The fearlessness of the sent

Today, we're going to be looking once again at a section from Matthew chapter 10. And as we're looking at being sent, I just want to remind us, and if you have your Bibles, we'll turn actually to Matthew chapter 10. Matthew chapter 10. And we're going to be looking today at verses 26 to 33.

And as we look at Matthew, I want us to remember the beginning of this chapter in the context even for chapter 10. Jesus is sending his disciples out and he's really preaching a sermon to them in many ways and preparing them to go. But even before that, we see at the very end of chapter 9, Jesus is looking out and it says in verse 36, "When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them because they were harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd. And when he said to his disciples, the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore, pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into the harvest."

And so Jesus right away sees the need in the land around him, the need in people's individual lives, a need for the good shepherd. And he prepares not just himself and his own ministry, but his disciples to carry that word forth, that gospel. And so he begins his sermon here. And we've been looking at just to review and recap here is we've been looking at a few parts. So we started looking at the purpose of the sent and really we see here the purpose is that Jesus wants to reach people with the gospel. He sees the need in the land. He knows that he needs to disciple and raise up people who are sent. And so we looked at that a few weeks ago. And then last week we looked at the peril or the cost of the sent that there are times where we may encounter resistance and danger. And yet that doesn't mean that the mission shouldn't go out. If anything, Jesus just prepares his disciples for what to do in the midst of that. The posture and the tone and the way that they go out as sheep in many ways go out and yet to do it with wisdom and yet with gentleness. And so we looked at those pieces.

This week we're actually going to be looking at the fearlessness of the sent because Jesus is going to say three times in this passage, do not fear. And so he's going to be giving once again instructions for what to do in the midst of facing a fearful situation in life. And so let's take a look here as we read Matthew 10:26 to 33 from our text today.

"So have no fear of them, for nothing is covered that will not be revealed or hidden that will not be known. What I tell you in the dark, say in the light, and what you hear whispered, proclaim on the housetops. And do not fear those who kill the body, but cannot kill the soul. Rather, fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your father. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not, therefore, you are more valuable than many sparrows. So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I will acknowledge before my father who is in heaven. But whoever denies me before men, I will deny before my father who is in heaven."

Let's pray. Lord, we just commit this time to you. I pray, Lord, that even now your word would shine, that your message would shine, that you would increase, oh Lord, and I would decrease. I pray, Lord, that your word would shine forth this morning and convict and penetrate and speak and encourage our hearts with whatever message you have for us today. Help me, Father, just to eloquently and precisely communicate, Father, what I believe that you have shown me through your word this morning. We do it all for your name and your glory and your honor in Jesus name. Amen.

So, as we look at this, we're looking at the fearlessness of men. And so, we're going to look at three pieces as Jesus gives these commands. Do not fear. And so, we're going to be looking at how not to fear, who not to fear, and why not to fear. So, the focus isn't even really on the fear. It's the reminder that we need to live in such a way fearlessly because there are consequences or realities beyond this life that one day we stand before God. Did we confess him in this life? Did we acknowledge him? Did we hold him high? Or did we turn in fear? And so Jesus wants to give us a reminder.

The first thing here we see is how not to fear. How not to fear. We see right here in verse 26. "So have no fear of them for nothing is covered that will not be revealed or hidden that will not be known. What I tell you in the dark, say in the light. And what you hear whispered, proclaim on the housetop." So, there's going to be a revealing happening. There's going to be a day coming when all will be made known. When the light of God and God's kingdom comes and it shines and in that day everything will be known. If people are getting away with darkness and with evil and it seems like they're on top, there will be a day when God's judgment and reality comes. You know, if there are things that are hidden or things that are in secret that are evil, God will bring balance to the scales. His revelation and revealing power will penetrate into this world. And it will change and remind us that when the light of God comes into the darkness of this world, when his kingdom comes in its fullness, what will be our posture? How will we have responded to fear? And he wants to tell us and remind us, don't fear. Do not fear because a revealing day is coming. A day of the Lord is going to come. And whatever you feel about this world, whatever you may fear in the darkness or whatever evil that seems like it's on top or it's stronger or more powerful, a day will come when it's all revealed. When all is made known. And we don't want to be found living in fear. We don't want to be found sitting idle. We want to be found knowing that this day is coming and living in light of that and proclaiming that.

