"Counting the Cost: The True Call to Follow Jesus" by Sam Baer

The one may be overpowered by another, two can withstand him, and a threefold cord is not quickly broken. Good morning, this is Strength to Strength, and happy to have you with us here this morning. Interestingly, this is the first talk of 2025, and if you look back over the past years of Strength to Strength, you'll notice that each year we start off the year with a challenging talk, and that's what we have again this morning. So Sam Baer will be joining us. Sam is from Calgary, Alberta, and he's also a part of the Strength to Strength team. And he's going to be looking at a topic this morning called Counting the Cost: The True Call to Follow Jesus.

And so we're looking forward to hearing a message on that this morning. I think he's going to be taking that from Luke 14. So looking forward to that. Maybe what we can do is just begin here with a word of prayer, and then we'll turn the time over to Sam. So let's pray.

Father, this morning we want to thank you for your goodness. We thank you for the call that you have upon each of our lives. We pray that we would work, that we would walk worthy of that call, that we would live in a way that is pleasing to you, that we would learn what cross-bearing means and what true discipleship is.

Lord, may we be not only inspired this morning, which I'm sure we will be, but also challenged to walk more faithfully to you. Pray that you would bless this time, bless those who are on the call live, bless those who will be listening to this later. And may we all together look for the furtherance of your kingdom, the growth of your kingdom. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

Amen. Great. And Brother Sam, the time is yours. Thank you, Brother Glenn. It's good to be here with you all this morning. And we're at the beginning of a new year, and it often is a time of reflection, a time of considering our lives. And my hope and prayer this morning is that I can encourage you, and I can encourage you to consider what it takes to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. I know I'm talking to a group of people who are interested in following Christ and following Christ diligently and well. But sometimes we need recalibrated a little bit. Sometimes we need to reconsider how we follow Christ or consider areas of our lives that we may have become calloused or have become lax in.

And I hope that this morning we can be stirred up a little bit and to reconsider what we're called to and the cost of following Jesus Christ. Jesus says in Matthew 24 that he who endures to the end will be saved.

And part of enduring to the end is knowing what it's going to take to take us there. This isn't a gamble. It's not a guessing game. It's not something that we blindly follow Christ without knowing what's required of us.

Now we want to look at the words of Jesus Christ in Luke 14, and then later on we'll look at some examples from his life. So we'll read Luke 14, verses 25 to 35.

Now great multitudes went with him, and he turned and said to them, "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.

And whoever does not bear his cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not sit down first and count the cost, whether he has enough to finish it? Lest, after he has laid the foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, 'This man began to build a tower and was not able to finish.'

Or what king, going to make war against another king, does not sit down first and consider whether he is able with 10,000 to meet him who comes against him with 20,000? Or else while the other is still a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks conditions of peace. So likewise, whoever of you does not forsake all that he has cannot be my disciple. Salt is good, but if the salt has lost its flavor, how shall it be seasoned?

It is neither fit for the land nor for the dunghill, but men throw it out. He who has ears to hear, let him hear."

A friend of mine sent me this passage a little while back. He was considering and wrestling with the meaning of these words, and I have to admit that it's a sobering passage. Jesus speaks plainly and almost painfully about what it means to be his disciple.

"Hate your father and mother, your sister and brother." I know that he doesn't mean to actually hate those who are nearest and dearest to us, but he uses strong language to create a contrast between what it means to place the relationships in our lives, even the most meaningful relationships, against what it means to be in relationship with him. Now, all of these relationships come with a cost. Whether it is our father and our mother, our wife or our children, our brothers or our sisters, we're willing to pay that cost. And we don't often think about it in this way, that there is a cost to these relationships, but there is.

There's a certain amount of giving up of ourselves to be in these relationships and for those relationships to be pleasant and enjoyable. But all of this pales in the comparison to the cost of our relationship with Jesus Christ.

Now, the first part of this, where Jesus talks about the relationships of this earth, this is something that's easy to quantify in our minds. We can think about our relationships with our father and our mother, our brothers and sisters, and wife and children, and then we think about our relationship with Jesus Christ and we say, "You know, this one is the most meaningful. This is the one that I'm willing to lean into because it shapes these other relationships." But he goes on to say that if you don't bear your cross, you cannot be my disciple. To me, this is a little ambiguous. And honestly, it feels like it leaves a little bit to my own interpretation.

