First Love

Jesus doesn’t soften His words in Luke 14—He sharpens them, calling us to count the cost of following Him. In this message, we wrestle with what it means to put God first and discover the life and joy found only when we stop chasing shadows and turn to what is real.

Transcript

Turn with me to the Gospel. You ought to know this by now, right? The Gospel according to what? Luke. Right, and then we're plugging right along here.

So, Luke 14. So go ahead and turn to the Gospel according to Luke and chapter 14 and find verse 25. And when you do, go ahead and stand with me for our gospel reading this morning.

Notice these words found in Luke 14 and verse 25.

Now, large crowds were traveling with Jesus. And bear in mind, remember, we're on a road trip with Jesus Toward where? Jerusalem. Okay, so now, large crowds were traveling with Jesus, and he turned and sat to them. Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes.

And even life itself cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost to see whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it will begin to ridicule him, saying, this fellow began to build and was not able to finish. Or what king going out to wage war against another king will not sit down first and consider what.

Whether he is able with 10,000, to oppose the one who comes against him with 20,000. If he cannot, then while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and ask for the terms of peace. So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.

Jesus, thank you for your holy word, your holy challenging word. And we pray today that you would challenge us. May we hear your voice today, and then may we respond with discipleship, with following you. We pray in your name. Amen.

You can be seated.

Well, here's Jesus doing his Jesus thing again, where he surprises us, quite frankly. All right, I don't know if you. You caught the reading. Maybe you were zoned out for just a second, but it sounded like we are supposed to hate our family. And even though Jessica's gone right now on a trip, I guess I'm supposed to hate her, too, right?

And my children, by the way. And I'm supposed to go sell all the possessions so that when she gets back, we won't have anything. Is that the way you heard it? Because. Because if I'm just sort of lackadaisically following Jesus on this road trip and he's spouting off stuff like that, and I kind of catch a little bit of it.

Boy, that's a. That's a. What they call it A sticker shock, right? It's like, whoa, whoa, hold on. Did I actually sign up for that?

I'm sorry, I don't know that I'll be able to afford that. It's interesting, isn't it, that the language here is not softened. You know, we always want to immediately just say, well, of course he doesn't mean hate your family and hate your wife and kids and, you know, basically go give away all your possessions. Surely he can't mean that. And you would be right to say so, but by the way, okay, so he's not talking about the kind of hate that, that.

That we often think of as. As spite or despising another person. Of course, that would go against the commandments, wouldn't it? To love one another as you love yourself. And notice Jesus even throws in here, even if you don't hate even life itself.

Okay, and so, but before we go softening things in, talking about the Aramaic that perhaps is used here behind this Greek term for hate, which really has its roots in Hebrew, like, we can go there and do that linguistic study. Okay. But I don't think we really have to because we all get that Jesus is driving something here to shock us, and there's something to see here at the same time as something to understand. So. So I think one of the things he's doing.

Notice how Luke tells us, like, hey, there was a lot of people that are following him. Have you ever noticed that when Jesus gets around a lot of people, he always does something to sort of whittle down that crowd?

In other words, he's not just in it for the crowd. We. When the more people that gather to hear us or our politicians, who. The more general they get, don't they? You know what I'm talking about?

They won't speak on specific things. Why? Because if it gets them in trouble, the crowds will leave and they won't continue to gather. So we get more general, more rounded out. Jesus gets sharper, doesn't he?

Isn't that interesting? He's not in it just for the crowds. He actually challenges the crowds and oftentimes many walk away from him. Just like when he said, he, you must eat of my flesh and drink of my blood. That was said to a lot of people.

And many of them, we are told, departed and did not follow him any longer. Now kind of backing out a little bit and looking at all four of the text today, there's really, as I saw it, and I really excited to share this as I saw it, there's like one Big overarching message in all four of the readings.

And it's this, God is the only source of life. He's it. There's actually not another option. And so when we choose the other option, we're choosing non being or sin. You say non being.

What might that be? Well, I don't know exactly philosophically, but the best way I can describe it is when you turn to non being, you're actually turning to, like, a shadow of a thing. You know what I mean? I saw a reel the other day because I watch those, because I think they're funny sometimes, right? And this kid looked behind him and saw his shadow and almost jumped out of his pants, he was so scared.

You know what I'm talking about? It was as if he never, you know, there's my shadow right there. And he tried to get away from it. And as he ran from it, course he fell down and it kept following him, right?

It was almost like I got this picture of, like, what sin is like. Sin, like, follows us around, tempting us into non being. In other words, not something more substantive. You know, we use that term of one substance with the Father, right? One substance, the ground of reality or being itself, right?

