The Cost of Following Jesus

What's up, everybody?

Welcome to One Church.

Want to say uh hello to everybody uh joining here in person, everybody watching online, uh everybody in overflow, so glad to have you here.

And uh I'll go ahead and pray and we'll jump into God's word today, all right?

Lord, we come to you in Jesus' name, and God, we thank you for the opportunity to uh to be in your house.

Lord, we recognize that this is the day that the Lord has made, and we will rejoice and be glad in it.

Uh, Lord, in these moments, uh, you have a way of showing up and speaking to us very specifically and personally.

And so, God, I pray you would do that.

I pray that you would help us to see your word uh for what it's meant to say to us today.

Lord, help me today, anoint me by your spirit to be able to communicate uh, Lord, with accuracy and also uh, Lord, with your heart, uh so that this word comes through uh at times in a convicting way, but uh also always uh with encouragement, never with condemnation, for there's therefore no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.

And so today we love you and praise you in Jesus' name.

Everybody said amen.

Amen.

Uh we're in a series of messages right now.

We're calling There's More to the Story.

And uh we've probably all had that experience.

You open up the Bible and you're reading it and you come across a verse, you're not quite sure what to make of it.

You know, you're like, does that say what I think it says?

You know, how am I supposed to interpret it?

Uh we've said this before, but it bears repeating that when you read the Bible, it's a cross-cultural experience.

So just like if you got on an airplane and you flew to another country, uh, some of the people in other countries drive on the other side of the road, right?

You wouldn't go there and try to make them drive on the side of the road that you uh grew up driving on.

You would embrace uh their culture, you would understand where they're coming from.

In fact, if you saw something that looked weird to you, you'd probably become curious to find out why they are doing what they do, and you'd find that within their culture, it makes sense.

And so, in the same way, when we open up the Bible, we realize that um this wasn't written by a bunch of Americans, okay?

This was written by people in different times, lived in different eras.

Uh they write in different uh literary genres that uh when we the more we understand that, the more that we can get the point that's being made about God, about decisions that we need to make and be able to apply it better.

Uh we say around here, good interpretation leads to good application.

And bad interpretation, you get it, leads to bad application.

And so uh we're gonna look at a few stories in the Bible or areas that when we read them, uh that usually brings up some questions, and we're going to look at more to the story.

When you look at more to the story, it makes a lot of sense.

All right.

We're gonna uh be in Matthew chapter 8 today.

Matthew 8 · chapter mention

Uh we're gonna start reading verse 18.

Matthew 8, 18.

It says, When Jesus saw the crowd around him, he gave orders to cross to the other side of the lake.

Then a teacher of the law came to him and said, Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.

Jesus replied, Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.

Another disciple said to him, Lord, first let me go and bury my father.

But Jesus told him, Follow me and let the dead bury their own dead.

Um what's going on here?

Well, let's let's uh let's take a moment to sort of get our bearings in Matthew 8.

Uh, if you've been around one church this year, you know we've been in the book of Matthew a lot.

Uh the better part of this year, we've been looking in Matthew, and so um some of you right away can sort of place the context, but I don't want to jump into the middle of the conversation.

I'll give a little refresher.

Uh in Matthew chapter 4, Jesus begins to call disciples.

Matthew 4 · chapter mention

And he says, Hey, come follow me.

Uh they put down their nets, they put down their careers, uh, they walked away from their homes and they followed Jesus.

They had a sense that there was something divine, that there was something about him that was worth following, but they didn't exactly know what they were in for.

In Matthew 5 through 7, we have the Sermon on the Mount.

It's three chapters of Jesus' teaching, and you have to read it deeply.

Uh see it beyond face value.

It has a lot, a lot of depth to it.

And Jesus ultimately is saying, I came to fulfill the law.

He says that during uh the Sermon on the Mount.

He said, I didn't come to abolish it, I came to show you what God meant the whole time.

And so he takes the conversation much deeper than they had ever taken it.

And then Matthew writes chapters eight and nine like a screenplay.

So he like makes chapters five through seven.

It's like uh everybody is this huge group of people are listening to Jesus teach, and then they flip to chapter eight, and it's like he wants you to envision Jesus walking off this mountain with this massive group of people, and they're all about to be bystanders to watching Jesus execute or live out and apply everything he just taught in Matthew 5 through 7.

So in chapter 8, a man with leprosy comes up to Jesus and he kneels before him in desperation, and Jesus does what would have been a cultural faux pas.

