Counting the cost. When Ernest Shackleton sat out to explore the South Pole, he placed this advertisement in the newspapers, “Man wanted for hazardous journey to the South Pole. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, doubtful, see if return, honor and recognition in the case of success.”
When the Pony Express was established to carry meal from St. Joseph, Missouri to Sacramento, California in 10 days or less, here’s the advertisement that was placed in the papers, “Wanted young, skinny, wary fellows. Not over 18. Must be expert writers. Willing to risk daily. Orphans preferred.”
Then the case of Shackleton and the Pony Express, the call to duty and the call to destiny were spelt out in honest facts. There was no sugar-coating the cost or the commitment required. There was no attempt to hire the casually interested. There was no bait and switch with regards to the demands of the job.
They were kneeled on the front door and it was obvious at the point of entry, you had to be all in to get in if you were going to be part of Shackleton’s crew, if you were going to be a Pony Express writer, all in to get in. And I like that and it reminds me of the approach of the Lord Jesus Christ as we find him described in the gospels. When it came to calling people to become his disciples, you had to be all in to get in.
Jesus wanted those who would follow him to count the cost and make the commitment. The demands of Christianity were incompatible with partial commitment or casual engagement. In the gospels, we see the Lord’s call required clear-headed, full-throated, wholehearted, two-footed allegiance to him, his kingdom and that which he set out to do. To borrow the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, when Jesus bid a man come, he bid him come to die.
As Gary Enrique notes, Jesus was always intensely realistic about what it meant to be his follower. He was never a huckster pushing a product while hiding the real costs in the fine print. Instead, he realistically spelt out his requirements. So we’ll come to Luke 14:25-35 and we’ll see there’s no fine print. It’s kneeled to the front door. You know what getting, you know what you’re called to at the point of entry because Jesus, in a plain and in an unvarnished manner, spells out the demands of discipleship.
You’ll notice that three times in the text, he unequivocally says you cannot be his disciple if you don’t do this and you don’t do that. Look at verse 26. If anyone comes after me and does not he at his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, in his own life, he cannot be my disciple.
Could it be any clearer? Just pause. Have you had a sense recently as you go about your life in Christ that it’s costing you something or are you trying to avoid cost? You don’t want to carry the demands of the discipleship? Well, be careful, brother, a Christianity that costs you nothing is worth nothing, may not be Christianity because if you don’t love Jesus more than anybody else, if you don’t take up your cross and you don’t put all that you have at his disposal, you’re not his disciple.
So let’s take this text up. Let, let’s put it in its context. This section of Luke’s gospel with the two parables about counting the cost, right? The guy who sits down and counts the cost, the building or the king that sits down and counts the cost of going to war, these two parables are set in the context of other parables. They’re sandwiched between the parable of the great banquet which comes before this text, and then the parables of the lost silver and sheep and sun, which comes after this tax.
Now those Parables focus on the free offer of God’s grace in the gospel. Go out and tell people to come to the banquet. Everybody’s invited, come and sit down at my table and enjoy forgiveness and peace and a fullness of life. And so we are being reminded that salvation is by grace through faith. It’s free. It’s unconditional. It’s a gift.
To become a disciple of Jesus Christ costs you nothing to be a disciple of Jesus. Christ costs you everything. This is a statement worth thinking through. Salvation is free, but it’s not cheap. And you go, that sounds contradictory. I would say it’s just two realities held in tension. Salvation is free, but it’s not cheap. It calls us to give our highest and best to the one who give his highest and best for us in the free offer of the gospel.
I like what Paul Powell says, according to Jesus, we cannot be his followers unless we are willing to subordinate every other relationship under him, suffer any hardship for him and surrender all ownership to him. AW. Tozer said we cannot have a Christianity where God does all the dying. Or Dietrich Bonhoeffer as a Lutheran pastor talks about cheap grace. What does he mean by that?
He says this, cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without the demands of Jesus Christ. That’s not a contradiction, it’s a tension. I strongly believe that salvation is free. You can’t purchase it, you can’t buy it, you can’t earn it, you can’t merit it.
To become a disciple of Jesus is free, but to be a disciple of Jesus will cost you everything. One of the writers I was studying this tax with, Steve Cole, makes this illustration. I think it’s at least helpful, the idea, well, that’s a contradiction. Salvation is free, but it will cost you everything. He says this, suppose you desired to climb Mount Everest. That would be only a very, very small number of people, but run with that idea.
