How To Be A Disciple(From Our 11-10-24 Worship)
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Transcript:
You know, we, we think about them often just as soulless corporations. Just these big businesses who are organized for just one purpose, to get more and more and more money. And in some cases, that's probably absolutely true. But we often forget that these companies, as large as they may have grown to in our modern day and times, They generally started out with one person.
And that one person did have a soul and they didn't have a personality and they did have a pretty interesting reason for doing what they were doing. Give me an example. If I say to you the name Walmart, what do you think? Oh no. Right. But. Did you know the guy behind it? You probably do. His name is Sam Walton.
You know, the other Wholesale side of the business is what? Sam's Club. Because of Sam Walton. And Sam Walton, you know, changed the way that all of us shop. This idea of a retailer who could carry almost everything and have it in one place. Rather, no telling how much money Sam Walton and his stores have made.
But, but where did he get the idea for all those extra low prices? I mean, how do you, how do you go from little town in Arkansas to worldwide corporation with global brand recognition? How do you get there? Well, in 1940, Mr. Sam. was had had taken a brand new job and he was put into the training phase of this company.
And it also was a department store type setup. He would work for this company for about 18 months until he was drafted into World War Two. But even though his career was cut short there, the time that he spent there affected him for the rest of his life. You see, when he went into this business, he went into the management side of it, and the training school they had there was very in depth.
This retailer, at the time, had over 1, 600 stores all over the continental United States. Remember, this is 1940. This is pre America in World War II. No internet, no social media, nothing. Just a massive retailing giant. But one day, the owner of that company, whose name is James Cash. Now, he's the president over the whole deal.
He, the last thing he has time to be doing is to coming out and to train new management recruits, right? But Mr. Cash is walking through the headquarters there one day and saw this, this group of young trainees. And one of the skills they were learning that day was how to how to tie up a package. Remember some a lot of you in the room may not remember, but used to you go to box, you go store and buy something and they would actually wrap it for you.
I'd wrap it up paper and put a bow on it, you know, and it wasn't just Christmas wrapping. I mean, it was just what you did. Well, Mr Cash stopped his day, stopped what he was doing. Walked up to a young Sam Walton who was trying to figure out how to wrap a package and basically said to the equivalent of, son, come here, let me show you this.
And he showed him how to wrap that package the most efficient way using the least amount of paper and the least amount of ribbon. And it made an impression on Mr. Walton. It was later besaid that he would turn into one of Mr. Cash's disciples, if you will. That's a word that he used. You see, James Cash was actually James Cash Penny.
What a name. You may know his store is JC Penny. And we look at that company today and you know, it's had to shut down a bunch of stores. It's it's still going through a massive reorganization and for all intents and purposes to us, that's a dying company. But you have no idea. that JCPenney helped launch Walmart.
Mr Cash come from a background where the first stores that he actually opened were called the Golden Rule. We got a hardware store named Golden Rule, but he had a massive chain and literally the operating principles of the business were founded on the Golden Rule. A lot of those things affected. Mr.
Walton when he opened his own business. You think about that? That's this is a great example of what it means to be a disciple of someone. It means to be a learner, a follower. Now, does walmart look and operate just exactly like J. C. Penny? No, but he learns him. He observed him and he took those principles and he applied it to his own store.
Of course, today we're not here to talk about how to open your own retailing giant, right? I want to talk to you about being a disciple of someone else. Being a disciple of Jesus. You know, we all learn from other people. Maybe there's someone on your job who has taken you under their wing and trained you and showed you how to do what it is that you do.
But, spiritually speaking, Jesus has done that for all of us. He has given us everything that we need for life. and godliness. We have it here in this word that we can pick up and hope in our hands. And he still calls us today to be learners of him and followers of him. But how do you do that? How do you be a disciple of Jesus?
Well, if you got your bibles going into Luke 14, that's where we're going today. We're gonna go to Luke 14 and we're not really gonna go anywhere else. Jesus here in Luke 14 bowls it down very Very simply for us if you want basically a one two three step program of how to be a disciple Jesus gives it to us and It's very interesting.
I'm going to start it to end because Jesus sums it up in verse 33 and he says this So therefore any one of you who do who does not renounce all that he has? Cannot be my disciple Now you think You think about that word, renounce. That's not a, that's not a word we use every day. But Jesus basically said, you can't be my disciple if you don't renounce.
