Matthew-021

We continue today in our Lord Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 10:34-36.

The parallel passage is Luke 12:51-53.

The gospel is peace, but Jesus did not come to bring peace?

The Chinese translation is very strange because it has not produced a translation but an interpretation. It doesn’t say, “I brought a sword” but “I brought war,” because the English idiom, “I brought a sword” means “I brought war,” but not in the Greek idiom.

Let us keep these two passages before us, especially Matthew 10:34-36. As I meditated upon this passage, I saw a spiritual vision of God’s Word, but I am not so sure whether I will be very successful in sharing this vision with you. It depends on whether you are willing to give the Holy Spirit freedom to work in your heart, so that you can see this vision of the Word of God.

As I looked at this passage, I was filled with a sense of wonder. But a preacher will say, “I don’t see very much to wonder at. This passage is really an embarrassment. How good it would be if Jesus had said, “I have come into the world to bring peace.” Then I’ve got something I’d like to preach on: Jesus came into the world to bring peace.” But the Lord Jesus says, “I did not come to bring peace. I came to bring a sword.” That kind of statement is very embarrassing for us. And Christians will say, “Jesus doesn’t sound like a religious leader. A religious leader is supposed to talk about peace and harmony. I am puzzled, and I don’t even know how to explain this embarrassing statement to my non-Christian friends! Now you come along and tell me this statement is wonderful?”

To make things even more complicated, we read in Luke 10:6, that when the Lord sent his disciples out he said the gospel is to come to the son of peace. The person whose heart is open to peace will receive the gospel. Here Jesus said he did not come to bring peace. We are getting confused!

Then Paul says in Ephesians 6:15 that the gospel is the gospel of peace. Jesus came to bring the gospel, which is the gospel of peace, how come he said that he did not come to bring peace?

Also in John 14:27, the Lord Jesus said to his disciples, “Peace I give to you, not as the world gives to you, but I give you peace in my special way.” Now if he came to give peace, and he did give peace to us and to his disciples at that time, how can he say that he did not come to bring peace?

It is little wonder that with this kind of complications, the preacher decided he’d better look for another verse to preach on. Actually, it is a wonderful passage! Never run away from a passage that seems to be difficult. Face it squarely and honestly, and never make an attempt to explain it away.

Jesus did not come to bring peace in the world

There is always a problem when you understand the Word of God in a very superficial way. Look carefully at the words of the Lord Jesus, and then you will see there is no problem. The Lord Jesus did not say, “I have not come to bring peace,” but what he did say is, “I have not come to bring peace on earth.” He said he did not come to bring a social peace, that is to say, to change the social structure of this world, to bring peace to a world that is living in sin and disobedience to God.

This was the error of the liberal theologians of the 19^th Century. They talked about “a social gospel.” They thought that the gospel would change this society, that man can achieve the day when the lamb will graze together with the wolf (cf. Isa. 65:25) by using the gospel as an instrument. This is to fail to understand that the real problem of mankind is sin. They thought that sin is not very serious; it’s just a human defect that you can correct by teaching them the gospel, the means of social education. That is a fundamental error. The Lord Jesus understood far too well that the human nature is corrupted by sin, to make this kind of mistake.

We cannot use Christian teaching to change a man. Many of you have been to Christian schools—Catholic or Protestant—perhaps since you were knee-high to a grasshopper. You were taught to recite the catechism in a Catholic school as I was. Did it change my character? Did the fact that I lived in a Christian school—with all the priests wearing the cross around their necks—change my character? It did not change me at all. It’s not the education that can change me. It needs something much more powerful, much deeper to change me. And if I am not changed, I cannot receive God’s peace.

God only gives peace to people who repent

Long ago, the Scripture in the Old Testament says, “‘There is no peace’ says my God, ‘for the wicked’” (cf. Isa. 48:22, 57:21). This world is wicked. It is living in sin. How can it have peace? Jesus does not bring peace to the world generally, but to all those who have repented of their sins, and have asked God to cleanse them with Jesus’ blood. Such people realize the peace between God and them. The Lord Jesus is saying, “I didn’t come into the world so that the gospel will take wars away from this world. Man will keep fighting and killing each other. The gospel will not stop that.

Look at this world. The gospel has been in this world for 2,000 years. You see the truth of Jesus’ words: “I did not come to bring peace in this world.” Look at how every time there is a war, the world becomes worse. Just look at how many wars were started by these so-called “Christian” nations, who honor God with their lips and deny him with their lives. What do they do when they send a battleship into war? They ask the local bishop to break a bottle of champagne on the battleship, to pray for their armies to have victory over the enemy. What kind of bishop would be willing to pray over some battleship, that its guns could sink all the enemy’s ships? These people are still in the world, so they put on ecclesiastical garments. It’s a disgrace to the gospel of God! There will not be peace in this world until man is changed in his heart. And when will man’s heart be changed? When the cross comes into his life!

