“Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword. For I have come to ‘set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law’; and ‘a man’s enemies will be those of his own household.’ He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for My sake will find it.
He who receives you receives Me, and he who receives Me receives Him who sent Me. He who receives a prophet in the name of a prophet shall receive a prophet’s reward. And he who receives a righteous man in the name of a righteous man shall receive a righteous man’s reward. And whoever gives one of these little ones only a cup of cold water in the name of a disciple, assuredly, I say to you, he shall by no means lose his reward.”
This is a marvelous portion of Scripture, and I truly feel so little and unworthy to preach it. I genuinely struggle; I feel like a child trying to grasp a mountain. These are truths of such vast importance, and here I am like a small child, not fully grasping these great truths, seeing my own lack, and then attempting to preach them. I really want to change and pray to be like the disciple described here. This passage calls us to a discipleship lifestyle. We are looking at the hallmarks of a true disciple.
We’ve seen that a true disciple:
- Doesn’t fear men.
- Unashamedly confesses Christ in the world.
- Hates his family compared to the love he has for Christ.
Today, we will see the fourth sign of a disciple. If you think not fearing men, confessing boldly, and hating your family were difficult, this next one will be a hundred times more difficult. The fourth sign of a disciple is that a true disciple hates himself.
This is a difficult portion. Someone said, “Your communion sermons are so comforting and encouraging nowadays, but these Matthew 10 sermons are very tough.” Yes, it is tough. But remember, the Gospel has both sides. If I only keep preaching the comforting and encouraging side of the Gospel and leave out the other, I will be a false prophet, and your blood guiltiness will be on me. As Paul says, so that your blood may not be on me, I have not shrunk from declaring the whole counsel of God. That is what many preachers fail to do to become famous, and that is why no one wants to preach verse by verse. The Gospel also has a sharp side. As a preacher, to be faithful, I must preach both sides. If you only like the comforting preaching and do not even want to hear the other side, watch out—you may be a false believer. One sign of a false disciple is coming to Christ only for the comforts of the Gospel and subtly ignoring the high callings and the cost to be paid. John 6 shows that many of His disciples, when they heard these things, withdrew, saying, “This is a hard teaching; who can follow this?”
Wanting to be a true preacher, I will preach the naked truth, even though it challenges me more than anyone. As true believers, listen and pray for God’s grace to shape you according to His words. Especially in today’s superficial Christianity, this is important. Ask nine out of ten Christians, and they will all want only comforts and shrink from its high and important responsibilities. We must rise above a common, everyday, false Christianity if we are to be true believers.
We will find it most useful to our souls to learn and remember this lesson ourselves and to impress it upon others. Few things do so much harm in the Christian life as wrong expectations. People look for a degree of worldly comfort in Christ’s service that they have no right to expect, and not finding what they look for, are tempted to give up Christianity in disgust. Instead, understand the reality: though Christianity holds out a crown of infinite blessings in the end, it brings also a cross in the way. If we understand that, we will not be surprised at troubles, but will be surprised we have less troubles and be grateful for whatever God gives in this life.
Last week we saw that a disciple hates his family. The Gospel brings a sword into the family. Some people strangely say, “Come to Christ, and your family problems will be solved,” but here Christ says you will have more family problems if you come to Christ. The Gospel rends families asunder and causes estrangement between the nearest relations. It is sure to do so in many cases because of the deep corruption of man’s heart. So long as one man believes and another remains unbelieving—so long as one is resolved to keep his sins and another desirous to give them up—the result of the preaching of the Gospel must be division. The Gospel is not to blame for this, but the heart of man is.
It is very difficult to hate family. But there is something even more difficult than hating family. There is something even more apt to rob Christ of His rightful place in the heart of an individual, even more than the family. Do you know what it is? The love of his own life. You might be willing to take Christ and lose your family, but would you be willing to take Christ and lose your life? Now you’re getting right down to the core. I mean, I might agree to the family deal. And so the Lord goes one step further and talks about giving up your life.
