Due diligence

Luke 14:28-30

For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not sit down first and count the cost, whether he has enough to finish it— lest, after he has laid the foundation, and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’

Jesus operated in an agrarian society and referenced agriculture in the majority of His stories, illustrations, and parables. At other times His focus was on fishing, given that He spent a lot of time in coastal cities. However, every now and then He used other references, as in the example we have today in our key verse where He ventures into construction.

Because of His family history in carpentry, and evidence of His own activities in the trade, one might have thought that carpentry and construction might have featured more but it didn’t. Some might argue though that He was still in the context of agrarian activities because we know that farmers, in His time, built towers to watch over their vineyards and other crops. “A man planted a vineyard and set a hedge around it, dug a place for the wine vat and built a tower.” Mark 12:1

In this situation we are looking at now, Jesus was making general statements about the cost of following Him and used a few examples, the challenge of family and relationships, the need to know the costs of one’s endeavours, and the need for a king to have resources for diplomacy when he lacks the resources for the war option.

We are not so much focused on that particular context now, rather we are lifting the principle of assessing costs before undertaking a major endeavour. Jesus is facing large crowds who are caught up in the excitement of the miracles and moved by the depth and freshness of the oratory. He knew though that not many of them had the staying power and so decided to challenge them to reflect on what they were undertaking.

The three verses compress the process and due diligence that is required for undertaking a construction project. Jesus said that in preparing for undertaking construction it is necessary to “sit down first and count the cost.” In other words, you need to have proper estimates before you start out. Failure to do this presents possible practical problems in that, “after he has laid the foundation, [he] is not able to finish.” Finally, failure to do so also damages one reputation and courts public ridicule, because “all who see it begin to mock him, saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’”

I say that these verses compress the process and due diligence because anyone who has ever constructed a home or other building knows that there is quite a lot involved in “counting the cost. Let’s break this down quickly in a non-technical way. To undertake a construction project, we first need to know the purpose for which the building is being constructed. Then we need a design for the building that would allow it to function for the set purpose we have in mind.

The design must consider not only the purpose for which the building is required, it must take proper account of the conditions on which it is being built. Also, the designer must be aware of the weather and other and other natural phenomena that occur there and that could affect the building if not there could be great risks to the structure later on. “But everyone who hears these sayings of Mine, and does not do them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand: and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it fell. And great was its fall.” Matthew 7:26,27

After this design is done and we have a plan or blueprints then we start looking at the estimates. For major construction, we bring in the quantity surveyors as part of a complex procurement process, but for small projects, like the average home, we ask the selected contractor to provide an estimate, sometimes we ask a few of them and then we choose one.

It is at this point that we need to weigh what resources we have and what resources we could mobilise. Often, for construction, we don’t have it all and we have to seek a mortgage or other types of funding for the project.

Jesus was making a reference to the challenges of a construction that is a good lesson for any of us who want to embark on a new construction project, If you don’t have it and can’t raise it, don’t start it.

But Jesus’ construction reference here was also intended as a metaphor for life and for genuine Christian faith. We should not undertake things for which we do not have the resources and for which we are unprepared to make the necessary and required sacrifices for it to be successful.

There were a lot of people in the crowd who were jumping and shouting and waving but who, when the going got tough, Jesus knew that they would fall away. We see this every day. We see as we drive around people who, for one reason or the other, were unable to finish their construction projects, and we see Christians who are unable to keep their public and private commitments to faithfully follow Christ.

Think on these things:

1. If you ever undertook a major construction project like a home, did you finish it?
2. If you ever undertook a construction project, what life lessons did you learn through it?
3. Do you make it a regular practice to properly evaluate the true cost of a commitment before you make it?

Prayer focus:

Let us pray today that we would be diligent in our considerations before making new commitments.

In His Grace

Pastor Alex