Your Holy Spirit would rain down on people today for their eyes to be open and their ears to hear, for us to see and know what the truth is. And I ask that You would give those who need the gift of repentance, give them that gift so that they can turn from their sin of slothfulness and their sin of carelessness and laziness and to pursue You with the vim and vigor of their youth and the youthful souls that they have in Christ. For them to serve You all the days of their life, all the remaining days of their life.
Only You know what each and every person is capable of doing. And I ask that You would communicate that to them today in this sermon. Lord, I pray that You would please be with this servant. Apart from You, I am nothing. I am not capable of teaching this people the words they need to hear. I have studied and I have prepared, but I need You to carry this sermon as Your own. I need You to look past all of my preparations and flaws. And I pray that You would equip me with the words of a prophet so that these words would be Your words alone, and none of Josh’s. Please pierce hearts today and call people to salvation. And protect us from the wicked enemy. In Jesus’ name.
Oh, and Lord, I also ask that You be with those who are at home. Even for those who watch us from the comfort of their homes, or maybe the discomfort of their homes, I ask that You would comfort their hearts with peace. I pray that You would help them to serve You in whatever way they can physically. I love You, Lord Jesus, and I know we all do. Help us to love You more. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Jesus says in Mark 11:24:
“Therefore I tell you, everything you pray and ask for, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.”
I asked the Lord to speak to you today, and I believe that you are going to receive that.
Today I am going to say some things that are pretty uncomfortable for you. They are going to be pretty scandalous. And that is because the One who said it was also scandalous, and He was scandalous when He said it in His day too. Please do not misinterpret anything I am saying as saying that some of you are not doing enough. Every time you hear me say we must serve the Lord, I want you to understand that what I mean by that is we must serve the Lord in the way specifically He is calling us at our point in time today. So if you are stuck to a wheelchair and you are not able to come and vacuum the carpet, there is no condemnation. That is not what I am after. But each and every one of you is convicted by the Holy Spirit, if you are in Christ, of things that you must do. And that is what we are after today: obedience to the individual calling placed on your life.
Now with that, I want to say in America we hear stories of hundreds of people coming to follow Jesus. And our minds are torn and thrust into this place and we go, “Lord, when will we see that in our church? When will we see that in our communities where people just fall down at Your knees?”
But what you must know is that in that world today, we must beckon people to something that is stronger and greater than merely walking down the aisle. Coming to salvation is great. Saying that you believe in Jesus is great, but you must understand one thing: if all you can do with that is say, “I believe in Jesus,” then your words are nothing but squalor. For those who say they believe in Jesus and they call Him Lord, you must understand you are writing your own death sentence. To come to Christ is a call to die. And a call to die means we let go of our creature comforts. We let go of our security blankets, and we let go of our favorite relationships, if any of those things ever inhibit us from fulfilling our calling.
Today we are going to read about three candidates for discipleship. These are three individuals who have the opportunity to follow Christ. And they all have one thing in common: they will only follow Jesus if Jesus answers their demands first. There is no such category for God as that kind of Christian. A true Christian that will find salvation at the end of the day is the Christian who says, “I am dedicated to following Jesus as Lord no matter what the calling is, and I expect Him to meet no demands of mine.”
It is a totally committed relationship to Him as Lord and King. It is the same kind of commitment that one has in the military to their ranking officers. You just follow the order. You don’t say, “Well, General, I’ll go ahead and I’ll infiltrate the enemy’s territory so long as you increase my pay package.” I know of soldiers who would tell you that would warrant a death sentence. And it is no different with Jesus. Following Jesus means we follow Him with no demands of our own.
Now, lucky for us, He is a committed and loving Savior filled with grace and love and peace, and He will take care of His own. But the candidates that we are going to read about today, they decided to set the terms for how Jesus was going to be gracious and merciful. It does not work like that.
Main Point: We Must Make Jesus Our Highest Priority Over All Other Loves
Now, to do an inventory of our own priorities, let us first look at the first individual who has a chance to follow Jesus.
We Must Prioritize Him Over Security and Comfort (Luke 9:57–58)
What do we learn from this first candidate? We see this in vv 57–58. This is a candidate who comes to Jesus and he submits himself. He volunteers himself as a follower, very much like the person who might walk the aisle of a church and submit themselves as a candidate for membership to a local body by baptism. And this was an acceptable practice even in Jesus’ day. A rabbi could call out students that looked promising, but you could also submit yourself to a rabbi and ask that rabbi to teach you the ways of the world in Scripture.
