Dependence on God (Mark 6:7-13)

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This episode, what we're going to have is a sermon that I preached out of Mark Chapter 6 on dependence upon God.

I got a lot of good feedback from this sermon. Maybe you'll enjoy it as well, because a lot of people saw that with everything going on in the world, with the virus and shutdowns and everything else, that a lot of people were struggling with family members who they hadn't seen and didn't know how to talk to about things going on.

A lot of people had said that this really set the perspective for them so that they had a good way of viewing the way the things are in the world today.

I hope it'll be something that you find valuable as well. So here is today's episode.

This podcast is part of the Striving for Eternity ministry. For more content or to request a speaker or seminar to your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

If you wouldn't mind turning to Mark Chapter 6. Mark Chapter 6.

And we will start reading in Mark Chapter 6, verse 7, and we're going to read down to verse 13.

If you wouldn't mind standing for the reading of God's Word. This is what

Mark, by inspiration of the Holy Spirit, in Mark 6, 7 to 13 says, And he summoned the twelve and began to send them out in pairs and gave them authority over the unclean spirits.

And he instructed them that they should take nothing for their journey except for a mere staff, no bread, no bag, no money in their belt, but to wear sandals.

And he added, Do not put on two tunics. And he said to them, Wherever you enter a house, stay there until you leave town.

Any place that does not receive you or listen to you as you go out from there, shake the dust off the soles of your feet for a testimony against them.

And they went out and preached that men should repent. And they were casting out many demons and were anointing with oil many sick and healing them.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we come to this passage, we ask Lord that as we look to this passage that we would look to you, our sovereign, our king.

We ask Lord that as you instructed the disciples, may we see the things that you have as an instruction for us.

We ask this in Christ's name. Amen. You may be seated. Well, as we come to this passage as a means of an outline, we're going to see the summoning of the twelve.

Then we're going to see that the instruction of the twelve and then the sending of the twelve.

So in verse seven, we see the summoning of the twelve. We see it says here that he summoned the twelve and began to send them out in pairs and gave them authority over unclean spirits.

Now, when we look at some of the other passages, the parallel passages such as Luke chapter nine, verse two, we see it was more that was given as far as what they were to do.

It says there, and he sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to perform healing.

So it was more than just that they were being sent out. They were being sent out to proclaim.

They were sent out in pairs, and if we think about this, this makes sense. It's always good to be teamed up with other people.

It's easier to do things, especially things we don't actually want to do. It is always easier to do them with someone else with you.

When we used to do, I used to run these conferences, evangelism conferences, and we would try to get hundreds of people to go evangelizing on a single day on the boardwalks of Jersey, and people would always say it was so much easier to do that.

Why? Because there were like 99 other people with you, okay? There were so many people that actually by the time you talked to someone, three or four or five people already spoke to that person.

They already knew what you were going to say. It made it easier to have the conversations. The other advantage was if you ever got stuck, it is so much nicer to just go, well, you know, he has an answer.

He may not actually have an answer. I would do that to friends all the time. Someone asking a question,

I'm like, you know, I think Anthony can answer that one. Go ahead. There's advantages to being paired up.

There's reasons that Christ would send them in pairs. Now, if he sent a team of 12, could you picture being the one person talking to the team of 12?

That's a little intimidating, right? A team of two is not that intimidating, but yet the team of two provides some of that encouragement, some of the ability of using each other's talents.

Each one of us in this room have different talents, and those of us who know the

Lord are gifted, and we're all gifted differently. My gifts will differ than your gifts, and there will be people I could talk to, and maybe

I would be better than you, but the reality is there's people you would be better to talk to than me because we're each different, and so when you're paired up that way, that benefits that.

There's also the teamwork that comes in just being able to work. You know, we would go on the streets.

We would always try to be in teams of two unless there's opposite sex, and then we'd say three, but we would end up saying that we'd have to have, you know, a team of two people, and the thing that would be is one person would be sharing the gospel.

You know what the other person is doing is praying, taking care of distractions. Be countless times when years ago at the church

I was at, we used to go door to door, and we'd go to someone's door, and someone would be sharing the gospel with someone, and the person would have a child.

The other person can just distract the child, keep the parent's attention on the conversation, right?

There's advantages to being paired up, and Jesus knows that, so he sends them out in pairs, but the thing is he's not just sending 12 of them and saying, okay, you guys just go to this area.

Go to the town square and just proclaim the message. Now, he's sending them all over, which is, you know, just expanding the gospel reach because they're all going in different places.

The encouraging thing of doing that is when you actually return. When you go on trips like this,

I mean, picture the disciples. They've gone out into these different cities, and they're going from one town to another town to another town. Then they come back, and they're all sharing the stories.

This is what happened here. This is what happened there. Now, we don't have the same stories that we'll be sharing where they're sharing about not only the stories of proclaiming the gospel, but also healing the sick and casting out demons and things like that.