That word means to give up interest in something else. To give up interest in something else. Jesus, what do I have to renounce to be your disciple? All that he has? Is that material things? Amen. Is that our own life? Yeah, basically. But now, you say, Doug, hang on a minute. That doesn't sound right. I mean, it's almost like you're saying we should shave our heads and sell everything that we have and go up in the mountains and be monks in monasteries.
Like, we should just That's not what he's saying. That's not what he's saying here. How do you renounce all that you have? How do you be a disciple? I don't know. Well, I think that Jesus tells us that in the previous verses And this morning what we want to do. We're gonna we're gonna back up several verses And we're gonna begin to step through these things and talk about how do they apply to us?
What do they look like right? This is a first century principle, but what does it look like? How does it apply in a 21st century world? in twenty twenty four about to be twenty twenty five. Where's twenty twenty four when? I don't even know. I mean, we're already coming on Thanksgiving. I drove by the other day and saw it on the sign.
I thought, is it time for that already? Yeah, it is. How do we be a disciple today? Alright. Got your Bibles back with back up with me to verse twenty five and twenty six. You see, there's several, there's several things here and really what I'm gonna key in on this morning is three different verbs. Three different verbs that I believe that, that shows us how do we renounce all to be Jesus disciples.
And the first one we find in verse 26. Now great crowds accompanied him and he turned and said to them, if anyone comes to me and does not hate me, father, mother, wife, Children, brothers, sisters. Yes. And even his own life. He did not mean my disciple. Hang on a minute. Jesus, man, that's that's pretty harsh.
Don't you think I've got to hate everybody else to to be your disciple. I mean, in in God, a God of love. Now, I get it. That may, that may sound shocking to us at first, but when you dig into what that word hate actually means, it makes all the sense in the world because what Jesus really is talking about here is your priorities.
He's talking about your priorities. You see that word hate, hate here and I'm going to read you a definition. I wrote these down this morning just so that I wouldn't mess them up. Okay. The word hate here means to be disinclined to or to disfavor. Now, you say, Doug, what in the world does that mean?
Disinclined to or disfavor. Okay. Let's take that first one, disinclined. Let's, let's, let's knock dis off of it for just a minute. If I incline something, what do I do? If you're on the treadmill and you're running and you hit the incline button, what happens? It goes up. Be like, be like the Russian guy on Rocky that time.
You know, he's almost running up the side of the wall. Okay. When you incline something, you raise it up. So if I disincline something, instead of raising it up, what do I do? I bring it down. If I favor something, I mean, we favor our own, our own kids, our own families sometimes. What do we do? Do we? If we favor them, we place them on a higher, higher pedestal, if you will.
So same thing with this favor. It means to bring down. Jesus here isn't saying that you have to go around and physically spew hatred out of your mouth towards your mother and your father and your spouse and your Children and your brothers and your sisters. He's saying what you have to put me above them.
You have to put me on the incline up and nothing else can be what? Above me. You think about Moses goes up on that mountain and gets those Ten Commandments and one of them is what? You shall have no other gods besides me. You've got to make me priority number one. Should we love our mothers and fathers?
Yes. Should we love our spouses? Hebrews 13, what God is showing together, let no man separate. You don't think God wants us to treat our spouses and our families and our children's, our children's, yeah that's great, our children's well? Absolutely he does. Does he want us to take our children or our spouse or our mother and father and place them above God?
Absolutely no. He does not.
If you're going to renounce all and be his disciple, God's got to be first.
And I think you can make a really good case that if you don't love God first, you can't love anybody else, including yourself, the way that you need to. This isn't about exclusion. It's about priorities. God has to be first. I can't make you decide that I can't look into your heart. I can't stick a pull a meter out of my pocket and stick it to your skin and say, Yep, you've got God is priority.
Only you know that. Only you know what you put in the top slot. But you can't be a disciple if he's not there. It won't work. It can't work. If something else is above him It just it's not gonna work out What did what did Jesus tell him in Matthew 26? You can't you can't love money And God you can't serve two masters.
You'll love one and hate the other God's got to be first It doesn't mean we don't love our spouses. It doesn't mean we don't serve those around us It doesn't mean any of those things It means God His will is in the top slot. His will is in the top slot. I'm gonna live my life by his principles. I'm not gonna do it.
