We who publish Yeshua’s kingdom news can fully expect to be betrayed – to be delivered over. This is frying pan and fire experience where the gold is tested, but not without the guarantee of success. Just so we know that in some circumstances God does not leave us to our own resources – as we are fond of being – the Lord commits to keeping our fingers off the switches, promising to speak through us.

When they deliver you over, do not be anxious how you are to speak or what you are to say, for what you are to say will be given to you in that hour. Matt. 10:19, For it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you. Matt. 10:20

Instructions from Jesus are usually challenging but sometimes they cross into the “do not try this without me” domain. Some believers are so convinced that their performance is all that matters now that they are saved this is a difficult pill to swallow. Some even forsee a time when they do not need the Saviour’s intercession (who could dream up such an outrage?) In the case of his prediction of betrayal and trial he commands:

do not even begin to be anxious about

• how one might speak
• what one might say/speak

Raising a ruckus for Yeshua

Imagine having an appointment and instructions require you not to think of the meeting and to refrain from planning how to say what you might want to say. The casual obesrver or the spectator believer may think that the mention of the name of Jesus at the key moment passes for lifting up his cause, but it it not so. Jesus is more “tack on at the end” than the all-in-all he really is.

It is obvious that picking up ones hat as one heads out the door on the day of the appointment highlights the last cascade of thoughts about the appointment, but as the day approaches and the last seven days pass the thoughts multiply and have to be kept at bay. However, in this instruction no one knows when that appointment is going to happen. In the final analysis this promise is a world apart if one is not raising any serpents on a pole for the world to see. This is not a promise for anyone who believes in God, nor is it for the followers of Moses or any other authority. The Father FATHER taking over the defence is for a select few.

Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.

Matt. 10:16