6/22/25 Matt. 10:24-39 “Sharpen Your Axe!”

19 Jun 6/22/25 Matt. 10:24-39 “Sharpen Your Axe!”

6/22/25    Matt. 10:24-39        “Sharpen Your Axe!”

Sometimes I like to leak out some little known facts about me.  This really doesn’t matter in the slightest to anyone but for years I never subscribed to a newspaper.  I never read them because they were/are such a downer.  I mean what could be worse than to get up in the morning and read that we are now allies with Iran against Israel?  Or that so many young girls were kidnapped in Africa or North Dakota and no one does anything about it.  Or that we have yet another government scandal.  If you remember we have a government that is supposed to help us.  Then we find that they have been stealing billions of taxpayer dollars for their own pockets.  Anyway, these are just a few of the headlines of late.  Now I’m not going to preach on this stuff but I hope that you know that the Bible tells us that these types of things will happen.  I read a good quote from Oswald Chambers once where he said, ‘Let me say that again, “Sin destroys the capacity to know what sin is!”’  All these headlines were caused by sin.  As a matter of fact, all our troubles are caused by sin.  Sin is the number one enemy of the world and yet, now listen, no one wants to talk about it.  Today, we are going to look at a passage from Matthew where Jesus lays it right on the line.  This is a hard passage for many people.  Let’s see if Jesus has any tips to stay away from sin and at the same time be a real Christian.

Martin Dale tells the story of a big shot type business manager on vacation in Greece who came upon a fisherman dozing in the shade next to his boat that was pulled up on shore.  This inefficiency was intolerable for the business man so he woke the fisherman to talk to him.

“The weather is great and there’s lots of fish. So how come you are sitting about here – when you could be out there – catching more fish?”  Quietly, the fisherman replied: “Because I caught enough this morning”  “But just imagine,” the manager replied, “if you went out twice a day, you could bring home twice as much fish. And do you know what could happen?”  Puzzled, the fisherman shook his head.  “Well,” the manager continued, “you could buy yourself a motorboat. And then, after say a couple of years you could buy a second one. Then perhaps after three years you could have a cutter or two.  And just think, one day you might be able to buy a freezing plant. Then you could go on to get your own helicopter to help trace shoals of fish for your fishing fleet. You could then buy your own truck to ship the fish to the capital thereby cutting out the middle man.”  “And then what?” the fisherman replied.  “And then,” the manager concluded triumphantly, “you wouldn’t have to worry. You could then sit down calmly on the beach, dozing in the sun and looking at the beautiful ocean.”  “Well, my friend,” the fisherman replied “what do you think I am doing now?”  There are a couple of ways to take this story.  But the point is that there are many times we make assumptions based on bad data.  Most of the headlines we read in the newspaper are only a very small part of the story.  And often times they are outright lies!  And if you read the letters to the editor, you find many people use only part of the story to form an opinion.  They use bad data.

Jesus tells us the whole story with good data.  This passage is absolutely massive in its information for us.  I’m going to try to talk about 3 parts of this passage and we will have to save the rest for some other time.  This is the time when Jesus is sending out the 12 disciples with these instructions.  We begin in verse 24 where Jesus is telling them that they cannot be above the master.  The best they can do is to be like the master or teacher.  They can never be better or above the teacher.  This goes right in the face of New Age thinking.  Jesus is telling them that they are not to be become conceited or vain because of the power they have from God.  They are also not to hide what they have.  Rather they are to go to the mountain tops shouting out the Good News to all they see.  It is important to note the Beelzebub is Satan and they were not to back down from him.

One of the things to remember when we read these New Testament readings is that these people were just like us.  They struggled with many of the same problems we have.  They had to find ways to eat, to have shelter and to have clothes.  Some were more successful and became richer, just like today.  Sometimes the elite would become very proud of themselves.  They would become vain.  They often thought that they were better than the gods.  Some of them could do wondrous feats as we see in the story of Moses and the Pharaoh.  So Jesus is telling His disciples not to be conceited.

We have to be extra careful today also.  We have sneakier means of saying that we are so much better than God.  Hey, we can clone a sheep.  Therefore we are on the same plain as God.  Give me a break!  This is just good applied science and it doesn’t even come close to what God has done.  But the science community that does cloning thinks differently.  Or how about the mega-church pastor who thinks he knows all the ins and outs about God.  He has so many people coming to his church that he must be just a step under God.  At least he thinks he knows that he is so much better than all of us at the bottom.  Take a look in your own life.   Is there something that you are too proud about?  I would bet that there is and you should try your hardest to lose this pride.

God doesn’t like pride but Beelzebub does.  All our troubles can be traced back to Beelzebub as I stated earlier.  All our troubles can be traced back to an incomplete relationship with Jesus Christ.  I believe that just about everyone has at least one area of their lives that they refuse to give to Jesus.  I don’t know why that is because Jesus is the master of everything on this earth.  He can help you no matter what.  I would also guess that there are many of us here today who don’t give thanks to Jesus for all He does.  Do you give thanks for every meal you have?  Do you give thanks for the abundance we have in this country, especially in this area?  Do you give thanks daily for your family or friends?  The list goes on.  Take yourself off these not so good lists by beginning a daily prayer life where you give all your troubles to Jesus and give Him thanks for all things.  Life will get better if you do.

