Reading Matthew with Missional Eyes

In Matthew’s Gospel account, the story of the paralytic is significantly   shortened from Mark’s account. Mark told about the effort the paralytic’s friends took on. Matthew largely skips it, saying, “Jesus stepped into a boat, crossed over and came to his own town. Some men brought to him a paralytic, lying on a mat. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Take heart, son; your sins are forgiven.” 

Where Mark is concerned with demonstrating the humanity of all involved by explaining how his friends brought him to Jesus, couldn’t get into the home Jesus was teaching in and so cut a hold in the roof and lowered the paralytic down, Matthew is far more focused of the Lordship of Jesus. The primary point of the story cannot be missed – we can do nothing but come to Him in faith, and to the glory of God, Jesus responds to our faith and forgives sin. 

That Jesus forgives sin, and that we can do nothing of ourselves, is the most freeing truth imaginable. It means salvation is not by works, but by faith. This Jesus specifically affirmed when asked what was the work that people should do to gain eternal life, “Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.” Grasping this, Paul would later write, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.” 

There is only one thing to do when you realize you have sinned. We cannot do a good thing to try to cancel out the sin we’ve done. We cannot hope that making better choices in the future will drown out the sin we’ve committed. What is done is done and there is nothing we can do about it. We can only call out to Jesus in prayer and ask Him for forgiveness! Praise God, He is faithful to forgive. As He Himself said, “All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away.”

Moreover, Jesus is faithful to forgive our sin multiple times. This the apostle John affirmed, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” It matters not if it is the first time you approach Him for forgiveness, or the ten thousandth time. Jesus’ unchanging nature, His grace and ultimately His sacrifice on the cross, are sufficient for all, all the time!

Our part – whenever we sin and as often as we sin – is simply to identify with the man on the mat. The paralytic, who cannot walk, get up or in any way help himself. Simply by encountering Christ, this man will be fully well again. It is only Jesus who forgives, and praise His Name, He forgives always! 

Being always ready to forgive doesn’t mean you’re permissive. It means you are like the Father.

Larry & Judi Keefauver

APPLICATION: Thankfulness

Thank God that He is always ready to receive us. Ready to forgive us. Ready to wash us clean. Ready to restore us to fellowship with Him and ready to put us back into His service.

In Mark chapter 2 we read the story of the paralytic, “A few days later, when  Jesus again  entered Capernaum, the people heard that he had come home. So many gathered that there was no room left, not even outside the door, and he preached the word to them. Some men came, bringing to him a paralytic, carried by four of them. Since they could not get him to Jesus because of the crowd, they made an opening in the roof above Jesus and, after digging through it, lowered the mat the paralyzed man was lying on.”  Matthew begins the same story, but abbreviates to get to the points he is making, “Some men brought to him a paralytic, lying on a mat.”

The man Jesus is being presented with is a paralytic. Simply put, he is paralyzed. He cannot get up, he cannot move from where he is. He is alive and thinking, but unable to help himself escape the condition he is in. The paralytic in this story was a real man, just as there are tens of thousands of paralyzed people today. But within the context of story, he is also symbolic of all of us who are laden with our sin. As Ephesians tells us, “As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins.” There is no more hope for any of us to escape our sin without Jesus then there was for the paralytic to escape his immobility without Jesus. 

Praise God, the paralytic in this story does encounter Jesus – so we know there is hope for him, as there is for all of us sinners when we look to Christ! But praise God too for the four friends who carry their friend to Jesus! 

We tend to overlook them, focusing (rightly so) on the paralyzed man and Jesus. Yet he could not have made it to Jesus without those four very determined friends. In a way, the four men are symbolic of the effort needed to bring some people to Jesus. It is true that many come to Christ just on hearing of Him, or on hearing from Him – just as the apostles did. But many more will only encounter the living Christ only when people work together to bring them to Jesus. 

