Matthew 10:1-42 part 2
Continuing on from the previous blog.
There was to be no fund raising drive before the disciples set out. They were to go out without financial backing and trust God to supply their needs as they moved through the communities they were sent to.
As they arrived in a community, they were to find a worthy person and stay with him. They were to give their greeting of peace as they entered the home. If the home proved unworthy the peace would be returned to them. If the community would not welcome them, they were to leave without feeling guilt, remorse, disappointment or hurt. The peace would return to them and the fate of those communities would be their own responsibility.
Jesus’ warned them that the world was full of those who would harm them. Therefore they were to be careful, to use wisdom to know when and to whom they should speak and to maintain their innocence in God. Be nice, but be aware that the world is not nice, and that following Jesus does not involve being a door mat!
Ironically, Jesus came to bring peace and salvation, but conflict would follow those who believed on Him. Jesus was challenging satan in his dominion. He was not going to give up without a fight. The more the truth of Jesus was preached, the greater the opposition. This holds true today. The greater the impact of Jesus’ teaching has on people, the harder they oppose Jesus. Jesus said that the conflict would be so great that family members would oppose each other. People would hate the disciples because of Jesus. Jesus response to this was to stand firm, and if we do that we will be saved. Jesus advised the disciples to flee persecution. He also warned that there would be many accusations and insults made to them. What had been said of Jesus would be said of the disciples. The disciples were not to fear those who could kill them. Rather they should fear the one who could destroy their soul (satan). Then and now, it is important that we keep our faith in Jesus and remain firm in that faith. People can kill us because we are Christians, but they cannot take away our salvation unless we give it to them. To emphasise how much God cares for His disciples, Jesus pointed out that God even cared about a sparrow that is worth so much less than us. We were so important to God that He knows how many hairs are in our heads! Jesus’ promise was that if we acknowledge Him before men, He will acknowledge us before God in heaven. This is as much about standing up against world opinion and standing firm to your own faith as about proclaiming the gospel.
What about standing up to your family? There is often great pressure placed on people in families to conform to the culture of the family. In verse 35 and following, Jesus said He had come to turn family members against each other. If your family does not follow Jesus and you are called to follow Him, then that call is more important than obeying your family. Verse 38 speaks of the importance of taking up your cross daily to follow Jesus, of valuing your life as less important than following Jesus. The message translates these words as “If your first concern is to look after yourself, you’ll never find yourself. But if you forget about yourself and look to me, you’ll find both yourself and me. It is very hard thing to not conform to the world and even harder to not conform to our families, but it is what Jesus calls us to do. As followers of Jesus we are also to honour our fellow followers. We are to assist each other. Our fellow followers are more important than our own families.
This Message has translated this chapter in a way that gives a good depth of understanding. I recommend you read it. The following link will take you to this chapter on Bible Gateway.
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+10&version=MSG

Matthew 10:1-42
Jesus gave instructions on how to be His disciple, then He demonstrated His teaching in His own actions. Now He is sending His disciples out to put the teaching into action. Learning is a multi-faceted process. We need to be taught about something. We need to be able to see that learning demonstrated by another person. We need to put that learning into action. Finally, we need to reflect on that action and learn from what went well and what didn’t.
Jesus called his twelve core disciples together and gave them authority to drive out evil spirits and heal the sick. What an amazing thing that would have been! I wonder what the twelve were thinking as Jesus gave them this authority? They would have gained an understanding of just what authority they had been given as they went out into the communities and followed Jesus’ instructions. However, I suspect they did not fully understand until after Jesus’ resurrection. It is sad to note that Judas Iscariot is forever remembered as “the one who betrayed Jesus” yet here he may well have done some good in Jesus’ name. It is sad when one who believes falls so spectacularly.
The rest of the chapter is devoted to Jesus’ instructions to his disciples.
First, He instructed them to only go to the “lost sheep of Israel”. (v5) Yet later He mentions that on His account, they will be “brought before governors and Kings as witnesses to the Gentiles”. (v18) Like many passages in the Bible, there is a many layered meaning here. Jesus was to come to Israel first. This harks back to Genesis 12:1-3 when God told Abram that He would make him into a mighty nation and He would bless him, and all peoples would be blessed through him. The nation (Israel) was God’s people and Jesus’ first witness was to them. But God intended the blessing of Jesus to be for all people. There are many references in the Gospels to this. Another layer of meaning to this verse relates to us today. In Jesus’ time there would have been an assumption that all Israelites believed in God, but they didn’t. Likewise, all who attend church and call themselves “Christians” have not accepted Jesus as their saviour. It is easy to attend only to those outside the church and witness to them. It is certainly important. But I believe that Jesus instruction for us here is to ensure that the people in Christian communities are witnessed to as well. Never assume that a person who goes to church is a disciple of Jesus. In my previous blog I quoted the words of a Chris Bowater song. In it he spoke about the church with “so much revelation still asleep”. The churches and the supposedly Christian areas are as much in need of witnessing to as are non-Christian areas.
The disciples were to announce that “the Kingdom of God is near”. So what is the Kingdom of God? For the Jews it represented the intervention of God to restore the fortunes of His chosen people and liberate them from the power of their enemies. This was when the Messiah was to come. In Jesus’ time, nationalism had become a large part of this picture and most Jews believed the Messiah would be a warrior who had come to liberate Israel and return it to its former glory. Symbols of the arrival of the Kingdom were the healing of the sick, the casting out of demons and the preaching of the gospel to the poor (in spirit). From Jesus’ perspective, the Kingdom of God was the arrival of God’s promised salvation for all people.
This discussion of Matthew 10 will continue in the next blog.

