The Cost of Discipleship

Intro

Last Sunday, I asked a difficult question. Where would you draw the line with God? How much is too much? The “academic” answer ought to be that there is nothing we shouldn’t be willing to give over to God. But in truth and in practice, we would be tested to our limits in certain areas of our life.

This idea really brings up the idea of the cost of discipleship, and so I have titled my sermon so. Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote a book by that name back in 1937 and has been reprinted enough that you can still readily find copies of it. I mention Bonhoeffer’s book, not so much as the inspiration for this message, as the Word of God is enough to inspire, but rather as a suggested read for those who want to dive deeper into the topic of discipleship. Bonhoeffer’s book uses the Sermon on the Mount as the primary structure, and thus would be a great companion book for the current Sunday School series.

Luke 14:25-35 is a heavy-handed call to discipleship… heavy-handed in that Jesus clearly and emphatically tells us that if you truly want to follow Him, it will cost you everything!

And so, we circle back to the thought from last Sunday… what would you give up in order to follow Jesus Christ? What would you be willing to do to be His disciple?

We will be looking up other passages this morning that touch on the topic as well, so I give fair warning to warm up your fingers in preparation for some page turning, but we are mostly staying in the gospels.

Being a disciple of Jesus means He is absolutely the highest priority in your life. What that looks like depends on each individual person. Most of us know of the story of the Rich Young Ruler in Luke 18:18-30 where a rich man has a conversation with Jesus about salvation. To quickly summarize (and don’t take my word for it, but check it out for yourselves when you get a chance), the rich man wants to know how to inherit eternal life (a.k.a. salvation). Strangely, Jesus tells him to obey a bunch of the commandments. The rich man says that he has done so, but Jesus then points to his wealth and says you have to sell everything and give it to the poor. Then you can come “follow Me.” In doing this, Jesus clearly indicates that the man will have treasure in heaven. However, the man could not do such a thing because he had great wealth and it is clear that this wealth was more important than following Jesus.

What in our lives would leave us sympathetic to the rich young ruler? What if God called you to give up your wealth and possessions? What if God called you to give up your family and friends? What if God called you to give up comfort, peace, convenience, your reputation? What if God calls you to give up your freedom?

That is ultimately at the heart of what we are looking at today. Discipleship has a high cost. But following Jesus is the greatest adventure you will ever experience and it has by far the greatest reward you could ever hope for… salvation.

What Is Discipleship?

Luke 9:23 “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.”

This is what it means to follow Jesus boiled down to its most basic core. It’s reflective of the original call of the disciples to get out of the fishing boat and follow Jesus (see Luke 5:1-11). Lives get dramatically transformed by following Jesus. But notice that even in the call to discipleship we see in 9:23, there is a hint at the cost. “Deny himself.” What does it mean to deny yourself but to be willing to stop what you are doing and adopt His priorities over and above your own?

For the fishermen, it meant giving up the nets and the boats. For the tax collector, it meant leaving the money and the infamy. For the Zealot, it meant a much more peace oriented approach to change. The sons of thunder were to give up the reputation and adopt a quieter approach. For the hot headed, it would mean thinking things through or else getting rebuked.

There is also the notion that following Jesus is a day by day endeavor. You have to take up your cross daily and follow Jesus. These words clearly foreshadowed Jesus’ own carrying the cross to His death, but notice that it takes daily effort. Day by day moving forward. Stumbling and falling do not stop us. We get back up and choose to keep moving forward.

Another passage to consider for understanding discipleship is John 8:31–32: “So Jesus was saying to those Jews who had believed Him, “If you continue in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.””

Following Jesus is important, but how do we do that? Jesus clearly spells it out here… “continue in My word.” Follow His instructions. Obey His commands. If you do this, then you know the truth that sets you free! There are more passages I could point to that emphasize this, but for the sake of time, we’ll continue on.

The Cost

Luke 14:25–30 “Now large crowds were going along with Him; and He turned and said to them, “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. “Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple. “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? “Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who observe it begin to ridicule him, saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’”

Luke 14:31–35 ““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? “Or else, while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace. “So then, none of you can be My disciple who does not give up all his own possessions. “Therefore, salt is good; but if even salt has become tasteless, with what will it be seasoned? “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.””

These words of Jesus are hard to hear. Does Jesus really mean that we are to hate our families? Obviously, this does not match with the message of love that we know that God has for us. God is love. Jesus even says in John 13:34–35 ““A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. “By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”” We are to be identified by our love for one another. But what could Jesus possibly mean by saying that we can’t be His disciple unless we hate our families?

This is not a command to hate, rather it is an attempt to look at what motivates us by comparing how we feel about Jesus to how we feel about other people we care about. This is Jesus telling us to love Him and to love the things of God so much that anything else, even our love for family members looks like nothing by comparison! So, I ask you, what would you give up for God? What wouldn’t you give up for Him?

