[Note: This sermon expounds Luke 9:57–62, parallel to Matthew 8:19–22. Previously preached in Montreal approximately two years earlier; this message approaches it from a different angle. Delivered 19 June 1977.]
In Luke chapter 9 verses 57 to 62, and the parallel passage in Matthew 8:19–22, three men approach the Lord Jesus to declare their intention to follow him, and his responses to each reveal the qualifications required of every true disciple. I preached on this passage in Montreal two years ago; today I approach it from a different angle. The word of God is so full of riches that you can preach on the same passage repeatedly and still not exhaust it.
The first man comes with great enthusiasm: "Lord, I will follow you wherever you go." He had clearly been impressed by the life and teaching of Jesus, perhaps by his mighty works, and makes a remarkable commitment. But the Lord Jesus does not say "Wonderful, praise God" — he pours what seems to be a bucket of cold water over this enthusiastic volunteer. "Foxes have holes, birds have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head." The Lord Jesus never plays on a person's emotions. He never whips up a crowd to emotional excitement and then takes advantage of the moment — you will never find him using the kind of influence that Hitler used so effectively: the mass meeting, the 10,000-voice choir, the military music, the red flags with the swastikas, the shiny boots, the spectacle that has tremendous effect on human beings. Never.
I never forget a scene from 1952 in China, during the Korean War. They came to our school to recruit volunteers, and there was a tremendous propaganda campaign with people weeping and shouting and working on each other's emotions. One person in my class wept the loudest and shouted the most fiercely, declaring he would go to Korea to fight. But because nobody else in the class was volunteering, another fellow — I still remember his name, Sun Yizhi — was swept along by the emotional tide and volunteered as well. When the day came for enlisting, he looked around for the other fellow who had cried and shouted — and found him sitting quietly in a corner, not going anywhere. The look of bewilderment and shock on Sun Yizhi's face — the realisation that he alone had been drawn in by an emotional appeal — I have never forgotten. That man had not the slightest real desire to go; he had only responded because of emotion. Would such a man make a good soldier? That is exactly why the Lord Jesus pours cold water on enthusiasm: because he wants every person to make a commitment having first counted the cost. Of all those whom under God's grace I have had the privilege of bringing to the Lord, there is hardly a single dropout — because I have always insisted that they first count the cost.
What does "the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head" mean? He is not saying there is literally no ground to sleep on. He is saying: if you want to follow me, this world cannot be your home — that is the first qualification for discipleship. Hebrews 11 tells us that Abraham, the father of faith, saw himself as a pilgrim passing through a foreign country. By "the world" the Bible does not mean mountains and trees and beautiful creation; it means the human system that is alienated from God, the society organised without reference to him. As 1 John says, "He that loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him." So many Christians have never clearly defined their attitude toward the world; they want the best of both — the kingdom of God and the securities of the world — and because of this double-mindedness they do not last long as Christians.
To follow Christ also means to accept hardship — the Lord Jesus does not hide this. In China, every one of us knew that to become a Christian meant giving up any chance of university education, being kept under government surveillance, being regularly interrogated. That is still relatively little compared to what others suffer. But here in the West where life is comfortable, I find Christians get soft. Every Christian should practice physical discipline: where you can walk, walk; learn to eat coarser food even if you can afford a sirloin steak every day; discipline your children to be tough and self-controlled, not slabby and weak. I cannot stand the sight of fat bishops and cardinals — they are a disgrace to the gospel, showing obvious flabbiness and lack of self-discipline. Whenever Reverend Yu stays with me, we run together around the training course at Pincot. Billy Graham does what they call jogging every day. The Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 9 says he disciplines himself very severely — "I give myself a black eye" — that is a figure of speech, of course, meaning he keeps himself firmly under control. A true disciple is a disciplined person.
The second qualification arises when the Lord himself calls a man — "Follow me" — and that man replies, "Lord, let me first go and bury my father." The normal Jewish burial customs involved a mourning period of seven days; in some cases it could extend to seventy days — when Israel mourned Moses, the ceremonies lasted seventy days. This seems a very reasonable request: surely a man cannot simply leave without attending to his father's funeral? Yet the Lord's reply will astonish us — and we must wrestle with it carefully. Part B will continue from here.
# The Qualification for Following Christ — Luke 9:57–62 (Part B) — Obligations, Affections, and Burning Your Bridges
[Note: This is Part B of the sermon on Luke 9:57–62, continuing directly from Part A. Delivered 19 June 1977, Montreal.]
