Dependence on God (Mark 6:7-13)

Andrew Rappaport's Rapp Report

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ChumbaCasino .com While I was traveling down in Florida at the end of last year,

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I had an opportunity to preach at Pastor Andrew Smith's church. And this was a message that I preached down there out of Mark.

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I hope that you will find this quite encouraging. In the dark times that we have in our days, just a time where many people are in fear, may this be a message that, at least down there, it seemed to have an impact on many to encourage them.

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So may you find this message just as encouraging. Welcome to The Wrap Report with your host,

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Andrew Rappaport, where we provide Biblical interpretation and application. This is a ministry of Striving for Eternity and the

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Christian Podcast Community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

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Welcome to sunny Florida. I hope none of you got blinded on your way to church this morning with that sunshine.

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I start off my podcast that I do with Bud, always mentioning that he's from the sunshine state.

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And I got up this morning and said, where is it? You know, an interesting thing before we get started with the pulpit, you notice it's quite big.

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This is actually a Puritan style pulpit where you have a lifted up of the proclamation of God's Word.

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For some of you who may not have grown up in synagogue, in case you didn't, in a synagogue setting, what you'd have to your left is a pulpit for the cantor to do the singing when there is the song to God, the praising of God in song.

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To the right, or to your right, would be another pulpit where you'd proclaim

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God's Word. But in the center is a raised pulpit, and behind it would be a closed curtain that you'd have a time that you'd open the curtain and bring out the

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Word of God. And the Word of God is marched up and down the pews, and then brought to the center pulpit where it is open and read.

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Everything about the service, even the way the structure of the building, is designed to show the height of the service is the reading of God's Word, that God's Word is what we gather for.

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I would encourage you to turn, if you would, to Mark chapter 6.

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Now, I know that Pastor Andrew is going to be preaching through Mark. Since I am older,

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I believe he is following me in lots of things. He took my name, Andrew. He's trying to copy the book that I'm preaching through at our church, but I have no fear because by the time he gets to Mark chapter 6, it will be next summer or winter.

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So you have a good year before you get back to this text. I do not have to worry.

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If you wouldn't mind, out of reverence for God's Word, rising for the reading of His Word.

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This also is a Jewish custom, by the way, is to stand for the reading of God's Word.

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This is what Mark, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, wrote in Mark 6, verses 7 -13.

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And he summoned the twelve, and began to send them out in pairs, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits.

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And he instructed them that they should take nothing for their journey, except for a mere staff.

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No bread, no bag, no money in their belt, but to wear sandals.

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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.

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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 testimony against them.

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

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Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we come to Your Word with great lessons for us, especially in our day and age and our culture, for us to understand.

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Some hard lessons in front of us that we will see. We ask, Lord, that we would look to Your Word as the authority and answer for our faith and practice.

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But, Lord, we ask that at this time, that You, by the person of the Holy Spirit, would illuminate Your Word to our understanding, and to give us the application therein for our lives.

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We ask this in Christ's name. Amen. You may be seated. What we're going to look at today, we're going to look at three elements of this.

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We're going to look at the summoning of the Twelve.

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We're going to look at the instruction of the Twelve. And we're going to look at the sending of the

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Twelve. Now, any of you astute students just realize I just gave you all the fill -in -the -blanks ahead of time. But those that weren't paying attention will get to those, and you can fill in the blanks as we go.

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I'm one of those students who always liked to get my homework in while the teacher was teaching, because I was bored at just listening to her teach.

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So, as we look at this, let's start with the summoning of the Twelve in v. 7. We see here in v.

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7, Mark says, And He summoned the Twelve and began to send them out in pairs and gave them authority over unclean spirits.

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Now, as we compare this to some of the other parallel accounts, we know in Luke 9, v. 2, it says,

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And He sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and perform healing. So not only did they go out just in pairs with the authority, but they went out for the purpose of proclaiming

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God's Word. Now, it says that they went out and organized in pairs. And sometimes we make a very big mistake of just kind of reading over things in Scripture and not meditating upon it, not thinking it through.

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Why pairs? Why would He send them out in pairs? Well, there's several advantages to being paired up.

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One, if you sent them out in a dozen, can you picture being the person that has a dozen people sharing the truth of God's Word with you and it's just you?

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That's not very comfortable, right? I'm being ganged up on. The other thing that you see is that if it's just one person, when we go out alone, there's an advantage of having someone else with us.

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It gives us a greater encouragement, doesn't it? When we're afraid to say something to speak out, we're a little bit more emboldened.

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When we know we have someone with us, that is an agreement. There's the other advantage that if you're anything like me and you tend to forget what you were going to say next, it's always good to have someone that is there to pick up where you fall.

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Or if they may ask a question you don't know the answer to. So going out in pairs, it provides support.

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It also provides some protection as well. Having the two together will be less likely that someone's going to try to rob them or things like that, which would happen as they go from town to town sometimes.

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It also gives the advantage of using their differing gifts. You see, there's differing people that you might talk to where you may be able to talk to someone that I wouldn't have a great rapport with them, where someone else

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I might have the great rapport and you might not because we're all different. And it gives the advantage of using our differing gifts, showing some teamwork, but it also extends the gospel.

