Peace through conflict

Choices

You may know that I’m planning on a four-day hike with my brother in August, and it’s been on my mind a lot as I collect gear so that I can go on early practice hikes. (That way, even if I somehow miss the big hike itself, I’ll get plenty of good hikes done around here, right?) Choosing gear for this is not easy because you can’t just pick it up on Gumtree or Facebook market. It’s too esoteric. You have to buy much of it new, and it’s not necessarily cheap. So you want to try to choose the best stuff, but how can you do that without having used it?

The most confusing purchase so far has been the sleeping bag. I’m still bewildered with the choices. Do I go with synthetic insulation, or down? Down is compact and light, but also very expensive. And then, what shape bag? Mummy, tapered, or even a quilt (which has no back, you sleep directly on your sleeping mat)? And within each of these categories there are dozens of brands with dozens of different models. Aaarrgghh!

And, on top of all this, is the sure knowledge that if I get one of these choices wrong, I’m going to die on the trail—guaranteed.

Hang on, that’s not actually true, is it? Even if I buy the wrong type of sleeping bag, in Queensland I’ll just be uncomfortable, rather than dead, won’t I? In fact, discomfort is really the only issues for me—things may be too heavy or too small or too cool or too hot. But they won’t kill me.

And that’s really what most of our choices in Australia are like, aren’t they? Do I buy this food or that food? It’s not a life-or-death choice, it’s just a matter of taste. Do I live in this neighbourhood in that house, do I go to that school, do I buy this car? It’s just a matter of convenience.

We live in a world where people argue bitterly over matters of taste (like the brand of a camera or phone) or, alternatively, where they insist that no choices matter at all.

The Biblical Perspective

But that’s not how the Bible sees the world. The passage we just read is very clearly talking about a life or death choice. A choice that really, absolutely, indisputably matters.

The Context

But before we get into that, let’s back up a bit and look at the context. Remember that we’re working our way through the story of the Bible in our series called “The Journey.”

When God created everything, he made it good, because he’s a good God. He designed us human beings to be his regents, ruling the earth on his behalf.

Unfortunately, we wanted to be absolute rulers—we wanted to usurp God’s place. But, of course, we’re not God and so this attempt to deny God his rightful place was a disaster that we call the fall, which has led directly to every disaster since.

But God was not happy to leave us decaying in our self-righteousness. He had a plan which he started implementing with the family of Abraham. He called Abraham’s descendants out of Egypt to be his own people, teaching them how to reflect his own character, but they wouldn’t accept God as king, so he gave them a king, David, but promised that a descendant of that king would come to put things right. God’s people demonstrated that we human beings cannot obey God on our own, and God exiled them, but showed his grace and brought them home. Finally, when the time was right, the Son of God, came to earth as the god-man, Jesus, the Lamb of God.

Our Bible passage today is in the middle of the story of Jesus’ time on earth. At the beginning of this tenth chapter of Matthew, Jesus has finally picked out twelve disciples to share his mission, and has instructed them on how to go and announce the coming of the kingdom of heaven throughout Israel.

Before we go further, let’s pray. [Pray that we can accept the challenge of discipleship.]

The challenge

Now, in sending the disciples out to preach the gospel, Jesus was very much aware that the good news of God’s coming kingdom wasn’t going to be taken as good news by people who wanted to rule their own little kingdoms. And so he warned his disciples:

Matthew 10:16 NLT

16 “Look, I am sending you out as sheep among wolves. So be as shrewd as snakes and harmless as doves.

Sounds a bit scary, doesn’t it?

Matthew 10:18 ESV

18 and you will be dragged before governors and kings for my sake, to bear witness before them and the Gentiles.

Jesus went on to explain that this hostility would never go away. He looked into the future and warned his disciples back then, and those in the future (that is, us) that various rulers would persecute us, but we would get to witness to them! In other words, persecution leads to sharing Jesus’ good news! Tricky, eh?

Matthew 10:19–20 ESV

19 When they deliver you over, do not be anxious how you are to speak or what you are to say, for what you are to say will be given to you in that hour. 20 For it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.

Even better is the reality that we aren’t even expected to come up with the right words to handle such a hostile environment—the Holy Spirit, God himself, will provide the words we need. This is a great comfort to me. But we don’t want to take this verse out of context. For example, while I rely on the guidance of the Holy Spirit in preparing sermons, it would be rather silly of me to just get up here and wait for the Spirit to give me words “in that hour.” After all, none of you have put me on trial. At least not yet! No, this reassurance is for those terrible times when we’re taken by surprise by people who want to suppress the good news of the gospel.

Oh, and we don’t have to hang around taking this abuse, either:

Matthew 10:23 ESV

23 When they persecute you in one town, flee to the next, for truly, I say to you, you will not have gone through all the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes.

As Christians we don’t have to try to convert those who refuse to listen. Indeed, we can’t—we cannot change hard hearts. Rather, we should simply keep sharing wherever we can.

Now, in this passage is a puzzling section talking about family members turning on one another:

Matthew 10:35–36 ESV

35 For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. 36 And a person’s enemies will be those of his own household.

