you for this time and we pray
that now that all you bless us to hear your Word. Your Word is not dead words. The words on the pages of the
Bibles in front of us, Lord, they are dead words so long as
all they are is words on a page that we read. And my words spoken
are nothing but the words of a dead man. But you can give life to these
dead words and make them your words and speak to the hearts
of your people. And we ask that you do that.
And Lord, we take a moment to pray for our brothers and sisters
who are sick. And right now, Lord, there's
a lot of them, more than we're accustomed to having in this
little congregation. We ask, Lord, that you would
be near to them in their hearts and in their minds, that you
would assure them that they are yours, you have redeemed them,
and you own them as your own and will not let them go. And
Lord, if it pleases you, bring them relief from their illness. And Lord, for the others who
are suffering various kinds of trials, Lord, uphold them. Show them that your grace is
sufficient. And we pray this in the name of the Lord Jesus. Amen. Now, this morning's message
was inspired, or at least it got my mind thinking on this
subject. It was a dramatization of the
life of Christ that's becoming rather popular right now, at
least they want you to think it is because they're trying
to get everybody to watch it. I watch these things. A lot of times
I just want to watch them and see if they get it right. And
then I also watch them because you can sometimes gain some insights
that you wouldn't have gotten otherwise. I've learned that
the Lord can plant his blessings anywhere he wants. He can even
make his truth come out of the mouth of unbelievers. After all,
Caiaphas the high priest, I believe it was him, he said, it is better
that one man die for the nation that the whole nation die. Now
he hated the Lord Jesus Christ. He was conspiring to put Christ
to death. But when those words are recorded,
The gospel writer says, he said this, he said this, kind of acting
as a prophet. He was telling the truth. He
didn't realize he was telling the truth because Jesus Christ
was the one man who was going to die in place of God's holy
nation, his church. So I watch these shows. And sometimes I gain something
from them. And one of the things I noted that
kind of caught my attention was when he called one of the disciples,
and all he said was, follow me. Follow me. Luke 5, verse 27,
follow me. And I thought to myself, what
a powerful statement. Two words. But two words, you
cannot imagine two words that had more meaning than those words. You cannot imagine two words
that called for more than those two words
do. Follow me. And I also thought this to myself,
how simple they are. The Lord did not give a long
set of instructions. He did not say, do this. You
know, here's, I got 10 things, 10 things. I see that a lot,
you know, 10 or 12 things to change your life. You know, got
a list of things you go through. One, one thing, follow me. I have no trouble saying that
follow me is the exhortation of the gospel. I know it's explained
other ways, believe me, but you can't believe him without following
him. They go together. Look to me, all that, all of
it can be summed up in this follow me. The call of grace is not
a call to a single solitary moment of decision. at the end of a
service, when you've been worked up into an emotional frenzy,
and they say, all right, raise your hand, or pray a prayer after
me, or give your life to Jesus, all this kind of, no, that's
not what the call of the gospel is. The call of the gospel is
follow me, follow me. These words, follow me, do not
represent a second call given after a person is a believer,
a call to a higher life than the mere believer has. It's not
that at all. Every true believer in the Lord
Jesus Christ has heard this call and answer it. Look over in John
chapter 10. Now, I think this is important.
Well, I know it's important or the Lord wouldn't have written
it down. But on the one hand, we say that
salvation is had at no cost or at no price. On the other hand,
salvation costs you everything you have. Now, everything you have is worthless. So really, giving it up, you
haven't given anything. But the call of the gospel is
not a call simply to lay hold of Christ. It is a call that
as you lay hold of Christ, you're letting go of everything else.
Paul said that he counted all things Rubbish for the excellency
of knowing Christ. Now, he didn't say, I paid these
things. I gave them up and oh, what a
loss they were to me so that I might have Christ. It's just
that he was better than the other thing. No, he said, when I saw
Christ, I looked at these things and they were trash. Yes, I let go of them, but in
letting go of them, I didn't lose anything. I gained Christ. But here it
says in John chapter 10, verse 20. Well, let's go back up to
verse 25. Jesus answered, I did tell you. Now they said, if you're the
Christ, tell us plainly. He said, I did tell you, but you do not
believe. The miracles I do in my father's
name speak for me. The things that our Lord was
doing, those miraculous works he was doing proved who he was. And then he says, but you do
not believe me because you are not my sheep. Notice cause and effect here. He didn't say you're not my sheep
because you don't believe me. He says, you don't believe me.
you're not my sheep." The Lord has some sheep. They're lost. He's going to find them. But
not all sheep are His sheep. All of His sheep, notice what
He says about them, My sheep listen to My voice. I know them. and they follow
me." Now, we don't know who the Lord's
sheep are. We do the best we can. We certainly
speak the Shepherd's words and to whatever ability God gives
us, we try to speak with the Shepherd's voice. But the truth
is, only the Great Shepherd can speak with the Shepherd's voice.
