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[static] Case of the Phony Follower. A message by Dr. Bruce W. Thielman. Let us give reverent attention to the reading of God's Word, as it is recorded in the Gospel according to Luke,

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the ninth chapter, beginning at the verse which is numbered 57th. "And it came to pass that as they went in the way, a certain man said unto him, 'Lord, I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest.' And Jesus said unto him, 'Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests;

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but the Son of Man hath not where to lay his head.' And Jesus said unto another, 'Follow me.' But he said, 'Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father.' Jesus said unto him, 'Let the dead bury their dead;

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but go thou and preach the kingdom of God.' And another also said, 'Lord, I will follow thee; but let me first go bid them farewell, which are at home at my house.' And Jesus said unto him, 'No man, having put his hands to the plow,

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and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.'" And may the same God that inspired these words align our hearts that we might understand them. Let us pray.

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In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. We can get to seeing with very few sentences. Jesus is in Samaria on his way to Jerusalem, there to die.

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A certain man approaches him and offers his allegiance. He does it almost casually, carelessly. "Lord, I'll follow you wherever you go." And Jesus, who has not called this man to discipleship,

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reminds him of what discipleship involves. Now this is the Jesus who's on his way to Jerusalem. This is the Jesus who's going to die there. This is the Jesus who just a few verses earlier in this chapter has said,

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"If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me." This is the Jesus whose whole life is summed with a single word in the Apostle's Creed, and that word is "suffering." And he says to this, "Would be disciples."

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"Foxes have hosts, and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head." And confronted with the reality of what discipleship really is, the "would be disciples" turns silently away.

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Jesus encounters another man, and this one the Master calls, "Follow me." And the man says, "I will follow you, but first let me go home to bury my father." Now, you must recognize that this phrase is an idiomatic phrase still commonly used in the Arab and Israelite countries.

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It does not mean that the man's father was dead, and that they were in the midst of the burial procedures, and the boy only had to go home and complete those procedures, and then would be ready to follow Jesus.

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The phrase, "I will come after I have buried my father," means, "I will come after my father is dead, after his life is at an end, after all of my responsibilities to Dad are over. Then, and only then, will I come and be your disciple."

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And Jesus says to him, "If you are going to be obedient to dead priorities, then you cannot follow me." And the second disciple turns silently away. And now a third man approaches, and he offers to be Jesus' disciple.

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"Lord, I will follow thee, but first let me say farewell to those who are at home." Surprising, isn't it, to have a man believe that because he's a disciple of Jesus Christ, he's supposed to say goodbye to everything at home, to sever his associations with his family and loved ones.

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It always surprises me when someone believes that on the basis of faith they are to lose their concerns for those who are the very closest to them. That is not true. And not only that, the first man, you see, has a rather limited perspective,

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teaching his family of being more important than all the family of mankind to which Christ calls them. And so Jesus says, "You've got to stop looking backwards and look forwards." You hear about the little boy with his grandfather walking on the beach, and they encounter an old man who was very distempered, very angry, very short-tempered,

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who explained that he was suffering a little bit from sunstroke, and felt very bad. And then they walked off, and the little boy had been listening, but only casually. And so as they walked away, he turned to his granddad and said, "Jesus, granddad, I hope you never suffer from a sunstroke."

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Well, there are a lot of people who suffer from sunstroke. They're always looking back. Jesus says, "I want you to look at the sunrise. I want you to look at new opportunities, at new obligations, at new responsibilities,

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at new doors open." And so this almost disciple turned silently away. And the Christ continues to do so alone. Jesus, you see, never fooled his country by his training in discipleship.

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There were no cards of commitment played beneath the paper. There's no small print in the contract the man signs with his lifeblood when he commits himself to Jesus Christ. It's all right out where you can see it.

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As the young people say, "This Lord of ours lets it all in and out." And you take it as the opposite, or you do not take it at all. And long ago there were some men who did not take it. And today there are some men who do not take it.

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And yesterday it was because they were unwilling to deny themselves, or unwilling to make first priorities be first priorities, or unwilling to give Christ the exclusive attention which he demands. And even so today those who turn away from him turn away because they're unwilling to deny themselves,

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or unwilling to make first things first, or unwilling to give the Savior the exclusive attention which he demands. The reasons, I would think. There are reasons that say we follow these even now.

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Let me introduce you to a few. There is, for example, the man who says, "Lord, I will follow thee, but teach swiftly." On one occasion I was teaching in a small church in Diana, Ohio. And in those days I used to put my finger on little cards.

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I had all the cards right in front of me. And as I was teaching a playful little zephyr came through the window and blew all the cards right out. And of course I said, "Let us pray." And while everybody had their heads bowed and their eyes closed, I read all the cards.

