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Father, we praise your name in
the name of your Son, Jesus Christ, and for his sacrifice for us
at Calvary, Father. We praise you for the gift of
the Holy Spirit, the gift of the Spirit that reside in the
saints. And for this service, Father, we ask that all we do
and say today would glorify you. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. And be seated. All right, I'm going to ask you
to open your Bibles again this morning to Matthew's Gospel.
Matthew's Gospel. Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 10. We've looked at Chapter 10 recently,
as recent as last week. I'll make some more observations
about it. A little more specific teaching
on what we see here. And I'll read verses 5 through
15 this morning. and my remarks will be based
on that passage. And so Matthew writes, these
twelve Jesus sent out and commanded them saying, do not go into the
way of the Gentiles, Do not enter a city of the Samaritans, but
go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, and as you
go, preach, saying the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers,
raise the dead, cast out demons. Freely you have received, freely
give. Provide neither gold, nor silver,
nor copper in your money belts, nor bag for your journey, nor
two tunics, nor sandals, nor staffs, for a worker is worthy
of his food. Now, whatever city or town you
enter, inquire who in it is worthy and stay there till you go out.
And when you go into the household, greet it. If the household is
worthy, let your peace come upon it. But if it is not worthy,
let your peace return to you. And whoever will not receive
you nor hear your words when you depart from that house or
city, shake off the dust from your feet. Assuredly, I say to
you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah
in the day of judgment than for that city. Oh, Father, let us
tread carefully with your word this morning, we pray in Jesus'
name. Amen. Well, we know a couple of things.
One, there is a judgment. It is coming. There are essentially
two judgments that can be made. I don't think there's going to
be a whole lot of different types of sentences given out. That's
not the impression I get from the New Testament. You will either
be considered worthy before God or unworthy. And he's asking
the disciples, the twelve apostles at this time, to begin making
some assessments in that regard. And so, we're not to take this
as though it's the final word of Christ to all Christians.
This is His first command to the Twelve Apostles. Jesus has
already appeared on the scene in Galilee. He went up on a mountain
and gave a great sermon. We've looked at it for many weeks. and dissected it and went into
the deep teaching of it. And so he went out into the countryside
again. He preached the word. The multitudes
followed him. Presumably these 12 apostles
were part of that multitude. They saw people healed. They
saw lepers healed. They saw healings that they didn't
think were possible, and Jesus displayed himself clearly as
an emissary of God, if not the very Son of God himself. Which,
by the way, you may have noticed, he doesn't call himself that.
He's a man in appearance as any other man, but he is quite an
extraordinary teacher. His wisdom separated him from
all the wisdom of all the philosophers for ages past, and the mighty
works that he did certainly separated him from all of the claims of
Godhead and power. of those who preceded him. He
called these 12 to himself, and these are his first, his initial
instructions to them. Go only to the children of the
house of Israel, the lost sheep, he calls them. The Jews to Christ
were the lost sheep. They shouldn't have been lost.
They had 39 written books of God's word, but alas, we, lostness
comes upon our race quite easily, it seems. It seems to me that's
why we are commanded by God to come together one day in seven,
because we are very forgetful creatures. And so he brings us
together. Now, he told him to go only to
the lost sheep. We know he gave a great commission
in his risen state at the end of this gospel in chapter 28,
when he says, go into all the world. Like all things, when
we looked at last week the orderliness of God, He told them the second
time, the first time I told you not to take money belts, not
to bring sandals or equipment or all of these things, but now
I'm telling you to bring those things. And so the dispensations
of Christ's instructions do change and develop with the times. Alright? I don't suppose too many of you
went throughout the countryside barefoot with your staff and
knocking on doors, and if they didn't accept you in, you cursed
the place and moved on. I don't suppose too many of us
have done that in our time, but it was being done then. It was
a different culture. Jewish culture was very close,
and by the way, very hospitable. Hospitality was taken for granted
among the people, as it should be really in the churches of
Christ. Hospitality shouldn't go out of style, friends. So let's begin. Verses 6 and
7 say, go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, and as you
go, preach, saying, the kingdom of heaven is at hand. So we're
once again looking into these passages where Jesus specifically
commissions the hand-picked twelve. This isn't a commission for everyone.
