Salt Is Good

So this morning, if you've been here a while, this text will be familiar to you because I preached on this same text just three and a half months ago on New Year's Day. And so it's a fairly long text, and there's two examples that Jesus gives in the middle about counting the cost, and I'm not going to spend much time on that at all because that's the focus of the sermon from New Year's Day, so if you want to know about that particular part of it. You can go on our website, clearnotechurch.com, sermons, scroll down, and you'll find a sermon on that part of the text. This morning, we're going to be focusing on what comes before the illustrations and then, again, what comes after. But before we get into the text, I want to get in our minds the idea of expectations, that we have expectations. Expectations are central to everything that we do. If you're a salesman or if you've ever bought something from a salesman,

You know that sales has everything to do with expectations and how you manage them. That's what a salesman's job is, is to manage your expectations so that their product will become desirable to you. If we're in the market of buying something, we come with our expectations, and we try to find something that will either meet or exceed our expectations. And so this was, it came home to me a couple of years ago when I bought a meat grinder. I don't know how many of you have meat grinders, but one of the things we do at my house is I like to hunt and we like to process the meat ourselves. And so we end up with meat to grind up to make a burger. And we never had a meat grinder, so we had to get the little attachment for our KitchenAid and then almost burn out our KitchenAid because the motor's not strong enough to deal with 40 or 50 pounds of meat. And so I was like, I'm going to buy a meat grinder. When you go online and you look around, they're three, they're $400, they're really expensive, and you really only use it at my house.

A short time of the year. And so I was struggling to spend that much money. And then the cheaper ones were, you just didn't have any confidence that they were going to work. It's like, well, the little worm gear, and it's plastic instead of metal, and it's just not going to last. And so you're trying to figure out, where can I get this, a good meat grinder? I have my expectations. I want to just chew through the meat. I don't want to have to wait. I want to be able to put big hunks of meat, and I just want to just tear it all up.

because that's what you want in a meat grinder. You don't want to stand there any longer than you have to doing the work. But those are expensive. So I go to looking online, and I remember talking to Levi about it at one point, because they had a meat grinder, and he was telling me about it. And I eventually found one online. We were talking about, okay, how big should the motor be? And it's like, oh, it's a third horsepower. Oh, it's a half horsepower. Well, those are little. I wanted one with a full horsepower motor. And I found one online that was less than $100.

And it had this huge motor in it. That's all it was, was this big giant motor and a big metal worm gear. And it was from China. And you could make sausage with it. You can grind it. It had all these different blades, and it was great. And I told Levi about it. I said, look at this thing I bought. It's better than your meat grinder. And it was a third of the price, you know, because I wanted him to be jealous, right? Because I had exceeded my expectations. Now, some of you probably don't care about meat grinders at all. But my point in bringing all that up is to say, We all have expectations. And we want something. When we're in the market to buy something, we want our expectations met or we want them exceeded. This is how we operate. And you don't have to try to have expectations. You just have them. And so a good salesman has mastered the art of managing your expectations. He knows how to talk about his product in a way that makes you think that it's the best thing since sliced bread. Here's this thing. Here are all the features. Here's how great it is.

And as he builds up your expectation, he doesn't make any promises about its performance. He says, here's what's available and here's what it's capable of and here's all this stuff. But he doesn't tell you that that's not available in the base model. That's available in the deluxe model. And so he's raising your expectations, but he's not telling you. And you can get that all for this low price. You know, when you watch a car commercial and you see how the car is handled and you see all the little gadgets and all the little stuff that goes on in the car. And then it says, you know.

and here's the price. And then in the really small print in the bottom, what's it say? No, I'm talking about the features of a car. Yeah, this is the base model price. And what you just saw, that's not the base model. That one's got all kinds of upgrades and all kinds of bells and whistles, and it's way more expensive. You don't get fully loaded performance with base model pricing. It's a salesman's job to manage these things, and largely for him to do it without you picking up on what he's doing. So our expectations are a given. We all come with them. We all have them. And we have them about everything. So then I want to come to Christianity and say, how about expectations for what it means to be a Christian? Do we have expectations about what the Christian life is like? What it should be like? And the answer is, yes, we do. Do unbelievers have expectations about what being a Christian is? Yeah, they do. Everybody does. It goes without saying, we all have them. We...

