Luke 14:25-35

Discussion Questions

• Where does your allegiance lie? What kinds of things fight for our attention and demand our devotion? Are our lives and loves ordered correctly, with Jesus at the center, or are they misaligned?
• What does being a disciple of Jesus mean? What is it, and what is it not? What is the cost? What will it cost you not to follow him? Are you ready to heed the call, follow in humble obedience, and be daily transformed and conformed into the image of Christ?
• How does how we live our lives speak to the integrity of our discipleship? Are we living lives focused on self-image and riddled with idolatry, or are we living lives of integrity that have real impact for the kingdom?

Transcript

We study through books of the Bible here at The Village Chapel. We have extra copies. If you didn’t bring one with you and you’d like one to follow along, just raise your hand up real high. I’d be glad to drop one off at your row, your aisle so you can follow along in the text. I’m going to post up on the screen here the QR code. If you would like the notes and quotes for this study today, that’s available to you and our passage will be Luke, Chapter 14, verses 25 through 35. Before we get going, I want to thank those who worshiped along with us last week or studied along with us through some of our podcasts from Medan City, North Sumatra, Indonesia. The Village Chapel sends you warm greetings. From Iloilo City, Panay, Philippines. We also send you warm greetings in the Lord. We had a bunch of folks from the UK that have communicated to us one way or another that they also joined us over the past weeks; Vermillion, South Dakota, USA and a whole bunch of people from here in Nashville, Tennessee that for one reason or another needed to jump online to be able to worship and study along with us. So, greetings to all and thank you so much for taking the time to be with us.

I want to begin our study today. I’m going to call it “Real Discipleship, Real Cost, Real Impact.” But I want to make this statement: I seek to persuade you that you are made for more than mere survival. Even though for some of you, your life seems to feel like it’s just reduced to that at times. you are made for more than achievement, acquisition and success. You’re also made for much more than merely discovering your “authentic self,” whatever that is. And much more than whatever the ever-shifting, always-disappointing cultural identity validators might demand of you this week. This is going to change next week. You are made for more, and behind every ache for something more, every yearning for significance, every longing to belong and every shiver of numinous curiosity, we all sense some kind of deeper calling. And I seek to persuade you today that it’s the voice of Jesus with just two words saying that I am radically going to change your life if you respond to them. Those two words are: “Follow Me.”

His calling is never casual, never merely religious. It is a summons to an entirely new way of being, a new way of living, to a life where Christ is not just decorative, not a once-a-week add-on. But it’s where Christ is at the very core and center of your life, where He reorders your loves, where He invites you into a life of real meaning and purpose, and where your story gets rewritten with eternity in mind. And that’s transcendence. That’s what we’re longing for – all of us. He’s written it into our hearts. He’s put eternity in our hearts as the book of Ecclesiastes says.

So, we are going to take a look at Luke, Chapter 14, verses 25 to 35. And before I read the text, let me just offer this prayer for illumination, if you join me: O, Heavenly Father, let us come to this study of Your Word with hearts and minds intentionally open to being surprised. Jesus, Son of God, help us silence our own agendas and vanish all our assumptions. Shake us free from our lazy, casual tendency toward drift. Holy Spirit, clear the cobwebs from our eyes and ears, confound our expectations, stir us and awaken us, penetrate the corners of our hearts with Your Word. We know You can. We pray You will. And we wait with eager anticipation for You to speak to us, move among us and transform us. Move in the crustiest of us, each one for Your glory. Amen and amen.

Luke 14, verses 25 to 35: “Now great multitudes were going along with Him; and He turned and said to them…” So, to set the scene, He’s come out of this house that He was in with this leader of the Pharisees. We studied that in the first part of chapter 14. Now He has moved outside and outside clearly there are waiting, not just regular multitudes but great multitudes, not just one multitude. It’s plural, multitudes. So, I’m going to just go out on a limb here and say there were at least hundreds, if not thousands of people waiting outside. And that the crowd parted as He exited and His disciples with Him, perhaps even some of those Pharisees that were trying to catch Him in something, coming along behind, trying to see if they could catch Him in something still. And the crowd parts and He heads on through. And at some point, between verse 25 and 26, He turns, and He speaks to the entire lot of them. And here’s what He says: “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.”

