Matthew 10,11

January 5, 2011
Matthew 10,11
Overview: Matthew 10 is Jesus coaching up his disciples. Matthew 11 finds John the Baptist sending his disciples to Jesus with a question and Jesus answering the question. Jesus goes on to say some pretty positive things about John.
Reading Jesus’ instructions to his disciples as they prepare to go out on their own to spread the word of the kingdom come near adds another exhibit to the “Whatever This Is It’s Never Going To Be Easy” file. Jesus says comfy things like, “See I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves.”(v.10). There’s plenty more hard stuff here; surely this talk kept the disciples attention.
Verses 26 and 27 are personal favorites. “For nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered and nothing secret that will not become known. What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops.” Here is Jesus exposing the delusion that we too often try to live under – the idea that somehow we can keep secrets from God. That action we aren’t so proud of – that sin we know is sin but hope will be off God’s radar in the midst of God’s busy day. Because we can occasionally get away with keeping things from one another we somehow think we can keep things from God. Jesus words say otherwise. It is useless to waste our energy and effort on the pointless task of evading God – God knows us through and through. It is both humbling and freeing to embrace the reality of God knowing us. Humbling to consider that, indeed, whatever I have done or thought, God absolutely knows it . Freeing to, at the same time, hold not only this knowledge, but also the knowledge that God’s love for us is deep, abiding and ongoing.