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Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and 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… “Freely you have received; freely give. Do not get any gold or silver or copper to take with you in your belts — no bag for the journey or extra shirt or sandals or a staff, for the worker is worth his keep. Whatever town or village you enter, search there for some worthy person and stay at their house until you leave. As you enter the home, give it your greeting. If the home is deserving, let your peace rest on it; if it is not, let your peace return to you. If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, leave that home or town and shake the dust off your feet… “I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves. Be on your guard; you will be handed over to the local councils and be flogged in the synagogues. On my account you will be brought before governors and kings as witnesses to them and to the Gentiles. But when they arrest you, do not worry about what to say or how to say it. At that time you will be given what to say, for it will not be you speaking, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you… The one who stands firm to the end will be saved.” (Matthew 9:35–10:8–23 NIV)
Happy Monday, dear Friend! I pray you all had a relaxing and renewing of your lives during this weekend. Nellie and I were blessed in taking our two oldest grandkids to Fredericksburg to tour for the first time, the National Museum of the War in the Pacific, which was very interesting, and which I really encourage you to see. It's quite the museum with plenty of exhibits. One part made me sad, for it was a photo of Hitler Youth, the Nazi group formed for teenagers in Germany in support of Adolf Hitler to join and fight. It made me sad for I remembered my Church History professor, Dr. Klaus Penzel, who was in that group and deployed to fight in France where he was captured and put in a camp. It was at that camp where he met Jesus and became a believer and later felt led to get educated in the history of this movement that he now loved. He was a super smart individual and I admired him and his love for the Lord Jesus. It took me a couple of weeks while sitting in his lectures to realize that when he said, "Christian face," he was talking about the Christian faith. Boy was I perplexed! I had to confess I looked around at my classmates to see which ones truly looked like Christians, all the while trying to remember what I looked like! This will all part of my getting ready, being prepared to go forth and do what the Lord had called me to do. It was fun. It was not fun. It was challenging and it was sometimes truly difficult. Many were the days of those 48 years that I had to share with Nellie and others, "They don't pay me enough!" But the days when I would gleefully say, "I can't believe they pay me to do this!" were more.
Opening: The Briefing Before the Road
In any mission, there is a moment when the one who sends gathers those being sent and tells them exactly what they are walking into. No glossing over the risks. No false promises of smooth roads and friendly crowds. Just the honest, clarifying truth about the territory — and the equipment they will carry into it.
That is what Jesus is doing in these verses. The compassion of chapter nine has already moved him. The twelve have already been named and commissioned. The authority has already been given. And now, before they set one foot on the road, Jesus briefs them on what the journey will actually look like.
It is one of the most honest mission briefings in all of Scripture. And precisely because of its honesty, it is also one of the most reassuring.
Travel Light: The Theology of Empty Hands
The first instructions Jesus gives are about what not to take. No gold or silver. No copper. No bag, no extra shirt, no sandals beyond what they are wearing, no staff. The list is striking in its thoroughness — Jesus seems determined to send them out with as little as possible between them and their dependence on God.
This is not asceticism for its own sake. It is a theology carried in a traveling posture. When you go with empty hands, you cannot pretend that the provision you receive along the way came from your own preparation. When you arrive at a home with nothing to offer but the message and the peace of Christ, the welcome you receive — or the rejection — tells you immediately where the soil is open and where it is not.
The instruction to find a worthy person in each town and stay there, giving your peace to the household, is a model of what missiologists today call relational mission — going not as a parachuting authority who delivers a message and departs, but as a guest who enters a home, receives hospitality, and lets the relationship itself become the vessel for the gospel. Jesus’ peace, extended to a household, is not merely a greeting. It is a real spiritual reality — something that either rests on the home or returns to the sender, depending on how it is received.
And when a town refuses to receive them — shake the dust off your feet and move on. There is no instruction to argue, to escalate, to stay and wear the resistance down by force. The commission is not to manufacture receptiveness. It is to offer the gospel genuinely and let people choose. The workers’ job is to go and give. The harvest belongs to the Lord of it.
Sheep Among Wolves: The Company That Makes It Possible
Then comes the line that sets the realistic frame for everything else: “I am sending you out like sheep among wolves.”
Jesus does not say this to frighten them. He says it to prepare them — and to introduce the two qualities that will make the difference between faithful witness and foolish vulnerability: the shrewdness of snakes and the innocence of doves. These two are not in tension. The snake’s shrewdness is the wisdom that reads a situation clearly, that does not rush naively into danger, that navigates the landscape of opposition with intelligence and care. The dove’s innocence is the purity of motive that cannot be compromised, the refusal to meet hostility with its own methods, the integrity that remains intact when everything around it is corrupt.
The church in every generation has needed both. The witness that is only shrewd becomes cynical and calculating. The witness that is only innocent becomes naive and easily crushed. Jesus asks for both at once — clear-eyed about the wolves, unstained by them.
And then the warnings deepen: councils, synagogues, governors, kings. The twelve are being prepared not for a comfortable village tour but for a mission that will, in time, bring them before the highest authorities of their world. This is not a failure scenario. Jesus describes it as witness — “on my account you will be brought before governors and kings as witnesses to them and to the Gentiles.” The opposition itself becomes an opportunity. The arrest becomes a platform. The trial becomes a testimony.
But the promise that holds all of it together is the one Jesus saves for last: “when they arrest you, do not worry about what to say or how to say it. At that time you will be given what to say, for it will not be you speaking, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.”
The sheep among wolves are not alone. The Spirit of the Father goes with them into every courtroom, every hostile village, every moment when their own words run out. They are sent with empty hands and a full presence — the presence of the one who sends them, speaking through them, in every situation the road brings.
For Reflection
Jesus ends this section with a word that carries the weight of everything that has come before: “The one who stands firm to the end will be saved.” Standing firm is not the same as standing still. It is the ongoing, daily, sometimes costly choice to keep going — to keep offering the gospel in the face of indifference, to keep traveling light when the temptation is to accumulate more security, to keep trusting the Spirit to provide the words when our own words are not enough.
The commission of Matthew 10 is not a first-century document that expired when the twelve returned. Jesus’ instruction to pray for workers and his sending of the twelve are the beginning of a pattern that has never stopped. The harvest is still plentiful. The wolves are still real. The Spirit of the Father is still speaking through ordinary, sent, empty-handed people who go in the name of Jesus.
We are those people. We carry the same commission, the same authority, and the same promise: it will not be you speaking, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you. You do not need to be eloquent. You need to be willing to go — and to trust that the one who sends never sends without accompanying.
Travel light. Extend the peace. Shake off what does not receive it. Stand firm. The Lord of the harvest is with you on the road.
PRAYER: Lord Jesus, send us out with empty hands and your full presence, shrewd enough to navigate what we face and innocent enough not to be stained by it, trusting that the Spirit of our Father will speak through us in every moment our own words fall short. Amen.
Have a great and blessed day in the Lord! OUR CALL TO ACTION: This week, go to one conversation, one relationship, or one need in your world with empty hands — no agenda to protect, no outcome to control — and trust the Spirit of your Father to provide the words and the welcome that only he can give.
I love you and I thank God for you! You matter to God and you matter to me! “It will not be you speaking, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.” Matthew 10:20 (NIV)
Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.
