I remember teaching my kids to drive. In our house we were teaching a teenager to drive a car every year for four years. I blame the gray in my beard on that. Learning to drive is a rite of passage in our culture and I still remember it well. It’s one thing to be along for the ride as a care-free kid, it’s another when the keys are in your hands and steering that metal box flying down the road is up to you. It can be daunting at first, and it certainly isn’t something done lightly. A lot of instruction goes along with that responsibility.
Jesus’ disciples will experience something like that in our text for this Sunday, Matthew 10:1-15. Jesus will essentially be handing the keys of his ministry to his 12 closest followers and send them out to do what he has been doing. As I said, a daunting task that requires instruction. We’ll be reading Jesus’ instructions for the mission.
This event is called the “limited commission”, because it’s targeted at Israel only, in an limited region, and for a limited time. The “great commission” of chapter 28 will expand on this mission, but here we have the basic instructions laid out.
In v 1-4, Jesus sends them out as “apostles” – it’s the first time this designation is used. It basically means someone sent…by Jesus, in this case. V1 tells us where they get the ability to do this mission, where does it come from? When you look at the list of apostles, what stories about them come to mind? What are their credentials and backgrounds that we’re aware of? Does this tell you anything about who Jesus is willing to send?
When you read the instructions of v5-8a, what feelings are inspired? Is the tone angry, threatening, confrontational? How would you describe the tone and atmosphere of this mission?
Jesus draws very specific boundaries in terms of provisions the disciples should take or receive in V8b-10. Why do you think he is doing that? What lessons should the church today take from those instructions?
In v11-15 Jesus talks about finding people who are willing to listen to the message (worthy) and staying with them. Why doesn’t he want his disciples going from house to house? If people reject the message, he instructs them to shake the dust from their feet. Do you think he means that literally? Why do you believe he gives that instruction instead of telling them to force the issue when the stakes are so high?
Hope to see you this Sunday!
What are your first thoughts when you read the letters IRS together? Do you have negative or positive feelings about this agency? That’s sort of a rhetorical question, I don’t know many people who get the warm and fuzzies when it comes to our government tax agency. As John Oliver says, “It’s no wonder people hate the IRS. They’re unavoidable, they often function poorly and they combine things we hate the most: losing money and math.”
How easy is it for you to trust someone? We may consider ourselves to be “trusting souls”, but the reality is we often find it difficult to place our trust in someone else. A lot of factors go into that – past experiences, our own sense of frailty when it comes to trustworthiness, and a host of other reasons go into our tentative approach to giving away our trust. It’s hard to trust others…and those are people we can SEE and examine and evaluate on a regular basis. What about a God who hides himself (
“I didn’t go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of Port would do that. If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity.” ~ C.S. Lewis
Do you remember playing “opposite day” when you were a kid? It could be sort of fun at first, but it always devolved into an annoying game of contradictions. There would usually be one kid who would take it too far and drive everyone around him to the brink of violence. I really should apologize for that.
I remember once when my wife and I were going to turn an enclosed porch area on the back of our house into an extra bedroom for our boys. We planned and considered how this could be accomplished and what it would take. We drew a lot of diagrams on napkins and contemplated this task – and then realized it was too big for us and had to be hired out. A friend from church did construction jobs like this agreed to take on our project. What I still remember was the great sense of satisfaction and even surprise when he set out to tear sections out and rebuild others, because there was a big difference between this project in theory and seeing it in action. It turned out much better than we had imagined.
If you’ve ever dieted, either to shed a few pounds or because of health reasons, what is the main thing you think about whilst denying yourself of some type of food? I can’t speak for you, but I know that most of the time all I see are visions of corn-dogs dancing in a chorus line singing “We taste great with MUSTARD!”. That’s a fascinating thing about the human experience: we have strong urges and desires for whatever it is that is that is generally not good for us.
It looks like our current hurricane season is going to be a tad more active than in the last 10 years. We’re already getting advisories about having our emergency supplies and evacuation procedures in place. There are a lot of things that take us by surprise in life, but hurricanes are not usually one of them. We have as much as a week to prepare in many cases. Meterologists give us the heads up; “Storm’s a comin’!” and it’s up to us whether we heed that forecast or not.
WONDERWHAT 