My name is John Whitaker and it seems like there's this new
tradition around here that the first Sunday of the year I end
up preaching. So I think like 3 out of the
last four first Sundays of January I have preached.
The one that I didn't preach, I had just had hip replacement
surgery and Tucker let me out of it, which I thought was very
nice of him to let me out. I'm not having to preach after
having hip replacement surgery. So.
So here we are, January 4th, 2026.
Welcome to the new year. And we're actually going to be
starting a new sermon series beginning today that I will talk
about in a little bit. But to set up that series as
well as this sermon, I wanted to reflect on a question with you.
I think it's a helpful question for us to think about what's
going on in the passage we're going to look at, as well as
this whole series and if we can put it on the screen.
Here's the question, can you be a Christian without being a
disciple? Can you be a Christian without
being a full on follower disciple of Jesus?
That's the question and the answer to that sort of like,
well, on one hand, I think you could say yes, you could walk
into a church building like this or maybe a fancy church
building. You could sing some songs,
right? You could believe in God and,
you know, occasionally go to church and be a decent person.
And to all appearances, people will think you're a Christian,
right? Maybe you're doing a survey and
they want to know what religion you are and they've got various
options and you could check the little box.
Well, not a Hindu, I'm not a Buddhist Christian.
That's who I am, right? I'm a Christian.
And you could. So you know, all right, I'm a
Christian. I had a friend when I was in
high school. We were pretty close.
We spent a lot of time together. I don't remember exactly which
class we were in, but his desk was right next to mine.
And we were taking a test. And as we were going through the
test, it it became clear that I knew some of the answers and he
didn't know some of the answers. And in the middle of the test,
he got my attention because he, he wanted me to kind of shift my
test to the edge of my desk and he wanted to look over and he
wanted me to help him out with his test.
He wanted to copy of my answers for his test.
I didn't want to do that. So I actually shifted the test
the other way and shifted my body so he wouldn't look at my
test. And we finished the test after
class. Here's what he said to me.
He said, John, you're too Christian.
You're too Christian. And that's because my friend
would have considered himself a Christian.
He he believed in God. He occasionally went to church.
He was a pretty decent kid. And in his mind, he was a
Christian. And probably to all appearances,
of all the other kids at school, he was a Christian.
He thought of himself as such. He just didn't want to be too
Christian. Right.
So can you be a Christian without being a disciple?
And on one hand, yeah, you can. You can.
You could be a Christian at least, at least a cultural
Christian without being a disciple.
On the other hand. On the other hand, I don't think
you can really be a Christian in the sense that Jesus intends for
you to be without being a disciple.
You, you can't really be a Christian in the sense that that
word originally meant. Like that word Christian is only
used like 3 or 4 times in the New Testament and when it first
shows up it was actually a word using from unbelievers towards
followers of Jesus. And it means Christ one like
little Christ. That's what Christian means.
Well, you can't be a little Christ without following Jesus
and being a disciple. And so on the other hand,
biblically, you can't really be a Christian without being a
disciple. And so we're starting a new
sermon series, message series beginning today, and it's going
to go from Luke Chapter 9 to about Luke 19.
It's going to take from now until a Good Friday and Easter.
And this new series is really titled Journey to the Cross.
And the reason we're we're picking up in Luke 9 and we're
going through Luke 19 is because beginning in Luke 9, the way the
story of the Gospel of Luke is told is Jesus now sets his face
towards Jerusalem. And he's on the way from Galilee
to Jerusalem, on his way specifically to his final week
where he's going to die on the cross.
And so the whole kind of story packaging from Luke 9 to Luke 19
is Jesus on the way to the cross.
So we're, we're going to follow that journey.
And what we're going to do is we're not going to take every
story out of Luke 9 to 19. We're going to focus on just
some maybe less familiar passages, maybe some more
challenging stories or demanding stories, ones that maybe we
don't know as well or aren't as easy for us out of this section
of the Gospel of Luke as we think about what it looks like
to actually follow Jesus, to actually be a real Christian, a
disciple of Jesus who's truly following him.
