Keep sharing good news without ads.
Jeff Durbin preaches live at Apologia Church on The Cost of Discipleship from the Gospel of Matthew.
Testament, the most popular of the four Gospels in the second century of the Christian Church. Also Matthew, as you guys get there, Matthew, Mark, and Luke are known as the synoptic Gospels. Synoptic means seeing together, and so you can really take Matthew, Mark, and Luke, you can put those side by side, and you'll see that in many cases Matthew might give you details that maybe a Jewish person can understand, and Luke will sort of change the language a bit so that a Gentile can understand, and you'll see where these sort of come together and intersect many times.
John is unique of the four Gospels in that he actually has a different kind of feel and theme to how he writes John, and he actually talks about things that you do not find in the other three synoptic Gospels.
So important stuff here, and you'll be able to see the intersection if you go home and study Matthew chapter 8, you'll see this working together in the other Gospels as well, so you can do a really healthy study in that respect.
So Matthew chapter 8 is where we're at today. We just finished the first miracles of Jesus, next, or actually that we talked mainly about two, we're actually finished the third one today and get right into Jesus talking to would-be disciples, and so Matthew chapter 8, after Jesus speaks to the centurion, after he was healed, at that very moment his slave, his servants, Matthew chapter 8 verse 14 now, it's the third miracle in the public teaching, preaching, and healing ministry of Jesus.
Matthew chapter 8 verse 14, hear now the words of the living God, and when Jesus entered Peter's house, he saw his mother-in-law lying sick with a fever. He touched her hand, and the fever left her, and she rose and began to serve him.
That evening they brought to him many who were oppressed by demons, and he cast out the spirits with a word, and healed all who were sick. This was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah, he took our illnesses and bore our diseases.
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 the 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. As far as the reading of God's holy and inspired word, let's pray together.
God thank you so much for the privilege of having your word. Thank you God that you have set your love upon us, and that not only have you given us revelation of yourself, Lord, to each and every single one of us, before we even knew you intimately, before we had peace with you, you spoke Lord God and gave us the revelation of yourself, that you've even spoken in creation, you still shout to us and to the world at every step, every second, there is no language where your voice isn't heard.
The heavens declare your glory God, you speak and you constantly reveal yourself in every moment, in every activity, in every thought, but God you've given us the privilege of your special revelation.
Lord Jesus you are the premier revelation of the Father, and God your word before us, Lord we know that we don't deserve it. God in ourselves and how we rebelled against you, we Lord are the rebels, and yet you chase us, you love us, and despite the fact that every single day we fail as fathers and mothers, we fail as brothers and sisters, we fail as children, we fail God, you and each other God, you still love your children, God thank you that you've saved us in Jesus.
Father please reveal yourself this day to those who don't know you, to your elect, draw them to yourself, reveal yourself today God, please by your grace and mercy to those of us who know you and are called yours.
I pray that you get me out of the way, God please speak, God these are not words that can be ultimately understood or obeyed apart from your spirit, so I plead God for the work of your spirit. I pray that today the preacher would be forgotten, the teacher would be an afterthought, and that you would Lord teach by your spirit, and I would decrease, and Christ would be magnified and increase, in Jesus name, amen.
So the messages are up, Apologia Studios on YouTube, you can watch the first two messages if you weren't here the last couple of weeks, you can see those first two messages in Matthew chapter 8, here's where it gets interesting, because at the beginning of Matthew, Matthew's proving now to Jews that Jesus is in fact that long-anticipated Messiah, that he's finally arrived, everything God promised through Abraham and David is now finally here, it's no more waiting now, that little quiet moment, the intertestamental period we have between the Old Testament revelation and the New Testament revelation in Jesus Christ, a little silence that we had, where we're waiting in anticipation for the Messiah, the prophecy in Daniel chapter 2 and Daniel chapter 9, as to the timing of the Messiah, now we're there, right?
So now Daniel is opening up, showing you that Jesus has finally arrived, this is now that time of the Messiah, and he's come, he's died and risen again, Matthew's telling the world now, all these promises fulfilled in Jesus Christ, and then it moves into Jesus, a bit of sort of like historical narrative, John the Baptist is there in Matthew chapter 3, Jesus goes into the temptation in the wilderness, Jesus now sits down in Matthew chapter 5, and he begins to proclaim to them the blessings of the kingdom of God, of the people of God, so it's all there, Matthew chapter 5 through chapter 8, you have the didactic teaching of Jesus, the systematic teaching of Jesus, really it corrects their understanding of the law of God, he calls them to himself, he says things like, you have heard it said, but I say, and he draws all of them in to him, and he calls them to submit to his authority, and then now we have the real beautiful moment where it switches now, out of like the Sermon on the Mount, the most popular sermon in the history of the world, and now we have Jesus walking around, and you have in Matthew chapter 4, Matthew chapter 9, the testimony of what Jesus was doing, he was teaching in the synagogues, proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and he was healing them of all their sicknesses and diseases, so you have this really full or ministry of Jesus teaching, preaching, and healing, and Matthew chapter 8, you have more, I said this before right, I said you have more going on than Jesus simply being a wonder worker, that's when I think I want you guys all, us all to walk away with, is that Jesus isn't just another wonder worker in history right, so for example, and this is, this is, I'm not putting the miracles of Jesus on par with these guys, but just as an example of this is not what Jesus is doing, if you search the internet today, you can, I love to do this actually, you can find some pretty amazing miracle, miracle workers today, and and I don't mean, I don't mean the people you might see on TBN or something like that, I'm not even counting them as part of this category, what I'm referring to is people like David Blaine, right, I'm talking about the people today that do like magic, professional magicians, magicians, and you have people today that do things that are astonishing, I mean truly astonishing, now we know, and they even confess to the fact, well it's a trick right, the card tricks many times are based upon arithmetic, the laws of math, how we use those cards, and it's all, it's trickery, right, it's a way, they even use tools, and they have like mechanical things that work this out, I remember when I was a kid, I used to love to wow my friends with magic tricks, right, I got in the library as a kid, I would go, and I would actually get books, and I would study books on like magic tricks, and if you've ever come to Apologia Studios during the daytime, and you're around for long enough, you know that I will probably do a magic trick for you, some would argue I'm not very good at it, but I still try, I'm a bit of a wonder worker myself, okay, so I love it, matter of fact, I actually purchased like an expensive brand of card tricks that are, sorry, of cards that are just for magicians, because I mean that's how into this I am, and I love to watch it, right, and you have people today that do stuff that looks honestly miraculous, how do you even accomplish something like that, it looks like you're defying the laws of physics, right, I mean really we've just gotten so good at it today that magicians 50 years ago can't touch guys today that do magic on the streets, but here's the point, there are wonder workers today in our society, now they'll confess that it's not real magic, it's not real miracle, but it is a bit wonderful, right, and here's what you don't want to do in Matthew chapter 8, we don't want to look at Jesus' healing ministry and say, oh look, Jesus performed miracles and he did it to wow people, no, Jesus actually is doing much more in Matthew chapter 8, because what you have there is commentary, social commentary on what was happening in the day, so the first thing is you have an unclean Jew, you have a person who has a sickness that is ostracized from society, he's the untouchable, and yet Jesus actually comes to an unclean Jew, that's how they saw it, he has this disease that makes him unclean, leprosy, they were told to stand on the other side of the street, don't touch me, don't touch my kids, stay away, he's the unclean Jew and Jesus does something that they would not have been okay with in that society, he actually touches this leper, he touches him, it's the ministry of touch that Jesus had that I think we all learn a lot from, by the way it's one of the ways, one of my love languages is I touch people, it's the way I express my feelings, I do it with words and I do it with touch and so that means a lot to me personally because that's one of the ways I show my love for people, as I