We’re going to look at a second story from the Bible this week, this one about Jesus in Luke 9:57-60
57 As they were walking along the road, a man said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.”
58 Jesus replied, “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.”
59 He said to another man, “Follow me.”
But he replied, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.”
60 Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God.”
Just like yesterday’s story, this is a tough one to interpret, since we probably didn’t expect this kind of response from Jesus. It sounds to us like the man’s father just died, and Jesus says he can’t mourn. He comes across as cold and even cruel, but mostly because we lack cultural understanding. There are again two possibilities for why he responds this way:
One option: The man’s father is actually dead, sometime in the recent past. He’s been put in a very hot middle eastern tomb. The son wants to wait up to a year, so he can go and place his father’s bones in a bone box, an ossuary, for secondary burial in a family tomb. This would have been a very important duty for a Jewish son, but Jesus says it’s not as important as God’s kingdom.
Another option: This is a stall tactic. The man’s father is not dead. The son wants to wait until his father dies and leaves him the inheritance. He only wants to follow Jesus when there will be no financial risk.
Following Jesus looks different today – it’s not as simple as joining his entourage on a dusty road. It changes us in many other ways, and we’re going to explore lots of those changes in the next few weeks.
Either way, we’ll be tempted to delay. We’ll want to put off financial changes until we retire, service changes until we have more time, and so on. But Jesus’ response to this man should inform us that Jesus needs to be first in our daytimer.
Question: What aspect of following Jesus are you tempted to put off?
Read the Bible in Sync Today
Loading Content...
Share a Link to this Message
The link has been copied to your clipboard; paste it anywhere you would like to share it.
Quick – what is the most important thing to Christian faith? Whether you are a Christian or not, have studied the bible or not, you probably have an opinion…you’ve seen what Christians emphasize, or not.
Now let’s see what Jesus said:
Matthew 22:35-40
…a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
Love God, love neighbour. Jesus says loving our neighbour is the second most important commandment in the world. Depending on your interpretation of “like it” the commandments may even have equal stature!
This was a testing question – the Pharisees, religious lawyers, would have been happy to see Jesus was giving their enemies the Sadducees a hard time just before this story happened, but would be very concerned not to support him unless he was orthodox – teaching the right things. He was risky – he seemed to be a religious rebel, too creative and original. Was he really one of them? Was he really a devout Jew?
So they asked this question to see if he was law abiding. Their faith had 613 laws – all equally valid – so they asked him to pick one that is most important, hoping he’d fall into their trap and say some laws are not important, or invalid, and contradict God himself in the process.
To answer their question, Jesus quoted directly from two separate sections from the Old Testament part of the Bible. He gave the perfect answer, in many ways it was orthodoxy in a nutshell. The first was said every day by a devout Jew, so very familiar. It’s possible Jesus was the first to put that familiar saying together with the commandment to love one’s neighbour, but it has a beauty and elegant symmetry to it. Love God, people.
He didn’t dismiss anything and prove himself to be a heretic. All ten commandments, and all other 600+ laws can be seen to “hang” under these two “hooks” or as this translation says, “depend” on these two commands.
Question: Make two columns on a piece of paper, or in your phone. One column says “love God” and the other “love neighbour.” Go through the ten commandments below and try to fit them in.
“You shall have no other gods before me.
“You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.
“You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain, for the LORD will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.
“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.
“Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.
“You shall not murder.
“You shall not commit adultery.
“You shall not steal.
“You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
“You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor's.”
Exodus 20:3-17 ESV
