Who Are You?

Summary

Dive into a powerful narrative from Luke 9 that challenges us to ask, “Who are you?” Reflect on Jesus’ unwavering journey to Jerusalem and discover how this path speaks to our deepest spiritual desires.

Transcript

Good morning. Well, thank you for being here today. So nice to see so many of you here today. And for those of you joining us online, glad you're here with us too. Glad for technology that brings us together, whether we're home, or traveling, or sick, or whatever has us separated this morning. Thankful that we can continue to be the body together. I've got a question for you.

Have you ever asked yourself, who are you? It's an easy question to throw up a quick answer in a particular order. A Christ follower, a father, a husband, a friend, a brother. But have you ever sat down and really thought about it? Dug into the center of your core. Who are you?

What makes you up? That's a huge question, right? Realistically, it'll take quite a few hours to dig through that. Maybe there's some potluck leftovers. We'll make it through.

It'll be alright. We won't dig through it all today, but we'll get the ball rolling so we can go home and keep kind of digging into it. Our gospel reading from today is in Luke 9, and it's going to ask some of those questions.

We start in verse 51. As the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem. He sent messengers on ahead, who went on to a Samaritan village to get things ready for him. But the people there did not welcome him because he was heading for Jerusalem. When the disciples James and John saw this, they asked, Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven and destroy them? But Jesus turned and rebuked them. Then he and his disciples went on to another village.

As they were walking along the road, a man said to him, I will follow you wherever you go. Jesus replied, foxes have dens and birds have nets. But the son of man has no place to lay his head. He said to another man, follow me. But he 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.

Still another said, I will follow you, Lord. But first let me go back and say goodbye to my family. Jesus replied, no one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God. Kingdom of God. Covered a lot of ground right there. And the rest of Luke in chapter nine covers a lot of ground real fast. Luke packs so many stories in there.

So back up just a little bit and just summarize what's going on in chapter nine. We start off with Jesus gives power to the 12 to heal and to cast out demons. We're about three years into his ministry. And so they've been together for a while. He's given them power. Then we roll from that story into feeding of the 5000, which was an incredible story. And we top that off, which is a hard one to top by switching into the story of the transfiguration.

Where Jesus, Peter, James and John are up on a mountain and they meet with Moses and Elijah, who we read about earlier. So then we come off the mountaintop and the disciples start arguing with each other on who's the greatest. So they're missing the point here along the way, right? We're three years in and they're still not quite grabbing it. And then after they've debated on who's the greatest, they come to Jesus and they're like, hey, somebody else was preaching in your name, casting out demons. We told him to stop because that's what we're here for. And Jesus rebukes them and is like, no, no, we're all on the same team here.

We're all in Jesus' name. If we think that when we get to heaven that it's just Nazarenes there, you're going to be a little surprised when everybody in his name is

there together. But yeah, so there's a lot packed in. And then we get into the disciples here. They're really not showing love throughout these passages. I'm getting ahead of myself.

Let's back up. So that's all in chapter nine and that catches us up to where we are this morning. We start off with Jesus is heading to Jerusalem. This isn't just any trip to Jerusalem. This is his last trip to Jerusalem. He knows he is heading there for the cross. And that is the reason for the trip.

And that's why he started. And then we roll from that and the disciples want to burn a town to the ground, right? Which essentially murders everyone inside. That's not very nice, right? And then we have three possible disciples that come up and seemingly get turned away. So there's a lot to unpack. We're going to break this down, kind of work through it step by step as we go along.

So best of luck to Chandler keeping up as we kind of bounce around this morning. So we'll start in verse 51. It says, is the time approach for him to be taken up to heaven. Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem. Resolutely, right? He's not, oh yeah, we're setting out, we're going that way. No, he's resolutely.

I like how the NRSV says it a little bit differently. It says, when the days drew near for him to be drawn up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. Now the Greek here implies he set his face on it and that's it. He's not looking at anything else. He's not looking to the left. He's not looking to the right. We're looking at Jerusalem.

We've got the blinders on and that's where we're going. He's not allowing any distractions. He's got his face set. He knows that this is the last trip. He knows he's going to Jerusalem to be killed. And still with that knowledge, stays focused on it. So we'll keep that in mind.

