25 Now large crowds were going along with 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 carry his own cross and come
after Me cannot be My disciple.
28 “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?
29 “Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is
not able to finish, all who observe it begin to ridicule him,
30 saying, ‘this man began to build and was not able
to finish.’
31 “Or what
king, when he sets out to meet another king in battle, will not first sit down
and consider whether he is strong enough with ten thousand men to encounter the
one coming against him with twenty thousand?
32 “Or else, while the other is still far away, he
sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace.
33 “So then, none of you can be My
disciple who does not give up all his own possessions.”
I would like to share this
evening something that God has been bringing to my attention over and over
again. What has been stirring in my
heart lately is this issue of discipleship…the issue of following Christ. It is not a light-hearted thing to follow
Christ as we read in this passage in Luke.
Jesus places some sobering and strong demands on those who would dare to
be His disciple. Tonight I’d like for
all of us to take a deeper look into these demands as well as a deeper look
inside ourselves
To start off I’d like to go
back to the basics and take a look at what a disciple is. It has been said that “A student learns what
his teacher knows, but a disciple becomes what his Master is.” A disciple of Christ is one who not only
learns who Jesus is and what He teaches, but is also actively involved in
becoming just like Jesus in mind, emotion and will. By following Christ so closely, a disciple
imitates every move of the Master. To be
conformed into the image of the Son is the goal of every disciple.
Now I’d like to emphasize
that discipleship and salvation are two different things. The Bible teaches that salvation belongs to
our God. The work of salvation is God’s
work because we could never do enough work to earn our salvation. God saves men and women simply by His grace
through faith. Discipleship on the other
hand is entirely in our court. Once we
become a child of God by faith in the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus,
to then follow our living Saviour is a choice left up to us. Jesus makes this clear in Luke 14 by saying
“IF anyone comes to me…” It’s a
conditional statement not a command. He
is speaking this to anyone who has ears to hear, not a specific group of
people, just a large crowd. He is
speaking to us.
Because it is our choice,
Jesus points out that we must count the cost and consider the demands placed on
a disciple before entering into this commitment. This is not a decision to be made lightly.
28 “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?
29 “Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is
not able to finish, all who observe it begin to ridicule him,
30 saying, ‘this man began to build and was not able
to finish.’
31 “Or what
king, when he sets out to meet another king in battle, will not first sit down
and consider whether he is strong enough with ten thousand men to encounter the
one coming against him with twenty thousand?
32 “Or else, while the other is still far away, he
sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace.
33 “So then, none of you can be My
disciple who does not give up all his own possessions.”
Jesus says to have what it
takes to follow me, you have to have nothing.
You have to give up all your own possessions. Now this doesn’t mean you have to sell
everything you have and live in poverty.
God is not interested in your earthly possessions. It’s your eternal heart He’s after. He wants you to have a heart that holds on to
nothing but Him. Jesus addresses
specific areas of our lives that He knows might be a struggle to give up, but
give them up we must if we are to be His disciples. It’s these specific areas of surrender that I
want to look at more closely tonight.
1. The first is the area of family as shown at the beginning of the passage in Luke.
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 is not saying that to
follow Him we must divorce our wives or abandon our children. He is not saying that we should hate them and
not love them. That goes against clear
commands in Scripture to love and nurture our families. What Jesus is saying is that in comparison to
our love for Him, our love for our families must take second place. Again He is interested in what our hearts are
holding on too. He’s looking on the
inside. We must give up any allegiance
to family that would interfere with our allegiance to Him if we are to be His
disciple. He must take first place.
This really became true for
me this past week as I was studying this passage. After 2 wonderful years of marriage to
2. The second area Jesus addresses is our own
lives
27 “Whoever does not carry his own cross and come
after Me cannot be My disciple.
Jesus says that to be His
disciples, you have to carry your own cross and follow Him. Not only do we have to give up possessing our
families, but we must give up possession of our own lives. The cross does not identify with a life of
comfort and ease. It is actually a
symbol of death. If we are holding onto
the “American Dream” of a life in a nice house in the suburbs, two cars and a
dog, we must be willing to give that up.
God might give us that kind of a life, but we cannot hold onto that life
and still be His disciple. We must be
willing to let it go and pursue the dreams God has for us. Again God is looking at what our hearts are
holding on to.
We cannot hold on to our own
passions and pursuits. If we dare to be
His disciple, we must deny ourselves. Mark 8:34-35 says, “And He summoned the
crowd with His disciples and said to them, “If anyone wishes to come after Me,
he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose
it, but whoever loses his life for My sake, and the
gospel’s will save it.”
We must be willing to give up
our very lives for the name of Jesus. If
we do not hold on to or possess our lives, then our lives are set apart for His
use in His possession.
3. The third area Jesus addresses is that of our
HOME
57 As they were going along
the road, someone said to Him, “I will follow You wherever You go.”
58 And Jesus
said to him, “The foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the
Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.”
59 And He said to another, “Follow Me.” But he said,
“Lord, permit me first to go and bury my father.”
60 But He said to him, “Allow the dead to bury their
own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim everywhere the
61 Another also said, “I will follow You, Lord, but
first permit me to say good-bye to those at home.”
