Count the Cost: Jesus’ Radical Call to Discipleship (Luke 14:25–35)

All right, so we're in Luke chapter

Luke 14:25

14, verse 25 today. We're going to be reading verses 25 through 35.

So you join with me there. Luke 14, verse 25. It says, now many crowds were going along with him,

Luke 14:25

with Jesus, and he turned and he said to them in verse 26,

he said, if anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and

wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life,

he cannot be my disciple.

Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.

These are Jesus' words, y'all.

For which one of you, when he wants to build a tower, does not first sit down

and calculate the cost to see if he has enough to complete it?

Lest, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish,

all who observe it begin to ridicule him. Verse 30, saying, This man began to

build and was not able to finish.

Or what king, when he sets out to meet another king in battle,

will not first sit down and consider whether he is strong enough with 10,000

men to encounter the one coming against him with 20,000?

Or else, while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks for

terms of peace. So then, none of you can be my disciple who does not give up

how much of his own possessions?

All, everything of his own possessions.

Therefore, verse 34, salt is good, but if even salt has become tasteless,

with what will it be seasoned?

It is useless either for the soil or for the manure pile.

It is thrown out. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.

Father God, we thank you for your word this morning, Lord. We ask that it would

sink deep into our hearts.

In Jesus' mighty name we pray. Amen. Amen.

Well, this morning as we take this journey together in Luke 14,

as we see on this opening slide, this is not designed to be easy,

this call to discipleship, is it?

We often think sometimes that our job in evangelism is to make being a disciple

of Christ, you know, easy, attractive, painless as possible.

You've probably heard this before. Maybe you have shared this before.

I don't know, but maybe you've heard something similar.

God has a wonderful plan for your life.

You've never had a friend like Jesus.

Give God a try and see if he does not come through for you. You've probably

heard those things, right?

And maybe there's truth, obviously, in that to a point, but it's like you hear

that and it seems like, hey, I'm being invited to a painless journey, right?

Well, as we see in this first point, some evangelism strategies in our day have

more in common with the techniques of a salesperson than they do with the ways of Jesus, all right?

Because Jesus, for his part, would have made a terrible salesman.

Do you agree? I mean, one day he was being followed here by a large crowd,

y'all. He had the crowds there, and he turned to them and said just about the

least encouraging thing he could possibly say.

Do not follow me unless you hate everything you hold most dear.

Yes, even your mom, your dad, your siblings, your children even,

and your spouse, and even your own wife, in verse 26.

And if that were not enough, he would, to communicate the point,

as we see in this next point here, in verse 27, Jesus actually says that being

his disciple means actually carrying one's own cross.

We've been introduced to this idea before, back in chapter 9.

It's hard to overstate, though, y'all, the shock that Jesus' words here would

have had caused in this day.

You see, in Jesus' day, a cross was not a piece of jewelry or a symbol of love and devotion.

Like today, people wear crosses around their neck. You know,

it's jewelry hanging from their ears.

That was not the case then. It was a repulsive means, y'all,

of execution It was a way of terrorizing a population And putting down dissent,

was to mention a cross, right?

That crucifixion, that cruel crucifixion It kind of today, it might somewhat

resonate with us Like the electric chair How many of you wear electric chairs around your neck?

You know what I mean? It's a symbol of death It's like, you know,

or whatever the case may be, right?

It was then, it was so repulsive, y'all And the crowds there would have actually

seen, you know, condemned people actually carrying the horizontal piece of a

cross out to their place of execution.

And the call to carry one's own cross is a call.

I want to make this clear today, as Jesus did. It's a call to a one-way trip to death.

God, we're going to see to die to sin, right?

Dead to sin, alive to Christ. And that's the level of commitment that discipleship

requires, not because Judd Harbison said it or anyone else in this room. You know why?

Because Jesus said it right here in this passage. These are Jesus's words.

Not that the whole Bible isn't, but these are quoted here from his mouth, right?

And so Jesus' command to hate here in verse 26, that might shock us too,

because we normally think of hate in terms of opposition, right, or antipathy, right?

But it's best to take Jesus' words here, as we say in this next point, in terms of priority.

