Matthew 10:5-11:1
5 These twelve Jesus sent out, instructing them, “Go nowhere among the Gentiles and enter no town of the Samaritans, 6 but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. 7 And proclaim as you go, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ 8 Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons. You received without paying; give without pay. 9 Acquire no gold or silver or copper for your belts, 10 no bag for your journey, or two tunics or sandals or a staff, for the laborer deserves his food. 11 And whatever town or village you enter, find out who is worthy in it and stay there until you depart. 12 As you enter the house, greet it. 13 And if the house is worthy, let your peace come upon it, but if it is not worthy, let your peace return to you. 14 And if anyone will not receive you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet when you leave that house or town. 15 Truly, I say to you, it will be more bearable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah than for that town.
16 “Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. 17 Beware of men, for they will deliver you over to courts and flog you in their synagogues, 18 and you will be dragged before governors and kings for my sake, to bear witness before them and the Gentiles. 19 When they deliver you over, do not be anxious how you are to speak or what you are to say, for what you are to say will be given to you in that hour. 20 For it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you. 21 Brother will deliver brother over to death, and the father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death, 22 and you will be hated by all for my name’s sake. But the one who endures to the end will be saved. 23 When they persecute you in one town, flee to the next, for truly, I say to you, you will not have gone through all the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes.[1]
If you woke up this morning hoping to hear Jesus say some difficult and unpleasant things, then you have come to the right place! Of course, you likely did not wake up thinking of any such thing. Nevertheless, Jesus has some hard sayings for us this morning that don’t necessarily compute in our comfortable Western culture. With the rise of the health and wealth gospel and prosperity preaching, we have gotten used to a comfortable, friendly Messiah.
Even Western Christian culture prefers its own version of Jesus, “Jesus-lite.” Great taste and much less demanding. We all prefer a Jesus that is interested in our own happiness and nothing more. He wants me to be financially comfortable, physically fit, and mentally and emotionally stable. He never demands anything of me that would interfere with these basic goals. Difficulties, trials, and hardships in my life are only there because of a lack of faith on my part to believe that Jesus genuinely wants me to be happy. Of course, the problem with “Jesus-lite” is that you will find no such product in the Bible. Christ’s teaching was often harsh, gritty, and difficult. He was not a preacher of convenience, but hardship. He was not a preacher of comfort, but suffering.
In 9:35-11:1, one simply has to deal with the theme of suffering or, more precisely, the theme of persecution (suffering that derives from the world’s rejection of Jesus). In 10:14 Jesus speaks of the possibility of an unfavorable reception and then verse 23 of the reality of persecution: “[w]hen they persecute you in one town.” In verse 16 he speaks of being sent out “as sheep in the midst of wolves” and in verses 17-19 of being brought before the wolves (the Jewish synagogue courts) to be flogged and then dragged before the gentile rulers to be sentenced to jail or death.
In this section Jesus speaks of even one’s family becoming one’s enemy, to the point where brother is turned against brother, a father against his child, a child against his parents, and family members delivering Christians over to the authorities (vv. 21, 28, 38, 39). Jesus also speaks of being maligned (10:25), of being “hated by all” (10:22) and of martyrdom (10: 21, 28, 38, 39). The main emphasis here is suffering. It is Christ’s call for his disciples to pick up their crosses (more literally than we might imagine) and follow him.
In the last sermon, we looked 9:35-38 where we learned that our motive for mission is compassion, and the means of mission are prayer and people. This section addresses the actual mission. What is the church called to do? Before we apply this text to ourselves, we first ought to walk a mile in the shoes (or sandals) of the apostles. If we don’t understand first what Jesus was saying to them, then we will miss what God is saying to us now.
HE’s NOT TALKING TO YOU
We tend to read the Bible existentially (what is God saying to me?). But we should be reading it historically (what did God say to them?). It is a corrective against the practice of just flipping through our Bibles looking for a word from the Lord. “Lord, what do you have to say to me today?” How about this quote? “Sell what you possess and give to the poor” (19:21). No. That sounds just too radical for me today. Maybe I can find another word I like. So I randomly flip open my Bible and I read: “For I know the plans I have for you… plans for welfare… to give you a future and a hope” (Jeremiah 29:11). There! I like that one. God has spoken to me through his Word.
Never mind that God did not speak those words to me. Never mind that they are not a specific promise for my personal happiness. It makes me feel good to read them that way, so that’s exactly how I’m going to read them. We need to know first and foremost that there are passages in the Bible that we will misunderstand and misapply if we don’t understand who the original author and audience were. As we come to this text, once we realize Jesus is doing the talking and he is speaking to the 12, then we can try to determine if what is descriptive is also prescriptive. In other words, only then can we decide if what Jesus said to the 12 applies indirectly to us today.
