The Cost of Discipleship

6 · The pastor adapts the original audience (crowds considering discipleship) to the current audience (people already calling themselves disciples)

You know, I think we could extend the metaphor. My guess is that most of us in this room would call ourselves disciples. There are probably not many of us who are saying, I'm thinking about joining Jesus on the road to discipleship, which is the audience here, right? But I think we could extend the metaphor. We could extend the parable and say, if it's necessary to stop at the beginning of the journey, you better not lose sight in the middle of the journey what you're doing and where you're going.

7 · Personal story of the pastor driving the family van without deciding on a destination first—his wife insists they stop and decide before driving

It happens often when Katie and I leave church. I'll turn to her, we've piled the kids into the van, I'll say, "Okay, what's the plan for lunch? Are we eating at home? Do you want to go out to eat? You want to go to Costco? Are we going to go to Chipotle? Go to Mi Ranchito? What are we going to do for lunch today?" And as I'm asking that question, I'll stick the van into drive and it'll start driving. I'll pull out and Katie invariably will say, "Can we stop? We didn't decide where we're going, but you're driving." And in my mind, well, I'm trying to be efficient. If we start heading in a direction and happen to decide that we're gonna go to that place and we're already moving in that direction, we've just saved the 2 minutes that we would have been sitting there in the van in the parking lot deciding where we're gonna go. Thank you. But I think she's on to something. Because more often than not, we end up that direction, and then I say, "You know what? Actually, let's go to Chipotle." And we turn around and we backtrack.

8 · Direct application: the repeated phrase 'sit down' in both parables is prescriptive

The text wants us to stop, to sit down. Notice that that phrase is actually in both of them. If you're going to build a tower, don't you first sit down and think about it? If you're a king going into war, don't you first sit down? How often in your life as couples do you sit down and say, what is our life about? About? What is our, our mission as a family? What do we value as a family? What are we trying to sow into our kids' lives? Or are we just driving and saying at some point along the journey while we're driving, we'll figure it out, but I'm going to take this left turn and I'm going to take this right turn and we're going to go straight. But I don't even really know where I'm going. So let's sit down. And think about where it is Jesus would have us go. So let's heed Katie's advice and stop.

9 · The pastor connects the church's mission statement ('a community of disciples') directly to Luke 14

When we came into church this morning, you might have noticed that on the board was our church mission statement, and it says we are a— what? Can anybody fill in the blank? A community. Good. There's one word. We are a community of disciples. So what Jesus is describing here is what we say we are. We are a community of disciples. We are a community of people who've heard Luke 14:25-35 and said, that's who we are. That's what we want. That's where we're going. So let's ask ourselves, Does this describe us? Does this describe me?

10 · The pastor defines 'Kingdom Come'—the sermon series framework—as the invasion of God's kingdom (values, loves, way of life) into the earthly kingdom (our values, loves, way of life)

The title for the sermon series through Luke is Kingdom Come. Here's my nutshell definition of what that means, because I think it's going to be helpful as we talk about Jesus' definition of discipleship. So God has his kingdom up here, right? And he has his way of doing things, his desires, his loves, his values. We have our kingdom down here, our way of doing things, our loves, our desires, our values, our definitions of rights and wrongs. And oftentimes there's a tension between those two. When Jesus comes and says, my kingdom's here, what he's saying is the way of life up here is going to start to be the way of life down here. I've come to gather a people, a group of people, a family of people, disciples who want to learn what what this kingdom is like and want to turn their backs on this kingdom. So that's when we say kingdom come. When you pray in the Lord's Prayer, my Father who art in heaven, hallowed be your name, thy kingdom come. We're not just praying that at some point in the future, Jesus, bring the heavenly kingdom and make it here. That is going to happen. We are praying that, but we are also praying right now in my life, in my minutia, In my days, in my weeks, in my months. These things up here that characterize your kingdom, make them true down here. Make them true in my life, make them true in my family, make them true in our community.

