Last week we saw for the first time all twelve of Jesus’ disciples together. Matthew took the time to record every one of their names into this Gospel. When we looked at this last week, we talked about the ordinary nature of these men. These weren’t super humans or super saints that Jesus called. These were just regular people like you and me. They were just going about their lives when Jesus walked into the middle of their situation and said, “follow Me”. I think it’s important to understand this because sometimes I think our potential to serve the Lord, can be roadblocked, by us thinking that we aren’t anybody particularly special, maybe we think that we don’t have any standout talents that it would seem like God could use. But what we learn through observing these guys, is that the ministry gets done not by these guy’s power, talents, or abilities. It gets done because God is empowering the people for His cause. Our potential for the Kingdom isn’t limited by our ability, it’s simply enabled by His presence and His power, to get His work done, through us that are willing to go and do what He says.
As we ended last week, Jesus was preparing these guys, His disciples, to go out into the community and work on behalf of Jesus in the way that He was instructing them. He told them to go and preach the Kingdom and to leverage His power to perform miracles. But last week, Jesus hadn’t finished His sending the guys out speech, and we’re going to look at some more of it this morning. Let’s read our passage.
Read Matthew 10:16-26
For me, I just imagine this moment. Jesus is bringing all of these guys together. All twelve of them are finally together, some for longer than others. And through this time, Jesus has been teaching, and performing miracles, and all of this other stuff in front of them. And then finally, they come into this moment last week, where Jesus is like, it’s time for you guys to go out and start doing these things as well. You’ve seen me preach about the Kingdom, you’ve seen Me perform miracles, so you know the message and I am going to give you the power to do these things. But before you go … verse 16.
Read Matthew 10:16
Now this is something that we have talked about a little bit before with some of the comments that Jesus had made already in this book. But today it’s going to be the main point. Jesus was never afraid to talk to the people that wanted to follow Him about the difficulty of actually following Him.
He is looking right at His disciples right now, and He says to them, that I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves. The middle of a pack of wolves is not a good, nor safe place, for a sheep to be. A wolf is an apex predator, it’s the top of the food chain in many of the places that they live. A sheep on the other hand, is generally a farm animal, they are for the most part helpless, they don’t really have any significant defensive measures, and they aren’t considered to be the smartest of animals. Its why sheep need to be looked after by a shepherd, to keep them where they are supposed to be, and to protect them from getting eaten by predators. Like wolves.
If you were one of the disciples at this moment, what would be going through your head? Maybe we would be thinking that this isn’t what I signed up for. For us, these days, maybe we have watched enough national geographic and the discovery channel to know that these apex predators are quite good at killing and eating their prey. And so, Jesus you’re saying that we’re these sheep and we’re going out to the wolves?
Sheep aren’t supposed to go out to the wolves, Jesus, they’re supposed to stay very far away from the wolves. So, again, maybe we’re thinking, what’s the deal Jesus? Why are we getting sent out to the wolf pack? Are you going with us? Can you promise that I will be safe? I think there would be a lot of things going through our heads in this situation. And what we need to realize this morning, is that we aren’t completely removed from this situation, Jesus has still called us to follow Him, He has still tasked us with Kingdom work to do, and there is still the reality that actually following Jesus is going to come with some difficulty. We’re still like sheep and there are still wolves out there.
I think for obvious reasons that this isn’t a popular message. That following Jesus will be hard. But it’s something that we absolutely can’t skip over or ignore. If we go out with a misguided understanding that following Jesus is supposed to be easy and that everything will just work out great, exactly how we want it to. Then when that doesn’t happen, that often times shakes people’s faith, because they were taught that following Jesus is all sunshine and rainbows and then when the storm gets here, then it’s like, this must not be real, or Jesus isn’t Who He says He is, or I’m just done following Him if this is what it’s going to look like. I don’t want you to be surprised, I don’t want us to be shaken, I want us to understand and be prepared for these things, like Jesus is preparing His disciples for at this moment.
Jesus was sending these guys out and He was getting them ready for what they would likely be facing in the real world. We absolutely need that understanding and need this preparation as well. Because if we understand this, then we can anticipate the difficulty, and not be shaken by it, rather than being surprised by it and unprepared to deal with it. Sometimes people run into conflict, or run into difficulty, or run into lots of different hard things, and some people would say that they “lose their faith”, so to speak. But maybe that’s because they ran into the speedbump of difficulty, and nobody ever told them that it was going to be there, and then there is surprise and hurt and confusion and it leads to bad places. That’s why Jesus is dealing with it before they even make it out the door. But Jesus is still talking to them, and He continues in the rest of verse 16. And we’re going to make it out of verse 16, but let’s read it again to see that second half one more time.
Read Matthew 10:16
If you are at all like me, when I read serpent here, it makes me think of the serpent in the garden with Adam and Eve in Genesis, and at that moment, that was Satan in the form of a serpent, and I’m like, I don’t want to be anything like Him. But of course, Jesus isn’t talking about that serpent here. When Jesus says that we need to be wise as serpents and harmless as doves, He is talking about us avoiding harm like a snake and not causing harm like a dove. Let us understand that difficulty and persecution may very well be coming, but we shouldn’t go seeking it out. Jesus says, be like a snake, pretty much everyone dislikes snakes, and many will go out of their way to attack and kill one if they find one. But snakes are pretty good at staying out of the light, and staying in cover, and much of the time avoiding harm. And so, Jesus is like, learn something from that, don’t go out looking for trouble, because trouble will more than likely find you if you do. And so, we don’t look for harm or for trouble, and we do our best to avoid it, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t go out and serve Jesus, and people, and help people, and share the gospel. We absolutely do those things, but we set out for the purpose of actually doing those things the right way, for the right reasons, and not for the purpose of just stirring up trouble.
