If You Must Be My Disciple, Carry Your Cross And Follow Me (Luke 14) - A Sermon by Elise Beatrice

If You Must Be My Disciple, Carry Your Cross And Follow Me. (Luke 14).

A Sermon by Elise Beatrice

Transcript

Let’s pray.

Holy Father, God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, thank You so much for this day.

Thank You for Your Son, Jesus and Your Holy Spirit.

We seek Your great presence. Lord Jesus, we love You.

Please help us all to hear, to understand what You are saying to us today.

In Your name, my Lord Jesus, I pray. Amen.”

LUKE 14

25 A large crowd was following Jesus. He turned around and said to them, 26 “If you want to be my disciple, you must, by comparison, hate everyone else—your father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even your own life. Otherwise, you cannot be my disciple. 27 And if you do not carry your own cross and follow Me, you cannot be my disciple. 28 “But don’t begin until you count the cost. For who would begin construction of a building without first calculating the cost to see if there is enough money to finish it? 29 Otherwise, you might complete only the foundation before running out of money, and then everyone would laugh at you. 30 They would say, ‘There’s the person who started that building and couldn’t afford to finish it!’ 31 “Or what king would go to war against another king without first sitting down with his counselors to discuss whether his army of 10,000 could defeat the 20,000 soldiers marching against him? 32 And if he can’t, he will send a delegation to discuss terms of peace while the enemy is still far away. 33 So you cannot become my disciple without giving up everything you own.

34 “Salt is good for seasoning. But if it loses its flavor, how do you make it salty again? 35 Flavorless salt is good neither for the soil nor for the manure pile. It is thrown away. Anyone with ears to hear should listen and understand!”

Yes, Lord, You are so wise, my God. Your words are really beyond the way we speak. Only You help us understand such wisdom, Lord Jesus.

Yes. Many have said wrong things against the Lord based on the way the Lord delivers His messages. Of course, if we don’t understand what the Lord means, by reading these words, they give us something else.

But it is not really what the Lord means.

“If you want to be my disciple, you must, by comparison, hate everyone else...”

The minute people hear the sound ‘hate,’ they just rapidly assume that the Lord is calling people to hate their parents, their children, brothers and sisters. But if you know the Lord Jesus, that is not what He teaches.

He does not teach hate. So, let us seek to understand what He means before we spread the lies.

The Lord Jesus is a God of Love. He has always been speaking of love and encouraging people to love, to forgive, to love even our enemies, and to pray even for those who hurt us, and that is LOVE.

So, anybody who hears all those beautiful teachings then suddenly comes across a Verse like this, don’t just grab this and say, ‘Ha! I found what I can use to expose Jesus as a hater!’ By doing so, this is the work of evil. Everyone who denies who Christ is but grabs this passage to speak about hate is doing the work of evil. Seek first to understand what He means; then, you might spare yourself from passing around as someone who knows nothing.

But the Lord is gracious for always being willing to forgive those who realise their fault and repent.

“If you want to be my disciple, you must, by comparison, hate everyone else —your father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even your own life. Otherwise, you cannot be my disciple. 27 And if you do not carry your own cross and follow Me, you cannot be my disciple.”

So the Lord is listing here: father, mother, wife, and of course, husband, since He is speaking to the men, and children, brothers and sisters, and even our own life.

Suppose we have a godly mother, a godly father, godly children, godly brothers and sisters; when we’re living with such people, I mean those who are godly, according to the ways of the Lord since we cannot declare ourselves godly based on our own minds, but only by the Scriptures, according to God’s will, if we live for God or not. So, suppose we are blessed to surround ourselves with godly people who are already doing the right thing and living in the Lord, living to please the Lord and obey the Lord. In that case, we don’t encounter the problem the Lord is addressing here. If we are around godly people we have nothing to worry about because we won’t find ourselves in a situation where the Lord will say, “You must hate everyone by comparison.” The godly ones are already in the Lord, and if everyone is godly, we won’t ever find ourselves in a situation of disagreement when it comes to the ways of the Lord. And the Lord won’t find any problem.

