Following Christ Without Reservation | Furgus Tunnell | Luke 9:57-62 — Furgus Tunnell

Luke chapter nine, Luke chapter nine. Great to be at Canyon Ridge Baptist Church again, this evening, thankful that we can be a part of the service. I'm super excited about the work in Japan and also Romania. Maybe I ought to pray for all your missionaries. Make that a matter of prayer for sure. This evening, we're gonna be talking about following Christ and what that requires or what that means for you and for me of course in our missionaries that have presented tonight and talked tonight, they're a living example of what it means to be following Christ. And I'm thankful for that. And it is a sacrifice to serve the Lord as a missionary. You and I would recognize leaving family, leaving the comforts of our country and what we know to go serve the Lord somewhere else. And I'm excited about that. I'm thankful for them. So thankful for missionaries that we support and others that you support also.

But it's just not missionaries that follow Christ. You follow Christ. And the Bible lays some things out about what that looks like even in San Diego. Even in San Diego. I was looking at the thermostat over there and it said it was 81 degrees. What was it now say? 82, man, it's going up. That's awesome. I checked the temperature in Clovis before we came in and serviced. It's only 70 degrees in Clovis. Cami says she's gonna move to Clovis now, so we're thankful for that. Sorry, just threw her under the bus. Luke 9:57–62 says, ‘And it came to pass, that, as they went in the way, a certain man said unto him, Lord, I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest. And Jesus said unto him, Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head. And he said unto another, Follow me. But he said, Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father.

Jesus said unto him, Let the dead bury their dead: but go thou and preach the kingdom of God. And another also said, Lord, I will follow thee; but let me first go bid them farewell, which are at home at my house. And Jesus said unto him, No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.’ Would you God, Father, we ask that you'd bless the reading of your word, bless our time together in it for it's in Christ and then we pray, amen. The day in which we live today is a day and an age full of half-commitments, not being all in, not giving everything that we have, but just kind of, well, I'm just gonna try this out. I'm gonna do this. People want Jesus as their savior, but they kind of hesitate to follow him as their Lord. He has to be Lord. That means he's the boss. That means where he says we go. What he tells us to do, we simply obey. And we do what the Lord has called us to do.

When Jesus called the disciples to follow Him, He never really watered it down. He never said it's gonna be simple. He said it's gonna cost you some things. Just follow me and they followed. Christianity or our life with the Lord Jesus Christ isn't about just trying out Jesus. Have you ever tried things out? Every year we go to the men's retreat. Every year your pastor stops at a shoe store, at the outlet mall. Every year he puts shoes on, he walks up and down the aisle. Every year we walk out without buying shoes. - Yes. - We try them on, we try things on. And some would, several years ago we were looking at buying a car, took Gary out looking at a car. We went, we started it, we opened the hood, we walked around the car, we were listening, we, how the engine goes, we pull the oil dipstick out, we check the oil and Gary goes, "Dad, what are you doing?" I don't know. Kick the tires. Why are you doing that, Dad?

I don't know why I'm doing it. My dad did it when I grew up, so I'm just simply doing it also. Well, you have to listen, you have to try it out. The society in which we live today will say, well, you need to try out your girlfriends too, and find out if they live well, they shack up, they live together. That's not God's plan. We understand that. I'm not diminishing that, So that's the society in which we live. I don't know if I'm going to be all in. I don't know if I'm going to give everything to it, whether it's a pair of shoes or whether it's relationships, whether it's cars. But when we follow Jesus, it's about trusting Him. It's about just being all in. Jesus says, "Go," so we go. We just simply do what He has called us to do. And so we want to be all in. So we're going to look at a couple of things here, four things here this evening, sure.

