[Morning Sermon] "What It Takes to Follow Jesus" Luke9:51-62

We'll invite you to open your Bibles now if you have them to Luke chapter 9 verses 51 through 62.

Luke 9:51–62

We're looking at Luke 9, 51 through 62.

So I used to sell real estate way back when in Nashville.

And I um I still chuckle when I think about all of the ridiculous things that real estate agents would say to try and make a sale.

You've heard them, you've read them.

Anytime you've looked at a listing on Zillow, like when an agent tells you that a house is cozy, when really they mean you can brush your teeth, fry an egg, answer the door, change your laundry all in the same room.

That's what a cozy house is.

Or when a house is a rustic retreat, and really that means that half of the siding is falling off and there's a family of possums living in the basement.

It's all bovine schatology.

Now, some of y'all are in sales, and you can probably fill this out better than me, but I have found that if you want to sell something, there are basically two approaches you can take.

You can tell people what they want to hear, or you can tell them the truth.

It's true for houses, it's true for cars, it's true for pots and pans, whatever.

It's also true for church.

Now I'm not trying to sell you anything per se, but I am trying to persuade you to believe the gospel and to become one of Jesus' disciples.

Or if you're if you're already a disciple, I'm trying to persuade you to stay on the path.

And there are two approaches that I could take to doing that.

I could tell you what you want to hear.

I could tell you that the life of Christian discipleship is all rainbows and lollipops, that if you just name it and claim it, God will make you healthy, wealthy, and wise.

In other words, I could lie to you.

And I can do it to build my church.

My church, right?

Happens all the time.

Or I could tell you the truth.

I could tell you that following Jesus means denying yourself and taking up your cross.

That sometimes coming to life in Christ feels like death.

That at times you will be rejected, you will be uncomfortable, people will challenge your priorities, and you will have to fight just to keep your eyes fixed on Jesus.

I could tell you the truth.

Yeah, there are times.

There are plenty of blessings, plenty of benefits to be enjoyed in the here and now.

There's life, there's light, there's joy, there's hope, there's peace, there's growth and grace.

All of those things are true.

All of those are good gifts.

I don't want to undersell the gospel.

That'd be a bad thing for a preacher to do.

But Jesus was clear.

Jesus was clear that the fullness of those blessings are not for here and now.

They actually lie on the other side of our present worldly sufferings.

And in our passage today that we're going to look at, Jesus may not tell us what we want to hear in terms of the light of the life of discipleship, but he tells us the truth so that we can be prepared to follow him wherever he leads us.

So with that said, I'll invite you to rise as I read today's sermon passage.

Again, this is Luke 9, 51 through 62.

When the days drew near for Jesus to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem.

And 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.

And 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, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.

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.

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

The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.

Father, thank you for your word.

Send your Holy Spirit now, we ask you to help us rightly understand and apply your word so that we could follow Jesus as his disciples in the way he's called us to do.

We pray in Jesus' name.

Amen.

You may be seated.

So today we come to a key pivot point in Luke's gospel.

Verse 51, it opens with the words, When the days drew near.

A more literal translation here would be, when the days were fulfilled.

That's the kind of language that Luke uses.

It's the language he's used ever since the first line of this gospel, where he's described the gospel as the fulfillment of all God's promises to and through Israel in the person of Jesus Christ.

And this reminds us here, him saying, when the days were fulfilled, that there is a divine plan in operation.

Jesus' turn to Jerusalem is a deliberate turn.

The time has come for him to approach the final phase of his mission, which Luke describes as the time for him to be taken up.

The word here is analuxis.

And it can sometimes refer to a person's death, but it can also refer to Jesus' resurrection and his ascension, which is exactly how it's used in Acts 1 and 1 Timothy 3.

And the same word is also used in the Greek translation of 2 Kings 2, 9 through 11, which tells of when Elijah was whisked up into heaven.

Now that's interesting, isn't it?

Because Elijah is one of the prophets who was with Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration 20 verses ago.

And what was Jesus talking to Elijah about on that mountain?

He was talking about his departure, his exodus in Greek, which was to be accomplished in Jerusalem.

And so Jesus is heading toward Jerusalem so that he can be taken up like Elijah.

