This Isn't a Sales Pitch

Yo, I'm so Good job Led me to the third heaven today, Or seventh heaven, my favorite show- Just Just kidding, that is not my favorite show. You go back and watch some old clips once in a while, cuz you try to look for clean TV and you're like "Ah, this was, This was a weird show". We're going to be in Matthew, chapter 8 today, Really excited about this passage. We've been going through a series called Facts, Where we talk about some of the truths that Jesus spoke, because so often we neglect the weightier things that Jesus said in view of the frilly, touchy-feely, enjoyable, heartwarming things that he said And we got to understand about Jesus is he is filled with both grace and truth.

He's filled with both.

You didn't know either, You just sat down. She's like: "I wasn't listening to you, I only listen to you when you're looking at me". That's what she said. He's filled with both grace and truth.

And if you only get the grace and you miss some of the truths you're going to, you're really going to be living at a lower level of Christianity.

And today I'm a little nervous because I don't want to. I don't want to come across harsh, but I also want to communicate effectively what Jesus said without apologizing for it. So if something I say today comes across harsh, just know that. I'm aware it could.

Maybe that'll help you when you leave here and you want to leave the church.

The reality is there's some truths that we need to speak in this room, otherwise we're going to continue to have a culture within the church and outside of the that pervades in all the wrong directions, And I think it starts here. So we're going to be in Matthew, chapter 8. And I'm going to read the text for you. There are two basic scenes within this text.

Jesus has already done a lot of healings in his ministry. Up to this point.

In Matthew specifically, he has preached a really important sermon. You know a really important sermon Jesus preached. It's called the Sermon on the Mount, Chapters 5 through 7. Maybe the most important sermon ever preached, Who knows.

And in chapter 8, he comes in, heals a few people.

And this is not a teaching. This is an interaction between two people, And here's what happens in verse 18. 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".

Wherever you go.

Like this scribe, he's coming with the right words. As a pastor, if someone came up to me when we were starting the church Ryan, and they said: "I'll go with you wherever you will. You know that song, Wherever you is- I'm a millennial- That you don't know that song if you're not a millennial. He said: "I'll follow you wherever you will go".

Then Jesus replied: this is one of the harsh statements.

It's not the harshest of the two. "Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head". Such a cryptic thing for Jesus to say to the scribe, Verse 21, . Another disciple said to him: "Lord, first let me go and bury my father".

Reasonable, right, Anyone Reasonable.

Jesus told him: "Follow me and let the dead bury their own dead. Almost titled the sermon "Bury Your Own Dead". I didn't think they'd get it on the outside, you know It's like "God, what is this cult doing over there off Jackrabbit Trail". But I'm going to give you my actual sermon title.

I think it's helpful when you look at both of those statements Jesus made to the scribe and to the disciple.

This isn't a sales pitch. This isn't a sales pitch. I think so often in church, we, as pastors, we'll try to sell you something, And- and there is some truth to it, because there's a lot to sell- Jesus is a worthwhile investment, and I think all of you in this room should invest in him, And if I were to ask anyone in this room who has invested in him to say out loud what he has done in their life, or just give me a like a noise or a sound that kind of exudes what he's done in your life, you would sound like that. There is so many good things.

There are so many good things about Jesus that I could sell you on, But I think, as a pastor, I come in here too often.

I just try to sell you on this thing that I've seen and experienced, And you might notice this, over the past couple of months, I've not been in that phase of my life and ministry. I've been in this phase where I just want to tell you the truth. I don't want to give you a sales pitch. I don't want to tell you about the, the life upgrade that you're going to have in Christ Jesus when you follow him, though it's true, I want to carry this ethos of Jesus in these two interactions.

I don't want to give you a sales pitch.

I want to tell you what life is going to look like when you follow Jesus and then follow that up with a reality that says "But it's worth it". And so I've kind of done with the sales pitches, Because when I do the sales pitch I'll get somebody really excited And I'll get somebody borderline committed. But what I don't see when I give you the sales pitch is a fully-fledged disciple of Jesus. Because the sales pitch- I mean, think about the sales pitches you've heard.

It's not a sales pitch, No lighting, Think about.

