Now, please, let's turn in God's word to Luke's Gospel, chapter fourteen. Luke's Gospel, chapter fourteen, beginning to read at verse twenty five. Luke fourteen twenty five: 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 happily 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, whoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple. I'm sure God will bless to our hearts the public reading of his precious word. I'm not sure what words I would have used had I been, uh, the person giving the lesson that the Lord Jesus gave here. On the surface, it sounds harsh. If you don't hate father or mother, brother and sister, wife or children, you cannot be my disciple. If you are not prepared to take up your cross and follow me, you cannot be my disciple, the Lord Jesus Christ says. There were a great multitude following him, and in his wisdom, he realized that there were many who would not follow him. You remember in John six when he told them that he was the bread that came down from heaven, and to be saved, they must partake of him. That many misunderstanding his words left following him. The Lord Jesus knew who of this crowd were real and sincere. He n- he knew who, uh, would be willing to listen to the absolute truth and be strengthened and encouraged by it rather than be turned off. And so, to attract them, he gave them the simple, straightforward, unvarnished truth. He let them know that this is what it will cost you. It won't cost you anything to become my disciple, but this is what it will cost you to be a successful, uh, follower of mine, one who, uh, understands and carries out the, uh, qualifications of a true disciple. And I suppose that for many it was like a, a dash of cold water upon them. And perhaps even then many turned around and went away, because what he said was, you have to abandon all. You have to abandon everything, self and fleshly desires. They must be completely subjected to the claims, the desire, and the will of the Lord Jesus. And the same is true today. In order to be a disciple, hard to define in my heart, in my mind, not all Christians are running the race as we should. Not all are following as close as we should, as the last hymn that Brother Barron gave out pointed us to. But if we would draw close, if we would be not insulated from the pains around us, but be insulated from the defeat that is around us, then we need to draw close to the Lord Jesus. The picture, pictures are two. We're gonna speak, speak or think mostly tonight of the rash builder, but there's also a rash soldier, a soldier who would, with ten thousand go out to meet one with twenty thousand and perhaps not consider what he had to do to win that victory over a much stronger force than he. How do you build your building? I built one once that was, I thought, very strong. Hurricane Andrew had other thoughts, and guess who won? Hurricane Andrew did. But most of the time, people in Spanish Wells b- build strong, secure, safe, and comfortable houses. Well, this, our thoughts tonight are not about concrete homes, but about the home and character of our lives. Everything we do, every word we say, every thought that we, uh, goes through our minds, and every place that we go, are- are each of them building blocks in our character. We build by actions, because those actions become habits. We build by thoughts, because those thoughts become words. We build by the words that we say, because they affect everybody around us, and the words that we say become habits. And the things that we do constantly as habits form the very character of our beings, and we will carry the character that is thus formed across the portals of time into eternity. So we need to be careful of the things with which we build. Some of us build prisons. We build prisons of selfishness and fleshly lusts. When the television came on the scene, uh, a lot of people thought how wonderful, and it is. A lot of people thought how awful, and it is, because of what's available to us, our young people and our elderly people as well. But when the computer came along, everybody, uh, shouted with delight, al- almost everybody, because what's available in the te- on the television is very self-destructive. And we need to be careful that we don't accustom ourselves to such bad habits that the life that we build is not a, a place where the Lord Jesus cannot feel at home, because the life that he lives in must be conditionally pure. Not sinless, we won't get there till we get to heaven. But if we harbor sin in our thoughts, in our minds, in our habits, then the Lord Jesus is not going to feel at home, and we will not have that character. So what should we do? Well, it depends on where, what we're aiming for. When a young, uh, man or woman goes to work, there are several, usually, uh, steps, jobs between them and the top, and frequently they have their eye on the very top, and they're not satisfied, hopefully, uh, by doing things that are right and honorable. They're not satisfied until they make it to the top. Well, we shouldn't make things like enjoyment our aim in life. Oh, we should enjoy our lives. We're the only people in the world that can truly, honestly enjoy life because of what's in store for us, both here and in eternity, but it shouldn't be the overwhelming desire of our lives to have enjoyment, even though we