There are three times He’s going to say, “He cannot be my disciple in this passage.” It’s interesting. There’s a different approach than we’re used to with Jesus. What’s different? Well, partly what’s different is He’s on His way to the cross and very close to it. This is likely the week before prior to leading up to Palm Sunday, which begins the week that He will lay down His life on the cross. So, as He does all of that, He wants to make it really clear what it means to be a follower of His, one of His disciples. And partly, we define some things by saying what it’s not. And so, He’s doing that here as He says three times, “He cannot be my disciple.” Verse 27, see if you can catch the other two. “Whoever does not carry his own cross “and come after Me cannot be My disciple.” It’s the second one, obviously. And then He gives two short little similes or short parables, if you will. “For which one of you, when he wants to build a tower, does not first sit down and calculate the cost, to see if he has enough to complete it.”

Now, some of you are thinking, “I never want to build a tower, except when I’m playing Janga, I have no need for a tower.” Back then though, a tower meant something. You’re watching over your property, you’re watching to make sure there aren’t enemies that are approaching from a distance. And so, there’s a bit of security in a tower. Sometimes towers were built as places to store grain as well. So, your security, either of having food or your security of watching out for approaching dangers and threats and all that sort of thing, or thieves that might break in and want to rob you, you might want to build a tower. And so, Jesus says, “Why would you begin to build a tower without first calculating the cost to see if you have enough to complete it?” Verse 29, “Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who observe it begin to ridicule him.” In other words, he’s being seen as a fool because he’s being a fool. Because he hadn’t counted the costs on the front side of this project that he was going to put all his hope and confidence in to be able to protect himself and to secure his stuff. And so, he becomes ridiculed, if you will. Now saying, “This man began to build and was not able to finish it.”

Now, the second little parable: “Or what king, when he sets out to meet another king in battle, will not first sit down and take counsel whether he’s strong enough with 10,000 men to encounter the one coming against him with 20,000.” Somebody’s coming at you with twice as many men as you have in your army, and who wouldn’t stop for just a second, right? Take counsel to see whether or not you’re strong enough to face that challenge. Verse 32: “Or else, while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks terms of peace.” In other words, he doesn’t go out and fight what he knows will be a losing battle but makes some kind of an arrangement, or a covenant, with the person, so that they could have some kind of terms of peace. Verse 33: “So therefore, no one of you can be my disciple [There it is.] who does not give up all his own possessions.” There’s the third one, and there’s an allegiance there, an abandon, if you will. Give up. The word is apotaso in the Greek, and it means to move from ownership to stewardship, and that’s really the way of the disciple, isn’t it?

We now, following Jesus, have literally laid everything at His feet. Nothing that I have is my own; nothing that I have did I go out and secure for myself, but it was given to me as a gift by God. I now see things completely differently. I know a lot of churches will talk about, give 10%, and we don’t really say a percentage here at The Village Chapel because we think Jesus owns it all. It’s just a matter of what you’re comfortable keeping for yourself, and so we give, we give generously because it all belongs to Him anyway, and yes, sometimes He’s calling on us in a very spontaneous moment to give an offering or to offer something to someone else to watch for needs that cross our paths, but a lot of us are disciplined in our giving as well, and that’s helpful because we want to do some things together. We want to respond to disasters together. We want to be able to keep the lights on in the church. We want to be able to make sure the chairs are in rows, and we have air conditioning, and all of the various programs that we want to do. We want to be able to do all of that, but obviously it costs money to do all of that. We’re not in business to make a profit, but we have to see a profit to be able to stay in business. I’m neither a profit nor the son of a profit, but I work for a non-profit organization, and it has to stay afloat, so I encourage you all, as good disciples, as followers of Jesus, He wants us to count the cost of following Him. Part of that is giving. Part of that is laying down my life for others, putting others first in a moment when I don’t even think they deserve it, because that’s what grace looks like.