You want to climb Mount Everest and you sit down and you realize the climate, it’s going to cost you about $70,000. By the time you pay for Sherpas and equipment and all of that, you don’t have that kind of money. So you desire to climb Mount Everest but you can’t afford it. But some friends get together and raise the funds or some businessman comes alongside you and they offer to pay for the expedition. So all that expensive clothing and gear is paid for.
So in one sense, climbing Mount Everest for you now is free, doesn’t cost you anything, but you know climbing Mount Everest will cost you everything in terms of commitment and your energy and months of preparation. That’s the analogy. You can say in one sense, coming to Jesus cost you nothing and salvation is free, but in another sense, it’ll cost you everything to live. And so that’s where we’re at.
So let’s go back to the context. I want to make a little thought here on verse 25. Now, great multitudes went with him and he turned and said to them, and he goes on to say, “You know what? Unless my relationship with you trumps every other relationship, unless you’re willing to pick up the cross and die to my will, unless you’re willing to put all your possessions at my disposal, you cannot be my disciple.”
And in some sense you look at the text, you go, that’s quite an invitation. It’s almost as if this big crowd, Jesus is trying to deliberately upset. He’s almost effectively discouraging people to follow him. At least it seems that way. In fact, that’s exactly what’s going on. Jesus, crowds worried the Lord Jesus because there was all kinds of people in a crowd.
There were some that were committed to loving him and following him and then there was the curious who’d heard about his miracles and the word had got out. When you go and hear this man, no one speaks like him. And then there was the confused, is he Elijah? Moses? Who is this guy? There’s the convicted that haven’t yet made the step into commitment and then there’s just a counterfeit in fact those with an ulterior motive.
Crowds always worried Jesus and he wasn’t worried about thinning the herd and that’s what he’s doing here. Jesus is thinning the herd. Jesus knew that large crowds killed discipleship. He wasted no time placating, admirers or entertaining the curious. I’ve heard it many times about people that go to the Maggot churches and many of them are almost happy to tell you, “I go there to hide. I like being anonymous.” They’re not in a small group. The pastors don’t know them. There’s no kind ability. There’s no sense of someone speaking into their lives asking for evidences of authenticity.
That’s where Jesus is at here. He understands that large crowds kill discipleship. Jesus wouldn’t cuddle the crowd. He doesn’t measure success by numbers, which is an affliction in the modern American church. I love the story of an American lady who was visiting England and she went to the Church of Dr. F. Townley Lord, who at one time was the president of the Baptist World Alliance many years ago, was a rather small church compared to her church in Texas.
It was Bloomberg Chapel, London and describing her approach to him, she had this condescending err, she had this large hat and she moved swiftly down the aisle to him, he said like a barge in full seal. And she said them with a little bit of a titter, “Oh, Dr. Lord, how many members do you have here in your little English Baptist church, while back in Texas? Our Baptist church has 3000.”
And he looked at her and never one to be beaten by or ought be one over him. He smiled at her and he said, “Why, madam? Here in England we don’t count our members, we weigh them.” It’s a great statement, and that’s exactly what Jesus is doing in Luke 13. There’s a great multitude, but he’s not counting, he’s weighing, he’s weighing them to see they’re real and he’s happy to thin the herd. He’s happy for some blessed subtractions. He would rather get down to the authentic few. And so that’s where we’re at.
By the way, what’s a disciple? Well, that would be the rest of this morning, but in its most basic sense, since Jesus uses the term, it’s someone who follows another, someone who stays for long periods of time in the company of a teacher to learn. Maybe if we were to draw an analogy today, the closest thing maybe would be an apprenticeship. Anybody had an apprenticeship? I’m keeping my hand up because I did.
I had a four-year apprenticeship in an engineering school or I was put with different man. Wasn’t always with the one guy for sure, but I was put with different man, we’d call them journeymen who would teach me skills in aerospace, worked for a aerospace company in Belfast, called Shorts. And so I was apprenticed. In my last year, I was apprenticed to a wonderful old engineer called Jimmy Blaine and we became great friends and I just hung out with Jimmy, learned his good habits, had the fight learning his bad habits.
He taught me many things including how to make him a really nice cup of tea anytime he wanted it. That was my job. I was apprenticed to Jimmy. I just learned, sucked it up and drunk it in as I spent time with him, I watched him, I heard him, he taught me, he modeled it. That’s where we’re at. So let’s get down to the passage and this will go a little quicker because these points are pretty self-explanatory. They’re not very intricate, but they are profoundly impactful.
