Show Notes
Matthew 10:16 - 23
Pastor Stephen Lauer
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Episode Transcript
[00:00:05] Lord Jesus, we have just heard how it was that you received false accusations, that you were falsely and wrongly condemned by a human court which did so for the sole purpose of seeking to put you to death.
[00:00:32] And we have heard how you were grievously treated.
[00:00:40] Lord Jesus, we confess that few of us have faced such opposition as you did in your earthly ministry, and at the end, in your passion.
[00:00:57] And yet we come to you as your children who bear your name. And for your sake you call us to face opposition in this life.
[00:01:10] We confess ourselves not only unworthy of this privilege, but we also confess that often our hearts are.
[00:01:17] Are troubled by this and we don't know what to do.
[00:01:23] And sometimes we remain quiet.
[00:01:26] We doubt your promises to keep us in the face of persecution or opposition.
[00:01:32] And we confess that in these ways we have often sinned, and sometimes we have responded poorly to such opposition as you, Lord, know, for you were with us as we went through it.
[00:01:50] But we thank youk that yout are gracious, merciful and loving, and that yout forgive us.
[00:01:57] We ask, Lord Jesus, that yout would help us as we open youn word together this evening, that by youy spirit you would work on our hearts, that we would be ready to receive your instruction, your encouragements, and most of all, that we would be ready to receive you.
[00:02:17] That we would draw closer to you, that our faith would increase, that our hearts, our souls, might feed upon you by faith.
[00:02:27] Bless us.
[00:02:29] Amen.
[00:02:34] Our sermon text this evening is from Matthew 10. We're going to begin reading in verse 16.
[00:02:44] We'll read through verse 23, Matthew 10, beginning in verse 16. Hear God's word.
[00:02:56] Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves.
[00:03:02] So be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.
[00:03:07] Beware of men, for they will deliver you over to courts and flog you in their synagogues. You will be dragged before governors and kings for my sake to bear witness before them and the Gentiles when they deliver you over.
[00:03:24] Do not be anxious how you are to speak what you are to say, for what you are to say will be given you in that hour.
[00:03:34] For it is not you who speak, but the spirit of your Father speaking through you.
[00:03:39] Brother will deliver brother over to death. Father, his child and children will rise up against parents and have them put to death.
[00:03:49] And you will be hated by all for My name's sake.
[00:03:53] But the one who endures to the end will be saved.
[00:03:58] When they persecute you in one town, flee to the next.
[00:04:02] For truly I say to you, you will not have gone through all the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes.
[00:04:10] Thus far. God's word.
[00:04:12] Please be seated.
[00:04:24] Who enjoys conflict?
[00:04:26] There's a few people out there that do.
[00:04:29] You don't have to raise your hand if that's you.
[00:04:34] Very few people enjoy conflict. And what's more, sometimes we have conflict with people that aren't on the same side. We're working through problems.
[00:04:44] But if you don't like conflict, you definitely don't like to have people who are opposed to you. I'm not talking about your opponents. In a soccer match, that can be fun. And the better the opponent. The better match the opponent, the more fun. No, I'm talking about other kinds of opposition.
[00:05:04] If you have an enemy at work, if you have a family member or a. Or a friend who you thought was a friend who's out to get you for some reason, this kind of opposition, what do you do with it? How do you respond?
[00:05:22] It's challenging, right?
[00:05:25] How do you respond? Well, do you simply remain quiet when the person accuses you falsely of doing something wrong? Or.
[00:05:37] Or do you bite back with words or with actions?
[00:05:42] That's what we're tempted to do, isn't it?
[00:05:45] Well, Jesus here in these verses is preparing the apostles, the twelve disciples, to face opposition.
[00:05:54] Pretty serious opposition. Not just a little conflict with a co worker or a family member, but people who are going to be out to kill.
[00:06:03] Not just persecute, not just give grief and cause trouble and hassle, but out to kill, put to death the apostles.
[00:06:12] We've been working slowly through this section of Matthew 10. We saw that Jesus sent out the apostles. He empowered them to preach the gospel, to give the gift of the kingdom, to give it freely, without charge. We saw how he equipped them with, how he promised that he would provide for them. That promise, the worker is worthy of his wages. In other words, I'm going to provide for you. In the meantime, I'm going to send you out just like me, with nothing.