The next sign of a true disciple is that he hates himself.
The Disciple Hates Himself: The Cross and Self-Denial (Matthew 10:38-39)
Let us look at today’s verses. A true disciple not only hates his own family (by comparison) but even himself.
Verse 38: “And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me.”
The Lord says this repeatedly, with an addition, even in Matthew 16:24: “Then Jesus told His disciples, ‘If anyone would come after Me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me.'” He brings this before us repeatedly. This is non-negotiable. The whole point of this section is to stress one thing: total self-denial to the point of death. A disciple is one who says, “I love You more than I love the people that are closest to me in this world, and if it comes to that, I’ll choose You over them. And now, I love death for Your sake better than life for my sake.”
Now you’re getting down to whose devotion is real. Verse 38 puts it so simply: “He that taketh not his cross, and followeth after Me is not worthy of Me.” I have heard many explanations for “bearing your cross,” such as, “My wife is my cross,” “My husband is my cross,” “I’ve got this one rebellious teenager, he’s my cross,” or a financial problem, or sickness—anything that disturbs our peace is looked upon as a cross. No, those are not your cross. You have to give some other name for that, but definitely not “cross.”
What is your cross? When Jesus said, “Take up your cross,” the disciples knew immediately what He was talking about. They hadn’t even heard about Calvary yet. In His day, the “cross” was that wooden plank on which a crucifixion occurred; it was the most grotesque and most humiliating form of execution imaginable, meant to insult and shame them. Before crucifying them, criminals were made to carry their own cross through the streets to the place of execution. Whenever someone “took up” the cross and began to walk up the hill, the whole town would insult them, and everyone knew that they weren’t coming back—it was the end of them. Taking it up meant death. And that’s the way Jesus means for us to understand these words. He was talking about dying, just plain old dying. Be ready to die to self. If you want to follow Me, it’s not about you, your plans, your life, or your name anymore. You should die to yourself. Like Paul says, “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.” A true disciple will die daily to self—to self-pleasures and desires—and will put his self to death, living not as he wants, but as Christ wants. He must die to what he is and live for Christ.
The disciples understood that carrying the cross meant taking shame and dying. Very recently, there had been an insurrection in Galilee led by a man called Judas of Galilee, and the Roman general Varus had crushed it and crucified over two thousand Jews. He put their crosses up and down all the roads of Galilee so everywhere the people went, they saw them hanging on these crosses. Every Jew that was crucified carried the crossbeam for his own execution on his back as he marched. These disciples, as Galileans, had seen all of that. That was hot news in that region at that time. Jesus is talking to them in that historical context, saying, “You saw how they took the cross and went and died. You, as My disciple, must be willing to die,” He says, “rather than deny Me.” This is a symbol of painful, torturous death—the most excruciating death man has ever invented. He’s saying, “You take up your cross, you must be willing to go to the most excruciating, painful, torturous death imaginable.” That is the primary contextual meaning, but it has a spiritual principle, which the Lord repeated in different places.
Other passages talk about first hating self and denying self—not simply some of the things that are pleasing to self, but hating self itself. This involves many things:
- In the first place, abandoning his own righteousness; knowing there is no good in you.
- Refusing to rest upon my own wisdom.
- Ceasing to insist upon my own rights.
- Repudiating SELF itself.
- Being dead to SELF.
- Saying with the apostle, “For me to live is, not self—but Christ.” For me to live is to obey Christ, to serve Christ, to honor Christ, to spend myself for Him. In other words, it is what you have in Romans 12:1: “Present your bodies a living sacrifice unto God.”
You have to voluntarily take up your cross. You first deny self, and then regularly kill self on the cross. You continue in the path of self-mortification. Our text refers to the CROSS not simply as an object of faith, but as a principle of life, as the badge of discipleship, as an experience in the soul. Where, to live for God and die for self, we kill our most dear sins in our souls. Christ’s Cross atones for our sins and provides legal benefits by faith, but when we take up the cross and kill self and its desires, it gives us power over indwelling sin, as it is realized in our daily lives.
