INTRODUCTION TO THE MISSION DISCOURSE

Open Wednesday 2008 talk 11 Matthew 10:1-15 INTRODUCTION TO THE MISSION DISCOURSE Iwonder if you ve ever had the experience of accidentally overhearing something that perhaps you shouldn t have - or, at least, weren t meant to hear? It s happened to me a couple of times and it s an unsettling experience. You don t quite know what to make of it - whether to simply ignore it, or to forget it, or to admit you ve heard it, or what. Now imagine that you overhear something and it s not an accident. That s even more complicated! The person talking knows you can hear, and wants you to hear. There s a scene in one of the Harry Potter stories like this. Harry and Ron are hiding under an invisibility cloak in Hagrid s hut and Dumbledore is talking to the Minister for Magic. But Dumbledore knows they are listening, and what he says to the Minister for Magic is affected by that. Now I begin like this because I want to point out that something like that is going on as we read Matthew s Gospel. We are, so to speak, watching things and overhearing conversations. But of course Matthew wants us to see those things and overhear what people are saying! But it s even more complicated when we stop to think about it. You see, as we read this historical narrative we are in a sense there, like Ron and Harry under the invisibility cloak. And yet, in the most important sense, of course we are not there: we are in reality at a later time in a different situation. If we want to make use of what we are seeing and hearing, then we need to translate that for the new situation. In other words, biblical narrative is hard to apply to our lives. There are complex issues involved. I want us to think about that tonight because the difficulty of how to apply historical narrative writing like Matthew is raised very starkly at the beginning of chapter 10. And it s worth spending some time on, because if we can t apply this or find its relevance, then we might well wonder why we re bothering to read it at all. Then we shall think about how we should approach Matthew 10 and make sense of it for our lives today. And, finally, we shall take a closer look at the first 15 verses. So first, then, HOW SHOULD WE READ BIBLICAL STORIES? The first thing I want to say is that THERE ARE DANGERS OF READING NARRATIVE BADLY What are we talking about? We re talking about reading biblical narrative; that is, writing in the Bible which is presented as some sort of story. In that, I want to be clear that I mean true story, historical narrative. But nevertheless, some form which has a plot, a time-line, characters, different setting and so forth. Graeme Goldsworthy begins his book Gospel and Kingdom with what has become a notorious example of reading biblical narrative badly. A speaker at a children s rally is re-telling the story of David and Goliath and has someone dress up as Goliath The fellow dressed up as Goliath had progressively revealed a list of childhood sins by peeling cardboard strips off his breastplate one by one, as the speaker explained the kind of Goliaths we all have to meet. Then a strapping young David had appeared on cue, and produced his arsenal - a sling labelled faith and five stones listed as obedience, service, Bible reading, prayer and fellowship. Goldsworthy notes that the speaker failed to say which of these actually killed Goliath. Now what s gone wrong there? Well, the speaker has encouraged his audience to identify with David 1

in an excessive and inappropriate fashion, and has then moulded the story beyond recognition to say what he wants it to say. The actual story has been completely discarded. God is no longer speaking - he is. And that sort of inappropriate close identification with characters in biblical narrative is very common and has a long and ugly pedigree. Back in the third century AD people read about John the Baptist and Jesus in Matthew chapters 3 and 4 and what did they do? They went off to live in the desert to eat locusts and do battle with demons. Strangely, it s not an application which lasted. But it s when we get to the teaching in Matthew that the dangers get especially acute. The narrative in Matthew is punctuated by big blocks of teaching or discourse. We re hitting one of those today, as we come to chapter 10. Now surely, we might say, we can take the teaching and instruction from Jesus straight? That s broadly what we did with the Sermon on the Mount, for example. Surely we stand along-side the people Jesus is instructing as fellow disciples, in pretty much the same place? Surely we can identify ourselves with them? So look at chapter 10, verse 8: Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons And, of course, as you know, people do read that and verses like it and say, Let s start a healing ministry! Let s cast out some demons! Strangely, though, as far as I know, people don t also say, Come on, let s go down to the morgue! Let s start a graveyard