I don't know what that means, but we're going to look at, First of all, verse 57, the Bible says that they went a certain way, a certain man said, "Lord, I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest." Say, "I want to follow you, I want to go where you want me to go, I want to do these type of things." And Jesus responded to him saying, "Hey, listen, this following me is going to require some sacrifice." So the first thing that we see here in the Scripture is following Christ requires immediate obedience. requires sacrifice upon our lives just following the Lord Jesus Christ. Now I was reading this one time and it said many want the crown without the cross or the blessing without the burden or the resurrection without the crucifixion but Jesus makes it very clear that following Him will cost you your comfort. You won't have it. It's a great thing but it's gonna cost you your comfort.

It's gonna cost the convenience of what you want in life. It may cause you security or relationships. So going all out begins when we stop asking, "Is this comfortable? "Is this a life of ease? "Is this what we want to do?" And really when we start asking, "Is this Christ honoring? "Is this relationship that I'm in? "Is it Christ honoring? "Is this activity? "Is this job that I have? "Is it Christ honoring or is it not?" So it requires, following Christ requires immediate obedience. In verse 59, the story continues on. Another man comes onto the scene and says, I wanna follow Jesus, but I wanna do it a little bit later. I have some things I need to take care of. And Jesus just kind of gives us an opportunity to realize that when we follow Jesus, or when we're following Christ, it requires an undivided loyalty, not to ourselves, but to him. Delayed obedience is disobedience. If God says go and you say, "Well, I'll do it on my timetable."

No, that's disobedient. When the missionaries were called to go to their field, when the pastors were called to serve the Lord Jesus Christ, when the staff members were called to serve in the church, when the usher was called to be an usher, it requires obedience. And sometimes we don't like obedience. And sometimes we like doing things ourselves. Jesus said in the text, "Let the dead bury their dead." In other words, the spiritual matters. They have to take priority over once. Over earthly attachments. You cannot go all out for God while holding back part of your heart. We have to be all in, we have to do it. Our society tells us that we need to look out for number one. Hey, whatever makes you feel good, whatever makes you happy, whatever you do that, we look out for ourselves.

That's what the society tells us, but Jesus shows us in scripture that when we look out for Him, when we look out for others and then yourself, I just think of the word joy, Jesus, others, yourselves, that's the proper order. We need to put Jesus first undivided loyalty. In verse 61 and verse 62, we see the third part about following Christ. It requires no turning back. I remember the song, you may remember it also. I've decided to follow Jesus. I know you want to hear me sing this morning, this evening. I'm not gonna say no turning back, no turning back. Following Jesus requires us to follow Him and not to turn our way back. The third person we see in the story, he wanted to follow, but he kept on looking back. I have other things I need to take care of. And Jesus uses the illustration of a plowman. And someone that is plowing their field. And if you look back while you're plowing, your plowing will be crooked.

When I was a young man, I'd work on the hay fields in Muskogee, Oklahoma. I'd go down in the summers and I worked for a preacher who was also a farmer. And I was raking hay. I was in charge of rock raking hay. I drove a Massey Ferguson tractor. I had a, I don't know, 10 foot, 12 foot rake on the back end of that, and that's not one of these things that you do, your leaves, I mean, it's a big old contraption here. And I was driving the tractor and my windrows, that's what you rake the hay up into windrows, they were like this all across the field. And brother Vanoy came up to me, brother Boland came up to me and he said, "Fur, you need to learn what you're doing." I go, "I'm cross-eyed, I can't help it, "I see two of everything." He said, "This is how you do it." He got me on the tractor. He says, "See that tree on that edge of the field?" I said, "Yes, sir." He goes, "Just look at that tree the whole time. "Keep your eyes on the goal."

And can I use it this way? Keep our eyes on Jesus. Keep our eyes on what He has asked us to do. If you're living your life constantly looking back what God has saved you from, your life's gonna be all over the place. Your windrows are gonna be crooked also. The story tells us about Lot. The Bible tells us about Lot and his wife. She looked back and she became a pillar of salt. Israel looked back in the wilderness and they longed for Egypt. They wanted to do it. They were complaining about that. And there's many of Christians in the 21st century that we keep looking back and we lose our effectiveness for the Lord Jesus Christ. And following Christ requires us to keep our eyes on Him and quit looking back or quit turning back. And you can't do that. You have to keep serving Jesus. So going all out or being all in for the Lord Jesus Christ does mean that we need to burn some bridges that are behind us.

