"The Power Of One Another" (Matthew 10:1-16, Darryl Blackchief)

So this week we are continuing our focus on community.

Really, what we're talking about is what it means to be part of a church.

We're looking at how community helps us grow.

And our text this morning is Matthew chapter 10, verses 1 through 16.

Matthew 10:1–16

It's Matthew 10, verses 1 through 16.

Matthew 10:1–16

We'll read the whole passage, but for our topic this morning, we're going to pay special attention to verses 1 through 5 and then 11 through 16.

Don't doze off in the middle.

Matthew 10, starting in verse 1, and he called to him his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits to cast them out and to heal every disease and every affliction.

The names of the twelve apostles are these: first Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother, James the son of Zebedee and John his brother, Philip and Bartholomew, Thomas and Matthew the tax collector, James the son of Alpheus and Thaddeus, Simon the zealot, and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him.

These twelve Jesus sent out, instructing them go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, and proclaim as you go, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand.

Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons.

You received without paying, give without pay.

Acquire no gold or silver or copper for your belts, no bag for your journey, or two tunics or sandals or a staff, for the laborer deserves his food.

And whatever town or village you enter, find out who is worthy in it, and stay there until you depart.

As you enter the house, greet it.

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

But if it is not worthy, let your peace return to you.

And if anyone will not receive you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet when you leave that house or town.

Truly I say to you, it will be more bearable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah than for that town.

Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves.

So be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.

Lord, we thank you for your word this morning.

We thank you for this body of believers, this church that you have called us to be a part of.

We ask that you would use your word to instruct us how to live out the gospel in a greater way as we seek to follow your Son Jesus, in whose name we pray.

Amen.

Jesus doesn't call us merely to follow him individually, he calls us into a community of disciples where we can grow, serve, encourage, and become more like him together.

There's something really powerful about the way that Jesus built his ministry.

If we were designing a discipleship program, we might have done it differently.

If you think of discipleship, there's another word that it means the same thing.

It's used a lot in corporate settings.

That's mentorship.

So if you wanted to be a mentor to someone, you know, if you saw a lot of promise in them, you wanted to help them on their journey, you would quote unquote take them under your wing.

When I first started as a driver at UPS, this was some time ago, but I had people do that for me.

We had uh training classes that went on for a week, and then uh followed by that, there were supervisors that would take you out on the route that you were going to learn.

Um they could not cover the astonishing number of scenarios that you might run into.

You wouldn't think it.

You would think it's you know, drop some boxes off here, go pick some boxes up here, but no, there's there's many different possibilities of things that could happen.

And I'm not gonna bog us down with with the plethora of them, but when I was starting out, I had a few season drivers say to me, here's my number.

If you ever need anything, give me a call.

I needed those numbers.

I had I had to call them.

Uh and I was able to do that for others as I progressed in my career.

Even in Christian discipleship, if we wanted to disciple someone, we might say, if you ever need anything, if you're struggling, give me a call.

We'll get together one-on-one, we'll pray together, we'll go through a book of the Bible, right?

So if you think about Jesus as obviously the master disciple maker, you might imagine Jesus taking one person at a time and giving each disciple his undivided attention.

You know, he'd meet with Peter on Monday, Matthew on Tuesday, John on Wednesday, so on.

Jesus didn't do that.

He called twelve men at basically the same time.

These twelve men were not identical people.

They came from different backgrounds, they had different personalities, they had different political perspectives, they had different experiences.

Some of them were fishermen, one was a tax collector, Simon was a zealot, and eventually there would even be a betrayer among them.

But Jesus called them together.

We read in Matthew 10:1, Jesus called his twelve disciples to him and gave them authority.

Matthew 10:1

And then in verse 5 it says, These twelve Jesus sent out.

You notice the language, these twelve.

Jesus was forming a community.

He was not simply producing twelve individual Christians, he was creating a community of disciples who would learn to follow him together.

And that's something important for us to learn as a church today.

We live in an increasingly individualistic culture.

We can worship online, we can listen to sermons by ourselves, you can read books by yourself, you can listen to Christian or worship music through your headphones.

I do a lot of that stuff.

But apart from community, it can give us a sense that we're spiritually healthy while remaining largely disconnected from other believers.

Biblical Christianity has never been an individual-only experience.

God saves individuals, but then he places them into a body.

Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12, 27, now you are the body of Christ, and individually members of it.

Peter says in 1 Peter 2.5 that believers are being built together as a spiritual house.

Hebrews 10, 24 and 25 tells us to consider how we can provoke or stir one another up towards love and good works and not forsaking assembling together.

And Jesus' ministry here in Matthew 10 reminds us of something very simple.

We need one another.

So today I want us to consider this truth.

Jesus didn't call us merely to believe together, he called us to become like him together.

We grow through belonging.

