The Cost of Discipleship – Part 2
September 29, 2024
Dr. Bradford Reaves
Crossway Christian Fellowship
Luke 14:25-35
www.mycrossway.org
25 Now great crowds accompanied him, and he turned and said to them, 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. 27 Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. 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 cannot finish, all who see it begin to mock him, 30 saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’ 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. 33 So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple. 34 “Salt is good, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? 35 It is of no use either for the soil or for the manure pile. It is thrown away. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” (Luke 14:25-33)
We're continuing to discuss the extreme character of discipleship this week. Jesus's words are absolutely and unmistakably definitive. In this passage, Jesus establishes the high calling of being his disciple. Unfortunately, today, many churches seem to lower the bar to make church some sort of consumeristic experience that focuses on the wants and desires of man instead of the Lord. It's backward.
The church is not about consumerism. While that may work great for selling hamburgers, cars, or coffeehouses, it is not compatible with the Gospel of Jesus. Consumerism focuses on the wants and desires of the flock, while biblical discipleship focuses on denial. This seems to go against modern church thinking and church growth strategies. The move is to gain followers of the church, not followers of Christ.
LCBC Church, out of Lancaster, PA, used popular movies this past summer's “at the movies” sermon series, where they show clips from popular movies and then execute the script sprinkled with some scripture. One campus spent thousands of dollars to build a 16-foot chocolate waterfall modeled after Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory to celebrate the series. (https://www.facebook.com/lcbcchurch/posts/878198274339096/)
Faith church in Saint Louis, Missouri, built a roller coaster on their stage while the worship band played “Love Roller Coaster” by the Red Hot Chili Peppers while 3-foot sparklers went off. If you want to be with the inner circle of Lead Pastor David Crank’s wife, Nichole, you can be included for $16,999.00 a year. If that’s too salty for you, there is a Zoom option for $29.00 a month.
(https://protestia.com/2024/09/02/megachurch-pastors-wife-charging-16999-to-be-part-of-her-inner-circle-private-text-access/)
Church by the Glades in Coral Springs, FL, embodies entertainment during pastor David Hughes’s sermons by using acrobats, Baby Shark mashups, and an Addams Family-themed service.
North Point Community Church in Atlanta GA pastor Andy Stanley who is known for watering down everything he possibly can recently stated in a podcast that he has 12 to 14 people check his sermons weekly to ensure that it doesn't land poorly with the crowd. Especially Democrats, minorities, and women. (https://protestia.com/2024/08/22/andy-stanley-says-12-14-people-check-his-sermon-outline-to-ensure-it-doesnt-land-poorly-with-democrats-and-women/)
Recently, the Church of England stated its avoiding using the term church for their new church plants in order to appease the current woke movement, using terms like “new things” or “faith expressions” or “worship communities”. (https://protestia.com/2024/08/19/woke-rebrand-church-of-england-is-avoiding-the-term-church-for-new-church-plants-study-finds/)
You remember primarily this year when a woman pastor at Crossroads Church in Cincinnati irreverently kicks a Bible from the church stage for a field goal.
The point is this new version of Christianity makes sure consumers of entertainment instead of the Word of God. It makes you a disciple of popularity and celebrity pastors instead of a disciple of Jesus Christ. They’re deceiving enormous crowds, thinking that this is what following Christ is all about. It's custom-tailored to your preferences. There is no substance to your faith. What's worse is that people think they're hearing the gospel, and they think they're being rescued from an eternal judgment when, in fact, they are being tragically misled.
Jesus's call is not to self-fulfillment. It's not man-centered, self-loving, psychologically defined, or personally enriching. The gospel is a call to sinners to put to death a life of sin for the eternal life found in Jesus Christ. It is self-denial and countercultural. Jesus isn't asking you to add him to your life; he's calling for a complete takeover. This is the costly gospel that Jesus preached.
Now, you'll remember last week, I brought you the first of three points in Jesus’s parable of the cost of discipleship. That being a disciple demands the relinquishment of your past priorities. You'll remember that Jesus says you must put every person, everything, every desire, every plan, every priority in submission to him. Every priority in your life changes. The false gospel says that you come to Jesus, and he will fulfill everything you ever wanted, and your dreams will come true. That's the deceptive gospel. It's not about Jesus giving you what you want, Jesus says when you come to him it might cost you everything. The early Christians were following Jesus as a death sentence, which is why they started wearing the cross as a symbol of their faith.
I read of a man who was Muslim, now living here in America. Recently, he came to know Christ. His family is back in Iran. They will now disown him.....they will consider him to be dead. If you truly follow the Lord, you won’t have to look for people to ridicule you; they will find you- and they may be your family members.
Today, we'll cover the remaining two points of Jesus’s message.
1. Being a disciple demands relinquishment of past priorities.
2. Being a disciple requires an assessment of current commands.
3. Being a disciple Commands allegiance to future fulfillment.
In other words, when you choose to become a disciple of Jesus Christ, you take on a completely different worldview, past, present, and future.
Being a disciple requires an assessment of current commands.
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? (Luke 14:28)
In Jesus’s culture, there were two very important cultural ideas. First, everybody knew what everybody else was doing. Second, honor was held in high regard. So here's Jesus using the illustration of a person building a tower. Building a tower would be a big undertaking. But to begin it and not be able to finish it would be embarrassing, and the entire community would know it.
When you build a tower, Jesus says you'll sit down and calculate if you have enough to complete the project before you even start it. Otherwise, you'll be left with a hat finish building and bring yourself and your family shame. Twice here, Jesus uses the word Teleo, which means finished or completed. Jesus himself uses this word, Tetelesai, at his death on the cross to say it has been finished.
