Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
The sermon text is from Luke 14:25-35.
Our text indicates large crowds followed Jesus. He’s achieved “rock star” status among the masses who came to see miracles and muse at his teachings, but Jesus lamented over this crowd at the end of Luke 13: “How often I have longed to gather you as a hen gathers her chicks beneath her wings, but you were not willing.”
Many people will follow Jesus when the going is easy. Many people latch onto Christ and the promise of eternal life; or as an hoped for, insurance policy against trying times. Many will embrace Jesus if it means respectability in the community. Many will follow Jesus if nothing is expected of them, no sacrifice of time or treasure, and no inconvenience to our best laid plans. But that Jesus doesn’t exist.
The Jesus who does exist as a living, breathing man, is also the Christ, the true and eternal God. The historical Jesus who came to be your Savior, and even today lives and reigns to all eternity, “emptied Himself of His power and became obedient unto death on the cross.” This Jesus, who is true God and truly human, rose from the dead, and even now as true God and our Brother in human flesh rules all things for the sake of His beloved Church – for you and me who have been baptized into His family of faith.
As we consider our text for today, we must never lose sight of this Jesus, because He demands absolute prominence in our hearts. Not second, third or lower on the list, but He stands alone as our Lord and God with God the Father and the Holy Spirit, three persons, yet eternally one, true God.
Our text grabs our hearts – and that’s how Christ intended it. “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.” Yes, this is the same Jesus who said, “Love your enemies”, the same who said, “If you hate someone, you’re guilty of murder”, the same who said in Matthew 15: “Honor your father and your mother.”
So what’s going on here? I think we’re on the right track if we see this as something of prophetic overstatement. I don’t say that to empty Jesus’ words of their force and meaning, but to realize husbands, wives, parents, children, brothers and sisters, this text does not give you permission to go home today and hate each other – and for families to become war zones. Matthew 10:37 captures the meaning for us: “Whoever loves his father or mother, son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me.”
Nothing, not our lives or even our children, are more precious and important than “Loving God with all our hearts.” To use a couple of examples from recent historical memory… A Christian family in Iraq accused of sharing their faith with a hurting neighbor. Hood-wearing, Islamic terrorists bound the family in ropes and stood behind the children with butcher knife in hand. As the cameras rolled, mom and dad were given opportunity to spare their family by confessing allah to be great and muhammed his prophet. The last images those Christian parents would ever behold were the bloody deaths of their children. They refused to deny their Savior. A little further back in our memory, a Colorado high school girl named Casey Berall sought cover when two Columbine High School classmates began a bloody shooting spree. One of the shooters held a gun to her head and asked if she believed in God. “Yes,” was the last word she spoke in this world.
Jesus said, “Whoever confesses Me before men, I will confess before My Father in heaven. Whoever denies Me before men, I will deny before My Father in heaven.” If these seem extreme and unlikely examples, I certainly pray that never happens to you. But if it does… If you are confronted with the life and death question, will you stand with Jesus or deny Him? Will you spare yourselves or your children or family?
What’s really important? In our text, Jesus lays it on the line, “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.” Either your God is the true God, or you’ll spend your life worshiping yourself or your children or your work or your money or your boats and cars and school friends. God doesn’t ask for a place in your life, but all your heart and soul and mind.
It may be that you and I will never face such horrible and momentous, moments of decision. Yet, for all of us who have been called into God’s family by grace, we’re daily confronted with life’s question: What’s most important to you? Who’s the “god” of your life? As parents, is our most central God-given priority seeing our children in heaven with us one day, or are we focused on other stuff? Students, when classmates are living sinful lives with alcohol and sex outside of marriage or listening to sinful music or wearing trashy clothes, do you refuse to compromise your faith in God and love Him first? Does our use of money reflect a love for God and the desire to extend His Kingdom or are we focused on our kingdoms? You see, each of those, and a million other situations we do face, require an answer.
As the Children of Israel prepared to cross the Jordan River and receive the Promised Land, Moses spoke words that he could well speak to us each day: “This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you today life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to His voice and hold fast to Him. For the Lord is your life…”
We didn’t choose Jesus. We didn’t invite Him into our hearts or surrender our lives to Him. He kicked down the doors of hell to rescue you. Romans 5 says, “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Even while our hearts were cold and dead in sin and our sinful flesh was at war with God, and the only thing we truly loved was ourselves, Colossians 1 says, “God has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the Kingdom of the Son He loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”
This may come as a newsflash, but you and I had no free will. We were lost and dead until the Holy Spirit by water and Word created faith and called you into God’s family. God didn’t wait for you to make good choices and put Him first. God chose to put you before His own life. Jesus said, “No one takes my life from Me, I lay it down of My own accord. I have come that you may have life and have it more abundantly.”
So that’s the real deal, and it’s good news! Jesus took up the cross, died and rose from the dead, not because He found something in you worth saving, but because His Fatherly heart loves you and wants you and all His children “to be saved and to come to know the truth.”
But it’s also true, God could have taken us straight to heaven the moment we came to faith in Jesus – the moment He declared our sins forgiven. But here we are. God left us here to do His work until He comes to take us home on the Last Day. That means we who were saved by God’s grace alone are confronted with daily choices. Will we be the “salt of the earth” flavoring the world with the Gospel? Will we live out our calling – not just being Mr. and Mrs. Perfect Christian when we sit in these pews – but will we walk the walk and talk the talk out there when the world needs our confession? Will we stand with Jesus when it might make our kids mad or friends desert us? Can we share our faith in Christ or are we ashamed? Are we prepared to “take up our crosses –whatever that might be – and follow Jesus?”
The second parable in our text is important… Some of you right now are confronting agonizing cross-bearing moments in your life. Some of us have it pretty easy. Some people rather foolishly think they know about all the “religion” they need to know after confirmation – as though you never learn anything after 8th grade. Don’t wait till the war starts to figure out if you’ve got enough soldiers! Don’t wait till the building has started to figure out if you’ve got enough materials to finish the job! Count the cost!
Every day of our lives, we disciples are called to confess Jesus by our words and actions. The time for us to learn God’s Word and grow in our prayer lives is now. We don’t need to face the terrible news from a consoling doctor, and try to piece together the things we forgot from confirmation class. God wants us to bury His Word in our hearts and have it on our lips, daily praying to God for ourselves and others, asking God to strengthen our faith and help us to confess Him. We’re daily called to be Jesus’ disciples in our words and actions, and there’s very likely to be a time when the challenges we face in life are literally life and death… Don’t wait for the battle to start. Paul wrote: “Put on the full armor of God, so that you can stand against the devil’s schemes.”
Daily we repent of our failures, wasted words and our retreat from the battlefield of faithfulness to God. Dear Disciple of Jesus, always know and remember that no matter how viciously the forces of hell rise up to assault you, Jesus fought for you. He won your victory by rising from the dead. Cling to His love and forgiveness in life and in death. Romans 14 says, “None of us lives to himself alone and none of us dies to himself alone. If we live, we live to the Lord. If we die, we die to the Lord; so whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord.” God grant us such a faith today and always. Amen.
And now may the peace of God which surpasses human understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.