<p>9:59 <i>And he said to another: Follow me. But he said: Lord, permit me first to go and bury my father</i>- Following Christ, which is to carry His cross, is paralleled by Him with preaching His Kingdom (Lk. 9:59,60). To live out the essence of the cross, in daily self-control, unconditional kindness and forgiveness, patience with those who provoke us&hellip; this is the real witness (Lk. 9:23-26). If we don&rsquo;t preach, we aren&rsquo;t following Him. And if we do follow Him, it&rsquo;s axiomatic that we therefore preach Him. &ldquo;From henceforth you shall catch men. And... they forsook all, and followed him&rdquo; (Lk. 5:10,11) definitely parallels preaching with&nbsp;following the Lord. Following after Him is the way to be fishers of men (Mk. 1:17), and yet following Jesus is so often understood by Him as a call to carrying the cross. A focus on Him and the life of His cross leads to a catching of men for Him in a quite natural way.</p><p>The man was on the way to his father&rsquo;s funeral and yet the Lord expected him to immediately follow Him, and quit going to the funeral as he intended (Lk. 9:59). And He criticized the man for not doing this. Another who wanted to first &ldquo;bid farewell&rdquo; to his family was likewise criticized (Lk. 9:61). Even Elisha bid farewell to his family before following Elijah, and Elijah allowed him to do this (1 Kings 19:20)- but the Lord Jesus was more demanding. He described the disciples as a &ldquo;perverse generation&rdquo; because they didn&rsquo;t have enough faith to work a miracle (Lk. 9:41). His demands and standards were and are very high; and we should never allow the extent of His grace to blind us to this fact, nor to assume that He is not serious about those demands.</p><p>The man who wanted to first attend his father's funeral was told that this wasn't good enough; although Abraham and Joseph did this. The man who wanted to go and say farewell to his family was told the same; although Elisha did this (Lk. 9:60,61). The Lord is surely saying that the commitment of such Old Testament giants was to be less than what He expected of those for whom He was to give His all. It isn't that He won't <i>save </i>a man who (in the parable) puts his father's funeral before the Lord's demands. But He expects the <i>ultimate</i> level of commitment from us. Likewise His Father had asked Abraham to offer his dearest: Isaac. This is the Father and Son with whom we have to do. His parables of Mt. 25 make the point that the rejected will be surprised at how hard He turns out to be: they didn't expect Him to judge sins of omission so seriously. Likewise the man who held on to his talent of the Truth seemed surprised when the Lord said that He expected more. The foolish virgins were likewise shocked to be told that actually they didn't know their Lord at all. &nbsp;&nbsp;</p>