Count the Cost

My first convertible was a 1993 Toyota Celica. I bought it used, with relatively low miles on it, and I kept it for something like 15 years.

During that time, I met Annette, and we traveled all over creation in that wonderful little car. She absolutely loved it. We both did.

But I only realized how MUCH she loved it when it finally came time to trade it in for something new.

The Celica had nearly a quarter of a million miles on it, and it needed a whole new suspension system, the seats needed to be replaced, and I suspected we’d soon be talking about replacing the engine.

I believe in keeping cars as long as possible, since the cost of just about any repairs you can name is almost always less than the cost of six months worth of car payments.

But in the case of the Celica, the cost of all the repairs and replacements that were needed were going to be just too great, so we had to get rid of it and get something different.

As we stood by the used Nissan 350Z that we’d just bought and I handed the Celica’s keys to our salesman, I looked over and saw Annette wiping tears from her eyes.

We’d made so many good memories in that little red convertible that walking away from it seemed to her like moving from one season of life to another.

For me, even though I’d loved the Celica, the tears didn’t come until two weeks later. And they were for another reason entirely.

I was standing by a gas pump, ready to put gas into the Nissan for the first time. And when I opened the gas tank cover, I noticed a sticker that said it needed premium gas.

I hadn’t realized that when we bought it. The Celica was happy with regular unleaded gas. But not the Z, which was something of a poor man’s race car. Its engine needed high-octane gas to run well.

We’d worked out how to afford the Nissan’s PURCHASE, but we’d not considered the significant added cost of the premium gas it needed to run well.

Now, I tell you this because of a question I received this week about last Sunday’s message.

Now, let me say right up front that I really do love getting questions about sermons and Bible studies. It tells me that you’re thinking about what you’ve heard and trying to know how to apply it to your lives.

And in the case of this particular question, it served as an encouragement to follow up with the message I’ve prepared for today.

You might recall I asked some questions of my own last Sunday: What will you bring to God? What does He want from you?

We answered those questions with a look at the Old Testament prophets, who talked about God’s promise to those who turn to Him through faith in Jesus that He’ll replace hearts of stone with hearts of flesh.

When we place our faith in Jesus for salvation, God begins to make us something new — a new creature is how the Bible puts it.

And He does this from the inside out, beginning with changing our hearts so that we can now respond in positive and obedient ways to Him and to His Holy Spirit.

All of this takes place at the point of salvation, and it requires one to be WILLING to give our cold, unresponsive stone hearts to Him in faith.

But there was also another sense of giving our hearts to God that we touched on last week, and this seems to have been the source of some confusion.

Giving our hearts to God in Christ Jesus isn’t a once-and-done kind of thing. Believers are called to continually give their hearts to Him.

And I think part of the confusion some folks had after Sunday’s message was a result of my having failed to adequately explain what it means to give your heart to Jesus in the context of discipleship.

You see, we’re talking about two different things. When we’re lost, we give our stone hearts to God through faith in Jesus, and He makes us what we were not: righteous in Christ. That’s salvation and justification.

But not all who are saved are disciples, true followers of Jesus. They’re saved, but they’re not allowing themselves to be sanctified, to be made more like Him and to love Him more each day.

True followers of Jesus — those who are His disciples — are called continually to surrender their hearts to Him. We’re called to set aside anything and everything that might compete with Him for preeminence in our lives.

We’re called to put Him first in every part of our lives. We’re called to let go of anything that might keep us from becoming more like Him. We’re called to set aside whatever keeps us from being obedient to Him.

And what makes this difficult is that oftentimes the things we most need to set aside are the things we value the most.

Salvation is free, but discipleship is costly. Truly FOLLOWING Jesus is costly.

And Jesus warned that all who would follow Him — all who would be true disciples and not just beneficiaries of a fire insurance policy, as it were — should stop and consider the true cost of following Him. We should understand the true extent of what He asks us to give Him.

Jesus talked about this at a number of different points in His ministry here on earth. Today, I’d like us to look at one of those occasions, as it’s related to us in the Gospel of Luke.

We’ll be reading from Luke, chapter 14 today, with a quick look back at chapter 9 later on.

Let’s look at our focus passage together, beginning in verse 25.

Luke 14:25 NASB95

25 Now large crowds were going along with Him; and He turned and said to them,

By this time, Jesus had become immensely popular among the people of Judea. His miracles had become known far and wide. And many people were following Him just to see what He might do next. They were curious.

Some were following Him hoping to experience one of those miracles for themselves, hoping to receive some earthly benefit from Him.

But, as curiosity is one thing; discipleship is another.

And Jesus had a way of winnowing from the crowds the merely curious by telling them hard truths that would be unacceptable to all but those who really wanted to BE His followers.

And that’s just what He does in the remainder of this passage. Look at verse 26.

Luke 14:26 NASB95

26 “If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple.

Now, you need to understand that Jesus is using hyperbole — exaggeration intended to make a point — in this verse.

He doesn’t want you to hate your father and mother or anyone else, including yourself. That would be a direct contradiction to the rest of Scripture.

