Counting the Cost and Paying the Price

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Transcript:

Well, it’s good to see all of you here this morning. If you would, turn with me in your Bibles to Luke chapter 14. Luke chapter 14.

The next couple of weeks, I want us to take a look at some passages in the four Gospels. Talk to us about the, really, I don’t know a better way to say it than the cost of following Jesus. There is a cost to it.

Now, incidentally, the cost to Jesus for us to be purchased, for us to be forgiven for our sins, and even have the opportunity for a relationship with him, the cost that he paid, the price that he paid, is considerably higher than anything we think we’re losing on our end. Nevertheless, there is a cost involved for us, not for salvation. There’s no cost to us for salvation because he’s paid everything.

But what comes after salvation? The point where we say, now I belong to him, I’m going to follow him, there’s a price to be paid. There’s a cost to us for that.

And I want us to talk about that the next couple weeks because as I was talking with some of my cousins yesterday at breakfast, there are some roles in life, there are some jobs that you just can’t do part-time. There are some jobs that you can. You can get a job working at Walmart part-time.

I did insurance part-time for a while. There are some things you can do part-time. That’s probably why I wasn’t good at it, because I did insurance part-time.

You have to eat, sleep, and breathe insurance to make you go of it. But anyway, there are some things you cannot do part-time. One of the things we were talking about yesterday was being a parent.

I am not a parent part-time to my kids in any sense of the word, because they’re always with me except when I come here on Sundays. I’m not a parent part-time. Even when they’re not with me, I’m still a parent.

And everything has to be oriented around that. so you can’t do it part-time. You can’t be a Christian part-time, I contend.

You can’t be a follower of Jesus Christ. You can call yourself a Christian part-time, and you can act like a Christian part-time, but to be a real follower of Jesus Christ, it is a full-time commitment. And so that’s what I want us to talk about the next few weeks. And this morning, we start with what the cost is.

And over the next couple weeks, we’ll look at some examples of people who have been willing to count the cost of some people who have not been willing to do that. But we’re going to talk this morning about what Jesus says the cost is. Because you need to know before you start down, in most cases, you need to know before you start down a journey where you’re going and what the cost of it is going to be.

Now, I like to sometimes go out and just drive, and I have no idea where I’m going to end up, but that’s not always the best way to do things. And Jesus gives some examples here that ring true in my own life when he talks about counting the cost. And in this passage, starting in verse 25, he says, And there went great multitudes with him, and he turned and said unto them, If any man come to me and hate not his father and mother and wife and children and brethren and sisters, yea, in his own life also he cannot be my disciple. And we’ll come back to that in a minute because that’s an interesting verse out of the Bible and one that could be taken out of context and misused if we’re not careful.

And whosoever doth not bear his cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. This is where he starts to talk about the planning ahead. He says in verse 28, For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he hath sufficient to finish it?

Lest happily, after he hath laid the foundation, and is not able to finish it, all that behold it begin to mock him, saying, This man began to build, and was not able to finish. So he gives the example here of somebody who is going to build a great tower, build a gigantic tower, and he sits out and lays out all the plans and starts building, but he doesn’t plan on the cost, and he realizes partway through that he’s run out of money to finish the tower. And so what you’ve got is something that’s not easily hidden.

I mean, it’s hard to hide a tower. It’s not easily hidden that this thing is, he intended to build on a massive scale, and it’s sitting there for everybody to see, and it’s unfinished, completely unfinished. And it sits there as a testament to his poor planning, to his not being a good businessman.

And people would look at this and mock, and he says, who would do that? And of course, there are some people who would do that. But a wise man doesn’t act that way.

And Jesus tells those who are following him, who among you would start to build this tower and not count the cost ahead of time and make sure? You know, I refer to from time to time in messages to North Korea, and it’s because it’s so bizarre. It fascinates me.

If you know anything about North Korea at all, it’s just a bizarre country with the dictatorship they have. There is a massive hotel in the middle of the capital city that is supposed to be like a three-sided pyramid. It looks to me like something that you would see the villagers running to with pitchforks and torches in a horror movie.

