Matthew 10:24-42 | "How to Find Your Life"

This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.

We are going to look at the end of the tenth chapter of Matthew's gospel, and it is going to challenge the conviction of what you have just confessed in Song.

Matthew chapter 10.

Matthew 10 · chapter mention

This morning, picking up here after our Christmas holiday series of the fulfillment of God's promise to come in the fullness of time.

And here in Matthew 10, God Himself is with His disciples, giving them some final instructions before sending them out into the world on a mission.

Again, that is Matthew chapter 10.

Matthew 10 · chapter mention

We're going to pick up this morning in the 34th verse, verse 34 through the end of the chapter.

The Lord Jesus is speaking, and he says, Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth.

I have not.

I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.

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.

And a person's enemies will be those of his own household.

Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me.

Whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.

And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.

Whoever finds his life will lose it.

Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

Whoever receives you receives me, and whoever receives me receives him who sent me.

The one who receives a prophet because he is a prophet will receive a prophet's reward.

And the one who receives a righteous person because he is a righteous person will receive a righteous person's reward.

And whoever gives one of these little ones even a cup of cold water because he is a disciple, truly I say to you, he will by no means lose his reward.

Amen.

Pastor J.

C.

Ryle wrote, It costs something to be a true Christian.

Let that never be forgotten.

He went on to say, a mere, to be a mere nominal Christian and to go to church is cheap and easy work.

But to hear Christ's voice, to follow Christ, to believe in Christ, to confess Christ, requires much self-denial.

That is the essence of Jesus' statements in verses 38, culminating in verse 39.

Whoever finds his life will lose it, but whoever who loses his life for my sake will find it.

If you're interested in following Jesus, we are glad that you have chosen to join us this morning in following this King who demands our all.

This Jesus who set the example for us in cross bearing calls us, calls everyone who believes in him and who follows him to take up their own cross and follow him.

You may lose your life in the process if you make this choice.

But the one who loses his life, for Christ, will gain it.

Now I want you to notice what's happening here as we work our way through this rather quickly this morning.

I want you to see very, very simply the flow of thought that Jesus gives to his disciples.

In verse 34, he starts with a very clear statement.

Don't think that I've come to bring peace.

Then he gives a reason, verse 35.

Don't think that because I have actually come to set people against themselves, against one another.

Then he follows that.

So there's a statement, here's the reason, and then he follows that with five points of application identified by the whoever's.

Verse 37, whoever loves father or mother.

Verse 38, whoever does not take up his cross.

Verse 39, whoever finds his life, verse 40, whoever receives you, verse 42, whoever gives one of these little ones a cup of water.

It's not too hard to figure out the application of this passage to our lives this morning because Jesus lays it out very simply for us.

We just have to understand the depth to which he's speaking.

How much are you willing to follow your commitment to Christ?

Because he's talking to disciples here.

We have to remember in Matthew's gospel: every believer in the Lord Jesus Christ is a disciple.

And every disciple is a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ.

There's not a difference in Matthew's mindset.

And he's speaking to disciples here at the end of verse 42.

He says, Listen, I'm talking to you, my disciples, as I'm sending you out.

You're going to encounter other disciples.

What Jesus says here then is directed to every single believer in Christ, not just those who are who are considered to be professional ministers of some kind or other.

We have to understand that Jesus is talking to everyone who claims the name of Christ.

That is important to recognize because of the harsh reality of Jesus' message here.

He wants you to have the best life you possibly can.

But he defines your best life for you in Philippians chapter 1, verse 6.

Philippians 1:6

Your best life is to be made into the image of the Lord Jesus Christ.

That is your best life.

But the voices that we hear in our world, in our community, and even in the Christian world so often are those that proclaim a promise based on earthly qualities of life.

Qualities that are defined in the level of ease or comfort.

But Jesus says that the secret to having your best life is not to focus on your life or to get caught up in the quality of your life, but to lose it.

A Christian's security in this world is not found in anything that belongs to this world.

If your security in life is found in anything that belongs to this world, your foundation will at some point be rocked to its very core.

A Christian security is not found in representative government.

A Christian security is not found in particular political parties.

Christian's security is not found in masks or social distancing.

It's not found in good health or physical safety.

It's not found in mental health.

It's not found in financial status or any other earthly element.

It is to be found in God alone.

And if your security is found in God alone, then your life is bound to include uncertainty, danger, and rejection.