First, notice to whom Jesus is talking. He is talking to his disciples (9:37). The term “disciples” appears six times in our text. In 10:1, those disciples are further defined as being “his twelve disciples,” and in verse 2 are defined as the “apostles.” The word “apostles” is used here for the first and only time in Matthew (by comparison, the word appears 29 times in Acts), and then those apostles are named in verses 2-4.
Those names are given to us, listed here as they are in three other places in the New Testament, not merely to help us name our children, churches, and hospitals, but so we might know who Jesus is addressing and their significance. Jesus is replacing Israel’s present, ungodly leaders with the “twelve.” The number 12 corresponds to the 12 tribes of Israel. Also, Jesus is beginning to build his church, as Paul wrote in Ephesians 2:20, “on the foundation of the apostles.”
MISSION DIFFERENCES
Do you see to whom Jesus is talking? In this text he’s not talking to you. He’s talking to the Twelve. But what did he say to them that he did not say to us? What is different about their mission and ours? There are two major differences.
The first difference is their Apostolic authority. This was directly granted to them by Jesus in 10:1. Later this authority (which is the keynote of the melodic line of Matthew’s book) will enable them to bind and loose sins (16:19) and in Acts to preach the gospel boldly through the power of the Holy Spirit. Here, the emphasis is on healing powers, authority over demons and diseases.
It’s particularly interesting to note that the Great Commission doesn’t mention healing at all, and yet here in their first commissioning we find Jesus orders to, “Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons” (10:8). We can safely say that Christians, other than the apostles, have done all four of these things. But it is not normative for us like it was for the apostles. Notice all of the miracles contained in the book of Acts. Almost all of the miracles are performed by an apostle.
There is a difference between the Apostolic age of Christianity and our age, a difference between the apostles’ powers and ours, a difference between the signs of a true apostle (mighty works of healing, signs, and wonders) and the permanent qualifications for Christian leadership set out in the pastoral epistles for elders and deacons. The Apostolic authority of the Twelve was unique.
The second difference between our ministry today in the Apostolic ministry of the 1st century becomes more obvious as we read the text: the scope and severity of their mission. Here in 10:5,6, they were commissioned to take the gospel only to “the lost sheep of the House of Israel,” not to gentiles or Samaritans. In obedience to the Great Commission, we are all to take the gospel to “all nations” (28:19) – both Jews and gentiles. Even the apostles will do this as their mission expands after Pentecost. But here their scope is quite specific. Israel must hear the good news first. The apostles must go “through all the towns of Israel before the son of man comes” (10:23). Very likely, Jesus is not referring to his second coming here but to his death and resurrection.
So the scope and the severity of their mission are different. There have been Christians who took Jesus’s call of “no gold… no bag… no clothes… no sandals… no staff” (10: 9, 10) as a literal command to themselves. Saint Francis would be an example. A more modern example would be George Mueller of Bristol. Nor are we alleging that other Christians haven’t been persecuted, tortured, and killed for their faith. But there is a greater intensity in this text. He warned these 12 men that slander, suffering, and death await them, and according to Christian history all but Judas (who would hang himself) and John (who would be exiled to Patmos) died a martyr’s death.
Yes, we are called to share in the sufferings of Christ. “Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2 Timothy 3:12). But not all of us are given the privilege of suffering unto death. We must pick up our crosses, but such crosses don’t always lead to Roman execution.
WHAT OUR MISSION IS
So we have seen the major differences between them and us. The next question is what is the same if anything? You’re probably not surprised to learn that there is application for us. Matthew has not written this Gospel simply as a history book. This is an evangelistic tract and a manual for Christian discipleship. The call and the Commission of the Twelve provides the church with some timeless truths, what we could call 6 principles for gospel mission today.
The first principle is simply a summary of what we learned in 9:35-38: Our motive for mission is compassion, and the basic means of harvesting are prayer and people. We are to have compassion for the lostness of the lost. We are to pray. We are to work.
Second, We don’t have to be great to reach the last, the lost, the least, the little, and the dead. The apostles’ mission was to the “lost sheep” of Israel, a term used in Jeremiah 50:6 to refer to the people who were under the leadership of ungodly shepherds. In our text we can say that “the crowds” (9:36) were similarly under the scribes and Pharisees and their bad shepherding. The apostles’ mission was to those whom Jesus had thus far been ministering, the social and religious outcasts.