I would like you to just note verses 32-33.  To paraphrase, if we preach about Jesus and present Jesus to other people, then Jesus will present us to God, the Father.  However, if we don’t do this or we disown Jesus to other people, then Jesus will disown us before the Father.  I tell you right now, you will not find many preachers today who will preach these verses or the next ones because they are harsh.  I don’t want any of my people to end up before the Lord after Jesus has disowned you.  I want every person in this audience to find a way to present Jesus to others and then do it for the rest of your lives.  In other words, find out where you are gifted and use these gifts to help others.  You see, even in these tough parts, it isn’t too hard to follow Jesus.  Jesus loves us and this is how we show it back to Him.

The next part is really hard because so many people will tell you that a loving God would never do such and such.  You have all heard this somewhere.  Well, guess what?  Jesus didn’t come to this world to bring peace.  As a matter of fact He came here for just the opposite reason.  He tells us that He came to bring the sword.  In other words, He came to turn this world upside down.  He came to turn man against his father, daughter against her mother, daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.  He came to make enemies in our own households.  Yowser!  That hurts!  This isn’t the stuff that I want to hear about let alone preach about.  This is some tough stuff.

But most of the toughness is for the people who don’t know Jesus.  However, it affects us also because sometimes these people who turn against us because Jesus is our best friend are our families and friends.  I have been a Christian for over 33 years and I still have people who will barely talk to me who I used to consider good friends.  But all that I do is for their own good.  I’m out preaching and teaching the Good News.  I’m trying to be a faithful Christian as best I can.  Hopefully, you people see this and hopefully my old friends see this.  Hopefully people will change their lives because of this.  Hopefully, they will turn to Christ and see what they have been missing all these years.  A life without Jesus is hardly worth living.

Don’t mistake that Jesus came to make wars.  He didn’t as we know the term wars.  He came to make war on Satan.  Satan is the only real enemy that we have.  When you boil it all down, all that is left is the good against the evil.  Now we don’t like it when the enemy happens to be in our family but it happens and that is what Jesus is warning us about today.  I don’t think that I have to tell any of you Christians that life isn’t always rosy.  Our families, friends and neighbors may not like us because we are Christian.  There is nothing we can do about that except to show them the love of Jesus in all we do.  If you keep hammering away, using your gifts you may someday wear the Satan right out of these people.

This is all part of the plan.  Some of us have children who have wandered away from God.  All you have to do is look around a little and you see the reasons why.  Satan is everywhere.  He is not only everywhere but he is getting stronger all the time.  It is no wonder that we lose people all the time.  I should rephrase that because we can’t lose people that we don’t have.  If people go to the other side, then we never had them in the first place but that is a whole other topic.

Churches are especially at fault.  According to the United Methodist Church, we will never amount to anything unless we implement their new church initiative.  Well, I’ve looked at it and it isn’t for churches that are small.  Imagine that!  We will never be anything unless we have all praise music or have a modern service.  And we will never grow unless we only preach the good parts of the Bible.  We need to leave parts like our today’s verses alone.

Well, I’m here today to tell you that this is all a bunch of baloney!   This is Satan working.  The churches that are doing the best in this country are the ones that are preaching the truth just as it is written in the Bible.  They wouldn’t dream of omitting a passage like this because you or your loved ones eternal glory depends on it.  Whether we like to admit it or not, we are all sinners.  There are no exceptions.  But praise the Lord that He loves us anyway.

I would just like to touch on the last part of this passage.  This is the part that I like to say at weddings.  It is the part where we are to love Jesus first before we love anything else.  This includes our children, our parents, our family and our friends.  Here Jesus commands us to love Him first because if we do, then He in turn helps us to love each other first.  This is one of those dichotomies of Jesus that we find very hard to understand.  It is like trying to understand the Trinity.  Well, don’t try to understand some of this stuff, just believe it.  Give yourself 100% to Jesus and trust in His word that you find in the Bible.  Yes, you will have temporary enemies because of this but you will be giving our enemies a glimpse of the truth.

Therefore if you find your life in the things of this world, then you will lose your life.  You will have not eternal life with Jesus in heaven.  However, if you lose your life by giving it to Jesus then you will have eternal life in the glorious place we call heaven.  This is a promise from Jesus Christ himself.  This is what He wants for every person in the world.  Our task is huge and getting bigger as Satan gains more control.  But just remember that he has already lost the war and Jesus has won.  Don’t listen to the bad things around you.  Listen to Jesus, read your Bible and worship on a regular basis.  These are the only ways that I know that will successfully repel this evil monster.

In our opening story, we had a man resting in the shade of his boat that was pulled up on shore.  We don’t really know if the man had a fleet of boats as the other man pointed out he could have or if he was just a poor fisherman resting or if he was anything in between.  Things change a little when we are talking about the eternal life of people and we have good Christians who are resting under the boat.  We have good Christians who have spent their lives resting under the boat.  Brothers and sisters in Christ, this is not the time for rest.  When you use one of your gifts, the burden is light and the yoke is easy.  Therefore you need less rest when you are using the things that Jesus gave you.

It is like when I was a kid and I was chopping some wood with an axe.  I worked and worked but I didn’t seem to be getting anywhere.  It might have been because I never hit the same spot twice but they didn’t call me lightning for nothing.  Anyway, someone came along and suggested that I sharpen the axe.  I did and I was done in no time.

Using your gifts is sharpening your axe.  Using your gifts is staying in love with Jesus.  Using your gifts will save lives.  Saving lives is what we are all about; saving lives for eternity and not for this world.  Jesus loves you so much that He had to set in place a standard to get to heaven.  That standard is loving Jesus first and having total faith in Him.  Thank you, Jesus, for first loving us.  Let’s pray.