Think about the sales pitches you've heard. My boy, Trey, came over and gave me a sales pitch the other day. Told me how great those knives were, Wherever he's at. I was like, Oh my gosh, it cuts through rope.

It's a.

It's a sales pitch. I think about some of the sales pitches I've heard over the years and some of them are just they sell themselves. Other sales pitches- the person giving it is just really good. I think in the church.

I'm trying to be careful with how I say this, So please don't judge me for the next statement.

I didn't workshop this enough to give to you, but I'm going to do it anyways. I think the culture in our country is such that, if the person giving the sales pitch is good enough, that's where I'm going to go. And what's interesting is, any of us could get like hit by a bus tomorrow and then the person giving the sales pitch is out And then you're in trouble. But I think the truth laid underneath whatever pitch you've been hearing is still there, regardless: that you can offer your life as a living sacrifice to the God of the universe, who sent his son to die on a cross for you.

That's true, regardless of how articulate I may be.

Paul even goes forward and he says he, almost intentionally, isn't eloquent. First Corinthians, He says: I didn't come with you, come to you with eloquence of speech. And- And I feel like he does that because he knows that he could utilize his eloquence to win people over by giving them an adequate sales pitch. But he understands something deeper: that no amount of sales pitches will get someone to bear a cross.

Like if I were to sell you on a crucifixion Anybody.

Dude, let me tell you about it. All right, Like you will be holy, You'll be shredded Right. Like I could tell you all. I could give you a sales pitch, BUT YOU'RE NOT GOING TO FOLLOW IT, BECAUSE you know what crucifixion is.

It's nails in your hands and nail in your feet.

At the end of it, just to make sure you're dead, they're going to pierce you in your side and then blood's going to shoot out of your gut. Then they're going to take you off the cross, but before you die, they're going to take off all your clothes. They're going to lay it right in front of everybody and they're going to steal your clothes. So you got to watch these people stealing the clothes they just took off of you, while they look at you sneering and you're completely butt naked.

No way I could sell you on a crucifixion, no matter how good the sales pitch is.

So I'm not even going to try. I'm just going to tell you the truth of the matter, recognizing that when you're attentive to it, the Holy Spirit can track within you, cuz it's regenerating you already. And when you showed up today and the word of God came to you, there's something within your spirit that's like: "I not dude, crucifixion sounds terrible, but also I want to follow Jesus for some reason". No matter, say this isn't a sales pitch.

Some people think it's a sales pitch And so they come and they get really excited, a little overzealous, and then they dive into this life, and this life is different than they anticipated it would be, so then they bow out.

Then other groups of people: , they'll buy in, but because they didn't understand the full weight of what bearing a cross felt like, they'll start putting things in front of the cross. They'll start putting things in front of Christ, Cuz they didn't adequately, in either case, count the cost required. And in this first situation you have what we might call the over-promiser. I don't know about you.

I seen a lot of over-promisers in my years.

I don't want to make you feel bad. I'm just trying to help you understand where people tend to fall when they haven't adequately counted the cost of bearing a cross. As you'll have people, they'll come in, and maybe it's your first Sunday today. I'm not trying to stress you out, but I'm trying to give you a reality that, just like the timeshare, if the communication and sales pitch is good enough, I can get you to promise to do a timeshare Anyone ever done it to.

I'm not going to ask you cuz I want you to feel bad in front of this room of people.

But if you've ever done a timeshare, what you recognize is: the pitch was good, It's very convincing, And now you own a part of this timeshare. Did you see? Did you see that I just killed a fly? Sorry, I got to get him off stage.

And if you've ever gotten a timeshare, after the timeshare sales pitch And now you own this timeshare and you're thinking, "Okay, now I got to use it", But there's certain blockout dates I can't use it.

But then I got to look at my year and I got to plan ahead. Most people aren't good at planning ahead. And then I know a lot of people got the timeshare, never use the time in the Airbnb or whatever. And so people they'll say, "All right, I'm going to jump in my relationship with Jesus".

This is what this person does, And I'll reread the passage.

They may put it up, they may not, but I just want you to see what this person does. When Jesus saw the crowd around him, he gave orders to cross the other side of the lake. So Jesus is standing at one side of the lake. They're about to hop on the boat and they're about to leave.

