This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

[Music] Welcome to day five of our look through Matthew chapter 10. What Jesus
has to teach us about how you and I can be the kind of people that share the
good news in our lives. We live it in our lives, and we share it in our lives
with others so that other people can enjoy it for eternity.

I want to go over all the principles that we've talked about this week at the
end of this day, but for right now I want to jump right in to the 17th of these
principles that we're looking at together. It's in verses 34 to 36. Those verses
say, "Do not suppose that I've come to bring peace on the earth.

I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn a man
against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law
against her mother-in-law. A man's enemies will become members of his own
household.

" This 17th principle is, you make a relationship with Jesus the priority. To
share the good news, to be on mission with your life, you make a relationship
with Jesus the priority. It's tempting when we're sharing our faith to use the
promise of some good circumstance or some better relationship with a human being
happening in a person's life as we draw them toward a relationship with Jesus.

The problem is, we don't know what will happen in a person's circumstances or
relationships because they trust Jesus. Beginning a relationship with Christ
brings conflict into some relationships where there was not conflict. Because
the people don't like it that you have faith.

They don't want to have faith. They don't like it that you have faith. So now
you're in conflict because you're not like them anymore.

It also, Jesus says here, brings reconciliation into other relationships that
had no hope of reconciliation. People who were your enemies become members of
your own household. If we somehow imply a promise that accepting the good news
will bring immediate reconciliation to all human relationships, we're offering a
promise that Jesus never made.

In fact, he said the exact opposite would happen. Now, we certainly can offer
all the promises that Jesus made to us related to life and eternity. He promised
salvation.

He promised security in God's love. He promised eternal life. He promised inner
peace.

He promised hope and joy and on and on and on. It's when we get into making
promises about circumstances that we're on shaky ground. Becoming a follower of
Christ will cause some relationships to get better and others to get worse.

And those that got worse might eventually get better. We don't know. It changes
circumstances for many to the better while others face immediate persecution.

Jesus is teaching us here that accepting the gospel reshuffles relational
patterns and priorities. And that means, for me personally and as I share the
gospel, that means that Jesus has priority over even family relationships. He
tells us this in verses 37 to 39, "Anyone who loves his father or mother more
than me is not worthy of me.

Anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And
anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever
finds his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find
it.

Whoever loses his life to me, who humbly gives his life to me, as long as I try
to find my own life, make it work on my own energy and strength and power, I
keep losing it. It keeps leaking out. I can't find it.

It's when I say, "I can't find it in myself. I need your strength and power that
I find it. " And Jesus teaches us here that for that to happen, I've got to make
a relationship with him the most important relationship in my life.

Whatever relationship I make most important in my life is the relationship that
controls my life. Now for some, this could be a relationship with a spouse or a
parent. For others, it's a relationship with a friend.

For many, it's found in making ourselves the most important person in our lives.
The truth is all other relationships will disappoint you in some way because
we're all sinful human beings. Only God loves you perfectly.

And it's from the strength of that relationship with him that all of our other
relationships get as strong as they can possibly be on this earth. So you don't
start by trying to make all your human relationships right so you can get to
Christ, get to God. No, you make your relationship right with him first.

That's where it starts. And there's one final principle that Jesus teaches us
through this chapter, this amazing chapter, this seminary class, and how to do
missions as a church, as organizations in our own lives. The eighteenth
principle is you use wisely the power of a personal witness.

Listen to what he has to teach us, beginning in verse 40, going down through
verse 42. "He who receives you receives me, and he who receives me receives the
one who sent me. " Anyone who receives a prophet because he is a prophet will
receive a prophet's reward.

Anyone who receives a righteous man because he's a righteous man will receive a
righteous man's reward. And if anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of
these little ones because he's my disciple, I tell you the truth, he will
certainly not lose his reward. When you share this message of the good news,
Jesus says, "As people receive you, they're receiving me.

" His teaching has said that you cannot separate your personality from your
witness. You can't say, "Don't look at me, just look at Jesus. " Well, guess
what?

You're standing right there as a follower of Jesus. They have a hard time not
looking at you. But as they receive you, they receive him.