We'll get to that in a moment, but as we look at this, we see that not only were they organized in pairs, but there is a authority that is given.

According to Matthew 10 8, which is the parallel account, sorry, Matthew 10 8, which is the parallel account to this, they were given authority not only over demons, but also over the sick and to raise the dead.

Matthew 10 7 and 8 says this, and as you go, preach saying, the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

Heal the sick. Raise the dead. Cleanse the lepers. Cast out demons. Freely you received, freely give.

Now, in our text here, the word sent that you have, that they were sent out, the word for send is the

Greek word apostoleo. It may sound familiar to an English word. Apostle.

It is where we get the term apostle from. It is a sent out one. It means literally to send away towards a designated goal or purpose.

And so the word here is meant that they're sent with purpose and they're given authority.

Now, this authority, the word in the, that's for the Greek here, for authority means a power or right to give orders or make decisions.

So the 12 here were given an authority by Jesus. In other words, they were given the power and the right to command demons.

Now, I want you to notice who it was given to. It doesn't say to the disciples. Our text says to the 12.

This authority was specifically given to the 12, not all the disciples. I make that point to say because this is not a command for all

Christians to be casting out demons and healing the sick and raising the dead. This may fly in the face of what you see on Christian TV.

You see these people that want to take passages and say, see this is, this should be normative for us that we should see this because Christ gave us authority and they'll look at the, in Matthew 28 and see that Jesus gave them authority and say, well that's the same authority here.

Just because you have a word authority in Matthew 28 and a word authority in Mark 6 does not mean it's the same authority.

You have to put words in their context. I know none of you like to be taken out of context.

God doesn't like it either. So we want to look at the context. Here, this authority is given to the 12.

The casting out of demons, the healing the sick is a way of vindicating the message that is being proclaimed.

In fact, if you take a look through the entire history of the world and you look through the scriptures, you'll only see about three times in history where miraculous gifts were almost normative, where there was a lot of that happening.

The first time was Moses. The time of Moses there were these miraculous gifts and what occurred just after that, you have the writing of the first five books and then all the historical books that we call the

Bible. So there was a writing of scripture but then there was a period of silence where God did not continue writing his word through people and after that silence

Elijah came on the scene. If you were here when we went through looking at Elijah in Sunday school, you saw the different miracles that went on with Elijah's life and what happened after a period of silence.

Elijah comes on scene, more miraculous gifts and yet again we end up seeing writing of scripture.

Then comes all the prophets placing judgments on the nation of Israel and then another about 400 years of silence and then

Jesus comes on the scene and this is the past where we're at now in the Gospel of Mark where all these miraculous gifts are happening and what happens after?

We have the writing of the New Testament. What we end up seeing is that these miraculous gifts point to vindicate the message after a period of silence.

It is to vindicate the message being delivered. So this was a specific authority given to a specific people for a specific time with a specific purpose.

So this is not something we just say, well see if the disciples could do it, we could do it. The text is clear that this was given to the 12.

Well, let's look at the instruction to the 12 in verses 8 to 11. And he instructed them that they should take nothing for their journey except a mere staff, no bread, no bag, no money in their belt, but to wear sandals and he added, do not put on two tunics.

And he said to them, wherever you enter a house, stay there until you leave town.

Any place that does not receive you or listen to you as you go from there, shake the dust off the soles of your feet as a testimony against them.

Now I will admit here in case those of you who do like to and I encourage you to look at the parallel passages when we go through the

Gospels and those that enjoy studying the Scriptures, you might find an issue that is between Mark chapter 6, 8 when you compare it to Matthew 10, 9 and 10 and Luke 9, 3.

Because in Luke it seems to indicate there that the disciples were instructed where in Mark they're instructed to take a staff, in Luke they're instructed not to take a staff.

It's a very frustrating passage for me because I looked for textual variances which is usually what you have where someone making a copy might have done something wrong.

Unfortunately, I cannot find any textual variances in any of the manuscripts between these passages.

Now there is some who will make the point, Matt Slick from CARM .org makes the point to say that some will take the word take in Mark where the word in Matthew is used for acquire and say and make the argument that they weren't to take it, they were to take one but not acquire it along the way.

That really doesn't fit well because it's the Luke passage that argues against that.

So unfortunately, there's not a good way that I have found to really reconcile these issues, to try to say that there's a variant we haven't yet found is

I think a poor argument because it's not based on actual proof or evidence, that's based on wishful thinking. So there does seem to be some variation here that I have not been able to satisfactory resolve which is frustrating but in case you also come upon this,

I want you to know some of it. It does seem in Luke that there is the reference to not taking any of the things including a staff.

So as we look upon these things though, what do these things represent? What is it that Christ is instructing them?

It's very interesting the instruction here. When you look at these instructions that he gives to them, he wants them to look to Christ, look to God, to depend upon him.

That's really what this text is going to focus in on, is a dependence upon God. We're going to look through each of the things that he gives, each of these elements he mentions and then

I'm going to try to wrap that up this section with what it is to depend upon God. The issue really could be broken down into two things, protection and provision.

