You may know that we have been in the book of Matthew, the gospel of Matthew, going through it. And this morning we come to Matthew 8, 18. And so that's on the docket for this morning. And when you hear this word, you must remember the words on the sign out front, that this is mission of grace church. And there's a reason why it's mission of grace church, because we think a lot of grace, right? And we're not legalists. And so because we're not legalists, we do not believe that we can ascribe to the level of obedience that the Lord would have for us without His grace. We can't just tough it out and become better Christians. We need Him to help us to do these things. So I don't want any of you to be down or depressed if you hear this word and you're convicted by it, but just that you would ask God to help you and to give you strength to do the things that you have determined He wants you to do in your own life. Amen? And so there's joy in that because you will see when you ask Him to do things, you will see miracles. You'll see things. You'll see, you'll know He's there. He may be very quiet. You're not gonna see him, you know, physically. He may not even make a sound, but you won't believe what he will do in your life if only you ask him, right? And you can ask him also for wisdom. It's a prayer he grants. We all need wisdom. We can't live without wisdom. We need it. Sometimes we find it in other people. but we ask the Lord and he gives it to us direct or through agents of his. His people are everywhere. So listen to this. This is kind of what you wouldn't expect, but these are the words of Jesus. Now when Jesus saw a crowd around him, he gave orders to go over to the other side. and a scribe came up to him and said, teacher, I will follow you wherever you go. And 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. Another of the disciples said to him, Lord, let me first go and bury my father. And Jesus said to him, follow me and leave the dead to bury their own dead. The word of God. In the first three centuries of the Christian church, If Christians were known for anything, it was martyrdom that they were known for. It was courageous faith. The accounts of the early Christian martyrs tell the stories of many followers of Jesus who demonstrated courageous faith even unto death. One such martyr was Perpetua, or Perpetua, depending on how you want to say it, and Felicitas, two young women. Now, Perpetua and Felicitas were martyrs of the third century. Perpetua was born around 181. She was 22 years of age, married a noblewoman and a nursing mother. Her co-mother Felicitas was an expectant mother and was her slave. They suffered together at Carthage in the Roman province of North Africa, which is now Tunisia, during the reign of Septimius Severus, not a kind Roman emperor. Perpetua's father pleaded with her to recant her belief. and sacrifice to the emperor. Because back then you had a choice. You either said Jesus is Lord or Caesar is Lord. And if they put you to the test and you didn't say Caesar was Lord, you were martyred. Perpetuer refused and was baptized before being taken into prison. Felicitas gave birth to a daughter despite her initial concern that she would not be martyred because they had a practice of not martyring pregnant women. Do you hear what I just said? She wanted to be martyred. And so she got her wish because she gave birth to the baby. On the day of the games in the amphitheater, the martyrs were led in, and at the demand of the crowd, they were first scourged by a line of gladiators. Then a bear, a boar, and a leopard were set on the men, and a wild cow on the woman. Wounded by the wild animals, they gave each other the kiss of peace. and then were put to the sword. Perpetua's death is described like this. But Perpetua, that she might have some taste of pain, was pierced between the bones and shrieked out. And when the swordsman's hand wandered, because he was a novice, she put the sword up to her neck so he could cut off her head. she moved it there. And it's been said that she was so great a woman that she could not have been slain had she not herself so willed it. Martyrdom in the ancient Christian church did not have the intended effect of the stopping of the spread of Christianity. It actually caused the spreading of Christianity. Tertullian said this, the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. The public execution of martyrs displayed their commitment to Jesus and their willingness to sacrifice their entire lives to him. The watching unbeliever knew it was not natural. They knew it was supernatural. When a person is transformed from self-centeredness to Christ-centeredness, it is a miracle. And that is what is happening in your lives. you are being transformed gradually from self-centeredness, because that's how we come out of the box, we're all born self-centered, to Christ-centeredness. People will notice. You see, Christianity is not a mere system of thought. It is that, but it's more than that. It is also a life lived. And it's like having a bicycle. You get your bicycle, waiting for Boyd to come in with his bicycle, I haven't seen him yet. But can you imagine Boyd coming in with only