In her essay, An Expedition to the Pole, Annie Dillard describes the ill-fated Franklin expedition—an expedition in the mid 19th century that perished because its preparations were adapted to the posh conditions of the Royal navy officers’ clubs in England instead of the harsh realities of the Arctic. Here’s an excerpt from Dillard’s essay:
“In 1845, Sir John Franklin and 138 officers and men embarked from England to find the Northwest Passage across the high Canadian Arctic to the Pacific Ocean. They sailed in two three-masted sailing ships. Each vessel carried an auxiliary steam engine and a twelve-day supply of coal for the entire projected two or three years’ voyage. Instead of ADDITIONAL coal, each ship made room for a 1,200-volume library, a hand-organ that played fifty tunes, china place settings for officers and men, cut-glass wine goblets, and sterling silver flatware.
The officers’ sterling silver knives, forks and spoons were particularly interesting. The silver was of ornate Victorian design, very heavy at the handles and richly patterned. Engraved on the handles were the individual officers’ initials and family crests. The expedition carried no special clothing for the Arctic, only the uniforms of Her Majesty’s Navy.
The ships set out amid enormous glory and fanfare. Two months later a British whaling captain met the two ships in Canada’s Lancaster Sound; he reported back to England on the high spirits of officers and men. He was the last European to see any of them alive. Years later it was discovered that many groups of Inuit—Eskimos—had encountered various still-living or dead members of the Franklin expedition. Some had glimpsed men pushing and pulling a wooden life boat across the ice. Later others found the boat and the remains of the thirty-five men who had been dragging it. At a place called Terror Bay the Eskimos found a tent on the ice and in it, thirty bodies. At Simpson Strait some Eskimos had seen the pack ice pierced by the three protruding wooden masts of a ship. For twenty years, search parties recovered skeletons from the Franklin expedition all over the frozen sea. Accompanying one clump of frozen bodies were place settings of that expensive sterling silver flatware. Another search party found two skeletons in a boat on a sledge. They had hauled the sledge sixty-five miles. With the two skeletons were some chocolate, some guns, some tea, and a great deal of table silver. Many miles south of these two was another skeleton, alone. This one was a frozen officer in uniform: trousers and jacket of fine blue cloth edged with silk braid, with sleeves bearing five cloth-covered buttons each. Over this uniform the dead man had worn a blue greatcoat with a black silk neckerchief.”
Sir John Franklin and 138 men perished because they underestimated the requirements of Arctic exploration. They ignorantly imagined a pleasure cruise amidst the comforts of their English officers’ clubs and exchanged necessities for luxuries. Like Franklin’s voyage there are requirements for those who would follow Jesus. There is a cost involved in being His disciple—and in our text for today Jesus spells it out.
To give you the setting of this next chapter in our study of Jesus’ life, I’ll remind you that our Lord was set on going to Jerusalem, where He knew He would die on a Roman cross. In fact, the cross was the focus of His entire life. We see this in texts like Luke 13:33 where Jesus said, “I must keep going today and tomorrow and the next day—for surely no prophet can die outside Jerusalem.” So a rough “voyage” lay ahead for Jesus and all who would follow Him. And–at this point in His ministry Jesus had a LOT of “followers.” Great multitudes were constantly around Him because of His preaching and healing. But the vast majority of the people in this multitude were not true disciples. They were just along for the ride. And of course Jesus knew this. He knew that most were not the least bit interested in spiritual things. Some only wanted to see miracles. Others heard that He fed the hungry and so they tagged along hoping Jesus would be their meal ticket. Some hoped He would overthrow Rome. So, in our text for this morning Jesus turned and thinned out the ranks of these “supposed followers” by giving them a reality check as He laid out in unforgettable terms the cost of being His disciple. He wanted them—and us—to know what to expect on the journey of following Him. In short, Jesus DID for His followers what Sir John Franklin FAILED TO DO for his.
Any would-be disciple who listened to our Lord that day would understand that discipleship would cost him dearly—though the benefit of following Christ would make it all worthwhile.
