Feb. 19, 2023 - Just Informed Talk - Craig James
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| And I hope you guys are ready to do a deep dive in the scripture. | |
| For everybody watching on YouTube, I encourage you to go in the description below this video. | |
| There are links to my Rumble channel where I do the live stream news show every day. | |
| Monday through Friday. | |
| And basically what I do is I do a news rundown and I talk about current events and what's happening. | |
| And I'll tell you this, guys, that the stuff I tell you on that channel on Rumble and Bitchute, they won't allow me to say on YouTube. | |
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| So please go check that out and give that a follow as well. | |
| Now... | |
| Let's get into the story of following Jesus Christ. | |
| The story of following Jesus Christ. | |
| Well, Jesus gives us what it means to follow Jesus Christ and the level of difficulty that it comes with and the level of commitment we have to make. | |
| And these are all summarized in these verses we're going to go through. | |
| And this is finishing up chapter 9 of Luke. | |
| We're picking up at verse 51, and we're reading all the way to verse 62. | |
| And we're going to start with Jesus taking his journey to Jerusalem. | |
| This is him heading to Jerusalem for his final days where he knows he's going to face death on the cross and then resurrection will come soon thereafter. | |
| So he's leaving to make this journey, and he encounters a few things along the way that are very powerful, and they're meant to teach us lessons about following Jesus and what that means and what that looks like. | |
| So, with that being said, let's just go ahead and read here. | |
| In chapter 9, we're finishing chapter 9, verse 51 to 62, it says. | |
| Now, remember, we're... | |
| Just for context here, we're picking up where we left off, where Jesus and the disciples are having this debate over who's the greatest disciple after Jesus has driven out demons and he's done these amazing things. | |
| He's had the transfiguration. | |
| He's done all of this. | |
| And essentially now we're picking up where Jesus is making his final trip to Jerusalem and some interesting things happen along the way. | |
| Let's go ahead and read. | |
| When the days were coming to a close for him to be taken up, he determined to journey to Jerusalem. | |
| He sent messengers ahead of him, and on the way they entered a village of the Samaritans to make preparations for him, but they did not welcome him because he determined to journey to Jerusalem. | |
| When the disciples James and John saw this, they said, Lord, do you want us to call down fire from heaven to consume them? | |
| But he turned and rebuked them, and they went to another village. | |
| As they were traveling on the road, someone said to him, I will follow you wherever you go. | |
| Jesus told him, Foxes have dens, and birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head. | |
| Then he said to another, Follow me. | |
| Lord, he said, First let me go bury my father. | |
| But he told him, Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and spread the news of the kingdom of God. | |
| Another also said, I will follow you, Lord, but first let me go and say goodbye to those at my house. | |
| But Jesus said to him, No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God. | |
| Well, a little bit to unpack here. | |
| There's an interesting story here that's tucked into all of this, and an interesting lesson, I believe, that we can learn from it. | |
| First off, obviously Jesus is heading to Jerusalem, and he's sending out messengers to prepare a way for him, basically to make preparations for him to have places to stay along the way. | |
| And his messengers go ahead of him to a village of Samaritans. | |
| Now, the Samaritans do not welcome him. | |
| They won't even welcome him at all because he's headed to Jerusalem, and they don't want to have any part of Jesus, apparently. | |
| Now, James and John, seeing this, they invoke what we know from the Old Testament is the fire that was called down by Elijah, right? | |
| They're invoking this. | |
| This is an interesting thing. | |
| It says here, They had in mind the story of the prophet Elijah calling down fire on the emissaries of the king of Samaria. | |
| This is what I want to share. | |
| This is from Dr. | |
| Jeremiah Wright. | |
| I love the way he writes this. | |
| He says, They still had not learned that Jesus came to rescue people, not annihilate him. | |
| Because Jesus had rebuked them. | |
| Right? | |
| He rebuked them when they said that. | |
| They were invoking this great story of Elijah and him raining down fire. | |
| And Jesus said, no. | |
| And they couldn't understand even then that Jesus was going to voluntarily give himself up to free us of our sins in this world. | |
| He wasn't going to establish a kingdom on earth. | |
| He was establishing a kingdom in heaven that we can all be a part of once we give our lives to him. | |
| Now that I thought was an interesting exchange that the disciples hadn't quite figured that out yet. | |
| And as they're still on the road to Jerusalem here... | |
| There's two interesting exchanges, and these all kind of do relate back in a little way to Elijah and Elisha, and kind of the interconnection here is interesting. | |
| First, they were traveling, and a man said, I will follow you wherever you go to Jesus. | |
| And how does Jesus respond? | |