11 · The pastor shares a personal testimony of his own confrontation with costly discipleship at age 20 in Australia with YWAM

Texts like this, I use this word, they haunt me. 16 years ago, I was 20 years old, and I went to Australia with a group called YWAM. And it completely and radically transformed my life. And there was really one, one thing that happened there. I grew up in the church. I grew up saying, I believe the gospel, I believe Jesus. But I got there to Australia and I realized these people have a completely different idea of what it looks like to follow Jesus than I do. And there was a mantra that matched their lives, and the mantra was ruined for the ordinary, that when Christ calls someone to now become his disciple and follow him, your life is now ruined for the ordinary.

12 · The pastor articulates a theological principle: cost reflects worth

And I hear that weight and that gravity in passages like this that say, hate your family, hate your life, pick up your cross, put nails through your hands and feet. That's what it means to be my disciple. So this text is a warning. But just as much as I think this text is a warning about not settling for the status quo, the ordinary, I think it's an invitation. And here's why I say that. Cost is often a reflection of worth. And if it's not, then the product is a fraud. So when Jesus says the cost is great, he is at the same time saying the value is enormous.

13 · Structural pivot: before exegeting the text, the pastor will address three common strategies believers use to avoid the passage's force—holding it at arm's length so it doesn't touch their actual lives

I think with a passage like this, there's a couple mistakes we can make, a couple potential errors that keep the passage at arm's length. Because when I hear things like this, My human reaction is to kind of want to build this force field around me so it doesn't get in here. And it doesn't really touch my life. I hear it, but it doesn't touch me. It doesn't impact me. I think there's a couple ways we can do that. And so before we ask the question, "What does he mean when he says hate your family?" Because we have to ask that question, right? I want to first warn us about ways that we can keep this at arm's length.

14 · Exposition of verse 25: the crowds following Jesus are attracted to his message, lifestyle, and miracles

At the beginning of the passage, if you look at verse 25, it says, "Now great crowds accompanied him." So Jesus is traveling through the countryside. He's on his way to Jerusalem. And as he's traveling from city to city, crowds begin to follow him. They're attracted to His message. They're attracted maybe to His lifestyle. They're attracted to the miraculous things that He's doing. They like Him. They're interested in Him. He intrigues them. Things He says and does resonate with them.

15 · The pastor warns against the first evasion strategy: dismissing the crowds as mere curiosity-seekers (a 'carnival act' audience)

And I think we sell the crowds short and we miss a crucial point in this text If we think the crowds are only following Jesus because he's some kind of carnival act. Hey, did you hear about that weirdo out in the woods who's saying the kingdom's coming and he's saying he's healing people? Let's go check that guy out. What do you got going on this evening? Nothing. All right, let's go see this dude because he is whacked out. He is crazy. And I think we sell the crowds 100% short if we do that. Because when we do that, you know what we do, right? We say, who Jesus is talking to are those people. He's not talking to me. No, Jesus isn't talking to me. He's talking to those kind of people.

16 · The pastor reconstructs the socio-economic reality of Jesus' original audience: sustenance farmers and shepherds for whom every day's work meant survival

But I want you to think about what it would mean in the Greco-Roman world to stop and follow someone around for a week. You were probably a sustenance farmer, or maybe you were a shepherd. As such, your daily sustenance depended on every single day of work. You didn't have a day off. That's actually why the Sabbath is such a huge deal in the Old Testament, is because for God to say you need to pause one day and not work, they're going, whoa, how can I survive if I do that? You don't take a day off. They don't have Costco. They don't have a deep freeze with a quarter cow in it waiting. They don't have a refrigerator refrigerator. If you want to live, you work. And you work every day when the sun comes up until the sun goes down. You don't go follow around a guy out on the countryside for a week and then think that you're going to come home and things are going to be like they were when you left. And so for someone to leave that and start following Jesus around, they're saying in that action, There's something about this guy that I want. There's something here that I have never seen before, and it's just not entertainment. This might completely change my life because I'm willing to take the risk of following him around. There was a cost involved.

