Matthew-020

Today, we will read Matthew 10:26-33, (parallel to Luke 12:2-9):

Christians and non-Christians are like sheep and wolves

In the last sermon, we studied that the Christian is as different from the non-Christian as the sheep is different from the wolf. Being a Christian is to change so completely that we become like sheep in character. The sheep live for people both spiritually in the sacrifice for sins, as well as materially in providing meat, warm woolen clothing, leather shoes and goods, and other daily necessities.

The wolf represents the whole character of human society today. We, the Chinese, often like to speak of human society as “the big fish swallows the small fish” (da yu chi xiao yu 大魚吃小魚), for it is worldly power that counts in this world. So the wolf represents worldly power, but the sheep represents God’s power. When we are willing to become sheep, then God’s power will change us, and he will work through us to change others from wolf to sheep.

Matthew 10:17-23 is in fact, a prophetic passage. The Lord Jesus is prophesying that when we are willing to be his disciples (true Christians), to be as sheep, we are going to suffer many things. But God’s power is going to work through us precisely in that suffering. And the Lord Jesus said to his disciples in verse 18, “You will be dragged before governors and kings for my sake, to bear witness before them and the Gentiles.”

That happened exactly to Paul. He was testifying before governors and kings. And who knows, if you and I are faithful to the Lord, one of these days, we will also be testifying before governors and kings. And the Lord Jesus said, “Don’t be afraid of what you shall say to them because the Spirit of God, your Father will speak through you” (cf. v. 19) This means that many people will be changed, just like the governor of Cyprus was saved through the preaching of Paul (Ac. 13:12).

Then the Lord Jesus went on to say in verse 23, “You will continue to be persecuted until the Son of man comes. You will not have gone through all the towns before the Son of man has come.” This verse does not refer to that particular mission the Lord Jesus sent his dis­ciples on. In theology, it is called an eschatological passage, that is, it refers to the last things. To expound it in its precise meaning will take me the entire service, so we are going to do this at a future date when we come to the Lord’s teaching about the last things. To put it simply for the moment, the Lord Jesus is prophesying that there will be a time when his disciples (Christians) will go throughout Israel preaching the gospel just before his Coming, but he will have come even before they will have covered all the cities of Israel.

Fear means there is no faith

So today, we come to this passage in Matthew 10:26-33, and we find in it the expression “fear not” three times. Now this expression “fear not” meaning “don’t be afraid” is very characteristic of the Gospels. It occurs twelve times in Matthew and Luke, out of which seven occur in the teaching of the Lord Jesus. This shows that the word “fear not” is very important in the Lord’s teaching. But why is it important? It’s because fear is the exact opposite of faith. Faith and fear are always exact opposites. I hope you will bear that very closely in mind. If you are afraid, it means you don’t have faith. If you have faith, you won’t be afraid. That is a fundamental principle in Scripture.

We live in a world that is full of fear, of nervous tension. Just consider how many millions of dollars of sedatives are being sold from the pharmacies every year. Stress is a basic problem in medicine. Many people have stomach ulcers and no end of illnesses, which are actually due to fear and nervous tension.

Recently, I was talking to a brother in the Lord, who is a surgeon in Winnipeg, and he said that among all the patients who come to him for surgery, 70% of their problems originate not from physical ailments, but from other origins. If you trace the cause of these illnesses, you will find that it is some kind of nervous stress or fear. How many people suffer from a sense of insecurity! All these problems are deep-rooted in the human character. Therefore, this surgeon found that what he had to do in 70% of these cases was to tell them to turn to God, and many did.

I was talking to another doctor in Winnipeg who had exactly the same feeling. He said his desire was to preach the gospel after having been a doctor for a long time, because he found that the needs of the people were much more spiritual than physical. I know quite a num­ber of doctors who, having practiced medicine for many years, and realized that the basic problem of people is spiritual, have decided to give up medicine and preach the gospel instead.