He's talking to the hand-picked twelve, although we will see
some overlap later in the gospel that some of these teachings
actually apply to all the saints. All right? They are to what?
They are to go. So he's sending them out. We
find out in another context, they perhaps went out two by
two in pairs. You'll notice he lists them in
pairs. So they, presumably, they go out two by two. They're supposed
to go out through all the cities of Galilee at this time, preach
the word of God, proclaim the the prophet from Nazareth, whose
fame has already gone out to the multitudes, and show with
great credentials that they are the emissaries of that prophet.
They too can heal upon request. They too, it says, can raise
the dead. And so this is an itinerant mission. They're moving on. They're not
staying in one place, right? They travel, presumably by foot,
from one place to another there to go with little or no preparation
with regard to material provisions. Provide neither gold nor silver
nor copper in your money belts. The mediums of exchange are banned.
Nor bag for your journey. Don't pack, just go. Nor two
tunics. No change of clothes, friends.
Now it says nor sandals. I hope it means nor two pairs
of sandals, but it doesn't say that. And some commentators believe
they went out barefoot. That's gotta be hard. Don't bring
your staff for a worker as worthy of his food. In other words,
you work for me now, you will be fed and clothed and cared
for. We see reflections of the Sermon
on the Mount in that, in the lilies of the field, who is clothed,
not even Solomon like one of them in such grandeur, right?
Even the birds of the air are fed by their maker who cares
for them, and you are worth many sparrows," he said, right? So
the task is simple. I didn't say it was easy, but
it's simple. Go out and proclaim the kingdom
of heaven is at hand. Preach the kingdom. I can think
of no other meaning to this one-line sermon than simply this. The
kingdom is at hand because the king is in the land. The kingdom
is at hand because they finally are reunited with their king.
Whoever heard of a kingdom without a king? So he's in the land. He has been seen by many. He
has preached to the multitudes. He healed the sick, et cetera. He's done many wonders. And we
are his emissaries, the 12. Blessed with commensurate power
and with an identical mission, that is, we are to proclaim the
kingdom of God. That is the calling for the church,
to proclaim the kingdom of God, friends, and my kingdom is not
of this world. Now, the young apostles are not
to simply go. They're not to simply go and heal. They're not
to simply go and heal and exorcise. The power to perform the miraculous
is a testament as to who sent them. They are sent by the healer
himself, who we will call the healer in chief. The one whose
miraculous healings are by this time renowned throughout Galilee. That's why people came to Jesus.
They found out he could heal. And this is at a time when you
couldn't just call 911 when something happened. But if Jesus was in
the land, you were in luck. You went out and asked him to
heal, and he healed, it says, everyone who came to him of every
ailment that they suffered, an incredible act of divine mercy. So they're not simply to go,
they're not simply to go and heal, they are to go and to preach.
There's simply no institution, no organization on earth whose
mission is so bound up with proclamation. Advertisement, yes. Proclamation,
no. Jesus has a message to proclaim. He has emissaries to proclaim
it for him. The church of God is his gathered
elect. God chose the churches. 1 Peter
1-2. The churches of God are his eternal
family, Romans 8, 16. The church is his house. He dwells
in us. 1 Corinthians 6, 19. We are also
his body. He's the head, we're the body.
We're the hands and the feet and the voice. 1 Corinthians
12, 7. We are his purchased possession. He bought you and the price was
his life. His life for ours. And we are a church almost entirely
dependent upon preaching, Hebrews 5.14. See, if I was preaching
a long sermon, I'd go into all those, but I'm going to give
that to you so you can do it as homework and go over it later and look
those up and see if I'm not right. And so what is preaching? We're
to go and we're to preach, we're to build our whole existence
as the church of the saints upon this action, this preaching,
just proclaiming. Preaching's fallen on hard times.
How many times has someone said to you, don't preach to me! Don't
be so preachy! The church has gotten so preachy
in our day. Heaven forbid we ever stop preaching
the Word of God. So what is preaching, friends?
I'll tell you what it is. It's teaching with fire. It's teaching
with zeal. It's insisting that the teaching
is right because it comes directly from the authority who is God.