the rear wheel of his bicycle? he wouldn't, he would be late. So orthodoxy without orthopraxy, that is doctrine without practice, is like having one wheel on your bicycle. You need two. And so we need both of those wheels, don't we? In the great book of Romans, the first 11 chapters are about the doctrine of God, his mercy, his greatness, In chapter 12 it switches and says, in light of God's mercy, do this. Right? Because of all that, do this. The Lord, you know, gave us the first fruits. He gave us his son. There's no greater gift he could give. the Lord asks you in return to give Him the first fruits, the best of your time, the best of your talents, and the best of your treasure. Not as some type of way of earning your way into heaven, not at all, but displaying the reality of your faith. Perpetua display the reality of her faith by her martyrdom. The missionaries that we are, Lord willing, going to be commissioning display the reality of their faith going someplace for three years to translate the Bible and the pay, if I told you what the pay was, you would say, what? Now, their expenses are covered, but at the end of the day, when they come home, they won't have anything much. And before they leave, they'll be selling their cars. If anybody needs a car, let me know. They'll be selling their cars, selling everything, except for certain clothes, and leaving, cashing out. And they're in their mere 20s. Those people just don't come along. They're not in the high school curriculum and they say, oh yeah, I wanna be a plumber, I wanna be a baker, I wanna be a lawyer. And somebody says, I wanna be a missionary, go to a foreign country and maybe get killed and do it for peanuts. That's faith and it's the evidence. I'm not saying you should be doing that. That's not what I'm saying. What I am saying is that if your faith is real, it will come out. It will effervesce from your life. And the big issue is, do you follow Jesus? Are you following Jesus today? And Jesus wants us to know a few things if you follow Jesus. The first one is this, if you follow Jesus, you will be rejected by others. You will. Nobody follows Jesus without being rejected. People, the more, the closer you get to Jesus, the harder you follow Jesus, the more you'll be rejected. The more people will ridicule you or not want to hang out with you. It's very difficult for children. you know, when they're on the school, high school, junior high school, trying to be accepted, trying to be liked, trying to be loved by others and their peers. And if they stand for Jesus, they take the hit, don't they? They really take the hit. That's why a lot of people homeschool their children or put them in Christian schools. Be prepared for rejection if you live like Jesus. And rejection's hard, right? Jesus was rejected. He was ultimately rejected. The Son of God came to save his people, and he was rejected so bad that he was murdered. They killed God. Jesus was, is, and will always be God. Yahweh in the flesh. They killed God. Time magazine in 1968 ran a cover. God is dead. How foolish. You can't kill God. But that's what they were doing. they were rejecting Jesus. If Jesus was rejected, so will you be rejected. Now, if you live with one foot in the world and one foot in the kingdom, if that's even able to do that, if you're straddling the fence, you won't be rejected so much, right? But we're not to make friends with evil practices or the world, meaning the world system. I don't mean like, you know, go out and take a walk in the, you know, beautiful winter woods. I mean the world system. We don't make friends with the world system. Why? Because the world system is godless. It's against God. All those people in that whole echelon of news media and politics and all that huge conglomeration of corporations, all these things, all of them are against God. You realize that? They're sewed together, some of them unwittingly, some of them very wittingly, and they're engineering all of life against God. If you want to know what they're trying to do, go to Disney World. And what I mean by that is this. Disney World, I just went there a couple months ago, and you might say, oh, why did he do that? I'm a student of culture. And guess what? You can go into the spaceship earth, which is the big ball. And it's really nice. It goes all the way up. You go up and it like gives you the story of the world. Very accurate, except for one thing. There's not a single mention of God. None. And then they have, you know, the past and they have the future. Tomorrowland. Guess what? Not a single mention of God. That they're gonna build, man is gonna build a utopia where everything's great and we don't need God. We're gonna have heaven on earth. Not, you will never have heaven on earth, never. Write it down, write it down. You'll never have heaven on earth, you'll only have heaven in heaven. King Jesus will come and rescue us from this earth when we're about to be martyred ourselves on this earth when it gets even more serious. Now, the other thing is, I like the fireworks presentations. You've never seen fireworks, of course, until you went to Disney World. The fireworks are, you know, they got all the money, so they got