Being A Disciple Luke 14:25-35

Being A Disciple Luke 14.25-35

Fri, Mar 28, 2025 2:48PM • 45:51

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Discipleship, Luke 14:25-35, cost of discipleship, Jesus' teachings, family priorities, renouncing possessions, perseverance, salt analogy, true sacrifice, commitment to Christ, spiritual growth, love of Jesus, eternal life, worldly distractions, faithful followers.

SPEAKERS

Speaker 1, Josh Slater

To where it comes from, and I am okay. It's also on the screens. Okay, good. I thought I was gonna have to Paul look over here anyway, so the reading of the word comes from Luke 1425, through 3025 through 35 if y'all like to be seated, you may at this time, except for him, because he has to get up in a few minutes anyway. Anyway. The Word says, Now great crowds were traveling with him. So he turned and said to them, If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his own father and mother, wife and children, brother and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple, whoever does not bear his own cross and come after Me cannot be My own. Cannot be my disciple. For which of you want him to build a tower doesn't first sit down and calculate the cost to see if he has enough to complete it. Otherwise, after he has Slater foundation and cannot finish it, all the onlookers will begin to ridicule him, saying This man has started to build and wasn't able to finish a what King going to war against another king will not first sit down and decide if he is able with 10,000 to oppose the one who comes against him with 20,000 if not while the other is still far off. He sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace in the same way, though, for every one of you who does not renounce all his possessions cannot be my disciple. Now, salt is good, but if salt should lose its taste, how will it be made salty? It isn't fit for the soil of the manure pile, they throw it out. Let anyone who has ears to hear listen now. Let us pray real quickly, Father God, thank You for Your word. Thank you for this time, and thank you for this moment that we have to just sing and listen to the message. Lord, let us ask that you be with us for the rest of the sermon and for the rest of the time that you put aside all this tracks and sword, that you just if we are here for any other thing that is to set them aside and be able to sit here and listen without any agendas, without being caught in the moment, without it seemed like it's not a without it seeming like it's Just another message that's not a song we're singing. Let's remember we're here for a purpose. We're here to learn from you, here to worship you. And let us always stay focused on the message. And just ask that you speak to pastor Johnson, that he be with him and guide him, lead them as he delivers the message. And test. Love you. Thank you for all you're giving to us. It's in Jesus name, amen,

amen. Thank you, James. You can go ahead and be seated. I'm just kidding. You can stand up if you want. Okay, so Luke, chapter 14, verses, 25 to 35 is where we're going to be this morning, and I tell you, I'm going to tell you that I have been wrestling with this Scripture all week long. In fact, at one point I was like, we'll just skip this one and we'll go to the next one, because Jesus got some hard sayings here, you know I was, as I was reading through and thinking through, I was like, man, we we are all gung ho. Okay, for the first half of chapter 14, Jesus has been hitting the Pharisees, man. He's just been saying, You need to be humble. You need to stop elevating yourself and all this stuff. And then he's just one two punch. He's like Muhammad Ali up there, just beating the snot out of the Pharisees. And then we get to this passage, and we're like, Oh, hold on, Jesus. Okay, let's, let's pump the brakes a little bit. And one of the reasons that we don't really like this saying from Jesus, or that can it be, it can be difficult for us to wrestle with, is because we like to have choices, right? We like to have decisions that we can make. I remember when Corey and I were We were living in the DFW area. We had a mechanic that we would go to whenever any of our cars were messing up, and we had one car that was messed up all the time, and so we were there a lot, and they had a sign outside of the office area, and it said this. It said, you can have it cheap, fast or good, but you can only pick two, right? You can have it cheap and fast, but it won't be good. You can have it good and cheap, but it won't be fast. Or you can have it fast and good, but it won't be cheap, right? That that those were the choices you were given. And when I was thinking about what Jesus was saying, he he only gives two options. You can either be His disciple, you can't be disciple. Those are your two options. And when we comes to this passage, we can really wrestle with that, because what he wants us to understand is that being his disciple is not a passive activity. Being his disciple means that we are all. In that we are in to what he has said. We give our whole lives to Him. This teaching comes on the heels of him telling us about a banquet, right? That that everybody is invited to the banquet, and you can come to the banquet, but coming to the banquet, there's going to be a cost. Jesus limits our choices to two. Here follow him or don't look at what he says in verses 25 through 27 now great crowds were traveling with him. So he turned and said to them, If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his own