The ultimate meaning of a bowl of cold water

 The ultimate meaning of a bowl of cold water

Matthew 10:40 to 11:01, the Holy Spirit descended after the fourth week , 2020 years 6 Mon 28 days

 

 

Matthew 10 focuses on the story of the trials the disciples face . Stories that appear sporadically in other synoptic gospels appear in a bundle in Matthew 10 . The names of twelve disciples are listed in verses 2-4 . After that, it is said that the disciples should live as nomadic evangelists until v. 15 . In verses 16-23 the story of the persecution that the disciples must face follows , and in verses 24-33 there is an admonition not to be afraid of the world's powerful . In verses 34-39 , there is a paradoxical sentence stating that he came to bring a sword, not peace, and that those who lose their lives for the sake of the gospel will gain their lives . At the end, the text of today's sermon, Matthew 10:40-11:1, appears .

Last 11:01 clause does leave a brief report about the whole situation, mainly Village 10: 40-42 , try to focus on the section . What do you think of when you treat a text like this ? Nothing is tricky to understand . Overall, it is read that because people who live as disciples of Jesus are rewarded, it means that we must live rightly like disciples in order to receive the reward . It is a story that we all know . The conclusion has already come out . But I'm going to take you to the deeper world of this text . I look forward to myself .

 

1) The story in front of today's text sounds horrible overall . Jesus disciples must face all kinds of difficulties . According to verse 10:14 , the disciples are favored by people . So when the disciples see Jesus , " Send the amount come to the center and the same " (16 sections ) He says . Verse 17 says that the disciples will be brought to the Inquisition at the Judaic Sanhedrin , and v . 18 says that they will be taken to the Roman governor . This story of persecution and suffering continues to verse 39 , the previous verse of today's sermon . These persecutions and sufferings were revealed in the early Christian history in the late first century when Matthew was written . Many disciples and Christians danghaetgo the hardships , finally Suspended until martyrdom . Until the end of the 1st and 2nd centuries of European historyAnd, for quite some time since then , the church has been treated as an unwelcome group . With this historical background, read verse 40 again .

 

Whoever receives you receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me .

 

Was this word accepted by the disciples ? Two premises are required . First , the disciples must recognize that Jesus and their destiny are the same . Without such awareness, the phrase “ He who accepts you welcomes me ” is meaningless . Second , the disciples must see through the fact that Jesus is sent from God . This is an insight into the fact that God was with Jesus' teaching and destiny . That is, the ultimate life experience through Jesus . Given these two facts, the disciples can even accept the surprising fact that they are participating in the work of God . Based on the trials of the disciples, verse 40 can be expressed as follows . Those who reject the disciples of Jesus is to reject Jesus , the people who reject Jesus is to reject the one who sent him .If the disciples were fully aware of and believed in this fact, they would have survived their situation of being excluded . Disciples here refer not only to the twelve, but to all of us who have accepted the gospel of Jesus and entered the church community .

 

2) Section 41 is an additional explanation of section 40 . Who accept the prophet will receive a prophet of the award , who will receive a righteous man will receive a righteous man has the . It means that those who accept Jesus' disciples receive the corresponding reward . It must have come to the Jews with a very special meaning . To them, the prophets and the righteous were those who would sit in the highest places in the kingdom of heaven . There are two practical meanings of the text . One is that the dark world is brightened even a little by the prophets and the righteous , and the other is that people are comforted by the fact that the prophets and the righteous exist . So the Jews , as we do today , appreciated and took the prophets and the righteous with high regard, even if they did not live like the prophets and the righteous . Fortunately, there were those who received this so that the prophets and the righteous were able to take on their roles .It is correct to say that they will receive a decent reward because they participate in the lives of the prophets and the righteous indirectly . We want to live that way too .

The life of the prophet and the righteous as this verse 41 refers to is " seek the kingdom of God and his righteousness ." Called ( Matthew 6:33) correspond to Jesus' words . A prophet is a person who receives trust from God and tells the Word to people . The word of God they convey is the kingdom of God . The righteous are those who seek justice and justice . Justice and justice are the most obvious features of God's rule . Jesus disciples are those who are called to the lives of prophets and righteous people . When people reject their disciples, they reject the prophets and the righteous . Conversely, when they accept their disciples, they have accepted the kingdom of God and His righteousness . So they won't lose the prize . If the disciples knew this, they would have been able to withstand their situation of being excluded . If you don't know enough about it, you will be lamented .What standard of life are we living by now ?

 

3) The words of verses 40 and 41 would have given the disciples and early Christians great strength . They learned that their gospel ministry belongs to the kingdom of God . Verse 42 explains that more directly .

 

And whoever gives even a bowl of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple, I tell you the truth, he will never lose his reward .

 

Here the little ones refer to the disciples . It means that anyone who knows this and offers them even a bowl of cold water will not lose the prize . The disciples are literally little ones . They were not sitting in a position to be treated in the world . They are people who really have nothing to offer . There is no power , no money . There were no people who supported them . Only things that are uncomfortable to live await them . During the days of Matthew's Gospel, Christians began to be expelled from synagogues . To be expelled from the synagogue not only means that Judaism and delinquency are lost, but also that there is no institutional safeguard against persecution by the Roman Empire . There was no sign of resolving this situation anywhere . It is a stuffy reality . People are usually frustrated when they fall into this situation . Figuratively speaking , here are 10Suppose there is a young man who has been preparing for a job for years but has not been able to find a decent job . Your self-confidence will disappear and you will live with an empty heart . Repeatedly doing this can lead to depression .