And as they're about to go, two people walk up to him.

The first one, a teacher of the law, comes to him and says: "Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go". Now, you might not notice this, but there's something, There's. There's always something in the language to look at, especially when you're reading the Gospels, because it's a narrative text about things that are high context Meaning. If you're not there, it's hard to understand.

Now, just so you're tracking with me, what did the scribe call Jesus Teacher?

Now, there are certain groups of people that would call Jesus teacher, specifically in the Gospel of Matthew: Scribes, Pharisees, Sadducees, Teachers of the law- Those are Like, almost explicitly those. Those are the people who would call Jesus teacher. It means fundamentally, that they like something he's doing, but they don't understand the full weight of what he's doing. So this: this person comes up to him and tells him immediately- any reader in the ancient world would understand almost everything about this scribe when he calls Jesus teacher And he says: he says: "Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go".

Now, at this point in the ministry, this is Matthew, chapter 8.

He's just taught the Sermon on the Mount And this is the. I'm not going to use any names, but Jesus is now the big name preacher rabbi in Galilee at the time. And- And you may think in this room about a big name preacher rabbi that comes out of the woodwork and you're like "Whoa", He's a pretty good teacher. And so this man, this scribe, who's been studying the Pentateuch, the Torah, for years, what he would is actually make translations, describe, make translations of the Torah.

He would copy it over.

He knew the Scriptures And he hears Jesus talk and he is impressed with the way that he articulates the Old Testament Torah. It's like man. This man preaches with authority And he goes up to Jesus before he's about to cross the lake, after the Sermon on the Mount, after he heals a few people, and he says: "Wherever you go, I'm going to go". Now, I'm not like Jesus.

I'm not as good of a teacher, I don't interpret the Torah as well as Jesus did And obviously I didn't die on a cross and rise from the grave for your sins.

I am not Jesus, But I can identify a little bit with what's happening in Jesus's ministry at this time. This person saw some of the good stuff, Saw an upgrade, And in a world where you go find the right rabbi, the scribe found a good rabbi or potential rabbi And he goes up to him and he promises him. He said: "I'll go wherever you go". And I'm not Jesus, but I remember when we moved out here.

In fact, just for honor's sake for a second, can you just lift up your hand if, if you were here at some point in 2023, before we launched on at the church, Hey, can we just celebrate the longevity really quickly?

Yeah, If you're here in 2023, you'll remember this season And I'm. I'm essentially we. We didn't have a building. We still don't have a building.

Pray about that one, but we didn't have the school yet.

We would meet periodically as a launch team and we would do interest socials and all these different things, just trying to gather people to cast a little bit of vision, to see if they would come be a part of what God was going to do through Orbit Church when we launched in 2024. And people would come up to me in various ways, And there was one that I learned to just get annoyed with And it was the over-promiser. It was one who would come up and they'd say this: And I don't even like Jesus has got to be they- he created every hair on their head. You know, within the Trinitarian relationship between him, the Father and the Holy Spirit, They created every hair on the scribe's head.

Jesus knows his every thought, every inclination, he knows all the problematic parts of his life.

Jesus knows everything about the scribe And he comes up to him and he, he just promises him. And people would come up to me. They'd say: "Man, love the vision, Pastor, I'll be with you wherever". I think I heard that direct phrase sometimes, Hannah, "Wherever you guys go, whatever building, whatever happens, I'm here for the long haul".

I would hear that one a lot And I learned pretty quickly the people who say that that quick are the very first people that will jet when things get hard.

Now, I'm not talking mess about them- Well, I guess I am- But at the same time I'm not trying to make them feel bad. I'm telling you a reality. A reality in this situation is you get excited, which triggers one aspect of your brain and you go do something about it. But the other part of your brain, the one that provides for reason and consistency and all of the other longevity things that you may be promising in your emotion right now, those things haven't quite been triggered yet.

And so you over promise.

And since you over promise, in the end you under deliver. So here's what Jesus does. This isn't a sales pitch. Jesus understands this person wants an upgrade and Jesus just preached a good sermon.

If I were Jesus- and I'm not Jesus- but at the end of that sermon, on the mount, he knows in the future how many people going to be reading that sermon, Cuz I- Matthew's going to translate this one pretty well.