father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, even his own life. He cannot be my disciple. So the first thing we see here is that there are crowds coming with Jesus, traveling with Jesus. Who were the crowds? Well, the crowds are standing in stark contrast to the Pharisees. You see as, as we said a couple weeks ago, as the intensity of the Pharisees was heating up towards Jesus, and their hatred and and vitriol towards him was gearing up. The crowds were continuing to love Jesus. They were following him. He had a great crowd following him. And so they're standing in contrast to the Pharisees. They love Jesus, and they want to follow Jesus, and they they want to be with Jesus, and why are they following Jesus? So maybe they're following Him because they think he's the Messiah. Remember, he's on the way to Jerusalem like a king going to conquer his city. So maybe they're they're following Him because they want to go to Jerusalem and they want him to overthrow the Roman government. Maybe that's why they're following him. Maybe it's because they really like his miracles. They really like what he's done. They're like, man, we've, we've heard about the stories that of you Jesus going around and healing people. We really like that. We hear the stories of you feeding 5000 Jesus, and we really like that. And we really want to see more teachings and miracles that you have for us. Maybe some truly wanted to become his disciples, if they didn't want anything from him, they just wanted him. This is the same reason that some crowds come to Jesus today, right? They think that coming to him will bring them influence, right? They're kind of like bandwagon fans of Jesus, or they they think that Jesus is going to hype them up and give them a platform to speak. They think that Jesus is going to give them all their wildest dreams. So they come to Jesus for that reason. Maybe they think that they're going to that Jesus is going to fix all of their issues, all of the the wrongs in their life. He's going to provide a healing he's going to heal their relationships. He's going to fix their life. And they go Jesus, we want to follow you because of that. There are also some who come to Jesus today who are genuinely intrigued by Jesus, what he says, and what they've seen, what he they've seen him do through the lives of others. They're like Jesus. I really and truly want to follow you. But here's the thing, Jesus in the gospels, is not interested in building a crowd. He's interested in having disciples. He's interested in people coming to him and following him and listening to him. In fact, there are many times throughout the Gospels the the one that sticks out the most happens in John six, where Jesus is teaching and he has a large crowd of people following him. And in John six, what happens is Jesus is teaching, and after he had just fed the 5000 with the the bread and the fish. And he says, if you cannot eat of my body and drink of my blood, you cannot be my followers. And what happens? Many of them depart from Jesus. What you are saying is too hard Jesus, we must leave and go find something else. See, Jesus isn't afraid to thin the herd, so to speak. He's not afraid of making sure that the true disciples stick with him and the false disciples leave. He's not interested in numbers. He's interested in holy, devoted followers, holy, devoted disciples. And that's what we're going to look at this morning. What does it mean to be a disciple? A disciple is simply a learner or a student, one who spends their time and their energy learning from another. And in Jesus's time, it was typically a rabbi would have disciples and they would learn from him. But the truth is, is that throughout all of history, there have been people who are committed to a teacher, one of my best friends, who lives in North Carolina, he's working on he's actually almost finished with his doctoral program, and he had a mentor that he went to, and he ran everything through. He was a disciple of this man, learning from him, growing from Him, being critiqued by him, trying to imitate him in some way. And for us following Jesus, that's what we have to do. Our allegiance to Jesus is what he's looking for as a disciple, that we learn from him, that we grow from him, that we we engage with him. Now the truth is, is that we are all disciples of something. We are all disciples of something or someone. Maybe we are disciples of. Favorite media outlet. Maybe we are disciples of a family or a friend. Maybe we're disciples of the world. Maybe we're disciples of philosophies. Maybe you are a disciple of your own flesh and the only thing you listen to are your fleshly desires and the lust and the sinful hearts that you have, maybe you're a disciple of that. Whatever influences you, disciples you. And so if you are influenced by it, then it is discipling you. And Jesus is saying here, if you want to be His disciples, which means that we want to be influenced by him, which means that we want our lives devoted to him, which means we want to download everything that he has taught into our hearts, into our souls, so that we look like him. Because that's one of the things that a disciple does, is that he looks like his teacher. That's what we are called to do. And Jesus says, If you want to be my disciple, if you want to look like me, it's going to cost you something. Jesus is giving the call, and when giving the call, he gets to set the requirements as well. And the first requirement that he sets is in verse 26 where he says, If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his