This fall, we've been considering Luke's portrait of Jesus. As one follows along, the temperature around Jesus becomes hotter. In the beginning, you have the birth of Jesus and all these ecstatic utterances of praise—that finally, after all these centuries, the Holy One of God, The Messiah or Christ, is coming into his Holy Temple to do God's bidding! Jesus would rescue God's people from their enemies. God Himself would be their King, and establish His Kingdom, and reign in holiness, righteousness, and peace. The world order is about to be shaken. The Lord's favor is breaking in upon the poor, the captive, the blind and oppressed. Jesus begins recruiting disciples not just to follow him, but to extend, magnify, multiply his message and Kingdom. Expectations are at a feverish pitch.
But the tension builds immediately. Satan openly attacks Jesus in the wilderness. Jesus is rejected and run off from his hometown synagogue. The crowds, harassed and helpless though they were, begin closing in upon Jesus with their demands to be made well, made full, made rich, made clean. Jesus begins turning up the temperature of his teaching to love. The religious leaders begin to characterize Jesus as a glutton, drunkard, friend of tax collectors and sinners. John the Baptist is arrested, and later beheaded. Jesus begins to warn about his own coming suffering, arrest, crucifixion, and death. Three times he tells his disciples he must journey to Jerusalem to die. Though he uses parables, Jesus teachings become increasingly sharp. He warns not of the “peace" but of coming divisions and hardships his Kingdom would bring. His kingdom would divide father and son, mother and daughter, entire families, in-laws. All this builds right into Luke 19, where Jesus sets his face like flint, with stony resolve, for Jerusalem. And like flint, he's about to ignite a firestorm unlike anything the world has ever seen!
As the temperature of opposition increases, the temperature of Christ's call upon his followers also increases. First, Jesus calls His disciples to go wider in love than ever before—this is Evangelism.
In the normal pattern of relationships you have dinner with your family. Then stack your relational circle with the righteous and the healthy. You love those who are loving you. You do good to those who have been doing good to you. You share resources with people who have shared with you. Our default is to insulate ourselves from drama, from trouble, from evil, from poverty, from pain, from obligation. For most Christianity is about taking care of my marriage, my family, myself, my kind. Christianity is privately pursing my own personal peace and affluence.
In Luke 8:16 Jesus says, “No one, after lighting a lamp, covers it with a basket or puts it under a bed, but puts it on a lampstand so that those who come in may see its light.” In Luke 8:20 Jesus is told that his mother and brothers were standing outside looking for him. In Luke 8:21 Jesus says, “My mother and my brothers are those who hear and do the word of God.” We need to think more widely, more inclusively than just the narrow margins of our biological families or individual households. We've yet to unleash the full benefit of the light we’ve been given!
In Luke, Jesus pushes our boundaries wider than ever before. Not just the righteous, but unrighteous. Not just healthy, but the sick. Not just those who show us love, goodness, friendship, trust, who admire us… but the wicked, the ungrateful. Not just those favored by society and graced by personal fortune and privilege… but the disfavored and disgraced. Not just the stable, self-sufficient masses but the harassed, the helpless. Not just the emotionally health, but those who are mourning, weeping. Not just friends, but also enemies, unkind, ungrateful.
When God throws a banquet, Luke 13:29, “They will come from the east and west, the north and south, to share the banquet in the Kingdom of God.” Luke 14:21, “…Go quickly into the streets and alleys of the city and bring in the poor, maimed, blind, and lame.” Luke 14:23, “…Go out into the highways and hedges…” In Christ's Kingdom there is steep relational cost. Going wider will strain the very fabric of Luke 18:29, “house, wife, brothers, sisters, parents, children..”
In Luke, there is no “yeah, but…” Jesus compulsively goes wider without apology, without fear, or reservation, or conditions. And he sends out the Twelve, the Seventy… just the same. There is no influence, no revolution without proximity to people far from God. When is the last time you became relationally uncomfortable for the cause of Christ? Sat with… ate with… walked around with… spent time in the home of… in the hospital with… visiting in prison with… listening to. . .
Second, Jesus calls His disciples to go deeper in love than ever before—this is Discipleship. Peter was one of the first to discern that he couldn't casually spend time with Jesus without the subsequence need for repentance and change. In Luke 5:8 he pleads with Jesus, “Go away from, because I'm a sinful man, Lord!” Not only was Jesus pushing his disciples into ever wider circles of relationships, he was pushing them into every deepening layers of transformation. A good person produces good out of the good stored up in his heart. Where much has been forgiven, much love and worship is expected. The good heart is that person who hears the word with an honest and good heart, holds unto it, endures, and produces fruit. Who are my brothers and sisters? Luke 8:21, “…those who hear and do the word of God"
Luke 9:23-25, Jesus said to everyone, “All who want to come after me must say no to themselves [deny themselves], take up their cross daily, and follow me. All who want to save their lives will lose them. But all who lose their lives because of me will save them. What advantage do people have if they gain the whole world for themselves yet perish or lose their lives?”