Grace is for the guilty and undeserving, that’s me. Jesus graced me so that I could grace others, and hopefully we can turn grace into a verb like that as well. And so, Jesus basically saying, count the cost whether you’re building a tower, whether you’re going to battle either way, build a battle, whatever it is, you naturally would want to count the cost. So, when you consider following Jesus, remember this is in that moment where He’s talking to all of those people, and He wants them to count the cost of discipleship. I love these last two verses, this is a really great image. “Therefore, salt is good.” How many of you like salt? Raise your hand. Awesome. My wife, Kim, she really likes salt. I find it interesting, we all learn from each other, don’t we? How many of you do this? Kim will salt her food before she tastes her food. Does anybody relate to that? You know it’s going to need more. She starts just offloading, back the truck up, and you know, whatever. And I can’t do that, I just, I don’t do that. And I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with it, Kim, you have some companions here in the room. So, I’m kind of that way with pepper though, so look at it, you know, that’s a different thing. I got like that with the pepper thing a lot.

I love these everyday examples. This is like every single one of us can relate to this, right? “Salt is good, but if even salt has become tasteless, with what will it be seasoned?” In other words, you can’t revive dead salt. Once it’s broken down, its essential ingredient has broken down, it’s useless. This is what He’s going to say. As a matter of fact, He says it’s useless either for the soil or for the manure pile. It’s thrown out. And then there is this thing that Jesus says repeatedly: “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” Same for ladies. She or any of us that have ears to hear, let us hear. It’s a bit of a warning, isn’t it? It’s a bit of a wake-up nudge. He says it over and over and over again. Why?

Well, because there’s a lot of people that have ears but don’t really hear, either because they don’t want to hear, or they’re too lazy to hear, or they’re afraid to hear. And Jesus wants to stir us awake to count the cost of discipleship, and this is well before Dietrich Bonhoeffer even wrote the book by that same title, okay? He wants us to count the cost of all of that. All right, let’s take a look then at what this might offer for us and how we can learn from it. There was an ancient Jewish proverb sourced in the tractate from the Mishnah. The Mishnah was that first part of the Jewish Talmud. It was a foundational text of rabbinic Judaism. And here’s what the ancient Jewish proverb says. Read this loud with me. “Follow the rabbi, drink in his words, be covered with the dust of his feet.” I love this image. I think it was really amazing. Follow the rabbi is about apprenticeship, living your everyday life the way your rabbi would live if he were you, going where he goes, not going where he doesn’t go. Saying what your rabbi would say but not saying what your rabbi would not say.

You have to put this into the context of your everyday relationships at work, at home, in the neighborhood, here at church, asking ourselves a question, not just what would Jesus do, but what would Jesus think? What would Jesus say? How would Jesus respond if He’s our rabbi? We do what our rabbi would do, and we don’t do what our rabbi would not do. It’s an apprenticeship to follow the rabbi. It means imitating his example. In a single word, following. Okay? The second little phrase up there is drink in his words. I like this because it’s more passionate, isn’t it? It expresses the idea of being thirsty for what your rabbi could teach you. Eagerly learning as you follow. It’s as if you hang on the rabbi’s every word and you find his words sweeter than honey, like the psalmist would say. Life-giving, like the gospel of John would tell us. Like a fresh drink of water in the middle of a hot desert. Drink in His words. I don’t know about you, but I’m that way about God’s Word, about everything that Jesus said, about everything that points to Jesus in the Old Testament and the New Testament, everything that reminds me of the Gospel. I want more of it. I know a lot of folks, when they shop for a church, they’re looking for a church that will feed them.