Now, remember last week we learned that the Gospels—there are synoptic Gospels: Matthew, Mark, and Luke—and these three Gospels, they overlap a lot with each other. They tell the same historical events, but each with their own unique details because they are unique authors. In Matthew’s version of this historical event (Matt 8:19–22), we learn that the person submitting, this first candidate, he is actually a scribe.
The scribes were what my mom might have, or my parents and relatives in New Orleans, what we would have called them, the “hoity-toity.” Right? They were the highfalutin, the high culture class of society. They had everything handed to them. They had the highest honor among the people. In fact, Jesus says as much in Mark 12. In Mark 12:38–39, Jesus says:
“Beware of the scribes, who want to go around in long robes and who want greetings in the marketplaces, the best seats in the synagogues, and the places of honor at banquets.”
The scribes were the people who loved high class and they loved being recognized. They are the kind of people that wear name brand and carry name brand, and they want to make sure that that name brand is prevalent for everyone to see. This is the kind of person who is submitting himself to Jesus.
But you see, when you submit yourself to Jesus, you are adopting the lifestyle of your Rabbi. This is the case anytime anybody becomes a disciple of a teacher or a rabbi. You have to do what they do. You have to go where they go. And this is why he says, “Wherever you go, I’ll go.” More than likely, this scribe, what he really wanted was he wanted the fame that Jesus had. He saw a talent where it was, and he wanted to put himself square in the center of that talent.
There are people in the Church today who will only volunteer at churches when they see that those churches have a large congregation. There are pastors who will only work at churches when they know it comes with a large pay package. I don’t think it is much different from the kind of disciple candidate that we have here. In Matthew 23:6–7, these kinds of people:
“They love the place of honor at banquets, the front seats at the synagogues, greetings in the marketplaces, and to be called ‘Rabbi’ by people.”
You see, being able to call a so-and-so your rabbi also gave you clout. Every public speaker knows that when you speak, you sometimes have to show your audience why they should hear you out. We call this ethos. Paul uses ethos to his advantage when he is trying to defend himself. In Acts 22:3, before the Sanhedrin, he says:
“I am a Jew, born in Tarsus of Cilicia but brought up in this city, educated at the feet of Gamaliel according to the strictness of our ancestral law. I was just as zealous for God as all of you are today.”
More than likely, this first candidate wanted to be able to say, “My rabbi is Jesus,” thinking that it will get him into closed doors. But Jesus don’t play. That is what I love about Jesus. He is not afraid to say the hard things, and He shuts this down very quickly. Jesus tells this candidate:
“Foxes have dens and birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.”
You see, this is an imagery of comfort and security. Foxes go into the holes. Yes, it provides them with security, but it also provides them with being dry and warm in harsher climates. And so it is their comfort. It is their plush pillows, their Tempur-Pedic mattresses, their air-conditioned habitation. And the birds of the nests, they place those nests high perched in the trees to offer them security from other prey.
When this man says, “I’ll go with you wherever you go, Jesus,” Jesus is saying, “Are you sure you want to be My disciple? Do you know that means going into places where you will not have mattresses all the time? Do you know following Me means that you might have to go without air-conditioning in the summer? Do you know that it means that you might have to give up your firearm because I’ll call you to a territory where those are not permitted? Do you know that this might mean that you have to give up your 401k because the mission agency that I want you to be a part of doesn’t offer retirement packages? Are you still willing to follow Me?”
This is not the case with every disciple, but it might be the case for you. Every person who chooses to follow Jesus must be willing to give up things in this life, and every single person will have to give up comforts and security. You can give up security because your hope and faith is in Jesus, amen? No matter what happens, we can tell anxiety to take a seat because Jesus is our King. He is in control of all things. And when it comes to comfort, if you are doing the will of God, it will be easy and bearable. We know this because Jesus says in Matthew 11:28–30:
“Come to me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, because I am lowly and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
For those of you who might have been raised closer to the city like myself, a yoke is a thing that you attach to oxen and beasts of the field. And you have bonds or ropes attached to them, and you are meant to pull the heavy weight in the field doing the work. All of us are carrying a yoke. There is no one who is independent of a yoke. Your yoke is what you are doing day to day. It is a burden that you bear. And if you are bearing the burden, the yoke of the world, I guarantee you, you are exhausted today. You walk through those doors and you are exhausted. If you are living in sin, if you are bearing things that you need to get rid of, you are absolutely exhausted. Sin will eat at you, it will eat your soul, and you will feel absolutely dilapidated and beaten down.
