The Discipline Of Choices
By Woodrow Kroll
Luke 5
Luke 6
Luke 9
We've been using the Gospel of Luke to teach us some important lessons about the disciplines we need--disciplines that can help us grow strong and mature in our faith and enjoy the freedom in walking with the Lord Jesus. These disciplines can also help us make the right decisions about the many choices we face each day. Perhaps you're wrestling with a decision about a job, or a place to live, maybe there's a situation you need to deal with and it's hard to figure out the right thing to do. Now is the time to open God's Word and exercise the discipline of choices.
Making the right choices does take discipline. In fact, it takes Spirit-filled discipline. We're not left without choices when it comes to Christ and we must be disciplined when making those choices. Today we're going to focus on how to be disciplined in the choices we make.
Making disciplined choices is one of the great disciplines of life. I want to begin with one of Aesop's Fables. Remember Aesop? Aesop said that a long time ago, when the world was young, the birds and the beasts were engaged in a bitter war. The bat, not wanting to be on the losing side, whichever side that might be, tried to be on both sides. And whenever the birds won a battle, he would fly with them, telling them that he was a bird. And when the beasts won, he would walk around with them, assuring everyone that he was a beast.
And it didn't take long for the bat's hypocrisy--says Aesop at least--it didn't take long for that hypocrisy to be discovered. He was rejected by both the birds and the beasts. And from that day on, the bat had to go into hiding. And to this day he lives in a dark cave, only daring to come out at night.
Now that's Aesop's Fables. But I want you to think about the inability that some of us have to make the right decision. You know, we go with the crowd when the crowd is going one way, and we go with a different crowd when it's going a different way. All this week here on Back to the Bible I've been talking about the disciplines of life. And now we get down to the last in the series, and as Don said, perhaps the most important.
We have to make choices in our life, and these choices arise out of a hidden discipline--a life of discipline that gives opportunity to give choices freely. See, we can make these choices and do it rightly if over the course of our lives, we disciplined our lives to maturity. Let me show you what I mean.
Luke 5, beginning at verse 27 (27, 28, and 29), our first passage for today to think about disciplining the choices of our lives. Listen to this, this is Luke 5, beginning at verse 27. "After these things He went out and saw a tax collector named Levi, sitting at the tax office. And He said to him, 'Follow Me.' And he left all, rose up, and followed Him. Then Levi gave Him a great feast in his own house. And there were a great number of tax collectors and others who sat down with them."
Now, that's a brief passage, but it's enough for us to get some understanding of a choice that Levi had to make. Levi, of course, is Matthew. Now what choice did Matthew make? What choice did this tax collector, Levi, make? Jesus came along, saw him sitting at the receipt of custom, sitting at the place where taxes were collected, and said to him, "Follow Me."
Now, there are only two words there, "Follow Me." Jesus did not explain where He meant for Levi to go. He did not explain what this meant for him. He did not explain whether or not this meant that Levi could return to being a tax collector the next day. What Levi understood was that this would mean a change of vocation for him--if he disciplined himself to the obedience of making the right choice.
Now, you see, this is the story of the call of Levi, or Matthew, to discipleship. It's not a very dramatic call, in fact, none of the calls of discipleship were dramatic in Scripture. With the exception of the brief mention of James and John, Andrew and Peter, after the incident of the launching out into the deep and catching all those fish, Levi's is the only call to discipleship that Luke mentions in his Gospel.
Well, be that as it may, there is still the element of choice making here. See, Jesus said to Levi, "Follow Me." And that put the burden squarely on Levi. I mean, Levi/Matthew had to make a choice here. Jesus gave him a command, he could either refuse that command or he could accept it.
Now, Levi didn't have much of a chance to discipline himself here. You see, the love of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit, I think, simply overtook this Jewish tax collector. And he got up from where he was, and he followed Jesus. Was it the right choice? Hindsight is 20/20, isn't it, of course it was the right choice. From our vantagepoint centuries later, we would say that there's no question but that it was the right choice. But it immediately changed Levi's life. He turned him from being a tax collector into being an evangelist.
How do I know that? We'll look at that next verse. It says, "Then Levi gave Him a great feast in his own house. And there were a great number of tax collectors and others who sat down with them."
