The Adversity

This morning, we're looking at the adversity.

And here's what I kind of want to help us understand is that fear is an intimate part of our human experience.

Fear is actually really central to our emotional intelligence.

If you think about it, fear, like all emotions, can be embraced and expressed in both healthy and unhealthy ways, right?

Fear in itself is not wrong.

The scriptures call us to be fearful, but the scriptures also call us to not be fearful.

And so what we have to do is we have to reconcile those two realities with that fear can be healthy when it's embraced and expressed in healthy ways, but it can also be unhealthy.

Think of healthy fear in the way that it preserves us and it guards our life with wisdom.

Maybe you can think of the fear of legal consequences.

Actually, when government structures execute righteous justice, it allows for healthy fear to be fostered within the lives of people that they would actually follow and comply with the laws and regulations and promotes a lawful and responsible society.

But we can also understand unhealthy fear in the ways that it causes us to fear the wrong things for the wrong reasons.

And often unhealthy fear causes us to miss out on good and beautiful gifts in our lives.

Think about the fear of like societal situations.

Some of you, I don't know, I can't comprehend or understand you, but you don't like going into societal situations like parties and different events like that.

And that's fine.

But let's understand this.

We realize that our blanketed fear of that often causes us to miss out on some great relational blessings or might even cause us to be stifled in our career pursuits.

It has implications of that.

At its core, fear is our response to uncertainty about our resources in the face of danger.

So let me say that again.

Fear is our response to uncertainty about our resources in the face of danger.

This morning we're going to talk about the adversity that we will face as we are sent on mission with the message of the gospel.

Jesus is going to address the fear that we will encounter, and he's going to help us understand it in both healthy and unhealthy ways.

And in the end, he's going to show us that we ultimately have no reason to fear the adversity of this world because in him, in Christ, we have unlimited resources to overcome the threat and danger that we face.

Now, I believe that a lot of the problems of the modern church is due to unhealthy fear of the culture around us.

And it's not just fear of the culture around us, but it's also a fear rooted in disbelief.

And let me help us understand these two things.

Number one is the fear of the culture around us.

When we have this unhealthy fear of the culture around us, what it's lent itself to over the last several generations is that we have either or both retreated from mission because of the fear of the culture, or we've sought to change the message so that we wouldn't be so offensive to the culture.

Now, in that, we've lost the church.

And we wonder what's going on with the church in America.

Well, I can tell you that's what it is.

And a lot of that fear, I believe, and I want to make an argument for this morning, is rooted in an actual idolatrous love of our life and the things of this world.

When the adversity that we face jeopardizes what we cherish, we're going to do one of two things.

We're going to retreat from mission in this preservation mode, or we're going to seek to change the message so that the culture won't be so antagonistic against it.

That's number one.

Number two, though, I believe actually that many of us, the reason that we have unhealthy fear is that if we're really honest with ourselves, we can't or we find ourselves unable to really believe God's promises.

There's a deep part of us that doesn't trust or believe that if we lost our very lives, there's an infinitely greater life awaiting the other side of our faithfulness.

And so that causes us to be scared and afraid.

And it hurts the mission and it changes the message, and it brings no power to the culture that we find ourselves in.

And so Jesus is going to work through that reality for us this morning as we hear his instruction for the church.

So I've broken this kind of section of text, a long section of text, into four different sections.

We have the sending, the warning, the admonition, and the reward.

We're going to start with the sending.

In verses 16 through 25, we see the sending of the 12.

Now, in the opening section of this text, uh, we see Jesus actually sending out the 12 apostles for a purpose.

He's going to be sending them to proclaim that the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

We see this above verse 16 in that opening part of Matthew 10.

He's sending out the 12 to proclaim that the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

And Jesus is sending them in both proclamation and demonstration.

This is a natural rhythm that we see throughout the scriptures.