Look again at the first four verses here in Matthew 10.

Matthew gives us the name of the twelve: Peter, Andrew, James, John, Philip, Bartholomew, Thomas, Matthew, James the son of Alpheus, Thaddeus, Simon the Zealot, and Judas Iscariot.

Why does Matthew give us their names?

First, because these were real historical figures, some of whom wrote the Bible that we read, including our passage here this morning.

But also because Christianity isn't merely an abstract belief system.

Jesus calls real people into relationship with himself and with one another.

If you think about the differences represented in that group, Matthew was a tax collector, Simon was a zealot.

These two labels, if you don't know, means that they were probably enemies.

The zealots opposed Roman rule.

Tax collectors worked for the Romans and collected taxes.

They were often despised by their fellow Jews.

But Jesus here puts Matthew and Simon in the same group.

And that's what Jesus does, isn't it?

He brings people together who might never have chosen one another.

And that is one of the first ways that community helps us grow.

Community teaches us that the kingdom of God is greater than our individual preferences.

It's easy to love people who think like us, right?

It's easy to fellowship with people who share our personality.

Sports fandom, maybe.

It's easy to enjoy church when everybody has the same background, same interests, same opinions.

But Jesus creates a community in which different people learn to love one another because they have something greater in common.

And that's Christ.

Paul says in Ephesians 4:3, we are to be eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

Ephesians 4:3

Another translation has it that we should be endeavoring to keep that unity.

Notice that Paul doesn't say that we must create unity.

The Spirit creates unity.

Our responsibility is to maintain it.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who I've referenced up here before, he had this book, Life Together.

He emphasized that Christian community is ultimately a gift from Christ rather than something we manufacture for ourselves.

We don't gather because we have found our perfect group of compatible people.

We gather because Christ has called us together.

That should change how we see church.

Church is not primarily a place where I find people who make me comfortable.

It's a place where Christ teaches me how to love people.

Sometimes the person who irritates you is a part of God's classroom for your sanctification.

Sometimes the person who disagrees with you is teaching you patience.

Sometimes the person who is different from you is teaching you humility.

Sometimes the person who needs help is giving you an opportunity to serve.

And sometimes you are the person who needs help.

That's why community matters.

Because God uses people to shape people.

You know well Proverbs 27, 17, it says iron sharpens iron and one man sharpens another.

Iron sharpens iron through contact.

And sometimes that contact creates sparks.

But the result can be sharpening.

You don't become spiritually mature by avoiding everyone who challenges you.

You become mature by learning to love, to listen, to forgive, to serve, to encourage, and to walk with people who are also being transformed by Christ.

I think Dan has used the example before that some people are like sandpaper.

They rub you the wrong way, right?

But that friction removes rough edges.

So community helps us grow through belonging.

We also grow through shared experience.

Matthew 10 doesn't merely tell us that Jesus gathered the twelve, it says that he sent them.

Verse 5, we read it, These 12 Jesus sent out.

Jesus was teaching them by giving them a specific assignment.

He didn't simply say, stay here and listen to me.

He sent them into ministry, into service.

They had to proclaim the kingdom.

They had to serve people.

They had to depend upon God.

They had to face rejection.

They had to learn what it meant to represent Jesus.

In other words, they were learning by doing.

And they were doing it together.

This is an important principle, too, of Christian community is that when we serve together, we grow together.

There are things you can't learn simply by sitting through a church service.

You can hear a sermon about compassion, but you learn compassion when you sit beside someone who is hurting.

You can hear a sermon about generosity, but you learn generosity when there is a genuine need you can meet.

You can hear a sermon about forgiveness, but you learn forgiveness when somebody hurts you.

Sermon about patience.

God may give you someone who tests your patience.

There's the old joke, you shouldn't ask for patience.

You should.

Sometimes God answers our prayer for spiritual maturity by putting us in situations that require spiritual maturity.

That's why James in chapter 1, verses 2 through 4 says that trials can produce perseverance, and perseverance produces maturity.

God doesn't merely teach us through information, He teaches us through experience.

And often those experiences involve other people.

If you think about a sports team, okay, someone could go out into a basketball court, spend hours and hours and hours shooting the basketball alone.

But eventually you have to play against somebody.

Because a real game reveals things that practice doesn't.

You discover how you respond under pressure.

You discover whether you can cooperate, whether you can encourage teammates.

You discover how you respond when you lose.

So Christian community works similarly.

You may think you're patient until somebody tests your patience.

You may think you're humble until somebody gets credit that you wanted.

You may think you're forgiving until someone really hurts you.

Community gives us opportunities to practice the character of Christ.

That's why Paul says in Galatians 6, too, bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ.

You cannot bear someone's burden from a distance.

You have to get close enough to know that they're hurting, that they have the burden.

