Jeremiah 18:1-11 Psalm 139:1-5, 12-18 Luke 14:25-33
Counting the Cost
As I was preparing for this talk, I found this meme giving us ten reasons why we should be missionaries.
But now…from the ridiculous to the sublime:
There once was a man who came from a very wealthy, well-known, and well-respected family. He had been privileged to study under the tutelage of one of the most famous teachers of his time and in his chosen vocation, he was progressing far beyond many of his contemporaries, because he was extremely passionate about everything he believed and did.
But then something rather dramatic happened to him. He had an eye-opening encounter with Jesus…and he was soundly converted…a decision that was on the one hand extremely good news for the Church, but on the other hand extremely bad news for his family and his friends and his colleagues. People turned against him, rejected him, and, at times, even tried to kill him. Because of his decision to follow Jesus, everything he once had…everything he once considered of value…everything he had once believed in and cherished and yearned for…everything was lost.
Now, some might call this a tragedy, but to quote from this man’s own words: “…whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him…”
Y’all might have guessed by now that this was the Apostle Paul’s testimony.
All things he had once considered important…family, friends, position, power…all things he had once held dear were now considered worthless in comparison to truly knowing and following Jesus.
But that was the Apostle Paul.
May I be so meddlesome as to ask you what it means for you to be a follower of Jesus? What has it or does it cost you to be his disciple…to be his follower?
Before we examine Jesus’ teaching in our Gospel lesson for today, I’d like us to remember the whole context in which this passage is found. Now, I hope you can recall the message of last Sunday…Jesus was at the house of a Pharisee where the invited guests were all trying to sit in the places of honour, remember?
What was the punchline of Jesus’ parable? “Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles themselves will be exalted.”
This is a basic principle of life in the kingdom of God. Humility. Always being the least. Always putting others before yourself. A basic, foundational lesson all followers of Jesus would do well to learn, because that is the mind of Jesus…humility…other-person-centredness.
Jesus then advised them to invite to their feasts those who would not be able to invite them in return…again a lesson in humility. Associating with the lowly and not striving to curry favour with the wealthy, the famous, and the powerful.
And finally, he ended that part of his teaching with the well-known parable of the great banquet where the original invited guests all refused to attend the feast and were then subsequently replaced by the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind…all categories of people not permitted to enter the Temple precincts in First Century Judaism.
That is the background to the passage we read today…
Now, Luke began the section we read from today with an important statement. He wrote: “Large crowds were travelling with Jesus.” This is important to note because from what follows we can safely conclude that it is not enough to simply be part of a large (or even a small) group “travelling” with Jesus. Jesus tells us here that to be his disciple demands more than close proximity…to be his disciple demands a deeper commitment. Following Jesus demands total realignment, total relinquishment, total renunciation, and total reliance.
So, let’s look at each one of these requirements separately.
1. Total realignment.
Many believers have struggled with Jesus’ statement in verse 26. How could Jesus advocate hatred for anyone, especially parents whom we are clearly commanded (in the fifth of the ten commandments) to honour? Besides, didn’t Jesus himself say that the second greatest commandment is to love…to love our neighbours as ourselves? But in our text for today, Jesus seemed to demand hatred…hatred towards one’s parents, hatred towards one’s spouse, hatred towards one’s children, and hatred towards one’s siblings…those whom we are specifically told elsewhere in Scripture to honour, protect, and love.
How do we reconcile this apparent contradiction?
Well, I believe in order to understand what Jesus was saying here, we need to understand his First Century setting and culture. What I mean is that we need to understand his use of typical Jewish idiomatic exaggeration or hyperbole. For instance, in Genesis 29:30–31 Jacob is said to have loved Rachel and “hated” Leah. From the number of children that were born to Jacob and Leah, we may safely assume that the word “hate” clearly did not mean what we think it means today.
“Hating” was a common Jewish expression that meant, in comparison, you loved one person less than the other. Therefore, Jesus was not teaching us to feel intense hostility or animosity towards our families and friends but rather to love him more than any other normal or usual recipient of our love and devotion. In other words, Jesus always…always…always comes first as far as our allegiances are concerned. Matthew’s wording of this same statement helps us better understand the thrust of what Jesus was saying here (Matthew 10:37). Matthew recorded Jesus as saying: “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.”
In other words, a disciple and follower of Jesus must love him more than anyone and anything else, including life itself. Our primary allegiance must be to him. Jesus must occupy the supreme position in our lives…above everyone and everything else including ourselves, our dreams, our ambitions, our aspirations, and our desires.
This can and often does cause division within families, within communities, within social groups, within marriages, and may even create division (or a struggle) within yourself. But Jesus states clearly that we must love him more than anything and anyone…more than life itself…because he is the Lord of all. We can have no more life, no more abundant life, than in Christ himself.
Now, of course, it is equally true that as a person commits himself or herself totally to Jesus, they will develop a greater love for all. If we truly love God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength, we will love others better than ourselves because loving Jesus means loving as he loves…sacrificially and unconditionally.
Be that as it may, the bottom line is simply this: if you wish to be a disciple and follower of Jesus you must be totally committed to him…as in your marriage vows, a disciple of Jesus must forsake all others and be faithful only to him in all things. Nothing and no one can come between you and Jesus.
2. Total relinquishment.
Jesus’ demand for absolute loyalty to him is further described by a second condition for being his disciple. In this passage, Jesus used the illustration of being crucified as a description of truly following Him. A disciple must sacrifice his life…himself and his desires…in order to follow Jesus. “…anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciples.” Radical. Crucifixion was a shocking metaphor for discipleship. It was a well-known method of execution used by the Romans to execute people they viewed as criminals. There wasn’t a Jew in the First Century who would not have understood what Jesus was saying here. Hundreds of crosses dotted the Judean landscape.