He reaches out and he touches the leper.

And the reason this was a faux pas was because, according to their belief, if you touch a leper, the leper makes you unclean.

Now you're both unclean.

And yet Jesus touches the leper and he becomes clean.

His leprosy goes away.

And so the point is being made by Matthew that when you touch Jesus and Jesus touches you, you don't make him unclean, he makes you clean.

And then uh and then the Roman centurion, who was a sworn enemy, it was he was somebody that was a part of the oppressing nation, comes to Jesus and calls him Lord, which is provocative because you wouldn't call anybody Lord except Caesar if you are a centurion, but he calls Jesus Lord, and and he he comes on behalf of his ailing servant who is in terrible pain.

And he's like, My servant is in pain, Jesus, would you heal him?

And Jesus is astounded that this guy with this important job and who's at the top of the org chart would take time to come to go to bat for somebody, you know, who is his servant, somebody who works for him, and he comes to Jesus on his behalf.

Would you help him?

And Jesus is so moved, he says, How about I come over to your house and nurse him back to health?

And and the guy says, No, no, you don't need to do that.

He said, just send a word and it'll be done.

And so Jesus is like, he just freaking out.

He's like, Are you guys paying attention to this?

He's like, I've not seen this type of faith in all of Israel.

This is amazing.

And he sends a word, and the man is healed.

And Jesus goes on this sort of, you know, this healing tour.

He's healing people.

He goes into heals Peter's mother-in-law.

And of course, we know uh in a moment, okay, we're now where we find ourselves in this text is right after that, right after that, and then right before they're about to go out onto the Sea of Galilee in this incredible storm.

And it's it's a it's a storm, it's a big storm.

It's a storm that fishermen think they're gonna die in.

Okay, if you're ever out on a boat and it's a big storm and you're with a bunch of fishermen and the fishermen are freaking out, you should be freaking out, right?

When the fishermen freak out, it's time for you to be afraid.

Okay, and so these fishermen think they're gonna die, okay?

But again, Matthew writes that uh Jesus is ultimately connecting the dot all the way back to Jonah, back to the Old Testament, that Jonah wanted to go to Nineveh and serve these bad people about as bad as you guys want to go across the Sea of Galilee to the Decapolis and reach these pagans.

And then, of course, they hit the shore, and who is waiting on them but this demon-possessed guy?

Okay.

So it's right in the middle of he's been healing people and right before they go out onto the water.

So let's go back to this, let's go back to this text.

It says in verse 18, Jesus saw the crowd around him, he gave orders to go across the other side.

In verse 19, it says, Then a teacher of the law came to him and said, Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.

All right, let's look closely at that.

Don't read that too quickly.

It didn't say some guy came up and said, Jesus.

It says a teacher of the law.

In some of your Bibles, it says a scribe, but a teacher of the law came to him and said, Teacher.

Teacher.

And then he makes sort of a grandiose commitment.

I'll go wherever you want to go.

Now, of course, the guy doesn't know that where they're about to go next in a few minutes is going to be on the chaotic waters in a deathly storm.

And he doesn't know that we're about to go meet a guy with so many demons, we're gonna Jesus is gonna cast him into a bunch of pigs that jump off a hill.

Okay, he has no idea what's in store, but what what we see is that this teacher sees Jesus as a teacher.

And so Jesus quickly realizes that this guy, who is a teacher, is enamored by Jesus' teaching.

And so, in the fact that he is sort of taken by Jesus' teaching, he wants to hear more of this teaching, he wants to get more of this content.

I want to hear Jesus talk more, I want to learn more of what he has to say, but he had not counted the cost of what it would be to not just see teacher as uh Jesus as his teacher, but to become a disciple and see Jesus as his Lord.

Um, okay, if you have your Bible in front of you, okay, you know how sometimes there's a chunk of scripture and then there's a heading above?

What is above Matthew 8, 18?

What is the heading?

The cost of following Jesus.

Um that okay, that's gonna be the title today of the sermon, The Cost of Following Jesus.

Uh okay, I'll just tell you, I'll confess up front.

I I am terrible at naming sermons.

I never know what to call them.

Okay, I spend all this time studying, interrogating the text, uh researching, um, you know, putting the message together, praying about it, working on it.

By the time I deliver it, they come to me, they're like, Pastor, what do you want to what do you want us to call the sermon?

I'm like, I don't care.