We also grow by learning to depend on one another.

If you look at verses 9 and 10 of our passage, Jesus tells the disciples here not to take any gold or silver, not to take any extra provisions for their journey.

Why?

Because Jesus is teaching them dependence.

They're going to discover that ministry requires trust.

They cannot control everything, they cannot provide everything, and they cannot accomplish the mission in their own strength.

And then Jesus tells them to enter homes and receive hospitality.

So this is pretty fascinating.

The disciples were going to have to learn how to give and how to receive.

This is difficult for some of us.

We could be happy to help someone else, happy to pray for somebody else, happy to give to somebody else, but sometimes we don't want anybody to know that we need help.

We say, I'm fine, even when we're not.

We say, I've got this.

Even when we don't.

Or especially even when we don't need to.

Christianity requires humility.

There are times when you need to say, I need you.

Galatians 6.2 tells us to bear one another's burdens, as we just read.

But in Galatians 6.5, Paul also says that each person has a responsibility to carry their own load.

Those truths belong together.

Christian community doesn't mean becoming irresponsible, it means recognizing that there are burdens that we were never intended to carry alone.

Moses learned this lesson in Exodus 18.

He was trying to carry the burden of leadership himself.

His father-in-law Jethro told him that what he was doing was not good because he was wearing himself out.

The answer wasn't that Moses wasn't spiritual enough.

The answer was that God had not designed him to do everything alone.

And again, there's a lesson there for the church.

Some people can become exhausted because they're trying to do alone what God designed the body to do.

We have to be willing to say, I need help when we need it.

And at the same time, and really at the same time, we need to be available for God to use us to meet someone else's need.

You can need help and still help.

We grow through encouragement.

Matthew 10 also reminds us that following Jesus will not always be easy.

At the end of our passage in verse 16, Jesus says, Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves.

It's not exactly a great motivational speech.

Jesus doesn't promise them that everyone will welcome them.

He warns them about rejection, about opposition.

And that makes community even more important.

Because there are seasons when your faith is strong, there are seasons when it isn't.

And as we live out in the world, we are going to be challenged, we're going to be rejected, and having the community matters.

There are times when you'll be the one encouraging someone else, and there are times when you'll need someone to encourage you.

That's why Paul writes in 1 Thessalonians 5.11, therefore, encourage one another, build one another up.

Another translation has it edify one another.

The picture is of building a house with a strong foundation, brick by brick.

It's a strengthening, it's sending in reinforcements.

I'm a big Lord of the Rings fan.

Many times in that series, a battle looks hopeless, only for reinforcements to show up at the last moment and turn the tide.

If you've seen the two towers, for instance, at the end Gandalf shows up with the riders of Rohan.

But multiple times that happens.

That's what Christian communities should do.

We build one another up.

We're all fighting a battle.

Imagine what would happen if every person in this church made it their mission to leave every conversation having encouraged somebody.

Not having flattered them, not having told them what they wanted to hear, but genuinely strengthened them.

Hebrews 3.13 says that we are to exhort one another daily.

It's because our hearts can become hardened.

Discouragement can drain our level of faith.

Isolation can magnify fears, but encouragement reminds us that we're not alone.

Bonhoeffer who I referenced earlier, he had a famous warning that's worth remembering.

That was that the person who loves their dream of community will destroy community.

The person who loves their dream of community will destroy community.

What does that mean?

We can fall in love with the idea of a perfect church, a perfect small group, perfect friends, perfect pastor, perfect congregation.

But we know that the moment real people enter the picture, there are imperfections.

People disappoint us.

People misunderstand us.

People make mistakes.

And then suddenly the community doesn't look like the dream.

Bonaver's point is that genuine Christian community requires us to receive people as they actually are and to learn to love them in Christ.

Because the reality is, you or somebody else's imperfect Christian.

People disappoint me.

I've disappointed others.

People misunderstand me.

I've misunderstood them.

People make mistakes.

I never do anything without messing up some part of it.

What did you think I was going to say?

We grow by serving one another.

In verses 7 and 8 of our passage here in Matthew 10, Jesus gives the disciples a mission.

He tells them to proclaim the kingdom and to minister to people.

Then he says, freely you've received, freely give.

That principle reaches far beyond the 12 disciples.

Everything that we have received from Christ is grace.

We didn't earn our salvation.

It's a gift, free gift.

We didn't purchase our forgiveness.

We were bought with his blood.

Jesus paid it.

We didn't deserve mercy, but we received it.

Therefore, we give.

Peter says, and we went through 1 Peter not long ago, in 4.10, he says, as each has received a gift, use it to serve one another.

Serve one another.

Okay?

God gives gifts to individuals for the benefit of the community.

Some preach, some teach, some encourage, some serve, some give, some organize, some pray, some visit, some cook.

