The Price to Follow Christ

Introduction

Near the end of the year in 1975, just in time for everyone to do their Christmas shopping, a new popular toy flooded the stores. For only $3.95 (about $22 in today’s money), you too could own one of these new toys that was actually a pet. This pet came with instructions that were a required read before pulling out your brand new pet.

The brand new pet loved the soothing sound of a ticking clock. It was allergy free and didn’t tear up any furniture or have mishaps on the carpet. There were hundreds of breeds of this pet known to man. And there was simple commands you could train this pet with: come, stay, sit, roll over, and especially “play dead.”

Of course, this pet is the pet rock. By Christmas day, over 1 million pet rocks were sold. The “inventor” of such an idea was a millionaire practically overnight. Yet, it didn’t last. Just as quickly as the sales came in they stopped.

This fad lived a very short life, no matter how many people were fascinated with it in the beginning.

Sometimes life feels like balancing hundred different plates and trying not to drop a single one. Every once and a while, a nice diversion comes along for us to be fascinated with, like a pet rock. Most people, though fascinated with it for a time, do not center their lives around a pet rock. If this fad was another plate to balance, we would easily toss it to the side without a care in the world.

But for many people this life in a balance of job, family responsibility, financial burdens, rising costs, hobbies, relaxation, education, etc, faith was one of those fascinations that gets tossed to the side. Can we treat faith in Christ so casually?

Last week, the three miracle stories we covered emphasized that what got someone a seat at the messianic table was not one’s social standing, ritual purity, or race, but rather it was simple faith. And yet, we also recognize a problem. There are people who make expressions that seem like faith and yet are not. Faith, as we saw, is motivated by knowledge of Christ and willingness to submit to his Lordship.

In Matthew 8:18-22 today, we will see some things that are close to faith, but are motivated by something quite different. We people who are fascinated with Jesus, but not really trusting in him.

We will see this fascination from the crowd, the scribe interested in comfort, the other disciple with family commitments, and finally we will listen to the call of Christ.

[TT: (3) Fascination with Jesus is not committed to him and does not meet the standard of faith.

Problem: fascination vs faith]

The Crowd

Revelation

Move 1: Genuine faith separates the disciple from the crowd. v. 18

Matthew 8:18 ESV

18 Now when Jesus saw a crowd around him, he gave orders to go over to the other side.

Again we see the crowd as a character in this story. While the three people in the previous story: the unclean, the unelected, and the unnoticed had some display of commitment to christ, the crowd shows no commitment.

Crowd seems to be representative of unfounded fervor. The tide that comes and goes, the toddler who demands without reciprocating, the black hole that always consumes but never gives back.

Previously, when several people approached Jesus, he continued to heal them. This time, when Jesus sees the crowd “around him” he does something in response: he gives orders.

When I get in a large crowd I can have the tendency to completely shut down. A few years ago when I was at the GA national fair, I did exactly that. There can be anywhere between 40-50k people on a given day at the fair. Usually what starts bothering me first is the amount of people, trying not to inconvenience other, make sure I have my people, but also the stress that all these people are gathered in one place just to be entertained, it’s all so futile. I start to think about the people’s eternal destination. And then just get an overwhelming sense of helplessness because I start to buy into the lie that all of these people’s lives depend upon me, when that’s not the case at all.

Jesus’s response to the crowd is not like mine. He is not experiencing some internal turmoil that causes him to have to get away. Jesus is purposeful with everything he does. Just as he is purposeful when healing the crowd, so he is purposeful now. In the sermon on the mount Jesus critiqued acting religious just for the appearance of it (i.e. piety for the sake of applause). Certainly Jesus is not here simply to appease a crowd which is fascinated by him.

And so, in response to the crowd, he gives orders to go to the other side. That is, the other side of the Sea of Galilee. It would be clear to those who heard him that he was going to go to a gentile region. Many of the Jewish crowd would not follow him to such a region simply because it was Gentile.

Two people from the crowd approach Jesus solidifying this casual fascination.

Relevance:

Popularist movements have been common throughout human history. Populism appeals to what people want in order to get them to then commit to their cause. After Jesus did all these healings, the crowd is fascinated and seems willing to commit to him. Yet Jesus gives orders to depart from them?

This seems to be quite the opposite of modern church growth strategies which seek to do whatever it takes to draw a crowd. But once they have that crowd the have to continue to do those same things to keep the crowd because what you win people with is what you win them to. Jesus is healing but he’s not just a healer he is the savior for our much deeper problem: sin. Thus, his call to depart separates those who trust in him from those who are merely fascinated.

The Comfort

Move 2: Genuine faith is willing to sacrifice comfort. vv. 19-20

Revelation:

Matthew 8:19–20 ESV

19 And a scribe came up and said to him, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.” 20 And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”

In v. 19, I believe the King James gets the translation correct when it says “ a certain scribe” came to Jesus. Scribes are teachers of the law. This person emerges from the crowd in response to Jesus departing from them. There is some irony in the fact that this teacher of the law addresses Jesus as teacher, yet throughout the Gospel of Matthew, it’s always those that are not close to Jesus who address him as “teacher.”