The truth of the matter is God specifically works through your unique background
and personality to lead people to faith in Jesus. You are part of the message.
As people receive you in Jesus' name, he teaches us here that they're blessed
for doing so.

These verses say that whatever reward you get for sharing, they get the same
reward for receiving. Because you're so tied up with the message that you're
sharing, you and I have to work to be sure that people focus on Jesus. They
don't get caught up in focusing on things about us that have nothing to do with
the message.

Let me talk about this broadly and personally. In intercultural missions, this
involves the principle of helping others to respond to Jesus in their culture
instead of feeling like they have to adapt your culture in order to respond to
Jesus. Even those who've been missionaries in a country for many years, they can
find this difficult because our culture is so ingrained in us.

We don't even recognize when we're doing this. When we're saying to somebody
sort of implicitly, like we don't even want to say it, but somehow we're saying,
"Well, you've got to talk like this or be like this in order to really be a
follower of Jesus. " When it's about our culture and not true faith.

Now, how do you break through this one? Well, this means that when it's
possible, what we need to do is support the leaders, the ministries of a local
church in that community, people who are in that culture, who are part of that
culture, who can reach out to that culture. The strong church to church emphasis
of the peace plan, the way that we reach out in missions here at Saddleback and
many other churches, that's the result of this principle.

Church to church. We go to help a church to reach its culture because the people
in that church who are part of the culture are best able to reach that culture.
So when I go, I don't want to necessarily be the one who goes to an orphanage
and just shares with the children that are there and minister to them.

No, I want to go and help the church go to that orphanage and share with the
people that are there and minister to them because the church is still going to
be there and because the church can best connect with them in their culture.
When you help a church that is in that culture to learn to share Christ with
that culture, you're best reaching that culture. This also has something to say
about your personal evangelism.

You use wisely the personal power of your witness when you invite someone to
faith, but you don't use it so wisely when you pressure someone towards faith.
Now, before we end in just a minute, I have to add in just one final principle
that's not actually in chapter 10. You have to go back to the end of chapter 9
for this principle, but it's so important and it really begins this talk of
evangelism that we have to add it in, and that is the principle of prayer, of
talking to God about it.

You remember at the end of chapter 9, Jesus said, "Pray that the Lord of the
harvest will send out workers into his harvest. " So, the final principle for
reaching out to any group is you pray for that group. That's where you begin.

As we've been talking about evangelism reaching out today, you might have been
thinking, "I don't know how I'm going to get started. I don't even know what to
say or how to say it or who to say it to. " I'll tell you where to start.

You start with prayer. You start by talking to God about a person that you're
concerned about. You might have him in mind even now.

You start by talking to God about a culture, about another country that you're
concerned about. In all of these principles that we've talked about, that's the
beginning place. You start by praying.

Now, as we've talked this week, as we walk through these principles, as we come
to the end of the week, I just want to remind you of them in a personal way.
These are principles that will help any church, any missions organization to do
what Jesus has told us to do in this world, and I've just briefly touched on how
we can do that, but these are also principles for your life individually. What
is Jesus saying to you about what it means for you to be called to make a
difference in this world?

Just in a spirit of prayer right now with me, would you just listen through what
Jesus is saying to you? Jesus has said to us, "You are called. You are sent.

You are authorized, and so you must focus. You must both do and say. You must
freely give the message.

You must sacrificially give to support the ministry. " You need to listen. You
need to be faithful over time, and sometimes you need to be faithful and move
on.

You need to adjust your methods without changing the message. You need to
remember that you are vulnerable, and so you're to be wise and humble, and you
are to know that God is working through every circumstance, and you're to live
by faith. You make a relationship with Jesus a priority, and so you use wisely
the power of your personal witness.

These are Jesus's instructions for you. Jesus, in just a very brief prayer, we
ask that you would strengthen us through your spirit to follow, to follow you
into the world, to make a difference so that not only we can hear the good news,
but those who are around us can hear the good news, and those who are across the
world can hear the good news. We ask this in your name, Jesus.

Amen. Be sure to join us next week. We're going to be looking at Matthew chapter
11.

In that chapter, we're going to see the humility of John the Baptist, the
justice of Jesus. We're going to see the rest that he gives for our souls.