35. Who is Jesus?
May 08st, 2011 (Mother’s Day)
Evaluating the Cost
Happy Mother’s day to all of our moms, we have a really special text for you today as we continue in our series through the gospel of Luke. Grace is free. Salvation is expensive. We spend a lot of time in the church talking about making a decision for Jesus but we don’t seem to have the same desire for Him that His disciples did. It’s like our goal is to do as little as possible to gain eternal life.
We like to start new things but not everyone finishes them. When it gets hard or painful we give up. We walk away. We do this with God, our marriages, our friends, our jobs. We will do something so long as it is easy but when it gets difficult a lot of times we quit. We seem to think that something being challenging means it’s wrong. Anything worth having is going to be difficult. If you walk away every time something gets difficult then you will never have anything actually worth having.
We are in Luke 14:25, this is just after Jesus final dinner with the religious leaders. After Jesus leaves crowds gather around Him and He begins to teach them about what it really means to follow Him. Now we like the play the; I’m saved by grace card. That is true, salvation does not come from being good and it is not something you can earn. Salvation comes from the grace of God. Grace costs you nothing, salvation will cost you everything. It will cost you your friends, your family, your time, your possessions, your children, even your life. Following Jesus is not about getting in, it’s about developing a real relationship with God that leads to life. Salvation is not just about a decision it’s about discipleship.
Lk 14:25 Large crowds were traveling with Jesus, and turning to them he said:
Lk 14:26 “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be my disciple. Lk 14:27 And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.
Jesus says you have to hate your father and mother to follow Him. So Happy Mother’s day, we hate you. Some churches give you flowers for Mother’s day, we give you hate. We will explain that in a minute. After the big blow out at Casa de la Pharisee a huge crowd forms to hear Jesus speak. It seems like whenever Jesus goes toe-to-toe with the religious people it draws the interest of the crowd. Huge groups of people come along and they are so impressed with Jesus for the way He schooled the religious leaders that they start offering Him these cheap admirations and shallow praise. They start boasting that they are His biggest fans. Jesus has lots of fans. Jesus is a rock star; everywhere He goes crowds gather. Even today, thousands of years later there are plenty of people who like to talk about Jesus, who discuss His life and teachings as if He were an academic course. Jesus still has lots of fans. He has over 5 million Facebook friends, on one page.
Jesus team is popular and the stadium is always packed full of fans. He just doesn’t have that many people who actually want to play. He has plenty of cheerleaders, but not enough athletes. He doesn’t have a lot of people who are truly willing to follow Him, to live for Him, and to become His disciples. Being a disciple demands total allegiance and unwavering devotion.
A disciple is someone who seeks so desperately to be like Jesus that they pattern their life after Him. A disciple is someone so committed to the cause of Christ that they would follow Him through the gates of hell and back. A disciple is someone who finds their entire identity, purpose, and meaning in Jesus. Who sets Him up as the focus and center of their life and will stop at nothing to see His dream for the world made into a reality. A disciple is a dedicated and unstoppable follower of Jesus. Jesus is their perspective. He is the lens through which they view the world. Jesus is their everything.
Jesus is not looking for a decision He is looking for disciples. So what is the difference? When someone makes a decision they still live like the world. They still share the world’s values, interests, worries, fears, priorities, and lifestyles. Disciples are believers who live like Jesus and they care about the things that Jesus cares about. Being a disciple means Jesus is your greatest priority, even more than your own family.
Jesus teaches us how to love. Jesus shows us how to love. He is love and He is all about love. He is the guy who tells us that love sums up the law. Here Jesus tells us to hate. He says you have to hate your mom, hate your dad, your brothers and sisters, hate your own children, and even hate your own life. So what does Jesus mean?
Obviously Jesus does not mean that to love Him we have to hate our families. Otherwise this would be the worst Mother’s day sermon ever. What He is getting at is that compared to our love for Him even our love for our families should look like hate. Hate is not how you feel about them, but how they may perceive your actions when you take time away from them to follow what Jesus has called you to do. You need to love Jesus first and to love Jesus most.
The way you love Him, treat Him, respond to Him needs to be in a league of its own. A relationship with Jesus must be so far above a relationship with anyone else that the only comparison you can make between them is hate. Even when you treat your family with a Christ-like love when you compare that to the way you love Jesus and to the devotion you have for Him it looks like hate. No one should be as significant as Jesus in your life. It’s not just putting Jesus first, its if anything at all can even come close to competing with Jesus then you love that thing too much and Jesus too little.
Love for your family, spouses, and children is commanded and assumed in Scripture. What Jesus is doing is giving us perspective: above and beyond all of that, we are to love Him. You don’t need to hate your family, but to love them less than Jesus. The idea is that following Jesus is your first love and that it should always take precedent over family members, friends, and even your own life.
Jesus is preparing us for what our lives will be like when we dedicate ourselves to Him. When you devote yourself to Jesus you will probably have people close to you, maybe even in your own family who try to pull you back. Be reasonable. Don’t spend so much time reading your bible, or praying, or being with the people of God. You need to be a part of this family, so you need to come to do this, do that, be here for this. You may feel relationship pressure from your family to reduce your dedication to Jesus.