One of the ways that I sort of thought about this revealing moment is if you've ever read the book, don't ignore the people behind the curtain there. The way that I thought about this though is that if you've ever read Lord of the Flies, it's a it's kind of chaos. It's these teenage boys who get trapped on this deserted island and they're shipwrecked there and they kind of go into factions and things get really nasty at the end of the day and somebody's dead and the island's on fire and things are just blowing up and then the grown-ups show up and it's like whoa, you know, and all of a sudden it's like the revealing. It's the revelation of that moment begins to happen and come and take place. So in that same way, this is the thing: God shows up. God shows up. And how do we want to be found in that moment of life? He says it's coming. Do we want to be found faithful and fearless or living fearful in light of that?

And so when you obey Jesus's truth, what you find is that you do exactly what he said in 27. He says, "What I tell you in the dark, say in the light." Saying what he tells you to say. One of the best remedies is to have little regard or thought. Even like it talked about in the video, having little regard or thought or worry or overthinking it and just speak when God tells you to speak. What he whispers in the recesses of your heart and your ear, proclaim that message. And we do tend to oftentimes hear from God. He speaks something. He prompts us. And yet what we do is we focus on what am I going to say and what about this person and how's it going to make them feel or how am I going to look in this situation instead of speaking being just I'm going to be obedient, my dad is telling me to do something, to say something, to be something here in this moment, in this time, and to just be obedient to it.

One of the ways I think in our lives is what Jesus is calling us to is just be public about your faith. Be public about your relationship with Christ. Because there is a force of darkness in this world that is working constantly to suppress the light of God, to make it not known. And what will happen oftentimes in life is there is a pressure to fear, you know, and we're all normal. We're all human, but we start to think and look at people instead of God, and we begin to overthink and respond in ways that are not what God is calling us to do here.

Think about being, you know, just in reality practically, you go into work Monday or you find yourself in a social situation and somebody says, "How was your weekend?" right? And most of us, what we say is, "It was good. My weekend was good." But I don't know, what if what if that relationship and that friendship, maybe it's a little bit of a deeper conversation or it's somebody that you know well? And so instead of keeping it superficial level, what if we were just honest and we said, "You know, I had a great weekend. We went and gathered with our local church and we worshiped God and heard this amazing message," and I'm just kidding, "heard this message that was encouraging. The fellowship was warm. We went to a picnic after church and hung out together and continued to encourage one another in the Lord. It was good. We enjoyed it and my faith was encouraged by that." Now, that may fall flat. People may not have any response to that, but you know, we entrust that to the Lord. We just let him do what he wants with that. Maybe there's a question of like, "Oh, okay. I mean, so you go to a church." We don't know. We let the Lord and the Holy Spirit do the work that he does. We entrust the result to him. We're just called to go run, hurry, and speak. Speak with fearlessness.

We also see that Jesus says to say the word that I tell you in the dark. And I thought about that so many places just in our little in the whisper of life where Jesus will tell us something. He'll say, "Go speak to that person." I know we've all been in those moments or those instances where you feel that prompting like, "I think I need to say something. I think I need to reach out and be..." What begins to happen is we begin to look with fear instead of obedience, instead of seeing. I talked about it last week, the joy of that calling, because oftentimes it does make us a little bit fearful. But when you step into those places with boldness, you experience God's joy because his love and his message is actually flowing through you. You feel the love and the power of God and his word flowing through you towards another person. You become this conduit and there's great joy in that. And I won't go into last week's message, but we talked about that piece right there.

