TEXT: Luke 12:49-59

SUBJECT: Luke #51: A Divisive Savior

How many of you know the name, Rolfe Barnard? He was a Southern Baptist preacher who died in 1969. In his day nearly everyone down south professed faith in Christ. In my father’s hometown, for example, one could not teach school unless he was a member of a church. This was common all over the south at the time. The culture was distinctly Christian.

Which means: There was very little Christianity. People weren’t Baptists or Methodists because they believed in Christ or the doctrines of the church, but because—well—because they had always been Baptists or Methodists! Because everyone was saved, then everyone was safe.

Until Rolfe Barnard came to town! He told them that being a Christian wasn’t about joining the church or teaching a Sunday School class. He said that a nominal Christian is not Christian at all, and that if you wanted to be saved, you had to repent of your sins—all of them—and become nothing less than a new creature in Christ. The sermons were not soothing, but appalling; people didn’t enjoy them, they either loved them or hated them. Rolfe Barnard was a shocking preacher.

But not half as shocking as his Master, the Lord Jesus Christ. He says many things that make you squirm, but very few of them make you squirm more than what He says in today’s passage.

We believe His words, of course, but we don’t feel comfortable with them. We want to tame the Words—and the One who spoke them! But the Lord will not be domesticated. Though Jesus Christ is the kindest and most loving of men, He is not always a nice guy. He doesn’t always tell us what we want to hear.

But hear Him we must. God give us the ears to hear and the hearts to receive the Words of Christ.

The Lord begins with a mission statement. He briefly tells us what He has come to do:

Now, what does this mean, this fire? Some say it stands for the Second Coming. It’s true, of course, that the Lord’s Return will be attended with fire, but this view does not fit the context at all. This fire comes before the Crucifixion and not centuries later.

In this place, the fire stands for a judgment—not the Final Judgment in which some are consigned to everlasting flames, but a judgment that took place during the Lord’s life on earth.

What kind of judgment was it? It was a dividing of people. In those days, everyone in Israel thought of himself as belonging to the People of God. But they didn’t! Our Lord’s First Coming exposed them for what they were and set them at odds with the people who truly belonged to Him.

This is expanded on a bit later. The Lord says,

We’re not used to thinking of Christ in these terms. We picture Him as a warm and cuddly fellow leading the world in a big group hug. But here we see Him as a Man with an edge—and the edge is razor sharp (or, maybe it’s jagged).

The Lord has come—not to unite people—but to divide them. Not to strengthen old ties, but to cut them. The people He has in mind used to be very close. They are

If you look to other places in the Bible, you find marriages and old friendships also breaking up over Christ. Neighborhoods, workplaces, and nations, too. Every human tie is subject to the Dividing Work of Jesus Christ.

The dividing work of Christ. That doesn’t sound right, does it? We think of the Lord bringing people together, not tearing them apart. Does He reconcile people? Yes He does, often the oldest and bitterest enemies have found peace with each other through the work of Jesus Christ.

In the First Century, the thickest wall of division was between Jew and Gentile. But Paul says Jesus Christ tore down the middle wall of partition and made one new people—out of two peoples who used to be divided.

The same thing took place between men and women and also between slaves and freemen. The old chasms were bridged by the Lord Jesus.

But, in bringing some people together, He was pulling others apart. He was creating a New People and with them, a new set of loyalties. In 1770, every patriotic American sang, "God save the king". But twenty years later, they were singing a different song.

Yes, Jesus Christ came to divide people. And He did it. If you read the New Testament, you’ll see how the great the Divide was—and how quickly it came. Long-time members of the Synagogue, were no longer welcome. Peaceful citizens of the Roman Empire were soon persecuted for their faith in Christ.

The same thing is true today. Sign up for a class in Comparative Religion. Before the term is out, you’ll have a Jew, a Buddhist, a Hindu, and others come in to explain their faith. Their talks will be interesting and everyone will be glad they heard them.

