Alright, the light is orange. What did I say the title of this message was today? The title of this message is, Are You a Church Member or Are You a Disciple of Jesus? We're going to be looking at verses 57 through 62. I'll see if I can do that without my glasses. It's something that's been pressing on my mind, and I just preached this message pretty much at my church, but I promise you it will probably not be exactly the same for sure. I just don't really work that way. And so let's do this right now. If you're able to, would you stand in honor of the reading of the word, and I'm gonna read this passage and pray, and we will get into the word of God. Beginning in verse 57, It says, now it happened as they journeyed on the road that someone said to him, Lord, I will follow you wherever you go. 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. And then, let me do something real quick. And then he said to another, follow me. But he said, Lord, let me first go and bury my father. And Jesus said to him, let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and preach the kingdom of God. And another also said, Lord, I will follow you, but let me first go and bid them farewell who were 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. Father, Lord God today, as I just come before you, I pray Lord that God, just be with us in our gathering together on this Lord's day. I pray, Father, for this body of believers right here. Lord, I believe that you have brought these all together providentially. And Lord, let us not look at the things that men say or the way we measure success and failure, but let us first put our soul, our complete focus on Christ. And let us measure ourselves just simply by your word, Lord. Just, are we obedient to what you're telling us to do? Are we being faithful to what we're called? Are we worshiping you in what you have said before us? And I don't know if success is the right word, but Lord, we wanna see your smile, Lord. We wanna bring glory and honor to you. I pray that you bless Brady as he tries to lead and pastor the church. And I pray for all the members, Lord, that they would just, that there would be such a sweet fellowship, a unity here, that they would grow, not only together, but grow in Christ individually, together, and that, Lord, that you would bring people and you would add to their number. And this we pray, God, we pray all this for your glory and for our good, in Jesus' name, amen. You may be seated. So this morning, or I guess it's this afternoon at this point now, We're going to be looking at this passage right here, and with a focus on, you know, I listened to an old, Vance Habner was an old Baptist preacher, and he preached a sermon that just, you know, some of his sermon titles just catch my eye. And the message was this, that Jesus doesn't come next. And there's going to be a focus on that. But when we get started here, we look in verse 57. I like how it records it. It says, now it happened as they journeyed. Almost like something just kind of just happened along the way. I can promise you there's no just random chance. Everything is designed by God and by his providence, these things happen. And so the first thing we look at is this. It says, it happened as they journeyed on the road that someone said to him, Lord, I will follow you wherever you go. Now, when you look in the book of Mark, It records that this man right here was a scribe. And the scribe was somebody that was, you know, they not only transcribed or, you know, put the scriptures down, but they studied, they studied the languages and stuff. They were very educated, intellectual people. And they were the ones who, you know, that would put all this together. They didn't have printing presses and things like that. And so this scribe, he's following along with Jesus. You got to realize it wasn't always just the 12 disciples and him walking down a road, but a lot of times there were many, there were multitudes that were following him and such. And this is probably one of those cases where as they're just going from one town to the next, they're on the road and this guy says, Lord, I will follow you. wherever you go. I want to ask you a question. Have you ever had those kind of what you might call an epiphany moment where something just comes alive in you and I mean you can see Jesus so much more clearer than maybe before and there's just this burning desire in you that you want to follow Jesus wherever He goes and it's easy to say those words. I can remember coming as a young, and I have to say it like this, as what I believe was a young believer, and I remember coming to this sensation one day that I wanted to take the gospel to a lost and dying world and tell everybody the good news about Jesus Christ. Now, What I didn't know is even the smallest details of difficulty that that would probably bring my way, much less how, you know, what distance that may be. But you see, when we think about, Lord, I'll follow you wherever you go, we usually are thinking geographically. We're thinking like, you know, like how far, and I told this today, and I'll tell y'all, my son-in-law and my daughter Kaylee, Tyler and Kaylee, at one time, about probably six, seven years ago, they were looking very strongly and just feeling like maybe God was calling them to the mission field. And they were in contact with a missionary, and this man's gone to be with the Lord now, but at the time, he sat down with them and with us, Kaylee's parents and with Tyler's parents and we all sitting around a table and this and this missionary asked this