That is because for most to hear the Gospel, there are obstacles in the way. In this case, not only is the man paralyzed (requiring coordinated effort in transportation), a crowd blocks the way. They have to assess the situation. Apparently they find they can get close to the house, but not where the window(s) may have been. No doubt the crowd stands many deep wherever they can hear Jesus’ words. So they find some ropes, climb up to the roof, peel away the thatching and lower the man – still on his mat – right in front of Jesus. That is a lot of effort, and a lot of teamwork! 

Getting the Gospel to remote villages, into closed access nations, and across the stiff barriers of opposing worldview(s) is a great challenge. A challenge that cannot be met through the efforts of a single individual. Going to remote places takes much planning, equipment and teamwork. Pushing the Gospel into closed access nations takes satellites and radio stations and couriers willing to risk much. Getting the Gospel across worldview  barriers takes much prayer, patience and repetition. 

Modern Christ-followers are the four friends to the unsaved. Working together, the lost find themselves being spoken to by Jesus, being ministered to by Jesus, being healed by Jesus and most importantly – being saved by Jesus. We only need to be as determined to help them encounter Jesus as these four friends were. 

Amen. 

It takes great humility to work with others, but theologically it is absolutely necessary that we work to express our missiology as one.

Scott W. Sunquist

APPLICATION: Intentionality

Who are you partnering with to bring others to Christ?

Some people receive the Good News with heartfelt appreciation. They hear of the reality of Jesus, they respond by looking for and to Him, and they subsequently find the presence of Jesus. Then, washing their sin forever away in repentance, they enter the Kingdom of God and begin to live new lives of freedom, victory and forgiveness. Best of all, that blessing does not stay solely with them, but spreads to all in their circle of influence, and many are made glad.

But some do not receive the Good News with appreciation. Some see its impact on their community and think only of a temporary downside. Or they see in the need for repentance only their own humiliation before others. They are so selfish and self-absorbed they cannot grasp that some in their community are desperate for the things of God. 

As Matthew 8 ends, the people of Gadarenes are pleading with Jesus to leave the area. They have seen Jesus heal the demon-possessed, but at a cost to them that they are not willing to bear. After watching an entire herd of pigs drown, they conclude that allowing Jesus to stay and minister might hinder the lifestyle of most. They ask in the strongest of terms that He leave. What follows is perhaps one of the saddest things in all Scripture. As the NLT puts it, “Jesus climbed into a boat and went back across the lake to his own town.” 

Jesus leaves. He was urged to leave by the people of the town, and he left. The presence of God moves away, and the people of Gadarenes are left without Him, just as they asked.

It isn’t the first time we read of God leaving. Ezekiel 9-10 tells the same story. Except back then, it wasn’t a Gentile community that sent Him away. It was the people of Israel. They had so grieved God through repeated sin that His Spirit departed from His own temple. What could be sadder than that? That your God – the one who made you with an eternal future of blessing in mind – leaves. Worse, He leaves not by His own desire but is actually driven away, and that by your own foolishness? Wow.

The sadder thing is their loss is not limited to themselves. The people of the community around them all suffer too. Consequently, those who send God away will reap not only the fate of their own foolishness, but also God’s immeasurable anger at the incalculable loss they caused to others. 

We all know that following God costs us. But know this for sure: The cost of selfishness is always far greater, and far wider, than the cost of discipleship. 

But sin, having intervened to separate man from God, has caused man to turn his back upon God, and to contrive to live without any sort of acquaintance with him.

Henry D.M.S. Jones

APPLICATION: Intentionality

So great is our need for mercy! “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts!” (Heb 3:7b-8a)

When Jesus and the disciples met the demoniacs, the Word records that “Some distance   from them a large herd of pigs was feeding.” As Jesus casts the demons out, they rush into the pigs, who then charge down the banks into the water and drown themselves. The disciples are with Jesus, but they are not alone. The farm hands who were watching the pigs must have walked over. Perhaps intrigued by the fact that Jesus and his group didn’t flee as the demoniacs came out of the tombs, or perhaps because they overhead the two men shouting. Nevertheless, they’ve witnessed a miracle of deliverance. Unfortunately that miracle came with a rather severe price from their perspective. “Those tending the pigs ran off, went into the town and reported all this, including what had happened to the demon-possessed men. Then the whole town went out to meet Jesus. And when they saw him, they pleaded with him to leave their region.” 

