Is the Cost Too High

The price tag on faith is not always money. Sometimes it’s your weekend plans, your comfort, your reputation, or the moment you realize you’d rather stay quiet than be seen as different. We start with a simple question, “Is the cost too high?”, using everyday choices to expose what we treat like necessities and what we push aside, even when it’s good for us.

From there, we turn to Scripture and the reality of Christian discipleship. Peter is ready to fight for Jesus when the risk feels low, but when the pressure spikes and his identity as a follower could cost him, he denies Christ. Then we look at Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who face a life-or-death demand to deny God and choose to stand firm. Their courage forces a personal question: what do we do when obedience stops being convenient?

Jesus’ words in Luke 9 bring the core challenge into focus: deny yourself, take up your cross daily, and follow him. We talk about persecution that believers face around the world, the social costs many of us feel closer to home, and why seeking approval from people is a losing game. We also unpack the “fence” analogy, the need for iron-sharpens-iron accountability, and the eternal stakes behind daily decisions.

If this message challenges you, share it with someone who needs courage, subscribe so you don’t miss what’s next, and leave a review that helps more people find the show. What “cost” tempts you most to stay silent?

Transcript

Everyday Tradeoffs And Priorities

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Uh our sermon today is talking about is the cost too high? And so what one of the things that uh when I think of when I ask myself the question is the cost too high, is you can connect that back to a lot of different things. Um I took uh uh economics class in college, and obviously with it being economics, our biggest topics were supply and demand. And then there it as it got a little deeper, it got into things talking about necessities and luxury goods versus normal goods. And there was a lot of math and a lot of uh ups and downs when it came to what we were buying here versus what we were buying here, what we weren't willing to buy. So when we think of the question, is the cost too high? We think about supply, demand, necessity, whether we want it or not. And so the the a question that goes with that is so how much are you willing to give and why? And and just for an example, when it's bow season, uh when it's spring, or when uh the days with the name of the day ends with a Y, I typically am willing to spend almost anything on gun parts, bows, uh hunting stuff, fishing baits, fishing rods, just about anything you could find at Bass Pro Academy, Sportsman Warehouse. The necessity is high. But then we want to we want to swap that. Everybody knows how important it is that we eat good. Everybody knows how important it is to spend time in the gym or to spend time uh doing things that benefit our health. But when I go to the store and I'm and I'm maybe I'm looking for snacks while I'm up at college and I walk past the vegetable section, all of a sudden my wallet seems a lot more dry than it did when I walked past the fishing section. And so those are just those are some examples of maybe not so not so serious, but moments when we ask ourselves, is the cost too

When Helping Costs Your Plans

SPEAKER_00 2:02

high? But let's go a little bit deeper. Let's say we have a friend who calls and asks for a favor. They need us to come out and get them, they need us to come tow a truck, do something, but you've already got plans made. You've got plans with family, you've got plans to be in the woods. So now you're asking yourself, what's it gonna cost me to go help this friend? Is it gonna cost me time? Is it gonna cost me the plans that I already had, the pleasure that I had uh planned ahead for the day, maybe gas?

Peter Denies When Risk Hits

SPEAKER_00 2:31

And so if we want to turn to Matthew chapter 26, we see Peter, and this is the story of Peter denying Christ three times. But if you if you go before that point in the story, we see Christ and Peter and some of the other apostles in the Garden of Gethsemane, and we see Peter when his life is not being directly threatened, when he is is obvious, nobody's throwing out accusations like being put up put up on a cross, nobody's in handcuffs at the time, you know, it's everything is still pretty civil. He's willing to cut off a man's ear to defend Christ. Because at that moment, what was the cost? Obviously, maybe he got reprimanded for what he did by Christ himself, but his life wasn't directly threatened. The cost wasn't high. But then when the the fact that he might have been a follower of Christ may have directly threatened his life, threatened his reputation, threatened the way he was looked at, and people are beginning to see this, and Christ has just been sentenced to death pretty much. And we see we see Peter weighing that cost in his mind, and he decided it's too high. And then we see get we see him go on to deny Christ. So then, so that's an example of when uh that's kind of a um an example of a situation where somebody weighed the cost and realized that that's not something they wanted to do. But what about the opposite of

Standing Firm Under Real Threat

SPEAKER_00 4:03

that? Meshat, Shadrach, and Abinago in the Old Testament are given the option of death or denial. What did they choose? They saw the cost of living and dying for Christ. They saw what it would bring to their life and even after that. They saw the way that they, the honor that they would be upholding in a situation where they decided to stand firm in their faith. And they also weighed the cost of what happens if they chose to deny him, chose to deny God in that moment. They understood the cost of that just as much. And what did they choose? They chose to stand on their faith. They chose to stand with the God who'd already delivered them from so much in their life, and they chose to stand with him one more time, and he delivered just as he always has.

