Jesus Concern for the Poor

Text: Luke 16:19-31

Focus: Jesus Concern for the Poor.

Function: To help people catch Jesus’ passion.

Form: Bible Study

Intro:

Luke 16 is the Chapter that I call “inconsistent.”

To be clear, it is not inconsistent with Scripture, but it is inconsistent with a lot of theology. It is almost to the New Testament what The Song of Solomon is to the Old Testament.

I mean, the OT has all these rules, regulations, stories of people accomplishing great things by faith, stories of the great people of faith making huge mistakes and sinning terribly, and all the failures of God's people to live sacrificial lives where they loved both God and their neighbors. And then, there is this love song. And people have chosen many ways to explain it. It is a story about our relationship with God, it is a template for worship, to “the people of Israel were merely a rather hot- blooded group of people.

I have never preached on it, but I have seen some good bible studies that are geared toward couples giving principles for increasing intimacy and respect between marriage partners. But you certainly can't preach that in a church with children attending.

The point is this, what do you do with it?

Has anybody ever really figured out the first parable about the unjust steward? I mean this: Jesus says: “Make friends by the means of the wealth of unrighteousness so that when it fails, they will receive you into eternal dwellings. They who are faithful in the little things, will be faithful in much. He who is unfaithful in the little things, will be unfaithful in much.

This is really odd. Is Jesus really saying that it is okay to cheat? That the wealth of unrighteousness will make friends that will give you eternal rewards?

Jesus says that the master of the unjust steward praised him for his shrewdness. Did that mean that the master was a scoundrel and a thief and he recognized the skill of his steward who was also a scoundrel and a cheat?

In the message, we read it completely interpreted that the shrewdness of the steward was praised, but it should be done in a righteous way.

I don't know. Jesus' statement, “friends for eternity” certainly cannot be talking about friendships in hell, and rewards by friends in hell because hell is a lonely and desolate place.

You are not going to go there and have a party with your friends. It is dark and lonely.

So what does it mean? Jesus isn't really talking about the virtue of cheating.

Jesus then goes on to tell the Pharisees that they have to choose between God and money. They cannot serve both.

You cannot serve money and God.

Do we believe that?

Do our lives reflect that?

My dad did the most good work in his pastoral ministry while serving as the head of maintenance at Fort Wayne Bible College and pastoring small churches or doing evangelistic crusades.

He was president of the Plant Managers Association in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Indiana University, Purdue University Fort Wayne offered him the position of being the head of their maintenance facility.

That school served over 15,000 students. FWBC served at the most, 600.

People would drop off old food at the college to help second career married students who were living in poverty while they were studying.

Dad's ministry was to those second career men, who got saved late in life, had a lot of rough edges on them and dad was their mentor, bringing the grace and patience of God to them while they worked for him in the shop.

I remember an entire week where my whole family was sick as dogs because we got ptomaine poisoning from some canned food that was donated because we were too poor to buy decent groceries.

So, when the big State school offered my dad an executive position, with a salary increase of 600 percent (no exaggeration), we jumped around for an entire week crying for joy that we were going to be rich. And the salary offered would have been riches.

Then Friday night, dad came home from work and had a family meeting. He said: “God called me to be here, and I am not going to trade my soul, or my calling, for money.”

Not a soul in our house was disappointed. I understood that serving Jesus means that it is going to cost us something, maybe everything.

So Jesus goes into this description, and the Pharisees, who loved money and its security more than God, scoffed at, ridiculed and mocked Jesus' teaching about money.

But wait a minute, did I just leave that first parable unexplained? Did Jesus really say that it is okay to cheat and lie to your employer?

No. That is not what Jesus is saying.

Jesus is saying, that God will condemn the people who refuse to love their neighbors as themselves.

Jesus will condemn the people who just write off the poor as being lazy.

And you may be thinking that I am starting to talk about politics. I assure you, I am not.

This is the passion of Jesus' teaching.

This chapter is really a question of repentance. Repentance for not loving our neighbor as much as we love ourselves.

Remember the story of the Good Samaritan. The Pharisee, wishing to justify himself said: “and who is my neighbor?” He tried to make an excuse, any excuse to not care for others. So Jesus' answer is this: “Even you enemy is your neighbor.”