[00:06:44] Then he talked to them about how they would be received. You're going to preach my gospel. You're going to offer my kingdom to people free of charge. You're going to look and act and think like me, hopefully.
[00:06:55] How are people going to receive you? They may reject you.
[00:06:59] Now we move from rejection, maybe a little bit of a conflict there, to outright opposition.
[00:07:06] People who are enemies of the gospel.
[00:07:11] Jesus is preparing these men as he sends them out on this mission, to face enemies, opponents, opponents that Jesus describes as wolves. And that's our theme this evening. How Jesus sends them to wolves, how the disciples are sent among wolves.
[00:07:30] Preachers usually have three points. I have three.
[00:07:33] We're going to look first at how he sends them as sheep among the wolves. Secondly, as he sends them as serpents.
[00:07:40] And thirdly, as he sends them as doves. All three in the verse there, verse 16, sheep, serpents and doves.
[00:07:50] So first sent as sheep, Jesus sends his disciples among the wolves as sheep.
[00:07:58] He sends his disciples into a wolf pack.
[00:08:03] Now, you and I, even as human beings, as people, you know, I'm six foot tall.
[00:08:11] I wouldn't run into a wolf pack, right? If there were wolves out there, I certainly wouldn't send a sheep into a wolf pack.
[00:08:21] We wouldn't do this.
[00:08:24] But King Jesus is sending his preachers on a preaching mission, and he's sending them right into the middle of a wolf pack.
[00:08:35] Now, this doesn't sound like a good idea to you and I, does it?
[00:08:40] Of course, it's a metaphor, right? Jesus is using the imagery of a wolf and a sheep being sent into a wolf pack to teach us something. To teach preachers especially, but all Christians something about what it is to be sent by Jesus into a world that doesn't want to hear the Gospel.
[00:08:59] To understand what he means by sheep. Here we have to think about the wolf pack.
[00:09:05] Because the Bible often talks about Christians as being sheep. And Jesus is our shepherd. He's using the word sheep here with a different idea.
[00:09:14] Their sheep are helpless, right? And they have to be cared for and fed and they're foolish and wayward and so on. Here the idea of sheep among wolves is about the sheep being helpless or defenseless.
[00:09:32] Think about wolves. They have these nice big teeth. And when you get a pack of wolves, the wolves are designed not just to, one at a time, tear into the flesh of their prey and eat them. But a wolf pack is designed to work together to hunt its prey and to take it. Take the prey down one by one, tear them apart, kill them and eat them, devour them.
[00:09:57] That's the imagery Jesus wants to get in our mind as he says that he's sending his apostles, his preachers, into a wolf pack.
[00:10:06] That you as sheep, are going to be defenseless against wolves. Your teeth are like sheep's teeth. They're made for chewing grass, not flesh. They're not made for attacking, destroying and killing.
[00:10:20] Jesus sends his preachers into the wolf pack with no defenses, helpless.
[00:10:28] To be a sheep means nothing. To defend yourself against the threat of death. So in our modern language, it would be like sending a preacher Somewhere where the wolves are and giving him no sword, no knife, no gun, nothing with which to defend himself.
[00:10:51] Jesus is sending his preachers into the face of death, from a human perspective, sure and certain death. Because that's what happens when you send a sheep into a wolf pack.
[00:11:04] You and I are sheep. Sheep in the general biblical sense of sheep that need to be saved from being wayward, that need to be fed by a shepherd.
[00:11:13] We're also sheep in the sense that Jesus sends us into a world that may want to put us to death.
[00:11:21] This is especially true of his preachers.
[00:11:24] Jesus puts on us on the front lines, out in front to lead the flock here, and that attracts attention, sometimes persecution and even death.
[00:11:38] This isn't, of course, true just of preachers. Christians around the world are persecuted, and we're told this in other parts of the Bible. 2 Timothy 3:12 says that as Paul reflects on his own suffering and persecution he's experiencing, he then says, indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.
[00:12:03] Yeah, this is especially true here in verse 16 of Preachers. But the rest of the New Testament tells us that the world is out to get us.
[00:12:12] And if we seek to be faithful to Christ and to our witness to him, we will face persecution.
[00:12:19] Okay, that's sheep and wolves. We get it. We're defenseless. We can't take up guns to shoot the bad guy when he comes at us, to oppose us for standing for Christ.