So, the Lord is not telling us to hate our parents. However, suppose our fathers, our mothers, wives and children, husbands, brothers and sisters, are ungodly people, immoral people, those who have no fear of the Lord, who live for themselves, conform to the patterns of the world, soo rooted into the darkness, and we love them so much, but they have made up their own minds and are heading in the opposite direction to heaven, following the darkness instead and have no intention of turning from their wrong ways. In that case, who would you choose? Your ungodly parents who are heading to hell? Would you follow them to hell just because you love them? Or would you choose the Lord Jesus Christ even if your ungodly family and friends will hate you for it? So, you must be willing to let go of immoral people who have no intention to repent and renounce evil if you want to be my disciple. This is what the Lord means. For if you love your fathers and mothers more than Me, if you love your friends and colleagues and your own ways more than Me, you are not worthy of Me.

The Lord said, “Honour your father and your mother...” But we must understand He always means our moral parents. But suppose a parent is an evil parent, an immoral parent, do we still honour evil parents? A godly person does not honour an evil parent; moral people clash with evil. God is moral, God is righteous, He is justice, so when He is giving instructions, we always have to abide according to His will. He wants us to be godly, moral people. So, if we follow any of our immoral family members and friends into darkness and abandon our Lord and Saviour because we love them so much, then we are not fit to be the Lord Jesus’ disciples.

If you turn your back on the One who is the Salvation, the Saviour, who rescues everyone from the darkness, then you are not fit to be His disciple.

The Lord Jesus should be the number one priority, the most important thing in our lives, because without Him, there is no true love. It is God who pours love in our hearts to be able to love in a way pleasing to Him. So we must understand what the Lord means here; He is not saying to hate our parents or our brothers and sisters.

As I’m speaking, I still have loads of people in my family who are in the darkness. But even when they are in the darkness, we do not hate them; we pray for them, for those who are lost. Pray for those who hate you, even for your enemies. Love even your enemies.

When people claim to know, they are shutting the door to the One who knows everything: God. When you have the attitude of someone who’s always learning, God will always teach you.

The Lord Jesus, before He came to die on the cross, had already seen the ending. He had seen what He would go through. So we Christians should do the same. We cannot see the future, but we can have the perfect picture of what it is like to be the Lord's disciple by seeing the life of Christ and the life of His faithful ones, His apostles. It won't be any different nowadays. So, we should be prepared to go all the way, no matter what, knowing that is the way to follow the Truth: the Way, the Truth and the Life, to get to Heaven. It is not an easy road. As long as God is fine with us, we are fine. As long as we are living for the Lord Jesus, He is pleased. When the Lord is pleased with us, He's with us.

The Lord finishes by saying, “Salt is good for seasoning. But if it loses its flavor, how do you make it salty again? 35 Flavorless salt is good neither for the soil nor for the manure pile. It is thrown away. Anyone with ears to hear should listen and understand!”

Suppose our parents, brothers and sisters, colleagues and friends are all immoral, and because we love them, we are with them, turning our backs on the Lord, taking things from them. In that case, we are using the salt that has already lost its flavor to season our food. But when salt loses its flavour, who can make it salty again? Our ungodly parents? No. Our ungodly children? No. Our ungodly brothers and sisters? No. Our ungodly colleagues and friends? No. The Lord Jesus is the Only One who has the power to make salt that has lost its flavour become salty and tasty again. So, instead of chasing after people who have chosen darkness, we should follow the One who has the power to even redeem them from the darkness, to help them to come to repentance. For the more we take and use the salt that has lost its flavour, the more we stop ourselves from being salty and tasty as well, and whoever is listening to us, whatever we're giving them is disgusting and useless for them.

Immoral people have no spiritual riches of the Kingdom of Heaven that save lives eternally to give anybody. Salvation is moral. And we must seek God, who saves us spiritually, not satan, who kills us spiritually. Darkness is immoral. Therefore, welcoming things from it is the same as eating distasteful, flavourless, and poisonous dishes, which only kill us. However, the flavourless salt, which is good neither for the soil nor for the manure pile, does the same job for the crops by withering them.

So, if we love our Lord Jesus, we carry our crosses and follow Him with gladness, love and obedience. For without Him, indeed, what kind of life do we have? We live for Him, for it is good, and we love what is good and love Him and His Father and also our neighbour.

Lord, I thank You so much for everyone who will listen, for everyone You will bring to repentance. I thank You, Lord Jesus, for Your grace, and Your mercy, and Your forgiveness. Thank You for blessing us and for this sermon, Lord. In Jesus' name, I pray. Amen.