That is the shocking announcement that Jesus gives to his disciples as he's about to send them out to do ministry.

What an encouraging thing to say is the last thing before you go out into ministry.

Get ready.

Here it comes, Jesus says.

See, the shocking reality that Jesus gives to his disciples is that his coming is not all peace.

We have to understand what's going on here.

If we go all the way back to the beginning of this same chapter, we have the list of the twelve disciples that are sent out.

And in verse 5, Jesus gives them instructions.

He tells them, Go and proclaim the good news of the kingdom.

Confirm that good news through healing the sick, raising the dead, cleansing lepers, casting out demons.

Don't take any money, don't take any extra food.

Just go and whoever takes you in, greet them and go into their house.

And if the house is worthy, let your peace come upon it.

But get ready, because not everybody's going to listen to what you have to say, and not everybody's going to welcome you into their houses.

In some cities, you might be chased out.

Verse 16, he says, I'm sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves.

Verse 17, he says, They're going to deliver you over to courts.

They're going to flog you in synagogues.

You're going to be dragged before governors and kings.

But don't be anxious.

You might die, but don't fear.

You will be hated by all for my name's sake, verse 22.

Verse 23, he says, when they persecute you, not if.

When they persecute you, flee to the next.

Just keep going.

Go to one town, to the next town, to the next town.

So we have to put ourselves in the mindset of these 12 disciples here, who have come to believe with all of their hearts, with all of their soul, with all of their mind, with all their strength, that Jesus is the Son of Man.

He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

He is the King of Israel promised from before time began.

So if Jesus is the king, then why would we need to be persecuted?

If the kingdom of heaven has come, why is there persecution?

If the king is here, why do we need to run for our lives?

If the king is here, why would we be given to fear?

The answer is because Jesus didn't come to bring peace.

He will, but he didn't the first time.

They did not expect the kind of peace that Jesus came to bring because they understood their Bibles.

They understood the common expectations built upon Old Testament prophecy.

We know some of them, right?

We've just been through some of them in the last six weeks or so.

Isaiah chapter 9, verse 6.

Isaiah 9:6

Behold, a virgin will conceive and bear a son, right?

What do we know about that son?

He will be called the prince of peace, right?

Zechariah chapter 9, verse 10 promised, He shall speak peace to the nations.

Zechariah 9:10

He will rule from sea to sea, from the great river Euphrates to the ends of the earth.

They expected their Messiah to come and to bring peace, but their expectations were applied to political Israel.

They expected the Messiah to come and bring peace through dominion and might and the crushing of their enemies and ruling over them and bringing them into submission.

That's not what they saw.

And Jesus says, That's not what you're going to experience right now.

Now Jesus did come to bring a sense of peace, didn't he?

We see that in the Christmas story in Luke chapter 1, verse 79, it says that he will guide our feet into the way of peace.

Luke 1:79

What did the angels proclaim to the shepherds out in that lonely field that night?

Peace among those with whom he is pleased, right?

Jesus said to his disciples in John 14, Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you.

So what do we do with that?

How do we look at all of these elements that say the Messiah is going to bring peace, but Jesus says, I have not come to bring peace?

Well, the answer is in John 16, 33.

And the answer is found in not getting hung up in the middle of John 16, 33, because it starts out, Jesus says to them, I've said these things to you so that you may have peace.

Great, wonderful, thank you, Jesus.

But then he goes on if we if we finish the sentence.

He says, I've come so that you may have peace, but in this world you will have tribulation.

But take heart.

I have overcome the world.

And right there we have a reset.

We have a reset because Jesus then identifies for us the location of our peace.

He says, I've come to give you peace, not peace that you're going to find in this world and people all getting together and singing together and having a happy time together.

I've come to give you a peace for eternity.

See, these are spiritual realities that Jesus is promising, and the disciples were expecting physical realities.

And Jesus sets them out into ministry with a shocking announcement.

Don't look for physical peace.

Because he says, I'm here to actually bring conflict.

That's not what we normally think about when we think about Christianity, right?

We don't think about Christianity bringing conflict, but Jesus says conflicts will come, and they're going to come even between the closest of relationships.

Husbands and wives, parents and children, in-laws, friends, we can go however far out we want to go.

Conflict will come because of Christ making relatives into enemies.

Father and daughter, and mother and daughter and in-laws are set against one another because one follows Christ and another doesn't.