This is a common way of speaking and writing among people of this time and place. The idea is that the love you feel for Him as one of His followers is so great that everything else pales in comparison to it. I call it comparative hyperbole.

What Jesus is saying is that His true followers will need will find their true identity in HIM, and not in any of the other relationships that defined their past identities.

If you’ve turned to Jesus in faith, then your identity in HIM should take precedence over all others. Every relationship you have should be filtered through your faith in Jesus.

Every attitude and world view have, every decision you make, and every priority you set. In every case, your question should be: Does this intensify my identity in Christ, or does it draw me away from Him?

True disciples eventually come to understand that the cost of becoming more like Jesus is what the Apostle Paul called the living sacrifice we make of ourselves to God.

The cost of becoming more like Jesus is the surrender to God of everything we once held dear for the One who is more dear than anything else.

Think about it. Jesus set aside His identity — His rights and privileges — as King of kings and Lord of lords to become one of us.

He set aside His identity of sinless perfection to take upon Himself the sins of mankind at the cross. He set aside His perfect and eternal relationship with His Father to bear the Father’s just punishment for OUR sins.

And He gave up His life so that we could have eternal life. He paid a high cost for our salvation so it could be ours for free.

But if we’re going to follow Jesus — if we’re going to be His disciples, His apprentices, the ones who bear His name throughout the world — If we’re going to become like Him who paid such a dear cost for our salvation, then we should EXPECT there to be a cost for our sanctification.

That’s what He warns in verse 27.

Luke 14:27 NASB95

27 “Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple.

If we’re going to be disciples of Jesus, then we must be willing to identify with Him, even to death, if necessary. Taking up one’s cross here suggests denying yourself and all those things that constituted your identity when you were lost.

It means that all those things that used to be most important to you — all those things that used to define who you were — are now secondary to your identity as a disciple, a follower of Jesus.

It means that your first loyalty is no longer to family or career or even yourself, but to Jesus.

As Warren Wiersbe put it: “Salvation is open to all who will come by faith, while discipleship is for believers willing to pay a price. Salvation means coming to the cross and trusting Jesus Christ, while discipleship means carrying the cross and following Jesus.” [Tom Constable, Tom Constable’s Expository Notes on the Bible (Galaxie Software, 2003), Lk 14:26, quoting Wiersbe.]

Unlike me last Sunday, Jesus recognized that it would be too easy to misunderstand His message here, so He gave a couple of brief parables to make His point. Look at verse 28.

Luke 14:28–30 NASB95

28 “For which one of you, when he wants to build a tower, does not first sit down and calculate the cost to see if he has enough to complete it? 29 “Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who observe it begin to ridicule him, 30 saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’

Nobody in his right mind would start to build a tower without considering how much the project would cost and then making sure he had enough money to complete it.

Nobody who was thinking straight would buy a little sports car without thinking first about how much it would cost to run and maintain it.

But that’s just what happens with many believers. They respond in faith to the message of the gospel, glad to receive forgiveness and eternal life.

But when the cost of truly following Jesus becomes clear, they balk. And some even turn aside from following Him, just as they did when He preached these hard truths in Luke.

In Luke, chapter 9, we see three examples of people who underestimated the commitment it would take to follow Jesus.

Let’s look at that passage together before continuing in chapter 14. We’ll pick up in verse 57.

Luke 9:57–62 NASB95

57 As they were going along the road, someone said to Him, “I will follow You wherever You go.” 58 And Jesus said to him, “The foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.” 59 And He said to another, “Follow Me.” But he said, “Lord, permit me first to go and bury my father.” 60 But He said to him, “Allow the dead to bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim everywhere the kingdom of God.” 61 Another also said, “I will follow You, Lord; but first permit me to say good-bye to those at home.” 62 But Jesus said to him, “No one, after putting his hand to the plow and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.”

I’ll follow you wherever you go, the first man said to Jesus. But instead of saying, Yay! A new disciple, Jesus clarified just what it was the man would have to give up — his own comfort.

The second man was different. Jesus called HIM to follow. And the man seemed willing to do so, but not yet. He would be obedient but on his own terms.

What’s delayed obedience? DISobedience.

What Jesus says here sounds harsh to our ears — “let the dead bury their own dead” — but His point was this: The spiritually dead people of this world — those who are still lost, who haven’t placed their faith in Him — will take care of worldly matters.

But those who are spiritually alive through faith in Jesus should be be should have HIS business as their top priority.

This week, I came across a great example of someone who really gets that.

I stopped at Bubba & Frank’s BBQ restaurant in Carrollton one day. While I was waiting, I saw a plaque with pictures and bios for Bubba and Frank. Frank is a pastor and he met the late Bubba at his church. Frank had done missionary work in Latin America, and Bubba was renowned for his barbecue.

The men got together and started what’s become a chain of restaurants.

On the plaque, was the restaurant’s mission statement: To glorify God. And in a little historical blurb, I read that they’d started the restaurant so they could use the proceeds for Frank’s mission work in Latin America.

These two men created a very popular local chain of restaurants. They could rightfully have identified as restaurateurs. Instead, they used their restaurants as a vehicle to proclaim their identity in Christ and to glorify HIM.

