06 What Does it Mean to Receive Jesus?

Today's passage is one of the "See For Yourself" passages Chapter 6 of Start Strong: A New Believer’s Guide to Christianity. 

In Matthew 10:40–42, Jesus makes a startling connection: the way we welcome His people reveals the way we welcome Him and, ultimately, the God who sent Him. This episode clarifies what it means to “receive” Jesus in Scripture, showing that it’s not a passive feeling but an active choice to accept, listen, and embrace His messengers and message. 

In this week’s episode, we explore:

• What “receive” means in the Bible and why it implies deliberate welcome rather than passive contact
• How receiving Jesus’ disciples reflects receiving Jesus Himself (and the Father who sent Him)
• What it means to receive a prophet “in the name of a prophet” 
• Why Jesus links “reward” to salvation and mercy
• Why Jesus calls His disciples “little ones,” and how humility and dependence shape true faith
• How welcoming a disciple with something as small as a cup of cold water carries eternal significance
• What your response to Scripture (the apostles’ words) and to fellow believers reveals about your heart toward God

After listening, you’ll have a clearer, more biblical understanding of what it means to “receive” Jesus and why faith shows up in concrete, everyday welcomes.

 Series: Start Strong: A New Believer’s Podcast

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Transcript

Purpose And Passage Setup

Krisan Marotta 0:42

Welcome to the Wednesday in the Word podcast. I'm Krisan Marotta, and this is my podcast about what the Bible means and how we know. This is the sixth talk in a companion series to my book, Start Strong: A New Believer's Guide to Christianity. Today we'll study Matthew 10, verses 40 through 42, which is one of the See for Yourself passages from chapter 6. What does it actually mean to receive fellow believers? And why does my response to fellow believers reveal my response to Jesus and to God? In this episode, you'll learn what receiving looks like in real life and why it carries the promise of an eternal reward. You don't need the book to listen to today's episode, but if you do have the book, you should read chapter 6 before listening. If you're listening or reading with a friend, a group, or a book club, you can download the free discussion questions for every chapter. There's also a companion workbook to help you apply what you're learning, and you can find all those free resources, the book and the workbook, at startstrongbook.org. Thank you for listening today. In chapter six of my book Start Strong, a New Believers Guide to Christianity, we looked at the unique bond created between believers. It's a bond rooted in our shared worldview and our hope, and it transcends the categories that would otherwise divide us. Today we're going to go back to the Gospel of Matthew, and we'll be looking at the instructions Jesus gave to the 12 as he sent them out to preach to the cities of Israel for the first time. Jesus prepares them for the reaction they're going to face. He warns them this is not going to be a victory tour. They're going to face hostility and rejection. And in the process, he tells us something important about his people and how we view each other. First, let's identify who the twelve are. They are the twelve men who were disciples of Jesus and later became his apostles. The word disciple simply means a student, a learner, or a follower, and the word apostle means one who is sent out. While Jesus was on earth, he chose twelve from among his many disciples and followers to live and work closely with him. These twelve traveled with him and they learned from him as he preached the gospel around Israel. They received unique and special training that the majority of his followers did not receive. After his resurrection and ascension, Jesus gave these twelve men the authority to teach and speak for him, and he commissioned them to go and preach the word about what he taught in his gospel. These men became his apostles. At this point in the story, Jesus has been healing people of all kinds of diseases and proclaiming that the kingdom of heaven is near. He has chosen the twelve and begun their training, and now he commissions them to go out on a journey through the towns of Israel and preach the gospel. And this journey is an important step in the process by which they will become his apostles. He sets up a kind of test for both the people of Israel and the twelve. The cities of Israel must decide how they're going to respond to the message of Jesus, and the twelve have to learn to be faithful, even when that response is negative. Ultimately, they will be speaking to Gentiles, but for now they are to remain in the cities of Israel. Jesus has warned them to expect rejection and persecution, but to remember that their fate is in God's hands. And he's warned them that his message does not bring peace but a sword. His message is divisive because it requires people to choose to follow him or to reject him. And that choice will split and divide even the closest human relationships. Now, all of that comes early in Matthew chapter 10 before the section we're going to look at. After those warnings, Jesus ends this talk by telling them that some people will respond positively to the gospel, and that's the section we want to look at for our purposes today. Let me read it to you. This is Matthew chapter 10, verses 40 through 42. Whoever receives you receives me, and whoever receives me receives him who sent me. 