You guys call it what call it Matthew 8 for all I care.

I don't even care.

They're like, nobody's gonna click on it if it's Matthew 8.

I'm like, what do you want to call it?

It's like my friend Lauren Breth, who let the doctor name her second child.

She, I'm not kidding.

She really did.

She's like, you know, I carried this kid for nine months.

I've been pushing all day.

I'm exhausted.

The kid came out and they're like, What do you want to name him?

She's like, I don't know.

Here's a few names, pick one.

And the doctor that delivered named him Everett.

That's a true story.

So that's usually for me, once I push this thing out, I'm like, call it whatever you want.

But the text in your Bible, it says the cost of following Jesus.

So that's the name.

All right, that's what we're going with.

The cost of following Jesus.

Jesus realizes that this teacher likes teaching, but he may not like following.

He may like the content that Jesus is generating, but do you actually want to go where I'm trying to take you?

Do you really want to see the thing I'm trying to show you?

Are you really committed to this to go to the place that I want to take you and where this is really going?

He realizes that the guy sort of quickly impulsively, you know how it is, like uh when you're in somewhat of a superficial relationship, somebody sees something about you that's attractive, and so they think you're cute, or they think you're funny, or they like your vibe, or they like your style, or they heard something cool about you, or you're good at your job, or something.

There's something about you at first that's cute, but then eventually over time, it's like, okay, if you're gonna really commit to this thing, you're gonna have to see the stuff that's not cute.

You're gonna have to understand there's a storm that will be coming.

You have to understand that you're gonna have to look in the eyes of some demons.

Okay, you're you have to understand, like, this is gonna be like some volatility.

So if you just like my teaching, you need to count the cost of what it would be to be my disciple.

And so what Jesus then he uses this phrase, he says, Hey, foxes have dens and birds have nests, but I don't have a place to lay my head.

When you read that, at first it seems like Jesus is talking about the accommodations.

So, like, hey, you have a nice house, and if you follow me, you know, you might have to be homeless.

You might have to sleep out under the stars, you might end up at a motel six or something.

It may not be all that you thought it was gonna be to follow me.

And so we think that he's talking, when he's saying birds have nests and foxes have dens, we think he's talking about accommodations, but I don't think he's talking about accommodations.

Really, what he's talking about is a deeper issue of discomfort.

That this is going to be more uncomfortable than you think it's going to be.

It's gonna disrupt something.

Like so far, the teaching has been interesting to you.

The teaching has been energizing for you, but there's gonna come a point that Jesus is going to lead you into something that's going to cost you something.

It's going to be very uncomfortable.

And so he's like, I want you to count that cost before we get on the water, before we get into this boat.

I want you to count this cost before we go to the cross.

I want you to count this cost before people are coming against you.

So think about this, right?

Foxes have dens.

What are in dens, but other foxes.

What are in nests, but birds.

And there are certain dens, he's saying, because again, when you read the uh the scribes and the Pharisees, you see that a lot in tandem in the Gospels, the scribes and the Pharisees, the Pharisees and the teachers of the law.

And so there was a relationship, right?

We looked last week at Matthew 15, and there was a group of Pharisees that traveled 75 miles from Jerusalem to Genneseret to try to corner Jesus.

So we're okay, we're in Matthew 8 now.

Seven chapters from now, okay, the people who are in your den, the other birds that are in your nest, are not going to like me.

So if you're following me, you're gonna be associated with me.

And so if you're associated with me, some of the people that allowed you in the den before, the other foxes, you're not gonna be welcome in that den.

Okay, the people that welcomed you in the nest, okay, before, and by chapter 15, they're not gonna want you in the nest.

Birds of a feather flock together, and some people who are flocking with you now won't be flocking with you then.

They used to flock with you, now they don't flock with you anymore.

I said it.

I said it, I said it.

They they they used to flock with you, they don't flock with you anymore because you're following me and they kicked you out of the nest.

So Jesus is saying this may get more uncomfortable than you think it is, and it might cost you some things you hadn't counted yet.

So he's trying to get them to count the cost.

Um let's look at the next part.

It says, verse 21.

It says, Another disciple said to him, Lord, first let me go bury my father.

But Jesus told him, Jesus told him, Follow me and let the dead bury their own dead.

Dang.

At 9 a.m., by the way, when I read that, a lady, a lady sitting like over here, she's like, What?

I was like, I like you.