How are we to understand the Lord's astonishing reply — "Leave the dead to bury the dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God"? We must see the context. Immediately following this passage, Luke chapter 10 opens with the Lord Jesus sending his disciples out on a preaching mission throughout Israel. The disciples cannot hold up the entire mission for seven days while one man completes his funeral ceremonies. People are dying in Israel every day without hearing the message of the kingdom — the work is urgent. If this man is called to preach the gospel, and is faced with a choice between going to his father's burial and going on the preaching mission, the Lord's teaching is this: what the spiritually dead can do, the disciple need not do. Non-Christians can conduct burials; only a disciple can preach the gospel. Therefore do the thing that only you can do.
Now here is a further dimension: love your parents while they are alive, not with an expensive coffin and a mountain of flowers after they have died and can no longer benefit from it. There are people who neglect their parents all their life and then buy the most ornate coffin and the grandest flowers at the funeral — that is a purchase made to ease a bad conscience. Love them now, while they are still with you. One day they will be gone, as both of my own parents are gone, and you will have no more opportunity. Even on the cross, in the midst of tremendous pain and agony, the Lord Jesus made provision for his mother — asking the beloved disciple to care for her — showing that he loved her deeply and kept her in his heart even at the moment of greatest suffering. He always put the kingdom first, but he loved her no less for it; she followed him everywhere he went, even to the cross.
Something wonderful emerges from this principle: when you love the Lord more than father or mother, you do not love them less — you love them more. "Seek first the kingdom of God and all these things will be added to you." If your wife loves the Lord more than she loves you, she will love you with a purer and stronger love, because God puts his love into her heart with which to love you. If you are a parent and you tell your children to love Daddy and Mommy first and the Lord Jesus second, you will find at the end that they love neither the Lord nor you very much. But if you say to them, "Love the Lord Jesus first," you will find — strangely and wonderfully — that they love you more. The more anyone loves God, the more love flows from them toward those around them. I still do not entirely understand the mechanism of it, but it is absolutely true. It is the same principle as seeking first the kingdom of God.
When my mother died, I was preaching the gospel in Ontario. If I had to choose between abandoning the preaching of the gospel to attend her funeral and staying where I was and preaching — and I love my mother very much, and right up to this day I have not fully overcome that loss — I tell you, I would stay and preach the gospel, even if it hurt me tremendously. That is the choice a disciple must make: always put the Lord first. Even the pain of love must yield to the Lord. This is the second qualification — defining our relationship to our obligations in the world, even our obligations to those we love most, which is precisely where the difficulty lies.
The third man says, "I will follow you, Lord, but first let me go and say farewell to those at my home." When Elijah told Elisha to go and say farewell to his parents, Elisha went and came back — and Elijah accepted that. A request to say farewell would have been acceptable here too. But the critical word in this man's reply is "first." Not simply "let me go and say farewell" — but "let me first go." That word "first" reveals that something is competing with the Lord for the priority position. In the kingdom of God, nothing comes first before the Lord and his work. The Lord Jesus immediately detects what is in his heart, and his reply makes it plain: "No one who puts his hand to the plough and keeps looking back is fit for the kingdom of God." The Greek present continuous tense is important here: it is not a single glance backward, as the English "looks back" might suggest — it means keeps looking back, continually turning the head. Try to plough a field with your head turned permanently backward and see how straight the furrow runs.
This third point deals with our affections for the world. There are Christians who give up a career to serve the Lord but keep looking back, hoping in their heart to return to it when things get hard. There are those who break their connections with the world with one hand while quietly keeping them open with the other. In Chinese history there is the famous incident of the general who took his soldiers across the river and ordered the boats to be sunk and the cooking pots to be smashed — 破釜沉舟. His message was: there is no boat to take you home, there is nothing left to cook with, you will win here or you will die here; now fight. That is the attitude the Lord Jesus requires. As Paul says, "Forgetting the things which are behind, I press forward toward the mark." There is no looking back; there is only forward.
To be a true disciple of Christ requires three things: first, to define your attitude toward the world — this world is not your home, you are prepared to endure hardship and to discipline yourself; second, to define your relationship to your obligations in the world — even your obligations to those you love most, which is where the real difficulty lies; and third, to define your affections for the world — to burn your bridges behind you and press forward without turning back. How do you see yourself in the light of the Lord's teaching? Do we really love Jesus? Does that love stand up to this test? Let the word of God examine our hearts. Let us be quiet before God in prayer.