Only he's got to die and be raised first, just like he's been predicting ever since Luke 9, 22.

Now, one more thing to say about verse 51 before we dive into the story.

Luke says that Jesus set his face to go to Jerusalem.

Jesus' face actually shows up a number of times in this passage.

And the idea is that he is fixed on his destination.

He is heads up, looking to the finish line, and there is nothing that is going to knock him off course.

That's him setting his face toward Jerusalem.

But there's actually more to it than just a kind of vivid figure of speech and metaphor.

Remember, Jesus is the fulfillment of all God's promises to Israel.

So Luke is steeped in the Old Testament, especially Isaiah, especially the servant songs of Isaiah.

And here are the words that Isaiah 50, verses 5 through 8, put on the lips of the prophesied servant.

Isaiah 50:5–8

The Lord God has opened my ear, and I was not rebellious.

I turned not backward.

I gave my back to those who strike, and my cheeks to those who pull out the beard.

I hid not my face from disgrace and spitting.

But the Lord God helps me.

Therefore I have not been disgraced.

Therefore I have set my face like a flint, and I know that I will not be put to shame.

He who vindicates me is near, who will contend with me?

Let us stand up together.

Who is my adversary?

Let him come near to me.

So do you see?

Jesus is the promised servant who sets his face like a flint toward Jerusalem, knowing, knowing full well that even though he will suffer, he will not be put to shame.

The Father who vouched for him at his baptism and on the mount of transfiguration will not fail to vindicate him in the end.

Or if we want to put it in the mode of Hebrews 12, for the joy that is set before him, Jesus will endure the cross and despise the shame because he knows that he will raised, be raised up after and seated at the right hand of God the Father.

See, this is where Jesus' head is at as he fixes his sight on Jerusalem.

And it's with that same sense of conviction, that same faithful resolve that he wants his disciples to take up their cross and follow him because they're gonna need it.

They're going to need that conviction, they're gonna need that resolve if they're gonna stay on the hard road with Jesus all to the end.

As we walk along with them today, we're gonna see what kind of rejection they can expect as they walk that road and what discipleship looks like in the face of it.

More specifically, we're gonna have to get comfortable with discomfort, we're gonna have to put Jesus before everything, and we're going to have to keep our eyes on the prize.

So we'll start with the rejection first.

In verse 52, it says Jesus sent his messengers before him, or ahead of him.

More literally, the Greek says he sent messengers before his face.

There's Jesus' face again.

And he sent them into a Samaritan village in order to make preparations for him and for all the crowds that were still with him.

And that was a really surprising thing for a Jew to do.

You wouldn't expect a Jew to bring his crowds of Jews into Samaria.

Samaria was founded as the capital of the northern kingdom by King Omri.

You can read about that in 1 Kings 16.

And if you know anything about the northern kingdom, it was a rival offshoot.

It was a rebellious kingdom that thought they could set up their own version of Israel in the north, but in contradiction of God's command.

He didn't tell them to do that.

It was a rebellion.

They even had their own holy mountain, Mount Gerizim, as a rival mountain to Mount Zion and Jerusalem.

They only recognized the five books of Moses as scripture.

They didn't have time for the prophets and the writings and all these other things.

And on top of that, they were a mixed race because of how conquerings and exiles and things worked.

They were only half Jew, half Gentile.

And so the Jews looked down on the Samaritans as mudbloods with compromised faith.

The same way Vandy fans look down on people who chair for Alabama.

I was waiting for a roll tide there.

The Jews so despised the Samaritans that they would go 20 or 30 miles out of their way just to avoid that region.

It may not seem like a lot, but that's a whole day or two of walking.

So the Jews no love for the Samaritans.

But make no mistake, the Samaritans no love for the Jews.

They hated the Jews every bit as much.

And we see that come out here in this passage.

In verse 53, it says that the people did not receive Jesus.

Why not?

Because his face was set toward Jerusalem.

So the Samaritans really didn't like Jesus' Jewish face.

Really, they didn't like where his Jewish face was going.

The Samaritans had no love for Jesus, no love for his holy city, no love for the temple, none of it.

They didn't care that Jesus was the king.

