Text: Matthew 8:18–22
Preacher: Pastor Brian Sauvé
A Kingdom Which Cannot Be Shaken
Let’s begin our time by simply getting the text in from of us. Look with me, if you would, at Matthew 8:18. This is the Word of the Living God:
“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.”
-Matthew 8:18–22
Thus ends the reading of God’s Word. May he write it on our hearts by faith and set our feet to walk in it with joy.
The Crowds & The Cost
Let’s take a moment to remember where we are in the gospel according to Matthew.
For three chapters—chapters five, six, and seven—we sat at Jesus’ feet at the foot of the mountain, looking up to him as he taught us about his Kingdom. He has come to make a new humanity and a new Kingdom, shaped after his own image—a people whose righteousness overflows into humble joy, enemy-loving mercy, sturdy trust in the Father, un-ostentatious holiness, and hope to inherit the world.
All of this, to the astonishment of his hearers, bends around faith in and therefore obedience to himself. Do you hear and obey this man? Then you have the joy of the Father. Do you not? Then you are like a man whose house is about to fall in on itself. So we saw that those who heard this message had begun to see the raw authority of Jesus—this authority that had been veiled behind his nondescript humanity, but which now began to show through in his awesome claims and authoritative teaching.
After this, Matthew walks us through a series of 10 miraculous signs in chapters eight, nine, and ten. His authority has peeked through the veil in his words, now it will be revealed in demonstration.
Already we’ve seen him cleanse the leper, heal the centurion’s servant with a word at a distance, heal Peter’s mother-in-law of a fever, and then cleanse many of demonic oppression.
All of these demonstrations of authority are not mere miracles, but signs. They point at something. They signify. They demonstrate something true about Christ and his mission. These are not random acts of the miraculous, but deliberate demonstrations of who it is that we are dealing with in this Jesus.
What have we seen so far? In a word, we’ve seen that Christ is Lord: He is Lord over the Curse of sin. He is Lord over human illness. He is Lord over human empires—even the Gentiles beginning to recognize his authority, as with the Centurion. And he is Lord over the powers and principalities, the demonic realm.
So he has come to set aright what has been put out of joint. He has come to heal, restore, reclaim, and reassert the dominion of God, and of Mankind in God and at peace with God. By the end of this section of the gospel of Matthew, we will see that his authority stretches to every corner of reality—that he has authority over man and spirit, all created order, visible and invisible.
And what’s happening is that this power and goodness and authority is coming into clarity for the crowds around him. They’re beginning to see Jesus, and really see him—like the landscape becoming clear as the sun comes up and burns off the fog.
So the questions is simply: What happens as they begin to see him, to see that goodness and authority and power? Verse 18 tells us: Crowds happen. People begin to flock to his banner. And our text this morning is about what Jesus does with crowds: He tries to talk them out of following him. Look at verse 18 again,
“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.”
-Matthew 8:18–22
Notice all the ways that the Lord tries to make it more difficult to follow him. In verse 18, it is when he sees the crowds that he determines to cross over the Sea of Galilee. That is not the way of the politician, trying to win votes. That is not the way of the celebrity pastor, trying to fill seats at any cost.
And notice his exchange with the scribe in verses 19–20! The scribes were a part of a broader group that included the Pharisees, Sadducees, and chief priests, essentially a sort of Jewish ruling class and teachers of the Law. You most often see them mentioned in the New Testament as those most fiercely in opposition to the Lord, even conspiring in his execution by the Roman State. By the end of Matthew’s gospel, we will see them rebuked in the strongest possible terms by the Lord.
And yet here is a scribe with an amazing show of dedication to Jesus. “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.” That is a strong statement! He acknowledges that Jesus is above him—calling him teacher—and says that he will follow Jesus anywhere. How does the Lord respond? Verse 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.’”
-Matthew 8:20
Do you want to follow me? Then you must be ready to suffer. You must be ready to be destitute and homeless. To follow Jesus, this member of the ruling class has to join with a group of fishermen and tax collectors in their embrace of following their homeless teacher wherever he goes. To follow him is to share in his suffering. Not exactly a sales pitch.
Finally, in verses 21 and 22, we see the final encounter of the text,
“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.” -Matthew 8:21–22
Ensuring your father had a proper burial was among the highest duties of a Jewish eldest son. So this disciple is saying, essentially, “I want to follow you, but first I have other duties to take care of.”