But many who were crucified at that time (and this is important) were crucified because of what they believed. Many had stood up to the tyranny of the oppressors and they had paid for their convictions with their lives. First Century Jews would have immediately made that connection. So, when Jesus said we must be willing to be crucified…to take up our cross and follow him…his audience would have assumed it was because of what they believed about him. Belief in a Jewish King was tantamount to sedition…rebellion. There had been many other so-called Messiahs before Jesus and every one of them had been squashed by Rome.
I know that this has often been interpreted as being willing to put to death our own desires and our love of this life, in order to follow Christ…and that sentiment is true…but I think that the First Century listeners would not have made that spiritual connection. This was a willingness to die for what they believed. I have been told that here in the Netherlands, being vocal or obvious about your belief in Jesus is social, political, and vocational suicide…so, in this sense, the image applies here too.
But, as some wise person once said, dying for Jesus is often easier than living for him…so, at least in this part of the world where faith in Jesus does not carry the death penalty, we may well challenge ourselves by asking if we are willing to put to death anything that will prevent us from living entirely for Jesus.
3. Total renunciation.
Let’s be honest here. We all love our comfort, don’t we? We love our money, our wealth, and our possessions. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with comfort, but often people put their trust in something other than Jesus…they put their trust in their education, their jobs, their positions, their finances, their bank balances, their pension schemes.
What someone values often reveals whether or not they have renounced all things for Jesus. Like the rich young ruler. After he gleefully told Jesus that he had obeyed the ten commandments since his youth, Jesus pushed him a bit further by telling him to go and sell all that he had, to give the proceeds to the poor, and then to return to follow him. Of course, we all know what the young man chose, but we must also allow Jesus to push us a bit further too with the things we value.
What are you not willing to give up?
The famous English preacher Charles Haddon Spurgeon once preached on the subject of giving in his church. (A church, I just learned, apparently attended by Vincent van Gogh when he lived in London.) After the service, a wealthy man said to him, “Mr Spurgeon. You will never reach my pocket until you have reached my heart.” To which Spurgeon replied, “Yes, I know, because that is where your heart is.” Ouch!
But this is not just about money…we can rob God of more things than money! (Malachi 3:6-12) What are you withholding? What are you unwilling to give to Jesus? You can often tell when people start making excuses…I can’t give that, I can’t do that…oh, but that’s from the Old Testament, isn’t it? To me that sounds like another version of “has God really said?”
No, Jesus makes it clear that nothing must come before God. Nothing must have a greater value to us than God. He must be first. So, ask yourself. What comes before God in your life? If it money? Is it status? It is comfort? Is it your family or friends? Is it convenience? Is it your reputation? Is it your work? What is more valuable to you than your relationship with Jesus?
4. Total reliance.
To be a disciple of Jesus is costly and it is very important for us to understand this. It is not as free as some people believe. To be a disciple of Jesus means we give up everything…even our very lives. The three descriptions Jesus gave, (1) loving him more than anything or anyone else, or forsaking all else for him…(2) being willing to die for what we believe about him, whether that death is physical or social or vocational or otherwise…and (3) being willing to give up all that we value…these things emphasize the need to seriously consider the type of commitment we make when we choose to follow Jesus. Jesus does not encourage a hasty, emotional decision. Instead, he urges those who would follow him to seriously “count the cost”.
Why? Because we are hopelessly “outnumbered” in our spiritual walk with Jesus. Many things demand our attention and our allegiance. We live in a very visually stimulating world…we have advertisements that promise happiness if only we own this, that or the next thing. We live in a very secular part of the world, where confessing Christ may result in rejection on so many different levels.
Jesus is simply not an optional extra…a good idea or ideal or ideology to add onto our neatly compartmentalised lives. No. Jesus says he is either everything or nothing and we need to regularly ask ourselves if he is where he ought to be in our lives. And we must be brutal…elsewhere in the Gospels, Jesus speaks of chopping off offending hands and gouging out offending eyes…Jewish hyperbole to be sure, but radical, nonetheless.
So, in this passage Jesus tells us that being his disciple is costly. It is not for the faint of heart. A lot of people will follow their idea or image of Jesus, for a while. A lot of people will say they are his disciples, for a while. A lot of people will be a part of a church, for a while. Until something happens – until it becomes inconvenient, until it becomes a problem at work or in the neighbourhood or in the family, until it becomes too costly for them to be with Jesus.
As Luke pointed out in the opening line of this passage, it is not the large number of people who travel with Jesus for a while, but the smaller, sold-out, committed group who remains in him…abides in him…against all odds…it is those followers that count.
May I ask, which are you? What Jesus said in this passage described complete commitment to him. Those who would dare to follow him must be totally committed to him if we are to be his disciples. We must love him more than anything and anyone else and we must surrender all, including our very lives, to him. That is the cost of being a disciple. That is what it means to follow Christ.
So, I dare to ask again. Are you fully committed to following Jesus? Have you considered the cost? Are you willing to count all things loss for the surpassing glory of knowing him? Are you willing to allow him to make, break, and remake you according to his own design and purpose as the Potter would with the clay?
Following Jesus demands total realignment, total relinquishment, total renunciation, and total reliance. But the prize for which God called us heavenward far outweighs the temporal things this world has to offer. As Pastor David Platt once said: “The task of mission will require suffering, but the light of eternity will prove the price was worth paying.”
Shall we pray?
© Johannes W H van der Bijl August 2022
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