Now—take your Bibles and turn with me to Luke 14. We’ll be reading verses 25-35.
25 – Large crowds were traveling with Jesus, and turning to them He said:
26 – “If anyone comes to Me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be My disciple.
27 – And whoever does not carry their cross and follow Me cannot be My disciple.
28 – Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won’t you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it?
29 – For if you lay the foundation and are not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule you,
30 – saying, ‘This person began to build and wasn’t able to finish.’
31 – Or suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Won’t he first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand?
32 – If he is not able, he will send a delegation while the other is still a long way off and will ask for terms of peace.
33 – In the same way, those of you who do not give up everything you have cannot be My disciples.
34 – Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again?35 – It is fit neither for the soil nor for the manure pile; it is thrown out. Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear.”
Okay—what does it “cost” to follow Jesus? What is required of those who want to COMMIT to be His disciple? Before we begin to answer this question let’s admit that these days our culture doesn’t breed strong COMMITMENT. This is because self-fulfillment is what is lifted up as being important and this leads us to believe that we have no higher loyalty than to ourselves. Of course this way of thinking eats away at our commitments like rust does to metal. One quick example is seen in the fact that health clubs can sell more memberships than they could house in their facility because they know most people don’t keep commitments—like the commitment to work out regularly. Another—far sadder—illustration of this is seen in the way that more than half of the men and women who pledge to remain committed to each other as husband and wife, quit long before death bids them part. And sadly believers are not immune to our culture’s value system.
One missionary observed that while third-world Christians are information-POOR, they are commitment-RICH. They tend to be deeply devoted to Christ—even if that devotion—that COMMITMENT—causes them to suffer. But on the whole, Western Christians tend to be just the opposite. They are information-rich but commitment-poor.
In his classic book, Basic Christianity, John Stott lamented that thousands of people—most of them “Western Christians” undertake to follow Jesus, “…and ignore Christ’s warning to first count the cost of doing so. The result is the great scandal of Christendom today, so-called ‘NOMINAL CHRISTIANITY.’” These nominal disciples do not experience the abundant life Jesus promised because they don’t really follow Him. And because of this they are no threat to our adversary or his purposes. They are like this dog story I came across in my study. One day a man walked into an old country store and saw a sign just inside that read: “DANGER! BEWARE OF DOG!” The man looked around cautiously but all he saw was an old hound curled up on the floor, sound asleep. He said to the owner, “That dog doesn’t look dangerous to me.” The owner said, “Well, he’s not but folks kept tripping over him so I put up that sign.”
Many Christians are like that sleeping dog. They pose no threat to satan. In fact, they help him because many would-be believers trip over their lukewarm excuse for “discipleship.”
And even though we are supposed to let sleeping dogs lie—this morning my prayer is that God will use our study to shake things up a bit. I want us to fully understand the costs—the requirements—of truly following Jesus as His disciple. By the way the words “disciple” and “Christian” are intended to be interchangeable in the Bible. These two words mean the same thing in the same way that I mean the same thing when I speak of my “spouse” and my “wife.”
But the word “disciple” is the BEST word to use in describing a follower of Jesus. We see this in the fact that the term “disciple” occurs 269 times in the New Testament, while the term “Christian” only occurs three times. And that makes sense because after all, that’s what Jesus commissioned us to make: DISCIPLES. In the Book of Acts we’re told that the “Disciples were first called ‘Christians’ at Antioch.” (Acts 11:26) Before that I believe they were called FOLLOWERS or DISCIPLES of THE WAY. I’m saying, ALL Christians are disciples—the question is how serious do we take that commitment? Well, Jesus takes it VERY seriously—serious enough to be intensely realistic about what that meant. And our Lord never led people on. No—He always spelled out the requirements for those who would follow Him—and our text is a great example of this.
So, what does it COST to be a disciple—what are the REQUIREMENTS for a dedicated follower of Jesus? I’m relying on points from a sermon outline by David Dykes to hang my answers.