Thank you for people bringing soup next week.

Some listen.

Some disciple children.

Some disciple teenagers.

Some care for the elderly.

Some sit with the hospitalized or the lonely.

Some quietly serve in ways that nobody sees.

But every gift matters.

Paul said in 1 Corinthians 12, 21, the I can't say to the hand, I have no need of you.

Okay?

That's not how Christ designed the church.

The church is a place where we can and should say, I need you, and you need me.

It's not because Christ is insufficient.

Christ is completely sufficient.

But he has chosen the church.

He has chosen to minister and work through this body.

We also grow when we learn to love people who are different from us.

Okay?

We talked a little bit about Matthew and Simon, the tax collector and the zealot.

It really is extraordinary that Jesus placed these men in the same community.

It wasn't so that they would come to the same political agreement.

Jesus was teaching them something bigger than that.

He was teaching them allegiance to the kingdom of God.

It doesn't mean that Christians are going to agree about everything.

It doesn't mean that we uh somehow erase differences in our personalities.

It doesn't mean that we pretend that the disagreements don't exist.

It means that we recognize that our identity in Christ is greater than our differences.

Colossians 3, I'm gonna turn there and read verses 12 to 14.

Colossians 3, verses 12 through 14, put on then as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another, and if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other, as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.

Colossians 3:12–14

And then, above all these, put on love.

Love.

That's the glue.

Jesus said in John 13, 35, by this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for another, for one another.

Jesus didn't say that the world would know we're his disciples if we have a perfect building or perfect programs, because you guys don't disagree on anything.

He said, if you have love for one another.

Another thing we need to notice is that community does not mean perfection.

One of the twelve was Judas.

Matthew 10 names him, Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him.

Even Jesus's community wasn't perfect.

Okay, that's pretty sobering.

There was betrayal inside the group.

There was misunderstanding.

There was competition.

There was failure.

The disciples would later argue about who was the greatest among them.

Peter would deny Jesus.

Thomas struggled with doubt.

James and John pursued positions of prominence.

The men were not finished products, and were not either.

They were being formed.

The church is not a gathering of people who have already arrived, it's a community of people who are being transformed.

Like Paul says in Philippians 1, he that began a good work in you will carry it on until the day of Jesus Christ.

God is still working on you, and he's still working on me.

So we shouldn't be surprised when the church contains imperfect people.

We should be surprised if we expect ourselves to be perfect while everyone else is still under construction.

The question isn't, are these people perfect?

The question is, are we willing to let Christ use these relationships to make us more like Him?

Our passage today began with Jesus calling the twelve together.

And then he gives them authority, then he sends them out.

They preach together, they serve together, they experience rejection together, they learn dependence together, they grow together.

And eventually, after Jesus' resurrection, those same disciples received a much larger commission.

Matthew 28, we know it well, the great commission.

He says, Go therefore into all the world, teach all the nations.

The disciples who were once sent to the lost sheep of Israel would eventually be sent to the nations.

They had grown, and they were now being sent to help others grow.

That's discipleship.

People who are being discipled become people who disciple others.

That's what Jesus wants for his church.

Not merely people who attend, people who listen, people who believe the right things, but people who are connected, people who encourage, people who serve, who pray, who carry burdens, people who forgive, who receive help and give help, who challenge one another, who love one another, people who grow together.

So the question we shouldn't ask ourselves is not, am I growing?

Or the question we should ask ourselves is not, am I growing spiritually?

That is an important question.

But we should also ask who is helping me grow?

And who am I helping grow?

Who knows when you're struggling?

Who can call you when you're discouraged?

Who can tell you the truth when you're drifting?

Who can pray with you?

Who can rejoice with you?

Who can weep with you?

And on the other side of that, more importantly, probably, whose life are you investing in?

Who are you encouraging?

Who are you discipling?

Who are you praying for?

The Christian life was never designed to be lived alone.

Jesus called the twelve, he formed a community, he sent them together.

And through that community, he transformed them from ordinary people into witnesses of his extraordinary grace.

So let us become that kind of a church.

A church where nobody has to pretend that they have it all together.

A church where the strong help the weak.

A church where the weak are not ashamed to ask for help.

A church where older believers invest in younger believers.

A church where gifts are used, where burdens are carried, where sins are confessed, where forgiveness is extended, where encouragement is abundant, and where love is genuine.

And where people will look at us and say, there's something different about those people.

They don't just belong to the same church, they belong to one another.

Because ultimately that's what Jesus is creating.

Not an audience, but a family.

Not isolated individuals, but a body.

Not merely people who believe in him.

A community that is becoming like him.

And may God help us to remember that we don't just grow individually and then become a community.

We grow because Christ has placed us in a community.

We need one another.

And together, by the grace of God, we can become more like Jesus.

Amen.