question and he said this he says if Jesus bids you to come Is there a time in that that you say, I can only go this far? If Jesus is telling you to follow Him wherever He's going, is there a point where you say, enough, I cannot go any further? And I wanna tell you, when I heard that question, it rocked me on my heels. It made me really start thinking because probably like you right now, when we think about serving the Lord, we think about in the capacity that I want to do it, and in the capacity that I want to do it, we at least believe that we can be full throttle. We can be 100%, which I beg you, you might want to examine your life even on that one. But in that same thinking, there's places that you can think about that you're thinking, I don't want to go there, Lord. Like I told our church today, we don't want to say it out loud because if you say it out loud, well, God hears you and that's where He's going to make you go, right? Isn't that the way the thinking goes? Well, that's not really true, but here's the thing. There have been times when God takes you to the very place that you don't want to go. Can I tell you something? I promise you, He's going to prepare you and He's going to equip you for the task or the journey at hand, whatever the destination may be. But let me also remind you of this, when he talks about I'll follow you wherever you go, do you know that that can even be doctrinally? Do you know that that can be the fellowship you have with other Christians and things like that? Do you realize that there are people today that believe a certain doctrine and then yet when put in an awkward situation, they get reluctant to go any further than that. It's like we've drawn our boundaries. And we're not getting out of this. And we're afraid to step over this and venture into where maybe somebody else is doing a labor, but we're just not so sure about that. What if God is leading you to labor with somebody who doctrinally sees things a little different? I'm not talking about essential doctrines of Jesus. I'm not talking about that. You might be in the reform camp and God may be telling you or leading you to work with people that are a little bit more on the, you know, when I say charismatic, I don't mean the crazos on TBN. All right, I'm talking about legitimate people who serve the Lord. And yeah, they may, you know, at times do a little bit of, you know, talking that we ain't got no clue what they saying and they ain't either. You know what I mean? And so here's the thing, when you really follow Jesus wherever he's leading, I want you to listen to Jesus' response. 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. In this first point, in these first two verses, To follow Jesus, wherever He's leading you, are you willing to suffer the hardships that may come along with that? Can I just share a little, an easy one with y'all? When Randy and I moved to Bowlegs, okay, we had built the house. We moved from Montana back to Oklahoma, and we had built this house ourself. We had raised our children in the house over there, just south of Stratford. And then we'd been there for over about 20 years or so. And there's a lot of memories, there's a lot of things like that. And can I tell you something? It wasn't really that easy to think about the possibility of selling that house. and moving over somewhere and buying another house. I mean, there was a lot of things. Now, and I say that's a simple one because in comparison to somebody like the Apostle Paul or something like that, that's nothing. But what I'm trying to get across to you is this, when we're talking about hardships, even sometimes what people may think of as small things, Listen, there's always difficulties that come with following Jesus. There's always gonna be those decisions we have to make that am I willing to give everything up? Am I willing to give this up in order to follow Christ? Amen? I mean, y'all aren't a very good amen church, so I'm gonna help y'all today, okay? I'm gonna tell y'all when y'all miss it and things like that. So it's something you all can work on. So listen to this. Now, I want you to think about this for a moment. Jesus is saying this. He's saying, I don't even have a place to sleep most of the time is what he's saying. I mean, it never records that he owned a home. We find him at times sleeping in the bottom of a boat in the middle of a storm, things like that. But he says right here, he says, I don't even have, it's like right now, I don't even know where I'm gonna sleep tonight. And it's like, are you sure you want to follow me? At this point, it's a good thing, what would be good right now is to just back up, because previously in this chapter, Jesus gives a call, and you could say it like this, it's an invitation. I mean, you know, we're so much against invitations sometimes, but through the Bible, Jesus gives those. Look what he says, and if you just take the same chapter, back up to verse 23, and I want you to listen to this. He said to them all, if anyone desires to come after me. So he starts with a desire. This is like, look, do you want to follow Jesus or not? And it's like, now here's the thing. Initially, everybody wants, not everybody, we know everybody doesn't want to follow Jesus, but you know what I'm talking about. People want to follow Jesus just in the label, the tag of that, you know. But he says this, he said, if you desire to come after me, Do this, let him deny himself. Take up his cross daily. Your Bible may not say daily, mine does, but I want you to understand something. To take up your cross is something