I mean, it just looks like the castle on the mountain, but it’s this big pyramid thing, bulky eyesore, and it was supposed to be one of the biggest hotels in the world, maybe the tallest building in their country. And they started building it back in the late 80s, I’m told, and then the Soviet Union collapsed. They didn’t have that support from outside coming in.

They ran out of money to finish the thing. And so you’ve got this massive pile of concrete sitting in the middle of the capital city. I think they just a few months ago put windows in the thing.

So they’ve got this massive hotel sitting there unfinished. We talk about billion-dollar boondoggles in our government. This probably would top the list if we were to make one.

And the entire world looks at this hotel, and I would not try to pronounce it in front of all of you because I know I wouldn’t pronounce it right. But the world looks at this massive hotel, and it’s sort of a testament to the foolishness of their government. I mean, people go over there even today and take pictures of it and come back and say, yeah, it’s still not finished.

And it’s such an eyesore that it’s a mark of shame on their government North Korea that they’ve not been able to finish this tower. That’s exactly what Jesus is talking about here. He says, who would start to build the tower without planning ahead where the money’s going to come from, how they’re going to finish it, because if it sits there unfinished, everybody is going to mock, saying this man began to build and was not able to finish.

And he says, or what king going to war against another king sitteth not down first, and consulted whether he be able with 10,000 to meet him that cometh against him with 20,000. He says, what kind of king with 10,000 troops is not going to sit down first and plan out whether he’s able to take on this other country with 20,000 troops before he goes to war? A foolish man is just going to say, well, I’ve got my 10,000.

We’re just going to charge right ahead and do what we want to do. And they’re going to come up against the 20,000. They’re going to get whooped up on.

And then as he says in verse 32, or else while the other is yet a great way off, he sendeth an ambassage and desireth conditions of peace. So what he says here is if you go to war foolishly, if a king were to go to war foolishly and has not carefully taken stock of whether or not he has the manpower, the supplies, the logistics, everything in order to take on this bigger army. And if he does, great.

But if he doesn’t, what kind of king doesn’t sit down and plan out whether he’s got the forces to be able to do this? Otherwise, he starts a war foolishly and gets out there on the battlefield and realizes he’s outnumbered and outgunned. I know they didn’t have guns in that day and age, but realizes he’s going to lose.

And suddenly he is sending an envoy to the other side and saying, wait, wait, we want to make peace. We want to make peace. And probably the other side realizes at that point he’s not coming at it from a place of strength.

And they can dictate whatever terms they want for peace. There’s some of you who were alive in the 70s. I was not.

But some of you who were alive in the 70s may remember the news reports of Idi Amin, who was the dictator of Uganda. And he oppressed his own people for nearly a decade. And in order to distract from problems that were going on at home, he decided, let’s get everybody on the same boat.

Let’s get everybody working in the same direction, and we’re going to invade Tanzania, which was the neighboring country there in Africa. But when they invaded Tanzania, he realized, my soldiers really are only good at killing civilians, because that’s what they’ve been trained to do over the last eight years. They’re only good at killing civilians.

Now that they’re up against another military, we’re having to withdraw back to the border. And he went on the news. I’ve seen the video where he goes on the news and says, we believe in peace and good feelings and friendship among nations.

And I’m thinking, where was that feeling when you decided to invade Tanzania? But he comes back to the border and says, no, no, we want peace. That’s all we’ve ever wanted.

And Tanzania didn’t fall for it and sent troops in. And that’s how Idi Amin ended up getting thrown out of power. He was not a wise man for many reasons, but he was not a wise man because he didn’t stop and take account.

Do I have the forces? Do I have the logistics? Am I able to finish this war I’ve started?

And of course he didn’t. And Jesus says, what kind of man would start to build this tower not knowing whether he could finish it? What kind of man would send his troops into battle not knowing whether he had a good shot of winning or not?

