Yeshua Sends Out His Emissaries ~ Part 4

In our last post, we continued to examine the topic of Yeshua Sends Out His Emissaries. In this post, we learned that Yeshua discusses conflict and sacrifices.

Conflict and Sacrifices

³⁴ “Don’t suppose that I have come to bring peace to the Land. It is not peace I have come to bring, but a sword!

Yeshua’s message inherently brings conflict. The context may indicate persecution and martyrdom, but interpersonal discord also results. A crude and foolish criticism of the Brit Hadashah based on this verse is that Yeshua advocates family strife. Yeshua’s purpose is, of course, not to create contentiousness but end it. Yet He knows that tension may result when some family members trust Him while others do not.

³⁵ For I have come to set

³⁶ a man against his father,
a daughter against her mother,
a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law,
so that a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household. [1]

³⁷ Whoever loves his father or mother more than he loves Me is not worthy of Me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than he loves Me is not worthy of Me.

Devotion to the family should not supersede allegiance to Yeshua. Yeshua asked for unqualified allegiance, something even the most esteemed rabbi did not demand. The central point of Matt. 10:34–37 is that the love of God and His Kingdom must take precedence over every other human relationship.

³⁸ And anyone who does not take up his execution-stake and follow Me is not worthy of Me. ³⁹ Whoever finds his own life will lose it, but the person who loses his life for My sake will find it.~ Mattityahu 10:34-39

Execution-stake, Greek stavros, usually translated as “cross.” It was a vertical wooden stake with a crossbar, usually shaped more like a “T” than the Christian symbol, used by the Romans to execute criminals who were not Roman citizens (Roman citizens sentenced to death were given a less painful way to die). It was not a normal Jewish means of execution. Halakhah [2] specified four methods of execution—stoning, burning, beheading, and strangling – but not hanging or being suspended from a cross (see Galatians 3:13 & 1 Kefa 2:24).

In our next post, we will continue to examine He Sends Out His Emissaries beginning in Mattityahu 10:40.

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[1] Micah 7:6

[2] A Jewish legal ruling concerning the application of the Torah to various daily aspects of human conduct. Yeshua and the Brit Hadashah writers lived in a period of intense halakic discourse and debate.