Hear now the word of the Lord from Matthew chapter eight, verses 18 through 34.

"Now when Jesus saw a crowd around him, he gave orders to go over to the other side. And a scribe came up and said to him, 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. And when he got into the boat, his disciples followed him. And behold, there arose a great storm on the sea, so that the boat was being swamped by the waves. But he was asleep. And they went and woke him, saying, save us, Lord, we are perishing. And he said to them, why are you afraid, O you of little faith? Then he arose and rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm. And the men marveled, saying, what sort of man is this, that even the winds and seas obey him? And when he came to the other side, to the country of the Gadarenes, two demon possessed men met him, coming out of the tombs so fierce that no one could pass that way. And behold, they cried out, what have you to do with us, O Son of God? Have you come here to torment us before the time? Now a herd of pigs was feeding at some distance from them.

And the demons begged him, saying, if you cast us out, send us away into the herd of pigs. And he said to them, go. So they came out and went into the pigs, and behold, the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the sea and drowned in the waters. The herdsmen fled, and going into the city they told everything, especially what had happened to the demon possessed men. And behold, all the city came out to meet Jesus. And when they saw him, they begged him to leave them and to leave their region."

The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever.

Before I entered into full time pastoral ministry. I worked several years in a sales role and I was not a good salesman, but I worked very hard at it. I worked hard to make the cold calls and and to set up meetings and to prepare the best pitches that I could, and to present those in those meetings as well as I could. But what I always hated, and what always would just throw me, was when the objections started to rise, was when people started to point out, or maybe ask questions, or maybe to do it somewhat pointedly. Problems. Either problems with what I was selling or possibly problems with the fit. What you're selling is fine, but I can't see how it would help us, that sort of thing.

And whenever that would arise, I would do my best to sort of try to recover. I would, I would try to. Well, I think you're missing it. Maybe let's think more about this. But I would always feel as things went on that they would slip further and further away. I just wasn't very good at responding to those things on my feet. I would just cringe inside as I felt the meeting go off the rails. So I tried to get better at this as well. How to answer objections. Respond to objections. I read articles and books, and I talked to the the best salespeople I knew. And one of the interesting things, although I never really got that good at this, one of the interesting things I learned from all of this is that the best sales people love objections. They don't see them as a threat. The best salespeople certainly don't want the deal to to fall apart. They don't want the problems, ultimately, but they love the opportunity for objections to rise. They they relish it. They see that as a wonderful opportunity to build trust. See, the best salespeople realize they're not just trying to hawk some product. They realize that they're trying to build a relationship with people who are real, people who are trying to balance a lot of competing factors, a lot of competing interests. They have their own sort of agenda and purposes that they're trying to evaluate what you're doing.

They have their bosses to answer to. They have other people that they're trying to serve in all this. And as they try to balance all of this, good salespeople see objections as an opportunity to clarify all of those competing opportunities. And so the best salespeople do a good job of raising objections, putting them out on the table for everyone to see even before the prospect recognizes them. They want to get them out in the open to say, look, if you work with us, here are some things that are going to be a challenge. But here's why. With everything else, you have to consider why that is still a good thing. Why? In fact, that's intentional. Why? That's the best of all possible worlds. Again, these were masterful things that I never got good at, but it was amazing to see a good salesperson at work sort of doing these things, to put these objections out there, because they recognize at the end of the day, they were to serve the other person. They were to help the other person build trust by absolute candor and transparency. I'm not talking about manipulating people. They genuinely wanted to see people, to see things as they were. If it wasn't a good fit, they could go their separate ways. But they wanted to show people honestly what they were hoping to do. Now, as we come to this passage, it's very important to note and to be very clear about it, that Jesus is not a salesman.

Jesus is God Almighty, the second person of the Trinity who has come down from heaven, who has taken a human nature like ours in every respect, yet without sin. But that when Jesus is starting his earthly ministry, his public ministry, very early on in this, it's so interesting that he's not desperate for followers. You see, I get desperate. I'd want to sort of save the deal and promise whatever I had to do, do whatever I had to do to sort of save things. Jesus. Here is the one who raises the objections. He puts them on the table. He wants us to see exactly what it will mean to follow him, so that seeing all objections, we can fall, follow him with full freedom. The big idea today, as we look at this particular passage, is that the authority of Jesus withstands all objections. The authority of Jesus withstands all objections. And so we're going to consider three objections that Jesus is raising through these stories that we're looking at.

