Don’t Look Back

Good morning, church. I trust that you had a wonderful Thanksgiving, and we have much to be thankful for this morning as we open the Word of God to Luke chapter 9. I invite you to turn to your Bibles in Luke chapter 9, as we're going to be examining verses 49 and 62.

This course is called, Don't Look Back. When you come to Luke chapter 9, starting verse 49, I invite you to stand for the reading of God's Word. Hear ye the word of the Lord this morning, starting from Luke chapter 9, verse 49.

John answered, Master, we saw someone casting out demons in your name. We try to stop him, because he does not follow with us. But Jesus said to him, Do not stop him, for the one who is not against you is for you.

When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. He sent messengers ahead of him who went and entered a village of the Samaritans to make preparations for him. But the people did not receive him, because his face was set toward Jerusalem.

When his disciples, James and John, saw it, they said, Lord, do you want us to tell fire to come down from heaven and consume them? But he turned and rebuked them, and they went on to another village.

As they were going along the road, someone said to him, I will follow you wherever you go. And Jesus said to him, Foxes have holes, the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.

And to another he said, Follow me. But he said, Lord, let me first go and bury my father. And Jesus said to him, Leave the dead to bury their own dead, but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.

Yet another said, I will follow you, Lord, but let me first say farewell to those at my home. And 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. Let's pray. Father, we do come before you anxious to receive this word. Lord, we pray that you would ready the soil of our hearts so that the word of God may be firmly planted therein, and that it would be watered by personal devotion, by the ministry of the Holy Spirit sanctifying the life of the believer.

And Lord, we pray that this seed of the word of God would grow unto full maturity, that the believer, those here gathered under the name of the Lord Jesus Christ would be edified, built up in the inner man, and that this word would bear much fruit in their lives, in their relationships, in their homes.

And Lord, that they would not just be hearers of the word, but doers also, not deceiving themselves, but bearing fruit unto good works. We pray, God, that you would bless everyone here. Grant them the strength, the attention necessary to receive this word for your glory and your namesake.

Amen. Well, church, we've come to this place in the Gospel of Luke where Jesus is now turning his attention towards the future ministry of the cross. His eyes are set upon Jerusalem. He is now in the midst of preparing himself for what is about to happen, which namely being his sufferings and his crucifixion and his eventual glory as he is raised from the dead and seated at the right hand of the Father.

But some peculiar things are beginning to happen here in Luke's Gospel, in chapter 9, starting in verse 49. John makes this observation. He says, Master, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we try to stop them.

I put myself in this story, and I'm trying to figure out, how is John saying this? I think John sounds like a lot of Christians here. John sounds like maybe some of us. Like, hey, we saw this guy doing this thing, and he shouldn't be doing this, so we try to stop him.

He says, we try to stop him because he doesn't follow with us. Now, this sounds like the typical Christian, maybe particularly those of us who are fairly denominationally minded. And we say, hey, wait a second, what are these folks doing over there on the other side of this camp?

They're doing some stuff that we don't do, and they're doing some stuff that seems to be working. They're doing some things that seem to be bearing fruit. We got to tell these folks to stop. You see, the 12 disciples of Jesus no doubt felt alarmed that there were those outside of the 12 and outside of the 70 that were beginning to use the name of Jesus to cast out demons.

The disciples tried stopping them and rebuking them because they were not in the immediate circle of Christ's followers. How does Jesus respond to the disciple John? Jesus says in verse 50, He said to him, do not stop them, for the one who is not against you is for you.

How interesting is this? I want you, if you're following along in today's notes, in today's insert, I want you to write this. John saw others outside the 12 apostles casting out demons and tried stopping them because they weren't following them.

Notice what happens next though. Yet Jesus said, if they aren't against them, they are for them. I want you to write this too, showing that God is bigger than your box. I know that's going to burst some bubbles.

But can I tell you this? God is bigger than your box. What box you might be asking? Well, we all got a box. We all have a box of parameters of what God is allowed to do and what He's not allowed to do, based upon our preconceived notions or our understanding of the Bible.

There's things that we say, well, this is the box and this is it. But dear believer, dear Christian, be humble enough to understand this, that none of us and no one on this side of eternity has a perfect box.

