The Terms of Our Commission Text: Matthew 10:16-23
Introduction: A Call to Conflict
We live in an age where the marketing department has taken over large swaths of the evangelical church. The gospel is presented as a therapeutic product designed to meet your felt needs. Jesus is a life coach who wants to help you become the best version of yourself. And the mission of the church is to be as inoffensive as possible to as many people as possible for as long as possible. We are told to be nice, winsome, and accommodating, in the desperate hope that the world will finally like us.
Into this plate-glass world of seeker-sensitive niceness, the words of Jesus in our text land with the force of a thrown brick. This is not a recruitment speech designed to boost numbers. This is a commissioning, and the terms are stark. He is sending His disciples out, not to a friendly neighborhood potluck, but into a war zone. He promises them persecution, betrayal, universal hatred, and the constant threat of death. If your vision of the Christian life is one of health, wealth, and untroubled popularity, then you must reckon with the fact that you are following a different Christ than the one we meet in the Scriptures.
Jesus is not a liar. He does not use bait-and-switch tactics. He tells us plainly from the outset that the path of discipleship is the path of the cross. The world hated Him, and if we bear His name, it will hate us too. This is not a sign that we are doing something wrong; it is a sign that we are doing something right. A faithful Christian in a fallen world should be about as popular as a game warden at a poacher's convention. Our Lord is equipping His men for the reality of spiritual warfare, and these instructions are just as relevant for us as they were for them. We have been sent, and we must understand the terms of our commission.
The Text
"Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves; so be shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves. But beware of men, for they will deliver you over to the courts and flog you in their synagogues; and you will even be brought before governors and kings for My sake, as a testimony to them and to the Gentiles. But when they deliver 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. For it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you. And brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child; and children will rise up against parents and cause them to be put to death. And you will be hated by all because of My name, but it is the one who has endured to the end who will be saved. But whenever they persecute you in this city, flee to the next; for truly I say to you, you will not finish going through the cities of Israel until the Son of Man comes."
(Matthew 10:16-23 LSB)
Strategic Innocence (v. 16)
Jesus begins with a startling and paradoxical image of our situation and our required character.
"Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves; so be shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves." (Matthew 10:16)
First, notice the setup. We are sheep. Sheep are not known for their ferocity, their cunning, or their natural defenses. They are, in a word, vulnerable. And we are sent into the midst of wolves. Wolves are the natural predators of sheep. They are cunning, they are vicious, and they hunt in packs. This is Christ's assessment of the world system. It is not neutral territory. It is enemy-occupied territory, and it is ravenous. The one who sends us knows this full well. He is the Good Shepherd who lays down His life for the sheep, and He is also the Lion of the tribe of Judah. Our safety is not in our own strength, but in His sovereign care.
Given this perilous situation, what is His command? He tells us to adopt two seemingly contradictory characteristics. We are to be "shrewd as serpents." The serpent here is not a symbol of evil, as it is in Genesis 3. It is a symbol of practical wisdom, of being savvy. A serpent is aware of its surroundings, it knows how to avoid danger, it is not naive. Christians are not called to be gullible simpletons. We are to understand the times. We are to be wise to the schemes of the devil and the machinations of a hostile world. We are not to be easily duped by political slogans or cultural trends. Shrewdness means we do our homework.
But this shrewdness must be married to another quality: "innocent as doves." The dove is a symbol of purity, harmlessness, and sincerity. Our wisdom must never curdle into cynical, manipulative pragmatism. We are to be without guile. Our motives must be pure, our testimony must be true, and our lives must be blameless. We are not to fight the wolves by becoming wolves ourselves. We do not adopt the world's methods of slander, deceit, and power-grabbing. We must be men and women of unimpeachable integrity. The world must be able to find no fault in us, except concerning the law of our God. This combination is our charge: to have a hard head and a soft heart. We are to be wise, but harmless; clear-eyed, but pure-hearted.
The Persecution and the Platform (v. 17-20)
Jesus then gets specific about the source and purpose of the coming opposition.
"But beware of men, for they will deliver you over to the courts and flog you in their synagogues; and you will even be brought before governors and kings for My sake, as a testimony to them and to the Gentiles." (Matthew 10:17-18 LSB)
The warning is blunt: "beware of men." The persecution will come from human institutions, both religious ("synagogues") and secular ("courts," "governors and kings"). This is a total opposition. The apostate religious establishment will hate you, and the pagan state will hate you. When the church is faithful, it is an irritant to all forms of man-centered power.
