The Cost of Discipleship

  • David Fairchild
  • Aug 24, 2008
  • Series: Encountering Jesus

TEXT

Luke 14:25-33: "Now great crowds accompanied him, and he turned and said to them, 26 ‘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. 27 Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. 28 For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? 29 Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, 30 saying, "This man began to build and was not able to finish."  31 Or what king, going out to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and deliberate whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? 32 And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace. 33 So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.'"

INTRODUCTION

We're continuing our series called Encountering Jesus this morning.  As many of you know, we've been looking at the parables of Jesus which are His primary teaching method to draw out His listeners' imaginations and bring them to a deeper meaning of what He wants to communicate to us.  Parables are stories which convey a profound spiritual truth in vivid, earthy ways.

As we've been looking at these parables, we've seen Jesus teach them differently.  Jesus gives us some parables which begin with the story and end with Jesus' own interpretation and explanation of the story.  Some are just the stories themselves and have to be thought out and worked out without further explanation.  The one we're looking at today begins with the principle and is followed by two parables to draw out the meaning of this truth.

Needless to say, the initial statement of Jesus, that we must hate our own father, mother, wife, children, brothers, sisters, and even our own lives, is shocking.  If that weren't enough, Jesus then says that we're to bear our own cross if we plan on following Him.  This is a hard parable.  Not that it's hard to understand, necessarily, but that it's hard to receive.

As I've mentioned a few weeks ago, when it comes to the hard sayings of Jesus, we have to be very careful not to either skip over them because we think Jesus is just giving us some kind of preacher hyperbole that shouldn't be taken serious.  Or, we hear what He's saying and try to force it into our system too quickly and don't take time to ruminate on it and let it steep into our soul.  We're to treat these statements like hard candy.  We have to let them sit for a while and work them out.  You don't just bite into hard candy without hurting yourself and you don't just swallow these statements without allowing them to work out their flavor.  The longer we spend with them, the more we think them through, the sweeter they become.  They become never ending as we spend years and years letting them shape us.

Now, this parable is about far more than our relationships with our family and friends.  It's about more than suffering.  These things are there, but they are set in the context of being Jesus' disciple.  This parable is about the cost of discipleship and the relationship we're to have with Jesus if we plan on being His followers.

The word disciple is mathÄ“tÄ“s in Greek, and means to be a learner or pupil.  So, here we are this morning, hearing from Jesus, learning from His words and being called to consider what it means to follow Him as His disciple.  There are a few things that we can learn from Jesus' initial statement that explains what the parable means.  Let's look at Jesus' words.

STUDY

I. Discipleship is not optional for the Christian

Verse 25: "Now great crowds accompanied him, and he turned and said to them"

Jesus was just at a meal with a ruler of the Pharisees on the Sabbath.  They were all watching Him as He ate and spoke.  As Jesus leaves, a great crowd begins to follow Him.  So, He turns and begins to address them with these words about discipleship and the cross.

I love that Jesus doesn't keep the fine print from us.  Most Christians in San Diego assume there are two kinds of Christians.  There are those who generally believe what the Bible says and believe that Jesus Christ is the only way to the Father and their only hope for salvation.  They even go to a church service every now and again and may even pray when they need to and ask God's help when they're in trouble.  But then there are the zealous Christians who seem more serious about their faith and are really committed all the way to their faith.  Most Christians see them as a kind of super-spiritual version of themselves if they ever got really serious about Christianity.

What is Jesus showing us here?  As He turns to the crowds and tells them what being a disciple is going to look like, He's showing us that there are no two standards or types of Christians.  There is only one kind of follower of Jesus in Jesus' thinking.

Jesus says, "If anyone comes to me..."  That means any person who desires to claim themselves as a follower or disciple of Jesus, anyone who claims to be His student or pupil, anyone who names His name and identifies themselves with Him, is being called to this kind of shocking discipleship.  Jesus is saying that full, complete, all-or-nothing kind of discipleship is the only way to relate to Him as His follower.  No second category.  No varsity and junior varsity.  No super-Christian and regular Christian distinctions.  Everyone is called to this kind of discipleship.

This is not optional.  To be a Christian is to be a disciple and to be a disciple is what it means to be considered a Christian.  The two can't be separated.

Don't you hate your cell phone bill?  You know, you get the bill in the mail and you were told when you purchased the phone that your service was going to run you $59.99 per month for 1000 minutes but then you open your bill and it's $80.00.  They didn't tell you about the tax for this and tax for that.  They didn't explain the multiple categories of additional fees that we all look at and have no idea what any of them mean.  They didn't tell you that they charge you a dollar for every time you sneeze while on the phone.  It's a bit ridiculous and I always feel deceived when that happens.  Jesus doesn't do this with His followers.  He doesn't say to the crowds, "come and join our cause," and then turn to His disciples and whisper, "but don't forget the crosses."  Jesus is up front about what it means to be His disciple.  He's not hiding the details.  He is letting us know what lies ahead of us if we choose to follow Him.  Anyone whishing to come to Him has to be His disciple.

