We know where Matthew ends this gospel. He ends his gospel account with the words of Christ that we know as the Great Commission, where, after noting that all authority had been given to him, Jesus declares, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matt 28:19-20). But I think that Matthew himself also knew where he was going to end his gospel before he even started writing. He was writing, in one sense, to build up to this moment when the risen Christ commissioned his church to embark on this mission of making disciples of the nations.
And because I believe this was Matthew’s object from this outset of his gospel, this text that we study this morning (9:35-10:15) is a crucial turning point in Matthew’s gospel. To this point, Jesus has largely been the main actor. If there is teaching, healing, or casting out demons; he’s the one that’s done it. He’s carrying out the mission that his Father sent him to perform. But this text introduces us to the fact that the mission of Christ will be carried out by others laboring under his authority.
Specifically what happens in our text is Christ grants authority and commissions twelve of his followers, the apostles, to perform the same tasks and same mission that he has been about. In fact, Matthew writes this in such a way that we can’t miss it. In 9:35 we’re told, “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.” Then, the language is almost perfectly parallel as we read in 10:1, “And he 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.” Finally, in 10:7-8, we read that the twelve as to proclaim that the kingdom of heaven is at hand and demonstrate the power of the kingdom as they heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, and cast out demons – the very tasks that we’ve seen Jesus performing.
The point, of course, being that those who have received the kingdom have now been made agents of the kingdom; those who were called out of the world into the kingdom of Christ are being sent back into the world in order to bring others into the kingdom. Or, as we see at the end of the book, they are sent to make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them and teaching them to obey all that Christ has commanded. This was Christ’s mission, and this is the church’s mission. And because this is what this text is about, it’s what I want to talk about this morning. But before I dive into the points of the sermon, let me make a few preliminary points about this text.
First, though this text deals with the twelve apostles and their mission specifically, I think it is instructive for the task of the entire church.
Now, I say this for a couple of reasons. One of them is that Jesus is going to make this quite clear in Matthew 28:18-20, as I noted at the start of the sermon. The other, however, is that this introduction of the twelve apostles that we find for the first time in the NT right here in this text is not by mistake. What I mean is that the fact that Jesus called twelve men to himself in 10:1 and these twelve are called apostles in 10:2 is not by mistake.
In the OT, God raised up Isaac’s son, Jacob, renamed his Israel, and then brought about twelve tribes that made up God’s people from his sons. These twelve tribes represented the people of God. Well, in the NT, when God calls out twelve men whom he terms “apostles,” it’s because he is showing that he is going to bring about a people for himself founded on these men. And indeed that’s what happens. These apostles record the words of Christ and all that truth that the Spirit leads them to understand as the words of Holy Scripture so that we who make up the church in the present day rightly refer to ourselves as the apostolic church because we are built upon the authoritative witness, testimony, and writings of these men. Therefore, this introduction of the twelve and the task given to them is absolutely meant to serve as a foreshadowing of the church and the task given to us as Christ’s followers in the Great Commission.
Second, one of the marks that Christ has made you part of his kingdom is that he puts in your heart a desire to see his mission fulfilled.
Being a recipient of the kingdom is shown in you becoming one who desires others to be part of the kingdom and to grow in love for and obedience to Christ as king. I don’t have much more to add to this declaration except simply to note it. One sign that you belong to Christ is that you long to see Christ’s mission obeyed and fulfilled.
Finally, the church which Christ has chosen to carry out his mission is full of many people who only have Christ in common.
I mention this because when you look at the names of the twelve in verses 2-4, it’s amazing that Jesus called these guys to labor together. For example, you’ve got a tax collector in Matthew, who worked to uphold and support the Roman government, and Simon the Zealot, who would have been working to overthrow the Roman government. But that’s how Christ works, and that’s the glory of the church. We’re made up of people who may differ on economic theory, class, nationality, and a hundred other things. But we both profess that Jesus Christ is Lord, and we must obey him. And therefore we love one another, and we are committed to obey Christ’s mission together.
So, that’s the background I want us to consider as I try to draw out points that I think this text shows us: Christ has given his church (a group who may well only have devotion to Christ in common) a desire to obey his mission when he called us out of the world to himself, and he has now sent us into the world to carry out the task of making disciples of all nations. Now, I want to point out some things that I think this text teaches us about that mission that Christ has given us as his church.
In the opening verses of our section, we see that Jesus was going through all the cities and villages, teaching, preaching the gospel, and healing every disease and affliction. But then we’re given some insight into Jesus’ heart. In 9:36, Matthew writes, “When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.”
