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Aug 25, 2019

Faith is Math

Faith is Math

Passage: Luke 14:25-33

Speaker: Patrick Lafferty

Series: The Stories In-Between: Parables

While receiving Christ is utterly free, following Him is not without cost. But when you hear Him say what it costs you, you find that not to follow Him is even costlier. Why so?

Order of Worship

Pre-Service Text: Luke 14:27
Call To Worship: from Psalm 91:2; Romans 10:9, 13
Statement of Faith: The Apostles’ Creed
Old Testament Reading: Joshua 24:14-17
Sermon Title: Faith is Math
Central Text: Luke 14:25-33
Benediction: 2 Corinthians 13:14
Post-Service Text: Matthew 4:20

  08.25.19 Sermon Notes

Illustration

Incredibles 2 - Math is Math

Readings & Scripture

Pre-Service Text: Luke 14:27
Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.

Call To Worship: from Psalm 91:2; Romans 10:9, 13
LEADER: Let us worship God.

PEOPLE: He is our refuge and our fortress, our God, in whom we trust.

LEADER: Let us confess with our mouths, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in our hearts that God raised him from the dead.

PEOPLE: Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

ALL: Let us call upon our true God, believing him in our hearts, confessing him with our mouths, worshiping him in spirit and in truth.

Statement of Faith: The Apostles’ Creed
I believe in God the Father Almighty,
Maker of heaven and earth.

I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord,
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
and born of the Virgin Mary.
He suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried;
he descended into hell.
The third day he rose again from the dead.
He ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty.
From there he will come to judge the living and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting. Amen.

Old Testament Reading: Joshua 24:14-17
14 “Now therefore fear the Lord and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness. Put away the gods that your fathers served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. 15 And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”
16 Then the people answered, “Far be it from us that we should forsake the Lord to serve other gods, 17 for it is the Lord our God who brought us and our fathers up from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, and who did those great signs in our sight and preserved us in all the way that we went, and among all the peoples through whom we passed.”

Central Text: Luke 14:25-33
Now great crowds accompanied him, and he turned and said to them, 26 “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. 27 Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. 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? 29 Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, 30 saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’ 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? 32 And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace. 33 So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.

Benediction: 2 Corinthians 13:14
LEADER: The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.

PEOPLE: And also with you! Amen.

Post-Service Text: Matthew 4:20
Immediately they left their nets and followed him.

Related Scriptures:

  • Joshua 1:8
  • Isaiah 1:19-20
  • Matthew 11:28-30
  • Luke 10:38-42
  • 2 Corinthians 4:10
  • James 1:22-25

Discussion Questions & Applications:

  1. When you were younger, did you tend to be the one who led or the one who followed the self-appointed leader?
  2. Given that Jesus means by “hate” not a literal hatred but a comparison of devotion, what are ways we are prone to not “hating” all those relationships in favor of following Jesus? What keeps us from “hating” them as he might intend?
  3. If “bearing our own cross” implies suffering some form of rejection for following Him, have you ever experienced that? If so, what was it like?
  4. No doubt this word from Jesus is a severe one--uncompromising. If the cost which not only seems but is so high, what must that mean about what Jesus is worth?
  5. Set aside, just for a moment, the thought of eternal blessedness, why might it be of greater cost to you not to follow Jesus as He outlines here?

Quotes:

 

  • Discipleship is fundamentally a call to allegiance. . . .It is not how little one can give that is the question, but how much God deserves. - Darrell Bock
  • Discipleship is a process of paying more and more attention to God’s righteousness and less and less attention to our own.  - Eugene Peterson
  • Following Jesus is no invitation to an ice-cream social. - F.W. Danker
  • The Christian life is both evangel and ethic, proclamation and practice, inseparably joined. - Thabiti Anyabwile
  • There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him. - C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce
  • It is simply not possible to get rich off your own human capital without exploiting yourself and impoverishing your inner life, and meritocrats who hope to have their cake and eat it too deceive themselves. - Daniel Markovitz
  • The woman who makes a dog the centre of her life loses, in the end, not only her human usefulness and dignity but even the proper pleasure of dog-keeping. . . .It may be stated as follows: every preference of a small good to a great, or partial good to a total good, involves the loss of the small or partial good for which the sacrifice is made. . . .Put first things first and we get second things thrown in: put second things first & we lose both first and second things. We never get, say, even the sensual pleasure of food at its best when we are being greedy. - C.S. Lewis
  • But there must be a real giving up of the self… The principle runs through all life from top to bottom. Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favorite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end: submit with every fiber of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in. -C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Sermons/resources:

Books:

Hearers and Doers: A Pastor’s Guide to Making Disciples Through Scripture and Doctrine, by Kevin Vanhoozer

Related Media:

InView Media Album 08.25.19