Three Radical Demands (4)

 

 

“Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim everywhere the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:60).

 

There are only two types of people on the earth, those who are alive in Christ and those who are dead in their trespasses and sins.  Is it possible that we have gotten away from this truth during the past few decades? Many churches which profess a high view of the Bible are now so enmeshed in worldviews, politics, and therapies that they have forgotten that Jesus says, “You must be born again,” (John 3:7).

 

These therapies, political persuasions, and worldviews are now the litmus test of fellowship, not whether a person knows and follows Jesus Christ. A person who has the new life of Jesus Christ in them, who lives in the Vine, yet who has a different worldview than me, or a different political view, is my brother or sister; while a person who is closer to me in worldview or political or economic thinking, yet who does not yet know Jesus (professing Christian or not) is not my brother or sister in the Kingdom of God.

 

“A crowd was sitting around Him, and they said to Him, ‘Behold, Your mother and Your brothers are outside looking for You.’ Answering them, He said, ‘Who are My mother and My brothers?’ Looking about at those who were sitting around Him, He said, ‘Behold My mother and My brothers! For whoever does the will of God, he is My brother and sister and mother’” (Mark 3:32 – 35).

 

If this is true of Jesus, this should be true of us. When we come to know Jesus we have a new family, and as we read in our previous reflection, our old family may react to us in different ways; there may be acceptance of us as followers of Jesus, or there may be rejection and outright persecution. There were members of Jesus’ family who thought that He had “lost His senses” (Mark 3:21), I have witnessed this, so radical is Jesus’ call of discipleship. How it can be that we have not all witnessed this?

 

Are we more concerned about not offending family and friends and coworkers, than we are about offending our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ?

 

If Jesus had not been obedient to His heavenly Father, where would His earthly family have been? His own brothers didn’t believe in Him during His earthly ministry (John 7:5), yet they will come to be counted among His followers in the opening chapter of Acts (Acts 1:14). There is a price to be paid by us for our families to see Jesus, and it can mean misunderstanding, rejection, and perhaps even persecution by our families and friends and coworkers and neighbors. The call of Jesus is radical, the Cross of Christ is radical – and we simply cannot live the way we used to live; this can trouble our families and others close to us. Let us trust God for the results of our witness and obedience to Him.

 

“And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.

 

“But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved)” (Ephesians 2:1 – 5).

 

We were once dead, now we are alive in Jesus Christ. There are two types of people in the world, those who are alive and those who are dead.

 

“Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come” (2 Cor. 5:17). There are two types of people in the world, those who are new creatures (creations) in Christ, and those who are not.

 

“You have been born again not of seed which is perishable but imperishable, that is, through the living and enduring word of God” (1 Peter 1:23).

 

“When the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior” (Titus 3:4 – 6).

 

Jesus’ command to let the dead bury their dead is a call to recognize that our life is in Him, our obedience is to Him, and that we have had a change of ownership, from Satan to Jesus, from self to Jesus – we are no longer our own, we have been “bought with a price.”

 

This is not to say that we repudiate our earthly families, rather it is to say that we follow Jesus and embrace our new family in Him.

 

An irony in all this is that professing Christians in our earthly families may present more opposition to us than those who don’t claim believe in Jesus Christ. They have often become comfortable in compromise Christianity, comfortable with the status quo in the enculturated church, comfortable with their social standing in the congregation, comfortable with having one foot in the world and the other in the Kingdom.

 

Consider that many of our books and seminars on witnessing strive to make witnessing inoffensive, palatable to all, and painless. In other words, they eliminate the Cross of Christ and its work in our lives and in the lives of those who don’t yet know Jesus.

 

The Cross is an offense, a stumbling block (Gal. 5:11), and the Gospel is foolishness to the world (1 Cor. 1:17 – 31). We ought to run from any teaching, book, or program that would suggest otherwise.

 

How do the dead bury their dead?

 

Might it not be through the pursuit of wealth, power, and possessions? In entertainment, sports, politics, nationalism? In pursuing fame, recognition? In sex and sexuality, culinary pleasures, alcohol, drugs? Can it not be through religious systems – including those with Christian origins, after all, the scribes and Pharisees knew the Scriptures quite well, after a manner, but they did not know Messiah when He with living with them and speaking to them?

 

Are we clear in our preaching and teaching and in our living that there are only two types of people in the world, the living and the dead?

 

Are you and I letting the dead bury their dead, and are we going everywhere proclaiming the kingdom of God?

Thanksgiving 2026

 

Thanksgiving 2026

The measure of our marriage

 

This has been quite the year for us, and while we have been shaken to the core of who we are; our core, our foundation, Jesus Christ, has remained unshaken, steadfast, and our refuge. Life is not touch football, or flag football, life is full-contact football and we all can be blindsided at one time or another.

 

On the morning of March 30, 2026, at breakfast, Vickie and I were talking about how long our parents and grandparents had lived, and how many more years we might have together, by God’s grace. That very night Vickie was admitted to ICU with a massive bilateral pulmonary embolism, with the right side of her heart shutting down. Do you think there is a lesson here?

 

With the above as a backdrop, an image recently came to me of our marriage that I’d like to share with you, it is an image of the way we’ve endeavored to live in Christ, and an image of the way I hope we will die in Christ.

 

Thanksgiving has wonderful memories for us, while also being bittersweet in that my dear brother Jim went to be with Jesus on Thanksgiving as did our beloved friend Gloria. We’ll have a Greater Thanksgiving when we are with them again, never to be parted.

 

One of our memories, which we were just talking about, was a Thanksgiving in Beverly, MA in which our home was filled with friends from England, Spain, Greece, Germany and the U.S.A.