Non being would be the opposite of that, which would be sin, which would be like a shadow. In other words, do you want my shadow or do you want me? Like, because I'm right here and my shadow's not me. Actually, you see how that works? It's non being.

There's nothing really there because as soon as you remove me, the shadow disappears. The shadow has no existence on its own. And you know what? Sin doesn't exist either. It always latches on to something that is good and substantive and tries to pull us down into the shadows, down into darkness.

You see, those. Those images in the Bible are both symbolic and also philosophical in nature.

And so that's why Deuteronomy hears Moses and even tells you, look, I'm an old man. Choose life. Like, let's just get on with this thing, right? Because if you don't, it'll lead to death. There's two options, and we have lots of contrast today in the readings here.

And the first big contrast is life and death, blessing and cursing, right? Right out of Deuteronomy. So you can choose. It's it, by the way, big thing on choice today, too. If you choose life, it's not automatic.

If you then blessing. If you don't, then cursing. And listen, the history of Israel as we find it in the Old Testament, isn't it One long history of pounding out on the anvil the fact that when they chose God, blessing came, and when they didn't, cursing came. And over and over, we just. What a bunch of idiots.

Until we put the mirror up to our own face and say, what an idiot.

Sin follows us in this way because we're born into its nature.

Then you come to psalm reading, right? So I'm one, which is my problem. Well, I have so many different favorite psalms that I don't even know which one is my favorite anymore. But it certainly is one of them. Two ways, just two ways.

There's not three, there's not 40. It's just two ways. It's God's way and then every other way.

And the psalm tips us off, doesn't it, in its first and last word? The first word of the psalm is blessed, happy, last word of the psalm, doomed in some translations, or perish. Well, there you go. There's your contrast again, right? Life, death, blessing, cursing, happiness or doom.

And then we turn to Philemon, the entire book, by the way, and this is a letter of Paul to one of his friends about a slave, a slave that has become our brother, which, by the way, that little seed that's planted in Philemon destroys slavery as we knew it around the world. Took some time, but it destroys it from the inside out. Not legislatively, not by writing or laws, because you can write another law, but a law doesn't change the human heart. And if we could see people as Paul saw Onesimus, which, by the way, it's kind of. It's a funny play on words, if you've ever studied Philemon.

It's a funny play on words because his name is useful, right? So he's a slave and his name is Useful. It's like, hey, Mr. Useful, come on. But he became useless because he ran away.

And Paul says, but he's useful to me, so I'd like for you to receive him back as if you're receiving me, by the way. And also I'm coming by and I know you'll do more than I'm asking. I love the way Paul kind of is a little subversive here, a little passive aggressive, maybe even, you know, like, basically, hey, you don't do this, I'm going to command you to do it. Okay, but I don't have to do that because I know your heart.

And it shows that our relationships, when we put God first, are reordered rightly. And then we come to this Luke reading, which again is just. It's troublesome it ought to sit with us. Wrong. Like what?

As our group looked at it on Wednesday, by the way, in our small group, it's just you have to wrestle with it. And I think that's the reason why Jesus did it. He wants us to wrestle with it because when we wrestle with something and come to terms with it, then we know it. You ever done that before where you just couldn't figure something out, but then you wrestled and wrestled, and then finally it's like the heavens opened up. It's all of a sudden like in the cartoons.

Ding. You know, that light bulb light representing knowledge. You're out of darkness now into the light now, you know. But it didn't come without wrestling. So let's just spend a minute wrestling with what Jesus says here.

Notice Jesus words are quite cutting. Hate. And of course, hate here is different. It's more this. It's more rightly ordering relationships.

So it's not despising our wife or our children or our family. Our mother and father, of course, we're told to honor mother and father in this way. And so he does not mean spite or some sort of hostility that we should all of a sudden work up in anger toward them, but in. But instead, in comparison to God, it looks like hate. And this, there's kind of a second thing that's attached to it, not just in comparison, not just in order, but also in potential.

So what I mean by that is all these things, all our relationships have the potential to become gods. In other words, to take the place of God. As some have said, you will worship something, and by worship means it's the most worthy thing to you. You lift that up, you bow before that, you wake up for that thing. You know, we could probably get down to it quite quickly if I just simply said, like, why will you go to work tomorrow?

You know, well, to make. Okay, well, why do you want to make money? Well, to take care of my family. Okay, well, why do you want to take care of your family? Because they mean the world to me.

Interesting. So you're going to work, really, because you love your family tomorrow. That's a good order. Right? But if family becomes more important and we worship family over God, which many of us are way lower than that, unfortunately, we would worship a device oftentimes than spend time with our family.

