Today, I am reading and commenting on  Matthew 10-12.

Today’s passage once again contains so many important points I struggle with where to start and what to write.  However, I saw the similarity between the first part of Jesus’ commission to the Twelve when He sent them out and His answer to the question John the Baptist’s disciples asked him.  Jesus told the Twelve to go out and proclaim that the Kingdom of Heaven is near.  Further, He told them to heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the unclean, and to drive out demons.  When John’s disciples asked Him if He was the “one who is to come” or if they should look for someone else, He told them to report what they had seen: the sick are healed, the unclean are cleansed, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached.  So, how did the people know that Jesus was the Messiah?  He healed the sick, He cleansed the unclean, He raised the dead, and He preached good news.  How can people know that we follow Him?  We can preach the good news, cleanse the unclean (at some point I am going to need to write a detailed blog on what that means), and raise the dead.  While I don’t believe that every follower of Jesus will do all of these things, I do think that every follower of Jesus should be prepared to do any of these when circumstances warrant.  I also believe that every follower of Jesus should be doing the first two in some way.

As for how we are to preach the good news, I think that we can look to what Jesus told the Twelve about what to do when they were arrested for the answer.  He told them not to worry about what to say, or how to say it.  When the time is right, God’s Spirit will speak through us.  We need to make sure that we open our mouths to say those words.  However, Jesus does tell us to take care about the “empty” words we speak, the words which were not given to us by God’s Spirit.  On the day of judgement we will need to account for each one of them.  So, we need not worry about what we should say.  Rather, we should think about the words we should not say.  I am not talking about specific words, but rather thoughts we should keep to ourselves, and consider whether perhaps we should stop entertaining those thoughts.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.