What a tragedy today – oh what a tragedy! There are people, even in the ranks of Bible-believing Christians, who are just offering the people prosperity, and happiness. ‘You can be a Christian, and you can keep the world. You can have heaven and Christ, and you can carry on in your worldly life, have your worldly entertainment, have everything you want, it will make no difference.’ If any man serve me,’ says Christ, ‘let him follow me.’ You have that compromised, dreadfully compromised, form of Christianity – you can in some parts of the land, and the world, attract enormous crowds, but not true Christians – only wood, hay and stubble – because believing is to follow him.
Follow him in that task. We cannot go to Calvary but we can proclaim him. We follow him in the task of the mission of redemption. ‘If any man serve me, let him follow me.’ This is almost a definition of a Christian. Have we repented? Have we yielded our lives to him? Have we really been converted? If we have, we will not only be worshippers, we will be followers. Our lives will be for him, to represent him, to speak for him, to spread his name, to serve him.