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You see, if Jesus said, okay, I want all 12 of you to go to this town and then this town and this town and we'll meet up in three weeks, the problem there is you only hit three towns where if they break up into groups of two, they can each go to different towns.

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And that's what they would be doing at this point. They would be going out from town to town and this expands the gospel or increases the gospel influence in that whole region.

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But the thing that we end up seeing here and focus on is it says that the authority was given. If we look at Matthew 10, a parallel account,

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Matthew 10, 8, I'm going to read 7 and 8, but we see that this authority was given not only over demons, but also to heal the sick and to raise the dead.

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Matthew 10, 7 and 8 says, And as you go preaching, saying the kingdom of heaven is at hand, heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the leopards, cast out the demons, freely you received, freely give.

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So we see first that the word send, this word apostoleo is from a word we understand, apostle.

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It means to be sent out. It is the idea of being sent towards a designated, with a designated purpose or goal.

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So this is something that we are, as we have today, we get sent out of the church. I loved when

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I was preaching at one church and when on the, you enter into their sanctuary on the one side, it says enter and worship

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God. And when you walked out of the sanctuary, it has a sign on that side that says, enter the mission field.

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Reminding everyone that they are getting here, being fed with God's word so that as we leave, we're going out into the mission field.

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We are sent out for the purpose of the proclamation of the gospel. And so the pulpit ministry is to equip us so that we can go out into the world.

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But he also says an authority. The thing with this authority in the Greek, it means the power or right to give orders or make decisions.

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So Jesus was giving the 12 the power to give orders over demons.

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Now, I want you to note something here. Who is this that has the authority? He doesn't say to the disciples.

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It says to the 12. So note that the authority was specifically given only to the 12, not all the disciples.

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Also note that this authority was given. Therefore, it was not an authority that they had of their own.

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This is an authority that not every Christian has. Not every Christian has this authority.

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They can command demons and heal the sick and raise the dead. This is an authority that was given for a specific purpose.

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The purpose is the proclamation of the gospel and the vindication thereof. It does not mean that everybody has the authority to cast out demons.

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Please, someone let Benny Hinn know that. The reality is that this is something that some people will try to take and say, well, see, we all have because we're disciples.

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And yet the text ends up being clear that this is to the 12. But there was a purpose for this.

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In fact, there are only three times in history that you see miraculous gifts being normative or normal.

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The first was in the time of Moses. It was the time of the writing of the historical books.

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The first five books of Moses and then the books that followed, that were the historical books. It started with Moses doing miraculous gifts.

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And then there was a period of silence. And then Elijah comes on the scene, and we have another time where we see the miraculous, these signs and wonders.

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And what is beginning with Elijah becomes the writing of the prophets after a period of silence.

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What is that doing is vindicating the message of both Moses and Elijah. Then we have a period of about 400 years of silence.

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John the Baptist comes on the scene preaching a message that seems quite offensive to Jewish people. Then Jesus is there, and Jesus is doing these miracles.

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And he's sending out his disciples with his authority to continue casting out demons and healing the sick.

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Again, after a period of silence. And what are we going to have after this? The third time that we have after a period of silence,

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Scripture being written in the New Testament. So what we end up seeing is that when we see these miraculous gifts, it is a time when it's to vindicate the message that God is proclaiming after a period of silence.

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How would you know that someone is speaking for God? Well, I can tell you one way you don't.

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For all the people that said that Romney was going to be a two -time president, well, they were wrong.

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For all those people that said that Trump would win by a landslide and it would be declared on election night, well, they were wrong.

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For the guy who stood up and decided that he was going to blow COVID away and it was gone, okay, well, we can move on from there.

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Those are what we can clearly know are not people that are speaking for God.

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Those miracles are not real miracles because they're wrong. But you have after a period of silence, you have this miraculous gift.

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Because that vindicates the message now being proclaimed after a period of silence. Anyone can come up and say, here,

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I spoke for God. How do you prove that? Well, this was the way to vindicate that.

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And that's why you'd see it. So what we see here is that this was a specific authority given to a specific people for a specific time and a specific purpose.

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So we should not use this text and say that we should all be commanding demons and we should all be looking to heal the sick and raise the dead.

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That's not what the text is teaching. By the way, what you always want to do whenever you come to a historical narrative, and that's what this is, a historical narrative, each different type of genre or literature of Scripture has different rules for interpretation.

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One of the things with this, when we come to historical narrative, is historical narratives tell you what did happen, not what should happen.

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Okay? One of the things that you'll find is that many people read something that's historical narrative and go, well, it's in the

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Bible. That's right, it is in the Bible. Solomon had a lot of wives.

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It doesn't mean you should. Just because it's in the Bible, it's recording what actually happened.

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And there's a lot of things people have done wrong in the Bible. So as we look at this, we see the authority that is given.

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By the way, that authority is only given if you have the authority to give. Okay? That authority is

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Christ's to give. He didn't get it from someone. He had to borrow it.

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And this ends up flying again in the way that some people will teach that, well, the

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Father gave Christ the authority. He gives it to us so we can give it to others. Okay? This authority is one that Christ gives.

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As we continue on to the instructing of the Twelve, we'll spend the bulk of the time here in verses 8 through 11, the instructing of the

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Twelve. Mark 6, verse 8 to 11 says this, and he instructed them that they should take nothing on their journey except a mere staff, no bread, no bag, no money in their belt, but to wear sandals.