II.  Discipleship is costly

Verse 26: "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."

Jesus takes the foundation of Jewish and middle-eastern culture and shakes it.  Who does He include?  Father, mother, wife, children, brothers and sisters, and even our own lives.  In our individualistic, western culture this doesn't have the same shock that it would have had to those first hearing it.

In their culture, this would have been what their life revolved around.  Their family was primary and all things centered around the family.  Your life revolved around the family.  It was everything to you.  It was normal to have such commitment.  Jesus was looking at the normal aspirations and commitments of every person's life and saying to them, "You have to be willing to hate it if you're going to be my disciple."  In other words, Jesus is telling them and us that we shouldn't even think about coming to Him with our agenda and our aspirations and then try to find a way to fit Him into our life.  He refuses to be used as a currency to purchase the life you want for yourself.

He's telling us not to come to Him to be a better spouse or parent, or better friend or employer, or to have a happy family and life.  Those things may come, those things may be a benefit, but He refuses to be used as a means to your end.  You have to be willing to kiss all of it goodbye.  He isn't the means and your life the end; your life is the means and He's the end.

Jesus doesn't want you to come to Him because He works for you but because He's the truth and only way for you and everyone.  If Jesus has become only a concept or simply a belief that fixes your life and works for you, then He'll never really change your life.  You might get some greater morality but the power He brings into someone's life shouldn't be pursued only because it works, but because it's true.  If it's not true for everyone it can't ultimately be true for you.  Jesus might as well be a motivational speaker or a radio personality you listen to.

Don't simply come to Jesus for other things.  Jesus is saying to all of us that He wants us to come to Him purely out of the treasure that He is.  He is the end.  It's Him not His stuff that He wants us to desire.  Of course He can fix our lives.  Of course He can fix our marriages.  Of course He can heal our guilt and emotional pain.  But not if you come to Him only for those things.  He'll still be too small to you.  But if you're willing to come to Him solely for the purpose of having Him, then you'll begin to understand why He can ask such things of us like hating everything else we're really worshipping as our true messiah and true lover of our hearts.  Jesus refuses to compete with such idols.  Jesus is telling us that you can't be His disciple unless you're willing to follow Him wherever and give up whatever He asks of you.

Is your prayer life kind of dull or non-existent?  Do you kind of yawn when you hear people talking about God?  Are messages like this about Jesus kind of boring?  If so, it may be that Jesus is still a concept to you to fix things and when those things are going well, there's no need to listen to Him or need Him.  It may be that Jesus is merely the means to your end and your apprehension of Him is simply not weighty enough.  Is your agenda still primary?  Then it is your weightiness and the reality you've created, and your plans that govern you.  But when He moves from a concept to a reality, the only thing we can do is say, "Yes Lord, whatever you ask."  That's His description of a disciple, of a Christian.

III.  Discipleship must come from the heart

Of course we have to discuss why Jesus uses the word hate, don't we?

Verse 26 "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."

Like I mentioned earlier, it's easy to just write Jesus off as being hyperbolic in this statement.  Usually we keep these kinds of verses from new Christians and non-believers and would never put this on a bumper sticker.  Why?  Because most of us are a little confused as to what Jesus was saying.

Of course, we know that Jesus isn't saying that we're to actively oppose and hate in action our family and self.  This would go against the answer He gives for the greatest commandment being that we should love God and love our neighbor as ourselves.  This implies two things: that we're to love our neighbors (everyone) and that we already love ourselves.  This also can't mean that we're to ignore or disregard our family since we have a mountain of instruction on how we're to care for and not neglect our family and loved ones.  We're even told to love our enemies.

So, what can this mean?  In Semitic writing, the word "hate" can mean either to actively detest or to love less depending on the context.  For example in Genesis 29 there is a passage talking about Jacob who had two wives: Rachel and Leah.  We read in that chapter that Jacob loved Rachel and hated Leah.  But the passage translates that He merely loved Rachel more and loved Leah less, yet the word used in v. 31 was the word hated.

Does this mean that Jacob actively despised and hated Leah?  No.  He simply loved Rachel more.  Remember, Jacob was tricked into marrying Leah by Leah's father.  This simply means that he hated Leah in comparison to his love for Rachel.  It's a comparative hatred, not an active hatred.  It isn't that he treated Leah poorly or was mean and abused her, but his love for her could not be compared with his love for Rachel.

Now do you see what Jesus is saying to us?  What is He saying He wants out of His disciples?  He's saying something that is almost shocking.  It's not how we typically read it.  We hear even that description and think, "Ok, Jesus is saying He has to be first in our lives."  Sure, that's true enough.  But that still doesn't go all the way.  What Jesus is saying is that He wants us to love Him.

