SPEAKER_00: This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.
SPEAKER_01: Please take your Bible, if you have one, or your device, and make your way to the Gospel of Matthew in chapter 8.
SPEAKER_01: Matthew chapter 8.
SPEAKER_01: Here at Faith Evangelical Free Church, we have as our goal, and we probably would even say beyond that, our duty to make disciples.
SPEAKER_01: You will see and you will hear again and again and again that we are here to declare the Word of God, to bring people to faith in Christ so that they become disciples of Christ.
SPEAKER_01: And then we take those disciples and we want to move them to a place of greater maturity and devotion in following Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: So I'm glad you're here today to be a disciple.
SPEAKER_01: But what kind of a disciple are you?
SPEAKER_01: Before we read the Word of God together, and before we get into what Jesus says, just take a moment and think about that question.
SPEAKER_01: What kind of a disciple are you?
SPEAKER_01: Now we don't want to participate too much in comparisons of one another.
SPEAKER_01: God has something for each one of us individually in life.
SPEAKER_01: He guides each one of us.
SPEAKER_01: But is your following of Jesus, is your devotion to Christ, what it should be?
SPEAKER_01: That's the kind of question that ought to be running around in our brains and bouncing around inside of us as we read Matthew chapter 18, beginning in, sorry, Matthew 8, beginning in verse 18.
SPEAKER_01: The word of God says, when Jesus saw a crowd around him, he gave orders to go over to the other side.
SPEAKER_01: And a scribe came up to him and said, Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus said to him, Foxes have holes, birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.
SPEAKER_01: Another of the disciples said to him, Lord, let me first go and bury my father.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus said to him, Follow me.
SPEAKER_01: And leave the dead to bury their own dead.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: Some challenging statements here about discipleship.
SPEAKER_01: Some confusing ones, I might add.
SPEAKER_01: But in the end, it asks us the question: where is my devotion to Christ?
SPEAKER_01: Am I first a disciple of Jesus?
SPEAKER_01: And then if I am a disciple of Jesus, where am I on that road of following him?
SPEAKER_01: Am I stagnant?
SPEAKER_01: Am I crawling at a snail's pace?
SPEAKER_01: Am I running?
SPEAKER_01: Am I even following the right path?
SPEAKER_01: Those are all appropriate questions to ask ourselves every once in a while.
SPEAKER_01: Now, as we finished the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew, we encountered and entered a section of Matthew's gospel that frankly is uncomfortable to our modern psyche.
SPEAKER_01: Because Jesus proclaimed that there is only one way to true life.
SPEAKER_01: There's only one way to God and only one way to the kingdom of heaven.
SPEAKER_01: That doesn't go over well today.
SPEAKER_01: That's why Jesus said in chapter 7, verses 13 and 14, enter by the narrow gate.
SPEAKER_01: Because there's a wide gate and there's a wide road that just leads to destruction.
SPEAKER_01: It's why he said, Not everybody who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven.
SPEAKER_01: Chapter 7, verse 21.
SPEAKER_01: That's why he went on to give the illustration of the two builders in chapter 7, verses 24 to 27.
SPEAKER_01: The builder who established his house on the rock and it stood firm, and the builder who established his house on the sand and it collapsed.
SPEAKER_01: You see, everyone wants to experience the benefits and the blessings of God's kingdom.
SPEAKER_01: Who doesn't want good things, right?
SPEAKER_01: Who doesn't want another stimulus?
SPEAKER_01: I mean, who wouldn't want more money in your bank account?
SPEAKER_01: Oh, the national debt?
SPEAKER_01: What?
SPEAKER_01: No, let's not go there, sorry.
SPEAKER_01: Forgive me.
SPEAKER_01: We like blessings, we like benefits, we like to receive things, right?
SPEAKER_01: And if God is dispensing good things, why wouldn't we want to receive them?
SPEAKER_01: God gives special blessings to some, but all people want to receive those blessings.
SPEAKER_01: For example, if you're in chapter 8, at the beginning of chapter 8, a leper came to Jesus for healing.
SPEAKER_01: Without, it seems, even believing truly in who Jesus is.
SPEAKER_01: He had heard that Jesus is able to heal, is able to transform a diseased person, a diseased body into something that is whole.
SPEAKER_01: Something that is without that disease ravaging it.
SPEAKER_01: He wanted that blessing.
SPEAKER_01: A Roman centurion then came to Jesus seeking help for his servant.
SPEAKER_01: He exercised great faith in Jesus, the kind of faith that Jesus links to the narrow gate and to the narrow road.
SPEAKER_01: And then there were crowds of people in need of spiritual and physical healing, all of them apparently receiving the blessings of God's gracious mercy.
SPEAKER_01: But not all of them believed in Jesus as the eternal God who became man in order to redeem him from his sin.
