Christ Brings a Sword

The Gospel of Matthew • Sermon • Submitted 3 years ago

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Jesus eradicates a misunderstanding of His coming and sets the record straight about how devoted His followers are to be.

Notes

Transcript

Announcements

My Return

It’s a pleasure and a joy to be back

This hiatus wasn’t nearly as long as our previous interruption last year due to COVID, but I’m so very happy to be back

My few days out of quarantine this last week weren’t nearly enough time to do everything, and I’m grateful for your prayers for our safety during our quarantine. Of the accidental exposure, 4 people (that I know of) got sick, and that’s a really small number of what could’ve been if we hadn’t been contacted. The Lord was very kind to us

I’m also incredibly grateful for Bobby willing to lead you all in worship these last few weeks. I don’t think I can measure up to his 27 point sermon last week, but I pray that God is glorified today anyway.

Egg Hunt

Today, at 1pm, we are going to have an Egg Hunt for kids . We have some 800-some-odd eggs packed with candy, and even have some candy that didn’t fit in the eggs that I’d like to give away.

If you’re willing and able to come by and help, please do. Even just to come and say hi to the kids who come would be a blessing to my soul

You might be wondering, why are we engaging in some theoretically “pagan” practice? Doing “Easter Eggs?” Isn’t it “wrong” for Christians to celebrate this way? Well, if this is you, let me remind you that our Lord Himself took the generosity of one small boys’ lunch in John 6:9 and magnified it into enough food to feed 5,000 people. He also said in Matthew 19:14: “Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven.”

Jesus loves children, and therefore we Christians are to love children. All we’re trying to do here is have some fun and give these kids something sweet, reminiscing about the sweetness of Christ who demanded that no one hinder kids from coming to Him. We are not celebrating a Babylonian goddess whose name vaguely resembles the word “Easter.” or celebrating the onset of the season of Spring… We are bringing smiles to the faces of children to the glory of God!

So I hope that you will be able to join us at 1pm to see the spectacle. If it’s only my kids there, then you’ll be able to laugh at them scrambling to pick up the eggs. If more kids come, then you’ll just see the humor of even more chaos. Come about 12:30 if you want to help place the eggs.

New Book

We will be receiving a gift from Crossway Publishers of a new book called Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers. When it arrives, please take a free copy.

Possible Change

There has been some requests to have a Midweek Bible Study in the evenings. We may move our Prayer Service to Sunday nights, and make our Wednesday night an evening for Bible Study. Please talk to Pastor Scott if you have any comments, or would also like to join and evening Bible Study.

Revelation

Psalm 96:1–6 ESV

1 Oh sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord, all the earth! 2 Sing to the Lord, bless his name; tell of his salvation from day to day. 3 Declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous works among all the peoples! 4 For great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised; he is to be feared above all gods. 5 For all the gods of the peoples are worthless idols, but the Lord made the heavens. 6 Splendor and majesty are before him; strength and beauty are in his sanctuary.

Introduction

Go ahead and open up your Bibles to Matthew chapter 10, starting in verse 34.

Growing up, my parents took me to church on two consistent days a year. Those days were, of course, Christmas and Easter. Today’s sermon is an adaptation of the sermon I had actually planned to preach on Resurrection Sunday (known usually as Easter), and it made me a sad that I didn’t get to preach this sermon then.

Why did it make me sad? Because when I went to church on those two days each year, I heard essentially the same message. That Christmas message was: “A baby was born, shepherds sang, and peace was brought to the earth.” Then the Easter message was like it: “A guy rose from the dead, people sang, and peace was brought to the earth.”

A silly event happened, people sang, peace on earth. It sounded so utopian. But here I was, a naive little boy hearing this message twice a year, looking at the world around me and the people around me, completely jaded to this message because this world is anything but peaceful.