1. His cost is too high (Matt. 8:18-22)
2. His call is too dangerous (Matt. 8:23-27)
3. His command is too powerful (Matt. 8:28-34)

His cost is too high

So first of all, his cost is too high. An objection right out of the gate. How much will this cost me to follow Jesus? Before we look at verse 18 through 22, I want to remind you of where we are.

We looked a little bit at this last week. Uh, but a few weeks before that, we got to the end of the sermon on the Mount, and the takeaway from the sermon on the Mount was not any particular point that Jesus taught. The takeaway from the sermon on the Mount was about how Jesus taught, namely, that he taught them as one who had authority and not as their scribes. The takeaway from the sermon on the Mount was that Jesus taught with real authority, and so we looked at the way that his authority shined forth in the previous passage in chapter eight, verses one through 17, especially in his authority to cleanse us from sin, we saw that he had greater authority than the priests, greater authority than the temple, greater authority even than the old covenant sacrificial system. Today we are going to look at challenges and objections to Jesus's authority that deal with discipleship. Following Jesus. Is it worth it to follow Jesus? Now I want to show you where authority sort of jumps off the page right as we begin this passage in verse 18, read with me. Now when Jesus saw a crowd around him, he he gave orders to go over to the other side. It doesn't say that Jesus said that we should go to the other side, that he suggested this, that he asked them this.

Jesus gave orders. This is a word of military command. Jesus gave orders that Matthew could have chosen any word. But again, the idea of authority is something that Matthew is exploring in this gospel, and he wants us to consider the claims of Jesus's authority now, especially as related to discipleship following him. And so in this first section, Jesus gives us two test cases to explore or consider the nature and the scope of Jesus's authority. The first test case comes with a scribe. In verse 19. A scribe comes up to Jesus and says, teacher, I will follow you wherever you go. The operative word for a disciple is that a disciple is someone who follows Jesus. So the scribe is offering to follow Jesus, namely as one of Jesus's disciples. But notice that the scribe calls Jesus a teacher. Now remember Matthew 729. Jesus taught them as one who had authority and not as their scribes. The scribes were teachers, but the scribe recognized what everyone else did. The sermon on the Mount recognized namely, that Jesus had a higher level of authority. He had authority not like the scribes. And so this scribe is thinking that he's doing a great service to Jesus by saying, teacher, you have something to teach me, let me follow you. It's so interesting the way Jesus responds. He doesn't say absolutely. Deal done. Let's go. Follow me. But he doesn't reject the scribe either. He simply reframes. The way this scribe is thinking about following Jesus.

Jesus raises an objection here. He wants this scribe to know that following Jesus is not going to be a simple academic affair. We're just going to walk around and think big thoughts and talk about big ideas. I teach you these beautiful things for you to ponder. Jesus raises the objection that following him will be hard. He says foxes have holes to live in and birds of the air have nests to live in. But the Son of Man and this is a title that Jesus is using to talk about himself. We can't go too much into that today. We'll talk about that more as the Gospel of Matthew continues. But the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head. I will have nowhere to lay my head. And the implication is, neither will you. This will be hard to follow me. Are you prepared for the hardship of discipleship to me now? What Jesus is doing here? Again, he's not rejecting this scribe. He's giving him an opportunity to respond in faith. And this is so sad because the impression is that the scribe sort of takes this and does not follow Jesus. We don't realize or read that he then follows. Jesus embraces him. It's a very different kind of story than what we will encounter later in Matthew chapter 15, where a Canaanite woman, not just a Gentile, but a straight up Canaanite woman, comes to Jesus and asks Jesus to heal her child. And Jesus at first says, I was sent only to the lost house of Israel.

And this Canaanite woman persists and says, well, surely you can help me anyway. And Jesus says, it's not right to take the children's bread and feed it to the dogs. There may be harsher ways of saying that I can't think of many, but this woman persists and asks, Jesus, help me. And what we see is that Jesus never intended to turn her away. He was giving her a test. He was putting a roadblock and objection in her way and wanted to see how she would respond. And at this point he breaks out in praise and says, O woman, great is your faith. And he heals her child. There's pastoral wisdom that Jesus is demonstrating here of putting up roadblocks to test overeager would be disciples. You say that you were willing to follow Jesus. Are you really? Do you understand what this will entail? We want to put these objections out on the table right away so that you know what you're getting yourself into. And ultimately it doesn't seem to describe, ends up taking the challenge. We come then to the second test case in verses 21 and 22, another of the disciples said to him, Lord, let me first go and bury my father. And Jesus responds, follow me. You follow me, and leave the dead to bury their own dead. Now we live in a culture with very low family expectations, exceedingly low.