put my hands on you, I touch you, so get over it, okay, I'm gonna touch you a lot, that's how I show you that I love you, but Jesus had a ministry of touch, he touched people and he touched sick people, he touched diseased people, he touched cursed people, that's how he saw it, I'm not saying he really was, I'm saying it's how they viewed in that society, he's cursed, he's a sick, unclean Jew and Jesus touches him and then next you have like a miracle that happens in a context where people were really honestly pretty racist, I mean we know the story of the Good Samaritan, it's not in Matthew chapter 8, but we know the story, we have hospitals across the nation called Good Samaritan Hospital, we had one here's Good Samaritan Hospital because that's the idea that comes from Jesus, his story of the Good Samaritan, but what we do with that story is we rip it out of its context and we say it's just about being nice to people, right, it's just about taking care of hurt people, but in reality there's really social commentary going on there, the Good Samaritan story isn't simply Jesus saying be nice to people that others throw out, it's actually social commentary, they were pretty racist at the time, the Jewish people of the day would actually take a different route around Samaria in order to avoid getting around those dogs, those, as I said, like Dwight Schrute says in The Office, those halfsies, right, it's a mixed breed of people, you were kind of Jewish but really you're more of a halfsy, you're really intermingled, it's in a way syncretistic, you've combined your culture, a godly culture of Jews, with these despicable, disgraceful, idolatrous Gentiles and that's really, in the story of the Good Samaritan, Jesus is coming right after their hatred and racism and he's showing them that you do to these people what you would do to others, it's not about just being Jewish and so that's really the Good Samaritan story, there's a lot going on there, but there's something happening here in Matthew chapter 8 when Jesus is talking about this unclean Gentile who's coming to Jesus now and he acknowledges I have no right, because what does he say, I don't even have a right to have you come to my house, he acknowledges his one complete unworthiness and he acknowledges the full authority of Jesus Christ and Lordship of Jesus Christ because he acknowledges in Matthew 8 what, think about it, he says I've got authority, I say to this guy do this and he doesn't, I say to this guy jump and he jumps, I say to this guy do this and he goes, I'm a man who has authority and people do what I say and he says to Jesus essentially in saying that I know that you're the one with authority, I know that you have authority over the laws of physics, I know that you have authority over healing hurt people and broken people and I deeply love this servant of mine and I'm begging of you just say a word Jesus, that's all you have to do is just say a word, I know that you can speak it into existence, you see what's there, that's a tacit admission of who Jesus truly is, this Gentile, this unclean dog as they would have referred to him as, this unclean dog understood his unworthiness, the authority of Jesus Christ and who he actually was because what did he say, he said all you have to do is speak it, you don't even have to show up, you just say it Jesus, that's all you have to do and Jesus is marveling at this guy's faith, he's like I haven't found this kind of faith in all of Israel and then Jesus speaks a word and that very moment his servant is healed, it's not wonder working, there's something there that would have ticked them off, I tried to figure out a way, it's difficult at times, try to find like a parallel in our day but I think I think it was a good shot at it, maybe you guys agree, maybe you disagree, I think it was a good shot at it when I pointed out that would be like in today's context Jesus going on to Fox News and there's an imam that represents ISIS, a Muslim on Fox News and everybody you know, everybody you know would be right after that Muslim imam from ISIS, hatred, you are the untouchable, you're the unclean, you're the demon and this is Jesus going on Fox News and loving this unclean disaster of a human being, this is Jesus touching somebody that everybody else says he doesn't deserve to be touched, he doesn't deserve to be cared for, that's the enemy and that brothers and sisters is the commentary I believe behind Jesus miracle in Matthew chapter 8 to the unclean Gentile, there's more going on than just wonder working, listen the miracles of Jesus are signposts, the signpost is there to point to a greater reality, I said to you guys last week I'll repeat it just so it's something we all know together as a body, when you guys are driving and I'm driving and you see a sign for school crossing, you know that that sign is not the thing, it's not the thing, it's a sign that's pointing to a greater reality, right?
You're in a place where you need to be careful of our children, you're in a place where you need to understand you can hurt my kids and so there's that sign, it points to a greater reality and here in the miracles of Jesus in Matthew 8, it's not Jesus simply being a wonder worker, the world is full of those, Jesus is doing things here that speak to the greater reality of who he is and what he does, so you're going to see that in the text, in Matthew chapter 8, Matthew does what he's been doing the whole time, he thinks in Isaiah the whole time, Matthew is quoting from various contexts but he's quoting specifically from Isaiah, he's thinking in Isaiah the whole time and if you look, let's read this together, Matthew look, just follow me in the text, I'm reading today from the ESV, I'll usually switch between the HZSB, the ESV and the NASB, but if you look after Jesus heals this unclean Gentile, now we get to the part where Jesus heals Peter's mother-in-law, another person many of us would say is unworthy of our love, not me, I'm saying some, I have a great mother-in-law but I hear stories, okay?
I love mine, here's the thing, I don't know to be honest, in this particular text, I'm not going to spend a lot of time on it because I've really tried hard to figure out, okay, what's going on here exactly, I think the stress of it is on Isaiah, you're going to see that in a second, but what deeper is going on here, I'll take one stab at it, of what I think is the social commentary of the day by Matthew here, okay, so here we go, and when Jesus, verse 14, entered Peter's house, he saw his mother-in-law lying sick with a fever, he touched her hand and the fever left her and she rose and began to serve him, that evening they brought to him many who were oppressed by demons and he cast out the spirits with a word, a word and healed all who were sick, can you imagine the scene, can you imagine the scene, I mean they're legitimately being healed, I mean last week I played just a little clip of a guy who was legitimately healed, I mean you heard it with your own ears, if you weren't here, go listen to the message, it's a legitimate healing, it happens, it's on record, it's real, and think about how I was in tears for two days listening to that, and every time I listen to it, I choke up, when we were in the studio, we played it on an episode of Apology at Radio, Randy was next to me and he was in tears, sorry Randy, I hope that's okay to say that, okay, I asked you afterwards, okay, but here's the thing, that's how we respond to it, and guys, this was stuff happening, it wasn't just a voice box destroyed, this is people who are like sick and dying, people who are lepers, this is people who had no eyes to see, no ears to hear, they're really, really hurt, they're being lowered down to him in some cases from a roof, just because you just got to get Jesus and touch this person, can you imagine the emotion, like one person is healed, maybe it was somebody's kid, maybe it's someone's child who was constantly sick, and they were in just constant despair because of their sick kid, and then now Jesus touches this child, can you imagine that one family's reaction, that one family, if one child healed by Jesus, can you imagine the emotions of that moment, the unbelievable elation, the feelings that have to arise from that one family, but it's not one family, it's one after another, after another, after another, and they're all hanging around Jesus, can you imagine the excitement in the air, you can cut it with a knife, right, legitimate healings, not pretend healings, this isn't Benny Hinn we're talking about, it's not a fake healing, it's not done by some charlatan, it's legitimate healing by Jesus, and now Jesus, he goes to Peter's mother-in-law, and she's sick with a fever, now what's going on, why bring it up, because there's obviously miracles that happen that they didn't bring up, so why this one, I think there's a good possibility, if you look historically, that Jesus probably broke with some Jewish tradition, now note, Jewish tradition, I'm not saying scripture, I'm not saying from the Bible, he probably broke from common Jewish tradition about a man touching another woman, so for example, there is an example of the woman at the well, right, Jesus speaks to the woman at the well, it was ultimately kind of a shocking commentary of the day, Jesus is doing what is countercultural, they did see women in that culture and society, maybe, oh yeah, their image of God, but they're, I mean, kind of, right, not so much, I mean, you have examples in that society of women's testimonies, right, not equaling to one man's testimony, so sort of said in a flippant way, like you needed to have a hundred women's testimony in a court of law to match one guy's testimony, like for example, at the end of the Gospels, when it shows, and help me with this, who were the first people to be eyewitnesses to the resurrection?