And sometimes you'll see that God will maybe break some of your preconceived notions by working outside of your box. See, God is bigger than your box. And Jesus' response is telling, because essentially what He's telling them is that He is at work even outside of their box, outside of their preconceived notions.

Now there's another statement we got to wrestle and grapple with, and it's in Luke 11, verse 23, where Jesus says this, whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.

Well, wait a second. We have on this end in chapter 9, Jesus says what seems to be almost the opposite, don't stop them, for the one who is not against you is for you. But then He says on the other hand, He says again in verse 23 of Luke 11, whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.

What's the difference between these two passages? First, in chapter 9, the disciples are concerned because these folks who are exercising kingdom authority were not gathered to them. But Jesus makes it clear that it is those who are not gathered to the person and work of Christ that are the ones outside of the kingdom.

So then those who were exercising kingdom authority, who were casting out demons in Luke chapter 9, were not associated with the apostles, but it didn't mean that they were unassociated with Christ. And this is one of the interesting things that we have to look at in church history, for instance.

When you see the beginning of the Reformation and you see one of the arguments that Martin Luther was making in contrast to the teachings of Roman Catholicism, which said that there was no salvation outside of the Roman church.

And Martin Luther said, that is not true. There is no salvation outside of Christ. And this is one of the texts that he pointed us to, was saying that it is to Jesus that we must gather to. And if we are in Christ, then we truly belong to Christ.

And so friends, there are going to be times when Christ will shake your box, when He'll shake your preconceived notions. And this statement that we just read from Luke 9 and Luke 11 should be viewed as complementary to Christ and to His statements.

No one, if one is casting out demons by genuine faith in Jesus Christ, then they are an ally to the kingdom. God is in operation outside of your box and outside of your context. And He doesn't like it when we put Him in a box, nor can He be bound by our perimeters or our preconceived notions.

God is big. Amen? He's big. And sometimes in Christendom, especially those of us who may be very partisan or denominational affiliations, we may feel uncomfortable when God works outside of our box. But He is God, and He shall do all that He pleases.

He'll work with us in our context. He'll work with brothers and sisters in our Presbyterian, in the Presbyterian context. He'll work with brothers and sisters in the Pentecostal context. He'll work with anyone who is a blood-bought, spirit-purchased son of the Most High God.

He will work with His children, even when His children don't always get along. Amen? See, God's at work in us, and He's at work in all of us who are truly in Christ, regardless of some of the errors that we may carry in our theology.

And again, no one has a perfect theology or box on this side of eternity. Therefore, be humble. This is what Jesus is getting at. When the disciples responded to Christ, they said, hey, Jesus, someone is casting out demons in your name, and we try to stop them.

What John was lacking was humility. And Jesus says, don't stop them, for the one who is not against you is for you. Now, Jesus goes on in verse 51, or the story continues. When the days drew near for Him to be taken up, He, that is Christ, set His face to go to Jerusalem.

He sent messengers ahead of Him who went and entered a village of the Samaritans to make preparations for Him. But the people did not receive Him, because His face was set toward Jerusalem. You see, the Samaritans heard and saw that Jesus was coming.

First and foremost, who are the Samaritans? Well, the Samaritans were a mixed race of Jews and Syrians who lived in a territory to the northwest of Jerusalem. And if you know anything about the New Testament context, the Jews and the Samaritans, were they friends?

Were they viewing each other as brothers and sisters? No, they viewed each other as polar opposites. They viewed each other as enemies. The Jews in particular saw the Samaritans as half-breeds, as people who were defiled.

They were mixed with Gentiles. These are people who had veered from the Abrahamic tradition. And then the Samaritans looked at the Jews as a bunch of legalistic, stiff-necked people. Now both sides had maybe serious contentions with the other, valid and unvalid.

There was certainly a tension that existed between these two people groups. The Jews, again, saw them as half-breeds, and they both differed on religious beliefs and traditions. While both sides claiming to be the true religion of Abraham, Jesus comes to them to share the kingdom message.

