Today's Sermon:
"Count the Cost": Discipleship Part 2

I. To Follow Jesus is to ......- Vs. 34

“Modern culture is exposed to the symbol of the cross primarily in jewelry or figures of speech (e.g., “bearing a cross” as putting up with an inconvenience or hardship). How vastly different was the symbol of the cross in the first century! An image of extreme repugnance, the cross was an instrument of cruelty, pain, dehumanization, and shame. The cross symbolized hated Roman oppression and was reserved for the lowest social classes. It was the most visible and omnipresent aspect of Rome’s terror apparatus, designed especially to punish criminals and quash slave rebellions.”
-James Edwards

“Very likely [your religion] costs you nothing. Very probably it neither costs you trouble, nor time, nor thought, nor care, nor pains, nor reading, nor praying, nor self-denial, nor conflict, nor working, nor labor of any kind…Such a religion as this will never save your soul. It will never give you peace while you live, nor hope while you die. It will not support you in the day of affliction, nor cheer you in the hour of death. A religion which costs nothing is worth nothing. Awake before it is too late. Awake and repent. Awake and be converted. Awake and believe. Awake and pray. Rest not until you can give a satisfactory answer to my question, ‘What does it cost?’.”
-J.C. Ryle, Holiness, pg.81

II. Why Follow Jesus? Vs. 35-38

A. To Lose Your Life is to ......- Vs. 35

B. The World is .....- Vs. 36

C. The Soul is ...... - Vs. 37

“He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”
-Jim Elliot

D. The Final Verdict is the One that Counts- Vs. 38

"Posterity must be considered. I do not look so much at what is to happen today, for these things relate to eternity. For my part, I am quite willing to be eaten of dogs for the next fifty years; but the more distant future shall vindicate me. I have dealt honestly before the living God. My brother, do the same."
-Charles Spurgeon