Welcome to our Together on Mission Podcast, when we seek to be with and like Jesus, as we begin a conversation with Jesus in the morning, through scripture, prayer, and meditation, and then continue that conversation with them throughout your day. Your host is Travis Twiney, the pastor at the Inland Vineyard Church in Corona, California. In this season of the podcast, we will be journeying through the Gospel of Luke, specifically looking for moments in the life of Jesus of the Azeroth. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Together on Mission Podcasts.
This is Travis, and I will be your host. This morning, we're going to be in Luke, chapter 9, and this is not a fun passage, at least at first glance. The title of the passage this morning is cost. Cost.
And Jesus in Luke, chapter 9, beginning in verse 57, says to someone, Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but I have no place to lay my head. In other words, following me is going to cost you. And then somebody else comes up to Jesus and says to Jesus, I will follow you anywhere but first let me go bury my father. And Jesus says, let the dead bury their own dead.
You proclaim the kingdom of God. It's going to cost even in our own family. And then Jesus says to another person, no one who puts their hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God. In other words, this is going to cost you everything.
And this passage is not often read, it's not often talked about, it's not even often liked because it's all about cost. And Jesus is using hyperbole and exaggeration. He is a brilliant teacher and employs things like exaggeration and hyperbole. But the point is following me is going to cost, it's going to cost everything.
And what I want to say this morning is that cost is good. We tend to think that cost is bad, but anything of value, and this is part of Jesus's point, anything of value costs and it must cost. And if it doesn't cost, it doesn't have any value at all. And if we want our life to have value, purpose, meaning, then we must be about things that cost.
And I think in our modern American culture, we're trying to have a life of value without cost. We're trying to have a Christian life without cost, a marriage without cost, a meaningful vocation without cost, and there's absolutely no such thing. It must cost, and if it doesn't cost, it simply has no value. And Jesus says this in all kinds of different ways, unless you lose your life, that's cost.
You won't find life. You know, he says the last will be first, the first will be last. He says, unless a seed falls to the ground and dies, that's cost, it will not bear much fruit. A life without cost is a life without value.
And so as we're thinking about this passage, as we're meditating on this passage, a couple of things that come to my mind. First, it's not just that cost is worth it. You know, it's deeper than that. It's that cost is actually good.
I mean, we're so accustomed to thinking, you know, is the cost worth it because we're accustomed to thinking of cost and we're thinking about buying something. But that's not the framework that Jesus is working with. It's not that the cost is simply worth the reward. You know, if we bring that framework to our vocation, to our marriage, to our friendships, that will never be enough of a motivating factor to continue to pay the price of cost.
What Jesus is saying is that cost in and of itself is actually good because cost is sacrifice, because cost is, you know, self-giving love, because cost is putting someone else before yourself. You know, it's not that we must pay the cost so that we can get the reward, you know, as if cost is some sort of a means to an end. No, that's not a life well lived. The cost itself is life.
Life is actually in the sacrifice when we give up what we want so that someone else can have what they want. When we sacrifice, that actually is life. You know, we need the cost. It's good.
We need it in order to learn to become a sacrificial kind of person. And so in our marriage, that'd be a good relationship to think about our best friend with our kids. When it comes to generosity, you know, really in any sphere of our life, it's not, well, I'm going to sacrifice so that I eventually can have life. You know, I'm going to do this, you know, in the moment so that I can have the reward.
No, the reward is living sacrificially. The reward is actually in the moment. The reward is actually giving up our lives. And then, and here's the bonus.
And then there's a further reward, which is a relationship that is fulfilling because that relationship has been laced with sacrificial cost. And this is very important as well. There's something that we must be careful of in relationship, whether it's, you know, following Jesus, whether it's marriage, whether it's friendship, whatever it is. If we're not sacrificing in our relationship, then we're making the other person sacrifice for us.
There really are only two ways to live, either we sacrifice for others or we de facto make them sacrifice for us. You know, if we're not really listening, then we make someone else listen. If we're not giving, then we make someone else give. If we're not bending, then we make someone else bend.
If we're not complimenting, we make someone else compliment. You know, if we're not sacrificing, if we're not choosing to enter into the cost of the moment, which is life, we're making somebody else do it. We either sacrifice and pay the cost for another or we require another sacrifice and pay the cost for us. There's only two ways to live.
And Jesus says life is in the cost. Life is in the cost. And clearly that's what God has done for us. He sacrificed for us.
He paid the cost for us. That is life. And then of course the bonus, he gets to reap the reward of sacrificing, which is a fulfilling relationship. And so the question that I am pondering this morning and I'd like to invite you into as well, you know, am I sacrificing for others?
Or am I making them sacrifice for me? You know, am I counting the cost and paying the cost or am I de facto making someone else count the cost and pay the cost? And what's hit me this morning in this passage is the more cost, the more value. The more cost, the more life, even in the moment.
The more cost, the more meaning. The more cost, the more love. And at the very end of the passage, verse 62, no one who puts their hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the Kingdom of God. Now for Luke and how Luke's narrative works, Jesus is not going back, he's going forward.
And he's going forward to Jerusalem. He's not looking back, he's looking forward, he's looking forward to Jerusalem, where he is going to embrace the cross, the cost. And he's going to give it all. And he looks forward.
And so the invitation of this text and think about, again, our relationships, our stages of life, all that's happening around us, the invitation is to look forward, to pick up our cross, to use a Jesus of Nazareth phrase and to follow, not simply to have life eventually, but to experience that life is right here and right now in the midst of the cost. We'll talk soon. Thanks for listening to the Together on Mission podcast. We truly hope that you were blessed and encouraged by it today.
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