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. Now, before we look at the overall point of this section, I'd like to explain some of the words and the phrases Jesus uses. First, let's talk about receiving. Jesus says, Whoever receives me, so in this context, what does it mean to receive someone? In modern English, we think of receiving as a passive concept. It doesn't take any action or choice to receive something. For example, if I get a text message from a friend, I don't need to do anything, I just receive it. It comes to me. But in the Bible, receiving often refers to a deliberate choice. To receive someone is to make the choice to accept them or to welcome them. So to receive the apostles is to make the conscious choice to listen to them and heed what they're saying. At the core of the gospel is a call to respond, to make the choice to respond to God and his messengers. And the word receive is one of the words we use to capture that response. We are supposed to actively receive God's messengers. We are to make the deliberate choice to receive and embrace the gospel. Now let me give you a couple of examples of how this word is used. This is Matthew 10, 14. And if anyone will not receive you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet when you leave that house or town. So that's in our same chapter. And notice receive there is in parallel with listen to your words. If they won't receive you or listen to your words, those two ideas are to fill out the picture. The opposite of receiving and listening is rejecting. When people reject you, you shake the dust off your feet and leave. Here's another example in explaining the parable of the sower and the seed, Jesus says, this is Luke 8.13, and the ones on the rock are those who, when they hear the word, receive it with joy, but these have no root. They believe for a while and in a time of testing fall away. So the seed that falls on the rock is compared to people who initially listen to the gospel and embrace it, they receive it with joy, but then they reject it when it becomes too costly. That reaction is described as receiving the gospel and notice it's in parallel with believe. They believe for a while. They receive the word with joy and believe for a while, but then they ultimately reject it. And one more example, this is from Luke 18, verses 16 and 17. But Jesus called them to him, saying, Let the children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it. Here again, this word receive captures the idea of choosing to embrace the gospel. The children of God are the ones who make the choice to receive Jesus, that is, to believe he is the Messiah. So to receive is to make the crucial choice to believe and embrace a person or a message. Now, back to our passage in Matthew, Jesus tells the 12 that whoever receives you receives me, and whoever receives me receives him who sent me. So he's saying basically, whoever welcomes you, accepts you, and chooses to listen to you also chooses to listen to me and the Father who sent me as well. And this is an important concept for the 12. They're going to be on the front lines of spreading the gospel, and they will experience firsthand how people react to them and their message. How people choose to respond to them is not only personally important for the danger they might be in, as if people try to stone them or whatever, but there's even more at stake. How people respond to the apostles and the prophets indicates how they respond to God. And that is true today. You and I face the same question. When we confront the writings of the apostles and the prophets in scripture, it confronts us with the same choice. Will we believe them or reject them? So to receive is to make the crucial choice to accept, welcome, and embrace something or a message, a person or a message. That's our first concept. Second, Jesus speaks of receiving a prophet because he is a prophet. That's in 1041. Sometimes you'll see that translated, receive a prophet in the name of a prophet. And let me explain what that means. To act in someone's name is not a common expression today, but we do have one similar usage in English. If you watch old police shows, you might see the police knock on someone's door and say, open up in the name of the law. The police officers are not coming in their own name. They are coming as representatives of the law. They're saying, open up because we represent the power of the state. We are acting on behalf of the state. If I knock on your door and say, open up, it's me, you might ignore me and go back to whatever you're doing. I have no authority to require you to open the door. But when the police say, open up in the name of the law, they are claiming to represent the law. When they demand that you open the door, you need to view them as representatives of the state who are authorized to maintain justice and enforce the laws. Well, just as the police speak in the name of