We're going to turn back to Matthew
chapter 10, but before we begin, let's have a word of prayer. Gracious Father, thank you that
your love found a way to redeem our souls, even this soul of
mine. You sent your Son to bear the shame that we deserved and
we bore, but could never bear the wrath we deserved. And He,
He came and He bore it. And He bore it away. And He found
a way to lay aside your wrath that should be against us by
taking it into Himself. And there we find and see our
salvation. All of our hope and desire is
our Lord Jesus. We thank you, Lord, for this
word that we know it's certain and sure from your word that
the Lord Jesus Christ gave himself for his people and that you gave
your son and that in so doing he perfected them forever by
his one offering. Lord, bless your word today to
your people. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Now, if you look at chapter 10
of Matthew, I want you to not miss the important themes that
are here. And one of the things that you
see as you look at this, there's a few themes here, and I'm going
to let you see them now as an introduction. But the first one,
if you look at this, is that the Lord Jesus Christ is here
sending his apostles to sinners. The Lord Jesus Christ, in this
chapter, sends his apostles to sinners. That's the first theme. And then the second theme is
within his commission of them to go, as he has given us here
in chapter 10, I see here something I would call the field manual
of those he sends. A laborer's field manual. You
know what that is. It's how to do what you're supposed
to do. All the questions you might have as a laborer are answered
here in this text. But the second thing, I mean
the third thing here that I want you to see, and really this is
the context of all that we see here, is that the Lord Jesus
Christ is describing here something from a position, His position,
that is As if He's looking at this point
in time through history to the ultimate conclusion of the world. And as He's doing that, He's
prophesying. The Lord Jesus Christ is speaking
here both as a prophet and as the Master of His disciples.
And He's sending His disciples. He's acting as a prophet and
a king in this. And as a prophet, He's foretelling
what would happen when he, as a king, would send his ministers
into the world. But sometimes I think the way
in which the Lord Jesus Christ, or the scriptures, describe to
us what the Kingdom of God is, sometimes the way it does that,
it makes it... we don't understand at first
what the Kingdom of God is. So when it's described to us,
in scripture, what you find is kind of like when I've gone to
a place, a historical site, and they have people there who are
dressed in the period dress of that point in history. Or who
are acting out, they're going about the everyday activities
of the people who would be living at that point in time. And you
walk in and And women are wearing funny clothes and men are wearing
high peak hats and they're boiling things in a big pot or whatever
they're doing. And it's almost like you've just
immersed yourself in a point in history and you don't have
the context for it all. And you see kids running around
and adults in these funny clothes and saying things in a different
way. They're trying to act out that
history. So you step right in the middle of it, and you're
living it, but you don't see the organization so much. You
don't see the day-to-day life at an outward level. Well, the
Kingdom of Heaven is described in scripture in that way. What
is done here in this chapter, in Matthew chapter 10, I think
this helps me understand it best of all. What's done here is that
the Lord Jesus Christ... as king, is looking forward to
fulfilling the will of God, and rising again, triumphant over
his enemies and their enemies, his people's enemies, saving,
actually saving his people, and then him taking his throne. And
from His throne, sending His ambassadors throughout the world
to proclaim what He has done, the victory He has obtained.
And from His King, sending His own power to work in them and
through them to bring and rescue His people out of all the world.
And in doing so, They're not without enemies. There are enemies
in the process, and these enemies are described here in various
ways. There are wolves, there are men who are deceitful, there
are persecutors, and they're at war with the ministers that
are sent out. So here we have in this chapter,
really, The Lord Jesus Christ, speaking as a prophet, and Himself
as King, as a prophet, telling what would happen when He sits
on the throne of glory, and how He would get there. And as a
King, issuing commands to His ambassadors to go out throughout
all the world, and to take His Gospel, the Gospel of the Kingdom.
