'Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of
wolves; be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless
as doves. 17. But beware of men: for they will deliver
you up to the councils, and they will scourge you in
their synagogues; 18. And ye shall be brought before
governors and kings for My sake, for a testimony
against them and the Gentiles. 19. But when they
deliver you up, take no thought how or what ye shall
speak: for it shall be given you in that same hour what
ye shall speak. 20. For it is not ye that speak, but
the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you.
21. And the brother shall deliver up the brother to
death, and the father the child: and the children shall
rise up against their parents, and cause them to be put
to death. 22. And ye shall be hated of all men for My
name's sake: but he that endureth to the end shall be
saved. 23. But when they persecute you in this city,
flee ye into another: for verily I say unto you, Ye
shall not have gone over the cities of Israel, till the
Son of Man be come. 24. The disciple is not above his
master, nor the servant above his lord. 25. It is
enough for the disciple that he be as his master, and
the servant as his lord. If they have called the master
of the house Beelzebub, how much more shall they call
them of his household? 26. Fear them not therefore: for
there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed;
and hid, that shall not be known. 27. What I tell you
in darkness, that speak ye in light: and what ye hear
in the ear, that preach ye upon the housetops. 28. And
fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to
kill the soul: but rather fear Him which is able to
destroy both soul and body in hell. 29. Are not two
sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not
fall on the ground without your Father. 30. But the
very hairs of your head are all numbered. 31. Fear ye
not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows.'
--MATT. x. 16-31.
We have already had two instances of Matthew's way of bringing
together sayings and incidents of a like kind without regard to
their original connection. The Sermon on the Mount and the series of
miracles in chapters viii. and ix. are groups, the elements of which
are for the most part found disconnected in Mark and Luke. This
charge to the twelve in chapter x. seems to present a third
instance, and to pass over in verse 16 to a wider mission than that
of the twelve during our Lord's lifetime, for it forebodes
persecution, whereas the preceding verses opened no darker prospect
than that of indifference or non-reception. The 'city' which, in
that stage of the gospel message, simply would 'not receive you nor
hear your words,' in this stage has worsened into one where 'they
persecute you,' and the persecutors are now 'kings' and 'Gentiles,'
as well as Jewish councils and synagogue-frequenters. The period
covered in these verses, too, reaches to the 'end,' the final
revelation of all hidden things.
Obviously, then, our Lord is looking down a far future, and giving a
charge to the dim crowd of His later disciples, whom His prescient
eye saw pressing behind the twelve in days to come. He had no dreams
of swift success, but realised the long, hard fight to which He was
summoning His disciples. And His frankness in telling them the worst
that they had to expect was as suggestive as was His freedom from
the rosy, groundless visions of at once capturing a world which
enthusiasts are apt to cherish, till hard experience shatters the
illusions. He knew the future in store for Himself, for His Gospel,
for His disciples. And He knew that dangers and death itself will
not appal a soul that is touched into heroic self-forgetfulness by
His love. 'Set down my name,' says the man in _Pilgrim's Progress_,
though he knew--may we not say, because he knew?--that the enemies
were outside waiting to fall on him.
A further difference between this and the preceding section is, that
there the stress was laid on the contents of the disciples' message,
but that here it is laid on their sufferings. Not so much by what
they say, as by how they endure, are they to testify. 'The noble
army of martyrs praise Thee,' and the primitive Church preached
Jesus most effectually by dying for Him.
The keynote is struck in verse 16, in which are to be noted the
'Behold,' which introduces something important and strange, and
calls for close attention; the majestic '_I_ send you,' which
moves to obedience whatever the issues, and pledges Him to defend
the poor men who are going on His errands and the pathetic picture
of the little flock huddled together, while the gleaming teeth of
the wolves gnash all round them. A strange theme to drape in a
metaphor! but does not the very metaphor help to lighten the
darkness of the picture, as well as speak of His calmness, while He
contemplates it? If the Shepherd sends His sheep into the midst of
wolves, surely He will come to their help, and surely any peril is
more courageously faced when they can say to themselves, 'He put us
here.' The sheep has no claws to wound with nor teeth to tear with,
but the defenceless Christian has a defence, and in his very
weaponlessness wields the sharpest two-edged sword. 'Force from
force must ever flow.' Resistance is a mistake. The victorious
antagonist of savage enmity is patient meekness. 'Sufferance is the
badge of all' true servants of Jesus. Wherever they have been
misguided enough to depart from Christ's law of endurance and to
give blow for blow, they have lost their cause in the long run, and
have hurt their own Christian life more than their enemies' bodies.
Guilelessness and harmlessness are their weapons. But 'be ye wise as
serpents' is equally imperative with 'guileless as doves.' Mark the
fine sanity of that injunction, which not only permits but enjoins
prudent self-preservation, so long as it does not stoop to crooked
policy, and is saved from that by dove-like guilelessness. A
difficult combination, but a possible one, and when realised, a
beautiful one!