Because one belongs in the kingdom of heaven and the other follows the kingdom of darkness.

Because there are only kingdom people and non-kingdom people.

There are only followers, disciples of Jesus, and non-followers, non-disciples of Jesus.

And these two groups are at odds with one another, even within the same family.

And some of you, I'm so sorry, know exactly what that's like.

See, the proclamation and the acceptance of true peace in Christ brings division.

That's what Jesus said to expect.

If you go back a little bit further to chapter 10 and verse 24, Jesus said, A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a slave above his Lord.

If they have called, it is enough for the disciple to be like his teacher and the slave like his Lord.

If they've called the master of the house Beelzebal, how much more those of his own household?

Jesus says, You belong to me, you are my family.

And if they've done this to me, then you better expect it as well.

So notice the progression.

In chapter 10, verse 5, Jesus sends them out.

He sends out these disciples, authorized by the king and empowered to do the miraculous, to proclaim the powerful good news that the kingdom of God is here.

And then he tells them, but you need to be ready.

There are going to be some, maybe many, maybe most, who will hate the message that you bring.

And not only will they hate the message that you bring, they will hate you because you bring the message.

See, to stand for Christ often means to stand alone.

To proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ is a death march.

All while being slandered along the way, while being hated by being abused, maybe even being slaughtered.

But do not fear.

You are going to be called to give up your life to let Christ have his way with you.

Do not fear.

You might die, don't be afraid.

Thanks, Jesus.

Great idea.

But what was he telling those 12 disciples?

They're getting ready to go out on what we might call a short-term missions trip.

He's telling them, listen, following me is not necessarily going to be all fun and games.

You're going out and you're going to proclaim the best news ever, but most of the people that hear the best news ever are going to believe it suspiciously as fake news.

You are rightly excited, believing in the truth, but don't expect everyone to be the same.

Now Matthew wrote all of this down to a book, and it would have been read in the early churches, and those early churches would have heard this as Matthew telling them listen, you're carrying on the spirit of the apostles.

You're proclaiming the same good news, so explain expect conflict, expect hate, expect beatings, expect reviling, expect slander, expect death, but don't worry, your eternity is safe.

Because your king holds you fast.

To the modern church dwelling in religious freedom, I can't help but think that Matthew would say to us, stop softening the message.

You've become comfortable, you're used to safety.

Don't let that become complacency in your life.

The message of Christ is opposed to the message of this world.

Get your eyes off this world and proclaim the good news of Christ without worry for your life.

Instead, expect the worst.

But friends, we only expect the worst when we see the world as it really is.

Under the power and the authority of the evil one, completely dark and without hope.

When we understand that that's the place in which we're shining as lights, we can expect the worst.

Now, if we think about that and we process through that a little bit, it's easy to see that we often entertain some false assumptions about being a Christian.

Let's take just a minute or two and blow up some of those false assumptions.

We all like good explosions, right?

Let's blow some up.

The good news of Jesus for you is not that he came to give you a life that was like a bed of roses.

Unless you think about the thorns and the thorn bushes.

My friends, your children may not trust in Christ.

Jesus may not fix your problems.

He may not rescue you out of financial debt.

He may not heal your diseases.

He may not give you a host of faithful friends.

Now that doesn't mean he doesn't care.

It doesn't mean that at all.

It means that that's not why he came.

He came to separate his own people for eternity.

Now, the glory of God's wonderful grace is that he does rescue some.

That's why we don't give up.

That's why we don't give up praying for those who haven't placed their faith and trust in Christ alone.

That's why we don't give up praying for those who are sick, for those who are hurting.

That's why we don't give up speaking of Christ.

But it does help us see that we need to have a mindset that is oriented in the right direction.

So Jesus continues on here and he says, listen, here's what this looks like in your life.

I'm going to give you five pictures, he says.

And I'm going to distill those five pictures down to one idea, and that is the idea of having right priorities.

First, in verse 35 and verse 36, Jesus tells us that having right priorities looks like this that when you follow Christ, He takes priority.

Over your family.

Now, Jesus, when he says, I've come to set a man against his father and a daughter against her mother, he's borrowing from Micah chapter 7, verse 6, that was often used by the Jewish people as an understanding of what it would be like before the Messiah came.

Micah 7:6

Before the Messiah came, there would be suffering, there would be trials, there would be problems in families, such that families would be disintegrating and turning against one another.

