Have you ever noticed that some people don’t think things through very well? There’s a story about a professional football player who wasn’t very fond of team curfews when the team was playing on the road. So this player had a routine that he followed whenever his team was in another city. If he wanted to stay out after curfew, he would take whatever he could find loose in his hotel room and cram it under his bed cover so it would appear that he was in his room.
However in one motel there was very little in his room that would fit under his bed cover. The only thing he could find that was the right size was a lamp. So he stuffed the lamp under his bed cover and headed out for an evening’s misadventure. The only problem was that an assistant coach who came by to do a bed check turned on the light switch in the player’s room. When he did that the athlete’s bed lit up like a Christmas tree. The poor guy just didn’t think things through when he put a lamp under his covers.
Some of you are familiar with the Darwin awards which are given out each year to people who do particularly stupid things. One of the finalists for the awards a few years back was a teenager who was in the hospital recovering from serious head wounds received from an oncoming train.
When asked how he received the injuries, the lad told police that he was simply trying to see how close he could get his head to a moving train before it was hit. He certainly found out. I’m glad our teenagers are smarter than to attempt anything like that.
Some people just don’t think things through before they act. Jesus had such people in mind one day when he turned to the crowd and said: “Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won’t you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it? For if you lay the foundation and are not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule you, saying, ‘This person began to build and wasn’t able to finish.’
“Or suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Won’t he first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand? If he is not able, he will send a delegation while the other is still a long way off and will ask for terms of peace.”
In other words, Jesus was saying, “Before you do something stupid, sit down and think through the consequences of your actions.” Or as we would say today, “For heaven’s sake, look before you leap.”
Jesus wanted people to give some thought to the conduct of their lives. By thinking through what you’re doing before you act, you can save yourself a lot of trouble . . . in every area of your life.
A few years back the Associated Press carried a story about an artist named Trevor Corneliusien, a 26-year-old young man who went camping in an abandoned mineshaft about five miles north of Baker, California. His plan was to wrap a chain around his bare ankles, lock it, and then, for whatever reason, draw a picture of his legs in chains.
Everything went well until he finished the drawing. Then it dawned on him he didn’t have the key with him to unlock the chains. So what did he do? There were few options open to him. So Trevor painfully hopped across the desert for 12 hours before finding help.
“It took him over 12 hours because he had to hop through boulders and sand,” a sheriff’s deputy said. Fortunately, “he did put on his shoes before hopping.”
That’s a relief. Corneliusien finally made it to a gas station and called the sheriff’s department, which sent paramedics and deputies with bolt cutters. “His legs were bruised but he was otherwise in good health,” the deputy said. He also said that the drawing of the chain around his legs was “pretty good.” I would hope it was better than “pretty good” after such an ordeal. (1) Sometimes it pays to think before we act.
Those of you who are into texting--have you ever wished you could take back a text after you hit the “send” button? I read recently that there is now an app for that.
After sending a friend an embarrassing text herself, Maci Peterson, a Washington, D.C., entrepreneur, created a mobile app that lets users take back those text messages they immediately wish they hadn’t sent.
The app, which she calls On Second Thought, has two main features: A recall function that gives the user up to 60 seconds to reclaim a text before it’s sent. And a “curfew” setting which holds all text messages until a designated time. Say you’re out late one night and don’t trust the condition you’re in. You might want to review your text the following morning and check to make sure your text message is something you really want to send before it actually goes out. The app automatically holds your text for you until the next day. (2)
Of course, some people are hopeless. There isn’t an app that will help them. They blurt out whatever they have on their mind, or they leap without looking regardless of how thoughtless or how stupid the thought or the act. They never learn. But you and I are smarter than that. We can learn from past experiences. We can sit down, think things through and come to some logical conclusions. That is all Jesus is asking out of us.
Some people think of Christianity as being primarily an emotional experience. Nothing could be further from the truth. Christ wants us to think things through. He wants us to count the cost.
The amazing thing is how few people think about the things that matter most. This is the real problem. What are some of the things that matter most to you? Your family? Your health? Your work? Your reputation in the community?
Think how many tragedies would be avoided if people simply sat down a few moments and thought through the consequences of their actions with regard to things that really matter to them. Think how many homes would still be intact, think how many prison cells would be empty, think how many lives would be spared if folks would just think first!
Most of you know the name Ted Williams. The former Red Sox baseball legend was the last major league hitter to hit .400. Many people consider him to be the greatest hitter of all time.
Williams was once asked by a reporter about his vision, which was 20/10. Yes, he said, his eyes were better than normal, and he had a lot of walks because he really understood exactly where the strike zone was.
The reporter suggested that with his eyesight, Williams could get more hits if he swung at some balls just slightly out of the strike zone.
Yes, Williams replied, he could get more hits; however, he never swung at pitches outside of the strike zone.
Well, the reporter asked, why if you could get more hits, don’t you try to do that?