This world is wracked with war and famine, hatred, bigotry, dissension, division, selfishness, pain, suffering, despair… and most of those are just in the church! In my own naivete, I could see the fallacy and lunacy of this message. It meant nothing to me, except I got to go eat food with my family after staring at this person in a silly robe for an hour.

Do you think this is why Jesus came to the world? Do you think it was to bring peace on earth and goodwill to men? Meaning now everything all is sunshine and roses?

Now, I realize that I didn’t pay a lot of attention at those sermons, and I’m not trying to fault those who preached them to me. But let me go ahead and shatter my recollections and what I remember to be the content with Jesus’ own words:

Matthew 10:34–39 ESV

34 “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. 35 For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. 36 And a person’s enemies will be those of his own household. 37 Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. 38 And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. 39 Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

“Do not think,” Jesus says, “that I have come to bring peace to the earth.”

Do not fall into a camp who thinks that Jesus has come to reconcile you to those around you, or to make life easy for you because wherever you go, Jesus has “brought peace.”

No, Jesus came to bring a war. He came and brought a sword. Now, I’m sure you all know the purpose of a sword. The sword exists to cut, to slice, to sever a person’s body in a gruesome fashion. That’s what Jesus brings… He brings an instrument to create division.

Jesus Came to Bring Division

But what sort of division? Throughout the letters of the New Testament, a divisive person is warned against.

For instance:

Romans 16:17–18 ESV

17 I appeal to you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you have been taught; avoid them. 18 For such persons do not serve our Lord Christ, but their own appetites, and by smooth talk and flattery they deceive the hearts of the naive.

Titus 3:9–11 ESV

9 But avoid foolish controversies, genealogies, dissensions, and quarrels about the law, for they are unprofitable and worthless. 10 As for a person who stirs up division, after warning him once and then twice, have nothing more to do with him, 11 knowing that such a person is warped and sinful; he is self-condemned.

Or as Jesus said so clearly...

Luke 11:17 ESV

17 But he, knowing their thoughts, said to them, “Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and a divided household falls.

So, what sort of division did Jesus bring? What did He mean when He said these words? It’s a division between the saved and the unsaved.

So, the first point I want you to take out of this text is this:

Jesus did not come to bring peace to the earth, but to draw a line between the saved and the unsaved

A divisive person, someone whom the Bible expressly warns against, tries to create division between believers. They execute the bad sort of division. But, following Christ will innately create division between believers and non-believers… even among the same family.

This point is illustrated in the proceeding verses. Particularly in verses 35 and 36, which say:

Matthew 10:35–36 ESV

35 For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. 36 And a person’s enemies will be those of his own household.

Illustration of a Divided Family

I want to illustrate what this might look like with with a story I once heard.

A young man heard the gospel and believed it. He knew that Jesus had died in an act that forgave His sin, propitiating God the Father’s wrath against Him for his sin, and that Jesus rose again from the grave, defeating death and securing His victory. He knew and trusted that Jesus is right now sitting at the right hand of God the Father, awaiting His inevitable return, our “blessed hope” as Paul puts it to Titus.

But, while this young man knew this, his single mother and his older brother thought he was an absolute fool. This young man wanted to attend seminary, to become a pastor, but his mom refused to pay a single cent toward his endeavor. Broken-hearted, this man began talking to his pastor. This is a normal thing, except it came out that this young man’s mother was not only unsupportive of her son’s pursuits, but she was also emotionally and physically abusive to him.

The pastor, being filled with compassion, offered for the young man to stay with his family. The young man consented, and the pastor reached out to the mother to say that he will be taking the young man in. the mother was furious, but the pastor also reported the abuse to the local authorities as a court-mandated reporter, and she backed off a bit.

This young man spent two years living with his pastor, and he tried to reconcile with his mother but she was hard-hearted. He ended up going to Bible college, then off to seminary on various scholarships, and his mother, and avid smoker since she was in her teens, ended up dying of lung cancer while he was away. She refused to contact him to let him know she was sick, and he only found out when his pastor had called him to say that he had received a funeral invitation in the mail.