And it seems maybe a little bit easier, I guess, to square away because it comes with our own definition. What does it mean to bear our cross? And sometimes we define that however we choose, but I don't think we have the liberty to do so. Have you ever considered the thought, what were the people that he was talking to in this time? What came to their minds when he said, "Bear the cross"? What did they think? Now, Jesus knew where he was headed. He understood where his end of life was. It was at a cross. And we, looking back through time on this side of the cross, we know what he's talking about. But have you ever considered what the people that he was talking to, what did they think of it when he said, "Bear the cross"?

What came to their minds? They didn't have the foresight that Jesus did or the hindsight that we do. And after pondering this for a while, the only conclusion that I could come to was that this was a time when Rome was in rule, and it was common practice for Romans to crucify criminals.

It was a gruesome way to make an example of them and their lives as punishment. And often when we can imagine that when Jesus was teaching, for example, when he gave the parable of the sower, that he was possibly sitting there and could have seen a sower from where he was sitting when he gave that parable.

And possibly when he brought this up, that you bear your cross, there may have been a criminal walking by with some Roman guards on their way to a crucifixion. The conclusion that I've come to is that to his audience at the time, this was not ambiguous.

This was not something that was open to interpretation. Cross-bearing meant death, and because the Romans would often require the criminal to carry the crossbeam to the site of execution. And if they were sitting there and someone was going by, everyone knew that when Jesus said, "If you can't bear your cross, you can't be my disciple. If you can't die, you can't be my disciple."

But even that, I grew up in a Christian setting, and we heard about dying to yourself often. And you almost become calloused to this type of speaking.

What does it mean to die to yourself? And again, we kind of define that in our own terms often, and that's a dangerous thing to do. So my hope is to define that once again. What does it mean to bear our cross? What does it mean to die to ourselves?

We want to count the cost this morning.

Now, counting the cost does not only allow us to see what we need to give, but it also causes us to take a close look at our resources. We'll look at the example of the tower. Jesus tells a little story, and it helps us understand the truth. If someone's going to go on a project, if you're going to build a tower, you're going to sit down and you're going to figure out what's needed.

But it's not only the cost to ourselves that we're thinking about. We need to think about the resources that we have in order to do that. Do we have enough funds? Do we have enough building blocks? Do we have enough materials to complete the project? And so when we are considering counting the cost this morning, I want to stop and just for a moment think about the resources that are available to each and every one of us to endure unto the end and to rejoice that God has given us such rich resources to do what he has called us to do.

When Jesus returned to the Father, he sent us the Holy Spirit.

We have the Spirit of God dwelling in us. This is something that we can't say enough how great of a gift this is to each and every one of us. We have the Word of God. We have the printed testimony and revelation of Jesus Christ, testimony of people who walked with him. This is a powerful resource that can feed us, teach us, show us, illuminate our minds. It is not only a printed text, but it is a revelation of the living Word. What a beautiful resource. We have prayer.

We have communion with the Father. Hebrews says we can come boldly to the throne of grace. Hallelujah.

We have fellowship with the body of Jesus Christ. So many times you hear stories of conflict in churches and division and relationships that are broken. And sometimes it's hard to see what a powerful resource this actually is to have fellowship with men and women of God. But it is. There was a time in my journey in following Christ that we didn't have a church to fellowship with, and that is a painful place to be in. You feel that void. It got to the point where I felt like if I was going to stand before the Father and hear those words, "Well done," I was going to need brothers and sisters. I wasn't going to happen on my own.

These are the resources that God has given us. He not only calls us to bear our cross daily, but he has given us rich and abundant resources. And I wanted to put that in here before we go on and talk about the cost, to insert that here, to draw our minds to the beauty and the abundance of the resources that we have in cross-bearing. He didn't call us to this and leave us alone. He called us to cross-bearing and gave us what we need to do so.

So moving on to the next portion here, what is the cost to be a follower of Jesus Christ? What have you given up to be his disciple? How do we know what to give up? Is it the same for everyone?

I'm going to read a story. Maybe I'll just give the highlights of it. I won't take the time to read it. Of a young lady who made a tremendous sacrifice, and I chose this story because she's a contemporary. She's still alive today.

So her name is Katie Davis. And at 18 years old, she was bright, ambitious, in a loving family. She lived in Tennessee. She was in a relationship. College was on the horizon. She had the American dream at her doorstep. But in her senior year of high school, they made a trip to Uganda.