What we're going to see is that Christ instructs them to protect themselves but not to take any provisions.

So the protection that we would see first would be the staff. He said to them to only take a mere staff.

A staff would be a usually like a limb of a tree that would be used for support, primarily be used for walking for support or as a weapon.

It could be used as a defensive weapon against those who would be robbers and thieves that they would come along the road, that would come along the road that they could defend themselves.

It would also be a deterrent, right? You see someone that has a weapon, you're less likely to try to attack them.

So if you see two people, they both have staffs, they both have a, you know, something that could be used as a weapon, a robber is going to be less likely to go after that person.

And so it is also something that could be used as a weapon against wild animals. Remember, they're journeying along a road system that's not like our road system, right?

And so they're going through wooded areas or wilderness areas and they may come upon wild animals.

There'd be places where people could hide out and take advantage of them, but most often a staff will be used as a means of keeping them from falling.

Remember, this is not the nice paved roads that we have, and even though the Roman roads that were in the areas where they had packed down the dirt, so it'd be a dirt road that's not really paved but packed down so that it would be easy to walk, most of the traveling they would do would be from village to village and they wouldn't be going along those roads.

So they're going more on, you know, on the hillsides, just in the wooded areas, just the paths.

And so you have rocks, you have things that can cause you to stumble, you have roots, things like this.

So the staff will help to stabilize them as they are walking. So we end up seeing that here they're using the staff probably to, you know, as a protection against falling and also as a deterrent and a protection against would -be robbers.

So this is something they're told to carry with them, but they're told not to bring any food.

Jesus' instruction not to take any bread with them. Now bread is the basic necessity of this at those times for food.

They didn't have the ability like we might have to stop at the local convenience store on their way to the next town.

We have to, when we read the scriptures, put our mindsets into what their thinking is, how they are, because our culture is very different.

In fact, one of the things that we have is we are probably the least capable culture of ever understanding the culture of the

Bible times because we have advanced so much past with the times of the scriptures that it's harder for us to put our heads into that mindset.

But here's the mindset that they would have. They don't have the ability to just go to a convenience store and pick something up.

They would have the food they carry with them, but now they're instructed not to even take that, not to take bread.

They're going from town to town walking. Well, you need subsistence to keep up the walk.

If you don't have food, you're going to get tired. It's going to affect how far they could go. But if you have ever had that struggle, we in America really do not understand the struggle of poverty, of real poverty, of being without food.

I remember speaking to a man who lived in, he was from Africa.

We were doing missional work there and it was very interesting. He had said to me, he says, Americans are so filthy rich.

Now, I'm thinking like, you know, he's talking money. We're much richer compared to where he was from.

But here's the thing. Now, it was interesting because the pastor who had been working with this church in Africa for years said one of the things that they love is shirts of color because all their shirts are just like an off white.

It's just the wool. They can only afford dye. And so when people come with shirts that have color to it, they're amazed.

And so when they go to this town, they always bring lots of colorful clothes.

They also bring Frisbees, which they love because they would use it as plates. They used it actually as hats.

They used it as everything but a toy to throw. But here's the thing he said why we're so filthy rich.

He said, Americans are so filthy rich because not only can you eat three meals a day, but you can have three different meals a day for a whole month and not have the same thing.

We don't think about that. We have so many in this country that bemoan how poor we are, and we don't think about how rich we actually are, how much we have.

Many of us don't have to struggle with it. I mean, have you ever considered that your food supply makes you very wealthy?

Now, I don't know if any of you have been without food, struggling with it, but it adds an anxiety. Living without knowing where your next meal from can be very stressful and concerning.

I speak from experience. There was a time in my life that I was homeless. I had no job, no income, and no place to call my own.

I had no means of finding food. The problem with me is

I was prideful, even back then more so. I was a deacon in the church, in charge of a deacon's fund with thousands of dollars in it to take care of the poor.

Now, I wasn't just going to tap into it myself without talking to anyone, but I was too prideful to let any of the other leaders, those in leadership know that I had a need.

And even in my pride, God still provided. Sometimes it would be that a friend would come by the house and just have some food.

I had one friend who came by once. He was headed over, and his mother always cooked a lot. He would actually invite me over a lot of times, and I'd come over, and she would provide food.

She was an Italian mother from Italy, and she cooked a whole lot of food, and I ate a whole lot of food when

I would go there. I remember he came by and just had a whole big thing of lasagna his mother made because he was coming over, so she made it for me, and so that lasted two days.

I never went without food more than two days. There would be days when I'd go without food, but God would always provide.

Even though I was prideful, God provided. One such time, there was this beautiful young woman who forced me to explain why

I wasn't eating. The next day, she went out and bought me groceries that lasted for two weeks.

By the way, I married that beautiful young woman. But I can tell you that when you are hungry and you do not know where your next meal is, it adds a greater level of stress and anxiety.

