His Call to Discipleship is Lordship

The passage we're going to look at today is really a very difficult passage to understand, and it's about the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. On the objective side, we understand that God sent His Son into this world to do ministry. He healed. He cast out demons. He proclaimed the kingdom of God. He declared repentance. Those three years were unbelievable ministry of the Holy Spirit on this earth.

And He made our atonement on the cross, didn't He? But it didn't end there. They placed Him in a tomb, and He was resurrected. And then He ascended into heaven to sit at the right hand of God. And the promise is that He's coming back. That He will ultimately set up His kingdom here and now.

That He will be King of Kings and Lord of Lords. That's the objective side of our faith. Those are things that we have to come to understand and agree with and believe and trust. That's the gospel. Paul says, for I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God for salvation from the very beginning to the very end. And so the passage we're looking at today doesn't present—it's interesting—it doesn't present those objective facts about Jesus. It's about Jesus calling people to follow Him and what the demands of that call is all about.

The other night at our transformation group, I told the guys, man, I'm really struggling with this because it's a hard word. And it could literally scare people to death. You know, when just earlier we read about how that person said, Lord, are there only going to be a few saved? And we talked about what all that meant. You know, the more I read the gospel of Luke, I think, I don't know how many are going to be there, really. And Jesus is really summing up here. I'm going to read.

He's really summing up. We started looking from Luke 9 51 where He said, He said, I set my eyes towards Jerusalem. He's going to do all that objective work that saves us. But in the meantime, He's also calling people to be His disciples. And the call discipleship is radical. I'm just going to be up front with you. It's interesting how that word disciple is ultimately translated in the book of Acts as Christian.

The call to be a Christian is radically, extremely different than the call to live in this world. Do you hear what I'm saying? What I'm going to read to you is the subjective side of Him calling us. And that's why I wanted to give this word over over Aidan this morning, is because the call in his life requires discipleship. It's not just living on the mountain. Sometimes it's persevering through the valley. That makes sense?

That makes sense to you? You understand that? Okay. So I want us to look at this this morning. I sent you out an email and said, I'm going to take my time with this. So we're going to get through one point today. And then next Sunday, we've got a very special guy coming to preach.

I've shared with you before, the night that I surrendered to preach, I was in a crusade at Lorenzo. And I was back at the back. I'd just gotten saved a couple of weeks earlier. And Lorenzo was having a crusade. The Assemblies of God, the Baptist, and the Methodist would have a tent revival. And I felt like God was calling me to preach. And I prayed, God, if I'm supposed to preach, you send David Bisstein back here.

And no sooner than I prayed that prayer, that young guy, a couple of years younger than me, who was making an Assembly of God preacher, going to go on make an Assembly of God preacher, tapped me on the shoulder and said, Hearst, I don't know why I'm back here, but the Holy Spirit told me to come back here. I said, I know why you're here. I know why you're here. That's who's going to preach here next week. He has retired from a church that ran about 2,000 in worship in Las Cruces. And he's going to be our speaker. He's coming in for Lorenzo homecoming.

And so I've invited him to preach next Sunday here for us. You're going to enjoy David. He's a good brother in Christ. So I want you to, I'm going to read this passage and then I want to make some comments and then talk about the first point. Okay. If you'll remember the points that I gave you on the demands of discipleship is relationship with families and others must be secondary. That's what we're going to talk about this morning.

The second point, boy, you talk about blow your mind. You know, today our world says discover yourself. I know people my age still trying to discover themselves. And I think, why don't you just do what the Bible says. It says deny yourself. You want to find out who you are? Lose yourself.

Jesus said, and you'll find yourself. Deny yourself. And then the last one that I want us to talk about, the third one is that all to Jesus I surrender, all to him I freely give. That's what we'll be talking about. So look at Luke 14 25 through 35 and we'll work our way through this and then I'll visit with you about this first point. Now great multitudes were going along with him. They're traveling with him. Great multitudes.