And she saw not only the poverty, but the deep hunger for hope and love and stability. And she returned back home expecting to move on to the next planned step of her life, well-ordered, blessed. But she couldn't shake what she saw in Uganda.

And she felt the call to return. And she realized that the cost of this is staggering, leaving her family, her boyfriend, her college, everything, to go back to serve.

At the age of 19, she did move to Uganda, armed with little more than faith and a fierce love for the people she felt called to serve. She began to teach in a local orphanage and soon began taking in vulnerable children who had nowhere else to go.

The first girl was Agnes. She had lost her parents and was barely surviving on the streets. Katie offered her a home and a future. One child became two, then three, until eventually she was raising 13 girls, each with a story of heartbreak and redemption.

And as a single young woman, Katie became mommy to children who had only known abandonment. Every day, there's challenges, meals to prepare, school fees to pay, tears to wipe away. And sometimes Katie would cry herself to sleep, not knowing how she was going to get through this or meet the needs. Yet every morning, she found strength in prayer, trusting that God would provide for her growing family. She ended up founding a ministry to make an effort to provide food and education to local children. Katie wrote in her journal, "I'm just an ordinary person who has been given an extraordinary task. I'm following the call of God and trusting him each step of the way."

Raising 13 children alone required a daily surrender of her own desires and dreams.

This is a remarkable story. A woman on the verge of so much available to her, so much greatness, I guess you could say, to walk away from that and sacrifice her life for the lives of others.

We could look at other examples. I'm sure you've read the story of Jim Elliott, who forsook comfort, risked his life to share the gospel with the Huroni people in Ecuador. Remarkable story. Challenging sacrifices made, only to end up on a strip of sand along a river, facing off with some natives and losing his life.

Huge sacrifice. The amazing thing of that is his wife, Elizabeth, ended up back in the villages of the very men who had taken her husband's life and had the privilege of seeing those men answer the call of Christ and become his disciples. What a story of forgiveness and sacrifice. Jim said, "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose."

We could look at Gladys Aylward, a single British sister who felt called to the missionary to be a missionary in China, who knocked on many mission board doors and was turned down, who eventually took from her meager income and saved, went down to the train station and figured out what a ticket cost to China, and took installments from her weekly checks down there until she had enough money to buy a ticket to China, who suffered a harrowing experience traveling there, who finally arrived there and ministered to the poor.

And at one point, she risked her life traveling for nearly two weeks with 100 children all under the age of 14.

They crossed nearly 100 miles because of war. She took these children on her own. This trip affected her health. She never actually fully recovered from it. Tremendous sacrifice. When she was asked why she persevered despite challenges, Gladys replied, "I wasn't God's first choice for what I've done in China. I don't know who it was.

It must have been a man, a well-educated man. But I don't know what happened. Perhaps he wasn't willing." And God looked down and saw Gladys Aylward, and God said, "Well, she's willing."

There's many other people that we could talk about: George Mueller, Jackie Pullinger. The list goes on and on. People who have done great and made mighty sacrifices of their lives to follow where God called them.

They're all towering examples of people who sacrificed so much to follow Jesus Christ and to serve. And they all made large sacrifices to be obedient to their Master. Is this cross-bearing?

Is God calling all of us to make these large sacrifices? Is this what Jesus had in mind when he said, "If you can't take up your cross and follow me, you can't be my disciple"?

Now, I believe that the instructions of Jesus Christ were meant to be followed by every one of us. Can every one of us leave our homeland and go to suffer imaginable physical sacrifice and pain to serve other people? If I'm being honest, this is a little daunting to me to consider some of these stories.

And I feel like the reason for that is there's one of two things that are true. Either I've become too soft as a Christian and I'm not willing to pay the price, or I don't understand what's being asked of me.

Now, when we're considering these examples of great sacrifice, I don't think they wake up one day and they're ready to make this major sacrifice. It's not like they're just living for themselves, and then one morning they wake up and say, "I need to go do this."

We may never be called to go to foreign places and endure physical hardship like the examples I gave.

A vision to go somewhere and sacrifice our lives, it doesn't just appear out of nowhere. But there's a steady learning process that must happen first. We first learn to sacrifice the things of the heart, and as we grow, the sacrifices grow as well.

I believe if we would look at the life of Jesus Christ, we would see a row of little crosses until we get to the big one.