Not only does Jesus indicate that you must love Him more than your family, you must love Him more than you love yourself! That means even your own priorities you lay at the feet of Jesus! This is painting a picture of an all in believer, a sold out believer… a card carrying, flag waving, face painted believer! Jesus is describing the kind of fans that organize and paint their bellies at football games to collectively have the team logo visible from the upper stands! It’s the kind of love that takes coordination, organization and intention. It is an active kind of love that takes effort, not one that can be done passively.

But then the tone changes. “whoever does not carry his own cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple.” To hear those words before the crucifixion would have been hard, but now that we know exactly what Jesus was talking about, it is even harder. Are you willing to obey Jesus to the point where you are carrying your own method of execution? Also implicit in those words is that you are literally walking in the footsteps of Jesus because of course, He carried His own cross as far as He could before the executioners enlisted the help of someone from the crowd to speed things along.

Jesus embodies the concept of a leader never assigning a task to His followers that He was not willing to do Himself.

Jesus also gives solid reasoning behind what He is saying. If you are going to follow Jesus, then you need to consider the cost. Our culture today has really shifted the wrong way in terms of financial shrewdness where we are encouraged to borrow money to make purchases and complete projects, but that puts us in a very poor position, as Proverbs 22:7 says: “The rich rules over the poor, And the borrower becomes the lender’s slave.” Jesus cautions us to consider the cost before taking the plunge and discipleship can’t be treated the same way as financial debts. Perhaps knowing about modern attitudes towards debt, Jesus also points to the example of an outnumbered king. If his soldiers can’t take out the enemy two to one, then it is wiser for the king to try to make peace.

To be sold out for Jesus means you give up everything for Him! It means that nothing else takes priority over the things God wants you to do! The cost of discipleship is high. If you can’t give it all up for Jesus, you aren’t quite there yet.

Another passage to consider is: Matthew 8:18–22 “Now when Jesus saw a crowd around Him, He gave orders to depart to the other side of the sea. Then a scribe came and said to Him, “Teacher, I will follow You wherever You go.” 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.” Another of the disciples said to Him, “Lord, permit me first to go and bury my father.” But Jesus said to him, “Follow Me, and allow the dead to bury their own dead.””

In this passage, there are two people who are willing to come and follow Jesus, but as we see, their commitment is not as great as Jesus wants to see.

The first individual is a well educated man, a scribe… someone tasked with writing copies of the scripture to distribute to those who knew how to read and could afford his services. He was someone who spent time in God’s word and would have likely known the scriptures almost as much as any religious leader or priest. But Jesus tells him that he must be prepared to give up the comfort of his own home. Jesus is basically a wandering nomad… a traveling preacher who has no home… in a very real sense, Jesus and His disciples are homeless. Is the scribe prepared for that? We are not explicitly told how he responded, but it feels as though it is implied that he did not commit to following Jesus.

Next up is an individual who wants time to bury his father. Here again, we see Jesus’ words echo what we looked at previously where our love for Him must be greater than our love for family. “allow the dead to bury their own dead.” These are hard words and I know that they hit especially hard for those of us who have had our father’s pass away, or other close family members.

To be clear, Jesus is not trying to be insensitive here, rather He wants His followers to know that if they really truly want to follow Him, the cost is high and there is no turning back. It’s a life long commitment to pursuing the ultimate path of righteousness… and Jesus is that righteousness! We are striving to become more like Him! That is what discipleship is all about, and Jesus gave it all up to come and show us the way to do it too!

Conclusion

So what do we do with this information?

First and foremost, this is an opportunity to check how we are doing. This question is for all of us… myself included. And I will admit that I struggle with this degree of commitment. Do I love God so much that any other “love” in my life doesn’t even compare? That’s a hard thought to grapple with. Do I love God so much that I would skip out on my father’s funeral? If Jesus were to physically come and ask me to give it all to follow Him on an adventure, would I be able to do it?

The cost of discipleship is high. Who among us is prepared to pay that price?

Matthew 6:33 ““But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”

This verse, embedded in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount is what it is all about. Seek the kingdom of God first in your life! Seek after His righteousness! So order the priorities in your life so that you are kingdom focused and kingdom minded and you won’t have any other worries in this life! And the promise of God is that all of your needs will be taken care of. Your great love for your family, even though it ought to pale in comparison with your love for God will be taken care of when you fully put your trust in God.

So, what things get in the way? What things is God nudging us to give up because we value them too much? We need to involve the Holy Spirit in this process because He is our connection with the Father and the Son in ways that the Word of God is not so clear about. Pray that the Spirit would show you the path of discipleship and what steps to take as you grow in your faith and as you grow more Christ-like.

Discipleship has a high cost. But following Jesus is the greatest adventure you will ever experience and it has by far the greatest reward you could ever hope for… salvation.