17 · Theological application of the exegesis: Jesus is addressing the first row—the committed, not the Pharisees or the scoffers

And so when Jesus turns And he looks at the crowd. He's not standing up on his tippy toes looking at the Pharisees kind of spying in on what he's doing. He's not looking up on his tippy toes looking at kind of the rabble in the background, right? The people snickering. He turns around and he looks at the first row. And he says, do you have any idea what you're doing? You want to follow me, but do you know what that means? So he's talking to us. He's talking to those who have left their life to come listen to Jesus. So we can't hold this text out at arm's length and say he's just talking to the people who come to church once or twice a year. He's just talking to the people who are off getting drunk on the weekends and off partying. Call themselves Christians. No, he's talking to us. He's talking to the crowds following him around. And in our day and age, that's the church when we gather. We're the crowd following Jesus around saying, you've got something to say, and I think there's something there.

18 · The pastor addresses the second evasion strategy: reducing 'hate' to 'make Jesus first on your priority list

I think the second way that we can keep this passage at arm's length is to immediately look at that word hate and say, well, what Jesus really means is that we just need to make Him first. Everything else second, Jesus first. Which actually might be what he's saying. But we can't say that too quickly. Because here, here's my problem with simply saying, "Well, he just means Jesus is second." You know, you've got all these priorities in your life, 1 through 75. Jesus is first, family second, job third. Reputation for such and such and such. It goes on. But that's not how hyperbole works, right? You know what hyperbole is, right? It's an exaggerated statement not to be taken literally, but to have an exaggerated heightened effect. So he's using hyperbole, yes. I don't think he's saying hate your family. You know, if He said, "Hate your family," He would be contradicting a million other passages of Scripture. You see what I did there? Hyperbole, right? Not really a million other passages, but you guys knew what I meant. There are a lot of Scriptures that say, "Honor your mother and father. Love your spouse." So He's not saying that. So what then is He saying? While hyperbole is not to be taken literally, it does have a literary function. It emphasizes, it heightens, it doesn't equate.

19 · Analogy explaining hyperbole: the phrase 'raining cats and dogs' is not used for ordinary rain but for an extreme situation—the intensity of the statement matches the intensity of the reality

You don't say, "It's raining cats and dogs," because it's raining. You say, "It's raining cats and dogs," when the raindrops on your roof sound like at any point a 40-pound animal is about to fly through the ceiling and land on your living room floor. That's when you say it's raining cats and dogs.

20 · Theological reasoning: if 'hate' simply meant 'second place' in an ordinal ranking (first, second, third), Jesus would be guilty of misleading language

So he wouldn't say, "Hate your family," if it simply meant, "Make everything else second place, but make Jesus first place." It's not just poor command of language to use hyperbole when it's unwarranted. It's actually misleading and a bit annoying. You know, like the guy who describes his fish as the size of a watermelon. If Jesus equates hating with second place, he's not a trustworthy communicator. Unless, unless what we mean by second place is less like getting second place at the Olympics, you know, first place, second place, third place. Right? In less, it's less like that and more like looking at a group of marbles.

21 · Physical object lesson with marbles and a bowling ball

I have some marbles here. Get them out of my pocket. So these are marbles, right? Isaac went to Moon Marble this year with his class. Loved it. Came home. We were playing marbles for the next couple weeks. Then I think they kind of forgot about it. But it was kind of fun. You know how marbles works, right? You, you have some kind of boundary and you put all the little marbles out and then you have your shooter marble. And the shooter marble you use to try and knock the other little marbles out of the circle. Well, the shooter marble is always a tad bit larger than the other marbles. So here we have our regular marble, right? And then we have our shooter marble. That's a little bit like the Olympics first and second, right? Your marble and your shooter marble. The only way that Jesus means second place here, and we're being true to his use of the word hate in hyperbole, is if Jesus's shooter marble isn't this. Jesus's shooter marble is this. Jesus, first place, second place. Not, first place, second place.