you do daily. And then he says, and follow me. Three steps to that. He says, start to deny yourself. Secondly, take up your cross. And thirdly, follow me. I'll use two examples right now. You can think of somebody that's going to join the military, or you take somebody that is maybe training for the Olympics. And I use the Olympics because any professional athlete has to pretty much devote their life to the skills and everything to do it. But Olympians in particular, because their goal is every four years And I mean, there's not even a guarantee they're going to make the team to even get there to even compete for it. I mean, there's so many things. If you are a football player or something, you're doing this every year, OK? And to win the highest prize that they can offer. But in the Olympics, you have to completely dedicate and devote your life. When Jesus says, let him deny himself, That's what he's talking about. What you're doing at that point is you're saying everything in this world, like if you were joining the military or you're going to the Olympics, all the food that I would love to eat, all the pleasures, all the comforts, all those things in life, I am going to deny that because I have a goal, I have a focus in mind, I have something that is set ahead of me that I'm trying to achieve here. If you're in the military, it's winning the battle, winning the war. If it's in the Olympics, listen, nobody's going to the Olympics for silver. Okay? Everybody wants gold. I mean, silver's fine, that's all you can do, but everybody wants gold, okay? And so, any of these things, so the first thing is just a denial. It's a willingness on your part to say, I'm going to be separate. I'm not going to be of this world. No more. If you're an Olympian and for these next four years, your military, these next four years, in Christ, the entirety of your life. The entirety, the complete, not only the entirety, the longevity of your life, but everything about your life. It's a denial of the things that I want, and it's a saying, it's bringing yourself into, okay, what does my Lord want me to do? He says next, He says, take up His cross. When you go to the military, when you go to the Olympics, what do you got to do? You have to start training, you have to start learning. You're preparing. You're going into combat. You're going into competition. You're doing those things. As a Christian, we are going into war. I said it today and I'll say it now. There are so many Christians that keep thinking the war is about to happen when America really gets flipped on its head. Folks, we're in the war. The problem is we've made friends with the enemy. You say, well, what do you mean? What I mean is this. You work beside people that are lost. You go to school with people that are lost. And it's much easier just to get along with them than to stop and say, hey, are you a Christian? No? Can I tell you, I want to tell you about Jesus. It's not just for bus station, one time a week, one time a month, whatever we can do. It's not just that. It's everywhere we go we are on mission, we are in a war. Now we don't go out there and fist fight them. No, we go out there and love them. We love them first with an exposure to the gospel, a care for their soul. We do things like that. But there has to be this cross bearing, which means that we are dying daily to self. Friends, I want to tell you something. It's much, much, much easier just to be quiet and get along and just go along with the flow. It's much easier. It's not fun being the guy, the oddball. It's not fun doing that. It's not fun being the guy that, when you're not around, they're all saying, yeah, stay away from that guy. You don't want to go work with him. He'll just talk to you about Jesus all day. Yeah, I better stay away from that dude. Then they get stuck with you. I've asked them before on jobs. I say, well, did they warn you about me? They said, yeah. I said, what did they tell you? They said, they tell you that you're a preacher and you're going to talk about Jesus. I said, are you OK with that? They're like, sure. And I was like, all right, let's get started. I've told him that, you know, I mean there's no reason to wait if you already know and you've been warned and all that and you're cool with it. So listen to this, to take up this cross and then to follow me. To follow me. This is when you get in the war. This is when you are in the competition. We've got a lot of Christians today that, man, they're denying their self, they're doing things like that, and they are studying, man, they are intellectual, and they are educated, and they can tell you how to do it, all these things. I'm not gonna bring up his name, but there's a big time preacher. Actually, I think he's one of the absolute best preachers I've ever heard. And I saw him give an interview with a guy on how to do street evangelism. Well, this is what you do. Man, he said it was all confidence, all boldness, all these things. And all I'm gonna say is that when he saw Jeff Rose and that other fella down there, what's his name, Will Dietrich or somebody, preaching, he come over and commended him, man, just loved it, and he said, you wanna go? I'm not called to that. Give me a break. Those street preachers ain't called to be a pastor either. But yet if you invite them to church, they'll go preach. Friends, we don't want to be the guy that just knows how to do it. We want to be the guy that's following Jesus. I'm not saying that brother has not followed Jesus. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying in that opportunity, he waffled. He waffled and he dropped the ball. I'm just going to be honest with you, man. And so here's the deal. We're all capable of that. But what I'm saying is this. We want to deny ourself, take up the cross, and follow Jesus. I just read the deal by Daniel Kearney. Is that how you say his name? Kearney? Just today where some of them Hindus are kicking, trying to kick him to death. I mean all this stuff and it looks like miraculously two guys come along, I don't know, they're people, angels, what, pick him up, pick his bike up and away he goes all beaten and battered. because some just overcome him in this pagan, this false God worship, and he just preached against it and took a beating. And we look at that, and I wanna be honest, who all is ready to go there? Hmm, nobody. That's what I thought. I mean, the thing is, see, it's like wherever you will lead me, can I tell you something? Typically, you know what happens? When you start being faithful in the little things, God says he'll purge you, he'll increase you and you'll grow until you come to the place where you might stand up on your moped and start preaching against this stuff just like Daniel did. It may happen. But I want you to listen to this because we're talking about Jesus said, if you have a desire to come after me, here's what it's gonna take. This is the requirements. He said, whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. Now listen to this, I'm gonna go back. The second guy, the second guy he talks to, in verse 59, he said to another, now at this point, I want you to think about this, at this point, He's looking at a certain person and he points him out and says, follow me. And I want to bring something out that I hadn't even thought of until I was on the way up here and this was just rolling through my mind. Some Christians like to do the group thing. Like as long as I'm in the group, it probably counts. I'm following Jesus. And we want to be together. We want to be like in a church thing type thing. But can I tell you something? Brothers and sisters, there's going to be certain things that God's going to point at Bob and say, Bob, I want you to follow me in this. I'm preaching through Acts and in chapter 13, there were five or six or seven teachers in Antioch. And the list starts with Barnabas and it ends with Saul, who is Paul, and the Holy Spirit says, separate to me Saul and Barnabas for the work which I have called them. There's going to be the part where you're part of the group and there's going to be times and you're the person already that's saying, you don't know me. I'm not really able to do those things. I just like to be a part. I'm just the guy that's in the crowd. I'm a roadie with everybody. No, no, no. I'm talking about you and I want you to listen to this man's response. When Jesus looks at him and he says, follow me, but he says, Lord, let me first go and bury my father. I was reading one of my commentaries and I did not know this. But in the Jewish time, in that day and age, that burying your parents was like of the highest honor. Even if you were a rabbi and you were doing that kind of work, you could, it was like, man, you got time off. I mean, like, you know, today they give you bereavement from a funeral, things like that. Well, they even would say it is such a high priority that we're going to let you off to go take care of that because that was like his highest of honor. Do you realize what this man is saying? He's saying, Lord, let me first go do what is the highest priority. I want to ask you something, Christian. What is your highest priority? And I want to show you something. A lot of times we'll say, well, my highest priority is serving the Lord. Well, maybe not true here, and I hope it's not true here, but in so many churches, especially since COVID hit, people are looking for almost any excuse to not come to church. I mean, and today, let me tell you something. When I was raising my kids, if my wife was sick and I was not sick and my kids weren't sick, guess what? The whole family didn't stay home. My wife stayed home and I picked up all the kids and I brought them to church. Okay? Nowadays, our baby's got a runny nose. We're all going to stay home. I'm sorry, I don't get it. We should be looking, we should be fighting for trying to figure out how to come to meet on the Lord's day with God's people that we can hear what God's word is for us that day. I have seen so many times, I know people that they're going, this is my struggle. We're having this problem. And you know what? When I hear what they say their problem is, I preached on it that day. Now I'm not saying it's that I'm this great preacher and that would have fixed all their problems, but God is speaking And they're not there because guess what? Let me first. Vance Abner says this, Jesus don't come next. Jesus does not come next. If you're doing this, I will serve the Lord no matter what, unless this is going on. I can just tell you this, Jesus ain't coming next. This right here is our church covenant. And I've got things highlighted today that I read in our church. Because as their pastor, I had to apologize and repent. Because we sign, everybody that's a member of our church has signed this covenant. And they are the ones that are listed as members of our church. And it tells how we're gonna pray for each other. We're going to not forsake the assembly of ourselves together. We're going to do all these things, love, encourage, hold accountable, all these different things. And guess what I wasn't doing very good at? Everything. I had a young brother in our church