The Jesus House

I was busy last week, so here we come to the next installment a little late … but seeing as how there were like four parts to the last one, probably good to take a break.

One of the aspects of discipleship as exemplified by Jesus was that He never accepted any excuse for disobedience or not following Him.

Now, some of these scriptures we can take with a certain grain of salt, because there were people who were ready to leave everything and follow Jesus, and Jesus told them to stay in their town (notably the demoniac, who obeyed).  In other words, not necessarily a formula of what exactly to do, but the principle of immediate obedience and willingness to do whatever He asks WITHOUT EXCUSE is consistent.

Jesus was the most compassionate man ever to walk this earth, and yet we routinely see Him acting in such a way that we would today interpret as completely insensitive.

The apostles and other writers of the gospels felt it was necessary to include testimony of people who came to Jesus with excuses and then to show how Jesus dealt with those excuses.

The common story repeated in the gospels about Jesus I’ll take from Luke 9:  Then He said to another, “Follow Me.”  But he said, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.”  Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and preach the kingdom of God.”

And another said, “Lord, I will follow You, but let me first go and bid them farewell who are at my house.”

But Jesus said to him, “No one, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.”

First of all, if someone came to me, whose father had just died, and they needed some time to grieve and bury him, I would guess I would say, “Sure, absolutely, take all the time in the world.”

But not Jesus.  Jesus said, “Someone else will take care of that stuff, people who are dead already.  You focus on preaching the kingdom of God.”

What a jerk!  No allowance for grief or how the guy feels or the “necessities” of life.  And those people who actually take care of those details, He calls them dead.  We can assume all we want as to why Jesus felt the need to be so harsh, but they are assumptions at best.

We are given Jesus’ motivation in clear enough language.  We just don’t like it.

Jesus clearly was more interested in the preaching of the kingdom, the complete and immediate answering of that call, than grief or the seemingly important details of life.

Next we have someone whose “heart” is to follow God, but needs to do something first.

Again we get Jesus the jerk.  “You can’t look back and follow Me.  You’re not fit for the kingdom if you do that.”

Someone really needed to sit Jesus down and explain to Him that you can’t earn salvation or it’s not about works and that as long as they want to “in their heart”, that’s good enough.  Maybe His problem was He only read that mean Old Testament with all those rules and the mean God we don’t really believe in anymore.

Or maybe, just maybe, if Jesus continually questioned whether people were “worthy” or “fit” for the kingdom, and His disciples felt the need to repeat those teachings in the gospels, we should be careful not to explain away the words of Jesus, no matter how harsh the language, no matter how uncomfortable to our modern theology it can get.

Maybe, just maybe, Jesus knew what salvation was really about more than we do.

All this guy was going to do was go back home and say goodbye to some people he loved before he followed Jesus.

Jesus essentially says, “Forget following Me AFTER.  Follow Me NOW.  Or you won’t follow Me at all.”

The gospels make the point that certain disciples immediately followed Jesus.  Yes, some of them were first disciples of John the Baptist or had probably heard Jesus’ teaching before being called, but the principle is important.  Once the call was clearly made, the response was immediate.  They put down their nets, left everything, and followed.

How does this balance out with “counting the cost”?  All I can say is that there is a place where you count the cost, and that is good, but there is also an expectation by God that His revelation is immediately responded to.  You cannot excuse disobedience with, “I was counting the cost.”  You still disobeyed a clear call.  God doesn’t make those calls lightly.

Also, you can count the cost while following, and likely will.  Who really knows all that they are getting themselves into when they make any decision?  There’s only so much “counting the cost” you can do before you just have to make a decision.  Whether a marriage or job or something else, you go through several moments along the way where you have to count the cost.

Getting back to the point, though, once we hear the Lord, there is no excuse for disobedience or not following completely.  None.  The revelation of God is the most precious thing in existence.  Treat it as such.

I hear lots of excuses for why people can’t really follow Jesus.  Everything to career choices to “my personality” to lifestyle decisions either cause people to reject God completely … or come up with some new doctrine to justify why they can tell God to chill while doing what they want or feel they need to be happy.  Of course the latter is just rejecting God, as well.

I believe that the early Church dealt with all this, too, hence why they included very clear stories and testimony and teaching from Jesus about the cost of discipleship and the complete absence of excuse, then wrote them down.

So we could explain them away two thousand years later?  I don’t believe so.

Peace.

As we finish the discussion of “forsaking it all,” I want to quickly look at the New Testament testimonies of how this was lived out. 

It is clear that the disciples still owned stuff.  Some had jobs.  Peter had a home and a wife.

