Luke 14:25-35 "My Love/Hate Relationship With Jesus"
I have a love/hate relationship with a lot of things. Social media, email, texting—I love how easy it makes keeping in touch and communicating but I hate how much of a time suck it can be. I have a love/hate relationship with technology in general—especially my computer and phone. I love how awesome they are when they work but when they break down. I’m not sure “hate” is a strong enough word.
I love how I feel when I’m exercising and eating healthy but I also love ice cream and finding excuses to avoid the gym.
I love salads but I have a hard time forcing myself to make one for lunch, or ordering them at restaurants.
It’s that way with a lot of food.
Like we bought a juicer. A nice one, you can juice just about anything.
I love juicing but I hate the way tacos get stuck in the machine.
And portion control is not my love language.
Because I love frozen lasagna but I hate the way the box says I’m a family of four.
Actually, I have a love/hate relationship with Jesus.
That probably sounds wrong but I think it’ll make sense before we’re done today.
Luke 14:25 Now great crowds accompanied him, and he turned and said to them,
Jesus is on the road heading to Jerusalem, stopping in every little town along the way to teach about the kingdom of God. This verse says great crowds were accompanying Him—the Jesus caravan was picking up new people everywhere they went.
So, one day Jesus just stops in the middle of the road and has the whole parade of people gather around for a little impromptu teaching time. He’s probably especially talking to the people who have recently joined Him on this journey to Jerusalem—but everyone else, too.
VERSE 26:
Jesus says, “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. Luke 14:26
Say what? That’s quite the icebreaker. I’ve probably heard a hundred sermons on this verse and everyone always tries to soften the blow of His words.
I don’t think He wanted His words to be softened. There were plenty of friendly ways He could have said what He said. He chose the most shocking and offensive way possible. “Hey, all you people who think you’re following me, if you don’t hate your mom and dad, your wife and husband and kids, if you don’t hate your brothers and sisters—if you don’t hate yourself—I’m not having you.”
Peter probably started running toward Jesus to tackle Him and get Him to stop talking like that before He drives everyone away. James and John might have been like, “What the heck are you doing, Lord? You’re going to scare away the hippies talking about hate like that.” Jesus says, “Oh I know. It’s called thinning the herd.”
Hate. This wouldn’t have sounded any friendlier to them than it does to us. No matter what the nice little preachers down the street say.
Now, I know what some of you are thinking. “But God says we’re to LOVE, not hate. We’re supposed to love our parents, love our wife or husband, love our kids—love our neighbor as OURSELVES!” All true. Absolutely. Also, Jesus says unless we HATE them, we can’t be His disciple.
So how can we both love and hate at the same time?
Well, first, there is a slightly different connotation between how we use the word “hate” and the way they used it. But only slightly.
We use the word “hate” to mean we are disgusted with something or someone. It’s driven by our emotional reaction to the person, place, or whatever. I hate vinegar and pickles, you might hate brussels sprouts—everyone hates getting stuck in traffic. We have a really strong negative feeling about those things. Really, it’s the same distinction between how we use the word “love” and the Biblical way of understanding “love.” We tend to think “love” is an emotional reaction to something but the Bible defines “love” as a deliberate action we take toward someone. It’s not just something we feel, it’s something we do. We love someone when we’re patient with them, kind to them, forgive them, and all that. We might feel like loving them or not but Biblical love is a commitment not a feeling.
It’s the same with the Biblical concept of hate. It means to reject, push away, deny—and it’s always in contrast with something else. To “hate” a person is to reject them for someone or something else. It’s always in contrast. This or that. To “hate” one thing is to reject it in favor of something else—something you are going to “love.”
But it means to do so in the strongest way possible—probably with a little stink on it.
So what does it mean to hate your parents? It’s certainly not being mean to them. It doesn’t have anything to do with not loving and honoring them. It means if you’re going to follow Jesus then you reject anything about your parents that gets in the way of following Him. A lot of the people in that Jesus parade were Jews with very traditional Jewish parents. Following Jesus was a radical New Testament departure from all their religious and cultural beliefs. A lot of them were going to get kicked out of their families, not invited to Passover, no longer welcome in the synagogue—following Jesus was going to be costly. From now on they were going to have a love/hate relationship with their parents. Love and honor them in any way they could but reject any of their parent's ideas about not being a disciple of Jesus.
Same with everything else on that hate list: They were to reject anything about their husband, wife, or children that gets in the way of following Jesus the way He called them to follow. If their brother or sister cornered them and had a heart-to-heart conversation about how following Jesus was getting in the way of family time—like they missed going to synagogue and Temple with them, they didn’t like all that time they were spending with their Christian friends—come on, compromise—you can still follow Jesus, just follow Him over here, from a distance. They were to reject (hate) their family and continue following Jesus as He instructed them.
Including hating (rejecting) their own life and opinions and preferences. God knows everyone loves and takes care of themselves, that’s the default setting—He even said that’s the standard for how we’re to love others (love your neighbor the same way you love yourself)—but if our “me time,” personal preferences—the “Me-Monster” gets in the way of what Jesus requires of us, then we have to reject our selfish ideas, hate our selfish desires, turn away from all our wicked pride and follow Him. That’s what being His disciple means.
