Good morning. Let's go to God in prayer. Father, you are a God who demands nothing less than perfection. And we come before you as a people who have nothing to offer except for what your son has offered us, Father. We ask that you hear our petitions not because of anything we are in of ourselves, but because of who your son is. And Father, we ask that you show us your word today. We desire to be a people who finish well. We desire people who, as we finish our race, we get to see the glorious face of Christ and his approval of the lives we lived. And Father, in order for us to do this, we need to know what it's gonna cost us to follow Christ. And Father, we just ask that you open our eyes to what we need to be willing to give up if we wanna be his disciple. We ask this in your son's name, amen. Several years ago, in Missouri, a pastor, who I actually have a lot of respect for, was talking to a woman from his church. And as they're in his office, this woman is weeping and she's as broken as you can get. And the reason that is, is because her doctor had just told her that she had an STD. And so as she's crying, she's telling the pastor about how her and her husband have been nothing but faithful to each other over the past 30 years, and this has to be a mistake. She has no idea how this could have happened. And so the pastor reaches out to the husband the following day, and he asks him, what did you do? And with a callous look, he looks him straight in the eye and says, for 30 years, I did it God's way, and he didn't pay up. So for now on, I'm doing it my way. We look at situations like that, where for a season people profess to be a disciple of Christ, but eventually time proves that to be false. And the thing that all these situations are gonna have in common is that the people who initially profess to follow Christ rarely actually consider what that meant. They rarely consider what following Christ means that they're gonna have to give up, They neglect to count the cost of the kind of sacrifices they're gonna have to make. Not for their salvation, but what it means to follow Christ and to live a godly life. I mean, Paul says that to Timothy in 2 Timothy, is that all who wish to live a godly life are gonna suffer. There's no exceptions to it. And there's three types of people here today. There's some of you who are not Christians and you know it, and you have no desire to be a Christian. Therefore, you never really contemplated what the cost of being a Christian actually is. There's some of you here who are professing to follow Christ, and you may be convinced that you are, but the reality is no one explained to you what that actually means. And then there's some of us here who are actual Christians that just need to be reminded about what we agreed to. Turn with me to Luke chapter 14, verses 25 through 35. Luke chapter 14, verses 25 through 35. And my goal with today's sermon is to show all who are going to claim to follow Christ what the cost you are agreeing to is. Verse 25. Now great crowds accompanied him, and he turned and said to them, 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. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. 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? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who will see it are going to mock him, saying, this man began to build and he was not able to finish. But what king, going out to encounter another king in battle, would not sit down first and deliberate, whether he is able with 10,000 to meet him, who comes against him with 20,000? And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace. So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple. Salt is good, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no use either for the soil or for the manure pile. It is thrown away. He who has ears to hear, let him hear. So as we're in today's text, this specific section takes place in what many refer to as Luke's travel narrative. So this is gonna be chapters nine through 19. This is the section where Jesus has his eyes set on Jerusalem, and he's traveling there, and you're gonna have all these accounts that are gonna be pretty exclusive to Luke's gospel take place in these 10 chapters. And oftentimes, when we read this section that we're in today, we see that the audience Jesus is talking to are the great crowds who are following him. But earlier in chapter 14, he's talking to the Pharisees as he's dining with them. And our temptation is to automatically assume because there's a different audience at play, these two things are separate from each other. But we need to remember that not only are the words inspired, but the placement of those words are inspired. So earlier in chapter 14, Jesus is dining with the Pharisees and he's telling them all these parables. And as we approach verses 15 through 24, the section right before today's text, Jesus is speaking about the parable of the great bankrupt. And one thing you need to keep in mind as you read this parable is that the custom for the Jews during the day was that if you had a great feast and you wanted to have a party, you wouldn't send out one invite, you would send out two invitations. The first invitation will function as just a general RSVP. It would be to figure out who was interested in coming or not. But then, the second invite would be what you send out to those who said they were interested, and once the feast was ready, you would invite them to come. And so, in this parable, Jesus is speaking of a man who the feast is ready, and he sends out the invite to everyone who agreed. And suddenly, all these people now have excuses. Some of them had just bought land, and now they have to focus on that. Some people have oxen that they need to take care of, so they can't go to this feast. And one of them just got married, so he's busy with his