« Lord, Will Only a Few Be Saved?-Luke 13:22-30 | Home | Drink The Good Stuff »

The Cost of Following Jesus-Luke 14:25-35

By Charlie Vensel | June 12, 2008

I came across a story this week; a hen and a pig approached a church and read the advertised sermon topic: “What can we do to help the poor?” Immediately the hen suggested they feed them bacon and eggs. The pig thought for a moment and said, “There is only one thing wrong with feeding bacon and eggs to the poor. For you it requires only a contribution, but for me it requires total commitment.” That story also serves to illustrate a key point that we will be emphasizing from the Scripture today: counting the cost. 


When we hear those words, “Counting the Cost,” we usually cringe. We start thinking of replacing a dead refrigerator when the money is not in the savings account. Or worse, having to replace a car that is paid off for one that is not. We do not like to think about costs too much; we do not like to pay. However, if we think for a few moments we soon realize that everything comes at a cost. Every decision we make comes at the cost of another.

Growing up, I had a friend who was a swimmer. He came from a long line of collegiate swimmers. He was good at a very young age and he decided early in life just how serious he wanted to become in that sport and trained accordingly. He set his eyes on the Olympics. He forwent many other options in life: great meals, sleep, going out with friends, girlfriends, concerts, and vacations. He trained for ten years just to qualify for the Olympic games. He conditioned himself for years just for the chance to compete; now that is devotion!

In today’s Gospel passage, Jesus illustrates the importance of fully devoted discipleship; it too will come with a cost and one we must be willing to pay. He opens with a statement against one of our deepest idols, our family, followed by two simple parables: One is taken from the agricultural world of that day and deals with construction or building, the other is taken from a political situation and deals with destruction or fighting. Nevertheless, Jesus uses both illustrations to teach the same lesson; what it costs us to fully follow Jesus and what it will cost us if we choose a different path. You might say it this way; as Jesus gave his all to us, we are expected to give our all to him. Let us turn to our Gospel passage and walk through these illustrations to see how they will strengthen us as Christians.

First, please turn to vv. 26-27. We read, “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. And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14:26-27 NIV). Because Jesus gave his all to us as Lord, we must give our all to him.

This is a hard saying. Does this mean I am to hate my family? Does not Jesus say, “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy…In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church.” (Ephesians 5:25-29 NIV) Does the Lord not also say, “Sons are a heritage from the LORD, children a reward from him. Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are sons born in one’s youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them. They will not be put to shame when they contend with their enemies in the gate.” (Psalms 127:3-5 NIV) We husbands are to love our wives. We are to nourish and cherish them. We are to find joy in giving them joy. Wives are to do the same to their husbands. Our children are blessings. That seems clear, does it not? Loving our families is mandatory. Our families are supposed to be sources of great joy. In light of our Gospel lesson this morning, is this a contradiction? Of course not. What it is saying is that we should not come to value our earthly families more than the Lord himself. It is a warning about familial idolatry.

What does it mean to hate your family? To hate your family is to love them less than you love the Lord. Take for example a man who goes off to seminary at 38 years of age leaving behind two great jobs, pulling his children out of the influential social circles that will make their career paths easy one day, tearing everyone away from a deeply rooted and large family tree, one who withdraws from country clubs, sells boats and other possessions, moves from the “right” neighborhood into the “wrong” neighborhood and throws all worldly wisdom to the wind to follow the Lord’s calling. To the world, that looks irresponsible and hateful. To the Lord, it looks like the minimum that could be done when he calls. It is putting the Lord ahead of familial comfort. That is what Jesus means. Do not make idols out of anything, even your family. It is a model Jesus followed, leaving a carpenter’s job and a single mother with the younger siblings behind, to pursue God’s calling; that looks irresponsible, but it is not. The Lord expects nothing less of us than to drop everything when he calls. We have all been called and nothing should stand in our way of our calling and devotion, not even our families.