 

After the cleanup, after everyone had left, as we were decompressing from a beautiful day, our thoughts turned to that most delicious of delights, turkey sandwiches. After all, is this not why we roast turkeys? Are leftover turkey sandwiches not the true dessert of Thanksgiving? Turkey on white bread with mayo, salt and pepper, and maybe lettuce, and maybe some cranberry. Yes, some may use dinner rolls instead of white bread, that is acceptable, let us not quibble about bread, let us not have schism over bread.

 

I don’t recall if Vickie or I looked in the refrigerator first; first one of us did, then the other. No leftover turkey. While it pains me, I’ll write it again, no turkey.  As we verified the complete absence of leftover turkey, that delicacy of delicacies, as we discussed the dire situation we were in, we realized what had happened. Between the two of us, we had given all the turkey away as we were distributing containers of leftovers to our dear friends.

 

All the turkey had been carried out the front door of our home and whisked away to be enjoyed by guests, our friends, our dearly beloved brothers and sisters.

 

There was not a piece of white meat, not a piece of dark; other than the carcass there was no proof that there had ever been a turkey in our home that Thanksgiving.

 

We laughed and we are still laughing. We rejoiced, and we are still rejoicing.

 

Our friends had given us the gift of a loving and memorable Thanksgiving. They had graced our home, petted our dogs, laughed with us, rejoiced with us, bathed us and one another in love and peace – and created a wave of God’s Presence that still carries us along. What is a little turkey among friends?

 

As Vickie and I approach this Thanksgiving, and as I give thanks for the miracle of Vickie’s healing and recovery – all through the grace of God – (a recent scan showed no evidence that she ever had the bilateral pulmonary embolism, no evidence of the myocardial infarction) – I am reminded that Jesus tells us, “Freely you have received, freely give.”

 

I am grateful for another Thanksgiving with Vickie (the Lord willing!); I am thankful for every day with her. I am thankful that I am married to a woman with whom I can give all the turkey away. Because you see, our lives are not measured by what we have accumulated, but by what we have given away. They are not measured by what we have experienced, but by what we’ve helped others experience.

 

My hope is that this will always be the measure of our marriage in our Lord Jesus.

 

My prayer is God’s blessing on you and yours this Thanksgiving.

 

Love…much love…

 

Bob

Three Radical Demands (3)

 

“Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim everywhere the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:60).

 

The request, “Lord, permit me first to go and bury my father,” seems reasonable. Is this not a duty of a child, to ensure that a parent has a proper burial? What kind of son would leave his parent unburied? What child would not be with his or her family at the funeral of a father or mother, sharing their grief and giving comfort?

 

Yet Jesus says, “Let the dead bury the dead.”

 

Why would anyone follow Jesus after hearing these words?

 

“But as for you, go and proclaim everywhere the kingdom of God.”

 

Not only is this person not to bury his father, but he is to go and proclaim Good News. This man doesn’t get a day or two or a week to grieve, to work through his sorrow – he is to go and proclaim the kingdom of God.

 

What will his neighbors think? His family?

 

“Where is Isaac? Why isn’t he here to bury his father, to grieve with us?”

 

“Isaac is out telling people about Jesus and the kingdom of God.”

 

“Really? What kind of man is this Jesus, that He would not want His disciple to bury his father? What kind of rabbi is this Jesus, not to tell his follower to have his priorities straight? Doesn’t Moses command us to honor our father and mother? Is not Isaac’s failure to bury his father a breaking of this commandment?”

 

Could it be that Jesus’ idea of family is not our idea of family?

 

“A crowd was sitting around Him, and they said to Him, ‘Behold, Your mother and Your brothers are outside looking for You.’ Answering them, He said, ‘Who are My mother and My brothers?’ Looking about at those who were sitting around Him, He said, ‘Behold My mother and My brothers! For whoever does the will of God, he is My brother and sister and mother.’”

 

Then we have Matthew 10:34 – 39:

 

“Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man’s enemies will be the members of his household. He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. He who has found his life will lose it, and he who has lost his life for My sake will find it.”

 

And then Luke 21:16 – 17, “But you will be betrayed even by parents and brothers and relatives and friends, and they will put some of you to death, and you will be hated by all because of My name.”

 

See also Luke 18:28 – 30.

 

As we ponder these passages, one thing we must not do is water them down, we must not blunt the sword or dull the scalpel – we must submit to them and allow the Word of God to do its work within us. It is far better to say, “I just don’t understand this,” and spend a lifetime working through what Jesus says, than to make the Word of Jesus mush, gruel that can’t be eaten, or cotton candy that will rot our teeth.  

 

These passages are a matter of the heart. The mind will explain the passages away, the heart will have to wrestle with them, to submit to them, to cry, “Not my will, but Your will be done!”

 

It would not surprise me if we never have closure on these passages; we may pretend to have closure, we may pretend that we fully understand and embrace them, but I really wonder if we can ever finish the wrestling match. Our tendency is to explain them away, to superimpose our commonsense interpretations, to lessen their challenge and bite, to avoid them – after all, they are not attractive, they are not winsome, they are not calculated to win friends and influence people.

 

Somewhere Oswald Chambers wrote that we often tell God that He does not know what our obedience will cost others, that He does not know what our obedience will cost our family and friends. Do we not tell God that we must wait for a better time to obey His call of the Cross? Do we not tell God that since others will not understand, that we must either wait or must modify His Word of obedience to us? Do we not edit the Word of God so that it is palatable to us and do we not make the Word conform to us, rather than conform our lives to the Word? Do we not insist that the Bible submit to us, rather than submit ourselves to the Bible?

 

How do these passages challenge you?

 

We’ll return to this in our next reflection in the series, the Lord willing…