You know, and sometimes when we don't know what to say, sometimes we can just be honest when God prompts us and whispers something in our ear. Maybe it's just to say, "Look, I know this is a little bit awkward, but I just wanted to tell you, I feel like I'm a follower of Jesus, and I just feel like he wants me to tell you that he loves you, and he just wants to encourage you today. Is there any way that I can be praying for you?" We just leave the result to God. We're just trying to put his message and his word fearlessly into those social settings and not worrying about, "Oh, what do they think?" or "How's this going?" or "Did I make it awkward?" Just be obedient, and the best way to feel fearlessness is just to be obedient. Because even if it falls flat, how do you feel in those moments? Even when it falls flat, joy. I was obedient. I did what he said. And when you're not, what do you feel? Guilt. Shame.

And you know, one of the things I actually felt as I meditated, you know, I've been working through chapter 10 and thinking about sent. And the more that I study this passage, and even particularly this week, I find myself at times getting a little bit frustrated and angry. And I was praying about it and really reflecting on like, why do I feel this frustration boiling in me as I studied this passage? And I realized that it's two things. I think on one hand I felt a little bit of condemnation. I felt like I'm not doing enough. I'm not being enough and I'm not... you know, and all of that began to kind of sadden and frustrate and anger me and I felt this thing building. I knew that wasn't of the Lord. That's not his goal. He's inviting us. And I always want us to remember that our father is inviting us to send us and to be his witnesses in this world, and calling us through that love and that calling to insert ourselves to be obedient to him. And it's not about guilt and condemnation in that sense. But you know what I also felt? I felt conviction. And conviction is okay. Conviction because I do know there are moments when I hesitate. We all do, where I start to think about things too much instead of just being obedient to what he's called me to do. And you know, we need to be honest with ourselves in those moments. We don't need to rationalize it, to brush it aside, because God will never work in your life if you won't have these moments of just what we call repentance, where we just come and say, "Lord, I didn't... I had fear of people. I overthought it. I wasn't obedient to what you called me to be in that moment." Because in those moments of repentance, that's where we grow. That's where the Lord picks us back up, dusts us off, and prepares us for next time. But if we won't be honest about it, how can he work in our hearts and our lives? God wants to stretch us and bend us at times and even when we fail, piece us back together and say, "I'm going to use you. You're a work in progress."

So, our call is to be obedient. And by just being obedient and not overthinking it, by proclaiming what we hear, we become what God wants us to be. And you know, it's a solid reality that we need to remember. As I read this passage and saw in verse 27 where it says, "And what you hear whispered, proclaim on the housetops," I just thought about Ezekiel. God set Ezekiel up in Israel in a certain time where he called him to be the watchman to proclaim what he heard and what he saw to the people. And if he didn't, God warned him, "I'm going to hold you accountable." And there's a sternness in that for the prophet. And Jesus is much gentler in some ways in the New Testament and in his invitational calling, but he also does remind us here at the end, "Everyone who acknowledges me before men, I will acknowledge before my father. But whoever denies me, I will also deny before my father who is in heaven." So it is a reminder of the importance of that calling to not live in fear.

So who do we not fear? That's the next thing that Jesus is telling us. Who not to fear? And it says in 28, "And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell." So ultimately, we're called not to fear people, not to put our eyes upon them in place of God, not to look at those who can kill just the body, but not the soul, who only have a temporal effect on life, but have no power over the eternal reality. Because Jesus always wants us to look not just at this life in this moment. He wants us to see what's behind this life: the eternal kingdom picture, him ruling over the universe. This life is just but a blink in just a moment. And God wants us not to see the temporal moments of life and not to fear and live only as if this is the only reality that there is, but to see above and beyond and behind it all is the God of the universe and is this spiritual reality. This war that is taking place among the kingdoms. And to remember to live not for the smile and the affirmation and the love of people, not to fear their thoughts and their thinking, but to fear God, to seek to please him in all that we do.

