Luke 14:25-35 Disciples Have Tang

Luke 14   Disciples Have Tang

25 Now great crowds accompanied him, and he turned and said to them,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.27 Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.28 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?29 Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him,30 saying, 'This man began to build and was not able to finish.'31 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?32 And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace.33 So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.

34 "Salt is good, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored?35 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."

Backing into the passage. Here is where the Lord Jesus is going with it.

Books ends..       Luke 9:23 And he said to all, "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.24 For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.25 For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself?

Luke 14: 25 Now great crowds accompanied him, and he turned and said to them,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.27 Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.

 

Luke 14   Disciples Have Tang

34 "Salt is good, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored?35 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."

Tang!    The Truth that saves must be valuable for life … Unless it sways the life and thought of the man who receives it, it is nothing.  Alfred Deakin, 1905

Wilbur Rees once wrote the following describing the average man's view of God:

"I would like to buy $3 worth of God please, not enough to explode my soul or disturb my sleep, but just enough to equal a cup of warm milk or a snooze in the sunshine. I don't want enough of him to make me love a black man or pick beets with a migrant. I want ecstasy, not transformation; I want the warmth of the womb, not a new birth. I want a pound of the eternal in a paper sack. I would like to buy $3 dollars worth of God please."

 

The call of God for each man and woman is to a changed life. He is bidding us to come to him, to embrace Him – all of Him, and having been with Him to go forth from His presence and be an agent of change in the world.

We change the world by being part of His church, His instrument for global transformation. His church is not a social club, a convenience store, or a spa, it is an army, a family and it is His Body reaching out to the world. We, the church, His body are His only means for global transformation. We are His feet, His hands, His voice, His heart; to care for the lost, the broken, the rejected and the weak.

Perhaps this revelation, that we the church are His only option for reaching the world, is so uncomfortable, that we would prefer the $3 dollars worth of God instead. Three dollars worth may be comfortable, but it is not what we, the church, were made for!

 

Tang!  Come To Him

25 Now great crowds accompanied him, and he turned and said to them,26 "If anyone comes to me

 

Luke 15

He is gracious.. come to Him

He is compassionate  .. come to Him.

He redeems.. come to Him.

 

 

Tang!  Love Him Most

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.

Martin

14:25-27. The setting then changed: large crowds were traveling with Jesus. Jesus intended to impress on the people their need to examine their resolve to follow Him. He was on His way to die on the cross. Ultimately everyone did desert Him when He was alone in the garden and then arrested and put on trial. To emphasize that discipleship is difficult, Jesus said that one must hate his own family and even his own life in order to be His disciple. Literally hating one's family would have been a violation of the Law. Since Jesus on several occasions admonished others to fulfill the Law, He must not have meant here that one should literally hate his family. The stress here is on the priority of love (cf. Matt. 10:37). One's loyalty to Jesus must come before his loyalty to his family or even to life itself. Indeed, those who did follow Jesus against their families desires were probably thought of as hating their families.

 

Tang!  Honour Him

27 Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.

Martin: The second difficult qualification Jesus stressed was that one must carry his (i.e., his own) cross and follow Jesus (Luke 14:27; cf. 9:23). When the Roman Empire crucified a criminal or captive, the victim was often forced to carry his cross part of the way to the crucifixion site. Carrying his cross through the heart of the city was supposed to be a tacit admission that the Roman Empire was correct in the sentence of death imposed on him, an admission that Rome was right and he was wrong. So when Jesus enjoined His followers to carry their crosses and follow Him, He was referring to a public display before others that Jesus was right and that the disciples were following Him even to their deaths.

Andrew Hastie, the Liberal member for Canning, in Western Australia.

His parents have deep Christian beliefs. I once had lunch with his father, a Presbyterian pastor from Ashfield at Macdonalds at Thornleigh. He had grown up in a household without religion. The big change for Hastie's father was attending a Billy Graham event. Young Andrew rebelled against dad's beliefs for a while: 'Around age sixteen to nineteen I was very aggressively challenging a lot of what I was taught. The question for me was: can I still be a good person without God? I had embraced the postmodern view I got at school—that I was a consumer and I could make any choices I liked. Partly I wanted to justify underage drinking and having a good time.' That led me to ask the question, did I accept the basic tenets of Christianity? The next question was: how do I practise Christianity? What implications does it have for my weekends? At his parliamentary office he has The Book of Common Prayer and also The Valley of Vision, a book of classic Puritan prayers and reflections. Hastie's speaks of the fifth gospel which is the way you live your own life. Hastie's Christian beliefs shape his life. You sense he is a fellow you can rely on, whose commitments stick.

The famously tragic situation where SAS captain Hastie called in a helicopter strike on 2 afghan fighters but accidently killed a 6 and 7 year old brothers, wrought terribly on his soul. He later went to meet the boys families to apologise for the terrible mistake.  It takes courage to own your own mistakes and deal transparently.

Of his testimony against Ben Roberts-Smith in the "own goal" defamation case, Mr Hastie said the former and current SAS officers who gave evidence against Mr Roberts-Smith were "some of the hardest and toughest characters I met at SASR." "They've seen a lot of combat. They fight tough, but they fight fair. They are people who are larger-than-life characters.