own father, mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, even his own life, he cannot be My disciple. Do you see that phrase cannot be my disciple? In these 10 verses, this phrase happens three times. Jesus is setting the parameter for what it looks like to be a disciple. Now these are hard words for us to read. If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his own father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, even his own life, he cannot be My disciple. Why is that hard? Because what we have to do is we have to wrestle with what is Jesus actually saying here? Because there's other scriptures that tell us that we are to love, there's other scriptures that tell us that we are to honor our father and mothers, that husbands, you are to love your wives as Christ loved the church, that that we are to love our neighbor as ourselves. So when Jesus says, hey, you need to hate your mother and father, your wife and your children, what is he saying there? Well, he's not actually saying that we have to hate them. He's using a Hebrew idiom, which basically puts priorities in place. So in we can all go all the way back to Genesis chapter 29 and in Genesis chapter 29 we get, we have this culmination of a story about a dude named Jacob. Now, Jacob was one of the patriarchs of the faith, and he was a deceiver. That was kind of his whole thing, but, and he ended up being deceived by his uncle, layman. See, Jacob saw this girl, Rachel, and said, I want to marry her. So he went to his uncle and he said, Hey, I want to marry Rachel. And layman said, alright, you can marry Rachel, but you gotta work for me for seven years. And so he ends up working for seven years. And in those seven years, layman deceives him, and in deceiving him, he actually gives him his oldest daughter, who had weak eyes, which whatever that means she wasn't very attractive, is what that means, um, Leah. And then when Jacob is deceived, he gets upset, and he goes back and he says, You promised me that I would get Rachel, and you gave me Leah. Now I want Rachel. And he's like, you gotta work for her another seven years. So he works 14 years for this woman. He had his eyes on this woman. And so what happens is, after that and Genesis, chapter 29 verse 30 to 31 it said Jacob slept with Rachel also, and indeed he loved Rachel more than Leah, and he worked for Laban another seven years, when the Lord saw that Leah was neglected, or another translation of that is hated, he opened her womb, but Rachel was unable to conceive. So it says that Jacob hated Rachel or Leah, but he didn't. He just had priority for Rachel. He loved Rachel more. And so when Jesus tells us that we are to hate our family, it's not about affection, okay, it's about priority. Our love for Jesus should be so great that our love for others looks like hate in comparison. Let me say that one more time, our love for Jesus should be so great that our love for others looks like hate in comparison. Jesus does explain this a little bit further in Matthew chapter 10, verses 37 through 39 when he writes this, the one who loves a father or a mother more than Me is not worthy of me. The one who loves a son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of me. And whoever doesn't take up his cross and follow Me is not worthy of me. Anyone who finds his life will lose it, and anyone who loses his life because of me. Will find it so Jesus is saying, You need to love me above everything else. And maybe some of you are going, man, you know what? That's that's pretty easy for me to love my Jesus more than my family because I don't really like my family. Maybe that's you, right? But in our our culture, we have a family first mentality, don't we? We do everything for our family. We build our schedules around family. We build our lives around our family. We go to work for our family. We do all these things for our family. And I'm not saying that necessarily those are bad things, but when your family is your number one priority and Jesus takes second place, your family is an idol. Your relationships are idols. It's idolatry. The culture tells us it's family first. And Jesus says, No, I'm first, I'm primary. I am priority. Scottish theologian Thomas Boston said this. He said, No man can be a true disciple of Christ to whom Christ is not dearer than what is dearest to him in the world, if Christ is not dearest to you, then you cannot be a disciple of Jesus. If you do not have Jesus as your first love, what happens is compromise. You will compromise your relationships. You will compromise yourself. You will compromise your family. If Jesus is not the number one priority. So in order to be a disciple of Jesus, you have to have a correct priority. Jesus doesn't want a second place trophy. He doesn't want a participation badge. He demands all of you. He it's not a request. He demands it from you. If you want to be my disciple, then you must love me more than anything else. You must love Jesus more than everything if you want to be his disciple. And what's interesting is in this paradox of loving Jesus more than you love your family, you will actually love your family more the more you love Jesus, the more you are committed to Jesus, the more that you are following after him, the more all of those other relationships will expand and grow, and you will love those people, all the more, because you have, will have right, rightly ordered priorities. That's why, when Jesus says that the two greatest commandments are Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind, with