Although many of the Jerusalem church left everything (traveling from around the empire for Pentecost and staying there to be with the newborn church), others obviously kept the houses they lived in and shared with others.  So while some didn’t technically “sell all they had”, they didn’t regard any possession as singularly their own (by choice and not obligation).  In some ways, sharing your stuff is more difficult than just giving it away.

Zaccheas repents by giving half of his goods to the poor and restored fourfold what he stole as a tax collector.  Not sure how that added up as a total percentage of his stuff, but sounds like a lot.

Paul testifies to being in need and in abundance at different times, and although he does not specify when those seasons were, I do find it interesting Paul used his great need and distresses as evidnece of his apostleship.

Jesus told His disciples to take nothing with them when He sent them to spread the Kingdom two by two.  They would have what they needed when they arrived.

Jesus Himself had “no place to lay His head” but was also the guest at feasts and had what He needed when He needed it (like at the Passover).  Regarding His earthly family, while Jesus distanced Himself from them in one sense, He still felt responsible for His mother while still on the cross.

Cornelius, the first Gentile to receive the Holy Spirit, was seen as righteous because of his great generosity to the poor and the synagogue. 

All these are just examples to show that the idea of “forsaking it all” isn’t a cookie-cutter idea – God never really works that way – but that there is an expectation your life will exhibit the type of change that is revolutionary and will include a real expression of how your life is focused on a whole other Kingdom.

For those that hear “there’s no formula” as justification for why you can’t get rid of your stuff or how you get to accumulate more, I can only say that’s not the point and using “grace for license to sin” and disobey a direct command of ANY who would follow Him.

You do not own stuff.  Stuff owns you.  It takse resources like your time and entergy to maintain your stuff.  The more stuff you have, the more you must do to protect and keep it.  You are bound to what you own.

As a personal testimony, my wife and I were led by God to serve in an international school overseas.  We were limited in what we could bring with us, so we got rid of a lot of stuff.  Sold it or gave most of it away, and stored more than we should have in my parent’s basement.

We lived in Korea with less money and stuff, but we never felt more free to just live for God.  And we actually gave more money away than we had before when our incomes were greater.

And once free, I determined to not go back.  I came back to America, but I determined to not return to “the  cares of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth” which choked out life, killing the plant, in Jesus’ parable of the soils.

But it is difficult to stay in that place.  People are fine with you being a missionary and living like that in another country, for the most part, and you might even emotionally inspire some, but to live the same way right under their noses challenges their ideas of success and normal how they’ve lived their life, making it much more personal and practical.  It makes many people really uncomfortable.

Which is not the reason to do it and not my personal goal, but I can implore you – give up your stuff.  Be free to follow God and bear fruit.  You’ll have more joy and see more of the true Kingdom than ever before.

Peace.

“Sell all you have and give it to the poor.”

So why the poor?  Now that we’ve established the requirement of forsaking it all, why is this connected with giving to the poor?

First, just as Christ did not just simply give His life away, but gave His life so that others in spiritual need could share in His spiritual riches, the goal is not just to lose but to give with recognition of others in need.

Staying with this symbolism, just as we were not able to earn such compassion, the poor don’t have to prove themselves worthy of ours.

Second, it is a recognition of a future state.  As we see in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus and the beatitudes as listed in Luke 6, Jesus taught that those with less now will have more later.  And I’m pretty sure He would know.  Also, the poor church of Smyrna in Revelation was told they had great riches and recieved no rebuke from Jesus (Philiadelphia was the other church of the seven to recieve no rebuke).

The sheep and the goats were divided based upon their actual treatment of the poor and others who could not give back (the dude in prison cannot visit you back), and a reward awaited them in heaven because Jesus so identified with those in need.

While there is a statement in the Old Testament about poverty being a curse, Jesus and the other writers of the New Testament seem to feel differently.  Jesus called the poor blessed with heavenly riches later, and James says they are rich in faith now.

So why wouldn’t you want to be poor?

This isn’t a denial of the hardship or suffering of poverty.  Quite the opposite.  It is a recognition that with faith, hardship produces an eternal weight of glory.

However, this also does not excuse the poor from giving.  The poor widow gave all she had and more than the wealthy man.  We see a poor church blessed by Paul because they gave out of their need.

In contrast, the rich are constantly given woes and dire warnings throughout the whole New Testament, like being fattened up for the slaughter.

Still want God to make you rich?

The New Testament never promises an earthly Utopia where we rid the world of poverty and oppression.  These acts are done in faith due to a revelation of a completely different reality, a spiritual kingdom that transcends and infiltrates earthly nations, both as a testimony now and fully realized at a later time.

okay … one more left …

Peace.

The first thing in this post I want to tackle is the idea of “inalienable rights.”