all the lights, and the smoke, and everything, and they've got the soundtrack, and all the stuff, and it's about humanity. how we're all brothers and sisters, and we are, you know, and how wonderful it is and everything's going to be great. Just us. We're going to do it. You know, Hakuna Matata, you know, whatever. We're going to have that utopia on earth without God. Not a single mention. God's not even in the place. But you know what the funny thing is? He's in some of the people. Amen. Cast members come from every country, and I made it a point to talk to every cast member I could and just start talking to them. And you know what? Some of them had the light of Christ in them, but they're working there for whatever reason, whatever motivation. When you don't buy into the world's lies, you will be rejected. And depending upon where you are, you will be persecuted. But you know what? The Bible says, blessed are you. Blessed are the persecuted. We are so full of ourselves, aren't we? Oh, it's disgusting. You know, with, what do you call it, virtual reality and, you know, all the stuff where we're so coddled and everything. And I'm sure these words to many of you talking about martyrdom in such terms is probably shocking to you culturally. You're probably going, what is he talking about? Like, you know, being martyred is terrible. And why would that woman say, bring it on? But she did. You know why? Because she loved the Lord more than even her own life. Amen. And so, you will be rejected. If you follow Jesus, you will find out quickly that this world will no longer be your home. Oh yeah, you'll live here and you'll own stuff and you'll cut your lawn and you'll do all the things that you're supposed to do. And maybe the Lord prospers you and you buy things and everything's great. But at the end of the day, you'll be like, Homesick. This is not all there is. This isn't it. In fact, you'll live as a citizen of heaven at the time you're living on earth. Your heart will be in heaven. It'll be there. And you know, you won't be so clutching on your life. Right? We think death is the worst thing that could ever happen to anybody. Oh, God. Right? And it's like, well, it's going to happen to every one of us, right? Unless the Lord comes sooner. But every one of us will die. There's an appointment. Each person has an appointment. We don't know what that date is, but there's an appointment. It's been appointed for man to die. And if you're a Christian, That's the best day of your life. Now, I know that's kind of cultural, right? Because we're trying to keep ourselves. We're living in Massachusetts. We've got Mass General Hospital. We've got Brigham and Women's. We've got Beth Israel. We've got all the great hospitals, and God bless them. Right? God has given us so much technology. They're even talking about something that could cure cancer. They're getting close. It's amazing the amount of technical knowledge that God is allowing us to have. And thank the Lord for that. But it doesn't mean that you have to freak out and clutch to your life. And then if someone told you, you've got three more months to live, that you should, you know, check in and just be so depressed about it. If you're a Christian, Rejoice. Right? And I'm not trying to be morbid or anything. I'm just trying to be realistic. You want to go home? That's home. You know, where there's no more tears. This world is no longer your home. He says, teacher, this guy says, I'll follow you wherever you go. And Jesus said, He's basically saying, I'm homeless. Now, was he homeless? At times, he was homeless. But at times, he stayed at Peter's house. At times, he stayed at Mary and Lazarus and Martha's house. He was fond of staying at those places. But there are other times he didn't have a place to lay his head. He had no home here, even though this is his world, his earth. Can you imagine? Jesus was homeless. And in the same way, you may have a home, but you're homeless because this is not your home. What was that lady there, the one that won the American Idol thing? That gal. This is my temporary home. Right? She had it right. She had it right. How could they let her sing that? They must have said, I don't know about that. It was like Charlie Brown. You know Charlie Brown? Do you watch it this year? I have to watch it every year. You know, and I love the part where Linus gets up and recites Luke 2, you know, in a spotlight. He recites Luke 2. And you know what? Charles Schulz, the Christian animator of Charles Brown, the creator of Charles Brown, had to fight TV producers for that to happen. The producers, this is back in the 60s, said, no way, Jose. You are not putting Bible on TV. The Bible is dangerous, for goodness sake. We won't have it. You won't have any viewership. Nobody will watch it. It won't last long. And we're investing money in this thing. So no Bible. And Schultz said, then no show. That's right. Dude, forget it. I love the Lord more than I love the money that I'll get from Charlie Brown. Bye. And they said, oh, Schultz, hold on a second there, bro. Don't get too hasty, bro. We'll work something out. You get your Luke 2, OK? So they gave him Luke 2, and they had Luke 2. Remember