Sometimes we would say this to our friends, don't burn bridges. Hey, let's keep those bridges. But there's some bridges that we need a torch. We don't need to go back to. Just say the last thing, what it means to following Christ. Well, let me just say it this way. following Christ is worth the cost. If you serve Jesus and you serve Him with your whole life, it's worth the cost. In Luke chapter 9 and verse 24, the Bible says, ‘For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: but whosoever will lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it.’ The Bible tells us in Philippians chapter 3 and verse 7, the Bible tells us, "But What things were gained to me, Paul says, those I counted for loss. Yay, doubtless, I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ, Jesus my Lord, for who I have suffered, the loss of all things and do count them, but dung, that I may win Christ.

And Paul is just simply reminding us or showing us, man, what I gave up for Christ was worth it. Now, what I thought here, what was going on? It wasn't what I really anticipated it to be. It is worth the cost. Jesus tells us there in Luke, the Bible tells us that whoever shall save his life shall lose it. But losing your life for the Lord Jesus Christ is really the only way to find your life. Jesus came to give us life and life more abundantly. I'll tell you, there's no better life to live than the life for Jesus. It's just not a Christian life. It's just not a life enveloped around a church. It's a life being lived for the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul, they're in Philippians counted. Everything is lost compared to knowing the Lord Jesus Christ. Jim Elliot said years ago, "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose." No one has ever gone all out for God and lived to regret it. - That's right.

- Every person who has lived for the Lord Jesus Christ on their deathbed or at their end of their life, they don't look back with a lot of regret, but I'm just telling you, there's a lot of people who die with a lot of regret because they're not living for the Lord Jesus Christ because they have lived for themselves. So as we look at this passage, as we kept it kind of short here this evening, I'm just trying to tell us tonight that Jesus is still calling people today. God may be calling you to serve Him in a life of ministry. God may be calling you to serve as an usher or work in the nursery or to show up for proclaim or to show up on outreach. God may be calling you to witness to your coworkers. God may be calling you to bake cookies for your neighbors or whatever it might be to enter into gospel relationships. God may be calling you to go to Romania. God may be calling you to go to Japan.

God may be calling some of you to go to Clovis, New Mexico. But God's still calling today. Are we listening to Him today? He's not calling us to a casual Christianity. He's not calling us to comfortable living. He's calling us to a life of service. There's probably the majority of us here tonight. We know Jesus as our personal Savior. could be possibly some that wouldn't know Him. But for you that are saved or for you that know Jesus Christ is your personal Savior, my question to you isn't do you know Christ. My question is are you following Him without reservation? What's hindering you from being all in? What's hindering you from total surrender? If you're here this evening, if you don't "know Christ as your personal Savior. He offers salvation to you. You need to put your faith and your trust in Him. He'll save you from your sins. He'll give you a home in heaven someday. We're thankful for what God gives to us.

But when you follow Him, don't keep looking back. Keep looking forward to what the Lord has for us. Some here tonight may need to come to a place in their life and say, "You know why? I need to to quit looking back. I need to come to grips with what God is calling me to do. God's calling me to serve Him. God's calling me to do that. Someone here today just needs to quit. They just need to stop delaying and just do what God's calling you to do. Well, I just don't know. I need to meet with the preacher and I need to meet with Brother Burnie. I need to find out what God-- you know what God's calling you to do. just do what God's calling you to do. Be obedient to Him. There's another group of people here tonight that just needs to quit dividing their loyalty. It gets kinda sticky there. 'Cause you have family, you have jobs, you have careers. I'm telling you, serving Jesus is worth it. You'll never regret serving Jesus.

He is worthy of everything that we will give Him in our lives.