And he turned and said to them, you know, in my mind, y'all are laughing at this. In my mind, I see Forrest Gump. Remember how Forrest Gump was walking and he walked and walked and walked all across the USA and everything? And he's walking and then he stops and he turns around and says, I think I'll go home now. You know, I could just see Jesus, you know, he's walking and then he stops and says, I got something to tell you guys. Something that's going to blow your mind. 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 I'm stopping dead in my tracks when I hear that.

Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me, he cannot be my disciple. That's dying, isn't it? That's what that cross means, doesn't it?

It did for Jesus. It was a cruel form of punishment and death in his day. For which of you, when he wants to build a tower, does not first sit down and calculate the cost to see if he has enough to complete it?

Counting the cost. Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who observe it begin to ridicule him, saying this man began to build and was not able to finish. You got to understand that in Jesus' day, this was a shame and honor society. And you didn't start building something unless you could finish it or you'd be ashamed of yourself. And so Jesus is saying, you don't need more shame on your life, you need to make sure that you're going to persevere and finish the race. Or what king, when he sits out to meet another king in battle, will not first sit down and take counsel whether he is strong with 10,000 men to encounter the one coming against him with 20,000. Now, do you think that's going on in Hamas today, in the Middle East?

Not only is Israel and the U.S. mounted up against them, but the Middle East is mounted up against them now. They're sitting down doing some counseling and trying to come to a peace agreement, aren't they? Or else, while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks terms of peace. You know, why have this slaughter of blood and death if we can come to terms in peace? Settle it. So therefore, no one of you, here he goes again, can be my disciple who does not give up all of his own possessions.

Do you hear those demands? That's our side of the coin, isn't it? That's our response. That's not a popular response in America today. The gospel today in America has more critics than it's ever had, and more people that want to stop the advancement of the gospel than it's ever had. You've seen it all over the news, haven't you? It's happening in our nation today.

When we lived in Sudan, Carol Ann, she'll probably concur in laughter about this, there was a newspaper called Sudan Beacon. I do not remember what the back page was called, but there was a lady who was publishing and doing the Sudan Beacon at that time named Mutt. Mutt Hanna? Mutt Hanna. I'm just going to say it was Mutt's Meddlings. That was on the back sheet. She wrote, this is small towns and small town newspapers, she wrote everything about everybody's life going on in Sudan that week.

And Kim and I had moved there from Wilmore to take the church there, and we started getting the Sudan Beacon. And I can remember us reading the back page of that newspaper going, good gosh, I can't believe she wrote that. I thought somebody's going to be mad or embarrassed or, I mean, she wrote things that should not have been public business right there.

Is that not right? She did. I mean, you got where you wanted to walk old eggshells because you were going to get in the Sudan Beacon. You know, the Bible says here in verse 25, now great multitudes were going with him. I asked myself, what's creating this commotion? And here's what I think. Jesus is the truth teacher.

No teacher in Jewish history ever drew the crowds Jesus did. Not even John the Baptist, the greatest of prophets. Jesus speaks the truth. Jesus does the truth. He didn't just only talk it, he walked it. He does the truth. Jesus is the truth, and he unabashedly preached that no one could come to the Father but through him.

Now you got to put yourself in Jewish shoes in his generation. When he said that, that was astounding. It was offensive that the only way you could have a relationship with the Creator God was to have a relationship with him and to go through him. You know, that's what we would call religion based on relationship, not on law. It was based on relationship. Look back at the context of what's just happened. Jesus has just shut up the hypocrisy of the Pharisees by performing a healing on the Sabbath.

Remember how we talked about that last week? In the legalistic mindset of the Pharisees, they saw this healing as an action, a performance of work that should not have occurred on the Sabbath. For Jesus, the author of the Sabbath, he knew the very purpose of the Sabbath was for man. First and foremost, it was to rest from their labors, but when actions of mercy and grace were needed, they were not to sit on their hands. He confronted the Pharisees, you treat your animals better than you treat people. When acts of mercy are needed, you don't sit on your hands, guys. Action was okay, Jesus was saying.

