Halfway Disciples - Luke 9:57-62

In 1519, a Spanish conquistador by the name of Herman Cortes set out to explore and conquer the Aztec Empire in Mexico.

Legend says that after landing there, he ordered his men to burn the ships that they arrived on.

That seems like an odd strategy to me and you.

Why burn the ships?

Well, because he believed that if the ships remained, retreat remained an option.

By burning the ships, he sent a messenger, a message to his men, that there is no going back.

Well, Jesus calls his disciples to that same kind of commitment.

Yet many want to keep their ships intact.

They want Jesus, but they also want an escape route back to their old life.

In our passage this morning, Jesus confronts three men who wanted to follow him halfway.

After their rejection in Samaria, Jesus and his company carry on toward Jerusalem as we saw last week.

And along the way, he meets these three individuals who seem to want to be one of his disciples.

But Jesus, knowing their heart, takes this opportunity to expose them.

And many like them.

I titled this sermon Halfway Disciples.

What is a halfway disciple?

Well, a halfway disciple is someone who is not ready to be a full disciple of Jesus.

Someone who doesn't want to follow Jesus fully, but instead they want Him to meet them halfway.

A halfway disciple is either a false disciple, meaning not a Christian, or a genuine believer just struggling with his or her divided loyalties.

It's someone who says they have given their life and their heart and their devotion to Jesus, but still want to hang on to living their lives their own way.

This is what we see in these three men in our passage, and this is what we see in many would-be disciples or so-called disciples today.

People who want to follow Jesus their own way instead of his way.

What I want to do this morning is point out three marks of a halfway disciple that we can gather from our passage this morning.

The sum of my message is this Jesus does not call us to halfway discipleship, but to wholehearted devotion that values him above comforts and control.

So, what are the marks of a halfway disciple?

Well, from our passage, we can gather these three.

Someone who follows too fast, someone who follows too slow, and someone who follows while looking behind.

Someone who follows too fast, someone who follows too slow, and someone who follows while looking behind.

As Jesus and his company are heading toward Jerusalem, someone calls out to him, saying that he will follow him wherever he goes.

Now, as I mentioned last week, Jesus is going to Jerusalem to die.

I don't know, or I don't think this man knew all of that, and you can't blame him, because few did.

But he did seem to have a readiness to go wherever Jesus was going and to become one of his disciples.

Now we are not told if this man eventually joined the company or went back home, but he is given a warning from Christ.

Earlier in chapter 9, Jesus has already mentioned the difficult cost of following him.

As he says, anyone who follows me must deny himself and pick up his cross daily.

And here he starts to lay out a little clearly, a little more clearly, what that looks like.

He says, Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.

In other words, foxes have their homes, birds have their homes, but me and my followers, we have no home.

Consider what you are saying when you say you want to follow me wherever you go, because you might lose some things that you're used to.

Do you like sleeping in a warm bed at night?

Do you like having shelter in the rain?

Do you enjoy having a home to go back to at the end of a long day?

Because if you follow me, you're going to lose all of that.

Jesus was giving this man a vivid picture of what it looks like to follow him.

He must have seen something in this man.

He must have seen his zeal and his willingness to be one of his disciples.

But Jesus wanted to make sure that this man knew exactly what that meant.

It might sound a little wrong to hear, but there are some people who want to follow Jesus a little too quickly.

And I don't mean that there isn't a spark that ignites passion in someone's heart to follow Jesus.

And I don't deny experiential cases of those who come to Christ.

Those things happen, not always, but they happen.

But I do mean there are some people, maybe this man was one of them, who see everything that Jesus is doing and say, I want to be a part of that.

Whatever that is, and without considering what a part of that truly means, they say, I want that.

There are people who, as outsiders, see something attractive about following Christ.

And let's be clear, there are many wonderful and glorious things about following Christ, many blessings to be had that outsiders can say, you know, I want some of that.

I want the joy that those people have.

I want the peace that those Christians have.

I would like to be in community like they are and have relationships like they have.

Some might see the passion and the zeal of some Christian and say, I'm attracted to that.

Whatever they have, I want that.

