[Machine transcription]
In the name of Jesus, amen.
Dear James and Noriko, dear Harrison, dear Blair and Tina, dear Andrea and Suzanne, dear saints of God, Jesus has a hard word for us today. He says, unless you hate, hate your father and your mother, your wife and your children, your brothers and sisters, your own life, you cannot be my disciple.
What about love? Isn’t Jesus the one who commanded us to love our enemy, to love our neighbor, to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength? Isn’t Jesus the one who invented the fourth commandment, “Honor your father and your mother”? Or the sixth commandment, “You shall not commit adultery,” committing husband and wife to live together in peace and love? How is it that Jesus can now call us to hate?
I think the key to understanding this difficult passage is in verse 33, where after Jesus talks about counting the cost, about a man who is building a tower. He says nobody builds a tower unless you first know that you are going to have enough money to finish it. No one goes to war unless you think you have enough soldiers to win it. He says, so you also count the cost. And then this: “So therefore anyone of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.” That’s the cost of discipleship, the cost of following Jesus.
Now here’s what I think it means, the best way that I can get after it. Most of the time, praise the Lord, most of the time there is no conflict between honoring your father and your mother and following Jesus. Most of the time there isn’t a conflict between husbands loving their wives and wives loving their husbands and parents loving their children and following Jesus. Most of the time there is no conflict between you and your brothers and sisters and Jesus, or even you and your life and Jesus.
But Jesus is telling us that there might be times, in fact, He is indicating that there will be times when those things will come in conflict with one another. When the gifts that the Lord gives in the second table of the law come in conflict with the first table of the law. When loving your neighbor comes in conflict with loving your God. And when that happens, we confess Christ and follow Him. We would lose all rather than lose Christ.
Most of the time our lives are lives of love. We love God and we love our neighbor, but sometimes, sometimes there’s an “or.” It’s either God or the neighbor, God or the world, God or your family or your friends, God or your money, your good reputation, your contentment, God or your life. And in those “or” situations, we stick with Jesus.
I think this is best seen in the lives of the martyrs. I brought two books to the pulpit this morning. Someone in the early service saw me carrying both books and they wondered if we were going to be out of here in time for Pastor LeBlanc’s installation at four o’clock. I’m not going to read all of both of the books here, but I want to read a couple of passages about the martyrs, especially this, the story of Perpetua.
Her martyrdom is really unique. The year is 203, it’s in Carthage, and she writes of her own martyrdom. She writes a journal about it. She was from a wealthy family, from a well-known family. Finally, she was a wife, although maybe we never hear of her husband, so we think maybe her husband died, but she had a baby, a newborn who was nursing, father and mother. She had a brother. She had a maidservant, and she became a Christian.
And she was going to confirmation class, and the persecution arose, and so they had all of the Christians in confirmation class arrested, the pastor, the people there, so Perpetua was arrested. Felicitas, her maidservant, was arrested. Her dad would bring her baby to her in prison so that the baby could nurse, and the dad every time would say, “What are you doing? What are you doing in here? Be done with all this Christian nonsense and come home. Don’t you love your baby? Don’t you love your mother? Don’t you love me?”
Here’s how Perpetua writes about it: “While we were still with the persecutors, my father for the sake of his affection for me was persisting in seeking to turn me away and to cast me down from the faith.” Father, I said. “Do you see? Let us say this little vessel lying here to be a little pitcher, or is it something else?” And he said, “I see it.” “So you know they’re in prison there, and she points to this little vase or something and says is that a vase or something else?” And he says, “No, it’s a vase.” And I replied to him, “Can it be called by any other name than what it is?” And he said, “No.” And I said, “Neither can I call myself anything else than what I am. I am a Christian.”
Her father, provoked at this saying, threw himself on me as if he would tear at me, but he only distressed me, and he went away overcome by the devil’s arguments. This, I think, is the case that Jesus is setting before us. This is what it looks like to hate father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters and even our own life for the sake of Christ.
Sometimes it has happened in history and even in our own day that the confession of Christ is set against even our own lives, and we have these martyrs, these heroes who went before us who would confess, “I am a Christian,” and would suffer whatever the cost would be for that confession.
Here’s another one. This is a fellow named Karpus. This takes us back to the year 170 in Pergamum. He was brought before the pro-council; I really love these stories. He was brought before the pro-council, and the pro-council said, “What’s your name?” And he answers like this, “My first and finest name is Christian, but if you want to know my name in the world, it’s Karpus.”
The pro-council says, “You are certainly aware of the imperial commands that the gods who rule the world must be worshipped; therefore, I advise you to come forward and sacrifice.” They would always do this. The Christians had to make a pinch of incense, and say “Lord Caesar” or whatever, and then they’d let them go home and do whatever they wanted. But the Christians couldn’t.
“Therefore, I advise you to come forward and sacrifice.” And Karpus says, “I am a Christian. I worship Christ, the Son of God, who is in these latter times come to save us and has delivered us from the evil one’s desires. I do not offer sacrifices to such idols as these.” Skipping ahead a little bit, the pro-council ordered him to be strung up and his flesh to be torn with small metal claws. Karpus cried out the whole time, “I am a Christian.” And then after the tortures failed, what did they do? They burned him alive. “I’m a Christian.”
