Truly at some point you've been the poor schmuck who gets stuck in the middle of all the Christmas

gifts on Christmas morning and it's your job to sort

through all of these things and put together the rotation and make sure that the right presents

are going to the right people. It seems like it be simple but it's kind of stressful and

detracting and Christmas is my birthday. So I shouldn't have to do that but I

always end up doing it. I don't know what my problem is. But Matthew

chapter 10 has me feeling a lot the same way with the same pressures.

We have this difficult little paragraph at the end of the missional discourse where it sounds

like there's a whole bunch of presence being given out, rewards that is, and they're being

given to different people, and it's hard to know exactly who these are supposed to go to.

And I feel like before we move on to Chapter 11, we need to sort out who gets what reward here at the end of

Matthew 10 because it seems rather important so Matthew 10 verse 40 we've just

heard a whole bunch of stuff about Jesus saying that he's sending the disciples out into

the big open world quest to go and represent the kingdom and tell people about him. They're going out with

the message. The message is the kingdom of heaven is near and they are equipped to heal the sick listen

closely to this list raise the dead cleanse those who have leprosy and drive out demons

there's nothing else on the list those are the things that they get to do

supernaturally that illustrate the authority of the message in case people just don't take

it on the merits of the message or on the merits of what Jesus has done.

So there's all this up and down language about, hey, it's going to be tough, probably going to be flogged a little bit,

you know, that'll be okay. It's going to be hard to know what to say, don't worry. I'll be there with you.

You'll get the words that you need to know to say

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