We are continuing in our study of the book of Matthew in chapter 10. This morning begins our time in the third section of our Lord’s instructions to His disciples as He is sending them out on their first evangelistic mission. We have seen over the course of chapter 10 Christ’s instructions expanding out to fit a broader range of His disciples throughout history. In the first section, verses 5-15 there was much that focused on the 12 in the mission that Jesus was preparing to send them on. Many of the principles focused on ministers of the gospel and those who would make their living from the preaching of God’s Word; though there were several principles we are all to live by.
Last week, we looked at verses 16-23 and the expanding focus of the instructions Jesus gave looking forward to the ministry of the 12 after His ascension and the beginning of the work founding the church. At the same time, we saw how these instructions began to encompass all disciples. This third section is the most broad, as we will see how these principles apply not only to the 12 but to all disciples that would come after them. Jesus began to point to the coming persecution in the second section, and here He lays out the coming cost of discipleship. He lays out the hard road ahead, not sparing the details.
Discipleship, being a Christian, was never meant to be an easy life. The first step on the narrow road begins with repentance and humility and every step after requires self-denial and a commitment to righteousness even in the midst of difficulty and pain. Jesus is making sure that those truths are laid out plain and simple, and in this section we are going to cover this morning, our Lord is making sure to explain the steps that His disciples are to take, the attitudes they are to have, in order to be successful and useful tools in the hands of our Father while on this difficult road.
We need to understand verses 24-42 as one section, one idea with its multiple facets but we are only going to cover through verse 31 today and leave the latter half for next week. If you have your Bibles with you I would encourage you to follow along as we read, Matthew 10:24-42.
“A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a slave above his master. 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 Beelzebub, how much more will they malign the members of his household! Therefore do not fear them, for their is nothing concealed that will not be revealed, nor hidden that will not be known. What I tell you in the darkness, speak in the light; and what you hear whispered in your ear, proclaim upon the house tops. Do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not to 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.
We begin with a look at the relationship between disciples and their teacher. Jesus presents this simple and obvious truth that a disciple is not above his teacher nor slave above his master. Now that is not to say that a disciple will never surpass his teacher in the course of time. You know Martin Luther but you know who taught him? You know John Calvin, but you know his teacher? This is not to say that a student cannot exceed the accomplishments of his teacher, there are many examples of that throughout the history of the world.
The point that Jesus is making here is that while someone is a student, while he is in that relationship with his teacher there is a structure of authority where the student is in submission to his teacher. The teacher teaches the student and the student is not in a position to demand the lessons He wants or how or when they should be taught. There may have been throughout history numerous examples of a teacher being surpassed by their student in time, but in verse 24, on this occasion especially, no disciple of Jesus Christ has ever or will ever exceed their teacher.
The point that Jesus is making here is two-sided. Man’s volition is represented by the figure of the disciple and teacher, man choosing to submit; and Christ’s sovereignty represented by the relationship of slave and master where there is no choice and recognizing sovereignty. The two illustrations come together to emphasize that the first and most obvious principle of discipleship is submission. We have seen throughout the gospel of Matthew Jesus being presented as the King and His disciples as citizens of His kingdom.
Too often Christians today focus on Jesus as a “friend.” He is treated as a buddy and our relationship to Him sees Him as the most caring and accepting type of friend who is here to support us through the difficulties of life. There is truth to that, He cares deeply for us, He weeps at our suffering and went so far as to be willing to die on our behalf. But He is still our teacher and master and that is the primary definition of our relationship.
When we approach Jesus as our teacher and our master, we begin to see the importance of the first sentence in verse 25, “it is enough for the disciple that He become like His teacher, and a slave like his master.” The purpose of any disciple is to learn from his teacher in order to become like Him. In 1 John 2, the apostle of love writes, “by this we know that we are in Him: the one who says He abides in Him ought Himself to walk in the same manner as He walked.” The goal of any disciple of Jesus is to emulate Christ, his teacher. The greatest hope of a disciple is to be made into the image of the teacher and we do that by observing His commandments and modeling our lives after His.
Jesus is making this simple illustration in the context of His sending of the 12 out on their evangelistic mission and with the promise of coming persecution because of their position as His disciples and the opposition to His message in the world. We saw last week that they will be brought before councils and governors and kings for Christ’s namesake. And they will be prosecuted, beaten, scourged, and many we know would be martyred.
What Jesus is getting at here is that He is the rabbi, the teacher, and the master. He is pointing to the scribes and the Pharisees and how they are treating Him. They are calling Jesus “Beelzebub.” There calling Him “Satan.” The name Beelzebub has something of a confused background. It’s roots come from the pagan Canaanite gods that were present around Israel. “Baal” or “bale” depending on who saying it simply means Lord or master. “Beelzebub” means Lord of the flies, Lord of the dung heap, or Lord of the demons depending on pronunciation, and it might have been something of a pun in Hebrew. But anyway, this title at the time of Christ was the Hebrew term of derision for the chief demon, the adversary of God, Satan, the devil.
