Knowing The Word in Matthew 8

The Cost of Following Jesus

18 Now when Jesus saw a crowd around him, he gave orders to go over to the other side. 19 And a scribe came up and said to him, “Teacher [a term used by outsiders and not true disciples of Jesus], I will follow you wherever you go.” 20 And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man [introduced for the first time, coined by Jesus to refer to himself from Daniel 7:13] has nowhere to lay his head.” [Jesus makes the point that following him entails homelessness and insecurity.] 21 Another of the disciples said to him, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.” 22 And Jesus said to him, “Follow me, and leave the dead to bury their own dead.” [Following Jesus even takes priority over family obligations. The dead were to be buried within 24 hours and took precedent over everything else. The duty was incumbent on the son. It could be that his father had not yet died and that the request was to wait for the father to die. Here the dead are those outside the discipleship group.]