Take Up Your Cross Daily

SPEAKER_00 4:53

And so if we turn to Luke 9, 23 through 26, this is Christ talking about denying ourselves and living for him. Luke 9, 23 through 26 says, Then he said to them all, If anyone desires to come after me, let a deny let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. For what profit is a man if he gains the whole world and is himself destroyed or lost? For whoever is ashamed of me in my words, of him the Son of Man will be ashamed when he comes in his own glory and in his father's and in the holy and of the holy angels. And so that's Christ directly telling us there the cost of what happens if we choose not to live for him, if we choose to deny him and live for the world.

Persecution And Social Pressure Today

SPEAKER_00 5:55

So in our life today, what are some of the costs that come with following Christ? We're lucky to live in an area that's not directly persecuted. But one thing that is not mentioned enough is our brothers and sisters in parts of the world today that are men and women and children who actively have to either flee for their lives or fight for their lives each day because of their relationship with Christ. I've seen plenty of videos of churches burned to the ground, men and women fleeing for their lives, gunfire heard in the background of these videos, because some people out there hate Christ enough that they're willing to commit these genocides and these killings because of those people's relationship with him. But fortunately for us, we don't face those situations. We're not directly threatened on the way to church. We don't have to worry about being persecuted as we walk into these doors and as we sit here now. But what are some of the cost here? Maybe we're looked at weird, maybe I've heard people caught use the term uh Jesus freaks. Um called names. Maybe we lose a friend or lose family or both because of they don't agree with it. They don't see eye to eye, maybe they think it's stupid and they don't want to be around us because of what we believe. Maybe we're verbally insulted, we're questioned, we're challenged, we we're we're put down and demeaned. So are those costs too high to you? Are you willing to share? Are you unwilling to share your faith or act on your faith because of somebody else's opinion? Like it tells us in Galatians 1 and 10 that we can't seek the approval of man. We have to seek only the approval of Christ. Are you unwilling to live and share your faith and your life as a disciple of Christ because you're afraid of who or or what you might lose? Maybe it's not necessarily who you might lose, but maybe it's a job, maybe it's uh a position in life where you following Christ and acting on your faith ends up losing you that situation or losing you that person. And in Matthew 16 and 26, the that that's just kind of another reference back to the Luke 9 through 20, 23 through 26, talking about how we have to deny ourselves and take up our cross. And we have to be willing to give up our life for him in order to get give up our worldly life here in order to gain life through Christ. Are you afraid of persecution, people insulting you, people questioning you, and even going as far as being hated? Because in Matthew 5 and 10 and in Luke 6 and 22, they both refer to the fact that we are going to be persecuted, but when the righteous are persecuted, that is glorifying towards God. When we're being questioned for our faith, when we're being directly uh insulted or accused because of the life that we're living, don't take that as a negative thing. Take that as the fact that you're showing your faith enough that somebody who doesn't agree with you has to come over and try to put you down because the faith that you're showing is shining too bright. It's shining so bright that maybe it's affecting this person's intentionally dark world that they just won't allow themselves out of. That 99% of the time is why people may question us, is why people may put us down, is because they've they have issues in their own life. They, and we all do, but they have issues that they haven't allowed Christ to handle. And and so when we are persecuted, when we're insulted, when people just continuously demean us, take that as a positive and know that you're doing what you need to be doing as a Christian.

Christ Pays The Ultimate Price

SPEAKER_00 9:57

So what was the what was the cost of Christ speaking truth above all the lies of the Pharisees at the time? Christ, throughout his his life on earth, continuously sought to speak the truth and spread the gospel and spread the good news to the world around us. And the the rulers and the people of that time wanted to put him down because they didn't agree with his agenda. They didn't agree with the fact that what he was preaching went against what they were preaching. So what, so, so what was the cost of that? What did Christ weigh in his head when he faced the decision on whether or not he was going to sacrifice himself? We came in his mind, us, everybody that has lived ever, those that is what that's the weight uh of the decision that was in his head was every every single one of our souls. And he understood that the cost of the world's salvation was himself. And he knew that. Christ knew the pain, Christ knew the suffering, Christ knew the agony that he was gonna have to face, he knew the persecution, he knew the ridiculing, the mockery, he knew every single thing that was gonna happen to him. And he understood that it was worth every single drop of blood, it was worth every tear, and it was worth every slight pinch of pain that he was gonna face over however that that that period of time. So we're called to be as much like Christ as possible. Many of us are not going to face these dire circumstances in life. We're not gonna be put on a cross, uh, we're not gonna face some the persecution to the level that he did. But we are gonna we we are called to live lives as close to him as we can. We are called to sacrifice, we're called to to uh give up our worldly desires and our worldly pleasures. As we become like him, we're gonna be hated, like it talks about in John 15 and 18. For the world hated him first. If the world hates you, know that the world hated him first. We're called to put others before ourselves, to put ourselves on the back burner and do our best to lift up not only our brothers and our sisters in Christ, but everybody around us. And then when we take persecution, when we are ridiculed, when we are mocked, we're to not answer that with aggression, not answer that with violence, not get offended and allow our emotions to control everything, but we're to answer that with truth, the truth that only comes from this word. And we have to be willing to give up everything for the truth that is Christ. But