In this context, He is sending them out as ambassadors. In total consecration to Christ, we are ready to hate our self and take the cross and march forward following Him. Cross here refers to everything the world can do to us: insults, shame, and even if it kills, we are ready to die for Him. He says, “take up and follow Me.” It is voluntarily taking the cross and following Him. It can either be avoided or accepted; it can be either ignored or “taken up”! If you want to follow Christ, if you want to be Christ’s true disciple, you have to take the cross, or you cannot follow Him. It is dying to self-love. A love for self—a love for one’s own life—is the greatest love of any person. Christ says you should love Me more than yourself, and so when it comes as a choice of whether to live or die for Christ, you choose death. He demands to be loved by us even more than we love our own lives. And our decision to place our love for Him over our love for our own lives is the most determinative decision we will ever make.
He truly has the standard up there. It is not just okay to pray and come to Jesus, take baptism, and join the church. Committing your life to follow Jesus Christ means you would not only forsake your family, if need be, the people closest to you that you love the most, but you must also be ready to face all the insults of the world and even lose your life. That is a mark of genuineness.
Let us ask a question: “Am I a true disciple?” Have we begun to “take up the cross” at all? Is there any wonder that we are following Him at such a distance? Is there any wonder that we have such little victory over the power of indwelling sin? This is one of the means of sanctification. The only way of getting deliverance from the power of sin in our lives and obtaining mastery over the old man within us is by the cross becoming a part of the experience of our souls! Killing self and its desires. It was at the cross that sin was dealt with legally and judicially. It is only as the cross is “taken up” by the disciple that it becomes an experience, slaying the power and defilement of sin within us. Christ says, “Whoever does not bear his cross, cannot be My disciple.” O, what need has each Christian here this morning to get alone with the Master and consecrate himself to His service!
Cross-Bearing involves:
- Killing of self and its desires. This may be the giving up of certain pleasures.
- The suffering of losses and persecutions for Christ’s sake.
- The consecrating of all to Jesus.
- The endurance of my heavenly Father’s will.
What am I to do with it?
- I am deliberately to take it up.
- I am boldly to face it.
- I am patiently to endure it, for I have only to carry it a little way.
- I am cheerfully to resign myself to it, for my Lord appoints it.
- I am obediently to follow Christ with it.
Some might try to escape by saying, “Well, yes, Jesus certainly demands a great deal of those who would be His missionaries or preachers! But I don’t feel called to be any of those things. I just want to be one of His simple, humble, little quiet disciples and then go peacefully to heaven.” But Jesus doesn’t even give us that kind of an option. He doesn’t say, “Whoever of you does not forsake all that he has cannot be My missionary or My preacher.” He says that you cannot even BE one of His disciples—not at all—if you do not, from the heart, forsake all that you have, and place Him above all other loves in your life, and bear up your cross and follow Him. You are not saved—that is what He says.
As honestly as you can, what is your heart’s response to this demand of Christ? The Bible is written wonderfully in an interactive way. When we hear such truths, questions, objections, and opposition rise in our heart, and it answers those. He expects an objection: “Oh, I know my problems in life, my situation in my family. If this is how Christ wants me to come, then sorry, I cannot follow Christ like this. I cannot pay such a price. What I thought was coming to church once on Sunday, maybe coming in the evening, and it would be over. You are talking about not fearing men, confessing, hating my family, or even my own self, and taking the cross and dying—enough! This is hard teaching; who can listen to this?”
The Reward of Reception (Matthew 10:40-42)
The passage concludes with the promise of reward for those who receive and support Christ’s messengers.
Verse 40: “He who receives you receives Me, and he who receives Me receives Him who sent Me.”
