Well, welcome to our continuing
Bible study in the book of Luke, and we're going to be concluding
chapter 14 today, so if you'd join me in your Bibles in Luke
chapter 14, and let's just spend a little bit kind of setting
the context here. And at the beginning of the chapter,
the Pharisee had bid Jesus to come to eat bread at his house
on the Sabbath day. And so we began there. And during that time, he healed
a man that had that edema problem. Then he issued a couple of parables
about those that were bidden to come to feast and how
they always tried to pick the highest, most honorable place
for themselves. He talked to the hostess of when
you have a dinner or a supper, and we went into what those two
words meant, the breakfast and the great feast, the most costly
feast, and invite those that are the lame, and the halt, and
the deaf, and the blind, and invite those. Don't invite just
the ones that can pay you back. And we looked at the allegories
that were linked to that, and Christ came not to call the righteous,
but sinners to repentance. And then we looked at all the
excuses that they came up with, the ones that were bidden to
the great feast. And they just, they didn't want to come was
the main issue. And then they came up with all
these excuses to excuse themselves why they should not have to go.
But the bottom line was they just didn't want to come. They
had no desire to come, no will to come. And he said, For none of those men which were
bidden shall taste of my supper." So that brings us up to today's
segment here, beginning in verse 25 of chapter 14, and we'll read
through the end of the chapter there. And there went a great
multitudes with him, and he turned and said to them." So he's addressed
these various ones. He addressed the host, he addressed
some of the attendees, and he addressed the crowds. If any man come to me,
and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children,
and brethren, and sisters, yea, in his own life also, he cannot
be my disciple. And whosoever doth not bear his
cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple. For which of
you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth
the cost, whether he hath sufficient to finish it? lest, happily,
after he hath laid the foundation, and is not able to finish it,
all that behold it begin to mock him, and saying, Well, that man
began to build, and was not able to finish. Or what king, going
to make war against another king, sits down first, and consulteth
whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him that cometh against
him with twenty thousand? Or else, while the other is yet
a great way off, he sendeth an ambassage and desireth conditions
of peace. So likewise, whosoever he be
of you that forsaketh not all that he hath cannot be my disciple. And then he closes out with,
salt is good. But if the salt have lost its
savor, wherewith shall it be seasoned? It's neither fit for
the land nor yet for the dunghill. But men cast it out, and he that
hath ears to hear, let him hear." So another parable form where,
unless a man is born again, he can't see the kingdom of God.
If you don't have ears to hear, you can't hear it. You can't
see it. You can't understand it. You
can't know it. So it's interesting how he brings up these various
segments. But today, if we could look at the whole thing with
his concluding remarks, and he's talking to all these people that
have been invited. and that refused, and people
that were the inviters, and what their objective was. But this
last piece, he turns to the multitude, and so if we were to think about
it, he's been to this breakfast And all these people know, oh,
he went to that breakfast at that Pharisee's house. I wonder
how that turned out, you know. But we're following him along,
you know, and they thronged him all the time. They were close
about him, but yet not many really had ears to hear. And a lot of
them were just interested in seeing, well, I wonder what trick
he's going to do today. Or I wonder if he's going to
feed 5,000 again, like he did in John. I wonder if he'll raise
somebody from the dead, or make a blind man see, or who knows
what. Interesting thing might happen
today. So they follow along, but not for spiritual reasons,
more from a curiosity, more from just nothing else to do. I guess we'll go see what Jesus
is up to today. So I think it's important to
kind of keep that in focus here as we look at these last verses,
because the great multitude is following Him, and He says, You can't really be my disciples
under your present circumstances. You just can't. And he says,
if any man come to me and hate not his father and mother and
wife and children and brethren and sisters, yea, his own life
also, he cannot be my disciples. Well, you know, that word hate there
is pretty strong. It's not a mild dislike or disappointment. It's a pretty strong word there
about hating. But I think you have to keep
it in context with the Gospel and the results of the Gospel.
And we've learned in other scriptures that in Luke 12, verse 51, he
says, Suppose ye that I've come to give peace on earth, I tell
you, nay, but rather division. For from henceforth there shall
be five and one household divided. three against two, and two against
three, and the father will be divided against the son, and
the son against the father, and the mother against the daughter,
and the daughter against the mother, and the mother-in-law
against her daughter-in-law, and the daughter-in-law against
her mother-in-law. So it kind of brings out this
picture that this gospel is this great divider. And we just don't
see very many instances in our own lives where whole families
are united in the gospel. It's just real rare. It's real
rare for anyone to believe the gospel, and still rarer yet for
an entire household to be believers. And so, in that context, How many of us have tried to
present the Gospel to a parent that's an unbeliever, and he
just told you pretty bluntly that, I don't want that. And
if you keep doing that, I'm going to really be angry with you.
