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Counting the Cost
September 22, 2018

Last week we saw how we must sacrifice everything by having no gods before God, and that anything, any idea, or any person can be that god. Earlier this week, as a first-century apostolic Christian, I observed the Day of Atonement understanding this day foretells when good triumphs over evil as Satan is banished to the bottomless pit and requires us to fast, being physically cut off from food and water, needed for physical life, as Jesus was cut off from the Father, needed for spiritual life, when the sins of mankind were heaped on Jesus. To have any god before God would make a mockery of God and the sacrifice of Jesus. Sacrificing everything does not mean getting rid of everything. In Luke 14, Jesus is recorded as saying we have to hate our family to follow Him. The Greek work for hate, miseo, can mean to love less. So it is OK to lover our family, we just have to love them less than Jesus. Similarly, anything that we have we have to value less than our relationship to Jesus and the Father.

Luke 14:25-33
And there went great multitudes with him: and he turned, and said unto them, If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. And whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple. For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it? Lest haply, after he hath laid the foundation, and is not able to finish it, all that behold it begin to mock him, Saying, This man began to build, and was not able to finish. Or what king, going to make war against another king, sitteth not down first, and consulteth whether he be able with ten thousand to meet him that cometh against him with twenty thousand? Or else, while the other is yet a great way off, he sendeth an ambassage, and desireth conditions of peace. So likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple.

Once we begin to follow Jesus, we must never give up. Only those who endure to the end will be saved. We know that the gospel of the Kingdom of God must be preached to the world before the end comes.

Matthew 24:3-14
And as he sat upon the mount of Olives, the disciples came unto him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world? And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you. For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many. And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places. All these are the beginning of sorrows. Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name's sake. And then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another. And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many. And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold. But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come.

When Jesus said he came not to destroy the law and the prophets in Matthew 5:17-18 but to fulfill it, and when Jesus said we have to love our family less than him and value our possession less than our relationship with Jesus and the Father, we are once again reminded of that very first commandment.

Exodus 20:2-3
I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

We have to remember that a god could be anything, any belief, or any person we value more than God. We simply cannot have anything, any belief, or any person in our life more valuable to us than God. To follow God and Jesus we have to abandon anything that we consider to be more valuable, and love our family less than we love Jesus and the Father, remembering if we endure to the end, we will be saved.

All verses are from the King James Version.
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