The Cost Of Discipleship

If you want to be my disciple, you want to follow me, you gotta love me more than these things.

You gotta love me the most.

This podcast is a ministry of Grand Parkway Baptist Church, helping people know, enjoy, and glorify God.

For more information about Grand Parkway, visit Grandparkway.org.

Let's pray together.

Lord, the scripture text we just sang from the 23rd Psalm that surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life.

And that's not because of anything that's great about us or anything we can control or anything we can force to happen.

It's only because of your character.

And you've decided to extend your mercy to us to only act towards us in goodness.

Would you give us new eyes to see that?

Eyes that look back and see.

I could only say the Lord has only acted to me in goodness.

And I know He will from this moment forward.

This morning, acting supreme goodness in heaven, the Spirit open up and enliven a text that would do two things.

It would do a surgery on our hearts where it pierces us deeply and making a correction where we begin to look more and more like Christ.

We ask this because you're the only one who's able to do it.

We ask it because we are certain this is what you desire.

Amen.

Thank you for tuning in and being with us and streaming.

We know most of you are doing this on Sunday morning, others throughout the week.

And we don't know when this will end, but I think it's sooner than farther away.

And those are part of our church body.

You'll be updated probably this next week on our plans to return at some point to services together.

My name is Blake Hardcastle, and I'm the spiritual formation pastor here at Grand Parkway.

And our our lead pastor, Neil McClendon, is on a sabbatical during this time.

So myself and other staff are uh filling in and we're preaching through a series in the pro the parables of Jesus, the stories he told.

And so this morning's parable is in Luke 14, and these are kind of the conditions of following Jesus.

And as you're uh hopefully turning there in the Bible or on your phone, um I want to ask you this question, I guess to share a little share time about me.

So, what did you want to be when uh you were younger?

Or maybe you're young.

What do you want to be?

Uh when I was little, really elementary school and a little bit of middle school, I wanted to be Jock Cousteau.

You may not know who this is.

He had a thing on Saturday mornings.

It was Jock Cousteau's uh wonderful underworld adventure, and I was mesmerized by black tip sharks and um mantays and moray eels.

I wanted to, I thought we'd live underwater by now.

And um that's what I wanted to be.

I wanted to scuba dive all day.

Uh maybe I'd be part of Boca Raton Baptist Church, but that's what I wanted to be.

And then in uh at the end of middle school, beginning of high school, uh, I wanted to be a Navy fighter pilot because this other movie came out, Top Gun, and it mesmerized me, right?

I wanted to be a fighter pilot.

These heroes are helpful and good, but this text will cut a pretty clear line this morning that in case you were confused, God is doing one thing, and that is upholding one person for you to follow.

It doesn't mean scuba and marine biology is wrong or bad or lesser.

It means that there's one hero we're to have, one person we're to emulate and to chase after.

That's the person of Christ.

Let me read the whole text, and then we will walk through uh verse by verse and unpack it.

So chapter 14, verse 25 to 35.

Now great crowds accompanied him, and he turned and said to them, 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, whoever does not bear up his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.

For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he is enough to complete it.

Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who will see it begin to mock him, saying, This man began to build and was not able to finish.

Or what king going to encounter another king in war will not sit down first and deliberate whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes with twenty thousand?

If not, while the other is yet a great uh great way off, he'll send a delegation and ask for terms of peace.

So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.

Salt is good, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored?

It is of no use either for the soil or the manure pile.

It is to be thrown away.

He who has ears let him hear.

So this morning's text, it was a shocker to the original hearers.

It would be as if Jesus were to say to us this morning, when we gather back together, some of you don't bother coming back.

When we reopen and get back together, all you fakers, all you imposter disciples, all you who really aren't following, just stop pretending.

Don't come back.

Shanking is that's that's how it would have landed on them.

This is one of the texts where Jesus begins, uh, these large crowds, he begins thinning them.

Let's walk through this together.

These are kind of the parameters, the conditions for following Jesus.