Women were, by the way, and this needs to be said, if you don't know it, you need to know this, if you're trying to create a religion, if you're trying to create a fiction in a particular context, like the first century, the people you have as first eyewitnesses to your event that upholds your whole claim, the people that show up, you better not let it be women.
Now, I'm not saying that's okay, but that's a culture they lived in, that's what they, that's how they treated women. Now, Christianity obliterates that, and the Word of God should have obliterated that from the very beginning, but it's stated explicitly in our New Testament, there's neither male nor female, slave nor free, Jew nor Greek, we're all one in Christ Jesus.
Women in Christian cultures are exalted, it's really Christian nations that have given women their rights in every nation we've ever gone, it's because of the work of Jesus, but watch, Jesus goes into Peter's house, his mother-in-law is there, she's sick with a fever, and Jesus does what?
He touches her. So, I think that what could be happening here is Jesus is breaking common Jewish tradition of the day by touching this woman in the way, this woman in the way that he does, and what does she do immediately?
She gets up, she starts serving Jesus. Now, notice that it says immediately after that, that Jesus then had them bring to him many who were oppressed by demons. Pause, I got to do a quick sidetrack here for a moment.
Is it a common occurrence to see demonic possession today? Answer, no. Does it happen quite a lot in the New Testament? Answer, yes. Why is it happening? Why is there this fervor in the first century with demonic possession?
Why so much fervor? And my answer to that is that that particular period of Christ was a period that Satan and the demons knew was the moment of Messiah. There was a lot of deception going on, there was this heightened kind of fervor and demonic activity in the first century because it was exactly the time of the Messiah, and Jesus was coming to accomplish our redemption, and so that's why you see that heavy interaction with demonic possession in that time, but notice that Jesus can speak to demons, and they knew who he was.
They knew Jesus because they had spent time with Jesus. They knew him, and so when they would see Jesus, they would call out to him, we know who you are. Have you come to torment us before the time? They knew their judgment was coming, and Jesus could speak a word to them, and they would flee, and they began to actually say to Jesus what?
Oh yeah, the demons listen to Jesus because he's working with Satan, and that actually became an accusation. Well yeah, the demons are hooked up with Jesus. They're like bedfellows. That's why they listen to Jesus.
They had to have some reason for it. They couldn't get the demons out. There's this heightened activity, demonic activity in the first century because of the coming of the Messiah, and these other people can't get him out, but Jesus is just speaking a word, and they're gone, and not only that, they recognize Jesus when they see him, and Jesus speaks a word, and they're gone, and they say, because you're with the devil, because you're his buddy.
You're hooked up with the devil, and so Jesus says, classic scene by Jesus. Jesus says, if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you. You got to answer that. Oftentimes people will say, well no, the kingdom is not really now.
The kingdom comes later, but Jesus says during his ministry, if I do A, then B. If I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, then B, this logically follows, and the kingdom of God has come upon you. Here's the question, did Jesus cast out demons by the Spirit of God?
Yes, and the kingdom of God had come upon them in the first century. Jesus' rule has already broken into history. He is reigning as King of Kings today with all authority in heaven and on earth today, but he speaks to the demons, and they leave with a word.
A word. But then Matthew says this. Here we go. Matthew says, this was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah. He took our illnesses and bore our diseases. Now here's what I want you to do. Keep a finger or whatever you got to do in Matthew chapter 8, so don't lose your spot, and go to Isaiah chapter 53.
Isaiah 53. Now I'm going to say something as we open this text here, because there's so much here I want to preach on today, but I want to say something about methodology of interpretation. So follow me for a second, okay?
There is an organic unity in the Scriptures from Genesis to Revelation. An organic unity. Sixty-six different books and letters. Dozens and dozens of different authors over a period of almost 2 ,000 years of composition, and a complete organic unity.
Same God, same revelation, right? But here's the thing. The New Testament is God's revelation in Jesus Christ that tells you the fulfillment. So our methodological principle of interpretation should be this.
The New Testament, because it's the fulfillment of the old, ought to actually give to us what the correct interpretation is of particular passages. So when we look at the New Testament, and it gives us an Old Testament verse, we're supposed to look at the divine revelation in the New Testament to say, this is what God meant by that.
That would, by the way, save us so much trouble in terms of improper interpretations. A lot of times people would just grab a verse, proof text it, and just draw an entire doctrine off of it, when in reality you just run to the New Testament, and it's already by divine inspiration and interpretation of that passage.
Here's what it actually means. So here's the deal. Look, Matthew quotes when he sees the scene, when he writes about the scene of Jesus, the Messiah, healing people, casting out demons. He says, this, what you see here in Matthew 8, was to fulfill what Isaiah said.
And now he quotes from Isaiah 53. And so, if you haven't read Isaiah 53, man, don't just read it, memorize it. That passage written about 700 years before Jesus' ministry, His earthly ministry, man, it's all about Jesus.
It's just spectacular. But it's in the text, so let's read it together, okay? We'll go through it together. Isaiah 53, who has believed what he has heard from us, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
This is about the Messiah. For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him.
He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And as one from whom men hide their faces, he was despised, and we esteemed him not. So watch, it's just spectacular. Because listen, if you haven't read Isaiah yet, you got to understand how odd this is.
Are you with me? If you've read Isaiah, you know that this moment in Isaiah 53 is odd. Why is it odd? Because as soon as you open up Isaiah, from starting, say, in Isaiah 2, you don't see that. You see a perspective of Messiah that's conquering, victorious.
