Verses 1-42
Chapter 10
10:1-4 And when
he had summoned his twelve disciples, he gave them power over unclean
spirits, so that they were able to cast them out, and so that they were
able to heal every disease and every sickness. These are the names of
the twelve apostles: first and foremost Simon, who is called Peter. and
Andrew, his brother; James, the son of Zebedee, and John, his brother;
Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew, the tax-collector; James,
the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus; Simon the Cananaean and Judas
Iscariot, who was also his betrayer.
Methodically, and yet with a certain drama, Matthew unfolds his
story of Jesus. In the story of the Baptism Matthew shows us Jesus
accepting his task. In the story of the Temptations Matthew shows us
Jesus deciding on the method which he will use to embark upon his task.
In the Sermon on the Mount we listen to Jesus' words of wisdom. In Matthew 8:1-34 we look on Jesus' deeds of power. In Matthew 9:1-38 we see the growing opposition gathering itself against Jesus. And now we see Jesus choosing his men.
If a leader is about to embark upon any great undertaking, the
first thing that he must do is to choose his staff. On them the present
effect and the future success of his work both depend. Here Jesus is
choosing his staff, his right-hand men, his helpers in the days of his
flesh, and those who would carry on his work when he left this earth and
returned to his glory.
There are two facts about men which are bound to strike us at once.
(i) They were very ordinary men. They had no wealth; they had no
academic background; they had no social position. They were chosen from
the common people, men who did the ordinary things, men who had no
special education, men who had no social advantages.
It has been said that Jesus is looking, not so much for
extraordinary men, as for ordinary men who can do ordinary things
extraordinarily well. Jesus sees in every man, not only what that man
is, but also what he can make him. Jesus chose these men, not only for
what they were, but also for what they were capable of becoming under
his influence and in his power.
No man need ever think that he has nothing to offer Jesus, for
Jesus can take what the most ordinary man can offer and use it for
greatness.
(ii) They were the most extraordinary mixture. There was, for
instance, Matthew, the tax-gatherer. All men would regard Matthew as a
quisling, as one who had sold himself into the hands of his country's
masters for gain, the very reverse of a patriot and a lover of his
country. And with Matthew there was Simon the Cananaean. Luke (Luke 6:16) calls him Simon Zelotes, which means Simon the Zealot.
Josephus (Antiquities, 8. 1. 6.) describes these Zealots; he
calls them the fourth party of the Jews; the other three parties were
the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Essenes. He says that they had "an
inviolable attachment to liberty," and that they said that "God is to
be their ruler and Lord." They were prepared to face any kind of death
for their country, and did not shrink to see their loved ones die in the
struggle for freedom. They refused to give to any earthly man the name
and the title of king. They had an immovable resolution which would
undergo any pain. They were prepared to go the length of secret murder
and stealthy assassination to seek to rid their country of foreign rule.
They were the patriots par excellence among the Jews, the most
nationalist of all the nationalists.
The plain fact is that if Simon the Zealot had met Matthew the
tax-gatherer anywhere else than in the company of Jesus, he would have
stuck a dagger in him. Here is the tremendous truth that men who hate
each other can learn to love each other when they both love Jesus
Christ. Too often religion has been a means of dividing men. It was
meant to be--and in the presence of the living Jesus it was--a means of
bringing together men who without Christ were sundered from each other.
We may ask why Jesus chose twelve special apostles. The reason
is very likely because there were twelve tribes; just as in the old
dispensation there had been twelve tribes of Israel, so in the new
dispensation there are twelve apostles of the new Israel. The New
Testament itself does not tell us very much about these men. As Plummer
has it: "In the New Testament it is the work, and not the workers, that
is glorified." But, although we do not know much about them, the New
Testament is very conscious of their greatness in the Church, for the
Revelation tells us that the twelve foundation stones of the Holy City
are inscribed with their names (Revelation 21:14).
These men, simple men with no great background, men from many differing
spheres of belief, were the very foundation stones on which the Church
was built. It is on the stuff of common men and women that the Church of
Christ is founded.
When we put together the three accounts of the calling of the Twelve (Matthew 10:1-4; Mark 3:13-19; Luke 6:13-16) certain illuminating facts emerge.
(i) He chose them. Luke 6:13
says that Jesus called his disciples, and chose from them twelve. It is
as if Jesus' eyes moved over the crowds who followed him, and the
smaller band who stayed with him when the crowds had departed, and as if
all the time he was searching for the men to whom he could commit his
work. As it has been said, "God is always looking for hands to use." God
is always saying, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?" (Isaiah 6:8).
There are many tasks in the Kingdom, the task of him who must go
out and the task of him who must stay at home, the task of him who must
use his hands and the task of him who must use his mind, the task which
will fasten the eyes of all upon the doer and the task which no one
will ewer see. And always Jesus' eyes are searching the crowds for those
who will do his work.
(ii) He called them. Jesus does not compel a man to do his work;
he offers him work to do. Jesus does not coerce; he invites. Jesus does
not make conscripts; he seeks volunteers. As it has been put, a man is
free to be faithful and free to be faithless. But to every man there
comes the summons which he can accept or refuse.
(iii) He appointed them. The King James Version has it that he ordained them (Mark 3:14). The word which is translated ordain is the simple Greek word poiein (Greek #4160),
which means to make or to do; but which is often technically used for
appointing a man to some office. Jesus was like a king appointing his
men to be his ministers; he was like a general allocating their tasks to
his commanders. It was not a case of drifting unconsciously into the
service of Jesus Christ; it was a case of definitely being appointed to
it. A man might well be proud, if he is appointed to some earthly office
by some earthly king; how much more shall he be proud when he is
appointed by the King of kings?
(iv) These men were appointed from amongst the disciples. The
word disciple means a learner. The men whom Christ needs and desires are
the men who are willing to learn. The shut mind cannot serve him. The
servant of Christ must be willing to learn more every day. Each day he
must be a step nearer Jesus and a little nearer God.
(v) The reasons why these men were chosen are equally significant. They were chosen to be with him (Mark 3:14).
If they were to do his work in the world, they must live in his
presence, before they went out to the world; they must go from the
presence of Jesus into the presence of men.
It is told that on one occasion Alexander Whyte preached a most
powerful and a most moving sermon. After the service a friend said to
him: "You preached today as if you had come straight from the presence
of Jesus Christ." Whyte answered: "Perhaps I did."
No work of Christ can ever be done except by him who comes from
the presence of Christ. Sometimes in the complexity of the activities of
the modern Church we are so busy with committees and courts and
administration and making the wheels go round that we are in danger of
forgetting that none of these things matters, if it is carried on by men
who have not been with Christ before they have been with men.
(vi) They were called to be apostles (Mark 3:14; Luke 6:13).
The word apostle literally means one who is sent out; it is the word
for an envoy or an ambassador. The Christian is Jesus Christ's
ambassador to men. He goes forth from the presence of Christ, bearing
with him the word and the beauty of his Master.
(vii) They were called to be the heralds of Christ. In Matthew 10:7 they are bidden to preach. The word is kerussein (Greek #2784), which comes from the noun kerux (Greek #2783),
which means a herald. The Christian is the herald Christ. That is why
he must begin in the presence of Christ. The Christian is not meant to
bring to men his own opinions; he brings a message of divine certainties
from Jesus Christ--and he cannot bring that message unless first in the
presence he has received it.
10:5-8a Jesus
sent out these twelve, and these were the orders he gave them: "Do not,"
he said, "go out on the road to the Gentiles, and do not enter into any
city of the Samaritans; but go rather to the sheep of the house of
Israel who have perished. As you go make this proclamation: The Kingdom
of Heaven is near. Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the leper,
cast out demons."
Here we have the beginning of the King's commission to his
messengers. The word which is used in the Greek for Jesus commanding his
men, or giving them orders is interesting and illuminating. It is the
word paragellein. This word in Greek has four special usages. (i) It is
the regular word of military command; Jesus was like a general sending
his commanders out on a campaign, and briefing them before they went.
(ii) It is the word used of calling one's friends to one's help. Jesus
was like a man with a great ideal summoning his friends to make that
ideal come true. (iii) It is the word which is used of a teacher giving
rules and precepts to his students. Jesus was like a teacher sending his
students out into the world, equipped with his teaching and his
message. (iv) It is the word which is regularly used for an imperial
command. Jesus was like a king despatching his ambassadors into the
world to carry out his orders and to speak for him.