Jesus is saying his disciples have got to count the cost. That’s the phrase he uses right in the parable of the man who’s going to sit down and build his building. And Jesus wants us to count the cost as disciples regarding family freedom and finances. Number one, count the cost regarding family. Verse 25 to 26, especially 26. If anyone comes after me and does not, this takes your breath away at least initially until you better understand it, hate his father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters.
That’s striking stuff. That’s not what we’re expecting from the lips of the Lord Jesus, I thought he was all about love. How can he call us to hate our families? And he says, if you don’t, in fact, I don’t want you even loving on yourself. This is the requirements of discipleship, straight out the gate as he tries to thin the herd to determine true disciples, he goes for the jugular, it’s jarring.
It flies in the face of honor your mother and father. How do we square the circle here? Didn’t Paul later teach us as an apostle of Jesus to love our wives as Jesus loves the church? Didn’t Jesus excoriate in Matthew 15:1-9 the pharisees for not taking care of their parents? So how do we square the circle here? How do we fit this into our theology?
Well, it’s hyperbolic language. It’s a tool in grammar where you use comparative language, exaggerated language to drive a point home. So this word, hate, would be better translated, loveless. I’m not trying to blunt the sharp edges of Jesus’ words. The point is Jesus is making is this, our love for him ought to be so out there, so out there, so large, so limitless that compared to any other relationship it will seem like we don’t like the other person, we hate the other person, we dismiss the other person. That’s the point Jesus is making.
I’m going to prove it to you. If you go back into Genesis 29 and verse 30, you read this, then Jacob also went into Rachel and he also loved Rachel more than Leah and he served with Laban still another seven years. When the Lord saw that Leah was unloved, he opened her womb, but Rachel was barren.
Just notice the contrast. He loves Rachel more than Leah, speaking of Jacob. And as the Lord looks in that, the text tells us that Leah is left unloved. Well fact, in the Hebrew, if you look at your margin, the Hebrew word is hated. It’s a comparison. Jacob loved Rachel far, far more than he loved Leah. Wasn’t that he hated her in literal sense because he had some affection for her or he certainly cared for her to some degree. But comparatively, it looked like he left her unloved in the Hebrews actually hated. So it’s a comparison.
The point is, he loved Rachel more and he loved Leah less. That’s the point of the language. So go back to our text. That’s the point being made. In your love for me, you’ll love your parents and your wife and your children far less to a point that they might charge you with loving Jesus and hating them. Our union with and to Jesus is a priority relationship.
Nothing, even in family, must be allowed to compete with it. Family is precious, marriage is to be prized, but never at the cost of failing to love Jesus and remaining committed to his kingdom. If it comes down to a choice and you hope you never have to make that choice, but if it comes down to a choice, our devotion to Christ will win out.
In fact, early Christians were often disinherited by Jewish or Roman families. Remember Jesus in Luke 10, verse 35 said, for I have come to set a man against his father, daughter against her mother and daughter-in-law, against her mother-in-law and a man’s enemies will be those of his own household. The gospel can be so disruptive and a person following Jesus so pronounced that it’ll create tension in the home and sometimes they’ll point of breaking. And when you get to that place, you better know what side of the argument you’re on.
In Hebrews 10:35, when the writer describes what the Hebrew Christians had gone through in a gentile environment, he talks about the plundering of their homes. And many commentators believe that’s a reference to that, they were disinherited by their families. Christian businessmen lost business. And so I want you to think that through. Play that out.
In my time, in fact, we just witnessed it a month or two ago here in our church when we had a baptism, in my time, I’ve watched Roman Catholics come to faith in Jesus Christ and be baptized as Christ commanded it and as the Bible describes it as believers and that rejection of their tradition, that rejection of their upbringing, that rejection of them from baptism cost them.
I’ve been read out on the phone by parents, we had a young girl in our church here just a month or two ago got baptized out of a Mormon background and clearly admitted that her parents weren’t there that night and didn’t want her to be there that night. A loving girl who appreciates her parents. But at that point, as a young adult, she wants to be a disciple of Jesus. She wants to obey Jesus. And he says, “I want you to be baptized. I want you to kneel your colors to the public mask and stand with me.” And she did.