It's declaring with fire and the Spirit of God. That's why
Christians feel it when it's preached. Because the Spirit
in us feeds upon it. Peter said it nourishes us like
food, like mother's milk. What else is preaching? It's
speaking in faith. We don't just preach, we don't
just babble. I hope you don't think that's
what I've done for 30 years. We speak in faith. It's declaring
with fire in the spirit, and this has been the mission of
the church from that day until this. That's the part of it that's
never changed. That's the part of it that's
not exclusive to the Twelve Apostles. We all preach. We don't all have
the same style, but we all preach. The context here, the context
is always important, as you know. If you don't consider the context
in which a statement is made, you can go off just about anywhere
with any verse of scripture. But the context should corral
us into right thinking or thinking God's thoughts after him. The
context clearly reveals that this passage is given to the
12 apostles only. We know that from the context.
But the balance of the New Testament, the greater context of God's
word, calls all the saints to speak the things of God and to
preach the kingdom. Having said that, however, I
think that the importance of preaching has fallen on hard
times. Not that there's none done, but
it's very often done regardless of the context. We like to sort
of extract little things that please us and not see that it
may not even apply in that particular instance. And no wonder, no wonder
that preaching has fallen on hard times. There's no other
aspect of our faith that's been so attacked. There's no other
aspect of our faith that's been so impugned, so corrupted, so
neglected as this first and foremost directive of the Savior. And
that's why he says, when you go out into Israel, now this
is Northern Israel, Galilee. This was an Israel who, during
the intertestamental times, that's between Old Testament and New,
that 400 years, They were actually idol worshippers at that time.
So there's a lot of false belief, but they're still the covenant
people of God, sons of Abraham. They should give hospitality
to the emissaries of a prophet in their time, but they were
not doing that. Jesus fully expected that only
some would receive them and some would not. So it's no wonder that preaching
is attacked. That's why we in the Reformed
churches are so insistent upon rightly dividing the word of
truth, which Paul told Timothy, 1 Timothy 2.15. That's why we
insist on preparing our sermons. Friends, we insist on preparing
our sermons, even though in the next section you will read You
will be brought before governors and kings for my sake as a testimony
to them and to the Gentiles, but when they deliver you up,
do not worry about how or what you should speak, for it will
be given to you in that hour what you should speak." I've
had people apply that to me and say, I will not listen to your
sermons, nor will I read them, because you prepared them. Preparation
is bad. You see how we pull something
out of context? He said, when they deliver you
up to councils, this will be, and he's talking to 12 men who
have been dead for 2,000 years. But with Christ, right? I've had people say, you shouldn't
prepare. You should just stand there and wait. The Holy Spirit
will come upon you, and you'll have wonderful things to say.
Guess what? I hope that happens. I hope in some way that happens
every time I approach the pulpit. I've got up here, and I've said
to you many times, I'm so glad I don't have to do this job.
The Spirit of God does it through you. But when someone, that one
person, not so long ago said to me, I will not listen to your
sermons nor read them. And he said, because they are
not from the Holy Spirit. And I said to him, why would
you limit God in that way? Don't you think when a preacher
sits down at the desk to pen some notes for a sermon for good
people to bother to listen to, that the Holy Spirit is working
in the whole prospect of the preparation? Why did, what, he
just shows up whenever we played the flute for you and you did
not dance? We sang to you and you did not mourn? So context is important, friends,
and I believe in preparing sermons. And so they are to not turn sermons
into mere chants or repetitious phrases. or inane formulations. I made up that little phrase.
Inane formulations. They are to, as Paul told Timothy,
convince, rebuke, exhort. Those are the aspects of the
Word of God being preached to the people. Convince. You are
convincing people of something. You're not just listening to
yourself talk. You're rebuking evil. In other words, you're
reforming the morality of a company of people. And you are exhorting
them, uplifting them, encouraging them with all long-suffering
and teaching. Long-suffering is the divine
act of patience. God doesn't strictly have patience.
When you know whenever everything's going to happen, you don't have
to have patience. God's not waiting and hoping as we are. Follow?