That not only are the apostles and the followers of Jesus sent to proclaim the message of the kingdom, but they're to demonstrate it through the working of miracles, the healing of the sick, the casting out of demons.

And so this dynamic duo, so to speak, right, is how we saw such radical, impactful uh kingdom advancement in the early church.

And the reason that he's doing this, I believe, is that he's actually gesturing toward the nature of their mission that's to be carried out after his ascension.

So they're kind of getting some warm-ups, right?

They're kind of getting some reps in because what is going to happen is after Jesus' ascension, he's going to be sending them.

That's the very nature of who God is.

It is the very essence of his church.

We need to understand that the very nature of God is that of sending.

The Father sends the Son, the Son sends the Spirit, the Spirit sends the church.

And so the apostles were being sent in preparation for what would be the defining essence of the church.

We've gotten something wrong in our theology and in our ecclesiology, how we understand the church, and that we've understood the church primarily as this place of refuge and respite from the culture around us.

And it's been a place where we pursue maturing and health in our spiritual life.

And what's happened is it's allowed us to not have cultural impact of being sent on mission to the world around us.

And it's also prevented us from having a hyper focus on our own spiritual health, to pursue being disciple makers of others, because we don't understand that our spiritual health actually increases at a greater and better rate when we're working to see the spiritual maturity and health of another flourish.

So the church has become stagnant.

And the church has also not been any effect, it's not had any effect on the culture around us, at least not in the ways that we've understood it previously through past generations.

Now, in this specific sending moment, Jesus has an extensive monologue with the twelve about the adversity that they will face.

And what Jesus does, I really appreciate this.

He guides them through this rhythm of promises.

He's going to communicate promises of the culture's response to them being sent on mission with the message, but he's also going to communicate the promises of God of those whom he is sending, right?

And so while this passage of scripture has a specific audience, we who are in Christ can confidently grasp the heart of the message for ourselves.

And here's the heart.

I believe it's understood in three parts.

First is that we are sent into a culture that stands in opposition to the gospel.

We are sent into a culture that stands in opposition to the gospel.

There is nowhere throughout the scriptures or the New Testament narrative where the culture is eagerly, excitedly anticipating, receiving the gospel message.

That's nowhere to be found, right?

So we're being sent intentionally into a culture that opposes what we have to give to them.

Second thing, that we are sent with the presence and promise of God.

We aren't sent unequipped, right?

This isn't some uh uh real life video game where God just gives us like an empty bag and we gotta go scourging for the right tools to make sure that we don't die in the whole process of our journey, right?

That's not what we're on.

God gives us the bag, he fills it with the tools, and then he sends us empowered and equipped to be able to accomplish, to be successful in what he's called us to do.

We just have to realize that success sometimes looks like the loss of life.

And we've got to be okay with that.

The third thing is this that the reward of gaining Christ is infinitely greater than any loss that we can experience in this life, even the loss of life itself.

So, with these three things in mind, let's work through the text to understand the premise better.

Jesus starts with a sober awareness of the situation that he's sending the 12 into.

I really appreciate Jesus here.

He's not trying to soften it.

I think we live in a culture where we try we have this like hyper optimistic thing that we do, or we try to make bad things not so bad by being overly optimistic.

Well, you're not really that bad.

No, they are.

That's fine.

You should just say that they are, right?

Or or well, the situation's not as bad.

No, it's it's horrible, and you should just be honest about that.

And that's okay.

Uh, and and Jesus is just cutting straight to the chase.

He he says this, Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves.

Anytime we see this language of behold, Jesus wants our undivided attention.

He wants us to be uh alert and awake to what's getting ready to follow it.

And he's saying this, I am sending.

So, first off, understand the intentionality of those three words.

I, Jesus, am sending.

He's not just haphazardly going about this, he's not just uh uh uh you know giving some type of encouragement or advice, he's intentionally sending out the twelves and he's sending them out as sheep in the midst of wolves.

Now, Jesus knows the hearts of man um intimately.