the law, the prophets speak in the name of God. The prophet has the authority to speak for God. So if I receive a prophet in the name of a prophet, I am receiving him because I understand him to be a representative of God. I might not find the prophet impressive as a person or charismatic as an individual, but I acknowledge this person speaks for God, and thus I grant him authority and accept him. And this is a big concept in our little section. How do you see the messengers of Jesus? These people present you with a choice. The twelve are not speaking for themselves. They didn't make up some new philosophical or religious system. They are being sent by Jesus to proclaim the message he gave them. They are speaking in his name. He is their master. And how people respond to them reflects how people respond to the master who sent them because they come in his name. So to receive is to make the crucial choice to accept, welcome, or embrace. And to receive a prophet as a prophet or in the prophet's name is to welcome and embrace that prophet because he represents the one who sent him, Jesus. And that's our second concept. The third concept is this idea of rewards. Jesus talks about rewards in this section. And when we think of rewards, we often think of a prize or a trophy or something that you earn or win. For example, if this is a fairy tale and I go on a quest to find the golden chalice and rid the kingdom of an evil dragon, the king might reward me with a gold ring or a medallion because I have done such a brave and noble thing. Well, that is not the flavor of rewards in the Bible. I have never found a context in the Bible that speaks of someone doing such great and mighty feats for God that God rewards them because he's so grateful for what they accomplished. That's just rewards in scripture are not prizes in that sense. Neither are rewards an extra added bonus that God gives in addition to salvation. Some people treat the Bible as if it were a catalog of prizes and rewards that you can get if you figure out the right tips and tricks. When they see the word reward in the Bible, they assume it's something extra, something above and beyond salvation, maybe a mansion or a crown or a laurel wreath or a different level of heaven, something like that. Well, I don't believe that the Bible ever teaches that there are rewards in heaven above and beyond salvation. I do have a separate podcast series where I go into that, and I'll put a link to that in the lecture notes. I'm not going to go into that debate now, but I wanted you to know where I'm coming from. I don't think the Bible teaches that there are any extra rewards above and beyond salvation. There's no crowns or levels of heaven or anything like that. Now, it is right to think of God as a giver of rewards. God does have a reward to give us. We have this famous passage in Hebrews 11:6, and without faith, it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him. I like that passage because I think that shows the flavor of what reward is in Scripture. A reward in the Bible is the desired outcome. We seek God because we want him to do something for us. We long to be freed from our sins. We long to be forgiven and made holy. And we seek God because we need him and we long for his mercy. The reward that we seek from God is the desired outcome that we will be forgiven and given a place in the kingdom of heaven. And Hebrews tells us God rewards those who seek him with forgiveness and salvation. You won't be disappointed if you seek him, because he will keep his promises. You won't be sorry if you seek God, because in the end, his promise will be everything you hope it will be. God's response is the reward we seek, and that's the reward Jesus has in mind here. In our passage, I think the reward Jesus is talking about is eternal life in the kingdom of God. That's the desired outcome. That's the response we want from God when we seek Him. And the 12 are being sent out to call people to repent so that they might find a place in the coming kingdom of God. If you repent and seek God's mercy, your reward, the desired outcome of that, will be a place in the kingdom of God. It's not that you've earned this place or proven yourself worthy through some great quest. It is a gift that God gives you. It's a reward in the sense that it is the outcome. It's the desired response of what you hope for. This concept is important to the 12 because it shows them again how much is at stake when they go out to preach the gospel. Jesus is linking how people respond to him and his apostles to how God is going to respond on judgment day. They are about to go out and call on people to repent, and repentance, if they do repent, will lead to this reward of eternal life. So there's a lot at stake in how those listening respond. So to receive is to make the crucial choice to accept, welcome, and embrace someone. To receive a prophet in the prophet's name is to welcome and embrace a prophet because he is a representative of Jesus. And when you receive a prophet, you receive the same reward as the prophet, which is the desired outcome of eternal life in the kingdom of God. Now let's add a fourth concept. I want to discuss why Jesus calls the twelve little ones. Why