Like the demoniacs, the townspeople come out to meet Jesus. Like the demoniacs, they plead with Jesus to let them just get on with their lives. Like the demoniacs, the townspeople don’t really want Jesus the Son of God. The parallelism is significant, and the irony is off-the-chart. 

From the perspective of the townsfolk, Jesus is the cause of a massive financial loss and resulting unemployment. Certainly those tending the pigs are now unemployed. Likely the butcher(s) who processed the pigs too, and the farmer(s) too are likely bankrupt. The fact that two ‘crazies’ have been healed is of little concern to the town as a whole. Besides all that, newly restored people need someone to help them reintegrate with society. That is a social cost. So is job training and immediate housing and food allowances. The whole episode represented a significant cost to the local economy.

When the Kingdom of God comes to a town, there is a cost to that place. Houses of sin, casinos, merchants of drugs and pornography are all going to face bankruptcy. No small number of criminals and addicts suddenly seek retraining and social assistance. That is the direct cost. There is collateral cost too. Temporarily, unemployment can jump as people quit working for unrighteousness. Governments see payroll taxes decline just when the need for social housing and programming spikes. Further, one should expect a drop in impulse buying and luxury spending as households work tithing and gifts into their budgets. Obviously, a temporary financial setback is the smallest of costs when seen with eternity in mind. All the same, from a strictly worldly viewpoint a Kingdom advance is, at the very least, disruptive. 

In Jesus’ day, a whole heard of pigs was not a small amount of money. Given that this was the first and actually a rather small deliverance (only two people), it may be that the townsfolk figured they’d all lose their shirts if Jesus got to spend time in their downtown. They plead with Him to leave. In doing so, they sacrifice what is eternal on the altar of the temporary. A bigger mistake cannot be made. 

Like the rest of this story, the irony is thick. The few who were out of their right minds came out to meet Jesus and found salvation when He tells the legion plaguing them to exit; the demons rushing to their destruction. Then the few who were in their right minds rush to tell the many, who perceive Jesus as a plague and come out to plead His exit; the people heading back to town, forever lost.

In our day, businesses compete with one another to see who can come up with the next disruptive product, the winner being awarded with market share. New business start ups compete to see who will emerge with the next disruption to industry, the winner being awarded with billions of dollars. But for thousands of years the kingdom of God has been disrupting families, communities and societies. At stake is not market share or dollars, but the eternal lives and destinies of living souls. 

Failure to break up the fallow ground will make for a rough planting season. You [ ] do this by changing neither format nor activities initially. Rather, you [ ] model and teach. Let them grapple with Scripture. Let them hear testimonies. Let their eyes acclimate to the light of what could be. God will use these truths over time to prepare them for a different pattern of relating to him.

John Franklin

APPLICATION: Intentionality

How are you bringing the disruption of the Kingdom of God to your community?

Jesus has deliberately taken the disciples across the Sea of Galilee. “When he arrived at   the other side in the region of the Gadarenes, two demon-possessed men coming from the tombs met him. They were so violent that no one could pass that way.”

There is no doubt that one of the men was far more violent and/or verbal than the other, because both Mark and Luke only remember one. Matthew though, recalls two. That the men come out from the tombs means they were living or hiding there for reason. Indeed, a better place from which to hide and surprise unwary travellers could not be found. After all, no one searches a cemetery for potentially unwelcoming strangers when passing through on the road! But “unwelcoming” is an understatement. 

Luke notes of the one man’s demonic condition, “For a long time this man had not worn clothes or lived in a house, but had lived in the tombs. […] Many times it had seized him, and though he was chained hand and foot and kept under guard, he had broken his chains and had been driven by the demon into solitary places.” It is not hard to visualize these as hyper-violent bandits that everyone who knew the region avoided, given that they kept escaping custody and were incapable of living in community. 