honeymoon. And at the end of the parable, the man angrily says that none of those who were invited are gonna taste the feast at all. And now, in today's text, instead of the emphasis being on those who have made a prior commitment and then bailed and started making excuses, The emphasis is gonna be on why you should be so flippant in deciding whether or not you're gonna be Jesus' disciple. Because Jesus isn't interested in disciples who are just gonna bail the same way these people did. And so, in verse 25 we see the setting. Look at verse 25 with me. Now great crowds accompanied him, and he turned and said to them, There's something about this great crowd which made Jesus feel the need to explain to them what their expectations should be. And there's no telling how many people in this crowd. This could have been thousands. You've seen that before. But a common theme that you see all throughout the Gospels is this theme where you have all these big crowds following Jesus and being interested in Him. But in reality, it's just a half-hearted allegiance that they have. John 6 is a perfect example. You have 5,000 people who are coming to Jesus because they want a second round of bread. And Jesus tells them, the only reason you're even following me, it's not because you want the living bread. It's because you want this bread that's just going to perish. You just want me for my benefits. You don't want me for what I actually have to offer you. And then as he's speaking these hard truths, what happens? All these thousands of people leave. because their ears are no longer being tickled, and there's only 12 people left. And so in today's text, Jesus is gonna talk about some conditions, not for salvation, because that's in Christ alone and his sacrifice, but he's gonna talk about the conditions you need to be ready to meet if you're gonna follow him. And one thing we need to remember is that a disciple, the conditions Jesus is placing on this, a disciple is someone who studies under a teacher. This is someone who, their end goal is that they want to become like the person they're studying under. They want their thoughts, their affections, and their desires to be conformed to whoever they're studying with. A perfect example is when I was in music school, I knew people who would travel five hours out of the way to take a master class with Pat Martino, a master guitar player. And their goal was always because they wanted to sound like him. And that's no different for the Christian who wants to be Jesus' disciple. So in verse 26, we see Jesus' first demand for discipleship is unconditional allegiance. Point one is that Jesus' first demand for discipleship is unconditional allegiance. Look at verse 26 with me. 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. Notice the first thing he says here. He says, if anyone. This is all encompassing, there's no exceptions to these conditions that Jesus is laying. It doesn't matter your age. It doesn't matter how bad your circumstances are. It doesn't matter how bad your past is. These conditions are gonna apply to each and every one of us here. And the first thing he says is that you have to hate basically your family. And many of us are wondering, well, how can a God who is love command us to hate our own family? I mean, doesn't the fifth commandment say to honor and respect your parents? Why is he telling us to hate our father and mother now? And one thing that he's doing is that he's using a hyperbole. He's doing the exact same thing he did on the Sermon on the Mount. You know, when he says, if your eye causes you sin, pluck it out. If your hand causes you sin, cut it off. He doesn't mean to actually pluck out these things. He doesn't want you to maim yourself. He's using an over-illustrated point to get his point across. And what he means when he's saying you have to hate your family and your own life is that your love and devotion and allegiance to him need to be so great that compared to the love and devotion you have for your own family and your own life, it has to look like you hate them. And he breaks this up into three different categories. He starts off with saying that you have to hate your father and mother, the very people who gave you life, the very people who brought you up into adulthood, Then he moves on to saying that you also have to hate your wife and children, the very people that you are closest to, the ones you're most intimate with, the ones who you are one flesh with. And not just them, but you have to hate your brothers and sisters, those who are your closest companions. All these people, none of them, none of your allegiance to them can surpass that of Jesus. Turn with me to Luke chapter nine. Keep your finger here, but turn to chapter nine for a moment. We're gonna look at verses 59 through 62. Luke chapter nine, verse 59. To another he said, and this is Jesus speaking, follow me, but he said, Lord, let me first go and bury my father. And Jesus said to him, leave the dead to bury their own dead, but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God. Yet another said, I will follow you. Lord, but let me first say farewell to those at my home. Jesus said to him, no one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God. So we look at this section and we see two people. We see one who Jesus goes and says to follow me. And notice he doesn't say no. His only request is let me go respect my father by burying him first. Let me go to his funeral. And Jesus says no, I have to take priority. And then you have this second guy that he actually takes the initiative and he goes to Jesus saying I want to follow you. My only request is just let me go home and say goodbye to my household. And Jesus says, if you put your hand to the plow and look back, you're not worthy of the kingdom. Now these seem like harsh things, but Jesus' point here is that nothing can hinder you from following me. You have to have such a devotion to me that nothing is gonna cause you to stumble, not even your own friends and family. And Jesus isn't saying to become like a monk and alienate and cut off and devote to your entire family. But he's making a point that he wants you to focus on him. And one thing I can promise you is that your allegiance is going to be tested if you decide to be a Christian. Professing Christ is always going to bring conflict to one degree or another. Matthew 10, 34 through 36, Jesus says, do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but have sowed. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a person's enemies would be those in his own household. Your own family, because of their degree of hatred for God, is going to hate you, too, if you decide to follow Christ. So much so that in Matthew 10, 21, Jesus even says, brother will deliver brother over to death, and father his child. And children will rise against parents and have them put to death, and you will be hated by all for my name's sake. But the one who endures to the end will be saved. Meaning, it's not only unbelievers on the outside who are gonna hate you, your own friends and family are gonna hate you. You have to be willing to give these relationships up. And that's a hard thing for us to fathom because of how pampered we are in America. But you look at other countries and fathers will kill their own daughter for professing Christ. I heard of one account where when a woman was saved at 14 years old, for three months her family beat her relentlessly. And eventually they got so tired about hearing Christ, they turned her into the authorities where she suffered 15 years. in a labor camp where she was abused physically and sexually that entire time. That says a lot about the depravity of man, doesn't it? Where man's hatred for God surpasses the natural inclination that a mother has to love her own child. And the only way to avoid this kind of persecution is to compromise. It's to water down the gospel. It's to live in a way where when people look at you, they don't see someone who is a follower of Christ. They see someone who looks like them. And in America, we may not have to worry about being murdered by our family and friends. We may not have to be worried about being turned over to the authority. But what if it means your friends and family alienating you? What if it means them slandering you? What if it means just being awkward whenever you go to family reunions or to hangouts? Luke chapter six, 26 says, woe to you when all people speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets. If unsaved people can be around you and not feel any conviction, that should concern you. And the very interesting about this is that Jesus is essentially saying that If you follow me, this may cost you your closest relationships. That's the complete opposite of what you see these cults do. See, one of the fear tactics that people like Jehovah's Witnesses do is that they say, if you're gonna choose to leave the Watchtower Society, your friends and your family are never gonna talk to you, and you're gonna sacrifice that. And the motivation is that they wanna keep their numbers up, so they're gonna try to keep you from leaving. Jesus is doing the complete opposite. He's saying, you following me may be the very thing that causes you to lose these relationships. And not only must you hate your own family, your brothers, your sisters, your wife, your children, your husband, your wife, all those things, you have to hate your own life. The very thing that we are implying to love the most. You have to renounce all your allegiance to yourself. You can no longer be the standard. of what's right and wrong, you have to live off God's standards. So much so that you have to be willing to even die for Him. Which brings us to our next point. Jesus' second demand for discipleship is for you to bear a cross. Look at verse 27. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. You have to be willing to die if you're gonna say that you follow Christ. And notice here, it says bear his own cross. To all you kids here, your parents can't bear your cross for you if you decide to follow Christ. To all you adults here, if your wife is a Christian, Don't think that her cross bearing is gonna merit your salvation. We all have our own cross that God expects us to bear. And let me give some clarification on what the cross actually means. Because the way we picture the cross in today's age is it's a decorative thing that you put in your bathroom, or on your necklace, or you get a tattoo of, and this isn't how the people in the New Testament would see it. they would see it as a horrific, gruesome torture device. See, the Romans spent years perfecting this torture device. Their goal was to figure out how can we inflict the most amount of pain without granting the victim the sweet release offered in death. And this was such a painful thing that they had to create a whole nother word just to describe it. That's where we get the word excruciating from. Cicero, a Roman writer, even says this, even the word cross must remain far, not only from the lips of the citizens of Rome, but also from their thoughts, their eyes, and their ears. The cross wasn't something that you would go around flaunting on a necklace. This was a horrific thing to picture. In fact, when Jesus is telling these crowds, you have to bear your cross if you're gonna follow me, this was a shocking statement. This was a controversial statement. All these people that one second they hear a man who's preaching mercy, mercy, mercy, and he's giving all these pieces of bread out and doing all these miracles and healings, now he's saying that you have to suffer. And that's no different from us, the people who often go to Jesus just because we think it's