Historically, it is unfathomable how low our ideas are about what we owe to our parents, and to our elders and to our family. But you think about the fact that even in our culture, this would be unthinkable to tell a man, you should not go to your father's funeral. But in a traditional Jewish culture where much was made of families and, and fathers and things like that, this would have been beyond unthinkable again, there could have been more offensive things that Jesus could have said. I can't think of too many, but Jesus is putting an objection on the table. Are you willing to consider me above all your relationships, even those of your father? Both of these cases are illustrating the high cost of following Jesus. It's going to involve hardship and it's going to follow sacrifice. As D.R. Carson writes in his commentary, commitment to Jesus must be without reservation. And this is so interesting. Jesus is not desperate for disciples. He's not just paralyzed with fear that the deal is going to run off the rails. Instead, he puts these objections out there. He wants you to know the cost that this will involve. Why? Because by asking what the cost is, you have to ask the next question. Okay, this is what's going to cost me. But what is the value going to bring? What am I going to gain from this? And more importantly, what will I lose if I don't follow Jesus? I know what following Jesus will require me to lose.

But what if I don't follow Jesus? Then what do I stand to lose? And when we start thinking about who Jesus is and what he brings us, we realize the cost is not too high because the value is infinite and we stand to lose far more than we will ever give up in this life to follow Jesus if we would instead not follow Jesus. In Matthew 13, verses 45 through 46, Jesus gives a parable that perfectly illustrates what he wants these two men to think about. He says very simply, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, who, on finding one pearl of great value, went and sold all that he had and bought it. This merchant found a pearl of great price. Something he'd been looking for his entire life, apparently. And he was willing to sell everything. Why? Because as high as the cost was to obtain this pearl, he knew that the value was far greater. Merchants then, as today, make their wealth off of cost and benefit off of profit and loss analysis. So when something is not worth what it costs, it doesn't matter how low the cost is, it isn't worth it if something is only worth a dime. Then it isn't worth that even just to spend a quarter. A quarter is not that much money, but it's not worth it because it's worth less than that. On the other hand, if I told you that if you purchase something for $1 million, you stand to make 5 million from it.

Well, I don't have $1 million to spend on something, but I think we could work together and find, you know, our rich uncles and things like that to put together an investment, to be able to put the million dollars toward this, to get the 5 million in return as high of a cost as it requires we stand to gain so much more, and we stand to lose so much more if we don't gain it. Jesus raises the objection of the cost of following him, so that we then start to calculate his value. Because once we calculate the value, like the merchant who found the pearl of great price, we will become willing to sacrifice everything to lay hold of Jesus. That's why Jesus confronts these overeager would be disciples with the harsh reality of the cost of discipleship. But then that brings up another question. Okay, let's say we do take the plunge. Let's say we continue following Jesus. Then what was this? Just a scare tactic to maybe turn away those who were not as committed to the cause? Or are there truth to the warnings that Jesus made that it will be hard to follow him? And in fact, that's exactly what we find. Following Jesus brings exactly what he promises us. It will bring us great cost, and we see that in the second story, where we consider a new objection that his call is too dangerous.

His call is too dangerous

In verses 23 through 27, we read there and when he got into the boat. So remember Jesus gave orders to cross over to the other side of the sea, the Sea of Galilee. Um, uh, the Capernaum. See, his disciples then followed him. Now, what's interesting here is that phrase followed him in the original Greek is actually pulled forward to the the front of the phrase. They followed him, his disciples. Now, when that happens, that's sort of a stylistic way of putting an emphasis on the following. These are those who took the plunge. These are the ones who followed him, even in spite of all the the scary warnings that he had given them in the previous section. And we read then in verse 24 that immediately they come into one of these trials that Jesus had warned them about. Behold, there arose a great storm on the sea. The word here is the word that we get our word for earthquake from. It's the word seismos. We get our word for the seismic activity kind of a thing. It deals with the the tossing and the turning and the tumult of all of these waves. And then when it says that the waters cover or swamped, it means that they covered her. It's a word that can mean hidden. And the waters so covered the boat that they hid it. That's how much water was being tossed and turned around, and it flowed over them.

