Forrest: Well, good morning.
Forrest: If I haven't met you yet before, I'm Forrest Coleman, lead pastor here at Multiply.
Forrest: Glad that you're here and walked through the door today.
Forrest: Hope you feel welcome.
Forrest: Our church is two and a half years old.
Forrest: Started uh in our beautiful, amazing local movie theater here in Frankfurt over two years ago.
Forrest: And uh I'm so glad that you are here this morning joining with us.
Forrest: And before I get into the message, also um I I just want us to give it up for our amazing kids team who've been preparing for these two services to start next week and for this new kids, new preschool area.
Forrest: And it's an amazing winning team that right now are serving uh young people and serving our kids, my kids, and I'm so grateful and I'm just excited about what it's gonna look like uh going forward of us moving into two services next week.
Forrest: And honestly, we don't know how it's gonna look.
Forrest: I don't know how it's gonna look next week of going to two public services, but here's the thing we're we we are wanting to be ahead of the curve.
Forrest: And we're uh sowing seeds in that we know that God is going to be faithful to harvest.
Forrest: And so, what will our church look like at Christmas?
Forrest: I have no idea.
Forrest: What will our church look like next Easter?
Forrest: I have no idea, but we're gonna continue to bring our best to the Lord, which means doing the most with what we have.
Forrest: And so we're gonna continue to do that.
Forrest: That's one of the things we say around here that we bring our best.
Forrest: And so I'm excited about what that looks like for next week.
Forrest: And as we jump into this sermon this morning, we're traveling back to our bricklayer series that we've been uh going through over the course of the year and a year in giving this last year.
Forrest: And the uh title of my message today is The Price Is Right.
Forrest: Ta-da-da-da.
Forrest: Actually, this last summer, uh Patrice Massey made it all the way on the price is right, all the way to the showcase showdown.
Forrest: That's the point at the end of the game where there's just a couple of contestants less left, and they have to guess the total price of big ticket items without going over.
Forrest: And so Patrice was uh he was guessing the price of a new car, a trip to all expenses paid trip to Miami, and an espresso machine.
Forrest: And his guess was$39,500.
Forrest: The actual price?
Forrest: One dollar off winning the grand grand prize and making show history, uh, show history with the closest bid ever made.
Forrest: Congrats to that guy.
Forrest: You know, price is something that uh is coming a lot up a lot right now these days.
Forrest: I saw a video this last week of a guy who got on his Walmart grocery app and went back to an order from 2022 and repurchased all the same items that he bought in 2022 again today.
Forrest: And instead of it being just over$100 for all those items, it was over$400 for those same items.
Forrest: A lot of us have price on the mind right now.
Forrest: And when you think about the question, what is the price?
Forrest: That's such a common phrase for us.
Forrest: There's probably not a week that goes by that you don't say it at one time or another to a cashier or something that you're looking at or something that you're trying to purchase.
Forrest: But it makes me wonder and makes me ask the question: what's the price of following Jesus?
Forrest: What's the cost?
Forrest: Well, what do you mean, Forrest?
Forrest: I thought following Jesus meant that he's gonna make me healthy, wealthy, and happy.
Forrest: What do you mean, cost?
Forrest: What do you mean that there's a price to pay?
Forrest: No, that's not how that's not how this works, right?
Forrest: I'm reading the biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was one of the only pastors in war-torn Germany during World War II that defied Hitler.
Forrest: And it's a long read.
Forrest: I've got lots of thoughts about it.
Forrest: But one of his most prominent quotes from his works is when Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.
Forrest: And ultimately Dietrich Bonhoeffer was hanged.
Forrest: That he defied Hitler and wanted to follow Jesus.
Forrest: So I wonder today for you, as you think about, and maybe you've stepped into the room, maybe for the first time, trying to wonder what is this Jesus thing all about?
Forrest: Maybe you've come into a moment where you're desperately wanting to get some success in life, to find some happiness, to find some wealth, to find some harmony.
