This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

I want to welcome you to day two of our look through Matthew chapter eight.
Yesterday we began by looking at some healings that Jesus did at the beginning
of this chapter and what we can learn about faith. Now as we head towards the
middle of the chapter we're going to see Jesus' encounter with a couple of men.

We're going to see two truths about how to face two of the greatest barriers to
discipleship from two conversations that Jesus had with two men. Let me read for
you what happened in verses 18 to 22. When Jesus saw the crowd around him, he
gave orders to cross to the other side of the lake.

And then a teacher of the law came up to him and said, "Teacher, I will follow
you wherever you go. " Jesus replied, "Foxes have holes and birds of the air
have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head. " Another disciple
came up 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. Both
of these men, as we look at these men and their heart, they wanted to follow
Jesus.

One is a teacher who expresses a desire to go wherever Jesus goes. Another one
is called another disciple. So the idea is that the first was a disciple too.

So these are people who want to be disciples. Remember the word disciple simply
means learner, learning to live life from the teaching and example of Jesus. So
here are two men who wanted to be learners, but there's something in the way.

Now we're not told whether they trusted Jesus and got that something out of the
way, or in this passage at least, or whether they somehow walked away and missed
out. But we do know that both wanted to follow, and both placed conditions on
their discipleship, on following Jesus, that put their following at risk. One
said, "I will follow you to be first.

" The other said, "I will follow you, but first. But first I have to do this or
this or this. " One is thinking, "I'll follow you to be first.

" And there's conditions that both of them have. This first man, it's the
position condition. You get this sense from what Jesus said, that this man had a
feeling, he's a teacher of the law, he's a great man, he's looked up to.

He sees Jesus as being looked up to, he's doing miracles, and you get a sense
from Jesus' answer. Then this man comes to Jesus, he wants to be a disciple, and
he says, "I'll follow you anywhere you go. " And in the back of his mind is,
"And you're really going places, Jesus.

I'll go anywhere with you, and you are going places. " And Jesus' answer is, "I
don't even have a place to lay my head. I don't have a house to live in.

" Jesus says, "Watch out for this position condition. I'll become a disciple of
Jesus Christ as long as it makes my life better, as long as it gives me a better
job, as long as it makes my finances better, as long as it makes people around
me think better of me. I'll become a disciple of Jesus for what it will do for
me, not for my service to him.

" Discipleship, there's no doubt about it. When you begin to follow Jesus, you
can see this in human history, you can see this in individual lives.
Discipleship following Jesus brings a measure of success into people's lives
many times.

Because before you were following Jesus, there are some who you're hooked on
drugs, or you're caught up in some seeking of pleasure, or you're focused on
selfishness. And guess what, when you get unselfish, when you get off the drugs,
when you start to focus on serving others, there's some measure of success in
that. But if you begin to follow for the success, you stop being a follower of
Jesus.

You stop being a follower, and you become a consumer. You've moved in that
moment from somebody who's a disciple of Jesus to someone in essence who is a
fan of Jesus. "Oh, I like what Jesus does for me.

" Well, I do like what Jesus does for me. But if that becomes the sole source of
the reason I'm following him, there's going to be some times when I don't have a
place to lay my head. There's going to be some times when he asks me to do
something that doesn't feel comfortable for me to do.

There's going to be some times when he asks me, instead of taking the higher
position, to take what seems to me to be a lower position. What am I going to do
then? What am I going to do then?

So to follow Jesus, as we see the lesson, the example of these two men, I want
to as much as possible take my conditions off of it and trust. Trust him. Trust
that whatever position he wants to put me in, whatever place he wants to put me
in, he can be trusted.

If you're thinking lately, "I'm following Jesus, but he's not making me first
enough. He's not giving me a good enough position. " There's a moment, there's a
heart moment in that for all of us.

Then the second man, and this is the one we have more questions about because we
wonder about what Jesus says to him. He says, "I will follow you, but first I
have to do this. First I have to go and bury my father.