The other disciples: I'm going to smack them when they get to heaven, cuz they didn't put that in their Gospel. But for him, Matthew's going to get some good kudos because he translated the Beatitudes. That's a good sermon. The Beatitudes, the birds of the air, beasts of the field, don't worry, Even the lilies in the valley are clothed with more than Solomon and all of his glory.

It's a good sermon.

Jesus knows it's a good sermon. And this man comes up. And Jesus knows this person wants the upgrade, he wants the clout, he wants the vibe of being around an amazing rabbi who's going to do some cool stuff. So Jesus responds to him, not with the sales pitch, but with the truth.

[clears throat], . He says: "Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the son of man has no place to lay his head". Let me translate that for you. Foxes, these thieving- I don't know, you've seen Zootopia, you know what I'm talking about.

These, these thieving, this has always been a thought on foxes, right?

This thieving type of thing. Even that's got a den. The birds, they're so fragile they couldn't even build a home. If they want to, All they can do is, with their feet, go grab a couple of sticks.

I just called it bird feet, I don't know.

They go grab a couple of sticks, they put them together and they call it a nest. Even they are provided. But the son of man, The son of man that's referred to in the Old Testament, in the book of Daniel, that son of man, the one with, like you know, all of these bronze and fiery eyes, and this crazy son of man that would come in and usher in the day of the Lord, the son of man has nowhere to lay his head. He's talking to a scribe, keep in mind.

This person knows the Old Testament like the back of his hand.

And Jesus says: "Foxes, have these birds, have these, the son of man, nowhere to lay his head". I think it's clean out state tape, kephale. I always learned in Greek that that head was kephale in Greek, cuz my, my Greek professor, he used to say: "You got to shave your head, kephale". And anyways, you'll remember Greek.

Now too, He says there's nowhere to lay down his head, And what he's doing is he's telling him.

You say wherever? Do you really mean wherever, though? Cuz I don't have a home, I, I, I don't have a place to stay, I'm itinerant, I move back and forth, I, I preach, I heal. Jesus knows- the disciples don't even know this at this point- He knows where he's going.

He's go going to a cross.

He tells this would-be disciple, who's currently a scribe, looking for an upgrade: Bro, there's no upgrade. I want to tell you in this room, if you come in and you enjoy the worship, your amygdala is moving a little bit and you're like I want. I want every bit of this relationship with Jesus. I felt so good today.

People were nice to me for the first time in a long time- I've been isolated for all of these years- and I came in and someone smiled at me Like I, I love every bit of this.

I opened the word and it's exactly what I've been hoping for, Like the Lord is, is real and you're realizing that in this moment. You say I'll go wherever you go. I want to tell you that is a good thing to say if you can deliver on it, But otherwise it's just over promising the Lord, not me, Until you get back home and a bad thing happens or the upgrade wasn't what you anticipated it would be, And then the same guilt comes in that you had before. You start to wonder.

I thought this would go away when I followed Jesus, But Jesus is saying: the reality is it's going to and fro, doing whatever the Lord's called you to do, and you'll receive Revelation about who he is in various moments, and you won't know what they are until you receive them.

And so you got to step forward in faith, genuinely understanding that wherever really means wherever. He may call you into a new friend group. He may call you to do something with your wallet that you never anticipated. He might call you, if you're single, into a different type of relationship than you've been dreaming of from when you were younger, cuz all the TV you watched and the stuff that you looked at that you shouldn't have looked at.

He's going to call you into a different type of relationship.

For many of you. He's going to call you into life that follows him, even though the rest of your family's not vibing with it. It's like what? Wherever I tell people when we baptize them, I say: "What this means is you are making your faith public.

And to make your faith public, what you're saying to everyone else, you're not over promising and under delivering.

You are saying that you have chosen to follow Jesus, whatever and wherever that may be. So don't promise and under deliver. Lean forward into your faith. I have a list of a couple things.

It's like some people will promise: "I'll be there every Sunday".

Came twice. Be there every Sunday? Well, yeah, I'll, I'll. I'll start tithing this month.

I'll start doing what God's calling me to do.