ministry! Let s raise some dead! There s something wrong with taking this straight. So, next, it s perhaps not surprising that PEOPLE HAVE REACTED AGAINST BAD PRACTICE BY STOICALLY STANDING BACK AT A DISTANCE They say, No more character studies. No more learning from biblical examples. None of this getting into the narrative. We stand at a distance and simply extract the timeless theological truths implied by what we see and hear. We ask what we can deduce about the character of God, of Jesus, of humanity. Following Graeme Goldsworthy, we ask what we can deduce about God s great plan in salvation history and where we stand in that. If those things have implications for our lives, then fine - but otherwise we do not apply from the details. I call this a stoic reading of narrative because what the stoic philosophers used to do is teach people not to get too attached to their children - not to get too emotionally involved; keep them at a distance. As we were saying a few weeks ago, the child mortality rate was so high in their world that you could kiss your child goodnight and you might easily find them dead in the morning. And the stoic reading of narrative is similar: don t get too emotionally involved, keep a distance - its relevance may well be fleeting. Now, in saying that, of course we do want to be thinking about all the timeless theological truths I just mentioned. Of course! But the question is, in providing so much of the Scriptures for us in this narrative form, does God not want us to do more than that? Three quick reasons to suggest he does: First, THERE ARE BIBLICAL EXAMPLES OF LEARNING FROM BIBLICAL EXAMPLES I had to face up to this at my last church when preaching through the book of Genesis. When you do that, it becomes very clear that the writer expects us to take some of the main characters seriously as examples. And when we turn to the NT, we see that confirmed. Paul expects us to take Abraham as a model of faith. The writer of Hebrews expects us to take Abraham and a whole host of others as models of faith. They don t, of course, expect us to do that simplistically. In Genesis we find Abraham and others doing some pretty bad things, and we have to read intelligently to discern what receives God s ap- 2

proval and what does not. Nevertheless, Paul and the writer of Hebrews do expect it. And I think Matthew expects something similar. So when we read Jesus general command in 4:17, Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near and the first thing Matthew shows us is four disciples responding to his call, I think we can we can take it that he expects us to take them as some sort of model of what it means to repent and follow him. But, again, not a simplistic model. We shall see: in Matthew the disciples are models of little-faith as well as of faith; of apostasy as well as of obedience. If we do engage, we must engage with these examples with discernment, guided by the clues Matthew gives us. But I think we are expected to do that. Secondly, especially as we listen to the blocks of teaching in the Gospel, WE SHOULD WANT TO OBEY THE GREAT COMMIS- SION If you flick forward to the Great Commission at the end of the Gospel, you will see how Jesus finishes it. So, verse 19: Go and make disciples of all nations [then verse 20:] teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you It seems likely that Matthew intends us to find that teaching first and foremost in his Gospel. If that leaves us with a few headaches on exactly how to do that, then let s not shy away from that. It would be selling Matthew short if we did. Finally, turning specifically to Matthew 10 Many commentators on Matthew have noticed something very interesting and important about this chapter. No one could deny that it begins with a very specific focus with well-defined boundaries. Jesus is instructing certain specific individuals - named individuals, notice, in verses 2-4. They have a specific and restricted task, which is to go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel and not to the Gentiles, verses 5-6. The task as it stands seems to have some sort of limited time-frame, verse 23 - it will be interrupted by the coming of the Son of Man. And yet there is much in this chapter which looks much broader in focus, especially as we progress through it. In verse 18, Jesus is talking about encountering Gentiles! In verses 32 and 33, he is talking in quite general terms: whoever acknowledges me whoever disowns me Don Carson reaches the obvious conclusion:...it is surely not unnatural for Jesus to treat this commission of the Twelve as both an explicit shortterm itinerary and a paradigm of the longer mission stretching into the years ahead. (1:242). And that is how we shall take it too. DISCUSSION (We had a substantial discussion about this, and many found these new ideas and quite hard to get their heads around! One person (quite short) said she found comfort from identifying with Zacheus in Luke! We talked more about ways in which that sort of identification was and wasn t appropriate. I said I did want us to get emotionally involved in the story - but only in the ways Matthew wants us to. We briefly looked back at some of the examples in chapters 8-9: miscellaneous characters who are commended for their faith. They do seem to be models of faith, even if their situations were quite particular. The control comes from Jesus express approval.) WE SHOULD NOTICE IN MATTHEW 10 THE MOVE FROM SPECIFIC TO GENERAL HOW TO THINK ABOUT MATTHEW 10 So this is how we are going to approach Matthew 10: as instruction for the mission to Israel told in such a way that it should be able to teach people engaged in the mission to the nations. 3