And when the disciples, they look back and they see Jesus asleep, they go to wake him. Now in English they say, save us, Lord, we are perishing. But in Greek these are three desperate words. These are Lord, save perishing. Three desperate words, Lord, save perishing. You almost wonder if they're choking to with all the water that's flowing in that they're barely get these words out. They were in over their heads in this situation. Now remember, the particular emphasis of this is that they had followed Jesus. They had followed him as their teacher, as their rabbi, as their master. They were his disciples, and he had led them there. They must be wondering, oh, what do we get ourselves into? Did we make the right decision? How did we get here? This is barely started. What's going to come if already we are experiencing this much hardship? And if if we survive? If we survive, is it too late to turn back where we fools to follow this man who is asleep over there after all, into such danger like this? Jesus owes us an explanation. We're only here because of him. Does this sound familiar to anything that you say in your own heart? What sort of a man would lead us into this kind of danger and then sleep through it? His call was too dangerous. For these disciples who did follow him. Jesus wants to confront them with another objection. His call is too dangerous.

Now in verse 26, when they wake Jesus. He doesn't say, well, good job you passed the test. You found me. He says instead. Why are you afraid? O you of little faith? They didn't pass the test. They were fearful. Why does Jesus say this? What is fear? What? God created us with the capacity for fear. Fear did not come about because of sin, although certainly because of sin. We end up experiencing fear in a lot more situations than Adam and Eve did in the garden. Fear in itself is not sinful, but there are certain kinds of fear that are sinful. Theologians distinguish between natural fear and unnatural fear. When we're talking about natural fear, think about Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, who is so brought to anxious, anxious fear that he sweats out great drops of blood as he prays. He knows what's going to happen. God created with a kind of created us with a kind of fear that does not want to die. But even in the midst of that, Jesus was submitting his will to His father. Yet not my will, but yours be done. Father, that's a natural kind of fear. We should fear death. We should not want death because death is an unnatural state. But on the other hand, there is unnatural fear where we fear because we don't trust God enough, where we fear because of of wounded consciences, where our wounded consciences lead to more fear, where because we have bad consciences.

But fear in itself is not sinful. In fact, the Bible says that the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord. So why then, did God design fear? And how did the disciples fall short of it? Well, think of a child who was afraid. When I go out with my children and when we meet someone, and it doesn't matter if it's Santa Claus or someone who is genuinely scary, they're terrified, right? When they meet a stranger or there's a dog, it doesn't matter if this dog is this big, if there's a dog running around, they're terrified. And what do my little children do? They run up and grab me by the leg, always by the leg, always behind it, sort of peeking around to see where the danger is and how it's coming. And they're terrified. And what does their fear do? It teaches them to run to their father. It teaches them to trust to their father, as I do, a big, strong thing of dealing with the tiny toy poodle dog. Um, what fear was designed to do was to drive us to faith, to stir our faith, to awaken our faith, not to weaken our faith, to awaken it, not to weaken it. And these disciples in part they do the right thing, Lord, save perishing, and they wake him up. But they do not come as people of faith. They're desperate. Maybe you can help us to bail out the boat before we all sink and drown.

Jesus confronts their faith that says, even though this is so dangerous, you should come to me. And so we read that Jesus rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm. And then the men marveled. This is the same word that we saw last time. Jesus marveled at the face of the faith of the centurion. But this time, the men marveled at Jesus, saying, what sort of man is this, that even winds and sea obey him? In the last objection, we saw that Jesus wanted us to understand the cost that following him will require of us, so that we then calculate his value. Here Jesus wants us to understand the danger of the call so that we learn to fear someone greater. We realize that he is the one to be feared far more than the danger we face in the storms of life. There is a high cost to follow Jesus, but he's worth it. His call is dangerous, but he is more to be feared with absolute power over creation. And then we come to the greatest objection in the third section, verses 28 through 34, where we see a direct challenge to his authority. We see the defiance of the demonic. Here we see the objections of demons and ultimately, eventually of the unbelieving world to Jesus. And we come to the third and final objection that his command is too powerful.

His command is too powerful

In verse 28, we read that when he came to the other side, to the country of the Gadarenes, two demon possessed men met him, coming out of the tombs so fierce that no one could pass that way.

