Foxes Have Holes
Matthew 8:18-34
Harry Stoliker
November 16, 2008 EBC
Listen
I'm going to give you my main theme right here at the beginning so you know
what this sermon is about from the start. Here's what I want to say to you:
If you are a disciple of Jesus Christ, it ought to change your lifestyle.
In other words, if you growing in your walk with Christ, it will clearly be seen
in how you life. Let me say it another way, If you are a true disciple
of Jesus Christ you won't live for all intents and purposes the same way
everyone else in your culture lives. We must live distinctly Christian lives
if we claim to know and follow Christ.
Everyone (or most everyone) in the culture has a job which takes up
a huge chunk of their time and energy, they have a mortgage or rent
to pay every month, have to cut the grass and fix the roof when it
leaks, they have children to raise and manage, they may take a vacation
with the family in the summer, they have hobbies like golf, tennis, reading,
fishing. They have to get along with their neighbors, coworkers, bosses and
relatives. They get sick and go to the hospital. They have relatives who get
sick and die, and before that they have to care for aging parents
and make tough decisions sometimes about how to care for them. They struggle to make
ends meet in a bad economy and hope there will be enough left in their retirement
account to make it after they can't work anymore. What's more, these
people might even go to a church service once or twice a month.
What am I getting at? I honestly believe that if that is all that characterizes
your life, you are not living as a disciple of Jesus Christ; you are living
as a disciple of your culture. A disciple of the culture gives his energy,
time and life to function in the culture so as to be comfortable and acceptable
to the culture. A disciple of Christ functions in the culture so as a way to live
out his burning love for the Kingdom and Glory of Christ. You can see, without much
trouble, the difference between a cultural disciple and a disciple of Christ.
If someone looked at your life, would they see enough evidence to convict you of
being a disciple of Jesus Christ? Think about this as we develop the text.
V.18-22 The Cost of Following Jesus
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What we are seeing here is a continuation of the theme of Jesus' authority.
He had authority to set the qualifications for being His disciple. When Luke
tells this same story there are three 'would-be' disciples that come
to Jesus, all of whom seem to have their own ready-made limited qualifications
for being a disciple. Jesus says finally in Lk. 9:62 "No one who puts his
hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God."
Anyone who looks back to the world, thinking he has lost something by being
Jesus' disciple cuts a crooked row for the Kingdom. Jesus sets the standard
for fitness in discipleship. Lk. 17:32 "Remember Lot's wife. 33Whoever
seeks to save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it."
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V.19 "Then a teacher of the law came to him and said, "Teacher, I will
follow you wherever you go." Was he sincere? Notice that he is a scribe
or teacher of the law. They are usually antagonistic toward Jesus. Unusual
to find one wanting to be a disciple. We never actually find out if he follows
through. What he says is very admirable, but was he ready to count and pay
the cost of being a genuine disciple? That is what Jesus pushes him to do
by His response. Many people claim to be disciples of Jesus Christ. Many
say they will do whatever it takes to follow Christ, right up to when they
have to pay the cost. Talk is cheap, especially if you can set the
requirements.
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Matthew 8:20 "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." How is this
a challenge to the scribe's motives in becoming a disciple? Jesus
warns him that there is no money, comfort, notoriety, pleasant accommodations or
earthly acclaim to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. Jesus showed him the 'stripped-down'
version of discipleship. There would be times of sleeping out in the cold,
under the stars, with a rock for your pillow. There would be a relentless call
to spread the Kingdom that would require mobility. Settling down
might not be a luxury that disciples can afford. If this is what the master
experienced, then it would be the same for the disciple. You'd be worse off in
many cases than the animals, Jesus says, so don't be so quick
to say you will follow me anywhere, you'd better think this over and count the cost.
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Another volunteer recruit shows up in V.21 "Lord, first let me
go and bury my father." That certainly sounds like a noble thing to do.
Why should be not expect Jesus to allow us to take care of our parents funeral
arrangements? Is it anti-Christian to bury your father? One commentator
said it this way: "A second potential recruit is met by an even more off-putting
demand from Jesus." (France) Jesus didn't seem to be looking
for what might be called "convenience-disciples" – disciples who would
be committed to him at their own convenience.
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We are met with what would have been a shocking response in Jewish culture.
V. 22 "But Jesus told him, "Follow me, and let the dead bury their
own dead." Originally, I had chosen this phrase as the title for my sermon.
It is indeed shocking! Why? The man's father seems to have just died.
There was a pressing responsibility on this man, who was probably the elder
son. The father had to be buried within 24 hours of the death. The
man wasn't asking for a long postponement and could have caught up
with Jesus band within a week on the outside. "Jewish custom and piety demanded
that these arrangements take priority over all other commitments, even the
most essential prayers" (France). Jesus refusal to allow him this
socially critical duty would have been profoundly shocking to any
who heard his response. Was Jesus being unreasonable? From a cultural standpoint
he was being outlandish. It would have been seen as a tacit denial of the 5th
Commandmentto honor your parents.
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Some have interpreted this situation a little differently however.
They say that the father hadn't recently died, and the man wasn't just asking
for the typical week off to complete customary burial ceremonies. They say
that "bury my father" was a standard idiom for fulfilling one's
duty as a son for the remainder of the father's lifetime, even if
the father was in no immediate danger of death. What the man would be asking
then is to postpone discipleship indefinitely, likely for years rather
than days, until after his father eventually died.