Is it starting to make sense? You see how we’re supposed to have a love/hate relationship with everything in this life?
I was praying about this message on Wednesday and the title popped into my head, “My Love/Hate Relationship With Jesus.” I laughed and said, “Thank you Lord, that’s a great title.”
It boils down to this…
VERSE 27:
Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. Luke 14:27
Everyone who follows Jesus follows Him to a cross. Everything in our life has to be nailed to that cross—even the good things. Especially the good things. We have to die. To ourselves, to our parents, to our family, to our possessions, to our career—everything we love so dearly in this world. We have to die to those things. We have to hate those things. We have to nail those things on the cross. Anything we try to spare from the pain and humility of dying on the cross will ruin us. Poison everything else. If we don’t kill all those things they will kill us.
Let me say it a different way. Parents, children, family, careers, ourselves—those are all good things but they make terrible gods. Any of those things that we put higher than God, any of those things that we love and trust more than God will destroy us.
If your family was Jewish so you didn’t want to offend them by going to church and worshiping Jesus—that would be spiritual suicide. You have to reject anything about your parents that keeps you from faithfully following Jesus. And He says it in the strongest way possible: you have to hate your parents. It’s the only way to love God. It’s even the only way to truly love your parents. You see that? Letting them believe you’re rejecting Jesus for their sake is not good for them.
If your husband or wife is Muslim or Buddhist, or Mormon, or Jehovah’s Witness—they might reject you for following Jesus, for being a Christian—so what should you do about that? You better not compromise how you follow Him to make your family happy.
I would say this even applies to different Christian churches. If God has put you here at NewChurch but you have family members who want you to leave and go somewhere else—you better not. You better follow Jesus where He’s called you to be. Maybe they’re Catholic or Baptist or whatever and don’t understand why you’re here. Especially if they want you to go to some shiny full-service Disneyland church where the cost of discipleship is much lower and you can anonymously hide in the crowd. Remember what we talked about last week, “don’t make it about you.” You need to follow Jesus where He has called you to serve Him.
And our kids, too. We can’t let anything about our kids cause us to compromise. We need to be good parents. We need to love and support our kids. But kids make really lousy gods. What are we teaching our kids if we encourage them to do activities that take priority over worship? Our culture doesn’t think anything is more important than our kids. Kid’s school. Kid’s sports. This is especially true in Katy—we worship our kids. Jesus says it doesn’t work that way. Anything we worship other than God will destroy us and will destroy the thing we’re worshiping. God alone is to be worshiped. The reason God alone is to be worshiped is because He’s the only safe place for our worship to be focused. Here’s a bad analogy: It’s like our worship is one of those carnival games that shoots a stream of water from a squirt gun—you know, you shoot the stream of water into the clown’s mouth and it blows up a balloon. Well, worship is like that except anything outside of the target (which is God, not a clown’s mouth) anything outside of the target is charged with high-voltage electricity and it’ll kill you. Aim your worship at God or GAME OVER. Aim your worship at God, not because He needs the attention, but because otherwise you’ll destroy the thing you love and put yourself in serious danger.
What was I talking about? Oh yeah, don’t worship your kids. Make sure they know in every way possible that Worshiping God is a higher priority than anything else in this world.
Think about all the most important things and people in your life. Hate Everything You Love Everything and everyone you love. All those things are potentially dangerous to your soul. They are the most potentially dangerous things to your soul. You have to figure out the ways that they are tempting you to go off course, and you have to reject those temptations. Even though you love all those things, all those people, including yourself—you have to reject any way they are getting in the way of you following Jesus, doing what He wants you to do, walking in His wisdom—and you have to deliberately choose to hate those things.
This is your love/hate relationship with everything in the world as you learn how to follow Jesus. This is the high cost of discipleship. Did you realize it was going to cost so much to follow Jesus? Jesus has a better metaphor than a clown mouth to help us understand:
VERSE 28:
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.’
Luke 14:28-30
Nothing wrong with building a tower—not in this parable anyway—Tower of Babel is a different story. In this parable it’s a good thing. But if someone starts building and runs out of money after they lay the foundation—well, that’ll be pretty awkward. Everyone will see what a poor planner they were. Loser!
It’s like when someone gets all excited about building their life around Jesus. They’re going to start following Jesus! They tell people they’re going to church, going to start reading their Bible, giving their life to the Lord. And then five minutes later they’re all jacked up on road rage, or being disrespectful to their husband, or unloving to their wife, or yelling at their kids. Skipping church. Collecting Bible dust. Basically acting like an unbeliever. A functional atheist. Well everyone’s going to see that—it’s going to be awkward.
Jesus is walking toward Jerusalem, stops in the middle of the road, who knows what the people behind Him were talking about, what they were thinking—and He says, “Hey all you people who are following me to where I’m going to be crucified for all your sin—you need to realize if you’re following me, if you’re my disciple, I expect you to finish what I’ve begun in you. I expect you to finish building the tower I’ve called you to build.”