I am thinking in the back of His mind He is thinking: “You aren't getting out of it that easily buddy.”

So what is the first part of this chapter? The point Jesus makes certainly doesn't fit with our theology. It seems to contradict the commandment: You shall not steal. It seems to contradict the Biblical principle that all business transactions must be win-win for both parties. Believers can never take advantage of another person's misfortune for personal profit. These are righteous and just business principles.

Well, I have done a lot of research on this because I do not believe that the Bible would contradict itself so completely.

You know that at the time of Christ, the Jewish people were under terrible bondage to their Roman masters. The taxation was crippling them.

People couldn't pay their taxes, so they had to sell their land to those who had been luckier than them. Pretty soon, most of the land was sharecropping under rich masters who used their new positions to further indebt them.

It was a sort of “you load 16 tons and what do you get, another day older and deeper in debt.”

The steward, decided to give the sharecroppers a break. Now I know the text says “it was reported to the rich man that the manager was squandering his resources...”

I am not saying that the manager was noble in his intention. But the stories are directed at the Pharisees. They are not teaching passages on how to do business. The reason why Jesus praises the steward is because the man had decided that the system was wrong, and he wasn't going to take part in the wealthy man's getting away with taking advantage of his poor neighbors anymore.

Jesus tells us that he does this in order to garner favor with the people that he has been a part of taking advantage of because of his position with his master, not because he was repenting over the abuse of the poor.

But repenting over abuse of the poor is certainly the theme of this entire chapter, and it was the main reason why the Pharisees wanted to put Him to death. He confronts just how unjust their religious practices truly are and they find out that God isn't pleased with the status quo.

So the verse: “Make friends by the wealth of unrighteousness” is a statement that we are called to be involved in changing structures and systems that take advantage of the poor.

At Beech Grove Church, a consortium purchased all the land around the church in order to build a horse racing track.

I was called on to speak at the big zoning hearing about it. It was a media event, and a sound bite from my speech made it on the Indianapolis TV news stations highlights of the year at the end of the year.

I oppose gambling because the industry exploits the poor. And I spoke to how evil that is.

A young man, who worked for the architectural firm that was planning the attached casino came to me and asked me how come he was a faithful Baptist, a deacon in his Church and I had just called him Satan for building a casino.

Of course, I never used that word, he put it on himself. But my answer was this: “you cannot serve God and money. You may have to change employers.” He hung his head and walked away, sort of like the rich young ruler.

Listen, Jesus died on the cross to purchase our salvation from sin. But they killed Him because He confronted the way they loved money more than God or their neighbors.

And in response to that, we come to today's text: The Rich man and Lazarus.

In this parable Jesus is explaining to them just exactly what will happen if they do not repent.

He shows them how a rich man refuses to repent.

And the proof of his refusal to repent is not listed in the things that this man quit doing. There is no mention of making it to worship every Sabbath. There is no mention of his commitment to stop lusting after women. There is no mention of his commitment to pay his tithe. There is no mention of his commitment to stop drinking to excess every night. There is no mention that he refused to worship idols anymore.

Yet this man ends up in torment, and there is no mention of vice, or any other thing that we consider sin.

His only sin is “ignoring this poor man who was laid at his doorstep.”

His sin was not one of commission. It was a sin of omission. He refused to love his neighbor as himself.

I love going to Tijuana. A month and a half ago, Kathy and mom spent Friday night in Fort Wayne with my grandkids.

I was bored and decided to go to the Greene shopping center.

They had a band playing music. They had a fountain for kids to cool off in. They gave free towels to dry off with. There were street performers and vendors. The place was packed. I looked around, I saw 2 black youth and one black couple. Then I thought about Rachel. The woman in Tijuana last year who taught Jane how to make a piñata. She is so happy, so full of the joy of the Lord, so much at peace, and living in incredibly difficult life just to survive with her husband and her kids.

I wondered what she would think of me if she knew how easily I have access to this wealth. From the mountaintops in Tijuana, one can look across and see San Diego, but she has no real clue what we have.

I wonder if she would look at the extravagant wealth and desire it for herself? Would she wonder what it would take to get here herself? Would she sell her soul and her Christian values to just live here? Or, would she just look at me and say: “How can you stand there, look at me, tell me you love me in the Lord, care for me a week and then feel comfortable coming back to this?”

