Sermon Tone Analysis

Get Out of the Stands, and On to the Field!

But First....

Good evening, Piney Grove!

Luke 14:25

Luke 14:25-

I love Saturdays!

I don’t get to enjoy them the way I used to, mainly because I’m preparing to serve with our football team on gameday.

Because, the way I used to spend my Saturdays, beginning at 11am I’d be locked in.

Saturdays was & is my college football day.

Nothing like it.

I really enjoyed all the pregame programming on ESPN.

Every week, the ESPN College Gameday crew would travel to a new location; some college campus hosting one of the biggest games of the week.

That place would be packed out with fans from that campus and surrounding area, and the show would be an hour long of analysis and back stories.

It would culminate with the picks for the week.

This is where the prognosticators would say who they thought would win.

The cool part was when they finally got to the pick of the week - that’s where the analysts would choose between the host school and their competitor.

One of the hosts, Lee Corso would keep everyone in suspense with his pick.

You’d know who he was choosing by the mascot head he’d don for his turn.

If he’d pick the host schools team, the place would go BANANAS!!!

Take a look.

video

You see what I’m talking?

Crazy!

That’s just one of the reasons I love Corso.

For those that have watched him over the years.

There’s something else he’s also known for.

An expression that would make you smile or frown - depending on what team you liked.

The panel would make their picks for a particular game, Corso would lay out some of the reasons why a team should win… then he’d say, “Not so fast my friend!!!” There’d be anarchy on the set.

Lol

That’s the part I’d like to focus on during our time together this evening.

What is Corso saying when he states, “Not so fast....?” What does he mean by that?

See, when everyone seems ready to jump on the bandwagon, the decision to choose one team over another seems easy.

What Corso is saying, however, is that “yeah, i hear you, but there’s are some factors that you didn’t consider when you made your choice.

He’s surmizing that a decision was made hastily, and that the fans and other analysts didn’t see the whole picture before making a decision.

In our text today, this is precisely what Jesus is addressing.

He’s built up a fan base at this point, and folks are running around wearing “Team Jesus” shirts, wearing face paint, rocking blinged out crosses, chanting and singing, and He’s like.... “Not so fast my friend!”

See they were saying “we, we” when referencing and following Jesus, the same way some of us talk about our favorite teams.

“We’re undefeated right now… We’re going to the championship right now… etc.”

We keep saying “we” like we’re French or something.

You’re not on the team, yet!

Right now, you’re just a fan.

And like most fans, you can be fair-weathered.

Jesus wan’t looking for fans.

His heart isn’t to just have a bunch of spectators in the stands, saying “we” but contributing nothing but chants, memes, and social media profile scripture references… So as enthused as his fan-base was at that moment, He had to hit them with the Coach Corso, “Not so fast my friend,” and then hit them with the real.

So He begins to break it down for them.

He lays it out with three different references on what it takes to get in the game, be on the team, rock the jersey, to earn a ring.

Jesus begins:

Luke 14:

Discipleship means giving one’s first loyalty.

There is no place in Jesus’ teaching for literal hatred.

He commanded his followers to love even their enemies (6:27), so it is impossible to hold that he is here telling them literally to hate their earthly nearest (cf.

8:20f.).

But hating can mean something like loving less (Gen.

29:31, 33; Deut.

21:15, where the Hebrew means ‘hated’ and not ‘disliked’, as RSV).

Jesus’ meaning is surely that the love the disciple has for him must be so great that the best of earthly loves is hatred by comparison

To be sure, the verb “hate” probably reflects a Semitic origin, and the Semitic languages often use contrasts to express things our languages would express by a comparative degree of preferences.

Bovon, F. (2013).

: A Commentary on the Gospel of .

(H. Koester, Ed., D. S. Deer, Trans.)

(p.

386).

Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press.

WHEN Jesus said this he was on the road to Jerusalem.

He knew that he was on his way to the cross; the crowds who were with him thought that he was on his way to an empire.

That is why he spoke to them like this.

In the most vivid way possible he told them that those who followed him were not on the way to worldly power and glory, but must be ready for a loyalty which would sacrifice the dearest things in life and for a suffering which would be like the agony of a man upon a cross.

We must not take his words with cold and unimaginative literalness.

The language of the middle east is always as vivid as the human mind can make it.

When Jesus tells us to hate our nearest and dearest, he does not mean that literally.

He means that no love in life can compare with the love we must bear to him.

There are two suggestive truths within this passage.

(1) It is possible to be a follower of Jesus without being a disciple; to be a camp-follower without being a soldier of the king; to be a hanger-on in some great work without pulling one’s weight.

Once someone was talking to a great scholar about a younger man.

He said, ‘So and so tells me that he was one of your students.’

The teacher answered devastatingly, ‘He may have attended my lectures, but he was not one of my students.’

It is one of the supreme handicaps of the Church that in it there are so many distant followers of Jesus and so few real disciples.

(2) It is a Christian’s first duty to count the cost of following Christ.

The tower which the man was going to build was probably a vineyard tower.

Vineyards were often equipped with towers from which watch was kept against thieves who might steal the harvest.

An unfinished building is always a humiliating thing.

In Scotland, we may, for instance, think of that weird structure called ‘McCaig’s Folly’ which stands behind Oban.

In every sphere of life each of us is called upon to count the cost.

In the introduction to the marriage ceremony according to the forms of the Church of Scotland, the minister says, ‘Marriage is not to be entered upon lightly or unadvisedly, but thoughtfully, reverently, and in the fear of God.’

A man and woman must count the cost.

It is so with the Christian way.

But if we are daunted by the high demands of Christ let us remember that we are not left to fulfil them alone.

He who called us to the steep road will walk with us every step of the way and be there at the end to meet us.

THE INSIPID SALT

Luke 14:34–5

Jesus said, ‘Salt is a fine thing; but if salt has become insipid, by what means shall its taste be restored?

It is fit neither for the land nor the dunghill.

Men throw it out.

He who has an ear to hear, let him hear.’

JUST sometimes Jesus speaks with a threat in his voice.

When a person is always carping and criticizing and complaining, the repeated irritable anger ceases to have any significance or any effect.

But when someone whose accent is the accent of love suddenly speaks with a threat we are bound to listen.

What Jesus is saying is this—when a thing loses its essential quality and fails to perform its essential duty, it is fit for nothing but to be thrown away.

Jesus uses salt as a symbol of the Christian life.

What, then, are its essential qualities?

In Palestine it had three characteristic uses.