Peter actually has a moment like this in the book of Acts where he is standing before the Sanhedrin and they are accusing him and charging him, "You better be quiet. Stop talking about this Jesus. Stop preaching him." And his words to them are the reminder to us all. Peter and the apostles answered, "We must obey God rather than men." And so we are reminded in that way. We can be prone to live in this world and this reality and to seek the affirmation and the love and the identity that this world has to offer and take our eyes off of God himself to fear and revere their respect. And what that winds up doing in our life is it actually makes you more afraid. You become more afraid when you fear the things of this life, when you fear humans. Because what you begin to do is you live within only this temporal reality and then you begin to ask all kinds of questions because you forget the God of heaven who provides, who protects, who ultimately is sovereign over everything. We forget to submit our lives to his work and to his will. And so what happens is we get tossed by the winds and the waves of the sea. We begin to say like, "Oh man, if I live this way, I may have no friends if I'm obedient to God. I may lose my job because I testified of the truth." And we begin to put our eyes on all those things and those become the driving force of life. People, not God, become slowly the driving force of our lives. And we wind up worshiping men over God. We wind up seeking their affirmation.

You know, if you think about it, even, we were all probably, most of us were teenagers at one point in life, and in your school setting, I don't know about you, but it's easy to think that's your only world when you're in teenage world. And you know, there's cliques and there's popularity circles. And when you come into those settings... I remember I moved from homeschooling to public school in fifth grade and whoa, it was a wakeup call. And I began to see there were cliques and there were like hierarchies and all of these things and there were different groups. And it was very difficult because in order to find your place in those, you have to try to win their approval. You need to dress a certain way. You need to act a certain way. You need to look a certain way in order to have the approval. And what does that do in life? It becomes the driving force. And I remember that temptation and that pressure. I needed to have all of those things so that I would fit in, so that people would accept me. And that's all that we can see. And in the same way, we grow up as adults, and in many ways, we're no different. We live in this world and our eyes begin to just focus on the here and the now and not to see how God is sovereign over it all. He's moving and working in the lives of people all around us every day. And he's inviting us to see with that lens, not with our own lens, to listen intently to hear how he might be calling and sending and using us day after day. There ought to just be moments where we literally just are praying in social situations and listening for how God might send us and use us to be.

And see, what happens in that moment is we're not focused on the fear of people. When you're praying and thinking about how God might want you to speak or to praise or proclaim him in some way in that moment, your eyes are fixed on the king. You're plugged into that more and thinking less about what people are thinking and what's going on in that world. Rightly fearing God makes all other fears cease.

You know, I love old hymns. I didn't grow up with hymns and not every hymn is great, but the words and the vocabulary sometimes in old hymns is great. And you know in the song Amazing Grace it says, "‘Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved." When you rightly fear and revere God, when your eyes are fixed and focused on him, the things of this world grow strangely dim—another hymn there—in the light of his glory. And so we want to turn our attention and our affections and our life on him.

One side note for this because I always want us to balance, because I see so many people say, "Yeah, we need to be fearless." And we can have one of two extremes that we wind up running to with people. Say, "Yeah, we shouldn't fear people." And so one extreme is that we don't fear people and we take almost this fundamentalist approach where we just see like the church against the world and they're all bad and we're good and we're just going to throw stuff at people and hope for the best, you know, and it's kind of an us-against-the-world in a way that we're not going into the world. We don't see ourselves sent. We stand for truth and we isolate ourselves off from the world, but that's not the heart of God. God is sending his people, his disciples, into the world—not of the world, but yet still in it. And we need to be careful of that extreme. That's a full, what I call a full tension model. It's all tension, you know, it's us against the world. "I'm not going to have any fear and I'm just going to beat against people with that fearlessness," and there's a level behind it of fear because we almost have to oppose it violently and harshly. We have to remember even from the first week of this study that we're called to be gentle like sheep among wolves.

The other extreme there is to say, "We're in the world, we've been called to love people," and to remove all that tension in some ways and just... so it's a no-tension model where we just go out into the world, we love people, and we water down the gospel. It's all just about people and it's about pleasing people and loving them, but we don't actually have any sort of corrective or message or gospel. We just say, "God loves you and loves you how you are." And we leave it just wide open. And there's a bit of fear in that too because ultimately you're more worried about pleasing people and what they want to hear than what God is telling us to say from his word and leaving the result to him. And so we want to make sure that we avoid both of those extremes in that.