the astronauts? Do you remember? We were alive in 1969. I was. We were watching the land on the moon from television. Well, how about before that, when they were orbiting the Earth? And it was some of the first pictures of the Earth from space. And it was at Christmastime. And what did they do? They recited the Christmas story. And it was broadcast, get this, all over the world. And a Russian cosmonaut said, Yuri Geller, he said, hey, I did spacewalking for Russia, for the USSR. And I was up there in my space suit, and I didn't see God. And somebody said, if you took off that space suit, you'd see God real quick. If you follow Jesus, you won't be playing at faith with God. You won't be sitting on the fence, uncommitted, indifferent, comfortably numb. That's not safe. That's not a safe place to be. There was a Georgia farmer, farmer, get that, farmer? Sitting on the steps of his tumbled-down house, and a stranger stopped by for a drink from the farmer's well and asked the farmer, how's your cotton growing? The farmer replied, ain't got none. The stranger asked, well, did you plant any? The farmer said, nope. Afraid of boll weevils. The stranger then asked, well, how's your corn? Doesn't plant no corn either. Afraid there weren't going to be enough rain. The stranger persisted. How about your potatoes? You must have a crop of potatoes. Didn't plant none. Scared of potato bugs. The stranger was now frustrated. He asked, well, what did you plant? And the farmer said, nothing. I just played it safe. That should not be us. And thirdly, if you follow Jesus, you will leave the dead to bury their own dead. Now, this sounds kind of mean, right? Jesus says, let the dead bury their own dead, you come follow me. In another book of the Bible, it says, you come and proclaim the gospel, right? Would Jesus not let this guy have a funeral for his poor dead dad? Well, guess what? His dad was not dead. He couldn't have been dead because the Jewish custom law was that when somebody died, you sat with the body until the body was buried. And if that guy had a dead dad, he wouldn't have been listening to Jesus. What this really means is he wanted to go home, take care of his dad until he died, bury his dad, then come follow Jesus. He says, let me first bury my father, first. And Jesus said, no way. You get it? It doesn't take a Christian life to take care of an elder, but it does take a Christian life to follow Jesus. And it does take a Christian life to preach the gospel. AI doesn't do it. Robots don't do it. Unbelievers don't do it. You don't get it from the television. They don't tell you the truth. Only Christians tell about Christianity. Let the spiritually dead bury the physical dead. But because God has invested so much in you, you serve Jesus. You be a disciple of Jesus now. Now I'm not saying that in some cases it's not part of your ministry maybe to serve your ailing parents and to do that, but not everybody is called to that by virtue of it. You know, maybe your unbelieving brother or sister can take care of your parents while you follow Jesus. Discipleship should never be delayed. If Jesus is the most important person in the world, he's God, and he's calling you to discipleship, is there anything that should have priority over that? Should you say, wait a minute, Jesus, I know you're first in everything, but I'll do it next week. In fact, I'll do it in a few years when dad dies. I'll become a Christian right before I die. No, you won't. I guarantee you, you won't. Some people think like that. They're going to say, you know what? I'm going to have all the fun I want in the world. And when I know I'm going to die, I'm going to, I'll come back into the church. I'll get myself strained out, shined up and get ready, but not until then. Until then, I'll just have a good time. No, you won't. No, you won't. It's like saying, if you won the lottery, you'd give all the money to the church. No, you won't. You're like, well, you know, the church, I'm not really sure about them. Pastor's kind of weird, you know. You'll find a few excuses. So, God has invested a ton in you, and he wants you to do the ministry, whatever it may be, that he's called you to. It could be very simple. It could be part and parcel of your job. You could be a CNA in a situation and you could bring Christ to people who are in that setting. It could be anything, right? It could be school, it could be retirement, and you pray for people and have gospel conversations with people. You could be giving people rides to the airport and talking about Jesus. There's lots of things it could be. It could be being a preacher. It could be being a pastor or an elder of a church or a deacon. It could be cleaning the toilets of a church. It could be anything like that. It could be an usher. You follow me? He wants you to do what you're supposed to do now. Indecisive discipleship just doesn't work, right? Now, think about this all, and you might say, oh, Lord, I can't believe I came to church today to hear this message. It wasn't my fault, we just came upon it. But if you read the Facebook post on this thing, it says this. Count the cost of following Jesus, this cost in following Jesus. Salvation's