As Christians, unbelievers all envision what it means to be a Christian, what living as a Christian would look like, what it would feel like. And there's nothing wrong with that. In fact, Jesus tells us that we're supposed to count the cost of being his disciple. We're supposed to understand ahead of time what it means to be a Christian. We're not supposed to be ignorant of these things. And we're supposed to do this beforehand. We're supposed to count the cost of becoming a disciple of Jesus Christ before we become Christians. Gospel proclamation is supposed to call the hearers to this work. It's supposed to tell people, here's what it means to be a Christian. Now, would you be comfortable answering the question if someone asked you, what's it mean to be a Christian? And you think of yourself and you think of the struggles or the trials or the hardships or the burdens that you've had in your life directly related to the fact that you are a Christian. Are you comfortable telling them that? Do you want to tell them that? It's hard.

Or do you want to tell them, no, it's great and it's wonderful and there's promises, it's wonderful, it'll make your marriage great, it'll make your kids great, it'll make more money and everything will just be wonderful. We just need to get you in the door. What's happening here? We're managing expectations. We're trying to communicate something that's not true. about Christianity. When I first became a Christian, I first started going to church. I went to a very big church up in Chicagoland. And their express purpose was we as a church view ourselves as a door. Our job is to get people into the kingdom. That's all we do. And then we hope or expect that people will then filter out into smaller churches and that's where they'll be discipled. Our goal is just to get them in. And this is what they did. And they were huge. They had lots of people.

But they were dishonest. They were dishonest to me because they didn't tell me what it was to be a Christian. They didn't tell me it was going to be hard. They left that work for somebody else after the fact. And it was wrong of them to do that. It was a bait and switch. They said one thing and they were withholding the truth about what it meant to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. The danger with that mentality or that way of approaching Christianity is that what you attract people with is what you end up keeping them with. They don't come in and say, oh, you told me it was going to be great and it was going to be wonderful and I was going to have all this great stuff happen in my life and all my problems were going to go away. Now they're in because they're attracted to that and all of a sudden you say, well, actually, that'll happen someday. In the end, all that's going to happen. But really, for the rest of your life, there's going to be struggles, there's going to be hardships because before you were a Christian, you were on Satan's team and so he wasn't at war with you in the way that he is with those who...

who fight against them. And so really what it means to be a Christian is to fight against those temptations. And so in some ways, your life's going to become much harder when you become a Christian. And they go, well, no one ever told me that. I came because I thought it was easy. I thought there was a benefit for me, not because I thought it was going to be so hard. We ought not to do that to people. You ought to be honest. Because too many times when someone goes through this process, oh, come on in, it's great and it's wonderful and it'll fix your marriage and fix your kids and fix your...

everything, when they come in and they realize there's not some magic Christian magic powder that fixes it all, then they leave. And they leave because they've been misled. And it's because they were never called to count the cost. It was not mentioned up front, and so it never was mentioned afterwards. Our text this morning is made up of Jesus warning the crowds to count the cost of following him. It's a personal interaction with them, and it's also quite intense. Would you please stand now for the reading of God's word? From Luke chapter 14, verses 25 through 35. This is the word of the Lord and it is eternally true. Now large crowds were going along with him, and he turned and said to them, 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. Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.

For which one of you, when he wants to build a tower, does not first sit down and calculate the cost to see if he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who observe it begin to ridicule him, saying, this man began to build and was not able to finish. Or what king, when he sets out to meet another in battle, will not first sit down and consider whether he is strong enough with 10,000 men to encounter the one coming against him with 20,000? Or else, while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace. So then, none of you can be my disciple who does not give up all his own possessions. Therefore, salt is good. But if even salt has become tasteless, with what will it be seasoned? It is useless, either for the soil or for the manure pile. It is thrown out. He who has ears to hear, let him hear. This is the word of the Lord.