Would I be ashamed? Is it easier for me to help her simply because she doesn't know what she is missing?

Are we supposed to feel guilty for being so blessed?

What was the rich man's sin?

It was his refusal to care for this man at his doorstep.

I think of the story of the boy and the starfish on the beach.

A tropical storm leaves a whole colony of starfish stuck on the beach in a high tide. Thousands are exposed to the sun and are dying. The boy is walking down the beach throwing as many as he can into the surf.

An older man comes along and says to him: “son, there are thousands here, there is no way you can make a difference for them all, your efforts are futile compared to the size of the problem.”

The boy picks up another starfish, throws it in the sea, looks at the man and says: “it made a difference to that one.”

The rich man refused to take care of the one starfish who was sitting right on his doorstep and was condemned for it.

God’s Concern for Evangelism

Text: Luke 15:1-10

Focus: Evangelism

Function: To reinvent a missionary vision.

Form: Bible study

Intro:

This week, someone on Facebook said: “if churches didn't have youth groups and preschools, churches would never have to face a scandal like you are going through.”

So, I sent him a private message saying, well, we could just have these really high standards, certain looks and attitudes, the right words, the proper family background before anyone is allowed to come to Church.

I then said, with that kind of attitude about sinners, your perspective would mean that only the righteous are allowed in here, and everyone who doesn't meet your standards can just go to hell for all you care.

He answered, not send them to hell, but casting out the immoral one so that their flesh will be destroyed in order to preserve their souls for eternity.

I guess he didn't get it, so I suggested we could have youth groups, but we would have to enforce a policy where all the girls wore burkas.

So, he asked me what kind of youth group we allow in our church, and I told him that they were just like me, not a righteous one in the bunch. We are all a whole lot of people who need a savior.

And the good news is this: Jesus is more interested in bringing people back to him than anything else.

Let us look at today's scripture and see just how much.

This is the first two of three stories about it. The Lost Sheep, the Lost Coin and the Lost Son, which follows our text this morning.

The look at the lost sheep and the lost coin morning leads us to the parable of the prodigal son.

All three stories are given to explain to people, especially to believers and the leaders of the faith, just how important it is to God when the lost return to Him.

I am still loving Dan's devotion at the last leadership team meeting when he said, “the whole story of the bible can be summed up in 4 words: `God wants everyone back.'”

And the reason why these three stories are right here in this passage has to do with what we read in the first verses.

¹Now all the tax-collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. ²And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.’

Have you ever said that about somebody? (PAUSE)

Has anyone ever said it about you? (PAUSE)

The Pharisees reacted to Jesus being with sinners.

Why?

They would never let themselves spend time with that kind of people.

Why might we be accused of the same thing?

Let me ask you some more questions:

Have you ever been harmed by someone's sin?

Have you ever been taken advantage of?

Have you ever been robbed?

Have you ever been cheated?

Have you been lied to and made a fool of?

Has anyone ever taken advantage of your good nature, kind and gentle spirit?

Has someone ever harmed someone you love dearly?

For Jesus to “hang” with sinner, the implication is that He is willing, perhaps already has, forgiven them.

Is that fair? Is that fair to you?

When we think of the concept of forgiving sinners “out there” we have these noble feelings of grace, the goodness of God, the purpose of that cross, the glory of resurrection, the joy of someone loving themselves enough to receive redemption.

And the neat thing about that last statement is that most often, when someone chooses to love themselves enough to find redemption, it is because believers like you and me physically demonstrated unconditional love to someone who believed they were not worth it. And they began to believe that God loved them also.

That is what we love about our message, about the gospel.

And when it is “out there” it is full of noble causes and feelings.

But what if we get burned in the process?

And that is where this story comes to play.

In my opinion, the story of the prodigal son is misnamed. It isn't about the prodigal son, but about the elder brother who resented the grace given to the sinner.

We can resent it for many reasons, like: He got to sin and get away with it, he made a mockery of all my hard work, it doesn't seem fair, when is it my turn? Those were all the thoughts in the elder brothers mind.

And all of that makes it hard for us, right now.

But here we are, and this is what Jesus says.

Look first at the lost sheep.

100 sheep, one wanders off, the shepherd leaves the 99 and spends his energy on the 1.

To me, that kind of gives a great perspective on pastoral ministry.