That’s fine, but it’s shooting too low. Go for a church that will make you hunger for the Word more. Hunger for the Lord more than you did last week. Now I think that’s really important. Drinking His words, be covered in the dust of His feet. You see that image up there? Try to imagine that. I think it reflects several things. Closeness of proximity. You’re close, but you’ve been humbled. You’re at his feet. A willingness to bow low to suffer even if need be and to sacrifice. This refers surely to following so closely that the dust from your rabbi’s sandals covers and smothers you. Your desire is to be so close to the rabbi you never lose sight of him. You can always hear him because you’re in close proximity to him. You hear his words, you passionately desire to have your entire life marked by them. You know, dust is like, if you’re ever getting a dust cloud, it’s like it’s everywhere. It’s all over. You can’t, you know, you’ve seen people like this if you haven’t experienced it yourself.

Verse 25 reminds us, there’s this great multitudes going along with Jesus, massive number of people. And so, He wants to, not just thin the herd to kick people out, but He wants them to think through what they really are doing. Are you just following Jesus for the sideshow of miracles back in that day when He’s walking the planet? Or are you really interested in what He has to say and the kingdom of heaven that He keeps talking about? Is that what you’re interested in? Jesus is drawing a line between those who were believers in the existence of God, all Jews would believe in the existence of God, but He’s drawing a line between people who merely academically believing something, that God exists and those who would actually follow Jesus in His way. As we’ve said before, even our own day and time, while every disciple is a believer, not every believer is a disciple. You can academically believe in the existence of God. So, you believe in God, but you’ve not chosen to follow Him or be His disciple. And this is a great passage for us to read, to study, to meditate on, to ask ourselves the question, which am I? Am I merely giving academic acknowledgement to the existence of God in my life? And then I just go about living my life as if it doesn’t really matter? Or am I so hungry? I want to get so close to Jesus that I’m just covered in the dust of his sandals as He walks along the road. We all probably know people who have this sort of disposition of heart toward God of just acknowledging His existence. The question again for us is, what about us? What about you? What about me?

And here’s Jesus on the road to Jerusalem. Full knowledge that He’s heading to the cross. And there were all those thousands who were walking along beside Him and behind Him. And He just wanted them to mean it, to take it seriously. And to mean it, the question is, do we, do we mean it? I think Jesus turned around rather suddenly, opened up a fire hose of the gospel reality and said to them the things that He said so that He could separate the religious tourists from those who actually wanted to be disciples of His. The traditional model back then was that disciples, or would-be disciples, would seek out a rabbi and hope to be accepted by the rabbi. You didn’t just get to be one, you had to be accepted by the rabbi. But you could go after any rabbi and ask if they would accept you. Some of them might not accept you back then. They might not think you were serious enough. They might not think you deserved to be one of their students. Jesus models completely different.

He reversed the normal process instead of waiting for students to come to Him and prove themselves worthy. Jesus turns around and talks to the whole masses, the whole crowd of them, and invites them to consider what real discipleship is. And if you want to do that, I would love to have you as my disciple. He’s essentially saying. So, it’s a reversal of that whole normal process back then, that model of what it meant to become a disciple. Jesus calls them to deny themselves, take up their cross and follow Him in some of the parallel gospel accounts. Unqualified though they were. And it highlights the difference between religion, our man’s climb, humankind’s climb to try to reach God, religion. And the Gospel is God coming down to us. To call us to Himself, to bridge the gap if you will.

This would have been quite jarring in the context of the first century. What Jesus has done here in Luke, Chapter 14, verses 25 to 35. Pretty shocking in some ways. He wasn’t a rabbi waiting in the temple courts for the best and the brightest students to petition Him. Jesus was essentially saying, I will choose you, and the only thing required of you is that you repent and believe. You turn away from your selfishness, your self-centeredness, your thinking that you can save yourself, your thinking it’s all about you. Turn away from that and you turn toward Me and follow Me. That’s what He’s saying. Deny yourself. And of course, in our day and time, the whole world is about focus on yourself. It’s all about me, myself, and I, the three most important people on the planet. That’s what I’m being told all day long. Different messages that we see implicitly, that’s what they’re telling us to do. And Jesus says, no, my way is for you to lose your life, and then you will find it. It’s completely upside down and cross-current in a lot of ways. But Jesus even begins with this. I will choose you, and I will call you to follow Me.

