Fan or Follower

Brandon Petras

Sermon • Submitted a year ago • Presented a year ago

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Notes

Transcript

Intro

I was at a youth football game yesterday and man was it a nail-biter.

Prior to yesterday, Cooper’s team 1 of 2 undefeated teams in his league for this age bracket. They have won all of their games by quite a large margin. Usually by at least 3-4 touchdowns.

Yesterday however was a little different. They played the other undefeated team in their league and won 20-18. Only a 2 point margin.

And that was only after an amazing pass play and what was and impossible catch with 2 minutes left in the game.

It was great. We had a lot of fans there cheering them on. Teams need their fans to cheer them on. It helps change the atmosphere of a game and motivates them to play better.

But I gotta tell you. What surprised me was how quickly fans turned on the coaches if they didn’t like a play call.

Here we are, one of the best teams in the league, and the first time we play a game that really stretches the players, fans start complaining about the coaches.

But that is how fans are sometimes. They love you when you are doing what they want you to do. But as soon as you don’t, they turn on you.

In the Bible, Jesus had a lot of fans didn’t he. People who loved him when he said what they wanted to hear.

But not so much when what he said was hard for them to accept.

Such as..

Matthew 10:37-39 NLT 37 “If you love your father or mother more than you love me, you are not worthy of being mine; or if you love your son or daughter more than me, you are not worthy of being mine. 38 If you refuse to take up your cross and follow me, you are not worthy of being mine. 39 If you cling to your life, you will lose it; but if you give up your life for me, you will find it.

Have you ever been told your not worthy of something?

How did that make you feel?

worthless, angry, slighted, sad, ashamed

Jesus doesn’t pull any punches here, he is very clear that if you want to be considered worthy of being his, then being a fan isn’t enough, you have to follow him.

But more than that you have to follow him his way, not your own.

That isn’t what many of us like to do isn’t it though?

We like to determine how we are going to get to where we want to go.

Jesus used this command to follow him often. We see him use it when he was choosing his disciples, when he would meet one of them he would often say, follow me. And they did.

They would drop whatever they were doing and would leave behind whatever was going on in there lives and they would literally follow him wherever he went.

He gives the same call to us as New Testament believers, he says to go and make disciples, which can be literally translated to say, go and make followers.

In this morning’s text he says to follow me, or you are not worthy of being mine.

Being a follower

So what does that mean exactly? What does it mean to say you are a follower of Jesus, or more importantly what did Jesus have in mind when said that to be worthy of him we had to follow him?

Often times when we think of following someone in today’s cultural setting we think of social media. We actually use the term following on things like Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

To say I follow someone on social media means that I stay up to date with the things they post about.

There are a number of Pastors and influential leaders that I follow. I see what they post about and often times interact with them through social media.

In other words to say that you follow someone today means that you keep tabs on them and what they are putting online.

If you really like what someone says or posts you can hit a “like” button or you can share it so others who don’t follow them but who might follow you can see it.

But the great thing about following someone online is that when you don’t like what they have to say or post about you simply keep on scrolling. You just ignore it.

That is not what Jesus had in mind when he said that we are to follow him. But yet that is what so many of us do.

We like what Jesus has to say on a lot of things especially when it comes to forgiveness of sin, heaven, love, acceptance, mercy, and grace.

If we could, we would hit the “like” button and share it.

But then we see other things in scripture that Jesus says like in...

Matthew 10:37 37 “If you love your father or mother more than you love me, you are not worthy of being mine; or if you love your son or daughter more than me, you are not worthy of being mine.

That we don’t like so much so we don’t share it, we don’t like it. We keep on scrolling.

You see when Jesus said to be his follower, his idea of following had nothing to do with whether or not we liked what he had to say.

But today we have elevated our opinions to hold the same value in our lives as truth

2 Timothy 4:3 NLT For a time is coming when people will no longer listen to sound and wholesome teaching. They will follow their own desires and will look for teachers who will tell them whatever their itching ears want to hear.

No when Jesus said to follow him he was saying something very different from what we understand following to mean today.

Now for others following Jesus doesn’t mean what I just described but it means to live a certain way. And while that is the result of following Jesus it isn’t the definition.

You see for some following Jesus is making sure you follow all the rules and stipulations in the Bible.

It means to go to Church and give your money and talk a certain way and to avoid certain behaviors that is what it means to follow Jesus.

But that falls short of what it really means to follow him.

Look at the Pharisees. If being a follower meant everything I just described then they would have been the example to follow.