He goes to the Samaritans. He shares the gospel of the kingdom. And they knew that the fulfillment of His mission would not lie in Samaria, but rather in Jerusalem. Notice again what the text says in verse 51, when the days drew near for Him to be taken up, He set His face to go to Jerusalem.

But before He gets to Jerusalem, He has to go through Samaria. He has to go through this contentious people group. And it says, He sent messengers ahead of Him who went and entered a village of the Samaritans to make preparations for Him.

So Jesus sends His disciples into the villages of the Samaritans to make preparations. But it says in verse 53, but the people did not receive Him. And why? Why didn't the Samaritans receive Jesus? Why didn't they receive His message?

Because His face was set toward Jerusalem. You see, again, one of the contentions between these two people groups wasn't just one of national identity, wasn't one of ethnicity alone, but also theological contention.

Because the Samaritans believed that they were God's chosen people, and that their mountain of worship was the true mountain of worship. Maybe you'll remember the woman at the well in John chapter 4, where you have this interaction with Jesus and this woman who's a Samaritan, and she says, well, we worship God, and we have the faith of Abraham, we worship on this mountain.

The Jews worship on Mount Zion in Jerusalem, which is the correct spot. And Jesus says, the hour is coming when true worshipers will worship God in spirit and in truth. So it won't really matter which mountain you are on, it won't matter which direction you face when you pray, rather what is gonna be of true and everlasting value is that you know God and that you worship Him in spirit and in truth.

So that that which divides us, that which divides Jews and Samaritans dissolves so that Christ in His sufferings, in His humanity, in His perfect obedience is able to purchase for God a new people made up of Jews, Gentiles, Samaritans, and everything in between so that He makes a new man in Christ.

Jesus is looking to Jerusalem. I want you to write this in the notes. The Samaritans rejected Jesus because His face was set toward Jerusalem, meaning that His mission, I want you to write this in there as well, to fulfill righteousness was there.

Now, this highlights the tensions between these two people groups. Beloved, we live here in the United States of America and throughout the history of our nation, there's always existed a tension between people's groups, whether it be between whites, blacks, Catholics, Protestants, whether it be between the Irish immigrants and the Italian immigrants.

Anytime there's a mixture of people groups, tensions usually arise because part of our fallen nature is that we are tribal. Part of our fallen nature is that we tend to associate within groups and we tend to divide along those lines.

And what the gospel does is that it begins to break down the barriers and those man-made lines so that in Christ it doesn't matter whether you're Jew or Samaritan. It doesn't matter if you're white or you're black.

It doesn't matter if you're Asian or Hispanic, that in Christ what unites us is Jesus and His spilled blood for us so that everything that is of the exterior begins to fade away. God in Christ is making a new humanity where the distinction of skin color, race, language, culture begins to disintegrate.

It is absorbed in the new man that Christ is making in the church so that at the end of human history what we see before the throne of God is a multitude of people from every tribe, from every nation, of every language, of every skin color standing before the throne of God singing the same song with the same voice, salvation belongs to God and to the Lamb.

Amen? That's what God is doing. He's working outside of our box. He's working above the resentment of people groups. Now, again, the tension that existed between the Samaritans and the Jews, this was a real resentment.

And this, the ministry of Jesus looking toward Jerusalem, this played into the resentments of the Samaritans. This is why they rejected Jesus' ministry. Now, did Jesus cower to the resentments and the cultural and racial dilemmas of His day?

No. Because Jesus rose above the partisan and cultural divides of His day. He rises above those cultural, racial divisions. Church, we live in times that are divided. We live in times in which there is racial tension in this country.

How can we overcome it? How can we help bring healing in this broken system and world that we live in? It's by approaching it in the same way that Jesus did, by not getting mixed in it, but rising above it.

You hear me? Not by getting entangled in the affairs of this world and the mess that is our politics today, but rather rising above the occasion, rising above the cultural divides. You see, His apostles then go on to do something of interest here.

It says in verse 54, when the disciples James and John saw it, the rejection of the Samaritans towards the ministry of Christ, they said, Lord, do you want us to tell fire to come down from heaven and consume them?

You've got to love the fervor that the apostles have. On one hand, they see people using the name of Jesus that are associated with them. They're saying, Lord, can we stop them? Then they see the Samaritans, they reject the ministry of Jesus.