The young man attended his mother’s funeral, knowing that His devotion to Christ had pulled him away from his family life. His brother and he reconnected at the funeral, and he shared the gospel with his brother. The brother didn’t accept the gospel, but he was no longer as hard-hearted as his mother had been.

The young man returned to his seminary and continued his coursework, and has now planted a church.

Now, that’s a bit of a long story, but it illustrates our first point perfectly. You see, this young man had been so devoted to Christ that He experienced exactly what Jesus predicted. When he went to tell his mother this good news that He had heard and believed, his mother recoiled and hated him for it. He was divided from his own family, scorned by his own mother for loving Jesus. As Jesus put it in verse 36: “And a person’s enemies will be those of his own household.” Such is the case of many a Christian throughout the world.

This story also illustrates our second point, which is taken from verse 37. The verse reads: “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.”

This young man loved Jesus more than his own mother, and Jesus fully approves of this reality. Loving and following Christ often means that we do as He has commanded, not just what our family or friends think we ought to do.

Love Christ More

Our second point, therefore is this:

Love Christ more than anything else

We spend our days thinking that things or people are supremely important, but reading the Bible reminds us that it’s truly God who is supremely important. He is the only One worth serving with all of our lives, and even with our deaths.

Which is the illustration that Jesus uses in v. 38 saying: “And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.”

You see the worth of Christ displayed over and over against in the Bible. In fact, I think it would be impossible to not see the worth, beauty, and majesty of God on every single page of the Bible. Our purpose for reading the Bible should be to invigorate our hearts to the truth and wonder of God.

Now, at the time of Jesus saying this, there was probably a severe amount of misunderstanding. The cross that we now so easily apply to Christianity, was at the time a form of torturous Roman execution. As was displayed at the end of Jesus’ life, He had to carry the cross (His method of execution) on His own back after being whipped and flogged. Bleeding and bruised, essentially naked and humiliated, wearing a crown of thorns pressed into the flesh on His head, Jesus illustrated what it means to “take his cross.”

Christians, we are often to carry the burden of our own demise on our backs, but we do it for the glory of God! This is, by the way, what either was missing form those messages I heard as a child, or I missed during those messages! The gospel is not a message of peace and the good life, but it’s a message of us being willing to die for the sake of Jesus’ sake! Our deaths glorify God, because our God died for us.

Look at Jesus’ final statement in v. 39. Let this statement marinate in your souls and hearts, and hear the Good News of the resurrection: “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”

Have Your Death Glorify God

So, our third and final point is this:

Have your death glorify God, and you will find eternal life

This can be done on the mission field, in a hospital bed, in a car accident, at home, or anywhere. Remember the hope commands and hope that Christ offers in these verses. The commands of loving Him more than family, than friends, than neighbors. Love Him more by speaking of His love and sacrifice to those who don’t believe that message, remind them of the truth of His resurrection and His living today.

March on toward your demise on earth happy that death doesn’t have the final say. It didn’t with Christ, and it won’t with you if you believe Him.

This will only happen (and I really mean only), if you are reading His Word. You will not be capable of doing this if you are not ingesting God’s Word daily. The ancient church didn’t have this luxury, yet their faith remained strong because they were rooted together and daily spent time listening to and discussing God’s Word. They didn’t have print Bibles, but they circulated letters around.

I don’t want to sidetrack, but if you are neglecting daily Bible reading (and I mean this rebuke for myself also), then you are neglecting a wonderful means of God’s grace in your life, and are not going to be capable of looking forward to glorifying God in your death. And if you aren’t able to look forward to glorifying God in your death, then your belief in Him must be suspect to yourself. You should doubt that you believe, and you should press into Him in His Word and grab ahold of Him and His preciousness, holding on with every ounce of your strength until you know, deep down in your soul that you are His and He is yours.

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