Forrest: And Jesus is gonna speak directly today in our text to what the cost is and what the price is of following him as his disciple, as a pupil, as a learner, as someone that wants to follow him.
Forrest: And Jesus is speaking to this large crowd.
Forrest: And he addresses this large crowd, but he's only speaking to a few of them in the crowd, and the ones that he's speaking to are the ones who actually want to be his disciple and the ones that want to have eternal life.
Forrest: And he gives some analogies of what the cost of being a disciple truly is.
Forrest: Y'all ready for this?
Forrest: Just a disclaimer: this sermon this morning is not the five happy hops to heaven today, okay?
Forrest: We're gonna be looking at Jesus and his teachings and some of the things that he said that uh not on the bumper sticker, not on the Christian t-shirt.
Forrest: These are the words of Jesus.
Forrest: This is Luke chapter 14, starting in verse 25.
Forrest: A large crowd was following Jesus.
Forrest: And he turned around and said to them, If you want to be my disciple, you must, by comparison, hate everyone else.
Forrest: Your father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, even your own life.
Forrest: Otherwise, you cannot be my disciple.
Forrest: And if you do not carry your own cross and follow me, you cannot be my disciple.
Forrest: Now, this is about the worst sales pitch of all time.
Forrest: This, if Jesus was a salesman, he needs some coaching, he needs some help.
Forrest: As you've never had a salesman say, hey, if you want to get this, then your life's gonna be really tough.
Forrest: It's gonna break all the time, it's gonna be tough on some of your relationships.
Forrest: No salesman says that.
Forrest: That's not their pitch.
Forrest: But maybe that's because Jesus isn't a salesman, he's a savior.
Forrest: Who's guiding us through this life and not lying to us and giving us a bill of goods or a bait and switch, but instead he's telling us the truth.
Forrest: And he's telling you the truth.
Forrest: See, Jesus says that you should, by comparison for your love for God, that you should, it should look like that you hate others.
Forrest: And you know that word hate, you know, I can say, you know, I hate to eat apples with the peel on them because I do get the peel off of those apples, okay?
Forrest: I hate that.
Forrest: Peel that apple before you put it into that caramel, okay?
Forrest: Uh and I also could say, you know, well, I hate my coworker.
Forrest: That's not exactly the same thing, right?
Forrest: Jesus is using this language, language that he uses at other times too, that like in Luke chapter 16, he says, No one can serve two masters.
Forrest: Either you hate one and you love the other, you'll be devoted to one and despise the other.
Forrest: You cannot serve both God and money.
Forrest: And then in Luke 18, he says, indeed, it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, big camel, big humps, through a small eye of a needle, than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.
Forrest: And what is Jesus doing by saying all of these things?
Forrest: My wife and I, we traveled to Colorado a few weeks back to go visit some friends, and we had a great time.
Forrest: We went up to the top of Mount Evans and looked all over the Rockies.
Forrest: And one of the things that they have out there in Colorado is uh is uh panning for gold.
Forrest: And basically you get down, you get this this great, this sieve thing, and maybe you've done this before at Gatlinburg, like I have, where they have those little fake gems and jewels in there, and you're in the water trough, and it's like, hey, you know?
Forrest: And the whole purpose of it is that you have this have this sift, and you're sifting out all the other sediment and all the other things, and what's left is the gold.
Forrest: And Jesus, with these statements, is sifting for gold.
Forrest: He's sifting to say, who in this crowd really actually wants to follow me?
Forrest: Who in this crowd actually wants to be my disciple?
Forrest: Who in this crowd actually wants to worship me and move into eternal life one day?
Forrest: See, Jesus, with his statements that we've just begun, he speaks to two of the most prominent idols in our life.
Forrest: Things, an idol is something that we put before God.
Forrest: And God commands us in the Old Testament we should have no other gods before him.
Forrest: We should not make these idols to ourselves.