He has long-suffering. He knows we're all sinners, but
he puts up with us. It's called long-suffering. Preachers
ought to do that. They are to be long-suffering
like God, and they are to teach. I asked my old friend Dave Kimball
many years ago. Dave's been gone for many years
now. I was a very new Christian, and
Dave was a pastor for 50 years. And I said, Dave, what is the
difference between preaching and teaching? And he said, I
don't know. But if you ain't teaching, you
ain't preaching. You don't just get up and talk
and chant and do things that I see people do. We are to do
it when? When it's convenient. No, in
season, out of season, always be ready to give a defense for
the hope that is in you. Preaching is the perpetual practice
of a functioning church. If a church ceases to preach,
if a church ceases to convey God's word through preaching,
it ceases to be God's church. It has lost its first love and
its first directive. Martyrs, friends, read the great
books on the martyrs. Fox's great book of martyrs.
Martyrs go to the flames preaching. The gospel is on their lips as
they burn at the stake. The truth of God attends the
saints in life as well as in death. You think there'll be
no proclaiming of the glory of God when we get there before
him? And so preaching comes with a healthy dose of striving. That's
why you sometimes see the preacher do something like this. It comes
with diligence, friends. In other words, we don't give
up on it. It comes with a stubborn resistance against those who
would seek to silence it. The preacher will not be silenced.
The church has a voice, and it's God's voice. And if they receive
you, they receive me, the gospel says. If they don't receive you,
they don't receive me. They therefore don't receive
him who sent me, the Lord said. We're not to tire of it, friends.
We're not to tire of hearing of it. We're not to tire of doing
it. And it can be a tiresome thing. And so we read of those times
when the silencers sought to have their way with the apostles
and the leaders of the Sanhedrin. That's the ruling religious class
of the day, the Sanhedrin. They call Peter and John to stand
before them in judgment for disrupting the land with this new teaching,
this gospel, this message of the guy we just tried and condemned
and put to death. And so we read this from the
book of Acts, but so that this gospel spreads no further among
the people, let us severely threaten the apostles that from now on
they speak no They speak to no man in his name,
in this name of Jesus. And then we read this. But Peter
and John answered and said to them, whether it is right in
the sight of God to listen to you more than to God you judge.
You're the religious leaders. Should we listen to you or should
we listen to God who spoke to us personally? For we can not
but speak the things which we have seen and heard. The preacher
cannot be silenced, friends. The children of the one true
God have been given all the tools to develop a healthy tolerance
for preaching. We're blessed with faith in the
Holy Spirit. There are some very specific
gifts of the Holy Spirit for the purpose of teaching and preaching.
There's a gift from God that empowers a man to preach, and
he must act upon it. There's a gift of God that empowers
the saints to teach, as well as other things, to administrate.
I will say our deacon, Duane, has an overabundance of the gift
of administration, and I've given you those receipts and I want
that money back, Duane. The church is not to make light
of such things. We're to cultivate the gifts
of God among ourselves. We're to encourage them in one
another. We're to exercise the gifts we're blessed with for
the edification of the church. Friends, you have a gift. It's
yours. God doesn't take it away when you misuse it. People misuse
the gifts all the time. They still have the gift. But
it's for the body. It helps the body for you to
exercise your gift. Maybe you're very hospitable.
You know, we're a hospitable church. I think we have all the
gifts of the Spirit here in this small body. So we're to cultivate
those gifts. We're blessed with the edification. The gifts are the blessing of
the saints for the edification of the church. So there are gifts
of God for carrying on the function of the church throughout the
generations. They don't change. Tolerance
for preaching. comes with a love of truth. Friends,
people that can't tolerate preaching don't love the truth of God. They shall perish because they
did not receive the love of the truth. 2 Thessalonians. Love of truth can only come from
immersion in the truth. Friends, if you're finding that
you're not moved by the preaching of God's Word, Go back to a daily
reading pattern of God's Word. It will build up in you a tolerance
for it. And yes, there will be things
that are troubling. There will be things that are hard to understand. But it will give you a tolerance
for not only the way God speaks, but the things that He speaks
about. So preaching truth has always
been paramount among the true churches of God. Hence the emphasis
we put on proper context and informed exegesis. What's exegesis? Exegesis refers to original intent. All right, so we go back and
we, instead of just guessing, we go back, we study the histories
of these times, some of which are evident from the word itself,
some are extra-biblical teachings, and we try to get as close as
we can to what that message originally meant to the people who originally
heard it. What did it mean? And then we extrapolate that
to meet modern times. Times have certainly changed.