You may be seated. Right before I read the text, I said, it's personal what Jesus has to say, and it's very intense, but it's not complicated. It's not a complex thing that he's saying. Some things that Jesus said were hard to understand. This is not hard to understand. It's not difficult. It may be unpalatable, but it's not obscure. You could summarize Jesus' teaching in this way. If you're to be one of my disciples, a Christian, Your allegiance must be to me first. It must come before all of your other relationships, no matter how close that relationship is. Nothing you have, not even your own life, can supplant or displace your allegiance to me. If it does, you can't follow me. And I think most of us, as we read that, got that message. So, what does that do to your expectations?

of what it means to be a Christian. Sign me up. I'm in. Sign me up. Is this the first reaction you have? You're like, oh, that sounds wonderful. I'm going to do that. I'm happy. All my family and all that stuff, even my own life, yeah, I'll throw all that away. We're all laughing because we're going, that's absurd. That's absurd. Who would react that way? And yet that is what Jesus is saying. It's a hard and fast rule. It leaves no room for us to vacillate in our commitment to Jesus Christ and still think that we have. a commitment to him. It informs our expectations and it actually places the bar quite high for discipleship, not low. Just come on in and everything will be great. No, this is a different bar. Actually, those people that you're closest to, those people that you love the most, the people that live in your house, you have to love me more than them. And if you love them, if you don't hate them, you can't follow me. The structure of this text is contingent. If you do not hate them, you may not be my disciple.

We could state it by saying this. Being a Christian means hating all that is dearest to you. And who says, yeah, that's for me. Isn't this what we would like to bury and hide and say, man, I hope it never gets like that. But here Jesus is with all the crowds following him. And he figures, well, you're following me. You're interested in what I have to say. Let me instruct you about what it means to follow me with relationship to the things that you hold dearest. There's no misunderstanding here. Being a Christian is serious. It affects or threatens to change everything in your life, even down to your household, even down to your spouse and your children and your brothers and your sisters. This is the opposite of a bait-and-switch sort of Christianity, right? Here we are right at the front. This is what it means to be my disciple. So is that attractive? Is it attractive? And all of us want to say, No, it's not attractive. So let me ask you this. Is this what he's just said contrary to what his ministry has been up to this point among the people? Nope, it's not. And so we have to ask then, why are all the crowds following him? Because Jesus Christ and the exclusivity of his teaching and of his power is attractive to them.

They want to be healed. They want to be taught. They want to be led. There were times during Jesus' earthly ministry where he would say something and his disciples would sort of throw their hands up in the air and say, this is a hard statement. Who can bear it? When he talks about marriage and they say, well, it's just better not to get married then. Who could bear what you're saying? But this is not the response to his call or his description of discipleship. There are also times when Jesus says things and the crowds disperse. The people leave him. They say, that's a bridge too far. I'm not going there. But this is not one of those times. He says exactly what you understand to him have said about being his disciple and the crowds aren't put off by it. So why are we put off by it? Each one of us, myself included, has this visceral response to speaking that way.

Why would you talk that way? Why would you say that to people? They're not going to go along with that. What's wrong with us? We might want to strike some middle ground where we say, well, we're different than the crowds, or our culture is different than the crowds. It was in season then. It was cool. It was popular. You could get away with saying that kind of stuff in his time, but now we can't do that. And if you're inclined to try to carve out that little piece of ground and stand on it, all I'll say to you is, what did they do to Jesus? They killed him. Was it in season to say what he said? Not with everybody, with some. And that's God's way in this world, is to always have a remnant, to always have some people, sometimes more and sometimes less, but to always have a remnant of people who hear his voice and who love it, who are attracted to what he has to say.

even if it's largely out of season. And so the idea that there was a time when you could talk this way, but not anymore, is not true. To those whom God calls, to his people, this message is attractive to them. They say, yeah, I understand. I understand what you demand of me. You've made me. You've loved me. You've died for me. And this is what you require of me. Yep, I get it. Thank you. Sign me up. Part of the problem today in our culture and with us is that discipleship doesn't have a cost. Well, actually it does have a cost, but we don't talk about the cost. And so what that's done is it's made us slack in our understanding of what it means to love Jesus Christ or what we will be required to sacrifice to be his disciple. Do you remember what the angel said to Cornelius about Paul, Saul?