And Jesus connects that idea with himself.

He says, I'm here, therefore prophecy is going to be fulfilled.

God said divisions would occur in families because of Jesus.

Don't be surprised when it happens.

And don't be surprised when it's terrible.

He doesn't mince words here.

He uses a word here, uh come to set people against one another.

That's a very clear image.

It means to cut something completely in two.

My kids right now love Kiwis.

Not the birds, the fruit.

And you know how Kiwis are that fuzzy fruit, and sometimes if you don't have an especially sharp knife, you cut through it, and there's still some of that skin left on the bottom side, it's still connected together.

That's not what this is talking about.

This means completely asunder all the way through.

Jesus says, that's what following me brings.

When you believe the good news of Christ, that that new faith and the excitement and the expected communication of that faith may come between you and those you love most, causing permanent division.

The only way for that division to be restored is if they come to faith in Christ as well.

If they see the Son of God having come to give his life as a ransom for many.

Now we are called to speak of Jesus with grace, with speech that is seasoned, as it were, with salt.

We aren't given permission to be unkind, to be mean.

But sometimes even the even the perfect set of words said in just the right tone will be divisive.

Not because of how you said it, but because of the content of the message.

See, the message of Jesus as the Messiah who came to give his life to save people is inherently divisive.

And to speak of it is often to stand alone.

So if if disciples of of any age take seriously the call to make disciples, division's going to come.

And that doesn't matter how old you are.

You can be a 90-year-old Christian who's walked with Christ for 70 years, or you can be a 10-year-old who's come to Christ in the last year or two.

If you take the call to speak of Christ and to make disciples, you will face division.

And if there is a situation where one must choose between Jesus and family relationships, Jesus asserts that he must have the supreme affection.

Following Jesus, being a disciple, means that loyalty shifts from the physical and the biological to Jesus Christ Himself.

The gospel may destroy families.

Now, does Jesus want family destroyed?

No.

That's not what he's talking about.

He's saying you need to have a shift in your focus.

If all you're thinking about is here, is present, is now, then your focus is on the temporal, it's on the temporary.

So you need to start thinking more about eternity.

What comes after this?

What's next?

What are you pursuing now?

Again, sometimes we misrepresent the good news of Christ.

Sometimes we misrepresent the hope that is in Christ, and we do it maybe even unintentionally with anger or with meanness or through a lack of graciousness or a lack of kindness, and that's never good.

If we have disruption in relationships because of that, we deserve what we get.

This is about reactions towards the content of the gospel, that Jesus is the Christ.

He is God Himself who took on flesh so that he might die on a cross to save us from our sins.

Those kinds of reactions, when people react to the content of that message, are going to become even more prevalent in today's world.

What we need as disciples, as followers of Christ, is a new way of looking at life.

That we don't look at life as here and now, but we have a hope for the life that will come.

Some of you, some of you older folks may remember, and I know, please don't take offense at me saying older folks.

Because I just put myself in this category.

Some of you may remember evangelist Pat Kelly, who was a baseball player for the Baltimore Orioles.

He played back when Earl Weaver was the manager of the Orioles.

Weaver was a manager that had his mind on one thing: winning baseball games.

One day Pat Kelly stopped to talk to his manager and he said, Weave, it sure is good to walk with Jesus.

That's nice, his manager replied.

But I'd rather that you walk with the bases loaded.

Now that exchange is, it gets a chuckle, and that's good.

But it illustrates very simply two views of life: the temporary, the temporal, and the permanent and eternal.

One is is preoccupied with things of the present, with things of the earth, with things that are here and now, but we can we can never get where we want to get with that kind of mindset.

Jesus says, if you're going to pursue that, then you're actually going to lose your life.

We forget that this is a time and a place to prepare for eternity.

With the permanent, long-term view, we begin to recognize the importance of getting ready for eternity by trusting in and living for Jesus Christ.

And that's where he goes next in verse 38.

He says, here's an additional, a step further of how this applies to your life.

He says, I need to take priority over your life.

Now, this is before the death of Jesus.

And notice what he says.

This is maybe at most two years before the crucifixion of Jesus, maybe at a shorter time, maybe a year before.

He says in verse 38, Whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.

Now the disciples are not going to imagine Jesus hanging on a cross at this point in time.

