The Tower You Cannot Finish

The crowd is enormous. This is the top of it for him, the peak, the day the numbers are best. And with everyone finally watching, he turns around and starts thinning the room.

"And there went great multitudes with him: and he turned, and said unto them," — Luke 14:25 (KJV)

He turned. Picture it. A man with a following any of us would kill for, and instead of closing the sale he faces the crowd and names the price out loud, in the plainest words he owns.

"If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple." — Luke 14:26 (KJV)

Hate. Sit with the word before you rush to soften it. He is not commanding malice toward the people who raised you and the people you married and made. Everywhere else he says honor them, provide for them, lay your life down for them. He is doing what a plain man does when he sets two loves on a scale and one of them has to weigh less. Next to him, the dearest love you have must come to look like something you could let go of. That is the whole terror of it. He is not asking for your worst relationships. He is asking for your best ones.

"And whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple." — Luke 14:27 (KJV)

Bear his cross. To that crowd this was not a figure of speech and not a bad week. A man carrying a cross was a man already sentenced, walking out of the city to die, and everyone who saw him knew he was not coming back. That is the caravan he is inviting you to join. And then, right when you would expect him to rally the ones still standing, he sits them down and hands them a pencil.

"For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it?" — Luke 14:28 (KJV)

Count the cost. He wants you to do the math. He is not afraid of the math. And he tells you what the half-built tower looks like when the money runs out.

"Lest haply, after he hath laid the foundation, and is not able to finish it, all that behold it begin to mock him, Saying, This man began to build, and was not able to finish." — Luke 14:29-30 (KJV)

You have driven past that tower. The foundation poured, the first floor framed, and then nothing, weeds coming up through the rebar, a sign that faded three summers ago. This man began to build, and was not able to finish. Everybody who passes reads the same sentence off the concrete. He started something he could not pay for.

Then he does it again, with a king this time.

"Or what king, going to make war against another king, sitteth not down first, and consulteth whether he be able with ten thousand to meet him that cometh against him with twenty thousand?" — Luke 14:31 (KJV)

Ten thousand against twenty. Do that arithmetic honestly and there is only one move a sane king makes, and the next verse names it: while the enemy is still far off, he sends and asks for terms of peace. He surrenders early. He gives up the war he cannot win before it grinds him to nothing.

Now here is the hinge the whole thing swings on. You did the math on the tower and you came up short. You counted the army and you are outnumbered two to one. You are supposed to feel the shortage. And then he closes it not with a discount but with everything.

"So likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple." — Luke 14:33 (KJV)

Forsaketh not all. Read it slow. He counted the cost with you, walked you through the shortfall on purpose, and the number at the bottom of the page is not a payment plan. It is all of it. So hear what he is actually doing. He is not telling you to save up until you can afford him. He is showing you that you cannot, and never could, and that the honest builder is the one who puts the trowel down. The king who wins is the one who quits. You do not finish the tower by finding more money. You bring him the foundation you could not build on and let go of the blueprint.

And that is exactly where the potter is waiting.

"And the vessel that he made of clay was marred in the hand of the potter: so he made it again another vessel, as seemed good to the potter to make it." — Jeremiah 18:4 (KJV)

Marred in his hand. Not thrown away. Not swept off the wheel into the scrap. The spoiled vessel stays in his hands and he works it down and makes it again. And then the word comes.

"O house of Israel, cannot I do with you as this potter? saith the LORD. Behold, as the clay is in the potter's hand, so are ye in mine hand, O house of Israel." — Jeremiah 18:6 (KJV)

You are the tower you cannot finish. You are also the clay that cannot fix itself. And the good news of a hard morning is that finishing was never your department. He is the potter. Marred does not mean discarded in his hands. It means unfinished, and he does not walk away from unfinished work.

Hear who is doing the counting.

"O LORD, thou hast searched me, and known me." — Psalm 139:1 (KJV)

He searched you first. He counted the whole cost of you before you ever picked up the pencil, every marred place, the exact price of the person you are, and he laid his hand on you anyway. When he tells you to count the cost, he is not warning you off. He is inviting you to know what he already knew and stayed for.

And forsaking all is never as grand as it sounds in a sermon. Look at the letter Paul sends this same week. A runaway named Onesimus, a slave who had wronged his master, and Paul sends him home with a note that says take him back not now as a servant but as a brother beloved. One man forgives one debt. One name he had every right to keep gets laid down. That is what forsaking all looks like when it comes to your street. It is not selling everything you own in an afternoon. It is the one held-back thing, given up, this week.

Because you already knew to count the cost. That is the trap. You have heard this text and turned it into a budget. You keep a ledger of what following Jesus costs and you pay the minimum that keeps the account open. Church on Sunday, a check in December, a clean version of your mouth. Enough to call yourself a builder and never enough to go broke. But he did not say budget it. He said forsake it. A discipleship you can comfortably afford is a tower you are pretending to build.

So count the cost, all the way to the bottom, and let the number bankrupt you. Put the trowel down. Send for terms of peace with the God you were quietly at war with. Bring him the foundation with the weeds in it and the marred vessel and the ledger with the minimum payment on it, and open your hands the rest of the way. You cannot finish this. That was always the point. He is the potter, and marred clay is the only kind he has ever worked with, and he has never once left a thing on the wheel half made.

Come to him with empty hands. Empty is the only way in.

Amen.