How does the shepherd know it is safe to leave the 99? What if they all wandered off?

Well, you have all heard the simile: “Like sheep to the slaughter.”

It means that sheep are communal, they stick together.

So, there is relative safety with the 99, enough safety for the shepherd to trust them while he goes to save the 1. Ultimately, the church grows one person at a time.

The Pharisees represent the 99. They know they are righteous. They can't understand why the shepherd doesn't spend his time honoring them for being so righteous.

They think it is about them.

But Jesus tells us where his passion is. It isn't that he doesn't care for the 99, no, he believes that the community, and its power will keep them together.

But the Pharisees lost sight of the importance of the one.

The importance of the one.

What is the passion of the shepherd?

· The Pharisees couldn't accept a missionary call. They were the keepers of the system and if the rules of the system are going to be broadened, in their opinion, if the circle of what it means to be faithful is going to grow, then it may not be about them.

· That is what happens when we let the faith move into maintenance instead of the mission that Jesus gave it.

• Jesus is moving from maintenance mode, to Missionary mode.
• The second worse sermon I ever heard happened when Annual Conference was in Orlando Florida. It was Sunday morning, and the preacher stands up and says: “Jesus died.” “Jesus died and that was it.” And then a long pause. “Jesus died, the disciples were sad, they got together to comfort each other, and the Church was born. The Church is a community held together by inspirational stories, allegories and superstitions.”

What was completely missing was the fact of Jesus' resurrection.

The Church was born in Acts 2, on the day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit fell on the 120 like tongues of fire.

And it all started with Jesus.

So the shepherd, verse 5, takes the lost sheep, lays it on his shoulder and then calls his friends for a celebration.

I have never been a shepherd, physically caring for those wooly animals, but I have seen them. A full grown sheep, a mature sheep, isn't going to fit on the shepherds shoulder.

As we mature, we follow. We follow because when we were baby Christians, the Shepherd went and found us and brought us back to Him.

That act, placing the sheep on his shoulder was a bonding maneuver.

Because of the love of the shepherd, the sheep wasn't going to run away again.

It starts right there with Christ, our job is pointing them there. Worship is for God’s sake, but it is evangelism, as it also brings people into the presence of Christ.

Then, a woman loses a coin. All that she has to live on. Her desperation explodes into a panicked search of her house for that coin.

It means life to her. And when she finds it, it is a treasure.

When God finds a lost person back in his arms, it is a treasure to Him. He gave His life to bring everyone back.

Now, the lost son: HE SQUANDERED GRACE.

This prodigal, he squanders away his own future share in his inheritance. The father tells the elder brother when the younger brother returns: “all that I have is still yours.”

There is this implication that although the son was lost, the father is fair to the elder.

But the brother doesn't see the value in it. He resents grace. He wants daddy to call his brother “the black sheep” of the family.

But to God, the son was dead and now he is alive.

Have you ever wondered why the father would give his son his share early?

I mean, isn't that an insult?

“Dad, I don't want to wait until you die, all you are good for to me is what I can eventually get out of you.”

“Daddy’s dying, who has got the will?”

What a terrible person, this prodigal. What wickedness!

Why would the father do that?

The father would rather let him go than keep him there by force. He loved his son, and wanted a son obedient from the heart.

What about times when our best efforts fail?

What about when we give our Christian duty, which should be very sacrificial, and our sacrifices are taken advantage of?

It feels a lot like betrayal.

Because, when the son returned, he came from his heart. Sometimes, really bad things need to happen to get us back to our missionary calling.

God’s Concern for Sacrificial Living

Text: Luke 14:25-35

Focus: Counting the Cost

Function: To ask people to live for God.

Form: GOK

Intro: I have told the story how I received Jesus at 4 years old and actually felt him come into my heart.

I was not allowed to be baptized into the faith until I was 12 years old.

And the reason for that was this scripture.

Jesus warns us to “Count the Cost” of being His disciples, otherwise our faith is insincere.

The concern centers around the importance of baptism.

Just what does baptism symbolize? Look at Romans 6:1-11 (read)

Buried with Christ, dead to sin, free from its bondage.

I want you to get the theology here. People are afraid to die when they know that in their life, they have done wrong. Christians are afraid to die when they know that although they are Christians, they still do things they know they shouldn't do.