When he was to go to him, what was he supposed to tell him? Was it Cornelius? I always get confused. Is Cornelius the one he came to in a vision? What's that? Ananias, thank you. Not the one who was struck dead. You remember what he said to him about Saul? Go to him and tell him. For what? What am I going to do to him? I'll show him how much he's going to have to suffer for my name's sake. Sign me up. But shouldn't we say, sign me up? Daniel and I had lunch with, or breakfast rather, with a couple of men earlier this week. Go to church. You know, they're Christians. They've grown up in church here in town. And at one point they asked us, so like, what's your church about? Like, what kind of church are you? And I said, well, the name of our church is Clear Note. And generally speaking, when you say that, people kind of go, because it doesn't offer up an explanation and it's not a benign name. It's like, that's a strange name. Why do you have a strange name?

So I go into explaining to them, you know, clear note, 1 Corinthians, it says, you know, if the bugler doesn't sound a clear note, how will the soldiers be called to arms? And so I explain to them, we understand our place as Christians in this world to be one where we're battling and we're fighting against Satan and against his plans and schemes to see the kingdom of God established. And so that's why we named our church Clear Note, because we want to be clear to ourselves and to other people as we're able to have these conversations that we understand the Christian life to be a life of struggle and a life of fight, not a life of ease and a life of comfort. It is a life of satisfaction, and there are comforts that are sweeter than any comfort you'll get from laying on the couch. But it's not easy. And he said, oh, okay, you know, that makes sense. And then I went on and I said, well, you know, he's like, well, theologically, where are you guys at? And I said, well, we're conservative.

reformed, Calvinistic. You just sort of look for the word that registers with people because Bible believing, all of these things are true. These are all ways you can describe the church. And he says, oh, okay. And I said, well, the way I would explain it to you is the word of God is very important to us. And we want to preach and teach and learn and obey all of God's commands. We're interested in his yes as well as his no. Where he says yes, do this, and it's good. And where he says no, don't do that, it's bad. We're interested in all of that. And I said, that means that we take God's yes and his no, and we put that together with the battles that are going on in our society today, and we call our people to fight at those points. So where is Satan attacking our society? Where is he at work today? And I said, it's mostly with the doctrine of man, anthropology. When does life begin? Abortion.

When does life end? Euthanasia. What makes life worth living? What's a man? Transgender issues. Homosexuality. What's marriage? Is it between a man and a woman or is it between two men or two women? These are all under the category of the doctrine of man. This is where Satan's attacking us today. And so I'm explaining to him our work, my work, my vision and my desire is to train our people to fight at this point. Because this is what the church has always done. The church has always been under attack from Satan in various places and in various ways. And it's our work as Christians to fight for God's truth right there. And I said, so we teach people to fight. And one of the things that I asked them, I said, have you noticed that the church, generally speaking, has more women in it than men? And they said, yeah, yeah, we've noticed. You know, you've got your married couples, but there's a lot more single moms and single women than there are single men.

And I said, the reason is because there's not a place for men, generally in church, to be men. The songs, I said, even to the point where you can't sing the songs. The register is too high. I can't sing it. And you're like, I'm sitting here thinking, can I say this? I just met him. It's like I pulled back the curtain and said, here's what I really think. Complete stranger, he and his brother. And you know what they said? Let me ask you this. Do you think I'm crazy? Would you have been comfortable if you were sitting there at the table with me? Or would you have been like, Dave, I think you're pushing it too far. I think you're saying too much. Because that's what I thought about what I was saying. I was inclined to be like, I don't know if I should say that. I don't know if I should, you know, I'm going to go for it. And so I go for it. And you know what they said? They laughed. They agreed with everything I said. And they said, we have to come check you guys out sometime. It's attractive.

