WWUTT 1982 Jesus Heals Peter’s Mother-In-Law (Matthew 8:14-22)

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Jesus healed Peter's mother -in -law, and she got up and served him. And you know, we've been healed of our sins, and how should we demonstrate that in our lives?

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But by serving Christ, when we understand the text. This is

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When We Understand The Text, a daily Bible study in the Word of Christ, that men and women of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

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Tell your friends about our ministry at www .utt .com. Here's your teacher,

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Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky. In our study of the Gospel of Matthew, we're looking at two more miracles of Jesus today.

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In Matthew chapter 8, verses 14 to 22, I'm reading from the Legacy Standard Bible.

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Hear the word of the Lord. When Jesus came into Peter's home, he saw his mother -in -law lying sick in bed with a fever.

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And he touched her hand, and the fever left her, and she got up and began waiting on him.

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Now when evening came, they brought to him many who were demon -possessed, and he cast out the spirits with a word, and healed all who were ill, in order to fulfill what was spoken through Isaiah the prophet, saying,

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He himself took our infirmities and carried away our diseases. Now when

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Jesus saw a crowd around him, he gave orders to depart to the other side of the sea. Then a scribe came and said to him,

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Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go. And Jesus said to him, The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the

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Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head. And another of the disciples said to him, Lord, permit me first to go and bury my father.

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But Jesus said to him, Follow me, and allow the dead to bury their own dead.

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So coming back to this first miracle that we read here, it's actually the third miracle in the sequence.

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So if you'll remember yesterday, we looked at Jesus cleansing a leper in verses 1 -4, the centurion's faith, which led to the healing of his servant in verses 5 -13, and then we have this third miracle of healing with Jesus healing

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Peter's mother -in -law in verses 14 -17. Now we're reading here about Christ's authority, and specifically his authority over even the human body, over sickness and disease, over demon possession, as we'll see here in verses 16 -17.

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At the end of the Sermon on the Mount, the people were astonished at his teaching for as it says in Matthew 7 -29, he was teaching them as one having authority and not as their scribes.

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Yesterday we read about the centurion's faith and how he said, I am a man of authority,

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I have people under me, there are people in authority over me. They say, do this and I do it.

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I tell my servants, do this and they do it. So if you just say a word, he said to Jesus, then

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I know my servant will be healed. And Jesus said, nowhere in Israel have I seen faith like this.

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The centurion believing that Jesus had such authority, he could just speak a word and his servant would be healed.

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We see that word authority more times here in this section of Matthew than anywhere else in the

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Gospels, in fact. So this is Matthew 7 -29 through chapter 10 verse 1, and it's something like four or five times here, that word authority comes up.

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So in Matthew 10 -1 is where Jesus will send out his disciples.

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And it says there in that verse, and summoning his 12 disciples, Jesus gave them authority over unclean spirits to cast them out and heal every kind of disease and every kind of sickness.

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So the same authority that Jesus is demonstrating is having here in these two chapters, 8 -9, he gives that authority to his disciples to be able to go and do the same.

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So we're reading about authority here, Christ's authority over disease to even heal those who are sick.

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And we had one miracle yesterday with Jesus cleansing a leper. And as I mentioned to you, that particular miracle showed that it's

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God's willingness before it's about our faith. So all praise be to God. We have faith and believe because God has been willing to do as he has promised to do.

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So that was in the healing of the leper. But then that's not to say that faith is unimportant because you have the centurion's faith that Jesus praises in verses 5 -13.

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And then here, this third miracle that we read about in verses 14 -17 is not dependent upon faith either.

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It's just Jesus' willingness to want to heal. So look at verse 14 again as we come to Jesus healing

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Peter's mother -in -law. When Jesus came into Peter's home, he saw his mother -in -law lying sick in bed with a fever.

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Let's stop there for a moment. So this is Peter's mother -in -law. What does that mean then?

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Peter was married. He had a wife, probably even had kids, though that's not spoken to us plainly in either the

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Gospels or in the Epistles. Though it does say when Paul is talking to the

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Corinthians about how a worker is worthy of his wages, he says that, does

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Cephas not have the right to bring along a wife? Now Cephas was another name for Peter. So he's talking about how

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Peter has the right to bring along his wife with him in the ministry that he does. And when he does that, you should take care of him.