Remember this thing that we don't understand? He's going to describe
that to us. Apologies for my phone. And when
He describes it to us, we're going to see the King, we're
going to see the organization, we're going to see everything,
but we're going to see it on a day-to-day level. How it works out on a
level here where there's people going in and they're having interactions
with other people and there's trouble and all this is coming.
So, I hope you see those three things. First, the Lord Jesus
Christ as a King sends His apostles to sinners. Second, all the details
here given to his ministers as a field manual, what they should
expect, how they should act, all the questions that they will
have answered for them. And third, Never to remember
the entire context here that Christ is sitting as a triumphant
King in glory, having conquered His enemies and His people's
enemies, having fulfilled the will of God, and now in the authority
and power of His position as the reigning King of Heaven,
sending His ambassadors to His people to find them and to bring
them into the Kingdom of God. And that, I think, is the overview
that I see here in this chapter. Matthew chapter 10 covers the
immediate period of time where the disciples were sent out while
Jesus was on the earth. But it also covers the entire
period of time after He rose from the dead and returned to
heaven when His ministers would be sent out. And so in that sense,
it's both a short-term and a long-term prediction, a prophecy. And that's
why I say He's looking, as it were, from that point in time
all the way through the course of Earth's history and sending
His ambassadors as the King. So, from that perspective, what
we see here is that all of the history from Christ's resurrection
and ascension and His enthronement in Heaven as the King, You see
that the world's history is all about what He is doing because
of what He did at the cross. And His ministers are sent out
this way. And so I'm giving you that as
an introduction here. And I want to go through this
chapter with you. Try to go through it in a fairly
rapid way. in order that you can maintain
that overview. So first thing you see here is
that in the first verse it says, "...the Lord Jesus called His
twelve disciples." It's the Lord who calls. The Lord, Jesus, who
calls His ministers. They're His. He chooses them. He ordains them. He equips them. He gives them His authority.
He gives them His message. And He sends them to those to
whom He would send as a King. He's sending His people throughout
the world. Those are the disciples. And he sends them with a task.
What is it that they're supposed to do? When we go, what do we
do? That's what he answers in the first one. The question in
the field manual is, first of all, what are we going to do?
And he gives the answer right here. Open your field manual
and it'll say, heal the sick, cleanse lepers, cast out devils,
raise the dead. That's what he sent them to do.
And if you understand that, Matthew is writing, as a Jew, a publican,
a tax collector, but he's writing his gospel first to the Jews,
so that the Jews will know that Jesus Christ is the Son of David,
the Son of Abraham, promised throughout all the Old Testament. And Matthew gives this account
to the Jewish person to see that the Lord Jesus Christ, in His
compassion and mercy to sinners, sends His disciples to do for
them what He Himself was doing. Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers,
cast out devils, and raise the dead. And isn't this Really? A summary of what the Gospel
does for us? The Lord Jesus Christ heals us. And how does He do that? By His
stripes we are healed. It was by, remember when the
children of Israel were bitten in the wilderness? How were they
healed? Moses, God told Moses, take a serpent, a serpent of
brass, and beat it out. Put it in the fire, beat it out,
hammer it out, fix it to a pole. That is the law that came upon
our Lord Jesus Christ. putting him under the wrath of
God, him bearing the punishment for the sins of his people, hung
on the cross. And then Moses told the people,
whoever is bitten, look to the serpent on the pole, and those
that looked lived. And Jesus told Nicodemus in John
3, that's what I'm going to do. I'm the one who's going to be
hung on the cross because of the sins of my people, cursed
for them. And all who look in faith at
Him, looking to Him as their total answer to God, bringing
them to God by His death, they'll be healed from their sin. Sin
is a plague. It's a sickness. It affects us.
And Solomon described it like that. It's a sin not only of
guilt, But it's a sin of corruption within us. There's this old man,
even after we've believed, that still we're at war with. And this war is won by what Christ
has done on the cross. So he says, heal the sick. telling
them to do this physically, but that healing process, that healing
miracle that they did then was to show what the gospel would
do. The gospel of the kingdom would
heal sinners and cleanse the lepers. How are lepers cleansed?