The following verses (17-22) expand the preceding, and mingle in a
very remarkable way plain predictions of persecution to the death
and encouragements to front the worst. Jewish councils and
synagogues, Gentile governors and kings, will unite for once in
common hatred, than which there is no stronger bond. That is a grim
prospect to set before a handful of Galilean peasants, but two
little words turn its terror into joy; it is 'for My sake,' and that
is enough. Jesus trusted His humble friends, as He trusts all such
always, and believed that 'for My sake' was a talisman which would
sweeten the bitterest cup and would make cowards into heroes, and
send men and women to their deaths triumphant. And history has
proved that He did not trust them too much. 'For His sake'--is that
a charm for _us_, which makes the crooked straight and the
rough places plain, which nerves for suffering and impels to noble
acts, which moulds life and takes the sting and the terror out of
death? Nor is that the only encouragement given to the twelve, who
might well be appalled at the prospect of standing before Gentile
kings. Jesus seems to discern how they shrank as they listened, at
the thought of having to bear 'testimony' before exalted personages,
and, with beautiful adaptation to their weakness, He interjects a
great promise, which, for the first time, presents the divine Spirit
as dwelling in the disciples' spirits. The occasion of the dawning
of that great Christian thought is very noteworthy, and not less so
is the designation of the Spirit as 'of your Father,' with all the
implications of paternal care and love which that name carries.
Special crises bring special helps, and the martyrologies of all
ages and lands, from Stephen outside the city wall to the last
Chinese woman, have attested the faithfulness of the Promiser. How
often have some calm, simple words from some slave girl in Roman
cities, or some ignorant confessor before Inquisitors, been
manifestly touched with heavenly light and power, and silenced
sophistries and threats!
The solemn foretelling of persecution, broken for a moment, goes on
and becomes even more foreboding, for it speaks of dearest ones
turned to foes, and the sweet sanctities of family ties dissolved by
the solvent of the new Faith. There is no enemy like a brother
estranged, and it is tragically significant that it is in connection
with the rupture of family bonds that death is first mentioned as
the price that Christ's messengers would have to pay for
faithfulness to their message. But the prediction springs at a
bound, as it were, from the narrow circle of home to the widest
range, and does not fear to spread before the eyes of the twelve
that they will become the objects of hatred to the whole human race
if they are true to Christ's charge. The picture is dark enough, and
it has turned out to be a true forecast of facts. It suggests two
questions. What right had Jesus to send men out on such an errand,
and to bid them gladly die for Him? And what made these men gladly
take up the burden which He laid on them? He has the right to
dispose of us, because He is the Son of God who has died for us.
Otherwise He is not entitled to say to us, Do my bidding, even if it
leads you to death. His servants find their inspiration to absolute,
unconditional self-surrender in the Love that has died for them.
That which gives Him His right to dispose of us in life and death
gives us the disposition to yield ourselves wholly to Him, to be His
apostles according to our opportunities, and to say, 'Whether I live
or die, I am the Lord's.'
That thought of world-wide hatred is soothed by the recurrence of
the talisman, 'For My name's sake,' and by a moment's showing of a
fair prospect behind the gloom streaked with lightning in the
foreground. 'He that endureth to the end shall be saved.' The same
saying occurs in chapter xxiv. 13, in connection with the prediction
of the fall of Jerusalem, and in the same connection in Mark xiii.
13, in both of which places several other sayings which appear in
this charge to the apostles are found. It is impossible to settle
which is the original place for these, or whether they were twice
spoken. The latter supposition is very unfashionable at present, but
has perhaps more to say for itself than modern critics are willing
to allow. But Luke (xxi. 19) has a remarkable variation of the
saying, for his version of it is, 'In your patience, ye shall win
your souls.' His word 'patience' is a noun cognate with the verb
rendered in Matthew and Mark 'endureth,' and to 'win one's soul' is
obviously synonymous with being 'saved.' The saying cannot be
limited, in any of its forms, to a mere securing of earthly life,
for in this context it plainly includes those who have been
delivered to death by parents and brethren, but who by death have
won their lives, and have been, as Paul expected to be, thereby
'saved into His heavenly kingdom.' To the Christian, death is the
usher who introduces him into the presence-chamber of the King, and
he that loseth his life 'for My name's sake,' finds it glorified in,
and into, life eternal.
But willingness to endure the utmost is to be accompanied with
willingness to take all worthy means to escape it. There has been a
certain unwholesome craving for martyrdom generated in times of
persecution, which may appear noble but is very wasteful. The worst
use that you can put a man to is to burn him, and a living witness
may do more for Christ than a dead martyr. Christian heroism may be
shown in not being afraid to flee quite as much as in courting, or
passively awaiting, danger. And Christ's Name will be spread when
His lovers are hounded from one city to another, just as it was when
'they that were scattered abroad, went everywhere, preaching the
word.' When the brands are kicked apart by the heel of violence,
they kindle flames where they fall.
