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September 23, 2001
Pentecost 16
Luke 14:25-33
Pastor Joel Zank

DISCIPLE, LOOK BEFORE YOU LEAP!

(Luke 14:25-33) Large crowds were traveling with Jesus, and turning to them he said: "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters-yes, even his own life-he cannot be my disciple. And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. "Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Will he not first sit down and estimate the cost to see if he has enough money to complete it? For if he lays the foundation and is not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule him, saying, 'This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.' "Or suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Will he not first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand? If he is not able, he will send a delegation while the other is still a long way off and will ask for terms of peace. In the same way, any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple.

In Christ Jesus, who loves us and gave himself for us, dear fellow redeemed,

In the wake of the recent terrorist attacks here in the United States, our leaders, supported by a vast majority of the U.S. public, have declared that the American people are on mission to wipe out terrorism-a mission that we are told could be very costly not only in terms of dollars and cents, but more important in terms of human life. With this in mind, our leaders are carefully laying out every phase of this objective. Rather than rushing into something blindly, they believe that we should look before we leap.

Our Lord Jesus wants us to do the very same thing when it comes to our daily mission as his disciples. As he tells us today, this objective also is not without it's costs. There is a high price to be paid in order for anyone to be a follower of Jesus. So the encouragement is in place for each of us: Disciple, Look Before You Leap! Look at what it means to be a disciple; look to see if you have what it takes; and look to Jesus to supply what you need.

I suppose the encouragement to look before you leap sounds a bit odd given the fact that many of us have been disciples of Jesus for some time. Isn't it a little late to be counting the costs of discipleship now? Not at all. The very nature of discipleship calls for a daily rededication to the same. There is nothing worse than complacent disciples who long ago quit thinking about the nature of their mission. Jesus will not have such disciples. So with each new day he issues this wake-up call: "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters-yes, even his own life-he cannot be my disciple" (Luke 14:26).

Look at what it means to be a disciple of Jesus-it means hating those closest to us. Can this be true? Does Jesus really want us to hate our parents, our spouse and our own children? He does, if our relationship with any of these people is harming our relationship with him. We are not talking about hatred in a malicious or evil-minded sense, but in the sense of being willing to speak and act in such a way that we do not let our affection for the people in our lives keep us from loving Jesus and his Word more than anything else. Jesus demonstrated this very hatred when Peter tried to discourage him from going to the cross. Jesus looked right at his friend and told him, "Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men" (Matthew 16:23). At that moment Peter was Jesus' enemy and the Lord told him so.

Are we following his lead? Or are we letting people pull us away from Jesus? Is your spouse's desire to sleep-in on Sunday's keeping you from coming to worship and Bible study often? Is some family member living in a sin that you feel forced to put up with or even defend in order to keep the peace? Jesus says this can't continue. The Lord refuses to take a back seat to our love for anyone, including the love we have for self.

Before an immigrant can become a citizen of America, he must renounce his allegiance to his former country and pledge total allegiance to America. Then and only then will our government grant him citizenship. The same is true of Jesus and his kingdom. To be a disciple of Jesus means we must hate our life, that is, we must renounce our allegiance to our sinful nature. There can be no pet sins that we permit ourselves. There can be no portion of our day devoted to doing what our sinful nature loves to do whether that be gazing at pornography or getting drunk or getting angry or letting worry consume us. Indulging our sinful nature in any way means that we do not hate it; and if we do not hate our sinful nature than we cannot be a disciple of Jesus.

But these are hard things to do aren't they! Fighting our sinful desires, speaking against the sins and unbelief of those closest to us, these things may very well cause us a great deal of turmoil, heartache and pain, but that is exactly what Jesus means when he says, "anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple" (Luke 14:27). The struggles we have because we are followers of Jesus are the crosses we bear. To refuse to carry these crosses means that we are loving and embracing the very sins that will destroy our relationship with Jesus and damn us to hell.

Friend you must carry your cross. This is what it means to live this day as a disciple of Jesus. Now, look within yourself to see if you have what it takes to do this. Have you started the day as a disciple? Can you finish what you've begun? These are questions of eternal importance. Jesus tells us that to answer them we must take a spiritual inventory of ourselves. He says, "Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Will he not first sit down and estimate the cost to see if he has enough money to complete it? For if he lays the foundation and is not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule him, saying, 'This fellow began to build and was not able to finish" (Luke 14:28-30).