Many of you have read the books of Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones, the great heart specialist in England, who also gave up medicine to preach the gospel. He devoted himself to preaching the gospel because he saw that man’s problem is precisely his insecurity, his fears. If you heal a person physically, he will return to the same position, because often, the physical illness is only a symptom of the spiritual illness. You will be healing his body endlessly until you heal a man in his soul. Take an obvious example, the stomach ulcer. Often, the stomach ulcer gets so bad that the whole stomach or part of it has to be cut away through surgery. But cutting away that diseased part of the stomach doesn’t solve the problem, because fear and anxiety will still be there. In due time, the sickness will return. So faith is the only way out for mankind, because God has the power to save through your faith.

Three kinds of fear

1. Fear of being persecuted, rejected

In this passage, the Lord Jesus speaks of three kinds of fear. First of all, in verse 26a, he says to his disciples,

What does that mean? To understand this, you have to look at verse 25 which says,

What does this mean? The Lord Jesus is saying, “If they slander me, they are going to slander you too, since you are my disciple.”

When the Lord Jesus was casting out demons by the power of God, they said, “Oh, he is working by the power of the devil.” Now that is the worst thing you can say about a servant of God. But no one will have been in God’s work for very long without being slandered and accused of one thing or another. If you are afraid of being accused or slandered, you’d best not be in God’s work.

This particular fear strikes us at a very deep place in our nature because we always like people to think well of us. Why do you think we put on nice clothing or wear a nice tie? We want other people to think, “He’s not bad. Look at the nice clothing he wears.” So the way we behave is often designed to impress the other person as to how good we are. We like people to think well of us. Our reputation means a lot to us.

I was listening to a program in which a number of girls were asked what they would like boys to think about them? Many boys thought girls would be concerned about being lovable, and to their surprise, all the girls were very concerned about their reputation.

That is not very surprising when we know that we always like people to speak and think well of us. Even those people who seem to behave as if they disregard others’ opinions, they still care about what a particular group of people think of them. So it is the fear of being the odd man out.

If you are in college, just try being a Christian there, and imme­diately, you will feel you are the odd man out. Do you dare to say you are a Christian when you are in the office? Do you dare to witness for Christ? Why don’t you dare to do these things? You are afraid. And I say again, where there is fear there is no faith. The person who has faith is not afraid.

So the point of the Lord Jesus’ words in verse 26, “nothing is covered that will not be revealed” is, don’t be afraid of being slandered and attacked because God will reveal every bit of truth. If you have faith that God will reveal the truth, you wouldn’t be afraid of what people say at the moment.

Take for example, you are afraid to show that you are a Christian in your college. But if you have confidence that on the Day of Judgment, Christians and non-Christians will be revealed, you wouldn’t be afraid. You will be saying, “The truth is going to be revealed, so I’m going to declare myself now.” Or if you are afraid to witness to someone about Christ and you say, “If I talk to him about Christ, what will he think of me? I don’t want to be thought of as a religious fanatic.” But you wouldn’t be afraid if you realize that one day, the truth is going to be revealed, and that person will say to you, “You knew the truth, so why didn’t you tell me at the time?”

2. Fear of death

The second kind of fear in verse 28 is the fear of death. This is an­other fear that keeps many people in bondage as we read in Hebrews 2:15.

The fear of death is more than just dying physically. The fear of death can mean the fear of losing your job, losing your place in this world, losing your rights when you live sacrificially for others in daily life. In Scripture, this is also called “dying,” so we see the Lord Jesus’ words clearly stated in verse 39:

So if I want to gain my life, I have to lose it. What does that mean? Do I rush out to get someone to shoot me so that I can say, “I died for Christ, now I’ve gained my life”? We only think like this if we only think of dying physically. However, in the Bible, losing one’s life means that one is giving up one’s whole life for Christ day by day. That is what the Lord Jesus says about taking up the cross daily. That is the dying every day. Now this fear of dying in everyday life is a great problem to many Christians. Why do many people not serve God? They are afraid of dying; they want to maintain their good standard of living. This is another fear that prevents many people from having faith.

3. Fear of hardships and suffering

The third kind of fear is the fear that is spoken of in verses 29-30. The Lord Jesus says,

Here is the picture of a sparrow that is wounded, hurt and falls to the ground.