The sword resembles the cross

“I did not come to bring peace but a sword,” a sword that will cut the families into two. It will divide between son and father, daughter and mother, brother and sister. Well, you might say, “Up to now, I have not yet seen anything wonderful about this passage. We know it’s too true that there is no peace in this world. The words of the Lord Jesus have given us a very sad vision. All you have said so far is the tragedy of the world in sin, and I have not yet seen the wonderful vision that you are talking about.”

Very well then, ponder, “I have come to bring a sword.” Think carefully about the sword. The huge Roman sword dominated the world, and countless people died under its blade. If I take that sword which has a hilt, and plant the blade straight into the ground, and I say, “Look at that sword. What do you see?” I will tell you what I see. I see a cross!

The Lord Jesus is going to take the Roman sword and turn it into the cross. He takes up the Roman cross and turns it into an instrument of salvation. He takes the instrument of death and turns it into an instrument of life. I see this as something wonderful! The more you meditate upon this sword, the more you begin to understand the meaning of the cross. Do you understand the meaning of the cross? Can you get a vision of this cross and its richness in meaning?

What can a sword do? A sword cuts and divides. That is exactly what the Lord Jesus said will happen. The cross always separates. It separates the righteous from the unrighteous, and it separates the unrighteous from their sins. That spiritual sword, the cross is really remarkable! We shall now see how the cross functions as God’s spiritual sword in six ways.

1. The cross will divide between two generations

In the parallel passage Luke 12:51-53, you see similar words. In verse 52 [NAS], the Lord Jesus says that sword will divide the family right down through the middle:

First, you will notice this reference is taken from Micah 7:6, and that passage in Micah chapter 7 was understood in Jesus’ time as a reference to the days of the Messiah, the days of the Savior. There­fore, in applying this verse to himself, he is saying that he has fulfilled the Old Testament prophecy of the Messiah; he is the Messiah God has sent.

Then if you look at Luke 12:52-53 carefully and thoughtfully, who are the two on one side and the three on the other side? On the one side, there is father and mother and on the other side, you will see son and daughter and daughter-in-law. It is very interesting. You will say, “What’s interesting?” It is interesting precisely in that the sword comes exactly between the younger and the older generation. How true it is to our experience!

If you have preached the gospel for a number of years, you will notice something interesting: the older people have always proved to be much more resistant to the message of the cross. It’s sad but it’s true. The young people are somehow much more open to the message of the cross and its cost. How often we have noticed that when the young people turn to God, they come under the opposition of their parents. Even if the parents have already come to God, they try to slow down their children’s spiritual progress.

This is what the Scripture says, and it is true to experience. We find again and again, that the older people always feel they have too much to lose. But the younger people have much less to lose, because they have little money, no social status, and no particular reputation. They belong to “the category of the poor.” The older people have got used to their old way of life, and hang on to it that much more strongly than the young people who don’t have much of an old way of life to hang on to. The older generation makes excuses for their sins: “I’ve been sinning all along. It’s not that bad. Other people do the same thing.” So you will find that the sword often cuts right between the generations.

Beware of your attitude to the cross in the gospel

Luke 21:16 says, “You will be delivered up even by parents and brothers and relatives and friends, and some of you they will put to death.” This is a verse that often makes me shudder. What does it mean by parents will “deliver up” or hand over their children to death? Now I do not want any older person to imagine that we are saying no older people can turn to God. That is not what the Scripture is saying. God loves you, the older person just the same as the younger person. This verse is not talking about God’s love. The Lord Jesus is talking about your attitude to the gospel and to the cross. How often the older person says, “This requirement of God is too demanding for me.”

By “older people,” I don’t mean very old persons by any means. When you watch the people in the church, you will find that people who are married very often progress spiritually slower than the younger ones, as they advance in age. How often once they got married, they got interested in each other, the children, the house, the car. Their whole attention is beginning to get absorbed by the world. So I say especially to family people, “Be careful that when the sword of the cross cuts down, it doesn’t leave you on the wrong side.” And in saying this to you, I am not criticizing you. I am speaking as much to myself, for I am also a family man. As soon as you get married, you somehow belong to the “older generation,” and we understand from the Word of God that we must be careful about our reaction to the cross.