SPEAKER_01: Some who received his blessings did not know him.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, at the end of this chapter in chapter 8, Jesus brings healing and life to a man who'd been demon-possessed.
SPEAKER_01: And then Jesus is kicked out of the country for doing it.
SPEAKER_01: As Jesus implied through the narrow and wide gates and the hard and easy roads.
SPEAKER_01: Believing in Jesus and then following him in discipleship is not a simple, easy process.
SPEAKER_01: Why?
SPEAKER_01: Well, if we just make it very simple, it's because believing in Christ is contrary to our natural and worldly thinking.
SPEAKER_01: And because following Jesus is costly.
SPEAKER_01: It will cost you.
SPEAKER_01: This is what is highlighted here in this passage.
SPEAKER_01: Like many Christians, I had a moment in high school where I came face to face with the reality of the cost of discipleship.
SPEAKER_01: I went to a public school in a small Montana town where I was, where I unexpectedly encountered a decision that would set me at odds with the rest of the school.
SPEAKER_01: And it was an issue of discipleship.
SPEAKER_01: Was I going to follow Jesus no matter what it cost me?
SPEAKER_01: I want you to notice here this theme of following Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 19.
SPEAKER_01: Scribe comes up and says, Teacher, I'm going to follow you.
SPEAKER_01: Wherever you go, I'm going to follow you.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 22, Jesus says to the second individual, follow me.
SPEAKER_01: Then in verse 23, all of his disciples followed him into a boat.
SPEAKER_01: This is about the process, the life of a disciple in following Jesus wherever he goes.
SPEAKER_01: What does that look like?
SPEAKER_01: What does it entail?
SPEAKER_01: How do we do that?
SPEAKER_01: We see here that a crowd had gathered around Jesus in verse 18.
SPEAKER_01: That happens all the time, right?
SPEAKER_01: If you go back to verse 16 and verse 17, Jesus spends an entire evening, maybe even late into the night, healing everyone who was brought to him.
SPEAKER_01: And when that begins to happen, a crowd gathers, right?
SPEAKER_01: Word spreads, a crowd gathers.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus begins to be overwhelmed simply by the presence of the people, and so he gives orders to his disciples to prepare a boat so they can get out on the lake and get out of there.
SPEAKER_01: Move somewhere else.
SPEAKER_01: Crowds are important in the ministry of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Fifty times in the Gospel of Matthew, we see crowds.
SPEAKER_01: Fifty times.
SPEAKER_01: It's almost twice a chapter.
SPEAKER_01: More than any other gospel record.
SPEAKER_01: If we look over at chapter 14, about verse 15, 14, 15, 16, you'll see that Jesus often had compassion on the crowds.
SPEAKER_01: When people gathered together in crowds, that indicated something to him.
SPEAKER_01: And he was compassionate toward them.
SPEAKER_01: But here he sees the crowd gathering and he issues orders.
SPEAKER_01: He gave a command to float, to get in a boat and go out on the Sea of Galilee.
SPEAKER_01: And that then serves for the rest of this chapter and even into chapter 9 to sort of take us from place to place.
SPEAKER_01: They're on one side of the Sea of Galilee, then they're going to go to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, and then they're going to come back to the where they started from.
SPEAKER_01: They're going to go back and forth.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus gives his disciples a directive.
SPEAKER_01: Get in the boat.
SPEAKER_01: We're going to look more at this next Sunday.
SPEAKER_01: But there's an implicit truth there.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus has the authority to give orders.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus possesses the authority to give orders.
SPEAKER_01: He requires obedience of his disciples.
SPEAKER_01: He determines when they move, where they move, how they move to their next location.
SPEAKER_01: He gives the direction, and they respond in obedience.
SPEAKER_01: And that giving of orders, that giving of a command, and the understanding of obedience, of responsiveness, of following that helps us understand why Matthew continues on to write about the expectations in discipleship.
SPEAKER_01: And he teaches us about the expectations in discipleship by highlighting three individuals.
SPEAKER_01: So if you're taking notes this morning, that's going to be our outline.
SPEAKER_01: We're going to look at just these three individuals that are present here in this passage.
SPEAKER_01: The first one is the scribe, the scribe.
SPEAKER_01: We might refer to him as a respected religious leader, because that's what he was.
SPEAKER_01: Initially, scribes were, we might call them an educated group of individuals who served as Bible copiers.
SPEAKER_01: That was their initial duty to hand copy the Old Testament and make sure that they were as accurate as humanly possible when you're hand copying something.
SPEAKER_01: But by the time of Jesus, this group of scribes had risen to one of the upper class groups of Jewish society.
SPEAKER_01: And so they still did the copying of the Jewish scriptures, but they also taught the Jewish scriptures in the synagogues.
SPEAKER_01: But in order to teach, they generally began their education at age 14.
SPEAKER_01: They were disciples of a teacher.