This analogy of the people being “sheep without a shepherd” is not used here because Jesus was ministering in a place where this would be an easy-to-grasp illustration. This had been used in the days of the OT when Israel would be full of sin and rebellion, and the Lord would often rebuke their leaders. After all, when the king was good, the people typically obeyed. And when he disobeyed, the people disobeyed. So, the Lord came in judgment upon his people, scattering them to different parts of the earth, just as sheep can be scattered when something threatening and fearful occurs.
So, Jesus looks at the crowds, and these crowds may have looked very much like Israel. That is, they were no doubt in situations that we would be right to label immoral (again, just like Israel). The woman at the well, for example, had been married multiple times and was now living with a man to whom she was not married. But, remember, Jesus came to save sinners.
Therefore, as he sees these people, each doing what is right in his or her own eyes, he doesn’t express first moral outrage (though he will call them to repentance) but compassion, because he sees them as having no shepherd to lead them and them wandering about and consequently suffering.
We have the same thing in our world. Nathan was giving us the violent crime report for Jackson just a few days ago in our elders’ meeting, and it’s brutal. There’s so much anger and so much pain. Often there are violent acts being committed by men and women who were themselves first the victim of similar violent acts. My neighborhood and yours are filled with people who consistently refuse to acknowledge the Lord Jesus Christ, look at the glory of creation which bears witness to our God, and suppresses that truth in unrighteousness, and Jesus looks on those who daily reject him with compassion.
Now, I mention that Jesus exercises this compassion because there may be days that you don’t feel it. You may have reached out, ministered, served, and cared for your unbelieving neighbor, and feel like he ignores all your efforts. You may have given to one in need only to feel like you were deceived and, in essence, robbed. And if those things continue to happen, you may well not want to reach out any more. You may not want to take another chance of attempting to care for anyone else. You may think, “I’ve been there, done that, and been burned. And I’ll do no more.”
However, this text reminds us that Jesus has compassion on my neighbor and yours, on our co-workers, on our unbelieving family, on those in the jungles of Peru, the beach of South Africa, and the Mormons of Salt Lake City. And our commitment to obey Christ doesn’t stem from our compassion (which may wax and wane) but from Jesus’ compassion. We love Christ and want to obey him, he has compassion for the lost, and so we go to them, demonstrating the compassion of Christ as we go. And because his compassion, unlike ours, is consistent, we must persist and be faithful in the mission of making disciples of the nations. Our mission stems from Jesus’ compassion. Second:
Where Jesus goes next is utterly contrary to our thinking. Jesus has compassion, knows the crowd needs people to go to them with the gospel of the kingdom, and so he says … “pray that the Lord would send laborers to them.” We read in verses 37-38, “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 the harvest.’”
This is a step, frankly, I think we like to skip. We think, rather, “We see the need, we’ve got people, let’s gather these people, equip and train them, and send out these laborers into the harvest.” But that’s not what Jesus says. He says, “Pray that the Lord would send laborers into his harvest.”
If we’re going to be faithful to obey the Great Commission, the very mission of Christ (making disciples of our neighbors and of the nations), then we are utterly dependent on the Lord raising up (and continually raising up) people who want to be trained, equipped, and sent into the harvest. You and I are powerless to produce those kinds of hearts in people ourselves. The Lord must do that.
So, making this practical, at Cornerstone, I want to make sure that we are continually exercising means to train, equip, and send out people to fulfill the Great Commission. I want to make sure that our Sunday school classes are equipping people with what they need to learn in order to love and obey Christ, that our internship focuses on people being able to lead in planting churches for the sake of the mission of Christ, that our small groups equip people to applying Christ’s commands in every situation in life. But all of those things are second steps in this mission. The first is to pray.
We need to be a church who is faithful to pray and ask the Lord to send laborers into the harvest. If we’re going to be a church that sends people to our neighbors and to the nations to make disciples, then we must be people who pray this way. We need to be praying for the Lord to send out people among us and to send us people whom we can send into the harvest. Before every new school year at Union, we should be praying that the Lord would send us people whom we can train and send into the harvest.
People are waiting for the gospel, waiting to be taught to obey all that Christ commands, and we must be faithful to pray and pray consistently that the Lord would raise up and send laborers into the harvest. Our ability to see our vision of sending out hundreds and seeing hundreds of churches planted may well be in proportion to the hundreds and thousands of prayers prayed to that end. O may the Lord grant us the grace to be faithful to pray that he will send laborers into the harvest. Third:
In 10:1-2, we read that Christ commissioned the twelve the same way that the whole church is commission in 28:18-20. Matthew writes, “And he 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.” Then, we read in verses 7-8, “And proclaim as you go, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons.”