all your soul and with all your strength. And the second is like it is that you love your neighbor as yourself. If you love God with all that you have, you will not you cannot help but love people better. So if you want to love people better, love Jesus more. Not only does he take priority over your friends and your family, he also takes priority over your own life. Those closing words in verse 26 leave the question in the air, do I want to be a disciple of Jesus? Do I truly want to be a disciple of Jesus? In fact, he doubled down earlier in verse six, where he says, whoever does not bear his own cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple. Jesus is talking here about true sacrifice. It's easy for us to not really understand the weight of what Jesus is saying here, because we don't have the same kind of execution mechanism that the cross was, but the disciples would have known what the cross actually meant. It meant humility. It mean humiliate. Humiliation. It meant death. It meant being despised and rejected. You know who was hung on a tree? You know who was hung on a cross? Those who were hated, those who were tyrants, those were who were trouble makers, those who were despised by other people. The only one who hung on a cross that didn't deserve it was Jesus. We hear all the time that you know, I've got this cross to bear, whether it be your illness or you're on a struggle, your financial situation, or maybe even a broken relationship, you go, Well, this is my cross to bear. But that's not what Jesus is talking about here. What Jesus is talking about here is, what are you willing to give up to follow him? Are you willing to go through the extreme pain of death to follow Jesus, following your or carrying your cross is the explanation of giving up everything for Jesus, suffering for the sake of Christ, whether that be persecution or spiritual hardships, being disowned by your family and friends. See in the. First Century, any believer who followed Jesus that they were, if they were Jewish and they followed Jesus, they were going to be rejected by their family. They were going to be rejected by their friends. They were going to be ostracized and be pariahs to the society for all time because they have rejected they the their families would have believed they had rejected everything that they have been taught. And that's really hard for us to wrap our minds around, because for for many of us, coming to faith in Christ doesn't really cost us a whole lot, like our families aren't going to necessarily reject us. Some of you face that. Some of you face that when you came to Christ, that especially if you grew up in in some denominational circles, if you finally committed yourself to Christ, then they would have been like, alright, well, you're not no longer a part of this family. You're no longer belonging here. But for many of us, it's just, it's just another day until you actually start living for Christ. And when you start living for Christ, people will start looking at you. Start looking at you crossways. I want to let you know that many Christians across the globe take this passage more seriously than we do. In fact, just a couple of weeks ago, there were 70 Christians in Congo who were beheaded for their faith, they had the opportunity to renounce Jesus, and instead, they said, No, we stand firm with Jesus. And they were taken into their church building and beheaded because of their faith. They said, I'm willing to bear this cross for Jesus. That is true. It should break our hearts that that happens, but that's what a true disciple looks like. Yes, Lord, I will give everything I have. Self preservation is off the table when it comes to following you. If it's going to cost me my life, I'm going to follow you to the ends of the earth. Love. What a CS Lewis said about this. He said the Christian way is different. Christ says, Give me all. I don't want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work I want you. I've not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it. No half measures are any good. I don't want to cut off a branch here and a branch there. I want to have the whole tree down. I don't want to drill a tooth or crown it or stop it, but have it out hand over your whole natural self, all the desires with which you think innocent, as well as those you think wicked, the whole outfit Jesus wants it all You see, discipleship is a life of perpetual death to self, perpetual abandonment to the things of this world, to in pursuit of Christ. This is what we face when we say we want to follow Jesus. When we say we want to be a disciple of Jesus. This is what he's calling. I was talking in Sunday school earlier this morning that in many of the the epistles, the letters to the church, when a writer is opening them, they'll say, my name, Paul, James, Peter, whatever. And then the they say, a servant of Christ. Well, that word, servant is better translated, a slave of Christ. I have been bought with a price. My life is no longer my own. In fact, Paul puts it this way in Galatians, chapter two, verse 20, he says this, I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me, the life I live now, in the body I live by faith, in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself up for me. As we think about those early apostles that were part of this crowd that was following Jesus around, I think about the majority of them gave their lives for the gospel. The majority of them died for the faith. We think about Paul, who just said, I am crucified