SPEAKER_00: Hey, thanks for tuning in to the Haven City Church podcast.
SPEAKER_00: My name is Josh Taranski.
SPEAKER_00: I'm the pastor of Haven City Church.
SPEAKER_00: We're new in Baltimore City.
SPEAKER_00: We do church together as a family Sunday mornings at 10 a.m.
SPEAKER_00: in Fells Point.
SPEAKER_00: We've got a beautiful location close to Cain Street.
SPEAKER_00: If you're in the area, we'd love to have you out.
SPEAKER_00: This sermon starts a new section in the book of Luke.
SPEAKER_00: We've been going through Luke since the end of 2017, and we finished up Jesus' ministry in Galilee.
SPEAKER_00: And now with chapter 9, verse 51, it says that Jesus turns his attention towards Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: He's going, he's getting ready to go up.
SPEAKER_00: So this is a great time to jump into the study, and um we're kind of starting afresh, a new um series based off of that uh indicator in the text.
SPEAKER_00: And so um take the ride with us.
SPEAKER_00: Um follow along over the next couple months as we go through um these ten chapters in Luke.
SPEAKER_00: If you want more information about the church, you can go to baltimorechurch.com.
SPEAKER_00: You can find us on social media by looking up Haven City Church.
SPEAKER_00: And uh next time you're in town, or if you're already a resident in the city, stop by.
SPEAKER_00: We have a free gift for visitors uh that we'd love to put into your hands next time you're with us.
SPEAKER_00: God bless.
SPEAKER_00: This section is 10 chapters long.
SPEAKER_00: It is, I am so excited to go through this pat this this these ten chapters because Jesus is taking these people that that were first of all kind of following him and then appointed as his 12 apostles, but still kind of screwing up, and Jesus is really now focused in on helping them.
SPEAKER_00: So literally, if you go to the next slide, what we'll see is that Jesus has been doing ministry up in this northern region, and he's traveling south but uphill in elevation to Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: And so these ten chapters take place along the journey.
SPEAKER_00: So some of the things that will be covered in this over the next ten chapters is Jesus' teaching about prayer.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna see a lot of the parables.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is gonna talk about a future judgment of the world.
SPEAKER_00: He's gonna talk about wealth, faith, and the kingdom, amongst other things.
SPEAKER_00: So there's a lot of rich teaching that we're gonna be covering.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna go through this section.
SPEAKER_00: I'm guessing that by the end of October, we will finish these ten chapters.
SPEAKER_00: So through the summer into a little bit of the fall is um the time that it will take for us.
SPEAKER_00: And I want to encourage you to um commit to the Lord afresh to receive what he has for you through these ten chapters.
SPEAKER_00: When we come together and when we um uh gather as a church on Sunday mornings, we're trusting that God, by His Spirit, wants to speak to us through the text that we're going through.
SPEAKER_00: And do you know what I'm gonna preach next week?
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna preach wherever I left off this week.
SPEAKER_00: That's just our format for preaching at Haven City Church.
SPEAKER_00: We're going systematically through the book of Luke.
SPEAKER_00: And then after we get done with Luke, do you know what we'll do next?
SPEAKER_00: We'll do another book, right?
SPEAKER_00: We probably won't do another gospel.
SPEAKER_00: We may go into Luke's volume two, Acts.
SPEAKER_00: We may do Daniel or Revelation.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure yet, because we've got a little bit of time before we get there, and I've got to make that decision.
SPEAKER_00: But here's the thing: this is the section that God has for us.
SPEAKER_00: For us, not just for me, not for just for me as a preacher, but for us as a church family.
SPEAKER_00: And so, would you do something this week?
SPEAKER_00: Would you just pray and say, God, I'm ready to hear from you through these ten chapters?
SPEAKER_00: Here's three things I'm going to be praying for us as we go through this, and I've got them up here on the screen.
SPEAKER_00: The first one is that God will give us a vision for this idea of being his followers.
SPEAKER_00: That the concept will become more and more clear in our minds and our hearts.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: That's the first thing, that God would just give us a vision of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: The second thing that I'm praying is that the core of who we are, our will, our thinking, will be yielded to the leadership of God.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: That God will have his way in our lives.
SPEAKER_00: That we will be yielded to his leadership.