So Jesus is saying to His disciples, “the Pharisees and the scribes are calling me Satan, do you think you are going to escape the same kind of hatred, the same kind of persecution?” If I am the one who demands respect as a teacher or master how much worse do you think they are going to treat you who are submitting to me. Who is more foolish, the fool, or the full who follows Him? Jesus is bad enough, you guys are even worse for following Him. The disciple is not above his master, if they hate Jesus, they are going to hate His followers all the more.
Jesus would later warn His disciples in John 15, “If the world hates you, you know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, because I chose you out of the world, because of this the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you, ‘A slave is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you.”
I asked the question last week, “if God has promised persecution when we preach the truth, why are we not facing it now?” In that same vein, I pose the question today, has anyone ever hated you because you are a Christian? Has anyone ever been hostile toward you because they know that you are disciple of Christ? If you have not, you have to ask yourself “why not?” Have I distanced myself from Christ? Am I striving to be like Him in everything? Do I try to blend in with the world so that they would not know I am a Christian unless they showed up to church on Sunday?
This does not mean that we should antagonize other people. This does not give us license to be mean or spiteful and then claim “persecution” because we are hated. We saw in our Bible study on 1 Peter that we are not to use our freedom as a covering for evil and that there is no blessing from God when we suffer for our own wrongdoings. We need to always be conscious of people’s hatred or malice toward us and in that look for it any reason we have given in what we have said or the way that we said it in. We saw last week in verse 16 that we are to be shrewd, or wise and cautious as serpents and innocent as doves.
What Jesus is pointing to here is something that is fundamental to the Christian life. There is a built-in animosity toward Christ in the world and fallen human beings. By nature mankind is antagonistic toward God and His truth. People will not openly claim this hatred, in fact except for a handful of truthful atheists, most people will claim the exact opposite. But God has made it clear that mankind hates Him, have rejected Him and will do anything and everything they can to continue in that rebellion.
If there is any love for Him found in man it is only through His gracious act of regeneration. And if we have any love for Him, especially as we proclaim the truth in a world of darkness, we will end up as recipients of that hatred that exists in the world. And if they hate God, if they are willing to call Jesus Christ “Beelzebub,” how much more the members of His household, how much more will they do to His children?
When we identify with Christ, when we identify with His death and resurrection we are promised a portion of His inheritance. When we are adopted as the sons and daughters of God we become the younger brothers and sisters of Christ and share in His glory. That is amazing, that is astounding, that we as sinful and wretched people who lived in open rebellion against God would be adopted into His family and granted and imperishable and undefiled inheritance that will not fade away and is reserved in heaven for us.
But what is so often overlooked intentionally or unintentionally, what is so often left out of the gospel presentation is that if we are to share in the blessed inheritance of Christ, then we must also share in what Christ did in order to gain that blessing. What we see taught throughout the New Testament, what we have been studying in the book of 1 Peter is that if we desire to participate in the glorification of Christ then we must participate in His suffering. Jesus will share His glory and exultation only with those believers who will embrace in their faith and in their life His humiliation.
“A disciple is not above his teacher, nor slave above his master.” Jesus is saying all of this to prepare His disciples, the 12 whom He is directly addressing and all those who would come after them, He is saying all of this to prepare them and us to encounter the hatred and rejection of this world. As we stand for Him and preach the gospel message “It is enough for disciple that he become like his teacher, and a slave like his master.” Oh God that we would become like Christ! Help us to be like our teacher, help us to be like our master both in obedience and in humility when undergoing suffering. “If they call the head of the house Beelzebub how much more will they malign the members of His household!”
As we go out to face this persecution, to face the hatred and rejection of God and his people that exist in the world, Jesus gives reassurances in verses 26-31. Three times in these five verses He says, “do not fear.” If we identify with Christ we will face persecution but we are not to fear that persecution, we are not to fear the world and their hatred and what they will do to us. We are not to fear injustice in verses 26-27, we are not to fear death in verse 28 and we are not to fear that we are not valued by God even in the worst of circumstances in 29-31.
In verse 26 Jesus says, “therefore do not fear them, for there is nothing concealed that will not be revealed, nor hidden that will not be known.” The “therefore” is pointing to that persecution that will come, because you will be maligned Jesus is saying, do not fear the falsehoods and injustices that are done against you that are never brought to the light and never punished in this life. We live in a world of illusion and deception. We live in a world of injustice and darkness. We see it all around us, if you read the Psalms over and over you will see especially David cry out to God asking why the wicked prosper and the righteous are oppressed. Not just the criminals and ruthless warlords but even in our country of laws we see that those at the top are so often ruthless in the way they take out anyone standing in their way. No mercy, no love, no thought to others. And on the opposite end of that, the righteous so often live meager lives. It leads one to wonder, “does God not see the injustice in the world?”