I mean, you just, you open the book, and Isaiah says in Isaiah 2, that what God's going to do through the Messiah, he's going to draw all the nations up to the mountain of God. And it says the law is going to go forth from Zion, so all the nations are coming for salvation.
Isaiah chapter 11, Isaiah chapter 9, he has an increase of his government and of peace, which there's no end to. Isaiah 11, he'll be as a signal for the nations. They're all going to come to God through Messiah.
And you're moving through Isaiah, and then lo and behold, Isaiah 53. He's this now, he's now a man men hide their faces from. He's acquainted with grief. He's like a root out of dry ground. He has nothing about him that would draw you to him in the sense that, oh, he looks majestic.
As a matter of fact, you're going to see in just a moment, this would-be disciple comes to Jesus, and he's like, I'm going to follow you. He's a scribe. I'm going to follow you. And Jesus says, foxes have holes, birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.
There's nothing about Jesus that would have drew them to him as, oh, that's the king of the world. The whole world is going to get put right again because of this guy who doesn't have a place to lay his head, like a root out of dry ground.
And what does it say? It says about Jesus that he was despised and we esteemed him not. Here we go. Here's the quote from Matthew. It's in Isaiah. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.
Yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace. And with his wounds, we are healed.
You see, there's the text here in Isaiah 53, the whole story. Matthew actually says that him healing the people in his day was a fulfillment of the promise of God that our sicknesses and diseases would be healed by this Messiah.
So there actually, listen, listen, there actually is truth to the fact that the healing ministry of Jesus is spoken of in Isaiah 53. And it was about physical healing because Matthew says as much. They were healed of their uncleanness and their sicknesses and diseases.
Demons are cast out. And Matthew says that is what Isaiah said was going to happen. But what's the greater thing? Listen, this is the greater thing about Jesus is it says in the text that they thought he was being punished for his own sins.
Now, if you think for a moment of the crucifixion of Jesus, what do you think those who are hostile to Jesus and his message, what do you think that they thought when Jesus was dying on the cross? What did they think was happening to Jesus?
He was being judged by God because he was a what? A what? A sinner, a criminal. And they would have said on that cross, you're being judged by God right now. But what does Isaiah say in this text? We esteemed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted, but he was pierced for our transgressions.
He was crushed for our iniquities. Upon him was a chastisement that brought us peace. And with his wounds, we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way. There's our rebellion.
There's our sin. We've turned to our own way. Every one of us. Tell me you didn't do that today. Tell me you didn't do it today in some way and thought, word or deed that you didn't do in some way. Turn to your own way today as a parent.
You didn't turn to your own way today as a child. You didn't turn to your own way as a husband, as a wife. You didn't turn to your own way somehow as a child of God. That's us. They thought, you're being judged by God.
But in reality, that moment, that crucifixion, that gruesome moment, that bloody and torn and bruised moment was about God reconciling his people to himself because the Father was giving to Jesus what you and I deserve for our sins.
This is why I was saying, listen, remember I told you that the miracles are signposts? They're pointing to a greater reality. And what Matthew does is he draws you in. He goes, look, look at the healing.
Well, that was because Isaiah 53, God said he would heal through this Messiah. But Isaiah 53 says much more than just healing is a part of his ministry. It's about Jesus actually being pierced through for our transgressions.
And watch, watch, watch, watch. This is huge. This is huge. Big. If you grapple with this, you see why there are so many false conversions, so many false professions of faith. Here's the thing, watch.
When people follow Jesus, many large crowds would come to him and he would just turn them away. He would just cut right through them and just turn them right away. Turn around, go away. He would talk them out of following him.
Did you get that? We're so afraid to do that today. We're so afraid. We so want people to know about the gift of eternal life and just how satisfying God is. Just how glorious God is that we take the wrong way.
What do we do? We try to lessen the impact of the message of Jesus. We try to make the message of Jesus more palatable for people. We try to make it something that they can just receive. So for example, you have guys like Rick Warren, famous pastor of Saddleback Church in California, saying on Fox News at Christmastime that you should you should do like a 60-day or 90-day trial with Jesus.
Just try him out for 90 days. Why? Because I so want you to taste what I have tasted and to see what I've seen. I want you to know. And Jesus just talks people out of following him. But who was it that walked away?
It wasn't the people that knew what he was about, right? He says when they've all left him, he says to the ones that are still standing, he says to them, do you also want to leave? And they say, where are we going to go?
Where are we going to go? You're the one with the message of eternal life. They knew what he came for. But what's amazing is this, Isaiah 53, he carries their sicknesses, their diseases. He heals them.
Matthew shows you he heals these sicknesses and diseases. All these people follow Jesus. Why? Because they didn't want eternal life. They wanted, can I say it, their best life now? Can I say that? That they wanted Jesus for the physical blessings.
Hey, you healed my mom. Good job. It's fantastic. I'll follow you. Hey, I'm hungry. This guy fed me and I'm starving and he totally fed me. They go to Jesus because of the little side benefits, the peripheral benefits of Jesus, the healing, the food, the satisfaction of knowing that, hey, this is the Messiah and I'm in the in crowd, like I'm with the Messiah.
I'm part of this larger story. I get to be a part of it. But what's amazing is you read Isaiah 53, what Matthew points to, and Isaiah 53 says so much more than Jesus heals sick people. What's it say? It says that God was pleased to crush him.
I've said many times before, listen, I'll just confess to it. There are a lot of things I do not know. I'm growing a lot as a believer. I'm still learning. I'm still learning. I'm still being sanctified.
And there's so much to me that is incomprehensible about God that is, in a sense, listen, I'm not afraid. I'm not even afraid to say it. It's very mysterious. There's certainty I have because of His word.
What's revealed to us is for us and our children. Amen? But here's the thing. Look, I've said it many times. Isaiah 53, it says the Lord, the Father, Yahweh, was pleased to crush Jesus. And I do not understand that.
I don't comprehend it. I've said many times. I could write it on paper. I could draw you a picture. I could tell you the fact. Here's the fact. The Father, who was in intimate relationship with the Son for all eternity, the Son of His love, in perfect fellowship and unity, He was pleased to crush Jesus for a wretch, a wicked man, a truly wicked man like me.
That's incomprehensible. In Isaiah 53, Isaiah's message there is this one coming, has no deceit in his mouth. He's done nothing wrong. He is sinless. It's a strange way to talk about anybody in the Bible because nobody has talked about in that way.
Not Moses, not David, not Abraham, not Peter, not John, not Paul, not James. Nobody has spoken of in those terms. And yet Isaiah says he's the righteous one. When Isaiah actually got a glimpse of God's holiness in Isaiah 6, when he gets a glimpse of God's holiness, the very first thing he does is he calls down a curse of God upon himself and he notices his unclean, deceitful mouth.
And he points to Jesus in Isaiah 53 and he says he has no deceit in his mouth. And he says what? That this Messiah was going to be killed? That he would see his offspring? He'd prolong his days? He'd be raised again?
But here's the glory of it. Listen. Here's the signpost. Here's what's behind it. The miracle is the signpost. What's behind it is the true story of Mashiach, the Messiah, and what he's really about. Salvation.