This passage begins with what everyone must find a very
difficult instruction. It begins by forbidding the twelve to go to the
Gentiles or to the Samaritans. There are many who find it very difficult
to believe that Jesus ever said this at all, This apparent
exclusiveness is very unlike him; and it has been suggested that this
saying was put into his mouth by those who in the later days wished to
keep the gospel for the Jews, the very men who bitterly opposed Paul,
when he wished to take the gospel to the Gentiles.
But there are certain things to be remembered. This saying is so
uncharacteristic of Jesus that no one could have invented it; he must
have said it, and so there must be some explanation.
We can be quite certain it was not a permanent command. Within
the gospel itself we see Jesus talking graciously and intimately to a
woman of Samaria and revealing himself (John 4:4-42); we see him telling one of his immortal stories to her (Luke 10:30); we see him healing the daughter of Syro-Phoenician woman (Matthew 15:28);
and Matthew himself tells us of Jesus' final commission of his men to
go out into all the world and to bring all nations into the gospel (Matthew 28:19-20). What then is the explanation?
The twelve were forbidden to go to the Gentiles; that meant that
they could not go north into Syria, nor could they even go east into
the Decapolis, which was largely a Gentile region. They could not go
south into Samaria for that was forbidden. The effect of this order was
in actual fact to limit the first journeys of the twelve to Galilee.
There were three good reasons for that.
(i) The Jews had in God's scheme of things a very special place;
in the justice of God they had to be given the first offer of the
gospel. It is true that they rejected it, but the whole of history was
designed to give them the first opportunity to accept.
(ii) The twelve were not equipped to preach to the Gentiles.
They had neither the background, nor the knowledge nor the technique.
Before the gospel could be effectively brought to the Gentiles a man
with Paul's life and background had to emerge. A message has little
chance of success, if the messenger is ill-equipped to deliver it. If a
preacher or teacher is wise, he will realize his limitations, and will
see clearly what he is fitted and what he is not fitted to do.
(iii) But the great reason for this command is simply this--any
wise commander knows that he must limit his objectives. He must direct
his attack at one chosen point. If he diffuses his forces here, there
and everywhere, he dissipates his strength and invites failure. The
smaller his forces the more limited his immediate objective must be. To
attempt to attack on too broad a front is simply to court disaster.
Jesus knew that, and his aim was to concentrate his attack on Galilee,
for Galilee, as we have seen, was the most open of all parts of
Palestine to a new gospel and a new message (compare on Matthew 4:12-17).
This command of Jesus was a temporary command. He was the wise
commander who refused to diffuse and dissipate his forces; he skillfully
concentrated his attack on one limited objective in order to achieve an
ultimate and universal victory.
The King's messengers had words to speak and deeds to do.
(i) They had to announce the imminence of the Kingdom. As we have seen (compare on Matthew 6:10-11)
the Kingdom of God is a society on earth, where God's will is as
perfectly done as it is in heaven. Of all persons who ever lived in the
world Jesus was, and is, the only person who ever perfectly did, and
obeyed, and fulfilled, God's will. Therefore in him the Kingdom had
come. It is as if the messengers of the King were to say, "Look! You
have dreamed of the Kingdom, and you have longed for the Kingdom. Here
in the life of Jesus is the Kingdom. Look at him, and see what being in
the Kingdom means." In Jesus the Kingdom of God had come to men.
(ii) But the task of the twelve was not confined to speaking
words; it involved doing deeds. They had to heal the sick, to raise the
dead, to cleanse the lepers, to cast out demons. All these injunctions
are to be taken in a double sense. They are to be taken physically,
because Jesus Christ came to bring health and healing to the bodies of
men. But they are also to be taken spiritually. They describe the change
wrought by Jesus Christ in the souls of men.
(a) They were to heal the sick. The word used for sick is very suggestive. It is a part of the Greek verb asthenein (Greek #770), the primary meaning of which is to be weak; asthenes (Greek #772)
is the standard Greek adjective for weak. When Christ comes to a man,
he strengthens the weak will, he buttresses the weak resistance, he
nerves the feeble arm for fight, he confirms the weak resolution. Jesus
Christ fills our human weakness with his divine power.
(b) They were to raise the dead. A man can be dead in sin. His
will to resist can be broken; his vision of the good can be darkened
until it does not exist; he may be helplessly and hopelessly in the grip
of his sins, blind to goodness and deaf to God. When Jesus Christ comes
into a man's life, he resurrects him to goodness, he revitalizes the
goodness within us which our sinning has killed.
(c) They were to cleanse the lepers. As we have seen, the leper
was regarded as polluted. Leviticus says of him, "He shall remain
unclean as long as he has the disease; he is unclean; he shall dwell
alone in a habitation outside the camp" (Leviticus 13:46). 2 Kings 7:3-4 shows us the lepers who only in the day of deadly famine dared to enter into the city. 2 Kings 15:5
tells us how Azariah the king was smitten with leprosy, and to the day
of his death he had to live in a lazar house, separated from all men. It
is interesting to note that even in Persia this pollution of the leper
was believed in. Herodotus (1: 138) tells us that, "if a man in Persia
has the leprosy he is not snowed to enter into a city or to have any
dealings with any other Persians; he must, they say, have sinned against
the sun."
So, then, the twelve were to bring cleansing to the polluted. A
man can stain his life with sin; he can pollute his mind, his heart, his
body with the consequences of his sin. His words, his actions, his
influence can become so befouled that they are an unclean influence on
all with whom he comes into contact. Jesus Christ can cleanse the soul
that has stained itself with sin; he can bring to men the divine
antiseptic against sin; he cleanses human sin with the divine purity.
(d) They were to cast out demons. A demon-possessed man was a
man in the grip of an evil power; he was no longer master of himself and
of his actions; the evil power within had him in its mastery. A man can
be mastered by evil; he can be dominated by evil habits; evil can have a
mesmeric fascination for him. Jesus comes not only to cancel sin, but
to break the power of cancelled sin. Jesus Christ brings to men enslaved
by sin the liberating power of God.
10:8b-10
"Freely you have received; freely give. Do not set out to get gold or
silver or bronze for your purses; do not take a bag for the journey, nor
two tunics, nor shoes, nor a staff. The workman deserves his
sustenance."
This is a passage in which every sentence and every phrase
would ring an answering bell in the mind of the Jews who heard it. In it
Jesus was giving to his men the instructions which the Rabbis at their
best gave to their students and disciples.
"Freely you have received," says Jesus, "freely give." A Rabbi
was bound by law to give his teaching freely and for nothing; the Rabbi
was absolutely forbidden to take money for teaching the Law which Moses
had freely received from God. In only one case could a Rabbi accept
payment. He might accept payment for teaching a child, for to teach a
child is the parent's task, and no one else should be expected to spend
time and labour doing what is the parent's own duty to do; but higher
teaching had to be given without money and without price.
In the Mishnah the Law lays it down that, if a man takes payment
for acting as a judge, his judgments are invalid; that, if he takes
payment for giving evidence as a witness, his witness is void. Rabbi
Zadok said, "Make not the Law a crown wherewith to aggrandize thyself,
nor a spade wherewith to dig." Hillel said, "He who makes a worldly use
of the crown of the Law shall waste away. Hence thou mayest infer that
whosoever desires a profit for himself from the words of the Law is
helping on his own destruction." It was laid down: "As God taught Moses
gratis--so do thou."
There is a story of Rabbi Tarphon. At the end of the fig harvest
he was walking in a garden; and he ate some of the figs which had been
left behind. The watchmen came upon him and beat him. He told them who
he was, and because he was a famous Rabbi they let him go. All his life
he regretted that he had used his status as a Rabbi to help himself.
"Yet all his days did he grieve, for he said, 'Woe is me, for I have
used the crown of the Law for my own profit!'"
When Jesus told his disciples that they had freely received and
must freely give, he was telling them what the teachers of his own
people had been telling their students for many a day. If a man
possesses a precious secret it is surely his duty, not to hug it to
himself until he is paid for it, but willingly to pass it on. It is a
privilege to share with others the riches God has given us.
Jesus told the twelve not to set out to acquire gold or silver
or bronze for their purses, the Greek literally means for their girdles.
The girdle, which the Jew wore round his waist, was rather broad; and
at each end for part of its length it was double; money was carried in
the double part of the girdle; so that the girdle was the usual purse of
the Jew. Jesus told the twelve not to take a bag for the journey. The
bag may be one of two things. It may simply be a bag like a haversack in
which provisions would ordinarily have been carried. But there is
another possibility. The word is pera (Greek #4082),
which can mean a beggar's collecting bag; sometimes the wandering
philosophers took a collection in such a bag after addressing the crowd.