We have a young woman in our church whose father’s one of the leading Muslims in LA, leaders baptized, that came at a cost. She is a converted Muslim to Christianity, married a converted Jew in Christ. Think about that. Think about a disturbance in her world. But you see, she loved Jesus more than mother and father, because that’s his demands. Remember what I just said a moment ago? I’m going to make a very contemporary application given the controversy surrounding a leading evangelical leader who encouraged people that it was okay to go to a gay wedding or a transgender marriage.
Remember what we said ago, I think Jesus is saying, “Look, your falling of me can create tension.” And he would ask us to be as wise as serpents and gentle as doves, not to go running in and creating unnecessary conflict. But there can come a point where our allegiance to him puts us in conflict with those who are not in alignment with him. And at that point, your love for Jesus is so out there, so large and so limitless that there may come a point where they’ll say, “You know what? You seem to love him more than me.”
And that’s exactly I think what will happen when you face the harrowing choice when a child or a relative asks you to go to a marriage which is not a marriage. A homosexual marriage is not a marriage. A transgender wedding is not a marriage is the Bible defines it in any way. And I’m just talking not just talking about two Christians being married because according to Hebrews 13, marriage is good for all men. It’s a creation ordinance.
We wish it on our neighbors between man and woman who have left mother and father who are now joining in the covenant to produce children and benefit society. We want that and we want to preserve it and we want to promote it and we want to prize it. But a homosexual marriage is antithetical to that. It’s a perversion of that and it’s a sin the Bible calls an abomination and it would seem to me given all of that, you can’t touch that.
The word fellowship means to share in something and the times we cannot have fellowship. We can’t share in things that are posing light with darkness. And when that happens and you say, respectfully, I can’t go and you give reason as to why you can’t go out of commitment to Jesus Christ, what are you going to get thrown in your face? Well, you don’t love me because if you loved me, you would be there. And your answer is, “Well, I do love you and hopefully you can look across a lifetime and see that I have loved you. But you need to know I love Jesus more and I can’t be there and I won’t go there and we’ll pick up the love on the other side.”
I think that’s a real application to this text in today’s world. There’s more thinking to be done about that, but I think that’s pretty plain and clear. If you came to me and asked, should I go? I’d say no. And I would understand the tension and perhaps even the consequences of offending. But I’d say, aren’t you a disciple of Jesus and didn’t he say to love him more than mother and father, son and daughter?
This would even perhaps play into 1st Corinthians 7 where a marriage that begun in the context of two unbelievers and now one of them has become a believer and the unbeliever doesn’t like the new behavior of the believer and perhaps they’re not going to clubs the way they once did. Perhaps they’re not getting involved in sexual perversion the way they once did and it’s created tension in the home. That’s just one path of conflict.
And at some point, Paul is saying, look, stay with the unbeliever, Christ in you sanctifies that marriage. But you know what? If the unbeliever won’t stay and it comes to a point where they say to you, it’s him or me, it’s Christ or me. Paul says let them go. He doesn’t say that flippantly, but we’re back to when it comes down to that kind of black and white them and us choice, who wins out? Jesus, every time. You can think that all out.
I just tried to think through some pastoral scenarios. To be at a disciple of Jesus means that every other relationship is subordinate to our relationship with him and takes the backseat. We’ll always love or we always should love those we love less than the one who has loved us with a everlasting love. And remember this, should those moments come, Psalm 27:10 says, what? When your mother and father forsake you, the Lord will take you up.
Francis Schaeffer generation ago, he’s now with the Lord, but he was a helpful brother and wrote about the culture and the church’s role within the culture. But when he got saved and he came out of a non-religious family and his father became aware that his son wanted to go to college and train for the ministry and he violently vehemently opposed it and it put a tension between him and his father.
In fact, one day his father met him at the door with these words, “I don’t want a son who’s a minister.” The tension continued. Schaeffer got along with God and realized, Lord help me. And the Lord reinforced this idea, you know what? If you’re my disciple, you’re going to follow me. I’m priority. And Schaeffer went and told his dad, “Dad, I got to go.”
And again, initially, there was an angry outburst. The father slammed the door in his son’s face and disappeared for a while. Schaeffer followed God’s calling in his life. But shortly after that in God’s kindness, the father’s icy response began to melt. And even over time, he began to send his son some money when he was being trained for the ministry and ultimately got saved himself. But what I love about that story is that Schaeffer realized the choice he had to make and the allegiance to Jesus needed to be priority.