Now the last piece to this. So, we've looked at how not to fear, who not to fear, and now we look at why not to fear. Verse 29 says, "Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your father, but even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not, therefore, you are of more value than many sparrows." So Jesus reminds us of our value. If I could say it like this, if you are in Christ, your dad loves you. He loves you and he loves his creation. His creation is good and he cares for the sparrows. It even says that not one of them falls to the ground without him knowing about it. How much more valuable are you, a child of God, one who has been created in his image? And so Jesus's word and message is a reminder for us to see our value and our great worth in God's eyes and to not forget it.

In fact, Paul tells us in the book of Romans, it's a little bit of a lengthy piece, but just hear me here. "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?" Because I want you to know God loves his people. He loves you. He knows you. And even when he sends you, you're not sent out into the randomness of life. You're not just at risk and peril without him knowing about it. You're not alone in this. He is with you. And nothing, nothing can happen or separate you from his love. Nothing can happen to you that he doesn't know about and that he's not working as a part of his good plan. And Paul reminds us, "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?" Does that mean that God doesn't love you? Does that mean that he's forgotten you? As it is written, "For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered" like among wolves. But Paul says, "No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." Your father loves you. You are valuable and precious in his sight. And even when we encounter, because he's warned us, danger or resistance or opposition, if things happen to us, if we even lose our own life because of it, as I've talked about with the persecuted church abroad, for whom that is a real risk all the time—even in the midst of that, his love is still there. His plan has not failed. He knows what he's doing. And even when we can't make sense of it, we are invited to trust. That's why we don't fear: because he loves us. Because he is still working. And he invites us to live in that reality and that affirmation.

Because when you know who you are, when you know whose you are, then you aren't shaken by fear of people, by opposition, by persecution. And you know, I love stories that come, as hard as they are and awful as they are, I love stories that come from the persecuted church. I love to even look over church history and see about times when people moved with great conviction. Was it hard? Did it take courage? Yeah, it did. But the love for their God, their father, drove them to want to serve and glorify him. And ultimately, that's the thing. This message, golly, I hope it doesn't become a guilt trip. I hope this doesn't become something where we just feel like I felt when I studied this. I hope what I can do is get past what I felt this week and bring us to see with our eyes on the Lord that he loves us and that he calls us to this. And it's a privilege and it's an honor, like we talked about last week, that we feel his glory and power in us and his affirmation and love when we stand and are obedient to what he calls us to be. And there should just be this overflow in our life that moves us out to people. Not because we feel guilt-tripped or we feel like people are projects or we need to do any of those things. We feel it just because he loves people. He loves the world and he wants to move us as his disciples to carry that, to be that out in the world. And so it's a motive of the heart that moves us to be obedient to our father in heaven, to know who we are.

And one of the things of why not fear that I've always, always loved is something that St. Augustine said. Augustine was a bishop and a monk and he lived in the fourth and fifth century, a long time ago. He was a great theologian and he wrote this book called Confessions, and he would sort of reflect on pieces of his life and it actually is incredibly worshipful. I love the book because it's not what you think. It's not just him confessing, but his confession always moves him to worship. It always moves him to reflect on the character of God. And I've got just a little mini quote here where he's reflecting on things about this world that he's held as true and yet now letting it move him to the reality of God. He says, "Cruelty is the weapon of the powerful used to make others fear them. Yet no one is to be feared but God alone. From whose power nothing can be snatched away or stolen by any man, any time or any place or any means." Do you hear what he's saying there? He's looking and saying, you know, there's cruelty in this world. There's opposition and it can make us fear. Wait a minute. Who is God? How does he feel about me? What is that truth? And he's pulling our eyes out of the present reality and he's making us look at the reality beyond, the eternal reality, the grand reality. And that is what God invites us to do is to turn our eyes constantly away from here to see him. And if you see him, it will then drive you into this world fearlessly to herald his word and his truth to people.

Fear, Augustine goes on and says, "Fear shrinks from any sudden unwanted danger which threatens the things that it loves. For its only care is safety. But to you nothing is strange, nothing unforeseen. No one can part from you the things that you love and safety is assured nowhere but in you." Oftentimes we think in our life that we save our life, we preserve our life, and we seek this life, and yet Jesus constantly reminds us, lose this life and you will find the true life that is in me. You will find that you move from the fear of people and all it driving your life to a reverence and a fear of me that actually frees you from all fear and it empowers you to be who I've called you to be and to not worry about the dangers of this world because you know you are mine and who you are and we are held fast in that.