In all these instructions Jesus was not laying upon his men a
deliberate and calculated discomfort. He was once again speaking words
which were very familiar to a Jew. The Talmud tells us that: "No one is
to go to the Temple Mount with staff, shoes, girdle of money, or dusty
feet." The idea was that when a man entered the temple, he must make it
quite clear that he had left everything which had to do with trade and
business and worldly affairs behind. What Jesus is saying to his men is:
"You must treat the whole world as the Temple of God. If you are a man
of God, you must never give the impression that you are a man of
business, out for what you can get." Jesus' instructions mean that the
man of God must show by his attitude to material things that his first
interest is God.
Finally, Jesus says that the workman deserves his sustenance.
Once again the Jews would recognize this. It is true that a Rabbi might
not accept payment, but it is also true that it was considered at once a
privilege and an obligation to support a Rabbi, if he was truly a man
of God. Rabbi Eliezer ben Jacob said: "He who receives a Rabbi in his
house, or as his guest, and lets him have his enjoyment from his
possessions, the scripture ascribes it to him as if he had offered the
continual offerings." Rabbi Jochanan laid it down that it was the duty
of every Jewish community to support a Rabbi, and the more so because a
Rabbi naturally neglects his own affairs to concentrate on the affairs
of God.
Here then is the double truth; the man of God must never be
over-concerned with material things, but the people of God must never
fail in their duty to see that the man of God receives a reasonable
support. This passage lays an obligation on teacher and on people alike.
10:11-15 "When
you enter into any city or village, make inquiries as to who in it is
worthy, and stay there until you go out of it. When you come into a
household, give your greetings to it. If the house is worthy, let your
peace come upon it; if it is not worthy, let your peace return to you.
If anyone will not receive you, and will not listen to your words, when
you leave that house or that city, shake off the dust of it from your
feet. This is the truth I tell you--it will be easier for the land of
Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that city."
Here is a passage full of the most practical advice for the King's messengers.
When they entered a city or a village, they were to seek a house
that is worthy. The point is that if they took up their residence in a
house which had an evil reputation for morals or for conduct or for
fellowship, it would seriously hinder their usefulness. They were not to
identify themselves with anyone who might prove to be a handicap. That
is not for a moment to say that they were not to seek to win such people
for Christ, but it is to say that the messenger of Christ must have a
care whom he makes his intimate friend.
When they entered a house, they were to stay there until they
moved on to another place. This was a matter of courtesy. They might
well be tempted, after they had won certain supporters and converts in a
place, to move on to a house which could provide more luxury, more
comfort, and better entertainment. The messenger of Christ must never
give the impression that he courts people for the sake of material
things, and that his movements are dictated by the demands of his own
comfort.
The passage about giving a greeting, and, as it were, taking the
greeting back again, is typically eastern. In the east a spoken word
was thought to have a kind of active and independent existence. It went
out from the mouth as independently as a bullet from a gun. This idea
emerges regularly in the Old Testament, especially in connection with
words spoken by God. Isaiah hears God say, "By myself I have sworn, from
my mouth has gone forth in righteousness a word that shall not return" (Isaiah 45:23).
"So shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth; it shall not return
to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and prosper
in the thing for which I sent it" (Isaiah 55:11). Zechariah sees the flying scroll, and hears the voice: "This is the curse that goes out over the face of the whole land" (Zechariah 5:3).
To this day in the east, if a man speaks his blessing to a
passer-by, and then discovers that the passer-by is of another faith, he
will come and take his blessing back again. The idea here is that the
messengers of the King can send their blessing to rest upon a house,
and, if the house is unworthy of it, can, as it were, recall it.
If in any place their message is refused, the messengers of the
King were to shake the dust of that place off their feet and to move on.
To the Jew the dust of a Gentile place or road was defiling; therefore,
when the Jew crossed the border of Palestine, and entered into his own
country, after a journey in Gentile lands, he shook the dust of the
Gentile roads off his feet that the last particle of pollution might be
cleansed away. So Jesus said, "If a city or a village will not receive
you, you must treat it like a Gentile place." Again, we must be clear as
to what Jesus is saying. In this passage there is both a temporary and
an eternal truth.
(i) The temporary truth is this, Jesus was not saying that
certain people had to be abandoned as being outside the message of the
gospel and beyond the reach of grace. This was an instruction like the
opening instruction not to go to the Gentiles and to the Samaritans. It
came from the situation in which it was given. It was simply due to the
time factor; time was short; as many as possible must hear the
proclamation of the Kingdom; there was not time then to argue with the
disputatious and to seek to win the stubborn; that would come later. At
the moment the disciples had to tour the country as quickly as possible,
and therefore they had to move on when there was no immediate welcome
for the message which they brought.
(ii) The permanent truth is this. It is one of the great basic
facts of life that time and time again an opportunity comes to a
man--and does not come back. To those people in Palestine there was
coming the opportunity to receive the gospel, but if they did not take
it, the opportunity might well never return. As the proverb has it:
"Three things come not back--the spoken word, the spent arrow, and the
lost opportunity."
This happens in every sphere of life. In his autobiography,
Chiaroscuro, Augustus John tells of an incident and adds a laconic
comment. He was in Barcelona: "It was time to leave for Marseilles. I
had sent forward my baggage and was walking to the station, when I
encountered three Gitanas engaged in buying flowers at a booth. I was so
struck by their beauty and flashing elegance that I almost missed my
train. Even when I reached Marseilles and met my friend, this vision
still haunted me, and I positively had to return. But I did not find
these gypsies again. One never does." The artist was always looking for
glimpses of beauty to transfer to his canvas--but he knew well that if
he did not paint the beauty when he found it, all the chances were that
he would never catch that glimpse again. The tragedy of life is so often
the tragedy of the lost opportunity.
Finally, it is said that it will be easier for Sodom and
Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for the town or the village which
has refused the message of Christ and the Kingdom. Sodom and Gomorrah
are in the New Testament proverbial for wickedness (Matthew 11:23-24; Luke 10:12-13; Luke 17:29; Romans 9:29; 2 Peter 2:6;
Jd 1:7 ). It is interesting and relevant to note that just before their
destruction Sodom and Gomorrah had been guilty of a grave and vicious
breach of the laws of hospitality (Genesis 19:1-11).
They, too, had rejected the messengers of God. But, even at their
worst, Sodom and Gomorrah had never had the opportunity to reject the
message of Christ and his Kingdom. That is why it would be easier for
them at the last than for the towns and villages of Galilee; for it is
always true that the greater the privilege has been the greater the
responsibility is.
10:16-22 Look
you, it is I who am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves.
Show yourself as wise as serpents, and as pure as doves. Beware of men!
For they will hand you over to the councils, and they will scourge you
in their synagogues. You will be brought before rulers and kings for my
sake, that you make your witness to them and to the Gentiles. But when
they hand you over, do not worry how you are to speak, or what you are
to say. What you are to speak will be given to you in that hour, for it
is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you.
Brother will hand over brother to death, and father will hand over
child. Children will rise up against parents, and will murder them; and
you will be hated by all for my name's sake. But he who endures to the
end will be saved.
Before we deal with this passage in detail, we may note two things about it in general.
When we were studying the Sermon on the Mount, we saw that one
of Matthew's great characteristics was his love of orderly arrangement.
We saw that it was Matthew's custom to collect in one place all the
material on any given subject, even if it was spoken by Jesus on
different occasions. Matthew was the systematizer of his material. This
passage is one of the instances where Matthew collects his material from
different times. Here he collects the things which Jesus said on
various occasions about persecution.
There is no doubt that even when Jesus sent out his men for the
first time, he told them what to expect. But at the very beginning
Matthew relates how Jesus told his men not to go at that time to the
Gentiles or to the Samaritans; and yet in this passage Matthew shows us
Jesus foretelling persecution and trial before rulers and kings, that is
to say, far beyond Palestine. The explanation is that Matthew collects
Jesus' references to persecution and he puts together both what Jesus
said when he sent his men out on their first expedition and what Jesus
told them after his resurrection, when he was sending them out into all
the world. Here we have the words, not only of Jesus of Galilee, but
also of the Risen Christ.
Further, we must note that in these words Jesus was making use
of ideas and pictures which were part and parcel of Jewish thought. We
have seen again and again how it was the custom of the Jews, in their
pictures of the future, to divide time into two ages. There was the
present age, which is wholly bad; there was the age to come, which would
be the golden age of God; and in between there was the Day of the Lord,
which would be a terrible time of chaos and destruction and judgment.
Now in Jewish thought one of the ever-recurring features of the Day of
the Lord was that it would split friends and kindred into two, and that
the dearest bonds of earth would be destroyed in bitter enmities.
