The Cost of Following Jesus Part II (Fruitful Longevity) Luke 14
Verse 25 Large crowds are following Jesus, but He begins to instruct them in the cost of following Him.
Verse 26 This of course would have been a very striking and shocking comment to His audience.
• But of course, He does not mean that we literally hate our family or ourselves.
o This would be contrary to all of the other commands of Jesus.
o After all, Jesus tell us we are to be known for our love.
o He tells us to love our enemies. Jesus tells us to love our neighbor as ourselves.
• He is warning His followers to count the costs in a couple different ways.
First, persecution or rejection. Jesus is saying the social pressure and family pressures will be real.
Second, there is the relational side of this, it can be real easy to give our families more time, more attention, and more love than we give God.
• End of the verse -yes, even his own life–he cannot be my disciple.
• Jesus says we must hate even our own life. Again, Jesus isn’t saying we should hate ourselves.
o That wouldn’t be very emotionally healthy. He is saying count the cost.
Verse 27 The cost of following Jesus is a constant, daily, moment by moment dying to ourselves.
Verse 28-30 Jesus suddenly goes into what appears to be either a lesson on finance or construction.
• The NIV refers to money, with our western mind that makes sense to us.
• The problem is that the word money is not in the original Greek text.
• The NASU renders it better. 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?
• We are to count the cost for sure. But the text is really a bit ambiguous and just asks do we have enough?
o The implication is you will not start to build until you have enough money in the bank.
• Another reason this isn’t about the money is Jesus is never all that concerned about money per se.
• Jesus is always concerned about the heart. Jesus makes everything a heat issue.
o So, I think we have to look at this from a heart perspective.
• If you are going to build a building whether all at once or as you have the money, it takes time.
o Buildings aren’t built in a day. It takes perseverance and faithfulness to see the project completed.
• You don’t enter into following Jesus for a brief period or temporarily. You enter it to finish
o And you enter it bear fruit the whole way. Slow progress if nothing else.
• But there is a cost to that kind of life. There has to be a deliberate choice made to stick with this and the process.
• Jesus is course talking about our spiritual life.
o We laid the foundation when we accepted Him into our life.
o Now, what will we allow Jesus to build on that foundation?
• What about you, what is the cost for fruitful longevity?
