As we begin to think practically about what we’re supposed to be doing in order to present men complete in Christ and equip them that they might go out and do ministry, we are no doubt left to ask how this is done. I think for part of that answer, we can look to these three chapters in Matthew. Matthew 8-10 (as William has pointed out in the past) seems to play an important part in Matthew’s topical arrangement of things, setting the stage for the great commission. In fact, if you break apart the great commission and then turn back to these chapters, you will find the themes shown compactly in Matthew 28:19-20 are expanded in these three chapters. Therefore, they do well in helping us answer the question as to how we are supposed to be equipping individuals that they might then distribute grace to multitudes all over the world.
Therefore, tonight I want to point out a few things that I think Matthew is communicating by arranging these events in Jesus’ life together. And they are things that I hope everyone who ever attends this church knows. They are things that we must teach them if we are to be faithful to the calling that we have been given by God as a church. By that, I don’t want everyone to think that you are responsible to teach everyone God brings us in the manner that I am teaching tonight, for this is not the way in which everyone is supposed to work. Some of you may teach the following just through living these things out, praying and encouraging individuals to see these things, or exhibiting these truths toward individuals. God no doubt has gifted many of us differently to carry out this task completely, so don’t feel the pressure to do what I’m doing even though I will use the word “teach” in relation to these things tonight. Also, do not feel it your burden (necessarily) to teach all of these things. For God may use one of you to focus on one and another to focus on another, and so on. However, it is necessarily for all of us that we know and understand these things if we are to fulfill the mission God has given us. Therefore, tonight I want to lay out six practical steps that people need to understand if they are to be successfully equipped and sent out. And though this list is not extensive, these will nevertheless be a part of any extensive list.
Matthew combines together the stories of Jesus’ life in chapters 8 and 9 because he is trying to make a point. And the point is no doubt that Christ has all authority and power. Matthew gives us glimpses of Jesus’ authority over a number of things. He shows us Jesus’ authority over sickness as he heals the leper (8:1-4), the paralytic (8:5-13), Peter’s mother-in-law (8:14-17), the woman with the issue of blood (9:18-22), and two blind men (9:27-31). He heals with the very authority of God. This is the point of Matthew 8:5-13. The centurion’s comment to Jesus is not that he knows Jesus can speak the word and heal his servant because he too is a powerful man. No, that would be saying what all the masses know. Rather, he says that he knows Jesus can simply say, “Be healed” and the man will be healed because, “I, too, am a man under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to this one, ‘Go!’ and he goes, and to another ‘Come!’ and he comes, and to my slave, ‘Do this!’ and he does it” (8:9). Therefore, what he was saying is when I speak, men do what I say because they realize I am under the authority of the Caesar. Therefore, when I tell them to do something, it is equal to the Caesar telling them to do something. I speak as one much greater than what your eyes tell you they see before you. And in saying that, he was saying that he realized the same thing was true with Jesus. This centurion realized that when Jesus spoke, he spoke with the authority of God. He realized that Jesus was equal with the Father. That’s why Jesus responds, “Truly I say to you, I have not found such great faith with anyone in Israel” (8:10).
Why did the Jews want to crucify Christ? They wanted to crucify him because they knew he was claiming to be equal with God, and they didn’t believe him and thought he was committing blasphemy against God. In contrast, this Roman soldier believed this reality, though he was a Gentile; even the very Son of God marveled at him (8:10). Therefore, that Jesus has the authority of God over sickness is a very clear message from Matthew.
But Matthew also points out that he has authority over demons. He includes stories of Jesus casting out demons in 8:28-34 and 9:32-34. Therefore, Jesus has authority over the demons, speaking and forcing them to leave. But Jesus’ authority does not stop there.
Matthew includes as well that he has authority over death, causing a dead girl to be raised (9:23-26). And Matthew lets us know as well that Jesus has authority over nature, causing the waves to be still (8:23-27).
But the most extraordinary display of Jesus’ authority is with that of sin. That is to say, Jesus has the power to forgive sins. Matthew makes this clear as well with the story of the paralytic whom Jesus heals and pronounces that his sins are forgiven (9:2). And to drive the point home, Jesus says, “In order that you may know that the Son Man has authority on earth to forgive sins … Rise, take up your bed, and go home” (9:6). Jesus indeed has the authority of God himself. This is no doubt Matthew’s aim in grouping all of these stories together. The message is that there is no authority lacked by Jesus, for he is himself God, the Son.
Why is this so important to realize? It is so crucial because we need to understand the power in which we are sent out when Jesus declares, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I command you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:19-20).
