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

There are three things in this passage which I want to focus on today.  The first of those comes when Jesus commissions the Twelve to preach throughout Israel.  He tells them to heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the unclean, and drive out demons .  They have freely received from God, so they should freely give to others.  A little later during His commissioning of the Twelve He tells them not to worry about what to say, or how to say it, because it will not be them speaking, but the Holy Spirit speaking through them.  The third thing comes when Jesus responds to the question from John the Baptist sent his disciples to ask about whether He is the One.  Jesus tells them to report what they see–the blind can see, the lame walk, the unclean are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead raised, and the gospel preached.

When I started to write this I had no idea how these three things fit together, mostly because in my mind the first thing was “Freely you have received; freely give.”  As I wrote it, I felt like I needed to include what came just before that about healing, etc.. So, I did.  Which made me realize that the first “thing” is almost identical to the third “thing”.  Which brings me to what brings this all together.  Jesus did not directly answer the question John’s disciples asked Him.  Instead, He told them to look at what He was doing.  And most of what He was doing was the same as what He told the Twelve to do when He sent them out.  So, we too should be doing more than speaking, and when we do speak, don’t spend time worrying about what to say; God’s Spirit will talk through us.

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