And think about the way that he communicates the nature of the heart of man.

He's gonna use the imagery of a wolf when he talks about the heart of man.

Throughout the scriptures, the image of a wolf is an emblem of treachery and cruelty, fierce and brutal in its hunger.

And Jesus says that he's sending out his disciples like sheep, right?

The characteristics of sheep, meek and humble, and he's sending them out into the presence of fierce predators who will seek to devour them.

In a sense, we could understand this that they're being sent outside of the care and protection of the good shepherd and into the danger and peril of the culture surrounding them, but they are sent with purpose.

And we need to understand, we need to draw attention to the reality that the good shepherd's not losing one of his sheep here, right?

He's not losing them to the prey of culture as if he was, in fact, a poor shepherd or unable to protect them from danger, but that his and he is intentionally sending them into the culture in the face of imminent threat.

And Jesus gives a word of wisdom in light of the circumstances before them.

He says this, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.

Be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.

I believe that Jesus kind of unpacks this for us a little bit down in verse 23 to help us understand what in the world is he talking about here.

In verse 23, he says, When they persecute you in one town, flee to the next.

Right?

So I think when he's saying, Be wise as serpents and innocent as doves, he's helping us unpack that meaning here in verse 23.

When they persecute you in one town, flee to the next.

Notice here that in the face of persecution, the response expected from Jesus is not retaliation, but preservation.

Not retaliation, but preservation.

Now, we may sit here and we and we we experience this tension, right?

There's this tension of the text, the text calling us to preservation, right?

And then other parts of the gospels and the New Testament that call us to lose our lives for the sake of the gospel.

And we have to try to wrestle with these two things to reconcile them together because they they seem at odds with one another.

We have to understand that when the Bible calls us to lose our life, it is almost always in light of our propensity to preserve our lives for the sake of our idolatrous love of them.

Right?

Whenever we see throughout the New Testament, when we look at the rich young ruler, look, in a lot of ways, praise God, you're not called to give up all of your possessions to prove your love for Jesus.

But can I tell you, you are called to be willing to do that.

That's the point of the rich young ruler.

You may not be called physically to do it, but you are called to be willing to do that.

And so when we talk about the the gospel call to lose our life, it's almost always anchored to the reality and the propensity of our own idolatrous love to preserve our lives because we cherish the things of this world.

Here, the call to preservation is not rooted in idolatrous love for our lives, but it's rooted in the furthering of the message of the kingdom.

To be wise as serpents and innocent as doves is to not seek vengeance or retaliation to the persecution we face, but it's also to not allow our lives to be lost through foolish means.

I really appreciate how uh commentator uh Daniel Doriani frames this.

He says, this flight is not cowardice, it is fidelity to the mission.

If necessary, we will die rather than renounce the faith.

But it is better to withdraw to fight by preaching another day.

What's he saying here?

He's saying that we can actually show faithfulness to the mission by being wise as serpents, that when they persecute us in one place, we flee to the next, so that we can live another day to fight.

And how do we fight?

We fight by preaching the gospel.

And so Jesus then sums up all of these promises of how the culture will express their wolf-likeness with this command of beware of men.

Beware of men.

Be on guard, pay attention because the hearts of man are like a wolf.

This isn't a command to missional retreat.

We have to understand that and make that clear as possible.

Jesus is going to continually communicate the nature and heart of man.

He's going to communicate what the disciples will face, not as possibilities, but promises.

And he's not calling them to missional retreat.

He's calling them to emboldened, faith-filled confrontation, right?

That's what he's calling them to.

And so he gives them a sobriety and attentiveness to what will happen as they are going.

And the three promises of culture's response to the message of the kingdom is this being drugged before both religious and secular rulers for judicial punishment, having the safety of intimate relationships shattered, and being hated by all who oppose the message of the kingdom and its king.

Think about this.

This is what Jesus is saying.

