Jesus, the Dividing Line, Part 2
Matthew 10:32-42
Last time in our study of Matthew 10, we began to look at verses 32-42. There, we saw that as Jesus gave instructions to His disciples, He told them, “Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword.” (Matt. 10:34). By that, Jesus meant that the result of His coming would be division. The gospel of Jesus Christ is a sword that cuts humanity in two. Everyone in the human race falls on one side or the other with Jesus. Either we are with Him, or we are against Him (Matt. 12:30).
Jesus made some astounding statements in this passage. Think about what Jesus is claiming about Himself. Jesus claims that God is His Father; making Himself to be God’s unique Son! He claims to have authority over the eternal destiny of people. He claims to have come to earth for a specific purpose, implying His pre-existence. He demands to be loved by His followers more than anyone or anything else. He claims that life itself hinges on Him.
What kind of man claims to be the unique Son of God who pre-existed, and who has come into this world in the fulfillment of a predetermined purpose? What kind of man says heaven and hell hinge on confessing or denying Him? What kind of man would think Himself worthy of supreme love? Who is this man that makes Himself the hinge-point of life itself?
Only the Son of God, the promised Messiah and King, could make claims like this and prove it by exercising authority over all things! Only the Lord Jesus Christ could have the authority to demand so much of us. All of heaven and earth centers on Him. Jesus is the dividing line. And last time we saw in Matthew 10:32-33 that …
1. Jesus is the dividing line in heaven (Matt. 10:32-33).
Your eternal destiny depends completely on your relationship with Jesus. Those who confess Jesus on earth, He will confess before His Father in heaven. Those who reject and deny Jesus on earth, He will deny before His Father. He is the dividing line in heaven. There are not many ways to heaven—only one: the Lord Jesus Christ. No one comes to the Father except through Him (John 14:6).
We also saw in Matthew 10:34-36 that …
2. Jesus is the dividing line on earth (Matt. 10:34-36).
When we follow Jesus, it often will divide us from those who do not follow Jesus—not because we do not still love them but because we love Jesus and they do not. The gospel frequently divides families and friends. Those who do not believe will sometimes fervently oppose the gospel, Christians, church, and everything that has to do with Jesus Christ. Jesus said, “… light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed.” (John 3:19-20). Jesus is the dividing line on earth.
Today, we see two more areas that Jesus divides. He is the dividing line of our affections, and He is the dividing line of our actions.[1]
So, in Matthew 10:37-39 we see that …
3. Jesus is the dividing line of our affections (Matt. 10:37-39)
Jesus demands our ultimate affections. We must love Jesus more than our closest family relationships and we must love Jesus more than even ourselves.
A. We must love Jesus more than family
First, we must love Jesus more than family. Jesus says, “He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me.” (Matt. 10:37). This is a very high demand of love!
Do you love your family? I hope so. You should. Out of all your earthly relationships, your family should have the strongest bond we can imagine. And yet as important as family relationships are in the Bible, Jesus says He must come first. Jesus isn’t saying you should love your family less. He is saying you should love Him more.
In Luke 14, Jesus said, “If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life also, he cannot be My disciple” (Luke 14:26). Now, hopefully, you are not thinking to yourself, “Well what do you know? I’ve been obeying the Bible all along! I can’t stand my family!” Jesus isn’t commanding us to “hate” our family members, He is commanding us to love Him more. When we are forced into a position where we must choose between following Jesus or appeasing the objections of our family, we must choose Jesus every time. Our love for Him must be so complete and supreme that it makes any other love look like “hate” even the natural love we would feel toward our father and mother, wife or husband, or son and daughter.
We saw in Matthew 8 that man came to Jesus wanting to be one of His disciples. But He told Jesus, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father” (Matt. 8:21). The man felt a tie to his father that was stronger than his tie to Jesus. And Jesus said something that, to those who place family above all else, sounds unspeakable! He said, “Follow Me, and let the dead bury their own dead” (Matt. 8:22). Jesus was, in effect, telling the man, “Until you make your love for your father second to your love for Me, you cannot be a follower of Mine. I am the Lord of life! Your father and your family may object, but You follow Me, and let those who do not follow after life take care of lesser things!” Loving Jesus comes first above all else.