SPEAKER_01: So, for example, the Apostle Paul tells us that he was a disciple of Gamaliel.
SPEAKER_01: They were disciples of a teacher, and as disciples, they were in continual contact with that teacher.
SPEAKER_01: They would work then to become, in essence, lawyers of the Jewish scriptures.
SPEAKER_01: One person who could be competent to make decisions and rulings on matters of religious law and justice and ceremony regarding Judaism.
SPEAKER_01: They studied the Old Testament and Jewish interpretation of the Old Testament to perfection, most often completing their studies at age 40.
SPEAKER_01: I know it's still early on a Sunday morning, so it's difficult to do math that early.
SPEAKER_01: But I wrote it down.
SPEAKER_01: That's 26 years of education.
SPEAKER_01: That's 26 years of in-depth education in the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_01: And in the interpretation and the application of the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_01: This guy knows what he's doing.
SPEAKER_01: He knows his stuff.
SPEAKER_01: He knows his Bible.
SPEAKER_01: He understands what it means to be a disciple.
SPEAKER_01: And so he would be acting at this point in time, perhaps as a judge or maybe as a rabbi himself.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe he was in some kind of ruling court in an administrative position of justice or government or education.
SPEAKER_01: Some of the scribes were members of the Sanhedrin, the Jewish Supreme Court.
SPEAKER_01: This particular scribe was not one of Jesus' twelve disciples.
SPEAKER_01: But he was apparently a follower of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: He was interested, it seems, in becoming one of those regular disciples, like the other twelve.
SPEAKER_01: And so he was following the normal pattern of the time where a student would identify a particular teacher, a particular rabbi that he wanted to learn from and study under and follow.
SPEAKER_01: And he would then ask, Can I become your disciple?
SPEAKER_01: I want to follow you, and by following you, be your disciple.
SPEAKER_01: He says, I'm a learner.
SPEAKER_01: I want to learn from you.
SPEAKER_01: I want to follow you.
SPEAKER_01: The interesting thing is that we never see that particular method happening with Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: We don't see someone coming up to Jesus and asking him, Hey, can I be your disciple?
SPEAKER_01: Can I follow you?
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus saying, Yes, absolutely, you're one of the 13 now.
SPEAKER_01: Instead, we see the opposite.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus chooses his own disciples.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus goes against the flow of culture and sovereignly chooses his own disciples.
SPEAKER_01: That should give us a little bit of a hint as to what's going on with this disciple and what's going to happen to him.
SPEAKER_01: So he says, Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.
SPEAKER_01: We've had to smooth that out to make it a little more readable in English.
SPEAKER_01: If we didn't smooth it out, it would say something more like, wherever you may go, I will follow.
SPEAKER_01: Wherever you may go, whatever place you take me, whatever place you travel, whatever circumstances you go through, I will follow you.
SPEAKER_01: So it gives us the impression that this individual, this scribe, is ready to go whenever, wherever, and however Jesus moves.
SPEAKER_01: So he's heard, he's heard Jesus' order to cross the lake, right?
SPEAKER_01: And he takes the opportunity to express his own perceived willingness to go with the group of disciples.
SPEAKER_01: He's declaring his wish to become one of Jesus' disciples.
SPEAKER_01: But interestingly, he calls Jesus a teacher.
SPEAKER_01: Look down at verse 21 to the other individual.
SPEAKER_01: And you will see that that individual refers to Jesus as curios, Lord.
SPEAKER_01: There's a difference between these two individuals, and we have to ask ourselves, what is the difference?
SPEAKER_01: Any time in the Gospel of Matthew that you see someone referring to Jesus as teacher, they are never a genuine believer in the Lord Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Every single time someone refers to Jesus as teacher, they are not coming to him in faith of who he is.
SPEAKER_01: So Matthew's hinting here at the true heart of this scribe.
SPEAKER_01: He's telling us that this scribe wants to follow and learn.
SPEAKER_01: He wants to be a student, but he doesn't understand who Jesus is.
SPEAKER_01: I'm afraid we have churches full of scribes who, for one reason or another, feel compelled to be part of a religious association, a group of people, because they have an interest in learning.
SPEAKER_01: They have a desire to grow in whatever means of faith they have.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe they're like this scribe and they're they're bright, well-educated, religiously devoted people, and they're they're thinking, hey, Jesus is a good guy to learn from.
SPEAKER_01: But they don't truly know who it is they're wanting to follow.
SPEAKER_01: We have eager folks who are interested in deepening their spiritual and biblical education by coming to church, but they don't really know who it is they desire to learn from.
SPEAKER_01: They desire good things, they desire the blessing, but they fail to realize that the one they desire to follow is in reality the sovereign Lord of all creation.
SPEAKER_01: You see, following Jesus is not discipleship if you do not believe in the Lord Jesus Christ as God the Son.