Later in Matthew's gospel, we're going to see that when he starts talking about that, they don't have a clue what he's saying.

What they likely would have heard when Jesus said this was imagining the cross as a symbol of excruciating pain and embarrassing death.

Above all, it was a picture of Roman might and of those who defied the might of Rome.

You see, just a few years before this time, when Jesus spoke these words, the Romans squelched an insurrection led by a zealot named Judas.

It didn't last very long.

The Roman general Varus conquered them, defeated them pretty quickly.

But in order to teach the Jewish people a lesson, General Varus ordered the crucifixion of over 2,000 Jews.

2,000 Jews lining the public roadways, hanging on crosses.

For those crucified in the normal way, the disgrace and the humiliation began not on the cross, but with the carrying of a crossbeam down a public street to the place of crucifixion.

And Jesus says that's what worthy disciples can expect.

A savage death and a public disgrace.

Don't be surprised, Jesus said, and don't be afraid.

See, there would have very little misunderstanding for these twelve disciples.

They were there to forget about themselves and to follow Jesus without consideration of the cost.

Even if it meant life itself.

That, Jesus said, is the road to your best life now.

Now we need to pause here for a minute and define at least one element.

What is a cross?

Because in our way of thinking, we have hardships and struggles and difficulties and pains that we we all endure.

There's the loss of a job.

There's failing and dropping out of school.

There's a rough marriage, a rebellious child, a debilitating illness, a loss of a loved one through death.

Those are hard and awful experiences in life, but they're not crosses in the sense that Jesus means.

The disciples would not have thought about those things.

When they heard Jesus command them to take up their cross, they would have only been able to think of the horrendously painful and humiliating physical death of hanging on a Roman cross in full public view, saying, I have defied this world because I've followed Jesus.

Taking up your cross as doggedly trusting and obediently following Jesus, no matter what this tribulation-filled world can throw at you, even if it means leading to a cross-bearing death.

Those who do this, Jesus said, whatever happens, even if they lose their lives for it, will in reality be the ones who find life.

Unfortunately, our response too often is to lay down our cross when following Jesus gets too difficult.

When we feel the hurt of rejection, when we we begin to experience how people respond to us because we're a Christian, we we can be tempted very easily to just set the cross down.

It's not going to be a problem.

If we start to feel the splinters in our skin from bearing the cross, maybe we can be tempted to cover it up a little bit.

Put a blanket over it.

People won't be able to see it as clearly.

If we get to the point of fearing pain or physical death, it puts a muzzle on our mouths.

That's not taking up our cross and following Jesus, that's laying it down.

To fear the loss of physical life, even in order to maintain our own safety rather than taking up our cross and following him, is choosing the world, not choosing Jesus.

My favorite illustrations of all time comes from missionary John Patton.

In the late 1800s, he was pioneering a new mission work in an area that was inhabited by cannibals.

I'm telling you, Mr.

Patton would not recognize the modern church if the Lord Jesus sent him back today.

An elderly friend expressed a fear that Mr.

Patton might be eaten by cannibals if he went through with this desire.

John Patton responded, Mr.

Dixon, you are advanced in years now, and your prospect is to be soon laid in the grave and eaten by worms.

I confess to you that if I can but live and die serving the Lord Jesus, it will matter not to me whether I am eaten by cannibals or by worms.

Wow.

It's taking up your cross and following Jesus.

But ultimately, what that leads to is verse 39, where we see that Jesus says that following Him takes priority over me.

It's no longer about me.

It's no longer about my life.

It's no longer about my desires.

It's no longer about my comfort, about my safety, about anything that I have.

Now look what Jesus is doing.

He's highlighting looking out for self.

Verse 39 whoever finds his life, whoever loses his life, he's identifying a possessive aspect of our human nature, that we are protective of our own lives.

We're protective of ourselves.

And that's what we do as human beings.

We seek to protect ourselves.

But he's talking here about finding life versus losing life.

If you go and you protect your life in such a way to find it, you're actually losing it.

But if you let go of your own life in following Jesus, you're actually finding it.

Living your life, living life to your protection, to your safety, to your desires, to your benefit instead of the life that Christ calls you to live does not lead you to true life.

You want to live your best life now?

Then trust everything about your life.

How long you live, how healthy you will be, how comfortable you are, how much money you make, whether you have friends or family, trust everything you have and hand it over to Jesus and receive with trust and thankfulness whatever it is that He gives you life, death, pain, suffering, wealth, whatever it might be.