And you just hate that. You just want the best for them,
and you want to share with them, and you want to give them the
good news. And yet, they're like those ones
that were bidden to the feast, and they say, well, you know,
I got new oxen I got to go try out, or I bought some land I
got to go look at. I don't really have time for this. If you want
to go to the feast, go ahead. But excuse me, I don't want to
go. I don't want anything to do with
it. And your heart is just broken. And even of ourselves, after
we've been born again, we're like Paul. wretched man that
I am. Look at all the stuff I did.
Look at how I think. Look at how I even am today,
even after I've been reborn. Yet, I do the things that I don't
want to do, and the things that I want to do, those I don't.
I hate that. Who's going to deliver me from
this body of death? So I think that we can keep this
in that context of that's how that is meant. Not that, well,
I have a mother, I must hate her. Or I have a father, I must
hate her. Or I have a brother, I must hate. But what we hate
is the results of the fall that causes the gospel to be a divider
amongst us. We don't need to go out and declare
war on our families, but we just hate the effects of the fall
and sin. When we look at them, we say, there's a part of you that says,
they're angry, and we'll look at some examples here in John
and other places that bring this out, They're kind of hindering you
from the Gospel. They're hindering you from being
a follower of Christ because they don't want you to be bringing
that home, you know. So, I think we could look over to
you to John chapter 9, if you want to turn in your Bibles there
to John 9. And in this instance, Jesus had healed
a blind man, one of those ones. He says, well, that's who you
should invite to the supper, the blind, and the halt, and
the lame, and the deaf. And so he healed this blind man,
and they really took exception to it. They just didn't say,
well, that was wonderful. That was a good thing. In verse 18 of John, Chapter
9, the Jews did not believe concerning him that he had been blind and
received his sight, until they called the parents of him that
had received his sight, and they asked them, saying, Is this your
son who you say was born blind? How then doth he now see? And his parents answered and
said, Well, we know he's our son, but other than that, we
don't know. because they said the Jews would
cast out whoever was a believer in Jesus. They had made that
public. They had declared that. And we
find that in all through the New Testament and in all the
ones that were scattered throughout Galatia and Pontus and Asia,
and they were scattered because of the persecution of believers.
And when these Jews cast someone out, They were not able to do business
with them anymore. They were not able to socialize
with them. They were just like invisible people to them from
then on. Life would become tough for them.
So it was not a minor issue if you were ostracized by the religious sect
of the Jews. And so these parents, he's my
son, I can't deny that part. The rest of it is, you ask him. And he tells them, well, I don't
know very many things, but I know this. I used to be blind, but
now I'm not. Now I see. And how that happened,
I don't really know. But I know one thing, whereas
I was blind, now I see. And then Jesus comes up to him
later and has a word with him. And we know how that turns out. But his parents just kind of
threw him under the bus. And that's the kind of relationship
that we talk about. He's like, I'm a divider. I came
to divide, and this is usually what happens. It's like the parable
of the sower. You're going to cast out that
seed, and some of it's not going to have any effect, and some
of it's going to bear fruit, and some of it's going to be
eaten by birds and whatnot. Well, sometimes the Gospel's
going to affect whole families, and most of the time it's going
to be a divider, and it's not going to have a happy outcome
in this world. So, a man hate not his father, mother,
wife, and children, brother, and sisters, and also his own
life also can't be my disciples. Well, you know what he told also? He said, you know, anybody that
suffers that in this world, they're going to have a hundredfold more
in the world to come. that anybody that loses these
family members in this life because of the, he says, in Mark, he
says, because they believe in me and because of the gospel, in this world they may suffer
that, but not in the world to come. They'll have hundreds more
family than they had, hundredfold more than they have now. Mark 10. I'll just read that
for you so I don't mess it up. Mark chapter 10 verse 28. Peter,
this kind of segues into our next part about the bearing the
cross part, but Peter began to say unto him, lo we have left
all and followed thee. We've left our family, we've
left our occupation, we've left everything that we're comfortable
with, everything that we know, and yet we followed thee and kind
of frozen up here on this monitor. Anyway, Jesus answered and said,
Verily I say unto you, there is no man, that hath left house,
or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children,
or lands, for my sake, and the Gospels. But he shall receive
a hundredfold, now in this time, houses, and brethren, and sisters,
and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions, and
in the world to come, eternal life." So he says, You know,
in your church family, you'll have 100 moms and sisters and
brothers and in the world to come. So. All right, we're back. OK, so. Likewise, if you don't... Whosoever he be of you that forsake
not all that he hath cannot be my disciple." Luke 14.33 from
our Scripture today. So, you know, the view of the
church is that You just can't look back at that
kind of thing. You just have to look forward and know that
I guess the thing to say is that when you become born again, your
view changes of things. You just don't look at things
the same way as you did. And you look at this as more
of a temporary situation where those that are unregenerate,
they look at this as all there is. This is life. And this is
what I have, and this is all I can hope for. But in Hebrews
chapter 11, in that faith chapter, he says, you know, these all
died in the promise. And they said, you know what?