Jesus says that those who love a family member more than Him are not worthy of Him. The idea here is that they do not deserve to belong to Him and be honored by Him. To belong to Christ is a privilege so precious that no other relationship can compare. It is a duty so imperative that no other duty is more important.
C.T. Studd was a missionary to China in the late 1800’s. When he was engaged to be married, he was worried that he and his fiancée, Priscilla, might become too preoccupied with each other and that they would lose sight of Jesus in the process. So, he wrote a little poem for Priscilla and asked her to recite it every day:
“Jesus, I love Thee, Thou art to me,
Dearer than Charlie ever could be.”[2]
Jesus is the dividing line of our affections. We must love Jesus more than father, mother, husband, wife, son or daughter. He demands to be first in our lives, above our own comfort and peace, above our most cherished human relationships.
It seems like a lot to ask. But remember who demands this of us. He is the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the Son of God who left the tranquility and glory of heaven to come to earth in the likeness of sinful flesh. He is the Savior who bore our sins in His own body on the cross. He suffered and died for us. He loved obedience to His Father more than His own life.
When we see who He is and how much He has loved us, is it unreasonable that He would ask that we love Him in the same way? How could we not follow such a Savior, and give Him first place in our heart’s love?
B. We must love Jesus more than self
Secondly, we must love Jesus more than self. Jesus says in Matthew 10:38, “And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me.” (Matthew 10:38) Jesus will teach His disciples again in Matthew 16:24, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.” In that context, Jesus had just taught His disciples “that He must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised the third day” (Matt. 16:21). He was describing His death on the cross. Taking up a cross meant death and that’s the way Jesus means for us to understand these words.
To take up your cross means you deny yourself. It means to give up your life. It literally means you are willing to die for Jesus. Whoever does not take up their own cross—that is, the instrument of their own death to self—and follow after Him, then they are not worthy of Him. A love for self, a love for one’s own life, is the hardest love of all for sinful people to place into the hand of Jesus. And yet, Jesus demands to be loved by us even more than we love our own lives. And our decision to place our love for Him over our love for our own lives is the most determinative decision we will ever make.
The sword of division cuts deep. It not only runs through families, it runs through your very self, where Jesus becomes more important to you than your own desires, comforts, and concerns.
Look at what Jesus says in Matthew 10:39, “He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for My sake will find it.” This phrase is the most repeated teaching of Jesus in the Gospels. It is recorded six times on different occasions. In Matthew 16, when Peter tried to convince Jesus that He would not suffer the cross, we read,
Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul? For the Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father with His angels and then He will reward each according to his works.” (Matthew 16:24-27).
In Luke 9, when Jesus warned them clearly that He was going to go to the cross, He told them,
“The Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised the third day.” Then He said to them all, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will save it. For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and is himself destroyed or lost? For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words, of him the Son of Man will be ashamed when He comes in His own glory, and in His Father’s, and of the holy angels” (Luke 9:22-26).
In Luke 17, in teaching His disciples about what would happen in the end times, Jesus told them,
In that day, he who is on the housetop, and his goods are in the house, let him not come down to take them away. And likewise the one who is in the field, let him not turn back. Remember Lot’s wife. Whoever seeks to save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it. (Luke 17:31-33).
And in John 12, just before He went to the cross, Jesus said,
The hour has come that the Son of Man should be glorified. Most assuredly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain. He who loves his life will lose it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. If anyone serves Me, let him follow Me; and where I am, there My servant will be also. If anyone serves Me, him My Father will honor. (John 12:23-26).
Jesus meant for this truth to sink into our hearts deeply. Our love for Him must be above our love for our own lives. If we are made to choose between denying Him and living, or confessing Him and dying, we are to choose to love Him and die. It also means you are willing to die to a thousand little selfish choices every day. When you have a choice between doing what Jesus wants and doing what you want, the way of the cross chooses Jesus.
There is a paradox here where Jesus plays with the words “lose” and “find.” The person who finds his life is the person who clings to their own desires, their own rights, their own goals in life. They put other things before God and try to craft their own life in their own way without a thought of God. The paradox here is that even if they succeed in gaining that life that they wanted, they end up losing their life in the process.