SPEAKER_00: And the third thing that I'm praying is that we will understand what it means for us practically as an individual to be Jesus' disciples, Jesus' disciples, and we will walk in what God is showing us.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what this means, right?
SPEAKER_00: It means one thing for me to be Jesus' disciple, and it may it means a significantly something different for you to be Jesus' disciple.
SPEAKER_00: There's overlap, right?
SPEAKER_00: There's this relationship, it flows out of relationship, but what my day looks like as a disciple of Jesus is different from what your day looks like as a disciple of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And I am praying that you will hear God's spirit in terms of what it means for you practically.
SPEAKER_00: What does it look like?
SPEAKER_00: So let's look at this text.
SPEAKER_00: We're kicking things off here in verse 51, and what we see is this introduction where Jesus says he's now preparing for to be taken up, right?
SPEAKER_00: So depending on what version you are, here we're we're always in the NIV, it says, at the time, as the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, literally the word heaven is not in the text.
SPEAKER_00: The um translators put that there because it's assumed that that's what Jesus is talking about.
SPEAKER_00: But it could be that Jesus is um being taken up to the cross, right?
SPEAKER_00: But but none nonetheless, one way or another, it's talking about the end, right?
SPEAKER_00: We're coming down to the to the hour that Jesus has been anticipating.
SPEAKER_00: Now, mind you, the whole book isn't going to finish for another like 15 chapters, uh 17 chapters, but um this is where Jesus is now turning his attention towards Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: You'll notice if you study the book of Acts that the first like 30 years of Acts is condensed into a few chapters, but then as you get further in the book of Acts, you begin to see that you get more detail and time spreads out.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, the last couple years of Paul's ministry takes up 10 chapters, whereas a whole like 30 30 years takes up like 20 chapters, right?
SPEAKER_00: So Luke gives greater attention to this journey up to Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: So part of the journey, as we saw on the map, was that they're going to go through Samaria.
SPEAKER_00: And you guys are Bible scholars, you know about Samaria, right?
SPEAKER_00: Samaria, these are half-breed Jews, right?
SPEAKER_00: They're intermingled between Gentiles and Jews.
SPEAKER_00: And religiously, they did not recognize Jerusalem as their place of worship.
SPEAKER_00: And they had a contention with purebred Jews because, well, they both didn't like each other.
SPEAKER_00: So in two weeks, when we look at the story of the good Samaritan, we'll recall that, hey, it's a shocking story because Jews don't like Samaritans and Samaritans don't like Jews.
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus goes through Samaria, and there's a kind of a group sent out to prepare for them to stay the night in Samaria because it's a three-day journey.
SPEAKER_00: And the Samaritans say, We don't want it.
SPEAKER_00: We don't want you to stay with us.
SPEAKER_00: And that causes James and John to say, Should we call down fire from heaven?
SPEAKER_00: What are they thinking, right?
SPEAKER_00: What are James and John thinking that we're going to call down fire from heaven?
SPEAKER_00: Maybe they're thinking of Elijah, right, and his crazy prophetic ministry.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe they're thinking of the whole process of fire being called down from heaven or coming down on the Mount Sinai, right?
SPEAKER_00: And all that power of God being displayed there.
SPEAKER_00: But nonetheless, these guys are probably ticked off that there's no welcome in Samaria, in this village.
SPEAKER_00: And they say, Master, should we call down fire from heaven?
SPEAKER_00: And what does Jesus do?
SPEAKER_00: He rebukes them, right?
SPEAKER_00: Obviously, this is he in other places, he says, You don't know what a spirit I am of.
SPEAKER_00: In John 3.17, this this I have a slide for this.
SPEAKER_00: John 3.17, it says this, for God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.
SPEAKER_00: You see, Jesus is going to come to earth twice.
SPEAKER_00: This story that we're looking at in Luke is his first coming.
SPEAKER_00: And when Jesus comes to earth the first time, he comes to save those that are lost, to care for the poor, to set the captives free.
SPEAKER_00: The first coming of Christ is not to judge the world, but to rescue the world from sin.
SPEAKER_00: And so when his disciples say, let's just pour out wrath upon this village, like Sodom and Gomorrah, it is completely out of line with who Jesus and what Jesus is doing.
SPEAKER_00: And I would suggest this that the ministry that Jesus was doing and his first coming is the commission that he has given us now on through to today.