Matthew 9:35-38
After Jesus’ healing miracles, he went out into Judah and travelled from population to population. He taught in the synagogues, he taught the good news of the kingdom of God. He also healed those who were sick. He had great compassion on the crowds who He saw as helpless sheep that did not have a shepherd. They were not supported by their religious hierarchy, they had impossible burdens of the law to carry and they had no hope of any salvation. Very much like people today. Jesus told His disciples that there was a plentiful harvest with many people seeking to be saved. Unfortunately, there were not many workers to harvest them. He told His disciples to pray to God for workers for the harvest.
We still need workers for our modern day harvest. Sadly there are still not many, and when the people are harvested, there is a shortage of those who can teach them how to follow Jesus. For 18 months I have been praying for the salvation of the people in my area. Alongside this prayer is the prayer for God to cause the Christians who live in the area to grow spiritually so that they may teach these newly harvested people about Jesus and how to follow Him. I know from my own experience that it is useless sending them to the many churches in the area. There is just not the spiritual maturity in those churches to allow newly harvested disciples to grow. Half my prayer time is spent on praying for the people in the churches to wake up and grow. There is more fondness for the church organisation than Jesus, and more focus on doctrinal legalism than following Jesus. This is not to say there are not pockets of spiritually alive Christians. There are churches with pastors who are spiritually alive and spend many hours praying for their congregations to wake up. Sadly, many of the Christians of the area are afflicted with that worst of human maladies – complacency. They are comfortable and safe and do not trust God enough to step out in faith, into the unknown.
As I read these verses, two songs came to mind. The partial lyrics are below. They give different messages. One is more about spending less time on the warm hug worship and more on reaching out to others. The other is more about growing spiritually so that we may fulfil the instructions of these verses. What do you need to do to take your place in the harvest?
There’s another kind of famine (John Clark)
“There's another kind of famine, you don't see it in their eyes. You don't see the children dying; you don't see the people cry. There's a hidden kind of hunger, see the victims all around. They don't even know they're dying; they don't even make a sound.
Are you talking to the Father, do you share your deep concerns? Or are you singing hallelujah while the man beside you burns? Do you quench the Holy Spirit; don't you feel the need to pray? Are you feeding on the word of God at the start of every day?
Now the Father's heart is calling, now He asks whom He can send to feed the hungry hearted, to love and not pretend. Will we be His faithful servants and obey the Master's voice? Will we cry out in the wilderness? If we're His we have no choice.
It’s time for tears (Chris Bowater)
It’s time for tears, to break the fallow ground of all the squandered years. As sand slips through the hands the precious moments disappear; it’s time, it’s time for tears. It’s time to weep for a church with so much revelation still asleep, divided by suspicion and with wounds still running deep; it’s time, it’s time to weep. It’s time to be broken, and contrite in your eyes. Let those with ears to hear know, it’s time to cry, for the generations in darkness slipping by. Without light, without hope, we’re leaving them to die; it’s time, it’s time to cry.

Matthew 9:32-24
The final verses of the section of the three miracles cover a fourth miracle. This miracle, however, was not listed as a miracle, but more as a series of responses. Here is a man possessed by a demon that renders him mute. Jesus casts the demon out and it recognises Him as the Son of God. The demon, the enemy of God, one of the evil beings that seeks to destroy God, recognised and acknowledged Jesus. Contrast this with the supposedly faithful Pharisees who hated Jesus so much they attributed His miracles, that had come from God, to demons. These verses make the point that there it is never possible to be neutral about Jesus. We either love Him or we hate Him, we can never be indifferent to Him. Sadly, those who are determined to hate Him will never see His miracles because they will block them out.
It is interesting to note that the Pharisees loved the past. Everything belonged in the past. They had no respect for or interest in the present or the future. This is why they did not see Jesus. Likewise, those who sit in a church and love the old doctrine of the past and refuse to see the present or the future but cling to the traditions will also fail to see Jesus. I am not citing the references because they are numerous, but Jesus often mentioned how the Pharisees of the past had killed the Prophets sent by God for the same reasons. Traditions were more important than the living word of God.
The Pharisees lacked a willingness to accept change, to be challenged by God. They lacked the humility to humble themselves before God and admit they were wrong. They were so determined to protect their false doctrine they refused to see the amazing revelation of God presented to them by Jesus. Be careful you do not fall into that trap and beware those in the churches who already have.