On the other hand, when you lose your life for Jesus’ sake, you will find it. When you give your life to Jesus and you let Him lead and guide you, when you sacrifice yourself for God and other people, when you choose to give rather than receive, to serve rather than be served, you find true life. If you seek to find your own life here apart from Jesus, you will lose out on eternal life with God. If you lose your life for Jesus here on earth, you will live with God forever.
Jesus is the dividing line of our affections. And finally in Matthew 10:40-42 …
4. Jesus is the dividing line of our actions (Matt. 10:40-42)
There are two key words in these verses that close Jesus’ message to His disciples. They are the repeated words “receive” and “reward”. The first word, “receive”, conveys the idea of receiving someone kindly, to welcome them or support them. And in this context, it speaks of kindly receiving, welcoming, or providing hospitality to those whom Jesus sends as His ambassadors into this world. The word “reward” means the fruit naturally resulting from toils and endeavors.
These words give us two key themes. In these final verses, Jesus tells us that He will reward those who receive His followers, and He will reward those who serve His followers.
First …
A. Jesus will reward those who receive His followers
Look at Matthew 10:40, “He who receives you receives Me, and he who receives Me receives Him who sent Me.”
Jesus is telling us something very important about Himself in this verse, and we need to take the time to consider it. As tells those He is about to send that He Himself was sent. He was sent to this earth by God the Father. He did not come on His own initiative and authority but came in His Father’s name and in His Father’s will.
As Jesus walked upon this earth, He made it very clear that He came as One sent by the Father to do the Father’s will. He said in John 4:34, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to finish His work.” He testified in John 6:38, “For I have come down from heaven, not do do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me.” He said in John 5, “I can of Myself do nothing. As I hear, I judge; and My judgment is righteous, because I do not seek My own will but the will of the Father who sent Me” (John 5:30), and “the works which the Father has given Me to finish – the very works that I do – bear witness of Me, that the Father has sent Me. And the Father Himself, who sent Me, has testified of Me” (John 5:36-37). He said in John 7:16, “My doctrine is not Mine, but His who sent Me.” He said in John 8:18, “I am One who bears witness of Myself, and the Father who sent Me bears witness of Me.“
Jesus does nothing apart from the will of His Father. He doesn’t even send out workers except under His Father’s authority. And so, when He sends out workers in His name to proclaim His gospel they truly go out in the authority of the One who sent Jesus. Just before He went to the cross for us, Jesus prayed to His Father and said, “As You sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world” (John 17:18). And after He rose from the dead, He appeared to His disciples and said, “Peace to you! As the Father has sent Me, I also send you” (John 20:21). Here in Matthew 10:40, Jesus lets His ambassadors know that whoever receives them, receives Him and also receives the Father who sent Him.
Then Jesus says in Matthew 10:41, “He who receives a prophet in the name of a prophet shall receive a prophet’s reward. And he who receives a righteous man in the name of a righteous man shall receive a righteous man’s reward.” The phrase “in the name of . . .” is a phrase that basically means, “in the authority and stature of . . .” In other words, to receive a prophet “in the name of a prophet” means to receive a prophet as truly a prophet sent from God with a message from God to His people with all the authority that comes with being a prophet. To receive a righteous man “in the name of a righteous man” means to receive him as a man whom God accepts, and who reverences God and truly puts God’s word into practice into his life. And to receive a disciple “in the name of a disciple“, even a very humble and seemingly insignificant disciple, is to receive him or her as someone who is greatly loved by the Lord Jesus Christ and is destined to share in His eternal glory.
Jesus will reward those who receive His followers. In the original context here, those who received His followers were those who welcomed them and their message. They were those who provided hospitality and support. They will receive the same reward as the prophet. There’s a story from the Old Testament that illustrates this. Elijah was prophesying against the evil northern kingdom of Israel, and against the ungodly king Ahab. God led him to prophesy that there would be no rain on the land for three and a half years. And during this drought, God allowed Elijah’s needs to be met through a poor widow. In 1 Kings 17:8-16, we read,
Then the word of the LORD came to him, saying, “Arise, go to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, and dwell there. See, I have commanded a widow there to provide for you.” So he arose and went to Zarephath. And when he came to the gate of the city, indeed a widow was there gathering sticks. And he called to her and said, “Please bring me a little water in a cup, that I may drink.” And as she was going to get it, he called to her and said, “Please bring me a morsel of bread in your hand.” So she said, “As the LORD your God lives, I do not have bread, only a handful of flour in a bin, and a little oil in a jar; and see, I am gathering a couple of sticks that I may go in and prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it, and die” (1 Kings 17:8-12).
