Disciple or Just Part of the Crowd?—LUKE 14:25-33
Jesus appealed to large crowds of people. Today’s text in Luke 15 declares: “Large crowds were traveling with Jesus.” Jesus appealed to the common masses of people. Time and again the Gospels make such announcements as:
“A few days later, when Jesus again entered Capernaum, the people heard that He had come home. So many gathered that there was no room left, not even outside the door, and He preached the word to them” (Mark 2:1-2)
In Mark 3:10 we see the crowds sometimes became pushy: “For He had healed many, so that those with diseases were pushing forward to touch Him.” We remember the story of the raising of Jairus’ daughter and the healing of the woman who had been hemorrhaging for twelve years. On that occasion Mark records: “A large crowd followed and pressed around Him” [Mark 5:24b].
Our Lord is compassionate towards the crowds as we see in Matthew 9:35-6, “Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness. When he saw the crowds, He had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” Sometimes the crowds could press Jesus so much that even His own family had difficulty obtaining an audience with Him as is the case in Luke 8:19, “Now Jesus’ Mother and brothers came to see Him, but they were not able to get near Him because of the crowd.”
On Palm Sunday again the crowd was present to welcome King Jesus into Jerusalem as Matthew relates in Matthew 21:8-9, “A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, while others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. The crowds that went ahead of Him and those that followed shouted,
‘Hosanna to the Son of David.’
‘Blessed is He Who comes in the
name of the Lord!!’
‘Hosanna in the highest!’”
But crowds can quickly turn fickle, for by Good Friday things had changed so now Matthew reports: “But the chief priest and the elders persuaded the crowd to ask for Barabbas and to have Jesus executed.” So when Pilate asked, “‘What shall I do, then, with Jesus who is called Christ?’ They all answered, ‘Crucify Him . . . . Let His blood be on us and on our children [Matthew 27:22-25].
It’s one thing to follow Jesus as part of the crowd. It’s any entirely different matter to be His disciple. Today the Holy Spirit confronts each one of us with this vital question: “Am I His Disciple or just part of the crowd?”
When we relate to Jesus as disciple to Master, it is the most intimate, personal relationship we can have with Him. Indeed Jesus calls those in the crowd to become disciples, for our text asserts: “Large crowds were traveling with Jesus, and turning to them He said: ‘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 can not be My disciple. And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me can not be My disciple” [Luke 14:25-27]. WOW! Where could you find a more challenging invitation to Christian discipleship than these words of Jesus Himself?
Billy Graham says, “Salvation is free, but discipleship costs everything we have” [--Edythe Draper, Draper’s Book of Quotations for the Christian World (Wheaton: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 1992). Entry 2832.] You can be saved and have assurance of going to heaven but not be a true disciple of Jesus Christ. A Disciple stands out from among the crowd of people who just follow Jesus. Are you a disciple of Jesus or just one who follows Him among the crowd? What is the cost of being a disciple of Jesus? First of all, you must “hate your father and mother, your wife and children, your brothers and sisters—yes, even your own life” or you “cannot be a disciple of Jesus.” Now is that not rather harsh? Well, if you take the word hate in the literal sense we normally use it, yes it is. However, this is not what Jesus is saying. Hate in the context of this Scripture simply means “to love less.” Jesus is saying that loving Him must be our number one priority. We can not love anyone or anything more than Jesus and be His disciple.
Jesus states the number one commandment of all Scripture in Matthew 22:37-38, “Jesus replied, ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment.’” Jesus must be our first love if we are to be His disciple. We might restate the words of Jesus here in the words of the first commandment as found in Exodus 20:3, “You shall have no other gods before me.” It’s so easy to screw up our priorities and either come to love people or things more than we love Jesus. This is a repeated theme in the Gospel of Luke. Go back with me for a moment to Luke 9:57-62, “As they were walking along the road, a man said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.”
“Jesus replied, ‘Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.’
“He said to another man, ‘Follow me.’
But the man replied, ‘Lord, first let me go and bury my father.’
“Jesus said to him, ‘Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God.’
“Still another said, ‘I will follow you, Lord; but first let me go back and say good-by to my family.’
“Jesus replied, ‘No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.’”
The story of the Rich Young Ruler shows us other things that can replace Jesus as our number one priority. I appreciate the way Mark records the account for us in Mark 10:21-22, “Jesus looked at him and loved him. ‘One thing you lack,’ he said. ‘Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.’
“At this the man’s face fell. He went away sad, because he had great wealth.”
So many things can replace Jesus as our “first love” and top priority:
family and friends that we love and want to please, career, material possessions such as houses and wealth to name only a few. We can not love anyone or anything more than we love and serve Jesus and be His disciple. It’s not a question of hating anyone; it’s a question of loving Jesus first and foremost. In the life of the disciple Jesus must be “my all in all.” As Dennis Jernigan, composer of this my favorite praise chorus, puts it so well, “Jesus is the source of my life, the source of my freedom. He is the source of everything I am. He’s my all in all” [--Phil Christensen and Shari MacDonald, OUR GOD REIGNS: The Stories Behind Your Favorite Praise and Worship Songs (Grand Rapids: Kregel Publications, 2000), 141.]. To be His disciple, nothing or nobody can take that place from Him.
