Counting the cost of following Jesus
There are many great investments we can make today to ensure that what we have money to live on when we get old. But the greatest investment that anyone can make is being a true follow of Christ because it reward far out way any earthy wealth we may acquire because it a promise of eternal life in heaven. But as Christians we need to understand the cost that comes from following Christ. Jesus illustrates this concept in.
Luke
So
you see must really think about what we are doing and realize that following
after Christ comes at cost and we must be willing to put God first no matter what the consequences are that Jesus
said.
Matthew
There are many today
in the religious world and in the brotherhood who have not sit down and really
considered the cost of following Jesus. Now some continue to go through the
motion of Christianity but they really have not denied themselves nor have they
fully began to take up the cross of Christ. We have a great example of this
found in John 6. Jesus begins to tell the people that he is the bread of life
which came down from heaven. Lets pick up on in,
John
Jesus was letting these people know that was following him that they must follow after him fully to have eternal life and explained this symbolically of eating his flesh and drinking his blood. We need to remember that those who were following him were doing so because he was providing food and he was healing people and what Jesus had just said would weed out those who were not willing pay the cost of following after him.
John 6:60
Therefore many of His disciples, when they heard this, said, "This
is a hard saying; who can understand it?"
61 When Jesus knew in Himself that His disciples complained
about this, He said to them, "Does this offend you? 62 "What then if you
should see the Son of Man ascend where He was before? 63 "It is the Spirit who
gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are
spirit, and they are life. 64
"But there are some of you who do not believe." For Jesus knew from
the beginning who they were who did not believe, and who would betray Him. 65 And He said, "Therefore I
have said to you that no one can come to Me unless it has been granted to him
by My Father." 66 From
that time many of His disciples went back and walked with Him no more.
You see many of these
disciples were willing to follow after Jesus as long as things were going
smooth for them but as soon as they couldn’t understand what he was saying nor
did the try find out the deeper meaning
of what he said they simply left and that is exactly what some
Christians do today. They will follow God’s word until something happens in
their life that makes it to hard for them to follow God word so they will turn
away from God but that did not the cost for following after Christ all the way.
Now Jesus 12 disciples had the right attitude and had counted the cost.
John 6:67 Then
Jesus said to the twelve, "Do you also want to go away?" 68 But Simon Peter answered Him,
"Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. 69 "Also we have come to
believe and know that You are the Christ, the Son of the living God."
This is always need to
keep in the back of our mind that Jesus has word of eternal life and no matter what disappointments may come from this life we need to hold fast
to Jesus and follow him realizing that eternal life only come through him. Jesus himself said,
John
So as disciples of Christ
we must learn to look to Gods word on how we are live our lives so that we can
follow Christ with all our might so that we can truly take up that cross and
follow after him. Like I said there are many religious world today who to pawn
off a cheap grace that say that all you have to do is believe and you will be
saved nothing else is required. However you look at the passages that we looked
at already you can easily see that it take life time commitment of following
after Christ and this goes way beyond the realm of simply believing. God always
called his people to be active and not idle. But when are not willing to go by
Gods word and you twist it to your own desires than you make up your own
religion and with or without your knowledge you carrying someone else cross.
The Pharisees were a group of Jews during the 1st century that had
perverted the word of God this way and had made up their own religion based on
their desires and mans traditions. In fact Jesus spoke about these
self-righteous men in,
Luke 12:1 In the
meantime, when an innumerable multitude of people had gathered together, so
that they trampled one another, He began to say to His disciples first of
all, "Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. 2 "For there is nothing
covered that will not be revealed, nor hidden that will not be known. 3 "Therefore whatever you
have spoken in the dark will be heard in the light, and what you have spoken in
the ear in inner rooms will be proclaimed on the housetops. 4 " And I say to you, My
friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body, and after that have no
more that they can do. 5
"But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear Him who, after He has
killed, has power to cast into hell; yes, I say to you, fear Him!
You see the Pharisees
were people who stood out on the street corner and said long prayers to impress
the people around them. They wore extravagant clothes and always tried to get
the chief seats in the temple. When the gave of their money they only gave out
of their abundance and they looked down at everyone else as being lower than
they were that is Jesus said they were full of hypocrisy. You see their biggest failure was they were directing
themselves to toward man trying to impressing them instead of directing
themselves to God that is why Jesus said that they had already received their
reward.
As Christian we must be
careful not to get caught up in pleasing man kind instead we as we count the
cost we must learn to dedicate ourselves to serving God with out whole being.
We need to remember that God does not look at us as man does because he is not
concerned with your outer appearance or how rich you are he is concerned with
your heart and with what kind of spirit you have.
We need to keep this in
mind because many times people will base the worth of someone on how much money
they have. James teaches us not to do this.
James 2:1 My
brethren, do not hold the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of
glory, with partiality. 2 For
if there should come into your assembly a man with gold rings, in fine apparel,
and there should also come in a poor man in filthy clothes, 3 and you pay attention to the one
wearing the fine clothes and say to him, "You sit here in a good
place," and say to the poor man, "You stand there," or,
"Sit here at my footstool," 4
have you not shown partiality among yourselves, and become judges with evil
thoughts? 5 Listen, my
beloved brethren: Has God not chosen the poor of this world to be rich
in faith and heirs of the kingdom which He promised to those who love Him? 6 But you have dishonored the poor
man. Do not the rich oppress you and drag you into the courts? 7 Do they not blaspheme that noble
name by which you are called? 8
If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture,
"You shall love your neighbor as yourself," you do well; 9 but if you show partiality, you
commit sin, and are convicted by the law as transgressors.
