My Future is in His Hands

Call to Worship

To all who are weary and in need of rest

To all who are mourning and longing for comfort

To all who fail and desire strength

To all who sin and need a Savior

We, Moraga Valley Presbyterian Church, open wide our arms

With a welcome from Jesus Christ.

He is the ally to the guilty and failing

He is the comfort to those who are mourning

He is the joy of our hearts

And He is the friend of sinners

So Come, worship Him with us.

Scripture Reading & Reader

Luke 14:31–35 NIV

“Or suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Won’t he first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand? If he is not able, he will send a delegation while the other is still a long way off and will ask for terms of peace. In the same way, those of you who do not give up everything you have cannot be my disciples. “Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is fit neither for the soil nor for the manure pile; it is thrown out. “Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear.”

Lucas Wong, Reader

Post-Scripture Prayer

Pray.

Introduction to Sermon

In this series we’ll be taking a Lenten approach to some of the commands of Jesus. In those commands He instructs His followers to “Follow me.” When we follow Jesus we become a people who are putting down something old and picking up a new way of life.

While Lent is a penitential season in the life of the church, where we often lay down something through the act of prayer, fasting, and repentance, we can learn to pick up new, more redemptive habits by which to engage in. When we follow Jesus, we are always “On the Move” towards the new thing that Jesus is doing.

I do want to answer a couple of questions you might have:

Isn’t Lent a Catholic practice? - No! Lent is a practice that is engrained into the life of the church, it’s a part of the calendar of the church where we walk in step with Jesus as He journeys to the cross and then to the empty tomb.

What were the Ashes for on Wednesday? - Ash Wednesday is the beginning of the Lenten season. It is the beginning of the Christian season of Lent, which we’re starting today, that is marking 40 days (not counting Sundays) where we, again, walk with Jesus. Ash Wednesday is a reminder of our own life, the shortness of it, and the need to be restored back to God.

Alright — Let’s get a Move on it, with our sermon.

Body of Sermon

Thank you to Lucas who read our scripture. Lucas picked up nicely in a chunk of scripture where Jesus has just been weighing the cost of following Him. I want to read Luke 14:25-30 to help give us a little bigger picture of what is going on.

Luke 14:25–30 NIV

Large crowds were traveling with Jesus, and turning to them he said: “If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple. And whoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. “Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won’t you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it? For if you lay the foundation and are not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule you, saying, ‘This person began to build and wasn’t able to finish.’

First things first this morning: the invitation of Jesus, the message of the gospel, and the hope of His Kingdom is that you will give up your life in exchange for the life that Jesus is offering you.

I wish someone had been real raw and honest with me about this when they had invited me to follow Jesus. I got a lot of great pictures about how Jesus was a gentle Savior, how He is the friend of sinners, but I’m pretty sure I missed out on the clause in real fine print at the bottom that says: “and when you do, your life is not your own.”

This goes against the grain of my American sensibilities… what about life, liberty, and the pursuit of my own happiness? What about every single time someone asked me when I was a kid, what I wanted to be when I grew up? A police officer, a superhero, a marine biologist, a dentist, an NFL quarterback - I’d spend days dreaming about those things.

Jesus has just said… unless you’re not willing to give up everything: hopes, dreams, life as we know it — to pick up and carry your cross; and not just carrying around your circumstantial burdens, but the thing that Jesus would end up enduring… unless you’re willing to die for this — then you’re not worthy of being my disciple.

In verse 26, he even spelled out the we have to be willing:

To move away from human attachments for His Kingdom (v. 26) — Jesus must take priority over basic family loyalties — would we welcome alienation from the people we love most for Jesus?

Despite how difficult that reality does seem, He provides some stark warnings, two of them, in fact: don’t do this, don’t join Me, don’t give up your life for Mine, if you don’t understand the cost...

He uses the story of a builder in verse 28: don’t start the project not knowing how much it’s going to cost you in the end.

And then He uses the story of the King at War in verse 31, this King is responsible for the well-being of others and has to determine the best course of action… even wise leaders are careful to count the cost.

Let me read this quote to you by RC Sproul:

A Walk with God: Luke (70. The Cost of Being a Disciple (Luke 14:25–35))

He had no time for superficial professions of faith… [but] we are so eager to increase our memberships that we do everything in our power to make a commitment to Christianity as painless as possible. We become peddlers of cheap grace, obscuring... the message of Jesus which was a call to sacrifice, to steadfast devotion, even to the point of martyrdom.

Sproul is referencing Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s use of “cheap grace.” If you don’t know, Bonhoeffer was a German theologian and pastor that was working to help bring down Nazi-Controlled Germany. It cost him his life. We don’t want cheap grace — there’s no painless as possible route in Christianity. Grace is costly. And remember… two things can be true at the same time. This is a costly life and at the same time Jesus promised He would “be with us always, to the end of the age.”

