LUKE: YEAR OF OUR LORD (WEEK 13) - THE ALTER CALL

If you're new with us we're going through the Gospel of Luke verse by verse and we're in what some call the Sermon on the Plain which essentially is chapter 6 of Luke’s gospel and it all began when Jesus went up on a mountain to pray and he pulled an all-nighter spending time with the Father and then selecting his apostles. He then descended from the mountain to a level place (a plain) and there proceeded to give a sermon to those who were following him.

And the sermon - like the Sermon on the Mount as we studied last year - is all about discipleship. What it means to walk the talk, if you will. Putting things into practice. Not just SAYING you believe, but actually LIVING out your faith.

For far too many people, their spiritual lives are like the box of Frosted Flakes disguised like a jigsaw puzzle; doesn’t make sense. Too many gaps. Many professing Christians experience these gaps between their profession of faith and their practice of faith - and it’s confusing. In the end it doesn’t make sense. The storms of life hit, and they are knocked for a loop. Is it perhaps because they don’t understand what the big picture is supposed to actually be? They think it’s about conversion, when Jesus is clear that it’s MORE than that…it’s actually about DISCIPLESHIP. That’s what he has been talking about: loving enemies, going the extra mile, living outside of one’s self, committing to a godly lifestyle…

And now it all comes to a conclusion with two final analogies: FRUIT and FOUNDATIONS. And, like all good sermons (I’ve been told), Jesus ends his sermon with an ALTER call, if you will. No, not an “altar call,” like come up to the altar, but an ALTER call - will you choose to let God alter your heart and your mind and your life choices in order to truly be a disciple?

Jesus is essentially asking this crowd of people: now that you’ve heard about the Kingdom, who’s in? Who wants to REALLY be my disciple?