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Reading Luke 14:31-35 where Jesus continues to teach about the cost of discipleship, and when professing disciples of Jesus aren't really His disciples, they're worthless. Visit wwutt.com for all our videos.
Jesus said, salt is good, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer of any use but to be thrown away. So count the cost of discipleship when we understand the text.
This is When We Understand the Text, a daily Bible study in the word of Christ. For he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. Tell your friends about our ministry at www .wtt .com.
And once again, it's Pastor Gabe.
Thank you, Becky.
In our study of the gospel of Luke, we are finishing up chapter 14, where Jesus has been teaching on the cost of discipleship. Let's come back to it. I'll read the section again, verses 25 to 35. Here, the word of the Lord.
Now great crowds accompanied him, and he turned and said to them, 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. 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 and was not able to finish. Or what king going out to encounter another king in war will not first sit down 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 asks for terms of peace. So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple. What have you been willing to give up for the cause of Christ?
What have you given up for Christ? Did you come to Christ and you continued in the same sins that you were doing before you came to Jesus? Then have you really given anything up? Have you crucified yourself?
Have you taken up a cross and followed after Jesus? Which by the way, this is not the first place Jesus has said that. Previously in Luke, he has said that if anyone comes after me, he must take up his cross daily and follow after me.
So here Jesus is saying it again. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. Dying to yourself and living for Christ. Putting your sins and your temptations, your passions to death.
And your desire would be God and his way to grow in godliness in Christ likeness. The apostle Paul saying to the Galatians, I have been crucified with Christ and it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives within me.
And the life I now live, I live by faith in the son of God who loved me and gave himself up for me. If Christ loved us and was willing to give all of himself for our sake, that our sins would be forgiven and we would have everlasting life with God forever in glory.
If Christ did that for us, then how much should we be willing to give for him? We could never pay back what he has given for us, but nonetheless, he gave his life. We must give ours. Taking up an instrument of death even, the cross that Jesus mentions, doesn't mean necessarily that you will be called to go out and risk your life for Jesus, but you might.
You need to live your life in such a way that at any moment you would be willing to give your life for Christ, holding on to the things of this world so loosely that you're ready to go when God calls you home.
I remember also the words of the apostle Paul in Colossians 3, verse four, when Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. Is Christ your life? It's not about what you can gain out of it, it's about Christ.
Yesterday, when we looked at these examples that Jesus had given, and I was only able to make it through the first one, 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 and was not able to finish. And we looked at multiple examples of people that we've witnessed in ministry who continued in the faith for a time, but were not able to finish, renounce the faith, went a completely different direction, and are now not walking with the Lord.
They never really had Christ in the first place. It was just convenient for them. It was advantageous for them at that time to be that person in that time of place, but it wasn't genuine, nor was it enough.
Because on that day, when they stand before God in judgment, Jesus is gonna say to them, depart from me, you worker of lawlessness, I never knew you. Not I knew you at one time, what happened to you? No, I never knew you.
They were never really with Christ. They were only out for themselves. It was in vain. It was a faith that was in vain, which wasn't really a faith at all. So they did not count the cost. They did not consider what they needed to give up to truly be a follower of Jesus.
The next example Jesus gives is about a king going to war. 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 asks for terms of peace. Now, this one is a little trickier and not because Jesus is confusing with this example, but because of our own limitations in trying to understand this.
Making peace in this case would not be a good thing. I know that when we read this, we think, well, that must be the good part of it, right? We shouldn't go out to fight because we're not gonna win. We should go out and desire to make terms of peace because who likes war?
We're seeing a lot of conflicts that are happening in the news right now. Israel and Iran are the big one right now. Iran even made a threat against Israel. Well, has actually made this promise to the world that we're gonna do something that's gonna be spectacular and you're never going to forget it.
At the time that I'm recording this, that hasn't happened yet. So maybe by the time this devotional airs, perhaps they did do something spectacular or maybe that was just all talk, who knows. But we see these kinds of conflicts all the time.
Ukraine and Russia, we haven't heard Pakistan and India in a while. When are they going to stir up again against one another? North and South Korea, the United States and North Korea, Russia and the United States, whatever it might happen to be.
Different conflicts happening in different parts of the world. War is inevitable until Jesus comes. There will always be people fighting with one another. But what would we rather see happen? We don't wanna go to war with anybody.
We live in a really comfortable position in the United States and that we don't typically see a lot of war except for the kinds of gang fighting or something like that that may happen out in the streets.
