“You received without payment; give without payment. 9 Take no gold, or silver, or copper in your belts, 10 no bag for your journey, or two tunics, or sandals, or a staff, for laborers deserve their food. 11 Whatever town or village you enter, find out who in it is worthy, and stay there until you leave. 12 As you enter the house, greet it. 13 If the house is worthy, let your peace come upon it, but if it is not worthy, let your peace return to you. 14 If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that house or town. 15 Truly I tell you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town” Matthew 10:8-15.
Jesus gives the apostles two types of instructions: negative and positive. Beginning with the negative, He tells them to take no money with them (gold or silver or copper), nor any basic travel items such as a knapsack or an extra shirt. He even tells them to leave behind sandals, or a walking stick, used both for support and for defense against wild animals and robbers. To go without these basic necessities would be a sign of the disciples having placed all their trust in God and of having renounced wealth and comfort, as they walk mere sandals throughout rocky Palestine. Moreover, they are not to receive payment for their preaching and healing. The disciples will experience the hardships of an itinerant ministry, as Jesus foretold (8:20–22). By traveling in such simplicity, they will be a prophetic sign bearing witness to Jesus’ teaching that the heavenly Father will provide for those who seek first the kingdom and trust in him (6:25–34).
On the positive side, Jesus instructs the Apostles to seek in each town a worthy person, that is, someone who receives the apostles’ teachings and shows them hospitality. The apostles’ announcement of peace to a house was more than an ordinary greeting; it was associated with the arrival of God’s kingdom (Isa. 52:7). But the house that rejects the Apostles will not receive the peace of the kingdom: let your peace return to you. The Apostles are to treat that place like pagan territory. They are to shake the dust from your feet — a symbolic act of repudiation (see Acts 13:51) that Jews did when returning from Gentile lands as a symbolic rejection of the unclean pagan realms. Jesus says that those Jewish homes or towns that reject the apostles will be in a worse situation on judgment day than two of the most notorious pagan cities in the Old Testament (Gen. 19), Sodom and Gomorrah, an indication that many there did not accept His proclamation of the kingdom (11:23–24).
Two things stand out in these instructions of Jesus: As Christian followers of Christ you and I are to be two things in life: a prophetic sign and an announcement of peace to others. People are to see that we are followers of Christ without ever having to open our mouths. We are to be a prophetic sign of Jesus Christ. We are also to remind others of the the peace of our Lord, Jesus Christ without ever having to open our mouths.
Today, when the Lord presents you with an opportunity to be just that — a prophetic sign and an announcement of peace — be such a person. And if necessary, use words.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, have mercy on me a sinner.
From the Bible:
“Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter— when you see the naked, to clothe them, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood” Isaiah 58:6-7?
“He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God” Micah 6:8.
“This is what the Lord Almighty said: ‘Administer true justice; show mercy and compassion to one another’” Zechariah 7:9.
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