The Pharisees had added law upon law upon law what it meant to keep the Sabbath holy. I've 10 Commandments. 613. Here's an example. If you spit on the ground and it rolled into a spittle ball, you were guilty of violating the Sabbath. Imagine that. You remember when Jesus healed the blind man that had been blind since birth?

What does the Bible say he did? He spat on the ground, and he made clay of the spittle, and he applied it to the eyes of that man, and he told him then, go wash yourself, and he did, and what was the result?

He came back seeing. Now guys, if Jesus had done that process on the Sabbath, he would have been violating the law because he turned dirt into a spittle, and that would have consumed being an action, a work. Matthew 23, 23, Jesus said, woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, you have neglected, I want you to hear this, you had neglected the weightier provisions of the law, justice, mercy, and faithfulness. You see, Jesus knew the intent and purpose of the law to provide justice, to do mercy, to create faithfulness. Luke 11 even adds this, they had neglected, here's the very foundation right here, they had neglected the love of God. They had neglected the love of God. There was no relationship in their religion.

It was all about self-effort, leading to self-righteousness, and ultimately to self-condemnation. Have you seen that process in life, in people's lives, where they just build themselves up, and they think they're better than others, and then all of a sudden their lives just fall apart? That's where works righteousness ends up. That's where trying to make yourself holy ends up. It brings self-condemnation. Now, why did I tell you all this? When the mutt of the Jerusalem Times reported what had happened at the leading Pharisees' house, it unleashed a tidal wave of curiosity.

The conversation there became common knowledge on the streets of Jerusalem. If you go back to the beginning of the Gospel of Luke, where does Luke get this information? Luke opens his Gospel with these words by saying, it seemed fitting for me as well having investigated everything carefully from the beginning. I wonder who he talked to? What article he read? To write it for you in a consecutive order so that you might know the exact truth about the things you have been taught. You hear what that's saying?

Whoever mutt was in Jerusalem got the press out on the streets. Maybe it didn't get put in print. Maybe it was just conversations that took place as they ran out of that dinner from the Pharisees and said, you can't believe what this guy's done. He healed on the Sabbath. And then he challenged the hypocrisy of the Pharisees. Listen to verse 25. Now, a multitude was going with him, and he returned.

A multitude was going with him. You see, what follows are some of the most radical words Jesus ever spoke. This commotion created a multitude, and Jesus spoke then. You know, I'm thinking Jesus is going. I want this crowd to understand what their response must be if they're going to follow me. You know, we fill up great stadiums with crusades, and we hear the gospel preached sometimes, but it's not the full gospel. I kept coming across this statement in numerous articles and commentaries and videos as I did my study on this sermon, and I can't tell you who the originator of this statement is, but it resonated with me, and I want to share it with you.

Jesus is not offering an ultimate makeover. We see that on TV today, the ultimate makeover, don't we? He's not offering an ultimate makeover here. He is declaring a complete takeover. You hear that? You know, I entitled my sermon, His called discipleship is lordship. Lordship is the definitive event and process of saving grace.

I've often said this, if Jesus is not Lord of all, he is not Lord at all. You hear that? My first Greek course that I took in seminary at Asbury, we did three studies that semester on first fruits, on the Holy Spirit, and on the gospel, and we looked at all the Greek language centered around those things, and when we did the study on the gospel, Dr. Lyon made this statement that if we are to present the gospel correctly, the presentation must be that we present him as Lord. Not just Savior, and I've got my ticket. You've heard that kind of gospel preached, ain't you? Just confess, and you'll be saved, and that's true.

You know, I buy that completely, but is that really the gospel? The full understanding of the gospel? Can he be Savior and not Lord? Can he be Lord and not Savior? It's not either or, is it? It's both and. Now, I can remember when Dr.