To be sent out without food means that Jesus is telling them that you must rely on God to provide.

You must rely that God will give to you what you need. Maybe not what you want, but what you need, and that requires trusting in the fact that God is sovereign.

A second thing that he tells them not to bring is a bag. This would be a device of storage. This would be a provision of storage.

A bag is kind of we think of like as a purse today. It would be a pouch of some kind that you put things in.

It would usually be made of either the leather from animal skins or a linen cloth, and it would typically have a drawstring.

A lot of times, it would either have a, it'd be like over your shoulder with a strap, or sometimes it'd be something that you could, if you have a belt, it would swing around and lock in through a belt.

But this would be used to carry food, your bread. If you're traveling from town to town to town, you'd have to have bread.

You'd put bread in there. You'd put your money in there. You'd probably put a canister for water.

Remember, this was a place where they were going was much of a desert land. So Jesus is instructing them not only to not take food, and we're going to see not to take money, so not take a bag may make sense because they got nothing to put in the bag, right?

He's going to tell them not even to take an extra tunic, but he's telling them not to take that.

I think what you end up seeing in the significance there is the fact that if they go to a house, you can picture them staying at a house.

What is a person naturally going to want to do? Here, take some food. Take some bread for your next trip.

If they have nowhere to store those provisions, then it's that they will eat what they have there and go to the next town and trust on God there.

And so I think the fact that they're, that Jesus has them not take a bag is so that they cannot take any of the provisions provided in one town to the next town.

He wants them to depend upon God town to town to town. He tells them not to take any money.

This is not the paper money we would think of, nice lightweight things that you can keep in your pocket easily. Their money would be coins, typically heavier than our coins today, but the fact that he is telling them not to take money with them is much like the food, much like we're going to see with the lodging.

It is to rely upon God, not to be able to provide for your own means. He wants them to learn to depend upon God.

I know this is probably not a lesson any of you ever struggle with. Maybe it's just me that we struggle with depending upon God for everything.

But if you think about it, why is it that Jesus says it is easier for a, it is easier for a man to go through an eye of a needle than for a rich man to be saved?

Because people who come from money, and there again I do speak from experience, even though I was homeless,

I come from a family that had great provisions. And I could tell you that when you have, when you have wealth,

I've seen this, people become very self -reliant because they could pay anything. They could take care of themselves. They don't need others.

And we end up seeing even in this country why we have so many wealthy people and they don't think, they say they're taking care of the poor and they usually aren't.

They do things that actually hurt the poor, but they don't think that way because they're just thinking for self. They're self -reliant.

Not taking any money with them on the trip means that they have to be dependent, again, on the people whose house they would stay in to care for them.

They're not to take any of their own provisions. Now we're in America, a very self -reliant country, different even than some of the other wealthier countries because we are kind of a country built on this idea of a rugged individualism, that if you work hard you can make your way.

And the thing is that creates within the culture a selfishness, in a sense.

It creates within the culture this concept that I can do it my way. I can do it on my own.

Not taking money is to rely completely on God. When you have no means of money, that's the only way you can go by, is to trust

God. God wants us to rely on Him and His way, not make it our way.

Sorry, McDonald's. The other thing that we end up seeing as far as provision is clothing.

We see the clothing here. Jesus instructs them to take sandals but not two tunics.

Now the sandals were commonly just a kind of footwear in the ancient

Near East that consisted of a sole with a little strap on it for you to put your toe in to hold it down.

By the way, there was no right and left. That didn't come until 1818 here in Philadelphia, PA, just so you know.

But sandals would be a standard dress code, especially when traveling. Because when you're traveling, again, you're traveling not on a nice paved road or a sidewalk.

You're traveling on something where it hasn't been cultivated. Rocks, twigs, different things.

And you're walking for, on average they would walk about, most travelers would walk between 6 to 12 miles a day.

Now depending on how much you're carrying, granted they're not carrying a lot because they're told not to take much, so they're probably carrying less and go further, but they're going.

What is this that He's having them do is to protect their feet. I could. Siri thinks

I'm saying, I'm speaking to her. But what you have here is that you have, a sandal would be something that would be used to protect your feet against rocks, twigs, things like this along the path.

This would be a necessity for traveling. And yet He says to carry that, again, the staff and the sandals are the only two things that He says to carry and both of them are more for protection.

All the other provisions of resource He says not to, one of them being, as we see here, the two tunics.

Now I will again admit a little bit of frustration. I looked at several different commentaries and could not find anyone in looking at different encyclopedias and to try to find out why people would carry multiple tunics.

So there wasn't a lot for me to go on to see if this was a common behavior. It seems like it is because Jesus tells them to only carry one, but a tunic is basically, it would be either a two -piece cloth sewn together is one or if they had a special loom, they would make a seamless tunic which would be an undergarment.

It would be what you'd put in underneath your outer clothes. If you think about when

Christ was crucified, right, He had a seamless tunic that they ended up taking.

