Receiving our reward
Text: Matthew 10:40–42
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus has plenty to say about the difficulties of being His disciples, even to the point of division and persecution. Today’s few verses conclude His instruction to the disciples as He is sending them out, and He does so by speaking about our reward for proclaiming the Gospel.
There are two key words in today’s text: “receive” and “reward”. Both of these words mean different things in different contexts, so we’re going to explore that today.
We receive Christ
“Whoever receives you receives me, and whoever receives me receives him who sent me.” (Mt. 10:40)
Our God is different to any other god because we humans actually get to receive Him. Jesus lays out how that happens: we receive the Father through the Son, and we receive the Son through those who are sent to preach.
Remember, Jesus is about to send His disciples to proclaim the simple message: “The kingdom of heaven is here” (Mt. 10:7). Of course, there are more words to a sermon than just that, but Jesus also promised to the Twelve that they don’t need to be anxious about what they will say, because it is not them speaking, but the Holy Spirit speaking through them (Mt. 10:19, 20).
That sounds like preaching to me. That’s all a sermon is at its core: telling people that God’s kingdom is here. That simple message has all kinds of different implications for us, which is why someone can talk for 15 minutes (and some for much longer) about only a few short Bible verses.
Paul says in Romans 10:
How then will they call on [the Lord] in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!” But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?” So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ. (Ro. 10:14–17)
We call on God’s name because we believe that Christ is our Lord and Saviour. We believe because we have heard about Him and what He has done for us. We have heard about Him because we have been preached to. We have been preached to because people are called and sent to preach.
So, Paul concludes, faith in Christ comes from hearing the Word preached.
So, we come back to Jesus’ words to the disciples: “Whoever receives you receives me.” But what does it mean to receive Christ?
That word, “receive” (δέχομαι, dexomai), has a range of meanings:
to receive something offered or transmitted by another, take, receive
to take something in hand, grasp
to be receptive of someone, receive, welcome
to overcome obstacles in being receptive, put up with, tolerate
to indicate approval or conviction by accepting, be receptive of, be open to, approve, accept
So, when we receive Christ through preaching, how are we receiving?
For some, a sermon is something merely to sit through, tolerate, or “put up with”. That is obviously not the kind of reception Jesus wants, but that is some of us at times.
At the most basic level, to receive a sermon, or any Word of God, is simply to hear it. We don’t have a choice when it comes to what we hear. The sounds that enter our ears and are translated in our brains will happen whether we want it to or not. The only exception to that is when we think our partners are using “selective hearing” to ignore something they don’t want to hear. But even then, the sounds are heard—they might just not be absorbed.
So, to hear a sermon, you have to put yourself within earshot of someone preaching. In that sense, you can listen to a sermon podcast or watch a preacher on YouTube and be satisfied that way.
How do we receive preaching beyond simply tolerating or “putting up with” it? How do we move from merely receiving the Word through our ears to something deeper?
Well, some preachers are just boring. Some preachers are too full-on. Some preachers go on for way too long. Some preachers don’t go for long enough. There is no one way to preach the sermon. Remember that all Jesus gave the disciples was one phrase: “The kingdom of heaven is here.” The rest will come to you in the moment through the Spirit.
I quoted Hebrews 4 last week. The Word of God is living and active. It’s dynamic. God’s truth doesn’t change, but how it interacts with us does. That means preaching changes, too, and varies between different people.
However long or short or interesting or boring a sermon is, remember that through the preaching of God’s Word, you are receiving Christ. Thankfully, this is not the only way we receive Christ, but we’ll get to that soon.
We receive our due reward
“The one who receives a prophet because he is a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward, and the one who receives a righteous person because he is a righteous person will receive a righteous person’s reward. And whoever gives one of these little ones even a cup of cold water because he is a disciple, truly, I say to you, he will by no means lose his reward.” (Mt. 10:41, 42)
Jesus promises that we will all receive reward for our efforts. The only issue is: these rewards are not always good things. The Old Testament prophets, for example, were often met with death threats, being chased out of cities, and isolated from God’s people.
“Reward” (μισθός, misthos), like “receive”, has a range of meaning. A reward can be to do with fair pay or wages for work done. A reward can also be what God gives us as a result of our actions, good or bad. God is a just judge, which means he both punishes wrong and blesses right. In that sense, we get what we deserve.
The same is true for other aspects of life. We deal with the consequences of our actions and decisions, both good and bad. If we speak harshly to someone, we can expect to be met with anger and a poor relationship. If we spend too much money, we can expect to find ourselves in financial strife. If we do something kind for someone, we can expect to be thanked.
We live in a world of tit for tat, reward for effort, and karma. This is a part of how the world has been created. There is a balance of good and evil in this world. That balance occasionally gets out of whack, but for the most part, we tend to get what we deserve.
Paul describes this as living under the law. There is a clear distinction between good and bad, right and wrong, and both receive their due reward. Fair is fair. And, if God was going to be fair in terms of the law, our sin would condemn us to eternal death.
Sin goes beyond our wrong words, thoughts, and actions. Sin is the terminal illness we are born with. Sin is the state we are in. Sin is what enslaves us. And that sin deserves to die.
Christ is the ultimate reward
But, since the day of your baptism, you no longer live under the law, but under grace. That sin has indeed been put to death—sin got what it deserved—and we were set free from it. Sin still has its effects in our lives, but we are no longer slaves to it.
“For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Ro. 6:23)
God is a just judge, but He is also a merciful Father. He dealt sin what it deserves, but that sin was taken out of our hands and put on Jesus.
Abraham said that God would provide the Lamb for the sacrifice. God provided a literal sheep for the sacrifice that day, but, however many centuries later, Abraham’s words came true for the whole world. The Lamb of God takes away the sin of the world. God has had mercy on us.
But we also know that the Lamb of God did not stay dead. The resurrected Lord Jesus lives and reigns with the Father and the Spirit. The resurrected Lord speaks to us through the written and preached Word. The resurrected Lord comes to us in the Sacrament.
We don’t only receive Christ through our ears. We receive Christ as we accept His forgiveness and promise of life. We receive Christ as we physically grasp and eat His body and drink His blood.
So, as you receive Christ today, you also receive the reward that He earned and graciously gives to us as a free gift: the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation.
We receive our due rewards in this life, and sometimes we receive what we don’t even deserve. But, every time we receive Christ through His Word and sacraments, we receive our eternal reward: life forever with Him.
No bad deed can take that gift away. No sin is unforgivable. No worldly reward comes close.
