True followers of Jesus-3

하나님이여 주는 나의 하나님이시라 내가 간절히 주를 찾되 물이 없어 마르고 곤핍한 땅에서 내 영혼이 주를 갈망하며 내 육체가 주를 앙모하나이다 ² 내가 주의 권능과 영광을 보려 하여 이와 같이 성소에서 주를 바라보았나이다 ³ 주의 인자가 생명보다 나으므로 내 입술이 주를 찬양할 것이라 ⁴ 이러므로 내 평생에 주를 송축하며 주의 이름으로 인하여 내 손을 들리이다. O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. ² So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, beholding your power and glory. ³ Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you. ⁴ So I will bless you as long as I live; in your name I will lift up my hands. (Ps. 63:1-4)

¹⁸ 예수께서 무리가 자기를 에워쌈을 보시고 저 편으로 건너가기를 명하시니라 ¹⁹ 한 서기관이 나아와 예수께 말씀하되 선생님이여 어디로 가시든지 저는 좇으리이다 ²⁰ 예수께서 이르시되 여우도 굴이 있고 공중의 새도 거처가 있으되 오직 인자는 머리 둘 곳이 없다 하시더라 ²¹ 제자 중에 또 하나가 가로되 주여 나로 먼저 가서 내 부친을 장사하게 허락하옵소서

 ²² 예수께서 가라사대 죽은 자들로 저희 죽은 자를 장사하게 하고 너는 나를 좇으라 하시니라. ¹⁸ Now when Jesus saw a crowd around him, he gave orders to go over to the other side. ¹⁹ And a scribe came up and said to him, "Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go." ²⁰ 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." ²¹ Another of the disciples said to him, "Lord, let me first go and bury my father." ²² And Jesus said to him, "Follow me, and leave the dead to bury their own dead." (Matt. 8:18-22)

FCF: We tend to stop following Jesus when we fail to get what we want from Him.

주제: 예수님은 최고를 받으시기에 합당하신 주님이기에 어떠한 대가에도 그분을 따라가야 합니다.                               Theme: Because Jesus is the Lord worthy of our utmost pursuit, we must follow Him at all costs.

Introduction: First things first. Needless to say it is a true maxim. However, there are not many who live according to that principle. Let me tell you this story. It is rather comical when the primary things are made secondary. Victor Borge told about a couple going on vacation, standing in line waiting to check their bags at the airline counter. The husband said to the wife, "I wish we had brought the piano." The wife said, "Why? We've got sixteen bags already!" The husband said, "Yes, I know-- but the tickets are on the piano!" Of course, the husband should have kept the tickets with him. Most probably, they were too excited for the vacation to forget the obvious fact that they couldn’t go on a vacation as scheduled without the tickets. They may have forgotten the tickets while stuffing their sixteen bags with unnecessary things. They don’t need sixteen bags because they are not immigrating to their vacation place. Like this couple, we may be trying to carry so many unnecessary bags or do so many things in our brief life journey while forgetting to do what’s essential and primary. If we are too focused on the secondary, we will miss the primary and waste our precious time. Life is brief, tough, and complex. We must learn to do first things first. To live a life efficiently, we must set priorities right. If we first do what is unnecessary, then we are wasting our precious lives.

            A lot of moderners today live a busy life. But it seems that they are not living according to a set of priorities. Some conduct their lives according to their immediate desires, impulses, or hunches. For many, entertainment is top priority. In an instant age, they constantly turn to their smartphones to watch something new and funny. Students, though they have to study, play games on their smartphones. While they should sleep, they stay up late watching movies. Some can’t remove their smartphones from their views even during worship. They claim to be followers of Christ. Though they know Christ take precedence over all things in life, they easily compromise their commitment to Christ with their studying, businesses, children, or personal entertainments or hobbies. What about you today? Is Jesus Christ top priority or something else?