The reality of what Jesus is offering us here is an invitation to relinquish everything — but consider what’s being offered.

Look with me at Luke 14:33

Luke 14:33 NIV

In the same way, those of you who do not give up everything you have cannot be my disciples.

At another point in Luke, a wealthy man asks Jesus what He must do to be able to live forever. Jesus says, “Be obedient.” And the guy just goes, “Okay, well I’ve done that. Now what?” And Jesus, most perceptively, says, “Sell everything and give it away! Then you’ll be rich! And then you can come and follow me!” The man didn’t follow Jesus.

At another point in the Bible, Jesus happens upon two sets of brothers who are knee deep in their family businesses. To one set of brothers: Andrew and Peter, He says to them, in the middle of them fishing, “to come and follow Him.” Matthew 4:19 says, “At once they left their nets and followed him.” The “at once” is the decisive moment of counting the cost of the rest of your life in pursuit of Jesus.

Matthew 4:21–22 (NIV) went on to say:

James and John were in a boat with their father Zebedee, preparing their nets. Jesus called them, and immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him.

Their “immediate” decision to leave was at once the decision to leave behind the traditions of their family, the inheritance of a livelihood, and to commit their futures into the hands of Jesus. — We’re in the process of giving up our lives in exchange for the life of Jesus, and we’re having to ask the question… okay… what’s this life that Jesus is inviting me into? Why would I endure alienation? Why would I voluntarily suffer? Why would I fast? Repent? Jesus says in Luke 9:24

Luke 9:24 (NIV)

For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find theirs.

Why did Bonhoeffer, why did Peter and Andrew, and James and John, all lose their life — some literally, others they abandoned their future at the call of Jesus — why? Because Jesus said they’d find real life there. — Actually He said He would teach them to fish for people, but that was the purpose in living they hadn’t yet heard about.

Peter and Andrew, and James and John didn’t know then, what we know now. — Jesus has not gone to the Cross, was not laid in the Tomb, has not yet been Resurrected, hasn’t appeared to over 500 of His followers over 40 days, and has not promised the coming of the Holy Spirit that would later give the church the comfort in midst of loss, courage in spite of fear, and hope in the face of impossible circumstances.

They didn’t know know then, what we know now, that Jesus offers them real life.

But we have to let go of the old life, and this is why we fast, we repent, we reject a way of living during Lent — so that we might just get a little glimpse of what Jesus is offering… it’s hard, it’s disruptive, I think the language in the Psalms for this is, “This sucks.” We want to do anything other than give up the old life for the new life, and what we’re scared to death to do is wholesale place our future into the hands of Jesus.

Scott Sauls, a Presbyterian Pastor, said it best, “It is our inclination to replace Jesus’ call to deny ourselves, take up our crosses and follow him. We replace his call with a self-serving path in which we deny our neighbors, take up our comforts and follow our dreams.”

But Jesus, the best Presbyterian of them all, said, “those who do not give up everything they have — they can’t be my disciples.”

I take on the practice of letting go, giving up, dying to self, so that I might just get a little window, a tiny morsel, a sliver of the life that Jesus said I could have… full of hope, full of purpose, full of joy, full of love.

I wish I had the faith of Peter and Andrew, of James and John, and even Dietrich Bonhoeffer, — and maybe with God’s help, I will. But for now… I’m learning to take it one day at a time. One moment. One step in the journey of putting down my desires, my hopes, my plans, my sins, my burdens, my shortcomings, my schedule, my calendar, my future — to find life with Jesus.

Lent is what we call a penitential season. It is a time of fasting, prayer, repentance — aligning our lives with Jesus as we prepare for Easter and His Resurrection.

And we want to encourage you to let something go, to give something up, to drop something like Peter and Andrew and James and John, so that you can get a peek into the life of what Jesus is offering. Start today with one thing, one simple practice by which we can declare to the world, that My Future is in the Hands of Jesus… Let me suggest three different ideas:

Give up (Technology) Doom Scrolling and Take On Prayer

Give up (Luxury) Starbucks, or Peets, or Philz and Take On Generosity — Contribute That Money at the End of Every Week to our Mexico Scholarships — and then pray for those students

Give Up the Fear of Inadequacy and Serve — 1 Time During Lent in our Kids and Student Ministry

And I think, what you might find is this life with Jesus that we’ve been looking for.

Sermon Closing

I want to give you a single liturgy, which is a prayer that we can keep in our back pockets for those moments over the next 40+ days where we’re learning to place our futures into the hands of Jesus. — Letting go is hard and embracing the unknown is probably harder.

A liturgy, by the way, is something that the church does. Liturgy comes from liturgeia and it just means, “the work of the people,” that the people of God have a duty to respond to God’s beckoning call on their lives, and a liturgy is something we can learn to pray together.