Cost of Discipleship

Text: Luke 14:25–33

Introduction

Let’s read our passage.

What does it mean to be a Christian?

Most of us have a version of an answer.

Perhaps you say,

A Christian is someone who believes in Jesus.

Someone who has been forgiven.

Someone who comes to church and tries to live a good life.

None of that is wrong.

But this morning Jesus gives us his version of an answer to the same question.

Jesus says:

Luke 14:26

“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.

Hate.

Your father. Your mother. Your wife. Your children. Your brothers and sisters.

That is not a random list.

Jesus has named the people closest to us.

Those are the people we love deeply, and whose approval we still need.

Then Jesus adds one more name to the list.

Hate… even your own life.

That word, hate, is important because it is Jesus’ answer.

So we have to take it seriously.

Jesus is saying there is a cost to follow Him.

So what is the cost?

And how can we afford it?

Three things this afternoon.

1. The Cost. What is Jesus actually asking for?
2. The Count. Why is Jesus telling us to count the cost?
3. The Cross. How did the price get paid?

1. The Cost

Before we look at what Jesus is actually asking for, let’s look at who He is talking to.

Now great crowds accompanied him, and he turned and said to them, (Luke 14:25)

Great crowds.

Not the twelve disciples. Not the inner circle.

Most of us assume there are two kinds of Christian.

There are ordinary Christians, who believe in Jesus and come to church.

And there are serious Christians, who actually give things up.

Missionaries. Pastors. The ones who are really committed.

But Jesus does not distinguish them.

He says this to the whole crowd.

This is not a fine print that you discover after you have signed up.

Imagine this:

Jesus is at the peak of popularity in His ministry.

Great crowds are following Him everywhere He goes.

And at that moment He turns around and makes it harder for them to follow Him.

No preacher does that. No movement does that.

To grow a movement you lower the price. Not raise it.

Yet He raises it for all.

What "hate" means

Now let us go back to that word, hate.

In the Bible, the word hate does not always mean hatred.

Sometimes it means loved less.

The clearest example is in Genesis 29.

Jacob has two wives, Leah and Rachel.

Genesis says that Jacob loved Rachel, and that Leah was hated.

When the LORD saw that Leah was hated, he opened her womb, but Rachel was barren. (Genesis 29:31)

Was Jacob cruel to Leah? No. He married her. He had children with her. He provided for her. He was not unkind to her.

Genesis 29:30 explains what the word means.

Jacob "loved Rachel more than Leah."

So Leah was not hated in the way we often understand the word.

Leah was loved less.

Jacob's love for Rachel was so great that his love for Leah looked like hatred in comparison.

That is what Jesus is saying.

Jesus is not asking you to be cold to your mother.

Jesus is asking to be loved so much more than your mother that it looks like hatred.

Tim Keller puts it like this. Jesus is saying to you: I want to be the Rachel of your life.

This is not a mere request to put Jesus first on a list.

You can put God at the top of a list and feel nothing.

But Jesus is asking for your deepest affection.

He wants to be loved warmly, personally, and more than anyone else.

He wants to be treasured.

So here is the litmus test.

When you pray, are you talking to Him as a lover?

We know what it is like to talk to a lover, you are looking forward to it, you are enjoying it. And you can’t wait for the next one.

The alternative?

You are just saying your prayers as a grocery list?

Now, think about what that kind of relationship would cost.

Jesus named two.

Cost 1: our family

Our family is very important to us.

For some of us, we have grown-up children of our own, and yet we are still longing for our parents’ approval of us. For them to be proud of us.

So when Jesus says He must come before our family, it sounds like betrayal.

Now listen carefully…

Jesus is saying that our family is expendable, if we have Him.

In that culture, to live your whole life without a husband or a wife, without children, was unthinkable. It was close to a disgrace.

Yet Jesus says a person can be single and lack nothing.

Cost 2: our own life

Then Jesus adds our own life.

For many of us, this is the harder one.

You say:

This is my life.

I get to decide what I do with it.

Look at how Jesus says it in verse 27.

Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. (Luke 14:27)

Carrying a cross does not mean doing something really difficult.

It means he is on his way to die.

His life no longer belongs to him.

One idol

Underneath these two demands Jesus made there is only one root problem.

In both cases we want to be the author of our own life.

To be in control.

But Jesus is saying, do not come to Me because I am useful.

Do not come to Me for a better marriage.

A peaceful life.

Or a successful career.

I will not be used.

And here is how you find out if you are merely using Jesus.

You have an “if-based” relationship with Him.

You follow Him, if …

Your children come around

Your relationship works out.

You get the promotion.

How to tell

Here is a fair question: How would you know if something has taken first place in your heart?

You cannot tell by how much you enjoy or love it.

Because…

Loving your children is not idolatry.

Enjoying your work is not idolatry.

You can tell something has taken first place if that thing has become too important to your heart.

When it has you by the throat.

Think about a rejection you still cannot get over even after so many years.

Think about the job, or the relationship, or the balance in the bank account, that you are quietly terrified of losing.

Those are not things you merely love.

Those are things that have you by the throat.

The Franklin expedition

Let me illustrates.

In 1845 Sir John Franklin sailed from England with 129 men to find a sea route across the top of Canada.

Two ships.

Supplies for three years.

Each ship carried only twelve days of coal.

In the space where the coal should have gone, they packed a library of 1,200 books.

A hand organ that played fifty tunes.

Fine China plates.

Cut glass wine goblets.

And silver knives, forks and spoons, engraved with each officer's initials and family crest.

They took no Arctic clothing.

Only Royal Navy uniforms.

And the results?

All 129 men died.

But here is the more interesting fact.