(1) The first cost or requirement is A SUPREME LOVE.
Look at verse 24 where Jesus said something that has shocked pretty much everyone who has read this verse—beginning with the people who first heard these words. Jesus said: “If anyone comes to Me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be My disciple.” Have you been shocked by these words—today or at some other time? I mean, did Jesus really mean that if we commit to follow Him we must HATE our families?
The answer to this question is “NO!”—and we know that for a couple reasons. First God’s Word teaches us to LOVE everyone, ESPECIALLY our family. Husbands and wives are told to love each other so much that they lay down their lives for each other. The Bible tells children to lovingly honor their parents. We’re told to love others more than we do our selves…and I could go on and on citing proof texts like this. That’s one reason we know Jesus WASN’T telling us to HATE our LOVED ONES. But the second reason we know this is because in the culture of the ancient Near East the concept of “hate” was different from our modern use of the term. For us “hate” means “intense hostility and aversion usually deriving from fear, anger, or sense of injury; extreme dislike or loathing.” But in the culture where Jesus lived and ministered “hate” was different. It was more of a matter of PRIORITIES. The word in Greek is “sane” and it literally means “to prefer above.” Genesis 25 gives us an example of this way of thinking when it tells us that Esau “hated” or “despised” his birthright and so he chose a bowl of soup over his blessing. Esau didn’t have intense negative emotions about his birthright. He didn’t have an AVERSION to it—I mean, he certainly didn’t “hate” it as we would use the term. In fact, later he fought hard to regain what he had lost and was inconsolable when he failed. At that moment of hunger he just foolishly preferred the porridge. He put his stomach first. Genesis 29 gives us another example in the story of Jacob’s two wives. We are told he “loved” Rachel and “hated” her sister, Leah. Again, the term indicates Jacob’s choice to favor one over the other. I mean, he couldn’t have been too repulsed by Leah. After all, he conceived seven children with her! The issue is choice or priority, irrespective of one’s feelings. So, no—Jesus isn’t saying that He requires His disciples to cultivate a deep loathing for people or to treat others cruelly. Instead He called for them to make a clear, definable, decisive choice to make Him the number one priority over all other relationships. Love for Him is to take precedence over all other loves—including love for self.
In short, Jesus is saying that to be His disciple He must be number one in our hearts. We must love nothing or no one more than we love Him. And sadly this is where many of us fall short.
Truth be told, there are many things we love more than our Lord: possessions, career, self—and yes, even our families. That last one is a hard one to swallow but many times people do indeed love their families more than Jesus. Their priority is to please their spouses and their children. R. Kent Hughes refers to this and writes, “We miss the mark when we put our children’s development athletically, intellectually, culturally, artistically, socially before their spiritual well-being. We fall short when we spend more time in the car shuttling them to games and lessons than we do in prayer for and with them. By comparison of priorities we reveal that we love them more than we love God.”
Now, I’m about to step on some toes here—and before you pull back from that—listen—hear me out.
As most of you know I worked in Youth ministry for many years—24 in fact—before I became a pastor. In those two and a half decades I saw two basic attitudes toward parenting. One type of parent obviously loved God with a supreme love—and that was seen in the fact that more than anything they wanted to teach their children to love God. So for this first type of parent, Bible study and church involvement took priority over school activities like sports and clubs. This parent brought their kids to youth events. This parent chaperoned retreats and mission trips and week-long camps like Centrifuge and World Changers. This parent prayed with their kids and discussed the Bible with them. This parent told their children about their relationship with Jesus and all it meant to them. I’m saying it was obvious that they loved God supremely and had experienced the blessing of that love-above-all-other-loves relationship—and they wanted their kids to do the same.