This widow had suffered under the drought, and now had next to nothing. In fact, she was gathering sticks to build a last fire; then she and her son would cook and eat their last meal. She fully expected to die afterward; but the prophet encouraged her to trust God and give him some of what she had.
And Elijah said to her, “Do not fear; go and do as you have said, but make me a small cake from it first, and bring it to me; and afterward make some for yourself and your son. For thus says the LORD God of Israel: ‘The bin of flour shall not be used up, nor shall the jar of oil run dry, until the day the LORD sends rain on the earth.'” So she went away and did according to the word of Elijah; and she and he and her household ate for many days. The bin of flour was not used up, nor did the jar of oil run dry, according to the word of the LORD which He spoke by Elijah (1 Kings 17:13-16).
God gave this poor woman the very same care that He gave to His prophet.
Jesus is letting us know that when we stand to the aid of the one He sent—faithfully receiving them and welcoming them as God’s servants to us and embracing their ministry as God’s gift to us, standing with them in support of their ministry—we will also share in their reward.
What a marvelous promise this is! Dear brother or sister in Christ: you may not feel as if you are important in the work of the kingdom of Jesus. You may not be in the spotlight. Your support of the ministry of God’s kingdom may be behind the scenes. But Jesus shows here how important you are to Him! If you genuinely receive those Jesus has sent, and give yourself to the support of the work of the kingdom that they perform, you will share in their reward together with them!
B. Jesus will reward those who serve His followers
Jesus says in Matthew 10:42, “And whoever gives one of these little ones only a cup of cold water in the name of a disciple, assuredly, I say to you, he shall by no means lose his reward.” Jesus will reward those who receive His followers, and Jesus will reward those who serve His followers. Look at the person He promises will be rewarded. He says, “whoever“. That means that it doesn’t matter who you are—if you show an act of kindness and support to even the least of one of His disciples, He greatly values it. He rewards it.
Second, look at the act. He speaks of an act that is very simple: just the giving of a cup of cold water. This means that it doesn’t take much to be richly rewarded by our Savior, just a willingness to meet the simple needs of His disciples. A cup of cold water, as Spurgeon said, may contain a warm sea of love; and Jesus sees it and rewards it.
And third, look at the certainty of the reward. Jesus goes to great lengths to express it. He says, “assuredly, I say to you . . .” which is the way He often stressed the deep truth and certainty of something He was about to say. He says that not only would the reward be given but He promises that it will not be lost![3]
Our Lord is letting us know that each of us has a valued part to play in His kingdom work. Even if we are on the receiving end of that work, we have a part to play in it. Jesus lets us know that, when we receive those He sends, we receive Him. He lets us know that when we participate in the work of those He sends, we share in their reward. And He lets us know that when we do something for them in His name—even something that seems very forgettable—He never forgets it.
And that’s because whatever you do for one of Jesus’ followers, you are also doing for Jesus. Jesus will say later on in Matthew 25:40: “Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.” (Matthew 25:40)
Jesus is the dividing line in heaven and on earth. He is the supreme object of affection, and He is the ultimate measure of your actions.
Earlier I shared with you a poem that C.T. Studd wrote for his fiancée. In closing I would like to share another poem C.T. Studd wrote. This is the one that he is most famous for:
Only one life, ’twill soon be past.
Only what’s done for Christ will last.
Very simple, yet very profound, and absolutely true. Jesus is the supreme object of affection, and he is the ultimate measure of everything you do in life. He is the dividing line in heaven and on earth.
Have you received Him?
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[1] Ray Fowler, Jesus and Division, https://www.rayfowler.org/sermons/matthew/jesus-and-division/. I adapted Fowler’s outline and drew from some of his points in this sermon.
[2] Quoted by Ray Fowler, Jesus and Division, https://www.rayfowler.org/sermons/matthew/jesus-and-division/
[3] Greg Allen, A Blessed Welcome, https://www.bethanybible.org/archive/2006/030506.htm#f4
