Hi, I'm Jonathan Pennington and this is the Human Flourishing Podcast. This podcast is a repository of a wide variety of sermons, lectures, interviews, and other resources that I've recorded over the years. Today's episode is a sermon I preached at Sojourn East in Louisville, Kentucky. Our scripture this morning comes from Luke 14, 25, 335, so if you're able, would you please stand for the reading of God's Word? Large crowds were traveling with Jesus and turning to them he said, if anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes even their own life, such a person cannot be my disciple. And whoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. Suppose one of you wants to build a tower, won't you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it? For if you lay the foundation and are not able to finish it everyone who sees it will ridicule you, saying this person began to build and wasn't able to finish. Or suppose a king is about to go to war against another king, won't he first sit down and consider whether he is able with 10,000 men to oppose the one coming against him with 20,000? If he is not able he will send a delegation while the other is still a long way off and will ask for terms of peace. In the same way those of you who do not give up everything you have cannot be my disciples. Salt is good but if it loses its saltiness how can it be made salty again? It is fit neither for the soil nor for the manure pile. It is thrown out. Whoever has ears to hear let them hear. This is the word of the Lord. Thank you. You can be seated. Morning folks. If I have met you my name is Jonathan one of the teaching pastors here and I am so glad you are here. And if you are a visitor we especially just want to say how thankful we are you are with us today. I don't know if you have ever wondered like I have but what are flight attendants feeling? When they are standing up there describing for us how to click and unclick a seat belt and putting on the yellow invest and saying that if you need to inflate it you can. How are they feeling when they are doing that and none of us are paying attention? I mean it is really quite an absurd situation. There they are doing these FAA required things that could literally save our lives. And we are generally just ignoring them. And myself included. It is a very common thing. Now on many planes today thankfully there are screens and so they don't have to go through that sort of moment of being completely ignored but I think we still find ourselves in the same situation. There you are and we are annoyed because it is interrupting my pre-flight watching of the Barbie movie or an old curb your enthusiasm episode. And coming on with these instructions that could save my life and I only just feel annoyed that this is interrupting what I want to do. Well this is something I was thinking about. Again just on Monday I was flying home from somewhere and found myself ignoring the flight attendants instructions and was aware of it. You know when I was younger I think out of my people pleasing I would try to make eye contact and pay attention but now I am jaded and I don't pay attention. There is like the other people on there. It struck me because once the flight attendant was finished I looked at the laminated card sitting in front of me in the seat pocket and I read the numbers 737. And then I thought and I remembered flight 1282 I believe it was right of the Alaska Airlines flight that you probably saw just within a month or so. A different plane but a 737 that was flying and taking off and all of a sudden what would have been what was formerly an emergency door blew open because this huge whole absolute chaos the cockpit door flew open the oxygen mask come down. Thankfully no one died pretty miraculously no one was sitting right in that seat but it was absolute chaos and fear. And what I thought of was that in that moment for them and it would be true for us as well all of a sudden those instructions that we've all ignored were really relevant. Those things that we would be very easily and we do just sort of ignore we paid attention all of a sudden once we face the stark reality of our own mortality or any kind of threat to us. Now all of that was on my mind as I read and study this text for today because here at Sojourniste we have been preaching through Luke often on for a while and if you've been around for a while and here heard her never sermons I'm sure you've heard both faster Kevin and I more than once say something like these are some pretty difficult words today. And it's really struck me in going through Luke how many times a lot of the texts are are things that feel you can feel the pension with them a little bit. I was looking at this text with someone within the last couple days and we read out loud and as soon as it was done her response or honest response was out. And maybe you felt that way too when you heard these words today understand they are pretty challenging and that's okay. You see as Christians we understand that overall and consistently the message of the Bible is one of grace God's gracious invitation to us to find fullness of life both now and in the new creation that's not something that we can earn it's not something that we even initiate it's God's kindness toward us we are it's not for the really good people and it's not for the really good Christians. We are all broken people and the message of the Bible is that God sees us and loves us and invites us by his love to be transformed to become fully who we were meant to be and not but but and at the same time this same gracious message the same gracious God the same gracious Jesus he welcomes us and he also warns us. He also gives us instructions that we actually do need to pay attention to and those are not the opposite of grace and so while it's not a very typical like theological metaphor for Jesus I don't think you could find any if you look to any theology book I don't think you're going to find what I'm about to say but I think it might be helpful this morning to think about Jesus like a flight attendant. And I don't mean that rightly I mean it very seriously in the sense that he is there to serve and he is telling us things that are what we need he's giving us wisdom. So that if and when and it really is a win when we face our mortality or we even just are living our daily lives we actually need to pay attention to his wisdom