It says he's counted among the rebels. He justifies the many as he bears their iniquities. And if you don't know what it's about, that is it. Fundamentally that's the message of Jesus. He comes to save sinners.
Now you may have heard that story so much that you're like, I know I'm a sinner. God's holy. I'm a sinner. Jesus died for sins and so I'm saved for my sins. That's the message of Christianity. Yeah. And you know what?
That message is gonna be a lot more meaningful when you actually stand before the judge of all the earth. That message will be so much more beautiful when you recognize how truly unbelievably broken and foul you are before a holy God.
And the fact that he truly is God and he created you for his glory and you have spurned his glory every day of your life. When you recognize that Jesus coming to save the rebels and being counted as a rebel himself was for God to reconcile you to himself, though you don't deserve it.
And I don't deserve it. This message is much more beautiful. And I think that if we can seep our minds in what Matthew is quoting from Isaiah 53, it will motivate our hearts and minds with a newfound strength and passion that we never had before.
When you truly recognize how holy God is and how unholy you are, that's what causes you to love Jesus more. So here's more though. That's Isaiah 53. But watch where the text goes. So back to 8 again. Matthew 8.
Now watch. Watch this. Watch. Matthew chapter 8. Look at these would-be disciples. Look. It's weird. By the way, I gotta say this. It's weird. God had a plan for it. He's in charge of his scriptures.
And I want to say this. If you look at how Matthew operates in terms of how it's written here, you have this historical narrative, miracles, and then all of a sudden this little sliver right in the middle of the cost of discipleship and the call to come to Jesus.
And then we're back on the miracles again. It's just like a little moment, right? Now let's read it together. Matthew chapter 8, starting at 18. 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 the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.
First disciple, who is he? He's a scribe. He's a scribe. Now I'm going to read to you what David Turner says in his commentary here. I thought it was excellent, better than I could say it. So I'm going to quote to you from David Turner in his commentary, his exegetical commentary on Matthew.
This is Matthew chapter 8. Look what he says. Because of the increasing press of the crowd at Capernaum, Jesus commands the disciples to make a boat trip to the other side of the Sea of Galilee. This command is important for interpreting the ensuing narrative, since it sets the interviews with the would-be disciples in the context of the story of the stilling of the storm, encouraging the reader to view the historical storm as a metaphor of discipleship.
Matthew's narrative itself implies that 818 is a call to discipleship, not just a command to get away from the crowd by taking a boat trip. As a trip to the other side is being contemplated, one of the Jewish legal experts, scribes, he's a legal expert, addresses Jesus as, quote, teacher, and promises to follow him wherever he might go.
Thus far in Matthew, the legal experts have not been presented positively. You got to get that. The legal experts thus far have not been presented in a positive light. Matthew 2, 4, Matthew 5, 20, Matthew 23, 13, 15, 23, 25, 27, 29.
In Matthew, those who call Jesus teacher are not disciples. Get that? Those who call Jesus teacher in Matthew are not disciples. The legal expert evidently makes his promise solely on his own initiative, and Jesus takes a dim view of it.
He starkly alludes to his itinerant form of ministry, which leaves him with not so much as a place to sleep. Even the animals have that. Matthew's readers can only conclude that the legal expert's enthusiasm is superficial, and that he has not counted the cost of discipleship.
Perhaps his enthusiasm is due to witnessing the many miracles Jesus is performing, be that as it may, his promise is hasty and unreliable. Matthew 8, 20 is the first time the title son of man occurs in this gospel.
Here it stands in the place of the pronoun I. This much debated title derived from Daniel 7, 13 through 14 as a whole stresses the exaltation of Jesus. Here it tends to express a very strange situation in which even though Jesus is the exalted miracle-working Messiah, he's also homeless.
So Jesus' most famous or popular like title for himself was son of man. That's from Daniel 7, 13 through 14. The son of man comes up to the ancient of days, and he's given a kingdom, dominion, glory that doesn't pass away.
And now it's used in Matthew to ascribe a legal expert, but yet Jesus doesn't have a house to live in. What I've said is this, listen, many times before I've said to all of us, you want a friend, you want a sympathizer in your weaknesses, you want somebody who relates to you, you can't get better than God in the flesh.
I've said to many people, I've actually said this to homeless people. I've done some ministry with homeless people, and many times this is like some of the hardest ministry, homeless people. Because oftentimes you have to deal with a lot of rough edges, you have to deal with a lot of brokenness, a lot of sorrow, and sometimes they'll ask questions like how can you say that God is a God of love and mercy and goodness when I'm out here homeless in the streets?
How can you say that God cares about me? How could you say that when I'm living outside in 118 degrees in Phoenix? How can you say that God relates to me and understands my woes when here I sit? And my answer is that Jesus understands your broken experience better than you.
Here's God who wasn't a sinner, who was righteous and holy and good, and we're the rebels against him. He plunges himself into our experience. He's hungry, he's homeless, he's lied about, he's betrayed, he's killed.
And Jesus now is what? The homeless Son of Man. The Son of Man? The Son of Man is worshipped in Daniel 7. Do you get that? He is worshipped and has a throne. He goes up to the Ancient of Days and he owns the entire world.
He brings all the nations. It never goes away. That's the Son of Man. And now Jesus, now the Son of Man, is homeless. And this scribe, he does what so many people do. I've seen it so many times. That's why I'm pretty much committed now to talking people out of following Jesus.
He does what so many people do. A superficial understanding of Jesus, you get super excited and you say I'm gonna follow you. I'll do anything. I love Jesus. I love him so much. Praise God. Hallelujah.
I'm with Jesus. I'm a Christian now. I'm a Christian. But Jesus has a message. It was in Matthew 7. It was already there before Matthew chapter 8. Matthew chapter 7, there are people who hear the words of Jesus and there are those who build their houses upon sand and those who dig deep.
They think ahead. They plan ahead. They determine whether or not this is gonna last the storm and the flood. And they dig deep. And Jesus says, fool, wise one. The wise one makes it through. They build their life upon the rock.
The fool doesn't contemplate the future. They never consider that there's a flood that's coming. They never consider that there's stress and persecution that arises. And here you have it. The first example of the fool.
It was in Matthew 7. Here's the first fool that comes walking along. The scribe, so excited about Jesus. A would-be disciple. Jesus, I'll go with you. Anywhere you go, Jesus. I'll do anything for you.
And Jesus says, watch. It's amazing. Watch. The guy so loves his status as a legal expert. He so loves his status as a scribe. He so loves his comfort of the moment. He doesn't want to be disrupted. He doesn't want to lose.
I'll follow Jesus. I'll go with you. You're the Messiah. I want to be with the Messiah. And Jesus knows right what he won't do. He says, ah, these animals, they have a place to lay down. They have like a home.
I don't. I don't have one. I'm the Son of Man, though. I'm that exalted Son of Man. I'm the one who has ownership of the world. Yeah, that's me. Son of Man. But I don't have a place to lay my head. You want to come?
You want to be homeless to follow the Messiah? And what do we know? We hope, man, we hope that that guy came to his senses and God opened his eyes and he followed Jesus. But here's what. Here's what. He would not follow Jesus if it meant struggling.
