The Cost of Following Jesus

Matthew 8:18-22 “Now when Jesus saw a crowd around him, he gave orders to go over to the other side. And a scribe came up and said to him, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.” 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.” Another of the disciples said to him, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.” And Jesus said to him, “Follow me, and leave the dead to bury their own dead.””

The Scribe

A scribe was a man who writes. Someone employed for his ability to read and write. Existed throughout the ancient Near East and Mediterranean over several millennia. The Hebrew word for “scribe” (סוֹפֵר, sopher) comes from the verbal root meaning “to write.” The participle form of the Hebrew word for scribe means “writer” or “secretary.”Unlike the Pharisees or the Sadducees, scribes were not confined to Israel. The scribal tradition in Israel has its roots in the ancient Near Eastern civilization. Scribes worked in a variety of realms, including religious, political, judicial, economic, and social. Jewish scribes may have been employed in additional occupations, including: copying manuscripts, teaching the Torah and other Jewish Literature, political advisor or diplomat, working with ancient science, functioning as wise sages, elders judges or as members of the Sanhedrin (the Jewish court), they wrote letters and documents for the kingdom, business, and private households.

The scribe was well educated. He had lofty friends, a prestigious job, and endless opportunities. To go to Jesus and declare “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go” meant that the scribe was ready to cut ties. He was making the statement that he was through with his friends, through with his occupation, through with his old life, and ready to strike off with Jesus wherever He would go.

>Jesus looked intently at the man and He had this answer. “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.”

>Jesus both shared and exposed something here. Jesus did not offer a comfortable lifestyle if you were going to lodge with Him, and this man was not willing to pay the cost.

Now Jesus probably did not live a lifestyle that left Him out in the rain, or living in caves, or sleeping in back alley ways.

Matthew 6:25 ““Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?”

But following Jesus is not always comfortable. Sometimes you are going to be pushed out. Pushed out by your friend groups. Pushed out by your family maybe. Pushed out by a society that wants to follow darkness rather than turn to the Light. Jesus knew that this man would not want to face hardships in his journey along with Christ. Jesus points out that a life following Christ is not always easy, and we never hear of this man again.

The Loving Son

This next man seems to be a loving son, but let me share with you what it means to bury the dead back then if you were a Jew: In Jewish customs, the dead would be buried in a tomb for at least a year. As time took its toll, and nature its course, the bones of the deceased would be jammed and folded up into a compact position, and stuffed into a box called an Ossuary box, then stored on a shelf in the back of the family tomb.

-What this man was asking of Jesus was one of a few things. One, he was asking Jesus to allow him to stay around time until his father died and the son could do his duty of burying the father. Two, the father has already died and the son is seeking to hang around town and wait for the bones to be transferred to the box.

>Regardless of the situation it is evident that the man was asking Jesus for a considerable extension of time. Jesus knew what the man was doing, delaying his devotion to the Teacher. Jesus never tried to sway him, He simply said “Follow Me, and let the dead bury their own dead.” Jesus was telling the man to let the spiritually dead bury the physically dead, but he was compelled to follow Christ. We never hear of the man again, so it is safe to assume that he stayed in the town and never followed Christ as He moved on.

There is a cost of following Jesus. In Matthew 16:24-26 Jesus tells us “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?”

You will have to give up some things. You will have to give up your friends who are not living a Christ honoring life, even if that means you miss the parties, you miss the trips, you miss the activities.

You will have to turn down opportunities in life when the opportunity that presents itself, though it may advance your life, does not honor God. This could be your work, this could be in your schools, this could be in any walk of your life.

You will have to deny yourself the pleasures of sin in order to follow Jesus. To keep yourself into a good harmony with the Spirit of God, and walk with Him in unity.

>Whatever you do, it will cost you. If you want to play sports it will cost you time, effort, resources, and you will have to make sacrifices. Sometimes many sacrifices.

Do not sacrifices God. God has sacrificed His Son, Christ has already sacrificed Himself for you. Do not cut them from your schedule. These two men gave excuses, and they sacrificed following Jesus for their own lives. Saying “I will follow”, but having little intention of following through.

Keep the same energy in your walk with Christ as you do in your sports, your school work, or your friendships. We put so much time into other things, but we hardly break a sweat to give ourselves to God. These men gave a lot of detail to their work and to their family, their personal lives, but they had the perfect opportunity to give themselves to Christ.

“What are you sacrificing?”

“Are you giving something more attention than you are Christ?”

Let me leave you with this: Mark 10:29-30 “Jesus said, “Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life.”

Jesus will take care of you. I promise you, Jesus will take care of His children that follow Him. Always choose Jesus.