call me a while back, and we was talking about that, and he kind of laughed, and he goes, well, we're not really keeping that covenant. And I said, you're right. I said, it starts with you. Nobody's keeping me from not doing what I said I would do. But forget this thing. Forget this paper. Do you realize that we serve a covenant-making and covenant-keeping God? that Jesus Christ came in this world, lived as a man. Listen, you start looking at these things right here, talking about denying yourself, Jesus set aside his deity. He became a man. You want to talk about cross bearing? It didn't start when he put that piece of wood and went up Calvary's Hill. It started when he was born. He was cross bearing all the way through that. He was doing, listen though, I want you to know something. He was following the desires, the will of his father. He said, I do always those things that please my father. The difference between Jesus and us, when he says, deny yourself, take up your cross and follow, Jesus leads. We're the followers, he's the leader. Now I wanna ask you something. When this man says right here, let me first go and bury my father, You know what he's saying? Let me have this life first and I'll give you my life later. Do you remember the man that wanted to build bigger barns? He labored for all of that, didn't he? I heard a guy say this one time. He says, well, when I retire from my job, then I'm going to start serving the Lord. The rich man that was going to build bigger barns because he had too much stuff now, he says he put it all up. And what did he do? He stored it all up. He spent all those years building and building and building and acquiring and accumulating. And for here, God say, you fool. Tonight, your soul is required of you. Jesus isn't coming next. The other thing, after the highest priority of, you know, burying the dead, is that, well, when you bury the dead, guess what? An inheritance is coming. Remember the parable of the prodigal son? He says, give that portion that falls to me. You know what he's saying when he says that? Father, I just wish you were dead. If you were dead, I could have my money. That's all I'm caring about. This man is saying, let me bury my parents. Let me go bury them. Because guess what? An inheritance was coming. And Jesus responds, and I want you to just see if this sounds like the Jesus that so many people try to portray. Let the dead, how do you say it? Let their own dead, let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and preach the kingdom of God. That don't sound real loving, does it? Let the spiritually dead, let those who don't care, let those bury the dead. Now listen, Jesus is not saying don't go bury your parents. He's not saying don't attend the funeral. What we're seeing here is this, what is the highest priority? A forsaking of trying to think that riches is what's going to accomplish things in life. What did Jesus tell us in, I think it's right over here a little bit, but he says, I'm gonna have to read it out of Matthew, because I don't know where it's at in Luke, but I'm gonna read it real quick. Listen to what he says in Matthew. in Matthew 6 at the end. He talks about all these things we worry about. And I'll back up to 31. He says, don't worry, saying, what will we eat or what will we drink or what shall we wear? And after all these things, the Gentiles seek. He says, your heavenly father knows that you need all these things, but seek first the kingdom of God in his righteousness and all these things shall be added to you. Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow for tomorrow we'll worry about It's own thing sufficient for the day is its own trouble. Do you know why it feels like sometimes we don't we like you pray and you're like do our prayers get answers? Do they get heard? You know people that have everything already. It's kind of hard to know what you're praying for but when you have given all when you've given all You know, people like George Muir, when he truly got saved, he gave up everything. He gave all his riches away. His wife even said, let's give it all. C.T. Studd, you know, cricket player in England. I mean, his dad was saved under D.L. Moody's preaching. And what until he heard Hudson Taylor preaching that, you know, he'd kind of slacked. And he was, listen, I know it doesn't mean a lot to us. But he was the number one cricket player in all of England, maybe all the world, which was a big deal. I mean, it would be like being the world's greatest football player, basketball player, or something. But when this happened, when he really got saved, him and six other guys, they were called the Cambridge Seven, they said, we're going to go down to China and help Hudson Taylor in the work down there. And he had inherited, his father had died, he was 25 years old, his father had died, he had inherited 29,000 pounds, which in today's equivalency would be several million dollars. He gave it all away, except he was engaged, and he's held onto 10% of it, and he said, this is for my bride. And his bride said, no reason to stop here, let's give it all away. And he went to India. And then he went to China, then he went to India, and his life ended in Africa. He never returned home. Folks, who is the highest priority? What is the highest priority? He's giving us a sense that when the Lord calls, we need to be ready to answer. If you're building your own mansions here, listen, go read the book of, I think it's the book of, not Hosea, what's the other one? Haggai, go read the first chapter of Haggai. This is a time when the children of