If it meant he couldn't have a nice house. And you're like, watch, you and I, be honest. I mean, seriously, like don't don't see yourself as the hero of the story. Be honest. Be honest. Are you willing to follow Jesus if it means giving up your house for the glory of his kingdom?
Like, okay, if Jesus told you, listen, I want you to go to a really hard place. He puts a passion on your heart. He tells you, go to this place for my glory and my kingdom. And then you get there and you realize, hey, you know, being here means that my family's gonna suffer.
It means that we're not gonna have the kind of house that we'd like to have. Can I be honest with you? We're looking for a house right now ourselves as a family. Being, planning a church and everything is sort of throws a wrench in your plans to have like long-term stable living.
We're looking for a house and, you know, my house, we went to look at houses. I think it was last weekend. We're just looking around. See, okay, what's out there now? How much does it cost right now? So we're looking around and we went, my wife is like, I'm gonna kill you because I'm going into the neighborhoods, like these amazing houses, and I'm like, look, I'll take it, right?
You know, totally just, I just want to see. I just want to taste, right? But we walked into this house. Wow, let me tell you. My kids know what I'm talking about. We go in and there's like people there looking too and I'm, we're like, whoa, like this place is amazing.
My wife's like, would you please stop embarrassing me? We're just like going around playing with things and running upstairs and we get upstairs and we're like, look at this. It's loft and it's massive.
We could play and there's a bar and there's 15 rooms and then I walk into one room and I'm like, oh, it was a theater in the house. In the house, theater style seating and you turn around. We, every, all my kids and even my other kid who's not my kid, Annie, she comes in and she's, we're sitting down and we were looking at this screen and all we did was sit there.
There's nothing even on the screen. We're just like, can you imagine if you had this in your house, right? And it's a part of you that's like, I want this. I really do. I want a theater for my kids. I do.
I want the loft. I do. I want the massive living room. There was even a special living room in the living room. It's like a living room and another living room, right? And then a dining room and another like waiting room.
That's, this house was massive, but we even like, we're like, that's where we'd put our tree and it would be there all year. It would be the tree room. It would just sit there all year, just screaming how amazing Jesus is.
Right there all year. And we're just like amazing, but here's the deal. Watch. All of us have to confess to something. We want to follow Jesus, but we don't want to lose. We don't want to lose. We don't want to say, I can't give my children a grand house.
We don't want to say, I have to drive around in a clunker. We don't want to say, in following Jesus, that we have to give everything truly up. But what if you are in this story right now? You're the one that comes to Jesus and says, I'll follow you wherever you go.
And then Jesus says, great. You have to downsize. You're gonna have to give that home up because I actually have a mission for you over here for the kingdom. And so I need you to give up your special fancy cars and this because I actually need you to serve in a different way.
You're not gonna be able to function with all that. Now am I saying that God's telling you to do that right now? I'm not saying that. I'm saying, what if? What if you're in the story and Jesus comes right after what you know you don't want to go without?
You see, Jesus actually says, I'm homeless. You sure you want to come? The scribe's like, no thanks. No. You see, here's what's amazing. I said a moment ago, I'm committed to talking people out of following Jesus.
I don't mean by that, and please don't misinterpret it. I don't mean by that that I don't want to plead for the souls of people and drag them away from hell. I don't mean that I don't want to plead with people to come receive Christ and to turn and trust in Him.
I mean by that I want to be real with people like Jesus was and I want to tell them the truth. Don't come. Don't come if it's pretend. Don't come if it's superficial. Don't come if it's just about excitement and it doesn't consider the cost of following Jesus.
Because here's the worst thing, the worst thing ever with Jesus, and you got to get this, is to be almost Christian, almost a follower, to almost have life, to be so close to eternal life but never truly receive it.
Because you know what? The whole time it was superficial and never real. He never counted the cost. What does it mean to follow Jesus? Look, here's the thing with Jesus. He actually would express to people, it's all of me or none of me.
You give up everything or you will have nothing. You actually give up your life to gain it. That's the call to discipleship that Jesus makes. And then the story now changes to the next guy. It's right there in Matthew 8, the next person.
Verse 21, 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. Now I have to confess something. When you first read that, cold reading, it seems sort of callous, right?
Right? I got to bury my dad. Let me, I'll follow you. Let me first bury him. Now there are things obviously that Jesus knew here that we just do not have in the story and the writer of Matthew, through divine inspiration, didn't think it was important to have.
There's the point. Jesus is calling a man who says that he is laying his life down for the purposes of the kingdom. He calls him to let the dead, those who are not part of this kingdom, those who are not, have not received life, who are not coming in this call.
He says you leave them to handle those issues because coming to Christ for salvation and for the purposes of his kingdom means over and over and over again in the Gospels and throughout the New Testament that if you're going to follow Jesus, you need to anticipate loss of relationships.
It's said over and over again by Jesus. Let's look at it together. If you look, let's just stay in Matthew first. We're in Matthew chapter 8. So I want you to move just a step forward to Matthew 10. Now this is in a particular context you've got to grapple with.
The context is the first century, that impending judgment and doom upon that first century audience. Judgment was coming. The temple was going to be destroyed all before they all died and in Matthew 10, Jesus sends the disciples out.
He tells them what to preach. He tells them that they won't finish going through the cities of Israel before he comes back in judgment and he tells them what to expect. It's right here in Matthew chapter 10, verse 32.
Listen, Matthew 10, 32. So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven. But whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven.
Boy, that's not a verse we often hear preached in our modern context. We don't want to hear Jesus say that. We don't want to hear Jesus say anything about judgment for people who profess faith in Jesus.
But he's talking to people, telling them if they deny him, he will deny them. Verse 34. Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father and a daughter against her mother and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law and a person's enemies will be those of his own household.
Whoever, listen, it's restated in Luke. 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. And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.
Whoever finds his life will lose it and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. Do you see what I mean when I say, brothers and sisters, that Jesus talks people out of following him? Listen, this is what you have to love about Jesus is he doesn't lie to you.
He's not a car salesman. He's not offering you what you need, what he thinks that you want to hear so that you'll come along. You can so tell. Brothers and sisters, listen, we often dog, I think rightfully so, they deserve it, false teachers in our day.
We dog them. From a purely spiritual and biblical perspective without any haughtiness, yes, we diss false teachers that preach to people things that they want to hear. You can see it in their eyes. You can see it when, say for example, one famous pastor, preacher is on Larry King Live and Larry King asks him directly a question.
If somebody rejects Jesus Christ, they do not believe in him, will that person go to hell? And this famous pastor says to Larry King with an awesome opportunity to preach Christ in that very moment in salvation only through him, he says on Larry King Live as a pastor, he says, You know, I just don't know.
That's just, I just don't know about that. I just don't know. Right? But here, Jesus actually doesn't tell people what they want to hear. He tells them what they need to hear. And he tells them, if you deny me, I will deny you.
If you love mother, father, child, anybody more than me, you're not worthy of me. If you don't come to die, then do not come. That's the message of the gospel. That's how Jesus preached it. You might be asking a question, well, why stick to this for so long?