The second type of parent was not a bad parent—but they made a conscious choice to get their kids on athletic teams or involved in school clubs or gymnastics or ballet or whatever. That kind of thing was the priority. So this teen’s primary peer group was MOSTLY non-Christians. Don’t misunderstand. This parent brought their children to worship and Sunday school, most of the time, but it was obvious that daily discipleship took a back burner to the other things I mentioned. I rarely saw the teens from these families on a retreat or a discipleship camp like ‘Fuge. These teens couldn’t go because they always had a sporting event to attend.
I’ve been a pastor for 17 years now and I can look back and see the results of those two different priorities. It is a sad thing to behold because with a few exceptions, the children whose parents loved God first—the parents who loved God most—those children are the happiest and most-fulfilled in life—because they have learned to love God first as well. These “kids” have grown up to be active in the church—serious about their commitment to Jesus. The others continue to put our Lord on the back burner. Their discipleship is nominal at best. The former is better able to face the disappointments and fears of life because they follow He Who has overcome the world. The latter often struggle when trials and tribulations come. I think it’s obvious which kind of parent is best—but the question is, which kind of parent are you? If you’re more like the latter than the former, take heart, it’s never too late to help your kids see that we must love God SUPREMELY.
But the important thing to remember here is that when we love Jesus with a supreme love—in the choice to love Him most and put Him first—in that decision we are both inspired and enabled to love for spouses and children and friends in the right way—the BEST way. I mean, as I just inferred, the best dads and moms are those who love Jesus most. The best employees are those who put Jesus first. The best spouses are those to give their supreme love to our Lord. Let me put it this way, you can only lay down your life for your husband or wife and your children and your fellow man, if you SUPREMELY love and follow Him Who laid down His life for us all.
I’m saying this COST of being a discipleship is really a BLESSING. This REQUIREMENT for following Jesus is really a BENEFIT—both to us and to the people closest to us.
Now—of course there is a time when this COST—really does COST us. I mean there are times when this choice to love Jesus most literally COSTS us our families and friends. We’ve all heard stories of Muslims who, when they let it be known that they were followers of Jesus were expelled from their families. I’ve heard similar stories of people who were Jews and then followed Jesus even though it meant their biological families would in essence consider them dead. But I believe the people who pay this cost would testify that it was more than worth it.
I’m sure you’ve heard of the late Francis Schaeffer founder of La Bri and beloved Christian author. Well Schaeffer came to faith in Christ when he was a high school student. He came from a non-religious family and when his father learned that his son wanted to go to college to train for the ministry, he expressed violent opposition. Schaeffer felt torn between love for his Lord and love for his father, but prayer only made his sense of direction clearer. One day his father met him at the door with the words, “I don’t want a son who is a minister, and I don’t want you to go.” Schaeffer went off to pray but returned to his father with the simple statement, “Dad, I love you but I’ve got to go.” Enraged, his father slammed the door in his face. Schaeffer later commented that few choices had been more costly that the decision about whether to please the Lord or his father. But Schaeffer’s choice of loyalties, difficult as it was, bore rich dividends. It laid the foundation for a fruitful ministry and also resulted in his dad’s eventual salvation. It was more than worth the COST. Following Jesus—giving HIM our supreme love ALWAYS is.
(2) The second cost of discipleship that Jesus mentions in this text is: A DAILY DEATH
Look at verse 25 where our Lord says, “And whoever does not carry their cross and follow Me cannot be My disciple.” Now, many of us misunderstand this verse and say things like, “My noisy neighbors are the ‘cross’ I have to bear.” Or, “I get a migraine headache whenever Mark preaches, but I guess it’s just the ‘cross’ I must bear.” Well, these are not the kinds of CROSS Jesus was referring to. He was not talking about INCONVENIENCE. He was talking about DEATH. And His listeners would have understood that. They knew an individual who was carrying his cross was on the way to be executed. He was as good as dead.
I can’t help but think of the book, Dead Man Walking, where it says that when a death row prisoner is walking from his cell to the place he will be executed the other prisoners say, “Dead man walking.” He was alive and walking—but he was dead. That’s reflective of the thinking of Jesus’ listeners that day. They knew He was saying that disciples are people who are as good as dead.