gonna bring health, wealth, and prosperity. And the process, if you were crucified, this is what it looks like. It starts off with you being stripped naked. and you're tied to a post where you have Roman centurions beat you relentlessly with a device called a phlegm. The phlegm was something that had several strands of leather tied to it, and it had pieces of metal and bone on each strand. And the reason that is is because they wanted to rip your skin apart and dig into the muscle and tear it out. and a single lash from a single strand of leather, this would be enough to cause you to need 20 stitches. Imagine a quarterback beating you with something like this. And after you were beaten with this, you were then given a cross to bear all throughout the city while you were still naked. And this wasn't a light piece of wood. This would be about 100 pounds. And it wasn't this nice, smooth, sanded-down piece of wood. It was rugged. It was rough. You would get splinters from it. And not only are you carrying this, and not only have you just been beamed, but your skin on your back had just been torn to shreds. And now you have this piece of wood bearing on that, on your bare back. And as you're marching through the city naked, what do you think everyone around you is seeing? They're seeing a criminal who is just nothing but scum. Because that's what crucifixion was reserved for. Romans were not allowed to be crucified. This was a punishment reserved specifically for the lowest of the low. You would have people looking at you with no dignity. You would be no different from a piece of slime. And after you had borne your cross, you were now finally nailed to it. And you were nailed through your wrists and through your feet, and specifically, You were nailed through what's called the median nerve. The reason that is is because that's the only spot where you're not going to bleed out to death if you get nailed through it. Just to give you a picture of how painful this is, by a show of hands, who here has ever experienced carpal tunnel? Okay. The reason that hurts so much is because there's tissues in your arm that are swollen up where it's putting just a light amount of pressure against that nerve. Imagine having a stake driven through that nerve. And after you were nailed to the cross, you would hang there for about up to six days as people would just walk by you mocking you, suffering as a criminal. And then once the Romans were done seeing you suffer and they were done toying with you, they would break your knees so that you would suffocate. That is what Jesus is saying you have to be willing to go through if you're gonna follow him. And notice he doesn't just say to bear a cross, but he says, bear a cross and follow me. Jesus wasn't the only one who died on a cross that day. Those other two people, even the one who went to heaven, they were on the cross because of their crimes, not because they were following Christ. See, so often there are people that because they're trying to figure out a way to give purpose to their suffering, rather than going to Christ, they come up with this false gospel that says, Christ is, you don't need to necessarily have faith in Christ, you just need to make him feel bad for how bad you're suffering. Where because of the degree of suffering they have, they almost think that's good enough to get them into heaven. Where because they're suffering for their crimes or their sins or whatever, God will show pity on them. That's not the case. The cross you have to bear has to be an intentional cross. Matthew 5.10 says, blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake. It doesn't say blessed are those who are persecuted for being annoying. It doesn't say blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of politics. Blessed are those who are suffering because of righteousness. And Jesus then gives us two illustrations to show the importance of why we need to count the cost of following him. And it starts in verse 28. Look at verse 28 with me. 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. Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it will begin to mock him, saying, this man began to build and he was not able to finish. So here we have a picture of a man who he has had the ambitious desire to build this luxurious tower. And because he was so caught up in his ambition and his emotions, he didn't stop to think about the pricing. He didn't think about the labor costs. He didn't think about any of that. And now he had to drop the whole project. And so now you have this big project that's left unfinished and it's serving as a monument of his own foolishness for everyone who sees it. And they begin to mock him. The purpose of this illustration is to show that there is consequences behind you just flippantly deciding to follow Christ without you considering what that's going to mean. And one of the things that's going to happen is not only do you receive hell for not following Christ and walking away, but you're going to receive mockery. I know one person who, for years, would do outdoor preaching, door-to-door evangelism, and he was a good preacher, from what I heard. And then he met a woman, and he got on drugs, and he walked away from everything, and now he's no longer a Christian, no longer even professing to be a Christian. This was several years ago, and I'm still hearing people mock him. The degree of pseudo-commitment that someone has for Christ will always be proportional to the degree of mocking you receive if you fall away. And you can just look at all these pastors who for years served God and then apostatized to validate that. Whenever I read this parable, I always think of pliable in Pilgrim's Progress. For those of you who haven't read the book, Pliable is a man who, after Christian had told him about how great the Celestial City is, and the wonders