We end up seeing though that this would be the basic clothing. Now the only thing I could think of is

He tells them to only take one would mean that, again, A, they're not carrying anywhere to store it, so that would be one thing, but He tells them not to wear it.

I think that if you think about this, if they're out for several weeks going from town to town to town, they didn't have, when they got to someone's house, they didn't have means of a shower, okay.

People didn't have ways, unless you were very, very, very rich, you didn't have bathing inside your home.

You'd go to either a lake or a stream or river and that's where you'd wash or you'd go to a bathhouse if they have.

So the idea of being able to wash the inner garment would say you'd probably have to go to a stream and wash it with you in it, which is how they would wash in the streams.

So again, it's, you know, you're wearing, you have nothing but the, literally, the shirt on your back is what

Jesus is telling them. All of this is saying to depend upon Him. The last thing we end up seeing in this provision is the idea of lodging.

In the first century culture, again, very different than the American culture, we have to put our mindset in this, and even in the

Middle East today, hospitality is expected. It would be a shameful thing to not be hospitable to a stranger.

It's just strange to our selfish, me -centered way of thinking. I mean, many of us, you know, live in towns where we get in our car, we drive home, we don't even see our neighbor, we pull into, we open the garage door remotely, we pull into a garage, we close the door behind us, and that's it.

We don't even see our neighbors. We don't see, so we don't have the, in America, we don't really have this idea so much of having people that we would have knock on our door and say, hey, can you have some lodging?

However, this is not the case. I remember some years ago hearing the story of, in a village where there was a tribal leaders that put a man to death because an

American reporter came through the town. He had, I think, he had car issues and he needed a place to stay.

Because he was an American, one of the men whose house he came to wouldn't put him up.

The elders of that tribal town had him committed to being stoned to death for the offense that he did to the village.

That is foreign to our thinking, but it's important to understand this text.

John MacArthur writes this, quote, in a day when inns were often sordid and even dangerous, travelers generally stayed in people's homes as they journeyed from one town to the next, and the twelve were no exception.

But Jesus added an important caveat in that regard. Wherever they went, once they decided to stay in a house for the purpose of lodging, they were to stay there until they left town.

Given their power to heal diseases and cast out demons, they likely received invitations to upgrade their comfort by changing homes.

But they were not to move from house to house as if to receive money or more from people.

After they accepted the initial invitation, they were to decline all others, unquote. So they should be accepting of whichever house they go to, not looking for which offers a better comfort, convenience, better food.

Hey, if I go to that house, I might get some more than just basic bread. They were to trust in God for their provisions, for their lodging.

This would distinguish them from the traveling teachers, the false teachers that would be looking to get upgrades in homes, be looking to see how they can get, you know, oh, well, now that someone's known they're in the town and someone says, oh, well, how about you stay in my home?

Well, that sounds better. It offers more for me. Let me go do that. No, this would put them separate from those type of people, which was very common in that time to have people that would do that.

And so you see that the lodging would be, again, something that once they come to a town, they were to stay, they were to rely on the resources that God is providing.

So we see that in all of these different things, God wants the disciples to depend upon Him.

You know, I think about this as we have recently. I can't help but to think about a few weeks ago when

Pastor Steve was in the hospital with the heart surgery and, or not surgery, but the condition.

And then, you know, when I was talking with him, just the thing he kept saying to me is,

I'm ready to go home and be with the Lord. It's just, you know, my wife and my mother -in -law. Like, I feel bad that I'm not, it's not, everything's not set up to care for them.

And then with COVID, he was just so, you know, again, you know, as some of you may know,

I hope I'm not sharing too much, but it was shared in the WhatsApp, but he was sick, it's raining, he loses power, and he was so worried when we came over.

I came over, you know, Leon and I went over there to help with his generator, but I called him up and he's like, I don't want you to come in, you know, because he's so worried that I would get sick.

And Yim and I had already decided, like, here is a brother in need. He was sitting there, he shouldn't be outside in the rain, which, by the way,

Leon was helping him. He had a cold. He shouldn't have been out in the rain either. But what was the issue?

We saw a brother in need. I had said to Yim that, I said, well, look, he's got no power.

I don't know if we can get the generator started. Yim and I, without hesitation, were like, well, then we'll just have him come here. Just go there.

If you can't get the generator going, Yim said, just bring him here. And when I talked to him on the phone, he's like, but, you know, I don't know.

I don't want to get you guys sick. And the response that I had is the same response I know that Yim had when she told me to go get him, is that there's a brother in need.

We trust God. God is sovereign. And as I said to Steve, if God wants me to get

COVID to do the right thing, then I will get COVID to do the right thing, because that's God's will.

The reality is that Scripture is clear that I had a brother in need. That's more important.

In Steve's mind, Pastor Steve was just like, I'm ready to go be with the Lord. But maybe some of you have experienced that where it's like, especially with things going on in this world, you want to be home with the

Lord, but you don't want to leave the loved ones behind. I've been praying for the rapture a lot more recently than ever before in my life, so Yim and I could go together.

