The principal links between the discourse in Matthew 10 and the closing views of Matthew 9 are two: first, the compassion of the Savior who saw the staggering need led naturally to the commission of other workers; and second, the signs of rising opposition against Jesus warning His followers of the kind of opposition they too could expect.

It is encouraging to realize that Jesus did not call those twelve disciples who became apostles on the basis of their innate worthiness or personal capabilities or faithfulness, but solely on the basis of what He could make of them by His own power working through them.

The discourse in Matthew 10 therefore focuses on two different levels. On the one hand, there are instructions applicable only to the trainee mission immediately ahead. On the other hand, the rest of the chapter (10:17–42)—although it conveys many things useful in any Christian outreach, including this first trainee mission—clearly envisages a situation beyond the immediate mission. It thus seems that Jesus wanted His followers to understand their immediate, short-term mission in terms of the life-long challenge they would face, a challenge confronted by every successive generation of Christians.

In opposition to a lot of sentimental religious garb, Jesus did not expect that wherever His gospel was preached there would be instant sweetness and light. Instead, He envisaged that the preaching of the gospel would in many cases actually divide families.

Jesus expected that His followers would face opposition, some of it savage.

Paul insisted that “everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2 Tim. 3:12). Considering the entire history of Christianity, we must recognize how anomalous the experience of many Western Christians really is.

Where the church is persecuted virtually not at all, it will either be because it is so strong as to dominate the opposition (and in that case it is in danger of arrogance, abuse of power, and overweening self-confidence), or because it has become domesticated by the surrounding culture and therefore no longer presents a threat (and in that case the church’s condition is even more perilous, for God Himself will judge it—since judgment begins with the family of God; see 1 Peter 4:17).

Knowing God in a world that does not know God, though costly, is infinitely to be preferred disciples of Jesus is not the desire to have a better life now, but the importance of living now in the light of the judgment and vindication to come. Without this eschatological perspective (as it is called), the claims and demands of the gospel of the kingdom make no sense at all.

Directions for the Twelve

Their ministry field.

Jesus says, “Do not go among the Gentiles or enter any town of the Samaritans. Go rather to the lost sheep of Israel”. This restriction was probably advanced because normally Jews and Samaritans did not get on very well; Jews and Gentiles could not be expected to get along any better. This restriction may have been Jesus’ understanding of his own place in redemptive history. He was sent as a Jew among Jews; he himself obeyed the law of Moses, and lived and died under it. When he ministered outside this framework, he himself seems to have seen it as something of an exception

Training mission or not, the first fifteen verses of this chapter nicely preserve a number of features endemic to all genuine Christian mission; and thus they contribute to our grasp of what Jesus’ compassion really means.
This mission is itself an extension of the saving reign of God. As you go, preach this message: ‘The kingdom of heaven is near.’ In short, then, their mission was to multiply the activity of their Master.

The Gospel & A Healing Ministry

The Western church has felt the impact of the so-called signs-and-wonders movement, usually identified with John Wimber and his associates in the various “Vineyard” organizations.

This movement holds that when the gospel is properly proclaimed, it should be accompanied by signs and wonders, that is, by an observable display of divine power in healing and other supernatural manifestations that attest and confirm the truth of the message that the kingdom is actually invading this world. The subject can’t be avoided in a context that plainly talks about Jesus’ delegation of authority to his disciples, in the days of his flesh, in terms largely congruent with the categories used by the signs-and-wonders movement.

Although after Pentecost signs and wonders are performed by a wide variety of believers, they are rather frequently associated with the apostles (Acts 2:43; 4:30; 5:12, 16; 8:18; 2-Cor. 12:12), sometimes as attesting acts.

Of course, some today argue that the gift of apostleship has never been withdrawn; and so if apostles in the first century were in part attested by signs and wonders, their modern counterparts may be similarly endowed.

But you must answer the question, “who is an apostle in that sense today”?

In one sense, Jesus alone is “the apostle and high priest whom we confess” (Heb. 3:1):

Then there are the Twelve, who according to Acts 1 had to meet the condition of being with the other disciples of Jesus throughout his earthly ministry, there can be no modern counterparts to apostles in this sense, unless someone turns up who is at least a couple of thousand years old.

Then there is Paul, who insists that among his qualifications is the fact that he saw the resurrected Jesus on the Damascus road and received his commission directly from him (especially 1-Corinthians 9 and 15). (“last of all,” he says, 1-Cor. 15:8) appearance of Jesus, in his resurrected form, an event not to recur until Jesus comes again at the end of the age.

