Cost From The King
Jesus taught the crowds with parables. This past Sunday, the Gospel lesson from Luke 14 (25-35) begins: Large crowds were traveling with Jesus. Matthew, in his Gospel, tells us:
Jesus spoke all these things in parables to the crowds. He did not speak to them without telling a parable. This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet:
I will open my mouth in parables,
I will utter things hidden since the foundation of the world.
From <https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2013&version=EHV>
A parable has been described as an earthly story that reveals a heavenly reality. The parable of building a tower and the king calculating the cost of going to war piqued my imagination. In the beginning God created. Before he created, he must have made a very detailed cost analysis of the whole creation process. He asked Job:
Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
Tell me, if you understand anything about it.
From <https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Job%2038%3A3%2D5&version=EHV>
God has a plan, he knows the plan (Jeremiah 29:11). In that plan, he also had to consider the impending war and how to offer terms of peace. The delegation he sent was Moses and the prophets. Moses, as the chief negotiator, said:
You see, I am placing before you today a blessing and a curse: the blessing, if you listen to the commandments of the Lord your God that I am giving you today, or the curse, if you do not listen to the commandments of the Lord your God and you turn away from the path that I am commanding you today by walking after other gods whom you did not know.
From <https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Deuteronomy%2011&version=EHV>
The prophets all repeated the same offer of peace, and hinted at the cost of the inevitable war. The quote in Matthew (from above): “I will open my mouth in parables
I will utter things hidden since the foundation of the world” is from Psalm 78. Jesus is the plan from the beginning.
In him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, things seen and unseen, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and all things hold together in him.
From <https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Colossians%201&version=EHV>
However, because of our allegiance to sin, — with the allies of death and the devil — we wage war on God. We do not have any concept of the cost of waging this war: either on our side or on God’s side. The war against sin, death, and the devil — part of the God’s detailed cost analysis — is paid by Jesus, through his life and death on the cross. Jesus has paid our cost for the war. The cost to the Father is the death of his son.
For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all.
From <https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Timothy%202%3A5%2D7&version=EHV>
But now in Christ Jesus, you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace. He made the two groups one by destroying the wall of hostility that divided them when he abolished the law of commandments and regulations in his flesh. He did this to create in himself one new person out of the two, in this way making peace. And he did this to reconcile both to God in one body through the cross by putting the hostility to death on it.
From <https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ephesians%202&version=EHV>
We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ (Romans 5:1)
Trust the Promises
Steve Skiver