Moving on. Cost regarding freedom, wanted to spend a bit of time there just given all that’s going on in the culture and even within the church. Number two, cost regarding freedom. Family cost regarding freedom. The second mark is our willingness to suffer any hardship for Christ. Look at verse 26-27.
In fact, it’s verse 27, whoever does not bear his cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. Now the image of a cross in the mind of the Jew or the Gentile spelt one thing, death. Death. An observation is being made by Christians who wear crosses around their neck as a ornament or a piece of jewelry.
In a sense, if you were drawn the equivalent to the biblical times, you might as well put a little pendant of an electric chair around your neck because that’s what it was. It was an instrument of execution. It was an instrument of death that brought thoughts of horror and terror to the human mind because it was a slow, excruciating, painful, torturous death.
And so Jesus takes that analogy and he says, “Hey, my disciples are cross bearers.” If someone was seen carrying a horizontal Roman cross, people knew they were fodder for Roman execution. Their life was about to end. Their plans were about to be buried, their desires were about to die, and their concerns were no one’s concern. Jesus is implying two things here, isn’t he? I think he’s implying on the one hand, actual martyrdom.
In some cases, I would say a minority, not a majority, but an increasing minority. Jesus asks some of his disciples to actually die. Isn’t it interesting that according to church tradition, and it seems some merit to it that Peter was crucified as Jesus talked about in John 21:18 and in that act to church tradition tells us he wanted to be crucified upside down.
He didn’t want people thinking that his death was anything like the death of the savior. But read the story of the church. It can be raced in a trail of blood. Tertullian, the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. There’s been a lot of blood of the martyrs and you know what you should read about? I remember as a young early disciple of Jesus, my father given me J.C Rowl’s book, the five English reformers, which was about five English reformers who were murdered and butchered and martyred by Bloody Mary, the Catholic queen of England.
And their courage challenged me. Their stand and commitment of Jesus Christ challenged me. And today we know there are increasing numbers of Christians being martyred across the world. And so maybe not for us, at least for now, although do remember that someone went into the offices of the Family Research Council in Washington and tried to shoot it up because of their commitment to biblical theology on marriage. It’s not out of the question.
We had a young street preacher, where was it in Arizona? Shot on the street corner just recently for open-air preaching. But imagine being in Africa or North Korea, this would live for you, wouldn’t it? You’re going to be my disciple, you’ve got to be willing to take up your cross. You got to be willing to die. So there’s one application, actual martyrdom, but that’s for a few.
But for all, there’s what I call everyday martyrdom because it’s interesting when Jesus says here, take up your cross and come after me. That’s in the present tense. So this is a continuing process which takes us beyond the idea of a moment in life when you die for Jesus as a martyr, this is where you, each and every day on multiple levels and in different occasions facing different issues, you decide to put Jesus, his kingdom, his gospel, his righteousness first and it will come at a cost.
And so in that sense, you’re dying to self. In fact, if you go over to Luke 9:23, that’s the very thought. 9:23 says this, 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.
So I hope that you and I are pursuing a lifestyle informed by the cost of sin that we want to repent of, informed by the death of Jesus with the intent that it produces holiness and sanctification in us, reminding ourselves that we love ourselves not too little but too much.
We have a fixation on self-preservation and self-fulfillment by nature apart from grace and therefore, given all of those theological realities, you and I are on the guard to deny self. Jesus is calling us to crucifixion of our self-will, self-ambition.
Basically, when he asks us to do something, we are in such a state of readiness in such a state of redemption, in such a state of unfolding discipleship. It’s not a question, we just do it because we’re taking upper cross every day and following him. That means prioritizing the God’s kingdom, prioritizing the church.
That means preferring others above yourself in a given situation or in a non-essential issue where there’s a difference. You put others first. Philippians 2, that comes at a cost to you, but in the light of the incarnation of Jesus and his humility, it’s not really a cost, it’s a joy to replicate him. It also means loving your neighbor as yourself, the kind of love you would give to yourself, you transfer to your neighbor or someone you meet in need, which would be the key. It means saying no to sin.
It means disciplining your body like 1st Corinthians 9, I discipline my body. I bring it into subjection. I don’t let my body’s impulses and desires drive me or define me. I define what my body does by the grace of God. It means forgiving others. Forgiveness comes at a cost, doesn’t it? Where you absorb something, you bear a hurt, you bury something that was done to you for the sake of the gospel. That’s just some of the things I wrote down.