But I want to apply this idea of dependence in four areas that there's really no way to avoid this in our culture today.

There's four major things that are affecting our culture and causing people to struggle when it comes to depending upon God and seeing

His sovereignty in all things. The lesson that the disciples, that Jesus wanted the twelve to learn, to depend upon God, trust

Him in His sovereignty. He knows what He's doing. Those four areas that we could look at really are similar.

We could look at this COVID disease that is spreading around the world. We could look in America, well, more than America now, with the

Black Lives Matter protest. We could look at the reaction that people have with the lockdowns of all these cities or states or countries.

They're just saying, no, we have to shut everything down. And in America, we could look to the anxiety so many have over the elections.

When we look at these four things, there's some things we see in common with all of them. Fear. The same fear that the disciples would have, the same anxiety that the disciples would have when it comes to not eating, not having food to eat, not having money to provide.

As I thought about this and looked at these things, yeah, I end up seeing that there's actually a lot of similarity here between all four.

So many of us are struggling with anxiety and fear because we were worried about what could happen.

I could get COVID. I could get attacked if I go into a city. You know, I could lose my job if they lock everything down.

Biden could win. You know, people are having fear over these things. Well, actually, the other way too.

Some people are having fear Trump could actually win, you know, could end up winning and then there's going to be riots everywhere. We as Christians should not be a people to be sitting and fretting over things like this because I got news for us.

If I get sick with COVID, that's God's will. If I go to a city and get beat up by Black Lives Matter, that's

God's will. You know, if I go to, if they lock down things and we lose our jobs, that's

God's will. If the election goes away that we think, let me be even more specific. Say Biden wins.

Say he does everything everyone fears and brings socialism in. Guess what? That's God's will.

We don't think that way often, but we need to as Christians. This is the message that Christ would have is for us to be dependent upon him, trusting in him.

That's what we have to have. The thing, when you look at all four of those things, it's so interesting because you end up seeing that people are saying, well, everyone has to behave because I'm afraid so you have to behave differently or I'm oppressed and therefore you have to act differently.

Notice what so much of that is though. It's not a focusing on God. It's a focusing on self.

I want you to do things to protect me. I'm saying that only because I'm going to be on a flight soon and I know that on the flights,

I'm not allowed to wear a vented mask that would protect me. They tell me I literally, because I did that last flight, they told me

I had to switch masks and they literally told me when I said, well, this mask is vented and it filters the air that I breathe because that will keep me from being able to breathe cleaner air and they said no, but that doesn't protect other people.

So they gave me this cloth mask to wear, but what were they saying? Well, you have to protect others. Okay, what is the issue of Black Lives Matter is that people feel oppressed.

They feel that they have been victimized and victimized from generation to generation and that somehow there needs to be an equalizing of this, a making right of wrongs.

But see, the thing we end up seeing is that nowhere in scripture does it say that the wrongs will be righted here on earth.

The disciples were going to go into these villages and where hospitality is expected and be rejected.

That would seem not right and yet that's what is expected. The thing is when we look at the lockdowns, you know, we have little control.

We struggle between, okay, are we going to follow Romans 13 or are we going to rebel? As you see now in New York with the bar owner.

Now, we're not going to be as foolish as those in California, the churches in California, where California has opened strip bars for, they could be open past curfew, but churches have to close.

So now they have, there's two churches where the pastor quote -unquote stripped by taking his tie off so they can call it a strip bar and stay open.

That shouldn't be happening at a pulpit of a church, even in a jest.

The thing is, do we fight these things? We think about the election that so many are, I know,

I do this too, glued to the news to find out what's happening. But are we worried? I mean, if Biden was to win, would that actually be the worst thing in the world?

I know, for some of us, we're like, what are you saying, Andrew? We all know

Trump won and they're trying to steal it. Yeah, yeah. And if they do succeed, so what? The message of the gospel still goes forth.

Let me read to you from 1 Peter 1, 6 -9. 1

Peter 1, 6, he says, In this you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been distressed by various trials.

So the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold, which is perishable, even though tested by fire, you may be found to result in the praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

And though you have not seen him, you love him. And though you do not see him now, you believe in him.

You greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory, obtaining as the outward of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

That's a powerful text to think about. This is the mindset we should have. This is the mindset that the disciples needed, going from town to town, just trusting in God and relying upon God, complete dependence upon him.

He would desire that we would live every moment of every day depending upon him, because you know what?

We do. Not a single one of us in this room deserve the breath that's currently in our lungs.

It is given to us by God. Do we give thanks for that? Do we depend upon him?

Often we do not recognize the things that we depend upon until they're taken away. We did not recognize how much we really depended upon fellowship.

Prior to March. I mean, think about it. Do you remember when we had to shut down all those months, those first weeks?

I talked to pastors across the country as I travel, and one of the things that's so interesting is I asked this question of each pastor now when their churches have opened.

