From being on the receiving end of personal betrayal and persecution to the point of beatings and death, to being cast in a light that will cause them to be labeled with the most odious of labels, the disciples have been hearing from their Teacher just what the price tag is for all who would really be His disciples.
The picture has not been very encouraging: sheep among wolves, hated and despised, betrayed by family and loved ones, sold-out for convenience and self-preservation, falsely accused and punished, even tortured and killed. All this they had to look forward to, and they were to greet it all with joy and a sense of blessedness. They were to count it a privilege to have been found worthy to share in His sufferings. But wait – there’s more!
Jesus goes on with His description of the real cost of discipleship by giving His friends and followers the encouragement to not be taken by surprise when these things happen, for they will have seen it all happen to Him first.
When Jesus we look at what Jesus says in Matthew 10:24-28, we find that He is basically telling them and us, “I was there ahead of you and have prepared the way. Keep your focus on becoming like Me and being loud about the message I have given you – I’ll take care of the rest. Do not fear those who will do evil to you for the God to whom you belong is far mightier and far more to be feared than the worst who will come against you.”
These few verses contain a great deal of truth for us about what it means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ, what the real cost of discipleship is, and where we are to focus our energies – and it is not on combating the vile treatment we may well receive.
In this section, Jesus starts off by speaking a truth to them about God’s order. There is an order to things that God has established, and it pre-dates Creation itself. Long before God created the Universe, there was an order in the Godhead – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Look through the texts that discuss the power and authority of God and you will find that the Holy Spirit is sent by the Father and by the Son, and that He speaks only what He has heard from the Son. You will find that the Son has subjected Himself to the authority of the Father, especially when He says, "My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to accomplish His work (John 4:34) .” Or what is recorded in John 5:30, "I can do nothing on My own initiative. As I hear, I judge; and My judgment is just, because I do not seek My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me.” You can also look at John 6:38-39 and see the same message.
The point is that Jesus begins this portion of His instructions by reminding His disciples that just as there is God-ordained order throughout the entire Universe, there is also God-ordained order in human relationships. And, when it comes to the relationship that human beings have with the Almighty, there is most assuredly a God-ordained order.
This is a teaching that doesn’t get much “play” these days and, when it does, it is resisted mightily. To hear and believe and obey this truth is to willingly submit oneself to another – maybe several “anothers”. Jesus had all of the power and authority of God because He is God-the-Son – yet He willingly submitted Himself to the God-the-Father. And God-The-Holy-Spirit is in voluntary submission to the other two, yet He as much God as they are. This is our example.
To be a disciple or learner of Jesus Christ we must willingly submit ourselves to be under Him – to subject ourselves to His leadership and authority whether or not we understand how He exercises that authority and in whatever capacity He assigns us. He is also our Lord, so we are compelled to be in obedience for we are His servants as well as His disicples. He has placed every believer into His Body and has assigned a role to each of us to fill.
He has gifted us and blended our talents and abilities into the precise combination that He desires, and then He puts us into use with other members of His Body as He sees fit in order to fulfill His plans and purposes.
Into this mix He “gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the Body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ (Ephesians 4:11-13).”
He has delegated this teaching work to various members of His Body, various members of His Church, and the responsibility both directions is vital to the growth and the witness of the Church. Just as Jesus devoted Himself to developing mature disciples, so must those He has assigned to the roles listed in Ephesians 4. The student in turn has a responsibility to submit to the leadership of the teacher and devote themselves to learning all they can. The teacher has the greater responsibility in ensuring that he is not only knowledgeable of the truth but is also ever learning.
In Luke 6:40, Dr. Luke records this lesson in this way: “A pupil is not above his teacher; but everyone, after he has been fully trained, will be like his teacher.” The student submits himself or herself to the teacher and seeks to learn what the teacher knows. Over time and dedicated study, the student will learn what the teacher knows, and if the teacher is ignorant, so, too, will the student be.
Of course, we know that Jesus is anything but ignorant, yet it is a principle that applies in every aspect of life: what we submit to, we become like.
Think for a moment about what you submit your mind and your energies to. Can you see how your thinking and your behaviors have adapted and adjusted to being more in line with what you’ve submitted yourself to than they were before you did so? Do you recognize changes in thinking and in priorities that coincide more with what you’re submitted to than before? Then you are experiencing the very fruit of this teaching in your own life.
Remember: what consumes you owns you. If you are consumed with knowing, loving and serving Jesus Christ, that is what your life will become modeled after. If you are consumed with money or power or prestige or anything of that nature, then your life will assuredly be a powerful testimony of that. If your pursuit is for the sensual things that please the appetites of the flesh, this, too, will be borne out in your life.