So, like, we're way behind the curve, I would suggest. But Jesus in this society, family was, I mean, it was up there and I mean in priority. That is so much so that people were putting family, people were putting Maybe we could say it this way without you crucifying me. Today, people were putting kids before God, kids before their marriage. You know, there is an order to love, and that's not the order.

And some of us are putting work before family or kids before marriage, and God's just almost an afterthought. Like, yeah, if we get around to that.

Well, here's the principle. The heart of the spiritual life is to love God first and foremost. Isn't this the first commandment? Put God first. I mean, it's right there.

It's like all the other commandments. They don't even make sense unless you do that thing. He is first. You say, well, why does he get to demand that? And just, by the way, just think about, like, put yourself.

We don't even have time to do this, but, like, put yourself in that first century context of being a Jew walking to Jerusalem with Jesus. And then think, who the heck is this guy? Think he is. He must be the most egotistical man to ever walk the face of the earth. He wants me to put him before Jessica Jackson Balabao Top Blakely before all my possessions.

Who does God think he is?

A little secret here. Is this that man that walked the face of the earth is the one who gifted me with all those things.

So can you imagine? Can you just imagine a child, One of my children. Let's just say Baylor, for all intents and purposes, nothing against him, comes to me and says, you know what, Dad? I like the truck that you're allowing me to drive. I like the house that you're allowing me to live in.

I like all the food that I get and all the snacks and cereal that I get to eat and whatever else, because mom is gone and nobody's cooked. I love all those things. But you know what? I really could do a lot without you, though, to be honest with you, you just kind of get in the way, you know, like telling me all these things to do and clean my room and, like, brush my teeth and take a shower and et cetera. Like, let's just do without that, okay?

And let's just not talk, but still give me the gifts. I mean, I hate to be blunt about this, but that's just gonna be better. And yet that isn't that kind of what we do with God? It's like, oh, man, I love all these things, man. I love it.

Thank you so much. But we never consider the giver. You see that? The gift could never be greater than the giver. It's impossible.

And yet we always get those disorder, don't we? We're upside down.

The creature can never be greater than the Creator. That's the way Paul puts it. And so the danger is loving things, loving creation, loving the gift, more than the giver, more than the Creator and maker of all things, ultimately worshiping idols.

Here's a thought that I had that came to my mind because I was thinking about a baby, because there's a new baby in our family. And they always like these puffs, you know what I'm talking about? Get stuck everywhere. They get stuck on their face and skin. I mean, you know what I'm talking about, these puffs.

And like, I actually ate one one time, and it hardly tasted like anything. It just like, just dissolves in your mouth like a puff, you know? And I got to thinking, like, I got to thinking then about my favorite meal, just as this is letting you inside my head a little bit, which is dangerous, but nevertheless. And it was like one of my favorite meals with Jessica somewhere out in Colorado, near Yellowstone. I can't remember the name.

You would all know the town. I couldn't think of it. And it was Buffalo Wellington. That is like, Wellington is like this dish, whatever fancy stuff, buffalo. And I'm talking about it was so good.

And I got to thinking, you know, if I tried to convince that baby to give me the puffs and trade it out for buffalo Wellington, they wouldn't do that. You're crazy, man. This is where it's at, you know, and just shoving them in their mouth, dissolving into mush or whatever, right? It's like, they wouldn't trade it. And you'd have to think, oh, yeah, that's just because they just.

They don't know there's just a bait. And there's like, hey, that's what we do. We settle for these lesser things, these dissolving things. When he's offering a feast, he's offering a feast. We've got to develop, though, fellow sinners, develop.

Develop a palette for Buffalo Wellington over puffs. If I could put it that way.

It's ludicrous to want anything else. And yet we do. We go back to the trough. We go back to the trough like greedy little pigs.

Not blaming you. That shadow follows us. We got to keep our eyes on what is substantive, on the feast that he prepares for us, on the good things. He's the giver. So he has these three images here in the Luke passage, which is building a tower, right?

And then going to war. And the tower has to do with what is our foundation? I mean, put simply, what's your foundation? And Paul's going to say this in 1st Corinthians 3, Christ must be our true foundation. You see, sometimes we've just.

I have done this, like I've been, I've grown up in the church all my life. And one of the mistakes that I made for so long as like a kid, a student, even into college was I thought, okay, to get closer to God, I've got to stop doing all this stuff. But that's a different religion. In fact, Sikhism tries to do that. You try to negate every action in your life so you can be in complete equanimity with the universe, just free flowing.

You know, Daoism also has a hint of this. That is not what Christ is asking us to do. Just try to keep negating things until all we have is just. We're. Silence.

