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 3rd 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!’
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