Tag: false teachers

Who Were the Wolves Jesus Warned the Disciples About?

When Jesus said, “Be wise as serpents and innocent as doves”, who was he speaking about?

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I am reading in Mathew right now in my year long reading plan, focusing this year on the New Testament. I have read the whole sweep of the Bible, from the Old Testament through the New Testament, each year for a number of years. I am not sure how many, because I have not kept track.

The words, “be wise as serpents and innocent as doves”, came up in conversation with my son a few days ago, so these words caught my attention in my daily reading this morning. I had not paid much attention to the context in which Jesus spoke these words before:

“I am sending you out like sheep surrounded by wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. Beware of people, because they will hand you over to councils and flog you in their synagogues.” ‬

Matthew‬ ‭10:16‭-‬17‬ ‭NET

These are the instructions Jesus gave the disciples when he sent them to “the lost sheep of the house of Israel”. Jesus was very specific in his instructions, telling them what to do and what not to do, what to wear, how to conduct themselves, and Jesus pointedly included the following instructions:

“Do not go among the Gentiles or enter any town of the Samaritans. Go rather to the lost sheep of Israel.”

Matthew 10:5-6

I realized this morning for the first time the significance of the warning that Jesus was giving to his disciples when he sent them “out like sheep surrounded by wolves”. (Matt. 10:16) That instruction takes on a different color for me, now, considering that the “wolves” surrounding the disciples would be the religious people in their world – their fellow Jews.

Jesus was not sending the disciples among the Romans, or the Greeks, or even the Samaritans. Jesus was sending his disciples to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

Jesus told the disciples to go only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, and Jesus warned them they would be surrounded by wolves. This means Jesus was sending the disciples to the sheep in the house of Israel, and the disciples would be surrounded by wolves in the house of Israel.

The conclusion seems clear that the sheep in the house of Israel to whom Jesus was sending his disciples were going to be among wolves, who were also in the house of Israel.

These words of Jesus provide us the time worn adages about wolves among the sheep and wolves in sheep’s clothing. Jesus repeats this theme of the lostness of religious people and the wolfishness of religious leaders over and over again throughout the Gospels. So much, that this theme has stuck out like a sore thumb to me in recent years. (I have written about it in articles like, Why Did Jesus Pick on the Pharisees so Much?)

I have been recently pondering about the many criticisms Jesus leveled against the religious leaders of his day. Do these criticisms have any warrant today? How should we view what Jesus said to the religious leaders of his day? Is the significance historical, only? Or does it have application today in our Christian world?

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People Are Enslaved to Whatever Defeats Them

God saves us to set us free from sin. We are meant for a freedom that empowers us to be good, knowledgeable, self-controlled, enduring, godly, filled with brotherly affection and with love.

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The words that have become the title of this blog piece struck me in my daily Bible reading this morning. They are pulled from 2 Peter 2:19. I highlighted them in my digital Bible app.

We may tend to focus on the more encouraging provisions of the Bible and gloss over provisions like the one I am quoting here, but the Bible is a double-edged sword. It sometimes cuts to the marrow. It discerns and reveals the thoughts and intents of the heart. It is living and active… if we let it in to our hearts to do its job.

I am convicted today, as I should be, and I am encouraged, because God, the Father, disciplines His children whom He loves. God watches out for the ones He loves. He warns us when we are straying into dangerous territory.

If we are paying attention and willing to respond, these warnings will protect us. If we rush headlong ahead, not heeding the warnings, as we are apt to do, we find ourselves entangled in difficulties that can threaten to undo us if we fail to repent and turn around.

Even then, the going can be difficult. Bad habits are easy to form and very difficult to break. If we go too far down the road with them, we find reversing course to be very difficult, indeed. Forming new, good habits is many times more difficult than the path we followed into those bad habits.

Bad habits are easy to form because they come from a place that is instinctual. They are outgrowths of natural tendencies of people who simply do “what feels good”.

Bad habits form from desires that are common to people – not necessarily bad desires. Evil isn’t a thing in itself. Evil is the corruption of good. Bad habits for when we seek to satisfy our desires in the easiest, most accessible, self-centered and least beneficial ways.

For instance, loving God and loving our neighbors – the two greatest commandments of God – are wrapped up in loving ourselves. If we don’t love ourselves, we have a hard time loving others. If we love others, we usually have an easy time loving ourselves. Loving God and loving people are intimately related to loving ourselves.

The popular idea of “self love”, getting some “me time”, and “focusing on myself”, however, can be a corruption of what is basically good. We are naturally self-centered. We naturally love ourselves more than others. When Jesus told us that we should love our neighbors as ourselves, he was implicitly acknowledging the fact that we are naturally focused on ourselves and our needs.

We instinctually love ourselves and seek what is best for us. We have to be purposeful, intentional and self-sacrificing to consider others, and especially to consider others ahead of ourselves. It isn’t natural, and, therefore, it isn’t easy.

Loving others isn’t hating ourselves; it’s learning to love others on the same level as we love ourselves. It is thinking of others on the same level as we think of ourselves.

Many people today are self-loathing, which is also a corruption of what is good. People who loath themselves are equally as self-absorbed as people who are corrupted in self-love.

We are made in God’s image, so to loathe ourselves is to loathe the very image of God. We shouldn’t confuse loving our neighbors as ourselves with loathing ourselves.

Self-loathing is a kind of self-centeredness. People who are self-loathing are self-absorbed in a negative way. Self-absorption and self-focus are a corruption of what is good, regardless of whether the result is pleasurable or painful.

The words of Jesus are transcendent. They direct our eyes away from ourselves to God and to others. When Jesus says, “My yoke is easy and my burden is light”, he is speaking to the reality that our self-focus (the burden of the self) traps us into unhealthy and ultimately destructive behaviors that are more of a burden than a help to us.

Such is the burden of sin. When we are unable to overcome sin, we are enslaved to it. As Peter says, “We are enslaved to whatever defeats us.” And so, I have come back to the focus of this blog piece: these words in 2 Peter 2:19.

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