can enjoy the process as we go on to glory. Nor should it be the satisfaction of earthly desires, things that are wrong and base. Satisfying that is ungodly. Neither should it be the accumulation of earthly wealth, though in the process of living for the Lord Jesus, he may very well provide us with earthly wealth that we can use then as we have our desires set upon him, then this that comes to us can be used for the furtherance of his kingdom. I have time, I use it sometimes for the Lord. I have some energy, sometimes I use it for the Lord. If I have money, I should use that for the Lord. It all belongs to him. It should all be yielded to him so that his name may be glorified by what we do with the things that he gives to us. Can I ask you, in your heart and mine tonight as you sit in the Gospel Chapel, what is a Christian a Christian for? Why am I a Christian, and why are you a Christian? Well, you say, to escape hell. Amen. But that's not all. Well, of course not, it's to go to heaven too. Yes, and that's true, and that's absolutely wonderful, but that's not all either. Because between being saved from hell and getting to heaven, there's a life to be lived, a life of discipleship, a tower, a home to be built, a character to be molded for the Lord Jesus. And one of the things I want us to consider tonight is how much that will cost us. And I'm here to tell you tonight something that you already know. Building a strong Christian character is extremely expensive. Building a home is expensive. You know that from having built homes. But if our Christian character is going to be what the Lord Jesus wants it, we cannot live as we like. We cannot live by any inclination that comes in our minds, every impulse of our character, everything I feel like, because if that's the way I live, I'm going to have these words on my lips all the time. I couldn't help myself. The devil made me do it. He gets blamed for a lot of stuff. I got carried away. You should forgive me. And beside which, everybody's doing it anyway. Those things are recipes for failure. And the reason that they're failures is that we fail to follow God's plan for our lives. It i- it is written down. Uh, mine is written here, and yours is written here, and the people down at the Methodist churches are written here, and those at the People's Church are written here. And they're not separated, as we are, by geography. They're all the same. And if we employ, if we take to heart God's plan for each of our lives, then we'll, we'll live a, a life that is not a recipe for failure. You know, our lives can send up a, either a sweet aroma to God, or they can send up something that you would call a stench. You say, a Christian can do that? Yes. Yes. Depends on how close we're living to the Lord Jesus and how much we are ba- obeying him. When you go to build a house, you ask an architect to draw you a plan, uh, and and the plans that you normally get are are are very pretty. They're big pieces of paper, blue on the inside with dark blue blue lines and architectural writing that's usually good to look at, and oh, it's pretty. You take that plan after Brother Freddie and Brother Gareth and others have been had it, uh, on the job for about three or four weeks, doesn't look pretty anymore. It's got cement on it. It's got dirt all over it. Its- its corners are all rumpled. Its pages are torn. New marks are put in. What it does, it tells us that the plan is being followed. Can I ask you if those things that I said about the plan are true about your Bible? Well, you say, of course not, I don't keep a dirty Bible. Well, that's good. Now, what I mean is, do you have a used Bible? Do I have a used Bible? Is my Bible constantly being checked to find out whether or not I am going according to God's plan for my life? If I have, hope to have a strong building, if I n- want to have a worthwhile character, I need to ask my master and my redeemer. I need to consult the gospel of the Lord Jesus. You see, a lot of people know because they go to it, but then when they leave, they don't follow what they read in God's word. So we not only need to know, we need to do. That's what James tells us. So you and I are not like vegetables. Vegetables grow right on the surface of the ground, and their roots just go down a little way, most of them, and they feed off of whatever's around on the surface. Trees aren't like that. Trees of the forest have their roots that go very deep down into the soil. What are they looking for? Water. You and I need to be like trees. Nothing should satisfy you and me as a believer outside of the deep, sweet waters of God's word, and they should be that to us. Whatever anybody says, we sh- we need to deep, to dig deep because that's where the truth is, and we need to reach the water so that we can assimilate, so that we can draw it up into our beings, so that it will strengthen us, so that we'll stand firm like the trees of the forest, so that we will have our lives conformed to the will and the to the desire of God. And we shouldn't let anything stop us from doing that. How's your appetite? Mine's good. And it's obvious. How's your appetite? How's my appetite for God's word? Is it strange to us? You say, of course not. I've read it from Sunday school time. But oh, Christian friend, how important it is for us that we will live in