²⁵Large crowds were traveling with Jesus, and turning to them he said: ²⁶“If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be my disciple. ²⁷And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.

²⁸“Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Will he not first sit down and estimate the cost to see if he has enough money to complete it? ²⁹For if he lays the foundation and is not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule him, ³⁰saying, ‘This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.’

³¹“Or suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Will he not first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand? ³²If 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. ³³In the same way, any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple.

³⁴“Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? ³⁵It is fit neither for the soil nor for the manure pile; it is thrown out.
“He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”

When I was about 15 I really fell in love with this passage.  I though it was the best thing out, a call to absolute commitment – I loved it.  And so, when I was required to put something about our small youth group in our family Church, I put the last two verses on the bottom of it.

vv34-35 “Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again?  It is fit neither for the soil nor for the manure pile; it is thrown out.

“He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”

I’m not sure quite why I chose those verses, but my Dad read them and was angry.  Really angry!

“Why did you put those verses on there?  They have nothing to do with anything else you have on that piece of paper!  There is no reason for them to be there!”

And I looked, and saw that they didn’t fit anything else I had written on that paper, and felt the weight of my Dad’s disapproval and after a while got some scissors and cut them off the bottom of the paper.

As I read these verses again the other night, it occurred to me that in fact – whether I had intended it or not – putting those verses on the noticeboard were in a very real way prophetic.  That church is what I call a third generation liberal Church.  There were true Christians among them, but, starting in my grandfathers’ time, the whole denomination had become increasingly liberal until many ministers no longer believed the Bible was actually the Word of God – it was just a record (and not the only record) of people’s experiences with God.  And worse, many no longer believed in the full deity of Jesus or His bodily death and resurrection – Jesus was just a man who was an excellent example of what it meant to be human (though limited because of the time in which he lived) and his death and resurrection…well, however it happened, it wasn’t really death and resurrection.  And a long run of ministers that have passed through that particular Church have held similar views.  This is a Church that is saying it followed Jesus, but in reality they were salt that was not salty and those verses directly applied to them.  And I think deep down my father knew it.

But those verses don’t only apply to my family Church in New Zealand and others like it.  This whole passage from verse 25 to 35 applies to everyone who says they are a Christian – who says they are following Jesus.  ²⁵Large crowds were traveling with Jesus, and turning to them he said: That means you if you call yourself a Christian, and that means me.  And if you are not a Christian, listen in so that you can find out what this whole thing about following Jesus really means.

Turning to us he said:

v 26 “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be my disciple.

Relationships.  Notice that Jesus is talking about relationships.  For us today, it could just as easily be “friends and fishing buddies, hobbies or work” anything that we find important in our lives.  But Jesus is talking about family here in particular because it is right and healthy and good to put our family relationships up there as the most important things in our lives.  It is something the Bible encourages!  But even these relationships should be left in the dust when it comes to loving Jesus.  “Hate them” is a deliberate exaggeration.  We are still to love our family deeply, but compared to being in a disciple relationship with Jesus, they should lose out every time.

What does this mean practically?

Floyd McClung in his book called Living on the Devil’s Doorstep writes about God’s call to his young family to live in the red-light district of Amsterdam.

“No way!” was Floyd McClung’s response – paraphrased.  “You’ve got to be kidding!  I’ve got young children.  I don’t want them growing up and being adversely affected by pimps and naked prostitutes in shop windows and drugs!”

God was patient with Floyd and eventually he came to the point where he put God’s will first and trusted God to look after his children.  Did Floyd still love his children?  Yes, absolutely, and he still took his responsibility to look after his children seriously!  But he loved Jesus far more and so was able to trust him and obey his direction.

Now, in this instance, I believe Floyd McClung did the right thing, but we don’t always get these things right.  I used to call Jesus the Great Mr. Fix-It because I trusted that if I got something wrong in my desire to follow Jesus, he would sort it out.  “Make mistakes for Jesus,” was my motto because I decided I’d rather make mistakes doing what I believed Jesus wanted me to than being too in love with someone or something else or even my own self to step out and obey.

Hebrews 5:14 says, ¹⁴solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.

Jesus is calling us to whole-hearted obedience along with the willingness to admit mistakes, ask for forgiveness and learn by doing.  I wouldn’t dare say I have come to that point, but I am praying for God to give me the wisdom to know the right thing to do in every circumstance and that in the meantime he will make my heart burn with a passionate desire to do his will.

v27 And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.

And there’s the kicker.  You will not be popular if you make this decision.

I don’t know if you know this, but many…I would like to say most, but I really don’t know if that’s fair, so many relationships are unhealthy.  Whether it’s your mother or father, your wife or husband, your brothers or sisters or yourself, people will notice that they have been demoted and often they will not like that.

Our Home Group has just been watching the videos called “Boundaries” and some of the stories told were horrific.  A 30-year-old woman who wanted to go skiing over Christmas didn’t go because her mother guilted her into spending Christmas with the family – something she did every year.  This woman knew what her mother was going to do but just didn’t have the resolve (the boundaries) to resist her mother’s control over her life.

Another woman had just had a traumatic childbirth experience, was on drugs for the pain and nausea, looking after a newborn and a toddler and she received a call from her father.  He knew her situation, but he wanted her to fly to another city and help him with a business project.  She said, no! No!  No!…but finally went.  When she got off the plane her father met her at the airport and said, “I knew you’d come.”

Now they are some more extreme examples, but both men and women struggle with this.  In whatever way, we are all influenced into decisions and actions – usually unconsciously.  When we put Jesus first, the illegitimate control that other people and even spiritual forces have over our actions virtually disappears – and you will have to carry the cross of their disapproval, anger, and various negative reactions.