Israel had been sent back by King Cyrus. They'd been sent back to rebuild the temple. And then the enemy comes and they stopped and the work had been stopped for about 16 years. And you know what they were doing? They were just building their own homes. They were making beautiful homes. And all the while the house of the Lord is in a pile of rubble. And God says, look, you go out and you work, you fill your bags with money, and it's got a hole in it. You try to do this. He says, everything you do, you're getting a very minimal amount. And he says, and you want to know why? Because my house is lying here in waste, and you're building your own homes. Think about that. Where is your focus every day? Every day. Now listen to this. The last one says this, another said, Lord, I will follow you, but let me first go bid them farewell who were at my house. Friends, did you ever hear the story of the two young men that had heard about this slave owner in the Caribbean. Rand, do you remember the island that they were on? Was it Jamaica? I don't remember the island, but forgive me on that part of this story. But the owner of these slaves was obviously, he was a hardcore God-hating atheist. And they knew there was all of these slaves that would never, they would live and die and never hear the gospel. So these two young men come up with a plan. We're going to sell ourselves into slavery, not knowing what would await them. Believing with everything in them, they would never return home, even if they made the voyage over there. Friends and family tried to get them to not follow the Lord's calling. As they boarded the ship and they're sailing off, they said, worthy is the lamb of his full reward. Do you know that nobody dies thinking about how much money they made or how much fame they had or what people thought of them? Do you know that nobody dies thinking that? Listen to what the man says again. Lord, I will follow you, but let me first, let me first go bid them farewell in my home, which are in my house. I'll tell you about a man I know named Godwin Simpson, and that's not his real name. I can't even pronounce his real name. He's from India. Godwin Simpson was a Hindu, raised Hindu. And as it turns out, there had been many, many girls born, but there had been no boys born for many years. And all of a sudden, here comes Godwin. He was the promised. whatever, ramen or whatever that this high, he was going to be a priest and all of these things. Except at the age of, I think, about 16 years old, he was in town and he heard a gospel preacher, an Indian brother, preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ. And the way he tells the story, he said, this guy was talking about this spooky Jesus. He says this spooky Jesus, was God, was the son of God, and he had died and then he came back to life from the dead. I mean, it was freaking him out. But guess what? The gospel had gotten inside. The Holy Spirit had gotten inside. He couldn't get it out of his head. And he goes to this village and he finds the man. Now, you can keep in mind, Godwin was a 16 year old boy. And the man doing the preaching was a grown man. And yet, this man knew who Godwin was. He knew the danger he could be. And this Godwin seeks him out and comes into his home. And the man is scared in his own home. And Godwin says, I don't want you to be afraid. I want you to tell me more about this Jesus. And God saved Godwin. And he went home. And he got baptized secretly. They thought it was secretly, they found out. When he got home from the baptizing, it was dark in the house and when he went to his bedroom, he was jumped by his uncle and his brother. And the knife that they would use to slit the throat of the animals for sacrifice, they tried to slit his throat. He ducked his head and they cut him across his chin. His dad came in and at least kind of fought for him and Godwin jumped out the window and he has never returned home. 16 year old. Today he is the head of a thing called AIM. It's the Ambassador India Missions. They have a school. Out of this school they have, it's the lowest people, it's the Dalits. that nobody cares about, they're teaching them. And the people come, they say, can you teach my child to learn to read? And they go, yeah, yeah, I want you to know that we're a Christian school and we're gonna teach them about Jesus. They say, I don't care, can you teach our kids how to read? And guess what? Those kids learn to read. They're taught to sing songs, they go home and they're doing these things and the parents are asking questions and they have prayed and strategically planted churches and pastors in all the places the kids are coming from and they're planting churches. You see, this guy didn't even have time to go tell everybody goodbye. This guy didn't even have time to go bury his father. He had no time for any of that. He has not spoke to him. He's in his 40s now. You see, the thing that you gotta understand is this. Listen to this. I'll skip back over here to the call to discipleship call. Jesus asks the question, he says, for what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world and is himself destroyed or lost? For whoever, listen, for whoever is ashamed of me and my words, of him the son of man will be ashamed when he comes in his own glory and in his father's and of the holy angels. The word ashamed is like to, to refuse, to reject. And he's saying this, and I don't think he's talking to those that, like the lady the other day, just rejecting Christ. We know they're ashamed. But this is where it comes in. Are you a church member and a disciple