Forrest: And in 2024, it's still possible for you to have an idol, something that you worship more than you worship God.
Forrest: And he says, one of those things is that you need to not worship and you need to die to family.
Forrest: And the other thing is that you have to die to yourself.
Forrest: See, here's the context around that for the people that he's speaking to, because it it Jesus is speaking to this crowd of people in a very family-centric and and and and very family tribe-oriented society.
Forrest: You live with your family, probably multiple generations, all in one place, one home.
Forrest: Your parents have a business, you grow up, you take over that business, and then the next son takes over the business, and on and on and on.
Forrest: And you're in this very family-centric, uh, centric place.
Forrest: And so Jesus is speaking directly to them about this idol of following your family more than following God.
Forrest: He's also speaking to this idol of idolizing our marriages.
Forrest: Newsflash, Jesus wasn't married.
Forrest: Newsflash, the apostle Paul wasn't married.
Forrest: And so we can put our, we can put on our spouse expectations that we should have of God and they're going to fail every single time.
Forrest: And then Jesus speaks to our own self-fulfillment by asking us to die to ourselves.
Forrest: See, so oftentimes we spend life trying to fulfill ourselves by things that will never truly fulfill us.
Forrest: That job, the success, our family's approval, social media following, drugs, alcohol, the next best religious experience or church that's going to feed my needs.
Forrest: And what you end up having is a people who are constantly searching for fulfillment but never fulfilled.
Forrest: A life filled of searching for this fulfillment.
Forrest: And what Jesus is speaking to is that we have to get our priorities in order.
Forrest: That over our families, over our earthly relationships, over our own desires of self-fulfillment, that we would instead follow Jesus.
Forrest: The priorities of what your home looks like.
Forrest: Husbands and wives loving one another, loving their kids, but having a home that the kids are not running the roost in the top priority.
Forrest: Because if your children are not in the right place of priority in your family, then you won't stay a family for very long.
Forrest: If you're caring more about your child's sports development than their spiritual development, that's not good.
Forrest: We have to have our priorities in order.
Forrest: And here's the thing as even as I'm saying these things right now, I'm like squirming inside.
Forrest: And I don't know about you.
Forrest: If some of the things that Jesus just said there just kind of makes you shift in your seat and squirm a little bit.
Forrest: And the reason why it is, is because he's calling us to make him first and to worship him.
Forrest: Not to worship our families, not to worship our careers, not to worship our success, not to worship our children, but to worship the one true King.
Forrest: And that this is a this is a daily act of us dying to ourselves so that we might be disciples of Jesus.
Forrest: And what that causes us and should make us do is that it should make us be dying to be a disciple all the time.
Forrest: That we are constantly in a mode of having to die to ourselves and our own ambitions as we follow Jesus and his great plan for our lives.
Forrest: You know, here's the thing though, that there's so many people out there now that would just say, well, you know what?
Forrest: Ow, Jesus, he's like a great guy.
Forrest: Good teacher from history.
Forrest: You know, he's just like Buddha and like every other religion, it's all the same thing.
Forrest: Jesus is like a great teacher.
Forrest: Oh, yeah?
Forrest: What about these teachings?
Forrest: You think Jesus is a great teacher?
Forrest: What about him telling you to pick up and carry your cross?
Forrest: Are those the teachings that you're talking about?
Forrest: No, you're probably not.
Forrest: And then they say, well, is that really what Jesus was saying?
Forrest: Which is the same question that Satan asked Adam and Eve in the garden.
Forrest: Is that the is that did God really say that?
Forrest: Did he really say that you were gonna die?
Forrest: Here's the thing knowing about Jesus doesn't mean that you know Jesus.
unknown: Amen.
Forrest: The scripture tells us that the demons know his name and they even tremble.
Forrest: So just because you know the name of Jesus doesn't mean that you are his disciple.
Forrest: I'll put it to you like this.