That will come back around later. And then we see the first time Jesus sends someone ahead of him to get a place ready for him. Don't see that anywhere else throughout the Gospels before this time. We'll do it a little bit later on too. But this is the first time he's, no, no, go ahead and set up a place before me. And he doesn't say, Luke doesn't tell us what village it is. It says it's a Samaritan village.

Doesn't give us a name. Doesn't really give us any more details. Because the name's not important. Jesus isn't out here to snitch on the people that didn't quite live up to his standards. They did not accept him. And he said okay and moved on.

He didn't fight them for it. He just went on his way. The disciples, on the other hand, didn't take it quite as easily as Jesus did. James and John, who Jesus nicknames in Mark, calls them the sons of thunder. Mostly for their impulsiveness, most likely. They want to call fire down on the city.

Or the village. These guys have been with Jesus for three years. They're feeling pretty unstoppable. Everything's been going their way. And just a couple of verses before, like we talked about, Jesus just gave them power to heal and cast out demons. And they're like, let's see what we can do with this power. Let's see if we can burn this town to the ground.

And Jesus is like, what are we doing? No, no, no, that's not what we're doing. Jesus is focused on getting to Jerusalem. Doesn't want to burn a town down. And so he rebukes them for this. So they've been with him for about three years. And they're sometimes forgetting what Jesus' point is.

Jesus' point is he's there to love people. But the old ways sneak back in. They've grew up Jewish, and they're looking for a Messiah that comes in on a horseback with a sword, ready to just destroy Rome and any other oppressor. And so they've let themselves fall back into that psyche for a minute, which what we grew up in is deep ingrained in us. We have to really work through that throughout our lives if we want to change that. And so for a minute here, they fall back into that. And Jesus tells them, hey, no, no, we're not doing that.

What they have deemed opposition is the people that said, no, we're not giving you a bed tonight, we're not feeding you. But Jesus sees opposition as anything that's going to separate him along his way to Jerusalem. So he's like, yeah, you guys are fighting a fight that we don't need to fight. They're not enemies of ours. We're going this way, and we'll just carry on. But so if the disciples spend three years with him and still fall off the wagon and focus on their own things, how much more so do we need to be in daily prayer to be able to be close enough that we can see where Jesus is going so that we don't fall into the same trap, that we don't start fighting people that don't need to be fought. We're not here to fight people.

We're here to love people. And Jesus does not rebuke people that are not close to him. Another word for rebuke is discipline, which discipline is not a fun thing, but it's an act of love. And Jesus is not out screaming and yelling at people. Those who are close to him, who listen to him speak, not listen to him scream, but those who are close enough they can hear him talking, he teaches them, disciples them, grows them. And those who do not listen, he moves on his way. He does not try to arm-wrestle them into a relationship.

And we see that Samaritan village. They did not accept him. And Jesus said, okay, and kept going to Jerusalem. That's where he's going. Jesus is not going to fight you. He will fight for you, but he will not fight you. He's right there waiting for you, but he's not going to put us in chokehold and drag you kicking and screaming into a relationship.

That's not love. That's control. That's not a relationship. That's a slave. We're made free in him and not slaves. And so I've got a photo here. You've probably seen it before from the Sistine Chapel.

There we go. So this is named, Michelangelo named it the creation of Adam. And I've never given any theological thought to this photo before.

It's great artwork. It's been there for centuries. And that's where I had kind of dropped it. But somebody challenged me with it a couple weeks ago. And they're like, well, actually, there's some theology here. And so we look at Adam really lounging back. He looks really comfortable.

He's kind of reaching out, but not really. And then God is stretching all the way out to him. God does not look like he's in a comfortable spot. And then if we zoom in on their hands, the next photo there. Right, so Adam's hand on the left side, God's hand on the right. God's stretching out, got his finger out all the way. And Adam's kind of, he's there, but not really.

How much work would it be for Adam to touch God? I mean, just, all he's got to do is stretch that finger out. God has done 99% of the work. He's come all the way to him. He's like, I'm right here. And Adam's like, yeah, I see you. And stays there.

Right, all we've got to do, a little bit of effort to turn and be able to touch him there. And so, kind of in the same way, right, Jesus sits next to the sinner. Mourns them not following him. Follows along with them. But he meets them, meets all of us, at the level of which we choose. He's not dragging us along. He meets us where we are.

He does not dictate our relationship with him. We do. We decide how much of a relationship we want to have with him. And so we're going to flip into John chapter 21 here. And we're going to read about Peter and his relationship with Christ. This is after the resurrection and everything. Jesus has met them while they're fishing.