They wouldn't listen to his messengers, who surely told them that the king was there to proclaim a kingdom that wasn't just for pureblood Jews, but for everyone who calls in the name of the Lord.

They didn't care.

It didn't matter who he was, it didn't matter why he was there, they just weren't interested.

Now, you can imagine how the crowds, or zoom in a little bit, you can imagine how Jesus' disciples felt about that.

Especially the two of those disciples who had just been with him on the mountain to see his glory with their own eyes.

You can imagine they're angry, they're annoyed, they're indignant.

They probably felt the same way you and I feel when we try to share the gospel with people who don't want to hear it.

A friend was telling me the other day about dealing with an angry customer.

And when he tried to leave that angry customer with a blessing, she cussed him out.

Some people just don't want to hear a word about Jesus at all.

And out of their hatred for him, they'll throw hate our ways.

Well.

Now here, James and John are heated.

So heated that they ask Jesus, Lord, do you want us to tell fire to come down from heaven and consume them?

That'd be a pretty cool thing to be able to do, right?

Now you might be tempted to beat up on James and John here.

Preachers do it all the time because this seems like just one more story about the disciples' stupidity.

There might be some truth to that, but do you remember who James and John saw with Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration?

Do you remember?

Elijah.

And what did Elijah do in 2 Kings 1 when the wicked king Ahaziah sent a unit of 50 soldiers to capture him?

He called down fire from heaven to consume them.

And when Ahaziah sent another unit of 50 soldiers to capture him, he called down fire from heaven again.

And then the third unit, the captain humbled himself before the Lord.

And God used that in order to vindicate and deliver Elijah and curse Ahaziah.

Well, Jesus is the greater Elijah, is he not?

James and John aren't just popping off in a reckless fit of anger.

They're actually asking Jesus for permission to do what Elijah did in the presence of God's enemy because they want to see Jesus vindicated.

And so why does Jesus rebuke them?

Because Jesus does rebuke them.

They get something wrong here.

We're not defending all of their actions.

Maybe because they did it in the wrong spirit, but Luke doesn't say so.

Instead, he lets us sit in the tension that has been rolling throughout this whole chapter.

The problem isn't their temper, the problem is that they still don't know what time it is.

See, that's the same problem that John the Baptist had as he was sitting in prison.

He had stood by the Jordan and he had told all these people that the deliverer had come and he was fixing to lay the axe to the root of the tree, right?

He thought Jesus was going to come and wreck Shap, and then he finds himself sitting in a prison.

And so he sends his messengers to Jesus to ask him, hey, are you the one to come or should we be looking for another?

I am confused here.

See, John struggled, just like the disciples struggled, to understand that Jesus was on a different schedule than him.

The time would come for fiery judgment.

There would come a day when Jesus and his disciples would be vindicated, but that day was not yet.

It's not time yet for the Samaritans to get what they deserve.

And in fact, there will come a day when they get what they don't deserve.

They'll get a second chance to hear and respond to the gospel, which they'll do in Acts.

And on that day, the Spirit will come down like fire from heaven, not to judge the mud bloods, but to save them.

And so what does this scene tell us?

It tells us how we should respond whenever we face rejection for having taken up the cross.

When people spit hate at us, when people shake their fist at heaven, we might get angry.

And we might ask God to put a stop to it.

We might even get discouraged when God doesn't answer that prayer as though maybe you were powerless to stop it, to keep the talking heads from dissing Jesus.

If we find ourselves in that place, we need to remember God could rain down fire in an instant.

But now is not the time for fire.

Now is not the time for vindication.

Now is the time for long suffering as we wait for God to call people to himself, especially people that we think are beyond his reach.

We just don't know.

We just don't know whether the guy who cusses out today will pick up a phone and call us three months from now to apologize and ask us to tell him more about Jesus.

I I remember years, it was like 15 years ago, we were with our church doing a Habitat for Humanity project.

And there was this there was this guy there, his name was Jamie, he was he was a hippie from Chicago who wanted nothing to do with us churchy people.

The gospel was just weird, it was a bunch of nonsense.

And I we connected on Facebook, we maybe like interact see each other once in a while, but we didn't interact much for years until I get a phone call from him and his fiance.