with Christ. You know what Paul endured? Paul endured beatings. He endured being arrested. He was shipwrecked, he was he got the 40 lashes minus one. He he was perpetually and always facing persecution for his commitment to Christ. And yet many of us today go, You know what? If following Christ means I gotta do this, then I'm going to just not commit to that. If following Christ means I gotta go sit. In the church for an hour. I'd just rather not we take so lightly the command of Christ here that we just say it's not that important. But Jesus is saying, are you willing to die for me? If you're not willing to die for me, you cannot be my disciple. If you are not willing to leave everything of this world behind, you cannot be my disciple. So before we make any rash decisions, Jesus wants the crowd in us to he wants to caution us on what it means to follow Him and He and He and He does this by telling us to count the cost. Look at these two parables that he says here in verses 14 through or 28 through 33 he says this, For which of you wanting to build a tower doesn't first sit down and calculate the cost to see if he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, after he had laid the foundation and cannot fix it, all the onlookers will begin to ridicule him, saying this man started to build and wasn't able to finish. Or what king going to war against another king will not first sit down and decide if he is able with 10,000 to oppose the one who comes against him with 20,000 if not, while the other is if not while the other was still far off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace in the same way, therefore everyone of you who does not renounce all of his possessions cannot be my disciple. Jesus teaches two parables here about counting the cost. Everything in life cost us something. You understand that everything in life cost you something. If someone wants to get a promotion at work, they will sacrifice time, energy, sleep and even relationships to get that promotion. If someone wants to excel academically, their social life will go out the window. If someone wants financial wealth, you will have to sacrifice the immediate pleasures of today for the future. In fact, Corey and I have been discussing me going back to school and getting my doctorate. So we have to sit down and we have to count the cost of what that's going to be, both financially and time and family wise, right? It's going to cost us something. It's funny that just earlier this week, I think it was Corey, Levi and I, we started watching the show alone. I don't know if you've ever seen the show, but basically what they do is they take 10 contestants and they go and they put them in isolated spots in the Canadian wilderness, and they have to survive, and the one who survives the longest in the dead of winter wins $500,000 okay, so it's a lot of money, but is it worth it? That's the question. And so they take them in with these people. Literally have nobody with them. They have to record themselves. They have to provide for themselves towards the like day 25 or day 30. They actually have people come check on them every once in a while just to make sure that they're still healthy. But they have to count the cost when they make that decision to go out there in the wilderness. And some are like, yes, it's worth the cost. But then the longer they get out there, they're starting to wonder, is it actually worth the cost? And so when we think that we want to do something, or when we think we want to follow Jesus, Jesus is saying, Do you count the cost? Do you understand what it is going to cost you? So he begins with the first parable about a man who wants to go build a building, and he sits down and he calculates a cost. And why does he do that? Because he doesn't want to be ridiculed for not finishing. I was listening to a pastor preach about the service or this this message earlier this week, and he gave this example that he used to live in Pennsylvania, and he had several friends whose parents would decide to build a house, they would get a plot of land, they would build the foundation, which had a basement in it, and then they'd run out of money, and they would never invite anybody over, because they were embarrassed that they never got to finish the project. That's what Jesus is is saying here, like nobody wants to start something and not be able to finish it because it will be ridiculed. And so when we think about the faith, one of the pressing ideas and things that we have to have in our hearts and in our minds is this idea of perseverance. Are we going to continue in the faith? And unfortunately, I think that this was where the American church has has just messed up, for lack of a better word, we think about all those crusades, like the Billy Graham crusades. We think about calling people down to the aisle and the aisle to accept Jesus. So it's not necessarily malicious that this has happened, but when we call people down to the aisle to say a sinners prayer or to give their life to Christ, do we have you ever heard anybody communicate this to them? This is going to cost you EVERYTHING YOU. Like this isn't just giving your life to Jesus. This is going to cost you your time, your finances, your life. This is going to cost you something. Like coming to Jesus, to be a disciple of Jesus, is going to cost you something. Yes, the gift of salvation is free, but obedience is the fruit of that gift of salvation. And if I've never been in a situation when I've done that where we said, hey, before you commit to