SPEAKER_00: So we are not in this time of God pouring out his wrath upon the earth.
SPEAKER_00: Our church, us as Christians, our message to the world is the love of God demonstrated through Christ, right?
SPEAKER_00: We love one another, we care for one another, we love people that are caught in sin, that don't know Jesus yet, because that is the spirit that Jesus came in.
SPEAKER_00: Now, does that mean that God will never judge the world?
SPEAKER_00: No, judgment is coming.
SPEAKER_00: There is a second coming where Christ will come into the world and the wrath of God will be poured out upon those who have rejected Christ.
SPEAKER_00: So judgment is coming, but it's not yet, right?
SPEAKER_00: And so we are called to be a people that encourage people to flee from the wrath of God, to take advantage of the forgiveness that Jesus offers.
SPEAKER_00: Now, I'll tell you this.
SPEAKER_00: I have met Christians that literally want to pour out fire from heaven verbally or on social media.
SPEAKER_00: And they want to exercise this ministry of fire and damnation now because they've taken upon them, they've misunderstood the age that we live in.
SPEAKER_00: And I would just encourage you, consider how Jesus dealt with people.
SPEAKER_00: There was a sharpness sometimes about Christ, but who was Jesus most critical of?
SPEAKER_00: He was critical of the religious hypocrisy of his day.
SPEAKER_00: He was forgiving towards those who were caught in gross sin.
SPEAKER_00: He was encouraging them towards Christ, but he was condemning towards those that were caught in religious pride and hypocrisy.
SPEAKER_00: So the picture we have of Jesus, he's a shepherd searching for the lost sheep.
SPEAKER_00: He's a father welcoming his son home.
SPEAKER_00: He uh is likened to a woman celebrating the discovery of a coin that was lost.
SPEAKER_00: That is Jesus, right?
SPEAKER_00: We are to walk with that heart towards the world.
SPEAKER_00: Now there are things that happen in the world that we don't like.
SPEAKER_00: This week, um the country of Ireland um uh legalized abortion, right?
SPEAKER_00: That's not something uh that is in line with the ethics of Scripture.
SPEAKER_00: And so if we lived in Ireland, and I have a friend who lives in Ireland, he was um working hard to persuade the people around him to consider this from a biblically ethical perspective.
SPEAKER_00: But the one thing I loved about his approach as I watched him on social media was that he was so loving to the people that opposed his view.
SPEAKER_00: There was, in fact, I saw there was a there was a Christian that was doing a demonstration right next to the pro-abortion table.
SPEAKER_00: And this guy was being just a ruckus and rude and disruptive and mean.
SPEAKER_00: And you know what my pastor friend did?
SPEAKER_00: He got on there, he saw the comment that was put up by the pro-abortion table people, and he said, I'm sorry.
SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry that that is how Christ is being represented to you.
SPEAKER_00: That's not his heart, right?
SPEAKER_00: It's Jesus' heart that babies wouldn't be killed, but he's also forgiving, right?
SPEAKER_00: He is uh God expects sinners to sin and he wants to rescue them from sin.
SPEAKER_00: So it's really there's um there's this fine line that we have to walk as we represent Jesus to people that may be unwelcoming and hostile towards us.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so let's go to verse 57 through 62.
SPEAKER_00: I this is what I want to spend most of our time on.
SPEAKER_00: Then there's actually a slide for this because again, we've already read it, but 57 through 62, we'll keep this up here for a second because um there are these three encounters, right?
SPEAKER_00: And you'll notice that as we see these three encounters, these different people, what what word is repeated in here?
SPEAKER_00: Did you notice it?
SPEAKER_00: Did you notice the repeated word three times?
SPEAKER_00: We see the word follow.
SPEAKER_00: It's twice here, right?
SPEAKER_00: He says, I will follow you wherever you go.
SPEAKER_00: And then here's another one where Jesus is saying, follow me.
SPEAKER_00: And then in on the next slide, there's another verse where it says follow.
SPEAKER_00: So um that's kind of the repeated theme.
SPEAKER_00: And and the way that Luke presents this idea is they're walking along on the path, and Jesus has these three conversations.
SPEAKER_00: The other thing that stands out is that Jesus is telling these individuals, he's calling them to radical following.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: Did you see that this guy's like, this guy right here, he's walking along the road and he says, I'm gonna follow you wherever you go.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus says, Great.