[00:12:31] Why?
[00:12:33] Right?
[00:12:34] Why does the good shepherd send his sheep into a wolf pack?
[00:12:40] Why does the king send his heralds into the enemy lines with no weapons or defenses to face certain death? Why does the good shepherd do this?
[00:12:57] Because Jesus kingdom is a very different kind of kingdom than earthly kingdoms.
[00:13:04] That's what's going on here.
[00:13:07] This is the king sending his messengers, his heralds out to herald the coming of the kingdom. To call men to repentance, to turn from their sins, to turn and follow King Jesus. The king is here. Follow him. He offers blessings, forgiveness of sins, and eternal life.
[00:13:26] That's how Jesus extends his kingdom.
[00:13:29] Not through swords, weapons, bows, arrows, and so forth.
[00:13:33] He extends it not by conquering physical territory, but by conquering the hearts of sinners.
[00:13:41] That's the kind of kingdom Jesus came to bring.
[00:13:47] He's not here for natural resources and for political structures. He's here to set up his kingdom in the hearts of men.
[00:13:56] Jesus is conquering sinners for his kingdom.
[00:14:01] And that's something conquering hearts. That's something that weapons cannot do.
[00:14:07] Weapons are weak, guns Swords, knives, they're weak. They can take a life, but they cannot save a life the way the gospel can as it enters the heart of a man.
[00:14:20] Weapons are too weak to change hearts.
[00:14:24] That's the nature of Jesus kingdom. And that's why he sends sheep without weapons, defenseless against the enemy.
[00:14:32] Jesus says this very explicitly about his kingdom. When he's standing, interestingly enough, wrongly and falsely accused of rebellion, insurrection. He's standing before the Roman governor Pilate, and Pilate says, are you a king? Jesus says, yeah, I'm a king, but my kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would be fighting for me.
[00:14:56] In other words, with swords and bows and weapons and armor. They would be fighting for me to get me free and to take over the Roman Empire. But that's not what they're doing, because Jesus says, my kingdom is not of this world. It's a spiritual kingdom.
[00:15:12] Why does he send us as sheep into wolves?
[00:15:16] Because it tells us about the nature of his kingdom.
[00:15:20] Secondly, and this part's probably hard for us to hear, Jesus doesn't just send us among wolves as preachers.
[00:15:29] There's a sense in which he's sending us to the wolves.
[00:15:34] Yes, if you look earlier in Matthew 10, he says, I send you to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
[00:15:39] But Jesus also sends us to preach the gospel to kings and rulers.
[00:15:45] And that's who Jesus is referring to here when he talks about the wolves is those who have the power to persecute his messengers, the disciples to persecute Christians and put them to death.
[00:15:58] Jesus sends preachers to preach the gospel to the wolves too.
[00:16:04] Think of the rulers of the Jews whom Jesus called wolves in sheep's clothing.
[00:16:09] They gathered around Jesus, tried him and put him to death.
[00:16:16] But some of those wolves came into Jesus kingdom. Remember Nicodemus, who came to Jesus at night?
[00:16:25] John, chapter three?
[00:16:27] At the end of John, we find out he's become a follower of Jesus.
[00:16:33] Jesus sends us, not with weapons, bows, swords, to fight against the wolves, but with. But with the gospel, even to the wolves, that some of our enemies might become followers of our king.
[00:16:47] If we bring a sword, we might actually kill him. I'm not good with the sword, but you get the idea. If I bring the gospel, it may be his salvation.
[00:16:58] Thirdly, when Jesus sends us as sheep into wolves, harmless and defenseless, he gives us a promise, as it were, embedded in this command, this foretelling that he's sending us among wolves.
[00:17:17] There's a comfort here to the preacher and to the Christian Jesus, the king knows what we will face.
[00:17:26] He knows that people are going to persecute us, oppose us, and maybe even put us to death.
[00:17:34] And yet Jesus sends us anyway.
[00:17:37] And we know that Jesus wins, right? He died and rose from the dead. We have the Book of Revelation. We know that the lamb wins in the end.
[00:17:47] He's the king. And if he sends us to our death, he has a good purpose.
[00:17:55] He knows what he's doing. And we can trust him that. That this is for his good, for his glory, and for our good also.