So, there’s gospel beauty in all of this. It’s pure grace. Jesus doesn’t wait around for you and me to be worthy. He reaches to the whole crowd and speaks this word that day. He comes to us, He calls us, not based on our merit, but based on His mercy. Christ’s call is not based on our credentials. It’s based on His generosity. How will we respond? All right, so a couple things. First, real discipleship means reordering my love so that Jesus becomes preeminent in my life. I think we see that here in this passage. Most people understand the deep emotional bonds of family. Many have also experienced the pain of strained or complex relationships. And verse 26 there is different. Raise your hand if verse 26 causes you just a little bit of anxiety there. Yeah, I think probably a few of you know what I’m talking about. He’s basically saying – and by the way, it is a Semitic idiom. It’s an ancient Near Eastern hyperbolic language, comparison, if you will. So, when He says “hate,” the word in the Greek is actually “meseo,” and it means it’s more about priority than it is about hostility. It’s more about saying, you love God so much that in comparison, all other loves look like you actually kind of hate them. You love God that much. And that’s the kind of Semitic idiomatic phrase that we aren’t used to in our culture.

And so, for a lot of us, we’re thinking very literally that that means I must hate my mother and my father. No. Jesus believes in the Ten Commandments. He inspired them. And so, the fifth commandment, honor your father and your mother. That’s Him. That’s His view. So, He’s not saying that. What is He saying? The only thing you can possibly come to is to understand that this idiomatic phrase is Him saying that we must hold Christ first in all of our loves. And then it will transform, of course, all of the rest of our loves. He’s diminishing love of family. He’s elevating love for God to such a height that it becomes the source and the fountainhead for all other loves. And they’re properly ordered because He is first. I think this resonates with the heart of people who have struggled with questions of identity and belonging, with social validation, cravings for that, with the bondage of living for the approval of others. I think this is the kind of passage that can really set us free. I can now declare to you as a pastor and as a Bible teacher and as one who’s a believer myself, God’s love for you is in spite of all of your shortcomings. It’s in spite of all of the places and ways you don’t quite measure up to the standards of the world around us or to even your own standards, whatever they may be. He loves you just as you are.

That’s why we can sing, Just Give Me Jesus. Because when Jesus is all you have, when He becomes preeminent, when He becomes the center, you start to see, Jesus is really all you need. There is no other significant validator in my life than Jesus. His are the only lips I really long to hear Him say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” I don’t need the validation of the world around me. I don’t even need my own sort of looking in the mirror and saying, “I’m smart enough, I’m good looking enough, and God, people love me.” I don’t need that. I know I need His grace. I bow and freely lift up my empty hands and receive from Him what I can achieve on my own. Stott, couple quotes on this subject: “The cost of discipleship involves putting Christ first in everything, before our relatives, our ambitions and our possessions.” That is from his book, “The Incomparable Christ.” I was fortunate enough on one of my birthdays many years ago, Kim surprised me with an airplane ticket, and she had registered me to go here. John Stott gave these lectures before this book came out. And it was such a blessing to me. I was so honored to be able to sit and listen to this. But when this book came out, and we’ve used it many times in our greenhouse program, many of you probably have read it because of that, but he really summed it up quite well there. And that second quote, “Our love for Christ must be so wholehearted that our other loves are, by comparison, hatred.”