I'll start doing it. It's been 4 months. I'm I'm going to go to that small group, But you haven't. I'm going to step into leadership one of these days, But I got stuff to do.

I'm going to quit drinking.

I'm going to forgive this person. I'm going to reconcile with my spouse. I'm going to start praying. Every morning I'll read my Bible from cover to cover.

I'm going to go on mission trips.

I'm going to mentor that person. I'm going to be completely different. That's what excitement tells you, But Jesus says you don't know what it's going to be, Cuz Jesus doesn't have a place to lay his head. Neither will you As they move forward carefully.

Is that it Okay?

Whatever, I just You'll remember it. That's the first type of person: the over-promiser. The second type of person is what we'll call the conditional follower. This is where it's going to hit.

I think This is where it's going to hit The conditional follower.

Here's what the person says: verse 21, : "Another disciple". Now, now, keep in mind. This says disciple. It didn't just describe A scribe, was someone who translated or copied the law over.

The disciple was someone who was already following Jesus.

Now, we don't know the extent to which he was following him. He obviously didn't follow him into the boat, but he was following Jesus at some level. I think this is where it hits many of us. If you're here today, most of you at some level of discipleship.

Disciple is simply a follower of Jesus.

Now you can follow him as close as humanly possible or you can follow him like you would follow somebody on Instagram, Like. There's a whole spectrum for discipleship And, based on what I see here, I would imagine this person's more the Instagram follower or disciple than he is the person who's really close to Jesus. And he comes up to him and he says: "Lord". Now what did the other person call him, Teacher?

This person called him Lord.

This is where it gets crazy. This person has more Revelation than the scribe. He understands that Jesus is Lord in some sense. Greek word is kurios, Kurios is the word that you would use for Jesus is Lord.

And so this man- we don't know the full understanding of this disciple, but we know he believes something about him that is different than the scribe.

And so he says: "Lord, let me first go and bury my father". Now, I've been trying all week to decide how far I want to go into the context for you, and I decided: I think I'm not going to go super far, And the reason is because I can give you all this interesting context about it. But it doesn't change the reality that I could give you without any context. But let me give you just a little bit of context to help you understand something.

Now, when he says: "Let me first go bury my father", this is not like us, where we have someone in our life pass And then within the week, maybe definitely within the next couple of days.

We go through all the rigmarole of meeting with a funeral home, getting with all of the family members and scheduling that funeral And then, by the time the funeral happens, everything is ready and immediately the person goes into the ground or into the crematorium or wherever the situation's going to take place. This is, for us, usually within a week or two. If we want to extend it to do a memorial so that we can get more people in town, we may go a couple weeks. Some people even go a month.

In this context it was different And we don't know exactly which version of the context it was, but we know it's probably not: "Hey, he died and I need to get him handled within 24 hours.

Can I come back tomorrow". Now, that would happen, but I don't think this is what Jesus is talking about, though it's still relevant to it. I think there are two other scenarios it could be. The first is that his father had died And when his father died, what you would do is you would put your relative in a place.

You would get all of their estate stuff in order, you would put them into a place and it would take about a year for for them to de- decompose fully.

No, no, no. This sounds terrible. And when they decomposed after a year, what you would do is you would go grab all of the bones and the things that are remaining and you would put them into a space that was more, like closed-in, and then you would officially bury them and finish the deed. This is pretty normal in the ancient world.

And then there would be another one.

The other scenario is that his father wasn't dead, but he was getting older. Maybe he was sick, maybe he wasn't sick, But in the ancient world and even in our world, there is a level where all cultures, all ethnicities, all backgrounds view death and burial as an important part of somebody's life. And so you, as a son or a daughter, have this innate cultural understanding that you need to take care of this deed of helping your family member move into this next season of life called death. My father's this way.

In a lot of ways, he likes to care for all of our family.

My mom lived with us for a while. There is a level where we all feel that, like that, pull on us to go and take care of our family members, And I think this is probably where the person landed. He said: "My father's old and I have this responsibility as a son to go see him into death and then bury him". And we have no clue how long this would have been, And we know Jesus was only there for a few years doing his ministry, And so Jesus' response to him is pretty significant.

He said: "Follow me and let the dead bury their own dead".