What Jesus is saying here is that we are not to fear that injustice, whether it is directed toward us or simply going on around us. We are promised in first Corinthians 4 that when the Lord returns He will bring to light the things hidden in darkness and disclose the motives of men’s hearts. All will be judged according to their deeds and their eternal rewards will reflect the truth of their hearts.
At the same time, we see in verse 27 Jesus commanded us “what I tell you in the darkness, speak in the light; and what you hear whispered in your ear, proclaim upon the housetops.” When God gives truth to declare, it is the obligation and honor of Christians to make that truth known, not to hide it. There are to be no secrets in Christianity. There are no secret rites or rituals, no knowledge that is held back for only the faithful or the ones who have proved themselves. You see this over and over again in cults throughout history. Two of the more popular and current systems in our country today, Mormonism and the church of Scientology, both require you to go through years of rituals and acts of commitment before they will reveal all that they believe. In recent years, the Internet has opened up the truth of these cults for all to see, but Christianity is never to have anything like that.
There is no doctrine held back for any reason. All spiritual and moral truth that man needs to know can be known and has been made fully known by God in His word. His desire is it is to be proclaimed not hidden. We are not to be ashamed of anything in Scripture. Many Christians today try to distance themselves from the Old Testament and the so-called “difficult” passages in which God calls for the destruction of entire people groups because of their sin. They may be difficult, even contrary to the morals of the day, but their truth remains and needs to be explained and exclaimed for all.
This does not mean that we need to be needlessly offensive. Again, we are to be shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves. But we do need to teach the fullness of God’s revelation and when we do the world will inevitably be offended. Fallen man does not like to hear that he is fallen; sinful man does not like to face the reality and that he is a sinful being standing condemned before a holy and righteous God. It is those truths that Jesus and the apostles never refused to proclaim, it is those truths that will lead to our persecution and rejection today; but it is those truths we are to proclaim from the housetops.
When we do, we will inevitably undergo persecution and sometimes that means physical persecution to the point of martyrdom. And that is where we see the next command in verse 28 “do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.” There are two things here we have to recognize are not being said. First, the latter half is often misunderstood to be referring to Satan but He is not the one who is able to destroy the body and soul in hell. People often have this picture of Satan and his demons tormenting people in hell, that is not the case, Satan will be in hell but he will be suffering alongside everyone else, rather this is referring to God who is the only one who can condemn people to eternal punishment.
The second thing that we must understand is that Jesus is not saying that any fear for your life is inherently sinful. Fear is perfectly natural, and a God given response when our lives are in danger. The experience of fear or anxiety when our lives are on the line or at the prospect of pain is before us will is not what Jesus is talking about here.
In both cases He uses the word “phobia” which can have the understanding of terror, and there is some truth to that implication here. But phobia often references a kind of fear or awe that causes one to submit to the source as authoritative. When we live in the fear of the Lord we recognize Him as authoritative and submit to Him. When we live in fear of man and their ability to kill the body, it causes us to act in a way contrary to the fear of God. What Jesus is saying here is that we must not act how those who can only kill the body want us to act, but rather live with reverence to God.
It is that reverence of God in His sovereign majesty that is to be our motivation to serve Him and to be fearless of any earthly, physical consequences that service may bring. We are not to serve in fear of God’s retribution but rather for the promises of our eternal glory and inheritance. This is not meant to say that we should replace the terror of men for the terror of God. We are not to worry that God will throw us into hell, rather, we recognize who is sovereign and deserving of our reverence in obedience. As faithful disciples of Christ, we are to value our souls immeasurably more than we value our bodies. We should be willing to sacrifice that which is only physical and corruptible for what is incorruptible and reserved in heaven for us.
The final reassurance comes in the value that God has placed on His elect children. “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.” This assurance is based upon the immeasurable value that our Heavenly Father places upon us. Not one sparrow, this is a word that refers to the smallest of birds, almost worthless in their value to us. A dime a dozen. Not one worthless bird falls on the ground apart from the intimate knowledge of God. He has even numbered the hairs on your head. And that does not mean that He simply knows the total but that He knows each hair, they are numbered and catalog. God is fully conscious of the happenings of every little bird in the world and knows every hair on your head.
“Do not fear; you are more valuable than many sparrows.” The obvious understatement demonstrates how very dear God’s children are to Him. How can we be anxious and fearful knowing that we have the protection of our omnipotent and omniscient Heavenly Father who cares so deeply for us?