And they've just finished breakfast. That's where we catch up with them here. When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these? He said to him, yes, Lord, you know that I love you. Jesus said to him, feed my lambs. A second time he said to him, Simon, son of John, do you love me? He said to him, yes, Lord, you know that I love you.

Jesus said to him, tend my sheep. He said to him the third time, Simon, son of John, do you love me? Peter felt hurt because he said to him the third time, do you love me? And he said to him, Lord, you know everything.

You know that I love you. Jesus replied to him, feed my sheep. Now there's a whole other sermon in that passage that we won't get into this morning. But it's one of my favorites. But I am a Greek nut, right? I have a minor in Greek and spent way too much time reading that language through college. And there's some Greek here, some nuances in Greek that we don't see in the English.

I want to talk about real quick here. So the Greek language has 13 words for the word love.

English, we have love. Greek's like, no, no, we got 13, which makes sense. Because I love the color green, and I love my wife, and I love my son, and I love hockey. And those are all very different levels of love, right? If you say you love the color as much as your family, maybe we need to talk about some priorities. But so Greek having those words helps out, especially in this passage. Peter and Jesus are not using the same words.

Jesus is using a completely different word for love. He says, do you love me? And Peter's over here like, I'm going to use this word for love. Yeah, I love you. And so Jesus, the first two times, uses a higher level of love. And Peter's like, yeah, I love you. Yeah, I love you.

And then the third time, Jesus says, all right, I'll meet you where you're at. Jesus brings it down.

Do you love me? Peter says, oh, he's sad. He realizes he's brought the relationship from here down to here. Because Jesus meets him where he's at. And he says, yeah, I love you. And he doesn't step it back up. He stays here at this point.

So Jesus stepped down to where Peter wanted to meet him at. In the same way, he steps to whatever level we want to meet him at. God is stretching out, reaching out to us. And we just have to decide what level of relationship we want with him. So that'll end our sidebar.

We'll snap back into Luke here. And so the second half of our reading from Luke, the disciples, like we said, they're on their way to Jerusalem. Their energy has to be so high in their camp. Three years they've been traveling with Jesus, and they haven't lost yet. They haven't lost at anything in their book. Can you imagine your sports team going undefeated for three years? How wild would all of those fans be?

And those players, their heads are going to be massive. They're so pumped up. And they can practically taste this new kingdom coming that Jesus has been talking about. They know stuff's about to get so good. They don't know which direction it's going to get so good. They're going to be a little blindsided by that because they think, right, growing up in that Jewish culture, they think, we're about to take over the world. That's why we're heading back to Jerusalem.

It's the center of the Jewish world. We're going to go take over right now. It's got to be it.

So they're pumped up. And it is a good thing to be pumped up, right? There's a lot of good coming, just not what they're expecting. So we'll read that second half of Luke again, starting in 57. It says, As they were walking along the road, a man said to him, I will follow you wherever you go. Jesus replied, Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the son of man has no place to lay his head. He said to another man, follow me.

But he 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. Still another said, I will follow you, Lord, but first let me go back and say goodbye to my family. Jesus replied, No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God. So some of our Bible passages, you read the story and you're like, Oh, that's pretty straightforward.

We've got it. Some of them are like this. We're like, what happened to these three guys? Luke tells us about them, but he didn't really give us any follow up details on them. Did they come along? Why was Jesus seemingly not so eager to have them come? Why did he call the second guy?

But the first and the third guy had to volunteer. And what does a fox, a bird and a plow have to do with any of this? Right. That sounds like the start of a really crappy joke, right? The fox, a bird and a plow walk into the church. And I don't know the punchline on that one. But so Luke thinks they're important enough to tell us about them, but he doesn't think they're important enough to waste any more space on it. But so from the lack of details, the lack of follow up stories throughout the gospels about these guys, it's most likely that this is their one encounter with Jesus and they're done.

They don't, they don't follow along. They all turn away. And the first man in Matthew, he's labeled as a scribe and he claims to be zealous, but he's not interested in a rough ride. He, you know, he wants to be comfortable. And Jesus says, you know, that he does not have a place to lay his head. He's homeless. And the first man not interested in the homeless lifestyle.

That's not a, not an easy road. And so he wants to know what the itinerary is.