and because you see the problem is we have the same problem with Jesus. Even if you've been coming to church for a long time or maybe you haven't we have the same problem that we do with flight attend because we don't really feel like we're in any kind of danger especially in the American church because we don't feel like we're in any danger we often ignore his wisdom and his service to us and maybe we're just uncomfortable even with it and we just block it out. But this morning I think even in these very strong words I think God has something for us. I think God has a word for us and so what we're going to do is we're going to look at this text. It's pretty short just 10 or 11 verses ask what does Jesus mean by this and then just ask what would this look like in our lives if we were to listen if we were actually to pay attention to what he has to say. So if you have a Bible you can turn with me use a few Bible in front of you you can put the words on the screen it's great to look in a Bible though and if you don't have one we'll be happy to give you one but we're going to be continuing Luke 14 starting in verse 25 and what we're going to see is five rapid fire very strong metaphors very strong images that Jesus uses to describe discipleship and they're very quick and I just kind of want to walk through them in quick order and then see if there's anything that ties them together. Here's the first one look at verse 25 again it says large crowds were traveling with Jesus and turning to them he said if anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother wife and children brothers and sisters yes even their own life such a person cannot be my disciple. Now it doesn't take very long in this text to feel the intensity to feel the heat of these words here and they also if we're honest I think feel quite confusing. I mean after all if you had to sum up like what's the message of the Bible I think we would all have to say sooner or later than it's love. When Jesus is asked what's the greatest commandment he says it's loving God and then loving your neighbor as yourself. When the apostle Paul lists off what does it look like to be a Christian like what is that the Holy Spirit's work in you look like and what's it tastes and feel like the first fruit of the spirit is love. Paul also says that it doesn't matter how talented you are how many degrees you have how many spiritual gifts you have if you're if your life or my life is not marked by love then it's meaningless. It's all over the place God is pro family God loves relationships he talks about us being loving people so why all of a sudden does he say that we need to hate something even people our own family even our own selves. Well I don't want to in any way like minimize or kind of you know somehow kind of put about your footnote somewhat Jesus saying that would in any way diminish it but I do want to understand something that maybe is a little different in our language than in what Jesus meant in his own day you see because our English word hate that we've translated here. It for us has almost entirely emotional connotations when we say hate we're thinking of the negative emotion of that but there's a phrase the phrase that's used here in both the old and the New Testament in Hebrew and in Greek. It doesn't quite have the connotations of the emotions like we would instead when hate and love are put together like this in the Bible it's more about the comparative worth it's about weighing the value of two things it's when we're facing a deliberate. And we choose to go one way not the other the Bible will often describe that not with things where it's hidden and love with with their words in this phrase to mean like the thing you've chosen is what you perceive as the greatest value and the thing you've chosen not to you perceive as not and they will use their phrase for this that would be love and hate I think a really good example of this is in Genesis 29. The story of Jacob where he has been deceived and he ends up with two wives one whom he wanted and one he not so much did but he has a relationship with them and he he loves them both in some sense right but he definitely loves Rachel more and so what the verse says is he loved Rachel more than he loved Leah but then the next verse says your translations probably say a little differently but what the Hebrew says there and because God saw that Leah was hated. That's our English word for it. The idea was not that he hated her but that he chose he saw Rachel as more valuable than Leah. Now we could debate about whether it was right or not but the point is this is the way the Bible talks to talk about one thing you see as weightier more valuable than another. Friends, this is what Jesus is saying here in Luke 1426 not that you and I become emotionally hateful towards anyone that would go against everything else he says but that the call of Jesus on our lives is such that we need to perceive that he is more weighty and worthy of anything else that might challenge or compete with allegiance to him. Now for most of us here probably that maybe we haven't experienced that our family was opposed to Christianity maybe some of you have many of us have not experienced that but many people throughout the world today and in the past certainly have but whatever it is whether it's your family or any person or any relationship that might compete with the allegiance he's saying you need to weigh these wisely and recognize that whatever that other thing is that might compete with the lesions of me is worth nothing compared to