22 · The pastor identifies a third evasion strategy: 'shooting high'—interpreting the passage as only about hypothetical martyrdom

So those are two ways that we can hold it out at arm's length. But I think there's another way that we can hold this passage at arm's length, and it's actually by what I'm gonna say is shooting high. What I mean by that is, I think it's easy to hear this passage and think what Jesus is asking you is, are you willing to die for him? Which he is here, right? He is asking, are you willing, in his context, Luke's original audience, they had to be willing to die. That, that was a possibility. It's not really for us as much. But here's what happens if I simply preach this message and I told you a whole bunch of inspiring missionary stories and martyr stories and how in the first century this guy did this. That would be inspiring. But you know what that would do? It wouldn't come in here. The reason it wouldn't come in here is you say, well, yeah, I'll deal with this passage when someone comes in the back door and is holding a gun to my head and saying, do you believe in Jesus?

23 · Theological claim: Jesus is not asking about a one-off martyrdom scenario but about daily cross-bearing and daily renunciation of competing loyalties

But I don't think that's what Jesus means here. Jesus doesn't mean to be willing to bear your cross simply means in that one-off occasion. Let's use a hypothetical situation. If this happens, would you be willing? And then we walk out here just thinking, would I be willing to do that? I don't know. I think what Jesus is asking of us is far more intense than that. He's saying every single day, are you hating your family? Are you hating your own life? Are you picking up your cross and following me?

24 · The pastor articulates his controlling theological vision for the sermon: the kingdom does not demand 'otherness' (becoming a missionary) but 'unordinary ordinariness'—infecting every ordinary area of life (family, job, finances) with kingdom values

If we were to say that what Jesus means by hate is that we've all just got to run off and be missionaries, I think we miss the point. And for some of us, that might be what it is. I don't want to sell that short at all. But here's, here's what I want to say. The real goal of the kingdom is not complete otherness. But in unordinary ordinariness. In an unordinary way of going about the ordinary things in our life. It's a way of making this kingdom up here infect everything down here. I look at my family completely different because of this kingdom. I look at my job completely different because of this kingdom. I look at my paycheck completely different because of this kingdom.

25 · Exposition of 'hate your family' by unpacking the Greco-Roman family structure: family was not merely affection but loyalty, security, identity, and destiny

So let's look then and ask, what does it mean to hate our family? Verse 26: 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. In the Greco-Roman world, your family unit was not simply a matter of affection, but of devotion. Your family, more than just those people you love more than the other people, it was the people you were loyal to. It was the people you dared not betray. If your father said, this is our trade and this is going to be your trade, you said okay. If your father said, we live here, so you're going to live here, you said okay. Your family, in addition to being your sense of loyalty, was your sense of security. You didn't have a Roth IRA because your family was your retirement fund. Just as you cared for your parents, your children would care for you. If your family gets attacked by another clan, your extended family comes to your defense. Your family here is not just, hey, you love mom and dad, right? You have this feeling for them.

26 · Interpretive move: 'hate your family' is metaphorical

When he says hate, he's not saying hate in the sense of, you know, you should despise them. I think what he's doing, he's using a metaphor. And he's taking the family unit, which in that world was your loyalty. It was the driving mechanism in your life. You did what you did because your family did what they did. And you dared not betray them. And so when he says hate your family, I think what he's saying betray all other loyalties. Turn your back on every other form of security that you're trusting in.

27 · Application: the pastor names specific competing loyalties that may function like 'family' in the listener's life—self-worth tied to children's behavior, career, or reputation

Maybe for some of you, that is your family. Your sense of self-worth as a parent is the behavior of your children. That's your security blanket. That's how you go to bed at night feeling good about yourself. Or maybe it's your career. Or maybe it's your reputation.