Looking to Scripture, we see that God’s First and Second Commandments to the post-Fall Covenant Community are “Do not have other gods besides me,” and “Do not make an idol for yourself.” (Exodus 20:3-4 HCSB) I think it no accident these two commandments lead the list, for they are foundational for proper worship and thus, proper living. Yet, due to the sinful nature of man, we see that God had to berate Israel for her affection towards idols her entire history; indeed, it was her chief sin…her Canaanization; becoming like her Canaanite neighbors, she worshipped anything and everything but God. Scripture is also littered with the idolatrous nature of the surrounding pagan cultures in both Testaments, and includes plenty of warnings for the New Testament believer. Christ himself tells us what Moses did very early on in Deut 6:5, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and most important commandment.” (Matthew 22:37-38 HCSB). This statement is a reaffirmation of the first two Commandments, in that God alone is to be the object of our affections. Clearly, idolatry is a problem, it has been from the beginning, and it is universal.

Please hear this morning, that idols are not necessarily golden, bronze, or wooden images; they are anything we come to value or worship more than God. For Israel, there were the Canaanite Baals, those jolly-natured gods whose worship was a rampage of gluttony, drunkenness, and ritual prostitution. For us there are still the great gods of Sex, Shekels (money), and Stomach (passion & gluttony) (an unholy trinity constituting one god: self), and the other enslaving trio, Pleasure, Possessions, and Position, whose worship is described as, “the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride in one’s lifestyle.” (1John 2:16 HCSB) Indeed the list of other gods is endless, for anything anyone allows to run his life, internally or externally, becomes his god and the claimants for this prerogative are legion. In the matter of life’s basic loyalty, temptation is a many-headed monster.

Our family can be an idol like any other, and in the realm of choosing this day whom you will serve, the family is often our first concern. Do you sacrifice God’s glory to have peace in your home? How many people do you know that stay in an apostate church because it is what their family calls home? Do you say, “I will follow Jesus if it will not mess up my marriage,” or “I will follow Jesus if my children are able to get into good schools,” “I will follow Jesus if it allows me to prospect for more sales in the congregation to provide better for my family,” or “I cannot possibly follow Jesus in that way [you fill in the blank] because my family will suffer?” Do you tell God, “If I just had another child, I would be happy,” or “If you would just give me a spouse, I would be filled with joy at last?”

Yes, the illustration Jesus gives us is about the family and it can be a real idol for many, but like his audience then, may we be brought to put down our familial idols, as well as all other idols, and believe on him and worship him alone as Lord and Savior. We can have no other gods before him. That is the foundation of proper worship, and indeed, always the first step to repentance. Jesus gave himself for us and he is satisfied with nothing less than our wholehearted worship; he is a jealous God.

Second, please turn to vv. 28-30. We read, “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? For if he lays the foundation and is not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule him, saying, ‘This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.’” (Luke 14:28-30 NIV). Because Jesus gave his all for us, we must be willing to pay the cost?

Many churches today have preached a message like this, “If you will just try Jesus, your life will be better.” They have misled the masses telling them that the way of Jesus is easy; in fact, they present it in terms of being optional, like picking from the self-help shelf at Books-a-Million. Not only are they saying nothing of sin, repentance, and the cost of discipleship, but even worse, many of those preaching that message do not even believe in those things. Brothers and sisters, I ask you to remember our sermon back on August 19th where we looked at Luke 12:52-53, “From now on there will be five in one family divided against each other, three against two and two against three. They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.” (Luke 12:52-53 NIV) There we talked about how following Jesus will cost us relationships and how it will cost us our own lives through painful sanctification. Following Jesus is the path of sacrifice, suffering, dying to self, giving of ourselves to others, emptying ourselves to help others overflow. There is nothing easy about it. I have been a Christian now coming up on ten years and I can say with all honesty, it has been the best ten years of my life, but they have also been the hardest. We must know this and ask ourselves, “Am I willing,” or “Am I able to pay the price of following Jesus,” or “Am I willing to lay down the idols of my own desires, and surrender wholly to him?”