What did I do except set his expectations for what it means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ in our culture? That was my whole point, was just to tell him that. Every one of you is capable of having the conversation I just described in your own words with the people that God places in your path, but you won't if you don't think it's attractive. If we put off Jesus' standard here of discipleship, the problem lies with us, not with the standard. If the people that we talk to and that we love say, That's not for me. The problem is not with what Jesus has said. The problem is with them. And that's a sad thing. So this is uncomfortable. It's hard, difficult. And so far I've framed this discussion in terms of your coworkers and strangers and your neighbors and all of that. But those are not the people that Jesus mentions. This work is not limited to them.

and your interaction with them or their interaction with Jesus. He brings it right into your house, right into your bed, and says, no, these people. You have this work with them. You have to be a disciple of Jesus Christ before your husband, before you're a wife, before you're a brother or a sister or a father or a mother. Your priority must be settled. Me first, says Jesus Christ. Now this cuts across the grain of our understanding of marriage, brotherhood, motherhood, fatherhood. Doesn't becoming a Christian mean that those things are all going to get better? We come, we've got marriage problems. They come to church. What's the church supposed to do? Fix their marriage. That's why they're here. That's what we're supposed to do. What happens if their marriage isn't fixed? What happens if it becomes clear that the problems that they had are actually much deeper than what they thought they were?

That there's things that were far worse than they knew. And once we get into the work of sorting it all out, it's much deeper and nastier than it had appeared at first. Are we supposed to just say, oh, well, and Jesus will make it all better. You guys are going to be fine. Just need to forgive each other and move on. Nope. That falls flat. It's insufficient. It's healing wounds superficially. What happens if after two years of them persisting in sin, they should separate? What if they're having trouble with their child and their child's causing them problems? But he's a minor and they just feel like they have to take it for another four or five years. And the counsel is, send your child away. You have the money. Put him in a school. Send him away. I thought Jesus was supposed to make it all better. Supposed to fix our kids and his problems and his wickedness. You can know as well as I do. If you were the mother or the father in that situation and the counsel to you was, send your child away.

Be dumb with them because they are wicked and a danger. You can feel the temptation to stiffen your neck against it and say no and to become angry at God. And the reason that we're tempted to become angry at God in those situations is because underneath all of it, we think that Jesus is going to make it all better, that becoming his disciple is going to make everything more peaceful. He doesn't promise that. Sometimes he does, but not always. We're supposed to be all about love. All about acceptance, unity, commitment to one another. You know how young men can, they carry each other's burdens. They all know about each other's failures, but none of them talk about it with anyone else. It's just in the crowd. I'm a man, so I understand it with men. I'm assuming this sort of thing happens with women too. That they have knowledge of failure and of sin amongst their brothers, whether they're blood brothers or close friends or peers, whatever.

And it's like there's this insulation around the relationship that no one can get into. And everything that happens inside is kept inside. And it's allowed to fester, and it's allowed to grow, and it's allowed to infect, but it's never allowed to be exposed. What's going on in that situation? What's going on in that situation is those men have committed themselves to loving one another more than they love Jesus Christ. And they've made themselves unworthy of being a disciple of Jesus Christ. Because they will not break rank and say, that is wicked. And I won't be party to it. Not only will I not do it with you, not only will I not remain silent about it, I'm going to tell. So what's the danger of the guy who tells? You guys were all young. You remember what it was like. What was the threat? What was the danger to the one who told? Threats of violence? Beat you up if you tell.

I'm never going to talk to you again and make fun of you. How about if you tell on me, I'm going to tell on you. Good. You should. Because what's at stake is your soul. In that situation, what's at stake is your soul. Is being a disciple of Jesus Christ more important than your relationship with your friend, with your wife, with your children, with your brother? Or is it not? Is it on an equal playing field where you try to navigate the difficulties of when should I tell and when should I not tell and what should I tell? Maybe I shouldn't tell the whole story. Maybe I should just leave a little breadcrumb trail so that if the leadership has some clue, they'll pick up on it. But I'm not just going to out my buddy. Can you be a disciple of Jesus Christ and behave that way? No, you can't. You can't. To love Jesus Christ is to have...

Zero tolerance for sin. I saw a funny cartoon this last week, and it says there's a difference between accounting and accountability. And what is accounting? Well, accounting is just, well, there's that. There's the beans. They're in that pile instead of that pile. We've accounted for them all. But accountability says, is that where they're supposed to be at? Is that where they were supposed to be spent? What's going to happen if you spend more over here? There's very much a difference between accounting and accountability. And our place as Christians is to provide accountability for one another, not simply an accounting of it. And that goes all the way down to your marriage and to your children. Your commitment may not be to anyone, even your own life, before Jesus Christ. If that's the case, you're not worthy to be his disciple. So what happens when someone strays? Do you just cut them off? Gone.