They're like, Lord, should we call fire upon them? Man, they have some religious fervor. They want to seek things done. They want to uphold God's sanctity and holiness and the person of Jesus. But Jesus takes them through another route.

He says, in verse 55, it says that He turned and He rebuked them. And they went on to another village. Jesus rebukes His apostles when asked if they should pray for the destruction of the Samaritans. And Jesus rebukes them for such a thing.

Why? Because Jesus wanted His people, He wanted His disciples to rise above their petty rejection and not join them. Now today, in this world, we have something that's called cancel culture. You heard of it before?

Maybe you're a victim of cancel culture. Maybe you've been canceled. We see what happens in this world when you go up against the grain, when you go against what is popular, what is in trend, the constantly evolving standards of this world.

And if you go against it, then there's the threat of being what's called canceled, which essentially in this context means that if you're on social media, they'll look for your employer. And they'll say, this person said something that was homophobic.

This person said something that was wrong against our standards. Therefore, this person shouldn't even exist. He should be an outcast. And to some degree, the apostles or the disciples in this instance are contributing to some form of cancel culture.

They're saying, God, can we just cancel these people right here, right now? Can we just call fire down and let's get rid of them? Let's cancel them. That's essentially what the world wants to do with Christians, what the world wants to do with those who think differently than them.

They should just be canceled. They should be erased from the culture, erased from their jobs. Is this what we should do? Should we contribute to the so-called cancel culture? No, we should not contribute to it.

And in fact, we can't overcome cancel culture, not by being the polar opposite, but by standing above the culture and preaching and practicing the gospel of reconciliation. How do we overcome the challenges of our day, culturally, racially?

It's not by getting involved in it, but it's standing over it. You know, the Bible says this about the saints, about the people of the most high God, that we shall judge the world. A judge doesn't get himself entangled in the affairs that he's judging.

He stands over it, he examines it, and he judges it rightfully because he's not of it. Similarly, Jesus says that his disciples would not be of this world. Truly, Christ's people must stand above the cultural, racial divisions, not partaking in them, but rather standing over it and being its judge.

And being its judge in the context in which we can preach and teach the truth of the matter, which is God's standard of what is good, God's standard of what is right, which is found in His Word, the Bible.

This is how we overcome the challenges of our day. There's a lesson to be learned from Jesus' example here. As Jesus is looking towards Jerusalem, as He's looking towards His mission, we learn this example from this passage of Scripture.

Don't let anyone keep you from our God-ordained mission. You see, Jesus was on mission from His Father, and He knew He had to go through Samaria in order to get to Jerusalem. In life, there's going to be challenges.

Even when God has ordained for you to do what is right and to do what is glorifying to Him, in the midst of that road, you might go through Samaria. You might go to a place where you will be rejected.

You might go to a place where it will be challenging. But, as Christ did, His eyes were set on Jerusalem, because that's where His mission was. That's where He would fulfill all righteousness through His perfect obedience, through His sufferings, through His being brought up to the cross, His death, His burial, and His resurrection.

Jerusalem was the place of His mission. Don't let anyone keep you from your God-ordained mission. When obstacles are in the way, stay on mission. When haters and detractors come your way, stay on mission.

When distractions come, stay on mission. When those who detest the name of Christ come your way, stay on mission. When your past mistake starts rearing its ugly head, stay on mission. Be strong, unshakable, unmovable in the work of the Lord.

Be undeterred and stay the course, and stay on mission like Jesus was on mission, as He set His eyes, His course on Jerusalem. Now, we see in verse 57, in Luke chapter 9, it says that as they were going along the So again, they were rejected in Samaria.

As they're going along the road, someone said to him, I'll follow you wherever you go. To me, this sounds like the modern day evangelical. They hear Jesus, they see the things of Jesus, and they say, Lord, I'll follow you wherever you go.

I'll raise up my hands in worship. I'll put my hand up when the preacher says. I'll walk down that aisle. I'll go wherever you go. And Jesus says to him, foxes have holes. Birds of the air have nests.

But the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head. If you're following your political leader, maybe your favorite artist, and you say, I want to follow you. I want to be your disciple. They say, great. Well, here's the new tour bus you can come along with, and you'll get all these benefits.