Jesus establishes the incredible truth that the disciples are His representatives. To receive the disciple is to receive Christ Himself, and to receive Christ is to receive God the Father who sent Him. This makes the reception or rejection of the disciples a matter of eternal significance.
Verse 41-42: “He who receives a prophet in the name of a prophet shall receive a prophet’s reward. And he who receives a righteous man in the name of a righteous man shall receive a righteous man’s reward. And whoever gives one of these little ones only a cup of cold water in the name of a disciple, assuredly, I say to you, he shall by no means lose his reward.”
Jesus guarantees a sure and certain reward for anyone who supports His ambassadors.
- The reward is proportional to the person and the motive: Receiving a prophet because he is a prophet yields a prophet’s reward.
- The smallest act of service, like giving “only a cup of cold water” to a disciple in the name of a disciple, will “by no means lose his reward.”
This final section should make us love the church more and help us to grow in loving one another. Since true disciples come with a heavy cost paid in their family, often being shunned by the world, the believer finds relational refuge among his brothers and sisters in Christ. This is why Christ wanted His church to be filled with love.
We owe our foremost love to Christ. He demands our supreme affection because of who He is and what He has done. The true disciple discovers an ever-growing, matchless love of Christ in his spiritual journey. It is one thing to say, “I love Christ more than my family,” but it is quite a different thing to see the reality of that love displayed practically. May God help us to display that love.
Boy, if the cost is so high, I’ll never get too deep. I’m not going to make that sacrifice; I’m not going to give my life for the Lord. I’m not going to be so committed as to take up the cross and follow Him. I will continue to live as I am. I love my family and my life. I’m not going that far. Man, I’m going to bail out. I’m not going to take the cross; I’ll just continue like this—this is too much.
He answers that in a negative and positive way.
The Negative Answer: The Paradox of Loss (Verse 39)
The negative answer is in Verse 39: “He who finds his life will lose it.” This very phrase is cited a total of six times in the Gospels. Surely, this was a point that Jesus meant to have made clear to those who would be His followers. He means for it to sink into our hearts deeply.
What does He mean by that? If you say this call of Christ is too difficult, you love your family too much, you can never deny yourself, and so you reject this call of Christ and try to secure your love for family and self—whatever you are trying to find life by rejecting the call of Christ—you will lose it. That is an eternal principle of the kingdom.
Ask your conscience at this moment: what makes you reject this call of total commitment to Christ? It can be love of reputation, fear of men, love of family, or love of self. Whatever you go after, seeking life, you will lose that. I have seen in this life that for whatever reason people give for not following Christ, they become losers in that and never prosper. You will lose, and finally, you will lose your soul.
If we make it our ambition to pursue the advancement of our own brief life on this earth—our own pleasure, comfort, and desires—and we place that ambition above the cost of following Jesus, then by that very act, we lose the very life we are seeking to hang on to! But if, on the other hand, we make it our ambition to pursue the kingdom of Jesus Christ above all else, and we place our love for our Savior above the love of even a comfortable life on earth, we gain the very thing we give up—life! In fact, we gain life eternal! That is the principle of the kingdom: seek His kingdom first, or you will lose what you are seeking.
In securing your physical life, you lose not only your life here, but you also just lost your soul. In another place, in exactly the same context (Luke 9:23-25), Jesus asks: “For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and is himself destroyed or lost?”
Christ shows that to reject His call is the most foolish decision a man can make. Let us say, as a hyperbole, that if you reject My call and go and even gain the whole world (though that never happens), what is the use if you lose your soul in hell? What will you give in exchange? You can escape hell only by following Me. By rejecting My call, you will face the greatest loss—the loss of your soul. Then what will you give in exchange? If you guard your family love so much, you will lose it; your family will be in hell with you, cursing and hating one another forever, perhaps saying, “It is because of your selfish example I am in hell today.” You will hate yourself there.
A person may imagine himself a gainer by avoiding persecution and rejecting Christ’s call for the present world. But what shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul? Who would accept a momentary possession of the whole world in exchange for even twelve hours of the life of the body? How much less, then, would any person act thus when the everlasting welfare of his soul was to be the price of his transient enjoyment?