We need wisdom to arrange our time properly for work, study, rest, fellowship, exercise, hobby, and the like. Also, we make time for God to pray, read the Bible, or worship, etc. In fact, such is our priority. But, there are people who spend hours watching TV and yet spend no time for spiritual priorities. We are called to follow Christ. If we say, “Lord, I have something else to do first, we are disqualifying ourselves to be true followers of Christ. Christ is the Lord worthy of our utmost pursuit. We must follow Jesus at all costs. In vv. 21-22, we learn that nothing or no one comes prior to following Christ. So, we must follow Him despite life-threatening obstacles. We must follow Him for His purposes, not for our personal gains. This is what we have covered the last two Lord’s Days. Today, I would like to turn your attention to the final point, which tells us how to follow Christ. My final point is we should follow Jesus…

I.               위협적인 장애물에도 불구하고 예수님을 따르라.

Follow Jesus in spite of life-threatening obstacles.

II.             우리의 이익이 아닌 예수님의 목적을 위해 그분을 따르라. 

Follow Jesus for His purposes, not for your gains.

III.           예수님을 최고의 우선 순위로 따르라.

Follow Jesus as your highest priority.

The cost of discipleship is demanding, but it is worth everything. While following Jesus, we may experience rejection, persecution, or discrimination. The large crowd, when Jesus commanded them to go to the other side of the lake, had to decide whether they would stay in a safe, comfort zone or take a dangerous travel with Jesus. Following Jesus involves dangers and obstacles. Once we decide to follow Jesus, we must examine why we want to follow Jesus. We may have come to Jesus for various reasons such as healing, deliverance, food, etc. We may have responded to His invitation to come unto Him, desiring to find an answer to our needs. If Jesus has met our needs, then we must follow Him for His purposes, not for our personal gains. We should not use Jesus to fulfill our ambitions or desires. Rather, we must follow Him to have Him fully because He is worthy of our utmost pursuit. Christian discipleship involves hardships. It intends to have Christ wholly, not to fulfill our needs or wants. Lastly, we must follow Jesus as our top priority. We must not let our personal priorities or businesses hinder us from following Jesus. Nothing is more important and primary than following Jesus. Following Jesus demands our total commitment, which is an act of our utmost worship.

Another of the disciples said to Jesus, "Lord, let me first go and bury my father." He makes his reasonable excuse against Jesus’ radical demand of following Him. Matthew calls him as “another of the disciples.” Maybe, he uses the term “disciple” here in a loose sense. The man here apparently didn’t commit himself to following Jesus, though he may have known Him, learned from Him, while maintaining his interest in Him. He desired to follow Jesus. When he heard Jesus saying, “The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head,” this man may have been reconsidering his initial decision to follow Him. So, he may have come up with an irrecusable excuse, that is, his filial duty to bury his father, which was commanded by the law of Moses. The law of God demands one’s familial responsibility for parents. So, the guy was placing his duty to his father before following Jesus. We are not sure whether he was going to follow Jesus after having buried his father or not. It is not even clear whether his father was already dead and needed a proper mourning and burial. If he had been dead, the son would not have been supposed to go out to learn the law of God from Jesus. He should have been lamenting the death of his belove father and prepared for his proper burial so that he would fulfill his duty to him.

His excuse appeared reasonable, needing immediate action for his dead father. Everyone will agree on the reasonableness of his request. We have no problem of endorsing his request. All the listeners there in the scene were expecting Jesus would allow him to go and bury his dear father. They would take pity on him, praising him for an act of honoring the father. People in the world today will recognize the necessity of burying his father. Even the prophet Elijah would agree with him that he should go and bury his father. Elijah allowed Elisha’s request to say goodbye to his parents before Elisha followed Elijah (1 Ks. 19:19-21). Even His twelve disciples would ask Him to send him away so that he would fulfil his filial duty to the deceased father. There was the only One , Jesus, who rejected his request and commanded him to follow Him, saying, “Follow me, and leave the dead to bury their own dead.” His demand was so radical that people might consider Him as heretical. And His word sounds absurd and hard to interpret. Who would command something contradictory to the law of Moses? Who would request people to follow Him in such a radical way like Jesus? We wonder how we are to interpret Jesus’ demand of him to abdicate his filial duty to bury the father and follow Him, and why He made such an absolute demand.         