Jesus says you can give that up. He also says that you can give up the burden of just doing things you are not called to do. This is my favorite realization over the last few years. I could be doing things in the church that I am not called to do, and it will wear me down. But I can put on the very thing God is calling me to do in the Church, and all of a sudden I come alive. And I will do things—you can do things, if God is calling you to do it—and you’re going to knock it out of the park. Everybody’s going to look at it and go, “How in the world did you do that? I don’t understand. How do you do this every week? How do you take care of those kids? How do you keep taking care of the church? You make it look so easy.”
And then that person replies, “Well, it is easy. It’s just, I don’t know, it’s what I do.” And it is nothing for that person. And everybody else, they are going, “I don’t know how they do it.” We all know somebody like that. This is the person who recognizes what the yoke of Christ is. It is only when you carry the yoke of Christ that your burdens are easy and light.
So when I tell you that Jesus is going to call you to sacrifice comfort, if you follow through with that calling, you will sacrifice and it will still be a bearable burden. But some of us are too afraid to jump into it. What’s your calling? What has God been convicting your heart of to let go of, to fix in your life, to let go of things you might already be doing, to pick up things that you are not yet doing? If you already know and He has been communicating to you for some time, just, just go. Do it. I promise you, it will be easy and it will be life-giving because He’ll be with you. He empowers you to do the calling He puts you in.
Now, with that being said, the first point on your bulletin is we must prioritize Jesus over comfort and security. Following Jesus means that you will endure what He endured. John 15:20:
“Remember the word I spoke to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours.”
Jesus warns this candidate, “Are you sure you want to follow Me? I don’t have a place to lay My head.” He’s telling him, “What I endure, you will endure.” Jesus says in Matthew 10:22:
“You will be hated by everyone because of my name. But the one who endures to the end will be saved.”
The world’s going to hate you. For people-pleasers, that’s devastating. In 2 Timothy 3:12–14, Paul tells Timothy:
“In fact, all who want to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. Evil people and impostors will become worse, deceiving and being deceived. ”
Paul is saying, in the church, you will have impostors. And these churchgoers will mock you because you seek to live a holy and a righteous life. Following Jesus means that we must relinquish comfort for the mission. Jesus says in Luke 14:33, this is a hard one to swallow. Y’all ready?
“In the same way, therefore, every one of you who does not renounce all his possessions cannot be my disciple.”
Did y’all swallow that? “Every one of you who does not renounce all his possessions cannot be my disciple.” Okay, I just read somebody’s brain: Josh, what verse was that? I’m going to go home and look that one up. That is Luke 14:33. Everything we own is not ours. None of it. Everything you have belongs to God and serving His kingdom. In Philippians 3:7–8, Paul says:
“But everything that was a gain to me, I have considered to be a loss because of Christ. More than that, I also consider everything to be a loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. Because of him I have suffered the loss of all things and consider them as dung, so that I may gain Christ…”
You can let go of all your possessions if Jesus really means the world to you.
So while the first candidate taught us to prioritize Jesus over comfort and security, the next two candidates teach us something a lot closer to home.
We Must Prioritize Him Over Family (Luke 9:59–61)
Looking in v 59, we see this candidate, the second one, Jesus actually calls him. He says, “Follow me.” And this candidate says, “Lord, first let me go bury my father.” This candidate uses a very dangerous set of words: “Let me first.” Do you hear that? “Let me first.” This is saying, “Jesus, I’ll follow You and I’ll do what You’re calling me to do, but first I’ve got to get my things in order. I’ve got more important things before I can fulfill the mission.”
Now, the thing that he wants to do first, it does seem reasonable. He just wants to put his father in a grave. It’s almost the perfect excuse. Yeah, boss, I’m sorry I couldn’t come into work today. My father died. Oh, all of a sudden, you don’t get written up. It’s the perfect excuse to say, “I was at a funeral.”
But is that really what’s going on here? This man was likely not even dead yet. Because if this man’s father was dead, then the candidate would not have been in front of Jesus. He would have been either at home mourning with the mourners, or he would have been preparing the funeral for his father. I mean, if you know anybody Jewish, the mourning process is a big thing, right? They have this thing called shiva. They sit. Nobody moves from their seat. I don’t even know—are you guys allowed to use the restroom? Okay. Well, there’s grace there. But you get the point. If this man was interested in burying a father who has already died, he would be in the process of mourning because it lasts for days. But we know that this man was not doing that, so his father was not dead yet.