There’s an endless list of events in life and issues in life that will demand martyrdom on your part, cross-bearing on your part. It’s challenging given our sinful, fallen self-centered nature, challenging given a culture that elevates self-expression. Be yourself. You can be anything you want to be. Self-fulfillment, personal preference. Those are the points on the compass for our culture. You know this, the desire for self-preservation is strong in all of us, myself included, and the call to discipleship cuts across the grain of that.
I want to promote myself. I want to preserve myself. I want to enjoy things that brings joy to self. And Jesus on many, many, many occasions ask us to say no, to do more, to give more. As hard as it is and as challenging as it is and the battle that it is, remember this Jesus incarnation, Jesus selfless death, Jesus’ substitutionary death shows us the way and empowers us.
Jesus is calling us to the way of the cross and the way of the cross is not forced on us. We follow it out of love for the one who first loved us and took up his own cross for you and for me, let me say this, cross-bearing is not some personal injury or circumstance. We tend to, I have a cross to bear and you go on to describe a relationship or a gammy leg or a bad ticker or whatever, not minimizing the challenges of circumstance or physical ailment, but that’s not cross-bearing.
When we understand cross-bearing from a biblical point of view, it’s tied into the kingdom and the cost that comes with following Jesus. It’s kind of persecution in all forms. It’s turning from sin in all forms. That’s what cross-bearing is and we are called to it.
Think about this. If you go to the older churches and their architecture, especially in Europe, have you ever noticed that inside those old churches, they were designed in the shape of a cross, there was a cruciform architecture. You had this long central nave and then it was this transept towards the top.
They worshiped inside buildings that reminded him of the cruciform life. The cross is at the center of the gospel and dying for Jesus is at the center of our discipleship. Read the story of George Muller, a full life, magnificent life. I’d love the details, but I’m going to leave it for the sake of time.
But he was asked towards the end of his life, what was the reason for his success or his effectiveness would be a better word. And he said this, “There was a day when I died, utterly died. Died to George Muller. His opinions, preferences, tastes and will died to the world, its approval or censorship. Died to the approval or blame even of my brethren or friends. And since then, I have studied only to show myself approved of God.”
There was a day he died and the day he died and surrendered his life to Jesus, defined every other day in which he was willing to die some more. In his book, All In, Pastor Batterson says that a century ago, a band of brave souls known as one-way, missionaries headed to the mission field. Have you ever heard about these guys? I think of some women involved too.
One-way missionaries, they purchased single tickets to the mission field. They didn’t buy a return ticket. They didn’t pack their stuff in suitcases. They packed their stuff in coffins. Coffins because they weren’t coming back. They’d already decided to follow Jesus, no turning back. No turning back. And they sailed all across the world, said goodbye to comfort and friends and everything they knew with a sense that they had never returned.
One of those was a man by the name of A.W Millney. He set sail for the new Hebrides in the South Pacific knowing full well that the headhunters and cannibals that lived there had martyred every Christian that went. It was a do-or-die mission, but he didn’t fear that. Why? He didn’t fear them killing him. Why? Because he had already died before he got there and in fact, they didn’t kill him and God used him in a magnificent way.
He lived there for 35 years and when he died, an epitaph was erected a tombstone and on the tombstone were written these words by the natives, when he came there was no light, and when he left, there was no darkness. Powerful. I feel pitiful, do you not? All my suppose sacrifices seem like nothing. The one-way missionaries, the George Mueller’s, that’s a spar to that kind of life, that kind of perspective.
Okay. I’m not going to spend a lot of time on the next verses because they’re the two parables and they’re self-explanatory, they’re very simple, but every good sermon, Jesus illustrates his point. So he’s in the middle of a sermon here and he’s, “Hey, you can’t be my disciple unless my relationship with you trumps every other relationship. You can’t be my disciple unless you’re willing to die literally or to self each and every day.”
And then he illustrates it with two parables and each parable makes the same point. If you’re going to become my disciple, you need to count the cost and he tells the story of a man that’s going to build a building. He says, “Look, if you’re a smart builder, you’re going to sit down and do the cost. You’re going to pencil the cost out.”
We’ve all walked down streets where buildings have been left unfinished and you go, what idiot started that and never finished it? And that’s kind of Jesus’ point. You want people mocking you where you got half the house built, you built the first floor but not the second floor. You built the foundation but not the first floor.