Search parties were still finding bodies on the ice twenty years later.

One party found two men in uniform who had dragged a boat on a sledge for over a hundred kilometres.

In the boat with them was some chocolate, some tea, some guns, and a large amount of silverware.

They were dying, and they were still dragging the silverware.

They could not put it down, because the silver was not just cutlery to them.

The silver was who they were.

That is what a disordered love looks like.

Their silverware had them by their throat.

So this is the cost:

Jesus wants first place.

First place.

Way ahead of the people we love, and ahead of our rights to run our own life.

2. The Count

Jesus tells two short stories.

The first story.

A man builds a tower.

Luke 14:28–29

[28] 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? [29] Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him

Then the second story.

A king goes to war.

Luke 14:31–32

[31] Or what king, going out 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 against him with twenty thousand? [32] And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace.

Both stories turn on the same two words: Sit down.

Do not rush in.

Work out what this will cost before you begin.

Buying a house

We know how to sit down and count the cost.

Think about buying a house.

You sit down.

You look at the price.

You look at the deposit you have.

You look at the interest and work out the monthly repayment.

Then you ask yourself one question.

Can I make that payment every month for the next thirty years?

A mortgage is designed so that the answer is yes. We can afford it.

Even if it is a huge amount, we can afford a small monthly repayment.

So we do the same with Jesus.

We sit down.

We work out what following Him might cost.

Church on Sunday.

Give to the offering.

Clean up a few bad habits.

Be a nicer person at home.

Read the Bible.

We come out of that feeling reasonably comfortable.

So we tell ourselves: Yes, I can do that.

Yes, it is a big commitment. But we think we can make the payments.

Verse 33: the real cost

Then Jesus tells us the real cost.

So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple. (Luke 14:33)

All that he has.

Not a monthly payment.

Not ten percent.

Everything.

Three times in this passage Jesus says the same thing.

Cannot be my disciple. (See vv 26, 27, 33)

There is no repayment plan.

There is no thirty year term.

There is no amount we can set aside each month that will slowly buy us a place in the kingdom.

Why Jesus tells us to count

If the price is everything, and there is nothing left to work out.

Why does Jesus tell us to sit down and count?

He is not asking us to budget.

He is asking us to stop pretending.

The crowd followed Jesus with excitement, but they had never once thought about what His claim on their life actually meant.

This kind of excitement without counting the real cost is what gets Franklin and his men killed on the ice.

So sit down.

Add it up honestly.

And when you do, this is what you will find…

You will find that there’s no way you can pay at all.

3. The Cross

Let’s go back to verse 27, Jesus says:

Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. (Luke 14:27)

Jesus does not say take up My teaching and follow Me.

He says take up your cross.

A cross is not a heavy burden.

A cross is an execution.

Following Jesus means to put yourself to death.

How can we afford this?

The One who could finish

We can’t, but there is One who can.

Jesus sat down and counted the cost of saving us.

He is the only person who has ever counted the real cost and paid it.

Jesus bore His own cross to pay for our salvation.

For people who could not pay a single cent of what is required.

When Jesus died, you also died with Him. His death counted as yours.

For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. (Colossians 3:3)

The moment you believe in Jesus, you died on that cross with Him.

You were buried with Him.

Which means when God looks at you right now, He sees you as though you have already paid the penalty for every cent of your sin.

Not that you will pay it one day. It is paid.

If our debt is paid in full,

then what is left for us is not a repayment.

But there is another cost.

It’s the cost of discipleship.

Some people think:

Give up everything and then God will accept me.

But Jesus turns it around.

God accepts you because of what Jesus gave up.

Only then can you begin to let go of what you have been holding on.

One more thing we need to be clear on.

Renouncing everything does not mean selling everything and living on the street.

Zacchaeus, the chief tax collector, gave half of what he had to the poor, and Jesus said salvation had come to his house.

What Jesus says is that nothing belongs to us ultimately.

It is all His, so hold it loosely, ready for Him to use.

This is not a command to be poor.

Cross. Every day

Jesus says: Take up the cross.

That’s a specific kind of death.

He did not say take up your firing squad and follow Me.

He did not say take up your electric chair.

Those are instant.

One moment you are alive, the next moment you are dead.

He said take up your cross.

Crucifixion is a death sentence.

But it is slow.

And he [Jesus] said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. (Luke 9:23)

Take up your cross daily.

This is gradual.

What He asks for is not a single heroic day. It is consistent.

Every day you get up and remind yourself who you are in Him.

You have died.

You are accepted.

There is nothing left to prove.

And here is what that looks like come Monday.

Someone snubs you at work (or uni), it does not devastate you.

You miss out on the promotion, it does not steal your joy.

Not because you don’t care. But because you already have the most precious that you cannot lose.

And that is what dying to yourself actually looks like.

Not self-hatred.

Not beating yourself up.

It is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less.

It is self-forgetfulness.

Church,

Forget your reputation.

Forget your own glory.

Forget your name.

The stars are out all day

So what happens to our family?

What happens to all the loves we were told to put second?

They do not get cut off.

They get eclipsed.

The stars are out all day.

But you cannot see them, because the sun is too bright.

The stars are not dimmer during the day.

My point:

The problem is not that we love anything too much.

It is that we love Jesus too little.

When Jesus comes first, and our family comes second

It doesn't mean we love them any less.

The man who loves Jesus most loves his wife more. Much more.

Discussion questions:

1. What struck you the most from the sermon?
2. In your experience, what makes it hard for you to love Jesus in the first place?
3. Why is it important for you to sit down and count the cost? What happens when you don't?
4. How does the gospel compel you to pay the price to follow Jesus?