And we go out and preach, and we're preaching to every body,
but we find out who of those that group of worldwide sheep,
who of those are the Lord's sheep? How do we know them? When the
Lord speaks, they listen. They listen. Why do people not believe what
we say? Well, if we're telling the Lord's
Word, and I believe we are, and people don't believe it, it's
because they're not His sheep. It's not because we don't have
the right program. It's not because we don't have
the right, you know, flashy looking website or interesting programs
at the church. They hear what we have to say
and they say, nah, they're not the Lord's sheep. Now, they may
say yes later and prove that they are. But for the time being,
when people live in unbelief of this gospel of the Lord Jesus
Christ, the only conclusion we can draw to is they don't hear
him, they don't believe him, because they're not his sheep.
His sheep hear his voice. He knows them. We don't, but
he knows them. And they follow him. Of course the picture that our
Lord is using is one of the more endearing aspects of sheep and
shepherding. But in those days you know there
was the cities and then there was what King James calls the
desert, it just meant wilderness, places where people didn't live.
And all the shepherds just kind of went out there with their
sheep wherever there was grass. You know it was kind of no man's
land. And they would go out there and they visited with one another
and their flocks would intermingle. Now they didn't have any brands
on them or ear tags or anything like that to determine whose
sheep belonged to which shepherds, which sheep belonged to which
shepherds. They just, all those flocks would graze together until
it's time to go home. And then one shepherd would stand
up and he called his sheep to follow him. And the sheep knew
their shepherd's voice. And all his sheep would come
out of that flock and follow him back to where he was leading
them. And another shepherd would stand
up and he'd call. And his sheep would come out
from among that mass of sheep out there grazing. But the thing
is, and this is what the Lord's saying, I'm the great shepherd,
my sheep, Listen to my voice. When I speak, they hear me and
they come out and they follow me. In another place here in
this chapter, it says, another shepherd they will not follow.
They won't. Not once he has brought them,
not once he has called them and they've heard his voice, they'll
never listen to another shepherd's voice. Now, by listen here, it
doesn't simply mean that they hear the words of someone. It's
like the same sense as when you say to your children, listen
to me. You're meaning, hear what I have to say and then do it. Listen, my sheep, hear my voice. Every one of God's sheep hears
his voice. And at the sound of His voice,
they follow Him. And they don't follow anyone
else. So you see, this business of
following Christ is not some upper level of experience of,
you know, so-called upper level Christians. Every one of God's people, to
whom the Lord has spoken, they follow Him. And you know, again,
that's why we don't use any fleshly methods in our preaching and
in our work to make this gospel known. We are not trying to make
converts. I hope that by the work we do,
God calls out His sheep But I don't have to do anything
special. I don't have to have anything natural about me or
exercise any particular attractiveness in order to make the preaching
of the gospel effective. We preach the gospel. That's
the shepherd's words. If he adds his voice to it, they're
coming. They're coming. Without us twisting
their arm. without us trying to terrify
them, without us threatening to cut off family relations if
they don't go our way. No, we just tell them the word,
knowing this, when the shepherd speaks, his sheep will follow
him. They always have, they always
will. They follow him. Now going back
to Luke chapter five, In verse 27, follow me, pure
simplicity. Follow me encompasses the initial
call of the gospel, and it encompasses all that Christ ever says to
his sheep. All of it's included there, follow
me. When the gospel first comes to his sheep, it is a word, follow
me. And the next day, it's the same
word, follow me. And every day of their life,
it's follow me. You say, what should I as a Christian
do? Follow him, that's what you should
do. Boy, that's simple. Our Lord keeps things simple
for us because we're not too good with complicated stuff,
are we? Paul said in, I believe it's 2 Corinthians 11, But I fear, as Satan beguiled
Eve in the garden, so your minds should be corrupted from the
simplicity that is in Christ. From now till the day you die,
you have nothing else to do, if you're a believer in Christ,
from now till the day you die, you have nothing else to do but
follow Him. Now, it's simplicity. But one
reason it's simple is because it is so radical. It is so radical. He didn't say,
follow good theology. He said, follow me. He is the
object of our following. He didn't say, walk in my path. You say, well, doesn't that mean
the same thing? Yes and no. The reason he didn't say walk
in my path is we don't know what his path is except by keeping
our eyes on him and following him. And wherever that takes
us, that's his path. You see, Satan will do everything
he can to get the believer's eyes off of the Lord Jesus Christ. And he's successful sometimes
for a period of time. And his best method of doing
it is setting before us something that sounds really good. Well,
follow the path that Jesus walked. Yeah, that's what I want to do.
