Where is Your Trust Focused?

[00:00:01] In the name of Jesus, Amen. [00:00:04] These last words of the hymn, they're a prayer. Take myself and I will be ever only all for thee. [00:00:14] Every time I say those words, I think it's wishful thinking, you know, Take myself and I will be ever only all for Thee. [00:00:25] Because I know how imperfectly that happens. I know that I am not always only for him from my own perspective. But that is why it is a prayer we are praying. Make us only ever all for Thee. [00:00:50] All right, that's what our gospel reading is aiming us at this morning and various parts of the liturgy and such, the prayers. [00:01:04] So we're going to start in the gospel reading, verse 33 of Luke 14. [00:01:14] So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple. [00:01:22] Now, we just talked, just talked about what we really have. What do I really have? [00:01:28] Think about all the things I own, all the things I know or think I know, and who do they belong to, really? [00:01:40] Well, not me. [00:01:42] I think that's what this is getting at, at least to some degree. [00:01:48] So therefore, Jesus says, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has, renounce all that he has, give it up. That's another way to say that whoever does not give up all that he has cannot be my disciple. [00:02:04] Well, what do I really have? [00:02:08] We should hold what we have loosely. [00:02:14] It helps to remember that all of it has been given to us by God. [00:02:20] Now, why is this so important? [00:02:24] It's because holding on to something can be dangerous. [00:02:29] What happens if I'm not willing to give up something that's been given to me? [00:02:34] Like, let's say I'm thankful for my good health. [00:02:39] But then I start to view it as my own, as something I can hang onto, something that I deserve, something I ought to have. [00:02:46] And then I lose my health. [00:02:49] Well, then maybe I'm frustrated. [00:02:54] I get angry, maybe angry with God, when really my good health in the first place was a gift from God and he took it away. [00:03:05] You see that in Jonah in a few funny ways, if you remember that story, you know, but especially toward the end there, Jonah is camped out, ready to watch Nineveh get torched by God's wrath. [00:03:20] He's sitting there, could have a pina colada or something. He's just excited, but it's hot, and he complains. And God makes a plant grow up and give him shade. [00:03:31] And then that night, a worm comes and eats the plant. The gift is taken away, and he curses God and he wishes he had never been born. Because this plant has been taken away. It's like, well, it was a gift. [00:03:49] It didn't belong to you. [00:03:52] Jonah couldn't renounce it. [00:03:56] He couldn't give it up. [00:03:57] And he found out when it was taken away. [00:04:01] And that's how it usually happens. [00:04:04] When the things that we thought we had, that we thought we could count on, are taken away. [00:04:10] That's when we find how much we were trusting in those things, how much hope we were placing in those things, how much we counted on being able to hang on to them and control them. [00:04:23] Then when we lose it, when we lose control, we're thrown into chaos. [00:04:31] We're thrown into chaos because our attention has been aimed in the wrong direction. [00:04:41] God says to Israel in Deuteronomy 30, looking at verse 17, but if your heart turns away and you will not hear, but are drawn away to worship other gods and serve them, I declare to you today you shall surely perish. [00:05:03] That's the danger I hold on to my health or my possessions or whatever it was that I started placing my hope in. [00:05:13] And those things now have my attention. [00:05:16] Those things, as if they are the goal in and of themselves. As if my happiness rests in those things. [00:05:24] My heart turns away and will not hear. [00:05:33] When attention gets turned, then hearing is kind of focused in that direction too, right? So, well, that's why, like, coaching soccer constantly, like, okay, everyone look this direction at the same time. Or a couple of you saw in woodworking class on Friday, you know, get a bunch of kindergarteners and first graders in there, and it's like, I need all your attention. Show me all your. I need all your eyes this way. Because if you're looking, if you're playing with this now, some. Sometimes you can do two things at once. [00:06:08] But I see their heart turning away. It's like, no, turn this way so that I can direct your thoughts and your actions, and we can all do this in harmony. [00:06:18] That's what God's saying. If your heart turns away and you will not hear. [00:06:29] So he says, therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live loving the Lord your God, obeying his voice, and holding fast to him, like a student hanging on every word of the teacher, holding fast. [00:06:48] That's what God wants for us. [00:06:53] So what are those things that would turn our hearts away from God? [00:07:00] Or maybe it's better put, what are those things which our hearts are inclined to turn away from God for? [00:07:09] What are the things that you and I hang onto that could distract us from God? [00:07:19] Again, you find out when everything is taken away. [00:07:26] Dietrich Bonhoeffer is a famous Lutheran pastor. He was a pastor in Germany during the Nazi regime. [00:07:39] And in 1937, he wrote the Cost of Discipleship, which is what Jesus is talking about