Luke 14:28-31
“Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won’t you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it? 29 For if you lay the foundation and are not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule you, 30 saying, ‘This person began to build and wasn’t able to finish.’
31 “Or suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Won’t he first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand?
Introduction
I have been rereading a biography on Rev. Sam P. Jones, who incidentally I did not name my son after! But if you don’t know who Sam Jones was, he was a contemporary of Dwight L. Moody, and some people even called him the Billy Graham of the 1800s. Sam Jones was born in Alabama, but he grew up in Cartersville. Interestingly enough, at least to me, is that at the same time that Sam Jones was beginning his ministry, Lottie Moon was heading to the mission field, also being from Cartersville.
Jones was born in 1848, and over his life, he would end up preaching to over 25 million people. He had been a lawyer, but before his conversion to Christ, he had been a drunk. As one person put it from his time, when he was sober, he was the best lawyer you could hope to have on your side. If he was drunk, he was worthless. In August of 1872, Jones was called to his father’s bedside. He was dying, but the father realized that his son was dying faster than he was. He said to him, “My poor, wicked, wayward, reckless boy. You have broken the heart of your sweet wife and brought me down in sorrow to the grave. Promise me, my boy, to meet me in Heaven.” Sam fell to his knees, and promised to his dying father that he would get his life straight, quit drinking, and live for the Lord.
However, that wasn’t as easy as it sounds. He struggled with alcoholism the rest of his life, but because of his devotion to the Lord, he gave it up completely. His last encounter with drinking, he had gone into the bar, but looked at himself for the first time in a long time in the mirror. Haggard, scruffy, matted hair, he said to himself, “is that all that is left of the proud and brilliant lawyer, Sam Jones?” He smashed his glass, and got on his knees in the bar and said “God please have mercy on me!” He went over to his boarding house, and over the next three days he detoxed with the help of the ladies who were also there. After those three days of detox, he went into town, got a new suit, and went back to his wife telling her “God has given you a new husband and our children a new daddy. Will you take me back?” Her answer was “Hallelujah, hallelujah, I’ve been praying for this!” Only one week later, Jones would step into the pulpit of his grandfather and begin a lifelong ministry for Christ.
Now, why do I tell you this story? Besides being a great story of faith, and one of great redemption, it is because Sam Jones was one of the wittiest and most memorable quote makers of the United States. Some of his quotes were “David was a great sinner, but he was a first-class repenter,” “the secret of a happy life is to do your duty and trust in God,” and “let’s quit singing the ‘sweet by-and-by’ and sing the “sweet now-and-now”. But perhaps the one that Jones is best known for, and you’ll hear it still from time to time is “the tune of America is pitched to the dollar.” Our country seems to sit down and count every penny before acting, making sure that it’s a good bargain before we do anything. Look at the recent construction bill that is hung up in Congress. Our legislators are hung up mostly on who will pay for it, how it's going to get paid for, and how well the use of the taxpayer’s money is going to be spent. We measure a man’s success by how much he owns, or how much is in his bank account. Well, this was no different than in Jesus’ day. Jesus spoke a bit about money in his ministry because I think that it was something that would speak to us even today. When we look at this passage of scripture and this parable that Jesus talks about, we realize that there truly is a cost to follow Him in our lives. Let’s look a bit at it.
II. The Cost of Faith
When we look at this entire passage of scripture, Jesus truly says some things that may seem bizarre to us. There is a large group of people that are following him, and he turns to them, I think somewhat abruptly. Maybe Jesus had known that some of them were there really to just see miracles, or even just for the spectacle of being in a group. He turns to the people following and tells them “if anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters - yes, even their own life - such a person cannot be my disciple. And whoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.” This is harsh! One commentary noted that in the book of Matthew, specifically in chapter 10, verses 37-38, it is put down in a nicer fashion. But it still means the same thing! Unless we are willing to give all for Christ, then we are not truly ready to be his disciple.
Jesus spoke clearly about the kind of person who could not be his disciple. That word, disciple, simply means ‘learner”. Prior to this, Jesus had stated just before this passage in the same chapter that coming to God was like accepting an invitation. Jesus added that the invitation was just the beginning of learning from the master. I have a question: for those of you who have gone to college, or have had children go to college, when either you or they received the notification that they had been accepted into that school, were they immediately given their diploma? That wouldn’t be much of a school if they did that, right? The expectation of that school, when someone applies to it, is that they will teach the student and give them the skills to succeed not only in whatever profession they have chosen, but also in life in general. That is why the invitation is important, but we must know that the learning just starts with that invitation. Why else would Jesus keep us here on this Earth if it were not so?