does he say that? What's this phrase all about? Well, later in Matthew, there's a similar passage in chapter 18. This is Matthew 18, verses 1 through 6. At that time the disciples came to Jesus saying, Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? And calling to him a child, he put him in the midst of them and said, Truly I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever receives one such child in my name receives me. But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it will be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea. Now there's a lot we could talk about in that passage, but for our purposes, I'm going to highlight one idea. You can see the similar language here about receiving a child in my name. And we can also see this issue of how others are going to respond to those who have humbled themselves like children. And notice that Jesus clarifies this is a metaphor. Jesus is not saying children are superior in some way just because they're children. Rather, whoever humbles himself like this child. The child represents something we need to become or we need to imitate. And what is that? Well, generally speaking, children recognize that they need their parents. They are dependent on their parents for survival, for teaching them, for giving them good gifts like food and shelter. You've probably seen how attached toddlers are to their parents. They're practically joined at the hip. They cry when mommy leaves the room. When a stranger enters, they run to hide behind daddy's legs and demand to be picked up. Children run to their parents the way we ought to run to God. They seek love and depend on their parents in the same way that we should seek love and depend on God. We need to abandon our proud autonomy before God and humbly cast ourselves on his mercy like children do. So when Jesus calls his disciples children or little ones, I think he has in mind this kind of humble dependency. The disciples must admit their humble dependency and abandon their pride and recognize how much they need their teacher and master. The apostles are not going out as high-powered, impressive leaders and scholars with all kinds of pedigrees and letters after their names. They were 12 ordinary men. They were tax collectors, fishermen, and craftsmen, and they are relatively unknown ordinary people who have humbly submitted themselves to follow Jesus, and they're going out to tell people what they learned. All right, finally, one more concept, and that is the concept of righteousness. What does it mean to be a righteous person in this context? As I've studied scripture over the years, it seems to me that the question, Am I righteous, can have at least three different meanings in Scripture. And we need to examine the context of the specific passage we're studying to figure out which of those three the author has in mind. When I ask the question, Am I righteous? I can be asking, one, am I forgiven by God or am I condemned? That's the first meaning. A synonym for this meaning is justification. Am I justified before God or not? Our sin is not just an unfortunate tragedy, it's wrong. We have broken God's laws and we stand condemned and are guilty. We owe a debt to justice that must be paid. Because we are sinful, we justly and rightly fall under God's wrath. And by God's wrath I mean the condemnation of our just and holy God. The good news of the gospel is that God created a way to pay our debt to justice through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We sinful people can be made right with God because Jesus took the penalty we deserved and died in our place. And in that sense, we are righteous. We are justified. So the first meaning of righteous can be those who have had their sins forgiven. The second meaning of righteousness, when I'm asking the question, am I righteous? I can be asking, Am I morally perfect or am I sinful and corrupt? And a synonym for this meaning would be holiness. Am I holy or am I sinful? In this sense, the righteous person is anyone who's acceptable to God by virtue of having a perfect moral character. And the only person who fits that bill is Jesus Christ. None of the rest of us are righteous in the sense of being holy. We are all sinners. You could say we are righteous sinners because we are both justified sinners and born-again sinners, but we are not holy sinners because we are still sinful. So that's the second meaning of righteous. The third meaning, when I ask, Am I righteous? I can be asking, do I have a heart that responds to God, or am I spiritually blind and reject God? Now the opposite of this one would be the wicked. And we see this usage most often in the Psalms because many of the Psalms contrast the way of the wicked with the way of the righteous. And what they're contrasting is the way of people who have repented and seek God with the way of people who still reject Him. So the righteous in that meaning are those who have repented, are truly contrite and humble about our sinfulness. We've turned to God for grace and mercy, and we seek him. In other words, we are the poor in spirit, we mourn over our sins and so forth. So a synonym for this person would be a person of faith or a person who's born again. And in this sense, the righteous are those who are rightly oriented toward God in the sense that they no longer reject him, they seek him. And I think it's this third meaning that we see in our passage here. The righteous person in our passage is a person who has accepted God and is repentant and open to him. And this is a key tie-in to my book, chapter six. We're going to talk about that more in a minute. But with those concepts now, those five concepts, we are ready to put all this together. Let me read you the passage again, and then we'll try to put it all together. Again, this is Matthew 10, 40 through 42. Whoever receives you receives me, and whoever receives me receives him who sent me. 