loving him and that leads to the second image he gives that you see it there in 1427 and he said and whoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. This is an image maybe a little bit more familiar to us it's it's one that Jesus uses a lot and it's of course a Roman symbol of pain and suffering and ultimately execution. And the reason we use crosses so much in Christianity is because this is how Jesus died to forgive our sins is death and his resurrection and it becomes an image even in Jesus's own day like this where he uses it to talk about a life of sacrifice a life of following a life of being willing to die even now again for most of us in the modern west we have not faced actual physical death or even very much suffering for being a good person. So much suffering for being a Christian but again in Jesus's day and for many centuries and all of the world in many places today that is the case but carrying our cross no matter what situation you find yourself in like hating other things is a question of allegiance it's a question of do you see the value of Jesus resurrection life and life with him as more valuable than whatever it might cost you now. And then look at the third image he gives us two parables that are unique to Luke and are kind of interesting the first one and one's about a tower and one's about a king going to war look at verse 28 he says suppose one of you wants to build a tower won't you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it for if you lay the foundation and not able to finish it everyone who sees it will ridicule you saying this person began to build. And wasn't able to finish. Our family for about a decade spent a lot of our summers in Orlando teaching for cancer say for Christ it was wonderful and we stayed all those times up in kind of northeast of Orlando a place called Altonon Springs and going way back I remember seeing there's this beautiful office building very modern office building right on I for there that was all great it looks amazing except for if you got a little closer. You can tell it wasn't finished it was just pillars and bear floors well as the years went on of us going there and the years went on and on it turns out the thing never got finished it was actually a guy who owned a religious television independent television station and he set off to do this thing it's called the majestic building as 18 stories very beautiful and it was supposed to open in 2003 originally and then it was 2004 then it was 2007 then it was 2010 then it was 2018 and they've kind of redone it I don't know if it's done now I was down there last year and I think maybe it might be finally done but the point is this thing became known it had a name it's called if they happen to know any Orlando people here the I saw an eye for is a great you can even buy socks when you're down there that has a picture of it on it I mean it's it's there's like memes all over and if you live in Orlando it's like everybody knows what this is it is the guy was and the building became a laughing stock he set out to do something and didn't finish it now lest I be the one to cast stones if you come to the pennington house and go into my backyard you will see that there's a fence that is about three fourths wooden and then a quarter of chain link that I never finished and I and there are all kinds of reasons I could give why you know I'm busy my auger broke my wife at a brain tumor but friends it's been five years there's there's no there's no excuse I deserve some some justified shame for never finishing that fence but we all do this right we all have things that we get energetic and excited about and then have trouble finishing what use is doing in this parable he is saying something that is completely natural could be understanding we do this there's no really question like about whether this was a good thing for this person to do this or not but what does it mean well go into the next one you can see that he can he does the same thing here about a king going to war look at verse 31 or suppose a king is about to go to war against another king won't he first sit down and consider whether he's able with 10,000 men to oppose the one coming against him with 20,000 if he's not able he will send a delegation while the other is still a long way off and will ask for terms of peace in the same way those who do not give up everything you have cannot be my disciples so once again another parable and you see that it functions the same way I mean we can maybe a little bit more relate to building something most of us can't relate to be a king going out to war and with analogies and parables you always have to be wise that it's you know not every part of it applies he's not saying like before you become a Christian you have to make sure you have enough resources enough money to do it or that you have enough will power something he's not saying that halfway through following me might have to make a deal with the devil and that those are not the point of the analogy the point of both of those parables is to say to follow Jesus is not like a casual kind of secondary or tertiary part of our lives to follow Jesus is not this this kind of small thing it's a call to pay attention and to not just let energetic excitement drive our words and drive our things we say we're going to do and then fail to follow through and that leads to the fifth and final and probably honestly the most confusing of these images and I will try my best explain it to you but after the first service cable bill still weren't clear and I'll take that on me so I'll try my best explain it to you but this is a hard image to understand it it's found there in verse 34 Jesus says then his fifth image salt is good but if it loses its saltiness how can it be made salty again it is fit neither for the soil nor for the manure pile it is thrown out what does that mean well this is an image that Jesus uses in the sermon amount as well it's one that rabbis the lots of the philosophers of people use salt is a very important part of all societies more than you realize from a modern perspective this is a particularly confusing image because when we think of it we think of like like chemically as NACL and you think well salt can't like cease to be salt I mean maybe it evaporate or maybe it like melts but then once it evaporates it's still still the same chemical composition but their understanding and their image of what salt was their experience of salt was different. There were a number of ways you could collect salt or make you know gather salt but one of the main ones that happens in ancient Israel is in fact at the Dead Sea which you could still go and they have salt production facilities there now but salt was often collected from marshes and it was actually a bunch of different things together a bunch of chemicals besides what we would call salt they were all gathered together and often piled up into big piles and it would be used for various things but over time when it's usually outside piled up with rain or wind and sun a lot of times the NACL part would actually be lost from it and what you'd have left is all these other really non-salt uses things the whole thing would still be called salt but in their minds the