Luke 13:23 someone says to Jesus, “Lord, will only a few be saved?” to which Jesus says Luke 13:24-27, “Make every effort to enter through the narrow gate. Many, I tell you, will try to enter and won’t be able to. 25 Once the owner of the house gets up and shuts the door, then you will stand outside and knock on the door, saying, ‘Lord, open the door for us.’ He will reply, ‘I don’t know you or where you are from.’ 26 Then you will begin to say, ‘We ate and drank in your presence, and you taught in our streets.’ 27 He will respond, ‘I don’t know you or where you are from. Go away from me, all you evildoers.” I don't discern anything casual about following Jesus in Luke's gospel!
Luke 14:25-35, “Large crowds were traveling with Jesus. Turning to them, he said, 26 “Whoever comes to me and doesn’t hate father and mother, spouse and children, and brothers and sisters—yes, even one’s own life—cannot be my disciple. 27 Whoever doesn’t carry their own cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. 28 “If one of you wanted to build a tower, wouldn’t you first sit down and calculate the cost, to determine whether you have enough money to complete it? 29 Otherwise, when you have laid the foundation but couldn’t finish the tower, all who see it will begin to belittle you. 30 They will say, ‘Here’s the person who began construction and couldn’t complete it!’ 31 Or what king would go to war against another king without first sitting down to consider whether his ten thousand soldiers could go up against the twenty thousand coming against him? 32 And if he didn’t think he could win, he would send a representative to discuss terms of peace while his enemy was still a long way off. 33 In the same way, none of you who are unwilling to give up all of your possessions can be my disciple. 34 “Salt is good. But if salt loses its flavor, how will it become salty again? 35 It has no value, neither for the soil nor for the manure pile. People throw it away. Whoever has ears to hear should pay attention.”
An occupational hazard of being a preacher is I've saturated my heart and mind with these words of Jesus. In the flesh, I sometimes feel like Peter, “Go away from me Lord, I'm a sinful man.” Go wider? Go deeper? The truth is we'd all run from the call of Christ if it were just a calculation of flesh and blood, personal will or strength. Except God gives us his Holy Spirit such that nothing impossible for God!
Third, Jesus calls His disciples to go longer in love than ever before—this is Disciple-Making. When God calls a person, he doesn't just call us to personal salvation and personal transformation. God calls us to be kingdom multipliers. In Luke 5:10 Jesus tells Peter, “Do not be afraid. . . from now on you will be catching people.”
For some reason this week, I started taking inventory of all the excuses—all the exceptional reasons—In the Gospel of Luke—a person might think themselves exempt from serving God. Sometimes I sense there is kind of a social contract Christian's have with one another. The contract is: “My faith is personal, private. I have no business going public, going wider, fishing for men.” The contract is: “Let's peacefully coexist without ever challenging each other. I'll sit here, you sit there. I'll shake your hand, you shake mine. You smile, I'll smile. You keep to yourself, I'll keep to myself. . . let's keep this Christian thing superficial, safe, and silent”
Maybe this explains America's obsession with ever larger churches—it’s like the crowds in Jesus days. You can get totally lost in the crowd. You can so easily maintain your anonymity. You can fall off the face of the earth—and nobody even knows or cares! You can lurk in the shadows, and dark corners of the room. You can slip in and out. Not a single person approaches you much less talks to you. You don’t have to worry about making any excuses, or justifying your complacency, in a crowd you engage on your terms and your terms alone. Yet Jesus is continually calling people out of the crowd to commission them for service.
What excuses do you have for not serving God? Zechariah and Elizabeth were too old, and childless. Joseph and Mary were too young, newly engaged yet not married. The shepherds and fishermen were probably too ordinary. Peter deemed himself too sinful. I suppose Levi and Matthew could have said the same. If you were a woman in Jesus’ day, you could have said there is a glass ceiling. If a soldier or religious leader, it’s too political to follow Jesus. In Luke there are so many heroic cases where people found a way to serve Jesus. The paralyzed man had four friends bust open a roof to be lowered to Jesus. The women sold their possessions to fund Jesus’ ministry. Mary and Martha had chores, but one found time to serve. For everyone who found time to serve… there were those who made excuses. I just bought cows, I’ve got a funeral to attend, I just got married, I bought a field. Luke 9… commissioning the Twelve; Luke 9… feeding of 5000… Luke 10… sending out of the 72. Theme: we avail ourselves, and God makes the way.