SPEAKER_01: Matthew's telling us that the scribe doesn't understand what it truly means to follow Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: He doesn't understand that to follow Jesus means to follow him down into the boat that's going to cross the Sea of Galilee during a horrendous storm where the disciples are going to become scared to death of survival while Jesus is sleeping.
SPEAKER_01: The scribe doesn't understand that follow means even to Gethsemane, to Galgotha, to a tomb.
SPEAKER_01: He doesn't understand that to follow Jesus means to take up your own cross and carry it daily, to crucify yourself day by day.
SPEAKER_01: And so Jesus responds to him.
SPEAKER_01: And we would naturally respect Jesus to expect Jesus to respond like any rabbi.
SPEAKER_01: Hey, great! Another follower, wonderful.
SPEAKER_01: How many do we have now?
SPEAKER_01: Jesus, if he's a normal rabbi, would be eager to educate and and train another person.
SPEAKER_01: But instead, we we see this cryptic response about foxes and birds and the son of man.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus says, foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus had a home base.
SPEAKER_01: Most likely it was Peter's home in Capernaum.
SPEAKER_01: But he had no home of his own.
SPEAKER_01: So Jesus is, on the one hand, highlighting his itinerant ministry.
SPEAKER_01: He said, if you're gonna follow me, there's no way of knowing where you're gonna be.
SPEAKER_01: Nowhere of known.
SPEAKER_01: But let's look a little bit more at what he means by this.
SPEAKER_01: Back in Psalm 104, we have a hint of where Jesus is going with this.
SPEAKER_01: In Psalm 104, the psalmist is talking about God's sovereign work in creation.
SPEAKER_01: What kind of details God has done in creation.
SPEAKER_01: And in verse 10 of Psalm 104, it says, You must.
SPEAKER_01: They make springs gush forth in the valleys, they flow between the hills.
SPEAKER_01: They give drink to every beast of the field, the wild donkeys quench their thirst.
SPEAKER_01: Beside them the birds of the heavens dwell, they sing among the branches.
SPEAKER_01: From your lofty abode you water the mountains, the earth is satisfied with the fruit of your work.
SPEAKER_01: Then down in verse 17, talking about the trees of Lebanon, in them the birds build their nests, the stork has her home in the fir trees.
SPEAKER_01: The high mountains are for the wild goats, the rocks are a refuge for the rock badgers.
SPEAKER_01: See, the psalmist is highlighting God's detailed provisions even for the animals, for the creatures in his creation.
SPEAKER_01: Remember back to the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus said, Don't be anxious.
SPEAKER_01: How could you forget that, right?
SPEAKER_01: I only preached about six weeks on it.
SPEAKER_01: You're thinking, oh, here we go again.
SPEAKER_01: What did Jesus do?
SPEAKER_01: To help calm our anxious spirits, what did he tell us to do?
SPEAKER_01: Look at the animals.
SPEAKER_01: He said, Look at the animals.
SPEAKER_01: God cares for them.
SPEAKER_01: So here the psalmist is saying, God has provided for everything.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus may be referring specifically, though, to Psalm 84.
SPEAKER_01: In Psalm 84, in verse 3, we read, even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young at your altars, O Lord of hosts, my King and my God.
SPEAKER_01: See, the Old Testament highlighted God's care and provision for the animal world, for his creation, even to the point of saying, I gave the birds a place to build their nests.
SPEAKER_01: I designed a place for foxes to rest.
SPEAKER_01: By the time of Jesus, there was a fairly common belief among the Jewish people where they held the fox and birds in contempt.
SPEAKER_01: They were sort of despised critters.
SPEAKER_01: With that in mind, notice the contrast.
SPEAKER_01: Now that's played out, literally.
SPEAKER_01: When they reach the other side of the lake and they encounter the demoniac, and he's he's cured, Jesus drives out the demon and heals him.
SPEAKER_01: And instead of being accepted, the townspeople say, get out of here.
SPEAKER_01: You have no place here.
SPEAKER_01: Foxes have a place to live, to make their own, to settle down in.
SPEAKER_01: Birds even have a place to roost, to build a nest in and raise their young.
SPEAKER_01: But in the context of discipleship to Jesus, our desires for comfort, for homes, for families, for possessions, for freedoms must take a back seat to the sovereign will of the master.
SPEAKER_01: You see, as disciples, men and women are called to be in complete submission to the will of the Father, just as Jesus was.
SPEAKER_01: We have to come to realize, Chad, thank you for praying this way.
SPEAKER_01: We have to come to realize that our citizenship is in heaven.
SPEAKER_01: Philippians 3.20.
SPEAKER_01: We have to come to realize that 1 Peter chapter 1, verse 1 says we are strangers and aliens on this planet.
SPEAKER_01: That's why John writes, don't long for, don't desire the things of the world.