Well, if they were healed, if they overcame their leprosy,
if God graciously healed them in Leviticus 14, God gave lepers
and the priests a process to go through so that the cleansed
leper would be able to re-enter and worship God. Remember that?
They were told, you take two birds, two living birds, and
you take some cedar wood, and hyssop, and water, and you take
one of the living birds and you kill it over the water, with
the running water, in this earthen vessel. And it's a strange process. What does it all mean? Well,
it meant that Christ would be killed in our nature, And the
scarlet and the hyssop were pointing to the fact that the blood of
Christ would cleanse His people who were lepers in their souls.
And this cleansing is talked about in the gospel. That's what
it's about. So the gospel was given to the disciples to take
and to pronounce to men that by the Lord Jesus Christ they're
reconciled to God. They're sprinkled on their conscience
when the Spirit of God gives them an understanding of what
Christ has done. He was that bird that was killed
in the earthen vessel of our nature over the running water.
The running water in Leviticus 14 represents all that God has
said in the Prophets and in the Old Testament. That's the water.
The water of the Gospel. Of what Christ would do. And
He was killed according to the Scriptures. And He was buried
and rose again the third day according to the Scriptures.
This is the cleansing of the lepers and then there's casting
out devils. And Christ came for the purpose to destroy the works
of the devil. And it was when He came, when
He accomplished our redemption, that He speaks of the devil being
cast out of heaven. And we'll get to that in a minute
here. And then there was the raising of the dead. There's
nothing more fantastic than that we are raised from the dead.
Raised from the dead. Only God can raise the dead.
Did you know that Jesus Christ calls himself the resurrection
and the life? The resurrection and the life?
What does it mean? It means that the Lord Jesus Christ is uniquely
the resurrection. How could he be the resurrection?
Well, first of all, God can't die, so in order for Him to be
the resurrection, He had to be a man. And secondly, man can't
raise from the dead, so only God can do that. He had to be
both God and man. He had to Himself die, otherwise
He couldn't be the resurrection, and He had to rise again. He
had to do away with sin, and He had to do it for His people.
And God had to approve of it and raise Him from the dead by
the Spirit of holiness. This is the resurrection. He
is that resurrection and He's our life. And so the resurrection
from the dead is what Christ did. And when He was raised from
the dead before God, we were reconciled. That was a resurrection
before God in the presence of God. Christ rose with His people. But that resurrection of Him
with His people then was applied to us when the Spirit of God
spiritually raised us from the dead. Showing us what Christ
had done. Giving us life in our souls and faith in Him. And then
the third resurrection that we experience is when our bodies
will be raised again. So you see these things. Christ
says, go heal the sick. cleanse the lepers, cast out
devils, and raise the dead. This was the authority of the
Lord Jesus Christ. Do you see this authority? Over
all sickness, over all disease, over devils, over death itself. You can see how that the Lord
Jesus Christ here is the reigning king, can't you? He has authority
and power over all of the consequences of the sins of His people. Death,
the devil, and the corruption, and the sickness, and the plague
of sin in their hearts, and the guilt before God. He, by His
command, removes all those things in an instant. His healing of
people was not gradual. He would touch them, speak to
them. And by His will, He would heal them immediately. And He
sends His apostles to do the same thing. Because they're accomplishing,
through their ministry, what He did actually one-on-one with
people. Have you ever thought about that?
If Jesus stayed on the earth, He would be going around physically
with people and healing and touching and speaking to them individually.
But it wasn't God's will that the gospel of the Kingdom of
God would be carried out by the Lord Jesus Christ. And think
about why is that? Why didn't God send Jesus to
the earth, have Him accomplish all the salvation of all His
people, and then go to the cross in the same order, but do it
without disciples? Have you ever wondered about
that? Well, we're going to get to that. So, I want you to look
at the next verse here. He says, "...the names of the
twelve apostles are these. First there was Simon, who is
called Peter, and Andrew, his brother." Notice the brothers
in this list. Peter and Andrew were brothers.