As I send you out on mission with the message of my kingdom, here are three promises of how the culture around you will respond.

They're going to drag you before religious and secular rulers.

You're going to be flogged, you're going to be forced to testify, you're going to be put on trial.

But not only that, those those intimate relationships that you're supposed to find safety in, you won't be able to anymore because they'll turn their back on you, they'll hand you over to death.

And he says, and on top of that, they'll all hate you.

They'll all hate you.

Jesus communicates these three responses, as I said, in the form of a promise.

He doesn't use the language if, but when.

This is how the wolves of culture respond to you as faithful messengers of the kingdom.

And what Jesus does is he roots all of this in his own experience, in the very way that culture has responded to him.

As a man who just came to proclaim that the kingdom of God is at hand.

At this point in time, what was Jesus' crimes, right?

He healed the sick, that's a good thing, raised the dead, uh, cast out demons, and then just said, Hey, the kingdom of heaven is here.

And what and what happened, look at how Jesus says this.

He says, A disciple, verse 24, a disciple is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master.

It is enough for the disciple to be like his teacher, and the servant like his master.

If they have called the master of the house Beelzebub, how much more will they malign those of his household?

Now I think he frames this in a very interesting way.

Because the beginning of that phrase, he says, the disciple is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master.

I believe what he's helping us understand is that if we have an expectation, that somehow we would avoid persecution for the gospel, that expectation is rooted in a false sense of arrogance.

That we would somehow be greater or above Jesus himself.

And I believe that the danger that we've encountered as the church is that that arrogance has intoxicated us.

We have somehow allowed ourselves to believe that we will avoid persecution for the gospel and have found ourselves shocked and dismayed when we actually face it.

And this unfounded shock to the culture's response has caused the church to retreat in cowardice fear.

And the way that we've seen this, as I said before, is we've either retreated from the mission altogether or we've worked hard to change the message so that the culture around us would not be in opposition to it.

Do we really think we're greater than Jesus?

Do we really think that we're above him?

I mean, if you want to see the culture's response to the message of the gospel, just look at the cross.

That's all we have to do.

If we want to know the heart of man, if we under if we want to understand and see clearly how they're going to respond to the mission we are sent on and the message that we carry, all we have to do is look to the cross.

This is the culture's response to the message of the kingdom and its king.

Think about this, church.

We can't love others better than Jesus loved people.

We can't.

We can't be more gracious.

We'll fail to be more kind or merciful.

We cannot uh re-educate ourselves or lower ourselves to such a degree that we'd be more compassionate, more understanding, or more empathetic than Jesus was.

One, we're arrogant and we're intoxicated in that arrogance to believe that somehow Jesus.

Outcome, ours would be different than Jesus' outcome because we're somehow able to do these things better than He.

We don't say it out loud, but that's how we're functioning.

Or it's caused us again, like I've said, ultimately to change the message altogether.

Jesus was more loving than we could ever imagine to be more gracious, kind, merciful, compassionate, understanding, empathetic, and they nailed him to a tree.

Shame on us for abandoning the mission and the message for the pursuit of a hopeful, different outcome of the animosity of the culture around us.

You see, how could we be so intoxicated by our own arrogance to fool ourselves of a different response?

Jesus here was working to sober up the apostles.

He was helping them understand the heart of man and the promises of the culture's response to the mission and the message.

Surely, intentionally, he was sending them as sheep in the midst of wolves, and he wasn't withholding the reality of what awaited them.

In verses 26 through 23, uh 33, we come to the warning.

The warning.

So throughout this passage, we see the word fear used repeatedly.

It's actually used five different times in one sense or another throughout this whole monologue that Jesus has before his apostles.

And in four of these instances, uh the word fear is used in a negative sense of do not, right?

And so the first time that we see it used in this negative sense of do not is actually up in verse 19.

He says this when, again, the promise of the culture's response, 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.

Now, anxiousness and fear are first cousins, right?