There are major cities that will see some seriously violent conflicts. But it's not like the US is at war with anybody in the sense that we have to worry about the kinds of bombs that they might be dropping on us or even being invaded.
I know that some would probably argue we've been getting invaded because of how open the borders have been over the last half decade or something like that. But in the sense that we go to war with another nation, we're not worried about Canada invading or Mexico or Brazil invading or something like that.
United States sits in a pretty comfortable spot. And on top of that, we are a technological superpower. So we have the advantage against anybody else that would try to come against us. So we don't see a lot of that.
We typically want to see peace between warring factions. It's not like we sit out with popcorn. And I don't know, I guess some people would like to see the firefight happen. But in this particular case, in this example that Jesus is presenting, peace is not the good thing here because peace means you become a slave of the nation that you made peace with.
That's the context of Israel at the present, right? They are occupied by the Romans and making peace with the Romans means we've become your slaves. They're not exactly fighting back. There are those factions of zealots who have attempted to rise up and fight against the Romans, but they don't have the numbers.
And Rome obviously has the military advantage as well. So making peace with another nation in this sense would mean that you've become their slaves. So Jesus is saying what king has not first considered that he can take this other king even though he has less men.
And in the history of Israel, it's been the case where Israel has had the advantage simply because God was on their side. They didn't have the number advantage. They had the advantage simply because God provided for them the victory.
And that should be something that as Jesus is telling this to the crowds, maybe they'd be able to relate to in that sense, looking back at their own history, the law and the prophets, the time in which God had given this land in which they occupied to their forefathers and did so with great victory.
Sometimes the battle was so lopsided that Israel did not even lose a single man. I think even of Gideon and his 300 men, not one of them died in the battles that Gideon led his 300 men into. Sometimes the victory was so incredibly lopsided that Israel didn't even lose anybody.
God's blessing was upon this people. And so listening to Jesus say this, they should recognize with God on my side, I would certainly be able to go against any enemy and be victorious, but making peace with that enemy, you become a slave to that enemy.
So the warning here, the application here would be you make peace with Satan and you become a slave of Satan. You make peace with your sin, not in the sense that you lay your sins down before God and ask him to forgive you, but in the sense that you've now become comfortable with your sin.
I don't even feel guilty anymore when I do it. You've made peace with your sin and now you've become a slave to your sin, that you would keep on doing it and not have any problem doing it. And so Jesus is saying here, verse 33, therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.
So again, the question that I opened with, what have you given up for Christ? Has anything about you changed when you began to follow Jesus? There are some people that have given away a lot. Some have lost their entire livelihoods, even in the United States to be a follower of Jesus, they've given up everything to follow him.
You are probably aware of a recent news item regarding a baseball game that was played between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the San Francisco Giants. And this was a pride night for those two teams and both teams were wearing pride gear, particularly their hats, had the pride flag insignia on their hats or at least their logos were done up like the pride flag and all the players had to wear it.
And not just the players, but even the coaches and the umpires were wearing the pride hats. They had to wear the pride gear. Well, Clayton Kershaw, who's one of the pitchers with the Los Angeles Dodgers World Series Champion Dodgers, right?
They won the World Series last year, I believe. Isn't that correct? So Kershaw is one of their star pitchers and known to be an outspoken Christian. Well, he wrote on his hat, the reference to Genesis 9 that talks about the rainbow being God's covenant sign that he would never destroy the world again in a flood.
So he wrote the reference on there. Genesis 9, 12 through 16 or something like that. He just put the reference there, Gen 9, 12 to 16. And there were Christians on social media that were praising Clayton Kershaw for this.
He wouldn't bow the knee. He wrote a scripture reference on his hat. But there are athletes that have done way more than that. There are people with businesses that did way more than that. Clayton Kershaw didn't reject wearing the hat.
He didn't refuse to wear the hat. He still wore it, but just wrote a Bible reference on it. Now, I don't mean to be critical of the guy, but have we forgotten about the people who decided not to bake the cake and lost their cake-making business?
Because they refused to bow the knee to the pride agenda, the LGBTQ mafia, or the gay stoppo, as I've sometimes heard them called, or the florist who refuses to do flowers for the gay wedding, loses her floral businesses, caught up in litigation and court proceedings for the next years upon years.
And where's she gonna come up with the money to pay for all of that? The wedding photographer that refuses to do photographs for a gay wedding and gets sued. And on and on and on it goes. Cases like this where a person refused to bow the knee and lost everything because they held fast to Christ and his word, believed what his word said, didn't even try to morph their Christian beliefs into something that would be less offensive to somebody else.