And immediately these demons began to defy Jesus authority. In verse 29 they say, what have you to do with us, O Son of God? Have you come here to torment us before the time that is, before the final judgment? It's so interesting to hear the voice of the demons. Uh, they acknowledge that Jesus will be the one to condemn them to the pit forever. But they are saying this is not the time. What have you to do with us now? And so they defied Jesus, but with an acknowledgment of their ultimate faith. Now look what Jesus says in response. Do you see that? He says nothing. Jesus says nothing in response. It's so interesting if you remember the temptation story back in Matthew chapter four, Jesus said nothing in response to the devil except to quote Scripture. It is written. And then he would quote Scripture, it is written, and then he would quote Scripture. Begone! Satan was the only time he added words to what the Scripture had laid down. Otherwise he was silent. And here again he is silent. He says nothing to these demons until the demons recognize that there's a herd of pigs nearby. And they begged him in verse 31, if you cast us out, send us away into the herd of pigs.

The demons recognize his presence and his authority, and they recognize that they cannot remain in his presence. He is too holy. He is too pure. He is too perfect. He is too powerful. But Jesus doesn't negotiate. He doesn't debate. He doesn't dialogue with them. He doesn't go through an elaborate exorcism procedure as though this were some magical kind of formula. Rather, it is simply Jesus's commanding presence that begs causes the demons to beg for them to enter into pigs. Why pigs? Well, pigs were unclean animals, so there's a spiritual fittingness for the demons to enter these pigs. And only at this point does Jesus speak, and he speaks just one word. He says go. So they came out and went into the pigs, and behold, the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the sea and drowned in the waters. And the herdsmen fled and going into the city. They told everything, especially what had happened to the demon possessed men. Now you would think they would be happy about this even if they didn't care about these men and their, uh, their health. Um, even if they didn't care what happened to these men, this was a way that they were afraid to pass by again, back in verse 28, this these men were so fierce that no one could pass that way. Well, that problem has been eliminated. Jesus has taken care of it. But in verse 34 we read, behold, all the city came out to meet Jesus.

And when they saw him, they begged him to leave their region. Just as the demons begged to be sent away. So these men fled at what Jesus did, just as the demons begged to be sent into the pigs. So these men beg Jesus to leave their region. There's a correspondence to the activity of the demon possessed men and these people who do not respond to Jesus. Why? Because his command is too powerful. The terrified by him. They're not worried about the good he can bring. Having seen what he did to these two demon possessed men. They just want him to leave. His command is too powerful. Now. It's so interesting again here that. As the challenges and objections to Jesus's authority grow throughout the passages that we've been looking at, it's interesting to see the way in which Jesus speaks less and less. And that first section, if you count the Greek words, it's 31 words. Jesus says 31 words to the two overeager disciples, 15, 15, or 16 to each particular one on average. But then to his disciples. It's kind of a long sentence in verse 26 there, but in Greek it's four words from 31 words to four words. And now in this last section, he just speaks one word go. You know, one of the other things that I learned in sales is that the more someone is in a position of power or authority, the less that person has to say. And very often I would go into these sales pitches with people and I'd, you know, have a meeting with some director of something or other that I was planning on meeting, and I was excited for that meeting.

And and suddenly, unannounced, the owner of the company would walk in. This is a big deal because this is the one who writes the checks. This is the one who signs the contracts. This is the one who could make it happen. But it was very common that this person said nothing through the meeting. If you got this person say anything, that was a really good sign. But typically they would say nothing because you were the one trying to convince this person. This person did not need to convince you of anything. They were the ones who simply could refuse the deal. The more power in a situation the certain person has, the less they typically say. And what we see is that as the objections and challenges to Jesus's authority grow, the less and less he says, the more simply his person and the presence of his person takes control so that even the demons are subject to him. I would feel desperate in those sales meetings. I would want to say more and more to just try to try to salvage something with some word salad that I would offer. But Jesus simply says nothing. That's how powerful he is. Well, what do we need to take from this series of stories about the authority of Jesus and considering objections to the challenge of following him? Well, I think one of the application is that as we enter a season where we remember Jesus's birth, we need to be very careful to avoid an unintended consequence.