Some would even argue that anxiousness is just a different degree of intensity of fear.

And Jesus is helping his apostles understand that you are going to face these dangers and these threats, but you should not be anxious or you should not be fearful, because the Father is going to supply the resources you need to overcome the danger in front of you.

Remember how we define danger, right?

We're not confident, we don't have confidence in our resources to be able to overcome the danger that's in front of us.

And so Jesus is helping us understand that there's no reason to be anxious because the Father will supernaturally supply all that they need in the face of the opposition.

They will be given the resources needed to overcome the uncertainty before them.

Now, the next three times the charge to not be afraid is given is in contrast to the power of man and the power and care of God for his people.

Jesus says this so have no fear of them, for nothing is covered that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known.

What he's telling them is this, that the world around them is going to believe in some sense that they're going to be able to get away with their mistreatment of you, that their wicked deeds, their cruelty against you will somehow be covered by the shadows of this world.

But he promises that that's not going to be the case.

He promises that their wickedness and their cruelty will be exposed by the light of his righteousness.

And so we see this confidence throughout the scriptures, where God communicates himself as a jealous God.

Have you ever thought through it's it's actually righteous and holy for you to be jealous in certain ways?

We often confuse jealousy and envy, right?

Envy is when you want something you don't have.

Jealousy is when you want back what's yours.

There's a lot of times we're like men, we should be really jealous over our marriages.

When it seems like there's someone else trying to take away what is ours, we should be jealous.

And that should cause us to stand up and push back against that confrontation, right?

That's that's the healthy jealousy we should express.

When the culture tries to come after our children, we should express a healthy jealousy that mimics the jealousy of God.

God calls himself jealous and he's utterly holy, so he's not sinning when he is jealous.

How does God communicate that he's jealous?

He communicates that he's jealous over his people and over his glory.

And what does he promise?

He promises vengeance.

The response of jealousy is vengeance.

And God says, I will execute vengeance over my people because I am jealous of them, because they're mine.

And the enemy's gonna try and take them away from me, and the world's gonna try and come and take them away from me.

But in the end, what is going to happen is that God will be in his holy jealousy at one who vindicates us and vindicates the holiness of his name through inflicting vengeance upon our enemies.

That's good news.

I don't know if you knew that, right?

You guys don't seem excited about that reality, but man, that's really good.

Unless you're one of the people God execs vengeance on, repent and believe the gospel.

That's your call this morning.

Um so Jesus then says, and do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.

I I love what he does here.

Jesus does, he's he we talked about this like weird, hyper-optimistic culture we live in, right?

Jesus doesn't do that, he's very honest about the power and capacity of man, right?

Able to kill the body.

He doesn't dismiss it, but what he does is he does the right thing.

This is what you and I should do.

He holds the power and capability of man in light of the power and capability of God.

Do not fear those who can kill the body, but cannot kill the soul.

You see, we would have a healthier fear in us if we contrasted God's power and capability of that against man's, and we see that they come infinitely short to what he is able to do.

And Jesus does this for his disciples.

The only way that we can be faithful to Jesus, the charge that he gives to us to not be afraid of man, I want to submit to you this morning, is it's actually through having a healthy fear of God.

The way that we can be faithful to Jesus' charge to not be afraid of man is actually through having a healthy fear of God.

And here's where he's going to bring that in, right?

This is the only place where fear is used as a positive command.

Every other time it's do not, do not, do not, right?

Here he's going to say this rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.

Here's what we need to get our minds around this morning.

To not have a healthy fear of God gives way to an unhealthy fear of man.

The absence of the fear of God and the presence of the fear of man causes both the mission and the message to suffer.

Where we're called to go, we retreat instead.

And when we are called to proclaim, our mouths remain shut.

You see, many of us have an unhealthy fear of man.

And we talked about this earlier.