So, you understand that what Jesus is saying in verse 26 is that compared to our love for God and for Jesus, everything else fades to the background. And I gotta tell you, when I love Jesus first and most, it actually makes me a better husband. It makes me a better brother. It makes me a better son. It means I can learn to love in a much broader way and a much deeper way as a pastor than I could have if I didn’t have Jesus first. That’s very important. And if you’re working on some kind of relationship or some kind of balancing out your view of something, you might want to ask yourself the question, have I prioritized my love for Jesus? Lewis said it this way: “You can’t get second things by putting them first; you can get second things only by putting first things first.” Friends, put Jesus first. Now, instead, if you were to ask me point blank, what does it mean to live spiritually? I’d have to reply living with Jesus at the center. That’s exactly what Jesus is calling us to in this particular passage. Christ preeminent in our relationships, verse 26, Christ preeminent in the way we steward the possessions and resources entrusted to us, verse 33. Secondly, real disciples, real cost, real impact.

Christian discipleship transforms me from a spectator into a participant; from curious to committed; it combines the passion of allegiance with the discipline of obedience. Does that make sense? Nod heads up and down, that’s good, yeah, that’s helpful. I know you’re still out there. Yeah, from a spectator to a participant. There’s so many people when you go to a Titans game that have the jersey that are not on the field. You know what I’m talking about? And so, Jesus actually wants us to not just be spectators, but become participants, to actually follow Him in His way. And to help His original hearers understand this better, Jesus used these two mini parables, a man building a tower and the king going to war, both teach the same truth. Discipleship is not impulsive, but responsive to the promptings of Jesus. It’s realistic, it’s thoughtful, it’s costly, but it’s intentional and sacrificial, and it’s resolute, all of the above. “Christian discipleship means I’ve been saved by grace and now, overflowing with gratitude, by that same grace, I live in resolute abandonment to Jesus as Lord. While salvation costs me nothing, discipleship will cost me everything.” That’s amazing, brilliant, and it might be life-giving to you if you’re on the inside of it, if you understand what it means. “If you want Jesus who saves you,” Keller says, “you must also embrace the Jesus who rules you.”

John Stott talked a lot about the combination of Jesus being both Savior and Lord. Let that sink in a little bit, and he talked about nominal Christianity, which basically is those folks who want Jesus as Savior, but not as Lord. Here’s a quote from him on that: “The Christian landscape is strewn with a wreckage of derelict, half built towers – the ruins of those who began to build and were unable to finish. For thousands of people still ignore Christ’s warning and undertake to follow Him without first pausing to reflect on the cost of doing so. The result is the great scandal of Christendom today, so-called ‘nominal Christianity.’” Jesus doesn’t lower the bar for His followers, He raises it. The call to discipleship isn’t an invitation to a hobby of religion, but a summons to a cruciform life. Real discipleship is not religious legalism, but it is an abandonment to apprenticeship. It’s living our lives as Jesus would live them if He were us. I actually must stop before I speak and think, what would Jesus say here? To the annoying person on the other end of the phone, to the person on the highway that has cut me off, that I want to use some colorful sign language with, or whatever it might be. I just want to scream and holler at him, or in some way outburst is in my heart. What would Jesus do in this particular moment? Always good to ask ourselves that question. Grace not only saves us, but it enables us to live differently.

Thirdly, and finally, real discipleship, real cost, real impact is on display here in Luke 14. Christian discipleship ignites in me a passionate desire to be conformed to the image of Christ. Not merely to act more religious, not to become more doctrinally correct, more passionate about social action. These are maybe good things in and of themselves, but real Christian discipleship will make me become more and more passionate about being conformed to the image of Christ. Then no matter what I’m doing, no matter who I’m talking to, who I’m in relationship with, no matter what I’m suffering through, I’m asking myself, how can I glorify Jesus? How can I put Jesus first in this situation? I’m thinking of two people right now, one my mother-in-law, who all through her battle with cancer in her last couple of years of her life, every single time she went into the hospital, she said she intended to in some way be a testimony to the people, the nurses, the doctors, whomever might be passing by. And she intended to be a witness and a testimony to them. I thought that was brilliant. That was amazing. Another TVCer, and I won’t use his name, but another TVCer who passed away in the last few years, told me that every single step along the way in his suffering, in his journey to where he crossed over onto the other side to be with the Lord, he said every single one for him was like dropping gospel seeds along the way. So beautiful, powerful, that even their suffering and their physical death here on this planet was an opportunity for them to put Jesus first in what they were going through. Now, conforming us to His image, sometimes that takes work.