On the other hand, who does not submit to a momentary pain when he is assured that it shall be productive of permanent and perfect ease? We go through exams and surgery because we are assured relief after that. How much more may any momentary sacrifice be made in the assured prospect of eternal happiness and glory? Know, then, that this is the alternative set before you. You must be ready to lay down your life for Christ at any moment. If these terms appear too severe, nothing remains for you but “everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power.” If, on the contrary, you accept the Lord on these terms, even though you should be eventually required to lay down your life for His sake, you will be gainers in the issue, since “the sufferings of this present life… are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us.” Thus, “life and death are set before you.” What a powerful lesson on true discipleship!
If you’re willing to lose your life for My sake, you’ll truly find eternal life in the end. It doesn’t mean you get saved by being a martyr; it just means that if you’re a genuine Christian, you follow Christ whatever the cost. One reason why Christ makes such demands is that it’s impossible with man, and it makes false believers go back. Only those who have the work of God in their hearts truly stay and follow this. Only those who, by the work of the Holy Spirit, realize their utter depravity and the horror of their sin, knowing they are doomed, will be willing to obey any terms Christ puts to save them. They know this is not possible with us, but if we believe God has done a work in our hearts, He is able to transform us to this standard. That is the negative argument.
The Positive Answer: The Blessing of Being an Ambassador (Verses 40-42)
The positive encouragement is found in Verses 40-42. Up to now, it’s all been tough and negative. A true disciple fears not men, confesses Christ boldly, hates family, and finally hates himself, or else he loses his eternal soul—the very life he wanted. But that’s all so negative. Isn’t there a positive? Yes, there is!
If you become a totally committed, cross-bearing disciple, God will make you a great blessing to many souls in this world. Men who have seriously thought about this and made this decision have said: Christ’s cross is the sweetest burden that ever I bore; it is such a burden as wings are to a bird to fly joyfully above the world, or sails to a ship, to carry me forward to my harbor (Samuel Rutherford). Oh, the sweet cross that delivered me from my greatest enemy: self. Bearing the cross, daily dying to self, regularly frees us from that self.
Let us look at the blessing.
1. Receiving the Disciple is Receiving God (Verse 40)
Verse 40: “He who receives you receives Me, and he who receives Me receives Him who sent Me.”
Bearing the cross and confessing Christ, you become an ambassador for God. However they treat you, God takes it as a treatment for Him. God uses you as a great blessing in the world. We are not always bringing a sword and dividing families; there is a positive effect. We are the destiny-determiners in the world. When we bring the sword that separates, on the one hand are the unbelievers who don’t accept us, but on the other hand are the believers who accept our message. Not everyone is going to refuse the disciple’s message and persecute us; some are going to believe and receive. As a cross-bearing disciple, you become an agency among men receiving and passing on God Himself.
When someone receives us, they receive the Lord and the Father who sent Him. What an incredible thought! We give the greatest gift to that person in all eternity. You become a marvelous instrument in the hand of God to save eternal souls. God will mightily use you to bring souls to Him. While some people may hate you, on the other hand, people receive the infinite God through you, and that changes their eternal destiny. There is no greater joy and reward than saving a soul from hell and being a means for that. If one soul cannot be bought with the whole world, what is the value of saving one soul, and that will be our reward!
2. Sharing the Reward of the Messenger (Verse 41)
Verse 41: “He who receives a prophet in the name of a prophet shall receive a prophet’s reward; and he who receives a righteous man in the name of a righteous man shall receive a righteous man’s reward.”
That is a tremendous divine principle. A prophet is what he says, and a righteous man is what he is; they speak of the same individual, for a true disciple lives what he says. The prophet is his task, the righteous man is his character. He is a representative of God. When you go out representing God by your life and your lips, those who receive you will receive the reward that you receive.