And of course there are times when being a disciple of Jesus requires us to die literally for our faith—but that’s not what Jesus was focusing on here. I say that because the Greek refers to a CONTINUAL dying. It literally says, “Anyone who does not KEEP ON carrying his cross and KEEP ON following Me cannot be My disciple.” Jesus was saying authentic Christian discipleship is a series of deaths. It’s a perpetual dying to self-will any time we face a fork in the road. It means every day over and over again we die to our own plans and ambitions. We allow Jesus to direct all our decisions. In short, the cross-bearing disciple has chosen to shape His life by Jesus’ will instead of his or her own. C.S. Lewis had it right when he said, “Christ says, ‘Give me ALL. I don’t want SO MUCH of your time and SO MUCH of your money and SO MUCH of your work. I want you. I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it. No half-measures are any good. I don’t want to cut off a branch here and a branch there, I want to have the whole tree down. I don’t want to drill the tooth or crown it or stop it but to have it out. Hand over the whole natural self, all the desires which you think innocent as well as the ones you think wicked—the whole outfit.”
Paul understood this principle as well and wrote about it repeatedly in his letter to the church at Galatia.
- In Galatians 2:20 he said, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.”
- In Galatians 5:24 he said, “Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature of its passions and desires.”
- In Galatians 6:14 he said, “May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.”
And do you remember what Bonhoeffer said, “The cross is laid on every Christian. As we embark upon discipleship we surrender ourselves to Christ in union with His death. We give over our lives to death. The cross is not the terrible end to an otherwise God-fearing and happy life, but it meets us at the beginning of our communion with Christ. When Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die.”
Well, have you died? Let me put it another way: Are you dying? I mean, who runs your life most of the time—you or Jesus? Who is most ALIVE in you these days? If you want to TRULY follow Jesus it is required that you continually DIE—and let Jesus live in and through you.
So what does it cost to follow Jesus? It costs our SUPREME LOVE, a DAILY DEATH, and then it also costs:
(3) A CALCULATED COMMITMENT
Jesus shared two parables to illustrate this principle: a man who is about to build a tower and a king who is about to go to war. He says that both would be wise to calculate the cost of their endeavor to make sure they can complete it. The principle Jesus was stating was that people who follow Him should realize this is going to require the rest of their lives. It’s not something they decide to do for a while and then quit. No—discipleship is something we don’t finish until we die. It’s not something you do and then cross off your “to-do” list. No—following Jesus is a life-long commitment. This is where the Franklin arctic expedition when wrong. They didn’t calculate the cost of finishing their task.
The fact is every worthwhile accomplishment in life requires counting the cost. For example, do you want to be a great violinist? By the time he reached the age of 75 world-famous violinist Jascha Jeifitz had logged some 102,000 hours of practice. If you want to be an artist remember that da Vinci’s anatomically perfect sketches came only after incredible effort. On one occasion he drew a thousand hands! Do you want to be an Olympic champion weight lifter? Your training lifts added together might equal the weight of the Sears Tower. Are you ready to lift that much?
Jesus says every would-be disciple must count the cost before he begins. And what is the end of that calculation? When you add it all up what does it require? EVERYTHING! Every possession—everything we are—for the REST of your life. Discipleship demands our personal relationships, our personal preferences and our personal resources. We are to give up everything to Jesus. Everything we are and have are to be used with His mission in mind. My house becomes His house. My car His car; my savings His savings. Joseph Fitzmyer’s translation of Jesus’ words in verse 33 makes this so clear: “Similarly, then every one of you who does not say goodbye to all he has cannot be a disciple of Mine.” Let me put it this way, when money or pleasure or our desires make us hesitant about doing what Jesus calls us to do, we are disciples of money or pleasure or desire and not disciples of Jesus. Following Him means making Him Lord of every corner of our life every minute of life. In short, discipleship is not a casual or an occasional activity.