Sparrows were being sold in the marketplaces in Jerusalem because the Jews used to eat them. I think some Cantonese people do too. In China, there was a time when they were striking down all the sparrows because it was said that they ate too much rice. So a lot of sparrows were eaten at the time. In Matthew 10:29, we read that two sparrows were sold for one penny; they were very cheap. The poor people would buy sparrows to eat. In Luke 12:6, we learn that five sparrows were sold for two pennies. That means to say they are even cheaper. If you buy two, you pay one penny, but for two pennies you can get five. So it’s cheaper by the dozen. Who says that bulk purchase is cheaper only nowadays? That was practiced long ago!

How did they get a sparrow? They did not have guns in those days, so they were shot down usually with catapults. Normally, a catapult doesn’t kill a sparrow straight away, but injures it, then people kill it after it falls to the ground.

Many people say, “I’m not afraid to die but I’m afraid of being hurt.” And in verse 28, the Lord Jesus says, “Don’t be afraid of those who kill (or hurt) the body, but be afraid of God who has power to destroy both body and soul.”

Fear is the opposite of faith

What are your fears? Every person has some kind of fear. If you could write down all your fears, it could be a very, very long list. These fears will fall into one of these categories. If you want to move on to faith, the first step is to let God search your heart to know: “What are the fears that are crippling my spiritual life?”

There are some girls who are afraid they won’t be able to find a hus­band. Some boys are afraid they won’t get a good wife. Some people are afraid they might not be able to finish their studies because they cannot pass their exams. Some people have visa fears: “What if I can’t stay on in this country?” Others fear about the future: “What will happen to me if I can’t find a job when I graduate?”

I know many non-Christians who say they don’t dare to become Christians, because they are afraid they cannot live the Christian life. There are some people who are so afraid of this that they never be­come Christians all their life. They must go on to faith to experience God’s power that enables them to live the Christian life.

Then some people say, “I’ll become a Christian just before I die because if I commit sin after I get baptized, what is going to happen to me?” The problem is you don’t know when you are going to die. If it could be so good that we are able to know which day we will die, we could postpone our turning to God just to five minutes before we die. And I suspect that people who think like this are really afraid they cannot enjoy the world if they become Christians.

They may be thinking, “When my friend invites me to a dance party, I can’t go because I’m a Christian. What a great loss! I’d better become a Christian just before I die.” Or perhaps, “If I am a Christian, I can’t go to the movies. I can’t see an exciting movie while all my friends are enjoying the excitement. Oh no! I won’t get baptized until I die.”

Or perhaps, “There is a very pretty girl who isn’t a Christian, but I am a Christian and I can’t marry a non-Christian. So I have to marry an ugly Christian instead of a beautiful non-Christian! That is a very serious problem! So it is better that I marry a beautiful non-Christian, and I become a Christian just before I die, and I’ll still go to heaven.”

Or you may say, “When I become a Christian and all my friends are laughing at me, “Ha! This guy has become a Christian! Another nut case!” So it’s better I become a Christian five minutes before I die. I won’t have anyone laughing at me, and I can have a beautiful wife. I can get to heaven and I can still enjoy all the good food in this world. I can have the best of both worlds. I’m very clever!”

In fact, these kinds of fear are unfounded. Where did you get all these ideas that Christians may not go to a dance or the movies? Are they from the Bible? I don’t mean to say that it is good for Christians to go to dances, but there is no law against it either. The apostle Paul said, “All things are lawful to me, but not all things are profitable” (1 Cor. 6:12, 10:23). A Christian is free to do anything, therefore a Christian decides between what is and isn’t profitable, and not whether he is allowed or not allowed. I hope that every Christian understands this principle. As a Christian, I am free to go to a dance anytime, but I consider this is not for my good or for anyone else’s good, so I don’t go. It’s not because I’m not allowed, but because I don’t want to.

The important thing is, don’t think that you can cheat God and still become a Christian at the end. To become a Christian means that you face the fear and overcome it. Faith and fear are always opposites, and that is why you need to be brave to be a Christian. I am not surprised there are not very many true Christians, because there are not many people with courage. There are many problems for becoming a Christian, but the man who has faith is not afraid of the problems. He is not afraid that people will laugh at him. He is not afraid of what people might think of him. He knows the truth will be revealed. He learns not to be afraid of death, not to be afraid of loss or injury.