Jesus, in other words here, saying he must have our absolute loyalty,

right, and our absolute surrender.

We don't hear that word much today. We hear the one that actually replaced that

word. You know what it is? It starts with a C. It's called commitment.

Does you know commitment replaced the word surrender in the dictionary in terms

of it's important or it's trumped there as priority?

And so surrender, with commitments, we make them and break them every day, don't we? Come on.

I mean, people can commit to car payments and default. People can commit to

their spouse in marriage and get a divorce.

People can commit to all sorts of things. But Jesus doesn't ask for our commitment.

He asked for our surrender. When you surrender, you don't negotiate.

You know what it looks like? Hands up, I surrender.

Everything belongs to you guys. Everything. And if love for parents or children

or even one's own life threaten to interfere with that type of surrender,

a disciple, according to Jesus, must choose to follow the will of Jesus.

That's big, y'all. That's bold. That's truth.

Theologian Edwards explains this about this passage. He says,

hate should not be understood in terms of emotion or malice,

that word just means getting even,

but rather in its Hebraic sense

signifying the thing rejected in a choice between two important claims.

Jesus holds a priority in our life, y'all, as a disciple of Christ.

And you know what that leads us to today in this passage is to count the cost

as we see in this next slide.

In order to illustrate the importance here of carefully considering the cost

of discipleship, Jesus actually tells two brief parables.

And before I get to those, let me just say again, you do realize,

according to this passage.

That following Jesus and being a disciple involves death, right?

Death to sin, death to your old man, right? All of that.

And it's not, y'all, this is not an easy road. You remember?

Broad is the way that leads to destruction, and how many finds it? Many.

Narrow is the way that leads to life, and only a few.

Y'all, we need to let people know, yes, God does. He is victorious.

And yes, His plans are good for all of us. When we're believers in Christ,

you know, that everything works together for our good, who love God according

to His purpose, all that.

But we need to let people know that there is a cost involved here, and it's surrender.

It's laying it down. Jesus becomes our Lord, our Master.

Yes, our Savior. But we lay it all down.

We don't go to Jesus on our own terms.

It's not on our terms. And he told these two parables here, verses 28 through 30 and 31 and 32.

In fact, the ESV translation does a good job of reflecting the fact that each

parable actually begins with a question that highlights the absurdity of the

scenario that Jesus is proposing. Listen to this, verse 28.

For which of you? That's a question, right? For which of you? Or what king?

In verse 31. one, both of those scenarios here in this passage,

you know what they do, they anticipate a negative answer.

In other words, no one would do something like that.

Jesus is inviting his hearers here in this passage, he's would,

to actually see a spiritual analogy, if you will, in a pattern of foolish behavior

in the world around them.

First off, imagine that you want to build a tower, verse 28.

The fact that it requires a

foundation indicates that it's going to be a significant structure, right?

I mean, this is something important, but it may well be a vise investment for

that person, right? They want to build this tower. It's a good investment.

Nothing in the way that Jesus tells the story indicates that we should understand

that this would be a foolish undertaking or a vanity project,

if you will, to build this tower necessarily.

But imagine in this scenario here that the builder made one crucial mistake.

He began building the tower, but he didn't first make sure that he has the resources

necessary to complete it.

And that's what Jesus wants them to see as we'll find out here.

Don't follow me without counting the cost. Make sure you have the resources

to complete this journey, right?

And so in the end here, all of his labor and his money would only secure for him, what?

The mockery of his neighbors because he didn't count the cost of building that tower.

In fact, probably some of us have passed buildings and houses in the past and seen them abandoned.

Like they were started and they never were finished. Have you ever passed one

on the road? You see a project that was started, it was left unfinished.

Somebody didn't count the cost. and therefore the bank or whatever happened

you know they didn't complete the project and so.

In other words here, a half-finished monument, if you will, like this tower, it's just foolish.

It would have been better for him not to start the process than to quit halfway

through it, is the point here.

And in fact, in the second parable of this passage, the stakes even get higher, y'all.

A king, think about it, who fails to gauge the relative strength of his enemy's

army, what's going to happen? He's going to suffer far more than ridicule,

right, of his neighbors.

