THE COST OF FOLLOWING JESUS MATTHEW 8:18-22

Have any of you ever seen someone post the phrase, “winning” online on their social media? Usually this means that someone is really good at something or that everything is going their way. Some of you may remember when the actor, Charlie Sheen, made the slogan famous by posting it everywhere, especially when he was probably not actually winning because his career was taking a nose dive.

A lot of people look at Christianity through the lens of whether or not they are winning if they follow Christ. They want life to go smooth, their problems to be resolved, their bank accounts to be full, all of their problems to disappear. That’s not what it means to be winning as Christian.

If you are winning as a Christian, you have denied yourself and become nothing so that Christ might become everything.

Our passage this morning serves to transition Jesus from Capernaum to the region of the Gadarenes on the other side of the Sea of Galilee, where Jesus will meet a demoniac.

Many people are pressing around Jesus and you would think that Jesus would want to have as many people follow Him as possible. To an extent that is true that Jesus desires to have people truly follow Him, but many of these people do not really want Jesus. They may want to be healed or they may think that the Messiah will bring in prosperity with His kingdom, so they are thinking like a wise investor and want to get in early before Jesus’ ministry takes off so they can be at the top.

Many people treat Jesus like this today. They “sell” Jesus and offer to the crowds what Jesus can do for them, but seldom do they ever ask the people who would follow Jesus to count the cost.

Jesus did! Jesus was not interested in building a mega-church. He was interested in calling people to be disciples and count the cost. \

Did you know that at Jesus Ascension to heaven, there were only around 120 people who were truly committed followers of Christ?

This morning, we are going to take a look and see what Jesus had to say to two people who sought to follow Him. What He said to them helps us learn to count the cost of following Jesus.