They want to buy a house.

And I'm sitting with them at a table, and they're just telling me all about God's will for their lives and how Jesus wants them to move forward together.

And I prayed for them at the end of the meeting.

God does it all the time.

When the Samaritan we think should catch a lightning bolt from heaven gets grace instead.

So it is a time of God's patience.

And Jesus wants us to be patient even as he is patient.

He wants us to suffer rejection like he suffered rejection, with our faces fixed on our destination and our hearts strengthened by his promise to make everything right.

If not now, then in the future, when he comes again.

That's a hard path.

That's a really hard path to walk.

And Jesus is not interested in sugarcoating it.

Jesus is not a salesman here to tell us what we need to hear in order to follow him.

Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life.

And he gives it to us straight, which is why in verses 57 through 62, Jesus engages in real talk with a number of would-be disciples who he meets along the way.

And his first message to them, his first message to us is this get comfortable with discomfort.

That's essentially what he tells the first person who approaches him in verse 57 with the words, I will follow you wherever you go.

Now it's hard to find fault with that statement.

That statement's not obviously wrong, and this person hasn't obviously done something that's out of kilter.

But Jesus responds with what sounds like a word of warning.

You want to follow me?

Okay, you should know.

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

Now, on one level, the meaning of Jesus' words is pretty clear, pretty obvious to us.

The path he's walking, it doesn't lead from rags to riches.

He's got nothing.

And his disciples shouldn't expect to come off any better than him.

But there's actually a little more to it than that.

In Luke 13, a couple chapters on from now, Jesus will be near Jerusalem.

And the Pharisees will come to tell him that Herod wants him dead.

And do you know what Jesus calls Herod in Luke 13?

Calls him a fox.

And he most likely got that from 1 Enoch 89, which is an intertest, it's a section in an intertestamental book that portrays the enemy nations attacking and devouring the sheep of the house of Israel, including foxes and bears.

So when Jesus says that the birds have their nests and the foxes have their holes, he's not just drawing on nature in order to make a point about poverty.

He's actually hinting at, alluding to, Roman oppression.

He's talking about having nothing in a land where God's people are supposed to have everything.

And so this isn't just about being homeless.

As bad as that might be, it's actually about getting kicked out of the house that God gave you and forced to live in the back.

That's the kind of abuse.

That's the kind of rejection.

That's the kind of lack that Jesus is saying we can expect to experience as we take up our cross and follow him.

Now, Scripture tells us that if we are in Christ, we are the heirs of a heavenly inheritance.

We are the sons and daughters of our heavenly Father.

We have been blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, all of these things in the present tense.

And yet we have not yet entered into the fullness of that inheritance.

We live in the eschatological tension of having everything and having nothing at the same time.

And so that really ought to chasten us in terms of what we expect from God on this side of heaven.

But even as it chastens us, it should encourage us.

You might be called to sacrifice for Jesus.

You might not be able to take a certain job.

You might have to give up a job that you have now.

You might lose friends, you might lose family, you might be forced to long a or to walk a long, lonely road for Jesus.

That's the gritty reality of discipleship.

But the promise is that God will give you, God will give us what we need to walk that road.

We can all do all things through Christ who gives us strength.

Strength to deny ourselves, strength to take up that cross, strength to follow him all the way to the sweet end.

Until then, Jesus tells us, get comfortable with discomfort.

And to the next would-be disciple, he says, put me before everything.

The first guy had come to Jesus.

The next one, by contrast, is called out by Jesus.

And that reminds us that the entryway to discipleship looks different for different people.

Some of us go on a spiritual journey and we find Jesus at the end of it.

Others of us are just going about our lives and Jesus shows up completely unexpected.

And in this case, when Jesus shows up in this man's life, he isn't ready to go.

Verse 59, he asks Jesus to let him go and bury his father.

And then, then he'll be ready.

Then he'll come follow Jesus to Jerusalem.

Now it's hard to know exactly what's going on with this man and his father.

If the father's already dead, then surely he wouldn't, he would have been buried by now.

Jews didn't wait.

They buried the dead almost immediately.

But they did have a practice of unburying the dead a year later, taking their bones, putting them in an ossuary, which is a fancy word for a bone box, and then burying them in a family tomb.