SPEAKER_01: Don't pursue the things of this world as being fundamental to your lives and held onto for dear life, because it's Jesus who bought us with his blood, and we are not our own.
SPEAKER_01: Unfortunately, there are many strands of Christianity today that make discipleship about what you have and about what you can get.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, when Jesus says, if you're gonna follow after me, be prepared to be like me.
SPEAKER_01: Now that doesn't mean that we cannot own a home.
SPEAKER_01: Doesn't mean that we can't have possessions or nice things or even have close family relationships.
SPEAKER_01: But my friend, be ready.
SPEAKER_01: Be ready because your Lord, if you are a disciple, may call you to relinquish your rights and your controls over anything that you have for his service.
SPEAKER_01: Don't forget that the key issue here is who Christ is.
SPEAKER_01: It's not about what we have, it's about who Jesus is.
SPEAKER_01: He deserved everything, but had nothing.
SPEAKER_01: It's as if Jesus is asking the scribe, are you willing to give up everything you have and everything you are to follow me?
SPEAKER_01: What would be the most difficult thing for you to give up or to walk away from if it meant doing so to follow Jesus?
SPEAKER_01: Do we even inadvertently communicate that discipleship is about what we get out of it?
SPEAKER_01: Because if we do, then we're making discipleship about us and not about the Lord Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: So Jesus challenges this scribe.
SPEAKER_01: He says, listen, discipleship isn't merely about following me in a literal sense, going down the hillside and getting in the boat and getting out on the water.
SPEAKER_01: It isn't simply listening to what they have to say.
SPEAKER_01: It's not learning from Jesus as students did with their rabbis.
SPEAKER_01: It's not just about going to church and listening to sermons and teaching.
SPEAKER_01: Following Jesus involves, at the very least, submission to the Lord's will, even if it means a total change in your life.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus expands this scribe's understanding of following to mean an urgent, wandering, homeless kind of ministry.
SPEAKER_01: Now maybe he hasn't called you to that.
SPEAKER_01: But we do know that discipleship in and of itself is a rigorous and self-denying life.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus calls us to be like him in that.
SPEAKER_01: And to kind of demonstrate all of that, Jesus highlights a second person.
SPEAKER_01: This second individual is the Son of Man, the glorious and divine ruler.
SPEAKER_01: This is a concept that Jesus will refer to many times in the Gospel of Matthew, more than ten times.
SPEAKER_01: And this is the first time that he refers to himself as the Son of Man.
SPEAKER_01: And throughout the Gospel, he says the Son of Man has the authority to forgive.
SPEAKER_01: The Son of Man is coming again.
SPEAKER_01: He's someone who associates with tax collectors and sinners.
SPEAKER_01: Son of man is Lord of the Sabbath.
SPEAKER_01: He's compared to Jonah in his death, burial, and resurrection.
SPEAKER_01: The Son of Man has angels to command.
SPEAKER_01: The Son of Man will come again with the glory of the Father.
SPEAKER_01: Over and over and over again, Jesus highlights this Son of Man.
SPEAKER_01: The scribe is not knowing yet everything that's yet to come in Jesus' ministry.
SPEAKER_01: But this scribe is an expert in the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_01: And as an expert in the Old Testament, he knows.
SPEAKER_01: He knows that the one place that is highlighting the Son of Man in the Old Testament is the book of Daniel in chapter 7.
SPEAKER_01: Where Daniel has a vision of heaven, where the ancient of days sits enthroned in heaven, surrounded by his glory, and there with him is a son of man to whom will be given all dominion.
SPEAKER_01: It says God's going to take away all of the dominion, all of the authority from any human leader that exists, and it's all going to go to this person.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus says to the scribe, Do you understand that I'm the Son of Man?
SPEAKER_01: Because if you don't, you can't be a disciple.
SPEAKER_01: If you don't understand who Jesus is, then you're simply following.
SPEAKER_01: You're not a disciple.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus may look like a poor, itinerant teacher with a handful of followers.
SPEAKER_01: He may look like just a poor guy who has a good following.
SPEAKER_01: But in reality, he is the promised one.
SPEAKER_01: He is the coming one who now leads his disciples with full authority, and he will one day rule the world with full authority.
SPEAKER_01: So when he commands his disciples to get into a boat, even with a storm approaching, you get in the boat.
SPEAKER_01: Seems that Jesus knows that the scribe may struggle to follow and obey when the going gets rough.
SPEAKER_01: And you're much more likely to stop following Jesus if you don't truly believe in who he is.
SPEAKER_01: You're also much more likely to keep pursuing if you do know who he is.
SPEAKER_01: You remember what Jesus did with Peter right before his ascension into heaven?
SPEAKER_01: You remember good old Peter, he denied Jesus three times, right?
SPEAKER_01: And then he thought, just I'm I'm done, what good am I?
