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11 Now whatever city or town you enter, inquire who in it is worthy, and stay there till you go out. 12 And when you go into a household, greet it. 13 If the household is worthy, let your peace come upon it. But if it is not worthy, let your peace return to you. 14 And whoever will not receive you nor hear your words, when you depart from that house or city, shake off the dust from your feet. 15 Assuredly, I say to you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for that city! ~ Matthew 10:11-15
Today, we continue our study of Matthew 10 where the Lord Jesus was giving to His twelve disciples instructions for their first mission trip without Him. He sent them out in pairs with the goal of giving witness to the coming of the kingdom of God. Here the Lord Jesus, for the first time, sent His disciples out to do ministry. In order to be most effective, they were to give the profile of an effective witness, they were to share the gospel, they were to show the people compassion and they were to trust the Lord to meet their needs. To make the disciples most effective, the Lord Jesus gave each of them the power to heal the sick, to cleanse the lepers, to raise the dead, and to cast out demons.
In v.11-13 of today's passage we read, "11 Now whatever city or town you enter, inquire who in it is worthy, and stay there till you go out. 12 And when you go into a household, greet it. 13 If the household is worthy, let your peace come upon it. But if it is not worthy, let your peace return to you."
Hospitality was huge in biblical days. A traveler back then, didn't have to look for a hotel when he arrived in a town. It was the responsibility of the town to show hospitality and to give what was necessary for those who were traveling. A stranger was always invited into the people's homes for a night of two. In those days traveling preachers wanted to stay just long enough to get money out of a family and then go to the next place. They kept moving to the next house, collecting more money from everybody.
The Lord Jesus countered that practice by telling His disciples to look for faith in the people with whom they conversed. It is our faith in the work accomplished at the cross of Christ that makes any of us worthy before the Lord. If the people were amiable to the Gospel, the disciples were to lodge with them if they invited them in. The disciples were to remain at one house and to lodge there the whole time they were in that city. They were to start there and they were to leave for their next destination from there.
When the disciples went out, they went out with the gospel message informing the people that their sin could be forgiven. And, whoever believed in the Lord Jesus would not be separated from God for eternity. Their message was a message about God's forgiveness and His free gift to them of His salvation. It also included telling the people to repent or to change their mind about salvation, that it was a free gift for those who had long tried to earn God's favor. This enabled them to enter into that which God had in mind all along, a personal relationship with Him.
In v.14 of today's passage we read, "And whoever will not receive you nor hear your words, when you depart from that house or city, shake off the dust from your feet."
The practice of shaking the dust off of one's feet was a rabbinical practice. The rabbis when they would travel to Gentile land and reenter the land of Israel, they would do this, they would shake the dust off their feet publicly so as to say, every particle of dust from this heathen area, we're leaving off of our bodies because they believed that even the Gentile dust would defile them. Their idea of shaking the dust off was to reveal their disapproval of the paganism of that place.
If the people didn't receive the disciples, it was due to their lack of positive response to their message that the Lord Jesus was their promised Messiah of the Old Testament. When this was the case, the disciples were to "shake off the dust from their feet" meaning if the people refused God's free gift of salvation, the disciples were to move on from that area. To shake the dust off one's feet was a testimony against the disbelief of the people. This was quite different than the religious leaders practice.
In v.15 of today's passage we read, "Assuredly, I say to you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for that city!"
Just as it didn’t turn out very good for Sodom and Gomorrah, so it will not for anyone else who rejects the free gift of forgiveness of sin through Christ. Since there is the truth, there must be an answer to that which threatens the truth and that threat is called sin. At the heart of sin is self-reliance. Due to the self reliance of the people who lived in Sodom and Gomorrah, fire and brimstone rained down on them. Sadly, there is no trace of either of those cities today. God delivered absolute and total devastating and eternal judgement upon them both. And, it will be worst for the people who lived in Galilee who rejected the truth of the Gospel because they were exposed more to truth than the people of Sodom and Gomorrah. You see, at the end of the day what will determine our eternity is how we responded to the truth. It is only by the truth of the Gospel that anyone has hope beyond this fallen world. Believing in the One who said, "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life" is the only ticket to spending eternity in the blissfulness of heaven.