of Jesus, or are you just a church member? Because you can be one of those and maybe not both. It should be a synonym. They should go hand in hand. but it's not always that way. You see, there's too many Christians, professing Christians that we see that are with lip service. Man, we sing the songs. I have decided to follow Jesus. No turning back. No turning back, right? What are we talking about? You never even started. Friends, listen to this. Jesus says no one having put his hand to the plow and looking back is fit for the kingdom of God. Do you know that when you're plowing, especially in those days, do you know how they did it? They would fix a point and they kept their eye on that. They drove that team with a goal in mind of where they're going. But if they're turning around looking this way, if you're still looking at the things the world has to offer, and you're still kind of juggling, instead of being disciples of Jesus, see a disciple, the word just simply means an adherent to the teaching and the following of Christ. To adhere to something is to be so close to it, there's really no separation. To really be a disciple of Jesus is to be completely given, completely devoted to Christ. It preaches good, doesn't it? But I find myself weighing the balance today and I'm coming up short. And do you know what people say about me, Jamie? They say, oh man, that Brother Ronnie, man, that guy is sold out. I just want to kind of wilt in humiliation, because I know me a lot better than that guy does. You see, getting ready to preach this sermon, I'm preaching through the book of Romans, and I preached this at my church today. It's really not the one you want to go to the pulpit with. Because it just doesn't make people feel good all the time. But I really went to the pulpit because I found myself coming up way short. I'm 58 years old. I definitely ain't got a lot of time left. I don't want to waste any more time. I want to put my hands on the plow and the goal in mind is Jesus Christ. I want to be focused on Him. I don't want to be given to the things of this world. I want to be like this man right here. And this man right here is a man that we always put on a pedestal, even though we're not supposed to. And we say, well, no one, no one can be like Paul. Listen to this. This is what Paul says. He says, you want to do some bragging? I'll do some bragging with you. He said, I was circumcised the eighth day at the stock of Israel of the tribe of Benjamin. I was a Hebrew of the Hebrews concerning the law. He said, I was a Pharisee. What he's saying in all these things is, You're not gonna have higher qualifications for a godly man than what I had. Pharisee was the strictest group out of all the divisions of the, you had your Sadducees and there was another group, I can't remember, Essenes or something, I don't know nothing about them. But he says, concerning zeal, this is the way Jews measured, this is the way they kind of rated you. He says, concerning zeal, persecuting the church. Paul was the persecutor of the church. He was the definite article. Concerning the righteousness which is in the law, blameless. Now I want you to think about this. What he's saying is this. Externally, you couldn't have pointed at anything in my life and said, ah, look at him, he's guilty. I was blameless. but what things were gained to me, these I've counted lost for Christ. Let me tell you something, Christian. I don't care what your standing and your status is before men right now. I really don't care. You're either a disciple of Christ or you're not. You may have done a lot of learning, you may have a lot of education, a lot of intellect, you may, all those things, you may have all your ducks in a row, But the real question you're gonna have to ask yourself is, am I truly a disciple of Jesus? Or am I just a church member? Now listen to this. Paul goes on. Things that were gained to me, these I've counted lost for Christ. And he says, yet indeed, I also count all things lost. And the first thing he's talking about is all of these things he just listed off. I denied every bit of it. I took up my cross. I have followed Jesus. And then he adds to it, he says, everything that I counted, everything I've counted but lost. for the excellence. And that word loss, in one place in the King James, he says, I've counted it as done. Some of them say refuse. It's waste. It's like something that just needs to be thrown out in the sewer. He says that's what everything, he's not talking about the sins, he's talking about the good things. He's talking about everything he was trusting in, but when he came to Christ, it all changed. And he says, I count all things but lost for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, my Lord. Listen to me, friends. He is either Lord of all of your life, or he's not Lord at all. He's not coming next. Now don't misunderstand me. Whether you acknowledge him as Lord or not, he is. But what you're submitting yourself to, if it ain't Jesus, then you've got a false God. He says, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and I count them but rubbish. There's where that is. As dung, as refuse, as rubbish, that I may gain Christ. Now, we don't earn Christ, but he's saying, I'm living my life in such a way, it's like I'm that Olympian, and I'm trying to run this race as though only one person's gonna get to go to heaven, and I'm gonna make sure it's me. Now all the time that you say, well nobody can be the Apostle Paul, well I can guarantee you one thing, with that attitude, you'll never get there. Okay? But what I can tell