SPEAKER_00: Like following me is not luxurious.
SPEAKER_00: I don't have, you know, the foxes get dens, birds have nests, but the son of man has no place to lay his head.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, you want to be a follower of me.
SPEAKER_00: You need to be willing for your own life and your sense of comfort to be disrupted.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: You've got to be ready to let go of that sense of comfort.
SPEAKER_00: The second, the second guy, right?
SPEAKER_00: The second encounter here is this one in verse 59.
SPEAKER_00: He said to another man, Follow me.
SPEAKER_00: But the guy replied, Lord, first let me go and bury my father.
SPEAKER_00: And what does Jesus say?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says to him, Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_00: Wow, that seems harsh.
SPEAKER_00: Doesn't that seem harsh?
SPEAKER_00: It almost seems like it's in contradiction to like the Ten Commandments.
SPEAKER_00: What's one of the commandments?
SPEAKER_00: Is you shall honor your father and mother.
SPEAKER_00: You know, in 1 Timothy 5, it says that if you don't care for your family, you are worse than an infidel, right?
SPEAKER_00: You uh the the you're like you have betrayed the faith.
SPEAKER_00: You might as well not be saved.
SPEAKER_00: And yet here Jesus is saying to this guy, let the dead, uh let the dead bury their own dead.
SPEAKER_00: You go and proclaim the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_00: Man, that seems that seems harsh.
SPEAKER_00: That's striking.
SPEAKER_00: It almost seems like it's in contradiction to other things that God has said.
SPEAKER_00: Go to the next slide.
SPEAKER_00: This last encounter.
SPEAKER_00: That seems reasonable.
SPEAKER_00: And yet Jesus replied, No one who puts the hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
SPEAKER_00: Man, you can't even go say say goodbye.
SPEAKER_00: What is going on here?
SPEAKER_00: What's why is why is um Jesus being so strict?
SPEAKER_00: I think this is the thing.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is putting his finger on the issue of priorities.
SPEAKER_00: He's going straight to their heart and he's asking them for total commitment.
SPEAKER_00: Total commitment.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this can be confusing, right?
SPEAKER_00: Because you're looking at this and and all of a sudden, what like kind of rises up in our own hearts is like, wow, if that's what Jesus wants for me, how am I gonna do my life?
SPEAKER_00: Go to the next slide.
SPEAKER_00: Did you watch this movie?
SPEAKER_00: This is one of my favorite movies, Elf.
SPEAKER_00: At the end of this movie, there is a scene where the dad, who's called Walter, is in a business meeting, and his son, I think who's Michael, walks in and he says, Buddy, the elf, is missing.
SPEAKER_00: Now, if you haven't seen the movie, you have no context for what that means.
SPEAKER_00: But Buddy was Walter's long-lost son, and he's been raised as an elf.
SPEAKER_00: If you haven't seen the movie, you gotta see it, right?
SPEAKER_00: And Walter is on Santa's naughty list.
SPEAKER_00: He's a bad man, right?
SPEAKER_00: And the crisis arises because on Christmas Eve, Walter is in a crucial life and death career meeting.
SPEAKER_00: And his son walks in and says, Buddy is missing.
SPEAKER_00: And there's a crisis that occurs.
SPEAKER_00: What's gonna happen?
SPEAKER_00: Is Walter, who's been on the naughty list, going to stay on the naughty list and stay in his meeting and ignore his family?
SPEAKER_00: Or is he going to um uh go and try to help find Buddy?
SPEAKER_00: I don't want to spoil the movie for you if you haven't seen it.
SPEAKER_00: Well, I will.
SPEAKER_00: He goes and he helps find Buddy the elf, right?
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so but but this that moment of crisis, we have it all the time, on a weekly basis.
SPEAKER_00: You're in a meeting, you're in an important meeting, something you perceive as a priority, and all of a sudden your phone dings, buzzes, rings, vibrates, whatever it does.
SPEAKER_00: You look down at it and you're like, oh no.
SPEAKER_00: And there's that conflict in your heart.
SPEAKER_00: Do I answer the phone?
SPEAKER_00: Do I ignore it and keep the meeting going?
SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh.
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that the worst feeling?
SPEAKER_00: Like, what do I do?
SPEAKER_00: Do I and do I just interrupt what's going on in front of me?