Those who focus on safety and comfort over trusting Christ, over speaking out for him, show a holding on to their own lives.

But those who lose their lives, that is, taking up their cross and understanding all that that means, they inevitably find life.

Now understand, Jesus is talking in clear distinctions here.

It's black and white.

He's not allowing for areas of gray.

Those who are his disciples consider the cost and they follow.

Now they're not naive.

They're not naive.

They're not fatalistic about this.

They don't downplay the cost and say, oh, it's not going to be that bad.

I know, eaten by cannibals, that might be pretty bad.

No, it's not that at all.

Disciples of Jesus know very clearly the cost.

And they know that following Jesus is worth every penny.

This is not about peace and safety at all costs, but eternal life at all costs.

Those who are his disciples willingly lose control over their life to gain the life of Christ.

That's not to say that there won't be times of failure, that there won't be times of fear.

There are.

We know that from the lives of the disciples themselves.

When Jesus was arrested, what happened?

Guys?

Where's the disciples?

They're all gone, right?

They ran away.

We live in unredeemed bodies, so of course there will be times when we give in to fear.

There will be times when we give in to sin.

There will be times that we fail, but there's a settled decision being called for here.

Jesus is saying there's a willingness to follow him, even being willing to suffer for Christ and His cause.

The choice is to be made, and it must be the right choice, even if it brings alienation, ridicule, the loss of my desires, the loss of my freedom, even death.

For this is the life of a Christian.

First service didn't get this illustration because we didn't have time.

I'm going to make you sit longer so you can hear this illustration.

This is priceless.

So grateful for the Lord preserving some history for us.

Cyprian was a church father who was born somewhere around 200 A.D.

Around 250 A.D., he wrote a letter to some believers in Christ, some disciples of Christ, who were suffering for their faith.

They had been consigned to work in gold and silver mines, as slaves in mines.

Cyprian himself was suffering persecution at this point, not quite as severely.

Here's what he wrote to those brothers and sisters living and dying in the mines.

He said, First, you were severely beaten with clubs, and you were ill-used.

And you have begun by sufferings of that kind, the glorious first things of your confession.

For a Christian body is not really terrified at wooden clubs, seeing as all of our hope is found in the wood.

The servant of Christ acknowledges the sacrament of his salvation.

We are redeemed by wood, that is by the cross of the wood, to life eternal, and we are advanced to our eternity by wood to the crown.

But what a wonder if, as gold and silver vessels, you have now been committed to the mine that is the home of gold and silver, except that now things are changed.

The nature of the mines is changed, and the places which previously had been accustomed to give up gold and silver have now begun to receive them.

Moreover, they have put fetters on your feet.

They have bound your blessed limbs.

And the temples of God they have bound with disgraceful chains, as if the spirit also could be bound with the body, or your gold could be stained by the contact with iron.

To people who are dedicated to God, attesting their faith with religious courage, such things are not ornaments.

They are not chains, nor do they bind the feet of Christians for infamy, but they glorify them with a crown.

O feet blessedly bound, which are loosed not by the smith, but by the Lord.

O feet blessedly bound, which are guided to paradise in the way of salvation, O feet bound for the present time in the world, that they may always be free with the Lord.

O feet lingering for a while among the fetters and the crossbars, but to run quickly to Christ on a glorious road, let cruelty, either envious or malignant, hold you here in its bonds and chains as long as it will from this earth and from these sufferings you will speedily come to the kingdom of heaven.

No, the body is not cherished in the minds, with couch and cushions, but it is cherished forever with refreshment in the solace of Christ.

The bodily frame wearied with labors lies prostrate on the ground, but it's no penalty to lie down with Christ.

Your limbs, unbathed, are foul and disfigured with filth and filth and dirt, but within there spiritually cleansed, although without the flesh, is defiled.

There in the minds bread is scarce, but man does not live by bread alone, but by the word of God.

Shivering you want clothing.

But he who puts on Christ is both abundantly clothed and adorned.

The hair of your half-shorn head seems repulsive.

But since Christ is the head of the man, anything whatever must needs become that head, which is illustrious on account of Christ's name.

All that deformity, detestable and foul to the unsaved, with what splendor shall it be repaid?

This temporal and brief suffering, how shall it be exchanged for the reward of a bright and eternal honor?

