Charles Spurgeon Commentary Luke 14:28-30

"For which of you, desiring to build a tower, doth not first sit down and count the cost, whether he have [wherewith] to complete it? Lest haply, when he hath laid a foundation, and is not able to finish, all that behold begin to mock him, saying, This man began to build, and was not able to finish." — Luke 14:28-30 (ASV)

Do you not think that there are a great many towers of that kind around in our day? I mean, unfinished Christian characters—persons who profess to be followers of Christ, but are not. They simply exhibit their own shortcomings to you; they are people with good intentions who made some attempt to follow Jesus, but since it involved too much self-denial, they were not able to go that far, so they turned back and walked no more with him. They began to build a tower but never finished it. May God, in His mercy, prevent you and me from becoming a laughingstock for all eternity!

I believe that, in the last great day and forever, those persons, who knew enough about the gospel to wish to be Christians, and who were somewhat motivated by right motives, but who never went so far as to give their hearts to Christ, will stand out as monuments to their own folly, and even the demons in hell will point at them and say, "These men began to build, and were not able to finish." Such persons will be unable to answer that contemptuous sneer.

If you have enough conscience to begin to follow Christ, even reason itself requires you to go all the way. If you know that it is right for you to do so, why do you not see it through? If you are sufficiently convinced of its rightness to go as far as you do, why not go even further? God grant that you may! Better never to begin to build than to begin without having counted the cost, and then to find that you do not have enough to finish.