The Call To Discipleship Part 3: Count The Cost Series

We have been looking at what it means to be a follower of Jesus. What does it mean to be a disciple? For last few week we looked at Jesus’ call to follow Him. The call to be a disciple of Jesus, to follow Him is not for the faint hearted.

Mark 8:34 And He summoned the crowd with His disciples, and said to them, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me.

Jesus' call to take up our cross can be found in several places in the Gospels and Jesus said it more than once. Jesus' call is for total commitment, even to the point of death.

There are those who get excited and jump up and say to Jesus “I will follow you anywhere”

Luke 9:57 As they were going along the road, someone said to Him, “I will follow You wherever You go.”

But Jesus said:

Luke 9:58 And Jesus said to him, “The foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.”

Are we willing to give up the necessities of life to follow Jesus? Many make false starts, then fall away.

Today we will look at our commitment to following Jesus, we must do so with our eyes wide open, we must “Count the Cost.” Are we will truly willing to follow Jesus through thick and thin? Are we willing to endure suffering and being without? Do we truly count the cost?

Luke 14:25–33

Opening Ill: In May 1845 Captain Sir John Franklin with 138 officers and men, two three-masted ship with newly fitted steam engines, set sail from England to find the Northwest passage across northern Canada, a route from the Atlantic to the Pacific Oceans through the Arctic. They had a 3 year food supply along with 1,200 volume book library, an hand organ, China place settings, Sterling silver flatware with ornate Victorian design with the crest of the individual officer’s families and the officer’s initials on them. They carries no special clothing for living on the ice in the arctic, just the uniforms of Her Majesty’s Navy.

The two ship left amidst much glory and fanfare. Two months later a British whaling ship met the two ships in Lancaster Sound, in north Canada. The whalers reported back in England the spirits of the men and officer where quite high. The whalers were the last Europeans to see them.

It was many years later, the fate of the expedition was revealed. In fact the two ships that were abandoned in 1848, after being stuck in ice, were only found recently in 2014 and 2016. Later it was reported that some Inuit Eskimos has chanced across a few survivors at one point as they were making their way over land pulling an pushing a small boat across the ice.

For over twenty years, search parties recovered the remains from all over the frozen sea. From one group of frozen bodies was found place settings of sterling silver flatware engraved with the officers’ initials and family crests. Sir John Franklin and 138 men perished because they underestimated the requirements of Arctic exploration. They ignorantly imagined a pleasure cruise amidst the comforts of their English officers’ clubs. They exchanged necessities for luxuries, and their ignorance led to their death.[1]

They failed to adequately “count the cost.”

As I reviewed with you last week, we need to remember that in these verses, starting in Luke 9, Jesus is slowly traveling to Jerusalem. Betrayal, rejection, suffering, and death waits for Jesus there.

Luke 14:25a Now large crowds were going along with Him …

In fact from our passage it sounds like Jesus want to pare down the crowds, to talk people out of following Him. Jesus proceeds and tells the crowd to examine their resolve to continue to follow Him. Most the crowd were disciples in name only. Many were spiritual thrill seekers. They loved the sermons and the loved seeing the miracles. They love multiplication of loaves and fishes. It all was great until it came time where it will cost them something. Jesus proceeds to tell what it takes to be His disciple.

1. We must love Jesus supremely.

2. We must carry our cross.

3. We must renounce all of our possessions.

Let’s look at loving Jesus supremely

Luke 14:25–26 Now large crowds were going along with 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.

Jesus here uses what called a hyperbole, an obvious exaggeration to make a point, as He often does. Jesus was also using a Semitic idiom. To love one person more than another in the OT is saying to love one and to hate the other. We must love Jesus Christ supremely, more than anything or anyone else. In a greater context we see that Jesus calls for us to love others.