[Note: This sermon expounds Luke 14:25–33. Delivered 18 March 1979, Montreal.]
Now let us turn to the Word of God in Luke chapter 14, verses 25 to 33. "Now great multitudes accompanied Jesus, 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, even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.'" Then follow the parables: of the man desiring to build a tower who first sits down and counts the cost, and of the king going to war with 10,000 men against an enemy of 20,000. The conclusion is the same: "Whoever of you does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple." Those are strong words — powerful words from the Lord Jesus.
Great crowds were following Jesus, and any person of lesser character might have thought, how popular I am, what a great success. And Jesus does the one thing guaranteed to turn the crowds away. He says: if any of you comes to me and does not hate his father, mother, wife, children, brothers, sisters — you cannot be my disciple. Now, I do not want to water down those words. One remarkable thing about the Lord Jesus is that he is not afraid to use language like this — not afraid to be misunderstood. The British academic tradition produces scholars who qualify every sentence until in the end you are not sure they said anything at all: "Perhaps, and maybe, and if..." Jesus is not like that. He knows that those who love the truth will understand what he means, while those who don't care for the truth will always find something to quarrel with no matter how carefully you qualify your words.
Curiously, not even the Jews quarreled with these words — and they were always looking for an opportunity to challenge Jesus. They could have said: you have broken the fifth commandment, which says "honor your father and your mother," by telling people to hate them. But they didn't pick on these words. Why? Because even they understood that he was using the Hebrew idiom, in which "to hate" means that you love God so much more than anyone else that in comparison, everything else is so secondary that it can be described as hating. When God calls you to follow and your parents say no and you follow anyway, your action can be interpreted as hating your father and mother. Some of you who desire to go into full-time service have exactly this experience: your parents say you hate them because you are leaving to serve Jesus. Jesus does not try to justify himself — he knows the truth, and he is not afraid of misinterpretation.
Now here is the problem that has created havoc in the church. We have been taught that salvation is a free gift of God — you receive it as a present. But here Jesus says it will cost you everything. If salvation is free, how can it cost you everything? Even if you paid $1, it is not free. These two teachings seem to directly contradict each other. How does the church solve this problem? There are two common approaches, and both are wrong. The first is simply to ignore the teaching of Jesus. You just stick with Paul, because Paul said salvation was a gift — never mind what Jesus said. That is surprisingly how many Christians solve the problem. The second approach is to divide Christians into two stages: the first stage is free, you simply believe and receive the gift; the second stage costs you everything, and that is when you become a disciple.
But where in the Bible is there a distinction between "Christian" and "disciple"? Where will you find this distinction? Nowhere. In the language of Acts, the word "disciple" is simply another word for a Christian. A disciple is not some higher stage of Christian. And there is also a logical problem: if I have already received salvation for free, why would I then decide three years later to pay everything for something I already have? If you gave me a car for free, and three years later I decided to pay you the full $6,000 for it — there is something very strange going on. So both solutions fail, and the reason they fail is the same: a false definition of faith.
Today faith is defined as stretching out empty hands to receive a free gift. Let me tell you honestly: that definition is not found in the Bible. I have studied the Bible for a very long time and I cannot find it. Faith in the Bible is always, without exception, a personal relationship to God. Faith in Christ means that you stand in a definite, specific kind of relationship to him — the relationship of master and disciple, of father and son. A Chinese church some time ago ran an evangelistic campaign with the slogan "salvation is as easy as drinking water." They quoted John 7, where Jesus says "if any man thirst, let him come to me and drink." But what does "come to me" mean? It does not mean going to a shop where the salesman hands out free gifts. In Matthew 11, Jesus says: "Come to me, learn of me, take my yoke upon you." Come to Jesus means to acknowledge him as king, to submit your life to him. That is what coming to Jesus means.