The Fence Is Not Neutral

SPEAKER_00 12:44

for many of us, we love the idea of living for Christ behind closed doors. We love the idea of living for Christ here around like-minded people or at Barton Bible Camp or maybe in our living room and we're surrounded by people who we know see the same things that we do, who think the same things that we do. But when we get out into the world, it's easy to kind of separate ourselves from what we what we maybe talked about here or what we have studied for ourselves. And it's easy to sit on that fence, it's easy to be halfway, to not fully commit, but obviously we're still a Christian. And then when we live our lives sitting on the fence, one thing we fail to realize is that fence is not owned by Christ. That fence itself is the world. That is Satan. And that I love that reference. And I'm sure we've all heard that analogy. That when we when we when the man decided that he didn't want to go one way or another, and everybody left, there was the people on the Christ's side of the fence and the people who were on Satan's side of the fence, and he just decided to stay. And the devil came back and he said, No, sir, I'm on the fence. I'm not going either way. And the devil looked at him and said, I own the fence. And that's where a lot of us get in our lives is we love to be halfway when it's convenient, and we love to be all in when it's convenient. But the truth is we have to be all in regardless of how convenient it is. So, what's it going to be? What are we willing to give up? And what life are we willing to live?

Accountability And Eternal Stakes

SPEAKER_00 14:26

Proverbs 27, 17 talks about how iron sharpens iron. One person sharpens another. We're meant to challenge each other, to question each other here in the church, to lift each other up, but not just to do it in a in a soft, helping way, but to to grind on each other in order to help each other sharpen and grow. We're to keep each other accountable and spread the truth into each other's lives when maybe one of us falls short. Being a Christian was never promised. It was never promised that being a Christian was going to be easy. Nowhere in the Bible does it even try to reference that. In fact, it tells us that it's going to be hard. If we, and and and one thing I love to mention when I talk about the the ease or the not ease of a Christian life, look at the apostles and the lives that they lived. They may have lived in different times, but these men were so willing to live for Christ and die for Christ. And I think I may have talked about it last week, last week, but some of them were sawed in half, filleted alive, stabbed to death, burned alive in oil. I mean, these are the costs that these men were giving for a truth that would have been so easy for them to say it wasn't true. I deny it. Let me go home, let me live in comfort. It's not going to be easy. Never will it be easy. But when we choose to take on the cost of living for Christ, maybe not here on earth we're going to be uh given happiness or joy and peace, but we've been promised something so much greater than any good on this world could ever even come close to, that the cost of uh of living a hard life here completely is outweighed by the reward that is set before us, the happiness, the joy, the praise, and the love that's going to be taking place in heaven. But the only thing that can get us there is living the life that Christ has called us to live here and now. Because just as heaven is promised to us, so is an eternity separated from Christ. That is also promised to us if we don't live that life. If we don't, aren't willing to give up, to, to give those cost that it takes to live a life for him. Uh eternity of anger, weeping, sorrow, death, and decay, that is an eternity separated from him, and it is eternity that is promised to us if we don't live for him. So what will so will we allow our actions today to cost us our eternity, or will we decide that there's nothing worth more than living for Christ? And that is the question that I want to end with, because it is important, it's more important than we know that we do our absolute best to live for him, that we do our absolute best to put away every worldly desire, to put away every worldly pleasure, and to make sure that, like I talked about last week, that Christ isn't just one drawer on the shelf, that he's the entire shelf himself, that he is our all, that he's our rock, he's our peace, and he is the love of our life. That's our goal. And if it cost us our friends, if it cost us our family and our jobs, if it cost us peace and joy here on earth, so be it. Because I promise you, the reward that we have been promised is so much greater than we'll ever be able to realize. And there's only one way we're gonna be able to figure that out. So, with that, if there's anybody here tonight, please join us as we stand and sing.