The disciples would’ve now been some distance from their boat and the relative safety of the lake, and now they were faced with the terror of two mad men meeting them. Imagine the overwhelming fear such a situation would invoke! A fear made all the more visceral by the obvious fact that these were not mere men, but demon-possessed men. Yet for all that, this is the real reason for the lesson of the storm that had appeared while they were sailing – though unlike the regional circumstance of the weather, this is a far more personal event, and likely a far more personal fear for the professional fishermen that some of disciples were. Perhaps as local fishermen, they would’ve heard the tales of being robbed and/or assaulted by bandits on the road, but they wouldn’t have had to face that fear while they stayed in their hometown. When they made the decision to follow Jesus and travel about with Him, it likely ran through their minds that it was just a matter of time before the worst possible circumstance came about. Sure enough, here it was – moments after arriving in Gentile land.

Yet they must remember that the night before, they had been afraid for their lives while sailing during a sudden storm. Now they are afraid for their lives while walking the countryside. But the same Jesus who was with them in the boat is now with them on the land. He is not afraid of the storm, and He is not afraid of the most violent and pathologically disturbed. The Lord had just demonstrated His sovereignty over the wind and waves. He is about to demonstrate His sovereignty over the demons that control people, so as frightful as it was for His disciples, it is really just another occasion for Jesus to reveal more of Himself, and to demonstrate more of His Kingdom. 

Praise the Lord, this same Jesus walks with us. The most frightful circumstance is just another occasion for Him to be revealed as sovereign, powerful and Lord of all!

Apparent adversity will finally turn out to be the advantage of the right if we are only willing to keep on working and to wait patiently. How steadfastly the great victor souls have kept at their work, dauntless and unafraid! There are blessings which we cannot obtain if we cannot accept and endure suffering. There are joys that can come to us only through sorrow. There are reveali.ngs of Divine truth which we can get only when earth’s lights have gone out. There are harvests which can grow only after the plowshare has done its work

Chas. E. Cowman

APPLICATION: Thankfulness

Thank God that He walks with us into every situation we face. Thank God that He put His Spirit inside us, so that His power is available in every situation we face. Thank God that He never leaves or forsakes us. Thank God that He is willing to come to all – even those we consider ‘out of their minds’. 

“He replied, “You of little faith, why are you so afraid?” Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the waves, and it was completely calm. The men were amazed and asked, “What kind of man is this? Even the   winds and the waves obey him!”  Indeed. What kind of man is this Jesus? 

Any student of the Bible knows that Jesus is the 2nd person of the Trinity. He is Holy Most High God – a fact firmly established in Scripture. Yet that Jesus is also God in the flesh is also a fact firmly established in Scripture. As Isaiah foresaw, “The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel…” and “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end.” So when we read of Jesus doing all manner of miracles, we are reading not only of God sovereignly ruling the earth He made, but also of the second Adam. A man untainted by sin, living and working in harmony with God to accomplish His will on earth.

The implications of that second aspect of Jesus’ nature – what theologians call, “the Hypostatic Union”, are profound. Firstly because it means that when we are finally free of sin and its effects, we will be like Him in being able to live and work in perfect harmony with God and His purposes. As the apostle John wrote, “Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.” That means we will be perfectly holy and perfectly able to fully obey God in everything, just as Jesus did.

But there is a second, most profound aspect to Jesus’ nature. For if Jesus is fully man (and He is) and fully God (and He is), then those who are sanctified by His work on the cross can start to live as though we are already like Him, albeit imperfectly. Further, that life – what AB Simpson called, “the Christ life” is available to us to live both inwardly in purity (again, not perfectly, but more and more so) and outwardly in ministry. As John also wrote, “Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as he is pure.” 

So when we read of Jesus and ask ourselves, “What kind of man is this?”, we should be filled with the awe of knowing that He is not only God and completely beyond us, but also our example of how we can and should and must act. It means the life He modelled is not meant to be unique. Jesus is a template for how we can and should be living. 

Of course, that doesn’t mean that we can exercise sovereign power to still storms as we want. Sovereign power belongs to God alone. We cannot manufacture a miracle, but we can cooperate with God who does. And in that limited way we can be like Him enough to absolutely accomplish the mission the Father gives us, no matter what obstacles we come across in so doing.