And so we go around looking for a path. Well, how are we going to know?
When we come upon a path, how are we going to know that's the
one Jesus walked? The only way we can know is if we see Jesus
on it. So instead of looking for paths, we look to him. Get in line and keep following. Everything that we are called
on to do comes under this category of following Him. Now those rebellious, complaining Jews, and I'm not
saying Jews are any worse than anybody else, God made a covenant
with that nation. And all they did, all the way across the wilderness
to Canaan, was grumble and complain. Grumble and complain. And he
had to give them 10 commandments written in stone, and then hundreds
of others written down on paper, I guess, some kind of paper,
to keep those people in line. God has one rule for his spiritual
people. Follow me. Follow me. Follow me means this, you got
to come to know him. You can't follow someone you
don't know. You've got to know what they're about. If you are
going to follow them as they walk their path, you've got to
know what path they walked. You've got to know the character
of it. If we're supposed to imitate his character, we've got to know
his character. If we're supposed to act like
him, we've got to know, how did he act? But in all of this, the one commandment
is, follow me. Follow me involves the relinquishing
of everything. It is written right here in Luke
chapter five. He sees Levi slash Matthew collecting
taxes. And you know, those guys that
collect taxes, they loved money or they wouldn't tolerate being
ostracized by everybody. That's how much they loved it.
They loved it more than anybody and everybody, because they wanted
that even if it cost them friendship and association with everybody
else. They loved the money. Jesus came up to this man, collecting taxes, and those tax
collectors often cheated. charged them more than they were
supposed to. Of course, they only passed on what room required,
kept the rest for themselves. And here's Levi, and he wasn't
godly. He wasn't any different than
any other tax collector. The Lord Jesus Christ came to
him in all of his love of money and hatred of other people. And
Jesus said, follow me and note the power of this word. And Levi
got up. left everything and followed
Him. You know people present Jesus
as though He's begging people to follow Him. I never saw anybody,
you won't find a record anywhere in the Scriptures that the Lord
said to someone, follow me, and they didn't. Now there's one man that came
to Him and said, what good thing must I do to inherit eternal
life? And He said, well, If it's going
to be about your doing, now he didn't put those words, but he's
answering the man the way he asked him. He said, okay, if
you want eternal life by doing, keep all the commandments. The
fellow said, I've done all of that since my youth. He said, okay, sell everything
you have, give it to the poor and follow me. Now the Lord wasn't
calling this man to follow him. He was answering the man's question.
He said, what do I have to do to get eternal life? Sell everything
you have and follow me. The man didn't do it. Why? It says because he went away
sad because he was very rich. What a statement. He went away
sad because he was very rich. You think riches are good for
you? They sent this man to hell. He went away sad because he was
rich. He didn't have riches, riches had him. And he followed
riches. But he didn't follow because
the Lord didn't just come up to him and say, follow me as
a command. He said, well, here's what you got to do to get eternal
life. And as long as people are trying to figure out what they
must do in order to obtain eternal life, they'll never find it.
They'll never have it because it's not about what you do, but
the Lord with a word of power came up to Levi Matthew and he
said, follow me. And this man who loved money
more than he loved anything else said he left everything, all
that money. He didn't say, well, just a minute,
let me get this money taken care of here. Let me deposit this
in the bank. He got up. He left all of that money. He left his position by which
he might be able to obtain more money. In other words, that thing
which was dearest to Matthew's heart up to that point was utterly
abandoned in favor of following Christ. And by what we can read in the
scriptures, he never looked back. Never. Peter said, well, I'm going fishing.
Matthew never did say, well, I'm going to go collect some
taxes. I'll be back with you guys later. Never went back. There is not a more powerful
thing in all of creation than the Word of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Remember, it's His Word brought the universe into existence. By Him were all things made.