My mom and daddy's principles. I'm not gonna do it by my spouse's principles. I'm not gonna do it by anybody else. I mean, you think about first Corinthians seven. Paul, they're talking about a unbeliever being married to a believer. And Paul says, Listen, if they'll stay with you, stay. But if they say it's God or me, you're not in bondage to them.
If it's, if one of your family members says it's God or me, it's God. Point blank. Period. I hope it never comes to that. But if it does come to that, God's gotta be first. Our priorities are important. Now, the next one. We go forward to verse 27. Before we do that, let's see. I need a, I need a volunteer. Come here, Gavin.
Do you think you're strong? Okay, even better. Come over here. You take that water bottle. Can you hold it out like this right here? Okay, just hold it there.
You got it. Don't get the giggles and drop it now. Luke fourteen twenty seven. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. So you can't be a disciple if you put somebody above God. You also can't be a disciple if you don't bear your own cross. Now that word bear, what do you think it means?
No, you gotta have it all the way out. That's cheating. That word bear means to hold up.
Cheater, cheater, pumpkin eater, give me that. Thank you. Go sit down.
That burden is cool and refreshing. Um, But you get the idea. If you take a water bottle and take a grown man, I mean, you take the, you take Arnold Schwarzenegger himself and ask him to hold a weight out here. Eventually, you're gonna get the point that he's quivering because his muscles get tired. That lactic acid builds up and it literally starts to burn like fire.
But you know what? If you're gonna be a disciple, you gotta bear some things. And Jesus says here that the thing that you must bear is your cross. Now, I'm going to tell you the book definition of this. The cross means the suffering and or death which a believer must endure to follow the crucified Lord.
The suffering and or death which a believer must endure in the process of following the crucified Lord.
Luke here tells us, he records Jesus words and basically says, if you're not willing to what? Bear your cross. You're not willing to hold that burden up, you can't be my disciple. And you see why this plays with the first one, right? I mean, if, if the going gets tough and this, this load gets heavy, If, if God is not my top number one priority, if God's not in the top spot, what am I going to do when this gets heavy?
I'm going to sit down. I'm going to sit down because it's causing me a problem. It's causing me strain. It's causing me pain. And if God is not a priority, I'm not going to hang on to it. We think about Galatians 6. Bear one another's burdens. And so fulfill the law of Christ, but you go a couple verses forward into verse five.
Each man must bear his own load You know, I'd love to be able to stand up here and tell you that being a Christian is always easy Boy, it's sunshine and roses and it's just wonderful That's a lie Now, is it, does it have its blessings? Absolutely. Is it great and wonderful? Yes, it is. But is there times when you absolutely gonna have to bear and hang on to a burden?
Yes. Now, I told you the book definition of what a cross is. It's the suffering or death that a Christian must carry, hold up, to follow the resurrected Lord. What's your cross? What's the weight or the burden that you carry for God? I don't know what yours is. I could tell you about my own way. It's not the point of this, but my point is this.
If you don't know what that weight is, if you don't know what that burden that suffering, if you don't know what the cross that you bear is, maybe you're not packing one. If you don't feel that strain sometimes, if you don't feel that struggle, maybe you think you're packing one, but you're not.
And I hope that's not the case for any of us. I don't want that to be the case for any of us. But Jesus is very plain that sometimes it's going to be a struggle. Sometimes it's going to hurt. Sometimes it's going to burn. And whatever it is that we go through will be nothing in comparison to what he went through.
When he carried the weight of our sins on his shoulders, when they nailed him to that cross, when they beat the flesh off of his back.
It's not too much of God to ask us to bear a cross when Jesus himself was willing to carry one first. I mean, you don't want to follow a leader who's not willing to do what he asked you to do. And Jesus was willing to carry the cross first. I So you gotta have some grit, gotta have some termination, gotta hang on.
But lastly, this last one goes with all the, these other two put together. 28 and 30. For which of you desiring to build a tower does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it. Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, This man began to build.
It was not able to finish or what king going out to encounter another king in war will not sit down first and deliberate whether he is able with 10, 000 to meet him who comes against him with 20, 000. And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation and ask for terms of peace.
Jesus says, You're gonna be my disciple. You've got to decide. You've got to sit down and figure this out. Because there are going to be priorities. There are going to be things that challenge God being first. There is going to be a burden that you have to carry, and it's going to be heavy, and you're going to want to give up and quit.