Come on, Jesus, It's a reasonable request, But Jesus knows that even reasonable requests that come before Jesus do not get. We get you where you want to be. I think I think we all fall into the reasonable trap, The reasonable trap. I'm a little scared, Cuz there's a lot of reasonable like.

I don't think most people who come to church on a regular basis are like: "All right, Jesus, I want to follow you, follow you.

Let me first go jump into sin, Jesus, I want to follow you. Let me first go, you know, smoke some weed until I'm done doing that. Now, some of y'all do that and you don't get your stuff together. Jesus, I want to follow you, but first let me go get my life of sin and sex and all this other stuff out of the way, and then I'll become an adult one day and follow you.

Now, some of a lot of people are in that category.

They want to follow Jesus, but they also want to do all the things that they shouldn't do, that Jesus told them they shouldn't do, and they think they're going to live long enough to get to this spot in their life where, when they're older, they won't depart from the way that they were taught. Now you can't promise that, and so you need to get your stuff together, because whatever life you're trying to live is not as good- it's the only sales pitch I'll give you today- it is not as good as a life with Christ Jesus. You're sitting there living in immaturity when Christ Jesus simply coming into your life will make you 10 times more mature. You'll have a perspective on this world that is different than the rest of the world.

Sometimes I'm looking at these people, full-grown adults- I'm 38 years old, they're my age- and they're stressed out about what the person down the street thinks about them, and they're going over and they're doing mimosas and cocktails on a regular, gossiping about each other, and then they're scared that when they're not there, if they don't make this event, they're going to be gossiped about.

They don't really like the people that they're hanging out with All this other stuff and they feel this little beckoning in their soul that says you should be following Jesus. But it's like oh, but, but, so-and-so with their sourdough. Starter is my best friend And I just need you to know that life is superficial, it's not helpful, it won't get you where Jesus is and so you need to follow him. But then there's reasonable traps.

This is where we find ourselves so frequently.

The comparison: let me go bury my father first. Like if you came up to me and you said, "Hey, I, I would serve, I would give, I would do this, I, I, I'll follow Jesus, I'll get baptized one of these days, but I really need to go bury my father first". You've now put me in a weird position. I'm just going to be honest with you.

I'm not.

I'm not trying to make you, make me feel better. This is my job, It's part of the game. But now you put me in a weird position because what I believe, beyond the shadow of my doubting, is that Jesus first is the best way to live, Nothing else. So there's literally nothing you can tell me in your little sales pitch to me, Nothing.

You can tell me that if you put it before Jesus, I'm going to stand there and be like, yeah, man, totally I get it.

But then sometimes, out of fear of losing you or whatever I'll say it, It's all right, I totally understand. But I'm just telling you the truth. I probably shouldn't tell you the truth, because now you're going to think that I'm thinking it every single time. You're telling me some excuse And it's like: don't tell me that.

Tell him that, Like you can tell me all you want, and I may make you feel better.

I may make you feel worse. You might get mad at me for making you feel bad about having to work on Sundays, and I'm not trying to make you feel bad. I'm just trying to help you understand that if you're working on Sundays is preventing you from following Jesus the way that he's called you to follow him, then you're living a life that's less than he's called you to. It is not my fault that you're working on Sundays.

So you got to figure out how to live a life that honors God while either working on Sundays, or figure out how to be the best employee possible that your employer doesn't want to lose, so that you can make church on Sundays?

I don't know. I know it's different for different people. And then some people will be like Pastor, I, I, I'll follow Jesus when my spouse gets on board And I'm like, half the time I don't even know the spouse. I'm like man, Tell me more about that.

That's got to be so hard.

I, Dude, I'll be all, I'll be all empathetic and I'm I'm working on it, but like, I'll try to be empathetic at the same time, If you put it first, Jesus is second or or later. If you put it first, Jesus is, is behind it. And what Jesus says to this guy is: let the dead bury their own dead, Follow me. And what I don't tell you is in anything that you're thinking about putting first Greek word proton is like this, this idea of like first place in your life.

If you put it first, before Jesus, lesser life, Lesser like Jesus is a lesser love for you.

And, you will not apprehend his nature at the level that you say that you want to. And it's not that you're not a follower, It's just that if you want to cling to Jesus up close, you've got to put him first. I'll give you another example. I'm scared about this example.