SPEAKER_00: That conflict right there is the whole conflict over priorities.
SPEAKER_00: It's the idea of what is most important in your life.
SPEAKER_00: Luke is bringing to the forefront the crisis of priorities in the lives of these three individuals.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, I can't handle Will Farrell behind me anymore, so go to the go to the next slide.
SPEAKER_00: Um at the end of Jesus' ministry, he tells his disciples, go and make disciples of all nations.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: So Jesus tells his disciples to go and make more disciples.
SPEAKER_00: You and I sitting here as disciples of Jesus, we're the descendants of that instruction.
SPEAKER_00: As followers of Jesus, we are recipients of the instructions that Jesus gave to his disciples.
SPEAKER_00: And the parameters have not changed for Jesus' disciples since he had these three conversations.
SPEAKER_00: Being a disciple of Jesus is a 100% commitment.
SPEAKER_00: He becomes the number one priority in our life.
SPEAKER_00: That's what Jesus is asking for.
SPEAKER_00: He wants to be the number one priority in your life.
SPEAKER_00: When I was in high school, my relationship with God really took off.
SPEAKER_00: I loved the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: And I felt like I was beginning to hear God's voice, and I just I just had a hunger for God.
SPEAKER_00: I wanted to be a follower of God, and this is how I looked at my life.
SPEAKER_00: And I asked one of the teachers at this Christian school I was at, and I said, How does this work?
SPEAKER_00: Like, how much of the pie chart does Jesus get?
SPEAKER_00: Does he get like more than a third?
SPEAKER_00: Does he get half?
SPEAKER_00: Because I was stuck.
SPEAKER_00: Like, like, how do I make Jesus everything in my life?
SPEAKER_00: And this is what he said to me.
SPEAKER_00: This is what it looks like.
SPEAKER_00: Well, that didn't really help.
SPEAKER_00: Because I'm like, well, what about all this other stuff?
unknown: And
SPEAKER_00: And I can't remember whether or not he explained it well, but what I grew into understanding is that this is the kingdom, right?
SPEAKER_00: We step into a kingdom, it's the layer over everything else.
SPEAKER_00: That we give our life to Jesus Christ, he is the one that we follow, and then he turns around and he authors our life.
SPEAKER_00: He authors our playtime.
SPEAKER_00: He authors our relationships.
SPEAKER_00: He authors our work.
SPEAKER_00: He authors our creativity.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is our wellspring of life.
SPEAKER_00: But we come to him first.
SPEAKER_00: We bow the knee to him and we say, Jesus, I want to follow you wholeheartedly.
SPEAKER_00: And in turn, he gives us back our life to live.
SPEAKER_00: Now within society, we have various concepts of priorities.
SPEAKER_00: What does our culture say is most important?
SPEAKER_00: The world that we live in outside of God.
SPEAKER_00: What does the world say is most important?
SPEAKER_00: Maybe family and friends, relationships, maybe it's work or career is most important.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe play or pleasure or fun is most important.
SPEAKER_00: Another one is freedom, autonomy, self-expression.
SPEAKER_00: Just let me be free.
SPEAKER_00: That's a priority, a value that our culture readily expresses.
SPEAKER_00: I want to show you a couple of things that I pulled off of Twitter that were just funny when I searched for priorities.
SPEAKER_00: This guy, he says, mid-graduation, walking to the stage.
SPEAKER_00: He gets a tweet from his or a text from his dad.
SPEAKER_00: Rockets are up by one, 30 seconds left.
SPEAKER_00: Dad from the stands.
SPEAKER_00: Completely forgets why I'm here.
SPEAKER_00: Wait, what?
SPEAKER_00: How?
SPEAKER_00: That's his uh that's his reply.
SPEAKER_00: Mid-graduation.
SPEAKER_00: He's kind of making, he's mocking himself for his priorities in the middle of his graduation.
SPEAKER_00: Go to the next one.
SPEAKER_00: This person, she says, I have two finals tomorrow and an essay, but I'm sitting here snacking.
SPEAKER_00: Priorities.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: She's saying, in other words, she's doing self-deprecating humor.
SPEAKER_00: My priorities are backwards.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: Go to the next one.
SPEAKER_00: One more.
SPEAKER_00: I like this one.
SPEAKER_00: Today I was reminded that chasing after my career and an internship is far more important than chasing after a guy that is 600 miles away.