We're not an agricultural society anymore, are we? We're technological. So we're zealous not to let the
meaning of the word be forgotten over time. That's why we do all
these things. We rightly divide the word of truth. We exegete
the word for the people. So we don't forget this over
time. We don't relinquish the power. which is tended to diminish
because of fashion and the traditions of society. They would like to
tell us that we're a quaint little archaic group of worshipers doing
things that ancient people did that are quite out of style and
fashion. We really ought to adopt some new modes of getting the
message across. We must never lose sight of the
fact that the accurate presentation of the Word of God has been systematically
and zealously attacked even from the very beginning, friends.
Only moments after God's first directive to man in the garden,
the message was questioned and attacked by a persistent enemy,
wasn't it? Happened right away. I don't
know if it was moments. Could have been a hundred years.
The Bible doesn't get specific. But it's said right after that
point in time. Recall the first most famous
test of man's resolve to adhere to a simple command. The serpent
asked, has God indeed said, have you ever been asked that has
God indeed said that he asked them that and they questioned
and they didn't come up with the right answer. Friend, it was by the kind provision
of a loving father that his true children would hold that question
close to their hearts. Friends, the serpent asked it,
but let's ask it of ourselves. What has God indeed said? It's to our eternal benefit that
the people of God gather one day in seven to resolve life's
most essential questions. What did God really say? The preaching of the word of
God is the most essential aspect of God's divine directive to
man. It is the most essential part of worshiping God. It is
that pearl of great price. And we ought to pray daily that
it does not become the lost coin and that we do not become the
lost sons and daughters of our father. Recall from the first words of
the Apostle John that the word is what? It's the true light
that gives light to every man coming into the world. The word
is that. He also wrote, these are written
that you may believe. Friends, God took the trouble
to have his word written down so that it can't change. And
He gave us scholars, and interpreters, and translators, and linguists,
and archaeologists, and all kinds of people to make certain that
what was written then is what is in our hands now, and I'm
here to tell you that it is. This sermon is not on that subject,
but what we have is what Matthew wrote. These are written that you may
believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing
you may have life in His name. James, the half-brother of Jesus
Christ, said, receive with meekness, what? The implanted Word, which
is able to save your soul. It's the Word of God that saves
you. You know, the Word of God has an inherent power of its
own. And I'll get to that. Paul writes
this, I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ for it is the
power of God to salvation. How do you think a man is saved?
He's saved by hearing the truths of Christ's sacrifice for your
sins and falling to your knees and repenting of your sin and
praying that he save you and claiming your faith in his promises. It is the power of God to salvation
for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the
Greek. To them that meant everybody.
For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to
faith as it is written, the just shall live by faith. Verses 12
and 13 go on. And when you go into a household,
greet it. If the household is worthy, let your peace come upon
it. But if it is not worthy, let your peace return to you. And so these 12 apostles are
to test the people. They're to evaluate the cities. Notice God talks about cities
and towns and nations. He doesn't focus a lot on individuals. We tend to do that in our preaching.