Jesus boldly states that you have to come to him to learn without reservation. Family relations can sometimes be a hindrance to someone’s commitment to Christ. Look at how the Mormons conduct themselves: if someone takes on their faith, but then abandons it, they are treated as if they are dead to those who are still within the Mormon faith. The Jews also practice this. Even hardline Catholics have been known to do this, although it is a tradition that seems to be dying out in that faith. But can you imagine in Jesus’ day how upsetting this would be? And honestly, how upsetting is it to us today? Take for a moment to think of your mother. If someone came up to you and said “you will have to hate your mother to be able to do this”, your response might be all the way up to popping them in the eye! I mean, we love our Mommas! But our mothers can’t get us into heaven. They can pray for us, they can pray for our salvation, and I’ve known of many mothers that have prayed very hard for their children to come to Christ, to come back into church, and to have a close relationship with Jesus. They are saintly women! But they can’t save their children. Only Christ can do that.
What Jesus said to those who wanted and want to follow him now was and is still audacious. Only God could call for those who follow him to be so personally committed and devoted to his teachings and commands. If Jesus was not and is not God, then this would be madness at best, and idolatry at worst! But we do know that Jesus is God. John 1:1 says “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Napoleon Bonaparte understood this about Jesus. He said “I know men; and I tell you that Jesus Christ was no mere man. Between him and every other person in the world there is no possible term of comparison. Alexander the Great, Caesar, Charlemagne, and I have founded empires. But on what did we rest the creations of our genius? Upon force. Jesus Christ founded his empire upon love; and this hour millions of men would die for him.”
In any case of competing loyalties between Christ and ourselves, it can only be solved one way, and that is through hating even our own life. A strange thought, no? Jesus used this strong word, hate, to show how great the difference must be between our allegiance to him and our allegiance to anything else in this world. Matthew Henry, the great commentator on the Bible, stated “every good man loves his relations; and yet, if he be a disciple of Christ, he must comparatively hate them, must love them less than Christ. Not that their persons must be in any degree hated, but our comfort and satisfaction in them must be lost and swallowed up in our love to Christ. When our duty to our parents comes in competition with our evident duty to Christ, we must give Christ the preference.” Being a Christ-follower usually makes us a better family member, actually. In fact, most of the time being a Christ-follower means that you are going to bring your family into a place of peace and of great honor. But to lose focus on the fact that Christ is the first in your life, and the first in your family, is to put Christ in that second place. The greatest threat to the best often comes from second best.
Christ finishes the first part of this passage with the statement that whoever does not take up his cross to follow him cannot be a disciple of his. There are a few parts to this, I think. In the there and then, Jesus was pointing towards his own death on the cross and the redemption of mankind through his rising from death three days later. But in addition to this, think about the implication that it had on his listeners right then. Every single person right there with Jesus knew of the most brutal way that Rome killed those who went against them. Crucifixion is cruel, and humiliating. Part of that humiliation was that the Romans would make the person, just like Jesus did, carry their own crossbeam to their own execution. The Romans didn’t just crucify them, they quite literally hung a cross on that person. And everyone knew this. Only 30 years or so earlier, there had been a revolt against the Romans in Galilee, and the Roman General Varus crucified 2000 Jews along the roads of that region. They knew of the awfulness of this death! And beyond that, they knew that carrying a cross always led to death on a cross. It would be like having someone put down electrical wires on the way to the electric chair. The people knew that if someone took up their own cross, it was a one way trip, and that that person never came back from it.
To bear a cross in our lives is to fully accept the consequences of discipleship - the shame, the loneliness, the hostility that men direct towards a life that is the channel of God’s truth, justice, and love. A true disciple is not a person who consumes every tradition, every little fact so that they can give an orthodox answer to any question that someone throws at them. Not at all; it is the person who follows after Jesus, gladly sharing in Jesus’ redemptive suffering. Jesus told us, even today, to take up our own cross and to follow Him. OUR own cross. There is a story of a man who prayed to Jesus that his cross was too heavy for him to bear day in and day out. He prayed that Jesus would just let him take that cross off for a day and choose one that wasn’t so heavy. Well, Jesus visited the man in a dream. He took the cross off of his shoulders, and took it through a doorway and closed it behind himself. When Jesus came back through, he took the man into the room. In that room were crosses that were huge in height and huge in weight. They were massive! But in the corner of the room was a very small cross, compared to the others. The man excitedly said to Jesus, ‘Oh, I’ll take that one Lord! It doesn’t look too hard to bear, at least for a day!” Jesus shook his head, sadly, and said, “Son, that was the one I just brought in here that you laid down.” Our cross that we take up daily will look completely different from the one that I bear, or anyone else bears. But we are to take it up daily and walk towards Christ and towards that one way ending. We are to come after Him, and to be his disciple, even unto death.
III. The Cost of Finishing
That seems like an awfully high cost of life, doesn’t it? Jesus tells us a parable here that helps to fully illustrate the point that he was trying to make. He talks about building a tower here. Have you ever toured a vineyard or seen pictures of one in the Holy Land? Often there are towers within those vineyards. But why? It was to protect against thieves, but it also was a place where grapes could be stored until they were ready to be processed into wine. Without nice, cool places, the grapes would start to ferment and turn into wine, which may or may not have been what was best for the vineyard owner. Jesus states that a person would sit down and first examine what they would need to do to afford this. Don’t we do the same with pretty much everything that we do in our lives? I know that there’s a whole industry in our country for people to work in that calculates the risk involved in making loans to people, be it for homes or for vehicles. In any case, you sit down, look at what your budget might be, and you figure up how much you can afford to spend on something. This has not changed since Jesus’ day.