[00:18:03] So he warns us in advance that we're going to face wolves so that we wouldn't be afraid, but that instead we would turn to him in trust.
[00:18:15] So he sends us as sheep among wolves.
[00:18:19] But he also says that we're to be wise as serpents. He sends us, in a way, as serpents. This is curious.
[00:18:28] If we're defenseless as sheep, Christ would not have us be foolish like sheep. He would have us be wise as serpents.
[00:18:39] Why serpents?
[00:18:41] If you go look at the commentaries, everybody wrestles with this. What's going on here? The best we can come up with is, I think all Jesus is doing is simply that in the Bible, starting way back in Genesis chapter three, there is the idea, the imagery, that serpents are sneaky and cunning, wise, even crafty in perhaps a good way.
[00:19:02] Genesis chapter three begins with, now the serpent was more crafty than all the beasts of the field.
[00:19:09] It's simply not anything pejorative, but simply that serpents have this reputation for wisdom.
[00:19:19] So Christ calls us, unlike the foolish sheep, to be wise as serpents.
[00:19:24] Particularly here, with the idea of wisdom, what's in mind is what we might call prudence, the idea of thinking carefully about how we're going to act, how we're going to respond to these circumstances of the wolves and whatever they may throw at us.
[00:19:41] It's a sort of practical wisdom or prudence.
[00:19:46] What kind of wisdom? Well, certainly wisdom regarding the imminent threat of persecution or death or whatever that opposition is, that we would avoid negative outcomes, you might say, if we're faced with wolves and the threat of death, no weapons of warfare, then handling ourselves in those situations wisely, carefully, prudently, may allow us to avoid death.
[00:20:14] I think this is at least this basic idea is there. And if you look at the rest of the New Testament, it's borne out.
[00:20:22] Christ himself, when the Jews plotted to kill him, it wasn't his time yet.
[00:20:26] So Jesus avoided them.
[00:20:28] He knew it was coming. He knew they were plotting to Capture him and kill him. He avoided them.
[00:20:34] Paul, after his conversion at Damascus, the Jews sought to capture him and put him to death. What did he do?
[00:20:42] He hid. And then as soon as he could, his friends let him out of a window, in the wall, in a basket, and he got away. There's prudence here, right, in using whatever means are available to us to avoid or escape these threats.
[00:20:59] There's other examples as you read through the Book of Acts. Paul wanted to charge into the arena when Christians were being persecuted by a mob, and his friends held him back. They said, don't go in there, Paul.
[00:21:12] Let the Lord take care of them.
[00:21:14] There's a practical wisdom here in avoiding the threat.
[00:21:18] But there's something deeper here. When Jesus calls us to wisdom in facing the wolves.
[00:21:25] All of this, everything in the Gospels, particularly here in the Gospel of Matthew, it's always in the context of the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom that Jesus is preaching, the kingdom that the apostles are to go out and preach, the kingdom that we preach today.
[00:21:41] So wisest serpents is related to the idea of the kingdom that the apostles are preaching.
[00:21:48] Our opponents, the wolves, are rulers, people with power to put people to death.
[00:21:55] They're often wise and certainly powerful in worldly things and in worldly ways.
[00:22:02] If we were to use worldly wisdom and worldly power and worldly ways of thinking and handling things against our persecutors, we probably wouldn't do so well.
[00:22:15] Certainly we wouldn't achieve our ultimate ends and our goals in preaching the gospel.
[00:22:21] The goal of preaching the gospel isn't for me to avoid death. The goal of preaching the gospel is that men, including the wolves, might hear the gospel of salvation in Jesus Christ and be saved.
[00:22:34] If we pick and choose and use worldly wisdom and worldly ways of doing things to encounter, avoid the wolves and so forth, that's what we look to.
[00:22:46] We aren't going to achieve gospel kingdom ends.
[00:22:50] And you see this in Christ's own example.
[00:22:55] When the wolves, the Jewish wolves, came to trap him, they asked him questions, right? To trap him in his teaching. In some cases so that they could accuse him of blasphemy, or in other cases, so that they could trap him and basically accuse him of being a false teacher and say, don't listen to him. He's a bad teacher.
[00:23:13] Jesus answered wisely. On the one hand, he answered their questions and their dilemmas according to Scripture, interpreting Scripture wisely.