Statue of holiness. No, no, no. Build, work, good works, virtue. Build a high tower. Gold, silver.

He lists all these things in verse, what good works. But notice the foundation must be right. In other words, all of us are building something, but not all of us have a foundation of Christ.

And then he says, kind of in an all. Well, the war piece is just make peace with God, right? Like, there's no way to keep fighting God. Some of us fighting God about this or that. Let's just make peace with him and be done with it.

There's no way we're going to win this war and then give up everything you have. Because it's better to have hands open than clinched on those puffs. If you're clenched, you can't receive. If hands are open, you can always receive from the giver. He gave you what you have right now.

Don't you trust him to give you more? Then keep the handle. Pry it open if you've got to. Keep it open.

Now you say. I'm still a little fuzzy on exactly how this works. I'm so glad you asked. Then this is the part I really want to get to. Here's the big news.

Here's the good news is that God is not one being among many. He's not one option among many. So it's not like today. Because, you know, as a kid I thought, why don't people just choose life and blessing? That's stupid, you know, if you had a choice, choose one.

Let's get on with it, right? But see, God is not on the same shelf, if you will, as Coke or Sprite. It's not an option of just you Choose Coke today. He's his own. He is, period.

He's being itself, so to speak. Okay, now how does this work out? Well, Deuteronomy sets before its life and death. Not multiple lifestyle choices, but the difference in reality and nothing at all. So we're back to the shadow again.

We're back to darkness.

Now maybe it's a little fuzzy. Thomas Aquinas says this. God himself is his own being subsisting by itself. So God's essence is his being. Now, we're not going to unpack that, even though that would be wonderful to unpack.

It's going to take too long. So let me just summarize and say this. God is not one being among many. He's being itself so that the closer we get to him, the more more real we become, the more substantive our life becomes. I think C.S.

lewis put it best in his work, the Great Divorce. You remember this. And when they go up to heaven, they're in hell and they take a bus up to heaven just to visit for a day. And it's a made up story, by the way, if you didn't know. And they get up there and they barely are existing.

They're like shadows. They're like if you know this effervescent something. But when they start moving closer to the great country, they begin to get firmer, the outline gets clearer. Is that not a prescription for our own culture today where nobody knows who they are? If you seek within, it just leads to nothing.

You want to know who you are, you don't look within.

That's a shadow. He said, you look up, you look up. And the more you look up, the more definition comes to your life, the more substance comes to your life, the more fullness comes to your life and the disappears.

Because every finite thing always fails. I ran across a great quote this week from a philosopher. Schopenhauer, I think, is how you say his name, says this it is. And just really hear this, let this sit in. It is painful not to get what you want.

We can say amen. It is, you know, I want this thing. I don't get it hurts. But notice what he says. It is far from worse to get what you want because then you discover it never satisfies.

You ever chase something and you finally got it and you're like, that's it.

I guarantee if Bo Jackson was right here with all the awards and accolades, what do they mean today for him? He would just, just stuff on a wall like it was a great moment. But if you just continue to Live your life. Can you imagine? Continue to live your life into your 80s based on something you did 40 years ago, 50 years ago.

Be awful. Once we get it, we realize quickly, well, that ain't living. There's more. There's more, more, more. Because nothing in this world will ever satisfy what we've got to go to the well, the well of life, the source of life himself, being itself, where all of our desires come to fruition.

All of our desires came from Him. So when we trace them back, they always lead to God. And we're trying to do stuff, we always stop so short, don't we? And then we just jump over to something else. Then we just jump over and we're like a tossing here and there with the winds of this world.

Be done with that. Let's go after the one.

Let's go after goodness himself. Because here's the thing. When we try to consume and consume, it's like grabbing at sand. It's never going to make anything substantive. You tried to do that before, right?

And just never. First wave that comes by. First kid. One time I designed a. A beautiful sea turtle out of sand.

Beautiful. And one of Justin's kids came over there and I mean, I was just like, okay, I see 45 minutes of work, poof, gone. Just for him to enjoy. What, destruction?

You can tell I'm not mad about that.

But isn't that what we do with our life? We build and build and work and work all for somebody else to come along and quickly take, destroy. Let's start building on a foundation that's inexhaustible, eternal, immaterial. And that foundation is Jesus Christ. The way I thought about this was this, and I hope this is helpful to you, is the burning bush.

You see, God is not something that we consume. You know, like when we, when we consume something and we're all considered like consumers and we all get advertised to on this thing. Of course, all that, when we consume, it's just gone, right? Like we just. We have a beautiful meal and it's gone.

We're going to consume it. You can never do that with God. He's not a consumable. He's eternal. He's just more and more and more deeper in.