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Scholar Don Carson says it is preferable to see Jesus response on the level
of what he said about "gouging out your right eye" if it causes you to end
up in hell. He wasn't so much denying the man from obeying the 5th
Commandment as he was detecting in him a level of insincerity toward full
discipleship that was completely unacceptable. Carson say:
"Commitment to Jesus must be without reservation. Such is the importance
Jesus himself attached to his own person and mission." Spurgeon has
a pithy comment here. He says:
"It's a grave fault to put the sepulcher before the Savior!"
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Jesus is cutting across the man's fake excuses for being radically committed
to following Christ. Jesus doesn't hesitate to cut across deep-rooted cultural
expectations. His words in V.22 are strong! "But Jesus told him, "Follow
me, and let the dead bury their own dead." He is saying: "Let the spiritually
dead take care of burying the physically dead!"
It's a metaphorical use of the word "dead" that doesn't occur anywhere else
in the gospels, expect perhaps in the parable of the prodigal son (Lk. 15).
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What is Jesus saying? Matthew 10:37 "Whoever loves father or mother more than
me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy
of me." The can be no higher loyalty and allegiance in a disciple's
life than his loyalty to Jesus Christ! How did Jesus sound in Jewish society
making such demanding claims as this? R.T. France: "No rabbi would
have been so cavalier, and normal Jewish piety would find such an attitude incomprehensible,
a prim facie beach of the 5th commandment." Then he makes another
statement that stopped me in my tracks: "The kingdom of heaven apparently involves
a degree of fanaticism which is willing to disrupt the normal rhythms of social
life."
When I read this I was cut open! I was left wondering if my following of Jesus
had this degree of fanaticism that is willing to disrupt the normal
rhythms of my social life?! I like my rhythms of social life, don't
you? We have many great traditions here at EBC as a church family. We each
have many great individual family traditions and social rhythms – things
we do that are comfortable, things we can identify with and cherish,
patterns of life that give us great security and stability in a troubled
world. What if Jesus wants to disrupt those rhythms??? What if the rhythms have
become more important for us than being His disciple?
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Following Jesus is an all or nothing experience. If it involves self-denial,
loving Christ more than anyone in your family, serving Him with no earthly
reward, suffering unjustly, persecution from evil men or even
death, SO BE IT. The call of Christ is radical. Dietrich Bonhoeffer
said it clearly on p.99 of my copy of The Cost of Discipleship: "When
Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die!" That is the uncompromising
nature of Christian discipleship for the cause of the kingdom.
Now we come to the application of this passage (I never got close to the
Calming of the Storm and the Healing of the Demoniacs in my prep.) How can we apply
these potent words of Sovereign Jesus? Do you have any sense in your heart
that they are being spoken to you directly? I pray you do.
You know, sometimes, I get a little bit afraid that I'm stuck in a rut,
a rut of comfortable patterns that have really taken the edge of challenge
off of my discipleship to Jesus. That have taken some of that "degree of fanaticism"
out of following the will of God. Do you ever feel like that? You know I'm talking
about the good kind of fanaticism, not the kind that hurts or kills people,
as we see in some religions.
Let me give you an example of what I'm trying to get at. What if Jesus were
to call you to do something pretty unusual for your social rhythms,
something that would jar your customary way of life? Would you be able to
hear the Spirit's call on that? Would you be ready and willing to obey
what God was calling you to?
One of the visions that I hope that we someday embrace here at EBC
is to find a way to plant a new church, give birth to a baby church
in some other town that doesn't have a doctrines of Grace church, or perhaps
not even an evangelical church. Then I'd like to see that new church also have a
passion and vision to reproduce itself in some other location. This is the
sort of thing that happened in the first century that spread Christianity
all over the Roman Empire: little churches that knew they had been "born to reproduce."
Seem like everything is "born to reproduce" so why not EBC????
What would that take? It would take some of our families being so committed
to this vision as to sell their homes and move to this town that we pick
out and live there until this new church is strong. Perhaps live there for
the rest of your lives. It would take high levels of work in evangelism, hospitality,
courage, love and faith to make it happen. It would down right upset our normal
rhythms! How exciting would that be to follow Christ's call to
plant a new church where there isn't one now! How scary that would be to
our comfort zones! How good that would be for the growth of our understanding
of radical, costly, biblical discipleship! Would you step up to this
challenge? Would you be willing to change things in your life as I mentioned
at the beginning, for the cause of the Kingdom?
Whether we ever get to that point here at EBC, God only knows. But you get
what I'm saying. I'll repeat my theme for this morning: If you are a disciple
of Jesus Christ, it ought to change your lifestyle.
This can start this week if you begin to pray: "Lord Jesus Christ,
speak into my life the way you spoke into these two men in our text. Cause
me to re-evaluate my understanding of what it means to be your disciple.
Make me see if I have domesticated and tamed what it means to be a follower
of the Cross in this world. Release my grip on any loyalty or love that has
taken over first place in my heart and restore yourself as my supreme Master and
Sovereign King. Give me the courage to follow you and let the dead bury
their own dead. What adventure of faith do you have in store for me that
I can't even imagine right now? Don't let me walk away from this passage
unchanged, unchallenged, unwilling to obey. I pray this for the glory and
advancement of the Kingdom of Christ in the world. Amen."
Let's pray, H.