You'll get people who will love you. People will adore you. You'll get all these benefits. But Jesus says, if you want to follow me, my life is one of poverty, not one of gain. If you want to follow me and be my disciple, the foxes have their holes.

The birds of the air have their nests. But the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head, which is to say that if you want to follow Jesus, it'll cost you. It won't be a good life. It'll be a hard life. It won't be a life always marked with success, fame, and love.

But instead, it will be one marked with poverty and sometimes even shame, because this is not true, especially in our society, that when we look at those who are poor, when we look at those who have no homes, that they are almost a shameful thing.

We want to move them out of our neighborhoods. We want to move them out of the way so they are not seen by society, because that's how shameful it is to be homeless in today's day. And in the ancient world, it was no less different.

And Jesus says, if you want to be my disciple, it'll be a shameful thing. It will be a thing marked, a life marked by poverty. I want you to write this in your notes. When someone declared their intention to follow Jesus, He responds by saying that He was homeless.

Imagine, for a moment, the theological implications here. Jesus, the God-Man, He who was eternal God, who was made flesh in the incarnation, of whom countless angels gathered in a festal gathering to worship Him, to adore Him, to render to Him all things, the One who made all gold, silver, all precious stones, all galaxies and all stars that exist and twinkle in the night sky, He who made and fashioned the world, had no place to lay His head.

Think about that. What a shameful ministry He took upon Himself to take upon our poverty, to take upon our sin, our depravity, our homelessness, our sickliness, so that through His poverty, as the Apostle Paul says in 2 Corinthians, we might become rich.

His poverty makes us rich. If you want to follow Jesus, just know what it will cost. It'll cost you everything because Jesus gave up everything for you and for me. Paul frames it in this theological term in Philippians chapter 2.

He says, though He, Christ, was in the form of God, the word form there being morphase, where we get the word metamorphosis from, He was in the very nature form God, yet He did not count equality of God as a thing to be grasped or held on to, but He humbled Himself by taking the form of a servant and being fashioned as a human, He became obedient, obedient so far as He went to death, even death on a cross.

So, therefore, God has highly exalted this Jesus, giving Him the name that is above every name so that the name of Jesus every knee should bow and every tongue confess that He is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

Jesus is glorious and He is made all the more glorious through His selflessness and through His incarnation and through His ministry of self-humiliation. He is exalted now at the right hand of the Father where every knee shall now bow and every tongue confess that He is Yahweh, Lord to the glory of the Father.

And so, again, this same Jesus is made homeless, made poor on our behalf. Therefore, the implication here is that discipleship comes at the cost of everything. I want you to write this in the notes. Discipleship comes at the cost of everything.

Jesus is the absolute opposite, notice this, of a sensitive speaker or a seeker-sensitive speaker. He doesn't flower the harsh and difficult truth to make the gospel more palatable. He reveals that not even the Son of Man has a place to lay His head at night, insinuating that to follow Him, one must come to the full and true abandonment of the self.

He reveals again that if you want to be a true follower of Jesus, you must give up everything, including your life and its possessions, and not look back, and not look back. It goes on to say in verse 59,.

And to another he said, Christ, follow me. But he, the one he is speaking to, said, Lord, let me first go and bury my father. And Jesus said to him, leave the dead to bury their own dead. But as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.

This, again, sounds like the average evangelical in today's culture. Lord, I'll follow you, but first let me arrange my house. First, let me take care of these other priorities. Lord, let me first do my business, and then I will follow you.

This sounds like the excuses that many of us make in a day-to-day life. Lord, I'd love to prioritize you and the things of your kingdom, but first, I've got to do this. I've got to take care of this affair over here.

I've got to do some business over here. I've got to take care of my father or my mother or the person who I'm about to bury. And Jesus says, let the dead bury the dead. I have to admit to you, brothers and sisters, this is a deeply convicting scripture, even to myself.

It's hard for me to even preach this to you, knowing that I myself don't fully live up to this call. This is a difficult call, and you would think a pastor, well, surely a pastor has got this nailed down.