We need to understand that when we walk after the commands of Christ that we go in his authority. And his authority is the authority of God. If God spoke to you audibly and said, “Do this,” would you hesitate and wonder if it could be done? Would you doubt that God would be behind your work? No, for God said that he wanted it to be done and he has all power to make it happen. Therefore, as you obey, you obey with the authority of God at your back.
It is like telling your little brother that he has to pick up his toys from your room when your Dad has told you to tell him and stands behind you, looking over your shoulder as you speak. We would be crazy to come up with excuses not to obey or to worry about he right thing happening. Though it sounds crazy, God has a vested interest in the command that he gave us in Matthew 28:19-20. He wants to call his people to himself, and he’s going to. We simply get to be a part of that work. What a privilege! The question is not, “Is God going to call his people to himself, including people from every tongue, tribe, and nation?” The question is rather, “Are you going to join in the work of God that you might be a tool he uses to call his people to himself, including people from every tongue tribe and nation; or are you going to disobey and suffer an incalculable loss of joy?”
When we go, when we obey, as we are sent out, we do so with the authority of Jesus Christ – with the authority of God. That is what everyone that comes through these doors needs to know concerning the work of ministry.
If knowledge is what we comprehend and wisdom is the ability to know how and when to apply that knowledge (which it might not be, technically, but for the sake of discussion, let’s assume that it is), then we need both even as Christ modeled both for us.
Jesus showed great knowledge and wisdom in chapters 8 and 9 (as he did throughout his life). And it is something that we can learn. First of all, we need to understand that conversion is the work of God in a man’s life wherein his heart is changed, he is made a new creature, and God’s grace builds within him a love for God himself so that even if the individual is tempted or walks away for a time from following the One who has become his Lord, his heart is brought back, for he has been “captured” (if you will) by the grace of God.
Jesus understood that this is what conversion is. This is knowledge that we need to have. But the hardest thing is having the wisdom to let this affect our evangelism. Let me show you an example of this in Jesus’ life in these chapters and then try to give you a personal example.
In 8:18-22, Jesus has two men that come to him and say that they want to follow him. Whereas we have been trained our entire lives to do whatever we can to get them to say a prayer, assure them of their salvation, get them baptized, and declare they are a brother or sister and fellow church member, Jesus handles things much differently.
He tells the first one, “Foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head” (8:20). And to the other, he says, after the man’s request to first go bury his father, “Follow Me; and allow the dead to bury their own” (8:22). Jesus is actually putting up barriers and making these men consider the cost. Jesus was not wanting followers, however, he was wanting genuine converts whose hearts had been made God’s. One author rightly states, “Nothing was less aimed at by our Lord that to have followers, unless they were genuine and sound; he is as far from desiring this as it would have been easy to attain it.”1 Jesus was looking for true converts, true disciples, and he knew that those who God indeed had converted would follow him.
That is knowledge and wisdom in action. Let me give you an example of this from my life. My brother-in-law is not saved. I have prayed for him for years now (and many of you have as well). Well, he said to my sister a few weeks ago that after blowing off God for years, the next time that God convicts his heart, he thinks he will surrender.
Yesterday, he went to visit someone who used to be a pastor to my family. While there, my brother-in-law was the one who initiated conversation about God. Indeed, my brother-in-law was the one who brought up to my former pastor that conversation when he had made the statement that if God convicted him that he would surrender. And it seemed that my brother-in-law was starting to feel a little helpless, wondering if God was interested in him any more, after he had rejected the word of the Lord so many times.
Do you know what my former pastor said to him? He said, “When God exposes your sin to you, shows you who you are, and breaks you over it, then you should fall before him in utter brokenness, completely throwing yourself on his mercy to save, realizing that your are helpless outside of the grace of God to save you and justify you before him.”2 And you know what, he is right. He is right.
What many of us, including myself, would have been tempted to do is to say, “Let’s pray right now and we can get this behind you, and I can declare you saved, and …” But you know what Jesus says to us, “No one can come to Me, unless the Father who sent Me draws him” (John 6:44). Therefore, it’s not in my power to change his heart.
So what this pastor said to my brother-in-law was right. If he had pressed, he might have been able to get him to say a prayer. But my prayer is that my brother-in-law is genuinely converted. And I desire that more if it happens a year from now than I desire hearing that he said a prayer tomorrow if God hasn’t brought about true conversion in his heart. This knowledge and wisdom by my pastor friend is no doubt the same knowledge and wisdom displayed by Christ in these chapters. Both are after true converts whose hearts have been grasped by God, not mere followers who will soon find their passions elsewhere and drift away.
I will comment more on this in a second, but let me first point out another area of Jesus’ knowledge and wisdom. Jesus knew that those who needed to be saved were sinners. We know this as well. But whereas he knew what this meant for his life, we often depart from Jesus’ wisdom. For Jesus understood that if sinners were the ones who needed to be made righteous and that they needed the gospel to be spoken to them to be saved, then he needed to go to them and speak the gospel to them.