If the Lord gives me a reward for proclaiming to you, He’ll give you the same reward for receiving what I proclaim wholeheartedly as truth. We all share. He who receives a prophet in the name of a prophet is to obtain the recompense as though he were himself a prophet. That is what God will do.
All of you may not become pastors, but you can receive the pastor’s reward. How? If you heartily receive God’s Word when it is preached and eagerly obey it. Show that reception by supporting the pastor in his work, strengthening him by such assistance as the occasion demands, cheering him when disheartened, and doing everything to encourage him in his difficult work—and all out of love for his office and desire for his success. When you receive the pastor in the name of a pastor, you will receive eternal reward as a pastor. Many of God’s saints know this. Mature Christians completely support the preacher in his work, don’t cause him trouble, and support him in God’s work. They strengthen him and don’t insult his labors by erratic attendance or opposition. They support him in every way in God’s work. The way they treat God’s messenger, Christ takes it as treatment for Him, and they get the pastor’s reward.
3. Rewarding the Smallest Service (Verse 42)
Verse 42: “And whoever gives one of these little ones only a cup of cold water in the name of a disciple, assuredly, I say to you, he shall by no means lose his reward.”
When you think of prophets and righteous men, you think of high-class people. But the Lord brings in a wonderful thought in Verse 42. What is the “little one” here? Young disciples, babes, a little nobody disciple. And, by the way, that is what the twelve were right now.
When these go out to preach and present Me, if you receive them, and you can demonstrate that by giving them just a cup of cold water because they’re My disciples—in other words, you’re helping them in the simplest way, responding to them in the simplest way—you will in no way lose your reward. They will be rewarded when they receive us because they will share in the very reward we have for proclamation. They will also be rewarded when they help us along in our ministry because God will not hold back a reward from those who have shared in the minister and his ministry.
The Lord cheers us by saying that the least service done to those who work in His cause is observed and rewarded of God. That the condition is “in the name of a disciple”—given for Christ’s sake—means the cup of water becomes a deed of eternal blessing. We then become the source of blessedness for others. We give them the privilege of hearing and receiving. We give them the pleasure of receiving and being rewarded. We give them the pleasure of giving to us and being doubly rewarded.
Application and Final Challenge
- Examine Your Discipleship: Are you a true disciple of Christ based on these demands? He claims our supreme love more than our dearest people and our own lives. If we do not love Him so much that we are willing to die to self, as expressed in taking up the cross, we are not worthy of Him.
- Acknowledge the Centrality of Christ: “Life” itself hinges upon Him. The one who willingly lets go of life to follow Him will find that very life, and whoever refuses these high demands to hang on to their own life will lose the very thing they seek to hang on to.
- Remember His Sacrifice: This is not too great a thing to ask when we consider what He gave up for us. Didn’t He give up the tranquility of heaven? Didn’t He experience the distress of the Father turning from Him as He bore our sins? Didn’t He love us above His own life, submitting Himself to “even the death of the cross” (Philippians 2:8)? When we see who He is and how much He has loved us, is it unreasonable that He would demand that we love Him in the same way? He demands so much love because He loves us infinitely more than this.
- Embrace the Blessedness: Look at the great blessing of overcoming the fear of men, confessing Christ, hating family, and denying self. We will be greatly used by God and become a means of eternal blessing to many souls.
We are called to love Christ supremely in this passage. We must admit before Him that we are not yet where we should be and resolve to be taught by the Spirit to set the Lord Jesus apart as the supreme love of our lives.
As we close the chapter, let us ask ourselves: Are we helpers of the Gospel or hinderers? Do we in any way aid the Lord’s “prophets,” “righteous men,” or “little ones?” He that gives a believer so little as “a cup of cold water to drink in the name of a disciple, will in no way lose his reward.” This is Christ’s infallible promise. We are not born to live selfish lives. May we all strive to leave the world a better world than it was when we were born!
Grace Reformed Baptist Church, Bangalore 