'Which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not
down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have
sufficient to finish it?'--LUKE xiv. 28.
Christ sought for no recruits under false pretences, but rather
discouraged than stimulated light-hearted adhesion. His constant
effort was to sift the crowds that gathered round Him. So here great
multitudes are following Him, and how does He welcome them? Does He
lay Himself out to attract them? Luke tells us that He _turned_
and faced the following multitude; and then, with a steady hand,
drenched with cold water the too easily kindled flame. Was that
because He did not wish them to follow Him? He desired every soul in
that crowd for His own, and He knew that the best way to attract is
sometimes to repel; and that a plain statement of the painful
consequences of a course will quench no genuine enthusiasm, but may
turn a mere flash in the pan into a purpose that will flame through
a life.
So our Lord lays down in stringent words the law of discipleship as
being self-sacrifice; the abandonment of the dearest, and the
acceptance of the most painful. And then He illustrates the law by
these two expanded similes or condensed parables, of the rash
builder and the rash soldier. Each contains a side of the Christian
life, and represents one phase of what a true disciple ought to be.
I wish to look with you now at the first of these two comparisons.
I. Consider then, first, the building, or the true aim of
discipleship.
The building of the tower represents what every human life ought to
aim at, the rearing up of a strong, solid structure in which the
builder may dwell and be at rest.
But then remember we are always building, consciously or
unconsciously. By our transitory actions we are all rearing up a
house for our souls in which we have to dwell; building character
from out of the fleeting acts of conduct, which character we have to
carry with us for ever. Soft invertebrate animals secrete their own
shells. That is what we are doing-making character, which is the
shield of self, as it were; and in which we have to abide.
My friend, what are you building? A prison; a mere garden-house of
lustful delights; or a temple fortress in which God may dwell
reverenced, and you may abide restful? Observe that whilst all men
are thus unconsciously and habitually rearing up a permanent abode
by their transient actions, every life that is better than a brute's
ought to have for its aim the building up of ourselves into firm
strength. The development of character is what we ought to ask from,
and to secure by, this fleeting life of ours. Not enjoyment; that is
a miserable aim. Not the satisfaction of earthly desires; not the
prosperity of our business or other ordinary avocations. The demand
that we should make upon life, and the aim which we should have
clearly before us in all that we do, is that it may contribute to
the formation of a pure and noble self, to the development of
character into that likeness to Jesus Christ, which is perfection
and peace and blessedness.
And while that is true about all life, it is eminently true in
regard to the highest form of life, which is the Christian life.
There are dreadful mistakes and imperfections in the ordinary vulgar
conception of what a Christian is, and what he is a Christian for.
What do you think men and women are meant to be Christians for? That
they may get away from some material and outward hell? Possibly.
That they may get celestial happiness? Certainly. But are these the
main things? By no means. What people are meant to be Christians for
is that they may be shaped into the likeness of Jesus Christ; or to
go back to the metaphor of my text, the meaning and aim of Christian
discipleship is not happiness, but the building up of the tower in
which the man may dwell.
Ah, friend; is that your notion of what a Christian is; and of what
he is a Christian for, to be like the Master? Alas! alas! how few of
us, honestly and continually and practically, lay to heart the
stringent and grand conception which underlies this metaphor of our
Lord's, who identifies the man that was thinking of being His
disciple with the man that sits down intending to build a tower.
II. So, secondly, note the cost of the building, or the conditions
of discipleship.
Building is an expensive amusement, as many a man who has gone
rashly in for bricks and mortar has found out to his cost. And the
most expensive of all sorts of building is the building up of
Christian character. That costs more than anything else, but there
are a number of other things less noble and desirable, which share
with it, to some extent, in the expenditure which it involves.
Discipleship demands constant reference to the plan. A man that
lives as he likes, by impulse, by inclination, or ignobly yielding
to the pressure of circumstances and saying, 'I could not help
myself, I was carried away by the flood,' or 'Everybody round about
me is doing it, and I could not be singular'--will never build
anything worth living in. It will be a born ruin--if I may so say.
There must be continual reference to the plan. That is to say, if a
man is to do anything worth doing, there must be a very clear marking
out to himself of what he means to secure by life, and a keeping of
the aim continually before him as his guide and his pole-star. Did
you ever see the pretty architect's plans, that were all so white and
neat when they came out of his office, after the masons have done with
them-all thumb-marked and dirty? I wonder if your Bibles are like
that? Do we refer to the standard of conduct with anything like the
continual checking of our work by the architect's intention, which
every man who builds anything that will stand is obliged to practise?