I mean, even into eternity, you say, well, surely when we get to heaven, we'll get it all. No, that's a good thing about God. Heaven or earth, it doesn't matter. You're never going to thumb the depth of who he is. There's always, always more.

And we get little glimpses of this in our life, you know, maybe something that you enjoy doing. And it never gets old. You know what I'm talking about? You know, I noticed that, actually, GK Chesterton noticed that the older we get, the sort of grumpier we become with stuff. You know, we're just like.

But like a kid. You can. Jessica told me the other day, the baby that is down there with them on this trip, she. She said, I just took a milk carton, put a plastic fork in there and gave it to the kid. He played with it for two hours, banging it around.

Just never got tired of it, you know. You ever had a kid, you, like, did that thing, like, rodeo or whatever, you know? Okay, all right, let's do it again. Do it again. Do it again, buddy.

When are you gonna get tired of this? Cause I'm tired. I'm sick of seeing you do it. You know, Chesterton said the older we get, kind of more grumpy we become and more tired and bored we get of things because we think we've got it figured out. But God, he says, is ever childlike.

Every morning he says, do it again to the sun. Every day he says to the flowers, do it again. Do it again. I love my. Do it again.

We grow old and dim because of sin. But when we join ourselves to Christ, we will find a new fire, a new illumination, a new light that will all of a sudden exemplify everything around us. So it's the same life, but now we see it differently. We see people differently. We see what God has given to us differently.

Do you see what I mean by that?

That's why St. Augustine can say it this way. Love God and do what you will. I love that. Love God and then do what you will. Because when you have whatever you're going to will rooted in God, it's going to be good.

Which means the world is wide open for us to create, for us to enjoy, for us to discover again. Christianity is not. Christ is not inviting us to some stodgy statue like tiptoeing through the world. No. We are supposed to place our foot in this world and make a difference based in his love.

We're to join him on this journey. And it is a great journey because he's the leader.

And so when we get close to him, he reorders everything, magnifying things in our life.

Actually, was watching this show the other day. I thought this was interesting. I don't know if it's true or not, but he said, when you're torturing someone don't ask me what show I'm watching. When you're torturing someone, if you take one sense away and then you punish another one of the five senses, it actually exemplifies the senses because you've taken one away. So like if you cover somebody's head in darkness and then you hurt them in some way, the pain is worse, right?

I thought to myself, you know, a more positive twist on that is when we think we're giving something up for the Lord. You know, lord, I'm going to give up this or that in my life. What happens is there becomes a magnification in our life of sensing trust for God.

So if you're going through a tough time, if the Lord's saying, give me that and it feels painful, that's okay. The way of the cross is always painful, but it leads to, to life. It leads to life, abundant life, like good life.

And that's why finally, in our Philemon reading, there's a transformation in how we see others and everything else in the world. Because as soon as God is first, as soon as he reorders our love, as soon as what is good in us is magnified over the shadow, over the darkness, then we're being sanctified by the Holy Spirit from the inside out. That's how it works. We don't just correct behavior. He gives us a new heart.

That's something only he can do as we submit to him, as we beg for Him. Give me that new heart. Oh Lord, I want to see you. You want to see Him? You can see Him.

Most of us just really don't care. We care about these things that are in right here in front of us, about the door of our face right here. And it consumes us. But Christ wants to turn that around to be an all consuming fire in our life, but not one that then burns us up. Because remember at the burning bush, the bush is not burning, the fire is burning.

And that's why, because God is on a level of his own. He doesn't need the fuel of this life. He doesn't need the little gifts that we offer up to Him. Instead, he can join Himself to us, making us one with Him. What a fault, what a God, what a life that he's offering to us.

If you thought Christianity was some sleepy, wooden, boring thing, you've been lied to. Come into the light. Stop chasing the shadows. Don't be afraid of your own shadow today. Go toward what is real and that is God.

So yes, Jesus is asking us to give up everything but Let me tell you, brothers and sisters, when you do, then you find real life. And it's a joy to give it up. It's a joy to watch him transform this disordered self into something beautiful. And that's what he has for you. That's what he has for me.

Something beautiful.

So stop chasing after these desires that will never fill us, that will always leave us empty. And instead, put God first.

Put him as your foundation.

And understand that's going to cost you everything. But here's the payoff. Here's the reward. You get everything thrown in. Seek first the kingdom of God.

And then everything else gets added back in on the back end in a new, beautiful, transformed way. But not before there's a death. So he bids us to come and die. He bids us today to choose Him. He bids us today and invites us to his feast, to his table, where there's lots and lots of food.

In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, may it be so of us. Amen