Forrest: My parents who live in Pennsylvania now for a little while until they retire, they've been there for a number of years and they've been leading a small group in their house, out of their home through their church.
Forrest: There's a young lady last year who came to Christ, became a believer.
Forrest: Her family is all from India in a different religion.
Forrest: And last year she made a decision for her to follow Jesus and be baptized.
Forrest: And when she was baptized, all of her family cut off communication to her.
Forrest: This verse that we just heard Jesus teach us and tell us, just because you don't have a family that would cut you off doesn't mean that everybody around the globe doesn't have that same situation.
Forrest: That Jesus has to say, who's your allegiance to?
Forrest: Are you gonna follow your family to hell or are you gonna come with me to heaven?
Forrest: I pray for this young woman who's come to faith, that she'll stay strong in the Lord and walking with the Lord.
Forrest: Something that we could never imagine.
Forrest: And maybe for you, maybe it's the flip side, maybe it's your family that's pulling you away from Jesus and into sin.
Forrest: Maybe it's your family that's saying, ah, it's no big deal for you to get high.
Forrest: Ah, you know, it's no big deal for you to do this thing that's illegal.
Forrest: Ah, you know, do you really need to go to church?
Forrest: Do you really need to do those?
Forrest: Ah, you know.
Forrest: And Jesus is saying, Will you love me more?
Forrest: Will you follow me?
Forrest: Jesus gives two more stories to illustrate this point in verse 28.
Forrest: He says, But don't begin until you count the cost.
Forrest: For who would begin construction of a building without first calculating the cost to see if there's enough money to finish it?
Forrest: Otherwise, you might complete only the foundation before running out of money, and then everyone will laugh at you.
Forrest: Which is true.
Forrest: And they'll say, There's a person who started that building and couldn't afford to finish it.
Forrest: Verse 31.
Forrest: And what king would go to war against another king without first sitting down with his counselors to discuss whether his army of 10,000 could defeat the 20,000 soldiers marching against him?
Forrest: And if he can't, he'll send a delegation to discuss terms of peace while the enemy is still far away.
Forrest: So you cannot become my disciple without giving up everything you own.
Forrest: The words of Jesus.
Forrest: I call these two people, these two stories, the brash builder and the kamikaze king.
Forrest: One to rush in without truly counting the cost.
Forrest: And what we know for the brash builder is that anything that we build or try to build apart apart from God is in vain.
Forrest: That's what the scripture says in Psalms 121.
Forrest: It says 121 127.1, unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labor in vain.
Forrest: And, you know, I'm sure none of y'all are like me and at times try to build your life on your own terms.
Forrest: Try to build the life that you want to build rather than letting Jesus lead you into the life that he's calling you to.
Forrest: Try to build a life around your own preferences and perspectives of how you use your time.
Forrest: Because you know, you can manage your time a lot better than God can manage your calendar.
Forrest: Or maybe you have never started tithing to the Lord.
Forrest: Or maybe you started for a time, but now you stop because you can manage your finances better than God can.
Forrest: Here's what we're doing.
Forrest: Brick by brick, big brick by brick, we are building a life by the eternal builder.
Forrest: See, because there's people out there that are probably in your life, and probably the ones that are saying to you right now, they're saying something like this.
Forrest: They're saying, you know what?
Forrest: Just follow your heart.
Forrest: Which is the worst advice ever.
Forrest: Just follow your heart.
Forrest: God wants you to be happy.
Forrest: Or maybe it is that God wants your heart to be holy.
Forrest: And you can't do that by yourself.
Forrest: And you can't do that on your own.
Forrest: But we're building brick by brick with him.
Forrest: Everybody say brick by brick.
Forrest: We're building a life brick by brick with the eternal builder.
Forrest: And then Jesus gives one more analogy in verse 34.
Forrest: He says, Salt is good for seasoning.
Forrest: But if it loses its flavor, how do you make it salty again?