Where are we going? What places are we staying? Where are we going to get our food from?

And that's not provided. If you've ever been on a missions trip and you've asked for the itinerary ahead of time, much like this man, you'll be sadly disappointed during the trip, because when you try to make a plan and you try to follow the spirit, it's timing and path and stuff. They don't typically mesh up. There was a work and witness leader that we went on a couple of trips with. She was fantastic, but she added a beatitude to the rest of them. And she said, blessed are the flexible, because they won't be bent out of shape. And this rings true in mission trips.

It also rings true in our lives. Every time we think we've got it figured out, I was like, well, I was just trying to get you to hear. But now we're now we're taking a step this direction. So then the second man says he wants to go bury his dad. That sounds practical until we look into it a little bit. Most likely, his father's not dead, right? He's saying, I want to hang around until he is dead.

Then I'll bury him, and then we'll carry on with following you. Which makes him seem like another of the casual disciples, right? Not really interested in fully investing. Kind of lukewarm, half-heartedly invested. And just has enough of those following him already. And so he says, let the dead bury their own dead. And what he means

there is, let the spiritually dead bury the physically dead.

Because if they're not following him, they're spiritually dead. So let them take care of the physically dead, and calls them along. But so the second man basically is saying, I need to get all my stuff in order over here. I've got to get my life working how I want it to go, and then I'll have time for you, God. I'll work you in a couple months, maybe a couple of years. When I can make it out, when I can make it fit into my schedule, that's when we'll make it fit. So then the third man.

It's most likely that he's built up some worldly treasures. So he wants to go back and say goodbye to his family. He wants to go back and say, hey, this is what you're going to do with this stuff. So that when I come back, I still have all my cool stuff that I don't want to lose. And then it spins into the agricultural proverb. This would not have been new to anyone. This line that anyone puts a hand to the plow and looks backwards does not fit.

This is not a new saying. He's just updating it here for them. So they would have known that. And he talks about you can't keep a straight line if you're looking backwards. Have you ever noticed when you go to merge on the highway, you look in the mirror and all of a sudden the car is going, you're changing lanes before you meant to. We're using our mirrors because we want to make sure it's clear. So it's not good to kind of drift with our eyes.

But our eyes lead us where we're going to go. And so in the same thing, if you're trying to drive a plow but you're looking this way, your plow is going to be all over the place. But so he's not giving us gardening tips here. Jesus is talking about his followers. And the plow is our actions, our fruits that we produce. And so maybe if you've ever known somebody that their plow doesn't run quite straight, they claim they're a Christian but it seems like they're really kind of driving off into the ditch and then they're back and then they're down in the ditch. I'm sure it wouldn't take long for each of us to think of somebody that their actions kind of feed into that where they claim to be a Christian but maybe they didn't love very well.

Or how long would it take us to come up with a story in our minds where we've done that, where we've not loved in the way we should have or not followed Christ how we knew we should have in those moments. Do we think we can do some damage running off the road kind of sideways like that?

Yeah, for sure. And the difference there between those who just run off the road, tear stuff up and then get back on and a Christ follower is how you follow that up. Going back to the person that you hurt with an apology and reconciliation is the difference there. And reconciliation and an apology aren't quite the same thing. It's easy to throw that out there. But to reconcile the situation takes work, takes compassion and love and time investing in that person to rebuild what we've torn down. And that's where our difference in a mistake that kind of leaves wreckage behind and a mistake that's going to leave a scar behind but a healed scar comes into play. Yeah. And do we ever believe that the apostles were perfect? Right? It seems easy to think, why would Jesus pick anyone who's not perfect to be his apostles? Right? They were going to be the twelve that were with him through everything.

Well, it turns out they weren't perfect. And I think we've seen throughout multiple different verses today where they weren't perfect which should give us some hope that any of us, we don't have to be perfect. And that lack of perfection is what allows Jesus to shine through the apostles' lives and through our lives and to be able to light up the lives around us. So in these passages, they're lacking love. As they're arguing over who's the greatest disciple. They're fighting with each other. Fighting inside the church.

Then they get bent out of shape over somebody not connected to them. Casting out demons in Jesus' name. Not loving their outsiders. And then they want to burn the Samaritan village to the ground. There's no love in destroying the village. And the village was not aggressive with them. They said, no thank you, we don't want you here.