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You should be able to provide for Peter and the family that he comes with because he has committed his life to the service of the

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Lord. He can't go out and get a job. He is laboring for the harvest as Jesus has commissioned the disciples to go out and do.

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So because this is the work that Peter is doing, the Corinthians need to be willing to support that. Now Paul said that he didn't want to be a burden to any of them.

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He took care of himself. He had a job that he did to cover his own expenses and things like that.

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So he didn't become a burden to anybody. But lest anyone say, hey, Paul didn't make us pay for him, so why do we got to pay for you?

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He makes this argument on behalf of those disciples, even those apostles that were married.

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The understanding was, in fact, that all of the apostles were married with the exception of John. And I don't have anything in Scripture to point to regarding that other than that's just kind of tradition or church history.

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The belief that all of the apostles were married except John, Paul was at even at one point he was married.

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He wasn't married at the time that we read the epistles that he wrote. But the belief is that he was married prior and was made a widower.

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But there was not a Greek word for widower. That's a word that we use in English. You only referred to women as widows.

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You didn't call men that because men were still considered to be able bodied and able to take care of themselves.

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Women, on the other hand, if their husband had died, then they were to go into a widow's registry.

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Or, as Paul said to Timothy, if she's young, then let her get married because otherwise she's going to subject herself to the temptations of a young woman.

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And it would be better for her to busy herself with getting married and having children and fulfilling her duties that way.

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Now, if you want to hear my argument regarding Paul having formerly been married, then you have to go back to the episode that I did on that in 1

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Corinthians 7. And I don't remember where that is, somewhere in the early 1500s in the numbered episodes.

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But that's where you'll find the argument. I'm not going to make that again here. Nonetheless, the point being that most of the apostles were married.

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And we see here by this reference to Peter's mother -in -law that he was indeed married.

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This means that Peter could not have been the first pope under the requirements that the

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Catholic Church puts on the pope, that he can't have been married, nor can he be married.

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Peter was married. And so the Catholic Church has made up these rules about, you know, like the pope and the priest can't be married and all this other kind of thing.

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Well, 1 Timothy chapter 4, rather, tells us that those who forbid marriage are teaching the doctrines of demons.

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There's nothing in Scripture anywhere that forbids marriage from somebody.

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So Peter had a wife. And in fact, we see here that Jesus even stayed in Peter's house.

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So coming back again to this miracle, I'm on a tangent right now making the argument for Peter having been married.

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And again, he may have also had kids. We don't read about those kids. And most likely because, you know, we don't want there to be this lineage that we can trace and then think those people are more holy than others.

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I think that's the reason why the Holy Spirit would have omitted that from the Scriptures. But I do believe

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Peter was not only married, he even had a family. He had children of his own. It's only logical, after all.

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I mean, if the apostles were married, why would we assume that none of them had kids? So here, Jesus comes into Peter's home.

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His mother -in -law is sick, lying in bed with a fever. Jesus just touches her hand, and the fever left her, and she got up and began waiting on it.

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Just like with the healing of the leper, there's no mention of her having faith, there's no mention of Peter having faith that Jesus can do this.

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He just does it because he is willing. So this healing section is bookended by Jesus' healing and it not even being dependent upon a person's faith.

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When you read about the man by the pool of Bethesda being healed, the lame man that is healed in John 5, he likewise, he didn't even know who

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Jesus was. Jesus just asks him, do you want to be healed? And the man says, well, there's nobody to carry me down there to the water to put me in the water when it's stirred up, so how can

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I be healed? And Jesus just tells him to get up and pick up his mat and walk, and he does, and he's healed.

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That man had no idea who Jesus was. He had no faith in him to be able to heal him. Jesus just heals him.

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And so our being healed of anything, of our sin, our transgressions, our being healed is simply because God is willing to heal us.

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We believe because God acted first. God doesn't save us because we believe first, as though our faith somehow binds

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God to do something for us. God does it as an act of his own mercy and will.

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As God said to Moses, and Paul repeats in Romans 9, I will have mercy on whom

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I have mercy and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion. And here,

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Jesus has compassion on Peter's mother -in -law. And how does she respond?

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After he heals her, she gets up and begins waiting on him. Now, this even goes to like what we read in Ephesians 2, 8 through 10.

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For it is by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not a result of works so that no one may boast.

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For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which

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God prepared for us beforehand that we should walk in them. So, it is by grace we are saved through faith and not of ourselves, not of works, yet we are

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God's workmanship, created for good works. But the works that we do are not what save us.