We may find four important principles of Christian discipleship in Jesus’ request in v. 22. First, following Jesus is our top priority. Nothing comes prior to Jesus. Our filial duty to parents doesn’t come before our duty to Jesus. It doesn’t mean we should relinquish our duty to parents. We should do our best to serve our parents, which is what the Lord wants us to fulfill. But our love for Jesus comes before our love for our families. Our devotion to Him comes before our devotion to our families and friends. Luke 14:26-27 say, ²⁶ 무릇 내게 오는 자가 자기 부모와 처자와 형제와 자매와 및 자기 목숨까지 미워하지 아니하면 능히 나의 제자가 되지 못하고 ²⁷ 누구든지 자기 십자가를 지고 나를 좇지 않는 자도 능히 나의 제자가 되지 못하리라. ²⁶ "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. ²⁷ Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.” No emotional attachment or tie to family is to replace our love for Jesus. Again, this doesn’t mean we are not to love our family. In fact, the more we love Jesus, the more we will be able to love our family. But the point is Jesus deserves our supreme love and we are to love Him above all things with all our hearts.

However, we often place our personal things before following Jesus. As seen here, we put our family, recreation, hobbies, studies, works, or duties before Jesus. Such things are important, needing our attention and care. However, they do not precede following Jesus in importance and priority. I often hear reformed pastors placing their reformed theology or puritanism before Jesus. It seems that they follow their own theological convictions rather than the Lord Jesus Christ. This doesn’t mean they don’t preach Christ. Nor does it mean they don’t emphasize the importance and priority of Jesus. In practice, however, they commit the folly of defending their theology rather than following Jesus. Following a reformed theology or a spiritual leader is one thing. Following Christ is another thing. I know a pastor who tried to find a role model pastor to learn from. He kept switching from this pastor to another because he was dissatisfied with their character flaws. He was fascinated with puritanism. He preached it with passion. He preached reformed theology with passion. But it seems he was off from following Christ, criticizing his former pastors with passion.

Following Jesus is different from following a spiritual leader. Following Jesus is different from following one’s conviction about Jesus. In the Corinthian church, some followed Paul, others followed Apollos. Some followed Peter, and others followed Christ. (1 Cor. 1:12) There were four factions in the same church. Even those who said they followed Christ were not really following Christ. Against the other factions, they were proud of saying that they were following Christ. Without relying on Christ and obeying His Word, they were following their own conviction that they were following Christ. Their verbal confession of following Christ was empty because they were trying to demonstrate they were right and the others were wrong. They violated the oneness of the church by forming a faction, not for Christ’s glory, but for their self-righteousness. Our verbal confession of following Christ means business when we truly walk with Him and love Him above all things. Abraham was willing to offer his son Isaac as a burnt offering as he was commanded by Yahweh. He didn’t even spare his son from God. Trusting God’s faithfulness to His covenant that all the nations will be blessed through your seed, Abraham committed his son Isaac to the sovereign God who kills and makes one live.

By placing Yahweh before his son, placing his loyalty to God before his love for Isaac, and obeying God’s command rather than his natural attachment to the son, Abraham was willing to worship God alone. As a result, God reaffirmed His covenant with him, reassuring him of His covenantal love for him and his descendants. When he placed God prior to all things, God took care of all things, even his son Isaac. We often think that we must do this or that first even by compromising our priority of God. Though such things apparently need our attention and care, doing them first before following Jesus won’t eventually be profitable for us. Comprising our top priority, that is, following Jesus, messes our lives and ruins our efficiency and fruitfulness in life. We must learn to first do things that take precedence over others, such as worshiping God, reading God’s Word, having a dialogue of prayer with God, preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ, following Jesus, etc. Instead of checking bad news of the world first in the morning by looking at the cellphone, we must start everyday with Christ, continue with Him, and end with Him. We must make a habit of following Christ as our top priority. Most of us carry cellphones all the time. Cellphones are our ever-present companions. If we are as close to God as to our cellphones, we will see a lot of changes in our lives. In reality, some can’t live without their cellphones even though they feel fine without Christ. We must lament our shallowness and laziness evidenced in following Jesus. We must repent of it and restore our commitment to Christ. Certainly, Jesus is our Lord and Savior who deserves our utmost pursuit and our top priority. On the basis of this truth, we must rearrange our everyday activities to demonstrate our faithfulness to Christ our priority.