The mission is to the last, the lost, the least, the little, and the dead. By the world’s standards the missionaries aren’t exactly the greatest. In 10:2-4, we see the names of 12 ordinary men. A few are given extra-long name tags. Judas, the last listed (intentionally), gets the diabolical description as the one “who betrayed him.” Some get additions on their name tags because they share the same first name, so that James is distinguished from the other James, or Simon the Zealot (the political assassin) from Simon Peter (who’s intentionally listed first). Besides Simon the Zealot, only one man gets his occupation listed. It is Matthew the tax collector (10:3).
God chose outcasts to reach outcasts. No one has a name tag that says, “the great,” or “professor of systematic theology,” or “his holiness.” Rather, these are common men, most of whom have but a rudimentary education. It is this unimpressive group who take the noble message of the gospel to the ignoble of the world (1 Corinthians 1:5-29).
What does that mean for you? It means you don’t need money. You don’t need an elite education. You don’t need worldly power and prestige. You don’t need a great reputation (we know truly little about the lives of these men). You need none of that to be an effective minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The church was built upon the faithful testimony of a bunch of rustics. God delighted in and still delights in building his church with such seemingly insufficient and slightly contorted building materials.
The third principle we can learn is this: Gospel goers depend on gospel givers. Gospel goers depend on God’s providential provision through Christian giving and hospitality. Notice the two groups involved in the mission. There are the goers (the apostles who are bringing nothing with them, 10:8-10), and the givers (whom Jesus describes as “worthy” in verse 11). The givers are those that welcome the goers into their homes, providing food and lodging and perhaps travel expenses.
Some of you may be in full-time ministry or anticipate being in full-time ministry, but the majority of you are givers, not goers. And the wonderful thing here is that Jesus essentially says to the givers, “Without you the mission fails.” In verse 40 Jesus equates receiving the goers as receiving him and the Father. Then he speaks in verse 41 of the givers getting their reward even for this seemingly insignificant act of hospitality, giving “a cup of cold water” (10:42). Even the simple sustenance of the goers by the givers gets rewarded!
As much as this passage commands that the goers can’t be greedy and must sacrifice much, it also commands sacrifice for the givers. If you are not going to go, you must give, and if you’re not going to give generously and cheerfully, then you seriously need to question your priorities and your eternal destination. With the closed-doored and the closed-fisted, God will shake them off like the dust from his feet (10:14). The world, the flesh, and the devil are at war with Christ. This is no time for cowards and halfhearted hospitality. Either we go or we give to the goers… or else.
The 4th principle we can apply to ourselves is: Our character commends Christ. 10:8b-10 teach that the goers must not be greedy for gain. We better not preach the gospel for money. Disciples are not to be beggars, but we better not be well-to-do or economically ostentatious in such a way that contradicts the message of the Gospel. In fact, showing off wealth is an affront to the gospel. We are to be dependent on God’s provision of givers. Simplicity, urgency, and even austerity should embody the Gospel since the Gospel is not about worldly wealth, power, or security. We commend Christ when we have nothing to commend other than Christ himself.
In verse 16 we find further commands about character, what we might call the crest of Christian character. Think of a school crest or a family coat of arms. The Christian coat of arms has a sheep surrounded by wolves, then a snake and a dove. Jesus said in verse 16, “Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.” A sheep, a snake, and a dove. I’ll bet it wouldn’t make a very impressive crest, at least not to most people.
So we are not to be like tigers, praying on the weak, strutting our bold and beautiful colors, barring our teeth to coerce people to believe or else. We are to be like sheep. We’re to be peaceful, nonviolent, vulnerable, fully dependent upon our Good Shepherd to lead and provide and care for and protect. But we are not to be as sheep in their foolishness. That’s why Jesus adds the part about the snake and the dove.
We are to be shrewd but innocent, a rare combination of characteristics that we normally put backwards. It’s easy to be guilty as serpents and as stupid as dogs. Instead, we are called to be godly but not gullible, snake smart but not snake sneaky. Our character commends Christ. Our godliness proclaims the gospel.
Fifth principle for our application: We are to give the same gospel announcement. “The Kingdom of heaven is at hand” (10:7). Both here and in the book of Acts the Christian message is not so much a suggestion or even an offer (God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life, if you will buy into my pitch for Jesus and welcome him into your heart). Rather, the gospel is an announcement of the good news of the Kingdom!
The good news is that God, in the person of Christ Jesus, has sent from Heaven his own Son as King. God has demonstrated Jesus to be the king through his life, teachings, miracles, sufferings, death, resurrection, and ascension – all of which are in fulfillment of scripture, and all witnessed in history. Therefore the time of ignorance is over, and the time for repentance and faith is here, for God has “fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he is appointed; And of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead” (Acts 17:31). Either we submit to Christ and receive eternal life, or we refuse to submit and instead incur his just and righteous judgment.