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The works are the outflow of the fact that we've been saved by grace through faith.

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So here, what Peter's mother -in -law does, right after she is healed, she gets up and begins waiting on him.

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And that is that demonstration of exactly that equation there in Ephesians 2, 8 through 10.

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She has been healed by grace, and even through faith, she does works as a result of what

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God did for her by an act of his grace. So that's what we see her doing, and that's the way it's supposed to be for every believer.

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It is by God's grace that we are saved, and so we demonstrate the salvation, the transformation that has happened in our lives by doing good works that God has instructed us to do, even prepared for us beforehand that we should walk in them.

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And we find out what those good works are, and what walking in them looks like when we read the scriptures, when we do the one -anothers, right?

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The love one another, help one another, wait on one another, care for each other. All of those instructions there in the scriptures, especially in the

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New Testament, teach us how we are to live in service to God our King, means even taking care of his own body.

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And so Peter's mother -in -law does that, quite literally, and we are to do that spiritually as we continue in this

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Christian faith. So now verses 16 to 17, still in that same miracle, but this is wrapping up the section that began in verse 1.

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So this portion of chapter 8, which goes from verse 1 to verse 17, ends like this.

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Now, when evening came, they brought to Jesus many who were demon -possessed, and he cast out the spirits with a word and healed all who were ill, and this, once again, a demonstration of his authority.

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He has authority even over the evil spirits. Verse 17 says, in order to fulfill what was spoken through Isaiah the prophet, saying, he himself took our infirmities and carried away our diseases.

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And so that right there, that Old Testament reference from Isaiah, closes out that section of three miracles, healing the leper, healing the centurion servant, healing

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Peter's mother -in -law, and the things that we see from those respective miracles and how they apply.

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So he took away our infirmities and carried away our diseases. And this is to show

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Jesus' power, his ability to heal, his power over sickness and even demon possession, is to show that he even has the power to forgive sins.

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That's a point that's going to get made a little bit later on in Matthew's Gospel. But these things that are spoken about in Isaiah are talking about how

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Jesus will do these things literally so that we will know even the power he has spiritually to forgive sins and make us to walk in his righteousness.

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Next part here, verses 18 to 22, is where we say this is a different section.

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So this next section goes from 18 to the end of the chapter, verse 34, we'll have the cost of discipleship of following Jesus in 18 to 22.

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Then we're going to see Jesus' authority even over creation itself, verses 23 to 27.

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And then Jesus saving men from demons, we'll see more healing from demon possession, which will come in 28 to 34.

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So that's this next half of Matthew chapter 8. We're just going to look at the first portion of it today, and then the next two parts will be tomorrow, verses 23 to 34, and we'll finish up the chapter.

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So the cost of following Jesus, verses 18 to 22, now when Jesus saw a crowd around him, he gave orders to depart to the other side of the sea.

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So when Jesus was healing those who were demon -possessed, he was still in Peter's home at that time.

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So he heals his mother -in -law, Jesus stays there in Peter's home, people are bringing their sick and their possessed to him, and he's healing them.

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But then when a big crowd forms, I mean, that's a lot of chaos. You don't want to afflict

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Peter's mother -in -law with that, or the neighboring homes nearby.

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It's just a lot of attention that is being drawn, and it would be clogging up the street.

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It's just not conducive to be able to do work and all the other things that people have to do in that area.

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So Jesus says, let's go to the other side of the sea. They're still in Capernaum, by the way, that was back in verse 5.

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So they're going to the other side of the Sea of Galilee. Jesus saw a crowd around him, he orders to depart to the other side of the sea, and then a scribe came to him.

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Now you've seen references in the Gospels to the scribes and the Pharisees. The scribes worked in the synagogues.

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They were those who kept the scrolls, they made copies of the scrolls, they made written records of judgments that were issued in the synagogue.

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So you have the Sanhedrin, which would have been made up of members of the

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Sadducees and the Pharisees, and they would issue judgments and rulings, and scribes would be among those that would help to write down the rulings that were made and things of that nature.

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So a scribe, who is a teacher, he's a teacher of the law. He comes to Jesus and calls him teacher.

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So recognizing Jesus' authority, we again have that reference to authority here. Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.

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But Jesus knows this man's heart, that he doesn't really understand what he is confessing to.