They came to the realization that we're just pilgrims and
strangers here. This world is not our real home.
We're not of the world. We're just here for a bit. We're
only here because that's what was required in the redemption
of the church for us to be born in this world and have Christ
died for us according to the scriptures. When he did and when
he reveals himself to us, we say, wow, wretched man that I
am that he would die for me. How can that be? What love that,
you know, he said, greater love hath no man than he lay down
his life for his friends. What a testimony on Memorial
Day. So we go from this gospel being
the great divider and the cause of division in families
to, These ones that were just multitudes,
they were just hangers-on-ers, I guess we'll call them. They
were just followers. We ran into them in John chapter
6 where they were following Him along, and there was the 5,000. They didn't have anything to
eat. And Jesus says, well, what have
you got? And the disciple says, we don't
have enough. We don't have. We've just got
this. That's how we look at things
in this world. We don't have anything. We don't
have any power to take care of issues like this. Jesus says,
make them to sit down. And then he broke the bread and
distributed it. And he says, take these and feed
the multitude. And they went out and fed the
multitude. And they had, what, 12 baskets of fragments left
over. And then they followed him someplace
else. And in John chapter 6, he said,
you know, you just followed me for the bread. You didn't follow me because
of the miracle of divine grace. You just followed me because
you wanted the free lunch and the entertainment of it. And in John 6, 26, he said, I say
unto you, I verily, verily, I say unto you, you seek me not. because
you saw the miracles, but because you did eat of the loaves and
were filled." And they said, oh, free lunch. Who doesn't want
a free pass to Golden Corral every day? But they didn't go there because
they saw Him as the Savior. They didn't go there because
they saw Him as the Son of God. They didn't go there because
they saw Him as the Messiah. They just went there for the
free food and the curiosity of it. It just always struck me that
in that chapter in John 6, when he gives them this lecture, and
then he says, You had all that free physical bread. I'm the
bread of life. I'm what you should be partaking
of. And unless a man eat of my flesh
and drink of my blood, he says, you can't be my disciples if
you don't do that. And they said, well, this is
a hard saying. And he says, well, that's why
I said to you that no man can come to me except the Father
which sent me draw him. In John 6, 6, 6, they said, well,
this is a hard saying, and so many of his disciples walked
no more with him. They said, well, we don't get
that. We don't see the spiritual application
of that. We just say, That doesn't make any sense.
From that time, many of his disciples went back and walked no more
with him. That kind of segues us into the
next portion here where he talks about bearing the cross
again, and he says in verse 27, And whosoever doth not bear his
cross and come after me cannot be my disciple." Well, you know,
we covered this pretty extensively in a previous lesson in Luke. So we'll kind of refresh our
memories on that a little bit. But he's talking to these people
that are just kind of following after me. The cross was an emblem
of—it was an execution device. It was a method of killing people. In 4 B.C., which would be in our time, we would
look back and say, well, it's probably about the Korean War
era or in between there and Vietnam. We can kind of remember back
to those times. And that in 4 BC, there were
a bunch of Galileans that revolted against the Roman Empire because
the Roman Empire controlled that region. And that area was a province
of Rome and under the Roman military control. And you can read about
this in Josephus' War of the Jews, if you want to go and read
it in detail. But there was an insurrection
and a revolt in this area of Galilee, and the Roman kind of
in charge, his name was Varus. And he marched against those
Jews of Galilee who had revolted, and he caught a great number
of them, Josephus said, and placed them in custody. And those that
were found the most guilty, he crucified along the road to the
main cities there. And the number of them was about
2,000. So this is only you know, not that many years
before Christ. So the Jews were real familiar
with the cross. And those Romans, they would
chain up those ones that had been condemned to die, and they
would make them tote their method of execution over their shoulder
on their way to where they were going to be executed, and then
they would stop and dig a hole and stick that post in and crucify
them on that. So they bore their cross to the
place where they were going to be killed, and then they were
killed. And so when people saw them bearing that cross, they
knew they were not coming back. Those men were dead men. They
were not coming back. And isn't that what happens to
us when we become believers? We're not going back. We can't
unbelieve what we, we're like that blind man that says, I don't
know how, but I know one thing. When I was blind, now I see,
and I can't undo that. I can't unknow that. When you
see grace, you can't unknow it. And then you see it everywhere.