I believe with all my heart, brothers and sisters, that the gospel is still mighty to save, that God is still powerful enough to raise the dead. I believe that the problem is in our preaching. It's in how we proclaim the gospel.
We don't tell it like Jesus does. We have examples of evangelism today where we say things to people like, do you want to go to heaven one day? And they say, yes. Okay, great. Pray this prayer with me.
Now, now write it in the back of your Bible that on this day in history, you were saved. See ya. We tell people, listen, if you would just give Jesus a chance, if you just give him a chance, if you would just let this Jesus into your little heart, you'll be saved.
We tell people these crazy things, like if you merely acquiesce to these truths, then you're saved. But in reality, the way that Jesus preached it, he preached it as though faith was a repentant faith away from sin toward God.
And he preached it in a way that when you come to him, you're coming to gain life and to leave yourself, to leave your old life. He preached it in such a way that he told people, don't come, don't come to me if you're not really coming to me.
You see, he understood and they understood, those who stuck around with Jesus, that there was a fundamental difference between where they were and where they are. That I used to be this and now I'm this.
I used to be going one direction in life and now I'm following the Messiah. My life used to be identified a particular way, by a particular thing, as a particular person. And now that I follow Jesus, my entire life is wrapped up in and absorbed into this one.
And they understood that eternal life meant that you gain everything, but you also lose everything. Gain everything meaningful and true and good, and lose everything that is ultimately idolatrous and meaningless and temporary.
They understood that and they stuck around for it. And so Jesus preaches a gospel that sounds so much different than ours today. And I have to say this, I believe, I don't know. When I was young, I heard for the first time Billy Graham say that I could not save myself, that Jesus had paid it all, and that if I would put my trust in Him, I would go to heaven one day, and I don't know if my conversion was real.
I learned so much about Jesus. I went to Bible College. I had a profession of faith in Jesus, and I was also sleeping with my girlfriends, and I was also getting drunk, and I was also doing really whatever else I wanted.
Oh, and I really loved Jesus, too. And there was, God just handed me over to my sins. He just handed me over to it. Go ahead, have it. You can have what you wish. And so I spent a year in utter just depravity.
I was a despicable excuse for a man, a disgraceful excuse for a father and a husband, and I spent a year in a depraved condition, living from my own belly, living from my own lusts, my own satisfactions.
And I would, if you were in one of those rooms at any after-party I ever went to while I was getting high, if you were in any one of those rooms and you would have dissed the Christian message, I would have debated you on the spot.
I would have argued for the Bible while I was rolling on ecstasy. I would argue for Jesus while I was drunk, and I think I actually did a number of times. It's kind of fuzzy, hard to remember. However, it was at the end of that year when God smashed my life and exposed my sin.
Do you know where I went? I went to these passages. And this, watch, this is where God wrecked my life. When he showed me my hypocrisy, when he showed me my love for my own sin, when he showed me that, yes, I had, quote, affections for the Bible and Jesus, but those affections were always subservient to my greater affections for my own sin and lusts.
And when I saw Jesus calling people to give everything up to follow him, when I saw Jesus calling people to come to die to follow him, when I saw Jesus calling people to come under his lordship completely, when I saw that, I asked myself, did that ever happen to me?
Did I ever really lose myself to come to Jesus? Did I ever really? I asked myself, I remember it, like it was just consuming me. Did I ever have the same experience as the people who came to Jesus as would-be disciples and were called to give everything up to come and follow him?
Did I ever have that experience? Or was I the superficial believer who said, I'll give up everything to follow you, Jesus? Was I the superficial believer? And so I remember I went into my closet. I went in my closet and I got on my knees before God.
I'll never forget it. It was Cinco de Mayo. I'll never forget it. It was the 5th of May. I went into my closet. I got on my knees and there was no magic prayer. All it was was grief over my own sin and all I wanted was Jesus in that moment.
That's the thing, watch. All I wanted in all of life more than anything was just him. I just wanted him. And I remember I'm pleading with God. I said to God something like, God, you're the boss. You get to tell me what to do.
You tell me what to do. You rule my life. You're the boss. That's what I said to him. I said, God, I'm wicked. I said, I am not good. I will never be good enough. You save me. Please just save me. And I said, just take over my life and tell me what to do.
I'll do anything you say. Just take me over and rule my life. And that's when my life changed. Was I perfect? No. Am I perfect? No. But I can tell you right now, I know in my heart of hearts what's happened inside of me.
And it's fundamentally different. And here's the message. Here's these superficial followers of Jesus that are like, I want Jesus. I want him. There's a lot of benefits to Jesus. There's all kinds of benefits.
I'm with the in crowd. I can hang around Messiah. He feeds me. He heals my diseases. You know, he's pretty cool safety net. Having Jesus is a great safety net for me. Very comfortable with it. Brings me kind of some peace.
Jesus wrecks you by shaking you up. He says, you won't follow me because I'm homeless. And you won't follow me because there's somebody else who is more important. You might think, Jesus, he's just trying to take care of his dad.
Honor your father and your mother, Jesus. You said obey the law. And Jesus says, yes, obey the law of God. But your commitment to your family is secondary to the commitments to me and my kingdom. One comes before the other.
I remember I had a friend of mine. I won't say his name. He was a good friend of mine. And he wasn't a believer. And I remember there was a particular point where the conversation finally opened up. We were so close.
It was when I owned my karate school many, many years ago. We were really close. He was a karate school owner. We hung out every night. We sparred with each other. Everyone left the studio. We turned the techno on super loud.
And we drink Red Bull and we just fight for an hour. Right? We just were really close. And I started preaching the gospel to him. And it got to a point where I was preaching to him every day. And he was asking hard questions.
I was giving, I think, decent answers. And it looked like the scales were coming off of his eyes. And I remember that he was like, I'm coming with you to church, man. I think I'm starting to believe in Jesus.
I'm like, good, you need to repent and trust in Christ. But yeah, come to church with me. And he was supposed to come to church with me one Sunday. And then he didn't show up. And when we talked again, like on Monday, I was like, oh, I thought you were coming to church.
He said, yeah, the thing is my wife, she just, when I told her about church and maybe believing in Jesus, she was like, we're not doing that. And I just, I just, I got to go with my wife on this. I got to go with my wife on this.
That. That's a superficial following of Jesus. That's the fake faith. And watch, here's the crazy thing. Watch this. Sometimes, sometimes that fake faith isn't even seen until years later. Sometimes it's immediate.
It's like Sunday to Monday. Sometimes it's a superficial fake faith that lasts you through your childhood into your adult years. And then one day, one day, God tests that faith. He knows that it's not real in the first place.
And then he exposes it. And you see that person fall into apostasy. You see that person abandon their faith, which John says, what? They went out from us in order to show what? They were never really of us.
Brothers and sisters, anybody watching this, listen, I'm not coming to you today as someone high and mighty saying that I have it all together in terms of the world's greatest faith. I am not. I'm telling you that this is a warning in this passage.