And then James and John were brothers. And then, it doesn't
say it here, but you learn it elsewhere. James, the son of
Alphaeus, and Lebaeus, whose name is also Jude, or Judas,
they were brothers. In the book of Jude, he says,
the brother of James. There are three sets of brothers
in the twelve apostles. Isn't that amazing? Now in scripture,
sometimes there are, it's often the case that there are people
in the same family who are not saved. Cain was lost. Abel was saved. Ishmael was lost. Isaac was saved. Esau was lost. Jacob was saved. And yet they
were brothers in the same family. Jonathan and Mephibosheth, father
and son, both saved. So you can see this throughout
time. Aaron and Moses were brothers.
And Miriam, all in the same family. And they were believers. Can
you see the mercy of God there? It just so happens that it pleases
God to save, sometimes, to save more than one out of a single
family. And there's a verse, and I don't
have it on my fingertips. One of a city, two of a family. So you see that the Lord is gracious
in His purpose and sovereign in the way He saves here. But
secondly, look at these men. Look at this list of men. What
do you see here? Well, if you follow these men
throughout the New Testament, what you see is a bunch of ordinary
people. They're not noble. They're not
great. Some of them are clumsy. They
do what seems to be foolish things. And yet, the Lord used these
12 men, entrusted them with the eternal everlasting gospel. to save his people. He says in
Ephesians 2 that the apostles are the foundation of the temple,
and Christ is the chief cornerstone, and the people of Christ are
the building itself, the occupation. God, by His Spirit, lives in
His people as the church. So the apostles have an infinitely
important role here. What an honor to have been placed
on them, to be the apostles, the sent ones of Christ, to accomplish
the will of the God of glory, who came and gave His life for
His people, purchased them with His own blood, and then sent
these men. And He did this through these 12 men. There's something
about them we can find. Each one of them, it seems to
me, that we don't like, and something about them that we do like. And
I thought about this just a little bit, and I didn't want to do
a complete study on these guys, but think about Peter. Peter,
he was clearly the leader. In every list of the disciples
that's given in the New Testament, Peter's always the first in the
list. And it says here, the first was Peter. Now, I want to be
like Peter in some ways. And there's other ways I don't
want to be like Peter. Jesus said to Peter, Simon, your
name is Cephas, which is also the name Peter. Cephas and Peter,
the same name in different languages. But it means the rock. And a
rock is stable. But Peter seemed like anything
but stable. He was, Lord, if that's you,
come to me on the water. He jumps out of the boat, starts
walking, and then he collapses in the sea. Cries out, Lord,
save me. And then after the resurrection,
he says to his disciples, he says, I'm going fishing. They
say, okay, we'll go too. And then he says, you know, he
always did things, the first thing that came to his mind,
it seems like, that's what he said. Remember at the Mount of
Transfiguration? It's good that we're here. Let's
build three tabernacles. One for you, one for Moses, one
for Elijah. And God the Father spoke from
heaven and said, This is my son! My beloved son! Hear Him!" And
so we learn a lot from Peter, don't we? He's the one who said,
though all forsake you, I will never forsake you, and deny you. I will never deny you. He's the
one who denied him. Three times. Peter. But I want to be like Peter.
I want to be like Peter because he said, when Jesus said, Are
you also going to go away? He said, Lord, where else would
we go? You have the words of eternal
life, and we believe and are sure that you are the Christ,
the Son of the living God. That's amazing that he said that. That's amazing that that was
in his heart. Jesus said to him after his denial, and Jesus rose
from the dead, he says to him, Peter, do you love me? I want
to be like Peter. He said, Lord you know that I
love you. Three times he said that. Because
he couldn't say anything else. Who did he love? His master,
the Lord Jesus Christ. I want to be like him. And I
want to be like Andrew, Peter's brother. Even though he's not
first in the list. You know what Andrew did? He
was always bringing people to Jesus. He brought his own brother,
Peter, to Jesus. And then when the Greeks came
and Philip said, The Greeks came to Philip. I guess Philip, maybe
he was close to the Greeks somehow. And they came to Philip and they
said, we would see Jesus. And Philip takes him to Andrew.
