The After Sermon /// What happens when Jesus asks for everything?

Welcome back to the after sermon where we get to sit down with our communicator from the weekend and ask them a couple questions about their sermon.

In this case, Tommy Cummins.

Hey, good to be here again, my friend.

That's amazing.

I love when you're here.

Thank you.

So good.

All right.

So, part two of the way.

You got to walk us through the cost of discipleship.

Um, give us just a brief kind of summary about like where you went, and then I've got a couple questions for you.

Yeah.

So Jesus encourages all of his disciples.

That would certainly include us, of like, hey, make sure you're you understand what you're signing yourself up for, essentially.

And so we looked at Matthew 10, which honestly are some of the hardest words of Jesus in all of scripture, I think.

And and yet I think that's exactly what he's encouraging his disciples to do.

There is just, hey, be warned, this is what is coming, this is what it's going to cost you.

And so maybe less of fixating on a hypothetical scenario.

Like as a as a kid, I just always thought about like, well, what if exactly if ninjas and bears showed up?

Would I still choose Jesus in that moment?

And yet, um I think every single one of us is faced with that kind of a decision every single day.

Am I willing to die to myself for the sake of the gospel for what Jesus wants to do in my life?

Because that's what it takes to experience that kind of surrender so that we can experience new life.

Yeah, totally.

It's such an important topic, and I think sometimes it can be glossed over because it's like, well, like if I choose to follow Jesus, then everything's gonna be great.

Yeah, right.

And it is, and also, but there's a cost to that.

For sure.

Some of the imagery that Jesus uses is he comes as a sword.

Why, why that imagery?

What what's the point behind that?

Yeah.

So, first of all, I think it's attention-grabbing language for sure.

Yeah, right.

Uh, especially in so many other places we have him talking about peace.

And so then for suddenly him to reverse that and say, I didn't come to bring peace, but a sword, it's like, what's he's gonna grab your attention there for sure.

Um, but I I talked about it and I I saw this in some different commentaries too, of when we draw this line in the sand, for especially again, they're going out to preach this gospel to the Jews at this point.

So these are God's people, they should already have a stake in his kingdom.

Sure.

Um, it's going to feel like, hey, we're again using the sword to dry the line in the sand, which are you gonna step over it and come be part of the kingdom, or do you have too much to lose?

And so you're gonna get wildly defensive, combative of like, no, hold on, this guy, they're his disciples, they're dangerous heretics at this point.

And it within the same family could potentially feel like um some people are wanting to follow after Jesus and others are wanting to kill them for it.

It's like this sword passing between these relationships, the kinds of relationships, especially in their day and age, yeah, where you see maybe a little bit more of that kind of divisiveness in families today where it was wildly uncommon then.

It's like your family unit was your unit.

Like you were, you were honoring to your parents, you you lived with them for a long time, even after you became an adult.

And it's like that core nucleus was so important.

And so for that to be the dividing line, and all of a sudden it feels like this sword passing through these relationships that you assumed could never be divided.

He's like, Hey, this this is gonna be painful.

There's gonna be some things at stake here that maybe you don't recognize are at stake right now.

Yeah, well, and you spent a fair amount of time um helping us understand the difference between like um division, like choosing division or being divided by choosing Jesus.

Yeah.

Um, why was that?

Why was that so important for you to help us kind of understand?

Well, I think everyone knows this.

We all feel it.

Our country is so divided right now along so many different lines.

It's just the culture that we live in that either you're in complete agreement with me or we cannot coexist, is what it feels like sometimes.

Yeah.

Like we have lost the ability to just like have a civil conversation about something.

It's like we either are existing in these echo chambers that are telling us exactly what we want to hear and reinforcing what we already believe, or we're just removing ourselves from those kinds of situations.

And so I wanted to make sure that we understood that Jesus is not negating everything else that he says.

When Paul says, like, hey, as far as it is up to you, live peaceably with everyone else.

Like it's not negating all of that just because of this one passage.

Instead, it's like, again, where we talked about prescriptive versus descriptive, not he's not prescribing violence, he's not prescribing this kind of combativeness.

Sure.

He's just saying, hey, there might be some moments in your life where you have to say, no, this is what I believe, this is who I am as a follower of Jesus.

And so, again, not being the one to draw the line, but if the line is drawn to say, well, that's where I'm gonna end up on it.

So again, we might experience that kind of division.

Sure.

That doesn't mean that that should be our posture, that we're going out trying to produce it and trying to like back people into corners of like, see, you can't argue with my logic, and so all of a sudden you're wrong.

And it's like, okay, no, that that's not.

I mean, again, again, when we are told to always be ready to give a defense for our faith, the very next verse is, and yet do it gently, like be humble.

And then how you're you're sharing that too.

So I think it's important for us to understand that a line is probably going to be drawn at different points for us in in our lives.

That doesn't mean that we should automatically go out with this like combative attitude about it.

Oh my gosh, I think that's so important and hard to do.

Yeah, for sure.

Most things are.

Um, you said that some disciples literally die, but every disciple must die to self-rule.

And you gave all these great examples about like, you know, what that can look like in our life, and it's almost like God knows exactly what we cling to most, and those are the areas in which self-rule is like that word is targeted at.

