The Cost of Our Calling

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I was thinking this morning about some of the trips that my kids and I have taken with my dad, or better said, he’s taken with us over the last few years. About how he took a week off of work this summer. About how he took a week off of work this summer to go with the kids and me to Dallas for the SBC meeting. And some of you have been to those meetings, and you can attest, it’s nobody’s idea of a great time, a vacation. But he took a week off work to go with us so that he could spend that time with me and with the kids. But there was a cost involved in it because, okay, let’s be honest, you’re traveling in a vehicle with my children. Your ears are going to get talked off. Plus, it’s long, and at the end of it, you know, you get there and there’s meetings that you sit through, and he can’t even vote. He’s just sitting there in the meetings and getting dragged all over.

You know, there’s a lot of walking involved, and you’re rewarded for the trip with exotic locales like Dallas and Indianapolis. Next year’s Orlando, and I’m not sure I’m going to go. That’s One time he flew to Phoenix. He didn’t have enough time to take off to go with me the whole time, but he flew to Phoenix to meet me out there and rode back with me, and we had a great time with my alternator going out in Santa Rosa, New Mexico. I bet he was glad he took off work, but he’ll do things like that to spend the time with us, and it got me thinking about my relationship with my kids and really how anything that is worth doing in life comes at a cost. Anything that is worth investing in in this life comes at a cost. There’s a sacrifice.

Our relationships with our spouses, our relationships with our kids, our relationships with one another, to put in the work that it requires to make those things good, There’s a cost involved. There’s a sacrifice involved. Even our walk with the Lord, especially our walk with the Lord, there’s a cost and a sacrifice involved in order for that to be everything that it ought to be. Now, that sacrifice, I’m not talking about sacrificing so that we can have a relationship with Him. Jesus already took care of that. But in order for our walk with the Lord to be everything it ought to be, there’s a cost that Jesus points out that we have to choose to pay. This morning, we’re going to be in Luke chapter 9, where Jesus talks to His disciples about this cost that’s involved for this very worthwhile pursuit of being His disciple, of walking with Him, of having this close fellowship with Him.

There’s a cost involved, and he lays that out for them, for them to understand. So we’re going to be in Luke chapter 9, where we left off last Sunday. If you’ll turn there with me, we’ll read together. And once you find it, if you’ll stand with me in honor of God’s Word. If you don’t have your Bible this morning or you can’t find Luke chapter 9, it will be on the screen for you up here so that you can follow along as we read. But Luke chapter 9, starting in verse 21, And I have backed up a little bit to the end of the passage that we read last week because it helps inform what he’s talking about this week. Verse 21 says, but he warned them and instructed them not to tell this to anyone. That’s the idea that he’s the Messiah. He says, let’s keep that quiet for right now.

Verse 22, saying, the son of man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed and be raised up on the third day. And he was saying to them all, if anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake, he is the one who will save it. For what is a man profited if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself? For whoever is ashamed of me and my words, the son of man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his glory and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels. But I say to you truthfully, there are some of those standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God. You may be seated. He’s laying out here that there is a cost involved in following him.

He’s not talking about salvation. There is a cost involved in salvation, but he paid that. Now, at the time that he’s speaking to them he had not yet paid it. But for us looking back 2,000 years ago, he’s already paid that. What he’s talking about is the cost of following him, the cost of walking with him, the cost of doing what they’ve been called to do, and what really they’ve been spending these previous months being trained to do. In order to do it, he says it’s not going to just be easy. I think they, well, I know they had the idea that it was going to be easy, that it was going to be fun, prestigious even. We get further down the road and some of the disciples are still asking, hey, can we sit on your right and left hand when you come into your kingdom? They’re wanting to sit on the throne. They think this is going to be a thing of ease that they’re walking with the Messiah.

And he begins to burst their bubble here that there’s a cost involved. And the cost was going to be taking some of the things that they loved and putting those things on the altar. It’s not a guarantee that we lose everything we love, but there has to be a willingness to take the things that we love and hold them loosely and surrender them to him that we’re willing to give them up if necessary. And what he’s pointing out here to these men is that it’s dangerous to love other things more than Jesus. It was going to be dangerous for them to love other things more than him. He was calling them to a life of surrender. And oftentimes that entailed dangerous or difficult tasks, things that were not going to be easy.

And under those circumstances, when you look at the cost of what it, what it, the cost involved in following Jesus, when you look at that, some of them were likely tempted to pull back away from it. Some of them probably thought that, you know, we could save ourselves all that trouble just by stepping away from this. Maybe we don’t have to be so committed. I mean, we can love Jesus. We can walk with Jesus. We’ll just be quiet about it. And we won’t go and do all the things that he told us to do. And maybe we can save ourselves because there was going to be a cost. Some of them probably thought that by breaking ties with Jesus, we’re not going any further. They might have an easier life or a better life. They might be able to hold on to things that they loved, like wealth, things like ease, prestige, even life itself.