A great life of sacrifice is made up of daily little sacrifice, a daily bringing of every thought into submission. At its foundation is a heart that knows it cannot choose its own way, but must give it up, yes, truly rejoices to give it up for God to have his way.

Now, I would like to look at a few examples in the life of Jesus Christ of where he bore his cross. I think it's fair to say that Jesus carried his cross daily, that he didn't call us to do anything that he didn't go ahead and do before us. I only have a few examples, maybe a half a dozen or so, and I know that there are many more. But I'd like to share the ones that I have with you.

And I want you to think about the fact that our Lord and Savior was willing to count the cost, to pay the cost in his daily life as a man before he made it to the great sacrifice, which was the cross. The first example we'd look at is in John 17. In his prayer, Jesus says, "And now, O Father, glorify me together with yourself, with the glory which I had with you before the world was."

The first thing that Jesus gave up in order to come to the earth is the glory that he had with the Father. And I'd like to read some verses out of Philippians 2 that kind of paint us a picture of what this looked like in the life of Jesus Christ.

Philippians 2:5, "Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bond servant or a slave, and coming in the likeness of man, and being found in the appearances as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death on the cross." You see the descent from glory with the Father, equal with God, lost his reputation, let it go, took on the form of a bond servant, came in the likeness of man. He had created man. He had taken dirt from the ground, formed a man, breathed into him the breath of life, and he became a living soul.

Christ took that on, his own creation. He took on that form, humbled himself, became obedient. What a sacrifice. What a cost.

Jesus left eternity and glory to take on the time-bound dust of the earth to be the object lesson of what true sacrifice and surrender should be. A little while back, we were reading through John in our family devotions.

And the thing that stood out to me so much was that he could hardly open his mouth without facing criticism. It seemed like he couldn't do anything. He couldn't even heal someone without someone criticizing for how it was done or the words he used or the day of the week that he did it on. This is what he embraced.

He left the glory to walk among men.

And the second one is in Luke 2, the last couple of verses of Luke 2. Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth and was subject to them. Subject just means to submit or to put yourself under. But his mother kept all these things in her heart, and Jesus increased in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and men. So Jesus, this was after the episode in Jerusalem when they couldn't find him after he had, I believe he was 12 years old. He was in the temple. They couldn't find him. And then he went home to Nazareth with them and subjected himself, put himself under them. And from that story, I take that Jesus was already a wise man at 12 years old.

He was speaking in the temple with the doctors of the law and teaching them, if I understand right. And yet he was willing to subject himself to his parents, to flawed individuals. And I know if you're anything like me, I mean, we've all learned to subject ourselves to our parents at some point. How much more difficult would that be if you understood their imperfections?

It was something he was willing to do, to subject himself, to learn obedience, to respect them, to honor them. That comes at a price.

Another example is in Luke 9. I'll read verses 51 to 62. Now, it happened as they journeyed on the road that someone said to him, "Lord, I will follow you wherever you go." And Jesus said to him, "Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head."

Then he said to another, "Follow me." But he said, "Lord, let me go first and bury my father." And Jesus said to him, "Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and preach the kingdom of God." And another also said, "Lord, I will follow you, but let me first go and bid them farewell who are at my house."

But Jesus said to him, "No one, having put his hand to the plow and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God."

Jesus didn't have the security of his own dwelling. I know there were houses that he stayed in, but he didn't have his own house to go to, to call home.

And I guess to me, this looks like a cost because what man is a man without his land or without some ownership or some home that he can call his own? He didn't have it. Foxes have holes, birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.

And there's some other interesting things in here. Jesus has some very harsh words to some people who have some pretty legitimate things to do. He calls this one man to follow me, and he says, "I need to go bury my father."

Is Jesus saying that the respect and honor due to a dead father, we should ignore that? I don't believe so. It's not that these things aren't legitimate concerns in our lives, but Jesus is teaching us that even the legitimate things in our lives have to come second. Houses, burials, family cares, they all have to come second to following Jesus Christ.

Even the right to having your own home needs to fall in line behind "follow me." Another example is in John 6:15. It says, "Therefore, when Jesus perceived that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, he departed again to the mountain by himself alone." They wanted to make him king. He had been doing great things. He was teaching great things. They saw greatness, and they knew it, and they were going to crown him, and he fled.

He ran away. He would not accept the earthly exaltation. It wasn't a part of the plan of God for his life.