I believe that one of the reasons that we have an unhealthy fear of man is because we have an idolatrous love for our lives and the things of this world.

Men threaten to take away from us what we cherish most.

If we cherish Christ most, we would realize man could never take that away from us.

And so in the face of threat, in the face of threat to the things that we love, what happens?

Well, we become cowardice.

We shrink back and we enter into this state of preservation.

But it's not a preservation of like what Jesus called his apostles to, rooted in loving the gospel and loving its proclamation for the sake and goodness of others.

No, it's a preservation rooted in another day to continue loving the things that we actually cherish most.

And what happens?

A fear-fueled attempt to preserve our own lives and our own stuff out of an idolatrous love for them, it's caused us to retreat in mission or change the message.

This is the problem with the church today.

We've stopped talking about the gospel in the way that we're supposed to be talking about it.

We have removed different doctrines and teachings from the scriptures outside of the conversation of the church.

In our effort, because we're actually fearful of the culture around us, we have changed that very essence of the message we've been entrusted with.

If you can just be nicer, if you can just be more kind, if you can just be more loving, if you can just be more whatever, right?

We talked about this in the first sermon of this series about the gospel.

We have whatever camp or flavor or twist of it you find yourself in, what we have changed the message to in its essence is if you can do better, try harder, God will love you.

And we talked about, we've just presented a moralism rather than a hope-filled gospel.

But we presented something that we believe the culture will actually like.

And we're excited when we fill churches by proclaiming that message, and people come and sit in our pews and they sit in our chairs and they're actually listening to what we have to say.

But here's what we're I've seen time and time again.

Time and time again, I've seen even mega churches in our own backyard when they've had to actually say what the Bible says about sin, repentance, and God's wrath against our own idolatry.

People are shocked at what they're hearing for the first time.

It's as if something new and foreign and alien had just come to their ears.

What are you saying?

I thought it was just X.

And it's happening over and over again.

And they're shocked because they never actually heard the true message of the gospel.

Because the church, out of a fear of the culture's response to it, changed it altogether.

But let's return to the positive charge Jesus gives us of the fear of God here for a moment.

This statement may seem dreadful, right?

Don't fear man, but fear God who can kill your body and soul in hell.

I mean, that's a pretty dreadful statement.

It wasn't, I didn't have that on my refrigerator this morning when I woke up.

Just like, yeah, Lord, another day, right?

Another day.

Thankful for you.

Uh but can I help us understand the intention of that?

If we understand it in its context, right?

The intention of that message, that that point Jesus makes is to magnify God.

It's to make him bigger in the face of already big fears.

And look how it's nested.

It doesn't just sit in isolation, right?

There's fear of God because of what he can do to you.

It's nested within his care for his people.

That's actually the fullness of the passage there.

It's set to contrast man's power, to minimize their threat, and to give us a more faithful perspective of God's power over both this life and the one to come.

Because if we fear God, how can we fear the vain efforts of human beings and worldly powers?

After all, big fears make little fears go away.

What does it mean to fear God?

I believe this.

I believe that it means to be anxious in a healthy way, in eagerness to be with him.

I believe that it means to build our lives around the call of being his bride, the church.

That it means to anticipate the pleasure of his presence, that to fear God is ultimately to be consumed with awe and wonder of his holy love.

I believe that the authors Alender and Longman frame it really well in their book, The Cry of the Soul.

They say this to fear God is to fear his intense, radically other centered love.

Perfect love casts out fear because that kind of love is more frightening than any fear of earthly harm.

We can't fathom God's love for us.

We talked about this in our sermon series in John, John 3.16, the terrifying love of God.

It is a love that is radically other centered, and it is one that is more frightening than any threat that we could ever face in this world.

God's love for you should cause us to be in awe and wonder of who He is.

It should cause us to fear him.

Now, like I said, this positive command to fear God is contrasting the power of God and man, but it's also being used to communicate the intimate care of God for his people.

