Luke 14:25-33 - EVERYTHING!

September 5, 2010
Josh Broward


I’m cheap! I don’t like to spend money. In fact, I hate to spend money. I hate to pay full price and love to get a bargain. Sarah and I love to get furniture for free or cheap. In our apartment right now, we most of our furniture belongs to us, and we’ve only paid for one couch and one chair - and we bought those used.
I hate to pay full price for anything. Once I bought a shirt at a thrift store with someone else’s initials on the sleeve. Like I said, I’m cheap.
It’s one thing to cheap about money, but it’s another thing to try to go the cheap route with God. I try to do that sometimes, too. Can’t I just give up this much? I’ve already paid so much; can’t that just be enough? I’ll give you this God, but not this; that’s too high a price.
In our passage today, Jesus wants to make clear that he doesn’t make deals. There is no such thing as discount discipleship. There are no cheap tickets into the Kingdom.

Read Luke 14:25-33.

Let’s work through the passage little by little.
The first thing to notice is that large crowds were following Jesus. He had been healing people left and right. He had been “sticking it to the man.” The Pharisees and teachers of the Law were the ruling powers. They controlled everything, but Jesus was showing the to be incompetent teachers and frauds at every turn. The people loved it. They could smell a revolution. Besides, even if the revolution didn’t come, Jesus was where the action was.
Jesus turns to the crowd and says, “Hey, just hanging around with me doesn’t make you my disciple. It takes a lot more than that. Standing in a garage doesn’t make you a car. Going to the airport doesn’t mean you’re traveling anywhere. Don’t be fooled in to thinking that you’re a disciple just because you’re traveling with me.”
You can almost hear his disciples saying, “Oh man, there Jesus goes again, running everybody off as soon as he starts to get a crowd.”
But Jesus doesn’t want anything half-hearted, so Jesus starts to explain what it means to be a true disciple. In typical Hebrew style, Jesus makes several bold statements and leaves us to figure out exactly what he means.
First, Jesus says “If you want to be my disciple, you must hate your father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes even your own life. Otherwise, you cannot be my disciple” (14:26).
Well, that sounds ... um ... bad. I don’t hate my family, and I don’t think telling people to hate their wives is a very good plan. Thankfully that’s not what Jesus actually means.
Here, Jesus is using an old Hebrew tool of speech. “Hate” here means to detach from or to break loyalty with someone. Following Jesus means Jesus is our highest priority. We detach ourselves from our normal obligations and ties. We detach ourselves even from ourselves. Jesus is more important than everything else ... and everyone else.

Jesus takes it a step further with his next statement: “And if you do not carry your own cross and follow me, you cannot be my disciple” (14:27). Take a minute and imagine someone carrying a cross everywhere they go. They carry it into church. They take it to the office and kind of lay it against the wall. They take it on the airplane - oops, that won’t fit in the overhead bin. They carry it to bed at night. I hope you’re wearing pajamas - might get some nasty splinters!
Carrying your cross sounds kind of funny to us, but for a first century Jew a cross was anything but funny. The crowds following Jesus would have seen hundreds or thousands of people crucified for rebelling against Rome. They would be nailed to crosses or trees along roadsides, and their bodies would be left hanging for days while they decomposed and were eaten by animals.
So carrying “your own cross” was a profound and challenging statement. Jesus was calling them to absolute commitment. Nobody gets half-crucified. This is an all-or-nothing event. There is no half-way Christianity. In or out. Jesus demands everything.