Jesus goes on to say that a slave is not above his master. What are you a slave to? Who or what have you been mastered by? Jesus wants us to take a close look at all of these things and realize that He is a better master to serve than anyone or anything else. Only in Him do we find real purpose and meaning and God-ordained order for our lives. When we allow ourselves to be mastered by anything else, we are out-of-order. We all know what it means when something is out of order – it doesn’t work properly and needs to be either repaired or replaced. Jesus would much rather repair us if given the chance, but He is willing to replace us if need be.
To go on, Jesus says “It is enough for the disciple that he become like his teacher, and the slave like his master.” As His disciples and servants, we are to be satisfied with whatever we are allowed to bear for the sake of His name since He has given us the honor of being called His. Want the rewards and accolades of the world? Then you must choose to pursue the world and it values and its agenda, abandoning the kingdom of God. Do you desire to be considered worthy of the name of Jesus Christ? Then you must abandon and forsake the world and its values and its agenda. There is no common ground between the two except at that place where Jesus went to the cross to save the world. We are to be “in the world but not of the world.”
We are also not to try to escape where He leads us even though that is our natural tendency when things are bad. Odd, isn’t it, that we never seem to resist His leading when things turn out good? As we discussed last time, there are times when obedience is answered with suffering instead of “blessing” and that suffering is to be received as a blessing as well. What we are to do is to seek to serve as selflessly and as joyfully as Jesus did when He walked among us, no matter the circumstances.
Let me share a story to illustrate this:
In a Japanese seaside village over a hundred years ago, an earthquake startled the villagers late one autumn evening. Being so accustomed to earthquakes and not feeling another follow, they soon went back to their activities without giving it another thought.
An old farmer was watching from his home on a high plain above the village. He looked out at the sea and noticed that the water appeared dark and was acting strangely, moving against the wind and running away from the land. The old man knew what that meant. His one thought was to warn the people in the village below. He called to his grandson, “Bring me a torch! Hurry!”
In the fields behind him lay his great crop of rice that was piled high in stacks that were ready for the market; it was worth a fortune. The old man hurried out to the stacks with his torch. In a flash the dry stalks were ablaze. Soon the big bell pealed from the temple below: Fire!
Back from the beach, away from the sea, up the steep side of the cliff came the people of the village, running as fast as they could. They were coming to try to save the crops of their neighbor. “He’s mad!” they said when they saw that he just stood there watching them come and staring out toward the sea.
As they reached the level of the fields the old man shouted at the top of his voice over the roaring of the flames while pointing toward the sea, “Look!” At the edge of the horizon they saw a long, thin, and faint line – a line that grew thicker as they watched.
That line was the sea, rising like a wall, getting higher and coming more and more swiftly as they stared. Then came the shock, heavier than thunder; the great wall of water struck the shore with a fierceness and a force that sent a shudder through the hills and tore the homes below into matchsticks. The water withdrew with a roaring sound. Then it returned and struck again, and again, and again.
One final time it struck and ebbed, then returned to its place and its pattern. On the plain no one spoke a word for a long while. Finally the voice of the old man could be heard, saying softly, gently, “That is why I set fire to the rice.”
He now stood among them just as poor as the poorest of them; his wealth was gone – all for the sake of 400 lives. By that sacrifice he will long be remembered, not by his wealth. He was not saddened by what his sacrifice cost him; he was overjoyed at what was saved.
This is how we are to see what the Gospel costs us – not measured by our loss but by what is saved.
What can it cost us? We’ve already seen some of that as we said last time and as I mentioned at the start of our lesson today. In our text, however, Jesus says, “It is enough for the disciple that he become like his teacher, and the slave like his master. If they have called the head of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign the members of his household (verse 25)!” What’s that all mean?
Some translations use the name Beelzebub instead of Beelzebul – just one letter difference. But the difference goes far beyond what you might think. Beelzebub is a reference to a pagan deity called Baalzebub from back in 2 Kings 1:2 ff. Baalzebub, which is the Hebrew and becomes Beelzebub in Aramaic, was the “Lord of the Flies”, and was the patron saint of Ekron, a Canaanite city-state in ancient times that was a little more than 20 miles southwest of Jerusalem. The Jews, in order to show disdain for this pagan god and those who worshiped it, changed the name by one letter from Beelzebub to Beelzebul. This turned the Lord of the Flies into the Dung God or the Lord of the Dung Heap. Pretty derisive, wouldn’t you agree?