There are many reasons why people look at Christianity and say, I think that I can use that, or I think that can offer me some good.

If that's what Christianity is, I think I need that in my life.

I need the community, or I need that excitement, or I need that structure, or whatever it is.

You know, years ago, a group of us from church went to a conference in Atlanta, and one of the ladies who was organizing the trip sent us all pictures of this large Airbnb to choose from or to choose.

And uh, you know, we looked at the pictures and we said, it's great, let's go for it.

It was it was exactly what we needed.

So we fly in and we drive up to the home, and wouldn't you know the pictures did it a little too much justice?

We initially said, you know, I don't think this is the place, but sure enough it was.

And to be fair, the the place was big and accommodating, and there were there was nothing in the Airbnb post that lied.

It just didn't tell us that this place was in a rough neighborhood, and that we would probably have to, you know, look out for our lives as we put the trash to the corner.

The posts really didn't tell the whole story.

And why would it?

The owner wanted people to book her place, and how many people would book a place that said, by the way, this place is in the roughest part of town?

And I think that's the way Christianity is often presented.

We want so much for people to follow Jesus and want people to become Christians that we only present half of the story.

We tell them, you need to come to Christ so he can do something in your life.

Which is true.

Jesus will do something in the lives of those who come to him, but that's not the whole story.

This is what Jesus is trying to get across to this person who said, I will follow you wherever you go.

Jesus was trying to make him aware that following him is not all glitz and glamour.

All you see is the healings and the miracles.

What you don't see is that we have no home to go to.

All you see is the crowds.

What you don't see is how much we are rejected.

They were just rejected by the town of Samaria.

And today it's still the same.

It's not as if following Jesus has gotten any easier today than it was in his day.

And I know pop Christianity has promoted it that way so we can get more people in the church, but the truth is following Christ is still a rough road.

Paul knew this in 2 Timothy 3.10.

He says, You, however, have followed my teachings, my conducts, my aim in life, my faith, my patience, my love, my steadfastness, my persecutions and sufferings that happened to me at Antioch and Iconium and Atlystrium, which persecutions I endured.

Yet from them all the Lord rescued me.

Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.

This is not like, this is not something you typically put on a church flyer.

Persecutions, sufferings, rejections that I endured.

But this is what Paul is saying.

Or this is what Paul is saying, how Christianity looks like.

Anyone desiring to follow Christ should expect persecutions.

Anyone who follows Christ should expect sufferings.

They should expect hardships, they should expect rejection.

It's what part of being a disciple means.

Being a disciple means following the way of the master.

Our master was persecuted.

Our master was rejected.

He endured hardships.

Should those who follow him not expect the same?

Why should we expect any better?

Why should we expect a life of luxury while our master led a life of suffering?

And look, I'm not saying that we're all going to suffer the same, and that we're all going to endure the same hardships, and that we're all going to face the same difficulties.

Truth is, some of us might face very few of them.

But what I am saying is that we shouldn't be surprised when they come.

The message that Christ was telling this man was that following me might cost you some comforts in this life.

And that's really the explicit message of Christianity, which is so counter to what you hear from a lot of places these days.

The prosperity gospel says, come to Jesus and he will bless you with material things.

The therapeutic gospel says, come to Jesus and He will meet all your felt needs.

So what happens is people jump at that opportunity and they say, I want to follow Jesus because they think it's going to be all smooth sailing.

And then a storm comes that overturns their boat.

And then they say, you know what, I don't think I want to keep following this course.

Back in chapter 8, Jesus gives this parable of the sower who went out and sowed some seeds.

And as he explains, the seed is the word of God.

And some seeds land on good ground, while other seeds land on bad ground.

And remember what he says about that seed that lands on the rock?

Let us remind ourselves, back in Luke chapter 8, verse 13, it says, And the ones on the rock and the ones on the rock are those who, when they hear the word of God, receive it with joy, but these have no root.

Luke 8:13

They believe for a while, and in time of testing fall away.

This is that halfway disciple that follows Jesus a little too quickly.

They start off with a lot of zeal and a lot of excitement, but then they run before they can walk.