Now why do you suppose these people were there? It wasn't that Levi was suddenly generous and wanted to feed all his friends. Instantly Levi invited all his tax-collector buddies to his house--and he did it to introduce them to his new Savior and Lord. Now that friends, that's a classic example of household evangelism. Unsaved co-workers were invited to Levi's house and Jesus was also there to be introduced to them.
That's a dramatic change in vocation. No more would Levi take from the people, now he was going to give. No more would he be involved as a government tax collector, now he would be collecting souls for the kingdom of God. See, his life was changed dramatically, changed entirely, changed eternally.
Now that's the choice. Oh, sure, Jesus called him, that's Levi, called him to discipleship. But it was his choice to answer. It was his choice to follow Christ. Now, you and I have our spiritual antennae on today and when we're tender to that still small voice of the Lord God, we may hear Him calling us to make some vocational choices as well. Now that takes discipline, but everything worthwhile does.
Remember, Moses was a herdsman; God called him to be a prophet. His disciplined response was, "Yes." So was Amos' response to the same God. Paul was a trained Rabbi; God called him to be a preacher. He called this Jew to be a preacher to the Gentiles. And yet his disciplined response was, "Yes." William Carey was a cobbler, he was a shoemaker in the 18th century England; God called him to be a missionary. And his disciplined response was, "Yes." He became the father of modern missions.
See, the list just goes on and on and on of people whose vocation was changed as a result of the discipline of choices. When you give a disciplined response to your choices, it may change your vocation. I know it changed Levi's vocation. And you know the day that Jesus came by and called Levi and he got up from where he was and followed Jesus--that was the turning point in his life.
On the top of a hill in a Midwestern State, there's a courthouse. This courthouse is situated so that raindrops falling on one side of the roof travel by way of the Great Lakes into the Atlantic Ocean, while those drops landing on the opposite side find their way to the Ohio and Mississippi River Valleys. And that seeps into the Gulf of Mexico. See, just a breath of wind, one way or the other, may determine whether a single raindrop will end up either in the Gulf of Mexico or in the Atlantic.
And even so, one single decision is enough to determine your destiny. If you've made that decision to trust Jesus Christ as Savior, then discipline your choices to make sure that you're involved in the vocation to which you have been called. I can't help but believe that there are some of you listening to me today who have been wrestling with answering the call of God to ministry. Answer the call of God to go and serve Him, to serve Him in a lifetime vocation.
You've been wrestling with that and you haven't been successful yet in answering the call, because you haven't disciplined your choices. Levi was a man who had learned how to discipline his choices. And one of the great disciplines of life, my friends, is the discipline of choosing what God has already chosen for us.
Now, let's move on from chapter 5 to chapter 6 of Luke. I want you to see that disciplining our choices also may mean a change of attitude for us. Look at this, Luke 6, I want to read verse 27, 28, and 29. Jesus is speaking here and He says, "But I say to you who hear: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who spitefully use you. To him who strikes you on one cheek, offer the other also. And from him who takes away your cloak, do not withhold your tunic either."
Sounds pretty crazy in 21st-century morality, doesn't it? See, the Pharisees were teaching "Love your neighbor, and hate your enemy." Matthew 5:43 tells us that. Jesus' parable, "The Good Samaritan" would teach His disciples to assist your enemy, or to do good to your enemy. But there's a big jump between assisting your enemy, and loving your enemy. This must have shocked even the disciples. A change of attitude was in order. But you see friends, allowing your minds to be disciplined by God, frequently brings a change of attitude--a change of attitude toward both people and things.
This business of turning the other cheek, that was totally foreign to His disciples' thinking. It was totally foreign to our thinking as well. It's just not part of our human nature to do that sort of thing, is it? But what Jesus wanted to teach His disciples with this statement, was that they were shown the spirit of hatred, the spirit of condemnation, the spirit of despite. They were not to return the spirit that they were shown.
But they were to turn the other cheek, they were to show the spirit of love--not ranker, not vindictiveness, but of forgiveness. And you see, that would take a change in attitude. They had to be disciplined in their choices, and they could choose, and so can you. You and I can choose the way we respond to other people. But it will mean a discipline in changing our attitude.