Consult your plan, the pattern of your Master, the words of your
Redeemer, the gospel of your God, the voice of judgment and conscience,
and get into the habit of living, not like a vegetable, upon what
happens to be nearest its roots, nor like a brute, by the impulses of
the unreasoning nature, but clear above these put the understanding,
and high above that put the conscience, and above them all put the
will of the Lord. Consult your plan if you want to build your tower.
Then, further, another condition is continuous effort. You cannot
'rush' the building of a great edifice. You have to wait till the
foundations get consolidated, and then by a separate effort every
stone has to be laid in its bed and out of the builder's hands. So
by slow degrees, with continuity of effort, the building rises.
Now there has been a great deal of what I humbly venture to call
one-sidedness talked about the way by which Christian character is
to be developed and perfected. And one set of the New Testament
metaphors upon that subject has been pressed to the exclusion of the
others, and the effortless growth of the plant has been presented as
if it were the complete example of Christian progress. I know that
Jesus Christ has said: 'First the blade, then the ear; after that
the full corn in the ear.' But I know that He has also said, 'Which
of you, intending to build a tower'--and that involves the idea of
effort; and that He has further said, 'Or what king, going to make
war against another king'--and that involves the idea of antagonism
and conflict. And so, on the whole, I lay it down that this is one
of the conditions of building the tower, that the energy of the
builder should never slacken, but, with continual renewal of effort,
he should rear his life's building.
And then, still further, there is the fundamental condition of all;
and that is, self-surrender. Our Lord lays this down in the most
stringent terms in the words before my text, where He points to two
directions in which that spirit is required to manifest itself. One
is detachment from persons that are dearest, and even from one's own
selfish life; the other is the acceptance of things that are most
contrary to one's inclinations, against the grain, painful and hard
to bear. And so we may combine these two in this statement: If any
man is going to build a Christlike life he will have to detach
himself from surrounding things and dear ones, and to crucify self
by suppression of the lower nature and the endurance of evils. The
preceding parable which is connected in subject with the text, the
story of the great supper, and the excuses made for not coming to
it, represents two-thirds of the refusals as arising from the undue
love for, and regard to, earthly possessions, and the remaining
third as arising from the undue love to, and regard for, the
legitimate objects of affection. And these are the two chords that
hold most of us most tightly. It is not Christianity alone, dear
brethren, that says that if you want to do anything worth doing, you
must detach yourself from outward wealth. It is not Christianity
alone that says that, if you want to build up a noble life, you must
not let earthly love dominate and absorb your energy; but it is
Christianity that says so most emphatically, and that has best
reason to say so.
Concentration is the secret of all excellence. If the river is to
have any scour in it that will sweep away pollution and corruption,
it must not go winding and lingering in many curves, howsoever
flowery may be the banks, nor spreading over a broad bed, but you
must straighten it up and make it deep that it may run strong. And
if you will diffuse yourself all over these poor, wretched worldly
goods, or even let the rush of your heart's outflow go in the
direction of father and mother, wife and children, brethren and
sisters, forgetting Him, then you will never come to any good nor be
of use in this world. But if you want to be Christians after
Christ's pattern, remember that the price of the building is rigidly
to sacrifice self, 'to scorn delights and live laborious days,' and
to keep all vagrant desires and purposes within rigid limits, and
absolutely subordinated to Himself.
On the other hand, there is to be the acceptance of what is painful
to the lower nature. Unpleasant consequences of duty have to be
borne, and the lower self, with its appetites and desires, has to be
crucified. The vine must be mercilessly pruned in tendrils, leaves,
and branches even, though the rich sap may seem to bleed away to
waste, if we are to grow precious grapes out of which may be
expressed the wine of the Kingdom. We must be dead to much if we are
to be alive to anything worth living for.
Now remember that Christ's demand of self-surrender, self-sacrifice,
continuous effort, rigid limitation, does not come from any mere
false asceticism, but is inevitable in the very nature of the case,
and is made also by all worthy work. How much every one of us has
had to shear off our lives, how many tastes we have had to allow to
go ungratified, how many capacities undeveloped, in how many
directions we have had to hedge up our way, and not do, or be this,
that, or the other; if we have ever done anything in any direction
worthy the doing! Concentration and voluntary limitation, in order
to fix all powers on the supreme aim which judgment and conscience
have enjoined is the condition of all excellence, of all sanity of
living, and eminently of all Christian discipleship.