Forrest: Flavorless salt is good neither for the soil nor the manure pile.
Forrest: It is thrown away.
Forrest: Anyone with ears to hear should listen and understand.
Forrest: Now, sometimes I can be very salty, but I don't think that's the salty that Jesus was talking about, okay?
Forrest: And I'm sure nobody else in this room needs an attitude adjustment either, do you?
Forrest: Maybe at times.
Forrest: Jesus tells us that we're supposed to be a good seasoning on our lives and the people that are around us.
Forrest: That no matter what the circumstances are in our life, no matter what we're going through at this time or the next time, that we should be a salt and a light to the world around us.
Forrest: And we should be become this salt and light that Jesus is talking about, not that we lose our flavor, not that we're useless, but instead we're a good seasoning for this world.
Forrest: Because we have a hope.
Forrest: We have a hope that others don't have.
Forrest: That by us dying, we live.
Forrest: And so we count the cost.
Forrest: And then we get to invite other people to move from death to life in the name of Jesus.
Forrest: People who are dead in their sins, just like we were at one time dead in our sins.
Forrest: But it's Christ who died for us to make us alive.
Forrest: And he stepped and walked out of the grave so that we can walk out of the grave with him.
Forrest: You know, as great as your family is, your family's not going to get you to heaven.
Forrest: You're not going to get to heaven because you have your grandma's Bible.
Forrest: You're not going to get to heaven because you have riches.
Forrest: Your marriage won't get you to heaven.
Forrest: Only putting your full faith in Jesus is what's going to get you from this life into the next alive.
Forrest: Jesus teaches in Ephesians, we learn that it's by grace that you've been saved through faith.
Forrest: Everybody say, faith.
Forrest: It's not of yourselves, it's a gift of God, not by works, so no one can boast.
Forrest: This last week, Dave Sandland and Bo Wolf and I were all laughing at a small group.
Forrest: Because we were reflecting on and talking about when after graduation from college, I asked a couple people, Dave and others, to just randomly take a random celebration trip.
Forrest: To the beach after graduation.
Forrest: And just looked up what the closest beach was to where we were, and we were going to get in the cumbar, and we were going to drop down there, and it just happened to be the closest beach was Trump's South Carolina, ironically, that we would end up living there some years later, but didn't know that at the time.
Forrest: And when I'm bummed the baby and a bumble the china, but we're all we were all broke coverage kids.
Forrest: For some reason, cumilage, you have the fewest bibbles of your chamber's broke.
Forrest: He's counting the cost.
Forrest: Also, this week, one of my really good friends who doesn't live in Frankfurt almost his his wife almost lost her life this week in a medical emergency.
Forrest: And she's gonna make a full recovery, praise God.
Forrest: And something that he said this week just stuck in my brain to share with you.
Forrest: And he said, I don't know how I would have gotten through this without the body of Christ, quote.
Forrest: The people that came around him and their family.
Forrest: And it made me think and wonder where my priorities are.
Forrest: If randomly on one day, because of a medical emergency, I was to lose my wife, where would I be?
Forrest: How would my faith be shaken?
Forrest: So what's the cost?
Forrest: What's the cost?
Forrest: What's the cost of following Jesus?
Forrest: Well, it will cost you everything, but you will gain everything.
Forrest: See, because I think right now there's some of us in the play in the room, and you gotta have two things that you need to do.
Forrest: Either cast or carry.
Forrest: There's some of us in the room that need to give something up and cast it from our life.
Forrest: And there's some of us in the room that need to take something up, which is the cross of Christ, and carry our cross because he already carried the cross for you.
Forrest: That can look like a lot of things.
Forrest: It can be small, it can be big, it could be that you confess the sin that keeps holding you down, and you you cast it to the Lord.
Forrest: Or maybe that worry that's keeping you up at night, maybe that worry that's keeping you up at night, that you cast that worry to the Lord.