Uh no, really, it's one of those you're like, it feels a little like really, Jesus?

Like, that's kind of harsh.

Let the dead bury the dead?

This guy's like, I just want to go bury my father.

Um what's going on here?

Well, there's more to the story.

So when you read it on the surface, what it sounds like is one of two things are going on.

It sounds like this guy has a his father's like on his deathbed and he's about to die, and the guy's simply saying, Look, uh, I want to go spend my father's last few moments with him.

Or it seems like his father just died, like a couple days ago, and I just want to go bury my father.

In other words, I'd like to go to my father's funeral.

And it sounds like Jesus is telling the man that he can't grieve his father, he can't go to his father's funeral.

But if there's more to the story.

If you look uh more deeply at Jewish burial rituals, okay, the way it worked is when somebody died, when somebody died, they would have an initial burial.

So if you remember when Jesus died, right, when he was crucified, and he was he was uh put in a tomb, and you remember it says of like three days later, these this group of ladies was coming to anoint his body with spices.

You remember that?

Okay, so that was part of the Jewish burial ritual.

They would anoint the body with spices.

In our world, and and what the Egyptians would do, and then what we do still to this day, most of the time, is we embalm bodies.

And what embalming a body does is it preserves the body long term.

But anointing a body with spices does the opposite.

It actually speeds up decomposition, it causes the body to decom decompose faster.

And so they would put the spices on the body, the body would decompose, and at the one-year anniversary of the death, the family would come back together, and now it's just bones, and they would take the bones and put it in what's called an ossuary, which is like a box, and they would take that ossuary and put it in the family tomb, and that was the second part of the burial ritual.

So, more than likely, this wasn't like the guy's dad is on his deathbed or he just died, you know, yesterday or the day before.

This is actually, this has been a year, and and he's in a place where he kind of has to decide, am I gonna go back and am I going to be a part of this?

Or Jesus is saying, Come follow me into what's next.

And this becomes a really now a deep conversation because we we look at this both literally when we think about you know burying people that we love and our relationship to people who are the closest to us and how intense those bonds are and what we're supposed to do about them.

And and we have to look at what decisions we make with our future based on the bones of our past.

Um it seems like Jesus, and when you read it, it almost feels disrespectful.

Like like Jesus is is prohibiting this guy from honoring his father.

Um, and and when you sort of fly up to 10,000 feet and you look at uh not only the Old Testament and the Ten Commandments, you know, honor your father and mother, Jesus affirms that multiple times.

So Jesus was all about honor your father and mother.

In fact, I mentioned it a moment ago, but Matthew 15, that um back and forth that Jesus has with the Pharisees and Genneseret, they come to him about ceremonial hand washing.

We talked about that last week.

How come you and your disciples don't do this ceremonial hand washing?

And Jesus comes back to them with honor your father and mother.

He's like, You're talking to me about washing my hands, and you think that's what makes me clean, but you guys don't even honor your father and mother.

And so he goes into that uh that whole concept and he talks to them about how they're not honoring their father and mother, and he's going, you know, what's worse, how I wash my hands or you honoring your father and mother.

So he he goes into that.

Um, if you remember the story of the rich young ruler, the rich young ruler comes to Jesus.

How can I have Zoe life?

How can I have eternal life?

How can I have life connected to God?

And Jesus gives them a very short list of things to do, and one of them is honor his father and mother.

Um, by the way, at this point in Jesus' life, his earthly father, Joseph, like this man's father, is deceased.

And so we know Joseph is is no longer alive.

We don't know, it doesn't say in the Bible how Joseph died, but we know that by the time Jesus is in his ministry, Joseph is no longer around.

We know that Jesus honored his mother even up to his crucifixion.

As he was being uh about to be crucified, John, in his account of the gospel, talks about how Jesus looked at him and said, John, take care of my mom.

John, take care of my mom.

Here's your new mother, he says to John.

And he says to his mother Mary, here's your new son, John.

So up to the very end, he's making sure that his mother is honored and that she's taken care of.

In fact, he even obeys her at his first miracle when he really didn't want to do it, but he did it uh in honoring his mother.

So there is this is not Jesus giving us license to be cold, uh to be uncaring, or to be dishonoring of our mothers and fathers.

But notice what we see here.

The description of this person who comes to Jesus is one of his disciples, it says.

This is one of his disciples in verse 21.