Fear binds

Life free from fear is wonderful! The only person who is free from fear is the man who has faith. And I repeat, if you have not been set free from fear, it is because you don’t have faith. So let God set you free from whatever your fear. As Jesus whom God has given all power and authority said, “If the Son will set you free, you will be free indeed.” (Jo. 8:36)

Sin brings fear. You have fear when you see a police car suddenly appear from somewhere in the rear view mirrors of your car. There is a knock on the door, and when you open it, a policeman is standing there asking you, “Where is your work permit?” And you panic: “Now they’ve got me!” Or someone suddenly claps you on your shoulder, and you jump half-way up the sky, but it’s just a friend who wants to say “hello.” Have you noticed that people with a bad conscience are very jumpy? Now you can see the connection between sin and fear, and the opposite of that is faith. You can see why faith saves you from sin through the power of God, and you will come into full freedom in Christ.

Some people become so habitually fearful that they don’t even know why they are afraid. It’s very strange. There are some people who suffer nervous tension, but they don’t really know why they are under this tension anymore. They have been in their tension so long that they don’t know what causes it. It is very strange that some people suffer so much from nervous tension that if they will relax for five minutes, they will start to fear again, wondering: “When is my tension going to come back?” There are so many fears: fear of pain; fear of not being able to sleep at night; fear of the dark; fear that someone is going to break into your house. Perhaps while you are sitting in church listening to the gospel, you are wondering, “Is a thief coming in to take all my antiques away?”

Fear is rooted in sin, love of the world, the flesh

Nowadays, what do you do with your money when you have too much of it? It’s a real problem for the rich. If you buy gold, the price of gold may go down rather than up. If you put your money in the bank, the interest you get may not keep up with inflation. If you buy shares, the shares will crash. Even if you buy the blue chip shares, they will crash too. Many people bought the Rolls-Royce shares because it is such a famous and reliable company so it will never col­lapse, but Rolls-Royce collapsed. Its shareholders lost millions and millions and millions of shares. So the rich people are very nervous people.

I once knew an elder of the church in London. He had too much money, so he bought a huge number of antiques as an investment. Antiques are very good because their value always goes up. If you have so much money, buy some antiques. But it’s very dangerous as well because where do you keep the antiques to prevent them from being stolen? You can put gold bars in the safe, but sometimes the thieves do carry the whole safe away!

This man had a whole room full of antiques. You could hardly sit down without knocking over a piece of antique. So you immediately have nervous tension when you come into his house. The best thing is to stand still because there are big and small antiques of porcelain and other fragile materials everywhere, and you dare not move. He was telling me, “This one is from Qing Dynasty, and that one is from Ming Dynasty. And this one costs 200 pounds and that one costs 400 pounds.” And I thought, “I’d better not knock that over because I can’t afford to pay for it.” In fact, even standing was a problem because the carpet was an investment. As many people do, he bought hand-made Chinese or Persian carpets as an investment because their value goes up. So if you stood on his carpet, you would be spoiling his investment.

Can you imagine how he is worrying all the time while he sits in church, because his whole house is full of thousands and thousands of pounds of antiques? How can the Word of God get into his heart when he fears for his antiques all the time? His house is full of alarms; one alarm is even connected directly to the police station. But I’m afraid that none of these alarms will be able to save him when the professional robbers go to work on his house.

How can this elder have faith? He cannot when he has so much fear. What does it mean? It means the love of the world brings fear. If you have a nice car parked on the street, I am sure you are worried and think, “I wonder if the kids are scratching up my car!” Or “Will it get stolen?”

We can clearly see that sin, the world, and the flesh all bring fear. If you commit a sexual sin, you will have a lot of fear wondering, “What will be the result of that?” So we need to be set free from fear through faith. From this analysis, we see that faith sets us free from fear, because it sets us free from sin, the world, and the flesh by the power of God. Then we know what the Lord Jesus meant when he said to his disciples in Mark 4:40, “Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?” Where there is no faith, there is always fear.