it has to offer, and how there's no more suffering there, he got so excited and caught up in emotions, he didn't actually think about all the trials that he would have to go through to get there. And so he follows Christian, and within moments, what happens? He falls into the slaw of despond, where after that little bit of suffering, he runs back home, And rather than everyone rejoicing that pliable came back, they mock him. And so as we look around our nation today, we see a lot of pliables. We see people that when you ask them, how did you get saved? What is the gospel? They usually would say, oh, I was baptized. That's the gospel. I went to a revival, got really emotional, and I felt convicted, and I prayed a prayer, and now I'm saved. And the big reason this is, is because of a man named Charles Finney from the 1800s. This was the man who created the altar call. And this is what his theology said, is that if you really wanted to get people saved, scripture wasn't enough. You need to wow up their emotions. And then once they get all emotional, you need to rush them to either the altar or the anxious seat, and you need to rush them into prayer, and then you can check it off your checkbox, and now they're saved. That's exactly why we don't do altar calls here, by the way. And the danger in Reformed circles like ours is that because we have such good theology, we like to debate. And oftentimes people think that just because they like to debate theology, just because they are willing to suffer a little bit of ridicule from those on the outside, that they're not pliable. Be careful about that. Spurgeon wrote a commentary on Pilgrim's Progress, and this is what he says about pliable. To tell the whole truth about Mr. Pliable, I must say that he began exceedingly well. He even defended Christian when obstinance reviled him. Some of these pliable people would even bear a great deal of persecution and be content to be ridiculed and laughed at. They would even suffer loss rather than turn back. If they do this, really for Christ's sake it is well, but often it is only due to a desire to promote oneself as powerful and important, or to obtain something, They are prepared to make some small sacrifice, but only for the sake of winning heaven or escaping hell. Meaning, there are some people that the only reason they like theology and claim to follow Christ is because they like the status it gives them. Because it makes them feel smart. They like feeling like a theologian. When in reality, they don't care about Christ, they just care about avoiding the consequences of hell. Jesus then gives us a second illustration, which we see in verse 31. What king, going out to encounter another king in the world, would not sit down first and deliberate whether he is able with 10,000 to meet him who comes against him with 20,000? And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace. So now we have a man who is forced to make a decision. See, earlier, the man who made the tower, no one made him make the tower. No one made him start that project. But now, this king, he has an enemy approaching. He has no time to waste. And not only is he forced to make a decision, but this king is outgunned. He has 10,000 men and the other one has 20,000 soldiers. Every moment he delays, the enemy is getting closer and closer and closer. And so as he's sitting, he's contemplating the terrain, he's contemplating the possible loss he may suffer if he goes into battle. And if he decides to just plead for peace, then while the king is a great way off, he's going to send a delegation to plead for mercy. And notice here that he, it's while the king is a great way off that he sends a delegation to plead for mercy. Meaning you don't see this king sitting down saying, I'll just think about it later. I'll count the costs whenever things get bad. I'll consider it once he gets right outside the gate. If you're here and your justification for not following Christ is I'll repent later, If your justification is saying, I'll repent right before I die, because I want to indulge myself right now, you are in the exact same boat this king is in. You are outgunned, you have no hope, and your only chance of surviving this is pleading with God for mercy while he's a great way off. This may be the last time God gives you a chance to repent. Do you realize that? And God promises that if you repent and trust in the works of Christ, that He's gonna grant you that peace. The only thing keeping you from it is your own self-righteousness. The third point, Jesus' third demand for discipleship is that you have to renounce all. Look at verse 33. So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple. You have to be willing to renounce all of your possessions if you want to follow Christ. Matthew 6, 24 says, no one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money. A test to figure out if something is an idol in your life is to ask yourself, are you willing to get rid of it? If there is some possession in your life that you're not willing to get rid of, that is an idol in your life. And Paul makes it clear that no idolater is going to inherit the kingdom of God. This may be your car, this may be your reputation, this may be your money, your bank account, your job, or your family. This may be any of these things. If you're not willing to choose God over that, if so be it, then that's an idol in your life. If you're gonna follow Christ, you need to be like Peter, where the second he says, follow me, You're gonna leave your net, you're gonna leave your boat, you're gonna leave your house, your family, your father, all those things to follow him. If you're gonna follow Christ, you need to be a Job, where if God sees so fit to take away all your cattle, all your servants, all your money, all your wealth, and even your own children. Job lost all eight of his