They still turn their heads away from the poor, the sick, the other, the sinner. They still spend more on their pleasure than on the things that those less fortunate need, just to survive.

A few years out of High School, I sold appliances for a big department store. I was warned when I took the job that a certain woman there, who claimed to be a very strong Christian was ruthless in stealing away sales from other salespeople in her department.

I was new to the department, and struggling to grow my own client base when she stole a rather large sale from me, and I asked her how she slept when she was taking food from my children's mouth?

She said: “I promised my son a new snowmobile for Christmas and I have to grab every sale I can.”

When those things happen, even though it was 40 years ago, I still have to stop and forgive her again.

When in anger, I went to God and asked Him for justice, all he said to me was this: “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.”

In the years I had a sales career, I quickly learned that I couldn't answer the question to a potential client who asked me: “How can I know I can trust you?” with “I am a Christian man and a man of my word.” Several times I have heard this statement: “all that means to me is that you can lie, misrepresent your product, cheat me out of what we agreed upon and go to your Church Sunday morning and all is forgiven.”

It is a sad commentary. And here is the thing, although we know that we have the right intentions in our hearts almost all the time, sometimes, if we are honest, we admit that we are not always pure.

Because we are Christians, we do repent, and we do make amends.

Here is the difference. When the Tax Collector, Zacchaeus, found grace given to him by Jesus, he paid everyone 4 times what he stole from them and then gave the rest of his wealth to the poor. Money had been his God, and now he was serving a new master, Jesus.

Jesus said, you cannot serve God and things.

But listen to it “the meek” from “The Message”

⁵"You're blessed when you're content with just who you are — no more, no less. That's the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can't be bought.

I have had several people ask me these last few weeks: “Where is God in all of this?”

What is God's concerns about these things?

And, coincidentally, this month, from the book of Luke, we are looking at God's concern for four things, for personal sacrifice, for the poor, for money and for evangelism.

God and money is the 3^rd week. We have to choose who we will serve. Will we serve ourselves and our money? Or will we serve God and His concern for the poor, both spiritually and physically poor?

Jim Wallis is so right: He preaches that Jesus spent 3 years teaching about God's concern for the poor and outcasts of society, and 3 days becoming the sacrifice for our sins.

The religious leaders put Jesus to death because He told them that their religious ceremony means nothing if they didn't actually open up their hearts to generosity.

He was crucified for our salvation, bruised for our iniquities and by his stripes we are healed.

He was crucified for our salvation, but they killed Him because He exposed their hypocrisy in using their religious ceremonies as an excuse to not care for the poor as their neighbor.

Apparently, this is a really big thing to God.

And there is a genuine revival taking place among Bible believing Christians, both from the right and the left to become “full gospel.” And I don't mean the full gospel that incorporated the Charismatic movement of the 70's, but full gospel in the fact that it integrates both the saving grace of Jesus and His call for us to continue His work of changing culture to care for the least of these.

It spreads from the right to the left, Rick Warren, a prominent Southern Baptist leader says it like this: “there is a second reformation…”

The Holy Spirit is moving the Church forward, just as Jesus promised. There is resistance to this movement because just as it confronted the materialism of the religion of the ruling class during Jesus' time, it contradicts the powers that be today.

So, back to Romans and the meaning of being baptized. In the passage we read: “We too are buried with Him in baptism.”

But look again at the last verses from that Romans 6 passage in “The Message:” Here it is again, Never again will death have the last word. When Jesus died, he took sin down with him, but alive he brings God down to us. From now on, think of it this way: Sin speaks a dead language that means nothing to you; God speaks your mother tongue, and you hang on every word. You are dead to sin and alive to God. That's what Jesus did.

It was a signal of the end of death-as-the-end.

“The end of death-as-the-end.”

Peterson nails it with this statement. Look at 1 Corinthians 15:55-56: O death, where then your victory? Where then your sting? For sin--the sting that causes death--will all be gone; and the law, which reveals our sins, will no longer be our judge.

Up until that time, humanity lives in the fear of death, and the reckoning with God.

But when Jesus died on the cross, Sin, the sin, and the power of sin for everyone who is humble enough to trust in Him died with him.

Both the sin, and the power that sin has over us.