Next, Jesus tells two stories about counting the cost and counting your resources. First, there’s the story about the building. Make sure you have enough money to finish before you even start building.
Have you all seen KNU’s new International Building? It’s beautiful, right? But what if they had run out of money? What if there was a huge, half-finished building in the center of campus? What if it was unfinished for years? You better count the cost, and make sure you can pay the price.
This week our Finance Team was working on our church budget for next year. Our first budget was ... a little hopeful. It increased by 25,000,000 won over last year’s budget. We counted the cost and decided we better do some cutting.
Jesus keeps going with another story. There’s this king that wants to go to war, and he’s got a good army - 10,000 strong. But the other guys have 20,000. He’s going to sit down with his generals and have a long talk about whether they can beat 2-to-1 odds. Even if we can win, how many people will die in this battle? If the cost for war is too high, then he backs down and pays the price for peace.
Within 30-40 years of when Jesus spoke these words, the people of Israel went to war against Rome. The small nation of Israel was completely overwhelmed and destroyed by the superpowers of the Roman Empire. They didn’t count the cost. They couldn’t pay the price.
Let me tell you a secret about me. I’ve always wanted to be in a bar fight. I know that’s not a very pastorly thing to say, but it’s true. When I was growing up, I was always watching movies and TV shows where cowboys or sailors or private investigators got into these huge bar fights. People were fighting all over the place, flying over tables, throwing chairs, smashing heads together. It looked like a lot of fun to me.
In the summer before we came to Korea, we went out to Colorado to visit some of my cousins. They lived way up in the mountains of Colorado, and we went to visit some of their neighbors. We walked up to their neighbor’s house, and they showed us the herd of elk they had just rounded up from the mountains - right there in the back yard. Then, we went into a little house in back. Every single person - men and women - had 3 things I didn’t have: a cowboy hat, boots, and a beer. They offered me a beer and some bear meat. I’m not kidding. They had barbecued bear meat roasting in a slow-cooker!
The two boys of the family were professional bull riders, and they had these huge silver and gold belt buckles - like trophies for rodeo folks. One of the boys about 19 years old had arms as big as my legs, and after a while he started talking about how he had gotten into a fight the night before. He broke the other guy’s nose with the first punch. At this point in the story, he sniffed and said, “But it’s no problem. I talked to him today, and he’s not going to press charges.”
Later that night, my cousins and Sarah and I went to a local bar to play a few games of pool. We were having a good time, just talking and hanging out. I joked with them about my secret longing for a bar fight. Then, this van pulls up, and 10 people from the bear-meat, bull-riding household get out. They’ve already been drinking, and they’re just stopping in here on their way to another bar. My cousin looked at me and said, “How about that bar fight?”
“Uh ... no thank you! Not looking so good now!” I counted the cost, and I decided I couldn’t pay the price.

Jesus says, “Count the cost. Make sure you can pay the price.” And just for the sake of clarity, Jesus spells out the cost of being his disciple: EVERYTHING! “So you cannot become my disciple without giving up everything you own” (14:33). Well, that pretty much eliminates any lingering doubts about what Jesus is trying to say. Everything! It costs everything.
In fact, this word EVERYTHING! is like a neon sign with flashing lights throughout this passage.
Hate your father and mother, wife and children, brother and sister. Nobody is more important than me. EVERYTHING!
Carry your cross, nothing half-way. EVERYTHING!
Count the cost now. EVERYTHING!

Jesus counted the cost. He knew he was going to the cross. He knew he would pay the ultimate price. Following Jesus means paying the same price: EVERYTHING!
In one of the most beautiful passages in the Bible, Paul says that our “attitude should be the same that Christ Jesus had. Though he was God he did not demand and cling to his rights as God. He made himself nothing, he took the humble position of a slave and appeared in human form. And in human form he obediently humbled himself even further by dying a criminal’s death on a cross.” Are you demanding and clinging to your rights? How comfortable are you in the position of a slave? Oh, man, this is tough. Following Jesus costs EVERYTHING!

In the book, Every Man’s Battle, one of the authors explains how he wrestled with Jesus’ demand for everything. “I was the perfect example of someone who wasn’t shooting for God’s fixed standard of obedience. I was teaching classes at church, chairing activities groups, and attending discipleship classes. My church attendance was exemplary, and I spoke the Christian language.” But like someone just trying to be good enough, “I was asking myself, How far can I go still be called a Christian? The question I should have been asking was, How holy can I be?” (50).
Are you asking the enough question? Are you just trying to be good enough? How much do I have to do to make it? How much to I have to believe? How good do I have to be without getting kicked out? How much is enough?
Or are you asking the everything question? How holy can I be? How can I become more and more like Jesus? How can I show more love in more ways more often?
What question are you asking? Count the cost. It’s EVERYTHING!

In the 13th century, England ruled Scotland with an iron fist. A young peasant named William Wallace rose up to lead a rebellion to gain Scotland’s freedom. The English had more soldiers and better weapons. In each battle, the Scottish soldiers had to count the cost and decide if they could pay this price.




Following Jesus will be difficult. Following Jesus will cost you EVERYTHING! You can find easier ways to live - for at least a while. But dying in your beds many years from now, would you be willing to trade all the days from this day to that for just one chance to live in freedom? I choose freedom. I choose Jesus. I choose to give Jesus EVERYTHING!

What do you choose?


Read Deuteronomy 30:15-20.

15"See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil. 16If 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. 17But 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. 19I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live, 20loving the LORD your God, obeying his voice and holding fast to him, for he is your life and length of days, that you may dwell in the land that the LORD swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them."