children. You have to be willing to say, so be it. And not only must you renounce all your possessions, you have to renounce control over every area of your life. You have to renounce your ambitions. You have to renounce your thought life. You have to even renounce your affections. When you become a Christian, you no longer have the freedom, as if you ever had the freedom to start with, to set your own path. You have to follow whatever path God sets before you. If you're gonna follow Christ, you no longer have the freedom to fantasize or think about whatever you wanna think about. And you're not even able to desire the things you want to desire. You have to desire things that God wants you to desire. Your affections, your thoughts, your ambitions all have to be for God's glory. It cannot be for your own glory. And not only must you forsake this, you have to forsake all of your sin. And notice, I'm not saying that you have to be perfect, but I am saying if you are unwilling to kill sin and you are content with keeping your sin in your life, you can't be a disciple of Christ. See, oftentimes people would say things like, let me do all these good things, and let me get rid of all these sins, but let me keep this one sin. See, I would argue that most people, if not all, There is one particular sin in each one of us that we are particularly prone to. There's one sin that is our bosom sin that we are just ensnared to, that may often serve as a thorn in the flesh for the believer after they get saved, or maybe the very thing that drags someone to hell because they were unwilling to give it up. Let me be clear. If there's anyone here who thinks they can have pornography in Christ, you can't. If there's anyone here who thinks you can have your pride and your reputation and Christ, you can't. You have to choose between whether or not you're gonna have your sin or whether or not you're gonna have Christ. There's no middle ground. You can't say, I'm gonna be 99% devoted to Christ, but this 1%, I'm gonna live for myself. That's not an option. And not only must you announce your sin, But you have to renounce a life of comfort. The very reason that so many people are prone to jump into Christianity in the first place. Because for some reason they think that it promises a life of comfort, of ease, of joy. And the thing God promises is trials. Tim Passmore, one of the speakers at last week's conference, spoke about a 32-year-old woman who he was counseling, struggling with severe anxiety. And this is why she was struggling. 10 years ago, she gave birth, and her son, after he was born, had several strokes in his brain. But now he's confined to a motorized bed, and he has to eat through a tube. And not only that, but he had a permanent tracheotomy, so he can't even talk. This same mother recently learned, according to Pastor Pasma, that her parents have a rare heart disorder, a rare genetic disease, that nothing short of a heart transplant can fix. And its victims would not live past the age of 40. She just found out she has it. And here's the kicker. She's pregnant. She's not gonna see her son's 10th birthday. Are you willing to have that kind of life, if that's what God wants you to have? Because God didn't promise you a comfortable life. And this is the amazing thing, is that so often, me especially, we are so quick to say, I would announce my life for Christ, and we're no different from Peter. Well, one second, we're saying we're going to renounce our life, but what happens the second God just asks us to renounce something small? You may say that you're going to renounce your life, but what if God calls you to renounce that one moment of rest that you get through the day because you had to break up your kid's fight? What if you have to renounce the security offered in a steady paycheck because God wants you to rely more on Him? What if you have to renounce your own pride? Whenever you sin against someone and you just have to say, I messed up. And the reason God demands so much is because he wants full commitment. Look at verse 34 with me. Salt is good, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? See, the purpose for salt back then, because they didn't have refrigerators, was to preserve the food. And this was often a valuable thing. This would be used for money a lot of the times. And many of your translations say, salt is good, but if salt has lost its taste, I don't like that translation personally. The actual translation is now is salt is good, but if it has become foolish. In fact, the same passage that Buster preached on last week, where Paul refers to the worldly wisdom and the foolishness it has to offer, moros, the word where we get moron from, that's the word used here to describe the salt. And the point is, is that salt that is just gonna become foolish and useless, God has no desire for. And see, Matthew, in chapter 5, 13, uses the same phrase. to describe how believers are the salt of the earth. And his point is that the believers, because God works through them, they serve as a preservative to restrain the evils that are degrading the earth. But the context is different here. Luke is using it in a different way. He's referring to the salt of someone's commitment to announce all things. In other words, Jesus is saying that your commitment to announce all is a good thing, but if it's just gonna perish in the future, that's no use to me. You may commit to follow me, but if you're just gonna walk away, I have no use of you. You're not gonna get a participation trophy for doing an 80% job, for having 80% devotion to Christ. And then he concludes by saying, he who has ears, let him hear. This is Jesus' way of saying, I have spoken the hard truth to you, and now you have to act on it. You have to think about what I said. I'm looking around here, and I'm seeing every single person here has ears, meaning