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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.

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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 as a testimony against them.

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Now, I must say here, I must let you know a little bit of frustration that I do have with this text.

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There is an issue here, a textual issue that we have here, between Mark 6, 8, and if you end up looking at the parallel passages in Matthew 10, 9, and 10, and Luke 9, 3.

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Because in this text, it clearly says that they were told to take nothing except a mere staff.

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Yet, if you look at Luke 9, 3, it will say there not to take a staff.

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If you look at Matthew 10, it says not to obtain a staff, not to obtain anything.

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And so there's an issue here. Now, sometimes we have these issues, and what we do is we will find often that there's some textual variant.

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In other words, where someone was making a copy, they added something in. Maybe they left out a word not or added a word not.

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The frustrating thing is, as I've done my research, there's not a single textual variant in any of these three, which is frustrating.

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So one argument, a friend of mine, Matt Slick, makes the argument that, not that he holds to it, he says this is the best argument that he has found for it, is that some will say that because of the use of the word take in Mark and the word acquire in Matthew, that what

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Jesus may be saying, and some make this argument, is to say that he's saying you could take a staff, just don't acquire one as you go.

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The problem is that Luke also uses the word take, so that's not a very good argument. And so you say, well, how do we resolve this?

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Some will say, well, maybe there's a textual variant that we just haven't found yet. That's not a good argument to make because that's an argument without evidence.

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We don't want to make arguments without evidence. So the only answer I can give is it's frustrating because I can't find a very good way of trying to reconcile these two.

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I have tried. So is it a contradiction? No. I don't say that it's a contradiction.

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It says that we just haven't resolved it. This is a thing that we just have to be honest and recognize that there's sometimes things we don't understand.

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Maybe there is a textual variant we haven't found, but the reality is that I just bring it to your attention for further study.

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Maybe you'll find the way of solving it and let me know. Give Pastor Andrew some homework this week.

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And maybe next year or two when he gets to Mark 6, he'll have resolved it for you.

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So let's look at the main part of what we want to focus on, though, is the instruction that Jesus gives, and that is the idea of dependence upon God.

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We're going to see this in several different areas that God wants us to depend on him, and then we're going to see that this is from the instructions he gives to the

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Twelve. He gives these instructions to them. First is one that I list as protection.

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He tells them to carry a staff, and these are going to be broken into two broad categories, protection and provision.

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And the reason I put it down in those two is what we're going to see as we go through these, that God gives them instructions to bring protection but bring no provision.

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And we're going to see why I think that is in a few moments. But we come to the first, is the staff.

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Now, we think of a staff. A staff would typically be just a limb from a tree. Maybe it would be carved down.

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But the idea of a staff is, one, to offer support, especially as they're traveling from town to town.

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Now, you have to remember, yes, they had the Roman roads at this time. The Roman roads would be basically just dirt packed down.

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But most people didn't travel from town to town on the Roman roads. Those would be the main thoroughfares.

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But you'd often have to go off the Roman roads to where it's just a path, maybe, of dirt. You're going to have rocks.

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You're going to have hills. You're going to have roots of trees, all kinds of things that you're walking through. And so a staff offers support.

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The other thing that a staff would do is offer protection. A staff was not only a protection against falling, but it was also protection against robbers and thieves because you have a weapon you could use.

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It's also protection against wild animals, which you'd come across as you're going from town to town. We don't often think about this, and this is something

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I really always will stress to people to do. Don't just read your Bible. Think it through because we are not in the culture that they were.

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We go into our garage. We hop into our car. We open a garage by this little remote control.

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We don't even get out. We pull our car out. We never even see our neighbor. We drive three towns over, and then we go wherever and come right back, and usually the one town buds up right against the other town.

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What you end up seeing is we don't have the concept too much where you have a town and maybe several miles away is the next town, and you're walking through the woods and the open fields and wherever.

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That's how they would get around. So put yourself in the mindset of what the Twelve were doing. They're going from town to town, and this is their means of travel.

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As they're going, they're sitting there, and a staff is going to help protect them from falling.

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It's going to protect them against would -be thieves or robbers. It would protect them against animals. So this is a means of protection, but then we get to some of the provisions, and we're going to get to a second protection later that we'll get to in a moment, but we get to provisions.

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First is food. Now he says to them, Do not take any bread. Bread is your basic necessity of substance in those days.

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They would always be carrying bread with them, especially if you're traveling. If you're traveling, you need something to keep your energy levels up.

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Remember, these are people that are going to be traveling about 12 miles a day. For us, it's like we think one mile on a treadmill might be too much.

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This is how they would go. They would be traveling for several miles. They need the bread to keep their energy levels up, and Jesus is telling them,

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Don't take any. He is telling them that for a reason, though. He does not want them to rely on the resources that they may have but to rely upon God.

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God will provide your need. This is a strange thing for you and I in America because we don't think of bread as our basic necessity.

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In fact, we usually think of bread as something we have before the meal just to tide us over until we get the real meal.

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I remember speaking to a man that was here from Africa. He was trying to explain to us how filthy rich us

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Americans are. Some of you are going, You don't know my life. I'm not filthy rich. Well, you are when you consider that here's someone that, when the pastor would take a team down to this town in Africa, this village in Africa, they would like to bring some colorful shirts because, see, they only have one color, gray.

