Telling the Truth

Guest (Female): The Christmas season can be so full of parties and presents, it's easy to forget what the holiday is really about. Stuart Briscoe's coming up with a reminder, and he begins in just a moment.

Guest (Male): Right now is one of the most important times of the year for Telling the Truth. As we approach December 31st, generous friends have stepped forward with a special matching grant that will double your gift to help more people experience life in Christ. That means your support will go twice as far to help share God's Word around the world through Stuart and Jill's biblical teaching, digital broadcasts, and global partnerships. So don't miss this powerful opportunity to make an even greater impact before midnight December 31st while your gift will be doubled through this special matching grant. Call 262-788-4648. That's 262-788-4648 or give online at tellingthetruth.org. Now, let's get into the word with Stuart.

Stuart Briscoe: "If only we could have peace. If only we could have peace." Or as the famous expression of the man who was beaten up by the Los Angeles police a number of years ago, "Why can't we all just get along? Why can't we all just get along?" It seems over the Christmas period we do manage to get along. We do manage to create a much more peaceful atmosphere. People try just a little bit harder, but it doesn't seem to last.

The interesting thing to me about this is that this attitude prevailed at the time that Jesus came into Galilee years and years ago. His disciples had listened to what he had to say. When he asked them, "Who do men say that I am?" they responded by saying, "Well, everybody seems to think you're a prophet, they're not agreed which one." Then he asked them a very penetrating question, "But who do you say that I am? Who do you say that I am?"

Peter, you remember, stepped forward and he said, "You are the Christ, the son of the living God." For some strange reason, Jesus said, "You're absolutely right, Peter, but don't tell anybody." Actually, it wasn't a strange reason why he told him to be quiet because under further teaching about what it meant to be Messiah, it was perfectly obvious that Peter's ideas of Jesus' messiahship were all wrong, totally wrong.

And one of the wrong ideas that people had in Jesus' time about the coming of Messiah was simply this: they thought that Messiah, quite rightly so, would sit on David's throne forever and ever. That was what God had promised them, and it's recorded in the Old Testament. They also thought that that meant he would literally reestablish the reign of David over Israel, and they would move into the glory days, the golden days of the rule and reign of David and Solomon—something very akin to peace on earth, something very akin to paradise on earth. Everything was going to be absolutely wonderful.

And Jesus shattered those dreams by saying that is not how it's going to be as a result of my coming. Now, why do I mention that to you? I mention that to you because we are endeavoring to talk about the reason for the season that we will celebrate. I want to point you to another reason for the season that Jesus spoke about that will be, I promise you, a huge surprise.

So turn, if you will, in your Bible please to Matthew chapter 10. The saying that Jesus pronounced is, I think, startling. Verse 32 of Matthew chapter 10: "Whoever acknowledges me before men, I will also acknowledge him before my father in heaven. Whoever disowns me before men, I will disown him before my father in heaven." Here it is: "Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword."

Isn't that one of the most surprising things you ever heard? And doesn't this seem to contradict other things that we've heard about Jesus? I mean, Isaiah in his great prophecy recorded in chapter nine gives all the names for the promised one who will come, including Prince of Peace. Let's look into the context here. Jesus immediately goes on to quote the minor prophet Micah, and he says a startling thing.

Verse 35 of Matthew 10: "I have come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. A man's enemies will be the members of his own household." All right, so what he is saying in effect is that when he says he hasn't come to bring peace but a sword, he says that his coming is going to create a rift in relationships sometimes.

Now, does that mean that the Father said to the Son one day, "Son, things are a bit of a mess down there on earth, go make them a lot worse. Just go and stir up a whole lot of trouble. Some of these relationships aren't very good, well really go and set some fathers against their sons and some mothers against their daughters and some daughters-in-law against their mothers-in-law." Is that what he said? No.

What he's actually saying is this: that my coming will present truth and some people will respond and some people will react. And some people will believe and some people will not believe. And some people will take so seriously their commitment to me that their families will begin to discover that the depth of commitment to Jesus actually gets in the way of the commitment that they thought they had as family members.

He doesn't come intentionally to cause trouble, but his coming and the presentation of who he is will be so challenging and will require such response that there will be positive and negative, there will be pro and there will be con, there will be those who embrace and those who push away. And the result will be not harmony, but at times conflict. This is not what is intended; this is what will happen when the message of who Jesus is is proclaimed as it must be proclaimed.