"All friends shall destroy each other" (2 Esdras 5:9). "At that time shall friends make war one against another like enemies" (2 Esdras 6:24).
"And they will strive with one another, the young with the old, and the
old with the young, the poor with the rich, and the lowly with the
great, and the beggar with the prince" (Jubilees 23: 19). "And they will
hate one another, and provoke one another to fight; and the mean will
rule over the honourable, and those of low degree shall be extolled
above the famous'" (2 Baruch 70:3).
"And they shall begin to fight among themselves, and their right hand
shall be strong against themselves, and a man shall not know his
brother, nor a son his father or his mother, till there be no number of
the corpses through their slaughter" (Enoch 56: 7). "And in those days
the destitute shall go forth and carry off their children, and they
shall abandon them, so that their children shall perish through them;
yea they shall abandon their children that are still sucklings, and not
return to them; and shall have no pity on their loved ones" (Enoch 99:
5). "And in those days in one place the fathers together with their sons
shall be smitten and brothers one with another shall fall in death till
the streams flow with their blood. For a man shall not withhold his
hand from slaying his sons and his sons' sons, and the sinner shall not
withhold his hand from his honoured brother; from dawn to sunset they
shall slay each other." (Enoch 100: 1-2).
All these quotations are taken from the books which the Jews
wrote and knew and loved, and on which they fed their hearts and their
hopes, in the days between the Old and the New Testaments. Jesus knew
these books; his men knew these books; and when Jesus spoke of the
terrors to come, and of the divisions which would tear apart the closest
ties of earth, he was in effect saying: "The Day of the Lord has come."
And his men would know that he was saying this, and would go out in the
knowledge that they were living in the greatest days of history.
No one can read this passage without being deeply impressed with the
honesty of Jesus. He never hesitated to tell men what they might expect,
if they followed him. It is as if he said, "Here is my task for you--at
its grimmest and at its worst--do you accept it?" Plummer comments:
"This is not the world's way to win adherents." The world will offer a
man roses, roses all the way, comfort, ease, advancement, the fulfilment
of his worldly ambitions. Jesus offered his men hardship and death. And
yet the proof of history is that Jesus was right. In their heart of
hearts men love a call to adventure.
After the siege of Rome, in 1849, Garibaldi issued the following
proclamation to his followers: "Soldiers, all our efforts against
superior forces have been unavailing. I have nothing to offer you but
hunger and thirst, hardship and death; but I call on all who love their
country to join with me"--and they came in their hundreds.
After Dunkirk, Churchill offered his country "blood, toil, sweat and tears".
Prescott tells how Pizarro, that reckless adventurer, offered
his little band the tremendous choice between the known safety of
Panama, and the as yet unknown splendour of Peru. He took his sword and
traced a line with it on the sand from east to west: "Friends and
comrades!" he said, "on that side are toil, hunger, nakedness, the
drenching storm, desertion and death; on this side, ease and pleasure.
There ties Peru with its riches; here, Panama and its poverty. Choose
each man what best becomes a brave Castilian. For my part I go south"
and he stepped across the line. And thirteen men, whose names are
immortal, chose adventure with him.
When Shackleton proposed his march to the South Pole he asked
for volunteers for that trek amidst the blizzards across the polar ice.
He expected to have difficulty but he was inundated with letters, from
young and old, rich and poor, the highest and the lowest, all desiring
to share in that great adventure.
It may be that the Church must learn again that we will never
attract men to an easy way; it is the call of the heroic which
ultimately speaks to men's hearts.
Jesus offered his men three kinds of trial.
(i) The state would persecute them; they would be brought before
councils and kings and governors. Long before this Aristotle had
wondered if a good man could ever really be a good citizen, for, he
said, it was the duty of the citizen ever to support and to obey the
state, and there were times when the good man would find that
impossible. When Christ's men were brought to court and to judgment,
they were not to worry about what they would say; for God would give
them words. "I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall
speak," God had promised Moses (Exodus 4:12).
It was not the humiliation which the early Christians dreaded, not even
the cruel pain and the agony. But many of them feared that their own
unskillfulness in words and defence might injure rather than commend the
faith. It is the promise of God that when a man is on trial for his
faith, the words will come to him.
(ii) The Church would persecute them; they would be scourged in
the synagogues. The Church does not like to be upset, and has its own
ways of dealing with disturbers of the peace. The Christians were, and
are, those who turn the world upside down (Acts 17:6).
It has often been true that the man with a message from God has had to
undergo the hatred and the enmity of a fossilized orthodoxy.
(iii) The family would persecute them; their nearest and dearest
would think them mad, and shut the door against them. Sometimes the
Christian is confronted with the hardest choice of all--the choice
between obedience to Christ and obedience to kindred and to friends.
Jesus warned his men that in the days to come they might well find state and Church and family conjoined against them.
Looking at things from our own point of view, we find it hard to
understand why any government should wish to persecute the Christians,
whose only aim was to live in purity, in charity, and in reverence. But
in later days the Roman government had what it considered good reason
for persecuting the Christians (see topic THE BLISS OF THE SUFFERER FOR
CHRIST).
(i) There were certain slanders current about the Christians.
They were accused of being cannibals because of the words of the
sacrament, which spoke of eating Christ's body and drinking his blood.
They were accused of immorality because the title of their weekly feast
was the agape (Greek #26),
the love feast. They were accused of incendiarism because of the
pictures which the Christian preachers drew of the coming of the end of
the world. They were accused of being disloyal and disaffected citizens
because they would not take the oath to the godhead of the Emperor.
(ii) It is doubtful if even the heathen really believed these
slanderous charges. But there were other charges which were more
serious. The Christians were accused of "tampering with family
relationships." It was the truth that Christianity often split families,
as we have seen. And to the heathen, Christianity appeared to be
something which divided parents and children, and husbands and wives.
(iii) A real difficulty was the position of slaves in the
Christian Church. In the Roman Empire there were 60,000,000 slaves. It
was always one of the terrors of the Empire that these slaves might rise
in revolt. If the structure of the Empire was to remain intact they
must be kept in their place; nothing must be done by anyone to encourage
them to rebel, or the consequences might be terrible beyond imagining.
Now the Christian Church made no attempt to free the slaves, or
to condemn slavery; but it did, within the Church at least, treat the
slaves as equals. Clement of Alexandria pleaded that "slaves are like
ourselves," and the golden rule applied to them. Lactantius wrote:
"Slaves are not slaves to us. We deem them brothers after the Spirit, in
religion fellow-servants." It is a notable fact that, although there
were thousands of slaves in the Christian Church, the inscription slave
is never met with in the Roman Christian tombs.
Worse than that, it was perfectly possible for a slave to hold
high office in the Christian Church. In the early second century two
bishops of Rome, Callistus and Pius, had been slaves. And it was not
uncommon for elders and deacons to be slaves.
And still worse, in A.D. 220 Callistus, who, as we have seen,
had been a slave, declared that henceforth the Christian Church would
sanction the marriage of a highborn girl to a freed man, a marriage
which was in fact illegal under Roman law, and, therefore, not a
marriage at all.
In its treatment of slaves the Christian Church must necessarily
have seemed to the Roman authorities a force which was disrupting the
very basis of civilization, and threatening the very existence of the
Empire by giving slaves a position which they should never have had, as
Roman law saw it.
(iv) There is no doubt that Christianity seriously affected
certain vested interests connected with heathen religion. When
Christianity came to Ephesus, the trade of the silversmiths was dealt a
mortal blow, for far fewer desired to buy the images which they
fashioned (Acts 19:24-27).
Pliny was governor of Bithynia in the reign of Trajan, and in a letter
to the Emperor (Pliny: Letters, 10: 96) he tells how he had taken steps
to check the rapid growth of Christianity so that "the temples which had
been deserted now begin to be frequented; the sacred festivals, after a
long intermission, are revived; while there is a general demand for
sacrificial animals, which for some time past have met with few
purchasers." It is clear that the spread of Christianity meant the
abolition of certain trades and activities; and those who lost their
trade and lost their money not unnaturally resented it.
Christianity preaches a view of man which no totalitarian state
can accept. Christianity deliberately aims to obliterate certain trades
and professions and ways of making money. It still does--and therefore
the Christian is still liable to persecution for his faith.
10:23 "When
they persecute you in one city, flee into another. This is the truth I
tell you--you will not complete your tour of the cities of Israel, until
the Son of Man shall come."