He spoke and it was. He commanded and it stood firm.
And he comes to us in all of our rebellion and sinfulness
and stubbornness and saying, no, no, I'm not, I'm not. Do
it my way. And he says, follow me. And the
moment he does, OK. When he says it to his sheep,
they follow. I'm glad. I'm glad because I
know me. I know that it takes a powerful
voice like that to take my mind and heart off of those things
which are contrary to Christ. It would take a powerful voice
like that to convince me that I couldn't somehow contribute
to my salvation. Follow me. All right, let's look at it in
Luke chapter 9, verse 23. Learn a little bit about this
following Christ. This will expand on the point
we just made. Then he said to them all, Luke
9, 23, then he said to them all, if anyone would come after me,
he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow Now, if you're going to follow
Christ, it's going to be a life of self-denial, a life of being cursed. That's what
the cross signifies. It is a life of living as Christ
did. Christ denied himself. I said,
what do you mean? He's the Lord of glory. Well,
we find this in Philippians chapter two, that for him being in the
very nature of God, he did not see his Godhood, his rights and
privileges of being God was a thing to cling to. He let it go. and made himself of no reputation. Oh, we're so jealous of our reputations,
aren't we? We're not willing to be held
in contempt by the world. And yet we don't have a reputation
to uphold. He did, but he made himself of no reputation. He
didn't come down from heaven's throne and sit even on the throne
of Israel. He came down, made Himself of
no reputation. He took on the appearance and
likeness of a servant. It is written that He was made
in the likeness of sinful flesh. That's what He looked like. He
looked like you and me. He denied Himself. And it goes on to say, He became
obedient to death, even the death of the cross. And we see that
played out there in Gethsemane. Our Lord, like any man would,
He knows what's laying ahead. He knows how awful a crucifixion
is, what's more, he knows the horror that awaits him in being
abandoned by his God and coming under the wrath of that God. That's what he's staring in the
face. And he says, Father, if there's any way that this cup
can pass from me, other than by me drinking it, And he stops
and he says, nevertheless, not what I want, what you want. He denied himself. He laid down
everything he was. All of those things he had a
right to. He laid them down and said, father,
whatever you want. Now, we wrestle with that the
rest of our lives. We're never, oh, there might be moments that
we feel like that, but we know we're supposed to say, not my
will, but your will be done, but when he doesn't give us what
we ask for, we get upset. Not the Lord. He said, not my
will, but your will, and he never resisted the will of his father,
despite what it made him endure. If any man would come after me,
he must deny himself. Take up his cross daily. I was told that there was a well-known story
in this day of some fellow that was supposed to be crucified.
And there was that Roman soldier. And the guy said, what am I supposed
to do? He said, take up your cross, follow me. And that our
Lord was making reference to that well-known story. Take up
your cross, follow me. Now, what does the cross represent?
The utter loss of everything. Certainly the willingness of
it. You know, you may follow Christ and there may not be much
difference in what goes on in your life day to day. This is
a matter of the heart. Now, it may make a huge difference, but it doesn't mean you're gonna
change jobs. It doesn't mean there's a bunch
of rules that you're gonna start following that you weren't following
before. No, it might be that your course through life of following
him on the outside, it looks just like what your life was
before you were following him. because the issue of following
him is a matter of the heart, and it is to say, like Paul did,
I am crucified with Christ. God forbid, actually the Greek
is may it never be, that I would boast about anything other than
the cross of my Lord Jesus Christ by which I have been crucified
to the world and the world has been crucified to me. What do
you crucify? You crucify that which you hate
and despise and want nothing to do with and want it out of.