And you're not going to do any of those things if you don't decide. Now, let's back up here. I want to talk about this decision a little bit more. You notice here in verse 28. First of all, there's a desire. Which one of you desiring to build a tower? You know, it's one thing to want to do right. It's one thing to want to follow God.
It's one thing to say, you know what, I know my life is a mess and I really should do right. I really should follow the examples. There's all these people over here and I see them and they're living a godly life. I really want to do that. Having a desire is one thing. But what takes you from desire to action?
This process of counting. That word there literally means to count numbers and count figures, right? We think about somebody sitting down with a ten key. You know, my daddy had an old cash register that had a ten key on it. And when you got done, you pulled the little handle. And that's what cycled it and spit the receipt out.
I can see that and hear that thing. You know, it was awesome. But you've got to do the calculation and there's a couple questions that you've got to ask yourself. The first question here, of course, he talks about building a tower and I want you to notice in verse 28 whether he has enough to complete it.
You don't build a tower. You got to know how much land cost. You got to know how much building materials cost. You got to know how much permits cost. You got to know that it's probably going to take X amount of material to build this. And then Bob over here one day, he's going to cut half the boards the wrong length.
So we're going to have so much overflow, you know. If I need a hundred boards, I'm going to have to buy 120 because there's going to be scraps. Some of them are going to be bowed, twisted. You got to know the margins. You got to, you got to know some things to build a tower. Because if you don't figure all those things out, if you don't kind of take into account the things that maybe you can't predict ahead of time, everybody's gonna look at you and say, well, he couldn't finish.
Look at him. He must be a fool. You gotta understand what you can do. You gotta understand what you can do. What am I willing to do to make this work? That's the tower. But the second side of this is the king who goes out. And I'm gonna tell you what, if you gotta go to war and you're outnumbered two to one, I'm gonna tell you what, you better have your ducks in a row.
If you're gonna go out and win that war, you better know special tactics. You better know the lay of the land. You better know about your enemy force. You gotta, I mean, you're outgunned two to one. You better have tactics and and all the supplies that you need. You better have everything just perfect or else what?
You're gonna fail.
And also with this right here, you've got to know what you've got to know what you can't do. It's one thing to know what you can do. But are you smart enough? Are you wise enough to understand what you cannot do? Let me tell you something that you cannot do. You cannot take care of your own sin problem.
Isaiah 59, 1 and 2. The Lord's hand is not short and it cannot save his ear. It is not deaf and he cannot hear. But our iniquities and our sin have separated us from him. You can live your whole life. You can try. But if you think you can fix your own sin problem, you're like a king going out with 10, 000 men head against 20.
You are going to get destroyed. You got no one to wave the flag and surrender. And the same thing is going to happen if you're going to be a disciple. You gotta know that I'm willing to do whatever it takes, and I also understand that I can't do this by myself anymore. If I don't make those decisions, if I don't set out and intentionally calculate and count the costs, and I don't think it's just a one time deal.
It's probably several times in a Christian's life that you do that. Yes, you're gonna do it when you obey the gospel, But if you're gonna remain faithful until death, there's gonna be plenty of days when it's hard and you're struggling and you got to sit down and say, Okay, am I really gonna am I really gonna commit?
Am I really gonna do what I said I'm going to do? Am I really gonna follow Jesus?
You gotta sit down and say, What can I do and what can I do?
And when you figure out what you can't do, it's gonna require probably being vulnerable and admitting you're wrong. It may involve coming down front and saying, God, I'm sorry. But if you're willing to admit it and follow through with it, then you can be what you can be a disciple without that decision making process.
There's no way you're going to be a disciple because when it gets too hard, it gets too tough. We'll just ignore it. We'll just go over here and do something else. We'll set the load down. We'll worry about that later. Doesn't work that way. I want to end up this morning right where we began. So, therefore, if any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.
Do you want to be his disciple?
Have you done what it takes? Maybe you've never started the process. Maybe today you're sitting here and you're counting the cost for the first time and you say, you know what? I can't continue to live this life. The way I've always done it. Something's got to change. Maybe you are Christian. Maybe you made that decision a long time ago, but you're struggling going down the road.