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Hence why Jesus says, the foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the

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Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head. Now note that this comes right after the story of Jesus healing

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Peter's mother -in -law. Where would Jesus have been staying at that time? He would have stayed in Peter's house.

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So there are different Peters, there are different homes that Jesus will stay in, but he doesn't have a home of his own.

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We know also Jesus frequently stayed in Bethany with Lazarus and Mary and Martha.

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They were friends of his. And so Jesus says to this scribe, recognizing his heart and knowing this guy doesn't really know what it is that he's committing himself to, he says, the foxes have holes, the birds of the air have nests, but the

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Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head. Like we're not staying in the lap of luxury here.

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We're basically homeless as we travel around sharing the gospel. Are you ready for that? Are you prepared for that?

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And the way that this is given to us here in Matthew 8 leads us to understand that the man wasn't ready for this.

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And so then in verse 21, another of the disciples said to him, Lord, permit me first to go and bury my father.

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And Jesus said to him, follow me and allow the dead to bury their own dead.

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Now once again, Jesus is not saying here that you shouldn't care for your ailing parents. Jesus cared for Peter's ailing mother -in -law.

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But rather what Jesus is communicating is you have to be willing to give up anything.

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And he's challenging this man's heart who wasn't really ready to go and follow

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Jesus. He had other affairs that he needed to put in place, and who knows how long it was going to be until this man's father died.

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Are you really ready to drop everything that you're doing right now to follow me and do the ministry that is ahead of us?

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And so he challenges this man's heart who's not really ready for it by saying, follow me and allow the dead to bury their own dead.

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But if the man was really genuine about following Jesus, then he would leave behind the dead works to pursue those things that bring life.

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That may be the reason why Matthew singles out this story and even says that this man wants to go bury his dead father.

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Well, this man was still committed to things that really were dead and dying instead of having a heart that was for those things that bring life.

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And Jesus, knowing his heart, challenges him by saying, allow the dead to bury their own dead.

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Now, I've used that response literally before. There was a man and wife in my church.

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This was years ago. They were in a really bad place in their marriage. In fact, he had just committed adultery and got caught and she was choosing to forgive him, even though there were things that she did in their marriage also that she needed to work on.

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Yet the two of them were deciding that they needed to be reconciled. And it was right in the days when he was going to be coming back home to start to work on things with his wife and kids.

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One of his extended family members called him up and said one of his relatives was dying. And I had to sit him down and tell him, do not leave your marriage in this place to go and be with your dying relative.

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You've got to let the dead bury the dead and you need to reconcile with your wife and kids.

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That's what's most important right now. And he listened to me and he did it. And in that, you know, in those days when he went home and they started working on reconciliation, his relative died.

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And I had to talk to him again and say, do not blame your wife for that. She did not prevent you from going and seeing your relative.

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Don't blame your kids for that. This was you who put yourself in this position by committing adultery and then having to be in a place where you needed to reconcile with your wife and kids.

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And he said that he understood. But that was one of those situations where I use that phrase.

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Literally, I said, you've got to let the dead bury the dead and you need to focus on these things in your life right here.

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Now, some have taken this to mean let the dead bury the dead, that like the guy's father and his family were unbelievers, they were dead.

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So let the dead bury the dead. We don't have any indication that that's what Jesus meant. Again, this was just a challenge on this guy's heart to see if he was really genuine about following and serving

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Christ. And that's something that we need to consider as well. We have to count the cost. Are we genuinely from the heart following our

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Lord? Is it just something you do because it was your upbringing? It's convenient for you.

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Like for me as a pastor, it's easy for me to want to continue to go through the motions and maintain this thing because it's my livelihood.

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You know, people pay me for this. What other job am I going to go do? And so I need to test my heart to see that I'm genuinely in this, not for myself, but for Christ.

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And so that is that is the test that is before all of us, that we genuinely from the heart love the

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Lord and desire to serve him. And may our works, our actions, these things that we do as a result, as a demonstration of the faith that we have, that we've been saved by the grace of God.

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May these works be the genuine demonstration of the genuine transformation that's happened by Christ.

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Heavenly Father, we thank you for what we've read here. And may we continue to put these things into practice that we have faith and we do what we say that we believe in.

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We consider the cost of what you call for your disciples to do. And we do it putting off the world, putting on Christ and sharing the gospel with others.

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Lead us in righteousness. It's in Jesus name that we pray. Amen. For more about our ministry, visit us online at www .utt