Enter Jesus healing the multitudes. The Pharisees hate Him so much that they brand Him with the most contemptuous, irreverent, disdainful label they can come up with. Look back at Matthew 9:34, then also look at Matthew 12:24, and Mark 3:22. There are several other texts we could use, but these will suffice for now.
When we read these together, we see just how much scorn and contempt they had for Jesus – and what a dangerous line they walked. They were accusing Jesus of being possessed and empowered by Satan, the prince of demons. That is blasphemy of the highest order. And they, the religious leaders of the day, were saying this out loud to anyone they cared to. They were wrong; they were speaking out of jealousy and spite.
This needs to be a warning to us, also: we need to be careful how we speak of those who serve God and whom we may not understand or agree with. They may be confused or deceived, but we best not label them with demonic labels unless we know for certain that it is so and God compels us to say so. This is rarer than we might think. We really need to check our motives. They may well be true servants of God actually serving in obedience to what God has called them to. Instead of criticism, we need to pray for them and for us. Pray for them that if they are wrong that God will mercifully correct them and restore them and use them for His kingdom. Pray for ourselves that if we are wrong about them that God will show us our error and help us know and live that truth in love. It just won’t do for the Bride of Christ to show up at the wedding bruised, bloody and with a torn gown because she has been fighting again.
Jesus is telling us that we should expect and accept insults and contempt for the sake of the name of Jesus Christ and for the sake of His Gospel. It puts us in good company – that of Jesus Himself and the long line of the faithful down through the centuries. We are not above Him or them. We are not better nor are we worthy of better treatment or greater recognition. We are to be like Jesus: “WHO COMMITTED NO SIN, NOR WAS ANY DECEIT FOUND IN HIS MOUTH; and while being reviled, He did not revile in return; while suffering, He uttered no threats, but kept entrusting Himself to Him who judges righteously (1 Peter 2:22-23).”
Remember last time that our lesson focused on the joy we are to consider these sufferings with – pure-joy. It is to be considered an honor and a privilege for us to bear what Jesus bore for it means that He considers us worthy to walk where He walked and be a testimony to His righteousness, His mercy, His grace, His love and His faith. We are to know that it serves a purpose and that it is at the direction and the discretion of God.
As even further encouragement He goes on to say that we are not to fear those who will mistreat us. Now, we’ve talked about the kinds of fear we face when it comes to standing for Christ and boldly speaking His name. There is fear of ridicule, rejection, disdain, and contempt; fear of loss; fear of separation and division; fear of persecution and suffering; fear of not being accepted any longer. There is a whole host of things that we can fear.
But what does Jesus say? He says, “Those people and those things cannot do one iota of what God Almighty can do to you. They may be able to hurt you or kill your body – God can actually kill your soul.” This is a truth that few seem to like to talk about or deal with, but it is very real and needs to be honestly and openly addressed.
Paul puts it quite well in Philippians 1:21 when he says, “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.” A win-win situation; alive he gets to serve Jesus Christ; dead, he gets to be with Christ in heaven. The worst they can do to him is kill him and then, HE WINS! This is how we are to be.
Let’s talk about fear for a moment. I have this in my notes about fear and witnessing:
Anytime we are engaged in a work for God, we are likely to encounter the poison-tipped arrows of ridicule. A barrage of truth mingled with lies, innuendo, malicious gossip and implied threats is the normal experience of leaders. Malice arises from fear, and fear is a common response to someone else’s success. Expect to have your faults thrown in your face, your folly mocked and your real progress belittled.
When this happens, by all means allow yourself to be cut down to size, but do not let yourself be dismayed or intimidated. Remember that the chorus of contempt has a diabolical conductor whose aim is to make your knees buckle. He likes tongue-tied, ineffective Christians and plays on your secret fears and inferiorities to make you one of those.
I am full of fears and chasms of inferiority. Whenever I have listened to the enemy pointing them out I have stopped working for the kingdom. Yet, in those moments when I have refused to listen to him and have feebly walked in obedience, I have been astonished at what God has done with my frail performance.
What we fear is often based upon what we don’t know or don’t understand. We are usually much less likely to fear what we do know and understand. When there is something we know and understand that gives us reason to fear, we are able to have a reasoned and reasonable response. Knowledge and understanding free us from freaking out and from freezing in terror and allow us to respond appropriately and successfully.
Let me tell you a true and tragic story. A woman was one day walking along a riverbank with her little boy. Suddenly, the child slipped into the river. The mother screamed in terror. She couldn’t swim, and was in the late stages of another pregnancy. Somebody finally heard her screaming and rushed down and into the river. The rescue became a recovery – the child had drowned within a few feet of his mother. The real out-and-out tragedy was, when they stepped into those murky waters to retrieve that now dead child, they found that the water was only waist deep! That mother could have easily saved her child but didn’t because of fear and a lack of knowledge.