In addition, we also learn throughout Scripture, that while Jesus gave his all for us, he also paid the cost for us. I had a gentleman who worked for me a number of years ago; we will call him Clarence. We spoke of Christ often. He was a married man and a ladies’ man, he enjoyed drinking heavily, and was always looking for an opportunity to satisfy those two desires; wine and women. He kept them pretty satisfied too. He finally looked at me one day and said, “Charlie, I know the Gospel is true, but I am just not ready to give up all of this fun I’m having. Christ would not want me like this anyway.” Clarence counted the cost and decided he was not willing to pay it. At least he was honest, but he was incorrect in his understanding. I will come back to that in a minute.

I have another friend, who did not understand why more people did not become Christians. He had an easy time laying down his carnal fun at his conversion, and for him, while it had been difficult, it had not been all that bad. He thought he had arrived; he chalked it up to his will-power. “I just have an iron will,” he says. We will call him Will. Will did not understand why others were not as strong. At least he is being honest too, but he is also incorrect in his understanding. Eventually Will came face to face with his denial and crumbled under the pressure of living in his own strength.

The fact is we are all more like Clarence than we want to admit. We are like Clarence in that none of us want to give up what is important to us, none of us are really willing on our own; none of us seeks after God. “As it is written: There is no one righteous, not even one,” (Romans 3:10 NIV) or, “there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God.” (Romans 3:11 NIV) That is where Will is wrong too; we cannot do it on our own. We cannot just pick ourselves up by our bootstraps and decide to live a more Christ-like life. Like Clarence, we do not have the desire, and contrary to Will, we do not have the ability. We cannot pay, nor do we want to pay the price of following Jesus. The prophet Jeremiah sums it up like this, “Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard its spots? Neither can you do good who are accustomed to doing evil.” (Jeremiah 13:23 NIV)

But, praise be to God, Christ never asked anyone to clean up before coming into his kingdom. He never asked anyone that could pay to come into his kingdom. None of us can pay our own way. The Apostle Paul tells us of this great love of God like this, “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8 NIV) God did for us in Christ what we could not do on our own; pay. The Scriptures declare Christ the second Adam. The first Adam came, entered into disobedience, and sin entered the entire human race. Ever since, there has been a wall between God and man. But the second Adam, Christ, came to live a sinless life. Because a man failed, a man had to succeed. This is why Christ came in the flesh. His sinless life is what made him the perfect sacrifice for our sins. And, when he died, he paid the wages of sin for us - death. However, it was more than just taking on the sin of those who would have faith. God also transferred Christ’s perfect righteousness to us. So, when God looks at the believers, he no longer sees sinners, but his son. But, he does not stop there. He also helps us pay the cost of following him all of our days by the power of the Holy Spirit. As God’s own, we are given the power to withstand temptation, forgiveness when we do not, and sanctifying grace to change our wicked hearts so that we do not just white-knuckle our way into obedience, but desire it and attain it. It is a super-natural power.

So, let us never look to our own strength to pay the cost of discipleship, because sooner than later, we will fail. We will be the one who started to build the tower and could not finish. Our salvation did not depend on our will-power, our pre-Christian moral life, our good works, or our own desires; neither does our sanctification - that process of being made over into Christ’s likeness. If our salvation and sanctification depend on Christ alone, who paid all of the cost for us, both in entering the kingdom and succeeding in the kingdom, we will finish the tower.

So, we are not to have any other gods before Christ, we must be willing to pay the cost, we must recognize that we cannot pay it, and turn to Christ as the only one who can make us willing, and the only one who can pay it on our behalves.

Third, please turn to vv. 31-33. We read, “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? 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” (Luke 14:31-33 NIV) If the verses 28-30 ask us if we can afford the cost, these verses ask us if we can afford to refuse paying the cost. In other words, because Jesus gave his all for us, we must pay the cost.