What was this man’s real condition? This sounds like too many people I know. What this man was really asking for was, “Jesus, I will serve You and fulfill my calling if You let me stay with my dad while he’s still alive.” How many of you have been in that position? I can’t fulfill my calling yet because so-and-so is still around and I need to stay close. If Jesus is calling you on to fulfill a certain purpose or a calling, you have to be willing to let them go. If that person is with Jesus, you must let go of them; they will understand. Better yet, if you can bring them on the mission, bring them, and then you can make a disciple. You fulfill your mission while showing your disciple how it’s done.
But what if they are an unbeliever? Jesus says, “Let the dead take care of them.” Is that harsh? Do we have permission from Jesus to view our unbelieving relatives in this way? What is it?
Well, first let’s address this idea of what Jesus means by dead. You will notice there are two groups of the dead in Jesus’ statement: “Let the dead bury their own dead.” The second group is the father. He’s the one that’s being buried, so we know that that sense of dead is the physically dead.
But what about the first group? The group that does the burying. Well, it would be odd if the group that’s doing the burying is actually physically dead, because I’ve never seen a skeleton pick up a shovel. So what does Jesus mean by that? Well, He means dead in a spiritual sense. Is that even a thing for this time among Jews? Would they have used the word dead in this sense?
Luke 15:24 says they did. We all know the parable of the prodigal son. What does the father say when the wayward son comes home? “For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!” Was the son physically dead? No. He was dead because he was in his sin and running from God. And then the same idea is repeated in v 32. In the Gospel of John, Jesus says in John 5:24–25:
“Truly I tell you, anyone who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not come under judgment but has passed from death to life.
Truly I tell you, an hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.”
So the living passed from death to life. The people who are unbelieving in Jesus are already dead. Unbelievers are nothing but a population of walking corpses. And Paul states this idea most clearly in Ephesians 2:1:
“And you were dead in your trespasses and sins…”
So Jesus’ response, “Let the dead bury their own dead,” reveals a few things to us. Something I didn’t pick up in the commentaries, but really startled me. This man requests, “Let me go bury my father,” and Jesus takes the title father and strips it out of the picture. You’ll notice Jesus does not entertain the title of father for an unbelieving father.
So, why do I think the father is unbelieving? Because Jesus says, let the spiritually dead take care of their own dead. When He says their own dead, I take that to mean that this is an unbelieving father of a candidate to follow Jesus. Jesus doesn’t say, “Let the spiritual dead bury your father.” He says, “Let the spiritually dead bury their own dead.” He strips the father right out of the picture. In Jesus’ mind, a spiritually dead father is not a true father for a believer in Jesus Christ.
This is like the old adage: Anyone can be a father, but not everyone can be a dad. In the Church, it’s the same situation. You can be a DNA donor, but if you’re not pushing people towards following Christ Jesus, then you are not a father in the sense of the Scriptures, because the Scriptures tell you the purpose of fatherhood is to yield them up in the way of the Lord. It says in Deuteronomy 6:7, as you walk to and fro on the path, be teaching your kids the ways of the Lord. So this teaches us that Jesus does not even see this spiritually dead father as this man’s father, and the implication is clear.
But you do have a true Father. You see, John 1:12 says:
“But to all who did receive him, he gave them the right to be children of God, to those who believe in his name…”
We are adopted into the family of God, and we have a true Father. So maybe you didn’t have a great father. But if Jesus is your Lord, you have the best Father. And Hebrews 2:11 says:
“For the one who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one Father. That is why Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters…”
So if you didn’t have a great home, welcome home.
Jesus’ response also reveals that we must not let the spiritually dead stop us from accomplishing the mission of Christ. The man requests to leave and bury his father, but Jesus in turn grants him leave to proclaim the kingdom of God. Said another way, in Greek there is a play on words in this text. It’s not quite picked up on in the English translation, but it’s something beautiful, especially if you’re a literature person. You see, in v 59, he says, “Grant me leave,” apelthonti, which comes from the Greek word aperchomai. And then in v 60, Jesus responds, “But rather, you go,” apelthōn, which also comes from aperchomai. So the man’s saying, “Grant me leave so that I can go bury my dad,” and Jesus is saying, “I’m going to grant you leave, but I’m going to grant you leave to go preach the gospel.”
We must not let our earthly relatives who are spiritually dead stop us from fulfilling the calling on our life. And I want to remind you: telling people how they can be saved in Jesus is not only for those who are gifted to preach and teach. It’s for everyone. The Great Commission (Matt 28:18–20) makes very clear: it’s to all the Church. Go and tell people to repent and believe. Make disciples.
