#Worth It!

Psalm 1 / Luke 14:25–33

Dietrich Bonhoeffer - The Cost of Discipleship (Nachfolge) 1937 - expositing the Sermon on the Mount

“Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ.  It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life.  It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner……Costly grace confronts us as a gracious call to follow Jesus, it comes as a word of forgiveness to the broken spirit and the contrite heart.  Grace is costly because it compels a man to submit to the yoke of Christ and follow him; it is grace because Jesus says: ‘My yoke is easy and my burden is light.’”

The Real Choice

Deuteronomy 30:15-18 “See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil. 16 If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I command you today, by loving the Lord your God, by walking in his ways, and by keeping his commandments and his statutes and his rules, then you shall live and multiply, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to take possession of it. 17 But if your heart turns away, and you will not hear, but are drawn away to worship other gods and serve them, 18 I declare to you today, that you shall surely perish. You shall not live long in the land that you are going over the Jordan to enter and possess.”

Make no mistake here. The absolute and meticulous sovereignty of God, which I confess and indeed herald, in NO WAY invalidates the reality that you have real, moral choices with temporary as well as eternal consequences. Paul declared in the Roman letter that everyone is without excuse before God. No less than Moses, I again set before you today life and good, death and evil. Heaven and Earth are called in witness. Christ Himself in our text calls you to count the cost.

The Real Cost

Philemon 1

God is no Genie; He is God and The Sovereign Lord

Your claim to righteousness

Your self-professed sovereignty

Your right to what you think is fair

Your right to self-fulfillment on your terms

In short, your life

Jesus gave His whole life for yours, what makes you think it will cost you any less?

I am intentionally not pulling any punches or sugar coating here. This is not an age where it is safe to do so. I need to be crystal clear here to be faithful to the words of Jesus in Luke 14, and to be honest with you.

John 15:17-19 “These things I command you, so that you will love one another. 18 “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. 19 If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.”

Worth It!

Psalm 1

C.S. Lewis: We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

1 John 2:17 “And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.”

Psalm 37:4 “Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.”

To be known, intimately by the One True and Living God

To be seen, heard, and eternally loved

To be strengthened in weakness, grown instead of withering.

To truly have life abundant, and never ending.

To escape the fate of the wicked…

Psalm 1:4-6 “4 The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away. 5 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous; 6 for the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.”

Church Family, we are sometimes in danger of being overly simplistic, as if there is only evangelism and not discipleship, and other times of short-selling the full demands of the Christian Life. Hear the words of Jesus. Count the cost, for it is great. But if you truly do, you will find it is no contest. #Worth It!