For all of us at NewChurch, that’s going to be NewChurch Pub or NewChurch Bar & Grill or whatever we call it. If we stop now, when all we have is a funky-looking foundation in an elementary school—that’s going to be an awkward place to stop. We need to count the cost. We have to see it through.
Same with everything God has called you out of the world to do. You have to finish it.
And yes, there will be opposition. It won’t be easy. There’s going to be so much temptation to get distracted, discouraged, and give up. So He tells another parable:
VERSE 31:
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.
Luke 14:31-32
We are at war my friends. And we are outnumbered. There are so many more devils and demons and unbelievers who are going to try to destroy your faith—get you to act like a fool, give up on what God has called you to do. Are you going to stand up to them anyway? Or are you going to compromise for a little temporary peace?
In Jesus’ story a smaller army is facing an army twice its size. If they get scared and send a delegation to make peace—to compromise—what do you think is going to happen? The larger army is going to kill the delegates and then smash that scared little army. But Jesus is saying if we stick with Him, we may look small but He will give us the victory. It’s the story of at least a dozen situations in the Bible where a small army trusts in God and defeats a larger one. This is Jesus reminding us why we don’t need to compromise—no matter how overwhelming the situation looks. He’s the king. He’s got it.
Bottom line:
VERSE 33:
So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.
Luke 14:33
Don’t let anything get in the way of following Jesus the way He has called you to follow Him, in the place where He has called you to follow Him. You have to have a love/hate relationship with everything in the world. It’s going to cost you something. It’s going to cost you everything—but what Jesus offers is worth more than everything the world has to offer. Nothing else even compares to it. Compared to the Gospel of Jesus, the wisdom of Jesus, the life in Jesus—everything else you love is worthless.
You have to renounce everything that gets in the way. Reject it. Hate it. Especially everyone and everything that’s close to your heart, everyone and everything you love. You won’t be free to truly love unless you hate all the ways they pull you away from Jesus and back into the world.
Because He has called you out of the world, to change the world, and you can’t do that if you are constantly compromised by your relationships and your possessions. All those people and possessions you love the most. You can’t do anything right if your primary identity isn’t in Him. You have to be a Jesus follower first—everything else comes after that: a son or daughter after that, a husband or wife after that. Everything you are and everything you have is to be put under the lordship of Christ. You have to reject everything in this world—no matter how good it is or how much you love it—you have to hate anything about it that would tempt you to be unfaithful. If you don’t, it’s not good for you and it’s not good for anyone else either.
And Jesus wraps it up with this analogy:
VERSE 34:
“Salt is good, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is of no use either for the soil or for the manure pile. It is thrown away. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”
Luke 14:34-35
Salt is salt. It can’t really lose its saltiness but if it gets contaminated by mixing disgusting things into it—then it isn’t good for anything. Pure salt is good for all kinds of things. It’s necessary for life. But salt mixed with hateful gross things—Jesus says it ain’t worth poop. It’s good for nothing.
He’s called you to be the salt of the earth. God made you clean and purified you. Your job is to change the world by being a Jesus follower but if you try to mix a little following Jesus with a little keeping your parents happy by denying Him, caring more about what your wife or husband thinks than what God wants you to do—or your brother or sister or kids.
And it works the other way, too. If you say you’re following Jesus but you hurt people, lie, cheat, let people down—act like a selfish jerk. It’s funny that we call being a grumpy jerk “being salty”—if you say you’re following Jesus but you go around being “salty” all the time. Well that kind of salty has lost its saltiness and isn’t good for anything.
No compromise. The only way to love the Lord with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself—-is to reject all the ways that you are tempted to make all those people and things that are precious to you more important than Jesus. Trust what Jesus has told you instead of listening to your parents, your spouse, your kids, or yourself—especially yourself.
It won’t be easy. It’ll be a daily struggle. Your love/hate relationship with Jesus.
But here’s the good part: Jesus was walking to Jerusalem. Whether anyone went with Him or not, He was still going. When He got there everyone was going to run away and hide. He was going to His cross by Himself—but not alone—You were crucified with Him. He took all your sin and shame with Him. Took all your hate on Himself. All your rejection. All those times you compromise by putting other people before Him, all the selfish, foolish things He told you not to do but you do them anyway, all the things He told you to do but you’re too much of a coward to do it. Too weak. All the ways you fail to bear your cross—He did it for you.
This is a heavy sermon but only if you try to do it on your own. Have you heard what He’s saying to you today? Do you have ears to hear? Then hear this: He took all that heaviness on Himself. In His resurrection He gives you hope. He restores your purity. Your sins are forgiven. Your saltiness is made salty again. Turn to Him, turn away from the things of this world that are trying to destroy you, and believe. Believe in His love that is calling you out of the hateful traps of the world. Jesus says, “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.” Makes more sense now, doesn’t it? This is Jesus calling you to be His disciple. It’s a life-long journey that continues forever, now and in the resurrection. Let those who have ears to hear say amen. AMEN