There is nothing in the world worth living for, but doing good and finishing God’s work—doing the work Christ did.

Brainerd

APPLICATION: Intentionality

Today the Spirit of God will lead and guide you. Listen to His prompting. 

To be afraid is to be full of fear. Fear, like all the emotions, is not wrong or   right, it is just how you feel. All the same, emotions are powerful tools that can steer our thinking, and they are not always a product of rational thought. Sometimes the emotional response we have is entirely due to our fallen flesh. Sometimes it is from that which is quite beyond ourselves. Everyone knows this. We even celebrate it every time we watch a movie. Moreover, there are times and places where we suspend how we might normally respond to our fear (or other emotion) because we know the place and time we are in does not call for a physical response. Sometimes that is obvious (as in when we are in a theatre), and sometimes it is less so. 

It would seem most reasonable to be afraid when one is in a tiny boat in the middle of a large body of water during a storm. Especially when you are among experienced fisherman who make their living on this exact body of water and they themselves are terrified! But Jesus is not afraid. Though he did not grow up a fisherman, he is sound asleep, even as the storm is so fierce the disciples fear the boat will be lost. 

When they wake Him, the disciples find Jesus unafraid. More than that, He does not identify with their fear at all. In fact, His response is rather condescending. Matthew writes, “The disciples went and woke him, saying, “Lord, save us! We’re going to drown!” He replied, “You of little faith, why are you so afraid?”

Jesus’ response seems harsh. Surely they are right to be afraid, for they know the boat and the lake and have spent their whole lives learning to live with the weather! But from Jesus’ point of view, it is entirely appropriate for the teacher to speak as He has. As He sees it, the disciples are acting entirely out of an unfounded fear. A most unfounded fear, actually, because the situation is just a simple point of circumstance. The full reality of that circumstance is that the disciples are with Jesus – quite literally, they are all in the same boat. And to be with Jesus is to be exactly where God wants you to be. There is no better place to be. 

As readers far removed from that circumstance, we can see that even though the storm raged, they had nothing more to fear than Noah did when he was in the ark. No one focuses on Noah’s fear because the Scriptures do not mention it, even though Noah also would’ve experienced the heaving of the waves, the frightening sound of the wind and rain and the terror of not knowing exactly what is coming next. But the man of faith dismisses such fear, recognizing that the Almighty God who commissioned the boat and led them into it is more than capable of seeing them through the storm.

Jesus knows that those who act on fear are no longer in control of their own lives. Such people are not very helpful as disciples, because they cede control of their words and actions to the emotional strings being pulled by circumstance. Jesus expects His disciples to learn to dismiss that fear by rightly reading their circumstance – and their circumstance is always that God is with them. There is no reason to fear when our God is sovereign.

We now see the people called Christians, though they have drawn their faith from mere allegories, sometimes acting like true philosophers. For their lack of fear of death and of what they will meet thereafter is something we can see every day, and likewise their restraint in cohabiting.

Plato

APPLICATION: Intentionality

The decisions we make in the easy times set our ability to weather the though times without panic. Are you in a calm place? Make up your mind now to follow, to endure and to sacrifice. Practice during the calm season, so that when circumstance changes and the spiritual weather turns, you will not yield to fear and can stand strong for Christ.

Some of the crowd that had gathered near Peter’s house had followed  Jesus to the  lakeside (v18). As preparations were made to get to the other side, two of the followers peppered Him with additional questions. No doubt Jesus was tired from a long day of ministry, but ever kind and gracious, Jesus had taken time to address those individuals. Having overheard the questions and His responses, those who remain are a bit clearer as to what a disciple is. We know this because when Jesus gets into the boat they follow Him in boarding. “Then he got into the boat and his disciples followed him.” 

The disciples to this point include a number of people we haven’t met so far in Matthew’s narrative, but we do know Peter, Andrew, James and John (4:18-22). These four were experienced fishermen who made their livelihoods on this very lake. They would’ve known the lake and the weather of the lake quite well. One would expect they would’ve been able to spot a potentially troubling circumstance and would’ve at least commented on it prior to setting out to cross the lake. Yet they do not, meaning it is likely that it looked like clear sailing. Perhaps for that reason Matthew notes that the storm appears without warning. “Without warning, a furious storm came up on the lake, so that the waves swept over the boat. But Jesus was sleeping.” 