But we don t leap in feet first. We stand back and ask ourselves the bigger questions first. Why is the mission to Israel happening at all? We shall see that the fact it is happening at all tells us many great and wonderful things about God and his purposes in salvation-history. There is an order in God s plan. In Genesis 12, God promises blessing for the nation (that is, Israel) and only then for the world. Later in the NT, Paul honours this order: the pattern is to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. In his missionary activity he goes first to the synagogue; only then to the market place. But the mission to Israel is also an expression of God s patient faithfulness, his compassion to his historical people. He comes to them first. They are family, if you like. If there is a final break in the relationship it will be because they have rejected his imploring advances, his appeal to them to come back into relationship, not because he simply abandoned them. Nevertheless, the fact that the mission to Israel is happening gives Matthew an opportunity to show Jesus teaching on mission more generally. The mission to Israel serves as some sort of model of the mission we are engaged in: the mission to the nations. I think we shall see, for example, that they both have a definite beginning and a definite end and that we can relate those to one another So the mission to Israel begins with Jesus proclaiming the Kingdom in 4:17, something we see spelt out in detail, in word and deed, throughout chapters 5-9. It is expanded to the twelve in this chapter, in verses 5-7. We can draw a line, as in the diagram on your handout, from that beginning, to the beginning of the mission to the nations in chapter 28: the Great Commission. According to 10:23, the mission to Israel ends, or is at least interrupted in some radical way, when the Son of Man comes. Now that is a notoriously difficult phrase, and we shall have much more to say about it. But I think we can make a good case that in this instance Jesus is referring to his death and his vindication in the resurrection. Later in Matthew s Gospel that s what enables the focus of the mission to widen to the nations. And we can draw a line from that to the end of the mission to the nations. This is the end of the Age, the Parousia, the Second Advent, the end-time judgment. And, we shall see later in Matthew, that is also called a coming of the Son of Man (unambiguously in 25:31). So in the broad compass of the Gospel, Matthew gives us a general framework in which we can understand instruction given in one situation and apply it to another. Read through the death and resurrection of Jesus, by people of the New Age, the instruction in Matthew should be able to teach us about discipleship. In chapter 10, teaching about the mission to Israel should tell us something about how to conduct ourselves in the mission to the nations. We can expect differences - but we should be able to work out what they are. And the more we progress through the chapter, the more directly applicable it will be. DISCUSSION (We talked about a comparison with Luke. Luke gave himself the luxury of writing a sequel, which is expressly concerned with the mission to the nations. Matthew has chosen not to, but rather to focus on Jesus teaching during his earthly ministry. Instruction about the on-going mission is built in to his teaching there and we have to learn how to extract it rightly.) MATTHEW 10:1-15 Read Matthew 9:35-10:15. So let s see if we can see this working in practice! We re going to work through these verses fairly quickly - but we can come back to them next week if need be. (We have two weeks on this chapter.) We re going to look at what this instruction meant to the disciples then. And then we re going to reading it through the lens of Jesus death and resurrection, and apply it to ourselves. And I hope we re going to see that this is a great encouragement to take the apostolic message, the gospel message which in- 4