Forrest: And they're able to carry the cross that Christ has called you to.
Forrest: To die to yourself, to walk with him, to worship him holy, fully.
Forrest: Maybe that means for some of you in the room that though you've given up on some of the things in your relationship with God, reading his word, being with his people.
Forrest: Maybe at one point you were in a small group, and you're like, ah, I don't like the way they do small groups there at multiply.
Forrest: I'm not gonna be part of that.
Forrest: But it's time to pick up the cross to carry it with him.
Forrest: Maybe it's the fact that at one point or another you stopped tithing, you stopped giving, or you never began, and it's time to pick up the cross, carry it, and walking with Jesus.
Forrest: It may be that you need to lay down your addiction to the approval of your family, and what they think of you, and what they think of your faith, and what they think of your commitment to Christ, and instead walk with them.
Forrest: It may be the fact that you walked in the room today and you don't even feel worthy.
Forrest: You don't even feel worthy to be here.
Forrest: And you think, what in the world?
Forrest: What am I doing in a church?
Forrest: How could God possibly do anything for me?
Forrest: He loved you so much that he carried the cross where he was beaten and broken so that you could have new life in him and that you could be made worthy, not by your own strength, but by his stripes, that you're healed.
Forrest: And so I wonder today, across this place, if there's anybody in the room that needs to start following Jesus.
Forrest: And we've already read that for you to make that decision, for you to put your full faith in him, that you should count the cost.
Forrest: And there's a card underneath your seat, and if that's you today, I'm gonna encourage you because one of those things says, hey, I want to know more about salvation, check that box.
Forrest: You you may be walking with Jesus for some time, but it's time for you to pick up and carry your cross with him and to be baptized.
Forrest: There's a little place that you can mark, I want to know more about baptism, and then drop it into the giving station as you walk out today.
Forrest: I also wonder this for all these salty people in the room.
Forrest: As we walk out today, we're gonna get some invitations to next Sunday in our two services.
Forrest: Who is it?
Forrest: Who is it in your life?
Forrest: Who is it in your life that you know needs to count the cost and come to faith in Christ?
Forrest: Or maybe they've given up, or maybe they feel counted out, or maybe they feel like that nobody cares about them, but you do and can make an invitation to them to be here, to come, to experience, to have a conversation about Jesus with them.
Forrest: Who is it?
Forrest: Who is it in your life?
Forrest: Will you bow your heads and pray with me?
Forrest: Father, all across this room.
Forrest: Lord, we thank you, God, for your goodness and your grace and your mercy to us.
Forrest: Thank you, Jesus, that you died for us, that you carried the cross for our guilt, for our shame, so that we could walk in freedom and healing.
Forrest: And so, Father, I pray all across the room right now, if there's anybody in this place, Father, who's not not followed you as Savior, who's not given their life over to you as you gave your life for them, that today they would do that.
Forrest: And they can start that by praying something like this Jesus, save me.
Forrest: I believe that you're the Son of God, that you died on the cross for me, and that you're alive.
Forrest: Make me alive too.
Forrest: Forgive me, cleanse me so that I can be with heaven with you one day.
Forrest: Thank you for saving me.
Forrest: And all across this room, Father, I pray, Lord, over every single person in this place who's a believer in you, who's following you, God, that Lord, you would help them, Father, to cast their cares and their worries and their sins upon you for forgiveness.
Forrest: That Father, that they would daily, daily be choosing you to worship you, to have you as their first priority.
Forrest: Jesus, because we know you're the way, the truth, and the life.
Forrest: No one comes to the Father except by you.
Forrest: And so, God, we we thank you, Lord, for the words from the scripture today.
Forrest: Father, help us to put people on our heart and our mind, God, that need to know, that need to count the cost, that need to father you.
Forrest: We pray all these things in the strong name of Jesus.
Forrest: Everybody said amen.
Forrest: Amen.
Forrest: Church, will you stand to your feet as we sing together?