So point number one is that following Jesus means that he is preeminent.

He has first place.

Verse 26.

Now great crowds accompanying him and turning, he said to them, so we have these crowds, it's the disciples, it's Jewish leaders, it's lots of people.

And uh they're kind of mobbing them.

He's done a fair amount of miracles, fed thousands of them.

He he says things that confound the leaders, and so it's likely a good bit of them are hey, what's he gonna do next?

What's he gonna say next?

This is this is must see TV.

What free trinkets are gonna be at this party?

Okay.

He turns to them and he says this, verse 26.

Again, this would have been shocking to them.

If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.

If anyone wants to be my disciple, he wants to follow me, and you don't meet this qualification, just turn around and go.

Stop following.

So you got these people who a good bit of them are there just to see what's gonna happen.

What's the next trip gonna be?

Is it gonna be another free meal?

And Jesus, Luke has them recorded in chapter 13.

Uh this is where we're going on this trip.

This is the direction of this where I'm walking.

I'm heading to Jerusalem to die.

Because that's where the prophets die.

So we say, look, we're not, hey, everybody, we're not going to Sal Padre, we're going to Galgotha.

That's where this is headed.

If that's not what you signed up for, just go ahead, no hard feelings.

Turn away.

Says, if anyone is an open invitation, wants to be my disciple.

This word's does not hate.

And this seems contradictory to a good bit of the New Testament.

In Mark 7, uh, we're reminded, uh, honor your father and mother.

Ephesians 5, love your wife, it's a command, love your wife.

Mark 10, Jesus is not shooing other children.

Come here, let me help.

Matthew 5, brothers and sisters are to uh love one another.

Even Mark 12 is an assumption that women love themselves.

So he is not advocating for some kind of destructive self-loathing.

He's not advocating for um, yep, you can hold on to some little bitter grudge you have against your family.

Let me just say, I know that in a church this size, uh, there's people who've had some pretty crummy family experiences.

Pretty terrible ones.

And what Jesus is not saying is, yes, you can hold on to that 10-year grudge of hating your parent or not speaking to your sibling.

It's not what he's saying.

He's not reinforcing some sin you're holding on to.

The rest of the Bible tells us we can't possibly love people too much.

So what must Jesus be saying here when he says you must hate them?

Hate in their language functions as an idiom.

An idiom is this.

It's a uh sometimes a nonsensical saying that people understand what it means.

So an idiom in our culture would be it's raining cats and dogs.

So raining cats and dogs means it's really, really hard.

We don't think, oh, Dalmatian, Pekingese, oh, there's a calico, there's a tabby.

No, it just means it's really hard.

In their culture, hate function this way.

That there must be some kind of distinction between two things where one is favored so much more than the other.

Not that the other's not favored, but so much more you love this one and you hate this one.

This one has preeminence and priority.

This one is a second.

Let me show you this picture.

This would be a typical priority list, right?

Give my priorities in order.

So God first, and then family, and then yourself, and then work, and then oh, ministry friend, and on down the list.

And that'd be like, oh, this is a pretty good priority list.

Yeah.

We should all live this way.

What Jesus is saying here is okay, number one is God.

Number one is me.

You want to be my disciple, follow me.

Number one's me.

And number two, functionally is so far down, we would call that love and hate.

It does not mean that, okay, I need to, I need to pump the brakes and love mom less.

It's not saying that.

He said, oh no, no, you probably need to elevate that.

You need to skyrocket your affection, attention, devotion to me.

If you want to be my follower, you want to be my disciple, uh, I'm not just one of several things you care deeply about.

I'm not just one more thing you add to your little pantheon of things you enjoy.

The Eugene Peterson here, he writes, he says this way.

He says, uh don't come to me and refuse to let go of the other things.

Don't come to me, just make me one more thing that makes you feel good about you.

He says, you cannot be my disciple.

He's not saying we got a bell curve here, and like we got the overachievers on this side getting a super duper A plus.