28 · Exposition of 'hate your own life': if 'family' represents external loyalties and securities, 'your own life' represents internal ones—impulses, desires, ambitions, comforts, dreams, fears

And then he goes on and tacks on to that, and even his own life. You must despise yourself. You must have this weird narcissistic— not narcissistic, opposite of narcissistic, I'm blanking— hatred of yourself. No, that's not what he's saying. If family represents those things outside of us that make demands upon us and shelter us, then our own life is those things within us that do the same. Your inward impulses and urges that demand your obedience. I want this. Keep me from that. Your life is your necessities, your comforts, your desires, your ambitions, dreams, fears, and your loves. And these then are what Christ says, bring all these to me with an open hand. All of those I want, I need, I must have. He says, make those a marble. They aren't untouchable, and they aren't the main thing for Christ's disciples.

29 · Theological claim about the result of making Christ the bowling ball: the questions you ask shift

When we make Christ the center and ultimate value in our life, we begin to ask different kinds of questions. Rather than asking, how might this affect me if I do it? I ask, "How could I love my neighbor in this situation?" Or when I get a bonus at work, rather than asking, "How do I want to use this?" I ask, "Lord, how could I best honor you and represent your kingdom with this?" I think the shift in mind of the true disciple is radical. Your ambition your loyalty is no longer to you. It's no longer to ourselves. It's to Him and His kingdom. We're driven by these values, not these values.

30 · Direct application: the pastor asks the congregation to identify their actual driving loyalties—what shapes their decisions, attitudes, and responses

So let's get particular. What What are your values? What's shaping who you are? What shapes what you're gonna do this afternoon? What shapes what you're gonna do this next week? The decisions you make as families, the decisions you make as individuals. What are the driving loyalties that shape those decisions, your attitudes, and how you respond to a situation? What are your securities? What is the sun, that enormous, hot, compelling center that all the other planets in your life revolve around and are held in their proper place by? Entertainment? Possessions? Reputation? Respect? Physical pleasure? Comfort? Fear of failure, fear of exposure, experiences, travel, ease, security, control, power, the need to feel wanted. We're pretty creative, we can think of lots of them, right?

31 · The pastor provides diagnostic questions to help the congregation identify their actual loyalties: What makes you passionate? What makes you upset? What do you worry about? What do you pray for? These are all indicators of what functions as the bowling ball in your life

What makes you tick? What do you get really passionate about? What do you get really upset about? What do you tend to worry about? Where or in what do you look for comfort? What would make you feel rich? What do you love to talk about? To what does your mind instinctively drift? This is a really convicting one. What do you pray for? How do you cope with disappointment? What would make you happy? Those are all indicators of where our loyalties lie.

32 · Personal illustration of the pastor's own examination of his loyalties: his children's annual Father's Day video

Every year on Father's Day, Katie does this thing where she videotapes the kids individually and asks them questions about me. It's kind of her gift to me on Father's Day is I get to see the kids answer questions about Dad. Some of them, you know, "What's Dad's favorite food?" "What does Dad like to do?" "What do you like to play with Dad?" These types of things. And invariably, the question comes, "What does Dad love?" And some of you are gonna say I'm being hard on myself, but I don't think so. When they answer, "The Royals," or, "Coffee," or for you, fill in the blank, "Movies, camping, traveling," if they look at my life and the answer to the question, "What does Daddy love?" are those things, I think I've blown it. I think I've completely blown it.

33 · Theological synthesis: 'hate' does not mean mere renunciation (saying no) but comparative delight—Christ is so wonderful that all other things become marbles by comparison

In the kingdom, there is one priority. And to all these other jockeying loyalties, trying to position themselves in our lives, Jesus says, "Hate them." If you wanna be my disciple, what characterizes people who follow me? Is they have me and then everything else is over here. So what then does it mean to hate our own preferences and ambitions? It means we believe that Christ is more wonderful and beautiful and satisfying. He's telling us to do something here that sounds negative, right? But simply saying— and Skip actually said this this morning during worship— simply saying no, simply passing up on things isn't what Jesus is after here. He's saying, I want your preference for me to so far outweigh your preference for any other thing. That they become like marbles to that bowling ball in your life.