The modern Western church often preaches today that God can change your life, God can help you find yourself, God can help you love yourself, God can bring you Peace of Mind, God can save your marriage or get you a new job or help you be a success in this world. Those kind of messages do not cause persecution. The world loves those messages. They will buy your book and watch your TV show.
But if you preach what Jesus said and what the apostles preached, that Jesus is the only way to God because he himself is from God (10:40) and that we owe him allegiance above even our closest family members (10:37) and that judgment is a reality, since God “can destroy both soul and body in hell” (10:28), you can expect persecution. You can expect persecution for heeding Jesus commands on how to think, live, and witness to the world.
Our 6th principle for application: Our mission is dangerous and divisive, but it’s worth giving our very lives. The mission is dangerous. There is nothing so obvious in our text as that. Are you looking to be maligned, hated, and possibly put to death? If so, Sign up today for Jesus’ Christian Missions 101.
Note further that our mission is not only dangerous but divisive. It is divisive not just in society but in our own homes. Christianity can renew a home. Certainly, you can change the aroma of that house from the smell of death to an aroma of life. But other households or torn up because a husband or wife or child or parents hates the gospel and does everything in his or her power to destroy it and banish it from that home.
In verse 34 Jesus says, “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.” If you’re around my age you’re probably familiar with the peace symbol. It was originally designed for the British nuclear disarmament movement. And if you grew up in church youth groups like I did, you might have been given the inaccurate historical explanation where we were told that the peace symbol was a broken cross and therefore an anti-Christian symbol. That is simply not true historically, but there is some social truth to it because it reflects how the world views the notion of peace. To most people, peace means merely a lack of hostility between all people.
Christianity is not opposed to such peace, but for the Christian the means of obtaining it and the timing of it are different. True peace between God and man (and also between man and man) comes only through “the blood of the cross” (Colossians 1:20) that is to be seen in the church. Eventually there will be such peace that even lions lie down with lambs, children play with asps, and Calvinists and Armenians will hug and enjoy one another’s company without arguing over theology.
Now, however, those who do not believe view the cross as a sword. God’s peace sign is not a broken cross but the whole cross of Christ. It is God’s sword on earth. The cross is a sword because its message is not the message that insurrectionists want to hear. Who wants to hear that he is sinful at the core of his being? And who wants to hear that in Christ’s death God has opened the gates of freedom and peace for all rebels, if and only if they stop their rebellion? Who wants to hear that God won’t permit such rebellion to go unchallenged forever, that judgment awaits those who will not accept this peace treaty from the Prince of peace?
But let’s be clear. If you return home after being born again, and you tell your parents how foolish they are for not believing in Jesus and that you see the light and they don’t, it is not the cross that is offensive, but you. Many Christians are needlessly offensive, committing great blunders and stirring up opposition which could have been avoided with a little prudence and humility. But if your heart has indeed been changed, and your actions follow, and in time you begin to demonstrate Christian humility and then witness in your words and deeds, and you are rejected then the cross of peace for them will become a sword of division between you and your family.
So our mission is dangerous and divisive, but it is worth giving our very lives. Did you notice in our passage all the motives Jesus gives for missionary perseverance? Jesus teaches we must expect persecution, endure persecution, and not fear persecution. But why? Why not fear? First, Jesus suffered so we too will suffer. Through suffering for the Gospel, we identify with Christ. Second, such persecutions will not stop the advance of the Gospel but actually promote it. God knows how many hairs are on your head and knows when a sparrow falls to the ground, and with Fatherly love God is with you even through your sufferings. Finally, following Jesus is worth it because Jesus says so: “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (10:39).
If you are doing all you can to achieve your best life now, to get the perfect spouse, the perfect family, the lucrative job, the big house, and all the right connections, guess what? You lose! The biggest gainers are the biggest losers. But if you’re willing to come to Jesus as King and give him your life, you win. If you go where he would have you go, do what he would have you do, give what he would have you give, suffer what he would have you suffer, then this is the beautiful irony of Kingdom life. You will find life, true life in this life and true life in the life to come.
- Our motive for mission is compassion, and the basic means of harvesting our prayer and people.
- We don’t have to be great to reach the last, the lost, the least, the little, and the dead.
- Gospel goers must depend on gospel givers (and gospel givers must give).
- Our character commands
- We are to give the same gospel announcement that the apostles did.
- Our mission is dangerous and divisive, but it is worth giving our very lives.
[1] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Mt 10:5–23.