They stood firm on Christ and his word. As we read previously in Luke 9, 26, whoever is ashamed of me and my words, of him will the son of man be ashamed when he comes in his glory and the glory of the father and of the holy angels.
These people were not ashamed of Christ or his word. They stood fast on Christ and his word. And maybe you could make that argument for Clayton Kershaw, sure. But think of the athletes who refused to wear the pride gear and what it cost them.
Jalene Daniels, who was one of the greatest women soccer players on the planet. And she refused to wear the pride gear and was cut from the US team. It was a couple of years ago, she managed to get back into soccer after she had been married and had a child and was able to work out enough to be a soccer player again.
And she joined the North Carolina Courage. So she becomes a professional soccer player. And the same thing happened again. She refused to wear the pride gear when the Courage made their athletes wear pride shirts.
She wouldn't wear it. They cut her from the team. Same thing again. You know, there was another soccer player. His name was Nuse Mazraoui. And he refused to wear the pride gear. But instead of getting cut, his entire team backed him up.
When he decided not to wear the shirt, the rest of the team said, you know what, we're not gonna wear it either. And now what do you do? You can't cut the entire team. So you could have somebody that stands on their principles in that way and inspires a whole group of people to go, yeah, sure.
Let's not bow the knee. We're just here to play soccer. We're not here to promote sexual immorality. Some of them probably don't even think of it as sexual immorality, but maybe they think of it as something political.
We're not here to promote politics. We're here to kick a ball. Why in the world are you putting us in this position? So no, we're not wearing your dumb shirts. Nuse doesn't wanna wear it. We're not gonna wear it.
And it inspired the rest of the team to do the same, to kick the shirts and instead go kick a ball. Between the Dodgers and the Giants, you had over 50 players between the two rosters, not counting coaches and umpires.
And no one refused to wear the gear. Everybody wore it. I'm sure there's more than just Clayton Kershaw between those two teams who would claim to be Christian. And they're gonna have to stand before the Lord for things like this.
Remember that Jesus is saying here, if you don't take up your own cross and come after me, you can't be my disciple. What does it mean to be a disciple? That you would live your life in such a way that would be a reflection of your teacher.
A disciple is a learner. Who are we learning from? We're learning from Christ. And so we must reflect the life of Christ in 1 John 2, verse five, that we must walk in the same way that Jesus walked. I guess that's verse six.
But we should follow his example. We must follow his word. We must obey what it is that he has said. And if your discipleship doesn't look like Jesus, then it's worthless. It's not discipleship at all.
Consider this last thing that Jesus says here in verses 34 and 35. Salt is good, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is of no use either for the soil or for the manure pile.
It is thrown away. He who has ears to hear, let him hear. The kind of salt that they used a lot in Israel came from the Dead Sea. And that salt has a lot of impurities in it, so it needs to be filtered out.
And if the impurities are not taken out, it's not going to be salty. It's actually good for nothing. It's not good for soil. It's not good for the manure pile because it doesn't work to kind of break down the manure or stifle the stench or something like that.
And so there's nothing good to be used for it. I can't put it on my food. I can't preserve my food with it. What do I do with this stuff? And so now it's worse than worthless. You throw it on the ground, you throw it in the soil, and it could affect the plant life that's in the ground.
You don't want to do that. So what do I do with this stuff now that it's impure? And Jesus is saying to those who claim to be followers of him, but they have not considered the cost. They don't actually live as disciples of Jesus.
Then they're good for nothing. You can't restore its saltiness when they don't even know what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. It's of no use for the soil or the manure pile. It is thrown away. And he who has ears to hear, let him hear.
So we would be convicted of sin and we would come to Christ and we would desire to be obedient to his word and turn from our sinful passions and follow him. And all who are his disciples will enter the kingdom of God.
Heavenly father, I ask, as we have wrapped up considering these things here in chapter 14 this week, that you would stir in us a desire to live for Christ, that we would be your disciples, that we would hear your word and keep it, and that we would tell others to turn from their sin to the Lord Jesus Christ and so live.
Whoever says, I know him, but does not keep his commandments is a liar, as John said in 1 John 2, 4. And the truth is not in him, but whoever keeps his word in him, truly the love of God is perfected.
Perfect your love in us and lead us in godly lives in this present age. It's in Jesus' name that we pray, amen.
You've been listening to When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, Gabe will be going through a New Testament study. Then on Thursday, we look at an Old Testament book.
On Friday, we take questions from the listeners and viewers. Tomorrow, we'll pick up on an Old Testament study, When We Understand the Text.