Second, following Jesus demands our urgency and immediacy. When He says, “Follow Me,” we must follow Him immediately because Jesus is our top priority. He said to the man in v. 22, “Follow me, and leave the dead to bury their own dead." We see urgency and immediacy of following Jesus in His call. This doesn’t necessarily mean we should not participate in our parents’ funerals. Nor does it mean we should negate our filial responsibility for our parents. The Lord simply is saying, “Let the spiritually dead take care of the matter of burial.” In other words, they will take care of it and the man should follow Jesus without delay. A good example of following Jesus immediately is Matthew the tax collector. Luke records it this way: ²⁷ 그 후에 나가사 레위라 하는 세리가 세관에 앉은 것을 보시고 나를 좇으라 하시니 ²⁸ 저가 모든 것을 버리고 일어나 좇으니라 ²⁹ 레위가 예수를 위하여 자기 집에서 큰 잔치를 하니 세리와 다른 사람이 많이 함께 앉았는지라. 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." ²⁸ And leaving everything, he rose and followed him. ²⁹ And Levi made him a great feast in his house, and there was a large company of tax collectors and others reclining at table with them (Lk. 5:27-29).

He left everything and followed Jesus. This fact reveals following Jesus shouldn’t be treated as a secondary matter or postponed to a later time because it is top priority. Following Jesus doesn’t mean that we should give up all our possessions, including our houses. It doesn’t mean that we should break our ties with families and friends. Levi invited Jesus to his house and made him a great feast. He invited his business friends to the feast so that they could come to know Jesus as their Savior and Lord. Leaving everything and following Jesus do not necessarily mean that we should give up everything we have. Rather, we will be willing to use everything we have for Him and His kingdom because everything is given and entrusted by Him.

However, we love things more than following Jesus. We love money more than Jesus. Money is top priority to many people today. In Jesus’ day, money was top priority to Jewish religious leaders, including Pharisees and Sadducees. Money wields a magical power over people, deceiving them to have it for happiness. There was a young rich man who came to Jesus to ask how to inherit eternal life (Mk. 10:17-22). Jesus answered, “Keep God’s commandments.” The young man replied, “Teacher, I have kept them from my youth.” Then, Jesus loved him and said to him: 네게 오히려 한 가지 부족한 것이 있으니 가서 네 있는 것을 다 팔아 가난한 자들을 주라 그리하면 하늘에서 보화가 네게 있으리라 그리고 와서 나를 좇으라. “You lack one thing; go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me” (v. 21). Mark records this man’s response to Jesus this way: 그 사람은 재물이 많은고로 이 말씀을 인하여 슬픈 기색을 띠고 근심하며 가니라. “Disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions” (v. 22). His love for money got in the way of following Jesus through whom he would inherit eternal life in the kingdom of God. Jesus kindly debunked his problem hidden in his heart. Unfortunately, he went away sorrowful without following Jesus. He kept everything for himself for a while on earth, but lost everything and eternal life without having Jesus.

The story is told of a prosperous, young investment banker who was driving a new BMW sedan on a mountain road during a snow storm. As he veered around one sharp turn, he lost control and began sliding off the road toward a steep cliff. At the last moment he unbuckled his seat belt, flung open his door, and leaped from the car, which then plummeted to the bottom of the ravine and burst into a ball of flames. Although he had escaped with his life, the man suffered a ghastly injury. Somehow his arm had been caught near the hinge of the door as he jumped and had been torn off at the shoulder. A passing trucker saw the accident in his rearview mirror, pulled his rig to a halt and ran back to see if he could help. When he arrived at the scene, he found the banker standing at the roadside, looking down at the BMW burning in the ravine below. Incredibly the banker was oblivious to his injury and moaned, “My BMW! My new BMW!” The trucker pointed at the banker’s shoulder and said, “You’ve got bigger problems than that car. We’ve got to find your arm. Maybe the surgeons can sew it back on!”` The banker looked where his arm had been, paused a moment, and groaned, “Oh no! My Rolex! My new Rolex!” This story sounds funny, but illustrates the point of misplaced priorities well. Many are deliberately delaying the call of Christ to follow Him now.