Lyon presented all this material, and there was a friend of mine, Jack Webb, who grew up in Slayton, and he and I went to Dr. Lyon personally and said, you know, our experience with God is hard to define that way, because we had so many evangelists come through our churches when we were growing up, and we would go to the altar, and cry, and weep, and ask Jesus into our hearts, but then we'd get up, and two days later, we're just like we were before. You know, I finally came to the place in my life where I understood, and the experience verified it, that the night I'm gonna say I got saved after a whirlwind of sinning, and wickedness, and evilness, and I found myself alone in my bedroom, in my apartment, on my knees, after I'd heard God say, boy, if you don't quit this stuff, you're gonna burn in hell. On my knees there, I did more than accepting Christ. I stayed on those knees until he entered that room and embraced me, and when I got up off my knees, he was not just Savior, he was Lord. No matter what the cost, he was Lord. Yeah, I can remember my friends at Tech, you know, I've told you this, putting a pot of money together saying, Hearst, we bet you'll be back in six months, and I said, well, y'all might as well go spend that money because I ain't coming back.

I didn't go back, because I knew him as more than just forgiving my sins and cleansing my guilt. That's one aspect of his objective work, but the purpose of all that is, is that he become Lord in our lives. There is no salvation where he is not Lord. You actually cannot confess him as Lord except by the Spirit of God in your life. It's what the Bible teaches. When the Spirit has invaded you, he's not just your Savior, he is your Lord. Now, does that unfold itself?

There's been many times I had to get back down on my knees and say, okay, you're Savior, and I know you're Lord, but I'm facing this situation. That's the sanctifying grace of God. I want you to be Lord in this situation. I don't want to run it, I don't want to control it, I don't want to be the Lord, I'm not God. I want you to be God in this situation. If you're gonna walk in Christ, write it down this morning, there will be many times you're on your knees in repentance and confession, pursuing the Lordship of Christ. That make sense to you?

If he's not Lord of all, he's not Lord at all. And so as your life unfolds, there'll be those definitive events where the saving grace of God is made more real to you than it's ever been.

Do you hear that? So I said this to talk about the demands of discipleship, and I want to talk about one this morning, and I got seven minutes. Y'all see why I said I couldn't get this all done in one setting? Because these are some of the most important words Jesus ever spoke. He's summarizing all of his teachings coming from 951 forward. He's summarizing it right here, what it's all about for us. Number one point, Jesus must be our first love.

And then he begins to outline these things for what that means. Relationships with family, and I added this, and others because I know it's to be true, must become, write it down, secondary. You guys hear that on the back? Relationships with family and others must become secondary. Verse 26, if anyone comes after me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, and I think you can throw in there your whole pool of friends, acquaintances, he cannot be my disciple. Now, what's Jesus really saying here? Jesus knew exactly what he was saying when he said this.

It just didn't flip off his tongue. It was an intended saying, a directive saying. He was speaking in the tradition of Jewish Hebraism. Hebraism is a Hebrew expression, an idiom, and in this instance, it is referring to preference. Preference. Jesus never told you not to love your parents, did he? Nowhere in the Bible, except here, do you hear that.

So he's not discarding that we're to respect our parents, that we're to love our wives. Paul talks all about that, doesn't he? That husbands, love your wives. Love your children, which involves discipline. Discipline is love. He's not saying, he's not saying here, don't love them. He said, love your neighbor and love your enemies.

That's all right in Scripture, isn't it? It's a given. The fruit of a Christian is love. We are to love unconditionally, without bias, without judgment. We are to love, but there is a preference, an order. They understood exactly what he said, and he knew exactly what he was saying. Let me give you an example.

In Genesis 29, 30 through 31, Rachel, Jacob's second wife, but first, by choice, is love completely by him. But you know the story. Rachel has another sister, Leah, who's older, and Jacob makes a deal with Laban, the neighbor, I'll work for you seven years and you give me Rachel. Well, that scoundrel didn't hold up his end of the bargain. He sends Leah. Jacob marries Leah first, never his choice, the Bible says, and it says that Leah is hated by Jacob. Now, this is a pure example of Hebrew expression of preference.