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 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. And I think there are three important ideas in this little section. The first one is how you respond to the apostles is how you respond to Jesus. And the second one is how you respond to Jesus is how you respond to God. And both those ideas are captured in 1040. The third idea is how you respond to your fellow believers, reveals how you respond to God, and that's in 41 and 42. Those who welcome other people who love God, just because they love God, will receive the same inheritance as those who love God. And even if they are kind in only the seemingly insignificant way of giving someone a cup of cold water, just because they're glad that person is a follower of Jesus, they will gain the same reward. That's the big picture. Let's walk through the passage to put it all together. Now, I should say implicit in what Jesus is saying here is the expectation that the apostles will accurately and clearly represent what he teaches. When that's true, when the disciples accurately represent Jesus, then how people respond to them says a lot about how they respond to Jesus. If they embrace the apostles, they embrace Jesus, who sent the apostles, and if they embrace Jesus, they embrace the God who sent Jesus. And this shows how significant and important proclaiming the gospel is. The disciples, particularly the 12 apostles, are proclaiming something that calls people to make a choice, and that choice determines their eternal destiny. And this is why Jesus tells them that other people's rewards depend on how they respond to the people of God. The reward of being forgiven and receiving life in the kingdom of God is at stake in how they choose to respond to Jesus and his messengers and his people. Now Jesus gives two examples. First, how they receive a prophet, and second, how they receive a righteous person. As we've seen, a prophet is one who proclaims the word of God. God has given the prophet a message and charged him with telling others about it. The individual prophet needs to seek forgiveness from God, just like every other sinner. He's hoping for the same mercy he proclaims to others, and that's the reward he's looking for. My response to the prophet reflects my response to God. I accept and embrace the prophet because I believe he can tell me about the God I seek. So I will receive the same mercy, the same reward as the prophet, because we have the same humble stance toward God. Likewise, he who receives a righteous man or a righteous person receives the same reward. And again, this righteous person is not a prophet sent with a message. He's just another regular old person who is seeking God. So if I welcome and embrace other followers of Jesus precisely because they follow Jesus, that shows that I am seeking Jesus too. So my response to my fellow believers reflects my response to Jesus and ultimately my response to God. And Jesus is saying, I will receive the same reward of mercy as them because I have the same open, humble, repentant heart toward God. Now I think Jesus gives us two examples because the point he's driving at is this third statement in 1042. 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. Now, again, a disciple is a student, a learner, someone who has chosen to follow and learn from Jesus, usually in context. If I welcome a disciple of Jesus precisely because he is a disciple of Jesus, it shows I want to be a disciple of Jesus too. My response to the disciple represents my response to God and his Messiah. So we see this chain of dealing with prophets, apostles, and other disciples of Jesus, and that that chain is central to our relationship with God. God very rarely steps into history and speaks directly to people. Very few people have had a relationship with God like Moses, Elijah, or Isaiah did, where God spoke with them directly and answered their questions. Likewise, comparatively few people sat at the feet of Jesus and heard him teach. Of those who heard him teach, only 12 were chosen to be his apostles and learn in great detail from him. The rest of us have a relationship with God because other people have told us about him. God has spoken to the world through his prophets, his apostles, and his son, Jesus Christ, and we relate to God by learning what he told them. We learn about God because we learn what he said to people like Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Matthew, Peter, and Paul. We know who Jesus is because his followers wrote down what he said and did. And