So this is somebody, whether it was one of the twelve, or there was uh, according, you know, in the synoptic gospels, we see there was like a collection of people.

They throw out different numbers, but there was a group of people that were hanging around Jesus.

This was somebody that Jesus knew, and he knew the dynamics, and what he's doing is giving him and us a new way to think about how to honor the bones of relationships.

A new way to think about it.

First thing, if you think about honoring bones, let's take a literal death for a moment.

Anytime somebody dies and you go to their funeral and you have that sort of conclusion that that that you know there's there's some finality to it and you can't avoid it, it forces you to think about your own mortality.

So it's one of the reasons it's tremendously unpleasant, but it's actually quite helpful if you'll if you're willing to go there because regardless of whether this was a wonderful person or a not so wonderful person, whether it's somebody you had deep affection for or the maybe the pain in the moment is I wish I did have more affection.

You know, there's complexity to this relationship.

There's a lot of pain in the relationship.

Either way, what it forces you to do is to be aware of the fact that you still have an opportunity.

This person no longer has breath in their lungs.

This person is no longer alive, but you are.

And the best, one of the best ways to honor them is to walk away and to go, how do I feel about the person that I'm becoming?

How do I feel about the decisions that I'm making?

How do I feel about how I'm spending my time and who I'm giving my energy to, and who I'm becoming when nobody's looking, and what's happening behind closed doors.

And if you think deeply about it, you'll think beyond like, do I have enough trophies and success?

And have I proven what I need to prove to the world?

If you look deeper, it'll be more about your character and who you are and what you value and what really matters.

I heard somebody say recently, uh they said, if I was in charge, I would have every student that graduates high school be required to do one year serving in hospice care.

One year serving people who are at the end of their lives.

Because they go, you want to talk about life changing.

You spend a year with somebody and watch them die, you become aware of mortality, and doing that would literally change your life and the decisions you make and where you go and don't go, and and who you give yourself to and who you don't.

And so when you think about this, being aware of mortality, I I um uh I have this picture I'll I'll share with you in a moment.

It's from the 1600s of a guy named Jerome.

Saint Jerome, he was the one that wrote the Latin Vulgate, and he lived in the fourth and fifth century, lived in the fourth century, died in the fifth century, and in in the 1600s, there's a painting of him.

Go ahead and bring it up.

It's a painting of him, and it's a um you know, him essentially writing the Latin Vulgate, and you'll see on there there's a skull, right, which is a little creepy.

Uh, when you look at it, you're like, okay, uh, that's an interesting decor uh in your office.

But actually, the monks would would work and study with a skull on their desk, not to be creepy, but to be constantly aware of mortality.

There was a a slogan, and the slogan was from the dead.

And the slogan was this where you are, we were.

And where we are, you someday will be.

And so the point is to go, I don't want to waste my life.

I want to live with tremendous perspective.

Although none of us want to really think about our mortality, there is huge value in it.

So, what Jesus is saying to this guy is look, man, your father, whether he was a great man or not a great man, whether these are good bones or not so good bones, you have an opportunity now to make a decision because you can't go back and go forward.

So I'm I'm gonna invite you to follow me.

I'm gonna invite you to think differently about honoring these bones.

And you might have to disappoint some people, and you might have to miss out on something that everybody thinks you should go to, but but you you need to be more aware than ever that you have a finite life.

And you need to get busy living, and you need to honor those bones by following me where I want to take you.

Because you now you know now more than ever that you only get this this one opportunity to do this.

Follow me, follow me, follow me, follow me.

Think about let's think about how to honor bones.

You know, I talk about good bones and bad bones.

Like, you know, you think about good bones, it almost feels a little implied in this text that these were good bones, that his his father, you know, he had this deep affection.

And frankly, if you are one of the fortunate ones to have had someone in your life who's just an amazing person, like just loving, sacrificial.

They were the type of person that didn't want you to have to try to please them, they didn't want you to have to overthink about them.

They they they wanted you to be all that God wanted you to be and to live the life that you had, and to make, okay, to be your own person and to follow God.

And when you lose somebody great, it hurts tremendously.

And it's it's it's part of the even what I would call the honor and privilege of having a great person in your life is that there is some sort of correlation between how great somebody was and how bad it hurts when they're gone.

But when you think about that, even a good person, if you're not careful, the instincts that you have that you had to want to please them or to make their legacy count, if you're not careful, you can assume a responsibility that feels like this impossible weight on you, that I had this wonderful, we'll just use a dad.