Wickedness. Can't have that. Sinner. Are you committed to them? Do you love them? Are you unified with them? Does your relationship go along unchanged? Only if they repent. What does Christ have to do with Belial? How can you be yoked to someone who's not a Christian? How can you be yoked to someone who loves their sin more than Jesus Christ? What do you have in common with them? And what happens when it's your spouse? What happens when it's your child? Or it happens when it's your parents? What do you have in common with them? If you don't share Christ, this is the cost of being Jesus' disciple. So does that mean that you're supposed to break all ties with him immediately? Sometimes. And I only say sometimes because we all want to say, no, it doesn't mean that, Dave. And I say, no, sometimes it does. Not always and probably not even most of the time, but sometimes it does mean that. It makes sense when we talk about new believers. What happens when, you know, this is my story. What happens when someone goes from a life of...

apart from Christ, and they become a Christian, what happens is their whole world changes, all their friends change, all the stuff they do changes, and they don't have contact with the stuff from before. Why? Because of the sin that was associated with it. Because of their participation, and because of the temptation to go back to it. It's cut off, it's done. So why do we think that it's appropriate and good and glorifying to God for a new believer to do that? But when we come into our houses and our marriages and our kids, that's not what you should do. Never. It can't be never. If it's never, then you have a commitment to the people above Jesus Christ. Am I saying you should be looking for a reason to cut off your family and do all this? No, I'm not. But sometimes that is what needs to happen, and it actually needs to happen in families, in Christian families. What are you supposed to do with your kid that is a rebel against Jesus Christ?

Let him infect all your other kids? Let him get away with a wicked lifestyle in front of everyone? With no consequence? Nope. No, you're not. Too often it's the Christian family that's unwilling to divide with an unbelieving spouse or parent or sibling. The sin's glossed over and the division is buried. Then you come to the end of our passage. There's a warning at the end. It's applied equally. And what's the warning? Well, the warning is you're supposed to be salt. And you wouldn't necessarily, you know, the interesting thing about this is that when you read the Gospels, Matthew generally is chronological. He basically just goes from Jesus' birth on through to his death, and he keeps things in order that they happened generally. Mark, Luke, John don't have those commitments. And so what Luke does, Luke is more thematic. And so he has a way of taking things that Jesus said from over here and over here, and putting them together and having an application. And so everything in our text up to verse 34, Jesus said at one time, cost of discipleship, crosses to bear, towers and wars and all of that. That's all part of one sitting, one discourse with Jesus Christ.

And it ends with, so then none of you can be my disciple who does not give up all of his own possessions. And then he switches, therefore salt is good. And it's like, you kind of feel like your chain's been yanked a little bit. Where are we talking about salt? What does salt have to do with any of this? And this discussion of salt comes from Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. It's a different, Jesus said this at a different time. And yet Luke puts these things together under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit so that we would better understand the cost of discipleship. So what does being salt have to do with discipleship?

We start by saying, okay, who's supposed to be salt? We're supposed to be salt, right? Before this, you are the salt of the earth. This is Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. You're the salt of the earth. You're the light of the world. These sorts of things he's saying. And so Jesus instructs us about our responsibility before God to love our neighbors. And what does he say? Otherwise, if you won't be salt, Luke puts it together, and what he defines salt as is being Jesus' disciple. And what he says is, if you will not be my disciple, you're worthless. You're of no use. If you aren't willing to maintain your commitment to me because of your family relations, you are the ones who have become worthless, not your family members, you. It's not about their discipleship. It's about your discipleship. Will you be my disciple? If you won't be my disciple, you can't lead them to be my disciple. If you won't be salt, you're good for nothing. Once salt loses its saltiness,

With what shall it be seasoned? What is the purpose of salt? Or another way of asking that question is, what's the purpose of discipleship? Because the two are equated in Luke's text. Salt is supposed to save things. It's supposed to preserve things. It's supposed to clean things. Generally speaking, salt is supposed to change, alter, act upon whatever it touches. Salt is not inert. It's not without consequence. It always evokes a response from you. You know, you get food and it's bland. What's it need? If you have children and they've become convinced that food is bland and they want the salt, what do they do with the salt? You know, 25 shakes of salt. And then what do they do? Why? It's too salty. They don't like it. Some people love salt. Some people on a sodium-restricted diet can't have salt. Salt is active.