It's a warning against our superficial calls to Christ that we preach today. It's a warning against your superficial faith if you have never counted the cost to follow Jesus. It's a warning to consider the cost in coming to Christ.
Do you know him? My friends, my brothers and sisters, can I ask you this question, please? Listen, if you checked out at any point during this message, can you come back for just a moment? And I'm gonna plead, God, please give grace in this moment, please.
Can I ask you this question? And would you please answer it, honestly, before God? Please, not for my sake. Have you ever, have you ever had a moment with God where you have truly done some self-examination?
Have you ever had a moment with God where you actually asked him, God, is my faith in you true? Have you ever had a moment where you've ever actually talked to God and said, God, test me. Lord, search me.
God, look at my heart and my mind. God, please expose. If there's any wrong way in me, if my faith is not true, God, would you please show me? Have you ever had that moment with God where you've ever asked him?
Have you ever done what Paul says to do where he says to examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith? I'm not telling you. Listen, please hear me. I am not telling you to live your life as a spiritual schizophrenic, where one day you say, God loves me.
No, he doesn't. God loves me. No, he doesn't. God doesn't want you to live that way. He wants you to know you have eternal life, but he does not want you to have a superficial faith that is fake, not even true.
Have you ever asked yourself the question, did I dig deep? Are you willing to give up your life, all that you love and hold dear? Are you willing to give it up for Christ to gain him? Because do you understand?
Listen, listen, Piper has a book. He has a book, and I think it's one of the greatest titles ever. God is the gospel. Do you consider that for a second? God is the good news. So let's flesh it out. Ready?
The good news is that, ready? You get him. Is that meaningful to you? Like when you think about heaven, heaven, can you think about it in this way? What if Jesus wasn't there? Here's the thing. The true believer says this, if Jesus isn't there, I don't want to go.
Do you see? Because he is the gospel. He is the satisfying part of this whole story. It's not the benefits of being a Christian, being in the in crowd, getting stuff from God. Here's the point of the gospel.
You and I get him. You have Jesus. And here's the thing. If you understand the gospel, you know that's enough that you have him. And that's the summary of it. You see, here's the modern gospel appeal is try Jesus.
It'll cost you nothing. The result of that is false conversions. You see, here's the deal. When you come to Jesus, you have to be willing to give up your sin, your stuff, your family ties, your comforts.
And here's the point. Ready? If you are not willing to give all that up to follow Jesus naked as you are, if you're not willing to give it all up, here's why Jesus doesn't accept you. Because what you're showing and not willing to give all that up is that those are your God.
The stuff, the sin, the comfort, the self, the family, all that. What you show is this. If you're not willing to give it up, then that means that there is a God before God for you. And what God calls you to is all of you for him.
What God calls you to is life. And as long as you're worshiping a false God and serving it, you'll never serve God. What does Jesus say? You cannot serve what? Two masters. Watch. Here's the deal. Watch.
You say, why, Jesus? Why would you destroy a family? People might word it like that. Why would you destroy a family? Why? Here's why. Ready? If it's a fiction, if it's a false faith, when there's a crossroads in your life and there's one of two directions you can go, God's calling you this way, your family's calling you another.
Ready? Here's the point. When you get to that crossroads, if your faith is a fiction, then when you get to that crossroads, guess where you'll go? Not with Jesus. You'll go there. So that's why Jesus calls you, all of you, to come to him now.
Where are you at? One of my greatest fears, and this is the last thing I'll say. One of my greatest fears for Christian kids. See, this message is for adults, yes. But I'll tell you what. This is one of my greatest fears for children raised in Christian homes.
Though you are raised in homes under the grace of God and love of God, with parents who are pointing you to Jesus, as fallible as your parents are, as sinful as your parents are, as much as they're inconsistent, listen, you've been under the grace of God because you've been hearing about Jesus your whole life.
And my greatest fear for children raised in Christian homes is that you will have the kind of superficial faith that these would-be disciples had. I'll follow you anywhere, Jesus. I love Jesus. It's the perfect, it's the perfect example.
Youth camp. Mountaintop experience. I'm a youth camp speaker. I've done it, like, for so long, done so many youth camps, and I love to do it. But you know what I know every time I walk away? Every time I walk away, I know that there are so many fictions.
There are so many pseudo-faiths taking place right in front of me. So many examples of the superficial would-be followers. I'll do anything with you, Jesus. Why? Because there was this moment where there was this music and fog and there were lights, and there was this experience with my friends where there was this beautiful moment where we were just loving God and experiencing something together.
And so they come down from the mountain, and then we know that a week or two later, all of a sudden now, that is exposed. You see it exposed. There's a moment of emotion. There was a moment of kind of this awesome feeling, and then it goes away.
So Jesus, He isn't so spectacular anymore. You see so many people that have a profession of faith because of some youth camp experience where they experience some emotional high, but they never counted the cost.
When I go to youth camps and I talk to teenagers, I tell them, I want to talk you out of following Jesus. I'm telling you, don't come to the front. Don't profess to believe in Jesus because you're in this moment with your friends.
You see them doing it, and so you're going to do it too. Don't do that. Jesus is talking to you right now. Do you know Him? Are you giving up all to gain everything in Jesus? And my greatest fear for kids raised in Christian homes is that you have a superficial faith where you think you know Jesus and you don't.
Have you ever even asked? If you're in here right now and you're a teenager or you're a child and you're raised in a Christian home, and I'm not telling you to be afraid. I'm not calling you to fear your relationship with Jesus, but I am calling you to this.
Have you ever even asked Him, do I really trust in you? Has it ever crossed your lips to God? God searched my life, my heart, my faith. Is it true? Do I really trust you? I think about that a lot. I do.
I think about it often for Christian kids. So here's the final thing. Would you pray about this and talk to God about it? Please. Pray and talk to God and ask Him, do I proclaim the gospel like you do?
Do I tell people your story the way that you do? Because brothers and sisters, you know my heart. Hashtag datpostmill. Jesus wins the world. How does He do it? Through the proclamation of His gospel. Is the gospel mighty?
Is it mighty enough to turn empires on their heads? It happened in the first century. Is it mighty enough to turn our empire on its head in this generation? Absolutely. Was it as wicked then as it is now in the United States of America?
Yes. Does that mean our country is done for? No. How will it be solved? The gospel. But watch, it doesn't get solved with the gospel of try Jesus. It gets solved with the gospel proclamation of come to die and receive life.
Give up all to get everything in Jesus. Repent and believe the gospel. Tell somebody. You know Jesus' message is life and it's a free gift and it's all Him. You can never earn that. You can never get it.
But let's talk about talking you out of coming to Jesus. Have you counted the cost of what it means to follow Jesus? And when someone says to you, oh, I've counted it and all I want is Jesus, then you know.
Then you know God is doing something. Brothers and sisters, let's tell the gospel the way that Jesus did. Amen. Let's pray. Father, please bless. Please bless this message. God, I know my own shortcomings.
God, I know my own inabilities. And I plead God for your spirit. Lord, take what was true in this message, Lord, and ignite it. Lord, send it out. Lord, cause it to flourish in whatever it touches. Please bless this in Jesus' name.
Amen.