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You have anything that has color, that's like a sign of wealth. They would go there.

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The thing that was so interesting is that they said the definition of you and I as being filthy rich is that we can have three meals a day.

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That's rich. Filthy rich is that we can have three meals a day for a whole month and not have the same thing twice.

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That's filthy rich. We don't think about that. Have you ever considered that your food supply makes you filthy rich?

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Maybe it's something to think about the next time you go to eat. The thing is we in America don't understand what it is to live without.

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When we run out of food, we just go to the local grocery store and pick more up. For many of us, we don't understand what it is to live without knowing where your next meal is coming from.

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There was a time in my life when I was homeless. There was a time in my life where I had no job,

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I had no income, had no place to live, and I had no means to provide my next meal. Even though I was hungry,

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I was also prideful. I was a deacon at the church in charge of the deacon's fund, where at the time we had several thousands of dollars in the deacon's fund to care for those in need, but I was too prideful to let anyone else know that I had a need.

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I also wasn't about to just go into the deacon's fund and take it out for my own use. So I went without.

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The amazing thing is even in my pride, I never went more than two days without food.

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God always seemed to provide food one way or another. He would provide food. I'd have friends that would stop by the house.

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Just, hey, my mom made this. Can you use it? Yeah, sure, let's eat. Or I had friends that would take me out.

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The reality is you and I do not know the feeling of having an empty stomach and not knowing whether I'm going to be able to eat next.

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One thing I rested for sure on was that God would always take care of my need, and he always did.

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Not maybe my wants, but always my need. Sometimes a friend would stop by with food. Sometimes someone would take me out.

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One such time, a beautiful young woman, who forced me to explain why I was not eating, found out that I had no food and no money and went out the next day and bought me groceries, enough that lasted two weeks.

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By the way, I married that beautiful young lady, and she's here with you today. So food is a basic thing, and when we are without food,

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I could tell you from personal experience, when you are hungry and you don't have any means of providing food, you do pray a lot more.

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You do depend upon God. It was a very, very valuable lesson, and though I would never want to experience again,

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I'll tell you this, I would never want to give up the lessons I learned during that time either. And that's what

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Christ wants the disciples to learn. Go without any food. Trust that God will provide. Another thing

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He wants them to do is to not take anything to have for storage. He doesn't want them to bring a bag.

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A bag would be what we think of as a purse today. A bag would be a bag or a pouch used for storage that would often be made of leather from an animal skin or a linen cloth and would have a drawstring to tie it.

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It would be used to put money in. It would be used to put food in, to store maybe something that would hold water for long journeys.

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And they were told not to bring any. And you're thinking, well, of course, why would you need to bring a bag if you're not going to be told to bring any money or any water, right?

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You have no need for a bag. Why would He say not to bring a bag? Well, I think for a very simple reason. Jesus is telling them not to bring these things, but as they go to the first house, getting ready for the journey to the next house, what do you think people are going to do?

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Here's some food for your journey. If you have no bag, guess what? You have no way to store that for the trip.

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In other words, Jesus isn't just sending them out and saying, I don't want you to take any food or money with you to start.

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He doesn't want them to have anything to be able to hold it so they can't go from one town to another. He wants them to depend upon God at every step of their trip, at every city that they enter.

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They were to have no means of carrying it. They were to trust upon God in every town that they come in.

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So they would need to rely on God's reserves to provide for them.

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They would have no way to store stuff. So He didn't want them to start off on the travel and then grab reserves later.

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This would be consistent with what we see in Matthew 10, 9 and 10. But another thing He doesn't want them to bring is money.

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Now, when we think of money, we think of the thin, light paper bills that we have.

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That's not the money they would have. They would have coins. And not the light coins that we would have. They'd be a heavier coin.

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Now remember, they would typically take money and put it in a bag and tie it around their belt.

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They don't have that bag. They're told not to carry any money. Why would Jesus not want them to carry any money?

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Again, if you have no money, you have no reserves to just go to the town and buy food.

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You're going to rely upon God's provision as you enter into the town that He's going to provide everything for you.

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Anything that you need will be provided for you. That is a hard thing for us to understand in America.

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See, America was built on this idea of individualism, being able to make your own way. It's the reason that you see a lot of selfishness in America.

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We could do it our way. And the thing that you end up seeing is that that flies in the face of what

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Jesus is trying to teach them to be dependent upon God. Trust God for your needs.

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He will take care of your provisions. Where we think, well, we've got to take care of it.

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We've got to make sure that we have the means to take care of it ourselves. The disciples would have been no different.

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But it takes something different to depend upon God. It's called trust. Who are we really trusting?

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Are we trusting ourselves and what we could do? Or are we trusting God and what He can do?

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We live in a very self -reliant culture. And therefore, it's extremely difficult for Americans to trust and rely on others, let alone

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God. We want to do things for ourselves. We want to make it our way.

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And God wants us to rely on Him, not make it our way. Sorry, McDonald's.

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Another thing He says He doesn't want them to bring, another element of provision, is clothing. Jesus instructed them to take sandals, but not two tunics.

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Now, a sandal was a common footwear in the ancient Near East that would basically consist of a sole with a little bit of a strap on it that they would have.