We must follow Jesus now. We should not postpone it until we have enough time later. Many say they are busy now studying, working, raising children, doing something important, and so have no time for Jesus. They know nothing about what awaits them in the future. Tomorrow may never be given to them. The only time we have is “NOW” which we live and in which we are alive. Now is the time we act to follow Jesus. 2 Cor. 6: 2 says: 가라사대 내가 은혜 베풀 때에 너를 듣고 구원의 날에 너를 도왔다 하셨으니 보라 지금은 은혜 받을 만한 때요 보라 지금은 구원의 날이로다. For he says, "In a favorable time I listened to you, and in a day of salvation I have helped you." Behold, now is the favorable time; behold, now is the day of salvation.” We must act now to follow Jesus and continue following Jesus. Instead of staying with her family ten more days at home, Rebekah also decided to leave his family and hometown to join her future husband Isaac (Gen. 24:58). Following Jesus is not something we can delay. It is something we should do immediately because there is nothing more urgent and important than it. Let’s join in following Jesus our spiritual Bridegroom.

Third, following Jesus demands our absolute commitment to Jesus. If we don’t pay full attention to following Jesus and follow Jesus with all our power, we can’t fully follow Jesus. The matter of following Jesus demands our total commitment because it is of utmost importance and priority. We shouldn’t miss this point that Jesus makes it here. Making a proper burial for the deceased father is necessary and important. However, it doesn’t take precedence over following Jesus. Of course, this doesn’t mean that following Jesus negates having a burial for the dead one. What matters is that following Jesus demands our whole commitment to Jesus. Half-hearted commitment or partial commitment won’t count. Delayed commitment won’t be acceptable. We must follow Jesus now with all our commitment. We must desire to follow Jesus. And we must indeed follow Him. We can’t follow Jesus and the world at the same time. Jesus invites us to go this way with Him, whereas the world invites us to go the other way. How can we go both ways at once? We can only go only one way at a time. We must choose to go after Jesus, not after the world. Though the way of the world is spacious, comfortable, and promising, it leads to destruction. But the way of Jesus is tough and perilous, but Jesus goes with us and guides us. The way of Jesus leads certainly to eternal life.

Darrell L Bock, a noted New Testament scholar, says, “One cannot follow after two things once; following Jesus means making Him the compass of one’s life.” Again, Christian discipleship demands total commitment to Jesus. Jesus intends not to make us students of His moral teachings, but to make us His wholly devoted disciples, people like Himself. In Jesus’ day, many followed Jesus to be His pupils. In fact, the word “disciple” refers to a student or apprentice. Disciples would follow their rabbi, wherever he went, learning from the rabbi’s teaching and being trained to do as the rabbi did. But, a disciple of Jesus is someone who serves Him not only as a Teacher, but also a Lord who died and rose again for salvation of His disciple. The disciples of Jesus are not fans of Jesus. Today, it seems that people in the church are like fans of Jesus. They go to church. They enjoy a good sermon. They read their Bibles. They talk a good talk. But when it comes time to obey Jesus, fans say, “No.”

Following Christ is no easy walk, but it is worth it, because it is a walk with Christ. William Barclay said, 제자가 되지 않고도 예수님을 따르는 것이 가능합니다. 왕의 군사가 되지 않고도 진영에 머무는 추종자가 될 수 있습니다. 전력을 쏟지 않고 어떤 위대한 역사에 구경꾼처럼 참여할 수 있습니다. “It is possible to be a follower of Jesus without being a disciple; to be a camp follower without being a soldier of the king; to be a hanger-on in some great work without pulling one’s weight.” Once someone was talking to a great scholar about a younger man. He said, “So and so tells me that he was one of your students.” The teacher answered devastatingly, “He may have attended my lectures, but he was not one of my students.” There is a world of difference between attending lectures and being a student. It is one of the supreme handicaps of the church that in the church there are so many distant followers of Jesus and so few real disciples. If you are merely attending your church, you may not be a true disciple of Christ. If you are a disciple of Christ, you are wholly committed to Him. You make every effort to learn, imitate, and glorify the Lord Jesus Christ by relying on Christ’s enabling grace.