It doesn't have to be a dad, it could be a mom, it could be somebody not even in your actual family, but just a significant person in your life.

Even a good person, whether they're still alive or whether they're not alive anymore, bones represents even metaphorically this weight that I have to think about how am I gonna please them and how do I keep their legacy going?

And am I good enough?

And am I am I carrying on their work well enough?

And am I doing what they would have wanted me to do?

And so, in a sense, it's like this gravitational pull to these bones.

And and yeah, they were a great person, but what Jesus is doing in many ways is helping him sort that out, even in his emotions.

Like, hey, honor your dad by learning from your dad, but by following me.

Learn from your dad, learn from the bones, learn from his example, but follow Jesus.

Follow Jesus.

He's going, come follow me.

Because, quite frankly, this man who is a scribe, uh, or this man who is a disciple, sorry, the disciple, probably came from a place where Jesus was going to take him to a part of town, and he was going to take him into some theology, and he was gonna take him on a journey of the kingdom of God that might not have pleased the bones of his father.

And so he's saying, I like, don't get it twisted.

You don't have to please your father to honor your father.

You can honor your father by learning from an example, whether good or bad, but then follow Jesus.

So Jesus is saying, Come follow me and honor.

And this is where, frankly, guys, this is such a relevant text because it's it's not just literal, it is also metaphoric.

Like you think about sometimes these bones represent people who aren't actually dead.

And there are some people sometimes in our lives who um, you know, who we may have great affection for, they may be very close to us, significant people in our lives who maybe um aren't healthy enough to be able to encourage you to follow Jesus even if it upsets them.

Some people want you pleasing them.

Some people want you doing everything.

They want to use honor.

There's a misunderstanding of honor.

They think honor means being connected to my bones all the time.

They think honor means doing everything the way I told you to do it.

They mean honor means you know, following and doing and pleasing them.

And Jesus ultimately is saying, look, to do this, you're you're actually probably going to not please some people that you really care about.

And in their minds, they may call it dishonor.

But you have to be clear in your mind.

This isn't dishonoring my father's bones.

I mean, think about this.

How is this gonna go over with his family if he doesn't come back at the year anniversary and be a part of that ceremony and a part of that tradition?

But he's going, look, I have to pick the option that is right for me.

And what's right for me is to follow Jesus.

And I'm gonna follow Jesus, even if that means being misunderstood in my own nest, in my own den, among my own people.

And so Jesus is encouraging both the scribe, the teacher of the law, and the disciple to think about the discomfort that comes with following Jesus.

Sometimes, sometimes you feel like you're homeless, sometimes you feel like you don't have a people, sometimes I feel like I've lost my community.

Sometimes I feel like the right decision that I made is full of negative emotions, and that's weird.

It feels like when I make a right decision, it should feel good, but sometimes you make a right decision and it doesn't feel good.

It doesn't feel good, and you get on the boat and you end up in a storm, and when you're in the storm, you're like, see, I should have gone back.

You start the second guess, and Jesus says, I know, and I know we end up on chaotic waters, and I know we end up in places that feel like we've never been here before, uncharted waters.

Follow me, follow me.

You know what's a little mysterious about this text is it never follows through to tell us what decisions these two people made.

Jesus didn't turn either of them away.

The teacher of the law says, I'll follow you wherever you go.

And Jesus said, The foxes and the birds, but it doesn't say if the teacher of the law went ahead and followed.

We don't know.

We know that the disciple wanted to go bury his father, and Jesus said, Let the dead bury the dead.

Come follow me.

Come follow me.

We don't know what decision that he made, either of them made, but we find ourselves faced with the same decision.

We find ourselves with the same opportunity presented to us by Jesus to count the cost.

Are you willing to follow Jesus sometimes at the expense of the nest in the den?

Are you willing sometimes to make a decision to follow Jesus to chart a course that may be different from the bones of the past and to move toward the future?

Uh I end with this.

I was thinking as I was looking at this text, I was reflecting on the days that led up to my wedding.

And I remember, you know, I had a whole bunch of groomsmen.

I went to college in Texas, so I had friends from all over the country that came, and I've got family spread out through the country.

We have a pretty big family, and a lot of them got on planes and came from from all over, and so I had my cousins, and then we got married in my wife's hometown, and so people from my hometown I grew up with, you know, some friends that their parents kind of became like parents to me and my parents to them.

