Mat 10:30 | KingComments | STEP | After His warnings to His disciples about the persecution to come, the Lord encourages them. The first encouragement is that all the slander that will be spread about them will at one time be brought to light. Then it will become clear that it really was slander. All who have spread these slanders, and all who have believed them, suffer the just punishment for it. We will in some cases already now, but certainly then, know the hidden reasons of the enmity of the people. It is also a great encouragement to know that the Lord was the First to enter the path of rejection. Our performance should be very different from the underhand slandering of our opponents. The Lord instructs us to pass on loud and clear to others what He says to us personally in our private relationship with Him. A second encouragement not to be afraid is our Father’s care. We should not be afraid of the people. They can do no more than kill the body. The killing of the soul is beyond their reach. The destruction of both body and soul in hell belongs only to God Who alone has the power to do so. We are not dealing with people, but with God. Someone who was well aware of this is the man of God John Knox (1514-1572). On his tombstone, it reads: ‘Here lies one who feared God so much that he never feared the face of any man’. For the faithful follower of the Lord Jesus, God is a Father. His concern extends to little animals that are barely meaningful to man and to things that man does not think about at all, such as the number of hairs on his head. If God’s concern goes out to those things that are so completely unimportant to man, how much more does God’s concern go out to those who are connected to His Son and share in His fate on earth. Sparrows don’t worry and hair even less and God takes care of it. For God disciples surpass many sparrows. That’s why they don’t have to worry about whether or not God thinks of them when they encounter the hostility of the world.

‏ Matthew 10:30

Encouragements

After His warnings to His disciples about the persecution to come, the Lord encourages them. The first encouragement is that all the slander that will be spread about them will at one time be brought to light. Then it will become clear that it really was slander. All who have spread these slanders, and all who have believed them, suffer the just punishment for it. We will in some cases already now, but certainly then, know the hidden reasons of the enmity of the people. It is also a great encouragement to know that the Lord was the First to enter the path of rejection.

Our performance should be very different from the underhand slandering of our opponents. The Lord instructs us to pass on loud and clear to others what He says to us personally in our private relationship with Him.

A second encouragement not to be afraid is our Father’s care. We should not be afraid of the people. They can do no more than kill the body. The killing of the soul is beyond their reach. The destruction of both body and soul in hell belongs only to God Who alone has the power to do so. We are not dealing with people, but with God. Someone who was well aware of this is the man of God John Knox (1514-1572). On his tombstone, it reads: ‘Here lies one who feared God so much that he never feared the face of any man’.

For the faithful follower of the Lord Jesus, God is a Father. His concern extends to little animals that are barely meaningful to man and to things that man does not think about at all, such as the number of hairs on his head. If God’s concern goes out to those things that are so completely unimportant to man, how much more does God’s concern go out to those who are connected to His Son and share in His fate on earth. Sparrows don’t worry and hair even less and God takes care of it. For God disciples surpass many sparrows. That’s why they don’t have to worry about whether or not God thinks of them when they encounter the hostility of the world.