If the citizens of New York decide to rebuild the Twin Trade Towers, they will not begin the project until they know for certain they have the financing to complete it. Whatever is built where those towers once stood will be built as a monument to those who died there. No one could bear the disgrace of failing to finish such a project.

Christians it is no different for us. Each day of discipleship is the monument we build to Jesus who lived and died for us. The time we devote to studying his word, the time we spend with him in prayer, the way we reflect his love for us in our relationships with our family and friends, our teachers and coworkers, our customers and employers, all these things and so many more are the building blocks of our monuments. Are you proud of the monument you are building? Does it stand tall as a tribute to Jesus? Or does it more closely resemble the smoldering ruins of Ground Zero in New York.

And if it does, if your monument is a disgrace to your Lord, what are you going to do about it? Will you try harder tomorrow to find more time for Jesus and show more love in his name? If that's your plan, you better know what you're up against-some powerful enemies that will be fighting to claim your time and your love for themselves. Do you think you can overcome them? Jesus tells us that's a good thing to know before we go into battle. He says "Or suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Will he not first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand? If he is not able, he will send a delegation while the other is still a long way off and will ask for terms of peace" (Luke 14:30-32).

The leaders of our country are planning for a war right now. They know it will be a long, hard struggle, but as they compare our resources to those of the enemy they have expressed great confidence that victory will be ours. How I wish the same could be said for the spiritual battles we must fight each day. But we can have no such confidence, not if we insist on relying on our own resources. We are up against the greatest terrorist of all times, the one called Satan who with the aid of his allies, the sinful world around us and that traitor-our own sinful flesh, spends his days enticing us to sin and then celebrates his victories by terrorizing us with the guilt of all of our wrongs. How can we live tomorrow for Jesus when we can't rise above the disgrace of yesterday's sin or find the strength to be holy today.

Each and every time we take this kind of spiritual inventory, we will find ourselves outnumbered by the enemy and lacking the resources to beat him. We don't have within ourselves what it takes to be disciples of Jesus. So what should we do? Ask for terms of peace with Satan? What would that gain us except an eternity with him in hell! Peace with the enemy is not an option. No there's only one thing to do. Disciple, look to Jesus to supply what you need.

This invitation is found in our Lord's own words: "In the same way, any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple" (Luke 14:33). Jesus puts his finger on the heart of our problem. By nature we are sinfully self-reliant. Our sinful pride does not allow us to turn to anyone, including God for help. We want the credit and the reward for doing everything for ourselves by ourselves. But the very sin that fuels this desire, keeps us from fulfilling it. When I rely on myself to resist temptation I cave in to it every time. When I look within myself for more love to show God and the people around me, I come up empty every time. So do you. Friends, we have to give up on ourselves. We have to give up every bit of our self-reliance and we do that by means of the very repentance that God himself works in us today. He shows us our miserable failures-those crumbled monuments and lost battles that have resulted from our own attempts at discipleship. We see the disaster we have made of our lives. We plead for God's mercy.

And we rejoice for God does not leave us in the wreckage of our ruined lives. He comes to our rescue with the forgiveness he himself secured for us at the cross. At the cross of Calvary our failure to love Jesus most of all, our failure to carry our crosses for him and even our failure to depend on him completely all became the sins of Jesus. This is what it means when it says in 2 Corinthians 5:21: "God made Jesus who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." God made Jesus to be our sin and to suffer our hell for it. At the cross Jesus took our place in that pit of despair, suffering defeat as our substitute for every battle we've ever lost with Satan. He became the loser so that God could declare you and me winners instead of sinners. And that is exactly what God does.

Every day God declares us to be his victorious disciples, not on the basis of our sinful efforts, but on the basis of our Lord's saving accomplishments. God lifts us above the disgrace of yesterday's sins, guaranteeing us that all of them have been paid for by Christ. Satan can no longer terrorize us with guilt. He cannot paralyze us with fear. Because our guilt and fear are buried in the very grave from which our Savior rose. And that's not all. God who put the blame for our sinful lives on Jesus has given the credit for Jesus' holy life to us. Even more wonderful is the faith he gives us to believe all this. So go ahead, disciple, look before you leap into another day of discipleship. You have what it takes to be the Lord's disciple. See! It all comes from God as a free gift. You have his forgiveness and holiness covering all your sins and working in you not only the desire and power to live a life of thanks, but also the assurance that everything you do as the Lord's thankful disciple will be acceptable and pleasing to your God for Jesus' sake. Amen.