Spiritual Discipleship
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Now great crowds accompanied him, and he turned and said to them, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’ Or what king, going out to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and deliberate whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace. So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.
Large crowds following Jesus - because of the things he was doing and what he would possibly do for them.
“All he needed to do was to perform a few spectacular miracles and then lead them in a great insurrection.”
So his brothers said to him, “Leave here and go to Judea, that your disciples also may see the works you are doing.
It seemed as though He were intent on alienating their interest and actually discouraging them from following him. He began to thin their ranks by stating in the starkest of terms the exacting conditions of discipleship.
Jesus always seemed to try and thin the herd when the crowds got huge. SO anti-evangelical today, isn’t it? How do we evangelize? What is the popular preaching/teaching today?
BONHOEFFER - 43 & 44
Again, Jesus laid out the cost of following him. He says, pg. 19
Present-day preaching finds little place for repentance, yet without repentance there can be no regeneration. Many have been encouraged to believe that because they have come forward to an appeal or signed a decision card, or prayed to receive Christ - they are saved - whether or not there is any subsequent change in their lives. It needs to be reiterated that “saving faith is more than just understanding the facts [of the gospel] and mentally acquiescing. It is inseparable from repentance, submission, and a supernatural eagerness to obey. The biblical concept of saving faith includes all those elements. It is sad but true that whenever the way of the cross and its implications are preached superficial believers, whose conversion experiences have been shallow, fall away.
An Unrivaled Love
An Unrivaled Love
3x Jesus says, “he cannot be my disciple.”
“If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.
Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.
Hate = “to love less.”
pg. 20
So the disciple is a follower of Christ whose love for him transcends all earthly love.
Doesn’t mean love your relatives/family less than you do now…means that you must love Jesus MORE.
Kristy & I getting married - missionaries.
ALSO…hate his own life - expound.
An Unceasing Cross-Bearing
An Unceasing Cross-Bearing
Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.
And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.
What would 1st century hearers understand about the cross?
“my cross to bear” - inconveniences
PG 22:
What did the cross mean to Jesus? It was something he took up voluntarily, not something that was imposed on him it involved sacrifice and suffering; it involved him in costly renunciations; it was symbolic of rejection by the world.
And it is to cross-bearing of this nature that the disciple is always called. it involves a willingness to accept ostracism and unpopularity with the world for His sake. We can evade carrying the cross simply by conforming our lives to the world’s standards.
BONHOEFFER - ______________
An Unreserved Surrender
An Unreserved Surrender
So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.
1st condition - the heart’s affections; 2nd condition - life’s conduct; 3rd condition - possessions....THIS is a hard one in our culture.
What does Jesus mean? Everything? Give up everything? Live open-handedly. Jesus is LORD over everything in our lives.
Do I love things more than I love Jesus? How can you tell? What about family/relationships? What about worldly status? How can you tell?