They didn't attack them. They didn't threaten them. They didn't chase them out of town. And so it's easy to see they weren't perfect. Which should encourage each of us. We say every week that perfection is a myth.

We believe that. But reconciling situations that we've created is also a part of it. It's easy to say that as I'm running the plow, I'm not looking back to the world. I'm not looking to the old ways. I'm not falling that far off track. And maybe that's the case. And I hope that it is.

But sometimes we have two things in front of us. It's still kind of wiggling. I don't know how many of you have seen the movie Moana. There's one scene where the main character is captured by a monstrous crab. And his eyes are like five, six feet apart. And while he's holding her, she can't pick which eye to look at. Just back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.

And it distracts the crab to where he finally just says, Just pick an eye. Just pick one.

Just pick one. I don't care which one. Just pick an eye. I can't handle you doing this. Right? And maybe that's what we're doing in our lives. Right? We've got two good things in front of us.

But we're trying to follow both of them. And you can't follow both of them. So then we're just zigzagging. Maybe God's looking down at us like, Pick one. Let's pick one of them. Let's go. Let's go towards one. Right? Jesus, when he set his face to Jerusalem, he didn't set his face to Jerusalem and.

He set his face to Jerusalem. We're focused. We're going to Jerusalem. That's where we're going. This is the direction we're heading. He's not out there looking for a fork in the road. He's staying focused on his true path.

Knowing that it's uncomfortable and difficult. And it's going to be the pain filled path. He's fully conscious of where he's going. He's not dragging his feet about it. He's not getting lost along the way. He knows there's going to be great pain. But for him, the greater pain would be being separated from us for eternity. Right? So we return to the original question of the morning.

Who are you? There's a lot of characters, a lot of people in this story. Maybe you can identify with one of them. Maybe you can identify with a couple of them.

Depending on the day. Maybe if you haven't had your coffee yet, you feel like the sun's a thunder and you're ready to burn the place down. And you just need a little bit of coffee to simmer out a little bit. Maybe you identify most with Jesus. Heading straight into the giving of self. Knowing it might come with some pain. It comes at a high cost sometimes.

But you're going anyhow. You're focused. Dead ahead. Maybe you resonate with the Samaritans. Like, yeah, Jesus, you're fine over there. I don't want to fight you. I don't really care about you.

I'm going to leave you over there. Maybe the first man that comes up to him and is happy to follow Christ when it's comfortable. The second man is happy to follow Christ when it's convenient. And the third man, happy to follow Christ when he's got his finances and all his worldly things in order. Maybe you fit in with somebody that was in the story that we didn't talk about. How about the other disciples that weren't trying to burn the building down? They were just following Jesus as best they could.

Step by step. Day by day. Silently listening to what he has to teach them. They've got their mouths shut and their ears open. Soaking in every tidbit they can. And then the follow-up question to who are you, who do you want to be? Which life do you wish represented your life the best?

And then what's the next steps to getting on that path? We're all running a plow. What does our field look like when we've finished plowing? Does it look like we threw spaghetti at a wall and used that as our route? Or are we running in a straight line? We find our straight line through our daily prayer and relationship with God. Through our community here together and through reading of his scriptures.

So we continue listening for him and what he's guiding us on. We keep our eyes on him and our plow runs straight. Just like Jesus was straight to Jerusalem, we run straight to God. And to stay close enough to him that we'll be pulled along. Maybe get a little discipline along the way. That's the only way we can grow. Knowing that it's not necessarily a comfortable path.

We saw three disciples that chose not to be disciples because they didn't want to be comfortable. They didn't want to be uncomfortable. But the goal is worth the uncomfortableness and the pain that comes along. Because there's so much more good that comes that outweighs all of that. So I pray that this morning that that is your goal. And if you're saying, hey, you know what? My field looks like it was planned out by some spaghetti.

And I don't know how to straighten that up. Well, you're in a room full of people that we're all trying to figure it out. None of us are perfect. And we're all here to help you. And I'd love to pray with you and get our paths all running straight and together. Will you pray with me this morning? Lord God, we thank you for your word this morning.

Thank you for your message. And as we go through the week, we pray that you will show us who we are in this story, Lord. And show us where you want us to go. Lord, we want our fields to be plowed straight. And we pray that as we go through the weeks, if there is something in our lives that we need to work on, we pray that you would show it to us, God. And help us to work on so that we can follow you closer and closer each and every day. Lord, we pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.