Matthew 10:14 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Matthew 10:14

Comments

There will be some places to which they go where no one is worthy, where no one will receive them or hear them. They will be rejected on account of their message, which the people will not want to hear, and they will not even tolerate their presence among them. ‘Whosoever shall not receive you’ – that is pretty strong and emphatic. Their instruction is not, ignore the person who won't listen to you. Their instruction is, turn away from the person who rejects you. You have got to have patience with the person who is slow to listen; you’ve got to persevere with the person who hasn't actually rejected you and refused you, but he or she is very slow to listen. Witness has patience. But rejection you can't work against. That rejection must not go unmarked. As a token of what awaits such rejectors of the gospel in the future, the apostle must symbolically shake the dust of that house or town or city from their feet. They dare not let it cling to them because that place is certainly marked out for judgment by the Lord, and the apostles wish therefore to totally disassociate themselves from it. They will have no part in that judgment. God is going to do something to that place, and Christ’s messengers have delivered their final warning to them. They have discharged their responsibility to those people by bringing the message to them, and now the whole responsibility lies with those who rejected the gospel and the gospel messengers.We learn that some are marked out for judgment even before the end of their lives. God will never again bring them the offer of mercy. Death has not come yet, but it might just as well have come, for they will receive no further opportunity to repent, and without repentance their future doom is certain. Perhaps some will be brought to the senses even at this late stage, but, if so these will be an exception. It is a fearful thing to reject the gospel, but since, for the most part, God sends the gospel through his people, it is a fearful thing also to reject the messengers of the gospel.God wishes those who reject his truth to know that he has nothing else to say to them. There is no substitute message ready for those who do not like the gospel. It is God’s last word. He also wishes them to have some inkling of the judgment that awaits them, and he troubles their consciences. ‘There remaineth no more sacrifice for sins, ²⁷ But a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries’ (Hebrews 10:26-27).

Application

The shaking of the dust from the feet was a symbolic act understood by the Jews in New Testament times. We are not literally to do that today. The thing to do today is to be sure that we've made it clear to people that this is a matter of eternal life, and a matter of heaven and hell, and rejection means forfeiture of all those things. Rejection of the Christian message and the gospel, rejection of Christ, isn't just something that will displease God for the moment, but we will still all go to heaven in the end. That is what people imagine. Oh no, it’s a very terrible and a very final thing to reject the living God. So those things have to be made plain. We have a ministry of soul winning, but it's also a ministry of judgement.

Let no one deceive themselves by concluding that because judgment does not come immediately on a rebellious world, God is never going to judge it. Let the rebellious not test his resolve; let them not imagine that he does not care or does not know what the world does with his message. He will not allow the gospel, which has been procured at such cost to himself, to be despised by an ungrateful and unrepentant world. This quiet symbolic act of the disciples should have caused the rejectors to tremble. The apostles knew what was coming even though nothing could be seen yet. This symbolic act is a lesson for all times of the danger of rejecting the only message of salvation.

No true believer can sit down with ecumenists when the disciples were taught to rebuke and go away from those who did not receive their teaching. The message does not belong to us and we are not at liberty to negotiate with those who will not accept it. Do we think we can skilfully find a way through our differences when the Lord has already given us our directions and told us that either our hearers receive the message of Scripture or they are to be rejected? The task of the church is to make known the consequences of rejecting God’s message, not to form friendships with those whose dust Christ has told us to shake off. We are thinking of the offence of the cross which will come even if we are entirely harmless; it cannot be avoided.

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Matthew 10:14 Commentary and Bible Study