According to the text, giving a bowl of cold water to insignificant disciples wins . In verse 41 , there is also an expression of receiving a prize . Luther did not say that he was awarded a prize, but translated as receiving a reward . Other English Bibles have also been translated as reward, meaning reward , not prize . A reward or reward, or similar, but reward is a word that emphasizes the price worthy of it . Awards can be done with honor , reward is going very practical . For example, receiving honors from the school, but can be done only with publicly traded , compensation to employees in the most significant achievements in the insurance companies are the same as those raised under reasonable money there . To be rewarded means to be sure of God's approval . So Jesus in this passage , " I tell you the truth, " he said represented . Greek “ Amen Lego WhiminIt is a translation of " . In the Gospels to highlight ' Amen ' it is used . In some sentences, ' Amen ' is repeated twice .

A small ruler and a bowl of cold water are words that communicate . Both are small things the world does not pay attention to . Words with similar meanings appear before them . That is the sparrow in Matthew 10:29 . Sparrow is one of two gees ' Aww come Sari " I was sold on that . Small chairs , water bowl , no one concerned with the two sparrows . But the body is related to these little things God's work , he says coming up the reward of God . Is that really so ? Do you nod to this word ? You may be nodded, but you really don't want to live as a small one , or live under a bowl of cold water or two sparrows .

 

4) Yes . I think it is difficult to live according to the words of Jesus unless the ultimate world to which these words are pointed is in hand . Small design student , cold water in a bowl of little things , and ' amen ' if you do not know the depth of God's tangled compensation can not but responded with life, you hear a hollow word .

Compared to the great power of the world, the disciples of Jesus, who belong to the little one, are actually very specially great ones . They are the ones who have done something special so that God's reward must be followed with a bowl of cold water provided to them . It is on a different level from the world . The world is judged primarily by what it sees outside . The larger and more objects you can handle, the more competent you are . About two months ago, there was the 21st general election , electing 300 members of the National Assembly from our country . There were many people who set out to become lawmakers . Thousands of people have voted to become lawmakers by counting each party's primary . Competition was fierce . The discretion given to lawmakers is enormous . Each legislator receives the human and material discretion from the state to destiny of a small business . After becoming a member of Congress, they compete again for higher positions .Other jobs work in a similar way .

This worldly way does not work for God's work, which is the essence of life . The small can be the big . The big one is rather the little one . Jesus said this many times . “ Whoever humbles himself like this little child is great in heaven ” ( Matthew 18:4). Those who are like children are the little ones in today's text, a bowl of cold water, and a sparrow . It is difficult to see such a statement as a defeatist's self-rationalization . The disciples were small from the viewpoint of the Jewish authorities or the Roman Empire at the time, but they were never small because they were called by Jesus, the Son of God, to preach the kingdom of God . Their lives were the greatest than anyone else because they were focused on the kingdom of God .

In this regard, the following facts are important . On a fundamental level, everyone is as small as a bowl of cold water . Even if there are slight differences in human lifespans, they are all just moments in time throughout the universe . This is the term for measuring acorns . I don't think Daegu Samteo Church is smaller than any other church in Seoul with hundreds of thousands of members . This is because large and small have no meaning in the dimension of the kingdom of God . I don't think America is stronger than poor North Korea . This is because in the long history of mankind, all are just acorns . The Roman Empire, the most powerful in the world for hundreds of years, is now without a trace . It is important who leans on the kingdom of God because it is so small that neither individual nor country can display business cards . The disciples were such people . They were so special that even a bowl of cold water served to them could be rewarded .

 

5) The last sentence of verse 42 of today's text is " That person will never lose the prize ." It is . I can imagine how great this word would have been to the disciples who lived in the Jewish tradition . They believed that when the time in this world is over, God's time begins . The world is " old eon ' and , in the future world to come is ' New eon " was . A world dominated by empire and violence cannot achieve true peace and rest in any way . They believed that eternal peace will be a reality because God directly rules the world to come . If you can be sure that God will not lose your reward in a world under which God will directly rule, your disciples will be able to withstand the situation as if it were a pardon . There are often parables about this in the Gospels .The church is like a bride waiting for Jesus, the bridegroom, to come . When the bridegroom comes, he tells us to be a wise virgin who prepares oil so that he can light a lamp ( Matthew 25:1-13). How can we endure life in this world today without this hope and excitement . The passage that describes God's complete hope for a new world in the most naked literary way is from Paul's 1 Thessalonians 4:13 or less . There Paul said that at Jesus' Second Coming, those who survived would be lifted up into the air . It's a very poetic and true description .

Some people might think that the reward you get right now is not the reward you get after you die . In the future, you will be rewarded in heaven, so you are told that you have to endure the difficulties you are facing now . Look carefully . To say that you will be receiving a prize in the future also implies that you have already received it here . This is important . Paul, II Corinthians 5:17 and said in verse . “ Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, and the old has passed away, and behold, the new has become .” People looking bored out that the reward of God is given to the life of the disciples ' already ' will be found also in fact it received the reward here . Because in his life ' already ' everything is new . The disciples were those who discovered in Jesus a new life that corresponds to the kingdom of God . We are the ones who want to join this rank of faith .

To those who ask me if you live the way you preached , I cannot answer aloud . You can answer by listening to a parable in a small voice . From October last year, I drink a glass of water every morning with my eyes open . The water is ice in the Alps ( by courier ) came , drink the feeling came from, or Baikal Lake . At that moment, I am filled with life . Jesus Christ is the cold ( living ) water from God . By drinking him I am filled with life . To be full means that you no longer need to make up for the life of God . It ' already ' a reward given to me by God .Not only have I been promised a reward, but I have already received it, so I am trying to live a life faithful to a bowl of cold water .