It just flares up at you from every page of the Bible. It just
hollers out to you. You look for Jesus, and sure
enough, you find him in the scriptures. He says, if you search for me,
You'll find me if you search for me with all your heart and
all your soul. You'll find me. And that's what we find here. He says, you know, he that doesn't
bear his cross can't follow me. You can't. You have to become
dead to the old part to follow Him. And it's not something
you have to physically do, it's just something that occurs because
of the new birth. Because when you have the new
birth, it changes your viewpoint, it changes your outlook, it changes
your heart. Your mind, it changes every bit
of you, and now you don't look at things the way you were. And
you say, I can never go back to those Jews, the parents of
that blind man. We don't want to give up our
Jewish customs and religion and our marketplace and all of our
society. We don't want to give all that
up to be a follower of Jesus. We're not going to. But the blind guy says, well,
I'm there. I don't know how it happened,
but it did. He says, it's a spirit that quickeneth
the flesh, profiteth nothing. All the things that we bring
to the table from the fleshly side profit nothing. So the costs of following Christ
are substantial in many cases. We're just so blessed here because
we don't really suffer any indignities or costs. Well, maybe your neighbor
won't talk to you anymore. The other day, one of the neighbors,
he wanted me to take him to the grocery store. And I said, well,
sure, I'd be happy to. unstable individual, we'll say. But we have some neighbors on
the other side of him that are really religious. And they never
say, hardly anything comes out of their mouth but Lord bless
you and all that. And they're trying to convert
him every time. I quit asking them to take him
into the store because they're just too religious. And he says,
how do you feel? And I says, well, I teach the
Bible class at Sovereign Grace Baptist Church. And he goes,
oh. Can't ask you to take me to the store anymore either.
Anyway, just kind of got off track there, but it's just the way it is in life.
Now my neighbor, he probably doesn't like me anymore. I didn't
sleep all last night. No, I'm just kidding. We just
don't suffer much in America. It's so free here, and we're
free to come here and celebrate the Lord and what he did for
us, and to declare the gospel of his death, burial, and resurrection
with no bad consequences, really. But in the old days, it wasn't
really that way. And there were costs. And he
says, you people out there, they're following me. You're not counting
that cost. You're not looking at that. And
to them, it really didn't mean anything. What's he talking about? I can come and watch him do stuff
if I want to. I can go to church and sit there
and put in my time and then go home like nothing ever happened. There's no cost. So I'm sure
you can see the picture in that. I wanted to bring out a few verses
from our previous lesson here that I brought back in Luke Chapter
9 regarding when he said, take up your cross back then. Paul wrote in Romans 6, Verse 1, he says, what shall
we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?
God forbid. How shall we that are dead to
sin live any longer? And remember that cross was a method of execution, a way to
cause deadness. Know ye not that so many of us
as were baptized unto Jesus Christ were baptized unto his death?
Therefore, we are buried with him by baptism into death, immersion
into death. Like as Christ was raised up
from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should
walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted together
in the likeness of his death, we shall also be in the likeness
of his resurrection, knowing this, that our old man is crucified
with him. that the body of sin might be
destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin, for he
that is dead is freed from sin." We're not free from being engaged
in it, but we're free from the penalty of it because our old
man has been crucified with Christ, and that penalty has been paid.
So, now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also
live with Him, knowing that Christ, being raised from the dead, dieth
no more, death hath no more dominion over Him. For in that He died,
He died unto sin once, but in that He liveth, He liveth unto
God. Likewise reckon ye also, yourselves to be dead indeed
unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord."
So he wrote about this relationship with that cross, with that crucifixion
pictured of our death to sin there. And to the Galatians,
he wrote, I'm crucified with Christ. Nevertheless, I live. I wasn't really physically crucified,
but spiritually, that is imputed to me. His righteousness in Him
dying on the cross is imputed to me. He says, nevertheless,
I live. Yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. And the life which
I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God.
Not mine. But by the faith of Christ being
the great faithful one in supplying my needs and finishing that work.