it, to constantly consult the plan, not be like the person in James. James describes a man who is, uh, goes and looks in a mirror, sees that he's dirty, turns around and walks away and does nothing about it. That's why you have a lavatory. That's why I have a lavatory under my mirror, so that when I see the dirt, I can wash it off. Well, the Bible, James says that that's what we need to be. We need to go to God's word where we find the cleansing, and then we need to apply the soap of God's word to our hearts and to our lives. We don't need to do it in a rushing fashion either, but a constant, careful fashion so that we're not one-sided or lopsided in our Christian walk, so that we're not all truth and no love, or all love and no truth. I- I've heard other p- people say that, so I thought I'd say it, because I don't think you can separate them. Truth inspires love. The truth of God's word, when known by a believer, will inspire him to love his fellow Christian, and we need both. Without both, our character will crumble. You see, it's built on a firm foundation that cannot crumble. If we love the Lord Jesus, he is the foundation of our lives. It is solid, it is secure, but we need to build on it things that require effort. The common expression is blood, sweat, and tears. We do that as far as our earthly jobs is concerned, but frequently we don't apply that same amount of consistency and effort when it comes to building our own Christian character. We need to, little by little, block by block, stone by stone, nail by nail, because, you see, this character that we're building has to be built so it stands the storms like my house, and so it won't fall down like my house did. Storms come into our lives, every one of us, if you're young or if you're old. Storms of doubt and fear and sickness and slander. And we need to so build that they will be able to stand against those things. That's the kind of life. That's the kind of tower that you and I need. One of the strongest materials for building our character is self-surrender, a life devoted and surrendered to the Lord Jesus. Selflessness, probably one of the most difficult things in the world to accomplish, is a life for others, not for self. I- it's born in us. It's a part of who we are. We take care of ourselves. The Bible says everybody, every man loves his own body, loves his own flesh. He takes care of it and nourishes it, so he's supposed to love his wife like that as well. But as Christians, we're supposed to take those things that are nearest to us and place them at a safe distance away, so that our love for the Lord Jesus is so preeminent, it's so strong, it's so unique that these other things fall way behind. Don't ask me to hold my hand up if I'm, if I'm guilty of not doing that, sometimes. But, but not only are we supposed to put those things, especially the things that are wrong, not only at a distance, but completely away. We're supposed to accept those things which are hurtful, those things that are difficult. How easy do you think it would be for anybody in this room to get up tomorrow morning and say, Lord Jesus, I will go anywhere you want me to go, do anything you want me to do from this moment on, and it doesn't make any difference what the answer to that is. And the next day, somebody sends you a check for a thousand dollars and says, that's the, that's the cost of a ticket to, to, uh, Zambia, to Guatemala, to Colombia. How many of us would say, yes, Lord, that's just what I've been waiting for? I would dare to say tonight, very few. But the Christian who is living that close to the Lord Jesus will, simply by an act of obedience, living so close to the Lord Jesus and so desiring to honor him by our lives, that it wouldn't make any difference what he asked us to do. When he gave the enabling, we would say goodbye to everything behind and go forward to serve him. I think Zacchaeus grew more in the couple of hours that we know about his life after he was a Christian than many, many people do in a lifetime. He said, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor. Now that had nothing, probably had nothing to do with the accumulation of wealth that was wrong. He did something with that as well. He just saw what he had, recognized that there were poor people who needed it, and said, Lord, a half of what I have right now, and I don't believe he would have said that to the Lord Jesus, nor do I believe it would have been recorded in God's word if he wasn't sincere. I believe he gave a half of everything he had to the poor. And then he said on top of that, if I have taken anything from any man by false accusation, I restore it fourfold. The Lord Jesus says, today is salvation come to this house, in as much as he also is a child of Abraham. Child of Abraham by paternal birth, by birth, now a child of Abraham by faith in the Lord Jesus, and probably like Matthew. Remember Matthew? Zacchaeus was a ca- tax collector. Matthew was a tax collector. You see, there are people who do what I just described. The Lord Jesus walked by Matthew. He was sitting at the receipt of custom, writing up receipts, probably for money that didn't belong to him or to the government, but he was going to take it, probably. And the Lord Jesus said, follow me, and he left all and followed the Lord Jesus. So we take the wrong and put it