Hand to the Plow

I’m not sure if you remember, but Thursday was a lousy day, rain and wind. It was also the day we had Prayer meeting at Brunilda’s. Brunilda’s husband is not a Christian and doesn’t have a great desire to be one, but she was really excited because she had invited some people to join us and we were expecting to have something like 20 people there. So she set up her basement to fit 20-plus people with chairs and food. Then right before we were supposed to start arriving, she started to get phone calls that one person couldn’t make it. Then another. Then another. Suddenly 20 was down to 15 and 15 was down to 10. And when 8:00 came and there were only 5 of us, it was looking pretty lonely down there.

The point of the story? After all the phone calls, Brunilda’s husband said something like, “That’s why I don’t like you Christians. You all say the right thing but if there’s a little rain, you don’t show up.” Or in other words, we are not fooling anyone when we go around saying how great we are and how everyone needs to be like us. The world is on to us. They know that we say things but when the going gets tough, we’re no different than they are – we avoid the tough conversations, the hard discussions, the uncomfortable situations. If it rains, we stay home instead of going to prayer. If our friends are coming over, we hang with them instead of going to service. If we worked late, we skip Bible study. Our ability to overcome our situation is no different than the rest of them. And they know it.

So why should they become a Christian? What does it buy them? They think they’re going to heaven because they are good people (or at least not as bad as some others – well, they never murdered anyone anyway…) They see a group of people who are the same as they are, who react the same way they do when something happens, who are always asking for money for something. What’s the point? Matthew 5:20 says, “For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.” Jesus isn’t saying that you get to heaven based on how good you are; he’s saying that we cannot be like the Pharisees, who were doing all the right things. We cannot be like the rest of the world, who think that doing all the right things get you into heaven. We need to stand out. We need to be separated. We need to be different than they are.

So here’s one for you – are you really a follower of Jesus? Yes, you go to church and give an offering every so often. Are you that different than the guy next door? Do people at work say, “That’s the person I was telling you about – who is not the same as the rest of us.”? Could you say that you are truly following in Jesus’ footsteps?

Jesus said "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.” (Matt 7:21). Again, he isn’t saying that you get to heaven by your good works, but he is saying that just giving lip service (“Lord, Lord”) isn’t good enough and that we are expected to act differently, following in the footsteps of Jesus, who did the will of the Father.

Matthew chapter 13 tells several different parables of the Kingdom of Heaven. In one, verses 24 and following, there are good seed which is mixed with bad seed. In the end God will separate them. Jesus is telling us that in his church, there are true followers and false followers and God knows our hearts and will separate the good from the bad. In another, verses 3 and following, there are 4 types of ground upon which the message of the kingdom is sown – 3 of them aren’t so great but the fourth is excellent and the seed grows tremendously. Then we are told that one of the ground types doesn’t even sprout any growth, but the next two actually root. The problem is that they still don’t grow good crop because either they get caught up in their own personal troubles or they are too concerned with their worries and their wealth.

When we sit in church, do we think that just because we are here, it means that we are good ground? Didn’t Jesus just tell us that the church is made up of real Christians and look-alikes and that there are many who have roots but aren’t necessarily good ground?

Jesus continued to tell us (v44) about the man who found a treasure hidden in a field and he sold everything to have it. The treasure in Jesus parable is the Kingdom of Heaven. Jesus is telling us that when we find the Kingdom of Heaven, the proper reaction is to forget about everything else that is happening in your life, sell it, get rid of it. Do whatever you need to do to obtain that treasure, which is the Kingdom.

Then (v45), he again tells us of a merchant looking for fine pearls and upon finding the greatest one, sells everything to obtain it. This guy knows his pearls. He’s looking for pearls to sell. But here, he finds the greatest pearl there is and he gets rid of everything. He’s not looking to sell this pearl. He’s holding on to this one for himself. As an expert in pearls and a seller of fine ones, he knows that there is no price high enough that would return the value of this pearl. He sells everything to have this one for himself.

Are we like these people? Do we realize the value of what we’ve found? Are we going to just continue on our way as if it’s no big deal or are we going to stop everything, realize that this is a life-changing moment, and start all over? Give up all the things we hold on to in this life so that we can have the treasure of the Kingdom of Heaven?

In Luke 9:23, Jesus tells us that if we want to follow him, we need to give up everything, deny ourselves, and carry our cross every day. If we want to save our lives, we need to lose them.