Jesus’ response also reveals that we must not let our attachment to family stop us from fulfilling God’s call on our lives. I’m going to say this calmly, dispassionately, but you must hear the sobriety in my voice. For too many, we treat family as an idol. You must not let the worship of your parents or your children stop you from following the Lord Jesus Christ. You must be willing to go wherever He calls you to.
But what about the believing family? Because He says, “Let the spiritually dead take care of their own dead.” That’s why I say, take them along. If they are a believer and they’re physically capable, take them with you.
The third candidate now, he’s like the first—he submits himself to Jesus to be a disciple—but like the second candidate, he wants to put off following Jesus to first depart and say goodbye to his family. This is another candidate who uses that scary word first. He wants to follow Jesus, but he has other priorities first. So at this point, it ought to be clear that we must prioritize Jesus above our own family. Attachments to family must not keep us from fulfilling the mission that God gives you.
But there is another priority issue that we need to discuss, and Jesus makes us keenly aware of that in the third candidate, in His next comment. By the way, I don’t know if I said this, but the second point in the bulletin is: we must prioritize Him, Jesus, over family.
We Must Prioritize Him Over Former Lifestyles (Luke 9:62)
Now, looking at Jesus’ response to this third candidate, Jesus’ response reveals that there is something else that is wrong with this man’s heart. How many of us love to use the phrase, “Boy, I miss the good old days”? “Oh, this world’s going to hell in a handbasket.” (I can say that because it’s literal.) We love to talk about how the old days were good and perfect. Right? But everything’s not peachy anymore. We call that nostalgia.
I think God has gifted our brains to do this wonderful therapy where we tend to forget the worst parts of our past and only remember the good for most of us. I believe that Jesus’ response to this man is going after the idol of nostalgia. You see, Jesus responds by saying his love for nostalgia just stops him from being on mission with Jesus. How do I know that? Because He says:
“No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”
When He says, “and looks back,” He is talking about a love for nostalgia, a love for things in your past that were the good old days. For this candidate, the good old days is being with his family.
Now, how do I know looking back is referring to nostalgia? That is because Scripture has two very clear cases where looking back is used as a phrase. And here’s what’s interesting: in both of those cases, it is in the context of salvation. Just like this third candidate, he’s being granted the opportunity for salvation, but he wants to look back.
So what are those two examples? The first that I want to bring up is Israel. After the Lord rescued Israel from slavery in Egypt, they were brought to the desert where they were forced to depend on the miraculous hand and provisions of God in the desert. He gave them water from a rock (Ex 17:6), manna from heaven (Ex 16:4)—which is, as the book of Psalms calls it, the bread of angels (Ps 78:25)—and He gives them quail (Ex 16:13). He blesses them tremendously. He even prevents their shoes from wearing out, the Bible says (Deut 29:5).
So how did they respond to all of this? They grumble against Moses in Numbers 20:5, and they say:
“Why have you led us up from Egypt to bring us to this evil place? It’s not a place of grain, figs, vines, and pomegranates, and there is no water to drink!”
They are looking back to their slave master. They are forgetting what God saved them from. They refuse to see the evil that He has brought them out of, and Nehemiah 9:17 adds:
“They refused to listen and did not remember your wonders you performed among them. They became stiff-necked and appointed a leader to return to their slavery in Egypt…”
Nehemiah has the inside track, and he has information that they were planning to return to Egypt. They even democratically elected a leader to get it done. That’s looking back. They spurned God’s salvation with yearning for nostalgia.
And the second looking back is Lot’s wife. Abraham’s nephew, Lot, and his wife, they’re rescued from God’s judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen 19). God sent angels to get Lot and his family out of there from the burning sulfur that rained down from the sky. And these angels instructed the family, “Run for your lives! Don’t look back and don’t stop anywhere on the plain! Run to the mountains, or you will be swept away!” (Genesis 19:17). But on their way out, what does Lot’s wife do? She looks back (Gen 19:26). And Church, what happens to Lot’s wife? She turns into a pillar of salt.
Why? Was it because God hates people who look back? No. God hates it when people reject His offer of salvation by yearning for the nostalgic lifestyle they left in order to receive that salvation. When you receive Jesus, it is a trade-in lifestyle. You must give up your old lifestyle and receive a new one. You cannot continue to live in the ways of darkness and sin when you come to Jesus. You must renounce them.