Jesus is telling the 12, this is the role they are going to play. They have a role like the prophets. They are standing in the place of Jesus, and how people respond to them will reveal how they respond to Jesus. Now I think in this context, Jesus clearly has the 12 in mind as he sends them out to speak for him. But I think we can extend this idea and apply it to ourselves today. The 12 aren't with us anymore, but there is a sense in which every disciple of Jesus stands in his place and represents him. Now, we don't represent him with the same authority that the apostles had, but we still represent him in the sense that we proclaim the gospel that we have learned. We tell others what the Bible says, we teach others what it takes to enter the kingdom of God, and we explain the need for repentance and the importance of turning toward God. We can talk about counterfeit idols of the world and how to find life and all the things that Jesus taught us through his apostles. And if people reject us because we follow Jesus, that says something about their response to Jesus. If they accept us and embrace us because we talk about Jesus and represent him, that also says something about where they stand. And this is a major theme in the New Testament. This idea that our response to our fellow believers is important. We reveal what we think of Jesus and his message by how we respond to his people. Jesus and Paul both talk about this idea a lot. And we see in this passage, according to Jesus, our reward, our eternal destiny is revealed by how we respond to his disciples. When we embrace the Christian worldview, we are embracing other followers of Jesus as our people. This idea was really on display recently after the memorial service for the slain Christian speaker and evangelist Charlie Kirk. Several million people all over the world watched all or part of his memorial service, and a surprising number of members of the liberal media admitted what they saw seemed foreign or alien to them. One staff writer for The Atlantic tweeted this: quote, I've spent half of my adult life in one foreign country or another, and I don't think I've ever felt so estranged from the surrounding culture as I am from the aesthetics and sensibilities of this movement. Not even a criticism. I just feel more at home in Greece than in these images, unquote. That's the kind of divide Jesus is talking about. Here is someone who looked at a Christian evangelistic memorial service for an assassinated Christian speaker, and he said, I don't get it. I don't know what these people are talking about. They seem like they're from a foreign country to me. And those who follow Jesus understood it. They found that memorial service natural and inspiring. But those who don't seek God or reject him had no clue what they were watching. And again, notice how important this response is. Jesus tells us how we respond to him and his messengers reveals how we respond to God. And this is a big topic in the New Testament. We could look at a number of verses, especially in the Gospel of John, that point out this connection between how you respond to Jesus is how you respond to God. One of my favorites is at the end of Colossians 1, Paul paints a very strong picture of who Jesus is, and he makes the claim all we can know about God is seen in Jesus, and everything is under Jesus' authority. Basically, what he's saying is it's not the case that Jesus gives me one piece of the puzzle, and there are these other philosophers and teachers who give you another piece of the puzzle, and then there's these textbooks that maybe have the missing piece and so on. Paul claims in Colossians that everything we can know about God, everything we know about God's person, his character, and his authority is manifest to us in Jesus. This man, Jesus, is the place where we learn about God. He is the one and the only one who can reveal God's plans and purposes, his character, his standards, his holiness, and what he expects. Jesus is God in a way that we can see and understand and grasp. So when we look at Jesus, we see the God that we need to know. And there's nowhere else to look. You can look high and low, but eventually you're going to have to deal with Jesus because all of God is found in Jesus. There's no other part of creation where I can find God. I won't find him in energetics or meditation or philosophies. I will find him only by learning who Jesus is. There's not a single thing to know about God that's important to know that I cannot find in Jesus. Likewise, Paul says in that passage, Jesus has the authority to speak to every inch of creation, including you and me. Whether you are a Christian or not, you are under his authority. There isn't anyone else you have to deal with. And no matter what path you take, sooner or later you will face Jesus. There won't be a vote, there won't be an election, it's not majority rule. It's going to come down to how you respond to Jesus. And one of the great tensions we find in the Gospels is that the religious leaders of the day claimed to love God, but they hated Jesus. Jesus violated the Sabbath. Jesus ate with sinners, which they thought was abhorrent. He makes these outrageous claims about having the authority to