October 6, 2019 Bible Study — We Should Tell People What God Commands, But They Should Not Have To Ask If We Believe It

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

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

I cannot cover all of the things Jesus says in today’s passage that I think we should take to heart. So, I will focus on just a few things.  One of the things which I often hear from those who do not want to impose discipline in the Church is, “We need unity in the Church. We need peace.”  There is truth to that, and we should strive for unity and peace with those who also seek to follow and serve Christ.  However, Jesus tells us that He did not come to bring peace.  If we do not love Him more than we love peace, we are not worthy of being His.  On the one hand there are those who lack humility and bring about conflict because they will not accept that others may follow Christ and see things differently.  On the other hand, there are those who will do anything to avoid conflict.  We need to be willing to draw others’ attention to the acts they commit which harm themselves and others even if this leads to confrontation.

I would like to make a nice neat segue between the previous paragraph and this one, but I am not really sure how to do that.  When John the Baptist sent his disciples to ask Jesus if He was the Messiah, Jesus did not give them a direct answer.  Instead He told them to go back to John and tell him what they had seen and heard.  In the same way, we should not have to tell people that we serve and follow Christ.  They should know by looking at what we do and by what others say about us.   Yes, we need to spend time telling people what Jesus expects of those who follow Him, but if they wander about our faith they should be able to see it by our actions.