This passage counsels a wise and a Christian prudence. In the
days of persecution a certain danger always threatened the Christian
witness. There always were those who actually courted martyrdom; they
were wrought up to such a pitch of hysterical and fanatical enthusiasm
that they went out of their way to become martyrs for the faith. Jesus
was wise. He told his men that there must be no wanton waste of
Christian lives; that they must not pointlessly and needlessly throw
their lives away. As some one has put it, the life of every Christian
witness is precious. and must not be recklessly thrown away. "Bravado is
not martyrdom." Often the Christians had to die for their faith, but
they must not throw away their lives in a way that did not really help
the faith. As it was later said, a man must contend lawfully, for the
faith.
When Jesus spoke like this, he was speaking in a way which Jews
would recognize and understand. No people were ever more persecuted than
the Jews have always been; and no people were ever clearer as to where
the duties of the martyr lay. The teaching of the great Rabbis was quite
clear. When it was a question of public sanctification or open
profanation of God's name, duty was plain--a man must be prepared to lay
down his life. But when that public declaration was not in question, a
man might save his life by breaking the law; but for no reason must he
commit idolatry, unchastity, or murder.
The case the Rabbis cited was this: suppose a Jew is seized by a
Roman soldier, and the soldier says mockingly, and with no other
intention than to humiliate and to make a fool of the Jew: "Eat this
pork." Then the Jew may eat, for "God's laws are given for life and not
for death." But suppose the Roman says: "Eat this pork as a sign that
you renounce Judaism; eat this pork as a sign that you are ready to
worship Jupiter and the Emperor," the Jew must die rather than eat. In
any time of official persecution the Jew must die rather than abandon
his faith. As the Rabbis said, "The words of the Law are only firm in
that man who would die for their sake."
The Jew was forbidden to thrown away his life in a needless act
of pointless martyrdom; but when it came to a question of true witness,
he must be prepared to die.
We do well to remember that, while we are bound to accept
martyrdom for our faith, we are forbidden to court martyrdom. If
suffering for the faith comes to us in the course of duty, it must be
accepted; but it must not be needlessly invited; to invite it does more
harm than good to the faith we bear. The self-constituted martyr is much
too common in all human affairs.
It has been said that there is sometimes more heroism in daring
to fly from danger than in stopping to meet it. There is real wisdom in
recognizing when to escape. Andre Maurois in Why France Fell tells of a
conversation he had with Winston Churchill. There was a time at the
beginning of the Second World War when Great Britain seemed strangely
inactive and unwilling to act. Churchill said to Maurois: "Have you
observed the habits of lobsters?" "No," answered Maurois to this
somewhat surprising question. Churchill went on: "Well, if you have the
opportunity, study them. At certain periods in his life the lobster
loses his protective shell. At this moment of moulting even the bravest
crustacean retires into a crevice in the rock, and waits patiently until
a new carapace has time to grow. As soon as this new armour has grown
strong, he sallies out of the crevice, and becomes once more a fighter,
lord of the seas. England, through the faults of imprudent ministers,
has lost its carapace; we must wait in our crevice until the new one has
time to grow strong." This was a time when inaction was wiser than
action; and when to escape was wiser than to attack.
If a man is weak in the faith, he will do well to avoid
disputations about doubtful things, and not to plunge into them. If a
man knows that he is susceptible to a certain temptation, he will do
well to avoid the places where that temptation will speak to him, and
not to frequent them. If a man knows that there are people who anger and
irritate him, and who bring the worst out of him, he will be wise to
avoid their society, and not to seek it. Courage is not recklessness;
there is no virtue in running needless risks; God's grace is not meant
to protect the foolhardy, but the prudent.
This passage contains one strange saying which we cannot honestly
neglect. Matthew depicts Jesus as sending out his men, and, as he does
so, saying to them, "You will not complete your tour of the cities of
Israel, until the Son of Man shall come." On the face of it that seems
to mean that before his men had completed their preaching tour, his day
of glory and his return to power would have taken place. The difficulty
is just this-that did not in fact happen, and, if at that moment. Jesus
had that expectation, he was mistaken. If he said this in this way, he
foretold something which actually did not happen. But there is a
perfectly good and sufficient explanation of this apparent difficulty.
The people of the early Church believed intensely in the second
coming of Jesus, and they believed it would happen soon, certainly
within their own lifetime. There could be nothing more natural than
that, because they were living in days of savage persecution, and they
were longing for the day of their release and their glory. The result
was that they fastened on every possible saying of Jesus which could be
interpreted as foretelling his triumphant and glorious return, and
sometimes they quite naturally used things which Jesus said, and read
into them something more definite than was originally there.
We can see this process happening within the pages of the New
Testament itself. There are three versions of the one saying of Jesus.
Let us set them down one after another:
Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not
taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his
Kingdom (Matthew 16:28).
Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not
taste death before they see the Kingdom of God come with power
(Mark 9:1).
But I tell you truly, there are some standing here who will not
taste death before they see the kingdom of God (Luke 9:27).
Now it is clear that these are three versions of the same
saying. Mark is the earliest gospel, and therefore Mark's version is
most likely to be strictly accurate. Mark says that there were some
listening to Jesus who would not die until they saw the Kingdom of God
coming with power. That was gloriously true, for within thirty years of
the Cross the message of Crucified and Risen Christ had swept across the
world and had reached Rome, the capital of the world. Indeed men were
being swept into the Kingdom; indeed the Kingdom was coming with power.
Luke transmits the saying in the same way as Mark.
Now look at Matthew. His version is slightly different; he says
that there are some who will not die until they see the Son of Man
coming in power. That, in fact, did not happen. The explanation is that
Matthew was writing between A.D. 80 and 90, in days when terrible
persecution was raging. Men were clutching at everything which promised
release from agony; and he took a saying which foretold the spread of
the Kingdom and turned it into a saying which foretold the return of
Christ within a lifetime--and who shall blame him?
That is what Matthew has done here. Take this saying in our
passage and write it as Mark or Luke would have written it: "You will
not complete your tour of the cities of Israel, into the Kingdom of God
shall come." That was blessedly true, for as the tour went on, men's
hearts opened to Jesus Christ, and they took him as Master and Lord.
In a passage like this we must not think of Jesus as mistaken;
we must rather think that Matthew read into a promise of the coming of
the Kingdom a promise of the second coming of Jesus Christ. And he did
so because, in days of terror, men clutched at the hope of Christ; and
Christ did come to them in the Spirit, for no man ever suffered alone
for Christ.
10:24-25 "The
scholar is not above his teacher, nor is the slave above his master. It
is enough for the scholar that he should be as his teacher, and the
servant that he should be as his master. If they have called the master
of the house Beelzeboul, how much more shall they so call the members of
his household."
It is Jesus' warning to his disciples that they must expect
what happened to him to happen to them. The Jews well knew this
sentence: "It is enough for the slave to be as his master." In the later
days they were to use it in a special way. In A.D. 70 Jerusalem was
destroyed, and destroyed so completely that a plough was drawn across
the devastation. The Temple of God and the Holy City were in ruins. The
Jews were dispersed throughout the world, and many of them mourned and
lamented about the terrible fate which had befallen them personally. It
was then that the Rabbis said to them: "When God's Temple has been
destroyed, how can any individual Jew complain about his personal
misfortunes?"
In this saying of Jesus there are two things.
(i) There is a warning. There is the warning that, as Christ had
to carry a cross, so also the individual Christian must carry a cross.
The word that is used for members of his household is the one Greek word
oikiakoi (Greek #3615).
This word has a technical use; it means the members of the household of
a government official: that is to say, the official's staff. It is as
if Jesus said, "If I, the leader and commander, must suffer, you who are
the members of my staff cannot escape." Jesus calls us, not only to
share his glory, but to share his warfare and his agony; and no man
deserves to share the fruits of victory, if he refuses to share the
struggle of which these fruits are the result.
(ii) There is the statement of a privilege. To suffer for Christ
is to share the work of Christ; to have to sacrifice for the faith is
to share the sacrifice of Christ. When Christianity is hard. we can say
to ourselves, not only, "Brothers, we are treading where the saints have
trod," we can also say, "Brothers, we are treading where the feet of
Christ have trod."