And Jesus’ point isn’t that we aren’t to honor our fathers and mothers, as the Law commands—but rather a matter of ordering principles: Which is the higher call? Which is the higher duty? So his point is that there is no earthly duty which can take precedence over this duty to follow him. None. Not one.
If you must give up anything to follow Christ, you give it up. You go. You don’t look back. If you don’t, you can’t follow him.
Why talk people out of following him?
Question: Why does Jesus do this? And make no mistake: This is a regular feature of Jesus’ interaction with crowds, with those who would follow him.
In the gospel of John, remember, it was right after gathering a great multitude of followers, feeding thousands with the miracle of the loaves and fishes, that he gave one of his hardest teachings—“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.”
The result of this teaching, as John records in John 6:66, is that “After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him.”
Or remember the rich young ruler, whom we will meet in Matthew 19? Jesus told this man to sell everything he had if he wanted to follow him! And the result, again, as Matthew records it: “When the young man heard this he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.”
Why does Jesus do this? The point is twofold:
First, because we must understand the absolute, totalizing, sovereign nature of Christ and his call to discipleship. To be his disciple means making him the highest, absolute priority above all else. You cannot worship Jesus as Lord on a part-time basis, or alongside other competing loyalties. No, even other good and right loyalties—like those to father and mother and children and friends and masters—must come under his lordship.
Second, because the way into his Kingdom passes through death, burial, and resurrection. Jesus’ Kingdom will come through suffering—through death, burial, and resurrection. And what those who would follow him must know is that you can only enter his kingdom through death, burial, and resurrection. There is no such thing as a costless Christianity.
As Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote in his book, The Cost of Discipleship,
“The cross is laid on every Christian. The first Christ-suffering which every man must experience is the call to abandon the attachments of this world. It is that dying of the old man which is the result of his encounter with Christ. As we embark upon discipleship we surrender ourselves to Christ in union with his death—we give over our lives to death. Thus it begins; the cross is not the terrible end to an otherwise god-fearing and happy life, but it meets us at the beginning of our communion with Christ. When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
The worst possible outcome for someone who hears the external call of Christ—follow me!—would be to think they had entered the Kingdom, but in reality had not. The Lord is faithful to preach the cost of his Kingdom, that those come truly come.
The Cost Today
So what I want to do now is to take this out of the realm of theory and doctrine and into the realm of practice for us.
It sounds harsh when he says, “Let the dead bury their dead,” but it was needful. It was loving of Jesus to say that, since he was trying to help this man see that he might miss the Kingdom of God by giving anything—even good things—priority over it.
So the question for us has to be simply: What might be the same sort of statement for us today? What is the equivalent of “Let the dead bury their own dead” that you and I may need to hear and receive as the faithful wounds of a friend? What concern of ours might keep us from the surpassingly important concern of following Christ, of being his disciple above all else? Where will we feel the cost today? First, many need to hear:
“Follow me, and give up the illusion that you are a good person.”
The first and most basic thing you must do if you are to follow Christ is to repent of your sin and trust in Christ. One thing this means is that you have to stop justifying your sin, hiding your sin, pretending your sin is not sin, or any other creative ways that you might want to try to have Christ, but not confess that you need him.
You can’t have Christ and the notion that you didn’t need him all that much. You can’t think, “I wasn’t that bad,” and simultaneously confess that the Son of God had to bear a cross to save you from your sin and guilt.
“Follow me, and let your family hate you if that is what it takes.”
Many of us will feel the cost in our family. That was one of the issues for the man in verses 21 and 22, right?
Some of you have already looked at this cost in the face and borne it for the sake of Christ. Some of you, when you left Mormonism, did so at the cost of full inclusion in your family. The Lord sees. He is with you.
But you need to hear this: The approval of your family—even father and mother and sister and brother—doesn’t even register on the scale of importance next to the approval of Christ. Let them hate you if that is what it takes.
“Follow me, and let your boss fire you if that is what it costs.”
There is and will increasingly be a cost of discipleship in the world of work and vocation. America grows more and more like the Roman Empire every day. See, Rome was one of the most inclusive empires ever to gain power in some ways. They allowed for many different cultures and religions to operate, build houses of worship and temples, and practice their various beliefs.
But there was a huge catch: You could have your gods, so long as you would bow before their images and burn a pinch of incense to Caesar. You could have Christ, so long as you were at least outwardly willing to have him alongside the Roman pantheon of gods.
The cost of being a Christian in the workplace today is higher than it has ever been in the history of our country. More and more, if a Christian wants to operate within a company or business, he must keep his head down and burn his pinch of incense to the gods of this age.