When, according to the word of the blessed apostle, the Lord shall change the body of our humiliation, so that it may be fashioned to the body of his glorious being.

What a letter.

What a letter.

Brothers and sisters, maybe you failed recently.

Maybe you're living in fear and doubt even now.

I get it.

Sometimes life comes at you hard and fast, and there's no chance of getting out of the way of the oncoming train.

You get bowled over by sin and doubt, and before you know it, you're wondering, what hit me?

Don't give up.

Don't worry.

Don't fear.

Christ is not here to kick you while you're down.

Scripture itself says that he doesn't break bent reeds.

He's there to pick you up and to restore you and set you on the right path again, just like he did with the Apostle Peter.

That's why Jesus ends here with some mission priorities, I call them, in verses 40, 41, and 42.

And this book ends what he started with at the beginning of the chapter.

He says, listen, you're going to go out and you're going to declare the message.

There are going to be people that hear it, there are going to be people that reject it, and you're going to have some hard times.

Therefore, go with this mindset.

Here's the first priority that he says over the mission.

Prioritize those who will listen.

You only have limited time.

Prioritize those who listen to God's message.

And also prioritize those who belong to him.

Prioritize hospitality to God's people.

Now, why would he say that?

He says that because of the last priority in verse 42.

He says, God's people, the disciples, these little ones, he's not speaking of children there, he's calling disciples little ones, children of God.

He says you need to prioritize fellowship with them and supporting them because crossbearing is hard work.

If you pick up your cross and you follow Jesus, you're going to need help.

You're going to need support.

This is one of the reasons, beloved, why I feel like our current COVID situation is a mark of the devil.

He wants to keep us apart.

He wants to separate us, as it were, in the minds to discourage us and to keep us separate so that we can't have the fellowship and the support of one another.

Crossbearing is hard work.

You need other disciples, you need their encouragement.

So he says, prioritize those who will listen.

Beloved, sometimes the ripest mission field is within the walls of the church.

We need to hear the gospel, whether you believe in Christ or not.

If you believe in Christ, you need to hear the gospel.

If you don't believe in Christ, you need to hear the good news of salvation in Christ alone.

Remind one another of the gospel.

Speak the gospel to one another.

Remind one another of the lordship of Christ.

Remind one another of the depravity of the human soul, that you are tending to give in to doubt and to fear and to frustrations.

And so come alongside one another and give them the necessity of believing in his substitutionary sacrifice on the cross to reconcile you to himself, which brings you into his eternal gathering in Christ.

Focus on eternal life in Christ.

That's why we need one another.

Recognize the element of hospitality.

Let people see how Christ moves you, of how he motivates you, of how he's rescued you from his wrath and rescued you from your own sinful desires.

Let them see you follow Jesus carrying your cross.

You know how you face life will point people to the things of importance in your life.

If you have set your cross down, people will see what's important to you.

They will see the complaining and the griping and the pain of suffering or loss, or they'll see the message of the cross pointing to the hope of eternity that God has given this lost world.

You remember back in chapter 5 at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, imagine a city set on top of a hill.

It can't be hidden.

What I imagine when I read that text is those photographs from the space station.

Photographs of major cities and even from hundreds of miles up in space, they can see those cities.

Jesus says, You can't hide a city on a hill.

He says, No, guess what?

You're a light in a dark world.

You can't be hidden.

People are going to see you.

You are the light of Christ in the darkness.

A cross-bearing Christian cannot be hidden.

But we can often conceal the reality of our faith by acting like the rest of the world when the darkness threatens to overtake us.

So Jesus says to his disciples, I'm sending you out into a dark world.

But shine.

Shine as lights by taking up your cross and following me.

Let's pray.

Lord Jesus.

We hear you.

We also confess that we give in to sin too often.

And we fail at following you.

Weakness gets the best of us.

So help us.

We want to take up our cross and follow you.

We want to be people who live as disciples.

Enable us to see you, the one who set the example by bearing your cross.

Enable us to follow you well.

Sometimes it's hard to hear you speak.

Sometimes we don't we don't see you clearly.

Sometimes the way is hard.

Give us faith to trust, even when the way is hard and dark.

So that we may spend eternity with you, actually gaining eternal life.

We ask this in the name of our Savior, Jesus Christ.

Amen.

That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.

Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.

You can learn more by visiting our website at faithfree.com.