And we're going to start that today in Luke Chapter 9, picking
up in verse 57 right at the beginning, Jesus on his way
towards the cross. And here's the setup for Luke
Chapter 9, verse 57. Jesus on the road, He's on the
way to Jerusalem and three would be disciples come to him in
various ways and Jesus speaks to them.
And this passage is a challenging passage.
It's challenging in the sense that we have to listen really
closely to make sure we understand what Jesus is
actually saying, what he actually means by what he says,
and what's happening. So it's challenging just to try
to maybe make sure we hear it rightly.
It's also challenging because this passage demands a response
demands a response from you and me as Christians, as followers,
as disciples of Jesus. So it's a challenging text.
So here's here's what it says we'll pick up and we'll take it
in three parts for each of the three would be disciples.
The first one picks up in Luke Chapter 9 verse 57, and it says
this as they were on the road. So they're that.
That's the picture right there on the road.
They're traveling from Galilee in the north through Samaria
down to Judea and Jerusalem in the South.
So as they're on the road, someone said to Jesus, I will
follow you wherever you go. This guy is like, I'm in Jesus.
I want to be a disciple. This is the kind of person that
if they were your friend, right, and they were like, Oh yeah, I
want to be a follower of Jesus. You'd be all excited.
You'd bring them to church. You'd introduce them to the
pastors, right? You'd maybe take them over and
have them get baptized. They're all in.
And we'd be so excited about that.
But that's not how Jesus responds.
What Jesus actually does is throw a little bit of cold water
on this would be disciple. So this guy's like, I will
follow you wherever you go. And here's how Jesus responds in
verse 58. And Jesus said to him, well, the
foxes have holes and the birds of the sky have nests.
But the Son of man, Jesus way of referring to himself, I, the Son
of man, I have nowhere to lay my head like this guy's like Jesus,
I'm in, I'll follow you. And Jesus response is not so
fast. Are you sure?
Do you really want to follow me? Do you know what you're in for?
Like the birds, they have nests to sleep in, they have nests to
call home. The foxes, they have dens.
Me, not so much. And in context, what has just
happened right before this is Jesus, he's travelling, has sent
a couple disciples ahead to a village in Samaria.
And the Samaritans and the Jews, right?
They're not on friendly terms. So they were like, hey, maybe it
was some places where he thought he had some connections, sends
them in and the people here, oh, it's Jesus and he's on his way
to Jerusalem. No, he's not welcome here.
And so they literally have no place to lay their head.
They're camping around a campfire and sleeping on the
ground. So Are you sure you want to sign
up for that? In other words, following Jesus,
being a disciple of Jesus, it it up ends our security and our
comfort. Are you sure you want that?
Like it's going to upend the the things that we cling to and try
to manage so tightly to make sure OK we at least feel OK and
secure in life. Do you really want your life
completely destabilized? Like we we work really hard,
don't we, to manage our finances to, you know, to make sure we
have a place to live, to manage our careers, you know, anything
that we think, OK, I need that in order for my life to feel
safe and secure and stable. We're going to work really hard
to try to protect that. And Jesus, like, yeah, but if
you follow me, we're going to upend that that's going to be
unpredictable. You're going to have a little
more instability and insecurity. Are you sure you want that?
Are you sure you want that if you want to be my disciple?
And not only that, it upends, if you will, when we hand our life
over to Jesus. It upends, I think, our
expectations. This guy says, I'll follow you
wherever he goes. He's probably like, OK, I really
do think he's the Messiah, which in his mind means, so that means
he's king. That means he's he's he's going
to go to Jerusalem because that's where he's on the way to.
He's going to kick out the Romans.
He's going to ascend to power. And I want to be right there
with him when he does it. And she was like, yeah, but
that's not quite the way my kingdom's going to work.
I have no place to lay my head. I just got rejected from the
Samaritans. I've been being rejected by the
Jewish leaders. I'm in a lot of ways they
reject. Are you sure you want to sign up
to follow me? Do you do you like hanging out
with rejects? Because that's, that's who I am
literally right now. And and for us again that that
challenges us to think about, well, what if Jesus disappoints
my expectations? What if Jesus, Jesus doesn't
make all my dreams come true? What if Jesus doesn't answer
that prayer? We don't.