And so I had all these influential people in my life show up at the same place at the same time.

We did all the you know festivities leading up, you know, we had the rehearsal and the rehearsal dinner and all this.

And over those days, I got like an infinite amount of marriage advice.

Like, I mean, it was just like, I mean, I got so much advice about you know how to be a good husband and how marriage is, whatever.

And I mean, some people were serious, and some people were making jokes, and some people were serious about their jokes, and and and and it was just like all this stuff, and I feel like I'm drinking from a fire hose.

Like every person I know is telling me how to be a good husband and what it's gonna be like to be married, and it's not what you think it is, and blah, blah, blah.

Okay, so I'm I got all this going on, and I'm trying to absorb it all, but I realize like I can't, this is too much.

Like, I can't absorb it all.

And I remember having the awareness, the conscious thought that I was like, you know, I have no idea what's in store.

I'm I I guess I know enough to know that I what I don't know.

And there's no way for me, even if the wisest person with the most relevant experience tries to tell me, I just can't absorb it, I've not lived it.

And I remember thinking, you know, like, I don't know what's coming.

I just know that I wanna, I just I want to take that journey with her.

You know, at that time I I didn't know where we where we were gonna live geographically.

I didn't know how the career was gonna go.

I didn't know if we were gonna be able to have kids or not have kids.

I didn't know that if we had kids, we were gonna have we were gonna deal with special needs.

I didn't know that we were ever gonna plant a church.

I didn't know if it was going to be successful or if it was gonna fail.

I didn't know about the high highs, the low lows.

I didn't know how our finances were gonna go.

I didn't know any of that.

I didn't know who was gonna walk into our life and out of our lives and and who was gonna walk out and hurt us on the way and who was just going to walk out unexpectedly and who we were gonna.

I didn't know how all of that was gonna play out.

I just I knew that it was worth taking with her.

And I'm like, high highs, low lows, unexpected twists and turns, storms on the water, demoniacs, whatever.

I want to do this with you.

And what Jesus offers here is he says, come follow me.

And there's gonna be some people that won't like it, and there's gonna be some things I'll teach you that are going to cost you some community, cost you some relationship.

I'm gonna take you to some places you wouldn't go on your own.

In fact, the bones wouldn't have taken you there either, but I'm gonna take you there because I want to show you something.

The question is, are you willing to go with me?

Count the cost.

And there's no way I can tell you every experience, but by faith, are you willing to take that step?

Um, I give you three questions on your own time to reflect, maybe over the next few days, that I think would help really drive this home in terms of personal application.

The first is, is there some discomfort that you need to embrace as you follow Jesus?

I think sometimes there is a misconception that when you follow Jesus, you immediately get a promotion at work and all your relationships are good and and all the uh stop lights are green, and you know it's all it's all go and it's all good and it's all great and up and to the right.

Uh sometimes it's tremendously uncomfortable, and maybe there's some discomfort you've been rejecting that it's time to embrace as you follow Jesus.

Next is um, what do the bones represent to you?

It may be some good bones that you've been trying to live up to and in some way have become a gravitational pull, you've not been able to walk away from some of these bones.

You can continue to honor good bones, but not by following the bones.

You follow Jesus.

And for some of you, it may be negative bones that you're still trying to prove something to some bones that were hard to please.

You may have some bones that are still uh haunting you because for some reason they didn't think you valuable enough to pay attention to.

And so, in some way, now my life becomes about proving something to these bones, and instead of burying them, it's just time to walk away and follow Jesus.

What do the bones represent to you?

And then the third is how can you honor the bones, good or bad, and still follow Jesus?

Let's pray together, Lord.

We come to you in this moment.

Lord, I recognize for each of us the idea of bones.

May mean different things to different people.

The idea of our den and our nest represents not only our house, our home, but our relationships and our comfort.

And Lord, I realize that oftentimes following you agitates our comfort zone.

And Lord, you don't do it just to make us uncomfortable for no reason.

Lord, you do it because you're trying to show us something much deeper, something that you think we need to see.

And so, God, I pray that today, Lord, as we look at these stories and we think about foxes have holes and birds have nests, but what it might mean to deal with that and to even to leave the bones and to follow you.

I pray, Lord, you would bring that application to light for each one of us.

And Lord, help us to remember that when you invite us to follow you, you're with us every step of the way.

So we love you and we praise you.

Thank you in Jesus' name.

Everybody said amen.