He says, you’ve got to count the cost. You’ve got to count the cost. See, I’m one of those that doesn’t always count the cost of things. So I know very well what he’s talking about here. A little over a year ago, I decided that I was going to redo the floors in my house over in Arkansas.

I hate carpet. I hate carpet. Now, if you have carpet, please don’t be offended if you’ve got carpet, because I don’t mind if you’ve got it.

I just don’t want it in my house. And so I thought we’re going to start room by room so we don’t have to do them all at once and spend all that money. We’re going to start with the living room.

So one day, while the whole family was back here in Oklahoma, I thought, okay, we’re going to get started. Got out an X-Acto knife and cut the carpet where it went from the living room into the bedroom and started ripping up all the carpet in the living room because I was going to stain the floors with that concrete stain. Well, I didn’t plan ahead for other contingencies.

I realized there was paint all over the floor from where the builders had just dumped. You couldn’t do anything. Okay, so I tried concrete paint.

That didn’t work. And eventually I started having to put out, what do you call it? I decided I was going to have to go to Lowe’s and buy flooring.

And I thought, well, I’ve already spent all the money on the stain. I’ve already spent all the money on the concrete paint, which ended up being horrible. Well, I guess I’ll go buy some flooring.

And I went and bought the flooring for the living room. And started putting the flooring down, and I realized, okay, I am hundreds of dollars now into this boondoggle. And I didn’t plan ahead that I’ve got to buy the adhesive for the flooring.

I didn’t think that I’ve got to buy the stuff that goes around the edging, too, which was almost another $100. And by the time I get through with the flooring, I’m looking at it going, how much more money am I going to have to spend or just leave my floor looking like this for anybody from the neighborhood or the church who comes by to visit? And I ended up looking stupid because I had to call people from the church and say, what do I do about this?

How do I fix this? Come look at my floor. I started through this and I could have put the carpet back, but I’d ripped it up and put it out at the curb already.

See, I should have, I’ll know better next time. But I should have planned ahead and said, okay, this is what it’s going to cost to redo the floor in my living room. Okay, let’s plan on double that just so I make sure that I have enough.

If I count the cost of what it’s going to be, make sure I have enough. I don’t always plan ahead. I know exactly what this is talking about.

Fortunately, yesterday I planned ahead. I went to kind of a farm expo with the kids that was being put on by the county extension people. And I thought, maybe that’s what I ought to do.

I ought to buy a farm. And then I started thinking about how much each cow was going to cost and how much taxes. And then I realized that’s probably not the direction I need to go.

So I’m learning to count the cost. But I think if each of you thought about it hard enough, we’ve all got a story from our lives where we didn’t count the cost and got into trouble. And usually it’s about things like money or time or we just got ourselves into a mess, but usually it’s short-term problems that we cause for ourselves. Even the army thing and the building of the tower, even those were short-term problems, relatively speaking.

When it comes to the most important things in life, when it comes to the spiritual, We have got to count the cost, lest we get partway through and realize, this is not what I signed up for. And I’m not trying this morning to talk you out of the life of following Christ. My prayer would be that each and every person in this room would solemnly and soberly count the cost of what it takes to follow Jesus Christ, and then choose to do it anyway. But he says in verse 33, So likewise, whoever he be of you that cannot forsake all that he hath, cannot be my disciple.

cannot be my disciple. Now, I’m not standing here this morning telling you that you have got to, that you’ve got to get your life in perfect order because what he’s talking about here is how you get salvation, that you count the cost to yourself and see if you’re willing to pay enough for your salvation. I want to make this as clear as I possibly can.

When it comes to salvation, when it comes to forgiveness of our sins, when it comes to eternal life, when it comes to a relationship with God the Father, Jesus Christ has already paid everything that’s necessary for our salvation. Everything. There’s not a thing that we need to pay and there’s not a thing that we can pay in order to have salvation.

What I’m talking about is going the step further because what’s supposed to happen after salvation is that we then are supposed to turn and follow Jesus Christ. We are then supposed to be his disciples. There’s not supposed to be a second class of Christians where the first class say, yeah, I’ve trusted Christ and now I’m going to be his disciple and go at it with everything I’ve got. and a second class who says, yeah, I’ve been saved, but I’m really not sure about following.