But what is the purpose of this persecution? It is not meaningless suffering. It is "for My sake, as a testimony to them and to the Gentiles." God, in His sovereignty, turns the enemy's courtroom into His pulpit. The arrest, the trial, the interrogation, these are not defeats. They are divinely appointed opportunities for witness. The chains on the apostle Paul became a platform to preach the gospel to the entire Praetorian Guard. When you are dragged before the powerful of this world, you are not there as a victim; you are there as an ambassador for the King of kings, to put them on trial before the bar of God's justice and grace.
And in that moment of supreme pressure, Christ gives a glorious promise:
"But when they deliver 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. For it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you." (Matthew 10:19-20 LSB)
This is not an excuse for lazy pastors to neglect their sermon preparation. This is a specific promise for a specific context: a legal trial for your faith where you have no time to prepare a defense. In that moment, when all human eloquence fails, the Holy Spirit Himself will give you the words. God the Father, through God the Spirit, will bear witness to God the Son. It is a promise of supernatural aid when it is most needed. Our testimony is ultimately not our own; it is God's testimony through us.
The Cost and the Crown (v. 21-22)
The conflict will not be limited to public institutions; it will tear through the most intimate relationships of human life.
"And brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child; and children will rise up against parents and cause them to be put to death. And you will be hated by all because of My name, but it is the one who has endured to the end who will be saved." (Matthew 10:21-22 LSB)
The gospel is a sword. It divides. It forces a choice, and that choice can sever the deepest of natural bonds. Loyalty to Christ must supersede loyalty to family. When a family member chooses the world over Christ, they will often become the most bitter of persecutors. Jesus is preparing His disciples for the deepest possible pain: betrayal from within.
And the hatred will be universal. "You will be hated by all because of My name." This does not mean every single individual will despise you, but that the hatred will come from all categories of men, from every quarter of the fallen world system. Why? "Because of My name." The offense is not our personality quirks or our strategic missteps. The offense is Christ. His name represents His authority, His exclusive claims to truth, His demand for repentance. The world hates the name of Jesus because it hates the Lordship of Jesus. If you are not experiencing any of this hatred, you should perhaps ask if you are truly bearing His name.
In the face of this relentless opposition, the call is to persevere. "But it is the one who has endured to the end who will be saved." This is not teaching salvation by works, as though our grit is what saves us. Rather, it teaches that endurance is the evidence of genuine, saving faith. True saints persevere. Those who fall away under pressure prove that they were never truly of us (1 John 2:19). Salvation is a gift of grace, and that grace includes the gift of perseverance. God doesn't just get you started; He sees you through to the finish line.
Tactical Retreat for Gospel Advance (v. 23)
Finally, Jesus gives a practical, strategic command coupled with a much-debated prophecy.
"But whenever they persecute you in this city, flee to the next; for truly I say to you, you will not finish going through the cities of Israel until the Son of Man comes." (Matthew 10:23 LSB)
The command is to flee. This is not cowardice; it is strategy. We are not to seek out martyrdom. We are not to stand still and be senselessly destroyed when there are other fields to be sown. The mission is the preaching of the gospel, and if one door is slammed shut, we are to move on to the next. This is tactical mobility in the service of the Great Commission. We are to be hard to pin down.
But what does He mean, "you will not finish going through the cities of Israel until the Son of Man comes"? Many have twisted this to refer to a secret rapture or the final Second Coming, creating all sorts of timeline confusions. But the context is the immediate mission to Israel. The "coming of the Son of Man" is best understood here, as in other places in Matthew, as a coming in judgment. Jesus is predicting the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple in A.D. 70. That event was the definitive judgment on the old covenant system that had rejected its Messiah. It was the public vindication of Jesus as the true King. He is telling His disciples that their immediate mission to Israel is so urgent, and the time so short, that they will not run out of towns to preach in before that cataclysmic judgment arrives, a judgment that would close the door on that phase of the mission and fling the gospel out to all the Gentile nations.
Conclusion: Our Confidence in the Shepherd
So what are we to make of these marching orders? This is not a call to a comfortable life. It is a call to a glorious, costly, and ultimately victorious conflict. We are sheep sent among wolves, but our Shepherd is the one who has authority over all wolves. We are called to be shrewd as serpents, but our wisdom comes from the Spirit of God. We are called to be innocent as doves, and our innocence is the righteousness of Christ Himself, imputed to us.
We will be hated, but we are loved by the Father. We will be betrayed, but we will never be forsaken by our Lord. We are called to endure, but our endurance is sustained by His grace. The world may drag us before its courts, but we go as witnesses to the Judge of all the earth. The terms of our commission are severe, but the one who commissions us has already overcome the world. Therefore, we do not go in fear. We go in faith, knowing that the Spirit of our Father speaks in us, and that nothing, not even persecution or death, can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.