Family has this unique way of making you feel guilty when they are not your first priority. There are cultures in the world where if you become a Christian your own family will try to kill you to protect their honor. Jesus is telling us, when you follow me expect opposition. Not everyone is going to like that fact that you love Jesus. If your spouse is not a Christian they may not like that you spend so much time at church and serving Jesus. They may mistreat you because of it, they may even threaten to leave you because of it. Your kids may hate you because of Jesus. They may want you to support their sin, to enable them to do evil and because of Jesus you can’t.
In that setting you have to decide which relationship is more important to you: Jesus or your family? When you love Jesus most; you don’t hide Him to save your popularity. You don’t do something unethical or wrong at work even when your boss asks you to. You don’t date non-Christians. You don’t keep your mouth shut when someone needs to hear about the love of God. It comes down to priorities, if someone is above Jesus on your priority list, if someone can compete with Him for your attention or devotion then you are not ready to follow Him.
In addition Jesus disciples must carry their own cross. A cross is not a burden or an inconvenience. My husband has a really bad sense of humor but that is my cross to bear. My parents are so lame that is my cross to bear. My children are undisciplined, disrespectful, little monsters, while that may be true, that is not the cross that Jesus is referring to. The cross was an instrument of execution that horrified and scandalized the Jews. It was a reminder to the Jews that the Romans were in control of them. The cross was a symbol of shame, of defeat, of pain, and of death. Carrying your cross meant you were joining the losing team. Following Jesus means you have to lose yourself so you can win; you have to be defeated to share in victory. It means you have to die so you can live. The cross is a death sentence for life. Following Jesus means not just dying but dying to yourself, your wants, your life every single day for the rest of your life.
Lk 14:28 “Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Will he not first sit down and estimate the cost to see if he has enough money to complete it? Lk 14:29 For if he lays the foundation and is not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule him, Lk 14:30 saying, ‘This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.’ Lk 14:31 “Or suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Will he not first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand? Lk 14:32 If he is not able, he will send a delegation while the other is still a long way off and will ask for terms of peace. Lk 14:33 In the same way, any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple.
My wife and I bought our first house almost two years ago. You know what the first thing we did was? We poured over our finances. We looked at how much money we had for a down payment. We looked at how much we could afford for monthly payments and so we figured out the price range we could afford. There no point trying to buy a house that you can’t pay for. So before you buy a house or build a house you have to make sure you have the money to pay for it.
The most important part of any building is going to be the foundation. Building the foundation takes time and is pretty expensive. Even so the foundation is only the beginning. A foundation while essential to a home does not have walls to protect you from the wind. It does not have a roof to protect you from the rain. So even if you build a solid foundation, if you don’t build the rest of the house it doesn’t do you much good.
A lot of people come to Jesus. A lot of people start to follow Him, they lay their foundation, they begin their journey, and somewhere along the way when things get hard, they give up. If you don’t finish it doesn’t count. If you buy a car that’s exciting; if they repo it because you stop paying for it, that is less exciting. Getting married is wonderful but it means nothing if you don’t finish it. Having kids is great but not if stop raising them halfway through. Starting a relationship with Jesus means nothing if you don’t finish it.
Can you give up everything to follow Jesus? The world calls us to gain, Jesus calls us to lose. Following Jesus does not mean you will have no possessions but that you don’t think of those possessions as your own. You make Jesus the owner, the controller, the head of your life and you give Him the control to use you and everything you own as He sees fit.
Lk 14:34 “Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? Lk 14:35 It is fit neither for the soil nor for the manure pile; it is thrown out. “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”
Salt or sodium chloride is an extremely stable compound. So salt cannot actually lose its saltiness. You cant make salt non-salty, what you can do is dilute it with other things. There are other things that look like salt but do not have the same value or usefulness as salt. Once they are mixed together they cant be separated and the salt is worthless. It’s only good is to be thrown out. Christians cant be made less effective, only diluted with so much worldly stuff that they no longer have any value. Jesus needs to be more than a part of your life. He needs to be more than your Sunday morning routine. He needs to be your life. Not diluted, not watered down.
Christianity is not about a decision you make once, it is about a lifetime of dedication to Jesus. Jesus is not asking us to make a decision for Him, He is asking us to live our lives for Him, to love Him first, to love Him most. He is asking us to care for Him more than we can for the woman who carried us for nine months and then raised us for eighteen years. Jesus is calling us to love Him more than we love our own lives: to make everything we do and everything we are all about Him.
Jesus isn’t looking for fans. He is looking for followers, and the time has come when you have to decide which one you are. Jesus calls us to follow Him, we don’t answer that call with a yes, we answer it with the fruit of our life at the end of our life. Jesus calls us to die so that we can live. The game is starting and the time has come to decide whether you want to sit by and watch on the sidelines, or you want to get in the game and do something for Jesus. Only the players are considered a part of the team.