SPEAKER_00: Poor girl.
SPEAKER_00: Sounds a little bitter, right?
SPEAKER_00: But she's she's she's she's evaluating her priorities.
SPEAKER_00: Our culture, the fish tank that we live in, doesn't agree on priorities.
SPEAKER_00: Our society is individualistic, self-expression is held in high regard, and that means that we are little kingdoms unto ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: But the book of Ecclesiastes, which someday we'll study together, is a message of the preacher, and Ecclesiastes, the writer says this life under the sun is vanity.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: Basically, the book of Ecclesiastes says life is a riddle.
SPEAKER_00: It's hard to figure out.
SPEAKER_00: These pursuits, these things that we think should be a priority, they end up being vain.
SPEAKER_00: We accumulate wealth and then we leave it to a bratty, disobedient child.
SPEAKER_00: The righteous may die young, but the wicked may live a long life.
SPEAKER_00: And the writer of Ecclesiastes is just evaluating how people do life, and he's saying that there is an emptiness, a weightlessness to life.
SPEAKER_00: And that is true of our day, uh our day and age today.
SPEAKER_00: So while there is a magnetic pull in our culture's concept of priorities, we need to realize that being a disciple of Jesus is five things.
SPEAKER_00: And I and I have these on slides.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, I want to encourage you to consider this because it's hard, right?
SPEAKER_00: It's hard.
SPEAKER_00: This is a radical claim.
SPEAKER_00: This was radical when Jesus said this because you had other people.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, John had disciples, the re the rabbis had disciples, um, the Pharisees had disciples, but no other disciples were asked to make this level of commitment.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is laying claim on people's lives that is so radical.
SPEAKER_00: But I want to say this that being a follower of Jesus and making that level of commitment is first of all rational.
SPEAKER_00: If Jesus created the world and knows the end from the beginning, it makes sense to follow him.
SPEAKER_00: Do you see that word?
SPEAKER_00: It makes sense.
SPEAKER_00: If Jesus created everything and he knows the beginning from the end, he is it is rational and reasonable to follow him.
SPEAKER_00: Second of all, it's safe.
SPEAKER_00: And here's what I mean by that.
SPEAKER_00: If Jesus died for us, it should say us on a cross so that you could be rescued from damnation, then he must have a good plan for you.
SPEAKER_00: He must care about your safety.
SPEAKER_00: He's not asking for your 100% commitment so that he can injure your life.
SPEAKER_00: No, he has a deep care for your safety and preservation.
SPEAKER_00: Now, some circumstances may seem to disagree with that, but ultimately he cares for you as an individual.
SPEAKER_00: Three, following Jesus 100% is triumphant.
SPEAKER_00: If Jesus defeated Satan on the cross and overcame the curse of sin, then the battle has already been won.
SPEAKER_00: When you sign up and you say, Jesus, I'm ready to be a total follower of you, you are walking in a victorious life because Jesus already won the battle.
SPEAKER_00: Let's look at the fourth one.
SPEAKER_00: It's holistic.
SPEAKER_00: And here's what I mean by that.
SPEAKER_00: If Jesus is the creator of all things, then we will discover greater and greater unity and relatedness between the diverse pieces of our life.
SPEAKER_00: He puts the pieces together as a whole.
SPEAKER_00: You'll notice if you just spend some time thinking about the priorities that the world puts on you, there's great disunity and a struggle to figure out how to bring about balance.
SPEAKER_00: How do you bring about balance between family and self and autonomy, right?
SPEAKER_00: Like so if if it's if the greatest value as a human is to be autonomous and self-expression, right?
SPEAKER_00: To be able to freely express yourself and run with your creative abilities, how do you unify that with the priority of relationships?
SPEAKER_00: Because when you're in a relationship, part of you has to die for the relationship to work.
SPEAKER_00: And so what we find in the world system is that they cannot bring about a good sense of unity with their priorities.
SPEAKER_00: But when we follow Jesus, because he is the author and creator of all things, you will begin to see the pieces put together.
SPEAKER_00: That there's a relatedness, there's a balanced nature to being a follower of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And fifth, it is glorious.
SPEAKER_00: If God sent his son into the world with a plan that would ultimately bring glory to him, our obedience to Jesus brings him glory.
SPEAKER_00: The word glory isn't used very often in our culture, but it's the idea of shining, radiant light.