They have no root, which means their Christianity is very shallow.

They haven't taken the time to be fully disciples.

So when the time of testing comes, meaning when trials and tribulations come, they fall away because they weren't fully discipled yet.

They gave up halfway through.

You know what happens when someone slows down to become a disciple?

What happens is they read the full counsel of God's word.

They don't skip past the parts they don't like or the parts that make them uncomfortable.

They don't skip past Christ and his suffering to get to his glory.

They don't skip the cross to get to the empty tomb.

Jesus knows that the comforts of this world are things that we hold on to too tightly.

And sometimes he will test us to see if we value those things more than him.

Or sometimes he will ask, Do you love me and my work enough to lose some of those comforts?

Jesus knows these things and he will test us.

And he had many opportunities in his life growing up to go to school and to make a name for himself in this country, to have the career that he wanted and basically make a name for himself.

But he had his heart set on taking the gospel overseas, on taking the gospel to an unknown people group where the gospel has never been before, to the people of Burma.

If you read his life, it was full of sufferings and full of hardships.

He had several opportunities to come back home to the states and escape the sufferings that he was in in Burma.

But he had turned them all down because he knew that the gospel was needed there.

Here's a few highlights or lowlights of what he went through.

He lived in extreme poverty.

His wife struggled with mental illness.

He lost a child on the mission field.

He became deathly ill while in prison.

He faced constant opposition from the same locals he was trying to save.

He didn't see his first convert until he was ministering there for seven years.

And that's all Jesus is trying to point us to in this passage.

That sometimes we're gonna have to lose some comfort for the sake of the gospel.

One famous quote that's attributed to him to Adonai Justin is this he says, if I had a thousand lives, I would give them all for the cause of Christ.

This man knew that Jesus was worth more than comfort.

You say you want to follow me, but understand it might lead you into some uncomfortable places.

Are you ready for that?

Have you counted the costs?

Are you willing to leave behind your comforts to follow me?

How much am I worth to you?

You know, every day people are answering that question with their lives, and their answer is not much, or not as much as the comforts of this world.

I didn't know following you was going to be so hard, or I didn't know it was going to cost me this much if I started to live for you.

So I think I'm gonna stop here.

I don't think I'm gonna follow you any further.

Some people follow him too fast without ever considering what it might cost them to follow him.

So instead of becoming a true disciple, they stop halfway.

Next.

A halfway disciple is also someone who follows too slow.

Let's look at verse 59.

To another he said, Follow me.

But he said, Lord, let me first go and bury my father.

And Jesus said to him, Let leave the dead to bury their own dead, but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.

So as Jesus continues along the way, he encounters another individual, but this time, Jesus is the one who initiates the conversation.

He turns to this person and says, Follow me, just as he did when he called some of the other disciples.

And the man's response is, Lord, let me first go and bury my father.

Now we would say this seems to be a reasonable request.

Why wouldn't the man want to bury his father?

Why wouldn't he want to be at his father's funeral?

We read this as if the father had just died and this man needed to go bury his dad.

But that is highly unlikely.

The Jews had a custom to bury their dead within 24 hours.

And the family would sit with the dead until the body was buried.

If this man's father had just died, he wouldn't be along the way.

He would have been with the family mourning over the body.

So more than likely, his father was still alive.

Maybe aging, and the man knew he didn't have much time left with him.

But more than likely, his father wasn't dead yet.

This is why Jesus responded how he did.

This man was saying, Let me wait until my father passes away, until I fall- I go and follow you.

This is why Jesus said, Let leave the dead, bury their own dead, but for you go and proclaim the kingdom of God.

Jesus saw this man's hesitation, and that this man was not truly ready to follow him.

When Jesus called the man, the man said, Not now.

I'm not ready.

Now's not the time.

I want to wait until it's convenient for me.

I want to wait until everything is just right.

This wasn't an outright rejection.

The man did want to follow him.

However, he wanted to follow him on his own terms.

He wanted to carve out his own path to being a disciple.

But again, the very meaning of being a disciple is following the way of the master.

It's not following our own way, but his.