Um what happens when we try to use the word compartmentalize?

What happens when we try to keep God out of those?

And yet we were like, oh, yeah, yeah, like Jesus is like awesome, but then also it's like uh, but I don't want him to be, I don't want him to be Lord of that part of my life.

What happens?

Well, it's almost like if we know there are like trace amounts of poison in our food, and it's like uh it's not gonna kill me today.

So it's like I don't feel that bad about it, right?

It's a really good number where it's like, ah, we'll we'll deal with that later.

We'll I mean we would never do that with actual food, right?

Like if we knew there was trace amounts of poison, even we'd be like, okay, we gotta get this thing out of here.

Right.

You know, that's exactly how we live our lives so often is like, uh I mean, I know it's not good for me.

I know it's kind of killing me in some way, and yet I'm not feeling the immediate results of that.

Um I shared the story of C.S.

Lewis with the the dentist, right?

Of like, my I want I want relief from my toothache, but actually what my mom's gonna do is take me to the dentist so we can address the issue.

And he might start poking around at other things that aren't even hurting yet.

Yes.

And it's like, yeah, okay, but we have to address those things.

They will eventually become this thing in our lives that is not only killing us, but it's keeping us from experiencing the the full life that Jesus has for us.

And so I think sometimes it's hard because the same thing could be a blessing or it could be like a curse in disguise.

And I sure I think maybe sometimes the the definitive question is like, well, is my hand closed around that thing?

Is it something where I'm like, yeah, I'm super open-handed?

And so, Jesus, if you want to use this, if you want to take it away from me, like I'm just stewarding it anyway, it was yours to take.

Or if I'm like, no, this one I'm not letting go of this, yeah, well, then that's probably a pretty good indicator of of whether or not it's something that actually I think God does want to, and He might give it back to you once your heart's in the right posture, right?

Or again, maybe it's just things where it's like, no, we know it's just killing us, we just aren't feeling the effects of it yet.

So we don't feel the pressure, we don't feel the pain of it that we were actually want to surrender yet.

Yeah.

Well, none of this sounds fun.

Sadly, no.

But you you spoke about towards the end, you said that um if we can live with empty hands that give it gives God the opportunity to place new life in that empty spot.

Um, and I thought that was so beautiful.

And then uh I was hit with this thought of like, well, like what gives us the assurance that that exchange is you know promised?

How how do we know God's gonna make good on that promise?

Because sometimes it's not immediate.

Yeah.

What what can give us the assurance that we need um to live that way?

Yeah.

Well, I think first of all, it's it's what Jesus tells us.

So we you know that he makes good on his promises.

And so when he says if you cling to your life, you're gonna lose it, but if you surrender your life, you'll find it.

Um, I think maybe sometimes it's gonna have to redefine what we mean by life.

It might have to take a redefining of what we understand him to mean when he said he came to offer life and life to the fullest and abundant life.

It might be a different kind of abundance than what we typically think of in our culture.

So that may be part of it.

And sometimes it honestly is not an easy answer, but it's a we have to think in eternal perspectives to recognize, like, yeah, that might lead to pain for the rest of this side of eternity.

I just had someone come up to me after the service and she was in tears and she's like, Thank you for talking about this because my family like canceled me essentially because I'm a follower of Jesus.

And so she's like, I'm I'm kind of alone in life now, and that's really hard.

And and I just was like, Yeah, but I just need you to know God sees you, He's proud of you.

It's not gonna be this way forever.

You have a family in Christ that that is here for you, that is here with you.

And so I think we have to sometimes understand, like, yeah, that we're gonna probably carry that pain until we are resurrected into these new spiritual bodies.

And yet the reward that is waiting for us is worth it in the end, because the alternative is that like maybe we avoid some of that pain in the here and now, and yet it leads to significantly more pain, probably in the here and now as well, but certainly for eternity as well.

And so I think a lot of it just has to come down to well, what is our perspective?

It might be redefining in the way that Jesus did at the beginning of his Sermon on the Mount with the Beatitudes of I'm gonna redefine what blessing actually looks like because it's different than what you think about in your current context right now.

Gosh, that's so great.

Which I mean, it makes so much sense now that so much of what the disciples said post-Jesus is like they had this eternal perspective and they made it very clear that, like, yeah, it's gonna be really hard, guys.

Yeah, but we do have this eternal um mindset that changes the way we live.

And yet it's it's light and momentary.

Yes.

Is what we were told.

It doesn't feel light, it doesn't feel momentary, and yeah, again, when you think of like the again, the eternal perspective, it's just a blip at the very beginning.

It's it's the precursor to the great dance, is what C.S.

Lewis says.

So like like, no, actually, the real thing is gonna start soon.

And yeah, all of this that we're doing here is building into that, and so it matters.

Yeah, and yeah, again, it's light, it's momentary, it's not gonna last forever.

I love that.

Well, thank you.

Thank you so much.

I've this is such, I think, a challenging topic, but the way that you were able to kind of present it to us um through Jesus' words are so beautiful.

Thanks, brother.

Absolutely.

All right.

Well, you guys know the drill by now.

If you wanna hear the sermon that this entire conversation was based on, and I know you do, head to our YouTube channel or wherever you get your podcast.

Until next time, we'll see ya.