Jesus says in verse 29, are not two sparrows sold for a penny?

And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your father?

But even the hairs of your head are all numbered.

Think about how Jesus is nesting this phrase.

Like I said, it's in the midst of God's intimate care for his people.

He's communicating this: that nothing is outside of God's power, and none who are his are outside of his care.

This is why we shouldn't fear man.

This is why we should have no fear within us of the men around us.

This is why we're called to have a healthy fear of God, his power and his provision.

Here we see the last charge Jesus gives based on fear.

Fear not, therefore you are of more value than many sparrows.

He roots all of it, and you don't understand how much God finds you as his treasure.

We need to be reminded of that as the church, right?

We need to be reminded that you are the treasure in the field, that the man discovered and sold all of his possessions so that he could have that, right?

He bought the field so that he could have the treasure that he discovered, that you're the coin lost in the house, and that God is coming through and unfolding and throwing apart and scattering the very furniture so that he could find the coin, that you're the lost sheep, that the shepherd goes and he leaves the 99 to go find that you are that to God.

This is why we shouldn't fear man.

This is why we're called to a healthy fear of God.

And now, here at the end of this section, we actually arrive at the warning.

So we would be falsely led to believe that Jesus was really warning us throughout this whole passage.

I actually don't believe that that's what Jesus was doing.

I think he was being honest.

I think he was helping to bring a sobriety to the apostles, but I don't think that we've gotten to the warning yet.

He he said, you're gonna be handed over to uh religious and secular rulers, right?

You're gonna have uh your own family turn on you and deliver you over unto death.

You're gonna have the whole world hating you, right?

But he continually meets those things with do not, do not, do not.

Why?

Because of who I am and who you are in me and what God is able to do and for you, right?

So we haven't even got to the warning yet.

The warning is here.

It's not based on anything that man can or will do to us.

The warning is given in light of our retreating and recoiling because we have an unhealthy fear of man.

Look at verse 32.

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

Here's the warning.

But whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my father who is in heaven.

That's the warning.

The denial of Jesus is the ultimate end of an unhealthy fear of man.

You want to know what this road will take you down?

As you have this unhealthy fear of man, as you don't have a healthy fear of God to counteract that and to overcome that, do you want to know what the ultimate end of that is?

It's denial of Christ.

And in response, he denies us.

You see, the warning is intense because of the seriousness of its consequence.

The fear of man, to fear him and to not fear God, will cause us to deny Jesus and be denied by him.

And so, church, we must heed this warning.

Verses 34 through 39, we see the admonition.

We're getting ready to wrap up.

What does admonish someone mean, right?

It means to counsel against a fault.

That's what the admonishing of someone means.

That you bring this gentle reproof to a false belief.

And so I believe that in this section of the text, 34 through 39, Jesus is admonishing his disciples because it says, do not think, right?

So you may have this false belief about who I am and what I've come to accomplish.

And I'm gonna admonish you, I'm gonna gently reprove this false belief.

Here's what I'm actually here for.

I'm not here to bring peace, but a sword.

I'm here that father would rise up against child, that mother would rise up against father, that mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, we knew that one, right?

That one, Jesus didn't have to tell us that one.

We knew that was gonna happen.

Apart from the gospel, it doesn't even matter.

Here Jesus makes sure that the apostles understand that the mission and the message are priority over every earthly possession.

That's what he wants to make abundantly clear.

And I love that Jesus doesn't waste time progressively like working up to this like climax of everything, right?

He doesn't start with like, hey, if you uh serve me, you uh you might have to give up your dog for adoption.

Like he doesn't start down low, he hits you right where it hurts.

Because I'm gonna I'm gonna put forth the argument that that in a good and right world, right, our family is our greatest possession that we could ever have.

That's our greatest possession.

And and guess where Jesus starts?

He starts right there.

I I didn't come so that everything would be Brady Bunch here, right?

I didn't come so that we'd be all happy, go lucky.