What if I don't get my best life now?
What if things turn sour and things go hard and Jesus seems
empty and not there for me? What if Jesus lets me down?
Do you want to follow him then, or just want him when he makes
your life actually turn out the way you want it to?
I will follow you, Lord, wherever you go.
And she's like, yeah, not so fast.
Following me is going to upend your security and your comfort
and your expectations. You sure you want that?
Are you in? That's the first guy.
Second guy is part of this entourage that's with Jesus as
he's travelling towards Jerusalem.
And Jesus actually calls this guy and says to him, verse 59,
he said to another, follow me. So Jesus is inviting this guy.
It's been hanging around with him, then showing up, then maybe
listening to some of the teachings and it's kind of on
the fringes of the group. He calls him to the center, like
follow me. But this guy responds like this.
Lord, permit me first to go bury my father.
It doesn't that seem like a reasonable request?
Lord, can I just go to my dad's funeral 1st and then after I'm
done with that, I'll come and follow you?
Seems reasonable, doesn't it? But look how Jesus responds.
Allow the dead to bury their own dead.
As for you, you go and proclaim the Kingdom of God everywhere
you go like that. That seems a little harsh,
doesn't it? Like, I thought Jesus was kind
of nice. This doesn't sound very nice,
does it? The guy just wants to go bury
his dad. And this is one of those places
where we have to slow down and make sure we hear what's
actually being said and what's actually going on.
We have to remember that the Bible wasn't originally written
to us, right? It wasn't written in our
culture, in our language, in our time and place.
Their world was different. And so when this guy says, well,
allow me to bury my father, permit me to go do that first,
what we need to realize is his dad's not dead yet.
Like just think about it. If his dad was dead, why is he
with Jesus on the road anyhow? That's not what that phrase
means. Permit me to bury my father
means this. It means let me take care of my
social responsibilities and my social obligations to my family.
Take care of my family, my parents.
And when that's all done, then after I'm done with that, then
you can come, or then I'll come and I'll follow you.
But family comes first. That's what that means.
We don't know when his dad's going to die.
It may be five years, it may be 10 years, it may be 15 years.
We don't know. He's just saying, allow me to
fulfill my social responsibilities to my my family
and my parents. After I'm done fulfilling them,
then I'll come and follow you. And to that Jesus says, let the
spiritually dead bury their own dead.
You go and you proclaim the Kingdom of God.
If you want to be my disciple, then what that means is your
whole life has to revolve around me and my kingship and my
Kingdom and my mission and my purpose.
That has to be the highest priority in your life and in
their culture, like taking care of your family responsibilities
and serving your aging parents up until they died.
That was the highest social obligation, the greatest social
responsibility anyone had. And for Jesus to say, yeah, I
come before that. I've heard a missionary in the
Middle East say that when he has read this text to people in
traditional Middle Eastern villages, their their response
is, well, no wonder he got killed.
No wonder he got killed because he's this 30 something year old
upstart rabbi thinking he's more important than my my family, my
parents. Yep.
That's what it means to be a disciple.
And you hand over your life to Jesus and he becomes the most
important relationship in your life.
He becomes the most important priority in your life.
If you want to be a disciple of Jesus, it's going to upend your
loyalties and your relationships.
It's going to upend what you live for and what's most
important to you. Jesus says no, it's not going
and serving your family, it's going and serving my Kingdom.
That's what matters most. Sure, you want that if you want
to be a disciple. To be a disciple of Jesus means
I hand over my life to Jesus and he says if you do that, I have
to be the most important responsibility, most important
social obligation in your life. All other loyalties go by the
wayside. Now, in our, in our cultural
context, it may not be, it may be family, maybe the the
greatest relationship with your family and your kids and you're,
you're super busy with club sports and, you know, and travel
sports and travel teams or, you know, music and, you know,
college and education. Maybe you're, and you're
pushing. And if so, Gia says, hold on.
