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Matthew 10:26, 28, 31
So have no fear of them . . . And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. . . . Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows.
A. Orendorff
Fear, as one source says, “is an evil, corroding thread; the fabric of our lives is shout through with it.” Yet for all of its negative features, fear is not in and of itself an inherently evil thing. Many of our fears—at a practical level—are in fact healthy, natural responses to a world that is full of danger and deception. Without the tool of fear, we would lose one of the most vital resources for curbing and restraining destructive and negative patterns of behavior. As an instrument of “common grace,” fear is invaluable.
Still, this is not altogether what Jesus has in mind in Matthew 10:26-31. Rather than encouraging us to simply eliminate our fears; Jesus first challenges them, then redirects their source. “What” (or perhaps better, “Who”) we fear is a much more important and practical question then whether we fear in the first place. After all, “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”
Interestingly, Jesus does not seek to quell our fears by merely assuring us that God is big and loving (although this is part of what he says). His first tact is rather to press upon us the awful power of God. “Why fear people,” Jesus asks, “when all they can do is hurt you physically? You would be wiser to fear God instead, because He alone has the ability to not only destroy you physically, but spiritually as well.”
Matthew 10:24-25
“A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master. It is enough for the disciple to be like his teacher, and the servant like his master. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul—the price of demons—how much more will they do so to those of his household.”
A. Orendorff
From whom should we expect the kind of persecution Jesus predicts in Matthew 10:16-25?
Most often, we assume the bulk of the church’s opposition will originate from what Scripture calls the “world,” from those outside the hallowed ways of God’s believing people. However, in answering that question, we must pay attention to two facts. First, we must remember who it is that Jesus is sending his disciples out to: namely, to “the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (10:6). The first “missionary” journey to which Jesus deploys his disciples was not focused on outsiders, but insiders. These were God’s people, people who (at least at a surface level) believed the right doctrines and supported God’s cause. Nonetheless, Jesus insists, these sheep are “lost.”
Second, in the v. 21, Jesus elaborates upon this point, “Brother will deliver brother over to death, and the father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death.” Not only will opposition come from within the “believing” community (i.e., the nation), it will also arise from within our families. This is an unsettling thought to say the least.
In both instances, the thrust is the same: opposition will come from within—from within the nation, from within the community, from within the church and from within our families.
Matthew 10:1-8
And Jesus called to him his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal every disease and every affliction. . . . “And proclaim as you go, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons.”
A. Orendorff
Much has already been said of Jesus’ “authority” in Matthew 5-9. The Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5-7) ends climactically, “And when Jesus finished these sayings, the crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he was teaching them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes” (Matt. 7:28-29). In the accounts that follow, Matthew again and again portrays Jesus as a Sovereign King whose irrepressible authority is exercised miraculously over disease, demons, the natural world and even sin itself.
What’s so startling about the opening lines of Matthew 10, therefore, is that Jesus boldly invests his disciples (also referred to as “apostles” in v. 2, literally the “sent out ones”) with the very same authority he himself possesses. Just as Jesus “went throughout all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction” (9:35), so too he tells his followers, “Go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel and proclaim, ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons” (10:6-8). The parallel is obvious and astounding.
As was mentioned yesterday, these two acts—proclaiming and healing—are inseparable. Both are advance markers of the in-breaking of God’s kingdom. We, as his followers, are called to the same work today. To proclaim and to heal. To heal and to proclaim. To act as kingdom-agents. To go out, sent by the Sovereign Christ, with authority “over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal every disease and every affliction.” May we not shrink from this work.
Matthew 9:35-38
And Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”
A. Orendorff
Proclaiming and healing. Healing and proclaiming. Often in ministry, the two are treated separately and relegated to different spheres of the church’s work. In Jesus, they are indivisible. Moreover, both, we are told, flow from the compassionate heart of a Shepherd who saw the “crowds”—that raw, unkempt mob of humanity who would soon cry out, “Crucify, crucify”—as “sheep without a shepherd: harassed and helpless.”