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Now as I did this I was reminded of a story of a situation that happened to a minister that was exactly like this. This sermon was blown off and he picked up the cards. Only when he picked up the cards they had gotten out of order. So he came to the bottom of one card reading this sermon and he went like this, "And Eve said,"

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"And Eve said," "And Eve said," There must be another leaf here somewhere. Well, my friends, if there's one leaf missing in many people's discipleship, it's the leaf of the open proclamation of Jesus Christ.

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There are many who are ready to follow it as long as it's secret discipleship. On the one hand you find the individual who justifies his secrecy by his own spiritual state. He says, "As soon as I've got everything straightened out between the Lord and me," "then I'll be ready to say an open word for Him."

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And there's much personal devotion and study of the scriptures and prayer. All kinds of devotional discipline, but never any open word. When I talk to these individuals I discover that they're always ready to cough up a long list of very keen sins. Bloodless sins. Contemptible sins.

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They often come to the office and reel them out and I feel like I'm being stoned to death with popcorn. Nothing really important. They haven't wrestled with the issues of life. They're so caught up in their personal relationships and all that they've got no room for witness to anybody else. That's using devotion as an excuse for avoiding discipleship.

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On the other extreme, you have an individual who gives himself over to all kinds of Christian activism. He's all ready to render every kind of service to society that he can imagine. I read a letter written by a dean of a Christian college to the teachers, urging them to Christian discipleship. And he mentioned some specific ways in which they could practice this.

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They were supposed to talk to the young people about the race problem in America. They were supposed to speak out shy and backward young people and make them feel a part of the group. They were to emphasize the importance of academics over and above the merely social activities that are part of the college experience. Now every one of the things that this Christian dean was asking these Christian teachers to teach to their students was good.

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None of us would dispute or argue with that. But at no point in the letter did the dean say, "Put in an open word for the Lord Jesus Christ." There was almost an activism that one could call social, think by the saints. But there was really no proclamation.

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The world won't be saved by night's sky. Decency, no matter how dynamic it is, will not bring this world to its senses. Only a hint of Christ can do that. And so when a man says, "Lord, I will follow thee," but he's criminal, he's a claim for death.

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Or this individual, "Lord, I will follow thee, but only so long as it's practical." Yesterday I had another wedding. I enjoy weddings. I think I can become existentially involved with weddings.

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I was noticed the frustration to have all these lovely girls come down the aisle, face toward me, and then always turn to the right or the left. A fellow said to me yesterday that marriage was like a deceived kitty. Everybody in it wanted to get out of it, and everybody out of it wanted to get in here. I don't know about the first half of that, but I do know about the second.

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And I enjoy marital conference that comes before that. And of course the thing we seek most to impress upon these people who are being married is that they must try in all of their marriage to have this same God who in this providence brought them together be the foundation stone on which their whole married relationship is built.

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And we illustrate many ways in which you can do this, and one of the ways that we emphasize is the five. The practice of making God very basic in your budget. Now we don't do that because we're trying to get their money. We do that because we recognize that we're living in a very materialistic society.

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In America we measure things in terms of dollars. We become immersed with dollar signs and decimal points. We put our money where we think it will be best invested. When a person in the living of his life doesn't put any of his money in the service of the Lord,

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doesn't put a significant amount of that which he has in the service of the Lord, that shows he doesn't think it's a very good investment. So we encourage these young people to make tithing, stewardship, responsible stewardship, an important part of their new relationship.

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But most of them do not do it. That's because they said, "I will follow thee, but only as long as it's practical." I have great admiration for Muhammad Ali. You may remember him by his name, but before he was called "Kafi's Cloth."

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He's the heavyweight champion of the world. I know there are others who claim that title, but no one's beaten him, and I still think of him as the heavyweight champion of the world. He's an amazing philosopher.

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The morning after he won the heavyweight championship, he announced in his first press conference that he was a black Muslim. And of course everyone was shocked and horrified. And they urged him not to make that public.

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And this is what he replied, "What can this nation offer me that is worth turning down my religion?" Now here was a man who had worked for ten years to win the heavyweight championship of the world. And all the millions that go with it,

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and all the pomp and circumstance that accompanies the position, all the prestige, all of the honor, it all was here. He had it in his hands. And then, for the sake of his faith, he laid it aside.

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He would not accept being conscripted into military service because it was against his religion. It wasn't because he was afraid. No one can tell me that the heavyweight champion of the world was afraid. Not only that, any person of such prominence, when they go into military service,

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they don't fight in the front lines. They're put in special services. They go out and put on demonstrations and entertain the streets and keep up morale and what have you. That was the kind of military service he would have to look forward to.