Because Jesus is very clear here, there’s a cost involved in following him. There are still people that pay this cost. some of the most underreported stories of the last few months in the media have been the slaughter of Christians in Nigeria, which has been a Christian country in the past, or a largely Christian country. But people have been pretty quiet about that, as well as the slaughter of Christians in Armenia by the Azeris, just because of their faith. Now, there’s some nationalistic things tied into that as well, but part of the difference between the Armenians and the Azeris is one group is Christian and one is not. There are still people who are losing their lives because they identify with Jesus Christ. There are countries in this world that the mere suggestion that you belong to Jesus Christ is an instant death sentence.

And maybe that feels too far removed because we’re not in that situation. But there are people this morning that some of us in this room know who have stepped away from everything. They’ve stepped away from their lives here in Lawton, Oklahoma, put friendships on hold, put jobs on hold, put everything on hold, and have gone to the mission field in closed countries. Maybe not countries where they’re in danger of losing their lives, but where some of the people they work with are, and they constantly risk deportation if they’re found out. There are people who are doing dangerous things because when they were called to serve Jesus, they said, whatever the cost. If that’s what it cost me to follow you, then I’ll do it.

And there’s a temptation even today to say, oh, maybe if I don’t embrace it that wholeheartedly, maybe I can just kind of thread the needle here, and maybe it won’t cost me that much. Some of these people thought that they could save the things that they loved more. And let’s be honest, that’s what it really is. Anytime we say, no, Lord, or we say, yes, Lord, but, it’s because there’s something there we want to hold on to. And we might not say, oh, I love this thing more than Jesus, but that’s what our actions indicate. And these people thought they could save something, they could hold on to something that they loved more than at least their obedience to Jesus, but he warned them about the dangers of going down that road. In verse 24, he says, whoever wishes to save his life will lose it.

Some of these men might try to preserve their lives by saying, okay, this disciple thing, I didn’t realize how much was involved. I’m out. Jesus, I love you. I’ll support you from afar, but I’m out. But he said, whoever wishes to save his life will lose it. Because if we reject Jesus, if we reject Jesus, what we lose is far more valuable than what we would have given up. And again, we don’t earn our salvation by following him. He paid for it. We believe for it. But if these people were so unconvinced of who he was that they weren’t willing to follow him, it’s a good bet they weren’t really convinced about his power to save. Because when we come face to face with this saving power that Jesus has, and we really understand who he is, it transforms our lives. And so for them to be able to step back and say, I’m out on this one, indicates that there’s really not sufficient faith here in Jesus.

And so we’re going to draw back and we’re going to distance ourselves from Jesus, maybe even reject Jesus to try to save our own lives. He said, you’re going to lose your life in the end. The Bible says it’s appointed unto man once to die. And after that, the judgment. It’s appointed unto each of us to die. We’re going to die one way or another. The question, the only question, is how the judgment works out on the other side. were we with him or were we not some of these people might say you know the it’s just too difficult the creature comforts i don’t know i’ll die for you but i don’t know that i could live 40 40 years for you in poverty by trying to preserve their wealth they would lose their souls though he says in verse 25 what is a man profited if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself.

Verse 26 says, whoever is ashamed of me in my words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his glory. Some of them would try to preserve their reputations. Now, nobody likes to be ashamed, but in their culture, shame is one of the worst emotions you could feel and one of the worst things you could heap on somebody. And so he was asking them when he said not to be ashamed of him. There were going to be people who were going to treat them shamefully. And he’s asking them to endure this hardship, probably the greatest non-physical hardship that they could experience in their culture, this sense of shame. And he was asking them to take that on themselves for his sake.

Because he says, if you’re ashamed of me, if you walk away to try to preserve your reputation, to try to save face, you don’t want to be identified with Jesus, you don’t want people to think you’re one of those crazy followers of Jesus, you’re going to walk away from me. He says, what’s to stop me from being ashamed of you when you stand before me? In fact, he says, whoever is ashamed of me in my words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his glory. we’re all familiar with this pull of I’m not saying you’re you’re on the fence and and you’re going to walk away from Jesus but sometimes I think we draw back from total commitment because we think about what it’s going to cost and we think well maybe if I just don’t go all the way to total commitment maybe I can preserve some of these things that I love and I hold on to.

But Jesus was giving his followers a warning that whatever you try to hold on to at the expense of your walk with Jesus, you’re going to lose that and more anyway. What we’re talking about here is idolatry. And if you read back through the Old Testament, the history, idolatry never ever works out well. We can look at our own lives and see that idolatry never works out well. I remember when God was calling me to pastor my first church, and I knew He was calling me to that specific church, and I didn’t want to go, and I had good reasons not to want to go because it was not a good experience.