It is much easier to treat people with justice than to treat them with compassion. Justice means you get what you deserve. Justice is easy, clean, manageable and safe. It insulates us from the harrowing possibility that someone might get one over on us, might take advantage of us, might trick us or possibly even hurt us. Yet that’s what it means to shepherd, and that (thank God) is what Jesus not only calls us as his followers to do, but what he himself did on our behalf.
“All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isa. 53:6).
Matthew 9:20-25
And behold, a woman who had suffered from a discharge of blood for twelve years came up behind him and touched the fringe of his garment, for she said to herself, “If I only touch his garment, I will be rescued.”
Jesus turned, and seeing her he said, “Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well.” And instantly the woman was made well.
And when Jesus came to the ruler’s house and saw the flute players and the crowd making a commotion, he said, “Go away, for the girl is not dead but sleeping.” And they laughed at him. But when the crowd had been put outside, he went in and took her by the hand, and the girl arose.
Tom Wright, Matthew for Everyone (Vol. 1)
[T]wo of the things that were near the top of the [Jew’s cleanliness] list, thing to avoid if you wanted to stay “pure” in that sense, were dead bodies on the one hand, and women with internal bleeding (including menstrual period) on the other. And in this double story Jesus is touched by a hemorrhaging woman, and then he himself touches a corpse.
No Jew would have missed the point . . . In the ordinary course of events, Jesus would have become doubly “unclean,” . . . But at this point we realize that something is different. [Their] “uncleanness” doesn’t infect him. Something in him infects [them]. . . . What Jesus was doing was the beginning of his whole work of rescuing the world, saving the world, from everything that polluted, defaced and destroyed it. And those who would benefit would be those who would believe (104-6).
A. Orendorff
Sin defiles. Whether we are the perpetrators or those perpetrated against, sin stains. It makes us dirty, unclean, impure, filthy. In the presence of a holy God, we may easily multiply Isaiah’s woeful confession, “I am a person of unclean lips, eyes, ears, hands, motives, thoughts and heart.” Yet our uncleanness does not stop the advancing Christ. Jesus enters the fray of our defilement and, as Wright so wonderful puts it, “[Our] ‘uncleanness’ doesn’t infect him. Something in him infects [us].”
“Lord Jesus, I believe you are able, make me clean.”
Matthew 9:9 & 12-13
As Jesus passed on from there, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he rose and followed him. . . . Jesus said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.’ For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.”
Tom Wright, Matthew for Everyone (Vol. 1)
[Here] we find Matthew, the tax-collector, telling the story of his own calling in the middle of a long list (two chapters in all) of healing miracles. Why would he do that?
In Matthew’s world it was assumed that tax-collectors could be lumped together with “sinners,” as in verses 10-11. This was because, first, they collaborated with the hated authorities, and, second, because they made extra money for themselves by collecting too much. . . . [W]hat would it be like having a young prophet with a spring in his step and God’s kingdom in his heart coming past one day and simply asking you to follow him? Yes: it would feel exactly like a healing miracle. Actually verse 9 hints at something even more: it would be like a resurrection. “He arose,” says the passage literally, using a regular “resurrection” word, “and followed him” (102).
A. Orendorff
Matthew 9:12-13 (along with its parallel passages from Mark 2:17 and Luke 5:31-32) has always been, for me, a powerful text on both the nature and the objects of Jesus’ call. Many times I have prayed (with desperation and joy), “Lord, it is not the well who you have called, but the sick, the unrighteous and the sinners. I am sick. I am unrighteous. I am a sinner. These are conditions I can meet. So to you I come.” What is so powerful about these verses is that they swing wide the narrow door and essentially say, “The more you understand how terrible you are, the more ready to follow Jesus you become.” This is, of course, completely backwards from the way I expect God’s call to operate. What I expect is that my fitness, my abilities, my morality, my uprightness, my fill-in-the-blank will be what ready me to approach Christ. But no, what Jesus says is it precisely our need—our desperate, guilty, culpable need—that readies us to draw near him. I am all at once floored, humbled and exhilarated to be called by a God like this.