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By the way, there wasn't a left and right foot until 1818 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, about half an hour from where I live.

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So they just had a flat. You didn't have to worry about if you got the right shoe on. You always had the right one on.

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But not everyone always would wear sandals. But sandals were a thing of protecting your feet if you were traveling. They're walking, again, they're walking on a dirt path.

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They're going to hit hard rock or maybe some roots or different twigs or different things.

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So, again, it's a protection of the foot and allows you to travel much further. So they're told to bring sandals, but not two tunics.

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A tunic is basically, there was two basic forms of a tunic. You either have two pieces of cloth that are sewn together or if someone had a special loom, they would have a seamless tunic, like the one that you end up seeing at Christ's War that they ended up taking at the cross, they end up taking bids for.

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And so you end up seeing that the tunic would be an undergarment. So, typically, people would have an undergarment with things outside.

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And he's telling them not to take two. Now, one thing, where are they going to carry it? Because they don't have a bag, right? But the thing is, he's saying not to wear two tunics.

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This is, again, a little bit of a frustrating portion. I didn't see a lot of commentators mention anything about this.

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There's some, but not much, that explains why he said not to take two. The best that I can see is the reason is, by carrying only one, you have just the one set of clothing that you're wearing.

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So you're not going and changing clothes. It's not that they can go and wash the one tunic while the other one is drying.

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The way of washing it would be to get into the river, wash it with you in it, and then you're wearing it until it dries, right?

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Or you're putting other clothes over it. The thing is that they're not to carry extra clothing.

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And it's something that would mean that they would be, basically, typically wearing the same set of clothes.

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And you think about your day, and we live in a place where we have nice showers. They were going to go to different people's homes, and they don't have showers, and they don't have tubs, right?

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So you're going to typically just keep wearing that. How do your clothes do after a couple days if you're wearing them? I'll just let you think about that.

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So next we go to lodging, another provision. Now, in the culture of the

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Middle East, again, we have to understand the culture of the time this is written. We are different than that culture.

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This may shock some people, but in the first century culture, they didn't know what the Internet was.

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Some of you children, your parents didn't know what the Internet was either when they were your age. We have to understand the

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Bible in the time it's written. Do not try to read the Bible for what you think it means today.

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When people tell me, well, I think this means, I stop them and say, I really don't care what you think.

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I want to know what it actually means. That takes following the rules of interpretation.

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And one of the rules is you interpret something in the context of its time, not our time. So understanding the time, the first century, understanding hospitality culture of the first century, it's still very common actually in the

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Middle East today that there was an expected hospitality. It would be ashamed to not house a stranger.

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This seems so foreign to our American selfish individualistic thinking.

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We think of protecting ourselves and our family. We would never let some stranger in our home. We don't know them.

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Well, that's why you carry Smith & Wesson. However, this isn't the case everywhere.

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I remember reading many years ago about a man who, there was an American reporter that came through a town, a village town in the

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Middle East, and he had some car problems. He came to a stranger's house and asked for lodging because they don't have hotels there.

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And the person did not allow this American in the home. And the elders, the tribal elders of the town, stoned the man to death for the offense that he brought to the town in not housing a stranger.

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That sounds foreign to us, doesn't it? You'd kill a man for not opening his home.

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That is the culture that you would have. It's very different than ours. John MacArthur writes this, quote,

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In a day when inns were often sordid and very dangerous, travelers generally stayed in people's homes as they journeyed from one town to the next.

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And the twelve were no exception. But Jesus added an important caveat in their regard.

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Wherever they went, once they decided to enter a house for the purpose of lodging, they were to stay there until they left town.

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

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But they were not to move from house to house. As if to receive money from more people, after they accepted an initial invitation, they were to decline all others, unquote.

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So they shouldn't be accepting any offers to look for better accommodations because better accommodations would give better food, more money that they would have for things that they might need for the provisions while they're there.

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They're to go into a town. They're to go to whoever offers first and stay there.

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Remember that when they stay in the home, that's where they're getting all their provisions. I mean, if you're given the choice of staying with Pastor Andrew or Bill Gates, whose house would you prefer?

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I would prefer, well, okay, I'd prefer Pastor Andrew because it would be great theology discussion.

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Bill Gates would kick me out, he'd just get the gospel. And I don't think he likes it that very much.

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But we have to look at that they were to go to a home and trust God for the provisions, depend upon him, whoever he sent them to, to go there and to trust that that's where they're going to stay.

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They're not to do what the false teachers would do, which would be to move home to home to see who could give them better provision.

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Maybe they could get more money out of those people. This sets them apart because a common practice people would have is when they get better accommodations, they'll go there.

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The Twelve were told not to do that. Now, what we end up seeing in all this is that God is trying to teach the

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Twelve dependence. It's something that you and I also need to learn.

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Now, we may not be going out in the same way that the Twelve were going out from town to town with this authority that's given to do this, but the lesson of the instruction that he is providing for them, we have the same today.

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God says to protect themselves, but to trust him for the provision. We had in our church, we had a little bout with COVID, and we had a lot of people that what we think happened is one of our, we have a retired pastor who preaches for me when

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I'm not at the pulpit, and he had some heart issues, went into the hospital, and our theory is he came back with COVID.