Jesus, know that your life is no longer your own. This no longer belongs to you. You. Jesus doesn't want people who just want to take it to heaven. Jesus wants people who are so holy sold out to him who are going to persevere, who are going to stay faithful. Now I'm not saying, okay, so hear me quickly. I am not saying the people who go to those who have been saved at those crusades, or who walked down the aisle and given their lives to Jesus that those people hadn't had genuine experiences. I'm saying that if Jesus is saying, if you want to be my disciple, you need to count the cost. Maybe we should start mirroring what he says. Maybe we should start thinking about what he says and not just wanting to increase in numbers. There's a old theologian. He's not really that old. He was in the 1940s his name was Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and he was murdered because he was leading a was part of a rebellion against Hitler. And he wrote a book that has become one of Christianity's staples, I guess, and it's called the cost of discipleship. And in this book, he talks about cheap grace. And cheap grace is this understanding that that all we have to do, we would call it like easy believe ism today, is all you have to do is come to Jesus and he'll forgive your sins, and He will forgive your sins, He will forgive your sins, but He wants, and he desires your life. And so you can come to Jesus, and you say, Jesus, I repent of my sins, and I want to have forgiveness. And if you truly believe, then you will walk it that out in obedience. But if you don't truly believe, then you will think that you're walking around and you're good with God, because at one point in time you said that I believe in Jesus, and that is not helpful. In fact, that is hurtful. Counting the cost of following Jesus means that we know that it's going to cost us more than we could ever imagine, and we're okay with that. We're okay giving up everything for Jesus. Salvation by grace is free, but following Jesus will cost us everything that we have. And here's one of the beautiful things about this, these two parables, Jesus is presenting two different scenarios. The first man who wants to build a house, and he counts the cost. He sits down and he calculates how much it's going to cost him to build this, this tower. And the second one is a king who has 10,000 troops with just no small feet. And he looks out and he sees an enemy troop coming, an enemy king coming, and he's got 20,000 so he sits down and he goes, am I going to win this battle? Is there a way for me to win this battle? And if not, I'm going to propose peace to the king over there. So in these two parables, Jesus is saying, Can you afford to follow Jesus? That's what he says in the first one, can you afford to follow him? And then the second one, he's saying, Can you afford not to? Can you afford not to? Because Jesus is the King of all and he is going to renew this earth, and he's going to wipe out all that is wicked, everything that stands against him. Can you afford not to follow him? The cost of discipleship is great, but the cost of non discipleship is even greater. In discipleship, we get Jesus, what we have to do is we have to make sure that we're we're, we know that we get to we have to cast off any of the temporary pleasures. We need to cast off any of this life that we want to hold to because eternal life is provided for us. We have to have an eternal mindset where we are thinking about things above and not things below. We have to make sure that we are focused on Jesus and what He is granting us through His grace and salvation, and not just what we have on this earth, because we can get so distracted by the things of this world. And that's why Jesus tells us at the end that we must be able, right in verse 33 in the same way, therefore everyone of you who does not renounce all his possessions cannot be my disciple. What does he mean by renouncing all of our possessions? Is he saying that you need to go sell everything you have and give it to the church? No, that's not what he's saying. He has said that to some people, but that's not what he's saying here. He's saying to renounce. He's saying to save. Well to that you have. Everything that you have is open handed towards him, that there is nothing that you have, that you own, that any of your possessions are not yours. They are truly and fully his, that everything you have is a gift from him. Your life is not your own, your possessions are not your own. Jesus is telling isn't telling us to get rid of everything. He's just saying don't hold on to anything too tightly. And if you gotta grab grasp on something too tightly, you need to let it go, whatever that is. If you aren't willing to count the cost of discipleship. By letting everything go, you will either come out, come up short, like the man who ran out of money, or you realize that you cannot stand against the power in the person of Jesus. Christ. Jesus is saying, follow me, be my disciple. Give up everything. He says in another gospel where he says, You cannot serve two masters. You cannot serve both God and money and really the truly. You can just put anything you cannot serve God and fill in the blank. You can't serve both of them. You can either serve God wholeheartedly, or he immediately takes second place, and you're serving and worshiping something other than Him. Jesus concludes his teaching with the interesting and somewhat confusing statement here in verses 34 and 35 where he says, Now, salt is good, but if salt should lose its