What Jesus is doing is taking every kind of human love; family, kinship, sexual, and parental, and He's saying that He offers and wants in return a kind of love that makes all of these other kinds of loves seem like hatred by comparison.  He doesn't simply want duty or sentiment, He wants something more real, more profound, more weighty than the love you have for your wife and children or family or friends.  Your love for Him should make all other loves pale in comparison.  He's saying He wants to be the Rachel of our hearts. The kind of love that is above all loves.  The One love that rules all other loves.

He's not saying that duty isn't involved.  Of course we're to obey Him even when we don't feel like it in the moment.  However, that should never be the basis for our discipleship.  We shouldn't be willing to give up all other things merely out of obedience and duty.  We shouldn't be willing to follow Him merely out of allegiance.  Those are certainly there, but they're not our fuel.  It's not the heart of our discipleship.

Jesus is saying to us that we're not a disciple until we love him.  Unless we're emotionally tied to Jesus out of love, we're not really His disciple.  That's why He uses the word hate and then gives us what we should hate in comparison to Him.  Jesus could have simply said, "Put me first," and in other passages, He certainly does say that.  But here He says something far more than putting Him first.  He says "love me."  Jesus wants to be tied to our hearts.

The stars are always in the sky, but when the sun comes it floods out all the other lesser lights in the sky.  What Jesus is saying is that He doesn't want to get rid of our other loves, He wants to be the sun that floods all our other loves.

1 Corinthians 16:22: "If anyone has no love for the Lord, let him be accursed."

Paul has the audacity to tell us that if we have no love for the Lord.  No personal, attaching affection, we are to be accursed.  In other words, we're banned from Him until we love Him.  We're not a disciple of Jesus until we love Him.

Augustine says that our problem is not that our other loves are bad, but that those other loves become so important to our heart that their opinion has us in slavery and has become too important.

You can actively try to hate these other loves to get freedom from them.  Some of us have done this at a heavy cost.  We've learned to hate this other thing that we loved too much in relation to our love for Jesus.  Or you can love Jesus more than you love them and let Him be the true lover of your heart.  What we need is a greater love for Jesus to swallow up these other loves.

IV.  A disciple lives under the shadow of the cross

If Jesus still seems like a concept and not real, it's usually because we have yet to comprehend what it was that Jesus did for us.  Usually it stems from a perception that we don't really need Jesus.  Why?  Because He's become manageable to us.  When we take up the cross, we are forced to draw from its resources to continue.

We can't take up a cross and follow Jesus unless Jesus first took up His cross for us.  When we identify with Jesus, we're identifying with His death up on the cross.  We're joined to Him in His death.  The moment we believe in Christ, we joined Him on the cross.  God looks at us now as if we've paid every cent of our sin.  In our Father's eyes, we've already been beaten, flogged, crowned with thorns, whipped, ridiculed, mocked, spit upon, nailed to a cross and speared through the side.  Our life is now hidden with God Christ.  We put ourselves in the position of Christ.

Taking up our cross is both our positional reality and our daily example.  We live in its shadow constantly.  We live a life of sacrifice and suffering like Christ, but we only do this because we're living out of the fullness of what Jesus did for us already.  We draw from this emotional well because we are already forgiven and brought in as sons of God.

How odd that Jesus would use the cross as a way of rallying people to Himself.  This was a symbol of great horror.  It was a torturer's device to condemn the guilty.  This is like a political crying out, "Take up your noose and follow me."  "Take up your electric chair and follow me."  "Take up your blindfold and stand in line before the firing squad and follow me."

When you saw someone carrying a cross, you knew that would be the last thing that person was going to do.  It was a sure thing they would die.

You never walk with a cross and then say, "Ya know, this isn't really feeling good, I think I'm done now."  When we become a disciple, it's the last thing we do.  We're now under arrest.  When we say, "I don't anyone telling me what to do," Jesus says, if you're His disciple, "you're under arrest."

Everything else is expendable if you have Him.  This now frees you to love those other things in a right relationship.

The only way Jesus can dare call us to love Him is because He's first loved us.  And the only way He can call us to be willing to turn from our family in relationship to Him, is because He was first turned away by His father on the cross.  The only way Jesus can call us to take up our cross and follow Him is because He first took up His cross on our behalf.  Because of what He's done, we can now hear these words and rejoice and obey.  And to the degree you believe these things, to that same degree you'll have the necessary love and power to hear and follow.

Do you want to be His disciple?  Hate your spouse, child, family, friends, and self.  Take up your cross and follow Him.  Are you ready?  Do you know how it's all possible?

Much was gleaned from Tim Keller's message "How to Hate Your Parents" and The Parables of Jesus by Wenham.   This and other messages can be accessed at www.redeemer2.com.                                                                                                            

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