[00:23:21] If you look carefully, you also see that Jesus answered them wisely, revealing their hearts, what was going on in the hearts of the Pharisees, you remember when they came and asked him the question about, well, by what authority Jesus are you baptizing and preaching and doing all of these things?
[00:23:43] And Jesus revealed what was in their hearts, didn't he? He says, well, by what authority did John the Baptist baptize and what happened? The Pharisees knew. We can't answer because if we answer him, we're going to reveal the truth about what's in our hearts. We know that John was from heaven and we rejected him and we didn't listen to him.
[00:24:05] And what did that reveal? They also knew that Jesus was from heaven, sent by God, and they were rejecting their king and Messiah.
[00:24:14] Jesus shows us how to deal wisely with those who oppose us from the word of God. And dealing not focusing so much on the outward problems, but on the matters of the heart that our opponents have, we might think of another way. The Bible describes this kind of wisdom.
[00:24:34] It calls it the wisdom from above in the Book of James.
[00:24:39] It guides us in how we deal with our opponents.
[00:24:43] Think of a difficult co worker or a difficult family member who's not a Christian, who opposes you on a regular basis.
[00:24:51] How does the wisdom from above apply in your dealing with that person?
[00:24:55] I'll just read James 3:17.
[00:24:59] But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere, and a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.
[00:25:24] Take that home. Chew on that. Think about how do those principles of wisdom there imply and how I treat this co worker or friend or loved one who opposes me because of Christ.
[00:25:40] There's a wisdom from above, a wisdom of the kingdom that Christ calls us to in our dealing with those who oppose us.
[00:25:48] Not just practical matters. Though there is at least a third thing here. I think that we can draw from the New Testament regarding the wisdom of the kingdom that Jesus calls us to.
[00:26:00] We need a wisdom to know when to stand for Christ.
[00:26:05] When do we mark that flag out and say, this is one of those moments where the gospel is at stake and Christ's reputation is at stake.
[00:26:15] And no matter what happens here, I have to speak up or I have to stand firm in my calling. Not every moment is one of those moments, is it?
[00:26:28] How do I know when to speak up and when to be silent?
[00:26:32] Well, if it's a matter of wisdom, Biblical wisdom is about meditating on God's word, taking our circumstances and our problems to the Lord in prayer, and having our character shaped over time and our Desires and our knowledge and our ability to apply God's word to situations. It comes with time. It doesn't come with in an instant usually.
[00:26:57] But consider the example of the apostle Paul.
[00:27:01] Paul could likely have been released from prison when he was captured at the temple and then imprisoned by the Roman authorities.
[00:27:13] He likely could have been dismissed had his charges dismissed and been released. He. He was basically charged, arrested and charged on false charges.
[00:27:25] They said you brought Gentiles into the temple. Paul hadn't done that.
[00:27:29] It was a pretty simple matter of fact as to what had happened.
[00:27:34] Paul could have hired a really good lawyer, really good defense attorney. Right. And gotten the charges dismissed pretty quickly, I would imagine, at least from human terms and human worldly wisdom.
[00:27:46] That's what makes sense to me when I read that story.
[00:27:49] And yet Paul doesn't think in worldly, earthly terms.
[00:27:54] He looks at the situation of his trial.
[00:27:57] The Roman governor takes Paul down to the Sanhedrin. Maybe you remember the story, maybe you don't. That's okay.
[00:28:04] And they're discussing what to do with Paul.
[00:28:08] Paul, I think, is applying Christ's teaching here in terms of wisdom to deal with the wolves. The very same Sanhedrin that had put Christ to death. There they are. What do I do with these wolves who oppose me? I could hire a lawyer. I could get off. What does he do? He sees an opportunity to testify for the Gospel.
[00:28:32] He says, I stand on trial before you for the sake of the resurrection.
[00:28:39] That's what he says. This isn't about whether there were some Gentiles with me in the temple or not.
[00:28:45] I'm here as to whether Christ rose from the dead or not.
[00:28:50] In other words, I'm here on trial as to whether God is king and reigning through Christ his Son, and whether you, the Jewish people, have rejected Christ as your king or not.