We need to be careful and
not show partiality with a brother or sister in Christ just because they have
money. As Jesus continues in Luke 12 we see he also teaches us not to allow our
own possession come before serving God. In Luke
Luke 12: 22
Then He said to His disciples, "Therefore I say to you, do not worry about
your life, what you will eat; nor about the body, what you will put on. 23 "Life is more than food,
and the body is more than clothing.
24 "Consider the ravens, for they neither sow nor reap,
which have neither storehouse nor barn; and God feeds them. Of how much more
value are you than the birds? 25
"And which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature? 26 "If you then are not able
to do the least, why are you anxious for the rest? 27 "Consider the lilies, how
they grow: they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you, even Solomon in
all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 28 "If then God so clothes
the grass, which today is in the field and tomorrow is thrown into the oven,
how much more will He clothe you, O you of little faith? 29 "And do not seek what you
should eat or what you should drink, nor have an anxious mind. 30 "For all these things the
nations of the world seek after, and your Father knows that you need these
things. 31 "But seek the
Luke
Another thing we need to realize when we consider the cost of discipleship is that following after Christ can divide families and friendships. Consider the word of Jesus in,
Luke
You see the message of the cross can divide a family when
they don’t agree with your personal decision to follow after Christ. While God
would love the whole family to be united and follow after him this doesn’t
happen every time. When I was attending at Madill there a lady in our Bible
class who had been treated badly because she left her denomination and came to
the
Many times becoming a Christian will loss you your friends because you can no longer engage in the sinful acts that you were before and this many times will push them away or even cause them to despise you because they cannot understand why you have changed. Peter offer the following to us in,
1 Peter 4:1
Therefore, since Christ suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves also with
the same mind, for he who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, 2 that he no longer should live
the rest of his time in the flesh for the lusts of men, but for the will
of God. 3 For we have
spent enough of our past lifetime in doing the will of the Gentiles -- when
we walked in lewdness, lusts, drunkenness, revelries, drinking parties, and
abominable idolatries. 4 In
regard to these, they think it strange that you do not run with them in
the same flood of dissipation, speaking evil of you. 5 They will give an account to Him
who is ready to judge the living and the dead.
So as we count the cost
of discipleship let make sure we are ready to put God over our family and
friends and let us never be lured into returning back to a life of sin.
Our finally point this
morning as we count the cost of discipleship is that we must invest our time,
our talent and resources in order to
follow Christ.
We need to take to heart
what Jesus did for us how he gave his all for us and wants us to follow in his
footsteps. Paul tells us to redeem the
time because days are evil Eph. 5;16. As Christian we need to make the best
use of our time to serve God and to be shinning examples to those around us.
One area that some
Christians really struggle with is being at all the church services. Even
though know that we commanded not to forsake the assembling of ourselves
together in Heb. 10:25. They also know that we are to obey our elders when it
comes to spiritual matters and this would include the times we come together
for Bible study on Wednesday night and
Sunday morning. But I want you to think about this what better way could you invest
your time then coming together with God’s people for purpose of worshiping God
or for the purpose of learning more about him in Bible classes. It really
amazes me that some Christians cant invest 4 small hours of out an entire week
to assemble with the saints. I can almost guarantee these same Christians
probably watch more 4 hours of TV in one week. Don’t find it sad when
Christians will invest more time watching TV than assembling with the saints?
Now I just used the TV as one example but it clearly put things into
perspective that we should be willing to count the cost and invest these 4
hours every week to help us follow after Jesus because that is what he
would want us to do.
Now there is much more
than just coming to ever service we must emulate Jesus in our everyday life.
Acts 10:38 God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy
Spirit and with power, who went about doing good and healing all who were
oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him.
Jesus went about doing
good for others and we should look for opportunities for doing good as well.
There are so many things we can do. We can use our talents to help out in the
worship service or to help others. We can visit the sick and the shut-ins. We
can make phone call encourage the weak. We can study our Bibles with people. We
can teach Bible classes. We can invite people to come to church and the list
can go on and on. We can also use our resources to help spread the good news.
This means we don’t need to be greedy when it comes to our money. We need to
realize that it will perish and if it can be used for good or for the increase
of God’s kingdom then we should not be afraid to make such an investment that
may lead to wining of souls. So is important that give of our time, talents and
our resources.
The apostle Paul had a
great understanding of what it means to be a disciple of Christ.
Galatians 2:20 "I
have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives
in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the
Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.
So let us never forget
that the cost of being a disciple of Jesus Christ can be difficult but in the
end it is worth it all. I hope this lesson this morning has made you think
about your life and I hope that if see that you have not been putting Jesus and
his kingdom first that you will start making changes today and you will pick up
the cross and start following Jesus to best of you ability for the rest of your
life. We need to remember that our time here on this earth is short and as
Christians we need to redeem the time we have and use it for glory of God.