The Challenge of Being a Disciple - Persecution. (Matthew 10: 16-18)
Introduction - Dealing with Opposition.
Before we deal with this passage in detail, we may note two things about it in general. When we were studying the Sermon on the Mount, we saw that one of Matthew's great characteristics was his love of laying things out in a relevant order. Matthew's custom to collect in one place all the material on any given subject, even if it was spoken by Jesus on different occasions. Matthew was the systematiser of the words of Jesus. This passage is one of the instances where Matthew collects his material from different times. Here he collects the things which Jesus said on various occasions. Matthew collects Jesus' references to persecution, and he puts together both what Jesus said when he sent his men out on their first expedition and what Jesus told them after his resurrection, when he was sending them out into all the world. Here we have the words, not only of Jesus of Galilee, but also of the Risen Christ.
As we’re going through the Gospel of Matthew, we’ve seen that there’s a difference and a distinction between being a child of God and being a disciple. I’ve called it the difference between being a Child and being a disciple. To be a child of God all you have to do is trust in Jesus Christ. The Bible teaches very clearly that God wants to give you heaven as a gift. Romans 6:23 it says the gift of God is eternal life and that comes simply and solely by trusting in Jesus Christ who died in our place to pay for our sin. Following Christ is something else again, if you become a follower of Christ, you are deciding not only to trust him to get you to heaven but to really to learn how to be like him. The word disciple just means learner you’re going to learn from him how to live your life. In other words, you’ve decided to not just trust him, but obey him. If you start to do that then that’s a whole other world so to speak that opens to you.
In Matthew chapter four he says follow me and I will make you to be fishers of men, so if you become a follower of Christ and do what he says you’re going to start talking about Christ to other people. But there’s something you need to know if you go swimming in those waters, you’re going to discover they are shark infested waters so to speak. For those who follow Christ soon discover opposition. In fact, for some it can be a whole lot more than opposition in some parts of the world Christians face outright persecution for choosing to follow the Lord. What do you do when that happens, how do you handle that kind of opposition to the Christian faith? What happens when it becomes more than just resistance or verbal abuse, what would we do if it becomes outright persecution as it did in the life of many of the disciples? Well, Jesus prepared them for that, when he sent them out, he told them that it was coming, and he told them what to do when it happens.
What I'd like for us to do today is look at what he told them. There are some timeless truths here that apply to all disciples in all ages and it’s that that I want us to see. If you’d like to know how to handle opposition to the Christian faith if you’re a disciple of Christ and you meet some of that then I invite your attention to Matthew chapter 10 and I’m gonna begin reading with verse 16
16 “Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves. Therefore, be wise as serpents and harmless as doves. 17 But beware of men, for they will deliver you up to councils and scourge you in their synagogues. 18 You will be brought before governors and kings for My sake, as a testimony to them and to the Gentiles. (Matthew 10: 16-18)
Types of Persecutions Facing Christians.
Now the immediate context of this passage is Jesus is sending out the 12 apostles. He is Says in the early part of this chapter that he sent them to the lost sheep of the House of Israel first. He’s giving disciples perhaps in all ages and for all times some instructions concerning opposition they might face. In this portion of his commission, he focuses on the opposition they’re going to get from unbelievers. As I see this passage, he’s giving them four pieces of advice to follow.
The first thing he clearly says is you should be wise if you’re gonna be a follower of Christ. If you’re going to follow his command and commission to go and tell others about him one of the first things you need to know is simply wise, have wisdom. Look at verse 16 he says I am sending sheep into the midst of wolves, therefore be wise as serpents and harmless as doves. This verse indicates that they are to be wise and there to be wise because they are going to be like sheep in the middle of a pack of wolves. A lamb in the midst of a pack of wolves is defenseless he has to depend on the shepherd for protection.
Jesus says you’re like that helpless defenseless lamb and I’m sending you out and there are wolves out there so you’re going to have to depend on the shepherd to protect you but what I want you to know is this, you are to be wise as a serpent and harmless as a dove. The Greek word that’s translated wise here means to be practically wise It means to be sensible and prudent it’s not the abstract wisdom of a philosopher, it’s a street wisdom kind of thing. That’s sort of the idea he means, but he quickly couples with that and you need to be harmless as a dove, the idea behind harmless that word means to be unmixed to be pure and to be simple.
I remember wrestling with this verse a number of years ago and I was going through the book of James and the end of chapter three in the book of James he talks about that your motives being pure and I remember connecting these two passages because this is talking about having pure motives and you’re not out to fleece anybody, you’re not out to manipulate anybody, your motives have to be untainted, you have to be harmless with no plans to harm anybody but you’re going to be as harmless as a dove. As you have heard me say before a dove is a flighty animal that flies away at the slightest provocation. So what Jesus is teaching is you must be wise, and you must be harmless. You’re not out to hurt anybody you have a message to deliver. What Jesus is teaching here is that disciples are to be tough minded but tender hearted at the same time. They must be shrewd but not cunning, they must be innocent, but not naïve, they to be pure in motive to do no harm. So that’s the first thing he says, there is more to it.
it seems to me that he then goes on to say you need to be aware or as he says it beware look at verse 17, where it tells us to be aware of men for they will deliver you up to councils and scourge you in their synagogues and you will be brought before governors and kings for my sake as a testimony to them to the gentiles. In verse 17 he says what to beware off, his very words so the outline is very clear very simple I’m going to send you into these wolves so beware so we need to play close attention to this because there’s a critical issue here. Look at verse 17.
