Seeds 08/02/2023 - Matthew 10:9-15
Scripture: 9 “Do not get any gold or silver or copper to take with you in your belts— 10 no bag for the journey or extra shirt or sandals or a staff, for the worker is worth his keep. 11 Whatever town or village you enter, search there for some worthy person and stay at their house until you leave. 12 As you enter the home, give it your greeting. 13 If the home is deserving, let your peace rest on it; if it is not, let your peace return to you. 14 If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, leave that home or town and shake the dust off your feet. 15 Truly I tell you, it will be more bearable for Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town.
Observation: This part of Jesus’ instruction to the twelve is all about hospitality. Hospitality is a practice—things that we do in order to welcome someone, and hospitality is an ethic—a set of values and virtues that undergird the practice with moral worth and obligation. The ethic of hospitality was more overt in ancient cultures and is today in more traditional cultures. Jesus is telling His disciples to, in the words of Blanche DuBois, “depend on the kindness of strangers.”
When Jesus refers to finding a “worthy person” with whom to stay or a home that “is deserving,” this is what He’s talking about—one that upholds the ethic of hospitality by practicing kindness and welcome toward them. This is why He compares the inhospitable town that must be left behind, having shaken “the dust off your feet,” with Sodom and Gomorrah.
In Genesis 19, Abraham’s nephew Lot finds himself in trouble because he has shown hospitality to the heavenly messengers (at times referred to as angels, at other times referred to as men). The men of the town come knocking on Lot’s door looking for these strangers in their town in order to sexually assault them. The hospitality ethic required them to host strangers, offering housing and nourishment for a couple days before they continued on their way. But these men reject this virtue to such an extreme degree that they threaten extraordinary harm, and almost physically prevail on Lot himself in their quest to do so. This is the extreme example of rejecting the ethic and practices of hospitality to which Jesus is comparing those homes and towns that reject the disciples. Strong stuff indeed.
Jesus tells the disciples that they may bless a house with peace or shake the dust off their feet as they leave.
Boundaries are appropriate. Yes, Jesus is the shepherd who leaves the 99 to search for the one lost sheep. It is also true that God does not coerce people into loving Him. It’s logically impossible. Coercion is incompatible with love, which is only given freely. It is important to remember both that we are made in God’s image with amazing capacity to witness in word and deed to reach people for Christ, and that we are finite creatures with limits. Some will simply refuse and reject the message of grace. Jesus is giving His disciples permission to honor people’s decisions and allow them to live with the consequences of their choices. He’s also allowing His disciples to live within their limits.
Application:
What might the Holy Spirit be speaking with you about in the text today?
Prayer: Lord, help me give of myself sacrificially to serve you and bring people to saving faith, and give me the wisdom to recognize and honor my own limits and others’ spiritual boundaries. Amen.
“But the seed falling on good soil refers to someone who hears the word and understands it. This is the one who produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.” (Matthew 13:23)
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