There is always a thrill in belonging to a noble company. Eric
Linklater in his autobiography tells of his experience in the disastrous
March retreat in the First World War. He was with the Black Watch, and
they had emerged from the battle with one officer, thirty men, and a
piper left of the battalion. "The next day, marching peacefully in the
morning light of France along a pleasant road we encountered the
tattered fragments of a battalion of the Foot Guards, and the piper,
putting breath into his bag, and playing so that he filled the air like
the massed bands of the Highland Division, saluted the tall
Coldstreamers, who had a drum or two and some instruments of brass, that
made also a gallant music. Stiffly we passed each other, swollen of
chest, heads tautly to the right, kilts swinging to the answer of the
swagger of the Guards, and the Red Hackle in our bonnets, like the
monstrance of a bruised but resilient faith. We were bearded and stained
with mud. The Guards--the fifty men that were left of a battalion--were
button-bright and clean shaved--we were a tatter-demalion crew from the
coal mines of Fife and the back streets of Dundee, but we trod
quick-stepping to the brawling tune of 'Hietan' Laddie', and suddenly I
was crying with a fool's delight and the sheer gladness of being in such
company." It is one of life's great thrills to have the sense of
belonging to a goodly company and a goodly fellowship.
When Christianity costs something we are closer than ever we
were to the fellowship of Jesus Christ; and if we know the fellowship of
his sufferings, we shall also know the power of his resurrection.
10:26-31 "Do
not fear them; for there is nothing which is covered which shall not be
unveiled, and there is nothing hidden which shall not be known. What I
tell you in the darkness, speak in the light. What you hear whispered in
your ear, proclaim on the housetops. Do not fear those who can kill the
body, but who cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who is able to
destroy both soul and body in Gehenna. Are two sparrows not sold for a
penny, and not one of them shall light on the ground without your
Father's knowledge? The hairs of your head are all numbered. So then do
not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows."
Three times in this short passage Jesus bids his disciples not
to be afraid. In the King's messenger there must be a certain courageous
fearlessness which marks him out from other men.
(i) The first commandment is in Matthew 10:26-27, and it speaks of a double fearlessness.
(a) They are not to be afraid because there is nothing covered
that will not be unveiled, and nothing hidden which will not be known.
The meaning of that is that the truth will triumph. "Great is the
truth," ran the Latin proverb, "and the truth will prevail." When James
the Sixth threatened to hang or exile Andrew Melville, Melville's answer
was: "You cannot hang or exile the truth." When the Christian is
involved in suffering and sacrifice and even martyrdom for his faith, he
must remember that the day will come when things will be seen as they
really are; and then the power of the persecutor and the heroism of
Christian witness will be seen at their true value, and each will have
its true reward.
(b) They are not to be afraid to speak with boldness the message
they have received. What Jesus has told them, they must tell to men.
Here in this one verse (Matthew 10:27) lies the true function of the preacher.
First, the preacher must listen; he must he in the secret place
with Christ, that in the dark hours Christ may speak to him, and that in
the loneliness Christ may whisper in his ear. No man can speak for
Christ unless Christ has spoken to him; no man can proclaim the truth
unless he has listened to the truth; for no man can tell that which he
does not know.
In the great days in which the Reformation was coming to birth,
Colet invited Erasmus to come to Oxford to give a series of lectures on
Moses or Isaiah; but Erasmus knew he was not ready. He wrote back: "But I
who have learned to live with myself, and know how scanty my equipment
is, can neither claim the learning required for such a task, nor do I
think that I possess the strength of mind to sustain the jealousy of so
many men, who would be eager to maintain their own ground. The campaign
is one that demands, not a tyro, but a practiced general. Neither should
you call me immodest in declining a position which it would be most
immodest for me to accept. You are not acting wisely, Colet, in
demanding water from a pumice stone, as Plautus said. With what
effrontery shall I teach what I have never learned? How am I to warm the
coldness of others, when I am shivering myself?"
He who would teach and preach must first in the secret place listen and learn.
Second, the preacher must speak what he has heard from Christ,
and he must speak even if his speaking is to gain him the hatred of men,
and even if, by speaking, he takes his life in his hands.
Men do not like the truth, for, as Diogenes said, truth is like
the light to sore eyes. Once Latimer was preaching when Henry the king
was present. He knew that he was about to say something which the king
would not relish. So in the pulpit he soliloquized aloud with himself.
"Latimer! Latimer! Latimer!" he said, "be careful what you say. Henry
the king is here." He paused, and then he said, "Latimer! Latimer!
Latimer! be careful what you say. The King of kings is here."
The man with a message speaks to men, but he speaks in the
presence of God. It was said of John Knox, as they buried him, "Here
lies one who feared God so much that he never feared the face of any
man."
The Christian witness is the man who knows no fear, because he
knows that the judgments of eternity will correct the judgments of time.
The Christian preacher and teacher is the man who listens with
reverence and who speaks with courage, because he knows that, whether he
listens or speaks, he is in the presence of God.
(ii) The second commandment is in Matthew 10:28.
To put it very simply, what Jesus is saying is that no punishment that
men can ever lay upon a man can compare with the ultimate fate of one
who has been guilty of infidelity and disobedience to God. It is true
that men can kill a man's physical body; but God can condemn a man to
the death of the soul. There are three things that we must note here.
(a) Some people believe in what is called conditioned
immortality. This belief holds that the reward of goodness is that the
soul climbs up and up until it is one with all the immortality, the
bliss and the blessedness of God; and that the punishment of the evil
man, who will not mend his ways in spite of all God's appeals to him, is
that his soul goes down and down and down until it is finally
obliterated and ceases to be. We cannot erect a doctrine on a single
text, but that is something very like what Jesus is saying here.
The Jews knew the awfulness of the punishment of God.
For thou hast power over life and death.
And thou leadest down to the gates of Hades, and leadest up again.
But though a man can kill by his wickedness,
Yet the spirit that is gone forth he bringeth not back,
Neither giveth release to the soul that Hades has received
During the killing times of the Maccabean struggle, the seven
martyred brothers encouraged each other by saying, "Let us not fear him
who thinketh he kills; for a great struggle and pain of the soul awaits
in eternal torment those who transgress the ordinance of God"(4 Maccabees 13:14-15).
We do well to remember that the penalties which men can exact
are as nothing to the penalties which God can exact and to the rewards
which he can give.
(b) The second thing which this passage teaches is that there is
still left in the Christian life a place for what we might call a holy
fear.
The Jews well knew this fear of God. One of the rabbinic stories
tells how Rabbi Jochanan was ill. "His disciples went in to visit him.
On beholding them he began to weep. His disciples said to him, 'O Lamp
of Israel, righthand pillar, mighty hammer! Wherefore dost thou weep?'
He replied to them, 'If I was being led into the presence of a human
king who today is here and tomorrow in the grave, who, if he were
wrathful against me, his anger would not be eternal, who, if he
imprisoned me, the imprisonment would not be eternal, who, if he
condemned me to death, the death would not be for ever, and whom I can
appease with words and bribe with money even then I would weep. But now,
when I am being led into the presence of the King of kings, the Holy
One, blessed is he, who lives and endures for all eternity, who, if he
be wrathful against me, his anger is eternal, who, if he imprisoned me,
the imprisonment would be for ever, who, if he condemned me to death,
the death would be for ever, and whom I cannot appease with words or
bribe with money--nay more, when before me lie two ways, one the way of
the Garden of Eden and the other the way of Gehenna, and I know not in
which I am to be led--shall I not weep?'"
It is not that the Jewish thinkers forgot that there is love,
and that love is the greatest of all things. "The reward of him who acts
from love," they said, "is double and quadruple. Act from love, for
there is no love where there is fear, or fear where there is love,
except in relation to God." The Jews were always sure that in relation
to God there was both fear and love. "Fear God and love God, the Law
says both; act from both love and fear; from love, for, if you would
hate, no lover hates; from fear, for, if you would kick, no fearer
kicks." But the Jew never forgot--and neither must we--the sheer
holiness of God.
And for the Christian the matter is even more compelling, for
our fear is not that God will punish us, but that we may grieve his
love. The Jew was never in any danger of sentimentalizing the love of
God, and neither was Jesus. God is love, but God is also holiness, for
God is God; and there must be a place in our hearts and in our thought
both for the love which answers God's love, and the reverence, the awe
and the fear which answer God's holiness.
(c) Further, this passage tells us that there are things which
are worse than death; and disloyalty is one of them. If a man is guilty
of disloyalty, if he buys security at the expense of dishonour, life is
no longer tolerable. He cannot face men; he cannot face himself; and
ultimately he cannot face God. There are times when comfort, safety,
ease, life itself can cost too much.
(iii) The third commandment not to fear is in Matthew 10:31; and it is based on the certainty of the detailed care of God. If God cares for the sparrows, surely he will care for men.
Matthew says that two sparrows are sold for a penny and yet not
one of them falls to the ground without the knowledge of God. Luke gives
us that saying of Jesus in a slightly different form: "Are not five
sparrows sold for two pennies? And not one of them is forgotten before
God?" (Luke 12:6).