They followed the rules and did what was expected. But yet Jesus referred to them as a snakes.

No, if we think following Jesus just means to live a certain way then we are missing the main point here.

Following Jesus has a lot less to do with living a certain and more to do with why we live a certain way.

Let’s go back to our text.

Here Jesus gets to the heart of two of the most influential things in our lives.

Loyalties

Agendas

Loyalties

We all have loyalty to something, and at times many things, but at the heart of it all we can only have one supreme loyalty can’t we?

At the end of the day there can only be one than rules over them all because like truth, you cannot be loyal to two opposing things.

You have to choose one or the other.

If I say I am loyal to my job but I am also loyal to my family, as long as the two don’t conflict I am okay.

But what happens when one begins to demand more than we have to give because we are loyal to both?

If my job dictates that I have to take more time away from my family who I am loyal too. If my family starts to suffer because of my job then I have to choose, the job, or my family because I can’t choose both.

They are now in conflict with one another and now the decision I make will determine which of the two have more of my loyalty.

That is what Jesus was getting at here in verse 37. He isn’t saying you can’t love your parents or that you can’t love your children.

No, he intentionally uses the relationships in our lives that are likely our most treasured and he says you have to choose. Who has your loyalty, your family, or me.

Not that you can’t be loyal to your family, but at the end of the day, if there is conflict between your loyalty to your family and your loyalty to Jesus, who will you choose?

Because you can’t choose both, rather the one you choose indicates who has more of your loyalty.

Jesus says if you don’t choose me, then that shows that you are not worthy being of mine.

If we are going to call ourselves followers of Jesus then we have to determine in our hearts that Jesus gets our loyalty.

Yes we can be loyal to our jobs, friends, and family. But if any of those things come into conflict with our loyalty to Jesus, then Jesus has to win. We have to choose him.

Too many times as Christians we are choosing the other things over Jesus.

We won’t tell our friends no, we can’t come to that party not because we don’t love you guys but because we can’t be engaging in the behavior you engage in if we want to remain loyal to Jesus.

We won’t tell our family, I would love to come on the trip or go to the picnic but I already missed a few weeks of Church recently so unless you can make it a different day or a different time we won’t be able to make it because we want to remain loyal to Jesus and his command to be part of his Church.

We wont’ tell our kids, I know you want to participate in this extra-curricular activity but that means you will have to miss going to Church a bunch and we want to remain loyal to Jesus.

And we recognize that we only get one shot at this parenting thing and we don’t want to mess it up. We want to show you how important serving in your local Church is, even if it mean giving up certain privileges to do it. Because we are loyal.

But we don’t do that. We choose all the other stuff instead, and in reality we are saying that we are not really loyal to Jesus.

He says if that is you, or if that is me, then we are not worthy of being his.

Agendas

Then he says in verse 38 38 If you refuse to take up your cross and follow me, you are not worthy of being mine.

What he is saying here would have made a lot of sense to his first century disciples. Jesus had not yet been crucified, but that doesn’t mean the disciples were unaware of crucifixion.

When a criminal was to be crucified they would make them take up and carry their cross or at least the crossbar of the cross to the place of their execution.

They hadn’t seen Jesus die yet and so they wouldn’t have understood this to mean that Jesus was saying that like him they would need to be crucified.

No, he was saying to do what I do. Follow, don’t just do what I say, but do exactly as I do and have done.

Jesus being the son of God chose to empty himself of his divine privilege and deny his right to himself as the king of the universe and became a human.

One that would eventually die a physical death. But long before his physical death Jesus had already died to himself.

Here he is saying to follow him and take up our cross and carry it to the place of our own death to self.

He is saying that to be worthy of being his, he needs our loyalty, but he is also saying that we must die to self.

They we must lay down our agendas, priorities, desires, and rights and be willing to say that this life is no longer my own to do with as I please.

No, this life has been handed over to another to do with as they please.

1 Corinthians 6:19-20 NLT 19 Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself, 20 for God bought you with a high price. So you must honor God with your body.

If you and I want to be worthy, if we want to say we follow him, then we have to accept that in this life there are things that we are going to want to do, places we are going to want to go, and people that we want to have relationships with that we are going to have to sacrifice in order to follow Jesus.

Jesus doesn’t need fans. He wants followers

Closing

Calling yourself a Christian is easy. Being a fan is easy.

Following Jesus, not so much. But it is worth it for what we have to lose and give up in this life, pales in comparison to what we stand to gain in the next.