free, but it's gonna cost you, right? Because you know what we do? We give him our lives. I gave him my life. What do you think I do this for? What do you think I do this for? You think I need the money? Do you think I do it on my Sunday mornings because I can't sleep? Right? I do it because this is what he's called me to do. And if he didn't, I wouldn't be here. Really, I wouldn't. I'd be done. But he's called me to do it. That's why I do it. Now, think about this, though. The cost is high, right, to follow Jesus? But the cost to not follow Jesus is much higher. The man of the world thinks, if I don't believe in Jesus, then Jesus does not exist. That's a lie from the pit of hell. I don't care what you believe or not, He exists. He says He exists. There's no contrary evidence to say that He doesn't exist. They can't disprove the resurrection. So many things we could talk about about that thing. It's not a matter of proof. It's a matter of faith. And you know what? If you don't have faith, there's only two doors, bro. Two doors. Smoking or none. Jesus or no Jesus. That's it. That's the whole thing in a nutshell. You're either the blessed or you're the wicked. You're either the wise or the foolish. You're either on the road with Christ or you're without Christ and you're doomed. You just haven't got there yet, but you will, unless you come to Christ before. That's it. It's that simple. And you know what? I need a piece of paper to describe this. I guess this is a piece of paper. Forgive me for ripping a bulletin. Kind of a holy thing. You may know that there's more to me than meets the eye, that not only do I do this, but I also practice law. Forgive me for that. Let the dead bury their own dead, Dave. Yeah, I know. What I do a lot is life estates. You ever hear of a life estate? It's a great planning device, right? People come into my office and say, Dave, I don't want the nursing home to get my house. What do I do? Well, you use a life estate. You transfer your house to your kids, we'll say. But we tear off a life estate. So, this is what your kids own until you die, and this is what you own. You own your house for life. And when you die, immediately, that will go to your kids. They'll have to go to probate, and if the big bad nursing home tries to come after you, they won't get this, they'll just get this. And this gets smaller all the time as you live. When you're 80, it's like this. When you're 90, it's like this. When you're 100, it's like this. When you're 110, it's like this. Stop me somebody, I like this. You follow me? And so you know what we're doing? If we're not committed to Christ, we're reserving a life estate for ourselves. We're saying, Lord, I give you my life, but wait a minute, I'm holding back a little bit. I would like to go to heaven when I die, but I want to reserve the management of my own life until I breathe my last. And the Lord says no. It's all or nothing. He's Lord of all, or he's not Lord at all. That's how it works, right? A few years back, I got a call after this mess. I got a call from a church, and the church said, We just got sued by a former member. I'm like, what? And the guy was suing to get his tithes back. Yeah, what he did, he was in a church where they didn't tithe much, maybe five bucks a week. It was kind of an indifferent thing. And then he so-called got saved and he went to this Christian church and he started tithing. They talked about tithing, so he gave 10% of his income to the church. And the church said that, you know, if you tithe, you'll be blessed. And so he was all excited about that. And he went for a few years, two or three, four years, and he said he wasn't being blessed, so he left the church, went back to the old church, started giving five bucks a week again, and he sued the church, because he said, you know what? They defrauded me. They said that I'd be blessed, and I wasn't blessed, and they want my money back. And I'm like, of all the crazy cases that could walk into my office. This is probably like 25 years ago. That's how long I've been doing this stuff. And of course it went to court and the whole thing. It went to a jury trial and the case was dismissed. But the guy gave to get. And at his deposition, I shall never forget it, I asked him some questions. So you say you're not blessed. He says, that's right. I said, how is your health? Do you have any health issues? No, I don't. What do you do for a living? I'm a used car salesman, true story. I asked you for the last five years of your records of your income, revenue from the car business. Can you show me those? Yeah. Just going up, right? The sales were going up. I said, are you a salesman up every year since you started at the church? Yes. Are you married? Yes, I'm married. How's your wife? Is she healthy? Yes. Do you have a good marriage? Yes. Do you have children? Yes. How old are they? Blah, blah, blah. How are your children? Good. Are they healthy? Yeah. Do they live with you? Yeah. Are they a joy or are they a thorn? Oh, they're a joy. I'm like, sir, I don't want to say anything, but how is it that you're not blessed? He thought he was going to get the winning lottery ticket or something. So he sued the church to