SPEAKER_00: It's like the lights at a concert, right?
SPEAKER_00: And our 100% commitment to Christ as his followers shines those bright lights on Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: It's a glorious life that you can live.
SPEAKER_00: I'm trying to make the case, and I'm appealing to you.
SPEAKER_00: Again, we're getting going into this 10-chapter section where Jesus is going to teach on discipleship about being followers of him.
SPEAKER_00: And I just want to persuade you that it is in your best interest to entrust all of your life to him.
SPEAKER_00: I want to make this practical and what this looks like in my life.
SPEAKER_00: Let's go to the next slide.
SPEAKER_00: I want to talk to you about something that I created three years ago based off of a book I read called A Life Plan.
SPEAKER_00: A life plan is a short written document, usually 8 to 15 pages long.
SPEAKER_00: That's not so short, actually, but eight to fifteen pages long.
SPEAKER_00: It is created by you as a as you pray and reflect on scripture.
SPEAKER_00: It articulates your personal priorities.
SPEAKER_00: It provides the specific actions necessary to take you from where you are to where God wants you to be in every major area of your life.
SPEAKER_00: It is most of all a living document that you will tweak and adjust as necessary for the rest of your life.
SPEAKER_00: So I refer to my life plan on a weekly basis.
SPEAKER_00: When I'm having my quiet time when I'm done, as I'm laying out my plan for the week, I go back to my life plan, right?
SPEAKER_00: So it's this document.
SPEAKER_00: Go to the next slide.
SPEAKER_00: My life plan is composed of these nine life accounts.
SPEAKER_00: My spiritual, the spiritual account, my physical health, learning and knowledge base, my marriage, parenting, social and friendship, vocation and work, my finances, and my hobbies and fun.
SPEAKER_00: Those nine areas are my that's what my life is composed of, right?
SPEAKER_00: I want to, I'm always trying to make sure that the things I'm doing line up with these life accounts.
SPEAKER_00: And then from there, having those life accounts, I write, and I have written a vision statement for my future self.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what this looks like.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and I'm gonna show you two of them.
SPEAKER_00: Let's go to the first one here, my health.
SPEAKER_00: So every all nine um have a some form of vision statement, but this is written as if I'm 80 years old looking back on my life.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: I'm an 85-year-old.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe I'll be 90 if I'm in good health, right?
SPEAKER_00: Who knows?
SPEAKER_00: Maybe I'll die next year, you never know.
SPEAKER_00: But this is what I want to be able to say at the end of my life.
SPEAKER_00: My good health corresponds with consistent, healthy, a consistent, healthy diet, exercise that I had throughout my life.
SPEAKER_00: Even in my old age, I'm above average in my mobility, strength, and stamina.
SPEAKER_00: My mind is still sharp.
SPEAKER_00: I am not restricted from participating in God's mission by my physical body.
SPEAKER_00: Where I do have scars and injury, it is the result of following Jesus in his mission and not foolish indulgence of the flesh.
SPEAKER_00: And then I put two scriptures there that kind of support that overall idea.
SPEAKER_00: Now, I I'll change that.
SPEAKER_00: You know, I may tweak that, I may like different language as I go along.
SPEAKER_00: But that is what I want to be able to say at the end of my life, and I believe that as a follower of Jesus, this lines up with what it means for me to be a disciple of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Go to the next one.
SPEAKER_00: So there's nine of these.
SPEAKER_00: Some of them are more private, but I felt like I could share two.
SPEAKER_00: This is my finances, right?
SPEAKER_00: So at the end of my life, here's what I want to be able to say.
SPEAKER_00: I am debt-free.
SPEAKER_00: I have had more than sufficient funds to care for my family and myself at the end of life.
SPEAKER_00: I have been generous with my finances, investing in missions and gospel endeavors.
SPEAKER_00: I have been disciplined with my finances when others were not.
SPEAKER_00: I saved a portion of my paycheck throughout my lifetime, and I tied to the local church on a weekly basis.
SPEAKER_00: I learned how to make wise financial investments and have received a significant amount of interest on the money I invested.
SPEAKER_00: Our family home is owned outright and will be inherited by my kids.
SPEAKER_00: There's no period there, but that's my statement.
SPEAKER_00: It may grow, it may change, but that is my plan.