Anytime circumstance appears to be against us we are unsettled. This is especially so when that circumstance is completely beyond our control, and our own sense of exposure is simultaneously aroused. Being on a boat in a large body of water during a storm is absolutely terrifying. At least for us it is. For Jesus – who knows the Father and knows the Father’s love for Him, it is not. “The disciples went and woke him, saying, “Lord, save us! We’re going to drown!” The disciples have to wake Jesus – He is sleeping, completely untroubled by what appears to everyone else as certain disaster. There is both irony and comfort in that. He hasn’t left the disciples. He hasn’t abandoned them to their own devices or imaginations. He is both present and available. He can and will respond when they do appeal to Him. They are as safe as He is. 

Jesus is always there, never leaving or forsaking us – so we can know that our response to circumstance says more about our faith (or lack of) than about Jesus’ care for us.

That fact brings to mind the reality that following Jesus ensures at least two outcomes beyond our own experience of His peace and presence. Firstly, that Jesus will use every occasion to reveal more of Himself to you. Even when you are not expecting Him to. Sometimes especially when you are not expecting Him to. Secondly, that from time to time you will have an adventure! God – who is sovereign over every circumstance – seems to delight in arranging circumstances in ways that allow us to see Him at work in them. Sometimes that’s through a long slow progression, and sometimes it is in sudden unanticipated change. 

Both outcomes sound wonderful and refreshing and exciting, but the reality of them is usually disturbing, and sometimes quite frightening. We forget that throughout the Scriptures, the appearance of an angel absolutely terrified those who recorded it. How could we expect less when we see the hand of God? The reality of God is so much more real, so much more overwhelming, so much more awesome than we could even imagine.  

Nature fears in the presence of God.

Charles Spurgeon

APPLICATION: Worship

In the midst of terrible circumstance, remember that our Father is yet watching over us. 

esus is about to travel to the far side of the lake. He gave orders to set out for there after seeing the crowds gather again. Some from the crowd had followed Him over, and even as He prepares to embark on His travels, people have come up to Him with questions. One of them – a teacher of the law – professed that he would follow Him wherever He went. Jesus dismissed him because He is not looking for a bunch of groupies. He is looking for disciples who will join with Him in His ministry. But before Jesus can leave, “Another disciple said to him, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” But Jesus told him, “Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead.”  Unlike the teacher of the law, this person can accurately be called a disciple because He’s already learned to address Jesus as “Lord”. His request is that he be excused from active involvement in the ministry because he has a pressing family obligation. 

In ancient Israeli culture, such a request would not be unwarranted. Moses had made it clear that the Lord placed a high value on family and family relationships, to the point that a recently married man was not to engage in civic service or any other obligation for a full year (Duet 24:5). As honoring your parents was enshrined in the Decalogue (The Ten Commandments), caring for a recently deceased parent (and especially a father) was one of the highest cultural priorities. So much so, that a rabbi once write, “He who is confronted by a dead relative is freed from reciting the Shema, from the Eighteen Benedictions, and from all the commandments stated in the Torah.” To our day, time off for family funerals is an expectation that cannot be ignored – it comes before every other pressing obligation.

All the same, Jesus summarily dismisses this disciples’ predicament, “Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead.” Jesus’ response may seem harsh, but that’s only because we tend to read it as though He was being unmindful of the disciple’s circumstance – which we have to know was not the case. He was just told it, and He knows every man’s heart besides – how could He possibly be ignorant of what this particular disciple was going through? No, it is not that Jesus was unaware of this man’s loss or his social obligations. Rather, Jesus was pointing out the real and obvious priority.  After all, that particular disciple is in the middle of a conversation with God in the flesh. God Most High is standing in front of him, speaking to him and inviting him to follow! 