Williams said, “Because then there is no place to draw the line.” (3)
One of the most important pieces of information that we can have in our lives is knowing where to draw the line. Let’s go back to those areas of life that are most important to us—our family, our health, our reputation, etc.—those things we really don’t want to damage or even lose. Can you see how important it is that we know where to draw a line around them—a line that we will not cross? It is very important that we give a thought to those things that are really important in our lives.
Psychologists tell us that about 10,000 thoughts pass through the human brain each day. That makes 70,000 each week and 3.65 million thoughts a year. At least a few of them need to take priority.
Sir Isaac Newton was once asked how he discovered the Law of Gravity. “By thinking about it,” he answered.
As one cynic said, “Use your brain.” Then he added sarcastically, “It’s the little things that count.” Use your brain.
Which brings me to something the great evangelist Dwight L. Moody once said. He said that if he could get someone to think only ten minutes about the condition of his soul, he could convert him. Think about that—just ten minutes of thinking about our soul. The trouble is that many of us refuse to think even ten minutes about the things that really matter.
Of course the most important thought we can have concerns our relationship with God. If we were secure in our relationship with God, that would take care of most of the critical concerns in our life.
A few years ago 151 cadets were expelled from West Point for cheating. Remember that regrettable scandal? A survey was taken among West Point cadets to determine what was the greatest single factor in the students’ minds in causing this breakdown in student behavior. The Secretary of the Army, in discussing the cause of the scandal, reported that “at least two-fifths of the cadets . . . when asked what the causes were, brought up removal of mandatory chapel at the military academy. Who among us,” he asked, “would have thought there would be this effect from removing chapel?” The cadets “felt that sanctity was driven out of the moral code.” (4)
Our relationship with God reminds us of some of the lines we dare not cross. When that relationship is broken we are vulnerable to all kinds of temptations.
Even more important, our relationship with God reminds us of a line we desperately need to cross.
When Jesus taught about counting the cost before building a tower, his real concern was not architecture or construction. He was advising potential followers about what it meant to be his disciple. He concluded this teaching with these words: “In the same way, those of you who do not give up everything you have cannot be my disciples.”
Wow! That will clear the room in a hurry. Give up everything? How many of us really want to take this religion business that far? Yet that is the demand Christ makes of every one of us if we would be his disciple. There is a line that we desperately need to cross, and that is the line that separates those who follow Jesus from those who do not. Once we cross that line, something special is expected out of us, and that is that we dedicate everything we are and everything we hope to be to following him. And why shouldn’t Christ expect that out of us? People all the time are committing themselves to matters of far less importance.
A famous athlete said that he does 1,000 sit-ups a day. How could anybody be that dedicated to improving their body?
We hear about business people who work 60, 70, even 80 hour weeks, neglecting their health and their families and their community responsibilities in their service to the god of success. Is it worth that kind of dedication? Why, then, should we be surprised that Christ would ask as much?
He does ask more. He asks for it all. That doesn’t mean we live at the church. No. The call to renounce everything is not a call to everyone to become a full-time church worker. Rather, it is a call to make our entire life—our work, our play, our family relationships, everything—pleasing in God’s sight. The ironic thing is that when we renounce everything else for Christ’s sake, we gain more than we lose. We find that in pleasing God, we ultimately please ourselves. That is because God’s way leads to life.
In the spring of 2015, a 39-year-old college professor from Venezuela ran the famous Boston Marathon. The professor’s name is Maickel Melamed. He had run 4 previous marathons, but this was his first time running the coveted Boston race. It was for Melamed the culmination of 6 years of training that had begun with his running just 500 yards the very first time.
What makes Maickel Melamed’s story unique is that he finished the Boston Marathon in last place. And he finished last because Maickel Melamed has a form of muscular dystrophy that severely impairs his mobility so that his run is more like a very slow and laborious movement of left and right strides.
The Boston Marathon course is brutal, hilly and difficult. It begins early Monday morning and the average male runner finishes in a little over 4 hours. Maickel Melamed finished the race in slightly less than 20 hours. He crossed the finish line in the dark in a pelting rain with a flock of supporters cheering him on.
He was interviewed shortly after completing the race and here is what he said, “It was hard on the body, but in the soul everything is shining.” (5)
Committed followers of Jesus will someday say something like that about the cost of discipleship: “It was hard on the body, but in the soul everything is shining.”
All Christ asks is for you to use your brain. Is he the Savior of the world? Then doesn’t it make sense to align your life with his? “Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won’t you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it?” You can save yourself a lot of problems simply by thinking through what really matters in your life.
1. https://www.makestupidityhistory.org/category/general/.
3. Richard Saul Wurman, Information Anxiety (New York: Bantam Books, 1989).
4. Contributed. Source unknown.
5. Cited by Rev. Todd Linn, https://fbchenderson.org/resource-library/faithful-and-fearless/.