Brothers and sisters, we barely can even grasp or scratch the surface of what it means to be a true disciple of Christ. There are times, and I can speak for the other pastors too, where we feel we're barely hanging on, where we're hanging on by a thread, but if it not be for the grace of God, it is all by the grace of God that we can do this.

Not just the pastor, but you. You, as a follower of Christ, as a member of the church of God, not the denomination church of God, but the true living church of God, the people of God. You can hang on.

You can persevere, and the Bible gives us this hope that we will persevere, because he who began a good work in us shall bring it to completion. What then is the point of what Jesus is saying here? When he says to one, follow me, he says, Lord, let me first go and bury my father.

And Jesus says, leave the dead to bury their own dead. But as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God. You see, what's interesting here is that burial was an important Jewish custom, maybe some of you don't know this, that required up to a year's worth of attention.

And Jesus is not being insensitive, nor is he asking him to dishonor his deceased father. Rather, he's acknowledging that when presented with the opportunity to spread the message of life, the gospel of life, then we are to do so.

When presented with the opportunity of the kingdom, don't waste time. And don't waste your life. I want you to write this in your notes. When Jesus said, let the dead bury the dead, meaning that the kingdom is the highest priority.

What's the highest priority for the Christian? It should and always be the kingdom of God. Jesus puts it this way. Seek first the kingdom and its righteousness. And all other things may fall in place, can fall in place, might fall in place, should fall in place.

Everything else, as Jesus says, if you put the kingdom first, everything else shall follow. Everything else shall follow. Meaning that in the hierarchy of importance, in the structure of the Christian life, what is chief beyond all things is God's kingdom and glory.

That is in fact the chief end of man, is to know God and to glorify Him forever. That's our chief end. That is our purpose, is to know Him and to make Him known. So then everything else becomes secondary, even the business of burying the dead.

Because the dead shall bury the dead. But we have in our possession the message and gospel of life. Therefore, don't waste your time. Don't look back. Jesus then goes on to say this in verse 61, or He said this in verse 61.

Yet another said, I will follow you, Lord, but let me first say farewell to those at my home. Now, what is of interest in these three scenarios, with these three individuals who are called to follow Christ, they are not saying or speaking anything that is unfitting to the Christian life.

They're not saying or doing something or requesting something that is unreasonable. Again, the first said, I'd love to follow you, Lord, and I'll go wherever you go. Jesus says, great, it'll be a life of poverty, it'll be a life of challenge, it'll be a life of difficulty.

The other says, Lord, follow me, but Lord, first let me go bury my father. That's a reasonable request. Okay, verse 61, someone says, I will follow you, Lord, but first let me say farewell to those at my house.

If you're married, that's a really reasonable request, amen? Right? If you try to do something without the consent of your spouse, you know, that can be a challenge. And so this is not an unrealistic request on behalf of those who are attempting to follow Jesus, but then Jesus surprises everyone when He says this in verse 62, no one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.

What does Jesus mean by this? I've believed this for a long time, that for me, Luke chapter 9, verse 62, is the most convicting scripture for me personally, because of its implications. What's implicated here, what's at stake here is this.

When Jesus says, no one puts his hand to the plow, what's the plow? Well, a plow is an instrument used by farmers to break up the ground. Now, Jesus often uses these imageries in regard to the message of the gospel.

He says that the earth is a field, that the world is a field, and the job of the Christian is to work the field, tend to creation, and speak the word of truth, which is the seed of the word of God, the word of God.

And as we bring the seed of God's word into the soil, we tend and we care for it, so that it may bear fruit for the kingdom. And Jesus says, whoever puts his hand to the plow, the plow represents Christian ministry.

I want you to write this in your notes. No one puts his hand to the plow, and this equals ministry. Now, who is this ministry for? Is it for those who go to seminary? Is it for those who become pastors?

Is it for those who become missionaries? The answer is, the ministry is for all who are in Christ. If you are a Christian, you are in ministry. Now, the question is, are you living up to the ministry to which Christ has called you to?

Because every single Christian is in ministry. There is no such thing as a Christian who is not in ministry. To be Christian is to be in ministry, is to be called to this work of making Christ known. So, then in some regard, every Christian is then a minister.