I said, what is it like after church is over? And they all have said the same exact thing. No one wants to leave.

Now we're in a different situation because they kick us out of this building at one o 'clock. But I've spoken to pastors.

I know one pastor that they said they just started having everyone bring lunch because no one was leaving.

They were staying there until five o 'clock at night and everyone was starving so they don't go out to dinner together. So they also started bringing lunch because they never realized how much they appreciated fellowship until it was taken away.

And that's often true with us. We don't know how much we depend upon things until they're gone. Well, let us look at the reception in verse 11.

It says there, any place that does not receive you or listen to you as you go from there, shake the dust off of the soles of your feet as a testimony against them.

As with any missionary journey or gospel outreach, the Lord prepared them for rejection.

He says in any place that would not receive them or listen to the message, they were to go from there, shake the dust off the soles of their feet.

Shaking the dust off one's feet is a traditional Jewish way of expressing basically scorn toward Gentiles.

When they would leave the area of Israel and go into a Gentile area, when they came back into Israel, they would take their sandals and take them off their feet and clap them together to not carry any of that Gentile dirt into Israel.

The term that they would use actually for those who were here in Sunday school would be a goyim or goyim. For those who were in Sunday school, you heard

Pastor Steve mention that. So this is the idea. It's such a scorn for the Gentiles, those non -Jewish people, that they would want to kick the dust off their feet.

And kicking the dust off was symbolic for them against these uncircumcised pagans.

What the Jewish people understood as a symbolic protest against them. And this was also applied in Acts 13 as a judgment against the

Jewish people for rejecting Christ. But the twelve were sent out. They're being sent out in Matthew 10, 6 to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

And they would understand this kicking off of the dust. The idea that if you went into a house and you go into a town, they don't receive you, kicking the dirt off your feet would be symbolic of judgment.

That they're a Gentile. To a Jewish person, that would be the worst thing you could do is to call someone a

Gentile. They would understand what the message that was being delivered with that idea.

It'd be a picture they would see. Now let us see what the reception was. If you turn to Matthew 10, because there's a couple passages we're going to look.

This is the parallel passage. And Matthew 10 goes into much more detail. What we have in just these few verses from verse 7 to 13 really is the ending of Matthew 9 all the way to Matthew 11, 1.

So all of chapter 10 is there. So we end up seeing, it says,

Matthew 10, 11 to 15. And whatever city or village you enter, inquire who is worthy in it and stay at his house until you leave the city.

As you enter the house, give it your greeting. If the house is worthy, give it your blessing of peace.

But if it is not worthy, take back your blessing of peace. Whoever does not receive you nor heed your words as you go out of the house of that city, shake the dust off your feet.

Truly I say to you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for that city.

We should never be surprised by rejection of the gospel. That's basically what's being described there.

For those who regularly evangelize, you're not surprised at rejection. In fact, you're actually more surprised when people accept.

The acceptance is what is surprising. We often don't know how to deal with that. But we have to remember, this is a message being delivered to a culture where hospitality is expected.

That's far different than our culture. If they were to expect rejection in a hospitality culture, how much more would we expect to see it in ours?

We should not be surprised by that in any way. And so we have to remember that this is a message being delivered to enemies of God.

Romans 5 .10 or James 4 .4. These are people that are at enmity with God. And Jesus is training his disciples to expect rejection, even in a culture where hospitality is the expectation.

If they killed our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ for telling the truth, why should we not expect that they would want to do the same with us?

In fact, that's what he ends up saying. You have Matthew 24 .9 says this,

Then they will deliver you to tribulation and will kill you and you will be hated by all nations because of my name.

Matthew also in Matthew 10, since you're there, if you're still there, his account provides these instructions in Matthew 10 .16

to 39. But we'll look just down to 23. Matthew 10 .16,

Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves. So be shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves.

But beware of men, for they will hand you over to the courts and scourge you in their synagogues.

And you will even be brought before governors and kings for my sake as a testimony to them and to the

Gentiles. But when they hand you over, do not worry about what, how or what you are to say, for it will be given you in the hour that you say.

For it is not you who speaks, but it is the spirit of your father who speaks in you.

Brother will betray brother to death and father his child. And children will rise up against parents and cause them to be put to death.

You will be hated by all because of my name.

But it is the one who has endured to the end who will be saved. But whenever they persecute you in one city, flee to the next.

And truly, I say to you, you will not finish going through the cities of Israel until the

Son of Man comes. So remembering that this is in the context, if you think back in Mark 6, 5 and 6, he had just left his hometown of Nazareth, where what happened there?

He was rejected. Rejected so much that it says he would not do any miracles, but save, save but heal a few people.

Where he would go everywhere else. As we saw in that message last week, this is a fact that we ended up seeing that it's a principle not to throw, that Jesus wasn't going to throw his pearls before swine.

We see that in Matthew 7, 6. Or give what is holy to dogs. So when there is rejection, we shouldn't be trying to debate with a person to win the debate or try to overcome the rejection.