Later in the same chapter (v57 and following), Jesus meets people just like you and me. They ask him if they can follow him. Jesus doesn’t say, “Sure, everyone come along!”. He tells them that if you follow him, you may not have a place to sleep, because he doesn’t. He tells them that you can’t worry about the things of this life or put your family before him. He says that once you put your hand to the plow, you cannot look back.

His point is that you are either his followers or you have your own agenda. If you are his followers, then you must do what he says. You must follow his orders, his agenda, his ways, his truths. If you are following your ways, the ways of the world, the ways of your neighbors, then you are not following his ways.

We come back to Brunilda’s husband. Imagine if we were all following Jesus and we came together for prayer even though it’s raining and we have to drive an hour and spend all that money on gas and filled the house. Might his reaction have been different? Might he have thought, “I got these Christians all wrong. They are different. There’s no way I would have gone out there tonight, but they filled my house. And for what? To pray?! Why? What does praying do that makes it so important for them to do this? Who is this Jesus that his followers would go through all this trouble just to be together and to pray to him?

Today, he thinks Christians are a bunch of hypocrites. We had an opportunity to make him rethink his position on Jesus and his followers. Do you think we reinforced his bad opinion of followers of Jesus or do you think we showed him why he should change his mind?

Gandhi once said, “Jesus I like. I don’t know about his followers.” Tradition has it that Gandhi wanted to be a Christian but he was turned off by the followers of him. Are we sitting here today thinking, well if he met me, he would have a different opinion. Or are we just like all the others, no difference between the way we act and the way they did, and still do today.

Jesus said the way is narrow. In every church, people think that they are the good soil, that they are on the narrow way. But we need to ask ourselves, “have we put our hand on the plow and yet continue to look back?”

Why should we follow Jesus? Why should we give up everything? If we are asking that question, then we really haven’t understood what God has done for us. Philippians 2:6 and following tells us that Jesus was God, he was equal with God, the same as God, and yet he didn’t keep hold of his position or his Godliness and instead made himself human, the same as his own creation. When we make something, we can take it and throw it away, re-do it, make it over again. We are the creators of this thing and we are so much higher and more important than this thing, that we can destroy it if we want to. Because in the end, compared to us, it is nothing. It is our creation and we own it. Jesus became nothing when he became one of his own creation. But that didn’t stop him from following through with his plan – to humble himself and to die at the hands of his own creation.

Why? Because he loves us so much. He loves us and doesn’t want to see us destroyed. He wants us to be a perfect creation, and so he came down and died as a sacrifice for us so that we can become perfect. That’s abnormal love. We can understand loving something because it has worth – not because it is nothing. We can understand loving someone because they love you back, but Jesus died for the people who killed him. He died for people who hate him, who don’t know him, who ignore him.

People ask, “Why would a loving God send his son to die?” Those are the people that Jesus died for. They don’t understand the love of God. They don’t understand that his love for us is that great. They don’t see that Jesus loves us so much that he came down to die for us. They don’t understand the abnormal love that God has for us. God wants us to have this relationship with Him where we are not following rules, but we are following Him. He doesn’t want us to have a great religion, He wants us to have a great relationship with Him. He wants us to have such a real, loving and trusting relationship with Him that we will want to change the way we respond to Him. He wants us to respond to Him with commitment, with love, with trust. He wants us to put Him above everything else in this world – our money, our careers, our families. He wants us to love Him with everything we’ve got. When we get to that point, it’s not about following rules, it’s about growing our relationship.

When we get to that point, we will find that going out on a rainy, windy night to pray together is not only no big deal, but we will desire to do it. If you are not there yet, don’t start making yourself go to every church function. That will make you even with the Pharisees, who did everything right, were at the top of their religion and were viewed by others are the best that we could be. Jesus already told us that if we didn’t do better than them, we weren’t good enough. No, if you are not there yet, the right answer is to start to put God ahead of the other things in your life and begin to build your relationship with Him. It will be by building that relationship with God, that you will finally learn to change your behavior into one where people like Brunilda’s husband will say, “that person isn’t like the usual ‘Christian’ I’ve come across before. There is something different about that one.” And maybe then you will be the salt and the light that Jesus calls us to be.

Send mail to david@TheArkNY.org with questions about the church or comments about this site.
Last modified: Nov 22, 2008