Sermon Tone Analysis

We’ve probably all experienced it - someone calls you on the phone, someone comes to your house, the doctor comes into the room - and asks that peculiar yet familiar question.

Do you want the good news or the bad news?

Psychologists may be able to predict, based on your personality type, which one you will want to hear first.

Do you want the good news first so it can temper your attitude and prepare you for the bad news, or do you want the bad news first so that you can take the positive in perspective of the negative?

Many of you know that I was home-schooled throughout my growing-up years.

My mother, then, was my rigid instructor, and she instilled in me the attitude of “do the worst first.”

Whatever subject in school I was least inclined to do, that is what I was supposed to tackle.

Use your energy and effort to get through the difficult, and then the rest will seem like a breeze.

I’d like to think that mentality has followed me through life, although as an adult, you have more and more opportunity for procrastination.

Sometimes the best option seems not to be “worst first,” but “worst never.”

Avoidance plagues many of us - but the difficult things of life are always coming, they are always looming, they cannot really be escaped even if they are postponed for a later date.

Well, this idea of “bad news good news” is very much present in our text today.

Lets read it together.

Matthew 10:16-42

I want you to notice Jesus’ comment in verse 24 specifically.

In the rest of this passage, Jesus is giving instruction to his disciples, but he is also tipping his cards to reveal his own fate.

All of this warning about persecution and division would first and primarily be experienced by Jesus himself, even before his disciples.

If you followed that passage closely, you may have noticed a little pattern - bad news, good news, bad news, good news.

For our purpose today, I would probably frame it this way - warning, comfort, warning, comfort.

As Matt showed us last week, Jesus is commissioning his Disciples for the first time, sending them out with his message of the Kingdom.

Even in that passage, we began to see hints of “warning signs” that things may not always be easy.

For instance, Jesus said in verse 14

So there would be a noticeable constituency that certainly would not receive the message that the Apostles would bring.

There would be a sizeable group of people who would decisively not accept the message of the Kingdom.

That is sort of the “initial” warning, but beginning in verse 16, Jesus starts to let them know that it’s going to be more than just a simple “receive or not receive” problem.

There will be passive rejection, but there will also be active rejection as well.

Also, there is a sense in which the text last week, verses 5-15, were very specific for this initial “sending” that Jesus does - the instructions had just to do with the Jewish cities and villages that the disciples would go to.

But In this next section, it becomes clear that Jesus’ warnings and comforts extend into the future as well.

So in a real sense, these warnings and comforts look to apply to us today, as Jesus’ disciples nearly 2,000 years later.

The warnings include persecution and division - two things that have been experienced almost ubiquitously throughout the centuries by followers of Christ.

There are seasons in which the local experience of these things wax and wane, but there has never been a generation of Christ’s followers that hasn’t come up against these things.

So in this case, Jesus is the Great Physician who is like unto that doctor that comes into the examining room and “gives it to us straight.”

So we will see this today:

As Jesus promised, Christians will experience persecution and division because of His name.

But the providence of God and eternal value of the mission give us great comfort.

Warning #1 - Vs. 16-25

The first warning is that of persecution.

Of course, we can hardly forget that we have already seen the topic of persecution in the Gospel of Matthew, and that was the final beatitude in Matthew 5 where Jesus said this:

You might remember some of this definition from when we studied that passage.

Persecution, by definition, is to be subject to systematic harassment and attack due to your religious belief or affiliation.

The word that Jesus uses means, literally, to be pursued, chased, driven away, harassed, or hunted.

That makes it fairly vivid.

In other words, persecution isn’t bad luck or a series of misfortunes, it is an intentional, personal, motivated pursuit for the sake of harm or defamation.

Now, in most translations, the word “persecution” isn’t actually used in Matthew 10, but it is so vividly and clearly described for us in this passage, we could hardly go anywhere else better to find a definition.

So, in stead of taking more time to define it, lets just jump right into the text and see the words of warning that Jesus gives regarding these things.

He begins, as Jesus often does, with a metaphor or an illustration.

We get the image of four animals in this illustrations.

Sheep, Wolves, Snakes, Doves.

Why the zoo?

What can we make of this?

Well, he says “I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves.”