You cannot continue to pursue paths of sexual immorality. You must live sexually according to God’s lifestyle. You cannot forego marriage to do things that people do in a marriage, as a married couple. You cannot forego the definitions of a married couple. You cannot forego what it means to be sober-minded and teach people the way of the Lord, to continue to pursue a life of drunkenness and debauchery. You cannot continue down the path of being a liar and a thief. Even when you are at work and you’re told to fill a report out, your new lifestyle says you cannot fudge numbers to meet the quota. Everything is a life of righteousness.
And Jesus says this third candidate preferred his older lifestyle. He looks back. If coming to Jesus makes you queasy at the thought of having to give up the life that He’s calling you to leave behind, or if you think coming to Jesus means you do not have to give up that old lifestyle, you don’t know Jesus. That’s very plain. You can call Him Jesus, you can call Him a Jew, you can call Him the Son of God, but if the Jesus you think you know is not calling you to change your life, you do not know the biblical Jesus. Hands down, guaranteed.
You drive down Main Street and you will see a church flying a flag that says that they celebrate sexual immorality. I can assure you that church is no church at all. That church does not know the Lord Jesus, and every person in that church is being made a disciple of the evil one. And we need to pray for them that they come to know the true Lord Jesus Christ. Because the true Jesus tells us in your bulletin: we must prioritize Jesus over former lifestyles.
Do you have a new lifestyle since you came to Jesus? Have you given up your former evil, dark desires? I’m not asking you, are you perfect? I’m asking you, do you even feel conviction? If you don’t feel conviction over sin—things you know the Bible does not support—I’d pray and say, “Lord, I need You to show me where I’m messing up because I don’t feel guilt for sin at all.” That is scary. To say you know what’s in the Scriptures, but you don’t feel guilty for going against it, that should terrify you. Because that’s the sign of a dead heart.
And it should scare you. Why? Because Jesus says no one who looks with nostalgia on their old lifestyle is fit for the kingdom of God (Luke 9:62). If you want to cling to that old lifestyle before you met Jesus, you must know right now you will not be given eternal life because you don’t know Jesus. I say that in love. I say that in love. I say that in so much love because I have members of my own family who look me in the eye and say, “I know what the Bible says, but I don’t feel like it’s wrong.”
Conclusion
Following Jesus is not for the faint of heart. It is true that being a disciple of Jesus requires you to pick up your own cross (Luke 9:23) and sacrifice all of your loves in this world for Him. It does not mean that the Lord will not permit you to have nice things or relationships with your family. Let me say that again: this does not mean that you’re not allowed to have relationships with your family, and this does not mean that you’re not allowed to have nice things. The Lord will still gift you with relationships, and He will gift you with nice things, but you must be willing to give them all up for Him if He tells you to.
So I ask you, if you call yourself a Christian, how has Jesus called you to serve Him? What creature comfort, security blanket, or close relationship do you know that you need to leave behind in order to follow through with your calling? That’s a real question. You can ask yourself now. What creature comfort, security blanket, or relationship do you know is stopping you from fulfilling the call that God has on your life?
Do you have a child who needs to fulfill his or her calling, but you’re guilting them into staying? Put the backpack on them and send them by the power of God’s Spirit and with much blessing, and pray for them. And if you fear that they will die on their mission, find comfort in knowing you will see them again in paradise (Luke 23:43). Because just like we need to be willing to leave our loved ones, we must be willing to let our loved ones go to fulfill their own mission.
So let us pray now to the Lord and ask Him to convict us and reveal to each of us the changes that must take place in order for us to be fit for the kingdom of God.
Father, I humbly come to You. I know, Lord, You love us. Today’s tone was a lot more serious because it is a serious thing for us to know what we must be willing to give up. And too many of us are—and I don’t mean in this church, I mean just in the world—there are too many of us, Lord, that call themselves Your disciples, Christians, and yet they don’t want to change anything in their life.
So, Lord, I pray that You would prick the hearts of any who are here that need to make a change. I pray that You would please, if there are people who are here that are not following through with their calling, that You would speak to them what they’re called to do this week. And give them strength to follow through with that calling.
I pray that You would help each and every person. I pray that You would help each and every marriage. Because maybe there’s a marriage that is spiritually unequally yoked (2 Cor 6:14). I pray that You don’t let that be torn asunder, but that they would be strengthened in the Spirit to go in the same direction. And I pray that You would help each and every person to be bold, courageous, and faithful. In Jesus’ name, amen.