Luke 9:49-62

TWO LESSONS INTOLERANCE

(Luke 9:49-56)9:49-56 John said to Jesus, "Master, we saw a man casting out demons in your name; and stoppedhim because he does not follow with us." Jesus said to him, "Don't try to stop him, for hewho is not against us is for us."

When the days that he should be received up were on their way to being completed he fixed hisface firmly to go to Jerusalem. He sent messengers on ahead. When they had gone on they went into a village of the Samaritans to make ready for him; and they refused to receive them because his face was set in the direction of Jerusalem. When his disciples, James and John, learned of this they said, "Lord, would you like us to order fire to come down from heaven and destroy them?" He turned to them and rebuked them; and they went on to another village.

Here we have two lessons intolerance.There were many exorcists in Palestine, all claiming to be able to cast out demons; and no doubt Johnregarded this man as a competitor and wished to eliminate him. But Jesus would not permit himThe direct way from Galilee to Jerusalem led through Samaria, but most Jews avoided it. There was

centuries' old quarrel between the Jews and the Samaritans (John 4:9).

The Samaritans in fact did everything they could to hinder and even to injure any bands of pilgrims who

attempted to pass through their territory. For Jesus to take that way to Jerusalem was unusual; and to

attempt to find hospitality in a Samaritan village was still more unusual. When he did this he was extending

a hand of friendship to a people who were enemies. In this case not only was hospitality refused but the

offer of friendship was spurned. No doubt, therefore, James and John believed they were doing a

praiseworthy thing when they offered to call in divine aid to blot out the village. But Jesus would not permit

them.

There is no passage in which Jesus so directly teaches the duty of tolerance as in this. In many ways

tolerance is a lost virtue, and often, where it does exist, it exists from the wrong cause. Of all the greatest

religious leaders none was such a pattern of tolerance as John Wesley. "I have no more right," he said,

"to object to a man for holding a different opinion from mine than I have to differ with a man because he

wears a wig and I wear my own hair; but if he takes his wig off and shakes the powder in my face, I shall

consider it my duty to get quit of him as soon as possible. . . . The thing which I resolved to use every

possible method of preventing was a narrowness of spirit, a party zeal, a being straitened in our own

bowels--that miserable bigotry which makes many so unready to believe that there is any work of God but

among themselves. . .. We think and let think." When his nephew, Samuel, the son of his brother Charles,

entered the Roman Catholic Church, he wrote to him, "Whether in this Church or that I care not. You may

be saved in either or damned in either, but I fear you are not born again." The Methodist invitation to the

sacrament is simply, "Let all who love the Lord come here."

The conviction that our beliefs and our methods alone are correct has been the cause of more tragedy

and distress in the church than almost any other thing. Oliver Cromwell wrote once to the intransigent

Scots, "I beseech you by the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken." T. R. Glover

somewhere quotes a saying, "Remember that whatever your hand finds to do, someone thinks differently!"

There are many ways to God. He has his own secret stairway into every heart. He fulfills himself in many

ways; and no man or church has a monopoly of his truth.

But--and this is intensely important--our tolerance must be based not on indifference but on love. We

ought

to be tolerant not because we could not care less; but because we look at the other person with eyes of

ove. When Abraham Lincoln was criticized for being too courteous to his enemies and reminded that it was

his duty to destroy them, he gave the great answer, "Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my

friends?" Even if a man be utterly mistaken, we must never regard him as an enemy to be destroyed but as

a strayed friend to be recovered by love.

THE HONESTY OF JESUS (Luke 9:57-62)9:57-62 As they were journeying along the road, a man said to Jesus, "I will follow you wherever you

go." Jesus said to him, "The foxes have dens; the birds of the air have places to roost, but the Son oMan has nowhere to lay his head."

He said to another man, "Follow Me! Lord," he said, "let me go first and bury my father." He said to

him, "Let the dead bury their dead; but do you go and tell abroad the news of the kingdom of God."

Another man said to him, "Lord, I will follow you; but let me first say good-bye to the folk at home."

Jesus said to him, "No man who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is the right kind of man for

the kingdom of God."

Here we have the words of Jesus to three would-be followers.

(i) To the first man, his advice was, "Before you follow me, count the cost." No one can ever say that he was

induced to follow Jesus under false pretenses. Jesus paid men the compliment of pitching his demands so

high that they cannot be higher. It may well be that we have done great hurt to the church by letting people

think that church membership need not make so very much difference. We ought to tell them that it should

make all the difference in the world. We might have fewer people, but those we had would be really pledged

to Christ.

(ii) Jesus' words to the second man sound harsh, but they need not be so. In all probability, the man's father

was not dead, and not even nearly dead. His saying most likely meant, "I will follow you after my father has

died." An English official in the East tells of a very brilliant young Arab who was offered a scholarship to

Oxford or Cambridge. His answer was, "I will take it after I have buried my father." At the time his father was

not much more than forty years of age.

The point Jesus was making is that in everything there is a crucial moment; if that moment is missed the

thing most likely will never be done at all. The man in the story had stirrings in his heart to get out of his

spiritually dead surroundings; if he missed that moment he would never get out.

The psychologists tell us that every time we have a fine feeling, and do not act on it, the less likely we are to

act on it at all. The emotion becomes a substitute for the action. Take one example--sometimes we feel that

we would like to write a letter, perhaps of sympathy, perhaps of thanks, perhaps of congratulations. If we

put it off until to-morrow, it will in all likelihood never be written. Jesus urges us to act at once when our

hearts are stirred.

(iii) His words to the third man state a truth which no one can deny. No plowman ever plowed a straight

furrow looking back over his shoulder. There are some whose hearts are in the past. They walk forever

Looking backward and thinking wistfully of the good old days. Watkinson, the great preacher, tells how once

at the seaside when he was with his little grandson, he met an old minister. The old man was very

disgruntled and, to add to all his troubles, he had a slight touch of sunstroke. The little boy had been

listening but had not picked it up quite correctly; and when they left the grumbling complaints of the old

man, he turned to Watkinson and said, "Granddad, I hope you never suffer from a sunset!"

The Christian marches on, not to the sunset, but to the dawn. The watchword of the kingdom is not,

"Backwards!" but, "Forwards!" To this man Jesus did not say either, "Follow!" or, "Return!" he said,

"I accept no lukewarm service," and left the man to make his own decision

-Barclay's Daily Study Bible (NT)