But the reason for this command to flee is perplexing. 'Ye shall not
have gone over the cities of Israel till the Son of Man be come.' Is
Jesus here reverting to the narrower immediate mission of the
apostles? What 'coming' is referred to? We have seen that the first
mission of the twelve was the theme of verses 5-15, and was there
pursued to its ultimate consequences of final judgment on rejecters,
whilst the wider horizon of a future mission opens out from verse 16
onwards. A renewed contraction of the horizon is extremely unlikely.
It would be as if 'a flower should shut and be a bud again.' The
recurrence in verse 23 of 'Verily I say unto you,' which has already
occurred in verse 15, closing the first section of the charge, makes
it probable that here too a section is completed, and that
probability is strengthened if it is observed that the same phrase
occurs, for a third time, in the last verse of the chapter, where
again the discourse soars to the height of contemplating the final
reward. The fact that the apostles met with no persecution on their
first mission, puts out of court the explanation of the words that
refers them to that mission, and takes the 'coming' to be Jesus' own
appearances in the places they had preceded Him as His heralds. The
difficult question as to what is the _terminus ad quem_ pointed
to here seems best solved by taking the 'coming of the Son of Man'
to be His judicial manifestation in the destruction of Jerusalem and
the consequent desolation of many of 'the cities of Israel,' whilst
at the same time, the nearer and smaller catastrophe is a prophecy
and symbol of the remoter and greater 'day of the Son of Man' at the
end of the days. The recognition of that aspect of the fall of
Jerusalem is forced on us by the eschatological parts of the
Gospels, which are a bewildering whirl without it. Here, however, it
is the crash of the fall itself which is in view, and the thought
conveyed is that there would be cities enough to serve for refuges,
and scope enough for evangelistic work, till the end of the Jewish
possession of the land.
In verses 26-31, 'fear not' is thrice spoken, and at each occurrence
is enforced by a reason. The first of these encouragements is the
assurance of the certain ultimate world-wide manifestation of hidden
things. That same dictum occurs in other connections, and with other
applications, but in the present context can only be taken as an
assurance that the Gospel message, little known as it thus far was,
was destined to fill all ears. Therefore the disciples were to be
fearless in doing their part in making it known, and so working in
alliance with the divine purpose. It is the same thing that is meant
by the 'covered' that 'shall be revealed,' the 'hidden' that 'shall
be known,' 'that which is spoken in darkness,' and 'that which is
whispered in the ear'; and all four designations refer to the word
which every Christian has it in charge to sound out. We note that
Jesus foresees a far wider range of publicity for His servants'
ministry than for His own, just as He afterwards declared that they
would do 'greater works' than His. He spoke to a handful of men in
an obscure corner of the world. His teaching was necessarily largely
confidential communication to the fit few. But the spark is going to
be a blaze, and the whisper to become a shout that fills the world.
Surely, then, we who are working in the line of direction of God's
working should let no fear make us dumb, but should ever hear and
obey the command: 'Lift up thy voice with strength, lift it up, be
not afraid.'
A second reason for fearlessness is the limitation of the enemy's
power to hurt, reinforced by the thought that, while the penalties
that man can inflict for faithfulness are only corporeal,
transitory, and incapable of harming the true self, the consequences
of unfaithfulness fling the whole man, body and soul, down to utter
ruin. There is a fear that makes cowards and apostates; there is a
fear which makes heroes and apostles. He who fears God, with the awe
that has no torment and is own sister to love, is afraid of nothing
and of no man. That holy and blessed fear drives out all other, as
fire draws the heat out of a burn. He that serves Christ is lord of
the world; he that fears God fronts the world, and is not afraid.
The last reason for fearlessness touches a tender chord, and
discloses a gracious thought of God as Father, which softens the
tremendous preceding word: 'Who is able to destroy both soul and
body in hell.' Take both designations together, and let them work
together in producing the awe which makes us brave, and the filial
trust which makes us braver. A bird does not 'fall to the ground'
unless wounded, and if it falls it dies. Jesus had looked pityingly
on the great mystery, the woes of the creatures, and had stayed
Himself on the thought of the all-embracing working of God. The very
dying sparrow, with broken wing, had its place in that universal
care. God is 'immanent' in nature. The antithesis often drawn
between His universal care and His 'special providence' is
misleading. Providence is special because it is universal. That
which embraces everything must embrace each thing. But the immanent
God is 'your Father,' and because of that sonship, 'ye are of more
value than many sparrows.' There is an ascending order, and an
increasing closeness and tenderness of relation. 'A man is better
than a sheep,' and Christians, being God's children, may count on
getting closer into the Father's heart than the poor crippled bird
can, or than the godless man can. 'Your Father,' on the one hand,
can destroy soul and body, therefore fear Him; but, on the other, He
determines whether you shall 'fall to the ground' or soar above
dangers, therefore fear none but Him.