What Will it Cost Me to Follow Jesus?

"What will it Cost Me to Follow Jesus?"

Pastor Jerry

Luke 14:25-33

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How many of you like to shop?  People seem to either love to shop, or, they hate it. More people are turning to online shopping to avoid the difficulties of going to stores. My wife does not enjoy shopping. She avoids it as much as she can. One of the most deceptive things in our society is keeping people from knowing the true cost of an item that is being sold. Have you ever received a bill in the mail which gives the basic cost but there are twelve different categories on the bill that list different fees and charges and taxes and you are trying to figure out what it all means and none of it makes any sense. Well, it is this very kind of confusion that Jesus wanted to avoid when he called persons to follow Him. Following Christ is costly. And Jesus warns us to count the cost first, before we follow him. How do we calculate the cost? Christ gives us an answer. And the answer is not complicated and it’s not confusing. This is His answer: forsake everything to be his follower. His answer is clear…but, it is costly! Jesus turns to the crowd and tells them, “Unless you’re serious about following me, you might as well go home!” Jesus knows that some of those following Him are only tagging along to see another miracle. So, Jesus says, “Do you really want to follow me? OK then, forsake everything else!” It almost sounds as if Jesus is trying to get people to stop following him! But Jesus is not trying to get rid of followers. We need to know what we’re getting into when we say we want to follow Jesus, because the cost is high. What will it cost you to follow Jesus?  Salvation is free to receive but costly to live out. Notice that I am not talking about salvation here. I am talking about discipleship. Jesus wants to do more for us than save us from our sins, as crucial and as important as that is. Jesus wants to give us abundant life, to deepen our relationship with him as we grow in faith. Jesus wants us to be his true disciples. What I’m going to do in this message— is share what it will cost you to follow Jesus. (1) You say yes to the Cost without looking at the Price Tag Jesus is calling people to follow him in discipleship, and then he’s reminding them that it’s like building a tower that you don’t want to leave half-finished or like going to war and realizing you don’t have enough soldiers to win the battle and defeat the enemy. So, he says, “Be sure to count the cost before you sign up for discipleship with Jesus because it’s costly. I don’t want you to sign up naively and be surprised later when the cost is very high.” That’s the gist of the situation Jesus’s pointing out, and that’s right. So, when we ask, “How do you count the cost when you don’t know what’s coming in your life?” The answer is that Jesus requires, upfront, a commitment to the highest possible cost. And nothing later is going to surprise you then because you’ve already totally sold to the highest, most excessive cost. In other words, you don’t need to know the specifics of the cost in your own particular case if the agreement you sign is “I’m yours at any cost.” And it’s exactly what these verses say. (2) You say Yes to the Cost even if it is the Highest Price In verses 26–27. Jesus 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. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.” Now, this is extreme language. The most extreme that he could use, I think, to show that the degree of the cost we may have to pay is extreme. The first extreme language is “I am calling you to something that is going to look like hatred.” And the second extreme language is “I am calling you to get on a cross,” which means you will suffer. So, counting the cost of discipleship means realizing that authentic discipleship may demand from you the highest price relationally and the highest price physically. (3) You say Yes to the Cost with no Negotiating Jesus ends the paragraph like this: “So, therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:33). Now, there are two absolutes in that sentence. One is found in the phrase any one. This applies to every disciple: “Any one of you who does not renounce all he has.” The other absolute is found in the word all. “You must renounce all that you have’ to be my disciple. You must be ready at any time to let go of everything for Jesus’s sake. So, when we ask, “How do we count the cost in advance when we don’t know what the cost will be in advance?” The answer is, you assume the cost could be total. All possessions given up, all relationships given up, all of life given up. That’s expectation that Jesus calls for. There’s no calculating. There is no saying, “Well, if the cost reaches this, then I’m not interested in Jesus anymore.” Because Jesus says, “You can’t sign up that way.” That’s not what disciples say. You say Yes to the Cost and receive a Rich Reward Disciples are all in, or they’re not in. That’s what the text is saying. But let’s make sure that we get this in right perspective, because just a few paragraphs earlier — in this same chapter — Jesus said, after he laid down some pretty high costs, “You will be repaid at the resurrection of the just” (Luke 14:14). In other words, “There is no cost that you can pay in following me that won’t be made up to you a thousand-fold in the resurrection.” And we need to remember Matthew 13:44, which says, “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.” A man sees and sells everything he has to get that treasure. In other words, all the so-called costs and all the so-called losses — everything — are nothing compared to the gains of having Jesus, the greatest treasure. So yes, we must count the cost in order to be a disciple. The cost is total in principle and may be total in actual experience. In the end, having Jesus means gain, like Paul says: “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” (Philippians 3:8). When we say “yes” to following Jesus, when we surrender our will to his will, something amazing happens. Bit by bit, we are changed. Each time we keep saying “yes, Lord, I leave behind everything to follow you.” We are transformed, becoming more and more like Christ. We experience abundant life, by God’s grace. And we discover that the cost of following Jesus, that we thought we couldn’t possibly afford, is worth it all. Because the price has already been paid out of God’s deep love for us, and when we give our all to Christ, we receive so much more!