" And Jesus says, "Follow me now and let the dead bury their own dead. " The
first question we have is, "What, Jesus says he can't go to his dad's funeral?
What's that about?

Doesn't Jesus care about people? " The idea behind this phrase, it's important
to understand in Jesus' day, is the idea not that he was going to go home for
his dad's funeral, but he was going to go home and live at home until his dad
died, which might be a year, might be five years, who knows how long it would
be. There's just some family obligations he wanted to fulfill first, which could
have taken years.

Then he would follow Jesus. So this is the procrastination condition. This is
the someday condition.

And there's no doubt that one of the greatest dangers to our faith, one of the
greatest dangers to our discipleship, is procrastination. You might know that in
our recent survey, only 10% of Americans say that they struggle with
procrastination. Of course, 90% never got around to filling out the survey.

That's the way we all struggle with procrastination. And there's actually
several varieties of procrastination. There is recrastination, which is putting
off a task again and again, or there's bicrastination, which is putting off two
or more things at once.

Or there's concrastination, which is pretending to accomplish a task while
you're actually putting it off. We've got a lot of ways of doing this, but the
truth of the matter is, procrastination, we can all laugh at it because we've
all done it. Procrastination is also one of the greatest dangers to our
discipleship.

We've got opportunities to grow, we've got opportunities to serve, we've got
opportunities to learn from Jesus all around us. And one of the major reasons
that we don't take advantage of them is procrastination. A couple years ago, we
were selling a house that we'd lived in for almost 20 years.

And as we were selling it, there were a few things that needed to be done. Like
out in the garage, there was a piece of molding that hadn't been painted. I put
it up when we moved in, like 17 years before, and I decided, okay, since we're
selling the house, I'm going to paint this piece of molding, see how long it
takes.

So I timed myself to see how long it would take. It took me less than five
minutes to paint that piece of molding, and it had stayed unpainted for 17
years. Oftentimes just because we haven't done something before, we don't do it
now.

So what are you procrastinating about when it comes to your discipleship? What
is there that you just haven't done? Reading the Bible, praying, talking to
other people about Christ.

What is it that you just haven't done? And because you haven't done it, it
becomes just part of who you are. Or because you haven't done it, it seems like
you can never get it done.

When the truth of the matter is, God wants you and I to grow in every area of
our lives. The truth is, both of these conditions we've looked at, they can keep
us from being disciples. They are conditions that can keep us from following
Jesus.

But even more significantly, once you start to follow Jesus, because the Bible
says that one of these men was already a disciple, once you start to follow
Jesus, these are conditions that can sneak their way into our lives. Where all
of a sudden, you weren't concerned about position when you first became a
follower of Jesus, but now something's happened and God's given you a certain
measure of position and now you are concerned about it. Or you used to
immediately respond when God said something, but now procrastination has begun
to make its way into your life.

It's slow, but it's sure. Have you been moving into seeking more position in
your discipleship? This is a good wake-up call, what Jesus teaches us here, this
experience.

Or have you been seeing more and more procrastination in your discipleship? This
is a good wake-up call. Jesus understands it.

He loves us all the way through it, but he also wants to help us to grow out of
it. So let's talk to him for a few minutes about this. Our Father, we want to
learn from Jesus.

We want to learn how to live life from Jesus. And you know our humanity. You
know how we can get caught up in position sometimes.

Lord, let humility reign in our hearts so that that does not become some
condition on our discipleship that causes us to shrink back from following
Jesus. You know how we can get caught up in procrastination, Lord. We just don't
get it done because we didn't get it done.

Lord, I pray that you would help us to break through that barrier so that it
does not become something that causes us to fail to follow you in any area of
our lives. We don't want there to be conditions on our following you. We want to
just follow you.

We pray for the strength and the faith to do this, that only you can give us. We
pray for it, ask for it, in Jesus' name, amen. Join us tomorrow.

We're going to talk about how to handle the storms of life.