Transparency, honesty and ownership when he is wrong are characteristics of a person who seeks to honour Christ first, even above his own reputation.

 

Mike Baird made one big political mistake. He tried to outlaw greyhound racing. And then he resigned from office because of illness among close family members and his desire to be there for them. His departure from politics was a big loss for this nation. Although I never knew Baird a close friend does.  It has always seemed to me that he was such a positive, straightforward personality, an almost sunny politician in a profession that grinds many people down to a certain robotic predictability and timidity in their public exchanges. It almost seemed to me that, whatever your politics, if you didn't respond positively to Baird at least a little, you possibly had a problem with human beings in principle. As everyone knows, Baird is a profoundly committed Christian. His dad, Bruce Baird, was a NSW cabinet minister and federal backbencher. Mike's sister, Julia, is a famous broadcaster, columnist and author. Baird's family was a family of faith, but as he tells me in our conversation for this book, the family set the context for his religious belief, but it didn't create his faith. He remembers being sometimes more or less dragged along to youth groups or fellowship gatherings and the like, even dragged along to church for a while. He was initially reluctant to go to such events as Christian camps but got into the swing of it and started listening.

He can pinpoint more or less the exact moment, at age sixteen, that his whole-of-life devotion to Christ began: 'Two good mates and I were in a Bible group. One of our mates, Jeff, said to us: "You blokes just don't understand how much Jesus loves you."'

'At first I thought: what's got into him? I accepted it and put it aside. But I started to think about it later. A few months later, around a camp fire, I came to accept that Jesus had died for my sins. I accepted him publicly and I haven't looked back since.'

Baird and his friends would at times get 200 students along to their functions.

And doubt? 'As humans there is a perennial battle with doubt, but really there was never any doubt for me.'

And prayer? 'Yes, I pray. It's obviously a personal thing. The constant call and reminder of being in communion, from moments of great joy to great trials.'

There is an impertinence to my questions, as I want the politicians I'm interviewing to reveal their most personal beliefs and deepest convictions and the private practices of faith which in the Australian tradition they almost never talk about publicly. So I ask Baird whether in prayer he uses formal prayers known by heart, or spontaneous prayer, or prayer at church when he is attending services: 'It's a combination of all of those. I try to have a time for prayer each day. There are moments when you have no explanation and, in a sense, no hope. The Christian faith gives you hope. It's the thing which has got me through.'

'Your call as a Christian is to live as Christ lived, to live for others, to show humility and charity … Most of my time over the last ten years has been in public life. During that time there has been an erosion of Christian faith in society and even of the acceptance of the Christian faith … There were articles written that I was letting my personal faith influence policy decisions and that was disagreeable. I think it might get harder to be a Christian in politics in Australia.'  Baird was certainly not run out of politics. His decade in politics was a big contribution, and a serious chunk of his life.

 

Tang!  Build For Him

28 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?29 Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him,30 saying, 'This man began to build and was not able to finish.

 

Tang!  Depend On Him

 

Tang!  War For Him

31 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?32 And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace.

 

Tang!  Bravery For Him

 

Tang!  Lose All For Him

33 So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.

 

The former Archbishop of Canterbury, William Temple, told a story about two vandals who wanted to wreak havoc in a famous store. They broke in but didn't steal anything. They simply rearranged the price tags—putting a $50 price tag on a $5,000 item and a $1,000 price tag on a $50 item. In the morning, they watched with delight as shoppers were confused. God has put the highest value on items like faith, faithfulness, character, integrity, sacrifice, servanthood, and eternal life. A thief has come in and rearranged the price tags so that the things God said are worth the most in life are the things on which our society often places little value, and the things that have little value are the things on which our society places the highest value. Someone has rearranged the price tags.

 

There can be no doubt that this possessive clinging to things is one of the most harmful habits in the [christian] life. Because it is so natural, it is rarely recognized for the evil that it is. But its outworkings are tragic. We are often hindered from giving up our treasures to the Lord out of fear for their safety; this is especially true when those treasures are loved relatives and friends. But we need have no such fears.

Our Lord came not to destroy but to save. Everything is safe which we commit to Him, and nothing is really safe which is not so committed. Our gifts and talents should also be turned over to Him. They should be recognized for what they are, God's loan to us, and should never be considered in any sense our own. We have no more right to claim credit for special abilities than for blue eyes or strong muscles."  A.W. Tozer (1897-1963) in The Pursuit of God, excerpt from Chapter Two, "The Blessedness of Possessing Nothing," 11-12.

"O God, I have tasted Thy goodness, and it has both satisfied me and made me thirsty for more. I am painfully conscious of my need for further grace. I am ashamed of my lack of desire. O God, the Triune God, I want to want Thee; I long to be filled with longing; I thirst to be made more thirsty still. Show me Thy glory, I pray Thee, so that I may know Thee indeed. Begin in mercy a new work of love within me. Say to my soul, 'Rise up my love, my fair one, and come away.' Then give me grace to rise and follow Thee up from this misty lowland where I have wandered so long." ― A.W. Tozer