When rejected, Christ's instruction was to move on to the next town. Kick the dust off your feet and move on.

We leave that person and we leave them to the Lord. Well, let's wrap up with the sending of the 12.

Matthew 6, 12 and 13. They went out and preached that men should repent and they were casting out many demons and were anointing with oil the sick and healing them.

So they went out preaching in verse 12. We see here the word for preached is a word that is a term to proclaim in the open air.

Maybe what we would think of today as open air preaching or open air evangelism. It is a proclamation to any who would listen.

It is an issue where they would go from town to town just proclaiming.

But what was the message that they proclaimed? It was a message that we see of repentance.

We see this in the parallel passages. Sadly, the message of repentance is a missing element of the

Gospels today. The Gospel is a message of repentance. Mark 1, 15.

Matthew 3, 20. Matthew 3, 17. Luke 3, 3. Luke 5, 32.

13, 3. 13, 5. Acts 2, 38. 3, 19. 8, 22.

7, 13. 19, 14. And I could go on. Look at those passages.

The message of the Gospel is a message of repentance. It is not a message of feel good.

And the difference between someone who receives a message of repentance and a person who receives a message of self -help is the difference between depending upon God and depending upon self.

Christ is teaching the disciples to depend upon God for all things. And when trials come, guess what?

It forces them to depend upon God even more. But those that believe in a message of self -help and feel good, when trials come, flee.

They don't want that. They want to get back to comfort. Brothers and sisters, I have said this before, but the reality is a persecution,

I think, is coming in our country against Christians. There's going to be many churches that are going to be emptied because they're not prepared to handle it.

Because they've accepted a message of self -help and comfort. And all they want to do is get back to comfort.

We're seeing it now is these churches are, some churches are still in lockdown even when they're allowed to open.

Paralyzed. Some by fear, some are thinking more they have to deal with, you know, the government is saying they have to be restricted when all these other businesses could be open.

And the reality that you end up seeing is that they're trying to get back to comfort.

And when the persecution gets even more, you're going to see those churches just go, you know what? I mean, Joel Holstein's churches are going to close, period.

Just close the doors. Because they're not there for that. They're not coming to that, if you want to call it a church.

They're not coming there because they depend upon God. They're coming there because they think God's going to give them something.

God, I gave you, you owe me. No, the message of repentance is the message that leads us to greater dependence upon God for all things.

And in verse 13, we see that the message is vindicated. Now, John MacArthur explains why the disciples may have used oil, which is strange.

Because oil is something that's used for medicine at that time. They'd use it to rub into wounds.

And so it was something that would be used as a medicine. But it's interesting because these were miraculous healings.

I mean, the whole purpose of them is to vindicate the message. Why use oil? I was confused.

And John MacArthur actually helps with this. MacArthur says this, quote, Mark notes that as part of their healing ministry, the apostles were anointing with oil many of the sick and healing them.

The gospel records never indicate that Jesus anointed the sick with oil, yet the apostles did on at least this occasion.

Though olive oil was sometimes used for municipal purposes, Luke 10 34, that was not the purpose here since the apostles healed the sick miraculously and not through the use of medicine,

Matthew 10 8. Then why then did they anoint the sick with oil?

The Old Testament olive oil was used to symbolize God's presence and authority, especially in the anointing of priests and kings.

The apostles then anointed the sick with oil to symbolize the fact that their authority came from God and not from themselves.

They were not the source of their power, but only the channel for it. By using this symbol, familiar to the first century

Jews, the apostles passed the glory back to the Lord himself.

As God incarnate, Jesus needed no such symbol when he healed, unquote.

Now if that's true, that's a very interesting thing because it says that they knew that the authority was

Christ's and only given to them, granted to them for the specific purpose.

But Christ didn't need any such thing because he was God. He had the authority. The authority was from him.

And so in such we see that the message was vindicated because of the work that they ended up doing.

Now we don't expect that we're going to go out and proclaim the gospel and be able to heal the sick and raise the dead and cast out demons, but yet we still have the same message today that he instructed the disciples.

We too must be completely and utterly and in all ways dependent upon God for all things.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we come to you and we confess our sin.

We do not depend upon you like we should. I'm sure I'm not alone,

Lord, in this room, in this church to think that I know that I fail.

I let fear overtake. I let anxiety reign.

Lord, there are times so often in my life I do not depend upon you like I should.

I've often taken a harder road because I didn't depend upon you and trust in you enough that you knew what you were doing.

Lord, we confess our sin before you. We need to depend upon you.

As you sent out the disciples, training them to depend upon you, so,

Lord, you put things in our lives so that we would depend, learn to depend upon you. Help us,

Lord. We need your help in this area. We need encouragement.

We need strengthening, that we would look to you for all things and everything that we have, we would see it as a gift from you, see it as more than we deserve.

And we want this, Lord, because we want you to be glorified in all things. Amen. In the areas of theology, church history,

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