Maybe you're you're almost collapsing under the weight of your own burden. Whatever your need is this morning, love and help is here because God loves you. His people love you and we can help you in any way which come while we have this invitation. Song
Transcript:
You know, we, we think about them often just as soulless corporations. Just these big businesses who are organized for just one purpose, to get more and more and more money. And in some cases, that's probably absolutely true. But we often forget that these companies, as large as they may have grown to in our modern day and times, They generally started out with one person.
And that one person did have a soul and they didn't have a personality and they did have a pretty interesting reason for doing what they were doing. Give me an example. If I say to you the name Walmart, what do you think? Oh no. Right. But. Did you know the guy behind it? You probably do. His name is Sam Walton.
You know, the other Wholesale side of the business is what? Sam's Club. Because of Sam Walton. And Sam Walton, you know, changed the way that all of us shop. This idea of a retailer who could carry almost everything and have it in one place. Rather, no telling how much money Sam Walton and his stores have made.
But, but where did he get the idea for all those extra low prices? I mean, how do you, how do you go from little town in Arkansas to worldwide corporation with global brand recognition? How do you get there? Well, in 1940, Mr. Sam. was had had taken a brand new job and he was put into the training phase of this company.
And it also was a department store type setup. He would work for this company for about 18 months until he was drafted into World War Two. But even though his career was cut short there, the time that he spent there affected him for the rest of his life. You see, when he went into this business, he went into the management side of it, and the training school they had there was very in depth.
This retailer, at the time, had over 1, 600 stores all over the continental United States. Remember, this is 1940. This is pre America in World War II. No internet, no social media, nothing. Just a massive retailing giant. But one day, the owner of that company, whose name is James Cash. Now, he's the president over the whole deal.
He, the last thing he has time to be doing is to coming out and to train new management recruits, right? But Mr. Cash is walking through the headquarters there one day and saw this, this group of young trainees. And one of the skills they were learning that day was how to how to tie up a package. Remember some a lot of you in the room may not remember, but used to you go to box, you go store and buy something and they would actually wrap it for you.
I'd wrap it up paper and put a bow on it, you know, and it wasn't just Christmas wrapping. I mean, it was just what you did. Well, Mr Cash stopped his day, stopped what he was doing. Walked up to a young Sam Walton who was trying to figure out how to wrap a package and basically said to the equivalent of, son, come here, let me show you this.
And he showed him how to wrap that package the most efficient way using the least amount of paper and the least amount of ribbon. And it made an impression on Mr. Walton. It was later besaid that he would turn into one of Mr. Cash's disciples, if you will. That's a word that he used. You see, James Cash was actually James Cash Penny.
What a name. You may know his store is JC Penny. And we look at that company today and you know, it's had to shut down a bunch of stores. It's it's still going through a massive reorganization and for all intents and purposes to us, that's a dying company. But you have no idea. that JCPenney helped launch Walmart.
Mr Cash come from a background where the first stores that he actually opened were called the Golden Rule. We got a hardware store named Golden Rule, but he had a massive chain and literally the operating principles of the business were founded on the Golden Rule. A lot of those things affected. Mr.
Walton when he opened his own business. You think about that? That's this is a great example of what it means to be a disciple of someone. It means to be a learner, a follower. Now, does walmart look and operate just exactly like J. C. Penny? No, but he learns him. He observed him and he took those principles and he applied it to his own store.
Of course, today we're not here to talk about how to open your own retailing giant, right? I want to talk to you about being a disciple of someone else. Being a disciple of Jesus. You know, we all learn from other people. Maybe there's someone on your job who has taken you under their wing and trained you and showed you how to do what it is that you do.
But, spiritually speaking, Jesus has done that for all of us. He has given us everything that we need for life. and godliness. We have it here in this word that we can pick up and hope in our hands. And he still calls us today to be learners of him and followers of him. But how do you do that? How do you be a disciple of Jesus?
Well, if you got your bibles going into Luke 14, that's where we're going today. We're gonna go to Luke 14 and we're not really gonna go anywhere else. Jesus here in Luke 14 bowls it down very Very simply for us if you want basically a one two three step program of how to be a disciple Jesus gives it to us and It's very interesting.
I'm going to start it to end because Jesus sums it up in verse 33 and he says this So therefore any one of you who do who does not renounce all that he has? Cannot be my disciple Now you think You think about that word, renounce. That's not a, that's not a word we use every day. But Jesus basically said, you can't be my disciple if you don't renounce.