That is why the Lord Jesus goes on to say immediately to the people in Matthew 10:37,

If you value anyone above Christ, you are not worthy of Christ.

2. The cross reveals the thoughts of the heart

Have you experienced how the cross cuts into your heart in such a way that all the thoughts of your heart are laid bare before God? The cross has a way of piercing into your heart and showing you what you really are, “that the thoughts out of many hearts may be revealed” (Lk. 2:35b). Luke 2:34-35 [RSV] is Simeon’s tremendous prophecy of the cross:

The glory of the cross is that it is like a spiritual x-ray that looks into your heart as nothing else can, and suddenly shows you what you really are. You never knew you were so sinful until the cross penetrated into your heart.

Before I became a Christian, I thought I was quite a good fellow. I was so proud of my worldly righteousness that I despised the Christians. I was disciplined in my way of life. When I looked at those sloppy Christians, I thought to myself, “Huh! Who wants to be a Christian? Look at that kind of people! Fat archbishops, bellies bulging out in front, cheeks hanging down like a bulldog. Such are Christians! All these people want is emotional comfort from God. They’re too weak to stand on their own feet, so all they want is the opium of religion. They are despicable characters who only live for their feelings!” I was filled with a sense of my own righteousness and excellence until the sword of the cross cut right into my heart and opened it up. Then the Holy Spirit of God said, “Are you so wonderful? Look deep down inside yourself. Have a good look at it.” By this time, I was just crawling on my hands and knees and saying, “God, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry!”

Jesus said, “I have come to bring the cross.” Thank God for the cross! If you didn’t know what you were really like, how would you ever want to change? Many people are not Christians today because they still think they are pretty good. They think that they are at least as good as this bunch of Christians. Wait until the cross penetrates into your heart and shows you as you really are, until like that surgeon’s knife cuts down inside and all the pus and filth come out. Then you will understand what Jeremiah 17:9 says, “the heart of man is desperately wicked, who can understand it?” But you would not have believed it until the cross cuts right into you. Like me, you might live in an illusion that you are so good. This cross keeps cutting right into my heart day by day. Every day, I feel more alarmed at the greater discoveries of the dirt, the sinfulness that is in my heart.

The path to holiness is a path that is very painful. It is painful because you keep discovering just how bad you are. And you keep discovering how bad you are because that cross keeps going deeper into your heart, so that all your self-righteousness disappears. Never again do you dare to attack the other people about their sinfulness. You can only say like the tax-collector, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner” (Lk. 18:13). But it’s also not surprising that there are some people who are enemies of the cross precisely because the cross is so uncomfortable.

3. The cross kills the old man

This takes us to the third point. The cross not only separates between people, it not only cuts us open and reveals us as we are, it does more than that, the cross kills just as a sword kills. The cross will go right through your soul, exactly as in Luke 2:35, where the prophet, Simeon, said to Mary, the mother of Jesus, “A sword shall pierce through your soul.” What a wonderful prophet Simeon was! What spiritual insight he had! He could preach about the cross before the cross actually happened! A man filled with the Spirit of God before the Day of Pentecost, so that like a true prophet, he was preaching in advance the gospel concerning the cross.

What was the sword that pierced Mary’s soul? Was it Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, and all the crowds were praising Jesus saying, “Baruch Haba Bashem Adonai!”, which means “Blessed is he who comes in the Name of the LORD!” (Mt. 21:9)? Was that a sword? There was no sword there. Her heart must have been filled with joy to look at her son. “Look at my son riding in triumph into Jerusalem! Why did the prophet Simeon talk about a sword piercing into my heart?” But it was coming. What was the sword that pierced her heart? The cross! You can see even the prophet speaks of the cross in terms of the sword. When Mary saw Jesus hanging on the cross slowly dying, hour after hour, the agony of a mother is almost indescribable. That was the sword as Simeon had prophesied. The cross was going right through her soul.

What happens when a sword goes through you? You die. The sword kills. When God changes a person, He does it thoroughly. You must die before you can live. If you have not died, you won’t live. If you don’t know what it is to die, neither do you know what it is to live. Not until the sword kills your old life are you going to have a new one.

When the Holy Spirit of God comes into your life, he is not going to be satisfied with patching up your old character, to whitewash your dirty, sinful, old life so that it looks nice and white, just as the Pharisees used to whitewash the graves, which appear beautiful outwardly, but they are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness within. That is what religion does to you. Religion whitewashes you. Jesus is not interested in religion in that sense. He is interested in the total revolution of a person. He is concerned that God makes a new person out of you in him. But first, the old must die before the new can come. This is the fundamental point of the message of Christ—“Take up your cross and follow after me, for I have come to bring a sword”—and also the meaning of baptism. In baptism, you die with Christ, you are buried with him, and you rise with him to new life. But you don’t rise again until you die. So the cross is the sword that kills our old way of life.