The point is this--two sparrows were sold for one penny. (The coin is
the assarion, which was one-sixteenth of a denarius; a denarius was
approximately four new pence; therefore the assarion was about one
quarter of one new penny). But if the purchaser was prepared to spend
two pennies, he got, not four sparrows, but five. The extra one was
thrown into the bargain as having no value at all. God cares even for
the sparrow which is thrown into the bargain, and which on man's
counting has no value at all. Even the forgotten sparrow is dear to God.
The thing is even more vivid than that. The Revised Standard
Version--and it is a perfectly correct translation of the Greek--has it
that not one sparrow will fall to the ground without the knowledge of
God. In such a context the word "fall" makes us naturally think of
death; but in all probability the Greek is a translation of an Aramaic
word which means to light upon the ground. It is not that God marks the
sparrow when the sparrow falls dead; it is far more; it is that God
marks the sparrow every time it lights and hops upon the ground. So it
is Jesus' argument that, if God cares like that for sparrows, much more
will he care for men.
Once again the Jews would well understand what Jesus was saying.
No nation ever had such a conception of the detailed care of God for
his creation. Rabbi Chanina said, "No man hurts his finger here below,
unless it is so disposed for him by God." There was a rabbinic saying,
"God sits and feeds the world, from the horns of the buffalo to the eggs
of the louse." Hillel has a wonderful interpretation of Psalms 136:1-26
. That psalm begins by telling the story in lyric poetry about the God
who is the God of creation, the God who made the heavens and the earth,
and the sun and the moon and the stars (Psalms 136:1-9);
then it goes on to tell the story about the God who is the God of
history, the God who rescued Israel from Egypt and who fought her
battles for her (Psalms 136:11-24); then finally it goes on to speak of God as the God "who gives food to all flesh" (Psalms 136:25).
The God who made the world and who controls all history is the God who
gives men food. The coming of our daily bread is just as much an act of
God as the act of creation and the saving power of the deliverance from
Egypt. God's love for men is seen not only in the omnipotence of
creation and in the great events of history; it is seen also in the
day--today nourishment of the bodies of men.
The courage of the King's messenger is founded on the conviction
that, whatever happens. he cannot drift beyond the love of God. He
knows that his times are for ever in God's hands; that God will not
leave him or forsake him; that he is surrounded for ever by God's care.
If that is so--whom then shall we be afraid?
10:32-33 "I too
will acknowledge before my Father every one who acknowledges me before
men. I too will deny before my Father who is in heaven every one who
denies me before men."
Here is laid down the double loyalty of the Christian life. If a
man is loyal to Jesus Christ in this life, Jesus Christ will be loyal
to him in the life to come. If a man is proud to acknowledge that Jesus
Christ is his Master, Jesus Christ will be proud to acknowledge that he
is his servant.
It is the plain fact of history that if there had not been men
and women in the early Church who in face of death and agony refused to
deny their Master, there would be no Christian Church today. The Church
of today is built on the unbreakable loyalty of those who held fast to
their faith.
Pliny, the governor of Bithynia, writes to Trajan, the Roman
Emperor, about how he treated the Christians within his province.
Anonymous informers laid information that certain people were Christian.
Pliny tells how he gave these men the opportunity to invoke the gods of
Rome, to offer wine and frankincense to the image of the Emperor, and
how he demanded that as a final test they should curse the name of
Christ. And then he adds: "None of these acts, it is said, those who are
really Christians can be compelled to do." Even the Roman governor
confesses his helplessness to shake the loyalty of those who are truly
Christian.
It is still possible for a man to deny Jesus Christ.
(i) We may deny him with our words. It is told of J. P. Mahaffy,
the famous scholar and man of the world from Trinity College, Dublin,
that when he was asked if he was a Christian, his answer was: "Yes, but
not offensively so." He meant that he did not allow his Christianity to
interfere with the society he kept and the pleasure he loved. Sometimes
we say to other people, practically in so many words, that we are Church
members, but not to worry about it too much; that we have no intention
of being different; that we are prepared to take our full share in all
the pleasures of the world; and that we do not expect people to take any
special trouble to respect any vague principles that we may have.
The Christian can never escape the duty of being different from
the world. It is not our duty to be conformed to the world; it is our
duty to be transformed from it.
(ii) We can deny him by our silence. A French writer tells of
bringing a young wife into an old family. The old family had not
approved of the marriage, although they were too conventionally polite
ever to put their objections into actual words and criticisms. But the
young wife afterwards said that her whole life was made a misery by "the
menace of things unsaid."
There can be a menace of things unsaid in the Christian life.
Again and again life brings us the opportunity to speak some word for
Christ, to utter some protest against evil, to take some stand, and to
show what side we are on. Again and again on such occasions it is easier
to keep silence than to speak. But such a silence is a denial of Jesus
Christ. It is probably true that far more people deny Jesus Christ by
cowardly silence than by deliberate words.
(iii) We can deny him by our actions. We can live in such a way
that our life is a continuous denial of the faith which we profess. He
who has given his allegiance to the gospel of purity may be guilty of
all kinds of petty dishonesties, and breaches of strict honour. He who
has undertaken to follow the Master who bade him take up a cross can
live a life which is dominated by attention to his own ease and comfort.
He who has entered the service of him who himself forgave and who bade
his followers to forgive can live a life of bitterness and resentment
and variance with his fellow-men. He whose eyes are meant to be on that
Christ who died for love of men can live a life in which the idea of
Christian service and Christian charity and Christian generosity are
conspicuous by their absence.
A special prayer was composed for the Lambeth Conference of 1948:
"Almighty God, give us grace to be not only hearers, but doers
of thy holy word, not only to admire, but to obey thy doctrine, not only
to profess, but to practice thy religion, not only to love, but to live
thy gospel. So grant that what we learn of thy glory we may receive
into our hearts, and show forth in our lives: through Jesus Christ our
Lord. Amen."
That is a prayer which every one of us would be well to remember and continually to use.
10:34-39 "Do
not think that I came to send peace on earth: I did not come to send
peace, but a sword. I came to set a man at variance against his father,
and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her
mother-in-law; and a man's enemies shall be the members of his own
household. He that loves father or mother more than he loves me is not
worthy of me; and he who does not take up his cross and follow after me
is not worthy of me: He who finds his life will lose it; and he who
loses his life for my sake shall find it."
Nowhere is the sheer honesty of Jesus more vividly displayed
than it is here. Here he sets the Christian demand at its most demanding
and at its most uncompromising. He tells his men exactly what they may
expect, if they accept the commission to be messengers of the King. Here
in this passage Jesus offers four things.
(i) He offers a warfare; and in that warfare it will often be true that a man's foes will be those of his own household.
It so happens that Jesus was using language which was perfectly
familiar to the Jew. The Jews believed that one of the features of the
Day of the Lord, the day when God would break into history, would be the
division of families. The Rabbis said: "In the period when the Son of
David shall come, a daughter will rise up against her mother, a
daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law." "The son despises his
father, the daughter rebels against the mother, the daughter-in-law
against her mother-in-law, and the man's enemies are they of his own
household." It is as if Jesus said, "The end you have always been
waiting for has come; and the intervention of God in history is
splitting homes and groups and families into two."
When some great cause emerges, it is bound to divide people;
there are bound to be those who answer, and those who refuse, the
challenge. To be confronted with Jesus is necessarily to be confronted
with the choice whether to accept him or to reject him; and the world is
always divided into those who have accepted Christ and those who have
not.
The bitterest thing about this warfare was that a man's foes
would be those of his own household. It can happen that a man loves his
wife and his family so much that he may refuse some great adventure,
some avenue of service, some call to sacrifice, either because he does
not wish to leave them, or because to accept it would involve them in
danger.
T. R. Glover quotes a letter from Oliver Cromwell to Lord
Wharton. The date is 1st January, 1649, and Cromwell had in the back of
his mind that Wharton might be so attached to his home and to his wife
that he might refuse to hear the call to adventure and to battle, and
might choose to stay at home: "My service to the dear little lady; I
wish you make her not a greater temptation than she is. Take heed of all
relations. Mercies should not be temptations; yet we too often make
them so.
It has happened that a man has refused God's call to some
adventurous bit of service, because he allowed personal attachments to
immobilize him. Lovelace, the cavalier poet, writes to his Lucasta,
Going to the Wars:
"Tell me not (Sweet) I am unkind,
That from the nunnery
Of thy chaste breast, and quiet mind,
To war and arms I fly.
True; a new mistress now I chase,
The first foe in the field;
And with a stronger faith embrace
A sword, a horse, a shield.
Yet this inconstancy is such,
As you too shall adore.
I could not love thee (Dear) so much,
Loved I not honour more."