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But he refused it because of his religion. So he was fined ten thousand dollars, and he was under threat of five years in prison, and he was stripped of his heavyweight title by every boxing commission in America. And he said, "But what can this nation offer to me that is worth my paying down my faith?"

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And the press has been criticizing him and talking to him ever since. And people don't understand him. He doesn't have the dumb dignity of a Joe Louis. He doesn't have that sweet, saccharine personality of a Floyd Patterson.

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He doesn't have the dark-tongued gags of a Cibere Robinson. He has principles. Now, the world would have understood if he had given up his religion in pursuit of his championship. No one would have commented.

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The world would have understood if he had given up almost anything in pursuit of what the world calls good. But when he gives up what the world calls good on behalf of his faith, that's the world doesn't understand. "Oh, I don't have much respect for his faith, the black Muslims. It's a crude effectivism at best.

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And I don't have much respect for some of the things that Catholic play has done in me. But I'm awed by his magnificent impracticality. He believes, and so he is. And he does not count the cost."

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John Calvin, the founder of our Presbyterian faith, was described by the Pope in whom he opposed with these words, "We will never defeat Calvin, for he trusts more in God than he does in gold." More in God than he does in gold. And that's what he said of most Presbyterians today.

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This fall, this conversation is going to launch into the greatest fundraising effort of its entire 85-year history. We're going after 800,000 dollars. And there are a lot of people who will call that a fake. We'll make every preparation that is possible. We'll do everything that needs to be done.

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But there's one thing that can be defeated, and only one thing that can be defeated. That is if enough of our people have said that we should stop. I will follow this, but only so long as it's practiced. Please turn your cassette to the other side.

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And Jesus turns silently again. And then there are those who say, "Lord, I will follow thee, but only when faith is proved." Now this is the individual who, if he's going to play with the dice of discipleship, wants to have them loaded. This is the man who, if he's going to enter into the committed life and play the roulette game of life, is only going to play it at a fixed table.

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No risk. No faith, if you will. But a bet on a sure thing. Now it used to be, when I heard that position expounded, that I would launch into a long, defensive rationale for our Christian faith. I don't do that anymore.

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Now I attack. Now I seek with everything within me to call to the attention of that individual exactly what they've committed themselves to when they seek to live a life without God. I think we Christians have forgotten that our faith is the only thing in the world that gives dignity to mankind. I was talking to Lacey Ford back in Chicago a couple of weeks ago. He's an associate evangelist with Billy Graham.

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And he told me of an experience in Paris in which he was talking to a young pilot who flies for Air France. And this young pilot's wife was dying of tuberculosis. And as a result of the suffering and heartache that this young man was going through, he had denied all faith and denied the reality of God. And he was doing this with some vigor to Lacey Ford.

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And so Lacey looked at him and he said, "Why don't you just forget about your wife? I mean, after all, she's down to nothing but skin and bones now anyway. You know, just leave her at home and go out and find somebody else. She's finished. There's nothing you can do to change about it. You know, just skip." And by this time the man was so angry he was ready to hit Ford.

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And Ford said to him, "Wait a minute. I'm simply drawing to its logical conclusion the position you just set as your own. If you deny the existence of God, then everything that is must have come about because of chance and time. Now neither time nor chance has personality. They're both impersonal. And no philosopher or scientist that's ever lived has figured out a way to bring the personal out of the impersonal.

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To bring personality out of that which by its very nature has no personality. And that means this. That means that your relationship to your wife is not built on anything personal. It's built on certain chemical reactions within your body. That's it and that's all there is to it. There is nothing in you that is personal. For you are the product of time and chance just as she is.

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And if that's so, then forget about her and go out and find somebody else who stirs up your chemicals. Because that's the kind of world you've got without God. And that's being on the attack. And we need to say that and to say that again and again. Personality, everything that makes a human being a human being, can only exist if God is, if God has made us,

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and if God in some measure by the power of his spirit dwells in us. And if those things are not proved, then we're only high class animals. And our relationship to mother, wife, father, husband, children, are their products of time and chance. And that's all there are.

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So when a man comes to Jesus and says, "I will follow you if you prove faith," Jesus says, "I am the way and I am the proof and I am life, and without me you will have none of this." And he turns silently away. Or again, we meet the individual today, especially the young person, college and high school,

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who says, "Lord, I will be thy disciple as soon as your disciples start to live up to standards which I find satisfactory." That may sound absurd, yet that's what many young people are saying today. A young girl said to me three weeks ago, "The church has never done any good." I got a letter from a young lady in this congregation this last week in which she said, "No one ever smiles in church."