If you're going to be a disciple, I'm more important
than all of that, even than your kids and your grandkids.
Maybe it's family, maybe it's career.
Maybe your whole dream in life has been to ascend to some high
point in a career and you've been pursuing that, giving all
your time and all your energy to that.
Again, what Jesus says to you is no, As for you, you go and you
live for and proclaim the Kingdom of God wherever you go.
The Kingdom of God has to come first.
Whatever it is that you're living for, if you're going to
be a disciple of Jesus, Jesus supersedes that.
He's king, He's in charge, and his Kingdom is what shapes your
entire life, how you raise your kids and how you conduct your
career and how you manage your finances and everything that's a
part of your life. You go everywhere and proclaim
the Kingdom of God. That's the second guy.
Third guy comes to Jesus verse 61 and he says to him, I will
follow you, Lord, but first permit me to say goodbye to
those at home. Once again, doesn't that seem
like a reasonable request? Like, OK, Lord, if I'm going to
follow you on the road to Jerusalem, great.
Can I just go pack a little go bag, say goodbye to mom and dad,
maybe my brothers and sisters and I could be back maybe in
like half an hour, 45 minutes. Jesus, that game seems like a
reasonable request to us. Doesn't like let me go say
goodbye to my family and Jesus response in verse 62 again, it's
harsh. It's he says no one after
putting his hand to the plow and looking back is fit for the
Kingdom of God. No one after saying yes to Jesus
and then looking back is worthy to be his disciple and fit for
the Kingdom of God. Now again, this is one of those
places where we have to make sure we hear what's actually
being said when, when this guy says, first, permit me to say
goodbye to those at home. It it's not just saying goodbye
in their culture, the way it worked was those like who are
leaving don't say goodbye. They request permission to take
leave of those staying are the ones that say goodbye.
So what we're talking about is this idea of partying.
And it's the idea that, all right, so here's what's going to
happen in their culture. You would go to the family, you
might have a meal, you might have tea, you sit around, you
have an hour and a half conversation.
And then in the middle of that conversation, you say, father, I
have this opportunity to follow this rabbi named Jesus.
Might I have permission to take my leave of the family and my
family responsibilities and go follow him?
And your father would either say yay or nay.
Yes, my son, permission granted. Goodbye.
Go follow the rabbi. That's that's what that's the
picture being portrayed here. In other words, what he's saying
is he's saying that I need to get permission from my family
because their authority is higher than yours.
In fact, Kenneth Bailey, who grew up as a missionary's kid in
the Middle East in the Thirties, 40s and 50s, came to the States,
did school here, and they went back in the 60s and 70s and
early 80s and lived as a missionary.
He said even to this day, in the like the 70s and the 80s, even
the 90s, he said when I'm in a traditional Middle Eastern
village, he said I'll be there. And if they're there is a say, a
40 year old businessman living in the city who's working in a
corporation, some business, who, who's offered a promotion at
work, right. If he before he takes that, that
promotion, he'll get in his car, he'll drive out to the village,
he'll sit down with his dad. He'll have the traditional tea,
the traditional conversation. And in the middle of that
conversation, say, may I have your permission to take this
promotion? Even if it's ceremonial, he'll
always do it. Why?
Because family authority is first.
That's the way the culture work. So when this guy says permit me
to say goodbye, what he's really saying is permit me to take
leave of my family, permit me to go to my father, sit with him,
ask permission to come and follow you.
And Jesus response is that's not the way it works in my Kingdom.
You want to be a follower of mine?
Then. Then my kingship and my
authority supersedes every other authority figure in your life,
including the patriarch of the family.
And so again, if you're going to hand your life over to Jesus and
be his disciple, what that means is he's going to up in the
authorities and influences of your life.
He gets to call the shots, not you, not me.
He's in charge. And what he says goes, if you're
going to be a disciple of Jesus, then within what that means is
whoever you listen to for your ideas about life takes a back
seat, maybe a distant back seat to Jesus.