If he actually commits 10,000 troops in this scenario to the battle,

what's going to happen? He'll likely almost surely lose most of them to the

20,000 that is his opponent's.

Bring in with him, right? And does the potential reward in that scenario justify

that kind of tremendous risk?

Is the gain, in other words, worth the price that he would have to pay?

If this king here in this parable decides that the cost is too steep,

he'll have to send out a delegation, it says, to actually make peace or try

to make peace with that approaching army.

And y'all get this. In each of these two parables, the path of wisdom, y'all, is so obvious.

A landowner, he needs to take stock to see if he can pay the price required to build a tower, right?

A king needs to be clear on whether, you know, what he has, that he has what

it takes to defeat an enemy.

Y'all, it's easy to start building a tower.

It doesn't take much to begin a war, even, does it?

Sometimes just the wrong word but the

way that jesus starts the parable of the tower with

a question in the second person you know which of you and it really brings this

out like i said in the esv and possibly some other translation it forces us

y'all to put ourselves in the situation as we see in this next point that he

describes do you have the resources and the surrender,

the commitment required to finish what you've started.

Y'all, the only useful tower is a completed one.

If you're only going to go halfway, you might as well not begin, is what he's saying.

Like the opposing army in Jesus' parable, as we see in this next point,

the call to discipleship is nothing to be trifled with or engaged with lightly.

Jesus makes it clear Eastwood that being his disciple will cost a person everything

that they have total complete surrender.

The cost of discipleship is particular to each individual.

Jesus requires every person to renounce 100% of what they have,

whether that be very little or very much.

Does that mean that Christians cannot have personal possessions?

Does following Jesus mean that we should abandon our spouses or neglect our

parents or children? No, that's not what he's teaching. Of course not.

That kind of flat and rigid application, if you would think that,

It fails to do justice here to the real point of his teaching.

Namely, what is it? There can be no split loyalties, in other words,

in the hearts of his followers.

Jesus comes first. Y'all have heard that, right? Jesus first.

But seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.

Not everybody is called by Jesus to serve and follow him in the same way, necessarily.

In some ways, discipleship will look different for somebody who maybe runs a

business than it will for a missionary planting churches in a remote part of the world.

A mother at home with children will be called to follow Jesus in ways that are

unique to her situation, her circumstance.

But the point is not that all give up the same things to follow Jesus,

but rather that all of us must be willing to give up everything that we have if Jesus requires it.

That's a good question for us to contemplate on this morning.

If Jesus asked you for everything, would you be willing to give it to him?

You see, that's a hard choice beforehand, right?

That shows where your loyalty lies. Is it to Christ alone or is it to other interests?

In the end, y'all, there is nothing in a disciple's life. I have to say this.

There's nothing in a disciple's life that is off limits to Jesus. Nothing.

Following Jesus means you have no veto powers, by the way, when it comes to

his plans for you and me. No veto.

Jesus calls the shot. He is our Lord. He is our master. And dare I say it, he is our king.

And he's a good king. Y'all, if following Him requires us to give up financial security,

creature comforts, good schools for our kids even, the respect of others,

or even our long-cherished hopes and plans for our own personal lives that we

planned, then so be it, according to Jesus.

That is the essence, Eastwood, of what it means to hate your own life,

as he talked about in verse 26.

In other words, my priorities, what I prefer, takes a backseat to Jesus,

right? Because he knows all.

He's my king. There's no evil in him. He knows the end from the beginning.

He knows more than I do. He knows what will fulfill my life more than I do, more than I think I do.

And it also calls you to carry your cross. That's part of it. In verse 27.

You know, I think too often the church has tried to sell people a different,

less costly form of discipleship.

Just say this prayer after me. Repeat these words.

Hallelujah, forgive them, walk the aisle, get baptized. And then we wonder why

those people never show up again in church after six months, if it lasts that long.

They never heard the whole gospel. They never counted the cost,

as Jesus said here. It's going to cost me everything.

Jesus is my boss. He's my master. He's my Lord. He's my king.

I lay it all at his feet. I repent.