cludes the resurrection, out to the world urgently - because judgment is coming. First, then THE BACKGROUND: 9:35-38 Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field. As Jesus has been going about his task and proclaiming the kingdom, he has had compassion on the people he has met. They are harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. That s a way of saying that they are leaderless. It s a figure of speech in the Prophets. Israel s leadership have failed. Picture some shepherds sitting in their huts: it s thick with cigarette smoke, they re drinking beer and playing cards - while outside the sheep wander off in all directions and into all sorts of dangers. It is into this desperate situation, when things are at their worst, that God has sent someone to shepherd his people. Remember chapter 2, and especially verse 6 - Jesus is the Christ: a ruler who will be the shepherd of my people Israel. Now the metaphor changes. The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. The harvest is another figure of Prophetic speech: we ve already heard John the Baptist using it, and Jesus will use it several times again. The harvest is the time of judgment: the ingathering of God s people and the destruction of the rest. Jesus is saying, the harvest is plentiful: there are many of God s people out there, but so far only me to gather them in. So the instruction to the disciples is this: ask, pray, for God to cast out more workers. It all sounds at first quite specific to the mission to Israel. But once Jesus has died and been raised, he has set the stage for the judgment of the world, the end of all things. We see now that the harvest field is global. And if Jesus has compassion on the leaderless people of Israel, how much more should we have compassion on those who have never had a leader, who have not just gone astray but have just been running wild all their lives. The principle of compassion translates to the new situation. Jesus is just about to answer the issue of few workers in Israel by appointing a new leadership - the Twelve in chapter 10. But if a shortage of workers was an issue in Israel, how much more will it be an issue in the global mission! So this should affect our prayers too: encouraging us to pray for people to take the message of the Twelve, the apostolic gospel, into all the world, and so gather God s people for the final harvest. Note: not necessarily paid, fulltime workers, although they may be a part of it - anyone who can do it. The principle of praying for workers translates to the new situation. (But please don t pray for God to raise up leaders, as I often hear. There s no special, exalted status here, no vertical hierarchy. The movement is horizontal and the workers are cast out, not raised up!) THE TWELVE APPOINTED: 10:1-4 He called his twelve disciples to him and gave them authority to drive out evil spirits and to heal every disease and sickness. These are the names of the twelve apostles So this is the answer to the immediate problem: a new leadership for Israel. To appoint twelve leaders, one for each of the tribes, is hugely subversive. Do you get The Apprentice out here? In the UK it s based on a gruff east-ender called Alan Sugar. (There s a US version with Donald Trump.) Jesus is saying to the 5

current leadership: you re fired! Here s a new board of directors, so to speak. It seems very specific to Israel, again, and it is! But notice the hints about a future focus even here. Matthew is reminding us even here about the temporary nature of this group as it stands: something will happen to scatter this band of brothers - look at verse 4: Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him. Even the number twelve is an ideal number, looking forward to a renewed Israel. (There were only two and a half tribes by this time in Israel s history.) The other thing to see here is that the twelve are uniquely given Jesus authority over death. Look at verse 1: to drive out evil spirits and heal every disease and sickness, as we saw Jesus doing in chapters 8 and 9, rolling back the shadow of death. In other words, to encounter one of the Twelve was effectively to encounter Jesus. We see that over in verse 40: He who receives you receives me, and he who receives me receives the one who sent me. And that shows us the on-going relevance of this. Whether you accept the apostolic message going out into all the world will show whether or not you receive Jesus. Next THE TWELVE SENT OUT: 10:5-8 These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions: Do not go among the Gentiles or enter any town of the Samaritans. Go rather to the lost sheep of Israel. As you go, preach this message: The kingdom of heaven is near. Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received, freely give. And so we see the Twelve expanding Jesus ministry in Israel. Everything he did, they do - even raising the dead. Just as with him, they are proclaiming the nearness of the Kingdom. And they should do so freely and generously, because the life they are offering and revealing is life they themselves were given for free. And here especially we see the advantage of reading this through the lens of the death and resurrection of Jesus. Remember that we said for chapters 8 and 9 that these sorts of miracles are resurrection miracles: signs of death turning to life. But once THE Resurrection miracle has happened there s no necessity for them any more. Instead of doing these things, we simply proclaim the Resurrection. That is sufficient to show that the kingdom is near. And it s interesting when you turn to the Book of Acts, that s what you find - the proclamation of the resurrection of Jesus at the heart of things. There are healings in special instances in Acts, but they are but a tiny trickle compared to the torrent we find in the pre-resurrection mission to Israel. PRACTICALITIES OF MISSION: 10:9-10 Do not take along [or acquire] 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. These are curious instructions, are they not? Why the austerity? Extreme poverty, even. Would you go out like this? Three possibilities: First, there are precedents in the Prophets. Isaiah was told to walk about naked and barefoot, like a captive of war, as a sign of coming judgement (Isa 20:2-4). Perhaps there s an element of that here (look ahead to verse 15). Secondly, it could be that the Twelve are identifying themselves with the righteous poor. Remember Jesus concern in the Sermon on the Mount for the poor (in spirit) - which in part referred to faithful Israelites under poverty and oppression (although it was wider than that). These are the lost sheep Jesus has compassion for. 6

Thirdly, look at the explanation at the end of verse 10: for the worker is worth his keep. It could be that is should be taken as part of the test of worthiness which follows in verses 11-15. There s a test for anyone meeting a messenger like this, and works like this I think: If you recognise a fellow Israelite, a brother, and respond to their message, but he has nothing, then you are forced to show your response by whether or not you support them. Look over at verse 42: And if anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones because he is my disciple, I tell you the truth, he will certainly not lose his reward. (We ll also see more of the same idea in the verses which follow.) How do we read this for the mission to the nations? Well, it s subtle, isn t it? Because in the mission to the nations it is not like meeting family, as it is here. The gospel worker is therefore not testing family love and faithfulness, as he or she proclaims the gospel, as we see here. So we see Paul, for example, putting to one side his rights to be supported and working to support himself, in order to win over the Thessalonians. Nevertheless, it remains a general principle that how you treat the messenger shows how you respond to the message. And the final principle also still applies: within the Christian family, the gospel worker is worth his keep. (So don t stop paying Simon Manchester just yet!) THE TEST OF WORTHINESS: 10:11-15 Whatever town or village you enter, search for some worthy person there and stay at his house until you leave. As you enter the home, give it your greeting. If the home is deserving, let your peace rest on it; if it is not, let your peace return to you. If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake the dust off your feet when you leave that home or town. I tell you the truth, it will be more bearable for Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town. So this is where we find that idea of testing worthiness fully developed. And, as I just suggested, this is very much about testing worthiness within the family of Israel. As you enter the home, you give the family greeting. If you are welcomed and heard, then great. Otherwise take your greeting back. Shake the dust off your feet at you leave. That seems to be some sort of sign of judgment - some sort of way of dissociating yourself from people who have rejected the blessing of God and placed themselves under the judgment of verse 15. It s like visiting some long-lost relative, I guess. You travel across the world to where they ve run away to, and hold out your hand to welcome them back into the family. But if they send you away, you just have to come back home. How does this apply in the mission to the nations? Well, again, I think we see this modelled by the apostle Paul. When he enters a town in the book of Acts, he goes first to family, to the synagogue. When he comes sailing out through the window, he dusts himself off and goes to the Gentiles. And with nonfamily he is more patient. He hangs around, sometimes for years. They know nothing, after all, while the family have the Scriptures and should know better. But even with non-family there are limits. When the welcome disappears, or the persecution gets too great, he moves on, knowing that he has done his best to save people from the coming judgment. And we need to notice that that is the note Matthew is striking over and over again. The judgment is coming. (To be continued ) Ben Cooper 2008 7