But the Lord has this whole communal approach to morality in societies
at large, right? He evaluates cities. And they
bless or curse cities and towns respectfully. So what does it
mean that a house be worthy or unworthy? By this time there
would be a grave distinction between who among the people
of Galilee had been receptive to the identity of the prophet
of Nazareth and who was not. And the teaching of Matthew 7
is not lost on these apostles. The placing of holy things in
the sight of those who eschew them is a sacrilege. The Spirit
of God will tolerate only so much disgrace where holy things
are concerned, and the Twelve Apostles ought to make a distinction
between the worthy and the unworthy among them. Do not give what
is holy to the dogs, or cast your pearls before swine," he
said. So when he says, greet it, when
he says, enter the house, greet it. He refers to a salutation
or a blessing. You're not coming in saying,
hello, house. You're greeting the house. You're
giving a blessing to it. But what is a blessing? Is a
blessing just a nice thing that we say? Is that what it is? Or
does a blessing have power to do something? One of the great
commentators of the New Testament, one of the great theologians,
R.T. France, wrote these words. The greeting, peace to this house,
Luke 10 5 spells out what Matthew's greet assumes. So Luke's version
has it this way. Whatever house you enter, first
say peace to this house. And if a son of peace is there,
your peace will rest on it. If not, it will return to you
and you will leave the house. So Luke gives a little more context,
France is saying to us. But France goes on to comment
on the greeting itself. And this is what he writes. It
is thus no mere formality to put a blessing on a house. When Bill gets up at the end
of the service, he's giving a benediction. That benediction is coming from
the Word of God by a hand-picked emissary of God, and it comes
with efficacious power. It is thus no mere formality.
It is envisaged, France writes, as an effective blessing which
goes out and takes effect provided it is suitably received. If not, if it's not suitably
received, it will have no effect but will return like an uncashed
check. You had the blessing in your
hand, you could have brought it to the bank, but you crumbled
it up and threw it away. It will have no power if you
don't receive it in a worthy manner. It will have one power,
the power to condemn. They're simply to test the people's
worthiness and the people are organized by cities. Notice Christ
says this, whatever city or town you enter, assuredly, I say to
you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah,
which are also cities, right? In the day of judgment, then
for that city, he speaks of us in terms of communal organizations,
almost always. So there's this communal blessing,
and the counter-blessing, that is the curse. I shake off like
dust from my feet, right? It's interesting to me how the
Lord assesses the receptiveness of towns. I wonder how Lakeville
would do. Of towns. Of cities. Of nations. as indicative of
the overall acceptance of his word by a group of people. You
know, I focused a lot in the last two weeks on what I see
as obvious, that the churches have been largely uninfluential
in society over time. I don't think their voice is
respected as it once was. Do you agree? I don't think the
word of holy men is as respected as it once was. And I gave some
examples of that last week. This is what he's talking about
here. And so he alludes to the communal destruction of the most
famously cursed cities in history, Sodom and Gomorrah, as the archetype
of God's curse. It's been asked of me, Dan, do
you suppose the story of Sodom and Gomorrah in the Old Testament
is a literal piece of history? Is it just a symbolic thing to
show us, you know, when God gets mad at me, he means business.
Is that what it is? Or did it actually happen to
those cities of the plain? By the way, there were more than
just the two. My answer is this. Jesus treated it as though it
were true. Right? Therefore, so must we. Recall the two essential rules
of genuine faith. These are my rules. They come
from 1 John 1.23. I'll have to check that, I think
it's 123, it's been so long, but the two rules of these, number
one, we must believe what Jesus believes. Jesus believes the
Old Testament, it's the word of God. We must believe what
Jesus believes. And that would entail also teaching
what Jesus taught. And number two, we must love
whom Jesus loves, and Jesus loves the church, who it is written
of, gave himself for her. We believe otherwise and love
otherwise at our peril. Remember, our default response
to every man coming into the world, to whom Jesus gave light,
is to love them. That's our default response.
The first thing we do is we love all men. We love those who hate
us. We love those who persecute us and despitefully use us, he
said in the great sermon, right? Yet at the same time, we're not
to cast our pearls before swine or give what's holy to the dogs. And that's a directive that does
not expire over time. Nor is it for the twelve only.
How a person or a society responds to the Word of God openly proclaimed
is the only testament of which category of God's affection a
person or a city or a society falls into. Will they be blessed? Or will
they be shaken off like dust? The act is particularly illustrative,
isn't it? The shaking off. I mean, it's
not a superstitious thing. It's not as though the dust had
any power or that a bad person's bad vibes are sticking to your
feet and you want to wash them off. He's just saying it's an
act of protest against a particular body of people. Since mankind
itself is formed from the very dust of the earth, it kind of
makes an illustrative point, doesn't it? Perhaps the most
famous of the societies who stood at the precipice of reception
or rejection of God's prophet was ancient Nineveh. And I'm
talking about Jonah, the book of Jonah, right? Nineveh is a
real city. It's been excavated. It's in
Iraq. It's an awesome city. If you remember, it took Jonah
several days to walk around it, right? So that city, that society, had
fallen into communal sin against God, and God held the city responsible. He's going to destroy the city,
he said. And so Jonah preached, yet 40
days and Nineveh shall be overthrown. I hope that's a section of his
sermon, but it's all we're given. It might be the whole sermon.