Jesus said that being his disciple is not about kicking the tires. It's not a journey. You start halfway and then decide it is not for you, so you turn back around. Following Jesus is an all-or-nothing thing. Likewise, we don't manipulate people to come to Jesus or follow Jesus. Jesus didn't sugarcoat the conditions. We're not bringing heaven to earth, but rather, we are setting the promises of this world aside, dying to ourselves, and waiting to go to heaven.
John Stott writes in Basic Christianity, "The Christian landscape is strewn with the wreckage of derelict, half-built towers, the ruins of those who began to build and were unable to finish. Thousands of people still ignore Christ's warning and undertake to follow Him without first pausing to reflect on the cost of doing so. This is the great scandal of Christendom, so-called nominal Christianity. In countries to which the Christian civilization has spread, large numbers of people have covered themselves with a decent but thin veneer of Christianity. They've allowed themselves to become somewhat involved, enough to be respectable but not enough to be uncomfortable. Their religion," he says, "is a great, soft cushion. It protects them from the hard unpleasantness of life while changing its place and shape to suit their convenience. No wonder the cynics speak of hypocrites in the church and dismiss religion as escapism.”
God provides what we need. Jesus is speaking here about the cost of total commitment. He is talking about finishing strong. In verse 29, Jesus spoke about the man who could not finish the job. He says everyone will look at this tower and see that it wasn’t finished and they will ridicule him. House on my street growing up...bricked about halfway. For at least ten years, it stayed that way. Always looked odd. One pastor tells the story of a pastor who drove through a small town years ago and saw a concrete block/shell someone had started years earlier. But te project had been stopped. There was no roof on the building, and trees and shrubs grew inside the building. One of the pine trees growing inside the uncompleted church was at least 15 feet tall. I don’t know the whole story about what happened in that church, but to everyone who passed by for years, building preached a sermon. Someone started this church without counting the cost, and they couldn’t finish it. Jesus says that when you start something, it finishes nicely. The older I get, the more I realize we cannot coast in the Christian life. There is no such thing as spiritual retirement. Let me ask you how you will finish. I’ve watched people committed through the years walk away from the church and the Lord. Don’t be one of those people!
For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Corinthians 12:10)
Indeed, I count everything as a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord. For his sake, I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, so that I may gain Christ (Philippians 3:8)
Jesus said to him, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” (Luke 9:62)
I read this week about a lifeguard on a beach who saw a drowning man. He walked into the water but didn’t go out to rescue the man. People gathered on the beach and yelled at the lifeguard to do his job and rescue the man. The lifeguard stepped out a bit deeper but still did not respond. When it seemed the man was going under for the last time, the lifeguard swam out, grabbed him, and pulled him back to shore. After some care, the man was fine, but instead of being a hero, the crowd was angry; they couldn’t understand why the lifeguard didn’t respond quickly. The lifeguard explained, “You can see that he is much bigger and stronger than I am. If I had gone out sooner, the way he was thrashing and kicking so violently, he would have probably drowned us both. As long as he was trying to save himself, I couldn’t help him. But when he got tired and gave up, I knew I could save him. (Credit: Sermon Central)
The question is, who is in charge? Jesus knew. He knew to the point that as he spoke these words, he was going to Jerusalem, knowing he was going to be crucified. “The cross is laid on every Christian. As we embark upon discipleship, we surrender ourselves to Christ in union with his death and give our lives to death. The cross is not the terrible end to an otherwise god-fearing and happy life, but it meets us at the beginning of our communion with Christ. When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” (Bonhoeffer)
Being a Disciple Commands Allegiance to Future Fulfillments.
“Salt is good, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? 35 It is of no use either for the soil or for the manure pile. It is thrown away. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” (Luke 14:34-35)
The word salt illustrates preservation and looks into the future. Salt has an important function, and in Jesus's day, salt was valuable. Salt was used as a means to preserve food before refrigeration.
Likewise, salt was also valuable. People would be paid and salt.
Ezekiel 43 associates the New Covenant with Salt. “You shall present them before the Lord, and the priests shall sprinkle salt on them and offer them up as a burnt offering to the Lord.” (Ezekiel 43:24)
In Jewish culture, salt was a symbol of promises and loyalty, and Jesus said that if salt loses its saltiness, it is almost an expression of hyperbole. Because salt does not change, it does not lose its saltiness. But if salt did not have its flavor and saltiness, it would be utterly useless.
Lanny Bridges works as a chemist for Morton Salt. He works in the salt mines every day. He says that pure salt never loses its saltiness. According to him, you could take a pure salt crystal, and 10,000 years later, it would still be just as salty. Pure salt never loses its flavor. The salt used in the time of Jesus wasn’t mined; it came from the Dead Sea. When the water evaporated, it left salt. But the salt was so mixed with other minerals that even though it looked like salt...it didn’t taste like salt. When it was placed on food, there was no flavor. When it was used to keep meat fresh, the meat went bad. So the only thing to do was to put it on the road and use it for gravel or to walk on it. (Verse 35). It was useless.
Unfortunately, many times, we are the same way. We’re useless. We do not commit. Too many Christians are like a dog I read about. One day, a man walked into an old country store and saw a sign that read: Danger! Beware of Dog!” The man looked around carefully, but all he saw was an old hound dog fallen asleep on the floor. He told the owner, that dog doesn’t look dangerous to me.” The owner said, well, folks keep tripping over him, so that’s why I put up the sign.
I think Jesus is saying here about value and loyalty. In the Sermon on the Mount, he told us that we are the salt of the earth, the change agents that Jesus put on earth. Likewise, our loyalty is to the King. We are loyal disciples of Jesus; our discipleship is valuable and costly.
“Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer "The Cost of Discipleship")
How will you finish as a disciple? Will you help others or become a stumbling block that people trip over? We are talking about authentic, radical, life-changing discipleship.