But Jesus takes this one step further, as always. He points out to us that we have to count the cost all the way to the finish, lest we be mocked for not doing so. Have you ever seen a house halfway built? There is a site going towards Tasha’s Dad’s house that is just a foundation. It has been there for years and years, just waiting on a house to be built upon it. It’s so strange to think that someone started all this work to get a foundation built, but for whatever circumstance, it was never completed. I can think of another example. A prominent businessman in Blue Ridge had the idea of a horse park. He did consider the cost to get it going, but not the cost of completing it. Now, that part sits with street lights, a whole barn complex, and even sewer systems, but no homes, and no horses. Why? Because the cost to completion was never taken into account. It became a boondoggle! And that man, I know, feels that part of his life is incomplete because he never got it done. What Jesus asks of us here is this: sit down and see if you can afford to follow me all the way to the end.
But Jesus tells us even more than that! He tells us of a king that has war come to his door. He has 10k troops, but the other has 20k. Now, there are scenarios where an army can beat another when its 2 to 1 odds. But that’s a bad bargain, and usually ends up with the smaller army still being very decimated. And more often than not, the smaller army is just overrun. The king asks for terms of peace so that he might continue to live and rule. This is not to say that we are to surrender to our enemy. In fact, it’s quite the opposite of that: in our lives, we have Christ on our side, so we are never outnumbered. But Jesus does warn people against following him without an awareness of the consequences and a willingness to accept that. Jesus says to us still today with this part of the parable “sit down and see if you can afford to refuse my demands.”
Jesus alludes to the fact that faith and working in His kingdom is like a building and battle. Each of these are usually more costly than someone thinks at the beginning. Think about all the buildings we have known of that they give an estimate of how much it’ll cost, then a year goes by and the cost has doubled. Or, think about the people who said at the beginning of the Civil War that all the blood of the coming battles will be able to be taken up with one handkerchief. How wrong they were, when over 600k casualties happened over the course of four years. The cost is great to us who choose to follow Christ.
Jesus says at the end of this passage that whoever does not forsake all cannot be his disciple. There are two extremes that we must avoid when we share the Gospel this way, though. The first is to never give the impression that people have to clean up their lives before they come to Christ. It’s like saying you have to get clean before you have a bath. But on the other hand, you can never give people the impression that Jesus won’t clean up their lives after they come to Him completely. Jesus will clean them completely, as white as snow, but people who are lost must understand this. Every potential disciple must consider that cost. But even those who reject Christ must understand the cost, too. What is the cost of rejecting Christ? Eternal damnation, and suffering in the separation from God for all time. It means hardship and struggle beyond what a Christian must endure. It costs a great deal in our lives to be a true disciple of Christ, but it costs even more to reject him!
IV. Conclusion
Jesus finishes with this, at the end of the chapter. It’s something that we are all familiar with because it is one of the most famous sayings of Christ. Starting in verse 34, it says “salt is good; but if the salt has lost its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? It is neither fit for the land nor for the dunghill, but men throw it out.” Natural salt, sodium chloride, will always have its saltiness, unless it is altered or contaminated. That was the salt from the Dead Sea. It had been contaminated with gypsum and other minerals. Because of this, it would literally lose its saltiness over time. As long as it was salty, it was still good for use in all sorts of different applications. But when it lost that saltiness, it was not even good to use in fertilizer. There was nothing for it to be used for, so it was thrown out in the garbage.
When we count the cost of being a Christian, and when we become a Christian, we take on the essence of Christ himself. Someone who turns away from Christ, or loses his way, or backslides, begins to lose that saltiness in their life. They become bland. They become useless to Christ, frankly. From the point of sodium chloride, it can never be reseasoned. Nothing will give it back its saltiness. The impurities of it cannot be removed by any means known to man. But there is hope for the soul that is impure. The way it can be made ‘salty’ again, making it the salt of the earth once again, is through Jesus only. And that is how the person becomes useful to the body of Christ once again.
I’ll ask you this one, are you salty? I know that sounds funny. But salt is a great tool all around. Jesus pointed out one use, that it could be used in fertilizer. It’s used to make the soil better, just like we talked about last week. It’s used as a preservative, to help in canning and in the preservation of foods. Are you helping to preserve your fellow Christian? It is used in healing, such as epsom salts. Are you being salty and helping to heal your fellow Christian? Being salty is a good thing in the Christian life! We know that Christ takes things we know about and turns them on their side when we look at them through the Christian perspective. And this is one of those times. Be salty for the people around you. Be the salt that Christ calls you to be. Let’s pray.
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