Despite what modern liberal progressives will tell you, the founding fathers of America studied the Bible extensively for principles of self-government.  That’s because the earliest system of government based on ideas of equality of man and republican democracy was not Greece or Rome but Israel.

These men were at the very least Deists and felt strong conviction of a single creator.  And if that Creator designed the immaculate way in which our world works ecologically and biologically, then He must also have ideas about proper government and we would be fools to ignore it.

And if God instituted a government based on certain rights of self-government and equality, then God also gave those rights to man.  And if God instituted rights, then they could not be taken away.  Those rights were inherent to man, like his DNA – “inalienable.”

Among the rights they found in the Law of Israel was the right of life and property.

My point here is that you have a biblical right to live and a right to your stuff.  It is your right to choose to do with it what you will.  The plea to give up your stuff and your life is not a denial of those rights, but rather evidence those rights exist.

Even in Acts, during a time when the whole church in Jerusalem seemed to be giving up their stuff, Ananias and Sapphira were told by Peter, before God struck them dead, “It was your property to do with what you will.”

Paul, in 1 Corinthians, pleads with that fellowship to be compassionate in financial giving, but he also makes it clear that it should never be by obligation.  It should be with a willing heart.

All of this establishes that no one can take what is yours by right.  Take this with a grain of salt because you will ultimately lose both your life and your stuff, usually simultaneously, but while in this life you must still give it willingly.  And yes, oppression exists, but oppression is evil for the very fact that the rights of self-government and private property are from God Himself.

Jesus never forced anyone to give up anything.  He only declared the spiritual reality and allowed for people to choose eternal destruction or eternal life.

These are rights and privileges that must be given up in this life to have the life and authority of Christ both now and for eternity.

In America, we love to defend our rights.  Anytime we want something or feel something is unfair, we claim it as a right.

It is honorable and good for a worldly government to recognize and protect certain rights.  But it is truly Christ-like to lay them down.

“Let this mind be in you” – the mind that recognizes certain rights from God – i.e. life and property – and renounces them for a  greater reward – the rights and priveleges of being a child of the King.

Jesus didn’t fight for the rights of this life but continually expressed the authority and freedom of a heavenly kingdom.  If we give up our citizenship here, then we are free to be citizens of heaven.

As we see in Paul’s testimony in Philipians 3, Paul even counted his Jewish heritage as lost.  In the context of discussing “no confidence in the flesh”, Paul lists the things he could take confidence in as a Jew – even concerning righteousness which is in the law, “blameless.”  And he counts it all as rubbish “that I might gain Christ.”

“That I might gain Christ.”

Jesus died on the cross to show us the way to life.  And we must identify with that act in order to be like Him.

Galatians 3: I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now life in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.

1 Tim 2: Here is a trustworthy saying: If we died with Him, we will also live with Him.

Colossians 3: For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.

While it may seem morbid, God wants you dead so He can give you life.  Your previous life is over.  A dead man doesn’t need to bother himself with the things of this life.  That dude in his grave probably isn’t worrying about leaving the iron on … and if he is, he can’t do anything about it now.

We must die, be crucified with Christ, so we can be dead to sin.  This identification with Christ in His death is a constant struggle because while the flesh may be dead, our brain doesn’t know it yet.

I call it the phantom limb syndrome.  You know, there’s this guy who loses his right leg in a war.  But it wakes him up at night with aches and pains and it itches him.  He swears he feels pain in his right pinky toe.

But he has no right pinky toe.  His whole leg no longer exists.

Our brains are so used to living by the flesh, it is difficult to convince our mind that the flesh is dead.  Hence the importance of renewing our minds and not conforming ourselves to the ideas of this world.  “If you have died with Christ from the basic principles of the world, why, as though living in the world, do you subject yourself to regulations-” Colossians 2.

“Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”  Romans 6.

A disciple changes his thinking, considering himself dead to sin, and “how shall we who died to sin live any longer in it?”

In Colossians 3, Paul goes into more detail, explaining that we are to put off the “old man”, the dead one, and put on the new.  And he makes it clear that this actually means changing our behavior.

However, too often we hang on to our life, our dreams, our desires, our concerns, our careers, our rights and priveleges, our comforts.  God wants us to be about the Kingdom above all else, to the literal exclusion of all else, not only when we can fit it into our schedule.

He wants His house to be a house of prayer, for our zeal for Him to consume us.  That necessitates being dead to this world and the things in it.

Before I move on, I at least want to mention the fact that some are killed and executed for the faith.  I don’t want to minimize at all the reality of truly suffering for Jesus.  All of the first apostles except for John were killed for Jesus.  The early church honored martyrs as great men and women of faith.  There are still martyrs all over the world suffering and dying for the Name as we speak.  True discipleship makes you a target, even if they don’t kill you - if they hated Jesus and tried to kill Him, how will they treat you?  “No servant is greater than His Master.”  That is part of the cost you must count.

