Luke 14:25-35 He is No Fool…
Good morning! Turn with me in your Bibles to Luke chapter 14, today we’ll look at verses 25-35. And nobody needs to wave their Catechism book at me as we are all done reading those questions together!
Before we jump into our text for this morning I want to read for you another text that will kind of frame our thinking as we look at our passage in the Gospel of Luke.
Ephesians 2:8-9
8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
I read that to you as a reminder to me that as we look at this passage in Luke that we are saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. Not works, not our effort, faith in Jesus Christ alone.
Let’s pray.
I love you guys. And because I love you, I have to ask, which is more loving: to tell you lies that make you feel good, or tell you the truth even if it makes you uncomfortable?
Your answer doesn’t really matter.
Because the Lord Jesus preferred over Himself, that’s what the true definition of love is, because the Lord loved people He told them the truth no matter the cost. And He knew the cost.
Let’s look at what the Lord Jesus said in Luke 14:25-35.
25 Now great crowds accompanied him, and he turned and said to them, 26 “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. 27 Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. 28 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? 29 Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, 30 saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’ 31 Or what king, going out to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and deliberate whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? 32 And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace. 33 So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.
34 “Salt is good, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? 35 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.”
It is clear that Jesus was unfamiliar with modern church growth strategy. He obviously didn’t think that the best plan to get the biggest crowd was to water down the message to the point where it was inoffensive enough to keep people coming. It almost appears that Jesus was trying to thin the herd.
I think He was.
25 Now great crowds accompanied him, and he turned and said to them, 26 “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.
How can Jesus, who is supposed to be all about love, tell people that in order to be His disciple that they have to hate their family? What could He possibly mean by this?
I went to the Greek to try and make the word translated hate mean something else, to make it just a poor translation… It isn’t.
What I can tell you is that the commentators agree that Jesus is making a comparative statement, that the love you have for your father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, even yourself should look like hatred in comparison to your love for Jesus Christ.
I drive a 2003 GMC pickup truck. It was made back when headlights were headlights, not this LED craziness that they’re putting in cars headlights nowadays where you can see up a squirrel’s nose from a mile away. When I drive down the road at night with one of those cars behind me their headlights make it look like my high beams aren’t even on.
That’s what our love for Christ and our devotion to Him should make our love and devotion to everything and everyone else look like. Even our selves.
27 Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.
The people to whom Jesus was first speaking knew all too well the horror of Roman crucifixion. The Romans used this act of public humiliation and torture as a constant threat to keep the people of Israel in line. Jesus’ own experience of being forced to carry His own cross was not unique to Him, it was part of the process. The victim of crucifixion was forced to submit themselves to bear the instrument of their own death.
So when Jesus used this picture He knew that was coming for Him, but He also knew what was in stor for those who were truly His disciples.
The invitation to dine at His table, like we talked about last week form earlier in this chapter, is an invitation to come and die. Jesus was calling those who would follow Him to forsake their own lives, to submit to the possibility of suffering unto death for His Name’s sake.
Jesus never once promised that adding Him on to an already decent life would make for a better life. Submitting to Jesus makes an altogether different life, a life of submission to Him and to the cost of following Him.
Jesus was, and is, calling all who would listen to consider that cost, and He made that point with two short parables.
28 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? 29 Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, 30 saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’ 31 Or what king, going out to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and deliberate whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? 32 And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace.
Consider what these pictures might look like in reality. A loud, outward declaration of faith but an inward refusal to turn away from sin, half-hearted Christianity?
JJ VanOosterzee wrote, “While the decidedly Christian life constrains the world to involuntary respect, half Christianity provokes it to not unnatural scoffing.”
Half Christianity, as VanOosterzee put it, is a type of Christianity that does not count the cost of following Jesus.
And what could it cost, what is required?
Death to sin, even to our favorite sins. Self-denial, watchfulness, exercise of holy duty to the church and to our neighbors. It may cost us our reputation, our houses, our liberties, all that is dear to us in this world, even life itself.
Matthew Henry wrote, “And if it should cost us all this, what is it in comparison with what it cost Christ to purchase the advantages of [faith] for us, which come to us without money and without price?”
This is not a call to sell all that you have and give it to the church or to turn away from your family. This is a call to submit all you have and all you are to the cause of Christ and His kingdom. To use what you have been given to expand His kingdom and His kingdom is made of people not palaces.
Jesus gives one more picture to illustrate His point that is separated by a heading but is no doubt connected to the preceding verses.
34 “Salt is good, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? 35 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.”
Salt without saltiness is a hard thing to wrap our minds around but it is possible in natural salt deposits for the sodium chloride to leech out and leave behind salt-less material.
What use is salt without its saltiness? There is no use for it. It’s not simply less usable, it’s completely unusable. How does this connect to the preceding verses?
Jesus is calling all who would hear to self-consideration and examination. This consideration and examination must lead to self-renunciation and submission, whole-heartedly to Jesus.
If we are not willing to love the Lord more than anyone or anything else, to put Him first above all else, if we are not willing to submit to suffering and even martyrdom for Jesus, we need to ask ourselves if our faith in Jesus is actually real.
8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
Our salvation is by grace through faith in Jesus, a gift from God our Father, our loyalty to Him over everyone and everything else is the first of, and the doorway to, those good works that He has prepared for us to do.
If we say that we love Jesus but are not willing to put Him before everything and everyone else, ourselves included, then we are salt without saltiness.
Jim Elliot was an American missionary born in Oregon in 1927 and was killed in Ecuador by the people he was there to reach for Christ in 1956. It was he that penned that famous line, “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”
Amen.
