[Machine transcription]
In the name of Jesus, amen.
Dear Saints of God, we continue to hear Jesus’ instructions
from Matthew chapter 10, as we have the last few weeks,
where he’s sending out his disciples
to bear his name before the world
and telling them how it’s gonna go,
and it’s not really gonna go well.
It’s gonna be difficult.
Jesus says, just in the verse
before our gospel reading today,
Jesus said, if you confess me before men,
I will confess you before my Father who is in heaven,
but if you deny me before men,
I’ll deny you before my Father who is in heaven.”
And then Jesus is now in the text before us
outlining all of the difficulties
that flow out of the confession of his name.
All of the difficulties that result
from being a bearer of the name of Jesus before the world.
I have to confess that I’m excited to get to chapter 11
where Jesus will say,
my yoke is easy and my burden is light and come to me all you who are weary and
heavy laden and I will give you rest because there is a weariness of this
chapter a heavy ladenness with this chapter there is a burden that Jesus is
is giving us and explaining to us in these verses he’s reminding us that his
His gifts, His name, His kindness, His gospel sets us at war against the world.
Sets us at war against the devil.
Sets us at war even like St. Paul was talking about in Romans chapter 7.
Sets us at war even against ourselves and our old sinful flesh.
Now what do we say about this?
Maybe three things.
The first is that we are reminded by Jesus that that being a follower of his
that we don’t follow after him so that he can give us a better life. Maybe we
say it like this, Jesus is preaching against a best life now-ism.
He’s preaching against the idea that’s so common in the church today that if we
would follow Jesus, if we would if we would give our lives to him, if we would
set him on the throne of our own hearts, then everything will start to fall in
place. That the grass will be greener, that the vegetables will grow bigger in
the garden, that you’ll get all the best parking spaces at the grocery store, that
you’ll be healthy and wealthy and wise. In fact, I heard someone preach one time,
I can’t believe this, this kind of preaching, but I heard someone preach one
They said, uh, there’s a lot of you in here who might not be Christians, and I want you to try Jesus out.
Give your heart to Jesus and just see if the next couple of weeks aren’t so much better for you.
I just, I don’t know how you square up
that kind of teaching and that kind of preaching with what Jesus says here.
Don’t think that I’ve come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.
I’ve come to set a man against his father.
A daughter against her mother. A daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.
I remember hearing this illustration one time.
In fact, I remember it was by a New Zealand evangelist named Ray Comfort.
And he, and I might have preached this to you guys before, but he said this, he said,
I want you to imagine that you’re in an airplane and there’s the people in the front in first class
and the people in the back and coach and the pilot finds out that the plane is going to
crash.
And so he sends back the flight attendants and he says, go hand out the parachutes because
the plane is going to crash.
And so the flight attendant takes the parachute to the people in first class and gives it
to them and says, now this is a parachute, I want you to put it on because it’s going
to make your flight a lot better.
And so they put on the parachute and they’re sitting there in their first-class seat and the plane jostles a little bit and it it’s
Uncomfortable it kind of hurts their back and I said this isn’t making my flight any better
So they take off the parachute and they put it under the seat in front of them and or put it in their lap
But there’s it’s getting in the way of their mimosa, you know, and things are all so they stuff it in the seat in front
Of them, but even then it’s cramping their feet and they say this flight attendant
This is nonsense, this parachute is making things so much worse and they stuff it in the overhead baggage compartment
and die in the plane crash.
Now in back, the flight attendant goes back and says,
put on this parachute, this plane is going down.
This is your only hope.
And now the person back there puts on the parachute and when the plane rattles, they strap it on tighter.
when the flight gets uncomfortable, it doesn’t matter, they know they’re
clinging to this thing, not because it’s comfortable, not because it’s nice, not
because it smells good, but because it’s gonna save their lives. So for us, we
cling to the cross of Jesus, not because it makes our lives better, not because
there’s benefit for it, and not because it makes things easy and smooth
and there’s these promises of health and wealth and wisdom, no, we cling to the
of Jesus because this place is going down and it is our only hope for
salvation. And the worse things get, the more difficult things get, the tighter we
cling to that cross and to that promise. So Jesus warns us that things are not
gonna be cupcakes and roses but that he will be with us. That the cross that we
bear is his cross. And maybe this is the second point. This word, cross, here in
Matthew chapter 10, is the first mention of the cross in the Bible. You just
started in Genesis and started looking through to find where the cross is first
mentioned. This is it. But look, and this is an amazing thing, it’s not the cross
of Jesus, not first, it’s here the cross of the Christian. Whoever does not take
his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.
Jesus says a few chapters later, he says,
take up your cross and follow me.
So the Christian life, so the Christian individual,
and so the Christian family and the Christian church
is marked by the cross.
Martin Luther, I can’t remember when this was,
Martin Luther wrote kind of early on an essay called
on the councils and the churches.
Oh, here, I have it here, 1539.
That’s not early on.
Luther, later on, wrote an essay
on the councils and the churches,
and in that little essay,
he outlined seven marks of the church.
He was asking the question,
where do you find the Christian church?
Where do you look for it, or what do you see,
or what do you look for
when you’re looking for the Christian?
and he lays out seven things that you’re looking for.