Another example is in Mark 1. He says he cleansed lepers, and he instructs them, "Don't tell anybody." In Matthew 4, he's tempted by the devil for all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he says, "Get behind me, Satan.

I can't do this. This is not in the will of God for me." He may have understood that all of these kingdoms would be his one day, but it wasn't the right time. It wasn't the Father's will.

There was no shortcut.

And in John 12, when he finally does make a triumphal entry into Jerusalem, if there was a time to accept exaltation and be elevated, this would have been it. But no, he comes riding in on a donkey, not a horse, not a majestic steed.

He was still humble. He still refused that earthly exaltation.

The last example I have, I'll read some verses in John 12, verses 44 to 50. Jesus said, "He who believes in me believes not in me, but in him who sent me. And he who sees me, sees him who sent me. I have come as a light into the world that whoever believes in me should not abide in darkness. And if anyone hears my words and does not believe, I do not judge him, for I did not come to judge the world, but to save the world. He who rejects me and does not receive my words has that which judges him. The word that I have spoken will judge him in the last day. For I have not spoken in my own authority, but the Father who sent me gave me a command, what I should say and what I should speak.

And I know that his command is everlasting life. Therefore, whatever I speak, just as the Father has told me, so I speak." There's something remarkable here.

He says that if you see me, you see the Father. If you hear me, you hear the Father. I will not say the things except that the Father has given me to say. This is a man who has truly surrendered even his own identity to the point where when you look at me, you're not going to see me. You're going to see the Father.

I will not speak even what I think is wise. I will only speak the things that the Father has given me. I will only say the things that are pleasing to my Father that will advance the cause of my Father. There is a death in this that runs deep to the core of who we are and how we see ourselves and how we identify.

And then the next thing goes along with this. In John 14, he says, "But the world may know that I love the Father. And as the Father gave me commandment, so I do. Arise. Let us go from here." The creator of the world, the living word, obedient to the commandments of the Father.

In John 17, "I have glorified you on the earth. I have finished the work which you have given to me to do." Jesus would not say or do anything of his own.

There is a tremendous death. If Jesus was a man with like passions as me, which the scriptures say he is of like passion as we are, and he was only willing to say and do the things that the Father had given him. Do you realize the cost that that is in your daily life, in your mind, to overcome this? When I look at my life, I can see times when I believe I was speaking and doing the will of the Father, but it seems like the gap in between those times when I'm doing the things that I'm concerned about or that I care about or that I think are wise, there's too large of a gap in between those times.

With Jesus, it was all of it. He would only do and say the things that the Father had given him to do. I hope that these few examples I gave you show that a life of sacrifice begins with moment by moment by moment by moment sacrifices. And this is the life that Jesus Christ lived when he was on the earth. There was rows of little crosses all the way to the cross from when he was a young man until he died.

Our Savior, the creator of the world, came to earth and sought nothing of himself. He endured cruel treatment, misunderstanding, treated unjustly, was tasked with entrusting a small group of men with the truth of the kingdom. And he eventually ended up in a garden on his knees, saying, "Father, it is your will. If it is your will, take this cup away from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours."

What was the cost for Jesus to do the will of the Father?

It was everything. It was all of him. He embraced a daily giving up of himself, emptying himself of everything to do the will of the Father. The point I would like to make is this: we are sometimes stirred and challenged by the lives of heroes of faith and the great things that they have done, and rightfully so. We should be.

What I see in the example of Christ is that unless we learn to surrender our wills, even in the small, mundane parts of our life, we will not be ready to make the great sacrifices when God calls us to make those sacrifices. If we aren't willing to die to ourselves in the relationships with our spouses, with our children, with our coworkers, if we're not willing to give up of our daily desires and will to the will of the Father, we won't be one of those heroes of faith who made great sacrifices and impacted many people's lives. It won't happen.

There were a thousand small crosses before Jesus got to the cross. Someone like Jim Elliott couldn't have given his life for Christ out on that sandy beach if he hadn't learned to give it up moment by moment by moment, in the quiet of his heart, sacrificing, dying.

So what is the cost of discipleship? What did Jesus mean when he said, "Bear your cross daily"?

I pray that we can see this clearly. It is a daily dying to ourselves. This is the cost that we are to sit down on the threshold of a new year and consider, "What am I need to give up? What am I going to need to give up this year?"

I've compiled a list of practical ways that we can bear our cross. I hope that this can help move the command of Christ from a self-defined, ambiguous, kind of murky, easy-to-handle, palatable area of our minds to a real understanding of cost. This list could be huge, but I've made a few things here that I would like to share with you.