you is this, everything that Paul did, denying himself, taking up his cross and following Jesus, everyone sitting here that is born again can do those things right there. It's just the problem is we are so, I hate to say it like this, we're so out of shape, overweight, I'm talking spiritually, Vance Hadmer said we're just like a bunch of milk babies on the bottle. We thought it's time to grow up. Because listen, friends, look at our country. No, I don't want it to go to hell in a handbasket. I don't want to see it flip on its head, but I got to be honest with you, it ain't looking good. It's not looking good in our favor if you're a Christian. And what we're talking about is things right now are trials. Friends, think about how fast things have changed in the last 20 years. Do you want to talk about persecution increasing on the same rate? It can very well happen in our time, in our generation. There's something that Jeremiah gives us, I think it's over I don't know, I'm going to say the 7th or 9th chapter of Jeremiah. And he gives this little picture, he says, if you have run with the footmen and they've wearied you, what will you do when the horses come? And you go, what is he talking about? He's talking about warfare. And he's saying this, he said, if you've only fought with the first line guys, what we would call the expendables, if you've fought with them and it's been really a war, what in the world are you going to do when the real military shows up? when the real forces of the enemy show up, what are you gonna do then? Well, I'm gonna tell you something. I would beat the rush. I would start right here, right now, today, and ask myself, am I truly a disciple of Jesus? These things that Jesus requires, do I find myself earnestly desiring to do those things or not? And if you're not there, this is the time to examine yourselves. First, to see whether you're in the faith. Second, to see if you're measuring up. And thirdly, to repent, to come broken, to come low before Jesus Christ and say, Lord, I want to be a disciple of Jesus. And not just on paper. I don't want to just be intellectually. I want to know him. I want to know him in the way that Paul knew him and others all down through time. So as Paul does this, listen, he ends it like this. He says, I want to be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith, that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings being conformed to His death. That's where we want to be today. So as I preach this to you, I preach this for the second time today. I mean, it's a little different, but kind of the same. I just have to ask myself, do I really want to follow Jesus? Am I really willing to get to lay it all out there, to just take the things of this world and just discard them? What am I hanging on to? I mean, when we talk about discipleship, we think it's something we can pick up when we want to do it, and we can lay it down when we got other, you know, better things to do. I got ripped by Don Kern one time. You believe that? Don Kern. Y'all will meet him. One of the nicest, sweetest brothers you'll ever meet. His wife's even sweeter than him. In our little church where we were struggling in, everything kind of went bad, you know, one Sunday. And I mean, you know, it's just one of these, like, what are we going to do now? Now we don't even have a building. And so I told the little small church about this size. I said, what do y'all think? You know, what should we do? Everybody's like, I don't know. Now they're looking to me for leadership. I said, how about we do this? How about we just take a month off and we'll just, we can go visit other churches and just see what we think, you know. Sounded like a good plan. I was tired, Brady. I was weary. I didn't have a game plan. I did not know what to do. And Don Curran calls me, asks how it's going, and I tell him. He says, well, what are you doing, brother? I said, well, I told everybody we're just going to take a month off. He goes, brother, you get your people and you gather them together. This ain't no time for that. And I said, brother, have you ever just been tired and you needed a break? He goes, yeah. And when you get a chance, take one. But this ain't that time. And I thank Him for it. I thank Him for it. Would you bow your head with me in prayer today? Should I pray right now, pray or take questions? Father, I do wanna come before you and I ask you, God, that you would look down upon the church here. Just as a group, individually speaking, my family, all of us, Lord, Oh, Father, the stick can't shake enough to point out all my flaws, all the things I'm probably doing wrong in my life. So I ask you, Lord, just help me to funnel this down to one main thing, which is Jesus. And to start right there, I don't want to look at all my problems, but I want to look at Christ. And I just want to start taking every thought captive Bring it under the authority and the submission of Christ, under that obedience. I wanna take the words I speak and do the same thing, the actions that I do. I just wanna start like that and just eliminate things. And I pray for this little church, Lord. Oh God, you don't measure based on size and buildings and all kinds of things like that. You just, are we being faithful to you, Lord? Are we giving you honor? Are we glorifying you? My prayer today, God, is that they would continue to grow individually in their walk with Christ, that they would die to self, deny the passions and everything, take up the cross, and follow Christ today. That is my prayer, in Jesus' name, amen. What do I hit here?