God Himself has said, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge (Hosea 4:6).” In Isaiah 5:13, He says also, “Therefore My people go into exile for their lack of knowledge.” But John tells us in 1 John 5:20, “And we know that the Son of God has come, and has given us understanding so that we may know Him who is true; and we are in Him who is true, in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life.”
Knowing God, knowing Jesus Christ, having Him open our understanding of the Scriptures and the truth revealed there is what equips us to be without fear in the face of opposition, no matter how severe, no matter how determined, no matter how personal, and no matter what quarter it comes from.
When Jesus says in verse 26, “Therefore do not fear them, for there is nothing concealed that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known,” He brings to mind what Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived said back in Ecclesiastes 12:14: “For God will bring every act to judgment, everything which is hidden, whether it is good or evil.” Later on, Paul speaks and several occasions about the day when God will judge the motives of men’s hearts and their actions and will repay accordingly. Paul then tells us in Romans 12:19, “Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, "VENGEANCE IS MINE, I WILL REPAY," says the Lord.”
What does all of this tell us then about how we respond to persecution? Joyfully, with kindness and understanding, realizing that we have been counted worthy to suffer what our Lord Himself suffered, seeing it as an opportunity to be used of God to somehow speak into the lives of the persecutors or those who are witnessing the persecution, and having the full assurance that God will deal judiciously with them and will do so with His full power and authority when He feels the time is right. Remember what the writer to the Hebrews says: “It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God (Hebrews 10:31).”
Our duty is to speak boldly and with confidence whatever it is that God has taught us, what it is that He has “whispered in our ears.” This is an allusion to the practice the rabbis had of whispering their teaching into the ear of an interpreter who in turn speak aloud what the rabbi had said. God speaks specific truths and lessons into each one of our hearts. This is the truth we are to share. We are to do so “from the housetops.” In other words, we are to be as confident, as excited, as fervent about sharing this Good News with people as we are about our favorite team winning the championship, as we are about talking about how awesome our children are, as we are about the great sale we discovered at our favorite store, or as we are about the promises our future holds when we get a new job or that long-awaited raise or have fallen in love.
If we do not, not only are we being disloyal to our Lord, we are begging the question to be asked, “Do we really believe that what we believe is really real?”
We are worth more than all other created things. Jesus said, "For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and forfeit his soul (Mark 8:36)?” Then in John 3:16, “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.” String those pearls together with what Jesus says here in Matthew 10:29-31, "Are not two sparrows sold for a cent? And yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So do not fear; you are more valuable than many sparrows.”
What we have as a result is one of the greatest statements of our value to Almighty God that we can find. We are worth more than the entire Creation to Him, for He came and gave His one and only Natural Born Son to die in our place and save us from the place where the body and the soul will go through the process of perishing without finality for all of eternity. He did this for us and us alone – nothing else in all of Creation received that sacrifice.
We have no reason to be afraid of any man or to fear anything that they can do to us because we bear a faithful testimony to Him. Our lives are of such value to God that they are under the exclusive and specific care of the Sovereign of the Universe. God pays such intimate, intricate and attentive detail to every aspect of our lives that each and every hair on our head is numbered. How significant is one human hair in the scheme of things? In God’s mind, it is as significant as everything else that has to do with us. We are His children and His love for us compels Him to be deeply interested in everything to do with us no matter how minute it might seem to anyone else.
What do we really have to fear when we know that about Him? There really are no accidents or coincidences in our lives when we belong to Him.
To close, I want us to read Romans 5:1-5: “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we boast in our hope of sharing God’s glory. Not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, and character produces hope [confident assurance]. Now this hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.”
Let us be like Eusebius who, when the Emperor Valens threatened him with the confiscation of all his goods, torture, banishment, or even death, the courageous Christian replied, “He needs not fear confiscation who has nothing to lose; nor banishment, to whom heaven is his country; nor torments, when his body can be destroyed at one blow; nor death, which is the only way to set him at liberty from sin and sorrow.”
This is what has been whispered in our ears and this is what we are to live confidently in as we live in this world for however long He leaves us here. Jesus Christ is personally invested in us and has a specific purpose and plan for each one of us.
Clinging to what we have here binds us here. Releasing all of that releases us to live to the fullest the life He has designed for us. The worst that can happen to us is we will be with Him sooner than later.
Let’s pray.