I didn't come so that all of us would would have peace and joy and goodness.

I didn't come for that.

I came for the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

I came for my people.

I came for all those of whom the Father has given to me.

I came for them.

And if your family member is not one of them, are you willing to still serve me?

Are you willing to still lay your life down to gain me?

He starts with arguably our most cherished possessions.

He's leaving no room for misunderstanding.

Nothing is safe within the mission.

I love in the Chronicles of Narnia, C.S.

Lewis kind of paints this in a very beautiful way.

Lucy has never met Aslan.

She's very curious about this Aslan character, this Lion King.

She's asking the beaver, hey, uh, this Aslan guy, is he good?

And the beaver responds, oh Lucy, he is good.

But he is not safe.

He is not safe.

The message isn't purposed to be embraced by all, but to only be received by those whom the Father has given to the Son.

To imagine, to think wrongly, that Jesus' kingdom will bring peace to all people, that he will bring joy, redemption, and life to the world is a false belief that needs a gentle reproof.

Because here's how he ends this.

Here's how he ends this section of the text.

The beauty and the goodness of the kingdom will only be enjoyed and embraced by those who are willing to share in the crudeness and dishonor of the cross.

That's how he ends this.

The beauty and the goodness of the kingdom will only be able to be received.

Received and shared by those who participate in the cruelty and dishonor of the cross.

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

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

Finally, in verses 40 through 42, we see the reward.

The reward.

As Jesus closes out this monologue in Matthew 10, he tells his disciples that the mission has an eternal purpose.

The mission has an eternal purpose.

Whoever receives you, he says, receives me.

And whoever receives me receives him who sent me.

You see, to receive God is to receive Jesus.

It's to receive his messengers who carry the message of the kingdom in this God-glorifying mission.

They're intricately, intricately connected to one another.

Jesus says that if they're going to receive you, meaning they're receiving the message that you are delivering to them, then they also receive me.

And if they receive me, then the Father receives them also.

So we can persevere in the face of earthly threat because of the heavenly reward that transcends all that this world can offer to us.

Right?

That's how we can persevere.

Because there's something greater that cannot be taken from us because it is in Christ.

Ultimately, I believe that this entire monologue is communicating this one thing.

The adversity is worth the reward.

The adversity that we face of the culture around us, the persecution that we draw to ourselves as we are people sent on mission with the message of the gospel, I believe what Jesus is trying to tell us over all things is that it's worth it.

It's worth it.

And my question to you this morning is do you actually believe that?

Do you believe that obtaining Jesus is greater than anything that you could lose in this life?

Do you believe of his infinite worth and beauty, splendor, and glory, is worth obtaining over anything that you could lose in this life?

Even life itself?

Or is there a part of us, deep down within our heart, that's actually unable to believe that God's promises are true?

Are we unable to believe that there really is a life infinitely greater than this one waiting on the other side of our faithfulness?

Do we truly believe?

Are we able to, that the loss of all of our possessions for the sake of the gospel cannot compare to the unimaginable riches of having and knowing Him?

Church, can we have a bigger vision, a deeper trust, a more anxious anticipation of the reward of having Jesus?

And let that embolden us to face threat, danger, peril, adversity that comes with being a people on mission with the message of his kingdom.

Because Jesus summarizes this in a very beautiful way in verse 22.

But the one who endures to the end will be saved.

We persevere because of Christ.

We endure because of a deeper trust and faith in the message of his gospel.

And in that endurance, we will be saved.

There's an old hymn called Give Me Jesus.

And as we close up this sermon, man, just listen to this in whatever posture you want to, but listen to it in reflection of what was preached this morning.

It says this take the world, but give me Jesus.

All its joys are but a name, but his love abides forever, through eternal years the same.

Take the world, but give me Jesus.

In his cross my trust shall be, till with clearer, brighter vision, face to face, my Lord, I see.

Let's pray.