If you put Jesus first, this will happen.  If this doesn’t happen, it’s very likely you haven’t put Jesus first.  So if you are going to be Jesus’ disciple, count the cost.

²⁸“Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Will he not first sit down and estimate the cost to see if he has enough money to complete it?

Can you afford to do this?  The question is not, “Are you able to do this?”  All the resources are there in Jesus if you decide to be his disciple (notice, there is no other option besides putting him before everything else in your life).  It will be difficult, it will hurt at times, but God will give you the resources you need when you need them.  The question is, “Will you do this?”  Because if you start to follow Jesus and don’t carry through, you will end up with a powerless Christianity – one foot inside Christianity but unable to be satisfied by Jesus himself.

²⁹For if he lays the foundation and is not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule him, ³⁰saying, ‘This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.’

We all know people who are big talkers but short on substance.  The grandiose claims that Christianity makes often fall short in our own lives.  Sure, some people make claims for Jesus that are just rubbish – he will not necessarily make you rich, he will not necessarily protect you from all disease, you will not necessarily have a great marriage – but there are other claims that are valid – Jesus will give you love and joy; he will give you power; he will give you peace that passes all understanding.  And when we make these claims and they are not evident in our own lives, people rightly mock us.

I’m glad to say that there are people at the moment who are experiencing a spiritual awakening.  One of them told me how they actually began to “own” their Christianity, to put faith in Jesus, not their spouse or parents or brothers and sisters.  And the result has been an incredible excitement.  Prayer is exciting because God’s Spirit is directing it and they see answers!  Sermons – no matter how boring other people find them – are fascinating and always have a message from God.  One of their friends has described them as being on a God-fest.  The truth of the matter is that this person is finally experiencing the truths they had known their whole life.  They are building their tower.

Perfection?  No, they will never be perfect until Jesus returns.  There will always be signs of construction on the tower of our Christian experience.  We will be rude, abrasive, sad, ungodly and make shocking mistakes – in other words, imperfect.  But people will see the construction going on if we are loving and following Jesus with all our heart above everyone and everything.  It’s only when we stop construction that the mocking Jesus is talking about here starts in earnest.

Can you afford to be Jesus’ disciple?  Can you afford not to?

³¹“Or suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Will he not first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand?

In this verse Jesus also warns that there are consequences to not following him.  In Luke 11:23 he says: ²³“He who is not with me is against me.”  Therefore, the question needs to be asked, can you afford not to follow Jesus wholeheartedly?  To refuse sets you against the King of the Universe – there is no in-between – and the odds are far worse than 2:1!

I used to be a teacher, and while I was not the greatest example of this, it was necessary to use both positive and negative reinforcement.  In other words, when a child was doing the right thing and it was appropriate, reward them, and when a child was doing the wrong thing and it was appropriate, punish them.

For quite a while I’ve been fascinated how God does the same thing – he uses both promises of blessing to draw people to him and warnings of punishment to push people toward him – not as a cruel despot, but as a loving God who is telling people the reality of what they are facing and the best way forward for them.

³²If 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.

We are in a position where we have the opportunity to ask for terms of peace.  It doesn’t matter how far off Jesus is from coming back again, NOW is the time to get our discipleship relationship right with him.  How?

³³In the same way, any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple.

Peace depends on a full surrender.  Discipleship is full surrender.

Not long ago I met a guy called Dion at Church.  He was a passionate guy and I had an interesting talk with him before I had to go and attend to something else.  A week or two later, he turned up at the Church Office saying God had told him to go the Baptist Church and pray with someone there about a situation he was dealing with at work.  I was the only one there, and so we prayed.

Man, I hadn’t prayed like that for ages.  We talked and prayed for maybe three quarters of an hour, and we both left really encouraged.  And as I’ve got to know him better, I’ve been moved by his faith and willingness to hear the voice of God and obey believing him, and I’ve been encouraged to do the same.  You see, that used to be my kind of faith, but fear of people – and yes, in large part family but also others – led me to stop obeying and then stop listening (who wants to feel convicted all the time?).  I still believed and still tried to live the Christian life, but the things I felt convicted of began to have a lot of competition from other things and decisions were not so clear cut anymore.  And after making a couple of mistakes, instead of pressing more into God to find the answer I allowed the “appropriate” thing to be my guide.

And then, fairly recently, a couple of situations in our Home Group showed me that we weren’t living a Christianity that had any power.  We couldn’t pass on a gospel of Jesus Christ that was changing lives because we weren’t allowing the gospel to change our lives.

³⁴“Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? ³⁵It is fit neither for the soil nor for the manure pile; it is thrown out.
“He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”

The last two verses in this passage aren’t warnings just to liberal Churches that don’t believe the Bible is the Word of God.  They are warnings to anyone who does not hate their mother and father, brothers and sisters, wife and children and their own life; to those who don’t take up their cross and follow Jesus; to those who don’t give up everything they have and make Jesus their Master.

They are warnings to me.  So I prayed.  “God, we want a living, real relationship with Jesus.”  And as part of the answer he sent along Dion to help us out.

Let’s be frank.  If we want to make an impact in our communities, we need to be as committed to Jesus as other people are committed to their beer, or their men or women, or their careers, or anything else in their lives.  We need to ask God for that passion if we don’t have it.  We need to ask God for wisdom if we don’t have it.  We need to ask God for power if we don’t have it.  And (and that’s an and, not an or) we need to ask God for love if we don’t have it.  And we need to put Jesus first.

In Brother Andrew’s book, God’s Smuggler, he tells of his conversation with God.  He believed God wanted him to do certain things and he would say, “Yes” and then add, “but…”.  Finally he realised what he was saying, and understood that “Yes, but” was not obedience but disobedience.  He said “Yes” and trusted God – and that was when God moved.

Will you say “yes” to Jesus?