But you know, you can still be in, you still make it, you know, D minus, you're still there, you're not failing.

So no, this is a hard line.

You cannot be my disciple if I'm just like everybody else.

When we say Jesus must be preeminent, it means he's the foremost, he's the best, he's the top tier, he's supreme, unrivaled, matchless.

Nothing and no one compares to him.

If you want to be my disciple, if you want to follow me, you gotta love me more than these things.

You gotta love me the most.

And here's the thing you can love God more than your children.

You can because children they're a poor replacement for God.

They're very poor rescuers, they're very pure poor saviors.

You can you can love God more than your spouse or your sibling or your friends, or even yourself, because all those things are terrible gods.

They don't always act for your goodness, they don't rescue and deliver, they're terrible saviors.

And when something good rivals something that's the best, the best must be favored.

Let me give you an example.

Um, when we so I moved to Texas almost a year ago.

About a couple more weeks, we have moved here.

So we've gone almost a year, and in this whole process, you know, we were moving our family.

I mean, my wife and I are three kids, and two of our kids are still in high school.

And so, you know, if you want to commit one of the major sins of American culture, you move your kids during high school, right?

You're guaranteed they're gonna have guaranteed therapy and and they're gonna hate you forever and you're ruining their life.

And um and so what's orbiting is is we have this cultural thing, an internal dialogue happening.

You can't move during high school, it's wait till they're older, and then another dialogue happening.

Uh God, are you leading us to this?

Do I love my kids more than you?

And I'll just say we didn't take them kicking and screaming, we didn't pry their hands on the deadlock in the mid-Atlantic.

And we were praying and waiting, and God was merciful to give them a desire also to come.

But my kids ask, why did we move here again?

The answer is because Jesus is more important to me than you being comfortable.

That's really why we moved here.

Why did we move?

Why did we move it here?

Because I want to follow God far more than I want to follow your preferences.

That's really the answer.

This helpful quote.

Says uh from a commentator says, when we we fall short, it comes to loving God, when we spend more time in the car in one day shuttling our kids to games and lessons than we do in a whole month praying for their souls.

That life reveals one that hates Jesus and loves kids disproportionately, not loves Jesus.

We spend more time telling them no and pick up this and uh being frustrated around a home than we do in a whole month of praying for the soul.

We disproportionately love them or love ourselves and hate Jesus.

And let me tell you, this is the still point one.

Here's a great paradox.

When someone loves Jesus most, they are filled and equipped to love others best.

Uh in my previous role, I would travel quite a bit, and it wouldn't be super long, it'd be you know, two, three days at a time, but it'd be, you know, five, six times a year, and almost without exception, um, you know, I would be gone and I would, you know, so of course call the first day.

The second day phone call was um what became known as second day away blake.

And so it worked like this.

Uh I would be gone, and it would be just enough time to reflect on, man, I I kind of miss them, my family, and I didn't leave on the greatest terms.

I was kind of like, I gotta pack, I gotta get to a plane, you gotta get out of my way.

And I left some shrapnel.

So second day away, I I've usually I've spent enough time with Christ that um I want to encourage them.

I've been praying for them.

And so I call and and things like uh kids' test scores and behavior, it's super clear, those are not super important.

And uh Jenny would often say, uh, oh, okay, you're now you're poly.

Okay.

It's second day away, Blake, yes, right on time.

And really what it was is Jesus' first blake.

That's really who it was.

See, Jesus' first blake, here's a paradox.

My family's loved best when Jesus is loved most.

They will experience being loved far deeper because they're receiving care from this bottomless sea of God's power and his grace rather than a little tablespoonful of power that Blake has all on his own.

All right, point number two.

We'll go a little quicker.

Point number two is this following Jesus is a series of deaths.

That's what he's telling them.

Look at verse 27.

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

Whoever isn't bear his own cross and come after me, just leave.

Whoever does not die to himself cannot follow me.