I’m just going to sit here in the pew for a while and see how that goes. There’s not supposed to be two classes of Christians. We are supposed to trust him as our Savior and then follow him.

But he warns us, and I think this warning may mean more in our day than it meant in his, because we have given people the wrong idea that, hey, you just become a Christian, you follow Jesus Christ and everything’s going to be perfect. You’re going to be perfect. Life is going to be perfect.

Everything’s going to be wonderful. Guys, there’s not that kind of life outside of children’s TV shows. It just doesn’t happen.

There is a cost to following Jesus Christ. Not a cost for salvation, but when we follow Jesus Christ after salvation, there are going to be things that we have to give up. There are going to be things that we have to give to Him. There are going to be things that we have to stop.

There are going to be things that we have dissuade you from following Jesus Christ, because as I said at the very beginning of this, anything we give up pales in comparison to what we get in return. But that’s why he says in verse 26, if any man come to me and hate not his father and mother and wife and children and brethren and sisters, yea, his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. He’s not saying here that we have to hate everybody.

In order to be a good Christian and a follower of Jesus Christ, I don’t have to go home after this service is over and slap my kids around and tell them I hate you. Okay, I would never do that. Just the thought, just even saying that, just the thought of it makes me sad.

I love my children. I would give my life for my children. I hope it doesn’t come to that, but I would give my life for my children.

I love them. I love my parents. I love my sister.

All of these people, all of these relationships that it says if you don’t hate these people, you are not worthy of me. Jesus is not telling them and is not telling us that we have to hate everybody to be a good Christian. Although there are so many Christians who do act like they hate everybody that maybe that memo didn’t get clarified.

What he’s saying here, what he’s saying here, we have to look back at how the Bible uses language sometimes. And in the Hebrew culture, you would exaggerate comparisons sometimes to draw a distinction between two things is the best way I can explain it. And if we were going to put it in our terms, if we were going to put it in our words today, when he talks about love and hate, He’s not talking about actual love and hate.

He’s talking about a love for him, a love for him, and a love for God that is so strong, that is so passionate, that by comparison, it makes every other form of love look like hate. Does that make sense? So he’s not saying you’ve got to hate your whole family or you’re a bad Christian.

What he’s saying is that to be a Christian, to be a follower of Jesus Christ, to be my disciple, you need to love me with such a strong and burning love that this great love that you feel for your husband, your wife, your father, your mother, your brother, sisters, your children, and we should love them with, you know, the way the world says, all of our hearts. We should feel a love for them. We should show love for them, but our love for God should be so much stronger that even that love looks like hate in comparison.

And he says, if you can’t love me, if you can’t love me with that strong of a love, you cannot be my disciple. So I wanted to clarify what that meant in verse 26, because I said at the very beginning, that could be taken out of context if we’re not careful. But four things we learn from this passage.

First of all is that a Christian must be willing to count the cost of following Jesus. A Christian must be willing to count the cost of following Jesus. Why do we see so many people who surrender to ministry, whether we’re talking about being pastors or missionaries or whatever, or people surrendering just to being Christians in ministry.

And what I mean by that, to give you an example, my dad, when he was a teenager, felt God calling him into ministry and surrendered to ministry, but he knew God wasn’t calling him to be a pastor. God wasn’t calling him to be a youth minister or a missionary. And dad said, at that point, back in the seventies, that’s all we really knew about.

He said, and so I felt like God was calling me into ministry, but I spent the next however many years trying to figure out what that meant because I didn’t feel particularly called to any of those things. And several years ago, my dad, who’s been in banking longer than he’s even known my mother, realized that that’s where God put him and the banking field is his ministry. Ministering, just being a Christian every day in his work environment and talking to people, and that is his ministry.

