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The LORD is my shepherd
Text: Luke 9
The Lord is my shepherd… he leads me… through the valley of the shadow of death…
Search for followers (vss 1-6)
Herod’s not a follower, he just has a morbid curiosity (vss 7-9)
Following for the wrong reasons (vss 10-17)
- Feeding 5000
- Jesus disperses them saying unless you eat my body and drink my blood
Christ is the Shepherd who must walk through death (vss 18-22)
You can’t follow if you don’t deny yourself (vss 23-27)
The Father acknowledges the Son (vss 28-36)
Christ’s disappointment in the faithless generation (vss 37-42)
Jesus reiterates his upcoming death as the Shepherd of souls (vss 43-45)
Jesus points out that he’s the greatest is the least (vss 46-48)
- Greatest is not the one that has the most, but the one that has given the most to the cause of Jesus Christ.
Christ condemns unnecessary division b/c of self-righteousness (vss 49-50)
- Quit fighting with people trying to follow Christ just b/c they aren’t in your clique.
Christ heads to Jerusalem for the final time to die (vss 51-56)
Why you won’t follow him
Cost too much (vss 57-58)
- This guy is on an emotional high and when reality sets in and the chemicals that produce excitement have all been processed in his body, he’s going to have to have something else in him that makes him want to follow Jesus.
- You’re not considering the big picture and he knows the response is a superficial one.
- Jesus explains that there are times he goes without basic necessities.
- The cost of family
- We want to soften the blow, but you realize Jesus doesn’t explain himself.
- LISTEN CAREFULLY! – You and I underestimate what God is willing to let die in order to gain a soul and conform that soul into the image of Jesus Christ.
- Jesus was a prophet without honor in his own home.
- Some of you have paid this price. And I want to encourage you. If it were easy, there wouldn’t be a cost involved. But you know exactly what Jesus Christ means when he says at some point it will come down to you following family or you following me. Because you’re family may not want to go in the direction I’m going and the question is when they don’t want to go, will you still follow me?
- The cost of following
- Jesus Christ says Christianity is following me and I carried my cross. You don’t get to call what you do following Jesus Christ unless you’re walking in the same steps he walked.
- My ambitions become His ambitions. My path for my life becomes His path for my life. My education for me becomes His education for me.
- He doesn’t ask you to go anywhere He hasn’t gone.
- The problem with following is we don’t want to walk where he walked.
- No servant is greater than his master. Jesus Christ isn’t going to walk one path while you walk another and still claim to follow him.
Divided loyalty to other good priorities (vs 59)
- Let me get my house in order.
- Let me stop doing this and then I’ll follow.
- Make my priorities your priorities.
- When I started learning the Bible, no one had to tell me to go to church. I found out where to get fed and I was hungry to get fed. They say you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink. If that horse is thirsty, you don’t have to make him drink. He’ll drink on his own.
Family connection (vss 60-61)
- Jesus said, Follow me, but this man’s response was LET ME FIRST…
- Family member dies without getting saved and it scarred you.
- The LORD is my shepherd