[00:29:05] You see, Paul's wisdom, God had given him the opportunity of a lifetime to stand for the gospel. And God continued to give him that opportunity. He then got to testify regarding Christ's resurrection to Felix the governor. And then on all the way, he required years of imprisonment. But all the way, Paul got to testify regarding the resurrection before Caesar's court. We don't know whether he stood before Caesar or not, but he was taken all the way to Rome and was tried in Caesar's court. And there again, he got to testify to the resurrection.
[00:29:45] If the name of Christ and if his kingdom is to be advanced, and if it must be advanced at the expense of our freedom or even our lives, the wisdom of Christ, the wisdom of the snake here should guide us.
[00:30:03] Now that's a hard thing.
[00:30:06] That's a really hard thing. It's hard to know when to speak up. Sometimes it's clear, other times it's not so clear, is it?
[00:30:13] Christ, our king, though, sends us out into the midst of wolves, defenseless as sheep, and yet he calls us to be wise as serpents.
[00:30:23] He calls us to equip ourselves with wisdom so we would know how to deal with those difficult circumstances.
[00:30:30] It's hard because most of the time we're not wise like sheep. Speaking of. Me too.
[00:30:36] I'm sorry. Most of the time we're not wise like serpents. Most of the time we're foolish like sheep.
[00:30:43] So what do we need? We need here, we need the wisdom of King Jesus, not the wisdom of Solomon. The wisdom of King Jesus.
[00:30:52] And he tells us, if any of you needs wisdom, ask for it and I will give it to you freely.
[00:31:00] So he sends us as sheep, he sends us as serpents, but he also sends us as doves, defenseless sheep, but not stupid, wise serpents, but not snakes with fangs and venom.
[00:31:17] He wants us instead to be like doves, innocent, pure, harmless doves. And that seems to be the imagery here, simply that the bird doesn't seem to do anything wrong to anybody. It's pure, it's innocent.
[00:31:32] The idea here, particularly of innocence here is of nothing mixed together. No moral evil, no moral wrong. Mixed in pure, innocent.
[00:31:45] Innocent of what? Well, innocent of any wrongdoing, right?
[00:31:50] Any crime, certainly. Peter tells us, well, you know, if you get punished for being a criminal, you're a thief and you steal something as a Christian and you get punished by the governor for that, you deserved it, right?
[00:32:03] Certainly we should be innocent of crime.
[00:32:07] But when we face our opponents, we need to be innocent of more than just crime.
[00:32:14] If we live in sin, if we live with sinful, hateful attitudes, if we're miserable towards those who oppose us because we're Christians, we're going to give them cause.
[00:32:26] Cause to speak ill of ourselves, but more importantly, cause to speak ill of Christ.
[00:32:34] No one will listen to the gospel I preach if I treat them poorly, right?
[00:32:40] Think of it that way, maybe. And the same is true for all of us in our witness to non Christians.
[00:32:47] So, yeah, we need to pursue innocence. Now, we're not perfect, we're sinners. But this is what Christ calls us to here.
[00:32:57] Now, it's not just a general innocence, but specifically an innocence in the face of opposition.
[00:33:05] What do you do when faced with conflict? What do you do when the wolves come after you there. He says you're to be innocent as doves.
[00:33:16] What do I want to do when people come after me? Doesn't matter what it is.
[00:33:21] Doesn't matter whether it's for the cause of Christ or for how I'm conducting myself at work. Whatever it is, when people come after me, what do I want to do? I want to defend myself. I want to fight back my hackles get up, right? This is unjust. You can't treat me this way. This is what we want to do.
[00:33:42] But Jesus calls us to something else.
[00:33:45] He calls us to pursue this harmless innocence of the dove along with the defenselessness of the sheep.
[00:33:53] The innocence of the dove. We do nothing, as it were, in response.
[00:34:01] For our own sake, Right?
[00:34:04] Why, certainly this encounter is not about me.
[00:34:10] The encounter you have with a non Christian who opposes you because you're a Christian. It's not about you.
[00:34:18] That's why we don't defend ourselves. That's why we don't strike back.
[00:34:22] It's about Christ and his gospel.
[00:34:26] If that's the case, the innocence here that we're called to is about being like Jesus, as so much of the gospels are about, is about calling us to conformity with Jesus, our Master and Savior.
[00:34:42] Maybe we have the right in some other context, when we're wrongly sued, to defend ourselves in civil court, that's fine.