But beware of men, for they will deliver you up to councils and scourge you in their synagogues. You will be brought before governors and kings for My sake, as a testimony to them and to the Gentiles. (Matthew 10: 17-18)
Now the council was part of the synagogue, it was the leadership in the local church. Verse 17 is talking about the fact that they’re going to be brought before the local Jewish religious leaders wherever the travel to and he says they might be whipped. Sure, enough in that day religious leaders in Palestine punished people for all kinds of things and one of the things they could possibly do to people was scourge them. Under Roman law they weren’t allowed kill them that’s why they had to go to the Romans to have Jesus crucified but they could inflict other forms of punishment. Jesus offered his followers three kinds of trial.
(i) The state would persecute them; they would be brought before councils and governors. When Christ's followers are brought to court and to judgment, they are not to worry about what they would say; for God would give them words. "I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall speak,"
(ii) The Church would persecute them. The Church does not like to be upset and has its own ways of dealing with disturbers of the peace. The Christians were, and are, those who turn the world upside down ( Acts 17:6 ). It has often been true that the man with a message from God has had to undergo the hatred and the enmity of a frozen religious attitudes.
(iii) The family might persecute them. Their nearest and dearest might think they have gone mad and shut the door against them. Sometimes the Christian is confronted with the hardest choice of all--the choice between obedience to Christ and obedience to friends and family.
Jesus also warned that in the days to come we might well find state and Church and family joined against us.
No one can read this passage without being deeply impressed with the honesty of Jesus. He never hesitated to tell people what they might expect if they followed him. This is not the world's way to win followers. The world will offer a person wine and roses all the way, comfort, ease, advancement, the fulfilment of his worldly ambitions. Jesus offered his followers hardship and death.
After Dunkirk, Churchill offered the British people "blood, toil, sweat and tears". When Ernest Shackleton proposed his march to the South Pole he asked for volunteers for that trek amidst the blizzards across the polar ice. He expected to have difficulty, but he was inundated with letters, from young and old, rich and poor alike, from the highest and the lowest, all desiring to share in that great adventure. It may be that the Church must learn again that we will never attract people to an easy way of life. It is the call of the heroic which ultimately speaks to men's hearts.
I have been studying this chapter for a few days now but If you were reading chapter 10 from the beginning in its entirety and you came to this verse it would jump off the page at you. If we go back and look at the beginning of the chapter he says in verse five, do not go into the way of the gentiles do not enter a city of the Samaritans verse but rather go to the last sheep of the House of Israel”, so, what’s going on here. He sent them to Israel and now we tell them they’re gonna be persecuted by gentiles. It’s that observation as well as a few other things he’ll say in just a minute that it’s driven Bible teachers to the conclusion that he’s really jumped forward to the time of the tribulation.
That certainly certainly seems to be confirmed later in verse 23 where he talks about the coming of the ‘Son of Man’ because that’s a reference to the second coming. So apparently, he’s giving these instructions to the disciples but he has a near view in that they are going to experience opposition now, but he’s laying this down also because it’s also going to apply to those who are doing this just prior to his second coming. It is fulfilled now but there’s more to come and that more will be fulfilled when he comes again. It’s not an uncommon thing when the Bible is talking about prophecy to speak for the immediate issue, and then skip to the future and show how it will be fully fulfilled there. Apparently, that’s what’s happening here.
Be all that as it may, and that’s critical for something were going to look at tomorrow I point is out to you because you need to be aware that you’re going to face some opposition, maybe even being physically harmed and you’re going to do all that so that you can be a witness to them, a testimony to them of the love of God in Christ. So, Jesus is saying I’m going to prepare you ahead of time, because there are wolves out there, there are sharks in these waters, so just be prepared, there’s going to be opposition.
The Reason the Christian Church is Persecuted.
Firstly, the church is persecuted because it threatens the established order. Looking at things from our own point of view, we find it hard to understand why any government should wish to persecute the Christians, whose only aim was to live in purity, in charity, and in reverence. But in later days the Roman government had what it considered good reason for persecuting the Christians. There were several but one in particular I feel I can’t pass without drawing you attention to it and that was the issue of slavery.
A very real difficulty was the position of slaves in the Christian Church. In the Roman Empire there were 60,000,000 slaves. It was always one of the fears of the Empire that these slaves might rise in revolt. If the structure of the Empire was to remain intact, they had to be kept in their place; nothing must be done by anyone to encourage them to rebel, or the consequences might be terrible beyond imagining. The Christian Church made no attempt to free the slaves, but it did, within the Church at least, treat the slaves as equals. Clement of Alexandria pleaded that "slaves are like ourselves," and the words of Christ and his salvation applied equally to them. Lactantius wrote: "Slaves are not slaves to us. We deem them brothers after the Spirit, in religion fellow-servants. Worse than that for the Romans was the fact that it was perfectly possible for a slave to hold high office in the Christian Church. In the early second century two bishops of Rome, Callistus and Pius, had been slaves. And it was not uncommon for elders and deacons to be slaves.
In its treatment of slaves, the Christian Church must have seemed to the Roman authorities a force which was disrupting the very basis of their civilization and threatening the very existence of the Empire by giving slaves a position which they should never have had, as Roman law saw it. There is no doubt that Christianity seriously affected certain vested interests connected with the Roman religion. When Christianity came to Ephesus, the trade of the silversmiths was dealt a mortal blow, as far fewer desired to buy the images which they fashioned ( Acts 19:24-27 ).
Christianity preaches a view of man which no totalitarian state can accept. Christianity deliberately aims to obliterate certain trades and professions and ways of making money passively but completely through things like prostitution and slavery. It still does--and therefore the Christian is still today liable to persecution for his faith. If we’re going to be committed to following Jesus Christ then we’re going to meet some opposition out there so be prepared, it’s coming. But you know, that’s not all bad, it’ll keep you on your toes, or as GK Chesterton once said I like being in hot water it keeps me clean, think about that. Jesus gives a third suggestion in verse 19 but we look at that tomorrow.