aside. We take the world, the flesh, and the devil. Why do you think the Lord didn't just remove them when he saved us? They're such a problem to you and to me. We could have lived such happy lives without the world around us to tempt us, without the flesh within to take- tempt us, without the devil to be always on our case. The Lord Jesus said something like this. You live in the world, but not of the world. You take the flesh and crucify it, and you resist the devil, and he will flee from you. And if you do those things and allow me to be victorious through you, then you'll be able to win others. Then you'll be able to honor me, provided you're willing, provided I am willing. If we live after the flesh, you shall die, Paul said, writing to the Romans. But if through the Spirit you do mortify the deeds of the flesh, you shall live. Which means, as far as I understand, that when you are tempted and I am tempted to do something wrong, you remind ourselves, we remind ourselves that the person being tempted is dead. That's what Paul, that's what the scripture says. I am dead, and my life is hid with Christ in God. So when the devil comes, you say to him, the person that you want doesn't live here anymore. He died. Wouldn't it be wonderful if I did that every time I was tempted? Wouldn't it be wonderful if you did that every time you were tempted? Now we come to the two verses, twenty six and twenty seven. The Lord Jesus says, you have to hate father and mother, husband and wife, and children, or you cannot be my disciple. Now we know that that's a, a picture made up of words. The Lord Jesus doesn't want you to hate anybody. We're to hate sin. And as far as mother and father are concerned, we know what he did. One of his last, one of his dying requests as he was hanging on the cross was to look down and see his mother and say to her, woman, behold thy son, looking at John, and then to John, son, behold thy mother. He loved his mother, and we have no right to do anything but to love and take care of them, and I don't have to tell you that. Spanish Wells people have a tremendous heritage. We have as those who take care of our loved ones, and if that wasn't true, the letter to the Ephesians Paul says, husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself for it, and greater loveth no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. But the second thing we're told, verse twenty seven, says, and whosoever will not take up his cross cannot be my disciple. There's a lot of definitions about what that cross is. I, I have a feeling it's just exactly what happened to the Lord Jesus. A person in his day was sentenced to death, and the moment the sentence was passed, he forfeited everything in this world that he owned. He owned nothing. He could claim nothing. As far as the state was concerned, he was a dead man. Only the sentence had to be carried out. So the day of his execution came, they put a cross on his shoulder, the only thing in this world that belonged to him, and they took him out and crucified him. You say, Roddy, that's a terrible picture that you've just painted of a Christian. No, I think it's the most, one of the most perfect pictures in the Bible. You see, living a life of true discipleship, we own absolutely nothing. Our possessions are his. Our home, our job, our wives, our children. We have no rights. The only right I have standing before you tonight is the right to do the will of God. Everything else I am supposed to subject to him and leave it with him, acknowledging that he is the owner, and I must do it daily. This same story is told in Luke nine, and it says that we should take up our cross daily and follow him. And I think the reason that it says that is that tomorrow morning, if I don't pick it up, I'm liable to leave it there and not surrender to him. I need to do that every day of my lives, that that day will be consecrated to him, and then to follow. And you say, like me, disqualified. I haven't reached that. I haven't surrendered all. I have not placed him as much as I should at the very peak of my life, the very center of my being, and I therefore consider myself a failure. No. No, you are a glowing success if you still have in mind that that's what you want to do. If your desire is to know all there is to know about him, if your desire is to forsake all of those things that are wrong, if your heart is set on being more like him every day, then you are a resounding success. But there are failures around us. There are unfinished lives broken by sin, even Christians. Windows not quite complete, never got that far, didn't count the cost. Had things I wanted to do in the meantime, and as you can see, I'm doing them. Houses unfinished, and there's no glory for the Lord Jesus in them because no account was made of the cost to begin with. But you know, if after many years your aim is still high, you're like the Apostle Paul. Listen to what he says. Not as though I had already attained or or was already perfect, but I follow after. Paul, even as late as it was in his life and as close to the Lord Jesus as he lived, he says he's reaching for those things that are ahead. He's, he's about ready to cross the finish line, and you can almost see him stretching for it, even though he was a successful Christian, following and pressing toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God, which is in Christ Jesus, our Lord. No, no, perfection is not for this life. Perfection is for the other life, or the continued life when we pass out into eternity. But we need to keep striving with the help of the Lord Jesus. Why does the Lord Jesus make this sound so hard? You can't be my disciple unless you hate mother and father. You can't be my disciple unless you take up your cross. Because he realized, I believe, that there would be a lot of people who would try to do it in a- on their own, and they would become failures. And they would become those who would dishonor the Lord Jesus. And so he wanted to make it perfectly clear that you can't do this, that we can't do this on our own. In order to be successful, we must make nothing of self, forsake self-sufficiency, forsake self-reliance, recognize my own ability, my own impotence, which means I can do nothing. And I trust then the omnipotent one, the one that can do everything, provided I reach that state in my life, I will become a quote unquote successful Christian, because the ones who do it on their own or try to do it on their own, they become spiritually bankrupt. They kept their eyes off the mark. They kept their eyes off the prize. They trusted self and failed. The Lord Jesus says, come to me and ask for my help. Depend on me. Ask me to be your strength. I'll come alongside. I'll give you the ability with ten thousand to beat not only twenty thousand. I'll give you the the ability to beat any, to win the war against any number. But you see, you and me, the Lord Jesus would say, is a majority in any war. There's a story in Second Kings chapter six. Ben-Hadad, the king of Syria, has been going down to Israel, uh, to to fight, and he can't find anybody to fight with. I, that's my words, but basically the king of Israel knows where he is, and he doesn't go there. So go, he goes back home, and he calls his people together, and he says, which one of us is telling the king of Israel about what we're doing? Who's the spy? And one of his men says, nobody, my lord, but the prophet Elisha tells the king of Israel what you say in your bedroom. So he says, let's go get him. Now, I, you know, I, I thought about this this afternoon. If I was him, I wouldn't have done that. I mean, he he's going after the source of the power. The power of God is resting in Elisha. I mean, the king was only getting the message secondhand. He's going to the man who's got the power given from God. So he goes down to Dothan, and the next morning, the king goes down to Dothan, sur- surrounds it with his horses and chariots, and the next morning, the, the servant of Elisha gets up and he sees the army, and he doesn't know what to do with himself. He calls his master, and he says, Master, how shall we do? And his master said to him, They that be for us are greater than they that be against us. Now, the servant probably couldn't understand that. It doesn't say, just says Elisha said to the Lord, open his eyes, and he opened his eyes, and the surrounding horses and chariots were surrounded by the hosts of heaven, horses and chariots of fire, no less. And I guess you know the rest of the story. They, the, the prophet made the army blind. He took him into the middle of Samaria, the capital of Israel, and they were captured. The king wanted to kill them. Elisha says, no, feed them as you would any person of war and send them back home. That little story ends with these words, and Syria came no more into the land of Israel. Victory was won. Why? Because of Gehazi, because of the king? Because of Elisha? No. No, God was on their side. You and I have the Lord on our side tonight. He is both able and available to us. There's nothing that he requires you and me to do that he doesn't give you the enabling to do. He's not like that. Men are like that. God isn't like that. He didn't say it would be easy. He just says, I will never leave you nor forsake you. So when we build a house, we want him to be our foundation, and he is the solid rock. We want him to be the architect, the one who plans our lives for us. But you know something? He's also the material that we use. We need to live and walk and eat and work and talk Jesus. I said something Sunday morning when the meeting was over. I don't remember the words, but I know what I feel in my heart and what I want to say, and that is that if you and I live like that, then Spanish Wells will never ever be the same. What we pray for day after day, week after week, will come to pass because we would have made ourselves open conduits, open channels through which the Lord Jesus can pour out the blessing that you and I need. Nothing of self, much of others, and all of Christ should be our thinking. I pray that we'll allow ourselves to be used of the Lord, that we might honor his name. We pray, our Father, that the simple truth of thy word, and they are simple in terms of explanation because you've hidden these things from the wise and prudent, and you've revealed them unto babes. And that's what we're like. We're, we're like little babies wanting to be fed by thyself. Oh, help us, Father, that once we know, once we are fed, that we will put into practice the things we know, the things we learn, day by day, until we see him, our Savior, face to face, we pray in his own precious name. Amen.