Because according to Jesus’ instruction we’re to be avoiding trouble when we can, like the snake, and we’re to be harmless to others like the dove. A lot of people claim the name of Jesus and try to stir up trouble in all kinds of ways, but that’s not how we’re supposed to go about ministering to people. That’s not how Jesus was instructing His disciples right now. Let’s not be troublemakers, the Bible says in Romans 12:18 that we must do our best to be at peace with all men. Again, we don’t go as the troublemakers, we go as the peacemakers with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
But even if we do those things and we do them in the right way. We’re still probably going to run into difficulty sometimes. Jesus of course knew this and continues with the disciples in verse 17:
Read Matthew 10:17-20
Jesus talks here about the reality at that time, that His disciples would face problems from the government, and from law enforcement, and from governing officials. He said that these guys would be brought before councils, and governors, and kings, and even scourged or whipped in the synagogues. Jesus says in verse 18 that this is going to happen, for HIS SAKE, and that even in those moments, they could be a testimony to these leaders and to the people all around them. Jesus tells them that when that time comes, when they are in that moment of testimony opportunity, not to worry about the right words to speak. We have to remember that a lot of these guys were still new to this, they didn’t know everything, just like we don’t know everything, but Jesus told them that the very Holy Spirit would speak through them when the time came and that’s incredible.
Thankfully for us, at this moment in time, we probably don’t have to worry about law enforcement and government arresting us and punishing us for serving Jesus. I have had a lot of conversations with people that are worried about politics and worried about that happening. But for today, we need to serve Jesus and tell others about Him right now, and if things change to the point that we could be in trouble for doing that, what would that change in terms of following Jesus and doing these things?
Would we just stop at that moment? Or would we fall back on this teaching and our preparation for the Kingdom work. Jesus was talking to His disciples right in the middle of that problem and telling them to go and do. Thankfully, we don’t really have that problem right now, but if it does come, we stay the course, and if we get in trouble for that, then so be it. I’m not really worried at this moment that we’re going to see this anytime soon, but if it does come, then we’ll need to be ready and walk through it, His way.
But Jesus keeps the good news coming and He’s like, its not just the government guys. It’s even family and everyone else too.
Read Matthew 10:21-23
Brothers will rat out their own brothers, father’s their own children, and even children on their own parents. Jesus speaks plainly and says that people will be put to death over this. Like this is what you are walking into guys. Be ready for it. And then if that wasn’t enough, Jesus tells them in verse 22 that “they will be hated by all for My name’s sake.” And this is the key to understanding why all of this is, the way that it is. I want to go together and read a passage in John 15.
Read John 15:18-21
The lesson that Jesus was teaching His disciples is that people aren’t going to hate them and persecute them just because maybe they are different, or weird, or for whatever else. They will hate them, and us at times, BECAUSE OF JESUS. Jesus said that the world will love its own, but if you believe in Him, then you aren’t of the world any longer. Remember we go out trying to avoid harm and to do no harm, but the message of Jesus is not well received by everyone. Many people hate Jesus and His message, and their feelings towards Him will be very likely be directed at us at times, as His representative. But again, Jesus is preparing us, Jesus knows how people feel about Him, Jesus knows what we are bound to face. We don’t have to be caught off guard by these things, we don’t have to be unprepared, because He is telling us all about it right now.
But even through all of this hard news that Jesus is sharing, back in Matthew 10:22, there is still a promise in the middle of it. Jesus says at the end of verse 22 that if we weather through these things, if we endure to the end of following Him, that He’s got us. It’s not that we’re saved through these actions, it’s just that our salvation is evidenced, by us making it through all of it, WITH HIM.
And verse 23 is a very similar point to the end of last week’s passage, as you run into the persecution, head to another area and find the people that want to hear about Jesus. Because time is short, and like we talked about before, there wasn’t many of these guys at this point, so they needed to keep moving with the message and that’s what Jesus was telling them to do. And that brings us to the last big point that Jesus makes in this passage for today.
Read Matthew 10:24-26
A disciple is not above His teacher and a servant is not above his master. This is the same point that Jesus made in John 15 a few minutes ago. He said in John 15:20 that:
“‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you.”
In verse 25 of Matthew 10, Jesus is like, they literally called me Beelzebub (or Satan), so what do you expect that they are going to do you? How much more are they going to say about us, if they are even willing to say that about Him? Jesus said in verse 24 that we will never be above Him, and we rightly should never be, but in verse 25 He says that “it is enough for a disciple that he be like his teacher, and a servant like his master”.
And that we should want more than anything else. TO BE LIKE JESUS. That should be the goal of every disciple and of every servant of Jesus Christ. TO BE LIKE HIM. Jesus’ point today isn’t just doom and gloom, it’s just a reality check for His followers, that if we want to FOLLOW Him, that if we want to BE LIKE Him, then just know clearly that this is part of it.
But even through all of this passage, all of the warnings, the wolves, the government persecution, families turning on each other, hatred, fleeing, name calling, and everything else, Jesus comes to verse 26 and He says, “Therefore do not fear them”.
That’s an interesting turn in the conversation. But it turns in the direction of where we will be going next week, as we continue on, once again, in this chapter. After everything that He said, after every warning that He gave, Jesus says don’t fear the people that are doing all of these things. This passage may be a rough one, it’s definitely not a popular one to teach, this isn’t the passage to try to draw the crowds in with, and it’s still completely true, but there’s a hopeful statement here at the end of the passage, there’s light at the end of the tunnel, and we’ll hopefully understand why, a lot more clearly, next week.