He said, I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me. and gave himself for me." And
he says, I don't frustrate the grace of God if righteousness
comes by the law, then Christ died in vain. He said, if we
can just keep the law, if we're within our power to do that,
and we had the ability, then there's no need for him to die,
but we don't. So that is a wrong assumption to make. Galatians
5, 22, he says, The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace,
long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance,
against such serious, no law. All those things are fruits of
the Spirit. All those things are attributes
of Christ that He fulfilled, and they that are Christ's, have
crucified the flesh with the affections and lust, lest any
man should boast." They would crucify the flesh, and that doesn't
mean that And I think this is a very important distinction
to make that we haven't crucified in the flesh all of our wrongdoing
or sins, but what we have crucified in the flesh is our continuing
to try to supply our self-righteousness. We've ceased, he says, he that
has entered into his rest has ceased from his own works. And
that's what crucified in the flesh really means. We've crucified
the flesh with the affections and lusts. We just love to say,
I did this and I did that. I did that. Therefore, that gets
me here and puts him in obligation to me. And we know that's just
not the case. He says, if we live in the Spirit,
let us also walk in the Spirit. Let us not be desirous of vain
glory. which we were just talking about,
I kept the law. I've done all this from my youth. I have, I, I, I, I, I. And provoking one another, envying
one another. Galatians 6, 14, God forbid that
I should glory. Notice how that keeps cropping
up here about our old nature, that we want to glory, that we
want to be viewed as important. and self-righteous. God forbid that I should glory
save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ by whom the world
is crucified unto me and I unto the world. We just don't have
that affection for the world that we had. And we know that
that cross, that cross was the delivery point for us. I think I mentioned in the last
class that if you have one of those crosses, there should be
a little writing across it that says, there is therefore now
no condemnation to those who are in Christ. This symbolizes
that He died in my place. Taking up our cross and following
Christ means denying ourselves our own self-righteousness and
remembering Him who died for us. And now that takes us up
to our last part here, and it's all connected as we look at If you don't leave all that behind,
you're not a follower of me. If you don't look at that in
a different viewpoint, you're not a believer. If you don't
see yourself as just a pilgrim and a stranger, then you're not
a follower of me. If you don't recognize grace,
you can't be a follower of me. And he says, you can follow along,
and we just want to use your name. We just want to be called
by your name. But we don't really want all that religious stuff.
We just want to be called by your name, that kind of an idea. So then he says, salt is Salt
is good. If you're the genuine article
of salt, you have some container of salt, you go home and stick
your finger in your mouth and take it in there and then taste
that, it's salt, it's good. You recognize that's the genuine
article. He said, but if you have something
that looks like salt, but doesn't have any taste, and it doesn't
have the chemical properties of salt as a preservative and
as a savor, It's no good. He says, if the salt lost its
savor, wherewith shall it be seasoned? It is not fit for the
land. It's not even fit to throw in
the dung heap. And so he's saying to those people
with this metaphor, this allegory of salt, you can say you're a
follower of Christ, you can say you're a Christian, but if you're
not, It's no good. It's not worth anything. What
have you got to share? You've got no seasoning. People
can't go up to you and hear the gospel. There's no savor in that
salt. I think if you'll remember back
wonderful lessons in Leviticus from our pastor in Leviticus
chapter 2, Every offering was offered with salt. Every offering in Leviticus 2.13,
"...and every oblation of thy meat offering shalt thou season
with salt, neither shalt thou suffer the salt of the covenant
of thy God to be lacking from any meat offering." Boy, you
should be quick to tell about the gospel, the gospel of the
covenant of grace. And you can't leave that out. can't be lacking in your delivery
of the gospel. And with all thine offerings,
thou shalt offer salt. Exodus 29, 18 says, and thou
shalt burn the whole ram upon the altar. It's a burnt offering
unto the Lord, and it is a sweet savor, an offering made by fire
unto the Lord. As your salt has lost its Savor. It's no good. If your offering doesn't have
salt, it's not accepted. It's not any good. And he says
it's not even good. You just can't even throw it
out on the ground. And it's not even fit to throw in the dunghill. What a declaration of the useless
religion, the tripe that we run into daily in this world on the
television and on the radio. Repeat after me. All you've got
to do is say these words, and then God is obliged to do this. And then here's my number where
you can call and send me a check. It's just revolting, you know,
and it's not good. He that hath ears to hear, let
him hear. So that's our conclusion in Luke
chapter 14. Thank you for your attention.
As always, my friends, be free.