From the human point of view, this elder who fills his house with treasures has reason to fear that he will be robbed. It’s not an empty fear. It’s a real fear, because he has not yet been set free from love of the world through faith. He will have no fear if he is going to store his treasures in heaven instead of the world. However, he doesn’t want to store his riches in heaven but in the world, because he has no faith. There are so many elders of churches who have no faith.

Why do you store your treasure on earth? You want to have money when you need it. If you store your treasure in heaven, you cannot get it back when you need it. So you think, “It’s so true that the Lord Jesus said, ‘Store your treasure in heaven,’ but it’s better to store it in the bank instead because I can draw on my deposit to meet my needs.” That is the way you think when you don’t have faith.

Have faith in God’s justice, his power to save, his love for us

Faith is the opposite of fear because firstly, faith is founded on the justice of God. People may slander me, people may think badly of me, but it doesn’t matter because you have confidence in God’s justice. He will justify those who walk in the truth. Even if the truth is hidden now, it is going to be revealed (cf. Mt. 10:26).

Secondly, faith is founded on the power of God. We read in Matthew 10:28, do not be afraid of man whose power is limited, as he can only kill the body. Rather, be afraid of God because his power is limitless; he can kill both body and soul. Faith is confident in God’s power therefore it is not afraid of man.

Thirdly, we see that faith is founded on the love of God as we see in Matthew 10:30-31:

God cares for you! You are valuable to God. He loves you so much that every hair on your head is numbered. In Luke 21:18, it says “not a hair of your head will perish.” Such is God’s love and concern for us.

The Lord Jesus also said, “You are evil and you know how to love your children. How much more does God who is good love us who are his children?” (cf. Mt. 7:11). Many times during the night, I go to the room of my little girl to see if she is properly covered. Like many children, she tends to kick off all the blankets. Usually my wife does this, and when she is not well, I go in, and sometimes I go in anyway. And the other day, when I was pulling the sheet to cover her, I thought to myself, “I being evil, being unrighteous, know how to love this little girl. How much more does God know how to love me!”

So faith is confident in three things concerning God: It is confident about God’s justice, God’s power to save, and God’s love for us. When you have that kind of faith what room is there left for fear?

Faith has the fear of God

There is only one thing that frightens a man of faith. It is the fear that Christ denies him on that Day. If Christ denies us, it also means that God will deny us. This kind of fear is called the fear of God. It is also the beginning of wisdom, as Proverbs 9:10 tells us: “The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.”

In Matthew 10:32-33, the Lord Jesus says,

What people think of me doesn’t frighten me. The only thing that counts is what God and Christ think of me.

Faith looks at eternal reality

This shows that faith looks into the future, at eternal reality. Faith knows that this world is passing away. The people who criticize you today, who kill you, who hurt you will also die. Anything of this world is passing away, but God never passes away; he is eternal. People who have faith can see that. That is why we are not to fear what is in this life because everything in this life will pass away. The most beautiful, precious things of this life will all pass away. What is the use of filling your house with antiques? You will pass away and they will pass away. You cannot take one cent with you.

The only thing that matters is eternity. People who have faith take hold of the eternal. Faith is concerned with only one thing: no matter what people think about me, I must acknowledge God and Christ. What does it matter if the whole crowd laughs at you? God and his Christ are acknowledging you. Therefore think carefully, do not deny God or Christ because of fear.

Confess God and Christ not just with your mouth but with your life. Remember that denying God and Christ is not just denying with your mouth, you might be denying with your life. Be careful how you live. Don’t think to yourself, “I didn’t deny God or Christ with my mouth,” but maybe your life is a disgrace! Remember also that if your life denies the only true God and Jesus Christ whom he sent (Jo. 17:3), Jesus, God’s appointed Judge will deny you on the Day of Judgment (2 Tim. 2:12). That is something to be afraid of!

So we can summarize by saying that to have faith is to be free from any fear in this life. If you have fear, how can you have joy? How can you have peace? Once you are set free from fear, then you can have joy and peace. Pray that God gives you the saving faith.