you all are gonna be held accountable for what I just told you today. If you are here, and you have not accepted the cost of Christ yet, but you want to, God is willing to save you. See, it doesn't matter how much you give up. It doesn't matter how many friendships or family members or relationships you're willing to lose. It doesn't matter if you announce everything you have, that's still not enough to save you. You can have the heaviest cross that's ever been built, and that's still not gonna be enough for your sins. You need the cross of Christ to save you. These things that you announced, this isn't what earns your salvation. This is a sign that you've received it. Meaning, if you want to be a disciple of Christ, if you're willing to suffer these things that I said, then just believe in the works of Christ. Believe in the death that he died for each and every one of you. And if you believe that, you're gonna be saved. And God's gonna give you the grace to live this Christian life. And He's not going to let anyone snatch you. He's never going to lose you. And I want to conclude with this. I want to give some encouragement to the believers here. There are many people here who the thing we fear is if we're going to be faithful in the future. Many of us have maybe had the thought of, what if when persecution gets bad, someone holds a gun up to my head, or my wife's head, or my children's head, and tells me to denounce Christ? Am I gonna be able to be faithful? Don't forget that God is good. God is faithful and just, and he'll never let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. God's never gonna put you in a situation where He asks you to renounce something and you don't have the ability to do it if you're one of His children. And also, don't forget that those who are faithful with the little are faithful with much. If you're faithful with the little sacrifices God calls you to make today, and the little trials you're suffering today, you're gonna be faithful with the bigger ones He gives you. But more importantly, rely on His ability to preserve you in those rather than your own ability to endure it. There may be others of you here who it's not necessarily future faithfulness you're concerned about, but maybe you're concerned about past faithlessness. Maybe you've been in situations where you chose these things over Christ, and now you're wondering if Christ is gonna take you back. Don't forget about Peter. I mean, that night that Peter rejected Christ three times, he chose his own life over Christ. He didn't adhere to the cost that night. But not only did God forgive him and show him mercy, he used him in mighty ways. And not only that, but do you know how Peter died when he was martyred? He was martyred upside down. They crucified him. They gave him the same death that Jesus died for us. But he said, I am unworthy to die the same death as my Savior, so crucify me upside down. That's the Christian life, is when we fail to adhere to the cost that we agreed to, God's gonna sanctify us, he's gonna mature us, he's gonna help us grow to the point where we can make sacrifices like that. I mean, you look at Abraham, one second he's denying who his wife is, twice, but then right after that, he's willing to sacrifice his son. And there may be some of you who, it's not future or past faithfulness that you're concerned about, maybe it's just the present. Maybe you're here and you're so tired of having to crucify your flesh daily. You are stumbling over the cross that you haven't buried, the thorn in your flesh is just pricking at you where you don't know if you can last another day. Let me close with this quote from J.C. Ryle. If any reader of this message really feels that he has counted the cost and taken up the cross, I bid him persevere and press on. I dare say you often feel your heart faint and are solely tempted to give up in despair. Your enemies seem so many and your besetting sins so strong, your friends so few, the way so steep and narrow you hardly know what to do, but I still say persevere and press on. The time is very short. A few more years of watching and praying. A few more tossings of the sea of this world. A few more deaths and changes and few more winters and summers and all will be over. We shall have fought our last battle and shall need to fight no more. The presence and company of Christ will make amends for all we suffer here below. When we see as we have been seen and look back on the journey of life, we shall wonder at our faintness of heart. We shall marvel that we made so much of our cross and thought so little of our crown. We shall marvel that in counting the cost, we could ever doubt on which side the balance of profit lay. Let us take courage. We are not far from home. It may cost much to be a true Christian, but it pays. We're going to partake in the Lord's Supper. And I want this to be a reminder for every believer here of not the cost that you paid to follow Christ, but the cost that He paid to save you. This grape juice and these steel crackers in this life are going to be a constant reminder for us that we are continuing on in this walk. And this is just a foreshadow of what the feast is going to be like in heaven. I mean, there's not going to be a steel cracker in the whole house. And as Pastor Carl said, if you're a visitor here, we encourage you to partake with us if you're a baptized believer in good standing with your church and you're not living in any unrepentant sin. And at the same time, if you're here today and you have not accepted the cost of what it means to follow Christ and you're not a believer, Paul warns that partaking of this in an unworthy manner could cost you your life or your health. So if that's you, just let this pass from you. Let's close our eyes and just pray and meditate on what God has done for us. If you're serving, come forward.