Somebody should’ve given me at least a Methodist amen on that. Does it take work to conform you to the image of Christ? Yeah, that’s right. How about the person next to you? Yeah, yeah, yeah, that might get a louder amen, yeah. Family, friends, neighbors, coworkers, those we might not like, those we consider repugnant. All of that changes when you start to follow Jesus. This is how practical this is, folks. All of that changes if you decide to follow Jesus. Count the costs is what Jesus is saying, okay? Everything changes. There are no repugnant others to people who follow Jesus. Why? Well, because we realized we were His repugnant other. Sinners, rebels, and yet He loved us, He graced us. So, I can have no repugnant others. I must do what He’s done. Forgive us our trespasses, Lord, in the same way that we forgive others theirs. You know? That’s the only conditional line of that prayer. And it’s brilliant, I love the way, but it sets us free, doesn’t it? Because so many of us struggle with bitterness or anger or hatred or thinking of others as repugnant all that, it’s just eating us up. Man, it’s like sand in your combustion engine, never meant to be there. It’s like you have no oil in the engine at all. It’s meant to be there to keep the gears working and the valves working. And so, we hold onto bitterness and anger.

And this brilliant theologian and philosopher Lily Tomlin said, “Holding onto unforgiveness, it’s like drinking rat poison and then expecting the rat to die.” The rat’s not going to die, you’re going to die. Don’t hold onto that stuff. Give that all up. Just give me Jesus. The integrity of our Christian discipleship is revealed when our character, our values, speech and actions come into alignment with those of Jesus Christ and the truth of God’s Word. Now look at each of those items up there on the screen, would you? Character. Lord, I want to be your son. If you’re a woman here, I want to be your daughter, Lord. I want to bear the family resemblance. I want my character to look like that of Jesus. But values. Pastor Tommy’s going to talk about values a little bit more next week, but it’s so important. Axiology, that branch of philosophy that deals with what is valuable, what is good. What is of value that we need to put into our lives. That’s so important. I think it’s the, it may be the most important branch of philosophy right now in a world where we’re being dehumanized by technology.

And I’m not saying all technology is bad. Don’t hear me saying that. I’m just saying if we just bow down and start to worship sort of at the digital, cyber everything, we’re going to be dehumanized. And real relationships with real people, that’s where we experience real love and real forgiveness and real redemption in the process is what makes us really human just like Jesus is. And so, our values, our speech, our actions all come into alignment with those of Jesus and with the truth of God’s Word. Our old friend Dallas Willard used to say, “Spiritual formation in Christ moves toward a total interchange of our ideas and images for His.” Think of that. Put all your ideas, all your images to the side and take on the ones that Jesus would embrace. That’s what discipleship is. Walking as Jesus would walk, at the pace Jesus would walk, in the direction Jesus would walk, to the destination Jesus is going to – the kingdom of heaven. Everything seen in that way is so important. So, we have the real discipleship described here at a real cost and it has real impact.