So when I say, why do we see so many people surrender to ministry? Why do we see so many people commit their lives to following Jesus Christ? Whether we’re talking about ministry as a pastor, whether we’re talking about ministry as a missionary, whether we’re talking about ministry working at a bank, whether we’re talking about ministry working at Walmart, whatever we’re talking about, the life that we go through, committing our lives that I’m going to follow Jesus Christ. Why do we see so many people go through an emotional experience at church and say, yes, this time I’m going to follow him no matter what the cost, and then we get out in the world, and it doesn’t last long.

It’s because we fail to actually count the cost. We fail to actually stop and take a clear look at what it’s going to cost us to follow Jesus Christ. There will be things that we will have to give up. If I want to follow Jesus Christ, I hope I don’t make some of you mad with this, but if I do, we can talk about it later. Just be nice and use polite words.

If I want to be a follower of Jesus Christ, I better not go out and get drunk every other night or every night or any night, really, because it doesn’t represent him well. And by the way, I’m not saying that’s something I need to give up. I don’t do that.

But if I’m going to be a follower of Jesus Christ and I’m inclined toward that sort of thing, I’m not going to be able to do that. That’s going to be something I’m going to have to give up if I want to represent him. If I have in the past, like going around and having affairs, and yet I want to be a follower of Jesus Christ, that’s going to be something I’m going to have to give up.

You know what? I may have to change my television habits from the things I watch to how much time I spend planted in front of it. If I want to be a follower of Jesus Christ, I may have to change my music habits.

If I want to be a follower of Jesus Christ, I may have to change how things operate in my family. There are definite costs involved if we want to be real disciples. If we want everything in our lives to be committed to following Jesus Christ, it’s going to cost us something.

And it’s easy in an emotional moment in a church service to say, yes, I’m going to do that. Because preacher, I’ve never been, but most preachers are pretty good at getting us whipped into an emotional frenzy where we just want to do something. But outside that emotional moment, if we’ve not counted the cost, we get out in the real world and suddenly things are very, very different.

And that’s why he gives us the example of the tower and says, which of you intending to build a tower doesn’t sit down first and count the cost, whether he has sufficient to finish it. An example of the king going to war, or what king going to make war against another king sit if not down first and consulteth whether he be able with 10,000 to meet him that cometh against him with 20,000. As a Christian, I’m speaking specifically at this point to those of you who have trusted Christ as your Savior.

As a Christian to say, I’m going to commit my life to Jesus Christ. I want to be his follower. And really, we all should want to follow him. We all should want to be his disciple because that’s what he created us for.

we’re going to have to sit down and count the cost and take consideration of the things that we’re going to have to give up, of the things we’re going to have to let go of, the things we’re going to have to put behind us, and take a serious look at that. Take serious stock of our lives and the things that stand in the way of Him. And sometimes they’re good things too.

I’ve said before many times that the things that get in the way of our service to God and our relationship with God are not always even just the bad things. Sometimes the good can get in the way of what’s best. we can be so occupied and preoccupied with doing good things that we forget about doing the best thing that he’s called us to do. So as Christians, we need to be willing to count the cost of following Jesus.

Second of all, a Christian must be willing to pay the price of loving Jesus above all others. To be his disciple, we’ve got to be willing to pay the price of loving Jesus above all others. Because he said, if any man come to me and hate not his father and mother and wife and children and brethren and sisters.

And again, what he means by that is not really to hate them, but to love them less in comparison than Jesus Christ. As a Christian, I love my family, especially my kids. I love my family, but my first loyalty is to Jesus Christ. My first loyalty has to be to Jesus Christ. I’ve known people who’ve had to deal with this. I won’t name any names.

They’re not here anyway, But I’ve known people personally who’ve had to deal with this very question. Where does my first loyalty lie? Does it lie to my family?

Does it lie to my friends? Or does it lie with Jesus Christ? Just to give you an example, a friend a while back had a sibling who was having a same-sex wedding ceremony.

And the sibling was a Christian who was invited to come be a part of it. And struggled with that question. He said, you know, I love them, but I don’t know that I can be a part of it because I would be approving what was going on.