There are many offers we can refuse just because they seem uncomfortable to us. There are many offers we can refuse because they are inconvenient. There are many offers we can refuse because we have other pressing obligations. But when the Creator looks at you and speaks to you and extends an offer to you to follow Him – that is an offer you cannot refuse. For what could you possibly do that is better than obeying the Source of all life? 

In saying this, Jesus is pointing out that He is paramount. He is pointing out that what He is doing is paramount, and that engaging in what God is doing is not optional for His disciples. Simply put, there is no circumstance that allows a vacation from the responsibility of following God’s very clear and explicit direction.

All of mankind is made for one purpose – to bring glory to God. We do that best by enjoying Him in God-centred worship and active participation in what He Himself is doing. God, and God’s purposes – are not duties or burdens to be reluctantly carried out from time to time. It is life to know God, it is life to be a witness for God and it is life to imitate Him in what He is doing, because He is life. As Jesus later confessed, “I am the way and the truth and the life.” We never willingly set our own life aside, so why would we even consider to set the source of life aside? To do so – and that to care for the dead of all things – is both unthinkable and foolish. Seen from that perspective, one can see that Christ’s comment to this grieving disciple is logical and obvious. You do not stop being a disciple because you need to engage in grief, or attend to pressing family matters. In fact, it is during such times that your discipleship is most prominently on display. 

Commitment to Jesus is to be without reservation

Stuart K. Weber

APPLICATION: Intentionality

Discipleship is costly. It mandates focus, commitment and wholehearted engagement. Are you prepared to go and do what Christ asks you to go and do?  

Matthew writes, “When Jesus saw the crowd around him, he gave orders to cross to the   other side of the lake. Then a teacher of the law came to him and said, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.” Jesus replied, “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.” ” 

Jesus sees the crowd and determines to move. His followers must not only come to Him as the crowds have done, they must actually follow Him wherever He goes. One man – a teacher of the law – does this. He follows Jesus. He approaches Jesus and tells Him that he’ll go wherever Jesus goes. One would think that to be the best possible response. But Jesus’ response is not that the teacher ‘gets it’. Actually, the fact that this particular teacher calls Jesus, “Teacher” instead of “Lord” (as the leper has just done, and as the centurion has just done) is a tip-off that this man doesn’t ‘get it’. He hasn’t fully committed himself to Jesus, in spite of his profession of faith. 

Knowing this, Jesus replies with a statement of the obvious that everyone could get; Foxes have dens to sleep in, and birds have nests to return to, but the savior of humankind has no home of His own. Following Jesus means sacrifice, and the first sacrifice to be made is one’s own comfort.

What crushing news that must have been to the teacher Jesus is speaking to. We never hear of this man again in Matthew’s account. Perhaps he was hoping for a different response – perhaps he was expecting some encouragement for having done and said the right thing. But Jesus is not looking for outward obedience without inward regeneration. Recall that earlier He said, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.” 

Jesus’ reply to the teacher of the law about foxes and birds is a colorful way of saying that the bar is much higher than simply following Him around the globe. Groupies follow someone for the sake of enjoyment – to enjoy their presence, fellowship and at least a hint of their lifestyle. Jesus is not looking for mere groupies. Jesus is looking for followers who commit to a lifestyle of sacrifice for the glory of God.

This short episode in Christ’s ministry is another death knell to the prosperity gospel movement. It is anathema to think that following Jesus by faith results in huge homes, yachts, nice cars and a cushy bank account. The luxuries of life may come to some, but they are certainly not a product of discipleship. If they were, the Jesus of the Bible would’ve had many very large homes! Rather, the reward of faith is Jesus Himself. Those who seek mere material things may gain them (or not), but even if they do, they gain only that which is burned up in the end. Jesus is eternal. He is the source of all value and all meaning. He Himself is the best reward, and by His grace, He can be found by all who purpose to follow Him wholeheartedly.

We may be selected and fully set apart for God, yet we can gather quite a bit of travel dust on our way to the altar of complete sacrifice. Will we offer a dirty sacrifice to God?

Keith Drury

APPLICATION: Intentionality

The Lord calls us to be living sacrifices for His glory. The choice to live a lifestyle of sacrifice is a daily choice. Choose wisely.