We must not sentimentalize, trivialize or diminish Jesus into someone who is purely a weak, frail, helpless baby. And to be sure, he took on weakness. He took on frailty. He took on helplessness according to his human nature that he took to himself. Even here we see a reminder that Jesus took on fatigue. He was asleep in this boat after all of this teaching that he had done on the mountain. Remember, he's just coming down from the sermon on the mountain. This is the same day we're made to understand. But Jesus did not give up one bit of his infinite strength as God Almighty. He didn't give up one bit of his authority. He didn't give up any of this. Jesus remained God Almighty and in this passage. He gives us responses to objections that may keep us from following him. Yes, following Jesus will cost us everything, but we stand to gain everything by following him. When we stand to lose even more by not following him. Yes, Jesus will lead us into danger, but he is the greatest danger to be feared. Even the winds and the seas obey this man. Yes, the powers of darkness will rage at Jesus and by extension, at us. But even the demons trembled before him and begged to flee from his presence.

You see very often our fears and our apprehensions, whatever. We're either worried that may come or whether we are afraid of in the heat of the moment. Whatever we are worried about, we are afraid in a way that does not sharpen our thinking but dulls our reason. So often we feel paralyzed. Paralyzed from following Jesus in obedience, so often from helpless to feeling compelled to continue into sin because of this fear. But God gives us fear for a purpose. To force us, to drive us, to compel us to seek Jesus. This morning. You may resist following Jesus because you know what it will cost you. You may not follow Jesus because you know that it will cost you everything and understand. Jesus wants you to see that cost. Jesus wants you to calculate the cost because he then wants you to calculate. What do you stand to gain and what do you stand to lose by not following him? Yes, you must give up everything, but you stand to gain the pearl of great price. If following Jesus were cheap. Then Jesus himself could be cheap. But since following Jesus costs everything he means to make us understand that we stand to gain far more infinitely above what we could think or imagine. If you were paralyzed from following him as you count the cost. Have you considered the profit? Have you considered what you stand to gain or to lose if you do not follow him? What you lose for all of eternity, or you may be in a position today where you've begun to follow Jesus, but you're drowning in the waves that are covering you.

They're swamping you. Your life is a big earthquake on the ocean, and waters are swamping over into your boat and you're terrified. But then following Jesus when we first come to him. It's not with purity. It's not with perfect heart. We we come in. Jesus gives us new eyes to see him when we come to him. And yet there is still a corruption of sin where we want to sort of straddle. We want to sort of divide and our bets where we want to sort of depend a little bit on ourselves. Even as we start to look at Jesus and Jesus wants to get us out of that, Jesus wants to remove the training wheels. Jesus wants to teach us to depend upon him alone, so he will lead us into difficult things. Your heavenly father knows what you need. He knows that you need all these things. And so Jesus is teaching you experientially to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. The fear that you experience is meant to awaken and stir and activate your faith, even your faulty, faltering, desperate faith. By fearing one thing, God is teaching you to fear and depend upon Jesus even more.

Or.

Today, you may feel burdened by Jesus and His holiness. We talked about the the purity of Jesus. We last week. We talked about how he has come with authority to cleanse us of our sins. If your sins are not cleansed, and to come into the presence of Jesus is a miserable affair, why can't he just leave me alone? Why can't he leave me to live out my life in peace? It's a miserable peace, but it's all I have. This is such a delicate place to be. Your soul hangs in the balance. Will you like these two demon possessed men find freedom through Christ's power. He has the authority even to cast out demons, even to wash away your uncleanness. Jesus has authority to cleanse you. Or will you, like the demons and the townspeople beg him simply to depart from you? We have such a clear picture here, such a clear contrast between chaos and darkness and madness and death versus life and joy and peace and health. Which will you choose to follow Jesus? To embrace his discipleship and what it costs to follow you at every step of the way? Or will you cling to the nothingness that you have? It's a simple choice, and yet it will cost you everything.

But Jesus is worth it. Jesus is the one to fear, and Jesus is the one whose power holds the upper hand in every situation in this life and the next. O sinner, embrace Christ by faith this morning. Let's pray. Heavenly father, we pray that you would give us faith to look to Jesus, to trust in him, to follow him by faith wherever he will lead us. Obedience as we repent from our sins. And as we seek to follow him. As we experience and enjoy his love. We pray, father, that you would give us Christ Jesus. That you would give us the Holy Spirit to open our eyes, to see and to open our ears to hear, and our hearts to understand that whatever is holding us back from following Jesus for the first time, or to continue to follow him as he leads us into scarier terrain, we pray that this would drive us more to him. We pray this all in Christ's name. Amen.