There are apostles in a still broader sense: missionaries, envoys, messengers of the churches. the frequent association of signs and wonders, it is easy to argue, as with “apostles” it should been seen in the narrower sense of those during the time of Jesus.

An emphasis on the inbreaking power of the kingdom of God must be balanced against other equally biblical emphases, including the prevalence of suffering in this fallen world. Not all deaths end in immediate resurrection: if the command to raise the dead were a universal mandate, it is rather surprising that none of the early Christians has survived to the present day.

Special emphasis in the New Testament on the inevitability of Christian suffering that stems from the world’s opposition. To put the matter another way, to have no theology of the power of the gospel in our contemporary world is to relegate virtually all kingdom blessings to the return of Jesus—that is, it is to have an overemphasis on futurist eschatology.

On the other hand, to place too much stress on the transforming power of the kingdom today, divorced from other competing and qualifying themes, is to depreciate what we are still waiting for, what the entire created order still groans for, the final redemption. It is to have an overemphasis on realized eschatology.

After the cross and the resurrection, New Testament writers can say, in various words, that whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved; they do not say that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be healed from every physical illness. The church will remain in tension over how much power and how much weakness should characterize her until the consummation of all things.

If this signs-and-wonders theology is treated as a kind of key to evangelism and mission, we are in for some weighty disappointments. With time, virtually all keys, whether the four spiritual laws, altar calls, or a bus ministry, tend to become fetishes, the necessary means exploited by the faithful to produce inevitable results.

When that is done, God’s work in regeneration becomes hostage to the particular key. Exercising the specified means becomes a test of orthodoxy. What begins as a salutary correction easily degenerates into a party position, with disproportionate energy devoted to the key and precious little to God or to people.

We must remember, the entire mission of the church, is an expression of the compassion of Jesus Christ. The saving reign of God is being extended, sometimes in strange ways difficult to understand, sometimes in dramatic displays of life-transforming power, sometimes in the context of persecution and suffering, “famine or nakedness or danger or sword”.

It’s Not About a Name or Money

Ministry must never be for personal financial advantage. Yet this does not mean Jesus’ emissaries are not to be supported by those to whom they minister; for Jesus adds, “Do not take along any gold or silver or copper in your belts; take no bag for the journey, or extra tunic, or sandals or a staff; for the worker is worth his keep”.

Whatever the precise significance of this list, it is clear that the Twelve are to go stripped to essentials.

At first glance this might seem like a contradiction. On the one hand, the disciples are to give “freely,” that is, without charging; on the other hand, they are to remember that “the worker is worth his keep,” and travel lightly in the full expectation that their needs will be met by those to whom they minister.

On both sides of the arrangement, we must consider the effect on those whom Jesus sends and those who receive them. That the disciples do not charge for their ministry forces them to remember that they, too, are the recipients of grace, and that spiritual treasures are not to be marketed in anticipation of the greed of Simon Magus (Acts 8).

Yet these people who receive the gospel of the kingdom want to respond in tangible ways; and so they provide food, shelter, and support for those who are primarily engaged in spreading the gospel. They reason that, although the gospel came to them freely, there is a profound sense in which they ought to pay for the work of those who brought them the good news of the kingdom. The worker is worth his keep. Meanwhile, those who are busy primarily in proclamation and ministry are reminded by the generosity of others that they do not stand alone, isolated heroes completely independent from the common herd.

Brothers we are not professionals

John Piper relates the following.

WE PASTORS are being killed by the professionalizing of the pastoral ministry. The mentality of the professional is not the mentality of the prophet. It is not the mentality of the slave of Christ. Professionalism has nothing to do with the essence and heart of the Christian ministry. The more professional we long to be, the more spiritual death we will leave in our wake. For there is no professional childlikeness (Matt. 18:3); there is no professional tenderheartedness (Eph. 4:32); there is no professional panting after God (Ps. 42:1).

Brothers, we are not professionals! We are outcasts. We are aliens and exiles in the world (1 Pet. 2:11). Our citizenship is in heaven, and we wait with eager expectation for the Lord (Phil. 3:20). You cannot professionalize the love for His appearing without killing it. And it is being killed.

We are most emphatically not part of a social team sharing goals with other professionals. Our goals are an offense; they are foolishness (1 Cor. 1:23). The professionalization of the ministry is a constant threat to the offense of the gospel. It is a threat to the profoundly spiritual nature of our work. I have seen it often: the love of professionalism (parity among the world’s professionals) kills a man’s belief that he is sent by God to save people from hell and to make them Christ-exalting, spiritual aliens in the world.