You see that in the last two verses. Look one more time, one last time. “Salt is good; but if even salt has become tasteless, with what will it be seasoned?” To you it’s useless, “either for the soil or for the manure pile; it is thrown out. He who has the years to hear let him hear.” Salt back then was used in at least three ways: as a preservative, or for purification and also for flavor enhancing, as we said earlier. It does bring a steak to life in so many ways, and vegetables as well. Jesus is calling us to deny ourselves, take up our cross and follow Him. That’s what real discipleship, real cost and real impact look like being, we become that kind of salt that has an impact. Many people, especially in moments of quiet reflection or crisis, sense a hunger for a life that matters. Maybe that’s you. Maybe you’re aware of the meaninglessness and the purposelessness of life apart from God. Apart from anything transcendent, anything higher than yourself. Maybe you’ve come to that place where you’re starting to see that in your longing for more; Jesus’ call to carry the cross and follow Him is actually an invitation to life – real impact and eternal significance. Peterson said it this way, “The way of Jesus is not the easiest way, but it is the best way. It gets us where Jesus goes, which is to resurrection.”

He’s on His way to Jerusalem to lay down His life so that you and I could know Him, could come into relationship with Him, be reconciled to God, this holy God. We sinners reconcile to a holy and righteous God based not upon what we do, not merit, not balancing out the scales, but based upon what Jesus has done at the cross and in His glorious resurrection. I commend Him to you as the one you should follow. I encourage you to consider if you are following Him or not. Perhaps you’re just believing in the existence of God. I seek to stir you up to awaken you, to think that through. Do a little self-evaluation in your own life and like Os’ closing quote, “Do you want to know a truth that in the momentous challenges of our modern world will be at once a quest to inspire you, and anchor to hold you fast, a rich fair to nourish you, and a relationship you will prize above all others? Listen to Jesus of Nazareth; answer His call.”

My friends, follow Jesus. Drink in His words. Follow so closely that you are covered by the dust of His feet. Amen. I pray, Lord, thank You for this. Stir us up, I pray, myself included, no matter where we are at in proximity to You right now, Lord, we know how eager You are for us to come home to You, our true home. And so, Lord, I pray, Spirit that You would move in my heart and all of our hearts, that we might be hungry for more of You, that we might turn to You fully, bow before You humbly, worship You gratefully, Lord, and then rise and follow You faithfully. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen and amen.

Songs, Readings & Prayer

Songs

“All Creatures Of Our God And King“ by St. Francis of Assisi
“Revive Us Again“ by John Jenkins Husband and William Paton MacKay
“Give Me Jesus“ by Fernando Ortega
“Jesus, Firm Foundation“ by George Keith, R. Keen
“Doxology” by Thomas Ken and Louis Bourgeois
All songs are used by Permission. CCLI License #2003690

Call To Worship: Bless the Lord

Leader: Bless the Lord at all times; let His praise continually be in your mouth.
People: My tongue shall tell of Your righteousness and of Your praise all the day long.

Leader: Oh, magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt His name together.
People: We will tell to the coming generation the glorious deeds of the Lord, and His might, and the wonders that he has done.

All: You are great, O Lord God. For there is none like You, and there is no God besides You!

Confession of Faith: The Apostles’ Creed – Article II. “He Descended Into Hell”

Leader: What does the Creed mean by saying that Jesus descended to the dead?

People: That Jesus descended to the dead means that he truly died and entered the place of the departed.

Leader: What makes Jesus’ descent into Hades important for us?

People: In my greatest sorrows and temptations I may be assured and comforted that my Lord Jesus Christ, by His unspeakable anguish, pain, terror, and agony, which He endured throughout all His sufferings but especially on the cross, has delivered me from the anguish and torment of hell. We can now face death knowing that when it comes we shall not find ourselves alone. He has been there before us, and he will see us through.

ACNA, Q. 68; Heidelberg, Q. 44; Growing in Christ, J.I. Packer

Classic Prayer: Martin Luther 1483-1546

Behold, Lord, I am an empty vessel that needs to be filled. Oh Lord, fill me. I am weak in the faith; strengthen me. I am cold in love; warm me to the point of zeal so that my love may reach my neighbor. I do not have a steadfast belief. I suffer from doubt, and I am unable to trust completely. Oh Lord, help me. Increase my faith and strengthen my trust. All my good treasure is stored in you.

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