forgive sins, which they thought was blasphemy. Speaking of the Pharisees, and Jesus calls them hypocrites and whitewashed tombs. He says they have their reward in full because the reward they're seeking is the approval of their peers. So the Pharisees would say Jesus isn't a reflection of God in his character. They think someone sent by God would look more like them. The Pharisees think they can reject Jesus and maintain that they claim to love God. And Jesus is saying here, that's not possible. The way you respond to Jesus is the way you respond to God. Jesus is a perfect reflection of God and a perfect representation of God. And if I don't like what Jesus is saying or doing, it's because I don't understand God. There's no way to claim, oh, I love God, but I'm not so crazy about Jesus because that means you don't really know who God is. This is the progression Jesus is teaching in this passage, and it is profoundly important. He who receives the disciples of Jesus receives Jesus, and he who receives Jesus receives God. The disciples are a reflection of Jesus, who is a reflection of the Father. One last point, and then we'll wrap this up. I think this passage tells us that there are three important intermediaries between us and God. And by intermediary, I just mean this picture we've been looking at, the people we need to receive. My response to an intermediary reveals my response to God. The first and most important is Jesus. We cannot claim to love God and reject Jesus like the Pharisees did. Jesus is a perfect reflection of God and his character. His teachings and his actions show us who God is, and how we respond to Jesus shows how we respond to God. The second set of intermediaries are the prophets and the apostles. God chose a few human beings to proclaim his message to and told them to tell the rest of us. And how we respond to them shows how we respond to God. So we can't say, I love Jesus, but I reject everything the apostle Paul ever wrote. That's not an option. The New Testament and passages like this one do not give us that option. Acts tells us how Jesus chose Paul to be an apostle just like the others. Paul makes the claim that he is an apostle just like the others and that he was taught by Jesus. And how I respond to the gospel proclaimed by Paul shows how I respond to Jesus because Jesus gave Paul the gospel he proclaimed. And then the third class of intermediaries are other followers of Jesus. People like you and me who seek Jesus, who want to know what he said, want to know what he taught, and want to learn from him. You can't say, oh, I love God, but I hate people who love Jesus. They're just weird. They think differently, they act differently, and they expect me not to be selfish. That's not an option. If we hate people who genuinely love and seek to follow Jesus, that reveals something about where our hearts are. We need to look at other followers of Jesus and think, those are my people. They want what I want. We're going to spend eternity together. We are running the same journey of faith together. Now, I'm not denying that there are people who claim to follow Jesus, but in fact they don't. They follow him in name only, but when push comes to shove, they're really not following him. If I find myself having a problem with that kind of person, I don't think it means I have a problem with Jesus. I'm talking about a response to genuine followers of Jesus who represent him reasonably well. I'm also not saying that you have to be best friends with every other believer on the planet. I'm saying on some level you have to recognize that we share the same hope, the same mercy, the same faith, the same savior, the same need for grace. We agree on the most important issues of life, even if our personalities don't mesh. In other places, Jesus talks about the ways our faith works itself out, like how we respond to our enemies. But here he tells us three things that reveal whether or not we have faith. When we open our hearts to Jesus, that's one. When we open our hearts to his prophets and apostles, that's two. And when we open our hearts to his people, that's three. And those show us that we are in fact opening our hearts to God. Thank you for listening to Wednesday in the Word, the podcast that explains not only what a passage means, but also shows you how to figure it out. The blog version of this episode, including links and resources, is at Wednesdayintheword.com slash Start Strong Podcast 6. You can listen to all the episodes in this series on Wednesdaytheword.com. There is no charge, no spam, and no ads, just free, trustworthy resources to help you grow in understanding scripture. If this podcast has blessed you, please leave a rating or review on your favorite podcast platform. And most importantly, tell a friend what you learned and where you learned it. If you're reading along in the Start Strong Book, read chapter 7 before the next episode. You can find the book wherever books are sold, or start with the free resources at Startstrongbook.org. Our theme music is graciously provided by Reggie Coates. You can hear more of Reggie's music on heartfeltmusic.org. Thank you for joining me today. I'm Krissan Morata, and I'll see you next week at Wednesday in the Word.