Yet 40 days. In other words, there's no hope
for the city. He didn't say, repent and you'll
be saved. He didn't do any of those things. There was no gospel
message here. There was just a prophet decrying
that you have outlived your usefulness for God, he said to ancient Nineveh.
And you get 40 more days and it's all going to be gone. Jonah
did not provide an alternative course for them. Yet the king
of Nineveh The king of Nineveh took the prophet seriously, and
he proclaimed a fast. Do you remember the book of Jonah?
He proclaimed a fast, and he publicly declared among the people,
he said this, who can tell if God will turn and relent? Like,
maybe if we do something to honor him finally, even though we've
been idolatrous all of our existence, the prophet has come, given us
a 40-day limit, I would have headed for the hills, I'll tell
you. But the king thought, we have
40 days to show God we can change. And so he proclaims a communal
fast. Even the animals were given no
food and water. And maybe he would turn away
from his fierce anger so that we may not perish. Repentance
brought fruit, friends, and God showed mercy because repentance
speaks to worthiness. It speaks to the recognition
that you are unworthy. You can't repent of worthiness.
You repent of unworthiness. The king's reception of the prophet's
words made him and they worthy of God's blessing. And so it's in Palestine. And
so it is in Palestine in the time of the apostles. There is
time. Repent and be worthy before God. Verse 14, whoever will not receive
you nor hear your words when you depart from that house or
city, shake off the dust from your feet. Don't miss the symbol
of disassociation. I want no more to do with that
house. The house, the town, the city
that will not receive Christ or the disciples he's dispatched
to serve them will be cut off from his blessing. Do not miss
the communal nature of Christ's blessing here, friends. Again,
a communal blessing. Nor the communal unworthiness
of entire cities and towns. The Great Commission focuses
on the discipling of nations. He says, make disciples of all
the nations, baptizing them. He's still concerned with nations. In a later era, the Lord spoke
not to towns or cities who adhere to a synagogue, right? Maybe
that's why he looked at cities that way. A city was really a
church. There was a synagogue that was
the worship center of that city. If genuine worship was being
done in that synagogue, then in God's sight, the people were
worthy. idolatry or superstition was
being taught in the synagogue, they would be unworthy. They
would be unrespecting of the prophets of Jesus Christ as he
sent them out. Now that's my guess but I'm wondering
why he gave such emphasis to cities. You will notice as we
come to the end of the New Testament that he doesn't speak of cities
or towns or nations but he speaks to churches. The church of Ephesus,
which is a city, right? The church of Ephesus he evaluates. And he tells them what they have
done that is rightful in his sight and where they have fallen
short. They have fallen short in Ephesus
because they left their first love, he says. So don't miss the symbol of disassociation. The house, the town, the city
that will not receive Christ or his disciples he has dispatched
to serve them will be cut off from all blessing. In a later era, the Lord speaks
not to towns or cities who adhere to a synagogue, but to the churches
of those towns and cities. The risen Christ speaks to the
seven churches of Asia, we see from Revelations chapters 2 and
3. From the next chapter we read this, then he began to rebuke
the cities. Jesus takes time to rebuke cities,
friends, in which most of his mighty works have been done.
In other words, I showed my mercy in these cities and they still
turn away from me. Because they did not repent.
And then he names the cities in their time. Woe to Chorazin,
he said. Woe to Bethsaida. For if the
mighty works that were done in you were done in Tyre and Sidon,
which are Lebanese cities to the north of Israel, right? Not
the people of God in the day. If those works had been done
in foreign lands, they would have repented in sackcloth and
ashes. Friends, we're not a society that's been unblessed by mighty
work, so this is our application. We are a society. We are a culture. You could say America, or you
could say the Western world, if you will. We are a society. I wonder how he evaluates us
morally as a society. I think not very highly. And
yet I wonder if our Christian witness is commensurate with
the blessings we've received. Friends, Our nation has received
great mercies and great blessings of God. There's a pattern disclosed in
passages like these ones of how God works among the nations.