You see when we discipline our choices, sometimes it changes our vocation, sometimes it changes our attitude. But as I continue looking here in the Gospel of Luke at the disciplines of life, Luke 9 teaches me that when I discipline my choices in my life, it will mean a change in lifestyle. Look with me at Luke 9, beginning at verse 1:
"Then He called His twelve disciples together and gave them power and authority over all demons, and to cure diseases. He sent them to preach the kingdom of God and to heal the sick. And He said to them, 'Take nothing for the journey, neither staffs nor bag nor bread nor money; and do not have two tunics apiece. Whatever house you enter, stay there, and from there depart. And whoever will not receive you, when you go out of that city, shake off the very dust from your feet as a testimony against them.'"
Now this sounds strange, doesn't it? Especially in light of what he just told them about turning the other cheek. But when our choices are disciplined by life, when they're disciplined by a life of faith, when we allow the Holy Spirit of God to discipline our choices, I think we can also experience a change in lifestyle.
Now, the things Jesus told His disciples to do in verse 3 are almost unbelievable. In fact, they would be unbelievable, if He did not elsewhere repeat them. He says almost the same words to His disciples in the very next chapter. Now you can check it out later, verses 4 through 8.
And obviously to go without a staff, the kind of rod that a shepherd would have; to go without a bag, that would be kind of a travelers bag, kind of like a knapsack or a briefcase today; to go without money or bread, to go without food, no money to buy food; to go out with only on cloak, literally a tunic, a tunic was kind of a T-shirt--to go out without proper provisions must have seemed fool-hearty to these disciples. I feel certain they'd never done that before.
But you see my friend, to discipline our choices is to follow Jesus and that may just mean a drastic change in our lifestyle. It may mean that we will have the Spirit of God to convict us of all those things we have, all the things in the places we spend our money on. Things in places we could better spend them on--the work of the Lord. A simpler lifestyle must come to Christians if we're going to win the world to Christ.
Now listen to me, my friend. There are fine men and women today, there are families today, there are people waiting on the Lord to get to the mission field today. And you know what they're waiting on? They're waiting on sufficient support to get there, prayer and financial support. And you know why they're still waiting? Because the present lifestyle of many of us who stay behind, is so lavish that we don't have enough money freed up for the work of the Lord.
Making disciplined choices is likely going to lead to a change in lifestyle. But disciplined choices are the only kind true disciples of the Lord can make. Such choices will, in all probability, mean changes. Changes in vocation perhaps, certainly changes in attitude, and changes in lifestyle. But hey, listen, there's more.
Now I stopped earlier in Luke 9:5. I want you to look at verse 23. Listen to what Jesus says here, "Then He said to them all, 'If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will save it. For what advantage is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and is himself destroyed or lost?'"
See, that's change in values. To come after someone means to follow them or to be followers of them. Jesus is saying that, "anyone who makes the choice to be My follower, had better have the discipline to back up that choice."
Now what kind of discipline is it going to take? If you're a follower of the Lord Jesus today, what kind of discipline in your choices will it require?
Well, first of all it's going to take the discipline to deny ourselves to once and forever to say 'No' to ourselves. Hey, I'll admit, that's not easy to do. To forbid our old self, that person we used to be, that person that we were apart from God's grace--for us to deny that person, that's going to take discipline. And the very fact that it takes so much discipline probably is the reason why so few people have been able to do it. Deny yourself.
Secondly, it's going to take the discipline of taking up our cross. Now what does that mean? Well, simply put, this will be the discipline of identifying so closely with the Lord Jesus that we're willing to bear the shame of that identification. See, we voluntarily, we decisively accept the pain, we accept the persecution, we accept the cost of discipleship, and the cost of living a life that's pleasing to the Lord. And again, this takes severe discipline, the kind of discipline that few people today are willing to pay.
And then thirdly, it will take the discipline of following Christ. Keeping on following Him. Being a disciplined person, being a disciple of the Lord Jesus, my friends, is not a short-term thing. It is a lifetime thing. We have to commit ourselves to the kind of choices, disciplining ourselves to the kind of choices that will please Christ.
Are you ready to do that? The discipline of choices, it's not something we readily want to face, but we have to face. How are you going to respond? Well, friend, the choice is up to you. The choice that you make will reflect the discipline that you have in making that choice.
Evelyn Underhill once said, "Christian history looks glorious in retrospect, but it is made up of constant hard choices and unattractive tasks, accepted under the pressure of the will of God." So what do you say? Are you willing to live a life that is disciplined? Not a popular concept in the 21st century, it just happens to be a biblical concept.
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