But then bring in a Christian! If he’s true to his faith, he’ll say something like: There is no salvation outside of faith in Jesus Christ!

If the students are polite, you’ll hear them shuffling their feet and clearing their throats. If they’re not so courteous, they’ll start abusing the Christian with words like, "narrow-minded, bigoted, know-it-all" and words my mom and dad taught me not to say!

Jesus Christ still divides people.

My neighbor once told me, "I have some real problems with religion". I asked him, "Which religion?" And, of course, he meant Christianity! Wouldn’t you love to hear someone say, "I just cannot reconcile the teachings of science with my faith in Hinduism!" If you live to be a thousand, you’ll never hear that.

Because the divide is not between religion and non-religion. It’s between Christ and everything else!

The division began—I suppose—with Cain and Abel, way back in the dawn of human history. But the divide that was always there came under floodlights with the first coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The growing divide was so obvious that our Lord bawled out the people for not recognizing it. The people were not stupid. They knew that a cloud rising from over the Mediterranean meant rain was in the forecast. They also knew that the winds blowing up from Arabia mean it was going to be hot.

The brains they used to understand the weather, they would not use to understand the time in which they were living. In Matthew’s version, He says "the signs of the times" (cf. Matthew 16:3).

This term, "the signs of the times" has been terribly abused by people who ought to know better. It does not refer to the Second Coming of Christ, but to His First Coming! The signs were everywhere—lepers were cleansed, the dead were raised, the blind got their sight back, and the poor had the Gospel preached to them!

The men of that generation saw all these things, but couldn’t infer from them that the Messiah had come and was doing the work the prophets said He would do in separating the sheep from the goats or the wheat from the tares or the precious from the vile.

They all knew that not every servant of God was really His servant. They all believed that one day, Messiah would come and sort out the true from the false or separate the men whose hearts were right from the hypocrites who only talked obedience.

The Messiah they said they looked for had now come and…they didn’t recognize Him. And wanted no part of Him.

What a godless people they were, for all their high-falutin talk! They cared more about the coming of rain than they did the coming of God! The feared the hot winds of Arabia more than the fire that Messiah would bring.

The Lord ends His sermon with a little story. He often did that and to great effect.

The story is about a guilty man who is being hauled into court by his accuser who has all the evidence he needs to get a ruling against him. In light of the coming judgment, what does the guilty man do?

He settles out of court. He knows the judge will rule against him—and maybe put him in debtor’s prison—and so he does whatever the accusers want him to do.

The moral to the story: You are standing before God your Judge . He’s going to find your guilty. Unless you make things right with His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.

So why don’t you do that? Why don’t you break with your old friends and cut old ties in order to be a disciple of Christ? If you become a disciple, some people won’t like it. But you mustn’t let that fear of what they think keep you from submitting to the Lordship of Christ and doing His will over what others expect of you.

Now it’s time to choose between being a disciple of Christ or being on the other side. You may not want to choose, but it doesn’t matter what you want. To not choose for Christ is to choose against Him. And that is neither right nor safe.

The stakes could not be higher. I know a man who lost $24,000 on one roll of the dice. He thought his loss was huge, but in fact, in was nothing. In Reno and Vegas and Tahoe, the stakes are low.

But standing before God the stakes are ultimate: you have everything to gain and everything to lose. Become a follower of Christ now and you’ll have everything you need in this life and more than you can imagine in the life to come. The Psalmist says,

But turn from Christ now and you’ll lose it all. First in this life and, then, in the life to come forever.

The divide is getting wider as I speak. It’s wider now than when the sermon began. One day, it will be so wide that no one can bridge it. The Rich Man hoped for better, but he learned that

The divide is still passable. The bridge is still there. And it is crossed by faith in Jesus Christ and submission to His Lordship. Submitting to the Lord will cost you dearly. But what’s the alternative?

The man who has no choice, has to choose wisely.

So do it. And do it now. For Christ’s sake. Amen.