Fourth, following Jesus must be our constant loyalty to Jesus. Following is the present tense. It should be an ongoing, daily practice. Christ is the Leader and we are the followers. But we say, “Lord, go ahead first. I will catch up with you soon.” We get lazy and complacent. We lose sight of Christ. Or some of us try to go ahead of Christ. But, we are not supposed to lead Christ. We are to follow Him as closely as possible. Following Christ implies loving Christ, imitating Christ, and obeying Christ. We must follow His steps. Following Christ involves following the One whom the world rejects. We should recognize even family duties are secondary to our commitment to Christ. We must understand following Christ means a clean break with our past and our old ties. Our top priority is Christ. Christ’s call demands our total response. If we look back on our past in the world, we may be like Lot’s wife who looked back on Sodom and Gomorrah and turned into a pillar of salt. We must keep following Christ, which implies our constant, undivided loyalty to Him. Dr. Bock says, 제자도는 순간의 감정적인 결정이 아니라 삶의 방식입니다. “Discipleship is not an emotional decision of one moment, but a walk of life.”

The Cost of Discipleship is a book by the German Theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, considered a classic of Christian thought. It is centered on an exposition of the Sermon on the Mount, in which Bonhoeffer spells out what he believes it means to follow Christ. It was first published in 1937, when the rise of the Nazi regime was underway in Germany and it was against this background that Bonhoeffer's theology of costly discipleship developed, which ultimately led to his death. One of the most quoted parts of the book deals with the distinction which Bonhoeffer makes between "cheap" and "costly" grace. According to Bonhoeffer, 값싼 은혜는 회개를 요구하지 않고 용서를, 교회 징계 없이 세례를, 고백 없이 성찬을, 마음의 깨어짐이 없이 사면을 전하는 것입니다. 값싼 은혜는 제자도가 없는 은혜이며 십자가가 없는 은혜이며 살아 계시고 성육신 하신 예수 그리스도가 없는 은혜입니다.  “Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without Church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without contrition. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ.” Cheap grace, Bonhoeffer says, is to hear the gospel preached as follows: "Of course you have sinned, but now everything is forgiven, so you can stay as you are and enjoy the consolations of forgiveness." The main defect of such a proclamation is that it contains no demand for discipleship. In contrast to cheap grace, 값비싼 은혜는 예수를 따르라는 은혜로운 부르심으로 우리를 대면하며 상하고 통회하는 심령에 용서의 말씀을 선포합니다. 이 은혜가 값비싼 이유는 우리에게 그리스도의 멍에를 지고 그를 따르라고 명령하기 때문입니다. 이것은 은혜입니다. 왜냐하면 예수님이 “내 멍에는 쉽고 내 짐을 가볍다고” 말씀하시기 때문입니다. "costly grace confronts us as a gracious call to follow Jesus, it comes as a word of forgiveness to the broken spirit and the contrite heart. It is costly because it compels a man to submit to the yoke of Christ and follow him; it is grace because Jesus says: 'My yoke is easy and my burden is light.'"

Disciples of Jesus are constant followers of Jesus. They avow that there should be connection between hearing Jesus and obeying Jesus. But, fans are dazzled or entertained by His miracles. Some are impressed by Jesus’ wise teachings. Jesus gained popularity in His day. The Jews were looking for a messianic character who would overthrow the Roman authorities. All Jesus needed to do was flatter them, probably perform a few miracles to win their allegiance, but He took the exact opposite approach. He didn’t come to set up His fandom. He came to establish the Kingdom of God where His true disciples would populate. His disciples are willing to live and die for Him and His Word. They are followers of Jesus and His way of cross. The cross was a cruel means of execution. Death to self is a continuous, ongoing process. The carrying of the cross declares “I belong to Christ.” It implies my death to self and my life in God. It is a horrific, definite, resolute action to deal with self. Cross-bearing is utterly painful and shameful. It takes endurance and suffering. Cross-bearing is a way to true life and glory.

Many today refuse to take it because it looks horrendous and dreadful. They want nothing but pleasure and fun. They want no pain. But the cross is painful and heavy. Christ wants total devotion and commitment. So many Christians go away from Christ because of pain and shame, which arises from following Christ. The world says, “Pleasure, pleasure, pleasure!” Christ says, “Pain precedes glory!” The cross is heavy and painful. So, we are constantly tempted to take it off and go after the world for fun and entertainment. But, being a disciple of Christ involves a painful denial of oneself. We must commit ourselves to Jesus Christ alone.