taste, how will it be made salty? It isn't fit for the soil or for the manure pile, they throw it out. Let anyone who has ears to hear listen. Essentially, what Jesus is saying is that if you're count the cost and you decide to follow Jesus, you must continue to persevere. You must continue to walk the life of the disciple, the one who follows Jesus. And if we have ears to hear, we must persevere. That's just for you. Chuck. Salt is a representation of the life of a disciple, right? Salt was used in the ancient world for both flavor enhancer and for preservation, and the believers should be that too. The disciples should be a flavor enhancer to the world, and it should preserve the good that God has put here on the world. We should enhance the world through Kingdom building, through preaching and proclaiming the gospel, through loving our neighbor and God above all else, whether we are in our workplace, in our neighborhood, our family or at home, we are that world should be better because we are there. It should taste better, it should seem better. It should love better when we are there. However, if we're not committed to following Jesus wholeheartedly, placing him as our number one priority in all of life, we will lose our saltiness. What happens with salt is when you add something to it, so salt, if you have sodium chloride here on the table, it will never really lose its saltiness, but it can be diluted if you add something that isn't salt to it, and that's kind of what Jesus is talking about here. Is like, if we let our selfishness and sin and pride in and we're distracted with other things of this world, then we lose our saltiness, because we've polluted what God has given us with the things of this world, and we will no longer preserve and we will no longer flavor enhance the world around us because our sin and selfishness. You see, salt is only useful when it is the nature of salt. A disciple is only useful when it has the nature of Jesus. If a disciple loses his or her distinctiveness, then she or he is useless. I want to read what Peter writes in Second Peter, chapter one, verses three through 10, and this is where we're going to close out. He says this, his divine power has given us everything required for life and godliness. Through the knowledge of him who called us by His own glory and goodness, by these he has given us very great and precious promises, so that through them, you may share in the divine nature escape, escaping the corruption that is in the world because of evil desire. For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with goodness. Goodness with knowledge. Knowledge with self control, self control with endurance, endurance with godliness. Godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. This is what I want us to really hear. If you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being useless or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord, Jesus, Christ, the person. Who lacks these things is blind and short sighted and has forgotten the cleansing from past sins. Therefore brothers and sisters make every effort to confirm your calling and election, because if you do these things, you will never stumble. Peter is saying here, if you continue to follow Christ, if you continue to grow in love and godliness, and knowledge and goodness, then you will continue to have an impact for this world, for Christ. But if you don't, then you are useless. Don't be useless. Don't be like that salt that's not good for the earth or for the manure pile. Continue to persevere, keeping your eyes and hearts focused on Jesus and what He has called us to do, who he has called us to be. Discipleship of with Jesus is not neutral. You are either becoming more like Jesus or you are not. There's only two choices, to become more like Him or to become more like the world. So I pray this morning for any of you who have been who have given your life to Jesus, that you continue to persevere, that you continue to chase after Jesus, leaving all the worldly things behind, and if you have not given your life to Christ, today is the day to give it all up, because in in the grand scheme of things, it's not worth anything compared to the knowing of Christ. James is going to come up here and we're going to sing, I surrender all. That's what this whole teaching is about. Is all to Jesus, I surrender. I surrender. Is that what we're singing? Oh, whatever. Just as I am, sorry, my bad. Last Last week was I surrender all anyway, here, here's a good thing, like you don't have to get cleaned up to come to Jesus. You can come to Jesus just as you are, and the good news is, is that you come to Jesus just as you are, and he will fix what's wrong with you. Isn't that amazing? That's a beautiful thing. So I'm going to pray, James, come up here, and we'll we'll sing, and then we'll have our short business meeting and go eat. Okay, Father God, thank you so much for your love and your grace and Your mercy that you have shown us. We pray this morning that our hearts and our spirits will be provoked to to love You more and to to follow more heartedly after you, knowing that you are the greatest treasure. You are the greatest prize. You are the the the most amazing thing that our hearts could ever have. We pray that we would continue to know you and to love you with everything that you have given us, Lord, that we would not let the world distract us from your beauty and your Grace. We pray all this in Jesus Name, Amen. You.

Thy Blood, Thou

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