You got to count the costs. I’ve reminded myself in the middle of our own building project, as costs have moved and risen and little things happen you weren’t expecting, we’re still on top of it and our mark and the team have done a phenomenal job on that.
But I keep reminding myself, and I joke with the elders that Warren Weir’s been made a statement about church buildings. He says there’s three things that’s true about them. Number one, they’ll take longer than you expected, cost more than you budgeted, and three, they’ll end up looking nothing like you started out with.
We’re going to try and minimize all of that at Kindred, but that’s just the reality. And so you sit down and you count the cost. One of my dear friends who’s now with the Lord, died young, was an elder with me in a former church. His job was an estimator. I wouldn’t want that job. This guy estimated a building, down the bolts and washers by their thousands lumber and metal and framing and drywall and paint and bolts and nuts and washers so that his boss had a good idea of what he could go in and bid on.
He was an estimator and Jesus says, “Hey, you need to be an estimator before you step in my direction. Have you counted the cost?” And then the other one’s war. I’ve reminded myself and others just in counseling situations, never start a fight you can’t win, just not worth it. I’ve also made statements like don’t start a fight. You can’t win or don’t start a fight that even if you do win, it wouldn’t be worth it.
Old Van Savner said, anybody can beat a skunk. It’s just not worth it. And so you got to sit down and think these things out. And Jesus says, “Hey, if you’re a builder, you’d count the cost. If you were a general or a king, you’d count the cost.” Do I have the man? Is it the right time of the year to fight? Do I have the armaments? That’s the point.
Let’s get down to our last thought. The third mark of discipleship is that we surrender ownership of all of our possessions to Jesus, the master of all things. That’s verse 33. So likewise, whoever of you does not forsake all that he has cannot be my disciple.
Counting the cost has us counting everything we have as his. Relationships, ambitions and my possessions. They all come under his lordship. Okay? That would be to go back to the Old Testament to make my point. That would be Proverbs three, wouldn’t it? Nine and 10 where Jesus said, or the word of God says, honor the Lord with your possessions and with your first fruits of your increase so your barns will be filled with plenty and your vats will overflow with new wine.
Can I remind you of Psalm 24 verse one? What does it say? The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof. And before we’re done in our series and prophecy, we’re going to look at the Millennial Kingdom. He’s going to come back and take what is his that’s being mismanaged by us. You see what Jesus is saying here, that he’s Lord over relationships, ambitions, possessions.
And the point he’s making this, it’s not a question of what we give to the Lord. It’s always a question of what we keep of the Lord’s for ourself because it’s all his. It’s his, and we’re simply stewards of his generosity.
The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof. The life, the breath you have was his to give, the smarts that you have that makes you as effective as you are was his gift. The providence that allows you to prosper, the land you live in with all of its freedoms and economy, it’s all his in terms of gifts.
Now, this is Jesus again, back to my introduction, telling us how we can purchase. Isaiah 55:1-2 says, those who have no money, come, it’s free. This isn’t a call to a vow of poverty. I don’t see that in the Bible. 1st Timothy 5 verse 8 tells every Christian man, you need to provide for your family. Get a job, make some money, take care of your family.
In fact, 1st Timothy 6:17, God has given us all things to enjoy. So we’re not talking about the purchase of salvation and we’re not talking about a vow to poverty, but what we are being confronted with and what Jesus is addressing us with is I want you to manage what I have given you under my lordship.
That means that you can’t spend your money divorced from theology. You can’t spend your money without prayerful reflection. When’s the last time you and I sat down and looked at our budget and made sure that it’s in proportion, that we’re ticking the boxes, we’re taking care of our family, we’re giving tithes and offerings to the Lord’s work, we’re being generous to those in need, we’re helping the poor, we’re setting aside some money for emergencies and a rainy day.
All of those are biblical things, and that’s what we ought to be doing. We ought to be managing our money with a kingdom perspective. Are we tithing our income to the church at least? Are we supporting God’s servants, especially those who labor in the word and doctrine? Are some of us willing under the prompting of the spirit and the need of perishing millions to sail up and go to the mission field?
Are we setting out to retire modestly for the sake of the kingdom? Are we limiting our luxuries and our purchases for the sake of the kingdom? Well, we could buy that, but why should we buy that when there’s a need here and a need there and a need here? That’s a mindset. Can you look recently to acts of hospitality and works of charity? Think that’s all under this, if I don’t have control of all that you have, you’re not my disciple.