[00:34:50] But when someone comes to us because we're a Christian and opposes us, what's at stake is not me and my justice. What's at stake is Christ.
[00:35:01] And he calls me to be like him.
[00:35:04] And what did Jesus do when he was surrounded by wolves?
[00:35:08] Innocent. Had done nothing wrong. No blasphemy. All he had done, all Jesus had done was come and forgive the sins of his people and deliver them from suffering and from subjection to demons. He brought the kingdom of light, the kingdom of heaven. That was what he did. Only good ever.
[00:35:27] And here he was on trial before the Jews and then before Pontius Pilate, Falsely accused, with Pilate, falsely accused of claiming to be king and rejecting Caesar as king. In other words, of insurrection, rebellion.
[00:35:44] What did Jesus do?
[00:35:46] He remained silent. He didn't defend himself.
[00:35:50] When he was finally asked and questioned and required to speak, he spoke the truth of the gospel.
[00:35:57] Yes, I'm a king, but not an earthly one. I bring the kingdom of heaven, a spiritual kingdom. He testified to what he came to do, to who he was. It was a matter of the Gospel, of his mission.
[00:36:13] And what was Pilate's judgment?
[00:36:16] He's innocent.
[00:36:18] This man has done nothing wrong.
[00:36:21] Jesus was innocent.
[00:36:24] He was oppressed, he was afflicted. Yet he opened not his mouth. Isaiah says, like a lamb that is led to slaughter, like a sheep that before its shearers is silent.
[00:36:35] So he opened not his mouth.
[00:36:38] He wasn't concerned with defending himself. He was concerned with stating the truth of the gospel.
[00:36:45] What he had come to do.
[00:36:47] I think that's at the heart of what Jesus is calling us to. Here we were to wrap this whole thing up.
[00:36:54] What are we to do? We're to take every opportunity, everything that we have in that encounter and point it, point the person to Jesus.
[00:37:05] We're to show them with our words, with our actions, that we belong to Jesus and that this is not about me, you hating me. This is about Jesus. And I want you to come to know who he is.
[00:37:21] Think about what Jesus says earlier in Matthew.
[00:37:25] I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. You could substitute love the wolves and pray for them when they persecute you.
[00:37:40] You have that example of Stephen when they're stoning him, that same group of wolves, that same Sanhedrin a few years later is stoning Stephen. And what does he say?
[00:37:55] Lord, forgive them. Don't hold this against them.
[00:37:59] He prays for those wolves who are persecuting him.
[00:38:04] The innocence here that Christ is calling us to is exactly that, to reflect a heart of love for them.
[00:38:12] If you thought wisdom was hard, I think this is the harder thing.
[00:38:17] To be innocent is a dove like our Savior.
[00:38:21] But that's what he did for us.
[00:38:25] And so it's okay that he calls us to follow him in this, isn't it?
[00:38:30] Because that's what he says. Take up your cross and follow me. Let's pray.
[00:38:37] Lord Jesus, we confess that these are at the very same time, some of the hardest words that we can hear and some of the most wonderful words that we can hear.
[00:38:52] For in them we are reminded of how it is that you came and reached sinners who were beyond hope.
[00:39:02] We were your enemies and you loved us and you came. And rather than fighting us, you came and you died for us.
[00:39:13] Lord Jesus, help us to see in this not just wisdom, but help us to see in this your marvelous love, a beauty and a glory beyond compare, something we would never expect, that you would come and die on the cross for us and help us to see in this such a wonderful thing that we might be conformed to that pattern of the cross, that in the difficulties, indeed even in some of the worst things we face in this life as we face those who oppose not just us, but you, that there you call us to love, to love in purity, to love in wisdom, and to love not for our own sakes, but for the sake of those who would seek to put us to death. O Lord Jesus, help us, that we might see in this your cross, and we might see you.
[00:40:12] We ask, Lord Jesus, that you would help us in all things that we might overcome by your spirit through union with you, that we might overcome the sin and all of the sinful motions of our hearts that keep us from this love, our envy, our self righteousness, our concern to justify ourselves, and so many more.
[00:40:36] Conquer them, Lord Jesus, put them to death in us, that we might learn to love freely as you have loved us.
[00:40:43] In Jesus name we pray. Amen.