Huh? Jesus came to cause conflict!? How does that make him the Prince of Peace?

The first thing you should be aware of is that this entire chapter is riddled with hyperbole. Remember that hyperbole is a figure of speech in which you make a point by exaggerating enormously. Personally I would never use hyperbole in a million years. I think it’s totally stupid. Those, by the way, were examples of hyperbole. This figure of speech is pretty familiar to us. Just read Twitter or Facebook and you’ll see plenty of it.

So, Jesus wasn’t saying that his sole purpose in coming to earth was to make sure that guys were opposed to their fathers, and women to their mothers and mothers-in-law. That would be a rather weird way to save people from their sins, wouldn’t it? No, he was saying that his mission might have the side effect of forcing Christian men into a situation where their father or son was bitterly opposed to them, and it might force Christian women into a situation where their mother or daughter or mother-in-law or daughter-in-law was opposed to them.

Why might this happen?

Well, Jesus explained when he said:

Matthew 10:27–28 ESV

27 What I tell you in the dark, say in the light, and what you hear whispered, proclaim on the housetops. 28 And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.

You see, discipleship, membership in the kingdom, is not like sleeping bag shopping. It’s not something that you can shop around for but if you get it wrong it really only makes you uncomfortable. Rather, discipleship--membership in God’s kingdom--is a life or death matter. The good news of the kingdom is of the greatest importance: it demands to be shared, no matter what the consequences. Why? Because the author of it is the very one who holds our whole lives in his hand. While our enemies can mess with our bodies, only God can destroy our souls as well! Another way of saying this is that we owe God our entire allegiance. And Jesus says as much in verses 37 to 39:

Matthew 10:37–39 ESV

37 Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. 38 And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. 39 Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

Our God is a jealous God, and that doesn’t change with Jesus. It sounds weird to our ears to hear that God is jealous, doesn’t it? But that’s because we humans don’t deserve to be jealous: people don’t have to love us--although they can choose to—because we’re all so flawed. God, on the other hand is all good (and that’s not hyperbole), he is love and light and beauty and grace. To not love him more than everything else, including ourselves, is to be really messed up. So when Jesus says that “whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me,” he is not engaging in hyperbole. He is simply stating a fact. Remember the first, and most important commandment?

Luke 10:27 ESV

27 And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.”

Sometimes that commandment comes into conflict with other parts of our lives.

When my wife Mable returned to live with her family after years in a Christian boarding school in Canada, she returned as a Christian. Her parents were not Christian, and so they were not happy about Mable’s faith. In fact, her father tried to stop her going to church. Now, in Chinese culture, like Jesus’ culture, one of the most important moral principles is that you must obey your parents. Mable had a conflict here: she could obey Jesus’ word in the Bible to not give up meeting together with other believers, or she could obey her father. This was not a trivial conflict. In the end, Mable obeyed Jesus, but it was not easy, of course.

We are going to encounter the same conflict in other areas of our lives, too. On Tuesday night we talked about Christian sexual ethics, and it became very clear that Jesus’ ideas about sex and our society’s ideas are very different. And the choice matters. If we choose our society over Jesus, we are telling Jesus he is not the all-loving, all-knowing God. Instead, we think he is less trustworthy than a bunch of selfish, short-sighted humans. There are so many areas of life where we will find ourselves in conflict, and every time we deliberately choose to spurn Jesus’ word we are showing our contempt for him. Jesus will not condemn us for our occasional failures, of course, but if our life is lived in continuous contempt for Jesus, what can we expect? Jesus said,

John 14:15 ESV

15 “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.

We can’t claim to be following Jesus if we are not. We can’t claim to love him and despise what he said. He doesn’t allow that.

So we are caught. Caught between a jealous God and a vicious, brutal world. If we obey Jesus our name is mud, we’re bigots, fools, haters, and so on. That’s what it means to carry our cross.

But Jesus doesn’t leave us there, despairing. This section of scripture has two of the most beautiful, tender promises of the entire Bible:

Matthew 10:39 ESV

39 Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

If we lose our life for Jesus’ sake we will find it. When we give up trying to preserve our reputation. When we stop trying to avoid conflict. When we go beyond embarrassment. When we do that for the sake of the Gospel, then we find a holy name, peace, and joy. And it’s eternal, unshakable, unending.

To emphasize God’s tender love, Jesus pointed to sparrows; tiny, vulnerable birds:

Matthew 10:29–31 ESV

29 Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. 30 But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. 31 Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows.

As tiny and “worthless” as they seem to us, God cares for each one, and knows the life of each precious creature of his. If he lavishes so much loving attention on sparrows, how much more does he love us? He pays us so much attention that he knows each hair on our head (of course, that’s easier for him in my case). When we face the world and its hostility, God knows exactly what is happening to us. He has got us. He’ll never let us go. We need not fear.

The only thing we need to be concerned about is our own relationship with our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ:

Matthew 10:32 ESV

32 So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven,

Let us then lift Jesus’ name up, Renew! Let us not be afraid of conflict as we seek God’s eternal peace! Let us not be ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes! (Rom 1:16)!

Praise God!