This scribe however, is not promising long-term commitment as the translation may make it seem. He’s promises to go on this journey with Jesus: “I will follow you to wherever you should depart.”

Given the likelihood that Jesus is going to a Gentile region, this is a counter-cultural promise for this scribe to make. Yet his lack of long-term commitment shows this is not faith but fascination.

Jesus responds by contrasting foxes and birds with the Son of Man. The title “Son of Man” can refer to just an ordinary human and emphasize for Jesus his humanity as it does through the book of Ezekiel. Yet Jesus pulls this title from Daniel 7 which has the exalted some of man figure coming before the throne of God. And so the irony of this statement is even greater. The woodland animals have a home and place of comfort, but the divine-human figure has no such place.

Jesus is not saying that he is homeless and that his disciples must commit to being homeless. Rather his disciples must be willing to give up their personal comforts for the sake of the gospel .

Fascination with Jesus can convince a man to approach him. It can make a man make promises. But fascination only brings one so far. It is faith that is truly committed.

Relevance:

One of my favorite preachers spent a good majority of his life a as missionary in Peru. He says that the guys there are a bunch of romantics. They will make big promises to their wives. They will say things like, “Honey for you, I would wrestle a jaguar” and “for you I would cross the Andes mountains in my underwear.” Meanwhile, the wife just replies, “But what I want you to do is the dishes”

Fascination boasts loudly but ends up not doing much.

The Commitment

Revelation

Move 3: Genuine faith is willing to forfeit family obligations. vv. 21-22

Matthew 8:21–22 ESV

21 Another of the disciples said to him, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.” 22 And Jesus said to him, “Follow me, and leave the dead to bury their own dead.”

This “other” disciple we know nothing about. He presumably could have been following Jesus for sometime and now Jesus’s departure led him to make this request.

The request is to go bury his father first. Now, most of us when reading this would think his father had just passed away. However, one commentator points out that if that had been the case, he would not have been with Jesus at that very moment.

More than likely, his father was very well still alive. He was requesting to live out his days at his home, perhaps even many years, before continuing to follow Jesus.

This is a man who is fascinated with Jesus but wants to continue living his life how he’s always been living it.

Jesus’s response is a difficult saying. He says, “the dead must bury the dead.” In other words, those who are spiritually dead are the ones who should center their lives on the burial of others.

The problem is not family obligations, legal obligations, job responsibilities, recreation, hobbies, and on and on the list can go. The problem is when we create a split between “I could either fulfill this family obligation or I could follow Jesus. . .” This “other disciple” here in v. 21 created such a dichotomy that he could either follow Jesus or fulfill his responsibility to his father. This false dichotomy revealed that his faith was merely fascination.

Relevance:

Do you want to know why Covid emptied the great majority of churches across the US? It’s because this disease revealed that many people’s faith in Jesus was merely fascination. Once these people got out of church and started spending their Sundays with other things, they began to find these other things more fascinating.

The Call

There are many, many people who have been fascinated with Jesus but never trusted in him. Just like those people fascinated with a pet rock, eventually such fascination wains as the rock is tossed to the side. The fad is over. There are a great many people in the church attempting to make Christ into another fad. And it has gathered a crowd in the past, and it may gather a crowd again.

The call for this text is to step out of the crowd of fascination and commit fully to Jesus.

Move from fascination to faith

There are people who center their lives around comfort (like the Scribe). Others who center their lives around commitments (like the other disciple). But the call for this text is to center our lives around Christ.

How?

So if you could take a step back and examine all the plates your balancing while trying not to drop a single one, what all do you see there? Health? Commitments to family or friends? Comfort and entertainment? Job or work obligations?

Now, let me ask you, is Jesus just one of those plates your balancing? Is Jesus just one of those things you try to make time for? Like “I think I might make it to church.” “Maybe I’ll pray sometime this year.” “I read my Bible by myself once this month.” If Jesus is one of many plates you’re balancing, this is not faith, but fascination.

In this analogy, Jesus should not be one of the many plates, but the very foundation on which you stand.

A lot of times we get things backwards. We think, “let me see to my comfort first then I’ll come to Jesus” or “I have all these other obligations I need to take care of, then I can make time for the Lord.”

And it’s even worse when churches do this. When “pastors” say, “I will see to people’s comfort and commit to them first, then I will give them a little Jesus.”

But what we see in this text is the opposite. Comfort and commitments do not make demands on our relationship with Christ. Rather, our relationship with Christ determines our comforts and commitments.

Here’s something I would encourage you to do this week in light of the teaching of this text.

List out all your commitments. List out all your comforts. Then consider this list. Which of these comforts flow from your relationship with Christ and which of them come from sinful, selfish desires? Do the same for your list of commitments. But also consider, which commitments compete with your relationship with Christ?

I believe for many of us in here that we will be both challenged and edified. I think we will be edified because there have already been many areas in our lives where we have committed to Christ and put him first. I think we will also be challenged to grow in other areas.

But maybe today after hearing these things you realize that all your interest with Jesus has just been fascination. You have never made that next step to trust in him.