And understand that this list comes from a part of a recognition of what it takes in my own life. Stop defending yourself and start defending others.

Stop serving yourself and start serving others. Stop placing so much value on your own time. Start valuing the time of others.

Stop retaliating, even in your thoughts.

Start forgiving.

Stop pitying yourself or seeing yourself as shortchanged. Start feeling empathy for others.

Stop thinking highly of yourself.

Start thinking highly of others.

Stop indulging. Start disciplining.

Stop seeking comfort. Seek sacrifice. Stop listening to the flesh and start listening to the Spirit.

Stop choosing your own way and seek the way of the Lord. Stop saying what you think is right and speak only what you know to be true. Stop seeking your own pleasure and seek to please God. Stop being bland or lazy. Start being salty.

Stop feeling that the yoke of Christ is heavy and see it as light. Stop dwelling on your own lot in life and start thinking of the situations that the people around you are in.

Stop complaining. Start giving thanks.

Stop trying to live and start learning to die.

Jesus says in Matthew 16, "For whoever desires to save his life will lose it."

But that's not the end of that verse, is it? There's more there. Whoever loses his life for my sake, he will find it. The first time I gave this message, I was going to end it with, "Start learning to die." And about 15 minutes before I shared it, I couldn't stop there because that's not where the story of Jesus Christ ends, is it? There's so much more to it. Let's look back at Philippians 2, where we ended.

It says that Christ, he found in the appearance of man, he humbled himself. He became obedient to death, even the death on the cross. Is that where it ended? Verse 9, "Therefore, God also has highly exalted him and given him a name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow, of those in heaven and of those on earth and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father." Rejoice with me that it doesn't just end in death. It ends in exaltation and glory.

God doesn't leave us at the cross. He takes us out of the tomb. We can live in him. Yes, we count the cost. Yes, we know that it costs everything. But that's not the only part of it, is it? I rejoice this morning that we don't only consider death, but we consider life. We consider reward. We consider reigning with him. 2 Timothy 2, Paul writes, "If we died with him, we're going to live with him.

If we endure, we will also reign with him. If we deny him, he will deny us."

Bearing your cross is not without reward. Just like our Master called us to die, it's not just for the sake of dying. It's so that we can share with him in new life. If we stand in the way, if we are not willing to make the sacrifice, if we are too big in our own eyes, if we don't do that daily cross-bearing, we have no part with him. We cannot share in his glory.

But if we do, if we hear his words, "Follow me, bear your cross daily, die to yourself, put the things in life into perspective, consider what your priority is." We don't have priorities, do we? We have priority. One, and that's to follow our King and to follow his example of daily dying to self. Can we count the cost this morning? I think we can. It's high. But we are not left without resource, and we are not left without hope. For Christ, for the joy that was set before him, he was willing to endure the cross, despising the shame. And we can do the same.

Praise be to his name.

That's all that I have this morning.

Amen. And thank you for sharing, Brother Sam. What an amazing message. So we're going to have Q&A time in just a minute. And so if you have your questions ready, that would be great. We can have a discussion. I appreciate the thoughts that were shared. And I agree with one of your initial comments. You said that for those of us who grew up in the church, we can become calloused to the meaning of cross-bearing, and it just becomes a term that we lightly pass over. You said there were a thousand small crosses before Jesus came to the cross, and that a great life of sacrifice begins with a life of small sacrifices, and how Jesus was an example of that.

And I appreciate that so much that we can look to Jesus and see how he demonstrated this for us. He didn't call us to something that he didn't demonstrate himself.

Yeah, so I'd like to open it up for questions. Maybe I'll just start with the first question here. You read that passage there in Luke 14, and part of that talks about this man who, intending to build a tower, sits down first and counts the cost so that he doesn't come to shame.

What does that look like practically for those who say they want to follow Jesus?

It actually begins by saying that great multitudes went with him. And then it seems like he's almost tempering their interest and saying, "First of all, if you're going to follow me and you don't hate your father and your mother and your wife and your children and brothers and sisters and your own life, you can't be my disciple." Then he says this thing about building the tower.

What do we make of this section there about building the tower? Yeah, that's a good question.