Whoever you listen to for what you think is most important and
the greatest priority and how your life should look like,
guess what? Jesus supersedes that.
His authority is in charge. Jesus calls the shots, not you,
not me. If I'm going to be a disciple of
Jesus, then Jesus is the ultimate authority of my life.
And what he says goes. I knew a guy years ago who split
time between California and Kuna, and he had a house in both
places. So when he was in California,
his house in Kuna sat empty and vacant.
Well, people began to realize that his house at times for
months of the year was vacant in Kuna.
So they began sort of parking in his driveway, loitering on his
property. And, you know, they didn't
always damage anything, but he just didn't want people, you
know, around his property. So he set up little cameras.
He put signs, you know, no test, trespassing, stay off, tried to
be nice about it and all that, but people kept doing it because
he was gone for months at a time.
And after a while he got so fed up with it and so frustrated
with it. He said, you know what?
I've tried to do it Jesus way, and it didn't work.
So now I'm doing it my way. If you're a disciple of Jesus,
you don't have that option. It's Jesus Way or the highway.
It's Jesus Way or no way. What Jesus says goes.
That's what it means to say, all right, Lord, you're in charge.
And whatever authority I think is so important or whoever I
think I need to listen to, none of them hold a candle to you.
Jesus doesn't play second fiddle to anyone.
Jesus is in charge and he's the ultimate authority figure in our
life. I want to read an extended quote
from CS Lewis because I think it it says something similar to
what Jesus is saying in this passage.
And I think it kind of pulls the threads of this all together for
us to help us hear what Jesus is saying.
CS Lewis in this passage is talking about the same idea of
following Jesus, living as a disciple, being a real true
Christian. And this is what CS Lewis says.
He writes this. He says the Christian way is
different. It's both harder and easier.
Christ says give me all I don't want so much of your time or so
much of your money or so much of your work.
I want you. I've not come to torment your
natural self, which which he means is your, your ordinary
self, your ordinary life, the the life that's just your life,
right? I haven't come to torment your
natural self, your ordinary life, but to kill it.
No half measures are any good. I don't want to cut a branch off
here and a branch off there. I want to have the whole tree
down. I don't want to drill the the
tooth and crown it or stop it. I want to have the whole tooth
out. Hand over the natural self.
All the desires which you think innocent, right?
The parts of your life you're like, I'm fine with those.
I think those are good. Those are fine.
Hand over those desires as well as the ones you think wicked,
the whole outfit, and I will give you a new self instead.
In fact, I will give you myself. My own will shall become yours.
That's the very point that that Jesus is making in these
encounters with these three would be disciples.
You want to be a disciple of Jesus.
What it means is you hand over your whole life, the whole
thing, not the not you don't you don't keep parts of it that you
think this part of my life is fine.
I like this part. I'm going to keep this part you
hand over the whole thing. Jesus goal is, is not for you to
and maybe just to, you know, trim off a bad part of your life
or fix this part of your life. His, his goal is to actually
give you a whole new life to to put to death the old self and
give you a brand new self. I actually think in the wisdom
of God, this is one of the reasons he gave us the the gift
of baptism, because baptism is an objective, tangible
identifier marker that draws a line in the sand where you say,
you know what? I'm a disciple of Jesus and I've
crossed that line and I'm his. I belong to him.
He's in charge. What he says goes I no longer
rule me. My perspectives don't matter.
It's Jesus perspectives, my feelings, they're not in charge.
His truth is in charge. My my goals, my aims, my
ambitions, my dreams, they all take.
They all kind of become subsumed under Jesus.
Goals, dreams and ambitious. My life is his and I belong to
him. And what baptism does is it
draws that concrete line in the sand where we step across.
We say I'm no longer my own. He's in charge, He's the king.
He's the one who rules our life. That's what it means to be a
disciple. We hand over our whole life to
him. So when it comes to your career,
like, well, it's not really your career, it's his career through
you. So ultimately, what he wants you
to do with your career, how he wants you to manage your career,
if he wants you to give up your career and do something else,
it's up to him, not up to you. My finances are no longer my
own, so I don't manage them the way I think fit.