It's like there is one that's really unique here.

It's like I'll follow Jesus when my kids get a little older. I'll come back in the biblical community when I'm not scared of my kid getting sick again. Oh my gosh, I'm so scared. Jesus said: let the dead bury their own dead.

And we're living in this culture where tons of people are struggling with postpartum depression because they're spending time in complete isolation, because somebody told them they needed 6 months off from community to protect their baby.

And I'm just- if I'm just- trying to be careful with this. But you want to know one of the biggest places where the fall off happens. It's when somebody has a kid- Biggest, One of the biggest fall offs I've ever seen, And it doesn't even fit biblical community standards. It's like what?

How did we get to this place where we needed to go into isolation during the most traumatic time of somebody's life?

I saw you, Pastor Matt, don't be mean like that- just cuz you brought your kid in like too early. Your kid was probably going to get all the diseases. I brought him in like 2 days later or something like that. Even my wife was like bro chill, .

But I'm not saying that you have to do that, but what I am saying- and I'm trying not to equivocate here- is, if you think anything, anything burying your father or mother, your job, your kids, your spouse, not being where you are, anything that prevents you from following Jesus, the way he's called you, causes you to live a lesser life, And what you're trying to do is live in such a way that you apprehend the upward calling of Christ Jesus to live in peace that surpasses all understanding, To have your heart guarded.

And I've got so many other examples here. I'm scared enough as it is, But what we see when we see Jesus interact with his disciples is not a sales pitch, It is a reality check. He says to the first person, a scribe who should know better because he saw the Old Testament. He says: "Foxes have dens, birds have nests, son of man has nowhere to rest his head".

Second person: he says: "Follow me, Let the dead bury their own dead".

And so interesting- I know they're going to start playing behind me in a second- is so interesting the way that you can interpret the ends of these passages. The second one that I just spoke to you of. He says: "Follow me, Let the dead bury their own dead". This man who didn't get on the boat to go to the other side of Galilee because he had to go bury his father.

He missed what happened just after.

If you look in the passage, what happened just after is when Jesus calms the sea In the middle of There's a storm and people are freaking out and Jesus tells it to be still. This is what I found in my own spiritual walk. I can come up with all the reasons not to follow Jesus and be a conditional follower, But when I get rid of those conditions to follow Jesus and I just step into the boat, I find that pretty quickly I see the miraculous occur. It- It requires me to push it out.

All the conditions, all the excuses, all the firsts- Requires me to put him first.

The reality check for this person is man. If you would just take a step of faith and get rid of all these excuses, you might see the very thing you showed up here for in the first place. And then this first person, when Jesus gave him that reality check that I've got nowhere to lay my head, you say you'll follow me wherever I'll go. I'm going to a cross, And it's actually in John, chapter 19, verse 30, we see this then I think it's the only time that the word again is used- klinai- In verse nine, chapter 19, .

Verse 30 of John, when Jesus says "It is finished", It says he bowed his head And he gave up his spirit. . What I see in Christ Jesus, in that reality check to the scribe, is: I've got nowhere to go. I've got nowhere to lay my head.

I'm homeless.

You- not People- aren't going to look at you when you follow me and think "That dude, That's a cool dude". In fact, if you follow me, the only place you're going to lay your head and rest is on a cross. But there's a beautiful aspect to the cross, Cuz without the cross we don't receive forgiveness. Without the cross we don't have life abundantly.

Without the cross we don't have intercession by Jesus, who sits at God's right hand.

Jesus came here and he wandered so that we would have life. And so what the scribe missed? I want to encourage you- don't miss this- That Jesus calls you into a life that's difficult, but in the end, even as everything about your, your life, is exhausting, as you follow Jesus internally, there is something within your spirit that is fundamentally altered. So no sales pitch.

Just Jesus going to a cross, Just Jesus telling me to get rid of excuses And at some point, whenever I follow him and wherever I follow him, I'm going to see the miraculous and I'm going to find rest for my soul. So if there is any sales pitch, that's it. Give up your entire life and follow him so that you can receive rest for your soul and so that you can see a life of abundance that you will never see in a life of superficiality.