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He probably got it at the hospital because he's very careful, and it spread. He preached. He was supposed to preach while I was gone, and we had to get someone else last minute because he was in the hospital, and when he came back,

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I understand what it's like when you prepare a message and can't preach it. So when I got back,

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I had him preach, and he literally came out Saturday, preached Sunday, and within a week or so, a number of our members got

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COVID, and he was one of them. And here he is. He had COVID. His mother -in -law ended up having to go into the hospital.

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His wife had to go into a different hospital. All three of them were separated. He's COVID. It's raining. He loses power.

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And he's putting, his wife ends up sending a message saying Steve is, you know, he's out there in the rain, sick, trying to get the generator running.

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You know, can anyone help him? Without hesitation, I just, I jumped in the car. My wife wrote a text to the church saying

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Andrew's on his way over. He's going to try to get the generator going, just be praying. If not, we're bringing

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Steve to our house, and people are like, what? You can't bring him to your house. He has got COVID. He wouldn't even answer the door.

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He was trying to talk through the door to instruct me, because he's like, I don't want you getting sick. I said, brother, let me be very clear.

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If I get sick from COVID, doing what the Bible tells me to do and caring for my brother, then guess what? God ordained for me to have

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COVID, and I'll get it. And if I die, then God ordained me to die. And if I live, then

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God ordained me to live. But I will trust that God knows better than me what he's doing.

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I'm going to do what scripture says, which is to care for my brother who is in need. I'm not going to worry about the result of this.

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We right now in our culture have several things that many Christians even have been in great fear of.

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COVID is one of them. There's people who are living in fear. I know we keep hearing to follow the science, but the science does say that it is 99 .98

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% survivable. You take vitamin C, take vitamin D, take lots of zinc.

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That's not true for everyone. So people do have to be careful. Same with the flu. Same with any sickness. But we don't let these other things drive us in fear.

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Why is it that we have fear of this? Because we hear it every day in the media. That's why. I mean, think about it.

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We get flu every year. What do we do? Stay home from work. But we don't have the media tracking it every day.

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Interesting thing. More people died in World War II than died in the

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Gulf War. Why is it that we had this thought that more people were dying in the Gulf War than World War II?

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Because in World War II, the time you'd see the numbers, they'd have big numbers. You know, 10 ,000 died, and they'd do it before a movie.

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They'd have credits before a movie letting you know how many died. During the Gulf Wars, we had it every day with names.

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You see, that's the difference. It was put before us every day. We have this fear because it's put before us every day.

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Another thing that was put before us is Black Lives Matter protests. I live by Philly.

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We have members of our church that live in Philly. And they're afraid. There's fear. There's also part of that is the fear of what you think about those who are involved in Black Lives Matter.

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There's a fear that many of them have because they have this belief that they're being oppressed everywhere they go.

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That's a fear that is controlling them. You have the fear of these lockdowns.

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Okay, you're in a freer state than Pennsylvania. I moved out of a state that still hasn't opened.

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I lived in Jersey. They still haven't opened since March. So you have these politicians that are just like,

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I've got a way to get a power grab. We can control people. We can decide when businesses are open or closed.

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And there's people who fear for business. They might be out of work. There's people that are afraid for the country and where this is going to go with the economy.

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It leads right into the next thing that we see in our culture right now is the elections. Oh, there are so many Christians that are so fearful.

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What if Biden wins? I got news for you. You want to know what happens if Biden wins? God still reigns.

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You know what happens if Trump remains in office and there's riots everywhere? God still reigns.

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You see, we as Christians should not be in fear of these things. We try to be careful.

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We try to use wisdom. We try to be sensitive to others. But we trust and rely and depend upon God because He reigns and is in control and is sovereign.

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And I got news for you. He knows much better what He's doing than you and I do. We think we know what we're doing, but He's all -knowing.

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And there's plenty of times that we think we know what we're doing, and it gets us into mess. And God knew what

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He was doing all along. There's times where He knows what we don't know. In fact, He always knows what we don't know.

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And when we look at these things that have come upon us and we're being deluged with, on whichever side you're on on these issues, there's some people that are like, no one should wear a mask.

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Some people are like, everyone should wear a mask. If you want to know which side I'm on, you can go listen to the podcast that we did together with your pastor and bud.

43:43

But, you know, there's whole lots of debate. And what's driving me crazy as I travel around and I speak to pastors,

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I counsel many pastors, is the thing is I'm seeing these issues dividing churches.

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That shows me churches where there's some people in the church that are not learning the lesson that the Twelve had to learn.

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Trust that God can take care of even your daily provision. If He could take care of your daily provision, guess what?

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He could take care of everything else. 1 Peter 1 .6

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-9 says this, In this you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been distressed by various trials, so that the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold, which is perishable, even though tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

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And though you have not seen Him, you love Him. And though you do not see

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Him now, but believe in Him, you greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory, obtaining as the outcome of your faith the salvation of your souls.

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We are part of the instruction that He gave was to depend upon God. Let's move to the reception in verse 11.

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Mark 6 .11 says, Any place that does not receive you as you go out from there, shake the dust off the soles of your feet as a testimony against them.

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Now, as with any missionary journey of the gospel, the Lord is preparing them for rejection.

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He says, If in any place they would not receive them or listen to the message, that they would go out from there and shake the dust off the feet.