Oswald Chambers put it so well in his devotional for yesterday, September 4th entitled “His!” In expounding on Luke 14:26 Chambers says, “Any one of the relationships our Lord mentions in this verse can compete with our relationship with Him. I may prefer to belong to my mother, or to my wife, or to myself, but if that is the case, then, Jesus said, ‘[You] cannot be My disciple.’ This does not mean that I will not be saved, but it does mean that I cannot be entirely His. . . . Be entirely His” [--James Reimann, ed., MY UTMOST FOR HIS HIGHEST: An Updated Edition in Today’s Langue The Golden Book of Oswald Chambers (Grand Rapids: Discover House Publishers, 1992), September 4th.]. Being Jesus disciple means I must “be entirely His.”
But Jesus also says, “And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow Me cannot be my disciple” [Luke 14:27]. In a related passage from
Matthew 16:38-9 Jesus says, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.” The cost of discipleship is sacrifice. All the Apostles except for John followed Jesus to torturous deaths. Although John died of natural causes, he once was boiled in a cauldron of oil. Peter was crucified upside down testifying he was unworthy to die upright as did His Lord; James the son of Zebadee was “put to death with the sword by King Herod [Acts 12:2]. Matthew was put to death by the sword in Ethiopia. James, the brother of Jesus, was thrown from the southeast pinnacle of the Temple to the ground, 100 below. When he survived; his executioners finished the job with a fuller’s club. Bartholomew, also know as Nathaniel, was flayed to death by a whip in Armenia. Andrew, Peter’s brother died on an X-shaped cross in Patros, Greece, as he testified, “I have long desired and expected this happy hour. The cross has been consecrated by the body of Christ hanging on it." It took him two days to die, and all that time he shared the Gospel with his executioners. Thomas was speared to death in India; Paul was tortured and beheaded at Rome in A. D. 67 by Nero. Matthias, who took the place of Judas Iscariot, was stoned and beheaded [--Source: John Foxe, Foxe’s Book of Martyrs]. Like Jesus they suffered persecution and paid the price of sacrifice in confidence in losing their life for the sake of Jesus they would gain it for eternity.
Someday, we too may be called upon to take the same stand for our faith in Jesus. If we are truly His disciples, there can be no hesitation. In the meantime, carrying our cross means standing up for Jesus in a post Christian, pagan society that will often ridicule us for our morals and our faith. Jesus was ridiculed at the cross as Luke relates in Luke 23:36-7, “The people stood watching, and the rulers even sneered at him. They said, ‘He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Christ of God, the Chosen One.’
“The soldiers also came up and mocked him. They offered him wine vinegar 37and said, ‘If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself.’” Paul says in I Corinthians 1:18, “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” Those who carry their cross in the footsteps of Jesus will be ridiculed, mocked, and taunted as foolish by the secular world.
Carrying our cross means that life for the disciple will not always be easy. We can expect troubles and hard times, for just before Jesus went to His own cross He warned the twelve at the Last Supper: “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world” [John 16:33]. Cross bearing will get tough, but He who has gone before us will keep us in His perfect peace as we surrender to His control and depend upon Him. By the power of His Spirit working in us “we are more than conquerors through him who loved us” [Romans 8:37].
Jesus sums everything up in final verse of today’s text, “In the same way, any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple” [Luke 14:33]. This is a favorite theme of Oswald Chambers, and he refers to our text at least three times during the year of his devotions in MY UTMOST FOR HIS HIGHEST. For the devotional of March 12 he makes the point that the disciple of Jesus is the one who has totally surrendered everything to the Lordship of Jesus under the control of the Holy Spirit. His closing admonition consist of these words: “True surrender will always go beyond natural devotion. If we will only give up, God will surrender Himself to embrace all those around us and will meet their needs, which were created by our surrender. Beware of stopping anywhere short of total surrender to God. Most of us have only a vision of what this really means, but have never truly experienced it.” And once again in his May 7th devotional on our text he stresses: “The conditions of discipleship given to us by our Lord in verses 26, 27, and 33 mean that the men and women He is going to use . . . are those in whom He has done everything . . . those who love Him personally, passionately, and with great devotion—those who have a love for Him that goes far beyond any of the closest relationship on earth. The conditions are strict, but they are glorious.”
Billy Graham is absolutely right, “Salvation is free, but discipleship costs everything we have.” Jesus says to us, “Any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple.” Jesus invites those who are following Him- in the crowd to become His disciples. A disciple or just a part of the crowd, which one are you?