Just like Job, as we said this morning, you know, in dust and ashes,

right? I come before God.

And I think we see in our world today a lot that even preachers fill auditoriums

all over the world by promising their hearers that Jesus wants nothing more

than serve them like a genie in a bottle.

You ever heard that? And if he had no other purpose, then that our lives should

be stuffed full of those material possessions and perfect health.

But what's going to happen, y'all, when those people are actually confronted

with Jesus's demands, like he shares here in the word, that they what?

They forego sexual immorality, that they give sacrificially,

and that they love unconditionally.

How will those kinds of disciples not descend into bitterness when God's plan

for their best life now involves terminal cancer diagnosis?

Ultimately, the false gospel of the so-called prosperity preachers,

you know what it produces?

False disciples, false converts. Y'all, by the way, I have to say this again.

This is what Jesus' parables throughout the whole New Testament is all about,

true and false converts, true and false conversions.

It all starts, you know, the parable of the sower is the key to understanding

all the other parables, it says.

There is true and false. Do you know what the true is in that parable?

The good soul that produced. The rest are false converts.

The good fish, the bad fish, the foolish virgins, the wise virgins,

the sheep, the goats, the true, the false, the wheat, the tares.

Y'all know wheat and tares can look just alike, right? I mean,

you come to church on a Sunday morning or see an auditorium filled with people

coming to church, and you look at people on the outside, you can't always tell

the truth and the false, can you?

You can't always tell those that know Jesus that are true disciples and those that are pretenders.

Because down here in the South, everybody knows Jesus, right?

Everybody's going to heaven because they're good people.

Never mind they've never counted the cost and realized that the Bible teaches

there are no good people.

None of us are good. No, not one. None of us even seek after God on our own, y'all.

None of us. The only reason that we're even in church really is that God has

drawn us here. He's seeking after us.

None of us care about the things of God on our own.

For we know, as we see in this next slide, that anyone who is not carrying their

cross is not a true follower of Christ, as we see.

That's strong words, but that's Jesus.

Anyone who's not carrying their cross is not a true follower.

Y'all, we have made the gospel.

We have made this choice of being, or the cost of discipleship,

a lot of times in our world today, in our churches, some kind of cheap journey.

And you know what happens? People take it cheap. They don't understand.

They've been presented with a false gospel.

They don't count the cost. They don't repent the tears flowing because they're

brokenhearted over their sin and their personal offense against a holy God.

You know what? I don't have to tell a person who's committed adultery.

I don't have to say, if you're trying to get right with your wife,

I don't have to say, all right, you repeat these words after me before your wife.

We shouldn't do that with God either. There's not a magic prayer that gets you into heaven.

It's the attitude of your heart, the posture of your heart. Is it surrendered

before God saying, Lord, forgive me a sinner.

Lord, I'm broken over my sin. Save me. That can be a salvation prayer just as

much as somebody saying, hey, repeat after me. Right. It's not about repeating after me.

It's about your heart being grabbed by the Holy Spirit of God and you responding

in faith, repentance and faith.

And that itself y'all both of

those are gifts from god repentance and faith because we

learn in scripture that apart from christ we are all dead in our trespasses

and sins the great question we've heard what can a dead man do zero you can

poke a dead man you can shoot a dead man but he's not going to respond.

Hang on to your seats a little bit. The Bible says salvation belongs to the Lord.

No man can come to the Father, Jesus, unless the Father draws him.

No one seeks after God. God's the one who does the seeking.

And you know what? God's the one that regenerates you and me and makes us alive together in Christ.

A dead man can't respond. But somebody who's resurrected by Jesus spiritually can.

He's telling us here, it's also easy, y'all, for us to pay lip service to the

call to discipleship without actually sacrificing to follow Christ.

You know, a lot of us think it's, you know, being a good Christian,

being a good follower of Christ, man, I just need to show up on Sunday morning. That's it. I'm good.

I've checked the box. Jesus said, no, I want everything.

It's not just about Sunday. It's about Monday through Saturday.

It's about every day of the week. It's about your schedule. It's about your calendar.

It's about your priorities. And my number one, that's the cost of true discipleship.