Let’ assume that your husband or wife loves you alone. But you later find out he or she has a lot of lovers and leaves you alone. Or you say you love your spouse but have secret lovers. You leave him or her alone. You thought you love your spouse but no longer love him or her. Self-deception is destructive at the end. You may feel ok now. But when you pay the consequences of your self-deception, you get to know it is too late to return. Thus, you make sure you are truly in love with Christ. To do so, you must be born again from above to be a disciple of Christ. You must be born first by God’s grace and you must be made to be a disciple by God’s supernatural grace. There should be a demonstrable match between your spiritual re-birth and your daily walk. Eugene Peterson says, “Discipleship is anything that causes what is believed in the heart to have demonstrable consequences in our daily life.

What is your demonstrable evidence of your confession of faith? If you rely on your discipleship on your lip-service, you are not a follower of Christ. Faith that saves is working faith. What kind of faith do you have in your heart? Do not get deceived by the voice of the devil saying, “You are accepted as you are in Christ. You stay as your are. You don’t need to do anything to follow Christ. You don’t need to sacrifice anything to be His disciple.” You may have been entertained by an idea that you will go to heaven, you are forgiven, etc. But receiving Christ into your heart means you have died with Him and risen with Him. You are little Jesuses in the world that represent His death and life to a lost world. You must rely on Christ’s love and grace in order to deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow Christ. Your willpower will fail if you rely on it alone. You must rely on His empowering grace, so that you walk with God as His disciple, not as a fake follower.

Conclusion: The story is told of a time when Satan held a strategy session for subverting those who were close to salvation. “What shall we do?” asked Satan. A daring demon stood and shouted, “I have it! I know what we can do! We can tell men that there is no life after death, that they die like animals.” Satan’s face fell as he answered, “It will never work. Man is not ignorant; even atheists admit of times when they sense a tomorrow after death.” Another demon spoke, “Here’s the solution! Let’s say there is no God or if there ever was, he is dead—because even if he started the universe, he has left it now.” Satan replied in dismay, “That won’t work either; most of them know there is a God, even though they don’t seek him.” Other ideas were presented, but none brought hope to Satan and his underlings. Finally, as they were about to give up, one demon leaped in glee, “I have it! A sure solution!” The other demons crowded around to hear the plan. “Go tell them that God is real and the Bible is God’s Word.” A gasp came from the audience as the demon continued, “And tell them that Jesus is God’s Son and frees men from sin.” The other demons were horror-stricken, thinking that their associate had gone bananas, until, with a smile, he added, “Then tell them that this is not the best time to choose Christ. Help them make excuses for delaying their decision. Tell them there is no hurry!” The demons danced in delight, realizing a workable plan had been discovered. Do you hear what the demons are saying today? They are saying the same thing over and over to people. There is no hurry. You have plenty of time to decide to follow Jesus. You are busy now. It is not the best time to follow Christ. It is a sheer lie. The word of God says, “Behold, now is the favorable time; behold, now is the day of salvation.” You must ack now to follow Jesus right away. You shouldn’t delay it. There is nothing more urgent than following Jesus. The Lord Jesus still calls all of us to come and follow Him. Will you be satisfied with remaining as fans of Jesus or with devoted disciples of Jesus? Let’s humbly admit we are incapable of following Jesus with undivided commitment. Even His twelve apostles failed to follow Jesus to the place of His crucifixion. Let’s seek the Lord’s enabling grace so that we should be His loyal followers for the rest of our lives to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ. Let me leave you with the following Scripture: 예수께서 이르시되 손에 쟁기를 잡고 뒤를 돌아보는 자는 하나님의 나라에 합당치 아니하니라 하시니라. Jesus said to him, "No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God" (Lk. 9:62).

Benediction: ²⁴ 여호와는 네게 복을 주시고 너를 지키시기를 원하며 ²⁵ 여호와는 그 얼굴로 네게 비취사 은혜 베푸시기를 원하며 ²⁶ 여호와는 그 얼굴을 네게로 향하여 드사 평강 주시기를 원하노라. The LORD bless you and keep you; ²⁵ the LORD make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; ²⁶ the LORD lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.