Guest (Male): More powerful teaching from the Briscoes is headed your way, so don't go anywhere. We've made a wide array of resources and content available to you online for free at tellingthetruth.org and on the Telling the Truth app. There, you can listen, read, and watch powerful teaching from Stuart and Jill on relevant topics like the sovereignty of God, the importance of the church, and how to grow closer with Jesus Christ. You can also request this month's featured resource as thanks for your gift of support to help share the abundant life Jesus offers with more people around the world. Visit us online or download the app today and experience life with Telling the Truth. Now, let's get back to Stuart and today's message.

Stuart Briscoe: You say, "Well, why must it be proclaimed?" To answer that, we need to go back a little further in the context. I refer you now to the closing verses of Matthew chapter nine. This is what it says: "Jesus went through all the towns and villages teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom, healing every disease and sickness. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them because they were harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd."

All right, here's the situation. Galilee in those days was quite densely populated. There were huge crowds of people, many towns quite sizeable in many instances. Wherever Jesus went, he attracted a large crowd of people. Sometimes his disciples were not enthusiastic about that. On at least two occasions, we know that they said basically, "Send them away. Just send them away."

Jesus always took a totally different tack on that one, and when he looks on them, he is moved with compassion towards them. Why? Well, we're given some information here. He had compassion on them because they are harassed and helpless. "Harassed" means that they are under severe pressure. "Helpless" means that they cannot find any alleviation for the pressure, and they are in despair. There is deep psychological and emotional pain there.

Not only that, he is healing every disease and sickness. There is all kinds of physical trauma that the people are experiencing. In addition to that, he recognizes that an underlying problem is that they are like sheep without a shepherd. They are people who have no transcendent one to whom they can turn who will give them support and encouragement and guidance and direction. They cannot in all truth say what the psalmist David said, "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall lack nothing."

They have deep, deep spiritual needs as well. Not only that, Jesus refers to the crowds and he says, "The harvest is plentiful." You check in Revelation chapter 14 sometime. There's a very graphic picture of the end of the world where God sends his angels with scythes and sickles to bring in the harvest. And that is a picture of men and women at the end of the world being gathered into God's barn where he will sit in judgment upon them.

And what Jesus is saying is this: this is a huge, huge crowd of people here. They have pervasive physical trauma, they have deep psychological pain, they are suffering from profound spiritual need, and they are in great eternal danger. What would you expect the response of Jesus to be? And the answer is you'd expect him to be moved with compassion, and that is precisely the case.

He is moved with compassion, and he draws the situation to the attention of his disciples who haven't noticed it. They have other interests, they have other priorities. They are not looking at the harvest that is out there. Meanwhile, Jesus tackles the situation. We recognize that he begins to minister to the people, and it's very, very important we recognize how he ministered to them.

He healed every kind of sickness and disease. In other words, he addressed their physical needs. He engaged in teaching and preaching. He dealt with social issues by teaching them, and he dealt with their spiritual issues by preaching the news of the kingdom to them. There's a balance here. He is addressing physical needs, he's addressing social needs, he's addressing spiritual needs. There's the model for disciples to this day.

We must add, of course, that there are many agencies dealing with people's physical needs and there are many agencies dealing with their social needs, but only the church can deal with their spiritual needs. Therefore, whilst we engage in physical and social ministries, priority number one must be and must never change from the spiritual needs of men and women with the others held in balance.

Jesus is very careful to point all this out to his disciples, and he says, "Look, there is a huge shortage of people who can effectively do something about this ministry, the needs of the multitude." It's very interesting to notice that whilst he said there's a huge shortage, he also recognizes that he does have a small group. And we are told quite a lot about them in the beginning of chapter 10 of Matthew.

This is what it says about them: "He called his 12 disciples to him and gave them authority to drive out evil spirits and to cure every kind of disease and sickness. These are their names." He then not only gives us the names of his little group, but he gives us information about them. In other places in Scripture, we have all kinds of biographical details about many of these people, and what we conclude from these biographical details is that these were surprisingly ordinary people.

They had ordinary names. They had fathers, they had brothers, they had jobs, they had political leanings, they had all kinds of religious understandings. Some of them were married, some of them had families. We know all this information about them. Some of them, we are actually told that they really messed up quite frequently. They were very ordinary people. That's the first thing we notice about them.

The second thing we know about them, however, is that they were people who when Jesus called them to himself, they responded to his call. What is the call of Christ exactly? I believe it is encapsulated for us in the call of Simon who became Peter. Here it is: "Come, follow me, and I will make you."