Look at John 6: "I am the bread of life, he that eats of me." Who eats of that bread? Did the unbelieving crowd eat of it? No. To whom did Jesus give his body at the communion? To his own disciples. Only disciples partake of it, and a disciple is someone who stands in that living relationship of faith to Jesus, where he is master and you are the disciple. God's free gift to us is in the person of Jesus — he gives Jesus to us as Lord and King. Jesus is not going to be a gift that you pocket and carry around. You cannot have Jesus at all without entering the saving relationship of faith to him, where he is Lord and you are his disciple.
Once you understand the biblical definition of faith, there is no contradiction in this passage. What does Abraham's faith look like? Genesis 12:1 — "Now the Lord said to Abram, 'Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you.'" And Abraham went. He left everything — country, relatives, father's house — to follow God's word. God said go, and Abraham went. Abraham was a true disciple, and his faith is precisely this: the response to God's call. Faith is not a package you accept; it is a relationship you enter. When God calls you and you follow, you become his disciple, you establish a saving relationship with him — and it is then that you have eternal life in Christ.
Now we can see the whole point of the two parables. The first parable is about the building of a tower: the challenge is not merely to start building but to be able to finish. The second is about a king going to war — and notice what the Lord Jesus says: the odds are against you. The king is going with 10,000 to meet an enemy of 20,000. He is not asking whether you can beat an enemy twice smaller than yourself — of course you can. He is asking whether you can go forward against an enemy twice as large. The word "able" appears several times in this passage — are you able to finish? Are you able to win when the odds are two to one against you? Because when you become a disciple of Jesus, everything will be against you. The whole point of the parable is that the only way to go forward against such odds is through faith. If you could meet the enemy with the advantage on your side, you would not need faith. But when you are outnumbered, and you go forward trusting in God — that is faith.
# The Cost of Discipleship — Luke 14:25–33 (Part B) — Faith Against Impossible Odds; Gideon and the Challenge of Discipleship
[Note: This is Part B of the sermon on Luke 14:25–33, continuing directly from Part A. Delivered 18 March 1979, Montreal.]
The king in the parable must decide whether to go forward against an enemy twice his size. The whole point is not whether to fight but whether to trust God when the odds are impossibly against you. This is exactly the situation of every true disciple: you are going into spiritual battle where the forces ranged against you are far greater than your own strength could possibly handle.
Mark 9:22–23 illustrates this perfectly. A father brought his demon-possessed son to Jesus and said: "If you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us." And Jesus replied — not "do you think I can help?" but — "If you can believe! All things are possible to him who believes." The question is not whether Jesus can do it; the question is whether you can believe. The ability is always God's; the challenge is whether you will trust him.
The story of Gideon demonstrates precisely this principle. He began with an army of 22,000. Already 12,000 departed because they were afraid — fear disqualifies you from faith. That left 10,000. God said to Gideon: still too many. Then the famous test of how they drank water reduced the army to 300 men. Three hundred against the Midianite army of 135,000. The proportion is staggering — the Midianites outnumbered Gideon by 450 to one. Why did God cut the army down so drastically? Because if they won with 22,000, they might say: "How great we are!" With 300, there could be no human boasting whatsoever. When 300 men defeat 135,000, everyone knows that God did it.
Gideon went forward with 300. He trusted God, not his own strength. And the result was the most remarkable military victory recorded in the Old Testament. That is faith — not in the abstract, but the concrete act of going forward when every calculation says you must fail. The disciples who followed Jesus were going to face the whole world, the whole religious establishment, the power of Rome, the power of Satan — everything against them. And yet they turned the world upside down, because their trust was not in themselves but in God.
This is why Jesus does not want converts — he wants disciples. A convert is someone who has added a religious option to their life. A disciple is someone who has entered the master-disciple relationship, where the master is Lord and the disciple stakes everything on that relationship. Jesus is building an army — not a crowd, but an army of disciples who will go forward against impossible odds because they trust God completely. The challenge of these two parables is not merely intellectual. It is a challenge to you: will you be that kind of disciple? Will you count the cost, face the odds, and go forward in faith? That is the call of the Lord Jesus today.