And Jesus Christ, you know, we hear all the time that, oh, that’s just the Old Testament. No, Jesus affirmed in the New Testament the Old Testament definition of marriage. And if we stand with Jesus, we have to stand for certain things that are not popular in our culture.

I don’t love homosexuals any less than anybody else. I’ve had dinner with them. I’ve had them over to my house.

I’ve shared Christ with them, as this other person had as well. But the choice comes down to, am I going to hurt a member of my family because they’re not going to understand, or am I going to do the right thing? Am I going to stand with Christ?

You know what? It created problems in the family. My friends stood with Christ, and I’m convinced that they did the right thing.

Because there’s going to be a day when, and it’s not just homosexuality, there are all sorts of things, that we’re going to be torn between standing with our family, as much as we love them. If your family members, if your friends are out there involved in some kind of wicked lifestyle, I’m going to tell you, do not love them any less for it. Do not love them any less for it.

But we don’t join them in it either because we stand with Jesus Christ. Our loyalty is first and foremost to Him. And a Christian has got to be willing to pay the price of loving Jesus above all others. If we decide ahead of time, I stand with Jesus Christ and my first loyalty is to Him, we’ve already made the decision before the question ever comes up.

Third of all, a Christian must be willing to pay the price of loving Jesus more than his own life. You notice, we hadn’t really talked about it yet, but at the end of verse 26, when he’s done talking about all the family members, if any man come to me and does not hate all these family members, it says, yea, and his own life also. He cannot be my disciple.

Now, again, here Jesus is not teaching us to hate our own lives. As a matter of fact, there are so many other places in the Bible that teach the contrary.

what he’s saying here is if your life is more important to you than me you can’t be my disciple as a matter of fact if your life no matter how important it is is not so much less in importance to you than me that it looks like you hate your own life in comparison to how much you love me then you can’t be my disciple so a christian must be willing to pay the price of loving jesus more than his own life how many people are there who have given up everything who’ve given up their lives for Jesus Christ. There’s the woman in Sudan, and I’ve not heard how that situation ended up this week, but the Christian woman in Sudan who was married to an American citizen and whose children are American citizens, who had gone back to Sudan where she was from to visit a family member and was arrested, thrown in prison for having, they said converted to Christianity, but as far as she knows, she was raised a Christian and was forced to deliver her baby shackled all four points in a jail in Sudan.

And there were people in America who were saying, I think she ought to just lie and tell them she became a Muslim again, so they’ll let her go. And at first, that sounds good. And it would be hard for me to blame her a bit if she did that.

And yet the Bible teaches that we’re not to do that, that we’re not to deny Christ. And she even said, they can kill me. I will not deny my faith. Guys, that’s exactly what he’s talking about.

And I don’t know this woman personally, but her testimony to the outside world is, I love Jesus Christ more than my own life. There are people across the world today who are being killed because they’re Christians. And a lot of times they’re given one last out and said, if you will just deny him, we’ll let you go.

And just like Martin Luther, they say, here I stand. I can do no other. They love Jesus more than their own lives.

There are not only people who are dying this morning, but there are people who are living for Jesus in ways that I’m envious of. Because long ago, God called them and said, I want you to go to this country. I want you to give up everything and everybody you know.

And I want you to go to Ukraine like Jeff and Colleen Franks. I want you to go to Peru. I want you to go to Mexico.

I want you to go to China like we’ve got people there now. And they could very easily say, but Lord, my life is here. What about my life?

What about my family? What about my children? What about my career?

What about all these things that I have here? My life is here. And yet God calls them, and it’s evident that they love Jesus more than their own life because they give their life in service to him, even if they’re not being killed.

The Christian must be willing to pay the price of loving Jesus more than his own life. And finally this morning, a Christian must be willing to pay the price of following Jesus to the end. Before we even set out, we’re going to have trouble.

Let me rephrase that. We are going to have trouble. We’re going to have questions and temptations to turn back if before we set out, we do not decide then and there that we follow him until the end, whatever the cost. Things get difficult, doe

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