The student doesn't get to set the standard and condition.

The master does.

Can you imagine if a student showed up in class and told the teacher, all right, teacher, this is how it's going to go.

There's not going to be any pop quizzes in this class, no homework's going to be given out.

No one's going to be marked late.

We can all talk to each other and use our phones whenever we want to.

Sounds wonderful to some of you students here, but we all know that's not going to go over so well.

There would be no learning, there would be no growing, there would be no discipline.

No one would be shaped into a true student.

This is why a disciple must not set the conditions of discipleship.

The master must set the conditions.

Do you remember when Jesus called Levi or Matthew the tax collector back in Luke chapter 5?

Luke 5 · chapter mention

His response was a lot different than this man's.

Look at Luke 5, 27.

After this, he went out and saw a tax collector named Levi sitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, Follow me, just like he did to this man in our passage.

Follow me in verse 28.

And leaving everything everything, he rose and followed him.

Levi or Matthew didn't hesitate to answer the call to follow Jesus.

In fact, he left behind a pretty lucrative career to do so.

Jesus was calling him from collecting taxes to collecting souls for the kingdom of God, from being a man who was about his own business to someone who was about the Lord's.

And he was ready and he was willing to do so.

Yet this man in our passage wasn't ready quite yet.

Here we see the difference between a true disciple and a halfway one.

One who says, Yes, master, I will follow you wherever you go.

Another one who says, I will follow you when I'm ready.

Why do people follow behind slowly?

You know, sometimes it's because we just walk slower than others or drive slower than others.

But, you know, there are times when I'm out with the family and we're at a store or we're at the mall and I lose them.

Y'all have been there before, right?

We get lost, we lose the pack, and they just keep walking ahead of me.

And usually the reason is because I stopped and I was looking at something.

There was something that just grabbed my attention.

And whatever it was, it put distance between me and my family as my family kept walking on.

And the reason was because I wanted to walk with them on my own terms.

If I wanted to stop and see something, I was gonna stop and see it.

This is how many people want to follow Jesus.

They'll be following him for a while, but the moment something in this world grabs their attention, following Jesus will be put on home.

And then they start to place some distance between them and Jesus.

If the first man's problem was being reluctant to let go of his comforts, this second man's problem was being reluctant to let go of his autonomy.

In other words, he wasn't willing to let go of being in control, he wanted to choose his own way of becoming a disciple, which is the path that many people want to take.

It's not so much that people don't want to follow Jesus.

Again, a lot of people like the idea of that.

That's what following Jesus is.

If I get to set my own turn, then they're okay with it.

People want to follow Jesus.

The problem is, people want to follow Jesus on their own terms according to their own path.

And you know, I think that comes from a misunderstanding of what it means to be a Christian.

When the disciples in the book of Acts were first called Christians, it wasn't a name they gave themselves.

They didn't say, wake up one morning and say, you know what, what's a good name for our group?

Let's call ourselves Christians.

No.

It was a name that was attributed to them.

It wasn't a name that they again invented or took upon themselves.

They were labeled Christians by outsiders because when people saw their lives and they saw how much they were devoted to this man named Jesus Christ, they said, those are Christians.

They saw how much they belonged to and followed this Christ.

So they labeled them Christians.

But today, a Christian isn't so much one whose life is marked by their devotion to Him.

Rather, a Christian is anyone who has said a prayer to invite Jesus in their heart, or anyone who has been baptized in water, or anyone who agrees to the Christian ethic, or anyone who lives by a spiritual experience.

So what we've done is we've separated Christianity from discipleship.

And we've made discipleship optional.

You can be a Christian if you say a prayer, but if you want to be a disciple, then you have to actually get serious about God's word and start obeying it.

You see, we've we've separated the two.

But the early Christians would have seen those two as synonymous, as one and the same.

And what starts to happen when you separate being a Christian from being a disciple is you have Christians who don't see it necessary to completely be devoted to Jesus.

Or Christians who are devoted to him, but they're devoted to him in their own way.

Christians or so-called Christians who see no need to be a disciple because they believe they've already punched their ticket to heaven.