Jacob did not emotionally nor maliciously hate Leah. He had sex with her. He had children with her. But his first love, and it had always been that way since the first day he saw her, was Rachel. She was the apple of his eye. His devotion to Leah, I'm gonna say, was 50%. His devotion to Rachel was 100%.

Now, do you see what I'm describing there? The terminology love and hate is an expression of preference. Jacob loved Rachel more than he loved Leah. So you could actually say his love for Rachel was so outweighing that it appeared that his love for Leah was hatred. But it really wasn't. It just shows the preference order, and that's Jesus is driving home here. Your love for Jesus is so radically demonstrated that your love in comparison to your family or others would look like hate.

That make sense? You see, when we measure our love for Jesus alongside of our love for others, it could actually be said, well, you hate them because his love is so magnificent and so large. Let me tell you this story, and I'll wrap this one up. I met that lady running the sound system back there at McMurray, and one of my good friends from high school had come to McMurray. They came in a little bit after I'd been at McMurray. They were younger, and Eileen was a good friend of mine, and a good—she was part of our youth group when I was going through high school, and she introduced me to Kim. And so I started spending some time with Kim on campus, and just getting to know her.

And it wasn't within a week or ten days. I remember leaving her dorm one afternoon, and I went back to the boys dorm, and there was a crowd of us together in one room, and I said to this crowd, I'm going to marry her. I found someone that I'm going to yoke to. Our background, our theology, our approach in life, the only big difference was she was really smart, and I was really dumb. I can remember thinking, can I fall in love with somebody that smart? I don't think I'd ever dated anybody as smart as Kim. You know, she was valedictorian of her class, and came to McMurray.

She's going to poke me when I get home, and she made all A's at McMurray, except in PE and statistics. I beat her in statistics. She'll tell you, I cheated, is what she'll tell you. But you know, I remember saying to a group of guys, I'm going to marry her, and one of them said, why you can't marry her? You just, you just might as well forget. Get that. Boy, that was like, that was like telling a dog, sick him.

I was determined. Well, that relationship developed. And I'm not a romantic person. And I asked him one night, by statement, I said, you know, if we keep dating, I'm going to end up asking you to marry me. And she said, I know that. So here's the proposal. Well, really, really romantic.

It's a business. Will you? She said, yeah, I will. I will. And within seconds after that, she said this. Well, let me tell you something. You'll always be number two.

You'll never be number one. Now, wait a second. Let me get my mind wrapped around this. Her commitment to Jesus would always be number one. And I could be number two. You know, I went back to my dorm room that night. You know, believe it or not, guys do muddle over things sometimes and think about things.

And I went back to my dorm room that night. And I thought, I have found a real deal. I have found someone that will love me because she loves Jesus.

Now, that's what Jesus is saying here. When he says about hating these other relationships, that your love for Jesus should be first. And in comparison, your love may look like hate because it's so vastly different. But it's really not hate. You'll be a better lover of your parents and your brothers and sisters. That doesn't mean you'll be able to fix them or the damage they've done in your life. But you will love them in the sense that Jesus loves them.

You understand what I'm saying there? So Jesus said, if you want to be my disciple, this hate-love relationship's going to go on. And you have to count the cost and settle the battle. We'll talk about those parables at another time. You count the cost, you settle the battles, that Jesus is your first love. Jesus said, if you come to me to be my disciple, I've got to be number one. I'm not interested in just saving you from your sins and cleansing your guilt.

I'm interested in taking over. I don't want to just do a makeover in your life. I want to do a complete takeover.

That's the gospel right there. Let's pray. Lord, I thank you that your word is truth. That you are the truth teacher. And Lord, that you did everything necessary to have a relationship. And you also defined and outlined what it would look like and be like to enter into a lordship-discipleship relationship. Lord, I pray for each person here today that you would be king of kings and lord of lords, much more than just Savior, but you would be the Lord in our lives.

In Jesus' name I pray, amen.