34 · Analogy extending the marble metaphor: knocking 15 marbles out of a circle with another marble takes 45 minutes of effort

Imagine playing that game of marbles. You have a boundary about this big with 15 marbles in it. You know, when Isaac and I play, it's harder than it looks. We'll sit there for 45 minutes trying to flick all those marbles out of that circle. If I took that bowling ball and I dropped it down It's not going to take long.

35 · Exposition of 'bear your cross' (v

And then in verse 27, he continues on. It's not enough to hate our families and our lives. We must be willing to bear our own cross and come after him, follow behind him. In the Roman Empire, the cross was reserved Specifically for political criminals. If you were a murderer or a thief, you weren't crucified. If you committed treason, then you were crucified. If you don't submit to Rome's authority, if you don't bow the knee to Caesar, then you're crucified. So what's the cross? The cross are all the penalties and repercussions and consequences that we pay when we look at all these loyalties in our life and say, "I'm not serving you anymore."

36 · Concrete application of cross-bearing: the loyalty is reputation

And those crosses can vary in degree, they can vary in substance and in style. Maybe your loyalty is your reputation. And someone at work has been talking about you. And you know they've been talking about you because actually you walked up behind them at the water cooler and they didn't realize you were there. And they were saying, "Can you believe Darryl?" I guess that means it's Michael if it's Darryl. In your heart because your reputation is what you find peace and hope and security in. And you get hard and you tense up. You say, "Ugh, I hate him." What Christ asks us to do here is say, "Don't be loyal to your reputation. Your reputation doesn't matter anymore in the kingdom." Stop serving this sense, this need that I need to feel good about myself. So rather than harboring bitterness, if you were to turn your back on that loyalty, you'd say, I'm not going to. I'm not gonna strive to make things right. I'm going to love.

37 · Theological claim: cross-bearing is hard precisely because our old loyalties ('bitterness, entertainment, fear of man') demand service

And that sounds pretty, right? But every single one of us know that's really, really hard. It's really hard in all of our relationships. It's hard in our marriages. It's hard with our kids. It doesn't feel easy when we're loving the way that Christ asks us to love because we have other loyalties that are saying, "Hey, you should be serving me over here right now." And so when we stop serving them, there are penalties. When we don't pinch the incense to Caesar, you get put up on the cross. When you don't pinch the incense to bitterness or entertainment or your fear of man, there's going to be a cost. And unless we're willing to bear that cost, Jesus says we cannot be His disciples.

38 · Exposition of the apostolic pattern of rejoicing in suffering (Acts 3-4): the disciples' response to being whipped was celebration because their deepest desire was to become like Christ, even in his suffering

There's this crazy pattern in the Bible. We see it in Acts and we see it all over Paul's letters. True disciples long to become like Christ even in his death. I mean, do you remember in Acts, it's around chapter 3 or 4, I think, the first time the disciples got put in prison and were whipped? And do you remember what they went and did? They went and they rejoiced. I mean, how weird is that? It is weird. It's not how we think. We get put in prison and we get whipped and we say, "Hey, pray for me, I'm getting whipped! Please tell them to stop, it hurts!" And they go away happy? They're singing songs, skipping down their street to their house. We got whipped for Jesus, we got whipped for Jesus. That's so not normal. But it's what disciples do. Because more than anything else in life, more than their back, more than the nerve endings on their back that are torn to shreds by a cat of nine tails, What they want is to become like their Savior. And that desire, that ambition is the controlling desire and the controlling ambition in everything they do.

39 · Exposition of verse 33, the summary and hinge verse: 'renounce' in Greek means 'bid farewell to

So what do we do with this? Verse 33. Serves as both a summary, I think, and a call to action. "So therefore, any of you who do not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple." The word renounce here is a really interesting word in the Greek. It actually means to bid farewell to. So if you're leaving for a long journey, you're going to bid farewell to your family, you're going to bid farewell to your friends, you're going to say goodbye. I love that imagery.

