The Cost of Christianity (8:18-22)

The Gospel According to Matthew
Jesus for President (Part 28: The Cost of Christianity)

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."

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."

1. Jesus knows the difference between quantity and quality. He was interested in having a bunch of fickle fans. He was interested in having faithful followers.
ie. the worship wars (we made worship about what faith could do for us)

2. Jesus is basically seeing if He can talk these two potential followers out of following Him. Would they follow Him if it meant having no home? Would they follow Him if it meant forsaking their own family?
Jesus' consistently taught the cost: 10:37-39, 13:44-46, 16:24-25, 19:16-22, Luke 14:25-33

3. Evangelicals have talked so much about how grace is freely given that we have neglected the fact that there is a cost to following Jesus.

* It's like God freely giving you an extremely expensive medicine for your terminal disease. But it has some serious side effects like 1) You have to daily visit the doctor 2) You'll have body odor and 3) It's an illegal medicine so if you get caught you might get in trouble. Jesus was calling people to following Him and He made sure that they knew the cost. They'd have to stay in relationship with Him, they'd become a stench to many of their formers friends and family, and they may even get jailed or killed.