And Andrew and Philip take him to Jesus. Andrew was always taking
people to Jesus. He took his own brother. I wouldn't
be like that. I always want to be bringing
people to Jesus. And then there's James. James
and John were the sons of Zebedee, sons of thunder. I want to be
like James in this way. James was the first apostle who
was martyred, who overcame by the blood of the Lamb, by the
word of his testimony, the gospel, and that he loved not his life
even unto death. He loved the Lord Jesus Christ
more than life itself. And Paul said that in Philippians
3, that I might... know the fellowship of his sufferings,
being conformable unto his death. Remember, James was ready to
die for Jesus. He didn't love life, and he loved
Christ more than life, and loved him even though it meant his
own death. So in that way, I want to be like him. And then John.
Who was John? Well, John wrote the Gospel of
John in the three epistles, and he wrote Revelation. John was
the apostle, the disciple, that Jesus loved. I want to be that. I want to know that Christ loves
me. I want to put my head right against His chest. And I want
to ask Him questions like John did. Lord, who is it? Remember? One of you is going
to betray me. And he's got his head laying
there on Jesus' breast. Because that's where his favorite
position was. And he says, Lord, who is it?
And Jesus told him, it's the one that I dip with in the cup. Dip the sop with. So I want to
be like John. Remember John, he knew that Christ
loved him. And what was the first epistle
of John all about? It was about the love. He says,
this is how we know love. That he sent his son to be the
propitiation for our sins. That's what John understood,
and he loved the Lord Jesus Christ because of that. And then there
was Philip. Philip was like Andrew, bringing
the Greeks to Jesus. Philip was the one who brought
Nathanael, remember? Philip goes to Nathanael and
says, listen, we have found him whom Moses and the prophets spoke
about. Philip understood the Old Testament.
What did he understand? He understood that the Old Testament,
throughout, talked about someone who was coming. And so he goes
to Nathanael, we found him whom Moses and the prophets have spoken
of. Is not this the Christ? I want to be like Philip, who
recognized that. But remember, Philip also was
the one in John 14 who said, Lord, show us the Father, and
it sufficeth us. We'll be happy if you just show
us the Father. I want to be like Philip so I
can ask questions to Jesus, even though I'm ignorant and the questions
are stupid. And I want to hear Him answer
me with the truth that clears up the fog and points me to Him.
And he says, if you've seen me, Philip, you've seen the Father.
And I want to be like Bartholomew, whose name is also Nathanael,
in John chapter 1. Remember what Jesus said to him
when he saw him under the fig tree? And he comes to Jesus and
he says, He says, I saw you when you were under the fig tree,
because Jesus said to him, Behold, an Israelite in whom is no guile,
Nathaniel was someone who just believed the truth when it was
revealed. Because when Jesus said that,
that he saw him under the fig tree, Nathaniel said, Thou art
the Son of God." And Jesus said, you believe? Just because I saw
you, you're going to see greater works than these. You're going
to see the Son of Man ascending and descending. I mean the angels
of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man. He's the ladder.
He's the ladder that enables men to go to God and God to come
to men. All that God is to men, He is
in Christ. And all we All we know of God,
and all we receive from Him, we have in the Lord Jesus Christ.
