Lesson 14 – The Kingdom’s Price
Read Matthew 14 – www.bible.com/bible/59/mat.14

In the last chapter we saw how a great price is asked for the Kingdom of God – and in this chapter we see three events that describe what God asks of us as a price.

In the first event we watch as John the Baptist is killed. Please notice, he is not killed for believing in Jesus, he is killed because he speaks out against the evil that stands against Jesus’ kingdom. Can you picture him, a man wearing animal skins for clothing, not even in the capital city, telling everyone how a picture of sin can be seen in King Herod’s actions of adultery? John was not timid or ashamed to call adultery sin.

Are we ever silent when God asks us to speak out against the wrongs being done around us, silent because we fear for our jobs or our reputations or perhaps financial loss? In certain parts of our world today, just saying we are believers in Jesus can get us arrested or even killed – are we afraid to take that stand? Jesus said in Matthew 10:33 if we deny Him before men, He will deny us before the Father. Are you willing to pay the price with your life?


Sometimes it can be harder to live for Jesus than to die for Him. In the next event we see Jesus asking an impossible thing of His disciples – they were to feed this crowd of perhaps 15 to 20 thousand. One of the disciples replied that a normal man’s wages for a year could only provide this many people a bite, let alone a satisfying meal. One of the prices of His kingdom is that Jesus will ask us to be available to do the impossible. We sometimes think it would be great to be able to do miracles like healing someone, feeding this many, or other spectacular things. We think God should give US the ability to do these things – but God says in Isaiah 42:8 that He will not give His glory to someone else. We either allow Him to do the work through us and give Him all the glory, or He will not work through us.

That takes us to the third event – the storm at sea. For all the things the disciples had just witnessed, they still didn’t understand the third cost of being a follower of Jesus – they had to live by faith no matter how hard the storm of life beat around them or threatened to overwhelm them. Faith in Jesus is often the hardest price to pay because every part of our being cries out to believe what we see around us. The reality for the disciples was that when Jesus was not with them their faith was weak. They did not understand that Jesus had authority that overcame distance and sight although even the Roman Centurion did (Matt 8:8). When He came to them, walking on the water, they still did not believe because that was simply not possible. When Peter tried to believe, his faith was not enough and Jesus had to rescue him. Only when Jesus was actually in the boat and the storm was quieted were they finally able to understand that Jesus was God in the flesh and they demonstrated this by worshiping Him

*Thought question – what price is God asking of you today?