When I think of that potential client, and his phrase, which literally means this: “I don't accept Christianity because it gives you an excuse to not live up to your own standards because all you to do is say one little prayer, and `poof' it is taken away.”

They ask “if Grace covers sin, Where is personal responsibility?”

And of course, we want to shout back, that isn't true. We believe we are called by God to do good works.

But what about that lady who took advantage of me claiming herself as such a great Christian lady, and the way the rest of the sales staff laughed about her version of Christianity?

Was/is she forgiven?

Absolutely!

But wait! Does that mean it is okay for us as Christians to take advantage of others? Does that mean it is indeed okay for the strong to exploit the weak? Does that mean that Jesus will not separate the sheep from the goats and send those people who claimed to be believers, who preached in the name of Jesus, who raised the dead in Jesus name, who healed the sick in Jesus name, who had all the right words but none of the actions... ...will He not send them to punishment in the judgment?

Think about these words: “I was naked and you didn't clothe me, I was hungry and you didn't feed me....” And He will say: “in as much as you didn't do it to the least of these MY BROTHERS, you didn't do it unto Me.”

He calls the prisoner, the poor, the sick, the hungry His Brothers. He wants us in that family, right along with Him.

So what about my co-worker?

I am not going to condemn her to hell, the Lord is the one who separates the sheep from the goats. I don't actually know what good she did with her wealth and spirituality.

And I forgive her. I certainly wouldn't wish the terror of God's judgment on anyone, even my worst enemy, let alone a person who thought in her heart she was doing good. I don't want vengeance on my behalf, not to the peril of her soul. Never. We are called to forgive, no matter what, if we want to be forgiven.

But what about her?

Back to this morning’s text: “Count the cost of being my disciple.”

Look again at verses 26-27: ²⁶‘Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. ²⁷Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.

I love the introduction to this passage in our text: “The Cost of Discipleship.”

It seems to me that my co-worker suffered from a lack of cost-counting. It seems that serving Christ was merely an insurance policy to keep her out of hell.

As Romans 12:1 says, “consider yourself to be a living sacrifice for Christ” we make that claim, we consent to that call, but when it actually comes down to doing sacrificial things, we climb back off the altar.

But Jesus said, it is a change of life. It may cost us our life, it may cost us our wealth, it may cost us our status in the community. It certainly will change what we do and how we do it and maybe even who we work for.

Well, here we are. I have done a pretty good job of talking about “the other” in a way that doesn't actually step on our own toes.

But we now ask ourselves the question, how do these people fall into sin like this?

Is it a lack of “Counting the Cost?” or “Does the randomness of sin and temptation affect every one of us?”

Yes, and yes.

We are saved, and kept holy by Grace. I mean, Peter’s heart was right, but he denied Christ. God was the love of David’s wife, but he seduced someone else’s wife. Good people who went wrong.

But it is very clear, that when the only thing that the life and ministry of Jesus Christ means to us is some sort of insurance to keep us from punishment at the judgment, we will be much more vulnerable to temptation. We will know how easy forgiveness is.

In “The Cost of Discipleship,” Dietrich Bonheoffer, one of the last men to be executed by the Nazi's during WWII for preaching against this mentality that some people were more deserving than others said it like this: “That kind of grace is cheap grace. The grace the Jesus gives us is costly. It cost Jesus His life, and it costs us to be in partnership with it.”

Jesus said, “the one who follows my must take up His cross and follow me.”

Every person is vulnerable to sin, and God's grace covers it for everyone who trusts Christ.

We cannot earn it. But Christianity is made a mockery of when people claim Jesus as Lord and Savior and yet they do not follow His teachings. And the sad thing is, too many have claimed to follow Christ, but have an heart that still wants to live for themselves.

Let this lesson, this week be a call to surrender.

The Cost of Discipleship

²⁵Now large crowds were traveling with him; and he turned and said to them, ²⁶‘Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. ²⁷Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. ²⁸For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it? ²⁹Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it will begin to ridicule him, ³⁰saying, “This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.” ³¹Or what king, going out to wage war against another king, will not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to oppose the one who comes against him with twenty thousand? ³²If he cannot, then, while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks for the terms of peace. ³³So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.

About Salt

³⁴‘Salt is good; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? ³⁵It is fit neither for the soil nor for the manure heap; they throw it away. Let anyone with ears to hear listen!’