It is very seldom that any man is confronted with this choice;
he may well go through life and never face it; but the fact remains that
it is possible for a man's loved ones to become in effect his enemies,
if the thought of them keeps him from doing what he knows God wants him
to do.
(ii) He offers a choice; and a man has to choose sometimes between the closest ties of earth and loyalty to Jesus Christ.
Bunyan knew all about that choice. The thing which troubled him
most about his imprisonment was the effect it would have upon his wife
and children. What was to happen to them, bereft of his support? "The
parting with my wife and poor children hath often been to me in this
place, as the pulling the flesh from my bones; and that not only because
I am somewhat too fond of these great mercies, but also because I
should have often brought to my mind the many hardships, miseries, and
wants that my poor family was like to meet with, should I be taken from
them, especially my poor blind child, who lay nearer my heart than all I
had besides. O the thought of the hardship I thought my blind one might
go under, would break up my heart to pieces.... But yet, recalling
myself, thought I, I must venture you all with God, though it goeth to
the quick to leave you; O I saw in this condition, I was a man who was
pulling down his house upon the head of his wife and children; yet
thought I, I must do it, I must do it."
Once again, this terrible choice will come very seldom; in God's
mercy to many of us it may never come; but the fact remains that all
loyalties must give place to loyalty to god.
(iii) Jesus offers a cross. People in Galilee well knew what a cross
was. When the Roman general, Varus, had broken the revolt of Judas of
Galilee, he crucified two thousand Jews, and placed the crosses by the
wayside along the roads to Galilee. In the ancient days the criminal did
actually carry the crossbeam of his cross to the place of crucifixion,
and the men to whom Jesus spoke had seen people staggering under the
weight of their crosses and dying in agony upon them.
The great men, whose names are on the honour roll of faith, well
knew what they were doing. After his trial in Scarborough Castle,
George Fox wrote, "And the officers would often be threatening me, that I
should be hanged over the wall ... they talked much then of hanging me.
But I told them, 'If that was it they desired, and it was permitted
them, I was ready.'" When Bunyan was brought before the magistrate, he
said, "Sir, the law (the law of Christ) hath provided two ways of
obeying: The one to do that which I in my conscience do believe that I
am bound to do, actively; and where I cannot obey it actively, there I
am willing to lie down and to suffer what they shall do unto me."
The Christian may have to sacrifice his personal ambitions, the
ease and the comfort that he might have enjoyed, the career that he
might have achieved; he may have to lay aside his dreams, to realize
that shining things of which he has caught a glimpse are not for him. He
will certainly have to sacrifice his will, for no Christian can ever
again do what he likes; he must do what Christ likes. In Christianity
there is always some cross, for it is the religion of the Cross.
(iv) He offers adventure. He told them that the man who found
his life would lose it; and the man who lost his life would find it.
Again and again that has been proved true in the most literal
way. It has always been true that many a man might easily have saved his
life; but, if he had saved it, he would have lost it, for no one would
ever have heard of him, and the place he holds in history would have
been lost to him.
Epictetus says of Socrates: "Dying, he was saved, because he did
not flee." Socrates could easily have saved his life, but, if he had
done so, the real Socrates would have died, and no man would ever have
heard of him.
When Bunyan was charged with refusing to come to public worship
and with running forbidden meetings of his own, he thought seriously
whether it was his duty to flee to safety, or to stand by what he
believed to be true. As all the world knows, he chose to take his stand.
T. R. Glover closes his essay on Bunyan thus: "And supposing he had
been talked round and had agreed no longer 'devilishly and perniciously
to abstain from coming to Church to hear divine service,' and to be no
longer 'an upholder of several unlawful meetings and conventicles to the
great disturbance and distraction of the good subjects of the kingdom
contrary to the laws of our sovereign lord the king'? Bedford might have
kept a tinker the more--and possibly none of the best at that, for
there is nothing to show that renegades make good tinkers--and what
would England have lost?"
There is no place for a policy of safety first in the Christian
life. The man who seeks first ease and comfort and security and the
fulfillment of personal ambition may well get all these things--but he
will not be a happy man; for he was sent into this world to serve God
and his fellow-men. A mall can hoard life, if he wishes to do so. But
that way he will lose all that makes life valuable to others and worth
living for himself. The way to serve others, the way to fulfil God's
purpose for us, the way to true happiness is to spend life selflessly,
for only thus will we find life, here and hereafter.
10:40-42 He who
receives you, receives me; and he who receives me, receives him that
sent me. He who receives a prophet because he is a prophet will receive a
prophet's reward; and he who receives a righteous man because he is a
righteous man will receive a righteous man's reward. And whoever gives
one of these little ones a drink of cold water because he is a
disciple--this is the truth I tell you--he will not lose his reward.
When Jesus said this, he was using a way of speaking which the
Jews regularly used. The Jew always felt that to receive a person's
envoy or messenger was the same as to receive the person himself To pay
respect to an ambassador was the same as to pay respect to the king who
had sent him. To welcome with love the messenger of a friend was the
same as to welcome the friend himself The Jew always felt that to honour
a person's representative was the same as to honour the person whose
representative he was. This was particularly so in regard to wise men
and to those who taught God's truth. The Rabbis said: "He who shows
hospitality to the wise is as if he brought the first-fruits of his
produce unto God." "He who greets the learned is as if he greeted God."
If a man is a true man of God, to receive him is to receive the God who
sent him.
This passage sets out the four links in the chain of salvation.
(i) There is God out of whose love the whole process of
salvation began. (ii) There is Jesus who brought that message to men.
(iii) There is the human messenger, the prophet who speaks, the good man
who is an example, the disciple who learns, who in turn all pass on to
others the good news which they themselves have received. (iv) There is
the believer who welcomes God's men and God's message and who thus finds
life to his soul.
In this passage there is something very lovely for every simple and humble soul.
(i) We cannot all be prophets, and preach and proclaim the word
of God, but he who gives God's messenger the simple gift of hospitality
will receive no less a reward than the prophet himself. There is many a
man who has been a great public figure; there is many a man whose voice
has kindled the hearts of thousands of people; there is many a man who
has carried an almost intolerable burden of public service and public
responsibility, all of whom would gladly have borne witness that they
could never have survived the effort and the demands of their task, were
it not for the love and the care and the sympathy and the service of
someone at home, who was never in the public eye at all. When true
greatness is measured up in the sight of God, it will be seen again and
again that the man who greatly moved the world was entirely dependent on
someone who, as far as the world is concerned, remained unknown. Even
the prophet must get his breakfast, and have his clothes attended to.
Let those who have the often thankless task of making a home, cooking
meals, washing clothes, shopping for household necessities, caring for
children, never think of it as a dreary and weary round. It is God's
greatest task; and they will be far more likely to receive the prophet's
reward than those whose days are filled with committees and whose homes
are comfortless.
(ii) We cannot all be shining examples of goodness; we cannot
all stand out in the world's eye as righteous; but he who helps a good
man to be good receives a good man's reward.
H. L. Gee has a lovely story. There was a lad in a country
village who, after a great struggle, reached the ministry. His helper in
his days of study had been the village cobbler. The cobbler, like so
many of his trade, was a man of wide reading and far thinking, and he
had done much for the lad. In due time the lad was licensed to preach.
And on that day the cobbler said to him, "It was always my desire to be a
minister of the gospel, but the circumstances of my life made it
impossible. But you are achieving what was closed to me. And I want you
to promise me one thing--I want you to let me make and cobble your
shoes--for nothing--and I want you to wear them in the pulpit when you
preach, and then I'll feel you are preaching the gospel that I always
wanted to preach standing in my shoes." Beyond a doubt the cobbler was
serving God as the preacher was, and his reward would one day be the
same.
(iii) We cannot all teach the child; but there is a real sense
in which we can all serve the child. We may not have either the
knowledge or the technique to teach, but there are simple duties to be
done, without which the child cannot live. It may be that in this
passage it is not so much children in age of whom Jesus is thinking as
children in the faith. It seems very likely that the Rabbis called their
disciples the little ones. It may be that in the technical, academic
sense we cannot teach, but there is a teaching by life and example which
even the simplest person can give to another.
The great beauty of this passage is its stress on simple things.
The Church and Christ will always need their great orators,
their great shining examples of sainthood, their great teachers. those
whose names are household words; but the Church and Christ will also
always need those in whose homes there is hospitality, on whose hands
there is all the service which makes a home, and in whose hearts there
is the caring which is Christian love; and, as Mrs. Browning said, "All
service ranks the same with God."
-Barclay's Daily Study Bible (NT)