Matthew 18:18-34

Very often our experience of something is different from our expectations. The experience itself may be far happier or far sadder than what we anticipated; but the difference between the two is marked.

For instance, we plan a family holiday with a detailed itinerary, and look forward to the two weeks with visceral enthusiasm, but the reality is not always that. Christian work can also generate false expectations.

Many of Jesus contemporaries were looking forward to a messiah who would run out the Romans, raise the nation of Israel to supreme prominence in the international community, and introduce not only prosperity but a global centrality to Jerusalem such that foreigners would flock to her, bring tribute, and acknowledge that the God of the Jews was the true God. They were expecting another David.

Not many of those looking for the Messiah gave much attention on the need for repentance, to the many promises of Scripture that anticipated thoroughgoing righteousness. There is no evidence they connected the promised messianic king with the promised suffering servant. Even Jesus’ closest disciples failed to make these connections until after the resurrection. The world’s expectations turned out to be too narrow, too partisan, very limited, and usually, just wrong.

When Jesus us today, similar misconceptions often have to be cleared up. away. Too often today the would-be convert thinks that Jesus is a spiritual “fix” worth trying, a fine source of spiritual fulfillment, and feel good about themselves without raising questions about sin, truth, or obedience.

The real Jesus regularly turns out to be unpredictable, unnegotiable, and when there is a real encounter with him, unavoidable.
Jesus makes demands that are personal and costly.

Two people are introduced in the first part of the paragraph, a teacher of the law, traditionally called a scribe, and another man, simply designated a disciple.

Jesus assesses men and women as they divide around him.

Matthew viewed the teacher of the law as a disciple and the second man who is mentioned as “another of his disciples.” The term disciple does not mean, a firmly committed “Christian” in this context. Applied to the ministry of Jesus, it customarily refers to a broad spectrum of people who are at that point following Jesus. For example, John the Baptist had “disciples” (Matthew 11:2)

The basic point of these verses is simple enough. Two disciples, or followers, promise some kind of allegiance to Jesus, and in some measure Jesus test them both. However, there is a difference between the two. The first is too quick in promising; the second is too slow in performing.

At first glance the words of the first seem promising: Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.

Jesus’ reply tests the scribe’s commitment, but probably reveals what Jesus diagnosed his problem to be. This response stresses not so much Jesus’ poverty as his homelessness. Apparently he detected that the teacher of the law envisaged a connection with Jesus that would secure stability, perhaps even privilege.

Perhaps he liked much of what he saw and heard in Jesus, and decided to follow him more closely, but without giving much thought to the kind of itinerant ministry Jesus was actually exercising, and to the difficulties and privations such work entailed. It is almost like he is saying, Jesus, I know you are going somewhere so I want to ride on your coat tail.

Little has done more to harm the witness of the Christian church than the practice of filling our church rolls with every volunteer who is willing to make a little profession, talk of experience, but display little of perseverance. It points out that a serious follower of Jesus at some point must count the cost and come to grips with the fact that loyalty to Jesus brings with it demands that will eventually cost them.

The second man, another of Jesus’ disciples, utters a request which, on the surface of things, seems reasonable: “Lord, first let me go and bury my father”.

There are two opinions to this situation: either the man was asking for the time needed to bury and mourn for his father, recently deceased; or else his father was aged, and the man was waiting for him to die and be buried before he would consider following Jesus more closely.

Jesus’ answer is stunning:

“Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead”. It cannot mean that Jesus is encouraging disrespect for parents, when he clearly supports Deuteronomy 27:14, 16: ’Cursed is the man who dishonors his father or his mother.’

The point Jesus will later make explicit: “Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matthew. 10:37–39). Jesus’ concern is not so much to forbid all who would follow him from attending the funerals of near relatives, as it is to expose the danger of weak discipleship.

Jesus’ point is sin must be dealt with radically, at its root, even if such dealings are costly. Jesus’ point is not so much that people should not be concerned for their parents, but that if concern for parents becomes an excuse for not following Jesus, or for delay in following Jesus, then concern for parents, as important as it is, is being too highly valued.

That is why Jesus can elsewhere tell parables that explains that would-be disciples ought to count the cost before they promise too much (Luke 14:25–35).

Paul understood that following Jesus entailed costly decisions. They may not be the same for every Christian; but for him they involved shame, pain, suffering, privation, and large-scale rejection (1-Corinthians 4:8–13; 2-Cor. 11:21–33)—even being considered “the scum of the earth, the refuse of the world.”

This point is frequently misunderstood by evangelicals and present it so. We stress the importance of justification by grace, the freedom of God in giving salvation. We emphasize that our works do not save us; we can be acquitted before the bar of God’s justice and declared righteous in his presence solely on the basis of God’s grace given us in Christ Jesus. But too often we fail to point out there is a cost in following Jesus that must be considered.

Salvation is paid for, and therefore free, nevertheless works in our lives so powerfully that it transforms us, confronts our will, demands our devotion and allegiance, and calls forth our deepest commitment, those things will cost us.

It is clear that the “costs” Christians pay in the West, as compared with those paid by many Christians in the world, are very small. However, they are exactly the same for all Christians: death to self-interest, a daily “dying” can be quite painful.

In one sense, our salvation costs us absolutely nothing; in another, it costs us not less than everything. The former is true because Jesus paid it all; the latter is possible because Jesus enables us to respond to his upward call. Those who stress the latter and neglect the former may never learn that salvation is by grace alone; those who stress the former and neglect the latter may buy into a cheap facsimile of grace that knows little of the biblical gospel and less of biblical holiness.

On the person Jesus is where our faith should rest

The situation of the disciples fear in the boat is to focus on the person of Christ: “What kind of man is this? Even the winds and the waves obey him!”.