62 But Jesus said to him, “No one, after putting his
hand to the plow and looking back, is fit for the
This one has been a very
difficult struggle for me. I am one who
really values a place to keep all my stuff, a safe haven to come to at the end
of a day, a table to eat at , a bed to lay my head on at night, a sort of “base
of operations” for life. To hear Jesus
say that if you want to follow Him, you have to be willing to be homeless was
hard for me to swallow. But this is exactly
what Jesus is saying. You cannot hold on
to a home if you’re going to follow Jesus.
You have to be willing to leave what is comfortable and secure and
follow Him into the wilderness if He calls you there. Again, I have to make the point, that Jesus
is not saying sell your home and sleep on a park bench. He is looking at the heart and saying that
you cannot have your security in a roof over your head, but in Him alone.
We are so thankful for the
house God provided for us in
In verses 59-62, we see again
a necessity to give up possession of the family. If we are going to follow Christ, we cannot
look back. Our love and loyalty must be
to Jesus first.
4. The fourth area Jesus addresses is that of our plans
and occupations
18 Now as Jesus was walking by the
19 And He said to them, “Follow Me, and I will make
you fishers of men.”
20 Immediately they left their nets and followed Him
21 Going on
from there He saw two other brothers, James the son of Zebedee, and John his
brother, in the boat with Zebedee their father, mending their nets; and He
called them.
22 Immediately they left the boat and their father,
and followed Him.
Here we find Jesus calling
the first disciples to follow Him. They
were fishermen by trade, but Jesus was calling them to give that up in order to
fish for men. They had a choice to make,
to continue doing something that they most likely enjoyed and were apparently
good at, or to embark on a journey into the unknown. Before they heard the “Follow Me” they
probably had their own plans for their lives perhaps to fish until they could
retire at age 50 and then maybe go on a cruise around the
The first disciples were
willing to give up their jobs and future plans in order to follow Christ and
today we must have the same willing hearts.
God might want us to stay in the same occupation, but we must be willing
to let go at the sound of “Follow Me.”
God might want to use us in the occupation we are in. A good example of this is our midwife,
Charlene. She is a Christian who is
having an impact on her medical coworkers in her office. She has told us of the opportunities to
witness and share her faith with those she is in contact with almost every
day. But I believe as a disciple of
Christ, she is willing to leave all of that if Jesus wanted her somewhere else. That is the heart of a disciple.
These are pretty rough
demands having to give up possession of things we tend to hold on too so
tightly. But as I was studying these
passages, I discovered that Jesus would not demand from us what He was not
willing to do Himself. Jesus gave up
each and every thing we have talked about tonight. He gave up His family. He was willing to leave the continuous
presence of God the Father in heaven to come to earth to save mankind. He gave up His own life. He sacrificed his very life on the cross so
that we might be able to live. He gave
up His home. He left heaven’s glory to
come to this sin-stained world and dwell among us. He surrendered His plans and desires and
chose to be totally submissive to God the Father constantly saying, “Thy will
be done.”
Being a disciple of Christ
means we must follow Him and imitate Him in all He does to become like
Him. Surrender is where it starts. Christ gave up everything for us…the least we
can do is give up everything for Him.
It is a high cost to be a
disciple of Christ, but as Walter Henrichsen said in his book, Disciples are
Made, Not Born, “The cost you will pay for not being a disciple is infinitely greater
than the cost you will pay for being one.”
Or I think Jesus put it even better in Mark 10:29-30, “Truly I say to you, there is no one who has left
house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or farms for My
sake and for the gospel’s sake, but that will receive a hundred times as much
now in the present age, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and
children and farms, along with persecutions, and in the age to come, eternal
life.”
So I ask you as well as
myself, what are you holding on to? Is
there anything that is keeping you from being a disciple of Christ? Are you holding onto family? to your own
life? to a home? to your own occupations, plans, or desires?
Jesus says, to be my
disciple, you must possess nothing. When
you possess nothing but Christ, you have everything.
I’d like to end by reading
the words of a song by Keith Green
I Pledge my Head to Heaven, by Keith Green
Well I pledge my head to
heaven for the gospel
And I ask no man on earth to
fill my needs
Like the sparrow up above I
am enveloped in His love
And I trust Him like those
little ones He feeds
Well I pledge my wife to
heaven for the gospel
Though our love each passing
minute just seems to grow
As I told her when we wed I’d
surely rather be found dead
Then to love her more than
the one who saved my soul
I’m your child and I want to
be in your family forever
I’m your child and I’m gonna
follow you no matter
Whatever the cost well I’m
gonna count all things loss
Well I pledge my son to
heaven for the gospel
Though he’s kicked and beaten
ridiculed and scorned
I will teach him to rejoice
and lift a thankful praising voice
And to be like Him who bore
the nails and crown of thorns
I’m your child and I want to
be in your family forever
I’m your child and I’m gonna
follow you no matter
Whatever the cost well I’m
gonna count all things loss
Oh no matter whatever the
cost, well I’m gonna count all things loss
Well I’ve had the chance to
gain the world and live just like a king, but without your love it doesn’t mean
a thing
Oh No matter whatever the
cost well I’m gonna count all things loss
No matter whatever the cost
well I’m gonna count all things loss
Well I pledge my son, I
pledge my wife, I pledge my head to heaven
I pledge my son, I pledge my
wife, I pledge my head to heaven for the gospel