We have this thing behind me, this is our baptistry.

And on some regular occasion, we have these living pictures of someone dying and raising, dying to themselves, the old person is dead, raised to walk in a new life in Christ.

And this is the regular rhythm of the Christian life.

It's a rhythm of uh I am crucifying my flesh in order that Christ, I maybe have a life, him living his life in me.

That's the it's one often talks about it's like it's like a curve, the shape of a J, where you go down and up, where I jump a self and I and I rise in Christ.

And not just rise at the very end of life.

This happens regularly.

That that what I what I feel like I'm missing out on or I'm giving up, it feels kind of like a death.

But really, this is the path to life.

He said, look, you want to follow me?

You're signing up for a life of 10,000 funerals, 10,000 times what you want that's not what I want is gonna have to die.

If that's not your deal, then all right, you can turn around to the crowds.

Ken Hughes is helpful, he says it here.

He says, uh, no one ever became a disciple of Christ and lived a life of ease.

And so, you know, some of these folks following Jesus looking for already fed 5,000.

What's he gonna do this time?

Maybe it'll be a week's worth of meals.

And if you're in pursuit of Christ, if you're tuning in now, if you come on Sundays because you want a life that's just super duper cushioning, you gotta go somewhere else.

This is not what it's gonna be.

This is not a life of ease.

Not because he's mean or not good.

It's because this life here on earth, this is for the believer, this is as close to hell as they ever get.

The life of unbridled, amazing ease and glory and incredibleness in his presence is the life to come.

Verse 20 and 32 is this, now we have the parable illustration.

And he said, Look, you know you should count the cost, right?

He said, two times, here's a parameter to follow me.

You know you should be thinking this through.

Verse 28 and 32, let's read along here.

For which of you desiring to build a tower does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it.

Otherwise, he laid a foundation, he's not able to finish.

And all who see will begin to mock him.

Ah, look at that fool.

Why would this guy count the why would he do this?

You know, right now, well, maybe not right now because it's raining like crazy.

Uh, right now we have we have this parking lot's being kind of rebuilt around here.

And when we finally open up, you'll see.

Right now we got this big giant hole of a trench on this side, and they're tying up rebar.

What what if we like, uh, you know what?

We uh we we miscalculated.

We had the funny story, we had the comma in two wrong spots.

Yeah.

Instead of like three zeros, we just have one zero at the end of our available parking lot funds.

And you come back here and it's just a a wreck.

Just big holes with a bunch of water land in it.

Rebar rusting.

Who does this?

No, what what king is gonna encounter another king in the battlefield and first not say, can we win?

They got 20,000, we got 10,000.

Can our guys kill two for every one of our guys to die at least?

Can we at least break even?

What he's trying to do before is they're not counting the cost of following him.

He has a comparison like, look, kings, builders, disciples should do this.

Those who wanted to be disciples must follow, must calculate the cost of doing so.

And this this is this is normative.

Every great accomplishment.

In this world requires sacrifice.

Leonardo da Vinci, one of the things he's maybe not most famous for, but he's most accomplished at is the drawing of hands.

Hands are incredibly difficult to portray in drawing and painting.

Most artists will hide them in a pocket or in an object because they're just so hard.

Da Vinci's one of the first artists to do autopsy on cadavers to find out, okay, where's the bones and the muscle, which way the fibers go in the skin?

And he would draw many dates, he would draw hundreds of hands in order to master what's this thing look like.

When we lead people to Christ, when we offer a call to come for salvation, part of what Jesus is saying here is this needs to include here's here's here's rescue, but you need to count the cost.

It doesn't come without any strings attached.

See, what a non-believer is proposing to do by following Christ is an enormous undertaking.

It will consume all their life.

It's not just a project to manage or a hobby to take on.

It's not like an accessory you put on and make you feel better.

He will radically alter your thinking, reset your values, determine what your treasure is.

Children are asked, why do we do this?

And the bottom line answer is, I guess we do this.