The parable tells us that a king is being attacked by a rival king, outnumbered two to one. It would not take long to realize the absurdity of going against those odds; surrender is the only way to peace. Jesus is saying “I have come to take back enemy held territory. To not follow me is to set yourself up against me. If you do not make peace with who I am and what I demand, the forces of righteousness that will storm against those who oppose God’s work will overwhelm you.” 



To not follow Jesus in full devotion is choosing to fight against Him and His cause. If you are not following Him and His way of thinking, then you are following someone else’s way of thinking; in essence, you are worshipping another god…perhaps yourself, perhaps the world, perhaps your family and friends. You are setting yourself up to fight against Jesus. And you cannot win that fight! Instead of resisting Him, make peace with him.

This parable is both for the Christian who thinks his salvation and sanctification are of his own effort; the Will syndrome, and also for the one who has not yet come to Christ. Both will pay dearly for choosing any other path besides Jesus’. Although you may at first appear to have success, like Will and Clarence, the tides of life will take their toll. You will either end up like Will, one defeated self-reliant Christian with no power, sitting on the foundation of an unfinished tower, angry at God, with good reason to question your salvation, and struggling with every sin imaginable. Think of the Sermon on the Mount in reverse: murder and hate, revenge and getting even, consumed by pornography and lust, divorce and broken families, being evasive and deceptive, judging and being suspicious of others, leveraging things to your favor and manipulating people to get what you want, and dedicating your entire life to the accumulation of personal wealth.

Although it is a miserable condition, and one not befitting a Christian, it is still far better than the other alternative; you will be one eternally condemned for your own pride in setting your own way up as god in the place of the Lord Jesus Christ, refusing to make peace with the Lord. Without being privy to Christ’s saving work, his paying the cost, you will pay the cost for your own sin and your own way. So, the question becomes for both of these people, “can you afford to not submit fully to Christ?”

So, we are left to close with a few more questions. First, have you made peace with the Lord? If you do not know him, you need to come into his courts today. See me after the service and I will be happy to help you do that. Second, if you do know the Lord, how are you doing with submitting to Christ’s lordship? Have you taken your goals before the Lord to see if they are his goals, or are they serving your ego, and building up your idols? Would you be willing to change them if they did not match up with his goals? Do you need to do any repenting? Third, how successful are you in your path to spiritual maturity? Are you working in your own strength, rather than trusting in the Lord and his empowering Holy Spirit? Again, do you need to do any repenting? Fourth, do you have any obstacles in your life to prevent you from following Christ fully…your family, your job, and your hobbies? Are you willing to make the changes necessary with the help of the Holy Spirit?

You know, my friend the swimmer never made it to the Olympics, even after all of his years of training and sacrifice. He was just not good enough, in spite of his best efforts. But praise be to God, if we devote ourselves to the Lord alone, train under him alone, and rely on him alone, we are guaranteed to stand on the medal platform of heaven wearing a crown of gold and hearing the anthem of heaven, “Holy, Holy, Holy” for the rest of eternity.

I would like to close by reading the Zimbabwe Covenant to you. These people have understood today’s message:

I am part of the fellowship of the unashamed. I have Holy Spirit power. The die has been cast. I have stepped over the line. The decision has been made. I am a disciple of His. I will not look back, let up, slow down, back away, or be still.

My past is redeemed, my present makes sense, my future is secure. I am finished and done with low living, sight-walking, small planning, smooth knees, colorless dreams, tamed visions, worldly talking, cheap giving, and dwarfed goals.

I no longer need preeminence, prosperity, position, promotion, or popularity. I do not have to be right, first, tops, recognized, praised, regarded, or rewarded. I now live by faith, lean on His presence, walk by patience, am uplifted by prayer, and labor by power.

My face is set, my gait is fast, my goal is heaven. My road is narrow, my way rough, my Guide reliable, my mission clear. I cannot be bought, compromised, detoured, lured away, turned back, deluded, or delayed. I will not give up, shut up, or let up. I will go on until He comes, and work until He stops me.

I am a disciple of Jesus. Amen.

Topics: Luke |

Comments