So the final thing that Jesus really says to us here as a reminder is he presents really two paths in this. He calls us not to fear and at the end of this passage, as he's told us how not to fear and who not to fear and why not to fear, he says to us, "So everyone who acknowledges me before men I will acknowledge before my father who is in heaven." All those who have not looked to the fear of people, to this world. All those who have sought me and made my name known, who've just been honest about their faith and their walk with Christ, who've let that spill over like overflowing waters into this world, into the world around them so that it's so evident to your friends and your family and the people around you. Then one day we will stand before God and he acknowledges us. "Well done. Well done, my good and faithful servant."

But then there's also the warning in 33 where he says, "But whoever denies me before men, I will deny before my father who is in heaven." And there's this eternal weight that we need to remember in this. We are called not to forsake or to deny, but to make his name known, to acknowledge him before all people. And we fail in that. But we're not left in our failure because again, this is not a message to just condemn all of us. It's a message to call us to more. To call us today, to make his name known, to pick up the pieces, to allow God to pick us up and say, "I'm going to use you again, and I'm going to stretch you, and I'm going to bend you, and there are moments where I'm going to make you uncomfortable, but man, you're going to feel my joy and my glory in it all as you see the ways that I faithfully present you in places and I use you in all of the beautiful things that will come from that." And I hope that that's the thing that we see today as we look at this and how not to fear, who not to fear, and why not to fear is because he acknowledges us. He loves us, and he calls us to demonstrate that to the world around us as well. God's message has not changed. Now he sends us. So go, run, hurry. Let's pray.

Lord, what a what a convicting word, Lord, in many ways. And I've I've felt it even in my own heart as I study it this week, Lord. And yet, that's the beauty of your word. We can't, you know, as a church, we we present it for what it is. Week in week out, we journey through these passages of scripture. And sometimes there are moments of high joy in which we celebrate. But then sometimes there are moments where we feel that tension and that discomfort. But it's only an invitation. It's an invitation to more. It's an invitation for how you want to to work in our life and to mold us and to yeah sometimes take the sponge and scrub against us so that we become the masterpiece that you are making us into. And I pray that even this week, Lord, that we can just come even in this hour and even in this moment that we can come to you, we can receive your grace and then we can also like the disciples go back out into the world not with fear but with a renewed sense of faithfulness.

If you would just open your eyes for just a second, just, you know, let's say audible here. I know we're a small group, but just I don't want to pass by this for a second. I don't want to pass by maybe even the confession heart. So, I just want us to give us just a second. You know, I'm going to even posture your own hands like this and you can do this if you want to as well. I invite you to to just let's take a second of just before the Lord and let's just confess the areas where maybe perhaps we we've had fear of people instead of fear of God. And in that, let's receive from him renewal. Renewal. And then I'm going to pray over us and then we'll sing a response to the Lord. So just here with me, let's take a second to confess to the Lord anywhere that you feel this word penetrating.

Lord, I think about this this moment in scripture of Peter, that awful, gut-wrenching moment when he denied you and how how it says that he went out and wept bitterly because the truth is, Lord, is we all love you. We love you. And yet sometimes we let the fear of this world and of people turn our eyes away from you. And we seek self-preservation instead of to worship you and to be honest about our faith and our love for you and to let that spill over to this world. We pray that you would forgive us, oh Lord. We pray that you would cleanse us. We pray that you would renew us so that even more so now we are going into this world and yes we will fail again I'm sure but we will also succeed and we thank you that through us, Lord, you will move your word out. And I pray that even this week that you will open up doors and opportunities and ways and make us mindful and aware and let us see the glory of God and the beauty of God penetrating people's hearts. But we leave that up to you. We just go, we run, and we hurry once again for your name, for your glory, for your honor. In Jesus name. Amen.