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Now, shaking the dust off the soles of your feet was a Jewish way of expressing scorn to the

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Gentiles, which I'm sorry is most of you. For those who don't know,

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I was raised Jewish. I'm of the line of Levi, specifically Aaron, and more specifically, a

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Korahite. So if you get to your Old Testament chronicles, you'll know that Korahites are those who cared for the temple.

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So the idea that you'd have here is when they leave Israel and go into the

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Gentile lands and come back to Israel, they're to kick the dust off their feet so none of that filthy

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Gentile strand gets into the pure Israeli land.

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You hear that and go, Gee, that sounds an awful lot like Republicans and Democrats right now. You see the division that was between those two cultures.

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Christ came to bring that together, didn't He? In fact, what is He doing? He's sending them to Israel. He's sending them to their own people, and He's giving this instruction and kicking off the dirt from their feet if not received.

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It's a sign of judgment that He's saying to give to them. They would understand very well what this is, that this was a judgment on them for rejecting the gospel.

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And so we would end up seeing that the people who ministered and refused to receive the message, even after it was authenticated by all these miraculous signs, that they were to treat them like Gentiles.

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In fact, in Matthew 10, Matthew 10 gives us a greater description of all that we're seeing here.

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But in Matthew 10, 11 -15, it says this, And whatever city or village you enter, inquire who is worthy in it, and stay in that house until you leave.

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

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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, shake the dust off your feet.

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

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Wow, Sodom and Gomorrah is not exactly the city you think of for blessing. We may be surprised that in their culture he would be teaching about rejection.

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Remember, this is a culture of hospitality. Hospitality would be the expectation. So how much more should we in our culture, where hospitality is a foreign concept, should we expect rejection?

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In fact, for many of us who evangelize regularly, it's not rejection that surprises us.

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That's actually our expectation. It's someone that receives the Gospel that's a surprise to us.

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Right? That's what we don't expect. When someone is actually receiving the message, it's like, wait, wait, hold on.

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Am I hearing this right? Let me say this again. Maybe you didn't understand it. Jesus was training the disciples to expect rejection in a hospitality culture.

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How much more should we expect it in our culture of selfishness? If they killed Christ for telling the truth, how much more should we expect that they would do the same for us?

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Matthew 24, 9. Then they will deliver you to tribulation and will kill you and you will be hated by all the nations because of my name.

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That is the culture that we are entering now, brothers and sisters. We're entering a time for many that don't understand.

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I was raised a generation after the Holocaust. Going to Hebrew school, they would drill into us to identify the signs because there would be another

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Holocaust. They happened over and over throughout the centuries to the Jewish people. We are trained to recognize the signs of when a culture was ready to persecute you.

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The signs have been here for a while, but it's not the Jewish people. It's us, Christians.

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We're seeing it evident these days with these lockdowns and the refusal to worship.

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Coming out here, in fact, I was coming out here and I was supposed to leave tonight to go to Sarasota where my family lives.

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My parents, who I haven't seen this whole time with the lockdown. We usually get together for Thanksgiving and that had to get canceled because most of my family are watching the news and living in fear.

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And so when they found out that I was coming to here before going to my parents, my one sister called a conference call with my other brother and sister and then they called a conference call with my parents and all of them had a conference call where they basically told my parents to uninvite me to coming to the house.

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My father made my brother and sister call me to tell me the news. They basically said, could you go visit the church after?

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Because it's so dangerous if you go to a church. We all know the churches are the super spreaders of the virus.

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I don't know how a virus knows to only focus on churches.

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It's a pretty smart virus. If you go out into a protest on the streets for Black Lives Matter, that's actually healing the country because it's bringing herd immunity, but in a church it's going to kill you.

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I don't know how the virus is so smart. And I said, so you're not worried about me getting into a tube with recirculated air with a bunch of people

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I don't know. That's okay. It's the fact that I'm going to church.

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Yeah. Could you not do that? Then you can go visit them. No. I committed to being here at this pulpit.

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This is an honor. And I said, then I guess I won't see my parents if they're too afraid. This is the thing that you end up having here, is that there's people who are going to focus that we

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Christians are the cause of so many of the ills of this country. In fact, if any of you have been involved in any of the

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Black Lives Matter, I actually have people in our church who are married to people who are helping to organize it, to people who are, which makes for a great counseling.

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You talk about division in a home. But we have people who work with people who are involved in it.

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I know people from work on the streets. I know many people that have been very active in the protests.

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And I'm looking at this and I see this and I just, first my heart breaks in so many ways over it.

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But the thing that I'm seeing is the fact that they don't, even those that profess to know Christ, they don't have a biblical perspective on it.

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They don't see this as, they don't see how God can be working righteousness in the midst of evil.

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You see, we're going to be persecuted. I hear them, I hear them talking and they'll say how, you know, Christianity is the cause of all this oppression.

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I'm going, really? How? It's Christianity that says there's no difference between Jew and Gentile.

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There's no difference between male and female, free and slave. There is only one race, the human race.

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There's no difference. You know, it's a frustrating thing to see, but the persecution is coming for us.

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Matthew's account, though, going back to Matthew 10, has more instructions that's provided in Matthew 10, 16 to 23.

