We read Matthew 10 in our Spoken Word Bible Reading Plan for today. I love how different aspects of each verse come to the forefront when we read through these verses year after year. Today verse 14 really stood out.
14 And whoever will not receive and accept and welcome you nor listen to your message, as you leave that house or town, shake the dust [of it] from your feet.
JESUS was sending His disciples out to minister with His authority. He sent them, first of all, to the Jewish people. JESUS IS the Jewish Messiah, Whom we who are not Jews are now able to receive as our own, thereby being adopted into the family! At this time JESUS gave them instructions for ministry, including the instruction above. My attitude had always kind of been that the shaking of the dust off of their feet was like saying "Then I will have nothing to do with you"! I realized that this God of infinite mercy and grace was NOT condemning these people to eternal damnation. Someone may have reached these people after JESUS rose from the dead and they might have all been born again! The REAL message that I now believe that this action represented is that these men held no responsibility to whatever would happen afterward. In fact, the Jamieson, Fausett and Brown Commentary says this:
Shake off the dust of your feet - "for a testimony against them," as Mark and Luke add. By this symbolical action they vividly shook themselves from all connection with such, and all responsibility for the guilt of rejecting them and their message. Such symbolical actions were common in ancient times, even among others than the Jews as strikingly appears in Pilate (Matthew 27:24). And even to this day it prevails in the East.
One thing that is becoming extremely, abundantly clear to me is that we are supposed to walk in love at all times. Now love is NOT wishy washy and 'anything goes', but it DOES require us to ALWAYS believe the best of others. (1 Corinthians 13:4-8) That attitude saves us from problems in our own lives because we KNOW that we are NOT to judge others (Matthew 7:1-2) and that our own faith will ONLY and EVER work when we walk in love (Galatians 5:6)! God's love fuels our faith! So make it be love or don't do it at all! AMEN! Here is Hillsong with "Greatest Of These":
Shalom in Him!
