Would-Be Followers Of Jesus
WOULD-BE FOLLOWERS OF JESUS
LUKE 9:54-62
The shallow commitment of these people who toyed with following Jesus is so different from Jesus’ determination.
Verses 54-56. As on the earlier occasion a demonstration of intolerance produces a precious saying. Sixty years later, the same John wrote the fourth Gospel and the letter which accompanied it, a document which is full of the plea for love which marked, according to tradition, the old man’s last days. “Little children, love one another,” he pleaded in Ephesus. “Why, master, do you always say this?” they asked. “Because,” the aged apostle replied, “if you do that, it suffices.” Experience had tamed the “Son of Thunder.”
9:57-58. On sudden impulse or a burst of emotion, a scribe (Matthew 8:19) promised to follow Christ. He had not counted the cost, and we are not told the result when he came to count it. The Lord offers joy, not comfort. He makes no promises of material reward. He calls to strife, and has to offer, he might have told them, “nothing but blood and tears and sweat.” He wants no one to follow him under any illusions, with any false hopes, any selfish or ill-considered motive.
9:59-60. The man surely would not have been there had his father been lying dead at home. The demands of an Eastern funeral would have preoccupied him. He must mean: “Let me wait, like Abraham at Haran, until my father dies, and I can follow without offending him.” The Lord must have priority if duties conflict. It is easy to decide when good and evil are the alternatives. The pain and difficulty of decision lie where good conflicts with good.
9:61-62. Another who came to Christ (Luke 5:29) did precisely this. Levi gave a farewell banquet to his friends, but in order to introduce them to Christ. This man had a divided mind. Like Lot’s wife, he “looked back.” In such is no stability. The good plowman fixes his eye steadily on a distant goal, takes firm grip on the plow, throws the whole energy of his body into the act, and does not stop, pause or waver until the long furrow is clean and straight to the end. Such are those whom the Lord would have follow him.
Notes 9:56: “another”—ie not Samaritan. 9:62: “the light plows of the East, easily overturned, require constant attention” (Farrar).
Prayer
Help us, O Lord of the field and the harvest,
to drive our furrow straight today.