idea would be like well it cease is to be used for what we would want to use salt for preservative or taste and it's only used for you know throwing on manure piles I guess. Well if you've been to the Dead Sea most of you probably have not but I hope you can go some time I was just there last summer and I scooped up from the bottom of the Dead Sea if you ever go and it is this salt but that's when I learned like from the tour guide like yeah you can't really use this because it's full of all these other things. I think the image here is and I know it can be still kind of confusing but it's like if we cease to be useless if we cease to be due to do what are the ways of Christ he's saying this is something to pay attention to this is something to be aware of that that is not good. And again the analogy probably breaks down some ways I know it's kind of confusing but I think when you pull all these together here's the question what all these mean when you pull them together because he gives them to him right in a row he just goes from one to another I think here's the point that simply all these images point to Jesus inviting us and calling us with our lives to be all in. Jesus is exhorting us to pay attention to our lives to get so distracted and so pulled in a million directions to pay attention to our lives to live with focus to live attentively and intentionally because you all these illustrations are an invitation they're warning that if we don't live thoughtfully we are heading ourselves into destruction especially in what turns out to be the most important part of who we are. It's so easy to ignore that is not pay attention to it or to be half-hearted about it and just like we can so easily ignore the flight and attendance instructions because we think they don't really apply to us so too we all get caught up in the business of life and good things in our lives and trials as well and it's so easy to just stop paying attention and to kind of live our lives full lives with a lot of joy and sadness but a lot of things and to not pay attention to what's really going on inside our souls. Typically this text and if you like look if you have a little heading above it if you look in a Bible it probably says something like the cost of discipleship or the cost of being a disciple and that's also the name of a very famous book by a famous German theologian pastor Dietrich Bonhoffer maybe heard of him or heard of it and he famously said the cross is laid on every Christian it begins with the call to abandon the attachments of this world when Christ calls a man he bids him come and die. And of course for many people in Jesus' day and throughout and Dietrich Bonhoffer himself this does result the falling of Jesus' results in death and I admire that and I appreciate that but I wouldn't want us to miss here what Jesus is saying here in other words that phrase cost of discipleship I think on a lot of our ears might sound a little bit harsher or might sound more negative than what Jesus is actually saying here. Because what he's saying he's motivating us and he is motivated by our good. He's not motivated just by duty but he is motivated and he's telling us things that are hard to hear because of his love for us. To shift the illustration a little bit I love what one way one scholar describes this is as imagine that we are following this guide and we need to go over this dangerous mountain pass and it's actually a rescue mission like maybe our plane is crashed or something and we need to get over this mountain pass and we're carrying all these things and we get to this point in the the kind of this final stage we have to get through this but he turns to us and says look this is too narrow and too steep all these bags that you're carrying and all these things you're holding on to there's no way you're going to make it through this and to the other side if you're holding on to these things. That's what's happening here. Jesus saying you need to weigh these things you need to think about the cross you need to think about the other things the other relationships that might be weighing you down you might think about the things that make you not salty whatever it is these things are not worth holding on to. Imagine again if you did have to evacuate a plane very quickly for danger you know I hope most of us would not be like digging through a bag to make sure we found our box of Kleenex or even our laptop we would be getting out of there and so to this is the kind of image use is getting you see saying you have to pay attention to your life because there are things that can make us not salty and things that can weigh us down and make us not find life itself. And so friends here's the question then how are we to respond to these instructions. Well as we turn to this kind of final things I want to say today I like us to think about Jesus not just as a flight attendant pilot even but also to think about him as an audiologist that is one who. Analyzes and helps us here and if you think I'm crazy did you read that last verse he says whoever has ears to hear let them hear it is very possible to not hear Jesus correctly but are some miss hearings. Maybe you might hear these verses and just think this doesn't fly to me I'm a Christian or you might have the opposite response and say. This might evoke fear these these kind of words might evoke fear to and you that God might change his mind or you might blow it or some of you might just read this I don't like Jesus that's too much. Friends I think those are all misunderstandings those are miss hearings of his tone and his goal what would be a clear hearing of Jesus here. Well I've suggested that his point is that he's inviting us to be all in and if you're not a Christian today these words are definitely for you for Christians as well but they're definitely for you in that the call is very clear. He's saying you will not find true life the life that you long for the long life that you're made for in any other way in a relationship with the true God through Jesus he alone has the words of life it will cost you everything. Jesus is saying he's not a slimy salesman with a bait and switch thing here we're saying hey it's all good and then afterwards he's going to be like hey it turns out something else he's saying on the front end I'm saying on the front end this will cost you everything. But it turns out it will cost you nothing