The Gospel of Luke: Costly Discipleship

Sermon Notes 3/1/26 Luke 14:25-35 . 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 see it begin to mock him, saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’ Or what king, going out to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and deliberate whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? 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 of no use either for the soil or for the manure pile. It is thrown away. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” This story has a lot in common with the parable before it. As the parable, the story involves a lot of people who are presumptuous and prideful. Jesus tells them that if they are not careful, and if they remain so presumptuous that they will always be accepted, that they might miss the biggest party ever. The story reveals that, while everyone is invited to Jesus's party, we don't necessarily have the right to do whatever we want there. Crowds form around Jesus for a great number of reasons, but disciples are only formed when we believe what Jesus says and believe he deserves our life which he desires. Why does Jesus tell people to hate our mother and father in this passage? Elsewhere, Jesus tells us to love our friends and family. The hatred he speaks of is not a venomous hatred: it is about priority: family should be put at such a distant second to the things of God that the difference could feel like hatred. A disciple of Jesus will live their life based on the words and ways of Jesus regardless of what friends and family say is best. The crowd may follow Jesus up to the point where people are inconvenienced, but true disciples know that when Jesus asks us to do something we must obey even if it literally strips us of everything. Crowds run from discomfort, but true disciples follow Jesus through discomfort. "Pick up your cross and follow me" is an instruction Christians cannot ignore. To get to the resurrected life, Jesus doesn't avoid suffering: he goes through it. And if we are following him, we should follow him through that suffering all the way to death itself. We are instructed to rejoice in our sufferings, as they create character and strengthen us for the life ahead of us. The Bible never promises prosperity in this life, but in fact promises suffering. We are required to carry a cross. A disciple will pick it up and carry it. But we know that Jesus will never abandon us in suffering. Crowds don't count cost; disciples do. Crowds are more interested in spectacle and energy. They never ask what it means to follow Jesus all their days. They tell themselves if it gets too hard, they can always bail out. Disciples realize that following Christ will cost everything up to and including their lives. And they still follow. Crowd's can't bring the change the world needs. Disciples are empowered by God to do just that. We can only be useful if we follow Jesus's instructions. We may stumble and recover, but those that are only half hearted are not useful. Jesus has given an invitation to his house to everyone, but we aren't able to act however we want to act and be allowed to stay there.

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The Gospel of Luke: Costly Discipleship is an episode from City Light Church Sermons by Brian Crawford.

This episode is 46:05 long.

This episode was published on Mar 1, 2026.

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