SPEAKER_00: That's my life plan.
SPEAKER_00: That's what I want to be able to say at the end of life.
SPEAKER_00: Now, obviously, man makes plans and God directs our steps, but I know that I can take the wisdom of Scripture and I can know generally what the will of God for me is in my finances, in my health, in my marriage, in my parenting, in my friendships, in my play, all of those things.
SPEAKER_00: And this document has served.
SPEAKER_00: So what I do is this is the mirror that I go back to.
SPEAKER_00: Other than Scripture, I go back to this and I say, Josh, how are you doing?
SPEAKER_00: How are you doing on being debt-free?
SPEAKER_00: How are you doing on giving generously?
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: This is kind of my sense of priorities that have been given to me as a disciple of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Just trying to be super transparent, make these ideas as concrete as possible.
SPEAKER_00: Let's see, is there another slide here?
SPEAKER_00: In conclusion, here's where we'll we'll end things.
SPEAKER_00: Someone has asked, someone asks, how do I know what it will practically look like for me to make Jesus my top priority?
SPEAKER_00: And here it is, it flows out of a relationship with him.
SPEAKER_00: You want to know where to start with all this stuff.
SPEAKER_00: And you're like, okay, I'm ready to be a follower of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: It starts right here.
SPEAKER_00: Relationship.
SPEAKER_00: It starts with a relationship with him.
SPEAKER_00: It continues to flow out of a relationship with him.
SPEAKER_00: Start by cultivating your relationship with God.
SPEAKER_00: How does a relationship improve?
SPEAKER_00: How does it improve?
SPEAKER_00: It improves through communication.
SPEAKER_00: You've got to communicate with God.
SPEAKER_00: Set aside some time to talk with God.
SPEAKER_00: Read your Bible as if it's God's answer to your questions today.
SPEAKER_00: Anticipate his response.
SPEAKER_00: Keep a record of what you think he is showing you.
SPEAKER_00: Journal it, draw it, paint it, wrap it, whatever you gotta do to remember what God's showing you.
SPEAKER_00: And write out your current priorities when God when as God is speaking to you.
SPEAKER_00: Like write them, write them down.
SPEAKER_00: So we we're called to be disciples, right?
SPEAKER_00: We're called to live out this crazy like commitment to Jesus that that lays claim to every aspect of who we are, but it is so rewarding.
SPEAKER_00: There is, remember that illustration a few weeks ago of like jumping out of the plane?
SPEAKER_00: Jumping out of a plane is a very absolute thing to do.
SPEAKER_00: It's not in the gray, right?
SPEAKER_00: If you jump out of a plane, you're not like in the gray.
SPEAKER_00: It's either black or white.
SPEAKER_00: You're either in the plane or you're out of the plane.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus is saying to these followers, look, you need to put your hand to the plow, you need to let the dead bury the dead.
SPEAKER_00: You need to follow me.
SPEAKER_00: That's what he's saying to us.
SPEAKER_00: Now there's forgiveness when we screw up.
SPEAKER_00: I screw up every week, right?
SPEAKER_00: He forgives our sins, but he is asking for us to have make this wholehearted commitment to him.
SPEAKER_00: Amen?
SPEAKER_00: God, we just ask as a church that we would be a people that are committed to you.
SPEAKER_00: And as you were saying these things to the crowd, there was this attrition rate to the crowd.
SPEAKER_00: People are like kind of shrinking back.
SPEAKER_00: They were afraid of these statements because it's just so um intense.
SPEAKER_00: It's so consuming.
SPEAKER_00: But but Jesus, 2,000 years down the road, we want to be your followers.
SPEAKER_00: We want to know you, want to walk with you.
SPEAKER_00: And we trust that you can author that in our lives.
SPEAKER_00: You can give it um feat.
SPEAKER_00: You can make it concrete for us personally.
SPEAKER_00: So Lord, where where we're unwilling to surrender, where our heart is stubborn, we pray that you would overcome our stubbornness.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we we would hope that our circumstances in life would not have to be difficult to convince us that this is good for us.
SPEAKER_00: We would we would hope, Lord, that we would be um ready to listen to you and your word and not have to be chastened through circumstances, Lord.
SPEAKER_00: But Lord, whatever it takes, get us to the place where we are following wholeheartedly after you.
SPEAKER_00: And we ask this in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.