get back his tithes, and everybody on the jury thought it was the craziest thing. You just don't do that. Why? He gave to get, and his gig, his discipleship, was revocable. Doesn't work out my way, I'm out of here. People do it all the time, though. They come to church, they come to church, they stay in church, and then if they don't like something, or they say, you know, I'm tired of being a Christian, they leave church. They leave. They leave the faith. They don't tell you first. They don't come up to you and say, I'm leaving the faith. It's like you don't see them anymore. And you call them and they don't answer. They've left the faith because it was revocable for them. It was not irrevocable. They turned to their old ways because they followed Christ for the wrong reasons. Christianity is like a contract which we sign, and it's blank, and all it says at the bottom is, yes, Lord, and you sign, right? I don't know what the Lord's gonna fill into that contract. He might have me going over to wherever, you know, some country, but I said, yes, Lord. I said, yes, Lord. Unconditionally, yes, Lord. And that doesn't come except by faith, right? It won't come naturally. The natural person will say, I ain't doing that. That's a crazy thing. Yes, Lord. But supernaturally, yes, Lord. And if you want to say, yes, Lord, and you can't, the way to do it is to pray that you could. In 1519, Hernando Cortes came over from Spain. And they came to, I think it was Veracruz. And when they arrived at Veracruz here in the Americas, they planted a flag, the flag of Spain in the dirt. And wow, it was great. We've discovered America. And wow, the whole crew, everybody's excited. And then they looked over and there was Cortez and a few men lighting all the ships on fire. So there would be no way to go back. When you come to Christ, it's a one-way ticket. You burn the ships, right? You burn the ships. I don't know about you, but hell is a price that I don't want to pay. Heaven is a gift I'd love to gain. So to be obedient to the Lord now makes complete sense. Does it not? Does it not? You know? And you think about it. Let's ask the Lord for the grace to not be half-hearted, to be all in, that the Lord would give us the zeal with knowledge. And you know, it's my job to love you. It's my job. to love you. If you are a member of this church, if you become a member of this church, if you're committed to this church, it's my job to love you. And you know what? One of the greatest ways I can love you is to tell you the truth. If I lie to you, you must just get rid of me. If I'm a liar, I'm a bad doctor. I'm giving you a bad diagnosis. But you know what? I want to see you all there. When I'm there, I look up, I see you there. Thank you, Pastor. Right? I don't want to say, where's so-and-so? Oh, it didn't work out for them. You never told them. You never told them. As they're going down, you never told me. No. Even though this is a hard word this morning, it happens. If we're going through the Bible, We get the happy stuff, and we get the tough stuff. Today's the tough stuff, but it's not tough because grace is giving you that you can do these things the way the Lord wants them. Augustine said this, if I can remember it right. Lord, command what you will, but give us the strength to do it. And other Protestants said, that's crazy. But it's true. He gives us the grace to do His will. Well, the last story comes with a super meteor presentation. Mikey, could you attend the honors? Do you see a picture up there? Is there anyone in this audience of people who can identify what that is? Iwo Jima. Iwo Jima is, and was, an island. It was one of the bloodiest battles of World War II. And that, my friends, is them gaining the victory over Japan to take the island of Iwo Jima. It was only an eight square mile island, 600 miles south of Tokyo. What was the big deal? It was strategic. It contained two airstrips that America needed to contain Japanese airstrikes. It was guarded by, get this, 22,000 Japanese soldiers on eight square miles. And the fighting began, and the fighting went on for a month, and the United States of America lost 26,000 people to get that victory. 26,000 people in a month. There are 6,800 graves of American soldiers there who could not be buried at home. And one grave there, one marker, says this. When you go home, tell them for us and say, for your tomorrow, we gave our today. Lord God, let us live our lives so courageously down here, following you on this earth, so that when we come to our end, we may be able to say to our families, to our friends, to our church, to our city, to our world, for your tomorrow, we gave our today. for your eternity of countless tomorrows, we risked our lives today, just like Jesus. Amen? Let's pray. Our Father and our God, we thank you, Lord, for your word. We pray, Lord, that these words would resonate in our hearts. And Lord, we pray that you would give us the grace and the strength and the wisdom to apply them in a manner that is pleasing to you. May each and every one, Lord, think on these things, and may, Lord, every heart be here, be good grounds where the Word will take root and grow a crop to your glory, in Christ's name.