And less this sound grim consider this: We should not only count the cost of discipleship, we should consider the consequences of REFUSING TO FOLLOW Jesus. You see, to decide not to become a disciple is to miss the privilege of knowing and following the Lord Jesus. It is to default on participating in His mission and sharing His victories. Paradoxically, refusing to die as a disciple is to say no to life itself. As Jesus said in Luke 9:24: “For whoever wants to save his life will lose it but whoever loses his life for Me will save it.” The life of a disciple may be extremely demanding but it is also infinitely satisfying. It is indeed the LIFE that is truly LIFE!
But, many—perhaps MOST—Christians aren’t willing to pay this cost—and their nominal discipleship is a powerless, worthless thing. It’s like salt that has lost its saltiness.
Understand, salt was something of great value in Jesus’ day. It was recognized as essential to life and was used in the preservation of food, as a purifying agent and antiseptic against infection, as a seasoning, and even as a fertilizer for certain types of plants and soil. In fact, in ancient times soldiers received their wages in salt. That’s where we get our word “salary.” In short, salt was a big deal—covenants were based on salt and major trade routes were established for the exchange of salt. But according to Jesus salt could become salt-less. He did not mean that sodium chloride could cease to be sodium chloride. No—the salt used in Palestine was not the refined product we have in our stores. Lumps of material that once contained true salt could look like salt but the sodium chloride had been leached away. Such material was virtually useless. It might be spread on the road as a primitive paving material but that was about all. There was little productive use to which sales salt could be put. Well, without committed discipleship a Christian is just as useless. They may LOOK like disciples—but that’s it. Their commitment is just appearance. It’s just skin deep. This is not saying we can lose our salvation—but we can lose our effectiveness—we bear no fruit for our Savior and we don’t experience intimate fellowship with Him.
But “salty” disciples—they live lives of abundance as Jesus empowers them to change the world!
In fact, people who are UNWAVERINGLY dedicated to Jesus draw people to Him like moths to a flame. People look at the way we give Jesus our SUPREME love—and how we consistently die to self and they figure following Jesus must be worth the cost. I’m reminded of a true story told by Charles Swindoll in his book, Living Above the Level of Mediocrity. It’s about the underground church in Russia—in the days before the fall of the Iron Curtain.
A house church in a city in the former Soviet Union received one copy of the Gospel of Luke, the only Scripture most of those Christians had ever seen. They tore it into small sections and distributed them among themselves. Their plan was to memorize the portion they had been given and the on the next Lord’s Day they would meet and redistribute the Scriptural sections. One Sunday these believers arrived inconspicuously in small groups throughout the day so as not to arouse the suspicions of KGB informers. By dusk they were all safely inside, windows closed and doors locked. They began by singing a hymn quietly but with deep emotion. Suddenly, the door was pushed open and in walked two soldiers with loaded automatic weapons at the ready.
One shouted, “All right—everybody line up against the wall. If you wish to renounce your commitment to Jesus Christ leave now!” Two or three quickly left, then another. After a few more seconds, two more left. Then the soldiers said, “This is your last chance. Either turn from your faith in Christ, or stay and suffer the consequences.” Another left. Finally two more left in embarrassed silence with their faces covered as they slipped out into the night. No one else moved. Parents with small children trembling beside them looked down reassuringly. They fully expected to be gunned down or at best to be imprisoned. After a few moments of complete silence one soldier closed the door, looked back at those who stood against the wall and said,
“Keep your hands up—but this time in praise to our Lord Jesus Christ, brothers and sisters. We too are Christians. We were sent to another house church several weeks ago to arrest a group of believers—but their faith was so strong—and so impressive—we were converted. We decided to become followers of Jesus! We have learned by experience, however, that unless people are willing to die for their faith, they cannot be fully trusted.”
I wonder what I would have done. What about you—if you were in that room, would you have been willing to pay the cost of being a disciple of the Christ? Let me put it another way—do you love Jesus with such a SUPREME LOVE—do you die to His will so consistently—that your “salt” makes others thirsty for Jesus?
Let us pray.