This seems so simple, doesn’t it? But what has happened in the church is that we’ve repeated the mistake of the Pharisees. We’ve said of Jesus, “Why [is he] eating with the tax-gatherers and sinners?” (9:11). We do this by thinking it is utterly wrong to go to the sinners but that it is expected and right for the sinners to come to us. This is how we’ve tried to do evangelism for decades. But Jesus didn’t. He went to them, and men spoke badly of him. However, he knew who needed righteousness. Thus, we need to exercise such wisdom from the Lord in our lives.
But the question that many have asked me after addressing this topic is, “If it’s not just getting people to say a prayer, how do we evangelize?”
In short, the answer is that we preach the gospel. We preach that, though He is holy, man is utterly sinful and guilty, and God’s wrath burns against sinful man, God has provided a way for men to be saved from the wrath of God through the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ as they repent and place their faith in him. But then what do we do? After we do this, what’s our part? And here the answer is simply that we lead them to Jesus. We point them to Jesus who alone can convict them of sin, give them faith to believe and grace to understand the truth, and take their hearts of stone and turn them into hearts of flesh. We lead them to the one who can bring true conversion and make men who hate God into men who love God.
This doesn’t mean that you leave the man necessarily, but it does mean that he understands that God is the one who will save him and that it isn’t you. Now, yes, you will no doubt be special before him, but he will know that you are not a priest who must be present if he is to meet with God. And he can express his faith in prayer. But his faith (which will be expressed in that prayer) is what is important, for that faith was brought about by God’s transformation of his heart from one who hates and rebels against God to one that trusts and loves him.
And when men are given hearts like this, we will behold true conversion before us. But we must practice these things with knowledge and wisdom even as Christ modeled this for us.
Our affections must be set on Christ if we are to faithfully walk in obedience to our Lord no matter the cost. In Matthew 9:14-17 we see that this is to be the mindset of Jesus’ disciples.
In this passage, some disciples of John approach Jesus and ask why they and the Pharisees fast while Jesus’ disciples do not. Jesus answers, “The attendants of the bridegroom cannot mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them, can they? But the days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast. But no one puts a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; for the patch pulls away from the garment, and a worse tear results. Nor do men put new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the wineskins burst, and the wine pours out, and the wineskins are ruined; but they put new wine into fresh wineskins, and both are preserved.”
Now there are many lessons here about fasting that we could see, but I only want to point out a few and show you why I think Jesus intends for his disciples to have their affections and minds set on him as they labor in this world. Jesus responds to the question of fasting by saying, “The attendants of the bridegroom cannot mourn …” Fasting is associated with mourning. Therefore, fasting was done as an act of mourning and longing. For example, we remember from Matthew 1-2 that the Jews had waited for a Davidic descendant to reign on the throne for over 580 years before Christ. Therefore, in that time, they mourned and longed and ached in their hearts for this promised one to come. And they expressed this through fasting, which was the right thing to do. Therefore, why does Jesus say his disciples do not fast? It is because he is here. The “bridegroom” is here, so why would anyone fast now? It is a time for celebration. Their longing had been answered. The Christ had been their longing and focus for years and had led them to mourn as they hadn’t seen him, but now he had come and it was a time for celebration.
Then Jesus tells them, however, that there will be a time of fasting again for his disciples, for he will be taken away (9:15). Then they will indeed fast. But it will be different from the fasting that had taken place before. For they have tasted and seen the reality of the coming of the Messiah, redeeming his people and forgiving their sins. Then (which is now), they would long for their triumphant Messiah to return and take them that where he is there they might be also (John 14:2-3). This is why Jesus says the bit about the new wine in old wineskins. Those who don’t recognize that the Messiah has come are fasting for the coming of the Christ, but they are looking for something that has already happened. But there is now something new that will happen. In the words of Jesus, they are trying to put new wine into old wineskins. But we fast for another coming of our Lord.
But the point I want us to see here is that Jesus expected his disciples to fast once he was gone. That is to say, just as those in the Old Testament who heard the promises and fasted, setting their minds and affections on the coming Messiah, had their whole lives consumed in the Christ, so should we. In fact, we should have our lives caught in Christ more so. He must be the very thing that drives us.
There is a power in being motivated by a hope in Christ that is more powerful that any other motivation we can imagine. That’s why Hebrews 11 can list some difficult acts of obedience that were said to be done in faith. That is their acts were motivated by hope in the coming promise – the Messiah – whom they didn’t even get to behold. They weren’t motivated mainly by man, or praise, or simple dedication; they were driven by their hope in Christ.
