The Cost of Following Jesus

The Cost of Following Jesus | Matthew 8 1:1-4 | Philip Dhinakar

After the account of three miracles there is an interruption with Matthew inserting a couple of discipleship stories in the middle of the narration of the miracles.
Jesus was deliberately withdrawing from the Jewish environment and going on a journey to place where his Jewish followers outside his small group of disciples would not go with him. Jesus encountered two men before he boarded the boat.
The first man approached Jesus and said to him, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.” He was eager to follow Jesus. But Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head. A Rabbi enjoyed a relatively high status within Judaism and therefore his disciples were also recognized. But Jesus had no school or synagogue or prestigious place of honour and therefore His disciples would have little or no recognition. Jesus’ response to the scribe is not a rejection of the man, but a warning that there would be no comfortable, settled life for him and his family.
Soon, another disciple offered to follow Jesus. But he added a condition: “Lord, first let me go and bury my father”.
So, when Jesus’ replies “Follow me, and leave the dead to bury their own dead”, he is not dismissing the importance of honouring parents; he is saying that tasks like burying the father can be done by anyone while only a disciple can follow Jesus and join Him in His works. While the man wanted to delay, Jesus was pressing on him the urgency and the priority of the work in God’s kingdom.
The eager one is turned away, while the half-hearted one is summoned. Why does Jesus act like this?
You know, there are some things that we cherish really deeply in our lives. Maybe it’s our family, our jobs, our comforts, our assets, our reputation, our holidays, our recreation or whatever it might be. We have to watch that the things we cherish do not become our idols.
Matthew does not tell us what became of these two prospective followers. Jesus rejected neither of them but only drew their attention to the cost of following him.
We should not forget that Jesus Himself fully complied with every one of the demands He laid upon His followers. He even set aside His family ties with His mother and siblings in order to faithfully accomplish the task before Him. He followed the way of utter self-denial and hardship to the bitter end. He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. He did all this to save us from eternal damnation.