It almost seems like Jesus puts down these roadblocks or reality checks for people who are flocking after him. And he doesn't want there to be any illusion as to what's going on or what's going to be required. When you consider the cost of building a building and everything that goes into it and the shame of not completing, I think that's something that we don't consider that often. So we count the cost of following Christ, but do we consider the shame of not enduring, the shame of not measuring up, of not building that tower to his glory?

One thing I was going to, just a point of interest, you had asked earlier if I was going to do a screen share. I was going to share a picture of Macaig's Tower in, I believe it's in Ireland. I think they call it Macaig's Folly. It was a king who had a vision of a great tower that he was going to build, and he didn't take into account his own frailness, and he ended up dying. And they only got one level done.

And so here they have this ring of stone. It's a neat-looking edifice. And if you didn't know that there was so much more that was supposed to be there, it might be entertaining. But Christ is calling these people to consider not only the cost of building, but the shame of not being able to complete, to start out on something that you're not going to be able to complete. And I think sometimes we miss that part of his challenge here.

Yeah. Okay. Thank you for that. So I'd like to open it up here for Q&A. If you turn on your camera, that'd be ideal. And you can go ahead with your questions here for Sam.

Well, Brother Sam, I really appreciated your message. Do you still have your Bible open to Philippians 2? Yes, I do. There's another wherefore. You took the one in verse 9, promising that there's exaltation. Go down to verse 12 and read that one. That's right. I'll read it. Go ahead. "Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling."

But I'll keep going, for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for his good pleasure. That verse is often taken out of context. If you want to know what it really is saying, put the word exaltation in there instead of salvation.

Let God salvage your reputation. He will, just like he did Jesus. Amen. Thank you for that.

That's beautiful. And that's how Christ, emptying himself, not saying his own thing, not doing his own thing, he sought his exaltation. I thought about that when I was talking about the he wouldn't seek earthly exaltation.

He could have. It was rightfully his, but he wouldn't because it wasn't the Father giving it to him. It wasn't the time. We get a little worked up about the time. It's necessary that people know that I didn't make that mistake. I didn't do this. It's not the time. Let the Father do it. Thank you for that, Brother John.

Yep. Thank you. And who will be next? Appreciated that text there that you read from 2 Timothy. This is a faithful saying, "If we die with him, we shall also live with him. If we endure, we shall also reign with him. If we deny him, he also will deny us."

A lot packed in there.

I think often there's not enough said about the reward. I mean, I know we all understand that there's an eternity with the Father if we're faithful. But there is a reward even in this life. I mean, it's obviously everlasting life. We begin our relationship with Christ here, and there's so many rich blessings in that. But dying daily isn't without its thanks.

And I'm sure each one of us can testify to times when we kept our mouth shut, we did the honorable thing. And in the end, it doesn't always happen. Sometimes our vindication won't come until beyond the grave. But sometimes there is a small vindication here. Sometimes God does reward us for our dying to self. And I feel like that's something that's left out often is the reward that comes with the dying.

Amen.

Yeah, reward even in this life. Because I think too many times people are looking for their reward way down the road. And so they think that they just need to survive or something in this time. And it's not the case at all. We can actually live a very joyful life. Yeah, we don't survive, we thrive. Exactly.

I just really appreciated when you talked about dying to ourself. And when you mentioned all those practical ways to stop defending ourselves, stop retaliating, and stop pitying, that it's really about others not seeing ourselves as being important so much, but that it is Christ working in us. And then we think of others higher than ourselves, and we put them before ourselves.

Amen.

Thanks, Jimmy.

We're often encouraged not to think of the reward because people are afraid we're going to do it for an ulterior motive. But the Bible says that Jesus, for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross. So it was the possibility of what came afterward that motivated him. And I think it does with us too. The Bible says, "He that humbleth himself shall be exalted." That's a promise. And we can make that sacrifice without an ulterior motive, but make it knowing that the end of the story is going to be what the Bible tells us. It will be exaltation. Amen.

Yeah, thank you for those thoughts. I think if we keep our perspective of dying grounded with the perspective of reward, it does glorify Christ. And maybe that would help with the ulterior motives a little bit. But these two things need to be held together. And I've often marveled that it says, "For the joy that was set before him." Because of the joy set before him, he endured the cross.

We should follow his example in that as well. All right. Well, we appreciate all of you who have joined in this morning. I think we'll wrap it up here. Sam, would you want to lead us in a closing prayer? Sure. Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we worship you this morning, for you are a great and mighty and high and holy God.