here, that before you build a tower, you should count the cost. Do I. Do I have what it takes to see this through? [00:07:57] Bonhoeffer, this pastor, in 1937, when he wrote the Cost of Discipleship, he was running an underground seminary. [00:08:09] He was, well, risking a lot to keep training pastors in ways that were no longer sanctioned, in ways that were punishable. [00:08:22] And he was teaching young pastors in training to, well, that this is an all or nothing kind of thing, that following Christ is all or nothing. [00:08:35] He said, when Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die. [00:08:45] When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die. [00:08:51] Now, that's all or nothing. What does he mean by come and die? [00:08:57] He means what Jesus means in this Gospel reading when he says, whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. [00:09:11] It's what we've been talking about with owning things or not owning things. Everything that I have and am my life belongs to God. [00:09:22] And so when God brings me to himself through Jesus Christ, to follow Jesus, it means to take up the cross. It means to die to whatever ideas I had that were not, well, that didn't come from him, that aren't consonant with his ideas. [00:09:45] As Jesus draws you and me to himself, it's like whatever isn't in conformity with Christ needs to die so that then Christ lives in us. [00:10:01] He brings us to repentance, and he gives us life in himself. [00:10:08] Bonhoeffer, he taught his students that to come to Christ is to come and die for our whole life to be turned over to him and led by him in whatever way he directs. [00:10:26] And he learned. [00:10:28] Well, okay, you could say he learned, or you could say he followed Christ to the end. [00:10:35] His obedience to Christ led him to take part in the resistance. And I think on April 9, a few weeks before the camp that he was in was liberated, he was hanged for his part in the resistance. [00:10:53] When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die. [00:10:59] For Bonhoeffer, it wasn't an option not to resist. [00:11:05] Because of his faith in Christ, what was he willing to renounce? [00:11:13] Well, everything. [00:11:16] Bonhoeffer is just one of the more recent examples of the countless Christians, the cloud of martyrs around us, who stand as witnesses to Christ's life and the gifts that Christ gives. He gives us his very self and everything so that we can renounce anything and Give him ourself. [00:11:46] Ignatius is another famous martyr. [00:11:50] He in, I think the second century, he was proclaiming the Christian faith and unwilling to yield even when it was dangerous. So he was on his way to Rome, being taken to Rome, not by his own choice. He was headed to the Coliseum to be fed to the lions. [00:12:17] And he wrote a series of letters to the Christians. [00:12:22] But among other things, he said, don't stop me from living. [00:12:28] What he meant was, don't save me by force from the mouth of the lions. [00:12:36] Because, yeah, from one perspective, I'm going to die, I'm going to lose everything and I'm going to be torn apart by the mouths of the lions. But from real perspective, from God's perspective, I'm just being born as a human being through my death. When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die. But when I die in Christ, I'm purified. [00:13:09] Christ lives in me and he is the human being to ever have lived. In him, humanity is restored. And so Ignatius said, yes, I'm going to my death from one perspective, I'm really going to my life. [00:13:26] The lions mouths are going to tear me apart, but I've been brought together like wheat as the bread, the bread of life who is Jesus Christ himself. [00:13:37] And I have true life. [00:13:40] And so, yeah, I can give up everything because I'm gaining everything in Jesus Christ now. [00:13:51] It's like, wow, good for Ignatius, good for Bonhoeffer. [00:13:57] I haven't been tested like that. [00:14:01] And God give me strength, put in that kind of situation, to look to God and for my heart not to turn away to any other thing, that I wouldn't give up what I have in Christ for the sake of something else that I think I really need and want to get on my own terms. Lord, give us that kind of strength in the face of persecution or loss when the real test comes and when it really counts. But here's the key. I think that Ignatius and Bonhoeffer, they didn't die when they died. [00:14:48] They died when they were baptized into Christ. [00:14:53] The death to themselves and the living in Christ, the renunciation of everything took place long before they came to the test. [00:15:05] It came by faith in Jesus Christ, in the daily grind of the struggle of faith. The struggle to look to Christ in the face of difficulty, the struggle to look to Christ and to have no other gods before him. The struggle not to put their hope and trust in other things. It was the daily being brought to repentance by the Holy Spirit through His word. It was what we're doing this morning hearing God's word and letting it sink down into our hearts and strip away the things that don't belong and put in there Jesus Christ himself who's. What we're doing now? [00:15:53] It's the baptismal life. You have been united to Jesus Christ in his death and resurrection so that you no longer live and Christ lives in you as you look to him in faith. [00:16:05] May he keep us in that faith to life everlasting. In Jesus name, amen.