And we're to be salt. Some people will love salt. And the same way that some of you like salt on your food, you salt it before you even taste it and your wife gets upset at you. And others of you don't like salt. And when people come over, you like to feed them food with no salt in it because salt's bad. We all have a response to salt. And everyone will have a response to disciples of Jesus Christ. It's kind of how it's supposed to be. They're supposed to respond to us. They're supposed to have a reaction. It's supposed to taste like something to them when they interact with us. So what's the application of this text to us? Well, Jesus tells us that we're to give up all of our possessions. Right before this in verse 33, I think it is. So then, none of you can be my disciple who does not give up all his possessions. And we come back to the beginning about expectations with regard to discipleship.

And he says, he starts with, if you want to be my disciple, you have to hate your father and mother and all these people. And then at the end of that, he comes back around and he says, if you want to be my disciple, you have to give up all your possessions. This is what Jesus tells us we must do if we're to become one of his disciples. And so what are our possessions? Oh, my money. Oh, my time. Oh, I have to take, are you telling me I have to take a vow of poverty? I have to do all this kind of stuff? I say, maybe, maybe. But what are the possessions that he talks about here?

Does he speak of possessions? They're those relationships. Those are your possessions. Will you give up a relationship because of someone's rebellion against Jesus Christ? Will you do it? And you say, maybe with a stranger. I say, Jesus didn't say strangers. He said your house. But Dave, that's really painful. That's really hard. That's really scary. And I say, you're right. It's not easy for me to say. It's not easy for you to hear. But it is the word of our Lord Jesus Christ. So will you love him more than you love your family? Will you oppose them if they're wicked? Will you call them to repentance when they're in sin? I just want to close by encouraging us to do this work, which is different than just simply encouraging you. My goal is not simply to make you feel better. My goal is to strengthen you to do the work. So here we go. This work's all very scary, and it's hard.

We all recognize the cost of discipleship to be a bar set very high by Jesus Christ himself, and so there's no getting around it. No wiggle room, no excuses. We're not preparing to make excuses for why we didn't reach the bar. This is the bar. Jesus Christ above all else, even your own life, all your possessions, Jesus first. This is the way that God calls each one of us to serve him. What this means, though, is that if we will be faithful disciples of Jesus Christ, And we will love him more than we love anyone else. And our commitment is to him before it's to anyone else. We will become useful to him because salt saves everything it touches. That's the point. You don't put salt on something and then have it rot. The goal of salt is to preserve, to save, to alter, to change. And we are the salt of the earth. And so it follows that our work in this world is to be salt.

to be the means that God uses to save, to preserve, to make more disciples. His church, we are that means. And so first, we're to be his disciple. And it has implications that are scary and that are difficult and that are burdens to bear, that are crosses to bear. No denying it. But as we're faithful to him, we'll be useful to him. And you'll actually grow in your love for people because if you have a commitment to somebody, that supersedes your commitment to Jesus Christ, you don't love them. You're not loving them. You're coddling them. You're pandering to them. You're complicit in their rebellion. And so what I say to you is love them. Love them. Love them because you were loved first. And love them in the same way that you were loved. And love them with the same intensity that you were loved.

And love them with the same persistence that you were loved. I don't desire that any one of us would find ourselves in the refuse heap. No good for the ground or the manure pile. A useless Christian. A worthless man. Because he didn't love Jesus Christ. And so I call you to love him. You say, if I do that, my wife's going to get mad. And I say, it may be the salvation of her soul for you to do that. Do it. You don't know how to do it? Come ask for help. Come talk to me, talk to David, talk to one of the elders, talk to your small group leader. What's it mean for me to be a disciple? Here's the situation. I want to be faithful to God. I don't want to be worthless. Those are profitable conversations. Not necessarily easy, but profitable. And so I exhort you to have them and then to do the work. And what you'll see when you do it is God move. He uses means and we're the means. So let's be about that work. Let's be salty.

Let's work to preserve, to build, to save. Let's be his disciple. Let's pray.