Are we willing to get fired for the sake of the gospel? Appreciated our brother, David, last month talking about the working environment of modern executive America, but he’s already drawn a line in his mind that he would be willing to lose his job, if necessary, for the sake of the gospel, but he’s already penciled that out because that’s where we might be in today’s world where politics and sexual morality are invading the workplace.
Are we willing to lose our pension, our jobs for the sake of the gospel? I mentioned the word pension because I worked with a dear man of God back in Ohio by the name of Pastor V as he was lovingly known to us, Pastor Vemilia. I was part of a body of churches for a while called the GARBC, General Association of Regular Baptists. They came out of the Northern Baptist Association.
So you’ve heard of the SBC. This was the Northern Baptist Association or the convention, and it had gone liberal. It had betrayed the gospel, it had questioned the Bible and men had fought within and realized the fight was done. The enemy had won out of a call to separation and not have fellowship with darkness. They separated and they created their own body of churches called the GARBC.
In those early days, those men left pensions, Pastor Vemilia was one of them. When they struck out to build a body of churches true to the gospel, they left everything behind and they charged forward with nothing materially speaking. In fact, pastor Vemilia told us that he was paid in chickens and eggs. He never got money given to him, made a little home loan to him and he was paid in chickens and eggs. That’s how he survived for those first years since those churches get on their feet.
You imagine that story around the table of about 20 pastors, some of them young, it was great. Challenged us about our belly aching. We don’t have this and we don’t have that yet we are enjoying the freedoms and the blessings of a good church that knows the gospel, but man paid a price. I hope you’re willing to think that through and pray that through.
But as we close, I want to turn, not that any of this hasn’t been positive, but I want to remind you that while you’re counting the hefty cost, have you counted the cost on family, freedom, finances? While you’re counting that hefty cost of following Jesus, remember to figure in the kingdom paradox that when we’re losing, we’re gaining. When we’re losing, we’re gaining.
Remember, God’s kingdom’s an upside down kingdom, a back the front kingdom, the humble get exalted and those who lose, gain. Let’s count the cost, but put a value on what we get in return for counting the cost because there are wonderful promises that come with this call to cost.
We gain Christ in all of his beauty, right? Matthew 13:25-46 and Philippians 3 where Jesus said, if you’ll lose your life, you’ll find it, and if you’ll buy the field at a cost, you’ll find a great pearl of great price. Paul said, I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, my Lord. What I’ve lost is nothing to what I’ve gained. He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep for that which you cannot lose and then you’ve got, you’ll gain life in all of its fruitiness.
I quoted that Matthew 10:39, Matthew 16:24-26, if you lose your life, you’ll find it and we gain eternal reward, Matthew 10:28-31. There was a day when Peter was feeling a little sorry for himself. Do you realize my fishing business is being hurt? I left the nets. I left my livelihood. I don’t see my wife as much on the road.
And Jesus said, “Hold on a minute. What have you lost?” Okay, on the calculator, what if I doubled that in terms of reward and maybe quadruple it or triple it, or I’ll give you a hundredfold for what you’re doing. Remember what we said a few weeks ago in one of the sermons? We talk about sacrifice, but is it a sacrifice when we breathe in immortality someday and stand on the shores of God’s eternal kingdom?
Will it seem like a sacrifice? No. David Livingston said, “For my part, I have never ceased to rejoice that God has appointed me to such an office. People talk of the sacrifice I’ve made in spending my life in Africa.” And he did, humbly speaking, lost an arm when a lion attacked him, he was often sick with fever and virus. He buried his wife in Africa.
Is that a sacrifice which brings its own blessed reward in healthy activity? The consciousness of doing good peace of mind, the bright hope of a glorious destiny hereafter, away with the word in such a view and with such a thought, I emphatically made no sacrifice. Say rather, it is a privilege. Anxiety, sickness, suffering, danger now and then with the foregoing of common conveniences and charities in life may make us pause and cause the spirit to waver and the soul to sink. But let this only be for a moment.
All these are nothing when compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us and for us. I never made a sacrifice. So my friend, when you have to pay in the realm of relationships, when you have to pay in the realm of self-ambition and self-preservation, when you have to pay in the realm of finances, remember, it’s not a sacrifice, given who he is, given what he promises, given what one day we will enjoy.