What will you do when they say that you have to add a rainbow flag to the signature of all your work emails?
What will you do when you are required to lyingly refer to mentally ill men with female pronouns?
What will you do when you are required to practice ethnic gnosticism to continue moving up the chain in your company?
It would be easy to go on. The cost of discipleship grows daily.
What gods will demand their pinch of incense? And will you give it? Do you see how easy it is to justify at least outwardly bending the knee to other gods than Christ? There is no neutrality in all the world. Every sphere of life—family, vocation, education, home, public square, all of them—are the battleground of gods.
So you can’t just go to work as a worker in a category that is comfortably and hermetically sealed off from your worship. There are gods there demanding your worship them and not Christ. They won’t just leave you alone. You will have to determine where your loyalties lie, and be ready to bend the knee to Christ, even if it costs you greatly.
Why? Because he is worth it! Because his Kingdom is worth it. Don’t trade the fickle approval of men for the eternal approval of the Father. Don’t trade your soul for peace at work. Be a problem if you have to be a problem. In fact, may we be a holy problem wherever the Lord deploys us. May we cause a ruckus if need be. May we go down preaching, if need be.
Christ continually set this before those who would follow him: If you will follow me, be ready to be hated. Be ready for a cross. If they hated me, they will hate you. And so he labored to preach people both in and out of his Kingdom. This dynamic, by the way, explains a lot of why we do what we do the way we do here at this church.
One of the things that we talk about with some regularity on the elder team is the necessity of preaching people both in and out of the church on a continual basis. This is why one of my goals every single Sunday that the Lord lets me preach from this pulpit is to say something that is sure to offend the gods of this age—to say something that is sure to drive someone out of the room, out of the gathering, out of this local church.
And we do that in hope—in hope that the hammer of God’s Word would break the rock of the unregenerate heart, and bring the lost to repentance. We do so in hope of destroying false assurance, that the true assurance of repentance and faith might stand.
This is why the megachurch, seeker-sensitive model is utter madness: You cannot entertain people into the Kingdom of God. You can’t try to round off all the edges of the message in the hopes that the lost will come on a Sunday and find the message palatable. Madness. The only thing that accomplishes is to ensure that our churches would be full of goats, not sheep.
Christ is worthy of our everything. He is worthy of our all. He is worthy to be worshiped and obeyed. May we count him as such, and may we never trifle with him. May we bend the knee to him no matter the cost in our families, friendships, workplaces, homes, or anywhere.
The Homeless Man Who Owns The World
Before we leave it, I want you to see something that is gloriously comforting in the face of the world’s sure rejection of us, should we follow Christ. It’s in the title that he takes for himself in our text—in fact, Jesus’ favorite title for himself by volume in the gospels: The Son of Man.
It’s there in verse 20, right? As he describes his own homelessness and destitution, he says that foxes have holes, birds have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.
And it’s easy to read that—especially in this very lowly context—and assume that this is merely a title of humility, that Jesus is merely emphasizing his identification with us as the God-Man, that he has taken on humanity to save us. This is partly true: Jesus is truly man. He is a Son of Man. But there’s more here. This title is also a reference to Daniel 7, where Daniel writes,
“I saw in the night visions,
and behold, with the clouds of heaven
there came one like a son of man,
and he came to the Ancient of Days
and was presented before him.
And to him was given dominion
and glory and a kingdom,
that all peoples, nations, and languages
should serve him;
his dominion is an everlasting dominion,
which shall not pass away,
and his kingdom one
that shall not be destroyed.”-Daniel 7:13–14
Who is the Son of Man? He is the one who, after coming to earth to defeat sin and death, going to the grave in burial, rising from the dead—ascends to the Father to receive an everlasting dominion and Kingdom and glory, that all people everywhere should serve him.
I mean, see it here in the text in Matthew 8: Here is the homeless man who owns the world. That’s the gospel. That’s both sides of the gospel: Suffering and death—you have to die. But on the other side of suffering is resurrection and inheritance.
So as you embrace the world’s rejection, as you bear the cost of discipleship, as you bear your cross, know this: We will inherit the world. We will inherit the, because our Lord has inherited it, and we are in him. The wicked ones of earth, who aim to trample down the people of God, will be no more. Though they spread out now like a great tree, one day you will look for them and find that they have vanished away—that the people of God stand, and that you can’t find the wicked anywhere, no matter how carefully you search them out.