Matthew 10:5-15
“And if
the house is worthy, let your peace come upon it, but if it is not worthy, let
your peace return to you.”
As I read Matthew’s account of Jesus sending out His twelve
apostles, the verse above jumped off the page at me. Can you imagine God giving you the ability to
give peace to a family if it is worthy, and to take it back if it is not
worthy? If you go back to chapter 10:1,
you understand that Jesus has authority and these twelve men were operating
under His authority, as if it was Jesus who was casting out the unclean
spirits, or healing every disease, and every affliction.
It is very important for us to see that Jesus gave them very
stringent guidelines to operate under as listed in Matthew 10:5-12, “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.”
Jesus leaves
no question on who is the target audience; they are to go to the lost sheep of
the house of Israel, no one else, and now you might understand why Peter’s
dream about eating defiled food, to the Jew, was such a hard thing for him, and
yet the voice that was speaking to him in his vision said, “What God
has made clean do not call common.” And we know that Cornelius, a centurion over
the Italian Cohort, a devout Gentile who feared God with his entire household,
had a vision where God told him to send men for Peter. So he did as God had instructed him and sent
to Joppa for Peter. And we know from
reading the account in Acts 10, of all that God did when two men listened and
obeyed the voice of the Lord. What you
and I should take away is that Jesus was with them in human form, when He send out
the twelve, and when He sent Peter to Cornelius’s home, Jesus was in heaven at
the Father side, but He was living His life in and through Peter, just as He is
living His life in and through you and me.
As they went
out, whose authority were they under, and when you go whose authority are you
under? If you understand that question,
then you will not limit God’s authority in your life. Do you recall when Jesus sent out the seventy-two
disciples and they came back and reported, and this was that report in Luke
10:17, “The
seventy-two returned with Joy, saying, “Lord, even the demons are subject to
us in your name.”
Do you know
or have you ever read about anyone other than these twelve apostles that went
out to the mission field with so little, and with very strict guidelines on
what to take with them and to take no offering for support, just trust the One
who has given you the assignment. I’ve
read of such men, one that comes to my mind is C.T. Studd, who was born December 2, 1860,
Spratton, Northamptonshire, England, and died 16th of July 1931,
Ibambi, Belgian Congo. C.T. was from a
very wealthy family and at 25 he got notice of coming of age and the amount of
money that was to be his. I have read
but could not find the quote, that C.T. said, if I had one shilling in my
pocket, I might trust in that and not in God, so he gave away his
inheritance. The following is part of
his testimony: “God
has promised to give a hundredfold for everything we give to him. A hundredfold
is a wonderful percentage; it is ten thousand percent. God began to give me
back the hundredfold wonderfully quick. Not long after this I was sent down to
Shanghai. My brother, who had been very ill, had gone right back into the world
again. On account of his health the doctors sent him round the world in search
of better. He thought he would just come and touch at Shanghai and see me. He
said he was not going to stay very long for he was mighty afraid he would get
too much religion. He took his berth for Japan about the next day after he
arrived. But God soon gave him as much religion as he could hold and he
cancelled that passage to Japan and stayed with me six months. When I saw that
brother right soundly converted I said, "This is ten thousand per cent and
more."
From the Back Porch,
Bob Rice
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