So, maybe that's what he was talking about.

Or maybe his father was still alive, and he was nearing death, and he wanted to be there by his side during his last days, and when he died, and then he'd bury him, and after all that was settled, after the estate was taken care of, all the bills were paid, and the will was executed, all that sort of thing, then eventually he would get to following Jesus to Jerusalem.

Maybe we don't know.

And it's okay that we don't know because what matters is Jesus' challenge to this otherwise faithful son's priorities in verse 60.

Leave the dead to bury their own dead, but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.

Whatever he means, whatever he has to do, Jesus is highlighting the life or death nature of the gospel, the urgency of the call to come and follow him.

Listen, your father, he's already dead, or at least as good as dead.

You can stay here with the dead people doing dead people things, or you can follow me to life.

You can spend your time putting people into the grave, or you can come with me and show people how to get out of it.

You choose.

Choice is up to you.

But it's now or never.

Now that might sound a little harsh.

That might seem a little insensitive.

This guy's just trying to honor his father.

There's a commandment about that.

Does Jesus really want him to break God's law?

No, of course not.

We're not talking about law here, we're talking about custom.

And because Jesus sees the heart, he knows that the issue isn't really about sentiment or tradition.

It's about putting someone or something before Jesus.

That's the issue.

The issue is one of priorities.

See, life is filled with either or decisions, and most of the time, the choice we face isn't between something that's obviously good and something that's obviously bad.

It's between two apparently good things.

And what Jesus is saying is that when it comes down to him or something else, he is always the best thing.

The life of discipleship is learning to say yes to Jesus again and again and again, even if it means you have to say no to good things, even if it means you have to disappoint people who might not understand why you would choose Jesus over them.

I still remember the looks of confusion and the exasperated size of certain people in my life when I told them I was going to go to seminary instead of building a big old real estate business or doing something else big and exciting with my life.

And I've walked with other people as they've had to break the news to loved ones that, hey, we were going in this direction, and then Jesus showed up, and I'm going in this direction.

None of that is easy.

Making those choices, putting Jesus first, involves all sorts of messiness, all sorts of heartache, all sorts of thinking things through.

It's not easy.

But we have to remember what Jesus said elsewhere in Mark 10.

Truly I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother, or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands with persecutions, and in the age to come, eternal life.

In the age to come, eternal life.

Get comfortable with discomfort.

Put Jesus before everything.

Now we come to Jesus' third word for his disciples.

Keep your eyes on the prize.

In verse 61, we see another seemingly reasonable request from a would-be disciple.

I will follow you, Lord, but let me first say farewell to those at my home.

At first blush, this seems like a repeat of what we saw.

This man's got people at home.

He wants to say goodbye before he leaves to follow Jesus.

But Jesus again knows his heart.

And the problem isn't so much priorities, the problem is attachment.

That's what we hear from Jesus in his reply in verse 62.

No one puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.

Now the translation makes it sound like Jesus is talking about the occasional backward glance.

But really the kind of thing that Jesus is referring to here is a continual looking back and pining for what is behind.

If you've ever worked a plow, then you know how disastrous that can be.

It's like driving a car while only looking in the rearview mirror.

Eventually you're going to crash into something.

It's not going to work.

You're not going to do what you need to do, you're not going to get where you need to go, and you're probably going to kill somebody in the process.

If you try, if I try to follow Jesus with one eye on him and another eye on the life that I've left behind, he says, we're not fit for the kingdom of God.

Why would he say that?

Because divided sight is evidence of a divided heart.

You're either with me or you're against me, Jesus says.

You're either going where I'm going or you're going nowhere at all.

And the kind of road I'm on takes singular devotion, singular focus, singular purpose.

I've set my face on Jerusalem, Jesus is saying, now pick up your cross and set your face on me.

Don't look at them, look at me.

I will get you where you need to go.

Just trust me.

That's what Jesus is saying.

Get comfortable with discomfort.

Put Jesus before everything.

Keep your eyes on the prize.

That is my discipleship pitch this morning.

Are you sold?

And then one of you is.

It's fine.