So when it comes to following Christ, they are going to follow him at their own pace.

I don't need to belong to a church.

I'll go if I can or when I can, but I can worship Jesus anywhere.

I don't need to obey everything in the Bible because Jesus knows my heart and he knows how much I truly love him.

Here's the difference today.

We're quick to tell others we're Christians.

In the Bible, people were quick to tell others they're Christians.

Look at the way they live their lives.

Look at how devoted they are to the one they claim to follow.

2 Corinthians 5 14.

For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this that one has died for all, therefore all have died, and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves, but for him who for their sake died and was raised.

I think one of the reasons why we see following Jesus as our own our own way as an option is because we tend to think of following him in the sense of following behind a car or that analogy that I looked that I made earlier about following my family around at a store.

That analogy makes a point, but it doesn't go far enough.

Because in that in that example, I'm still a separate, autonomous, living person apart from my family.

But when the Bible speaks about the Christian, it speaks about the Christian being united to Christ.

Has this text in 2 Corinthians 5 says, He died, therefore all have died.

Since he died, everyone born of him, every Christian has died.

Died to what?

Died to ourselves, died to our sinful passions and desires, died to being in control of our own lives.

It is Christ who is now in control of our lives, or better yet, it is now Christ who lives in me.

And if my way is at odds with his, then guess what?

I am submitting my way to his.

That is true discipleship.

That is walking in step with Christ.

That is not walking too fast or walking too slow, but walking at his pace.

And the only way to do that is by being truly united to him.

It's Galatians 2.20.

I have been crucified with Christ.

It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me, and the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.

This is the point Jesus was trying to make to the man who wanted to wait until he buried his father.

Young man, you need to understand something.

Following me means that you will no longer live for yourself.

But from now on, and from here on out, you're gonna be living for me.

And because you want to wait and follow me on your own terms and on your own time, you are revealing that you are not ready to follow me.

You're not ready to be my disciple.

Because disciples don't follow far behind their master.

One more mark to look at.

A halfway disciple is also one who follows while looking back.

Verse 61.

Yet another said, I will follow you, Lord, but let me first say farewell to those in my home.

Jesus said to him, No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.

So here we have a third encounter with Jesus on the road to Jerusalem.

And this one is a combination of the first two men.

Like the first, he's quick to tell Jesus that he's willing to follow him and go wherever he goes.

And like the second, he wants to follow him on his own terms.

Though he says he's willing, he's not quite ready.

He says, I will follow you, but let me first go and say farewell to those at my home.

Again, this probably wasn't, you know, a 30-minute goodbye to the people at his house that he was asking for.

More than likely, this man wanted to go spend some days or maybe even some years with his family before he left behind everything to follow Jesus.

And look at the reply: no one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom.

This would have been a clear illustration to this man and to those who were around in Jesus' day.

Because in those days, plowing was done with a simple, simple wooden plow pulled by an oxen.

The farmer had to keep his eyes, as he was plowing, had to keep his eyes forward, had to keep his eyes straight ahead on a marker in the distance.

He had to make sure that the furrows he was making were straight.

And what would happen is if he kept looking back, the plow would drift and the rows would become crooked, and this would waste the seed and this would hurt the harvest.

Jesus is basically saying, if you are one of those farmers, someone who keeps looking back, I don't want you working in my field.

I have no need for these type of farmers.

In a spiritual sense, I have no need for such disciples.

Those who follow Christ while looking back are not fit to be his disciples because their eyes are not fixed on Christ.

Rather, their eyes are fixed on what's behind them.

This is a strong warning for each and every one of us.

Jesus does not want to compete with our past.

Once we come to faith, the old man, with its old life and its old ways, needs to die.

It needs to be buried and never dug up again.

Peter, speaking of those who drift away, says this in 2 Peter 220.

He says, For if after they have escaped the defilement of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first.

For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than after knowing it turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them.

What the true proverb says has happened to them.

The dog returns to its own vomit, and the soul, after washing herself, returns to wallow in the mire.

The devil is a master at deception.