40 · Direct application using the 'bid farewell' imagery: the congregation is called to say goodbye to the loyalties and desires occupying their hearts

I think what this passage would have us do this morning is to say goodbye. To bid farewell to those things and desires that occupy our hearts, our loyalties that we bow down to and that we serve and that we pinch incense to. He says, say goodbye to them. I think there are many of us, myself included, that have loyalties sitting in the passenger seat or maybe on our laps in the driver's seat when they ought to be in the rearview mirror and our hand should be out the window saying bye.

41 · The pastor connects the sermon's call to 'bid farewell' with baptism's symbolism: going down into the water is saying goodbye to old loves, desires, ambitions, dreams, hopes, and securities—dying to the old and rising to the new

And we're gonna— I didn't think about this until this morning when Seth was talking about baptism. That's what baptism is. So did you know that the symbolism of baptism, when you put someone down into water, you're saying this is symbolizing like going to the grave. You're going down and you're dying and you're coming up out of the grave now as a completely new person. You're saying goodbye to your old loves, your old desires, your old ambitions, your old dreams, your old hopes, your old securities, and you're rising again to brand new ones. And that's what we're going to celebrate when we celebrate baptism. And it's what Jesus calls us to here.

42 · The pastor closes the exposition by returning to the opening theme: stop and sit down

So this passage leaves us with a picture of a true disciple. Christ is his or her single-minded passion. So let's end where we started. Stop. Sit down and think about that. Maybe you stop and sit down and think about that This week, maybe that's the best way for you to apply what we've said today is, like, don't just leave this morning and think, well, I heard that message and now I'm gonna go on and forget about it. Don't even remember anything I said, just remember Luke 14:25-35 and pick it up with your spouse or with a friend and sit down and say, let's talk about where we're going. Let's talk about what we're building. Building. Let's talk about what we value, because we want to be true disciples.

43 · Theological reframing: the goal is not merely displacing marbles (negative renunciation) but loving the bowling ball (positive devotion)

There's a place in our lives for our desires and hopes and ambitions, but Jesus wants them to be marble size and held in orbit around him. If I throw this marble off that bowling ball, that bowling ball is not going anywhere. But who knows where this is going and will end up. But I don't want to leave the impression in closing that displacing marbles is the goal. The goal is loving the bowling ball and seeing the bowling ball for what it really is. The goal is coming to realize that being wholly devoted to Christ is the very best investment you could ever make.

44 · Exposition of the salt warning (vv

The chapter concludes with a final warning about salt, and here's his point: This is how we'll conclude. I'm gonna borrow something Faris actually said a couple weeks ago, the missionary pastor from Pakistan who was with us. He said, "We don't advertise. People don't know about us because we have advertisements or we have signs. The believers' lives." are the advertisement. If we are committed to the same exact things as everybody else, we become insipid, without flavor. You can't even tell there's salt there. And we, in effect, concede that this kingdom is better than this kingdom. And Jesus wants followers who know and have experienced and have delighted in and who courageously say with their whole life, He is better.

45 · Closing prayer asking God to be the congregation's chief love, loyalty, delight, desire, and ambition—to dominate their lives not out of duty but out of longing for the joy, confidence, security, and peace found only in him

Let's pray. Father, you know that my heart is so prone to wander, but I ask for us this morning that you would be our chief love, our chief loyalty, our chief delight, our chief desire, our chief ambition. Father, I pray that for us this morning that we would take that bowling ball that is you and smash it down in our little game of marbles, and that our life would be dominated by your presence. Not out of a sense of duty, Father, but out of a sense of longing for that life that you have promised to those who truly know you. There's a joy to be had. There's a confidence to be had. There's a security to be had. There's peace to be had, and we're not gonna find it in marbles. We're gonna find it in you. And so I ask this morning that you would absolutely invade our lives and become our one priority. Not one of many, but the priority. And I pray that if there's anybody in this room who does not know you and has been thinking about for some time about wanting to follow you, I pray for the courage for them this morning or this week or next week to consider what it means to your to be your disciple, and that your Spirit would so invade their heart that they would say, "Yes, I want that. I want to leave all this and I want that." May that be the salt that we sprinkle in our world, that you, without a doubt, are better and more valuable than any other thing. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.