So if our nation, if our society is not amenable to the presence
of Christ and the ones he sends out, I wonder what kind of treatment
we may receive from the Lord God in the final act of human
history. How will we be evaluated as a
culture? Oh, Pastor, don't speak on cultural
things. We're not supposed to delve into those. Of course we
are. We don't take God's Word out
of a whole most important sector of human society, our moral culture. And yet I remind you of one caveat. Even though he talks about all
this communal stuff, there's still a caveat of salvation. in God's communal plan. God is
able and has shown himself willing to surgically remove a single
righteous man from an unrighteous city or society. Hasn't he? Abraham was called out of Ur
of the Chaldees, which is Babylonia, right? And even though he speaks
of Sodom as being swept away with fire and brimstone of God's
wrath, He surgically removed Lot out of Sodom. God is able
to take a single man or a single righteous person or a single
church out of the fires of his wrath. Abraham called out of
Ur. Lot was called out of Sodom.
Jonah, though a reluctant prophet, was yet a faithful one. Right? Some of us have been reluctant.
I'm reluctant at times. I don't like to be told what
to do. That might be an American thing, but I think a lot of people
have that. But in the end, I'm faithful to God, and our church
is faithful to God. So Jonah, though a reluctant
prophet, was yet a faithful one, and yet he was in no danger from
the hand of God. God wasn't after Jonah. Even
when he thrust him in the deep, even when he was inside the fish,
he prayed to God. From the belly of the fish, Jonah
prayed. One of my favorite passages of scripture. Don't let your
reluctance get the last word in your life, friends. You may
be a reluctant prophet, but don't let reluctance be the last thing
you say to God. Repent and be baptized for the
remission of sins. Paul was pulled out from among
the Pharisees, right? Jesus didn't have a lot of good
things to say about the Pharisees, but he extracted some people
out of there. Paul, probably Nicodemus, maybe
Gamaliel, the great rabbi of the era. He pulled Matthew right
out of the Roman Empire. Matthew worked for Rome. He was
a government worker. Right? He was in Herod's cabinet. The
purity of the one leads to the purifying of another. So God
pulls them out. The purity of Paul led to the
purity, purification of thousands, maybe millions of others, right?
Same's true of Matthew, who wrote this gospel. They were in the
world, friends. God pulled them out. He's able
to surgically remove us. Look at the whole world set afire
with the gospel by those who would not be shaken off. Don't
let the preacher come to town and shake you off like dust.
By those who did not disregard their Savior when he had come
among them. Friends, when the Savior or the
emissary of the Savior comes among us, receive him and give
him hospitality. And who can say who will finally
repent? For the moment, the churches
will preach that the kingdom of God is at hand. We will command
by the authority of Jesus Christ that we are to repent and be
baptized for the remission of sin. It is God's command. Baptism
is the sign of submission to Christ. It is the symbolic representation
of death and resurrection. It's symbolic, friends, but like
the bread and wine of the Lord's Supper, it is a symbol of our
acceptance of Christ, but never assume that it is an empty symbol
or a mere ritual. It's a symbol, it's a ritual,
but it's not empty of God's presence and of God's power and of his
insistence that we keep it up till he returns. And so we will
baptize believers in the name of the Father and the Son and
the Holy Spirit, and we will call for the blessing of those
who have shown love and hospitality to the saints in this day, the
neighbors on the hill. As you go preach, O Father, in
Jesus' name, we praise you for being with us. And among us,
as you have promised in the preaching and the proclamation of this,
your holy word be with us for the remainder of our service.
Indeed, father, for the remainder of our lives, we pray in Jesus
name. Amen.
As you go, preach
Series Sermon on the Mt: Beatitudes
| Sermon ID | 81725162306067 |
| Duration | 49:29 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Bible Text | Matthew 10:5-15 |
| Language | English |
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