You’re looking for the Word of God, and baptism,
and the Lord’s Supper, and absolution,
and prayer, and good work.
But the last mark that Luther gives,
the last way that you identify the Christian church
is the presence of the cross,
the Christian life of suffering.
Listen to how he explains it.
They, that is the Christian,
must endure every misfortune and persecution, all kinds of trials and evil from the devil,
the world, and the flesh, as the Lord’s Prayer teaches us, by inward sadness and timidity
and fear, by outward poverty, contempt, illness, and weakness, all this in order to become
like their head, Christ. And the only reason that they, the Christian, must suffer is that
they steadfastly adhere to Christ and to God’s Word, enduring all of this for the sake of
Christ, Matthew 5, where Jesus says,
blessed are you when men persecute you on my account.
They, the Christians, must be pious, quiet, obedient,
and prepared to serve the government and everybody
with life and goods, doing no one any harm.
No people on earth have to endure such bitter hatred.
In summary, the Christians are called heretics, knaves, and devils, the most pernicious people
on earth, to the point where those who hang, drown, murder, torture, banish, and plague
the Christians to death are said to be rendering to God a service.
No one has compassion on them.
they’re given myrrh and gall to drink when they thirst, and all of this is done
not because they are adulterers or murderers or thieves or rogues, but
because they want to have none but Christ and no other God. Wherever you see
or hear this, you may know that the Holy Christian Church is there. As Christ says
again, Matthew chapter 5.
Blessed are you when men revile you
and utter all kinds of evil against you on my account.
Rejoice and be glad.
Your reward is great in heaven.
This too, this cross,
this also, says Luther,
is a holy possession
whereby the Holy Spirit
not only sanctifies his people,
but also blesses them.
Not only does the Holy Spirit use suffering and the cross
to sanctify us, but he also uses suffering and the cross
to bless us.
And this, I think, is maybe the third point,
that the reason why Jesus tells us about all these troubles,
all these afflictions, all these oppressions that come in bearing his
name. The reason why Jesus tells us about these things is not so that we would
just know that we are supposed to be in this world to suffer, but so that we
would begin to be good at it, that the Christian would be good at suffering,
that we would be good at being persecuted, that we would be good at being driven
around at mock, at being mocked and blasphemed, at being tortured and even being put to death.
Now I think, I think that Jesus gives us three things that we can do to be better at suffering
and he does this by pointing out some of the temptations that come to us when we confess
and have all this trouble from confessing. We have the temptation to be silent, to not
say anything, because we know that if we speak up, we’ll be laughed at, we’ll be mocked,
we’ll cause fighting and strife in the family.
We know that silence is peaceful, and so we’re tempted to silence, but Jesus says, whoever
confesses me before men, I will confess before my Father in heaven.
So he says, don’t be afraid, don’t be silent.
Even in families, he says, well, man will be set against his father, and daughter-in-law
against mother’s law, and a person’s enemies will be in his own household.
He says, don’t love your father and your mother and your children,
peace in the house, more than me.
And then Jesus says there’s a second temptation,
that when we know we’re going to get all this trouble,
we’re tempted to self-preservation.
We’re tempted to protect and look for our own lives,
to seek life.
Jesus says, whoever finds his life will lose it.
So Jesus knows that we’re tempted to sort of this defensive self-preservation
and he says don’t fall for that temptation as well. Don’t worry about
losing your life. If you lose it for my sake you’ll find it. And then there’s a
temptation, a third temptation, that Jesus knows that we’ll have. It’s a temptation
to defensiveness, to circle the wagons, to lock the doors, to know that when we
confess the name of Jesus that we get trouble coming at us from every
different direction, so we sort of want to curl into a ball or build a castle so that
we can be protected like this.
And Jesus says, no, you should simply open your arms and be hospitable and receive the
people no matter who they are who come to you.
He says the one who receives a prophet, because he’s a prophet, receives a prophet’s reward.
Who receives a righteous person, because he’s righteous, receives a righteous person’s reward.
and whoever gives a little child a cup of cold water because he’s a disciple,
he won’t lose his reward. So that even though we’re tempted to kind of like
the disciples in the upper room and lock the door for fear of the people who
just killed our master, we should not be afraid, but be welcoming, be caring,
receive those who come to us, bless those who spitefully use us, and rejoice that
Jesus has set us in this world not only to receive his goodness and his mercy
but also to bless others. Well this seems like a lot of law in the end and I
suppose it is that’s what Jesus is giving us but but there’s some joy in
Because Jesus knows the difficulty that we have in this life of confessing his name to the world,
but he reminds us that even as we confess his name to the world,
he confesses our name to the Father.
Now think of that.
And right at this very moment, Jesus is confessing you to the Father.
Not like the devil who wants always to bring your sins before God’s face,
but Jesus is there bringing his sacrifice and his blood and his kindness and so
his confession is one of joy. That you are his brother, that he is your brother,
that you are his brother or sister, and that you are his friend. So may God
grant us this Holy Spirit so that we would be good at suffering as we wait
for the joy to come as we rejoice in the life and death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.
May God grant it for Christ’s sake. Amen. And the peace of God which passes all understanding
guard your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