He's the latter. And Jesus told Nathanael that,
whose name is Bartholomew here. And then there's Matthew. He
was a tax collector. Do you know what it says in the
book of Luke? That when Jesus said to him, follow me, Matthew
left all. Now it says that because he must
have had a lot. He had a house big enough for
all the publicans and sinners and friends. He invited them
there. He wanted Jesus to do for them what he had done for
him. And so he writes his gospel with this theme. He came to save
his people from their sins. He didn't want anyone to miss
it. And I want to be like that. I want to know that He saves
His people. I want to hear His words that
Matthew recorded. "...Come unto Me, all you who
labor and are heavy laden, and you shall find rest for your
souls." And then there was Thomas. Thomas, whose name is also Didymus. It means both of them. It means
the twin. The twin. Thomas was the one who wouldn't
believe. Who needed evidence. He couldn't
take the Word of God. Just the naked Word of God. And
so... He is a twin to all of us who
doubt, who need the grace of God to believe. And when we find
that so, it humbles us. But he came to such a settled
confidence that he cries out, Oh my Lord, my God. before him
in his conscience and his heart, bowing before him as his Lord
and his God. He was devoted to Christ. He
loved the Lord Jesus Christ, but he couldn't overcome his
own unbelief. Christ had to do that for him.
And so, I want to be like Thomas in that way. And then there was
James, who was called James the son of Alphaeus. And so, in Mark
15, he's called James the Less. James the Less. Isn't that interesting?
James the Less. James, the brother of John, must
have been James the Greater. James the Less was the son of
Alphaeus. I want to be like that. I want
to be like James the Less who, like John the Baptist says, I
must decrease. He must increase. Psalm 106,
4 and 5 say, That's what James the Less would have said, I think,
from his heart. And then there's Jude, James'
brother, whose name here is Thaddeus or Lebeus. It's easier for me to remember
Jude. And I wonder if Jude, who's actually called Jude in the book
of Jude, his name was Judas, which was a common name then.
But I wonder if it was always a problem for him to always have
the same name as Judas Iscariot. Don't you think that would have
been a problem? No, no, I'm not Judas Iscariot. I'm the other
Jude. And maybe when he wrote the book
of Jude, he had in the background of his mind how easy it was for
all these people throughout history. First he starts off with the
angels who fell. Then Israel, who though they
were delivered out of Egypt, were destroyed. And then he goes
on to talk about other men who fell. Balaam and the sons of
Korah and all these people who were apostates, who had the truth
and rejected it. And then he speaks to God's people
and he says, Now unto him who was able to keep you from falling,
and maybe he even had in his own conscience at that time what
happened to Judas, whose name he also shared with him. And
he thought, Now unto him who is able to keep us from falling,
and to present us faultless before the presence of his glory with
exceeding joy, To the only wise God, our Savior, Jesus Christ,
be glory and dominion, majesty and power forever and ever. Amen.
Jude, I want to be like him. And then there's Simon the Canaanite.
It's a funny thing that he was a Canaanite, isn't it? He was
also called Simon Zelotes or Simon the Zealot. He was probably
someone who was part of an insurrection against the government. Always
opposing authority, perhaps. I don't know for sure in his
former life. But here, the Lord Jesus Christ is his one king,
his one master. And so in that sense I want to
be like him. But I do not want to be like Judas Iscariot. I do not want to be like him.
Why? Because Judas had only one nature. And he needed two. And he only
had one. If he had two natures, if the
Lord would have given him a new nature, what would he have done?
What would Judas have done if he had two natures? I'm sure
that if Judas had another nature, then something would have happened
differently here. But it was God's purpose that
He would call this one who is called Judas Iscariot, the son
of perdition, and He would leave him as a son of perdition. But
if he were the Lord's, He would have cried out like the righteous
cry, and he would lament his sins, like the psalmist says
in Psalm 65, 3. Iniquities prevail against me,
but as for our transgressions, thou shalt purge them away. Judas
would have called to the Lord Jesus Christ. Remember this man
who's called Hazael in 2 Kings chapter 8? Elijah comes to him
and prophesies and says, this is what you are going to do.
You are going to murder the king and then you are going to rip
up the women with child in Israel. And you are going to do all these
horrible things. And Hazael says, what do you think I am? A dead
dog that I would do these things? But that is exactly what he did.