"Come" is an invitation to relationship. "Follow me" is a summons to discipleship; you can't separate the two. "I will make you" is a promise of transformation. "Come" is an invitation to relationship. What kind of relationship? The relationship of a sinner to a savior. The relationship of a disciple to a teacher. The relationship of a servant to a master. The relationship of a worshiper to the Lord of heaven and earth.

Come, come, come! Whosoever will may come. He that comes to me, I will under no circumstances cast him out. This is a universal invitation, but notice it is being presented by the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. It is by the one who has come to gather a group of disciples. Therefore, the invitation is married to a summons to discipleship.

Some people want the invitation without the summons. Some people want to be saved but they don't want to be discipled. Some people want to get in through the door but stay as close to the entrance as they can in case it doesn't work out. Jesus said, "No, no, no, that's not how it works. Come, follow me. And if you do, I promise you something: I'll make you into what I want you to be."

Not only that, we notice that these very ordinary people who'd responded to the call of Christ were uniquely equipped by him for the task that he had in mind for them. So he knew that they were going to go out and face all kinds of demonic opposition, so he gave them authority and power against them, for he never calls without equipping.

Very ordinary people responded to the call of Christ, uniquely equipped for that for which he had called them. And then it says fourthly, "And when they were sent, they went. When they were sent, they went." Basically, what they said was, "We'll be what you want us to be, Lord. We'll do what you want us to do, Lord. We'll go where you want us to go. Here am I, send me." Those were the little group of people that he had, but there was a desperate shortage and he needed a whole lot more.

Guest (Male): Stuart, what should we take from Jesus's example as we reach out to others?

Stuart Briscoe: There are certain things that we need to understand when we think in terms of reaching out to people who do not acknowledge Jesus as Savior and Lord in the way that we seek to do. And the first thing is this: we've got to recognize that if we want to convey to other people who Jesus is and how important he is in our lives, we need to recognize that we may be talking a foreign language to them.

We may need to recognize that we are actually saying something that is offensive to them. I mean face it, if we are saying the key to my life is that I've acknowledged that I am utterly dependent upon Jesus as Lord, I tell that to somebody who's never seen that, they've lived 25 years without bothering about Jesus, what we're really saying to them is, "You've got it dead wrong for the whole of your life so far." That's insulting.

So what we've got to recognize is this: that if we're going to really communicate our love for Jesus to people, we've first of all got to build a relationship with them so that we are credible to them, so that they are intrigued by us, so that we have something about us that they admire and want. And then we can begin to communicate to them. And surely this is what Jesus did by his works. He proved himself to be credible. By his attitude, he proved himself to be lovable, and then people were drawn to him and they were willing to listen to him. Not everybody, of course.

Guest (Male): Stuart, Jesus said he will never call us to do something he hasn't equipped us for. But what happens when a believer feels called but doesn't necessarily feel equipped?

Stuart Briscoe: Well, that's an interesting question. Notice that the whole question is framed concerning the believer's feelings—doesn't feel called, doesn't feel equipped. Now I'm not picking you up on one little word because the answer to the problem is this: it has nothing to do with feelings. It has everything to do with knowledge. In other words, it is not my emotions that are running the show; it is my mind that has been informed by the truth.

Now this is what it says: "If you know the truth, the truth will set you free." Now knowing truth means that I have embraced what it is that God is saying to me, and what God is saying to me is this: "I'm going to call you to myself and I am going to empower you for that to which I have called you." Now I've got to decide: do I believe that or not? It's nothing to do with feelings. It's got everything to do with saying, "Yes, I choose to believe that and I'm going to step out in faith on the basis of that belief position."

Guest (Male): Thanks for joining us today. We hope today's message has encouraged you to know Christ more deeply and live in the joy of his truth. Right now is one of the most important times of the year for Telling the Truth. As we approach December 31st, generous friends have stepped forward with a special matching grant that will double your gift to help more people experience life in Christ. That means your support will go twice as far to help share God's Word around the world through Stuart and Jill's biblical teaching, digital broadcasts, and global partnerships.

Every day lives are being transformed as people discover the peace and purpose that only Jesus gives, and your year-end gift makes that possible. So don't miss this powerful opportunity to make an even greater impact before midnight December 31st while your gift will be doubled through this special matching grant. Call 262-788-4648. That's 262-788-4648 or give online at tellingthetruth.org. Thank you for helping others experience life in Christ through the unchanging truth of God's Word. Thanks for listening today. Come back next time and experience life here on Telling the Truth.