But one of the things I said was, Lord, I’ve got this full-time job working for the county, and we’re trying to buy this house, and I started hating my job at the county and came home shortly after I had this conversation with God, and my whole house is flooded because I can see the water from this broken pipe running down the driveway. That’s never a good sign when you get home from work and see water running down your driveway from inside the house. It’s like, okay, I was making an idol of that job in that house, and that did not work out well. Okay, Lord, whatever you want me to do. Whenever we try to step into idolatry, it’s dangerous for us. It never works out well. But, lest we just look at this as a completely negative passage, it’s not that, because behind every warning, there’s also a promise. That’s really what this passage is about, the promises that he’s giving his disciples.

See, we could misread each of these things as saying, oh, you have to, by your performance and your commitment, you have to earn each of these things. But really, he’s saying the way is clear for you to walk in these things because of the promise of what waits on the other side. We’ll talk about that a little bit. Behind each of these warnings, there’s a promise. So we go back to verse 24, and he’s promised life to them. He says, whoever loses his life for my sake, he is the one who will save it. Now, when we talk about saving their lives, he’s not saying you are, understand he’s the Savior. He’s the one that does the saving. But he says the one who gives up his life for Jesus’ sake will actually find his life saved.

Because what Jesus does, even as we lay down our lives for him, which doesn’t just mean dying, but even as we lay down our lives for him, what he gives us in exchange for that is abundant life. We take the old selfish life where we live for ourselves and our purposes, and we lay that down at His feet. We hand it over to Him, and He gives us an abundant life in exchange for that. And even if that life is cut short by martyrdom, there’s still the promise of eternal life to come. Whatever life we lay down for Jesus, whatever that looks like, and like I said, there are some believers today who are laying down their lives literally in the sense that they are dying. They are at risk of death, and some of them are actually dying because they are Christians. They can do so confidently because they know that the life that He has set aside for them afterwards is better than anything on this earth.

And you and I, even now, that’s not just a promise of future stuff. If we lay down our lives in the sense that daily we get up and we surrender our lives to Jesus, and we say, whatever it is you want for me to do today is what I’ll do. Not my will, but thy will be done. We say that to Him, and He gives us abundant life that eclipses anything. that we put aside to follow him. We will never give him more than he gives us in return. And so when he warns about life lost because they’ve held it too tightly and made an idol of it, there’s also the promise behind this warning that we can walk with him boldly and with confidence. We can trust Him because no matter what happens here, we know that He gives us abundant life here. He gives us joy. There is joy in serving Him even in difficult times. But there’s the incredible joy to come of eternal life.

And so He’s not saying, again, He’s not saying that we earn our eternal life through our commitment to Him. He’s saying we can be committed because there is this promise of eternal life waiting for us. There’s also the promise of salvation. He asks, what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world, in verse 25, and loses or forfeits himself? Pursuing the world and the things in the world while rejecting Christ will cost us our souls. And so the opposite is also true. That we can walk with Him and we can serve Him confidently knowing that there is salvation waiting for us. That we’ve already begun to experience. our salvation is a done deal in the sense that you and I are as saved as we will ever be at the moment we trust Christ as our Savior. But there’s a day coming when we get to experience all the full benefits of that salvation.

We are already saved in the sense that God has looked at us and declared us righteous, and we have a relationship with Him, and the slate is wiped clean. We are being saved in the sense that He is conforming us to the image of His Son, and we will be saved when we get to be with Him for eternity in His presence and in His glory, in our new glorified bodies where the knees don’t hurt and the next don’t pop. And there’s none of that. There is salvation. There’s hope. And some of these overlap. Life, salvation, hope. These are, it’s really hard to draw a bold line between them because they all fit together. But verse 26, he talks about those who are ashamed of him, he will be ashamed of them. But look at what he says, when he comes in his glory and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels.

Jesus points out there is a day when he is returning and those who have received him will find joy in that day. and those who have rejected him will walk away sad. He’ll be ashamed by those, but he won’t be ashamed of those who have received him, who’ve been willing to endure the shame here on earth. So you and I have hope that no matter how dark things get here on earth, there is a day coming when Jesus will return in all of his power and all of his glory and we’ll behold him as he is. And we’ll either come with him or we’ll meet him in the air. We’ll be raised. And we have that hope. Do you ever feel like the world is a little bit hopeless? There are times that we feel that way. And then we remind ourselves of the hope we have in Jesus. And we get through another day. But it’s true.