The world sets the agenda of the professional man; God sets the agenda of the spiritual man. God, deliver us from the professionalizers! Deliver us from the “low, managing, contriving, maneuvering temper of mind among us.”2 God, give us tears for our sins. Forgive us for being so shallow in prayer, so thin in our grasp of holy verities, so content amid perishing neighbors, so empty of passion and earnestness in all our conversation.

Banish professionalism from our midst, Oh God, and in its place put passionate prayer, poverty of spirit, hunger for God, rigorous study of holy things, white-hot devotion to Jesus Christ, utter indifference to all material gain, and unremitting labor to rescue the perishing, perfect the saints, and glorify our sovereign Lord.

Humble us, O God, under Your mighty hand, and let us rise, not as professionals, but as witnesses and partakers of the sufferings of Christ. In His awesome name. Amen. John Piper

The church recognizes that those who serve in this way must be “kept,” and are worthy of it. In practice, this means that the ideal situation occurs when the church is as generous as possible, the ministers do not concern themselves with material matters and are above selfish material interest. The worst situation occurs when the ministers are grasping and covetous, constantly comparing themselves with other “professionals,” while the church adopts the attitude, “You keep him humble, Lord, and we’ll keep him poor.”

The Mission Has a Divided Response

Just because this mission is to be motivated by compassion does not mean everyone exposed to its message will be won over. Far from it: it divides people

Jesus says the division will begin when the disciples arrive in any village and make arrangements to stay at someone’s home. The disciples are to find out who is interested in supporting Jesus’ outreach in this way; such a person is worthy, and Jesus’ followers should go and stay there, without going from place to place trying, perhaps, to secure “superior” lodgings. They are already superior if they are provided by someone who is worthy in this way.

If the householder turns out to be unworthy (not interested in following Jesus or giving aid to his disciples), then the disciples should let their peace return to them—that is, they shouldn’t stay. But the loss is not theirs.

Those who receive Jesus’ disciples receive him. The unworthy person is not simply rejecting a few disciples; he is rejecting the Jesus they represent. Their greeting of peace is of special value because of their relationship with him; and if they leave, taking their greeting with them, the home they thus abandon is impoverished incalculably. Potiphar’s home was blessed because of Joseph’s presence (Gen. 39:3–5): how much more the home that harbors the apostles of Jesus the Messiah!

Rejection of the disciples of Jesus, because they are his disciples, therefore ultimately invites judgment, and that is true not only of the individual or home but even of entire towns: For Jesus to apply this custom to Jews must have been deeply shocking. The emissaries of Jesus the Messiah are now treating certain Jewish homes and towns as essentially pagan, ignorant of God, threatened with judgment.

The judgment theme becomes explicit in the final verse of the section:

“I tell you the truth,” Jesus says, “it will be more bearable for Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town”. Sodom and Gomorrah, proverbial for wickedness (Genesis 19; Isa. 1:9; cf. Matt. 11:22–24; Rom. 9:29; Jude 7), suffered catastrophic judgment on account of their sin; but on the final day, Jesus insists, as much as they will be condemned, the homes and towns that rejected Jesus and his emissaries will face more fearsome judgment yet. Our responsibility before God is related to the advantages and opportunities we have enjoyed. That is a perennially sobering perspective that stands over the Western world, a threat that looms larger when self-interest and materialism squeeze out what we know to be a better way.

It is common in Scripture to find the love of God and the threat of judgment side by side. God so loves the world that he sends his unique Son, we are told (John 3:16); but a few verses on we are told that “whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on him” (John 3:36). “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8), Paul writes; but it is only this that guarantees we shall “be saved from God’s wrath through him” (Rom. 5:9). Elsewhere, John delights us with the words God is love (1-John 4:8, 16); but he is quick to add, “

Judgment Comes When Jesus is Rejected

It appears, then, that if we are to be faithful to Scripture, it is difficult to deal at length with the love of God without saying something about God’s wrath. This is not because God’s love and God’s wrath are entirely symmetrical. Rather, it is because God’s wrath, a function of his holiness when it confronts rebellion, is the environment in which we live and breathe: we are all by nature “objects of wrath,” the apostle tells us (Ephesians 2:3). What is marvelous is that this same God, who has every just cause to be angry, is nevertheless the God of love; and it is that love that sent his Son, that love that sent the disciples, that same love toward us today that “compels us” (2-Corinthians 5:14) to bear witness.

The exercise of Christian compassion in a lost, harassed, and rebellious world leaves behind a transformed people or an increasingly guilty people. Everyone who reads or hears the gospel will either be drawn more closely to Christ, or become increasingly guilty before him. There is no middle ground; for the mission of Jesus results in a divided response. But those who have tasted and seen that the Lord is good cannot but rise and sing praise in thanksgiving.