I guess I say no to these things and yes to these things in your life because I'm a follower of Jesus.

Neighbors will ask, why do you live this way?

The bottom line becomes, because it's one of the costs of following Jesus.

That's why I do this.

Point number three, following Jesus means he is treasure.

Look at verse 33.

So therefore, told little parables, a little comparison story.

Any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.

Peterson is helpful here.

He says, Any of you that just kiss that stuff goodbye can't follow me.

Any of you who loves that stuff more than me, you're just kind of pretending.

You're fooling, you're either fooling yourself or others, but you're not fooling me.

So what Jesus says.

When we lived in Delaware, we had a pool there and we had a thing called a salt, salt water chlorine generator.

I don't really know how it works other than you don't add you know liquid or powdered chlorine to a pool.

You have the water, you put salt in it.

And the water runs through this little contraption that separates the sodium and the chlorine ions, and and so that go back into the pool and the chlorine does its cleansing, right?

Phosphates and organic matter and all the rest, and then and then recombines with the sodium and goes back to your pump.

And and and so as long as you had your salt concentration high enough, you'd be making chlorine every day that pool ran.

Just sanitizing the pool constantly.

You're not tasting it, you know, oh my god, I'm gonna choke here.

It's actually pretty mild.

And and uh if your salt got too low, you keep pumping that stuff through there, but there wasn't enough to zap and break apart and to cleanse the pool.

So you get algae.

You start seeing algae.

Oh man, the salt's too low.

Dump some salt in there.

Let me pause.

I've skipped the wrong thing.

I'll come back to salt.

Back up to verse 33.

Peterson says, kiss it goodbye.

What Jesus is not saying and what Peterson's not saying is, you know what?

It's time for you to be a monk.

Sign over your bank accounts, sell all your stuff, put it all on Craigslist or eBay, and just kind of live like a hobo.

That's not what he's saying.

Barbara Boyd is helpful in this, in this, I think.

She has this illustration where she says, the distance from the earth to the sun, so our earth to our sun is 92 million miles.

It's pretty far.

If we were to shrink that and just say, okay, this a piece of paper represents how far that is.

The width of our galaxy would be 310 miles of pieces of paper.

No, not piece of paper that's you know, four one thousandths of an inch, piece of paper that are 92 million miles.

And then if we take our galaxy and then just shrink it or put it in the scope of the whole universe, our galaxy would shrink down to a little pinpoint.

And what Barbara Boyd says is Jesus, who right now is upholding all of that, are you really asking him to be your personal assistant?

Hey, Jesus, can you uh can you settle this little thing?

Can you work this out?

Can you let her know?

Hey, I'd like if I could get one of those.

Uh I'd like if you could uh sort out this problem over here.

If you're wanting Jesus to be your personal assistant, you can't be his disciple.

You're not following him.

Rather, the posture to these things is one where in humble recognize his lordship.

We don't death grip hold on to the stuff of this earth.

By renouncing it, we just open our hands.

And we say, these are tools in my hands, you've entrusted to me.

And at any time, anywhere, any cost for the gospel, you lead and I'll follow.

You lead, and this is a tool in your hand to use.

That's what renouncing looks like.

I just have I have these things.

They don't have me.

They're at your full use.

Fourth point.

Fourth point, following Jesus means being winsome.

This is a salt.

Now we're talking about salt again.

34 and 35.

Luke adds this little thing on here.

Oh, by the way, uh, Jesus saying, salt is good, but if it loses its taste, how shall saltiness be restored?

It's of no use either for the soil or manure pile.

For the garden or just the trash heap.

Throw it away.

And he who has ears let him hear.

So revert back.

I'm sorry I confused you with my my pool, right?

If the salt gets too low, you get algae.

It loses its saltiness, it's not helpful, not useful anymore.

Salt in at their time, it was used to preserve meat and to enhance the flavor of it.

So stuff lasted long and tasted good.

Want to say that following Jesus means being winsome, is when people interact with you.