That word means to give up interest in something else. To give up interest in something else. Jesus, what do I have to renounce to be your disciple? All that he has? Is that material things? Amen. Is that our own life? Yeah, basically. But now, you say, Doug, hang on a minute. That doesn't sound right. I mean, it's almost like you're saying we should shave our heads and sell everything that we have and go up in the mountains and be monks in monasteries.
Like, we should just That's not what he's saying. That's not what he's saying here. How do you renounce all that you have? How do you be a disciple? I don't know. Well, I think that Jesus tells us that in the previous verses And this morning what we want to do. We're gonna we're gonna back up several verses And we're gonna begin to step through these things and talk about how do they apply to us?
What do they look like right? This is a first century principle, but what does it look like? How does it apply in a 21st century world? in twenty twenty four about to be twenty twenty five. Where's twenty twenty four when? I don't even know. I mean, we're already coming on Thanksgiving. I drove by the other day and saw it on the sign.
I thought, is it time for that already? Yeah, it is. How do we be a disciple today? Alright. Got your Bibles back with back up with me to verse twenty five and twenty six. You see, there's several, there's several things here and really what I'm gonna key in on this morning is three different verbs. Three different verbs that I believe that, that shows us how do we renounce all to be Jesus disciples.
And the first one we find in verse 26. Now great crowds accompanied him and he turned and said to them, if anyone comes to me and does not hate me, father, mother, wife, Children, brothers, sisters. Yes. And even his own life. He did not mean my disciple. Hang on a minute. Jesus, man, that's that's pretty harsh.
Don't you think I've got to hate everybody else to to be your disciple. I mean, in in God, a God of love. Now, I get it. That may, that may sound shocking to us at first, but when you dig into what that word hate actually means, it makes all the sense in the world because what Jesus really is talking about here is your priorities.
He's talking about your priorities. You see that word hate, hate here and I'm going to read you a definition. I wrote these down this morning just so that I wouldn't mess them up. Okay. The word hate here means to be disinclined to or to disfavor. Now, you say, Doug, what in the world does that mean?
Disinclined to or disfavor. Okay. Let's take that first one, disinclined. Let's, let's, let's knock dis off of it for just a minute. If I incline something, what do I do? If you're on the treadmill and you're running and you hit the incline button, what happens? It goes up. Be like, be like the Russian guy on Rocky that time.
You know, he's almost running up the side of the wall. Okay. When you incline something, you raise it up. So if I disincline something, instead of raising it up, what do I do? I bring it down. If I favor something, I mean, we favor our own, our own kids, our own families sometimes. What do we do? Do we? If we favor them, we place them on a higher, higher pedestal, if you will.
So same thing with this favor. It means to bring down. Jesus here isn't saying that you have to go around and physically spew hatred out of your mouth towards your mother and your father and your spouse and your Children and your brothers and your sisters. He's saying what you have to put me above them.
You have to put me on the incline up and nothing else can be what? Above me. You think about Moses goes up on that mountain and gets those Ten Commandments and one of them is what? You shall have no other gods besides me. You've got to make me priority number one. Should we love our mothers and fathers?
Yes. Should we love our spouses? Hebrews 13, what God is showing together, let no man separate. You don't think God wants us to treat our spouses and our families and our children's, our children's, yeah that's great, our children's well? Absolutely he does. Does he want us to take our children or our spouse or our mother and father and place them above God?
Absolutely no. He does not.
If you're going to renounce all and be his disciple, God's got to be first.
And I think you can make a really good case that if you don't love God first, you can't love anybody else, including yourself, the way that you need to. This isn't about exclusion. It's about priorities. God has to be first. I can't make you decide that I can't look into your heart. I can't stick a pull a meter out of my pocket and stick it to your skin and say, Yep, you've got God is priority.
Only you know that. Only you know what you put in the top slot. But you can't be a disciple if he's not there. It won't work. It can't work. If something else is above him It just it's not gonna work out What did what did Jesus tell him in Matthew 26? You can't you can't love money And God you can't serve two masters.
You'll love one and hate the other God's got to be first It doesn't mean we don't love our spouses. It doesn't mean we don't serve those around us It doesn't mean any of those things It means God His will is in the top slot. His will is in the top slot. I'm gonna live my life by his principles. I'm not gonna do it.