| He says, foxes have dens, birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head. | |
| Wow. | |
| Well, what's he saying there? | |
| Well, he follows that up by saying, follow me. | |
| Well, what's he saying? | |
| Well, I love that there's another interpretation of this that I thought was really, really great where it talked about how the man was boasting about how he would follow Jesus anywhere, but Jesus was explaining to him how great the hardship was that he would face. | |
| And that even Jesus, at that point, Had less adequate and less permanent provisions than animals, right? | |
| Can you imagine? | |
| And he's showing them how hard it is to actually follow Jesus because you're not going to have a home until you find that home in heaven. | |
| And that is, I believe, exactly. | |
| It kind of embodies the whole power of following Jesus and knowing that you have that home, that you're given a home, and that's why we must follow him. | |
| So that's the first exchange. | |
| And then the second exchange, a man says, Lord, let me first go bury my father. | |
| Now, this is not necessarily saying that his father had already died and he wanted to go bury him and have a funeral. | |
| I believe it meant probably more closely that his father was sick or is very old and he wanted to wait until his father passed so he could bury him and then go follow Jesus. | |
| And again, another person said, I will follow you, Lord, but first let me go and say goodbye to those at my house. | |
| So they both asked for excuses. | |
| They said, I'll follow you, but I'll just get to it later. | |
| Let me take care of what I have to take care of, then I'll follow you. | |
| That's not how it's meant to be, because Jesus answers both times, By giving responses that are very interesting. | |
| The first one to the man who wanted to bury his father, to be with his father until his father passed, said, Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and spread the news of the kingdom of God. | |
| He's giving him a directive for action. | |
| He's saying, you have to put the kingdom of heaven first. | |
| You have to share the kingdom of God before you can take care of any of your business on this earth. | |
| You have to make that commitment, just as in the second example here, where the man wanted to just go say goodbye to his family. | |
| He was referencing, of course... | |
| It's Elijah, right? | |
| In Elijah, commissioning Elijah, where Elijah asked permission to return to his family and say goodbye before beginning his apprenticeship. | |
| But, instead, he slaughtered the oxen that once plowed the fields, and he never looked back. | |
| And that's what the kingdom of heaven takes. | |
| That's the kind of commitment this takes. | |
| It's not something you put off until later. | |
| Because no day, there is nothing guaranteed. | |
| Tomorrow is not guaranteed. | |
| Your next breath's not guaranteed. | |
| That's why, if you haven't accepted Jesus yet, do it now. | |
| Don't wait. | |
| Don't be like these who are asking Jesus, well, can I just take care of my stuff and then get to it? | |
| Can I just get into a good place and then I'll take care of my faith towards you? | |
| It's the opposite. | |
| You drop everything you have Like Jesus says, no one who puts his hand to the pile but looks back is fit for the kingdom. | |
| You can't stop and put it on hold. | |
| You can't put your faith on hold. | |
| You have to turn everything over to Christ. | |
| And I encourage you to turn everything over to Christ today. | |
| Remember, as Jesus teaches us in both these examples, everything will work itself out. | |
| But if you put your faith first... | |
| And you put that at the forefront of your life, everything else will fall into place. | |
| You'll be able to take care of those things. | |
| And whether they take care of themselves or you're there to actually do what you want to do, let God guide the way. | |
| Our salvation is what must come first. | |
| And I believe that's the lesson that Jesus teaches us about following Jesus Christ and how it's supposed to look. | |
| So let's go ahead and say a prayer and then we'll wrap it up. | |
| Lord and Heavenly Father, we give thanks for this incredible scripture, and I pray, Lord, that if there's anybody out there watching right now who's been putting off turning over their life to Jesus, who's been waiting so that they can take care of the things they feel they need to take care of before they really turn their life over to you, Lord. | |
| That you'll open their heart. | |
| You'll help them recognize that they must do it now. | |
| That you are calling them right now, where they're at, where they're sitting, where they're listening to this right now. | |
| Lord, that you're calling them to turn it all over to you. | |
| And trust that you'll allow everything to happen according to your will from there on. | |
| Lord, we pray that that opens up people's hearts and that you'll show us all the way and help us live like that every day. | |
| So we thank you, Lord, for this day and every day, most of all, our eternal salvation. | |
| In Jesus' name, amen. | |
| All right, guys. | |
| Well, I hope you enjoyed this episode. | |
| We're going to leave it there, and I want to say thank you all for watching. | |
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| But I want to thank you all for your support. | |
| We'll see you on the next one. | |
| Until then, my name is Craig. |
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