First Presbyterian Church Carson City

Pastor Bruce Kochsmeier

Purpose: For people to discover the gift of living the life of discipleship to which Jesus calls us as a joyful, freeing experience and not a burden to weigh us down.

Discipleship is a word I don’t think we really understand very well. What it really means is to be a learner; someone committed to the purpose of learning. The cost of discipleship therefore is what it takes for us to learn something. Those of you putting kids though college know that this kind of discipleship is very expensive there days. It not only costs a lot of money; it costs in terms of choosing to let go of doing some things. The cost of discipleship in life can be very costly when we choose to think that we can make life turn out differently by doing things OUR way even though generations have learned this is not true. The real cost of discipleship is our pride; being willing to accept that we don’t know what is best for our lives and being willing to LET the model of Jesus lead us to the place we need to be.

The cost of discipleship today is that of learning what it means to know and convey the joy and hope of belonging exclusively and more exclusively every day to Jesus Christ.

Do we know about this JOY that comes from counting ANYTHING worth giving away and giving up for the sake of knowing Jesus Christ? We know the words, but do we know the tune?

What does it look like in our marriages? It looks like seeking to be a servant.

What does it look like in raising our kids? It looks like our lives so joyfully devoted to knowing the peace and power of Jesus Christ that our kids can’t help but catch it, (even if they don’t tell us.)

What does it look like in our investments? It looks like having more than enough money to build a sanctuary that calls people into the one hope for eternity. We have millions to build a new hospital to prolong the inevitable, but not enough to build churches that open us to what is impossible for us to do. What would happen if we reversed or evened what we spend on the temporal for the eternal? Interestingly we would all be a lot healthier physically and emotionally let alone spiritually.

The “Cost of Discipleship” is a profoundly powerful book by Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer who was martyred by the Nazis in which he speaks of the call of Christ to come and die in order to live. Bonhoeffer knew that if he didn’t belong to serving Jesus Christ in body and soul he was lost and so he left the safety of a professorship in NYC to return to Germany to lead the confessing church in saying “Nein” to the Nazi efforts to use the church as a tool of the 3^rd Reich. He knew that this was a perilous, but glorious call because it would take him to a place of knowing God as nothing ever had.

The other night Gary Brooks asked me what I would be preaching on today and I told him, “The Cost of Discipleship”. “Ah” he said. “Dietrich Bonhoeffer”. And I said, “Degene Brooks”. Degene was on the line and had just told me about her recent experience of Bells Palsy of which she said, “If God brings you to it, he will bring you through it. Bruce,” she said, “I’m looking for what God has to teach me on the way through this. I know there is something great and I don’t want to miss it.” That is the cost of discipleship today. It is being open to what and how God wants to teach us to trust and follow Jesus and the ONLY way through this life.

The cost of discipleship is a call to exclusivity that calls us away from looking first or at all to anything for our hope and meaning and purpose in this short life before looking first and ONLY to what it will mean to follow Jesus Christ in whatever it is we are doing.

I know what I am about to say goes from preaching to meddling, but that is exactly what Jesus did that day on the road to Caesarea Philippi, which was a center of worshipping anything you thought would make you happy. (Kind of like our western world today!) I was in Caesarea Phillipi in June and it was like being shot back in time 2000 years because there were hundreds of people milling around; kids screaming and hollering, people eating ice cream, all well and good, except…except it was so clear that few knew what Jesus had ask then and is still asking today…”Who do you say that I am?”

Jesus baited Peter that day. He outfished the fisherman when he got Peter to admit what God had spoken to Peter’s heart: that Jesus was the hope of the world. And when he had induced the confession from Peter, he told him that on a worldly level this hope would appear to be defeated; it would mean death and suffering. And Peter couldn’t handle this at first; and neither can we. Do you know why? Because our old nature tells us there is only so much we can risk and then we have to seek our own comfort. I know this because I do it and I think you do too. And so you know the irony in this? We think we are giving up too much; that it might hurt too much; change our lives too much, when in fact we need to give up more than we think. We need more change in our lives than we know and the only way we will begin to discover that the cost of discipleship in following Jesus Christ is NEVER too great is to do one thing: Follow. Give it up, whatever it is, pride, money, circumstance and follow Jesus Christ radically.

Human prosperity is not the prosperity to which God calls us because it is not our best. But how easily we have come to do as Peter did and seek the human level of satisfaction and safety. TIME magazine has as its cover story this week the question; “Does God want you to be rich?” Alan has written an upcoming article on this I commend to your reading in the next Trumpet, but let me give a one-word answer. YES! God wants us to be very, very rich; so rich that people come flocking to know how we became so rich. But the wealth God wants for us is BETTER than any material wealth we could ever attain because material wealth will never make us whole. What God wants for us is a wealth that so transcends human versions of wealth that we don’t even think in human terms any more.

Do you want to know how to acquire this wealth? It comes as we pay the cost of discipleship which works interestingly the way most unknown millionaires have acquired their human wealth. Every now and again you read about someone who has lived in a very humble manner, dying and leaving a HUGE amount of money in their estate that was accumulated by living and investing well in a system of compound interest. They were disciplined people who had a goal and did not allow themselves to dissipate their income by spending on things that kept them from their goal. And this is how we come to know the immeasurable wealth of belonging to Jesus Christ; by daily investing in the one goal of knowing and following him without allowing ourselves to look for hope or peace or any kind of solution anywhere else. This is the cost of discipleship. It is the daily discipline of letting God’s Holy Spirit show us what it means to experience Jesus as Lord of all that we have – our mouths and our minds, our faith and our finances, our loves and relationships – everything committed to his direction; everything for his sake, WITHOUT being distracted by thinking we might be missing out or what others are getting to do or what they might think of us for being so single minded.

Jesus clearly uses this time to tell us that the cost of discipleship is the great reversal of our hope. What he is saying is that if we really want the best life we will seek to give him more, not less of ourselves. We will ask not what is the least I have to do, but what do I get to do for you; not what do I get to keep, but what do I need to let go; not what about me, but what about you? What can I do for you Lord? What can I do for my spouse, my friend, my child, and the stranger? You see the cost of discipleship is the life-long learning to abandon anything but Jesus Christ in the pursuit of what really matters. Holding on to life on our terms is the world’s model. Jesus’ model is just the opposite. In the economy of Jesus sacrifice and service are the highest goals; it is through them not as a earning of our way but as the way of realizing they are who Jesus is; they are the entrance points to joy.

Pastor Alistair Begg told a story Friday about a man in England who had been given amazing privilege in life who said of it all, “When I consider all that Jesus Christ did for me there is nothing I would not sacrifice for him.” This is what Jesus is calling us to realize in this call to discipleship. Is this where my heart is? Is this how I am living? If it is not, I need to ask myself why not? Why have I counted anything more important; more worth of my time, money, heart and mind than making a life of service my greatest joy.

Listen, if we really want life, we need to let ourselves become disciples in word and deed. We need to ask Jesus how we can best serve our spouses and friends and children and co-workers and strangers; how we can know how to make this our greatest purpose in life because this is exactly what Jesus did.

May this be the day we consciously choose to listen to Jesus and ACT in response to his amazing invitation to follow him into the life we are longing for no matter what it looks like it will cost us. Amen