And the world didn't want Paul because of his association with
Christ. If they thought they could have got away with it,
they would have crucified him. The only reason they didn't,
he's a Roman citizen. You can't crucify Romans. The only reason
they didn't crucify him. They'll love to. They hated him. They wanted him
gone. Now, when I say that Paul hated the world, he didn't hate
the people in it. But we hate the rebellion that's
in the world. And we hate it in this sense. If it gets in
the way of us having Christ, world, you're gone. You're gone. World, you can hang around as
long as you don't interfere. with me and Christ. You interfere? The choice has already been made. I'm crucified. I'm dead and gone. And nothing about this world
matters to me anymore. Someone asked a fellow, a preacher
one time, what is it to be dead to the
world? And you know, all those old churches
usually had a cemetery associated with it. And there'd been a recent
death in the church and the preacher said, well, brother William died
here recently. Let's go out to his grave. So,
all right. They got out there to his grave
and he said, now I want you to praise William. You just tell
him what a fine fellow he was. Fellow looked at the preacher
and said, what? He said, just go ahead and tell him. So? The guy kind
of liked William, so it wasn't hard. He said, well, William,
you're a great friend. You are an honest man, a man
of integrity. You are a great help to this
church. When he got done, the preacher said, now cursing. You're the most worthless fellow
I ever saw. I'm glad you're dead. The preacher said, now, how did
William respond to that? He didn't. He's dead. He said,
that's what it means to be dead with the world. You're not moved
by its blessings. You're not moved by its curses. You're dead to the world. And
the only one you're alive to is Christ. And he says, take up his cross
daily. Why? Well, because our flesh keeps
trying to get off of the cross. And so you're crucified every
day. It's an ongoing battle. All right, what is it to follow
him? What's he calling us to? Matthew
4, verse 19. The Lord sees Peter and Andrew
fishing, and he says, come, follow me, and I will make you fishers
of men. Now if the Lord calls you to
follow him, he is at the same time making
you a fisher of men. He didn't say, Come, follow me,
and if you really want to be serious about this, there's a
job opening as fisher of men." He said, follow me, I will make
you fishers of men. Now I understand that this applied
to the apostles probably more than it did anybody ever. And
even in our day, you know, this applies to me in some respects
more than it does to you. That is, it has more effect on
what I'm doing day to day because the Lord has called me to a public
ministry. But there is no such thing as
a believer who has not been called upon to seek the salvation of
sinners. There's no such thing as being
called to Christ and not fishing for men. How you do it, how much of it is part and parcel of your life,
that differs from person to person. But every believer, every follower
of Christ is a fisher of men. And as a fisher of men, he should
not only do that which drops in his lap, opportunity. He ought to be on the lookout
for opportunity to cast the net and draw in some
of the Lord's fish. You know we who believe in the
sovereignty of God's grace and believe that before the world
began he chose who he'd save and he sent his son to die for
him, he's going to send his spirit to call him and he's not going
to lose any of them. The devil can twist those truths
to make us lazy and uncaring. He'll whisper in our ear, don't
worry about telling people about Christ. He's God's elect after
all. And they'll be saved, so no use
you bothering yourself and getting yourself in trouble by bringing
up Jesus to people that don't want to hear about him. That
all works real good until you have children. Are you satisfied to let them
go untaught? Are you willing to let your children
go to hell? Say no. Well, don't you believe
that God's God is elect and if they're among them, they're going
to be saved? If that won't stop you from doing all that God puts
into your hand, to bring them under the gospel and to appeal
to them, to trust the Lord Jesus Christ. Why would it hold you
back from doing that with anybody? I thought of that as we were
singing that song. Brethren, will you pray for sinners? See our mothers and our fathers
and our children sinking down. Death is coming. Hell is moving. Can you bear to let them go?
And brethren, if you can't bear to let your children and your
parents and your friends and loved ones, if you can't bear
to let them go, spread that passion for others. They're just as lost. I don't, I can't remember what
preacher it was about, but I heard a story about one of the old
preachers and he was, he was standing out on, I think it was
in London and he was just standing there with his eyes closed. tears
coming out of his eyes, you know, and somebody came up to him concerned
for him. He's weeping. And they said, sir, are you all
right? Is there something wrong? And he said, I'm standing here
listening to the sound of thousands of feet marching to hell. Do you believe that? And can you let them go unwarned? I'm not saying we got to pester
them. You tell them if they don't want
it, they don't want it. Nothing you can do about that. But can
you let them go without a warning? Brother Spurgeon said, if they're
determined to go to hell, at least let us make them jump over
our bodies to do so. Follow me. I'll make you fishers
of men. I guarantee you, when it comes
your time to depart this life, you will not be mulling over
and taking comfort in how much money you made. All the things that attract us
now will mean nothing then. But if you are a believer, there
is something which you can enjoy at that hour. I made known the
Savior's name. And blessed be God. The Lord
found some of his sheep by that. fissures of men. Follow me. It's simple. No matter what you do, be following
him. No matter what you have, hold
it loosely with a willingness to let it
go if it's going to interfere with following him. Make your life about him. Follow me. May those two words
find their way into our minds, occupy a spot we cannot ignore,
and may every step we take be a step of following him. Amen.