And one of his greatest deceits is to convince people who start to follow Jesus that they left something better behind.

He has a way of making our vomit look savoring to us.

Don't fall for his lies.

Don't let him tell you that life without Christ is a life worth going back to.

Don't believe for one second that anything you lost compares to the worth that you have found in Christ Jesus.

Those who set out to follow Christ must have a resolve to say, I am not turning back.

They must burn the ships.

There's nothing to go back to.

There's nothing to be gained by me reminiscing on my own life.

There's nothing I would want back in exchange for Jesus who I have.

To close.

How do we avoid this?

How do we avoid becoming a halfway disciple?

How can we continue following Jesus when we start losing some comforts?

How do we continue following him when we lose some things that we're used to having?

Maybe some friends that we're used to having or even family that we're used to having?

How do we let go of some things that we're reluctant to let go of?

Maybe, maybe some habits or some idols or some addictions or pride or pet sins that we like to keep around, things that Jesus might be telling us to let go of, but we're having a hard time doing so.

How do we keep our hands on the plow?

How can we keep looking straight ahead without turning back, without wondering if we left something behind that's worth going back to?

How do we become a true disciple?

Well, I believe we can learn from a true disciple.

The Apostle Paul in Philippians 3, 313, where he says, Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own, but one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

Notice how Paul didn't just forget what lies behind, he didn't stop there.

But he also reaches forward to what lies ahead.

Unlike that farmer who kept looking back, his eyes, Paul's eyes was on the marker.

As he says, he presses on toward the goal for the prize.

What is the goal?

The goal is the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

In other words, it's everything that God has called him to, and it is everything that God has called us to.

Everything that we have been called to is found in Jesus Christ.

Every promise, every blessing, every peace, every joy, every strength, every rest, everything that is good is found in Jesus Christ alone.

You're not gonna find it in the world.

You're not gonna find it in past relationships, you're not gonna find it in the lures and enticements that you see all around you.

It is found in Jesus Christ.

He is the prize of the disciple.

Until he satisfies you more than any comforts and pleasures and attachments you have to this world, you will have a hard time following him.

Until your great prize in this life is Jesus Christ, you will not have the desire or the willingness to reach for the goal.

And let me be clear, lest there's some misunderstanding.

This is not about effort.

Jesus never says you need to do so much in order to be saved.

This is about who has your heart.

We're not saved by the perfections of our discipleship, but genuine salvation always produces a growing devotion to the love of Christ.

Even the disciples who followed him to Jerusalem, you remember they they they abandoned him one night.

They fled in his darkest hour.

They looked out for themselves.

Yet when we think of disciples, we think of these men.

We think of those men who that night in the garden said, I'm out of here, Jesus.

When you think of a disciple, we we think of them.

We think of these and men who would eventually take up their call to suffer for the gospel.

What changed?

What made these men who were halfway disciples for one night, that night when they abandoned Christ, that night when he was arrested, become these true disciples that we read about in the book of Acts?

The ones who turned the world upside down for Jesus.

What changed?

It was their view and their vantage point of the cross.

It was a glimpse of their Savior's love displayed openly as he hung upon that tree?

What made them finally decide to pick up their cross and die for Jesus when they couldn't do it before?

When they weren't ready to die for him?

What made them say, I'm going to suffer for you through the through through through the face of Rome and all the persecutions, through the imprisonments, through the abandonments?

What made these men who couldn't do it before all of a sudden do it then?

It was their view of the cross.

It was getting a glimpse of seeing their master pick up their cross for them.

If you're having a hard time answering the call to completely follow Jesus, if you're having a hard time being sold out or selling out your life for Jesus, let me tell you something.

Threats and warnings and exhortations, that can only go so far.

Encouragements and pep talks, that has a limit.

You, my friend, need to be captivated by the love of Jesus Christ.

You need to be captivated by his work on the cross of Calvary.

You need to see that old, rugged, bloody cross as the most beautiful sight in this whole world.

For on that cross, Jesus displayed how much he is devoted and committed to you.

Now, will you be devoted and committed to him?

May we leave it all to follow him.

Amen.

Let us pray.