I Have Not Come To Bring Peace But A Sword
I have not come to bring peace but a sword Trinity
Matthew 10:16-39 22.12.19
What were the employment benefits for the apostles who followed Jesus?
- Airbnb vouchers, for comfortable nights in plush apartments?
- Plumb front bench positions, titles and free air travel for life?
- The Number 1 ticket at the SCG members stand?
- A great super scheme?
Anything but! Our reading in Matthew 10 today told us:
- V16 They would be like sheep among a pack of hungry wolves – reduced to an item on the menus of the rich and powerful.
- V17 They would be flogged by whips in synagogues and …
- V18 dragged by the feet into Roman courts.
- V21 Their own flesh and blood will turn against them to save their own necks.
- V22 It will seem like there is no one anywhere who is on their side … “you will be hated by all”.
- V23 And all this while they never have a fixed address … always on the move, hunted from one town to the next.
Why would anyone in their right mind sign up for a life like that? Unless there was something so wonderfully compelling about Jesus that something mattered more. More on that in a moment.
To my knowledge, no one here has ever been dragged into a synagogue for 39 lashes. I’m not aware that anyone here has no fixed address so when Jesus says “you will be …all this”, he isn’t talking directly to us.
He is describing life for his apostles. It is their backs which were scarred by whips. They were stoned and crucified. They had criminal records for following Jesus, and they were treated as scum even within their own families. He is speaking directly to them about them.
These words are indirectly to us as well. The 27 books that make up our New Testament came from these men and others like them. Not written in some academic library as they drank their lattes. They were written on the run, from exile and in prison. They were written out of sweat and blood and tears.
They also have to preach because their Jesus-given task is crystal clear. Verse 27: “What I tell YOU, in the dark, say in the light, and what YOU hear whispered, proclaim on the housetops.”
The words they speak and the words they write are the words they have heard from the mouth of Jesus. Words that might otherwise have been locked up in the first century, or imprisoned in little Judean towns.
Yes, I know that we have these words because they are from Jesus, and our church exists by the sovereign hand of Jesus but the buildings he builds are built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets. The Word he uses to build us up came through them. We stand on the shoulders of these men … these men who knew more about suffering from a sword than picnicking in peace.
It is now fashionable to dismiss them … to write off what they preach and write as being out of touch, or unloving, or to opt for Jesus and against them but it is the words of Jesus that come through them.
Some are saying that everything that happened before yesterday is really irrelevant. And probably wrong. Why else did so many universities back-pedal when money was offered for a course in the strengths of Western History and Civilisation? As though so much back there was bad, and the notions of equality, fairness and care started today with Peter Fitzsimons or Jane Caro.
For thousands of years, Christians have run hospitals and schools, worked against social inequality and ugly class systems, and cared for widows and slaves when others would not, formed trade unions and worked for justice. It’s not a perfect history, but it is an impressive one. Where did all this come from?
The words of these men gave life and soul to cultures and to civilisations. They brought light to darks worlds. All of us, and Christians especially, stand on their shoulders.
It came at such personal cost. Disowned by their families and hated by all. Words written in blood by sweaty, trembling hands, so that we all might have the words of Jesus faithfully relayed to us.
So no dismissing what they say. No embarrassment because someone somewhere doesn’t like it. No treating their words cheaply when the mood of the culture changes.
Christianity didn’t start yesterday. It is before our modern culture and over it. It is grounded in the past. It is profoundly historical. Because these men back there stood firm – and generations after stood on their shoulders, we stand. And we live.
These words about specific trouble that is coming are spoken about and to these men back there, and not to us.
But when we get to verses 34-39, Jesus moves from the particular to the general … from the 12 disciples to all believers.
He speaks in verse 36 about “a person”, any person … including you and me. In verses 37-39 he says “whoever” 5 times. These words are for all Christians everywhere. Which words?
“Do not think I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a person’s enemies will be those of his own household.”
That makes me think about the girl I have mentioned before. When she became a Christian while a student at the University of New South Wales, she told her good Jewish parents. Her father told her she was no more, as far as he was concerned, and he placed her death notice in the following day’s Sydney Morning Herald.
These words make me think about people I know who because they have become Christians, were written out of wills and of parents I know who are no longer welcome to visit their children or their grand-children. Of people here who are mocked by their spouse for just reading the Bible, or coming to church and for whom it’s tough on a daily basis.