He promises that there’s a day that He’s coming, and we can walk with Him boldly, knowing that when that day comes, we’ll experience the joy and the hope, and we won’t be ashamed in Him at all. And then there’s this final promise in verse 27, where He says, But I say to you truthfully, there are some of those standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God. And this is one of those things that theologians debate over what it means. Is it talking about when he comes with the resurrection? Is it talking about the crucifixion? That doesn’t seem like a joyous promise to make to them. More likely to be the resurrection. Probably not the second coming, because these men are all dead, and Jesus doesn’t make mistakes. I think the most likely thing that he’s talking about is the transfiguration that we’ll look at, that he talks about right after this, in the next passage.

when Jesus goes up to a mountaintop and talks with Moses and Elijah, and they, Peter and the others with him, see a glimpse of Jesus for who he really is. They know. Peter knows. He just confessed last week as we read it, probably the same day. But for our purposes, it was last week. We read it that he knows that Jesus is the Messiah. He acknowledged it, but they get a glimpse of what that really means. And I think in context, that’s what he’s talking about when he says that they will not die before they see the kingdom of God. And what that is a promise to them for is that they would have the opportunity to witness his plans unfold. And folks, if we walk with Jesus, no matter what the cost is, one of the great joys that we will experience is that we get to be a part of his plans and we get to watch those things unfold.

Have you ever been through a circumstance where you’ve said, I don’t understand why this is happening. Maybe you’ve been unhappy about it. And then you look at it on the other side and go, wait, that’s what God was doing. That’s why he did that. Some of the most difficult circumstances of my life fall into that category. When you’re going through it, you think, this is awful. Why would God let this happen to me? Maybe sometimes you think, why would God do this to me? And then you get a little further down the road, and you see how He uses it, and you see what He does in you, and you see what He does in other people, and you recognize what He was doing all along, maybe part of what He was doing all along. And it’s a blessing to get to see God’s plans unfold and to get to be a part of it. And so there’s this promise that as we walk with him, we’ll get to see his plans unfold.

Now, these statements that he makes in verses 24 through 27, they don’t mean that we earn these things through our commitment. Jesus paid for each of these things. Jesus paid for you to have hope of eternal life. Jesus paid for you to be saved and to be saved right now. Jesus paid for you to have spiritual life. You can’t do that on your own. He sent the Holy Spirit to give it to you. He did all of this. Instead, what these are, are promises that are meant to reassure the disciples. As he’s speaking to those 12 men and saying, the things that are about to come are going to be very hard. They’re going to be very difficult. You’re going to want to give up. You’re going to want to throw in the towel. Goodness. You’re going to want to walk away. but keep going because here’s what’s waiting for you on the other side. And those things are true for us as well.

Those things are true for us as well. These are promises to his people that when we, in a life of serving him, come to those points where we think this is too much. I can’t do this again. I can’t deal with this one more day. I can’t pay that cost, it’s too high. I’m ready to walk away. I’m ready to give up. He tells us keep going because of these promises that are awaiting us. We know that we can endure anything. We can endure any cost because what he restores to us is far more than the cost that we pay. And I want to leave you with this because I think this is the most important part of this passage. We look at a passage like this, and we think of how much it’s going to cost us to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. We think about how much we’re going to have to go through. We think of the problems that it causes for us, but it is nothing in comparison to the sacrifice He made.

It’s nothing in comparison to the cost that He paid for us. It’s nothing in comparison to what he has endured for us. And so ultimately the call to discipleship is a call for us to be like Jesus. It is very important that we understand he is not asking us to do anything that he hasn’t done. Actually what he’s asking us to do is less than what he’s done. Our kids have chores at home and sometimes they think why do I have to do this and sometimes I’ll step in and help. Not because I have to, but because I want them to see, I’m not asking you to do anything that I won’t do. Jesus is not asking us to do anything that He hasn’t done. Jesus is asking us as His people to come and be like Him. Look at verse 22. He tells them, Son of man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed and be raised up on the third day.

He’s saying, this is my whole plan. This is what I came to do, was to be rejected and to be despised and to suffer and to be crucified, to be killed and buried and to rise again. And so by the time we get to 23, verse 23, when he tells them, if anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself, take up his cross daily and follow me. Suddenly, that cost doesn’t seem so high because He’s just asking us to exhibit the kind of sacrifice that He made for us on a smaller scale. When we’re asked to take up our cross, for most of us, that’s not literally to go and be crucified. But it is daily putting the flesh to death and saying, it’s not about me and what I want, it’s about what He calls me to. So I take up that cross. I deny myself. When my flesh wants something different than what He’s called me to, I say, no, deny Himself daily and follow me.

When we’re called to be disciples, when we’re paid to make the sacrifice, when we’re called to pay the cost. Jesus is not asking us to do anything more than what he’s already done. He’s actually asking us for a whole lot less. But every time, every time we endure some hardship for him, every time we deal with some cost or some inconvenience for him, we’re just learning to be more like him.

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