My mom and daddy's principles. I'm not gonna do it by my spouse's principles. I'm not gonna do it by anybody else. I mean, you think about first Corinthians seven. Paul, they're talking about a unbeliever being married to a believer. And Paul says, Listen, if they'll stay with you, stay. But if they say it's God or me, you're not in bondage to them.
If it's, if one of your family members says it's God or me, it's God. Point blank. Period. I hope it never comes to that. But if it does come to that, God's gotta be first. Our priorities are important. Now, the next one. We go forward to verse 27. Before we do that, let's see. I need a, I need a volunteer. Come here, Gavin.
Do you think you're strong? Okay, even better. Come over here. You take that water bottle. Can you hold it out like this right here? Okay, just hold it there.
You got it. Don't get the giggles and drop it now. Luke fourteen twenty seven. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. So you can't be a disciple if you put somebody above God. You also can't be a disciple if you don't bear your own cross. Now that word bear, what do you think it means?
No, you gotta have it all the way out. That's cheating. That word bear means to hold up.
Cheater, cheater, pumpkin eater, give me that. Thank you. Go sit down.
That burden is cool and refreshing. Um, But you get the idea. If you take a water bottle and take a grown man, I mean, you take the, you take Arnold Schwarzenegger himself and ask him to hold a weight out here. Eventually, you're gonna get the point that he's quivering because his muscles get tired. That lactic acid builds up and it literally starts to burn like fire.
But you know what? If you're gonna be a disciple, you gotta bear some things. And Jesus says here that the thing that you must bear is your cross. Now, I'm going to tell you the book definition of this. The cross means the suffering and or death which a believer must endure to follow the crucified Lord.
The suffering and or death which a believer must endure in the process of following the crucified Lord.
Luke here tells us, he records Jesus words and basically says, if you're not willing to what? Bear your cross. You're not willing to hold that burden up, you can't be my disciple. And you see why this plays with the first one, right? I mean, if, if the going gets tough and this, this load gets heavy, If, if God is not my top number one priority, if God's not in the top spot, what am I going to do when this gets heavy?
I'm going to sit down. I'm going to sit down because it's causing me a problem. It's causing me strain. It's causing me pain. And if God is not a priority, I'm not going to hang on to it. We think about Galatians 6. Bear one another's burdens. And so fulfill the law of Christ, but you go a couple verses forward into verse five.
Each man must bear his own load You know, I'd love to be able to stand up here and tell you that being a Christian is always easy Boy, it's sunshine and roses and it's just wonderful That's a lie Now, is it, does it have its blessings? Absolutely. Is it great and wonderful? Yes, it is. But is there times when you absolutely gonna have to bear and hang on to a burden?
Yes. Now, I told you the book definition of what a cross is. It's the suffering or death that a Christian must carry, hold up, to follow the resurrected Lord. What's your cross? What's the weight or the burden that you carry for God? I don't know what yours is. I could tell you about my own way. It's not the point of this, but my point is this.
If you don't know what that weight is, if you don't know what that burden that suffering, if you don't know what the cross that you bear is, maybe you're not packing one. If you don't feel that strain sometimes, if you don't feel that struggle, maybe you think you're packing one, but you're not.
And I hope that's not the case for any of us. I don't want that to be the case for any of us. But Jesus is very plain that sometimes it's going to be a struggle. Sometimes it's going to hurt. Sometimes it's going to burn. And whatever it is that we go through will be nothing in comparison to what he went through.
When he carried the weight of our sins on his shoulders, when they nailed him to that cross, when they beat the flesh off of his back.
It's not too much of God to ask us to bear a cross when Jesus himself was willing to carry one first. I mean, you don't want to follow a leader who's not willing to do what he asked you to do. And Jesus was willing to carry the cross first. I So you gotta have some grit, gotta have some termination, gotta hang on.
But lastly, this last one goes with all the, these other two put together. 28 and 30. For which of you desiring to build a tower does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it. Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, This man began to build.
It was not able to finish or what king going out to encounter another king in war will not sit down first and deliberate whether he is able with 10, 000 to meet him who comes against him with 20, 000. And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation and ask for terms of peace.
Jesus says, You're gonna be my disciple. You've got to decide. You've got to sit down and figure this out. Because there are going to be priorities. There are going to be things that challenge God being first. There is going to be a burden that you have to carry, and it's going to be heavy, and you're going to want to give up and quit.