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Now on the very face of it, you know that those statements are absurd, and those girls know that those statements are absurd. But you see what they've done? They've fallen for a very subtle lie. I don't mean that they're lying deliberately.

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I mean that they've fallen for something which isn't true. Here's what they do. They take the worst example they can find in the church and match that person up with the best life they can find being lived outside the church.

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And then they say, "I am willing to be a disciple who is part of the body of Christ which is the church, when everyone in the church, looking at this counterfeit Christian, is like this individual whose life I honor." Now if you're going to follow that line of logic, then once you find a counterfeit bill in your wallet someday, from that time on you'll throw away all your money.

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Is this exactly that logical? Did it ever occur to you that you never counterfeit anything that's worthless? You only counterfeit that which has value. When someone tries to counterfeit Christianity,

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when a hypocrite finds his way into the church and parades around in all the garments of righteousness, but that's all, he is doing that because what he's trying to copy he counts as being worthwhile. The trouble is that too many people only look at the counterfeit and don't look at the real Christian. If this morning when they took up the offering and then tomorrow morning when they take it to the bank

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and there are eight or nine people who sit around the table and count it, suppose that they found in that offering plate a counterfeit five dollar bill. Now you know as well as I do that before that morning was over, everybody would have passed it around, everybody would have looked at it, both sides carefully examined.

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The only bill of the morning that would have been carefully studied was the one that was phony. And all the good bills would be passed casually aside. It's just like that in the life of the church. The one who's looked upon is the one who's not real.

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While the suffering, brave, courageous, unpretentious, humble, dignified Christian who sits in the presence of God and in the presence of others with love is ignored. It's really kind of silly to hear them say this. Of course I learned a long time ago that if you're going to be in the ministry you have to have a sense of humor.

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You can't have anything to do with the church unless you've got a sense of humor. You really can't. Is there anything sillier in all the world than a bunch of people who aren't good trying to be good? That's exactly what we are.

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Oh, just take the things that I hear at the front door Sunday morning. Like the spinster lady from our congregation who said to me one Sunday morning, "Reverend Thielman, there's just no minister who holds me like you do." Or one of our businessmen came out and said with great seriousness,

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"Bruce, I want you to know that every sermon you preach is better than the next." Or one of our teenagers who was much moved one morning by God's spirit and came out with a tear in her eye and said to me, "Oh, Mr. Thielman, your sermons are like a cup of cold water to a drowning man." Of course those are just silly little things that happen at the door.

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I can take you to other silly things and you know about them too. And when we can't laugh at ourselves, when we don't recognize the ridiculous failures we make in our discipleship, then we're goners. But what's sillier than all of that is to have someone come up and say,

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"I'll become a disciple of Christ when all of you start living as pleasantly as I do." And that's the silliest and I suppose the saddest spectacle of all. And when Jesus hears someone say that, he turns silently away. Just one last thought.

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There are many who say to him, "Lord, I will follow thee, but later." For the last ten days I've not been permitted to speak. Just whisper a little. I've learned to be silent before the Lord.

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And I've had a lot of time to think about time. I never think that time's duty is to degenerate and that it's doing its duty all the time. It's more insidious than sin. It's more dangerous than disease.

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Time is always clutching at us. And we never have enough of it. See, for each and every one of us, there will come a time when our love views will not be said. There will come a time when our "I'm sorry" will faint from lack of breath.

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And when "here's hoping" will become "here lies." Our lives are like a finger snap, a conjunction between sentences, a match flare against the darkness that he turns to. And people say to Christ, "I'll come later." And think they're marking time, not recognizing that time is marking them.

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And that's the great tragedy of it. To have time snip, snip away at you until you're cut down to puny, pitiful size. You know what I've discovered? The great tragedy is not that life ends so soon.

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It's that so many people wait so long to begin living. The great tragedy is not that life ends so soon. But that so many people wait so long to begin living. And Jesus says, and he says, "Come, follow me, and you will have life, and you will have it abundantly."

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So one who meets him on the road, what will you answer? What will you answer? O Lord Jesus Christ, this morning I pray that you will touch each life here assembled. That you will take each life committed and make it more splendid than it has ever been before.

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That you will take every life here and now to be committed and begin in that life a new life. God forbid that we should be a legion of phony followers. And God great, that others in seeing us might know that we belong to thee. And that thou, O Christ, dost belong to us.

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And the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you. The Lord lift up the light of his countenance upon you and give you his peace. O night divine, O night divine, O night divine, O night divine.

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Amen. Amen. Thank you.