SPEAKER_01: But Jesus then meets him on the seashore on the on the Sea of Galilee and he cooks breakfast for him.
SPEAKER_01: And he says to Peter, Peter, I want I want you to feed my sheep.
SPEAKER_01: I want you to keep on following me.
SPEAKER_01: But he does it in a really strange way.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus asks him three times, do you love me?
SPEAKER_01: Do you love me?
SPEAKER_01: Peter says, Well, yes, you know this.
SPEAKER_01: Why are you asking me that question?
SPEAKER_01: You know that I love you.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus says, he gives a command and he says, Do what?
SPEAKER_01: Feed my sheep.
SPEAKER_01: See, here's the deal.
SPEAKER_01: We come to truly believe in who Jesus is.
SPEAKER_01: When God gives light to our souls, we come to understand the person of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: That He's not merely a human being who was a good teacher.
SPEAKER_01: He was not merely somebody who was able to be a good doctor.
SPEAKER_01: But this is God taking on human flesh.
SPEAKER_01: This is the sovereign of the universe.
SPEAKER_01: And that sovereign of the universe came to give himself for you.
SPEAKER_01: So we come to be true disciples when we truly believe in who Jesus is.
SPEAKER_01: And then we begin to grow in our grasp that our obedience and our submission to Christ comes from two realities.
SPEAKER_01: His ultimate lordship over all things is one, to which we humbly submit and obey.
SPEAKER_01: And secondly, his giving of himself for us.
SPEAKER_01: And when we come to understand his giving of himself for us, our obedience and our submission to the Lord of the universe moves from being mere duty to love and devotion.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus said to Peter, Peter, if you love me, go out and do your work.
SPEAKER_01: We grow as disciples in our submission and our obedience to Jesus, the more we understand his lordship and the more we grasp his giving of himself for us.
SPEAKER_01: That's what we mean when we speak of growing in maturity in discipleship.
SPEAKER_01: Is know Jesus more and obey Jesus more and love him more because they're all tied together.
SPEAKER_01: But the scribe didn't pass go.
SPEAKER_01: He wanted to pass go and collect the$200, but he couldn't even get that far.
SPEAKER_01: Because he didn't understand who Jesus is.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus says, You don't understand who I am.
SPEAKER_01: So we move then to the third individual who's a sincere disciple.
SPEAKER_01: He's an earnest individual.
SPEAKER_01: He wants to follow Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: He is following Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: He's become a genuine disciple, but he's sort of double-minded.
SPEAKER_01: And we see him here like we do the individual in the first chapter of James, a double-minded man who's tossed by the waves, driven by the wind.
SPEAKER_01: So he comes to Jesus and he says, Lord, let me first go and bury my father.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus, I know you want us to get in the boat.
SPEAKER_01: But I have some family responsibilities first.
SPEAKER_01: We don't know who these guys are.
SPEAKER_01: No names are given to us in any of the gospels.
SPEAKER_01: I personally happen to have the opinion that this second individual is one of the twelve disciples.
SPEAKER_01: Because I think it follows in line with Jesus giving orders to get into the boat, and he's saying, Um, Jesus, I've got some business I need to take care of first.
SPEAKER_01: Just my opinion.
SPEAKER_01: But we know that this guy is different from the scribe.
SPEAKER_01: It says, another of the disciples said to him, that word another tells us that this scribe is a disciple, but he's a different kind of disciple than the scribe.
SPEAKER_01: We have to be careful because a disciple is not always what you think.
SPEAKER_01: Different writers mean different things and can use the same word in different ways.
SPEAKER_01: Matthew makes it clear right here that there are two different kinds of disciples to which he's referring.
SPEAKER_01: The first are those who are curiously interested in Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: They're not merely following him like those at the feeding of the 5,000 that just want to get a free meal out of it.
SPEAKER_01: No, they're there because they are interested in him.
SPEAKER_01: They want to follow him because he has good teaching.
SPEAKER_01: They see some benefit in it and some value in it, and they want to receive that value and that blessing.
SPEAKER_01: They have a curiosity of sorts.
SPEAKER_01: They don't believe in who he is, but out of a certain sense of religiosity, they follow in order to learn.
SPEAKER_01: But that's all.
SPEAKER_01: They don't believe.
SPEAKER_01: This man is different.
SPEAKER_01: And Matthew makes that undeniably clear.
SPEAKER_01: For that word another, he uses the Greek word heteros.
SPEAKER_01: It's a word that generally means another one, but it's another of a different kind.
SPEAKER_01: That's why we we have the term in English, heterosexual.
SPEAKER_01: It's a different sex.
SPEAKER_01: It's a human being, he or she is a human being, but they're different sexes.
SPEAKER_01: They're in the same class, but yet different.
SPEAKER_01: This is the class of disciple, but it is another disciple of a different kind.