The sanctuary's been getting too full anyway, so we call it a spacemaking sermon.

Here's the real talk.

The road from here to heaven is paved with suffering.

Be ye glad.

Let's pray.

There are blessings to enjoy, there are gifts to receive, no doubt, but we cannot evade the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

There is no avoiding it.

This world is not yet what it was meant to be.

So I can't promise you heaven on earth.

That would make me a liar.

But what I can promise you is what God has promised you in his word.

That the one who asked us to take up our cross went before us by first taking up his.

The Son of God put on our weak and sinful flesh so that he can suffer in our place and for our sins.

And just as he was raised to life on the third day, he has promised us eternal life with him.

Jesus has been seated at the right hand of God the Father, and he promises to prepare a place for us right there with him.

To be a disciple is to be like our master.

To follow Jesus is to become like Jesus, to live like him, to die like him, to rise like him, to ascend to him.

And when he returns, when he comes again in the clouds with glory, he will come with fire.

And he will come with rain.

He will come to vindicate and to restore.

He will put everything wrong to rights.

He will make all the sad things come untrue.

He will trade our sufferings for glory.

That's what we have to look forward to at the end of the road that is discipleship.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfailing, kept in heaven for you, who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

In this you rejoice, though for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold, though it perishes by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

Though you have not seen him, you love him.

Though you do not now see him, you believe in him, and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, it is a paradoxical thing that you call us to come and die.

It's so hard for us to grasp it.

We like to think that we are the author of our own lives.

That we know where to go, what to do, what we're owed.

And we don't.

And we thank you, Father, that even in spite of our rebellion, even in spite of our turning from you again and again and running in the opposite direction, you sent Jesus to chase us down, to conquer us by his love and to send his Holy Spirit to give us new hearts to desire to follow him.

Help us to follow.

And Lord, if there are any here who do not yet follow, Lord, present Jesus to them in all his goodness, in all his glory, is the only one worth following.

And would you, by the power of your spirit, do a work that only you can do?

And will we all lock arms together?

Will we all encourage one another?

Point one another to Jesus as we seek to follow him together.

We pray in his mighty name.

Amen.

I'm going to invite up now our ruling elders to prepare the Lord's table for us.

Richard, can you?

Thank you.

Three ruling elders and a teaching elder.

It's like the setup to a joke.

It is a significant thing that God bookends the drama of redemption with two meals.

Jesus on the night when he was betrayed, he sat down at a meal with his disciples.

And we look forward to a day when we will sit down with him again, all of us.

All who followed him to the bitter end, but to the sweet end by his grace.

And so we get this meal in the middle every Sunday morning to help us remember what it is that Jesus has done for us.

To remind us what got us on the path to glory to begin with.

But even as it shifts our focus backward, it shifts our focus forward as well.

Because we know we have not yet arrived at our destination.

The road's going to get hard between here and there.

If it's not hard for you right now, it will be hard for you at some point.

That's just what life looks like in a fallen world.

But Jesus gives us this meal every single week to strengthen us so that when we get to the obstacle, we have what we need to keep moving forward.

So if your faith is in Jesus, if you have been baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, if you have obeyed your Lord in joining yourself to a body of believers where the gospel is preached, where the Bible is taught, where you can know and be known, then come to Jesus' table.

He's going to give you what you need for the week ahead so that you can keep moving forward as his disciple.

But if you're not yet on that journey, if you have not yet followed Jesus, or if the things I'm saying to you are kind of, eh, I don't know, you're at exactly where you should be.

And we hope you'll be here next week and the week after that too.

And if you want to talk about this, if you want to know more about this, please don't hesitate to come see me or one of these guys.

But right now I'm going to pray.

I'm going to ask the Lord to bless this meal, to use it to nourish us, to strengthen us.

After I pray, we'll come forward, we'll receive the elements.

After everybody's been served, we'll partake together.

Father, thank you for this meal and the great gift it is to us and all that it does to strengthen us for the hard road ahead.

Lord, it is a privilege to be your disciple.

It is a privilege to sit down at the table with you.

And we thank you for the fact that you invite us to do that today, even as we look forward to the final day when we will get to sit down with you forever.

We pray in Jesus' name.

Amen.