Jesus does not chide them for disturbing him with their prayers, but for disturbing themselves with their fears. “You of little faith,” why are you so afraid?” The words little faith may not so much refer to quantity of faith as to its weak nature, it is not the size of their faith but a certain kind of faith. Jesus presupposes that proper faith would drive out fear; he rebukes the disciples in that in their case fear has driven out faith.

Many Christians cry to God for help, but what poor quality of our faith that in many instances when God has answered, often in ways vastly superior to what we expected, we are greatly surprised.

The most serious deficiency of faith displayed by the disciples was their failure to recognize who Jesus really was. If they had truly come to terms with the kind of messiah Jesus was, could they really have thought that a squall on Galilee could take the life of the heaven-sent Redeemer?

They have not come to grips yet with who he is; and that is precisely why their faith is so weak.

Our faith will be most stable if we center it on who Jesus is.

Jesus focuses on what is important

The demons recognize Jesus; in that sense they know him better than the disciples do. They know that Jesus is the unique Son of God; yet they are still demons. They are even aware of their ultimate fate, Revelation 20:10, and that Jesus is the one who will consign them to it; but that knowledge does not change their attitude and actions, they taunt, are violent, hateful and do not repent. What distinguishes saints from demons is faithful obedience, not just knowing about Jesus.

The passage is not particularly aimed at giving us a detailed knowledge of demons, but, it may be worth reflecting a little on what it does suggest about them. In the Western world, there are still many who prefer to play down the reality of demons: demons, they say, are not real, spiritual beings but popular projections of evil. Only philosophical materialism could read that conclusion into the New Testament evidence. Unfortunately, Jesus proves that demons are real and very powerful.

In the account before us, the demons are able to dissociate themselves from the men they possess. They recognize Jesus; in that sense they know him better than the disciples do. They know that Jesus is the unique Son of God; yet they are demons still. They are even aware of their ultimate fate ( Jude 6; Revelation 20:10), and that Jesus is the one who will consign them to it; but that knowledge in their case breeds taunts, violence, and hatred, not repentance.

One point of the story is that Jesus has matchless, unassailable authority over all powers of darkness and evil spirits. This incident takes place in the Decapolis area, largely inhabited by Gentiles; and the herd of pigs,
which no self-respecting Jew would keep or tend, equally proves the Gentile context. But Jesus is not limited in his authority to a Jewish environment. He is not bound by geography or race.

After Jesus’ miracle, those tending the pigs run off and tell the town folk what had happened, including what had happened to the demon-possessed men. The news was startling: a large herd of swine had been destroyed, and with it the wealth and livelihood of many people; and two demoniacs, well-known and universally avoided as dangerous, were now restored. Instead of focusing on the marvelous transformation of the two men who had been possessed, instead of asking further if Jesus might help others in their number, they apparently focus on the material losses, and plead with him to leave their region.

Why Jesus granted the demons their request when he could have done something else is merely one of a many similar questions of which we have no biblical answer. The release of the two men who had been demon-possessed is clearly of more importance to him than the loss of the two thousand pigs.

It is easy for us to devote much of our thought and energy to matters that, in the light of eternity, are of relative unimportance. Politics, sport, entertainment, the daily administration of family matters, clothes, health, education, and the like all enjoy varying degrees of importance; but compared with the really basic questions these subjects fade into insignificance, or, more accurately, these subjects find their true significance only when they are seen as subsets of the really fundamental concerns.

Such fundamental concerns include righteousness, knowing God savingly both now and for all eternity, growing in thoughtful obedience to Jesus Christ, freedom from sin and from demonic power, and displaying the love of Christ in lives transformed by the Spirit he has given us.

Christians live with the perspectives of the new age (the future to come) so deeply embedded in their minds and hearts that the focus on this world are held more loosely, “as if they do not” have permanent validity or ultimate importance, simply because they do not!

Jesus overturns many common expectations

This truth emerges from the flow of the arguments throughout the Gospels. One of the most self-evident aspects of Jesus’ ministry is its flexibility. He may tell the rich young ruler to sell all he has; he does not lay down this requirement to Nicodemus, nor to the disciples, nor even to Zacchaeus. The model of a child’s responsiveness and simple faith is not applied by Jesus to Zacchaeus, Nicodemus, or the rich young ruler.

The gospel can be applied with such flexibility because the needs have more commonalities behind them than a casual glance might reveal. All mankind has the same problem, sin, it just shows itself in different ways. Jesus deals with the main sin with his blood on the cross, but addresses our different sins at the place where we can see it.

Our expectations are inevitably bound up with who we are; who we are is bound up with our ignorance of and rebellion against God. Despite our diversity, that is what Jesus and his ministry inevitably confront.

All cultures are in some degree in rebellion against God, and will be judged by him. If the presentation of the gospel remains entirely congenial to any culture, it can only be because the gospel has been stripped of its stark independence, tamed like a pet poodle, to do the bidding of that culture.

Examples are not hard to find. In much of the West, many people are looking for a sense of fulfillment. if this theme is constantly reiterated without any mention of servanthood and death to self-interest, we become guilty of nurturing the very narcissism and hedonism that have corrupted so much of Western culture and that stand as glaring indications of our rebellion against God.

Christians in every culture must thoughtfully discover just where their lives have been too greatly shaped by the pervasive influence of their surroundings, rather than by Jesus Christ and his truth.

When Jesus confronts us, he does so on his own terms; and those terms are not negotiable. He makes demands that are personal and costly; he puts spiritual realities before other considerations; he overturns many common expectations; but, thank God, he is always far more caring than most of us ever realize.