Matthew 9:6-8
“But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”—he then said to the paralytic—“Rise, pick up your bed and go home.” And he rose and went home. When the crowds saw it, they were afraid, and they glorified God, who had given such authority to men.
Tom Wright, Matthew for Everyone (Vol. 1)
“Authority” has had a bad press, in much of the world, for a hundred years and more now. . . . What “authority” really means in all these cases, of course, is “people who have the power to do what they want.” This usually means “people who have an army to back them.” Authority means power, which means force, which means violence. No wonder we’re suspicious of the very word “authority” itself.
Yet here it is again in the gospel story: Jesus has authority. You can’t miss it. Authority in his teaching. Authority over diseases at a distance. Authority over the storm, over the demons. Now, authority to do what normally only God does: to put away sin, to change a person’s life from the inside out, to free them from whatever was gripping them so tightly that they couldn’t move. . . . He uses the authority which God has invested in him, authority to forgive sins and so to bring new life (96-97).
“Get up!” he says, and the man got up, “arose.” When sin is dealt with, resurrection (at whatever level) can’t be far behind (98).
A. Orendorff
Here is an authority unlike any we have seen before. An authority that displays its power not simply by aiding the powerless and oppressed, but by ultimately becoming powerless and oppressed itself. Here is an authority used not to punish sin and exact justice but to forgive sin and yet honor justice. Here is an unruly authority that refuses, at great peril to itself, to stay in line and play by the rules of polite, civilized, religious society. Yet what a wondrous authority it is—“Your sins are forgiven.” What a staggering, humbling, life-giving authority—“Arise and go home.” Here is Jesus—Daniel’s towering “Son of Man”—at his most offensive—“only God can forgive sins”—and yet simultaneously at his most gracious—“they glorified God, who had given such authority to men.”
Matthew 8:28-32
And when he came to the other side . . . two demon-possessed men met him, coming out of the tombs, so fierce that no one could pass that way. And behold, they cried out, “What have you to do with us, O Son of God? Have you come here to torment us before the time?” Now a herd of many pigs was feeding at some distance from them. And the demons begged him, saying, “If you cast us out, send us away into the herd of pigs.” And he said to them, “Go.” So they came out and went into the pigs, and behold, the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the sea and drowned in the waters.
Tom Wright, Matthew for Everyone (Vol. 1)
The point of the story, then, is that the Jesus who has authority to teach people, as he was doing in the Sermon on the Mount, also has authority over disease both close at hand and at a distance; over the lives of people who want to follow him; and over the winds and waves on the lake, and over the shadowy forces of evil. . . . He is somebody with authority over everything the physical world on the one hand, and the non-physical world on the other, can throw at us. This is a Jesus we can trust with every aspect of our lives (93-94).
A. Orendorff
Trust is a powerful word. Almost as powerful as the word authority. Moreover, when the two are combined, as they so often are in our daily lives, they take on (it seems) a life all of their own. For example, we “trust” in the “authority” of our government whenever we trade goods for currency. We “trust” in the “authority” of the justice system whenever we submit ourselves to the laws it prescribes. We “trust” in the “authority” of banks (although perhaps less now than in previous years) whenever we turn our money over.
Yet when it comes to trusting people with authority, a turn occurs within us that takes us down a number of dark roads: cynicism creeps in, fear takes hold, pride begins to grip us, self-pity sets in, distrust overshadows. It is true that we trust the government, but who we don’t trust is politicians. We trust the justice system, but don’t trust lawyers. We trust banks, but we don’t trust their CEO’s. The question becomes, whose authority can we trust?
The answer Matthew provides, vividly throughout chapter eight, is plainly and simply, “Jesus; Jesus is who we can trust.” His is an authority over disease, distance, nature and even un-nature. Yet it is also an authority that he wields for our good, not because we’re good but precisely because we’re not. His is an authority that trumps all other authority, and (more importantly) an authority in which we can trust.
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