I wonder if you are a white-washed “Christian,” or whether you are a Christian who knows what it is to have the cross in your heart? There are two kinds of Christians in the churches everywhere. The white-washed kind, who paints a red cross in front. The cross is outside your life, and is certainly a nice decoration for you, but that doesn’t make you a new person. The true Christian is the person who has the cross inside him, so that it has killed your old nature, and continues doing it.

That old nature forever tries to climb out of the tomb. It is very hard to kill. It is like an earthworm. When you cut it, the other section starts growing again. If you chop it again, it starts growing again. It is some battle! You need to keep having your sword ready. I am not talking theoretically about the cross in its legal status, but in its application in our everyday life.

4. The cross brings resurrection to new life

God uses the cross to kill in order to make alive. He kills in order to make alive! In fact, that has already been prophesied in the Old Testament. How amazing is the Old Testament! In Deuteronomy 32:39a, God says,

These similar words appear in 1 Samuel 2:6 [NJB]. There, Hannah, filled with the Spirit, prophesied into the future of what God does:

That is exactly what God does through the cross: it kills in order to make alive.

We find this also in Luke 2:34, where Simeon, that great prophet of God says these remarkable words,

Notice that both the killing and the making alive by his cross are all beautifully said in one sentence.

This word in the original, anastasis—translated in English as “the rising”—is a very remarkable word. What does anastasis mean? It literally means to stand up once more, and that is why it is the word for “resurrection.” There is no resurrection without dying. And that is exactly what Simeon prophesied: the sword will kill. Some will fall not to rise again, but some will fall to rise to newness of life.

The sword of the cross will affect every person in this world. No one will escape it. Let no one in this church say to yourself, “Well, that cross will never affect me.” It has already affected you because as you sit there, you have already determined your attitude towards the cross, and so towards God. Therefore, it has already affected you. There is no one who can escape the effect of that cross. That is the wisdom of God! So either right now, the cross has spelt your fall to die in your sins, because you reject God’s salvation in Christ, or it will spell your rising again to new life, because you are willing to pay the cost of discipleship.

Isn’t it wonderful that the cross, like this spiritual sword of God, separates, exposes, kills, and makes alive to set you free from sin? Such is the abundant riches of the cross. Let no one who has listened to the Word of God say that he doesn’t understand the cross. Every time you think of the cross, think of the sword of the Lord Jesus planted in the earth, shining forth like a great cross. That is the cross the Lord Jesus came to bring.

5. The cross represents judgment

In the Bible, the sword also represents judgment, and you will come under that judgment if you don’t allow that sword to make you alive. On that Day of Judgment, every person will be able to see the great cross that is planted in the earth. In the face of that cross, every person will be asked to explain, “Why didn’t you come to life through that cross?”

That cross would have wiped away all the sins committed in your old nature, by killing it. That is precisely the point that Paul was making in Colossians 2:14, that the cross came to kill you so that the law has no claim on you. All your sins would be wiped out with the dying of your old way of life, your old character. The Lord Jesus will condemn you not so much for the sins that you committed, but he is going to ask you, “Why did you reject that cross that could have made you alive?” And you are going to have to explain to him what was your attitude to the cross.

What I would rather do would be like what the Lord Jesus says in Matthew 10:38, that a man take up his cross. As for me, I want to embrace this cross to my heart, knowing that even if it cuts into my heart and kills my old nature, it will make me alive. “The gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes” (Ro. 1:16). And Paul says, “Forbid it that I should boast except in the cross of my Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.” That is, I have been killed to the world, but made alive to God. (Gal. 6:14)

6. The cross sets free from the power of Satan

The sword of judgment has also destroyed the power of Satan. In John 12:31, the Lord Jesus says just that: “Now is the judgment of this world; now will the ruler of this world be cast out.” When was this “now”? If you read the context before and after John 12: 31, you will see it is talking about his death by the cross. So the great oppressor is cast out; the power of the evil one is destroyed by this battle weapon of the cross. We are set free by the cross and we come into newness of life.

Can you catch the vision of the cross, the means of our salvation that I said right at the beginning? Can you see that glorious cross that the Lord Jesus planted in the earth, with his own blood flowing down the blade of the cross? Isn’t that a transforming vision to observe? May God’s Holy Spirit work in your heart and help you to see this vision.