Everyone that we send out should go from here driven by their hope in Christ. We do people a disservice if we send them out motivated by a love for people, or praise, or a hundred other things. For these things will not last and will not provide the power for obedience that we behold in Hebrews 11. You will quit being obedient to the Lord as he tells you to encourage people if your motivation is simply the individual. For what happens if every time you encourage, they snap at you or complain about something? Or what happens if you are persecuted by the very people with whom you are trying to share the gospel? Will you do like Paul in Acts 18, going back into Corinth, where he had been persecuted, only to preach more? I don’t think you will if you are merely driven by the people, but if you are driven by a sincere hope in Christ, you will find the strength to be obedient at all costs.
This is the kind of people that we are supposed to be – so wrapped up in our hope in Christ and our passionate longing for him that we find ourselves fasting, mourning because he is not as present as our hearts long for him to be. I hope the reason fasting has dropped off much for many is not because our longing and aching for our Christ has dropped as well. He must be the hope of all whom we equip for ministry, or else we’ve failed to equip them properly.
At the end of chapter nine, we see two scenes. The first is that of Jesus being opposed by the Pharisees. Even as Jesus casts a demon out of a dumb man and enables him to speak, the Pharisees respond, “He casts out demons by the ruler of demons” (9:34). And the second is that of Jesus having compassion over the multitudes and telling his disciples to pray that God might send out workers into the harvest (9:38).
And then chapter ten picks up with Jesus sending out his disciples to go preach in the surrounding area. This is much what Antioch would do later with Paul and Barnabas (Acts 13). And it is what many of us feel that God will allow us to be a part of (especially with the many college students passing through our doors). But Jesus’ opposition was a foretaste of what his disciples will know. I want this to come as no surprise to us.
First of all, Jesus tells his disciples in Matthew 10:14 that they would not necessarily be received. Then he tells them that they would be delivered up to the courts (10:17 – which is happening with Christian missionaries in Afghanistan), scourged (10:17), brought before governors (10:18), face betrayal to the point of death from those who are closest (10:21), and that they would be hated on account of him (22). And if they are surprised by this, he reminds them of the events in 9:34 as he says in 10:25, “If they have called the head of the house Beelzebul, how much more the members of his household!”
Therefore, though it is an exciting and thrilling thing to go out into the world, into the workplace, etc. as ministers of the gospel, don’t expect things to be sweet, good, and friendly. If we don’t prepare our hearts and minds for this, we might find ourselves thinking we need to change our message, possibly compromising on the exclusivity of Christ (that Jesus is the only way), as many have already done.
When Jesus was telling his disciples all of these things, I am sure that they were shaking, scared, and doubting whether or not they were doing the right thing; to them (and, by extension, to us) Jesus says the exactly perfect comforting thing. He reminds them in 10:24-39 that they need only to fear God. For, as Jesus lays out:
- That God will judge all men in the end and the gospel message will go out (10:26-27).
- That people cannot kill the soul, but only God can (10:28).
- That God himself knows us, cares for us, and is watching over us in his sovereignty (10:31).
- That those who acknowledge Christ are acknowledged by him before the Father (10:32-33).
- That he who loses everything (even this life) and knows God, loses nothing, but gains everything (10:34-39).
Therefore, despite everything our flesh tells us to fear, we must fear God alone.
Ultimately, as I dream of people whom God will take from this body and use to build up in the body of Christ in their different callings in different parts of the world, I pray that they might know the love of God through us and that we might recognize that in blessing those whom God has given us that we are blessing the very heart of God.
Jesus says in 10:40-42, “He who receives you receives Me, and he who receives Me receives Him who sent Me. He who receives a prophet in the name of a prophet shall receive a prophet’s reward; and he who receives a righteous man in the name of a righteous man shall receive a righteous man’s reward. And whoever in the name of a disciple gives to one of these little ones even a cup of cold water to drink, truly I say to you he shall not lose his reward.”
Therefore, let us love one another, and know that no matter where we go in this world, we can love those who love our God and be loved by them. Few things are more fulfilling than to know in the depths of your heart that someone passionately loves your Lord even as you do.
Therefore, let us focus on letting these things take root in our hearts:
1. We need to remember that we are sent out in the authority of Christ.
2. We need to grow in and practice the wisdom displayed for us by Christ in the Scriptures.
3. We need to be driven by our hope in Christ.
4. We need to recognize the opposition that we will face as followers of Christ.
5. We need to remember that we must fear God alone.
6. We need to realize our blessedness of loving God’s people as his church and being loved by God through his church.
These are not exhaustive, but they are indeed a part of what I hope every believer who is called into (and out of) this body of believers understands and allows to shape his or her life.
May his grace be with us. Amen.