That's the call, y'all. Count the cost. If you're considering today,

if you don't know the Lord and you're considering, hey, I'd like to put my faith

and trust in Christ, then count the cost.

Jesus would tell you, count the cost.

Have you ever come to a place in your life where the Holy Spirit has grabbed

your heart, convicted you of your sin, and you knew that you needed to repent.

You knew that you needed Christ.

Respond to him, y'all. I can't urge with you enough. Count the cost.

Lay it all down. No, when you come to him, it's total surrender.

Total surrender. But we should examine whether there are things that we're not willing to do.

Is there anything you're not willing to do? or maybe income thresholds that

we're not willing to slip below if Jesus called us to or standards of living

that we couldn't possibly imagine foregoing,

even if doing those things would actually advance the cause of Christ.

And let's be honest. Usually they would.

We should look to our lives to see if they're sinful behaviors or attitudes,

maybe things that we're able to condemn in others that we simply will not forgo in ourselves.

There is nothing, Eastwood, in our lives that we have the right to point to

and tell Jesus that it's off limits.

Nothing. Jesus' call here, and I hope you've seen it in this passage today,

to radical discipleship.

It also means that when we proclaim the gospel to unbelievers,

that we got to tell them the whole truth, these would, specifically that they

must know that following Jesus means that he has claim to everything in their life.

There's no rooms off-limit.

Nothing is off-limits or outside of his lordship if

they're not told about the cost of discipleship as jesus tells

the crowds here they may well begin down

that road some of you may have done this that

you know that path like the man building a tower or the king going to war only

to discover midway through that they don't have what it takes to finish the

undertaking now let me ask you this as we draw to a close more Or will this

mean that fewer people will start down the path of discipleship? Perhaps.

But no fewer people will make it all the way to the end. You ever thought about that?

It seems that in this last slide here, Jesus, y'all, would rather you not follow

him than follow him on your terms and with your agenda.

Read it. It reminds me, too, I think, in Revelation. Remember,

you're not hot, you're not cold.

In other words, you're not making an impact. You're not making a difference.

You're what, lukewarm? What's going to happen, according to Jesus, to the lukewarm?

Spewed out of the mouth, vomited out. Jesus would rather you not follow him

than to follow him on your terms with your agenda.

You see, that's not going to work. You're playing the game. You're a false disciple.

We see crowds of people here as a sign of success sometimes totally, even today for a church.

And it may be so in some instances because God does add to his church, obviously.

But Jesus saw the crowds in verse 25 here, and he immediately began to clarify

the parameters of discipleship.

So that people would follow him for the right reasons and with the right and

proper understanding of what they would be forfeiting if they did so.

You know, there's a paradox at work here whenever we contemplate the gospel in there.

In a sense, the demands of the gospel, as we see in this passage, will cost us how much?

Everything in our lives. Some of those things may be good, such as money or

personal comfort or this, that, and the other.

And some may be bad, such as selfishness or sin.

But in the end, the message of the gospel is that we receive,

y'all, far more from the Lord Jesus than we could ever possibly sacrifice.

And y'all, what's so interesting is that the things that we try to hold on to,

and Jesus wants to get us to see here, y'all, the things we think are gonna

bring that satisfaction, that peace, everything that we wanted,

Jesus sees the end from the beginning, like I said earlier, and he knows.

He's the only one who will

fulfill every one of us to the ultimate full

life abundant life that doesn't mean you're rich you

can get tons of money and you all that have big houses it

means a roller coaster ups and downs valleys mountaintops

good and bad all of it all

of the comfort health and pleasure of this

world eastwood is rubbish it's

garbage compared to the forgiveness love adoption and eternal life that we received

in christ amen i mean the pleasures of sin cannot compare with the reward that

god has promised to his people.

And in that light, I think we all should remember that the call to radical discipleship

here in this passage is ultimately good news, y'all.

It's a call. You know what it is? A call to trade in those things that we cannot possibly keep.

All these things to light is temporary, right? And that cannot ultimately satisfy

us for a far greater inheritance that we cannot possibly lose, y'all.

Jesus is our king. Jesus is our treasure.