I manage them the way Jesus tells me to.
And I do with him what Jesus says because it's ultimate my
kids. I raise my kids and I parent my
kids, not according to my ideas and my wisdoms and my ambitions
and my goals for them. But what does Jesus want?
For whatever it is, whatever part of your life you can think
of, you hand over the whole thing to him.
That's what it means to be a disciple.
And as I reflect on this text and think about that truth,
praying through that this week, if you're like me and I'm, I'm
guessing there's plenty of people in the room that are like
me, that, that when you signed up to, to be a Christian, you
really did sign up to be a disciple.
You, you didn't, you weren't signing up just to go to church
and be a cultural Christian. You really signed on to follow
Jesus. That, that was me.
And if that's you, when I read this text, it's been 40 years
since that was the case for me. When I read this text, I, I, I,
I think, I don't know exactly what it means at this stage of
my life, but Lord, I want it to be true still.
I want to surrender everything to you, Lord.
If I've gotten too complacent and too comfortable in my
discipleship to you, then Lord, stir up my heart, make it new.
Show me new ways to serve you and hand over my life to you.
Lord, I know that's uncomfortable and scary, but
Lord, here's my life. Take it, do with it what you
want. May my life be about you and
your Kingdom. For some of you, maybe that's
you today where you're at. You've been following Jesus for
a long time. You really have been living as a
disciple. May this text challenge you to
continue to hold your life with an open hand before Jesus and
let him do with you what you want.
Maybe some of you are here and you've been more like that, that
cultural Christian. Everyone would have considered
you a Christian. You you can talk to Christian
language, you know, some of the songs, right?
You're maybe a fairly decent person.
And you go to church occasionally and people look at
you and think, yeah, you're, you're, you're kind of a
Christian. You know, you don't want to be
too Christian, but you're kind of a Christian.
And maybe that's you. What this text says to you is do
you want to be a true Christian? Do you want to be the kind of
Christian that Jesus intends for you to be?
If so, hand over the whole outfit, hand over everything
about your life, all the parts of your life, all the facets of
your life. And yes, you don't know exactly
what that might mean. You don't know where it's
exactly going to lead, but Lord Jesus, you're in charge.
Here's my life. Do with it as you see fit.
Maybe you're here today and you just, you just wandered in
because 2025 was a hard year and you start looking in the mirror
and you're like, I got to make some changes to my life and you
thought I'm just going to go to church and you showed up and
you've never signed on to be a Christian.
You've never signed on to be a disciple.
Just know what you're signing up for.
This is what you're signing up for.
If that's you, then what you're signing up for is handing your
whole life over to Jesus, saying Jesus, you're you're king,
you're in charge. What you say goes, you are the
king of my life. That's what Jesus is inviting
you into. That's what he's calling you to.
That's what it means to be a disciple.
It means I hand over all of me. It's no longer I who live, but
Christ lives in me and through me.
And if, if thinking about that like maybe threatens you, scares
you, makes you feel like, I'm not sure about that.
Can I just remind you that what we're going to do right now is
we're going to sing another song here in just a second and and
we're going to take communion. Communion is this little piece
of bread. It's a little bit of juice.
It's a very simple, tangible act once again, to remind us of the
kind of King that Jesus is. If you're going to hand over
your whole life to him, can you trust him?
Well, just know that Jesus says I didn't come as king to be
served, but to serve and give my life a ransom for many.
What kind of king is Jesus? He's the kind of king who lays
down his life for you. Can you trust him with your
life? Indeed you can, because he's
already given up his life for you.
And so Jesus invites you and I into this moment where we're
going to take communion and we're going to say yes to Jesus
in a fresh, new way. And my hope, my prayer is that
wherever you're at that you'll say, Jesus your King, you're in
charge. I no longer rule me.
Jesus, it's all about you. So make my life completely and
fully for you. Thanks for joining us today.
If you would like to watch the full service, check out the link
in the description. For next steps and to learn
more, visit calvaryboise.com.