It doesn’t take much of an imagination to get the picture there.

The allusion to Christians or Jesus’ followers as “sheep” is so common in scripture.

And, the allusion to fierce enemies also came up in the Sermon on the Mount.

Matthew 7:15 ““Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves.”

It is interesting, though, that Jesus says “i am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves.”

He speaks in the present tense, as if the disciples are already sheep, and the wolves are already surrounding them.

The clear and present “danger” if we want to call it that, is not a surprise or an anomaly to Jesus.

He is well-aware of the difficulties, the rejection, and the disposition of dismissal that He and His disciples are in.

So, rejection, even violent rejection, was not a surprise - actually - and we will see more about this - it was on the radar the whole time.

Jesus then gives them instruction, still in the realm of this zoological illustration.

he tells them to be “wise as serpents and harmless/innocent as doves.”

A snake is prudent, wise, and sensible - there is no wasted energy, no wasted motion, no needless gestures and noises - everything is calculated and geared to their survival and flourishing.

A snake, you might say, is not reckless.

And Jesus tells them, “be wise as serpents.”

In other words, you know that you are going in to a difficult mission field - don’t waste your movements!

Make them count!

Don’t act recklessly, but be ready!

At the same time, he says “innocent/harmless as doves.”

Snakes are not known as harmless, and doves are not known for their wisdom - but when you pair the two, concepts, it is quite a personality.

A snake is subtil, “street smart,” ready for attack, and wise - but a dove wouldn’t harm a soul, except maybe a bug or a worm.

Jesus is saying, be wise and aware, but don’t cause any unnecessary trouble or violence.

Jesus’ Gospel would be plenty divisive enough without the disciples inciting their own personal drama and creating a scene.

We would be prudent to look at this warning - when we interact with those outside the faith, we know we are outnumbered, and we know in this day and age, hostility is on the rise toward the Bible and Jesus and Christianity - but may the accusation of belligerence never stick.

May we never create our own personal drama for the name of Christ - His name and His Gospel are offensive and divisive enough without us adding our own problems.

May we be wise as serpents and harmless as doves.

Here is the part of the warning where we begin to see further into the future.

We have no indication that these things happened on this first mission, and we have specific information that they were to only go to the Jewish cities and villages at this time.

So Jesus was looking ahead here, and perhaps seeing even to our day.

But, if we look carefully, we can assume that he was also seeing himself in this prediction as well.

Delivered over to courts?

Like the sanhedrin, perhaps?

Flogged in synagogues?

dragged before governors, like Pilate, for instance?

dragged before Kings?

Like King Herod?

Certainly, in the book of Acts, we will read how many of Jesus’ disciples faced these very things - but before they ever imagined it, Jesus Himself faced all of these things.

And we haven’t gotten there yet, but we can already see that key verse - is a disciple greater than his teacher?

It seems that Jesus is indeed forshadowing his own experience, and also opening up a picture of the future - a future that we live in.

We have not faced these persecutions in our nation, in our day, but many of our brothers and sisters around the globe face these very things.

And therefore, since Jesus is looking into the future, and not just this initial mission, we can take his words here as words for us as well.

He says here, in a sense, don’t spend your time being worked up about what you will do in that moment.

I remember in college, walking often by a painting in the hallway of Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley being burned at the stake in England for spreading the Gospel and furthering the Protestant Reformation.

The famous quote that came from that very true story is Hugh Latimer saying to Ridley, “We shall this day light such a candle, by God’s Grace, in England as I trust shall never be put out.”

That example was 500 years ago, and time wouldn’t permit to tell of the thousands who faced similar fates before and since for the sake of the Gospel.

When you hear heroic and fateful words like that, of someone who was actively being burned at the stake, you wonder if you could ever imaging even having anything to say at all - but that is a bit of what Jesus is saying here.

Don’t work yourself up about that moment - follow the Lord through Life, and if and when that day comes, His grace will be sufficient in the moment and he will give you the strength to endure and speak for His glory.

Now, this promise doesn’t apply universally to every time we are ever in a position to speak about Christ.

We are called, after all, to be prepared to give an answer at any time for the hope that is within us.

But in the unimaginable and unbearable circumstance of persecution, Christ’s Grace is sufficient.