And I do not want to be like Judas. I want to come to the
Lord Jesus Christ, like Paul, and say, Oh, wretched man that
I am! Who shall deliver me from the
body of this death? So the big message here, with
the twelve, is that the Lord Jesus Christ chose and prepared
these nobodies to tell everybody about somebody who can save anybody."
I got that quote from Scott Richardson. I didn't get it first hand. I
never spoke to or heard Scott Richardson, but I got it from
somebody else. I like it though. These apostles were nobodies
that Christ sent to tell everybody about somebody who could save
anybody. And if you forget anything else,
maybe that's worth remembering. That the Lord Jesus Christ came
to save sinners. He's the somebody who can save
any sinner. By His power, by His death, He
saves sinners from their sins. That required the power of Christ,
who is God, to lay down His life that He might take it again to
save sinners. And so we see that here. So,
I've spent most of my time on these 12 names, which I wasn't
intending to do. Which means the next time we're
going to have to cover the rest of this. But think about this.
Think about these twelve apostles. See if you can find yourself
in these names. But the next thing I'll show
you here just before I end it today. He says in verse 6, in
verse 5, Jesus told the twelve, he sent them forth and he said,
"...Go not into the way of the Gentiles, into any city of the
Samaritans enter ye not, but go rather to the lost sheep of
the house of Israel." It's the Lord who sends the Apostles. He sends them with His message.
He sends them to the people designated by Him, the King. And He sends
them for the purpose of saving His lost sheep. The entire purpose
for sending these Apostles was to gather the lost sheep. And
here, in this case, it's the lost sheep of the House of Israel.
Now there's a two-fold meaning there. First, When he first sent
the apostles out, they were to go outside of those cities where
he told them to go. Not into Samaria, not into the
Gentiles, just to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. As Matthew
wrote his gospel to his Jewish countrymen, they would have seen
in his gospel the one who is the son of David, who is the
son of Abraham, who his name is Jesus, which means Jehovah
is salvation, Emmanuel, God with us. He has compassion on sinners. He Himself heals the sick, raises
the dead, casts out devils, and does all these things, and even
appointed His disciples to do the same things, and then to
send them to you! you Israelites, to save the lost
sheep of the house of Israel." And so, if they hear that message,
that God has sent His Prophet, His King, commanding them to
repent and believe the Gospel, which is the message of the Kingdom
of God, then to reject that would be to forsake their own mercies. And that's why He says here,
in verse 15, "...if they will not hear you." and reject you. For them it will be worse than
for Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment." What an ominous
warning! What we need to come away with
when we read this chapter, and we'll go through this next week
to try to finish this out, we want to come away with a few
things. First of all, Christ as King, in compassion and mercy,
sends His Apostles to His people who are sinners needing Healing
from their sickness, raising from the dead, and casting out
devils to bring his lost sheep in. And also, in sending them,
he sends them with a specific message and the expectation,
a certain success is expected here, that he will bring them
in. And don't you see that? Even in these 12 men, that he
saved these 12 men, just like all the rest. So that Peter said
in Acts, I think it's 1511, he says, But we believe, He said this in defense of bringing
the gospel to the Gentiles. Speaking about the Gentiles and
about His own salvation, He says, "...we believe that through the
grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, we shall be saved even as they."
And that's what Peter understood, and I want to be like that. Let's
pray. Lord, thank You for Your Word, for this salvation, for
the Lord Jesus Christ who, as King, with all the authority
and power of heaven, sends his word by his own ambassadors to
the lost sheep of the house of the true Israel, those throughout
time who were designated by the Father in eternal election, redeemed
by Christ the Son, who laid his life down for the sheep, and
then sends his word, and they hear his voice, and they follow
him, and they're kept. They cannot be lost because the
Father Himself holds them in His hand. And we pray, Lord,
that we would see these things as the Lord Jesus Christ here
sends His disciples into the world to accomplish His mission.
In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.