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

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

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

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

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For it is not you who speaks, but it is the Spirit of your

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Father who speaks in you. Brother will betray brother to death and father his child, and children will raise up against their parents and cause them to be put to death.

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You will be hated by all because of my name's sake. But it is the one who has endured to the end who will be saved.

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But whenever they persecute you in one city, flee to the next. For truly

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

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Son of Man comes." Remembering that Jesus just left His hometown. If you look at the first part of Mark 6,

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He just left Nazareth where He did no miracles there save heal a few people.

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It's not that He could not, it's that He would not because of their rejection.

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The instruction He gives to the twelve should not have been a surprise to them after seeing what they just came from in Nazareth and what

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He had done there. But so often what should be common sense to us is unexpected.

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As we see with Jesus, as He left Nazareth, He said He should not throw in Matthew 7 .6

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that He should not throw what is holy before dogs or throw pearls before swine. When we are rejected, we shouldn't be trying to fight and debate.

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We just move on and trust that God knows. The Lord will save who He desires.

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And when persecution comes and it will, just depend upon God and He will see us through.

55:52

Let's look quickly at the sending of the twelve in verses 12 and 13. They went out and preached that men should repent, and they were casting out as many demons and were anointing with oil many sick who were healing them.

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So they go out, the word here is they preached. Greek means to proclaim in the open.

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It is often what's argued for open air evangelism or what's called open air preaching today, is to proclaim in the open to all who would listen.

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It is what is done throughout, but it is a message that they had was a message of repentance.

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A message that's not being proclaimed when people say they're proclaiming God's Word today. They sit at pulpits or they go into the streets and they want to proclaim, but what are they proclaiming?

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God has a wonderful plan for your life. I mean, you are so special. God just loves you.

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Or they're preaching that God wants you to have a better life now. I've got news for you.

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If this is your best life now, you've got eternity and a lake of fire to look forward to. For the

57:05

Christian, this is the worst life now. We have eternity with Christ, the one we love to look forward to.

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So they went out preaching a message of repentance. And at least you think that I'm saying that that's not a core part of the message.

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Let me just give you a little sampling of verses that teach that the message of the proclamation was a message of repentance.

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Mark 1 .15, Matthew 3 .2, 4 .17, Luke 3 .3,

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5 .32, 13 .5, Acts 2 .38, Acts 3 .19,

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8 .22, 17 .30, 19 .4. Are you getting the point? Should I go on? Go check those passages.

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The fact is they were casting out demons. Why? To vindicate the message. They were vindicating the message of the gospel.

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But even with this, I already mentioned that earlier, but there is something else here that we have to look at that may be a bit confusing.

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What else were they doing? They were taking oil and anointing with oil. That may sound interesting.

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Because the thing is we end up seeing what would they do with oil in that day with those that were sick?

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It was used in a medicinal way of healing. Rubbing the oil in to bring healing to the body.

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And so here brings an interesting thing. If they're anointing with oil, then is the healing they're doing miraculous?

58:27

Or are they just acting like the faith healers? Oh look, we stretched your leg. Really all I did was turn the angle of your foot very slowly.

58:36

If you haven't seen that, you can go watch it on American Gospel. They slow down and show you how to do these things.

58:42

But is that all they do? Are the disciples just doing a trick? Are they just sitting there and really rubbing in the oil and saying it's a miracle?

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Well, that wouldn't vindicate the message, would it? No, this is something that is doing a healing.

58:56

So then what's the purpose of the oil? Well, let me quote from John MacArthur. He says, quote, Mark notes that as part of the healing ministry, the apostles were anointing with oil many sick people and healing them.

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The gospel records never indicate that Jesus anointed the sick with oil.

59:14

Yet the apostles did on at least this occasion. Though olive oil was sometimes used for municipal purposes, that was not the purpose here since the apostles healed the sick miraculously and not through the use of medicine.

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Why then did they anoint the sick with oil? In the Old Testament times, olive oil was used to symbolize

59:36

God's presence and authority, especially in anointing of the priests and kings.

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

59:52

They were not the source of their power, but only the channels used for it.

59:57

By using a simple symbol familiar to the first century Jews, the apostles passed on the glory back to the

01:00:06

Lord Himself. God incarnate Jesus needed no such symbol when He healed."

01:00:13

So you see, all this goes back to where that authority came from. That Christ was the authority.

01:00:18

And Christ being the authority is who we trust for our dependence. That in all the things that we have in life before us, all the things that can cause us to be in fear and worry and concern, what's going to happen if this?

01:00:32

What's going to happen if that? The answer is, we depend upon God every step of the way.

01:00:39

Just like the twelve going from town to town to town, they trusted and depended upon God.

01:00:45

And guess what? We must do the same. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we are a people who fear.

01:00:54

We are a people who need You, depend upon You. And we need help to depend upon You.

01:01:00

We ask, Lord, that as You instructed the twelve, to take with them protection but no provision.

01:01:08

May we look to You for our provision. If, Lord, if every of our provisions are taken away, if it be

01:01:13

Your will that Christians are thrown into the prisons and all of our provisions are removed and we have to rely completely on You through others to even give us our daily bread, may we learn from Your Word to do just that.

01:01:28

Lord, give us a love for You that we would let all these earthly things pass away so that the only thing we would focus on is our trust and dependence upon You for all things.

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