All About GOD - Growing Relationships with Jesus and Others

Never Promised you a Rose Garden

Never Promised you a Rose Garden. Matthew 10.16-31

About 10 years ago, when my daughter graduated from U.C. Berkeley, she was hired off campus by Johnson & Johnson as a pharmaceutical rep, and almost immediately, sent back to New Jersey for training. Just 20 years old, she tackled the intense training like all of her academic pursuits from the time she was a tyke at a Montessori preschool.

Now imagine if, at the completion of the training, the door opens and the president of the company comes in the room offering congratulatory words, shaking hands, ready to send the new hires out with a final word… can you picture it? He tells them what a fine job they have done, the potential for their careers … and then the other shoe drops as he tells the fresh recruits how harshly they will be treated, that they will be disliked, spat upon, etc., as representatives of J & J!

So it was when Jesus assembled the twelve disciples, first telling them the great things they will do—teaching, healing, and raising the dead—seriously incredible, supernatural things! The men are looking at one another and thinking, ‘Wow, when Jesus called me to follow him, I didn’t know I would be doing all these things! It is going to be amazing!’ They may even have battled a little personal pride, thinking of what they would be empowered to do, right?

But then … Jesus tells them it is going to be anything but easy. Do not forget they were preaching a new way to Jewish people, who believed that their holiness and right standing with God came from upholding the Law—Jesus was about to change all of that, when he went to the cross and ushered in the way of Grace. Bearing in mind that all of them—Jesus’ disciples, the 12 apostles (these sent-out ones), and new believers were under the heavy-handed rule of Rome, and Rome was going to grow more and more intolerant of the Christians, as they were to profess no king besides Caesar.1,2

Jesus looks at them, “I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves. Be on your guard; you will be handed over to the local councils and be flogged in the synagogues. On my account you will be brought before governors and kings as witnesses to them and to the Gentiles. But when they arrest you,

do not worry about what to say or how to say it.

At that time you will be given what to say,

for it will not be you speaking,

but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you. “Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child; children will rebel against their parents and have them put to death. You will be hated by everyone because of me, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved. When you are persecuted in one place, flee to another. Truly I tell you, you will not finish going through the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes.

“The student is not above the teacher, nor a servant above his master. It is enough for students to be like their teachers, and servants like their masters. If the head of the house has been called Beelzebul, how much more the members of his household!

“So do not be afraid of them, for there is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known. What I tell you in the dark, speak in the daylight; what is whispered in your ear, proclaim from the roofs. Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.

And yet the Twelve did not break and run away! Each one knew he was chosen and called, and bore the sentiment Paul would later pen, “for I know the one in whom I trust, and I am sure that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him.”3

Jesus’ warning to them was not just about the ministry they would do while he was still with them, but also about what he knew of what was to come, after he ascended into Heaven, and the persecution they would endure. Eleven of the twelve disciples would indeed die a martyr’s death.

Note with me what God knows about each of us: Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.

Dear Friend, God knows all about you—your thoughts, what you are going to say before it ever leaves your mouth. He knows when you sit down and when you stand up; God knows how many days you will live.4 Any and every detail about your well-being concerns him. As the woman redeemed at the well told her townspeople she invited them to meet Jesus, ‘Come and meet the man who told me everything about me—and loved me anyway!’5 Turn your eyes to Jesus, cast all your anxiety on him, because he cares for you.6

Christine DiGiacomo, www.pastorwoman.com ;

1 - Believers in Jesus Christ were not yet called Christians--not for about a decade after Jesus died, recorded in Acts 11.26

2 – John 19.15

3 – 2 Timothy 1.12

4 – from Psalm 139

5 – from John 4

6 - 1 Peter 5.7