SPEAKER_01: And this second kind of disciple to which Matthew refers is one who genuinely believes.
SPEAKER_01: They follow Jesus and learn from Jesus because they have come to believe in who he is.
SPEAKER_01: In that sense, every person who genuinely believes in Jesus is a disciple.
SPEAKER_01: No matter where you are on the narrow road of following Jesus, if you genuinely believe in who he is and are genuinely converted by faith in him, you are a disciple.
SPEAKER_01: So this is a man who seems to have understood in some sense and accepted the demands of being a disciple.
SPEAKER_01: Notice that he calls Jesus Lord.
SPEAKER_01: That's a direct contrast to the scribe who comes to him and says, Teacher, this guy comes and says, Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Again, it's Matthew's way of telling us this man is different.
SPEAKER_01: This disciple understands who Jesus is, and he's placed himself as a disciple under the direction and the lordship of Jesus, the Son of Man.
SPEAKER_01: And so he asks then, Lord, I know you're wanting us to go get in the boat, but can I can I go home and bury my father first?
SPEAKER_01: Perfectly reasonable request, right?
SPEAKER_01: Maybe.
SPEAKER_01: This action was implicitly required in Judaism to honor your parents.
SPEAKER_01: It was the duty of the firstborn son to bury his father.
SPEAKER_01: Later on, after the time of Jesus, it actually came to be explicitly recorded in Jewish tradition where burial of the dead superseded all other religious duties.
SPEAKER_01: That wasn't yet at the time of Jesus, but it was getting close.
SPEAKER_01: Now we don't know exactly what this individual meant.
SPEAKER_01: Is he saying, you know, Jesus, I'm ready to follow you even across the lake if that's what you want to do?
SPEAKER_01: But I need to wait until my dad dies?
SPEAKER_01: Or is he saying, I need to wait until the second burial?
SPEAKER_01: And you're saying, what?
SPEAKER_01: What do you mean by second burial?
SPEAKER_01: Well, in Jewish culture, there's two burials.
SPEAKER_01: There's the initial burial when a person dies.
SPEAKER_01: And they're generally laid out on a flat place like Jesus was, wrapped up, anointed with spices, and so on, as the body decays.
SPEAKER_01: Then later, about a year later, after the body has decayed, they would go back in and they would gather up the bones and put them in a stone box, most often a stone box, sometimes a wooden box called an ossuary.
SPEAKER_01: That was the second burial.
SPEAKER_01: So is the second burial coming up?
SPEAKER_01: Did his father just die and he just got information about it, news of it, and so he needs to go?
SPEAKER_01: We don't know what the situation is.
SPEAKER_01: But the man was essentially saying, I need to fulfill the demands of my culture and my family before I follow you and obey you.
SPEAKER_01: It's an incredible struggle for so many disciples today.
SPEAKER_01: We feel the pull of culture and the pull of Christ all at the same time.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe we feel the pull of family and the pull of Christ at the same time.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe you're a younger individual and most of life is still in front of you, and so you feel the pull of your own desires and the pull of discipleship.
SPEAKER_01: And you're struggling with where that puts you.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus said to him, Follow me.
SPEAKER_01: Follow me and leave the dead to bury their own dead.
SPEAKER_01: That seems crass and uncaring.
SPEAKER_01: Well, Jesus most likely meant, You're my disciple.
SPEAKER_01: Let those who are spiritually dead bury your father.
SPEAKER_01: And let's be worried about eternity.
SPEAKER_01: See, the expectations of culture, the expectations of family are merely customs that are going to pass away at some point.
SPEAKER_01: But following Jesus is an issue of eternity.
SPEAKER_01: Encouraging other people to become disciples of Jesus through faith in him is an issue of eternity.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is saying, put that which will last first.
SPEAKER_01: Following Jesus because of who he is surpasses your culture.
SPEAKER_01: Being a disciple of Christ means that, yes, you honor your parents in a way that pleases God, but when cultural and societal responsibilities begin to get in the way of following your master, you follow your master, not the culture, not the society, not even your family.
SPEAKER_01: Because Jesus comes first.
SPEAKER_01: And why does he come first?
SPEAKER_01: Because he's the Son of Man.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus says, nothing can come before discipleship in the cause of the kingdom.
SPEAKER_01: He says, Don't allow yourself to be distracted.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it seems legitimate.
SPEAKER_01: But it's secondary.
SPEAKER_01: I wish we had more.
SPEAKER_01: I wish we had more here because what Jesus does here is profoundly shocking, even to our sensibilities.
SPEAKER_01: It would have been more so in that time period.
SPEAKER_01: All the man said was, Jesus, I need to fulfill some familial responsibilities at home and then I'll catch up with you.
SPEAKER_01: What's so wrong about that, right?
SPEAKER_01: But Jesus is laying out discipleship and he's saying, Listen, if you are a part of my kingdom, you are part of a radical and new nature that imparts new life to its residents.
