I Will Follow You, But....

Luke 9:57-62: Now it happened as they journeyed on the road, that someone said to Him, “Lord, I will follow You wherever You go.”58 And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.”59 Then He said to another, “Follow Me.”But he said, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.”60 Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and preach the kingdom of God.”61 And another also said, “Lord, I will follow You, but let me first go and bid them farewell who are at my house.”62 But Jesus said to him, “No one, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.”

What a sobering message Jesus gave to someone who claimed that he would follow Jesus wherever He went. Jesus is essentially saying that a follower of His will be marked by three things:

1. You will be rejected wherever you go.

“Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.”

2. Your primary focus in life will be to go and preach the kingdom of God.

“Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and preach the kingdom of God.”

3. If you think twice about your commitment to Jesus, you are not fit to follow Him.
“No one, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.”

Jesus seems to be moving from the end result to the root cause in these verses. The end result is that they will be rejected. The root cause for this rejection is wholeheartedly following Jesus. In the middle, we see that a wholehearted follower of Jesus will be primarily focused with preaching the kingdom of God.

In summary, if you have a complete commitment to follow Christ (v.62) the result will be that you will go and preach the kingdom of God (v.60) and as a result you will be rejected by the world and you will have nowhere to lay your head (v.58).

Our Mission on Earth

 Luke 19:10 "...for the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost."

If God’s primary purpose for the saved were loving fellowship, He would take believers immediately to heaven, where spiritual fellowship is perfect, unhindered by sin, disharmony, or loneliness. If His primary purpose for the saved were the learning of His Word, He would also take believers immediately to heaven, where His Word is perfectly known and understood. And if God’s primary purpose for the saved were to give Him praise, He would, again, take believers immediately to heaven, where praise is perfect and unending.

There is only one reason the Lord allows His church to remain on earth: to seek and to save the lost, just as Christ’s only reason for coming to earth was to seek and to save the lost. “As the Father has sent Me,” He declared, “I also send you” (John 20:21). Therefore, believers who are not committed to winning the lost for Jesus Christ should reexamine their relationship to the Lord and certainly their divine reason for existence.

Fellowship, teaching, and praise are not the mission of the church but are rather the preparation of the church to fulfill its mission of winning the lost. And just as in athletics, training should never be confused with or substituted for actually competing in the game, which is the reason for all the training." John MacArthur