8(c) next …

Peace.

Whoever of you does not forsake all that he has cannot be My disciple.  Luke 14.33

Seems like a pretty clear requirement to me, but per my usual way, I’ll be talking about this in four parts. 

No, really.

Jesus didn’t just speak this message one time; it was a central message of His whole ministry.

He also said, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.”  This is shared in Matthew 16, Mark 9 and Luke 9.  The writers of the gospels must have thought it pretty important.

Look at the language – “cannot be my disciple.”  And “if ANYONE DESIRES to come after Me …”  Do you want Him at all?  The answer is clear, deny yourself, forsake all you ahve, pick up your cross, and then you can follow Him.

The idea of the cross, for the Jews, was one of shame and great offense, a constant reminder that they were, as the chosen nation of the only true God, a subjugated people.  To carry the cross to your own death was a humiliating experience, forced to walk through populated areas as an example of someone with no rights.  To willfully embrace this was a challenge indeed.

What does Jesus say just following this?  “Whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will save it.”

The message should be clear: following Jesus entails a constant testimony that you are giving up your whole life for His sake.

In regards to “forsaking all,” Jesus focuses His teachings in the gospels on three main areas.

First, forsaking your family:  “Anyone who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me” and of course “if anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father, mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.”  There’s that “cannot” word over and over again.

Second, a denial of yourself unto death.  These are all related, but a dead man doesn’t need to bother with family, possessions, etc.  He can give stuff away.  A dead man doesn’t need it.

Third, and the main thing I’ll talk about today, is your possessions.

Everytime someone speaks about the Rich Young Ruler, you always get the qualifier: “That was for him alone, okay.  Not for everyone.”

You’re not gonna hear or read that from me. 

In Luke 12.33, Jesus speaks publicly: “Sell what you have and give alms; provide for yourselves money bags which do not grow old, a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no theif approaches nor moth destroys.  For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

(To give alms means to give to the poor)

Look at the clear message.  In summary, if you place your treasure in heaven by selling what you have and giving to the poor, then your heart will be on your treasure in heaven, and that treasure won’t fail you.  Obviously, worldly treasures will.  The implication of the opposite is that if you don’t sell your stuff and give it to the poor, your treasure remains on earth and so does your heart.  Your heart follows your treasure.

So Jesus’ message to the Rich Young Ruler was a common theme in His ministry.  After the young ruler was unwilling to part with his stuff, Jesus says, “It is harder for a rich man to enter the Kingdom than for a camel to go through the eye of the needle.”

Looking at other passages: the merchant “sold all he had” to get the pearl; the abundant farmer was called a “fool” by God Himself for saving his stuff and building new barns to do so.

You can’t have your stuff and Jesus, too.

You can’t have two masters; you can’t serve God and money.

And it is no coincidence to me that in America, the wealthiest and fattest nation in the world, we refuse to give up our stuff and explain away a very clear requirement for what it takes to follow Jesus at all.  And we’re smart enough to come up with great excuses and doctrines as to why God would never ask us to do such a crazy thing.

Yes, crazy like willfully picking up a cross and carrying it.

There’s a reason “forsaking all” is necessary to follow Jesus.  It is what He did to come to us.  If we want to be His disciple, i.e., learn to be like Him, we must begin where he did.

Philipians 2: “Let this mind be in you which was also in Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God [did not consider equality with God something to be grasped or retained/as something to be used for His own advantage], but made Himself of no reputation [literally emptied Himself of His priveleges], taking on the form of a servant, and coming in the likeness of men.  And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross.”

(also read 1 Peter 3:13-4:2)

You want to be a Christian, a little Jesus?  You do this.

Jesus, being God, gave it up while on the earth, “emptied Himself of His priveleges”, took on the form of a man, a servant, while in the flesh, and even still humbled Himself further to die on the cross.

Jesus wasn’t only willing to do it.  He didn’t do it in theory or “in His heart.”  He didn’t make excuses as to why He couldn’t do it or why God wouldn’t ask Him to.  He actually gave up His stuff and gave up His life, living as a servant unto His death.

Let that mind be in you.

You’ll find plenty of churches and Christians that will tell you I’m wrong and you can live your life and fight for your rights and keep your stuff and have Jesus too.  A lot of people believe in a gospel that tells you that you can have the pearl of great price without selling all that you have to get Him.

But if you want to really follow Him, to have Jesus at all, to be His disciple, you’ll do it.  Yes, the world won’t understand and neither will most Christians you know, but God will look down and say, “Hey, there’s my Son.”

more in part (b)

Peace.