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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, “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. 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 giving us and explaining to us in these verses. He’s reminding us that 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 being a follower of his does not mean that we 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 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 time that there are 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 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 are the people in the front in first class and the people in the back in 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’s uncomfortable; it kind of hurts their back, and they 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, or put it in their lap, but 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 to 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 the 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 cross 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, but Martin Luther wrote 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 works. 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 being mocked and blasphemed, at being tortured, and even being put to death.
Now 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-in-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, 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.
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, 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 there’s some joy in it 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.