Now, how to we deal with this? Why does Jesus command them to preach the gospel and to do these miracles? And do we have this kind of power? After all, when Jesus commissions the church in Matthew 28:18-20, he tells us to make disciples, baptizing them and teaching them. He doesn’t mention healing the sick, raising the dead, cleansing lepers, and casting out demons. So, what do we do with that?
Here’s what I think we gather from this. Jesus wants us to preach the gospel and demonstrate the saving reign of Christ. Remember last week when I said that Jesus’ miracles give us a glimpse of the coming kingdom? Well, another way to say that is to say that Jesus is showing us now a glimpse of what his perfect reign will look like one day when his saving work has swept over all things so that even the earth is made new.
As we walk in this world, however, we see a world that is under God’s wrath and showing the reign of death at every turn. So, what Jesus commands us to do as his church is to go and preach the gospel to all nations because this is the only means by which people can be saved. But in addition to that, we demonstrate what God’s saving reign will look like. When our neighbor gets cancer, we lay hands on him and pray that God would heal her. When our sister is afraid she’s facing another miscarriage, we lay hands on her and pray that the Lord would sustain the life of that child. And we do that, knowing that one day there’ll be no more cancer and no more death when God’s saving reign will be experienced in all its fullness. And we know that only those who hear the gospel and bow the knee to Jesus Christ in faith will experience that saving reign of Christ in full, so we make it our priority and aim to preach the gospel.
That’s what we do. We are going forth with the only message that will enable someone to know God’s saving reign, and we demonstrate the glory of that coming day, as we seek to love our neighbors as ourselves.
And I want to add this note. The local church should be the clearest picture of God’s saving reign on the face of the earth. Obviously we won’t demonstrate it perfectly, but you should be able to be in a local church and get partial glimpses of what awaits us in the day when the Lord returns to establish his reign forever. The church should be filled with people who preach the gospel to one another, teach one another to obey Christ’s commands, pray with one another, encourage one another, pray for healing for one another, love one another enough to help them turn from sin, help one another climb out of poverty, and on and on and on. And this is one reason why church planting must be at the core of accomplishing the Great Commission. We go with the gospel, and what the gospel creates is an outpost of the kingdom in the form of a local church. We preach and demonstrate the saving reign of Christ. Finally:
Now, this is an obvious point to make in that the Great Commission specifically says, teaching them to obey all that Christ has commanded us. But I think we see this same theme in verses 5-15, as we consider Christ’s teaching.
Note just how clearly Christ provides instruction. He tells them to whom he wants them to go in this first mission. He wants them to go to Jews, not Gentiles or Samaritans. Now this isn’t because he doesn’t love Gentiles and Samaritans or want the gospel to go to them. He does. He makes that clear at the end of this gospel and at the beginning of the book of Acts. But he even makes it clear in this chapter as we see him talking to his disciples about bearing witness before the Gentiles in 10:18.
I think the main issue here is that Jesus is equipping his followers. And, frankly, they’re not ready to go to the Samaritans and Gentiles. We know from Luke 9:51-54 that when one Samaritan village rejects Jesus, James and John ask if they can call down fire from heaven to consume them. Clearly they’re not in a healthy place to go minister in Samaritan villages. And we know the struggle the early church faced as Jesus called them to go to Gentiles with the gospel, even after the day of Pentecost. So, Jesus knows what they’re ready for and what they need. And he’s teaching and equipping them how to obey him.
This is a lesson for us. When I first told my church I grew up in that I thought God wanted me to preach, I was scheduled to preach a few Sunday nights later. That’s like telling some kid who says he wants to be a mechanic to fix the next car that’s brought into the garage. Some teaching and training is necessary. Zeal doesn’t equal preparedness.
Jesus though walks through details of what obedience looks like. He tells them that they should minister with no sense of wanting personal gain. They freely received the gospel and should freely give it. Yet, they should also trust that those who welcome the gospel should want to materially provide for them, “for the laborer deserves his food” (10:10).
If they come into a town and someone will receive them, happily stay there. There’s no need to see if a better house comes open. Just stay there and bless them. And if someone won’t receive you, dust your feet off and leave them in the hands of the Lord. We have to trust the Lord with those who reject our message.
Such is our task. When someone hears and believes the good news that Christ died for their sins and was raised from the dead, and they trust in him and are saved. We then prepare them to make disciples of others by walking them through what obedience to Christ looks like and training them, as they have become recipients of the kingdom and need to become agents of the kingdom as well. Such is the mission of the church.
Therefore, let us be driven by the compassion of Christ, pray for the Lord to send forth laborers into the harvest, labor ourselves to preach and demonstrate Christ’s saving reign, and always be learning and teaching others how to obey all that Christ commands1. And as we do, remember that Christ is with us always, even as this meal we now come to celebrate reminds us. Amen.