SPEAKER_01: Those who come to the king for life become disciples who come to him for who he is.
SPEAKER_01: And he expects the immediate response of following him wherever he goes and obeying him and whatever he commands, even if it means a life or death situation on the Sea of Galilee.
SPEAKER_01: That's the end of the story.
SPEAKER_01: So what do we take away from it?
SPEAKER_01: Well, since you are here, or since you're listening to the live stream, I'm assuming that all of us belong in the categories of the scribe or the other disciple.
SPEAKER_01: We're either an individual who follows out of religious interest or out of cultural expectation, but without genuine belief in the person of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Or you're here because you have come to see who Jesus is.
SPEAKER_01: And you're saying, I want to follow him.
SPEAKER_01: To be a disciple who believes in Christ does not mean that we are exempt from difficult decisions in life.
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't mean that we're exempt from hardships or difficulties or pains or trials.
SPEAKER_01: Again, we're going to see more about this next week, but Jesus, as the sovereign Son of Man, knows that there's a storm coming on the Sea of Galilee.
SPEAKER_01: And what does he do?
SPEAKER_01: He orders his disciples, get in the boat.
SPEAKER_01: No, being a disciple of Jesus means that we are now equipped by our Master the King to live securely in him and to deal with whatever comes in life appropriately by his strength in us.
SPEAKER_01: Now, the issue here in this passage is not so much the disciples or the individuals in the passage.
SPEAKER_01: The real core of what's going on here is Jesus' response to those people.
SPEAKER_01: We don't know very much about these men.
SPEAKER_01: We don't know what happened to them.
SPEAKER_01: We're not told in detail about what they believed in Jesus or how they reacted to his shocking statements.
SPEAKER_01: We're not told about their level of commitment to him.
SPEAKER_01: We're not told anything about their responses.
SPEAKER_01: Here is what we do know.
SPEAKER_01: If Jesus were simply another rabbi, another teacher, looking for disciples, then these men would have thought him insane.
SPEAKER_01: If Jesus is just another human being, his demands are stupendously outrageous.
SPEAKER_01: They're ridiculous and unacceptable.
SPEAKER_01: But he's not merely a man, is he?
SPEAKER_01: God in the flesh, the sovereign ruler of the universe.
SPEAKER_01: We know him as Emmanuel, God with us, Jesus who is the Christ, and he has a full right to establish the parameters of discipleship.
SPEAKER_01: And he says that discipleship is self-denying, trust-filled following of Jesus no matter what.
SPEAKER_01: It's obedient, loving submission to his commands because he is the Son of Man who came to give himself for us.
SPEAKER_01: Now here's the secret, beloved.
SPEAKER_01: Yes, there's a secret.
SPEAKER_01: It's not really a secret, but we act like it's a secret.
SPEAKER_01: Your Lord's commands are not burdensome.
SPEAKER_01: Your Lord's demands are not a burden.
SPEAKER_01: If you're finding his commands burdensome in your life, then you've not experienced the love of Christ in giving himself for you.
SPEAKER_01: The scribe considered submission and obedience without faith and love.
SPEAKER_01: There was no faith and love there.
SPEAKER_01: It was simply, I need to follow him, whatever he does, I'm going to do, just because that's what a disciple does.
SPEAKER_01: The other disciple demonstrated the tug of culture on his faith and love.
SPEAKER_01: But both received the same lesson that we receive today.
SPEAKER_01: When you truly, genuinely see Jesus as God the Son, the sovereign, glorious God who humbled himself to purchase your redemption from your sin and you trust in him, then faith rises to the top and obedience flows out, driven by love for this Son of Man.
SPEAKER_01: What a lead-in to taking the Lord's Supper together.
SPEAKER_01: As we consider our following, our discipleship, as a response, as a flowing out of our faith in him and a response of our love because of who he is and what he's done for us.
SPEAKER_01: Let's pray together.
SPEAKER_01: Lord Jesus, forgive our sin.
SPEAKER_01: We come and we gather together humbly before you as the Lord who is the Son of Man and has the authority to forgive sin.
SPEAKER_01: Cleanse us and wash us free.
SPEAKER_01: Forgive us by your faithful justice found in the shed blood of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Give us new light to see you, to know you, to love you, and so to follow you and pursue you without hindrance.
SPEAKER_01: What a holy God you are.
SPEAKER_01: Set apart from us in your sovereign glory and holiness.
SPEAKER_01: And yet in your love you came to die so that we might not be forever apart from your love and your grace and your mercy.
SPEAKER_01: Draw us closer to yourself, we pray, to see you in your holy holy heaven, but also as the Son of Man who gave himself for us, who loved us first, so that we might love you.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.
SPEAKER_00: Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: You can learn more by visiting our website at faithfree.com.