And you're not going to do any of those things if you don't decide. Now, let's back up here. I want to talk about this decision a little bit more. You notice here in verse 28. First of all, there's a desire. Which one of you desiring to build a tower? You know, it's one thing to want to do right. It's one thing to want to follow God.
It's one thing to say, you know what, I know my life is a mess and I really should do right. I really should follow the examples. There's all these people over here and I see them and they're living a godly life. I really want to do that. Having a desire is one thing. But what takes you from desire to action?
This process of counting. That word there literally means to count numbers and count figures, right? We think about somebody sitting down with a ten key. You know, my daddy had an old cash register that had a ten key on it. And when you got done, you pulled the little handle. And that's what cycled it and spit the receipt out.
I can see that and hear that thing. You know, it was awesome. But you've got to do the calculation and there's a couple questions that you've got to ask yourself. The first question here, of course, he talks about building a tower and I want you to notice in verse 28 whether he has enough to complete it.
You don't build a tower. You got to know how much land cost. You got to know how much building materials cost. You got to know how much permits cost. You got to know that it's probably going to take X amount of material to build this. And then Bob over here one day, he's going to cut half the boards the wrong length.
So we're going to have so much overflow, you know. If I need a hundred boards, I'm going to have to buy 120 because there's going to be scraps. Some of them are going to be bowed, twisted. You got to know the margins. You got to, you got to know some things to build a tower. Because if you don't figure all those things out, if you don't kind of take into account the things that maybe you can't predict ahead of time, everybody's gonna look at you and say, well, he couldn't finish.
Look at him. He must be a fool. You gotta understand what you can do. You gotta understand what you can do. What am I willing to do to make this work? That's the tower. But the second side of this is the king who goes out. And I'm gonna tell you what, if you gotta go to war and you're outnumbered two to one, I'm gonna tell you what, you better have your ducks in a row.
If you're gonna go out and win that war, you better know special tactics. You better know the lay of the land. You better know about your enemy force. You gotta, I mean, you're outgunned two to one. You better have tactics and and all the supplies that you need. You better have everything just perfect or else what?
You're gonna fail.
And also with this right here, you've got to know what you've got to know what you can't do. It's one thing to know what you can do. But are you smart enough? Are you wise enough to understand what you cannot do? Let me tell you something that you cannot do. You cannot take care of your own sin problem.
Isaiah 59, 1 and 2. The Lord's hand is not short and it cannot save his ear. It is not deaf and he cannot hear. But our iniquities and our sin have separated us from him. You can live your whole life. You can try. But if you think you can fix your own sin problem, you're like a king going out with 10, 000 men head against 20.
You are going to get destroyed. You got no one to wave the flag and surrender. And the same thing is going to happen if you're going to be a disciple. You gotta know that I'm willing to do whatever it takes, and I also understand that I can't do this by myself anymore. If I don't make those decisions, if I don't set out and intentionally calculate and count the costs, and I don't think it's just a one time deal.
It's probably several times in a Christian's life that you do that. Yes, you're gonna do it when you obey the gospel, But if you're gonna remain faithful until death, there's gonna be plenty of days when it's hard and you're struggling and you got to sit down and say, Okay, am I really gonna am I really gonna commit?
Am I really gonna do what I said I'm going to do? Am I really gonna follow Jesus?
You gotta sit down and say, What can I do and what can I do?
And when you figure out what you can't do, it's gonna require probably being vulnerable and admitting you're wrong. It may involve coming down front and saying, God, I'm sorry. But if you're willing to admit it and follow through with it, then you can be what you can be a disciple without that decision making process.
There's no way you're going to be a disciple because when it gets too hard, it gets too tough. We'll just ignore it. We'll just go over here and do something else. We'll set the load down. We'll worry about that later. Doesn't work that way. I want to end up this morning right where we began. So, therefore, if any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.
Do you want to be his disciple?
Have you done what it takes? Maybe you've never started the process. Maybe today you're sitting here and you're counting the cost for the first time and you say, you know what? I can't continue to live this life. The way I've always done it. Something's got to change. Maybe you are Christian. Maybe you made that decision a long time ago, but you're struggling going down the road.
Maybe you're you're almost collapsing under the weight of your own burden. Whatever your need is this morning, love and help is here because God loves you. His people love you and we can help you in any way which come while we have this invitation. Song
