Today’s Podcast
Today’s Bible reading plan:
Read it in a year – Job 11-12
see the whole year’s plan [here](http://www.bible-reading.com/bible-plan.pdf)
Today’s Devotional
Matthew 8:22
Jesus: Follow Me! And let the dead bury their own dead.
What do Jesus’ words mean for us today?
As I’m writing this podcast, I’m also teaching a class on the book of Romans. I can’t help but tie the two together as Paul describes the incompatibility of the man following the path of sin and death and the man who has died to sin and received the gift of eternal life. The two bodies represented by those redeemed and those who fail to accept the redemption Christ paid. The gift we have for the taking, but we must reach out and take it.
A man comes up to Jesus after He has done so much, healed so many, performed so many miracles. He says to Jesus, “Jesus, before I do the things You’ve asked me to do, I must first bury my father.” This doesn’t seem like a bad thing to do. The man’s father just died or at least death was knocking at the door. This disciple wanted to do the right thing and give his father a decent burial. He wanted to pay his last respects to the man who raised him, trained him, gave him his value system, his thought process, his inheritance. He wanted to do something good.
We would all look at the man and say, “What a noble gesture. Sure go bury your father, then come back and join us.” We would applaud and tell him he was an honorable son for not coming along and instead spending those last moments making sure his father’s body was properly washed, wrapped, covered with spices and entombed. We would think the man a great disciple doing all the right things.
What does Jesus say? “Follow Me! And let the dead bury their own dead.”
How could He be so dispassionate? How could He care so little about the man’s feelings? How could He just brush off a funeral the way He did and tell this disciple to follow Him without regard for the normal grieving rituals that accompanied the death of a loved one? What was Jesus saying to this poor disciple and to us? Was Jesus saying to leave all our emotions aside and become hard-hearted against such things?
The answer to all of those questions is no. Look at Jesus’ life and you’ll see He cared deeply about the feelings people had for others. He wept at Lazarus’ tomb. He raised the widow’s son. He performed miracles at funerals because death was never supposed to enter the world in the first place and at times He changed its outcome when He walked in the flesh with us.
Jesus knew how to grieve. He was “the man of sorrow, acquainted with grief,” Isaiah tells us. So what was the intent of His words that day?
I think Jesus saw through the man and his relationship to Him. God must take first place. Period. If He is not first place in your life, He will not take any place at all in your life. It wasn’t that Jesus didn’t understand the grief of the man, but the man’s father and family was more important than following Jesus. I think the disciple would have come to Jesus and tried his faith later with, “My mother is sick and I need to tend to her.” Sound legitimate. But then it would be, “My sister is having a baby and I need to be around to help her.” Soon he would say, “Master, the goats need milked and no one can do it like I can, I’ll do what you ask as soon as I’ve milked the goats.”
I’m not sure what Jesus asked the man to do that day, but I can guarantee you that the man could have accomplished the task before it was time to bury his father. He just wanted to put it off. Just like we do. “Jesus, I’ll do what you ask, but let me finish getting my career in order first.” “Jesus, I’ll talk to you as soon as I finish watching this football game.” “Jesus, I’ll do what you ask after the kids are asleep.”
How often do we put off what Jesus asks us to do until it’s more convenient for us? How many times do we miss opportunities to share what He is doing in our lives, that’s called witnessing, by the way, to someone around us? How many times do we fail to show His love to someone near us that we can help in some small way because we’re just too busy with our own lives to think about those around us?
What if Jesus lived His life that way? What if God lived in such a way that He only took notice of the important things. How would we fit into that? Would we even register in the mix? I’m one of 7 billion people on one of eight planets (maybe nine again) circling one of billions of stars in one of billions of galaxies in a universe too large to measure that is expanding every second. How important does that make me that God would care?
The answer is important enough to die on a cross for my sins, that if I choose, I can follow Him and have eternal life. What is more important than that? How can I not drop everything else when He gives me a task to do? He knows your heart. Follow Him. Just do it!
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