It shouldn't be a bad experience.

There should be some good taste, there should be some interest there.

A Christian should be really intriguing and interesting to a non-Christian.

What is more in a consistent sharing of the gospel, you can actually Christ should change them to where they are preserved forever.

The devotion of a disciple, it can dilute.

And so maybe it was a time where I was pretty enjoyable, and there was some frequency of people counting the gospel through me.

And maybe, like my old pool, that concentration is dipped.

Not that you're not saved, but there's just less fruit.

So so what?

Do you want to be a disciple of Jesus?

This is really the question this is getting to.

Do you want to follow Jesus?

You're thinking, well, I don't know.

I mean, what's in it for me, right?

I'm going to get heaven and I get some stuff sorted out here.

If you're just thinking of the benefits package, you're missing the point of the one who upholds the whole universe.

Not just rescuer, but he's Lord.

Do you want to be a disciple of Jesus?

He's not asking, hey, do you want to try harder this week?

Do you do you want to just do a little better?

Do you want to just improve a little bit?

That's not what he's asking.

Count the cost of following Jesus.

Because everything will have to submit to him.

Now, maybe not all at once, but everything is free gain.

He's free to hunt on all your land without permission, without license.

If your answer is yes, after counting the cost, if your answer is yes, I do want to follow him, then take heart, because only he could make you feel that way.

Only he could make you think.

That's evidence of the spirit at work in you.

If you find yourself less enjoyable, or if you're brave, ask someone who knows you, hey, am I a little am I am I less enjoyable?

Am I less salty?

Am I less interesting?

I want to commend to you a very small book called Seeing and Savoring Jesus Christ.

It's written by John Piper.

You can get it for free, a free PDF at desiringgod.org.

And it's really a book that's a bunch of signposts.

Hey, look at this text, look at this scripture, look at Jesus here.

And maybe what God would do is make you fall back in wonder with the person of Jesus.

Back in wonder.

Making you savory to the world around.

In just a minute, Lindsay's gonna come up and and there's gonna be some questions on the screen.

Um and as our custom, we'll take a moment or two and we will let you read through those.

Take your phone and take a picture of them.

And as you read through them, just maybe land on one of them.

God, I want you to search my heart.

I want to respond to you through one of these questions.

And maybe today at lunch or tonight or sometimes a week, engage with someone else about this.

So take that the spirit is still speaking, not just through the text now, but just you and him.

And I know you're on a couch, I know you're in our living room, or I know you're around a table.

He wants to get this to a conversation, just the two of you.

Let's look at these questions.

I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder, thy power throughout the universe display, then sings my soul I save your guide to thee.

How great thou art, how great thou art and sings my soul my save your God to thee.

How great the how great the thing of God is not sparing sent him to die I scarce can take it in the cross of my bird and gladly bearing he bled and die to take away my save then sings my sice to thee hungry then sings my side save your god to the crit.

Do not come to a table of negotiation, kind of working out terms with you of this relationship.

We don't get to negotiate a contract.

There is one covenant that you have written in the blood of Christ, and it is for our supreme good in your unfailing glory.

And so, would you restore to us an overwhelming view of your greatness?

That we don't follow you begrudgingly, we follow you joyfully, knowing whatever we would forfeit.

We didn't need that anyway, amen.

Thank you again for uh viewing.

I want to ask you uh go please if you can, please stand.

And most of you can.

Hey, look, all you young folks, you've been laying there half awake, eating breakfast.

All right, stand up.

Let's stretch it out.

Stand up, and as we close our service, normally do we uh like to have a spoken blessing.

So put your hands out.

This is a posture of Lord, bless me, receive.

Daddy, give me something.

Let me speak this over you.

Your God wants to spread you all over this world like a salty brisket rub.

Showing the gospel, a living picture of the gospel everywhere.

Following Jesus is costly, it'll cost everything.

But you are not a fool if you give up what you could never keep to have what you could never lose.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.