Luke 14The Cost of Following Jesus (It's More Than Money)

Transcript

If you seek for yourself pleasure now, Jesus says, you have your reward. But if instead you put to death the things of your flesh, there's abundant life waiting. Jesus looked out at the crowd and said, "If you're going to follow me, you have to count the cost." And this is so much more than just a monetary amount of money you're going to give up. Jesus uses the example of a construction project, saying if you're going to start building a tower, you sit down first to see whether or not you can complete it.

And counting the cost means looking today to see where all of your actions and your life are heading towards. So, we're going to talk about all the benefits of following Jesus, but then we're also going to talk about everything that's required for us to give up to follow Jesus. So in counting the cost, you look towards what it means to believe in Jesus and follow him. You become a citizen of heaven in which you spend your life looking forward to all the good things that God has waiting for you when you get to spend forever worshiping him and learning from him.

But we're not left as orphans now. It tells us that we get the Holy Spirit that seals us. We get peace. We get understanding. We can read the Bible and actually understand it. But when and if you decide to follow Jesus, your world completely changes. All of your motivations go towards that. The cost of following Jesus is in this world, you will have trouble. Jesus said he did not come to bring peace on earth, but a sword.

That the enemies that we're going to be facing are those of our own house. The people we care about who reject the truth, who reject salvation, and ultimately reject us because they want no part in the God we serve. And it's going to result in ridicule. It's going to result in broken friendships and people you thought cared about you were really only in it for themselves. It's going to be a complete shift of your affections.

Jesus uses such strong languages. If you do not even hate your own life, you cannot be his disciple. And what he's getting at is that if you do not love Jesus so much more than your own comfort, your own desires, you're not truly his follower. Because when you follow Jesus Christ, you change, meaning repent of what you want to do and seek to please the savior of the world, your own personal savior, your God. And you order your life around serving him.

It means bearing your cross daily, dying to my own desires, and seeking what honors and glorifies God. And that's going to require a sacrifice of our money, our time, and our own comfort because we know that the perfect rest comes from Jesus. So counting the cost does mean you have to be willing to give up everything.

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