Here’s another. This is a group of martyrs, the martyrs of Cilicia. This is the year 180 at Carthage who are brought before the pro-council, and the pro-council says, “Give up these beliefs. Why do you share in this lunacy?” And one of the martyrs, Sittinus said, “We have no one to fear except the Lord our God who is in heaven.” Then Vestia, one of the martyrs, says, “I am a Christian.” And then Segunda, another says, “So am I, and I want to be nothing else.”
The pro-council says, “Are you still resolved to remain a Christian?” And they said, “Yes.” So they repeated, and the pro-council gave him thirty days for which to think about this, and they went to prison the whole time confessing that they were Christians, so they said forget about it. And they ended up cutting their heads off that same day.
Or another, this is Philip; this is the year 304 in the city of Adrianople. He was pastor in a church. During the time of persecution, they came and they were tearing down the church, and they were destroying all the communion vessels and they were burning all of the Bibles. It says, “While the church was being dismantled and the sacred writings publicly burned, Philip and Hermes, his assistant, and the others were held in the marketplace so everybody could see the spectacle.”
The governor came to them and ordered Philip to sacrifice to a god. And he said, “I am a Christian. How can I worship a piece of stone?” So, refusing to concede to their demands, they brought him also to the marketplace and set him on fire.
Now, this happens even in our own days; we were talking about it in Sunday school. It’s not happening around us, not happening to us today, but still Jesus is preaching, and this is what he’s preaching about. He’s calling us to count the cost. He’s saying that when you are a Christian, you are at war. You are at war against the world. You are at war with the devil. You’re at war even against your own flesh. The Christian life is not your best life now; it’s not a life of ease. Jesus doesn’t say, “All who would follow me must take up their lazy boy and remote control and follow me,” but “Take up the cross.”
And this, being willing to suffer, being willing to die for the name of Jesus, this is the saltiness of the Christian. Jesus uses the example of salt, right? He says, “If salt’s lost its flavor, it’s not good for anything. You throw it in the ground or manure; you just throw it out. If salt has lost its saltiness, it’s useless.” So the Lord is calling us to be salty Christians, that is, to be a preservative in the world. And how is it that we serve as salt?
This is how: that we are unafraid. Unafraid to confess the name of Jesus, no matter what the consequence is. Do you see how different that is from the world? The world has so many things that it wants us to be afraid of. The people in the world are afraid of so many things, most of all of dying, but the Christian is not afraid. One of the martyrs, and this is kind of one of these amazing things to all these Roman pro-counsels who were persecuting the martyrs, one of them says to the martyr, “Why are you so obsessed with death?” And the martyr says to the pro-council, “Death? I’m obsessed with life. Life that never ends.”
One of them, that’s kind of the same theme, but one of them said, the pro-council said to the martyrs, “Don’t you know that I could burn you?” And the answer was, “Better to burn before death than after.” But here’s the Christian idea: that we are fixed on life. And we understand that because of what the Lord Jesus Christ has done in His death and in His resurrection that we possess a life that will never end. Do you remember, I think I told you this recently, that there was a seminary professor who had a gravestone, and on his tombstone he had written, “This is only a temporary setback.” Remember? And it’s true. You have a life that goes on and on. A life that goes through death to life eternal.
Because Jesus himself has gone to death for you and has won the Father’s favor for you and has made a place in heaven for you so that you now have this in mind: that God is your Father, that Christ is your brother, that His life is yours, that His mercy is yours. And so you’ve counted the cost because it’s true. It’s costly to be a Christian, but the cost is even more severe on the other side. Jesus says it like this: “What does it gain a man? What does it benefit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul?”
You, dear saints, have that which matters: Jesus, His kindness, His blood, His smile, His forgiveness, His cross. Jesus also had to pick up the cross. He wasn’t following anybody; He was going first. Jesus also had to count the cost. I’m amazed by this. I hope you are amazed by this as well. That Jesus, living in the eternal bliss and glory of the Godhead, Jesus in perfect communion with the Father and the Holy Spirit, Jesus possessing all things, the creator of all things, receiving the glory of all things, Jesus determined to leave all of this to come into your flesh and blood, to bear your sin and the wrath of God on the cross, to be forsaken and stricken and smitten by God, to go through all of that. That was the cost that He was willing to pay to have you as His own child and as His dear friend.
Count the cost. Jesus says, “I’ve counted it and I would rather suffer all of these things than lose any that the Father has given to me.” Jesus counted the cost. He would rather suffer on the cross than to have you remain in your sins. He would rather have the depth of the agony of the wrath of God than for you to have it.
Oh, it’s amazing. So we rejoice in the midst of a life of ease or in the midst of a life of difficulty, in the midst of persecution, in those times when our love for God is set against our love for our neighbor. We rejoice that the Lord is with us. He’s not against you; He’s for you. And He will never leave you or forsake you. You are Christians. That means you have a Savior, Jesus Christ, risen from the dead. You are Christians. That means you have passed already from death to life eternal. You are Christians, which means you have a Lord who has trampled over sin and death and the devil and set you free even from the fear of death. You are Christians, which means that the short sufferings of this life will give way to the bliss of life eternal and the joy of the resurrection of the dead.
You are Christians, which means you have the Word of God and the blood of God and the kindness of God and the presence of God with you now and always. You are Christians. There’s nothing to be afraid of because you have Christ and He has you. May God grant you comfort and peace and boldness in this truth. May God grant it for Christ’s sake, amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, guard your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ our Lord, amen.