it will be leaving behind things that don't matter to find life itself and so for sure that message is very clear that he's inviting all people to realize that his call is costly and more beautiful than you can imagine. But what if you're already a Christian maybe for eight days or eight decades what is this call for Jesus inviting us to be all in what does this mean for us. Well are there spheres or realms in your life right now that where God is maybe inviting you to pay more attention to live more intentionally to be all in. If you think about your life and your soul is like a mansion like a house with many rooms are there aspects or wings or rooms that you've kind of boarded up or put drapes over because you don't want to pay attention to them they're too painful or too scary. Jesus inviting us the call of discipleship is a constant openness to be all in is it money for you your relationship with money is it some relationship with a boss or a coworker employee spouse kid friend neighbor is it how you use your words and your tongue as he wanting to invite you into more being all in with him. For some of you it may be that you actually following in the way of Christ may actually cost you something and most of us in America doesn't cost anything like it doesn't many parts of the world that I spoke with a young man. This week who's boss explicitly told him to do something illegal and he said no and he's in a very precarious situation right. Or maybe you might just be tempted to cut corners at your job to get a promotion or make more money but you realize that will be selling your integrity. Maybe being all in with Jesus means sticking in that marriage where you have been hurt so much or you've hurt someone and trying again to learn to love. Maybe if you have kids I don't know if you've seen all this stuff online right now about how much it costs to raise a kid per year I think they're saying like $20,000 for a year yeah six kids you can do the math I don't make that much money. But you know maybe for you it's saying it's okay that I don't have as much money because I'm going to invest my soul in my life into these kids if you have children. Maybe you're in a place like I am right now where over the last couple of weeks I had three completely separate conversations that were not related at all and the content was different. But in every one of those conversations something was revealed to me about myself that was really painful and really embarrassing like a mistake I had made some ways I was showing up. And you know that's that precipice moment where I have to decide am I going to be all in with Jesus or am I going to defend myself just by myself or am I going to be open to say here's another room of my soul or Jesus I want you to bring healing and I want you to bring transformation. Maybe that's where you are today. You know I was thinking this morning that when we live half-heartedly any situation if you show up in any situation half-heartedly there's no life there you know that real life is found when we live all in. And Jesus is saying these various trials and difficulties as James says these are what make us whole and this is what Jesus is inviting you to. You are made for being all in you're made for being fully dedicated and fully alive and he's saying I am the one alone where you can find that life and find it's full.
I was also thinking about this famous parable of Jesus from Luke 8 the parable the Sower if you remember it in Luke 8 he tells this parable about four different soils. And he describes the what this parable means and actually says the same words you as years here let him here and you need to listen carefully listen let me read for you how he describes this parable how he explains it in chapter 8 of Luke he says this is the meaning of the parable. Did he just told the seed is the word of God though those along the path are the ones who hear and the devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts they may not believe and be saved. Those on the rocky ground are the ones who receive the word with joy when they hear it but they have no root they believe for a while but in the time of testing they fall away. The seed that fell among the thorns stands for those who hear but as they go their way they're choked by life's worries riches and pleasures and they do not mature but the seed on the good soil stands for those with a noble and good heart who hear the word retain it and by persevering produce a crop friends. I think what you just saying here in in Luke 14 is especially the application if you're a Christian today I think he's addressing the second and third soils. And he's guiding us to again pay attention that it is possible to be rocky soil where you have this energy and excitement all is beginning but then once difficulties come and maybe it's somebody's hurt you or maybe God wants to do some deeper work in a part of your life it's easy to fall away but he doesn't want that I don't want that for you. Or maybe probably the most tempting for many of us here if you've been a Christian for a while would be this third soil where you're committed you know all the Christian stuff maybe you get money to church you come to things but over time. Thorns cares of the world good things and bad things creep in and kind of choke out our hearts that's the opposite of being all in. And I don't say these things to scare you to put a burden on you but to recognize that this is Jesus goodness toward us he wants us to find life and we will not find life apart from hearing opening our ears and hearts to listen to this kind of instruction to actually be open to say yes you know there are always parts of my life where I have let my heart become hard where I've let thorns grow in. He's inviting us to once again be all in. And as a pastor and a spiritual leader I'm aware especially in preaching that when you hear a text like this people are going to hear it very differently for some of you this sounds like condemnation this is not condemnation this is an invitation to life for some of you it may we may just feel like well that's you know that's not that's the opposite of God's love or something in every way Jesus is inviting us to listen. inviting us to pay attention because he is the guide and the soul doctor and he is attending to you he is attending to you and inviting you to find life in him alone and that's why these words are here.