My history is tame. My father tolerated my following Jesus as a teenager, but when at age 20 I went off to Bible College, that was too much – a waste of a life and of a good day job, he said.
For my preaching I have been spat on, called names, taken before a tribunal, and received a written death threat.
I know it’s all low intensity suffering for me. Christians in Iran, China, North Korea or Sub-Saharan Africa are flogged and tortured and killed, and because of them, sometimes family members suffer the same fate. Because they belong to Jesus.
Do you wonder how you’d go if it got worse for you. What if your job is at risk because you won’t cross that line, or support that cause? What if your standing in your social circles is under threat because you identify with this person or that ethical stance? What if you are written out of a will, or simply no longer invited to family do’s? What will you do then?
How will we face it, if deeper opposition comes to you?
The same way the disciples did. By being prepared. Prepared for what? And with what?
- Prepared for WHEN THE SWORD COMES
Some Christians are surprised when not everyone loves them or when their beliefs are mocked. When family members resent it that they have a higher allegiance than flesh and blood.
Surprised? Were the apostles surprised when family members stood back from them or they ended up with criminal records? Jesus had said it would happen. How lovingly he prepared them.
Can you imagine them all talking one day as they compare their scars … “Isn’t this exactly what Jesus told us would happen?” “He warned us against making him sentimental … the baby in the manger who doesn’t cry … peace and good will to all … just wanting us all to be happy, together. No, that was never his message, was it?”
You might cruise through life with everyone thinking you are the most wonderful person they have ever known. If one day it’s not like that, you won’t be surprised, will you? It won’t be enough to make you disillusioned about Jesus, will it?
And had prepared them by getting them to ask what power their opponents really had. “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both body and soul in hell.” (verse 28) People out there might take this life, or write you off as cursed by man and God. But that’s all they can do. Only Jesus has power over hell.
- PREPARED TO LOVE JESUS MORE THAN FAMILY
Should we love parents, and children, and in-laws? Of course. Should we be respectful and generous, and bend over backwards to maintain good family relationships? Yes.
Are you free to dishonour your parents by speaking badly about them or to them, to bail out on the washing up because you “have” to be doing something “more spiritual”? Or neglect your kids because you have some ministry to do. Or ignore your in-laws because they are not believers. No.
Family isn’t God. Where there is a clash between doing what parents or children want, and what Jesus asks, love for Jesus trumps love for family every time. Jesus could not be more clear: “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” (v37)
What if they side with others against you, write you out of the will, keep you away from the grandchildren?
Jesus asks to remember that none of that is an accident. That although family members may not love you, you have a wonderful Father in heaven who is sovereign in his love for you: “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father . .. Fear not therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows.” (verses 29,31)
Can you love Jesus more than family? You must, because he is Lord and they are not. You can, knowing that you are in the sweet hand of a Father who cares even about the sparrows he made.
Jesus wants us to be prepared:
>> Prepared for when the sword comes.
>> Prepared to love Jesus more than family.
- PREPARED TO LOVE JESUS MORE THAN LIFE
“Whoever does not take his cross and follow me, is not worthy of me.” (v39)
What did you know at once, if you saw a man walking by your house carrying a cross? That meant he had been found guilty of a capital crime. It meant he was on a one-way trip to his death. It meant he was not coming back.
Isn’t that the very nature of what it means to belong to Jesus and to follow him? It’s a one-way trip. All the way to the end and you’re not coming back this way again.
What if it means social or physical death along the way, or any of the other things that come when Jesus brings a sword? Jesus asks us to love him more than life itself.
Those who gang up on you or look down on you have no real power to do anything beyond this life. What they do cannot deny the Father’s loving plans for you, but only fulfil them.
In the end all you might lose is here and now. There is a life that is bigger and more wonderful than this one. Jesus says “Whoever finds (hangs onto) his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” (verse 39)
Your physical well-being and your social well-being and your familial well-being are nice but they are not really life – not life as it is in its ultimate sense. You can have all that and lose real life or you can lose all that and find real life.
We are told that 11 Christians die every day because they will not renounce Christ … because they are prepared for the sword to come … they are prepared to love Jesus more than family … and they are prepared to love Jesus more than life itself.
Could I do that? If the sword brings such pain? Could you do it?
Yes, we can, because of the wonderful certainties in these words of Jesus. And because he is so uniquely wonderful and breathtakingly glorious, we must.