Turning back to Luke, finally, we have the third man, who just wanted to say goodbye to the people back home before following Jesus.

Again, Jesus’ reply to him sounds harsh to our ears. How long would it have taken to say goodbye, anyway? Well, that’s hard to say. What if his family had convinced him to stay? “You can catch up with Him later,” they might have said.

Or in our modern context: “You can go to church anytime. You can go on the NEXT mission trip. You can give after you’ve received that bonus.”

The point is that the world will never lack for ways of distracting people from following Jesus, nor for nice-sounding excuses for not doing what He’s called us to do as His disciples.

As Mark Bailey put it in his book, To Follow Him: “Mr. Too Hasty was too concerned with the comforts of this life, Mr. Too Hesitant was too concerned with the cares of this life, and Mr. Too Homesick was too involved with the companions of this life. Those three kinds of people can’t be used effectively for Jesus Christ.” [Tom Constable, Tom Constable’s Expository Notes on the Bible (Galaxie Software, 2003), Lk 9:61, quoting Bailey.]

Salvation is free, but discipleship — truly following Jesus — has a cost. Indeed, as Jesus suggests in the next part of our focus passage in Luke, chapter 14, discipleship means being ready to step into battle with Him. Look at verse 31.

Luke 14:31–32 NASB95

31 “Or what king, when he sets out to meet another king in battle, will not first sit down and consider whether he is strong enough with ten thousand men to encounter the one coming against him with twenty thousand? 32 “Or else, while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace.

Jesus doesn’t invite His followers to a Sunday picnic. He’s calling us to join Him in spiritual warfare against Satan, the ruler of this world. And if you’re going to join the battle, you’d better be sure you know the potential cost.

And He makes this point clear with a bit more hyperbole in verse 33.

Luke 14:33 NASB95

33 “So then, none of you can be My disciple who does not give up all his own possessions.

Clearly, this IS hyperbole, since we know the disciples had clothes of their own and even swords. And they would’ve had money to use for their expenses, too. As a carpenter, Jesus would have had tools of His own.

What He’s saying here is that His followers must adopt a lifestyle that demonstrates their willingness to part with whatever is necessary to follow Him in obedience.

HE made the sacrifice to pay for your salvation. But you can only truly serve Him if you’re willing to make a sacrifice of your own.

And it wouldn’t be a sacrifice if it weren’t something dear to you. What we must give up to be truly following Jesus as disciples differs from one person to another, and sometimes it can be hard to know what He’s asking for.

But here’s a question I’ve found to be helpful in figuring it out: What parts of your life have you kept segregated from God?

For some people, it's their entertainment and relaxation. For others, perhaps it's sexual identity and relationships. For others, money or careers. For others, maybe vacations and free time. For many, it's family.

Maybe it’s what folks like to call “righteous anger.” Or indignation. Or ill will to someone who’s wronged you.

We all tend to carve out little pieces of our lives to which we claim exclusive ownership. And sometimes the things we hold onto aren't evil in and of themselves.

But if we don’t surrender these things to God — if we don’t sacrifice them at the cross of Jesus and allow HIM to do with them what HE chooses, the way those men did with their restaurant, for example — If we refuse to deny ourselves and put Him first in any aspect of our lives, then we’re no longer following Him.

We’ve turned aside, like the man who wanted to go home and say goodbye to those who’d been important to him in THIS world.

And the last two verses of this passage are Jesus’ commentary on such believers. Look at verse 34.

Luke 14:34–35 NASB95

34 “Therefore, salt is good; but if even salt has become tasteless, with what will it be seasoned? 35 “It is useless either for the soil or for the manure pile; it is thrown out. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”

“Just as a disciple can cease to follow Jesus, so salt can lose its saltiness. In that case both things become useless. What distinguishes a disciple of Jesus from a non-disciple, what makes him or her salty, is his or her allegiance to Jesus.” [Tom Constable, Tom Constable’s Expository Notes on the Bible (Galaxie Software, 2003), Lk 14:34.]

Significantly, the only way salt can lose its saltiness is to be contaminated by something else that dilutes its saltiness.

Which is the same thing that happens to believers who choose to abandon their walk with Jesus because they’re unwilling or afraid to sacrifice whatever else is dear to them. They’re trying to have Jesus AND whatever else they’ve held dear for so long.

In doing so, they don’t lose their salvation, but they DO lose the reward that comes from following Him where He calls.

Listen, I’m not saying you all have to give up everything and preach on a street corner somewhere. If that’s what God’s calling you to do, so be it. But most of us aren’t called to that.

What I AM saying is that each one of us who has turned to Jesus in faith must prayerfully examine ourselves and allow the Lord to show us what we’ve held back from Him.

We need to ask Him what we need to deny in order to identify with Him more closely, in order to love Him more completely.

What do we need to set aside so we can be more like Him? What do we need to sacrifice so we’re not diluting the change He wants to make in us?

Salvation is free, but discipleship is costly. Sometimes it means giving God control of the things we once considered most important in our lives, the things that occupied our very hearts.

The rewards are magnificent, but be sure to count the cost.