Wow, that focus there, y'all. The question that each of us have to wrestle with

is, and don't miss this today, does Jesus seem worth it to you?

Christian is not a glutton for punishment. Somebody who takes a perverse joy

and pain and difficulty like that.

Instead, what? A Christian is somebody who understands the sacrifice,

but who believes that the sacrifice is worth the rewards that come with following

Jesus. Jesus is our ultimate reward.

If we don't enter into discipleship with our eyes wide open,

knowing the cost, but prizing the benefits of Jesus, our Savior,

he is our treasure, like I said, then we'll give up somewhere along the way, as many have done.

We'll be like the man who built that half a tower, but before realizing that

he didn't have enough to finish it, not enough to finish it. But you know what?

We need to be salty followers, don't we?

Salty followers, as we see in this next slide. Luke actually concludes this

section about discipleship with a warning. I'm going to go fast through this.

He says, salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, it can be useful for nothing.

You know, it can't be useful for anything, right?

And the meaning of Jesus's word picture here, y'all, it's debated.

You know, theologian Edwards, you know, he actually compares four different

theories about how salt might lose its saltiness here, as he's talking about.

And I hold to the last one because I believe it's scriptural more.

But he says, it might be compromised by the presence of other compounds.

It might be used for cataloging.

Purposes and ovens, and so it undergoes a chemical change, he says,

and it could lose its impact when mixed with too many of the wrong kind of spices.

And here's the last one he said.

He said, or Jesus knows that salt does not lose its saltiness,

and therefore the saying suggests that the scenario Jesus is referring to here is impossible.

If the fourth suggestion here is correct, and it does seem to fit best with the context, I believe.

As we see on this slide, the thrust of Jesus's teaching here is that a half-hearted

disciple, again, is no disciple at all.

It's impossible for a disciple to be anything less than a devoted follower of Christ.

You need to read this passage. I need to read it again. See what Jesus said.

You may need to wrestle in your spirit with some of it, but it is truth.

Through all, though all followers of Christ are going to struggle with indwelling

sin. How many of you struggle with indwelling sin?

I hope so. That's the sign of a believer. You struggle. You don't just surrender to it, right?

That makes the intensity of our devotion, you know, less than it should be,

we think, but our desire and intention is to what?

Follow Jesus without reservation. In other words, when we fall,

we get up. We look to Jesus, right?

We fall down, we get up. We look to Jesus in repentance and faith.

You know, somebody that's just not a disciple, they're going to wallow in that

muck and mire. In fact, they're going to say, today I plan to sin, right?

There'll be no desire to get out of it.

Anything less, y'all, than the posture, as we see here, the posture of the heart,

than that posture of the heart is useless discipleship.

It's useless. Like this salt story here, it's useless.

We might find that message a bit shocking or extreme, but Luke actually concludes

this section of the gospel with a warning.

Did you see it there at the last in verse 35?

Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear.

Do you have ears to hear this morning? Are you going to listen?

Are you going to count the cost?

Just think about in what area of your life, or is there any areas of your life

that you're most likely to ignore Jesus' teaching here?

Instead of having those ears to hear.

Y'all, there's no better time than today than to become a disciple of Christ.

Or maybe some of us need to repent and say, God, forgive me.

I fell down. I want to get up. Get my eyes fixed on you.

If Ms. Sharon comes to play, I'm going to ask you to stand with us.

Father God, this morning, I just ask, Lord, as your Holy Spirit continues to

move in our midst, Lord, that today that we have count the cost, we'll count the cost.

And God, I pray if anyone needs to do business with you, Lord, they'll do it.

But Lord, if there's anybody here that doesn't know you, God,

I pray that they've seen, Lord, that true discipleship, Lord,

is just about complete surrender of giving you control of everything.

I pray if your Holy Spirit is moving in their heart, maybe today,

Lord, they're ready to say, Lord, forgive me a sinner.

Lord, I trust you in what you did for me on the cross and that you defeated

death, hell, and the grave. You took my place.

You rose again, defeated death for me.

And Lord, I repent. I want to follow you.

Whatever their prayer would be, the attitude of their heart in full surrender,

we ask Lord in Jesus' name.