Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - What Jesus Says You SHOULD Fear | The Gospels | Matthew 10:21–42

Episode Date: October 19, 2026

Why does Jesus tell us not to be afraid, and then tell us there is someone we should fear? What does it mean to fear God without living in terror? And how can you find courage when following Jesus comes at a cost? In today’s episode, Keith unpacks Matthew 10:21–42 and explains how a right fear of God frees us from the power of people’s opinions and reminds us that our lives are held by our Father. Want to become a more consistent Bible reader? Download our free Ten Minute Bible Guide and start building a simple, sustainable habit of meeting with God through his word. Grab your guide here. Read the Bible with us! This year, we’re exploring the Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—and it's never too late to join! Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passage: Matthew 10:21–42

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. What were you afraid of this week? I mean, it might have been something small like an email that you were afraid to open or a conversation that you'd been dreading. Or maybe it's something bigger like a test result you were waiting for from the doctor. Maybe it's something really deep, like the thought that if people knew what you were really like,

they would think less of you. Maybe they wouldn't even want to be around you. Or maybe you're afraid of being stuck in your life, stuck in a career or in a town or with a mental health condition. Or maybe you're afraid that you're not going to become the person that you'd always assumed you'd become. Most of us don't walk around calling those things fears. We call them stresses or pressures. But they act a lot like fear.

They cause anxiety. They determine what we say and what we don't say. They determine what we protect. In Matthew 10, Jesus says, do not be afraid three times. But then right in the middle of telling them not to be afraid, he tells them something they should be afraid of. So we need to unpack this. Let's start with this.

It's not a contradiction. The thing that they should be afraid of is kind of the whole point of what Jesus is saying. Jesus, it turns out, is not trying to eliminate your fears. He's trying to relocate your fears. Because fear is not defeated by reassurance. Fear is displaced. by a greater fear that turns out to be safe. Let me explain, but first we just need to read, starting in Matthew chapter 10, verse 26. Jesus says, so do not be afraid of them,

for there is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed or hidden that will not be made known. What I tell you in the dark, speak in the daylight. What is whispered in your ear, proclaim from the roofs. Do not be afraid of those who kill the body, but cannot kill the soul. rather be afraid of the one who can destroy both body and soul in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside of your father's care. And even the very hairs on your head are all numbered. So don't be afraid.

You are worth more than many sparrows. Now, before we go through this passage, I just want you to notice who Jesus is talking to. He's getting ready to send the 12 disciples out. And this is the kind of pre-briefing that he can, gives them. And what we're listening to is kind of the briefing he gives them before they leave. It's not very encouraging. He says, I'm going to send you out like sheep among the wolves. You're going to be handed over to local councils and get flogged in the synagogue. He says,

brother will betray brother to death and father will betray his children. You'll be hated by everyone because of me. So when Jesus says, do not be afraid, he is not saying it to people who are worried about nothing. He is saying it to people who have major challenges in front of them, major reasons to be afraid. And Jesus never tells them the danger isn't real. He never says, look, nothing bad is going to happen to you. And by the way, Jesus never promises you that either. Verse 28 concedes the opposite. Jesus grants that your enemies or your opponents or your challenges in life, they can kill you. He just says that's the end of their reach. All they can do is kill you. And to Jesus, that's not the whole thing.

So I want you to feel how honest this passage is. Because a comfort that only works when everything is going right in your life and nothing is going wrong, well, that's not really comfort. Jesus is building in us a faith that makes sense on our worst day. So the first thing he says is, do not be afraid, because everything eventually will work out. Now, the first reason sounds a little strange. He says, don't be afraid because nothing concealed will stay. concealed. Put that in context. The disciples are going to be lied about. Their character will be

attacked. They're going to be misrepresented when they're not around to defend themselves. They're not going to get to correct the record. And Jesus's comfort is that the record will eventually be corrected. Not now, maybe not in this lifetime, but in the end, it gets corrected. Which means the verdict currently being passed on you? Well, maybe you could call it an interim verdict. It's not the final verdict. Whatever the room decided about you, whatever the group chat decided about you, that is a provisional ruling from a court that will be overruled where it gets things wrong. And I have to say the other half of that, because it's in the verse, the same daylight that vindicates also exposes. If nothing stays hidden, that is only good news for a person who has

nothing to hide or who has hidden somewhere safe. Paul says your life is now hidden with Christ in God. If you are hidden in Christ, then disclosure on judgment day? Well, that's when you finally get told the truth about yourself, but you get told that truth by God, who already knows all of it and loves you anyway. So Jesus says, look, since everything is coming out anyway, just say it out loud now. He says, what I tell you in the dark, speak in the daylight, you have nothing to hide, nothing to fear. Fear makes us whisper. It makes us hedge. It makes us qualify. It makes us us kind of water down what we believe so that it really doesn't cost us anything to say it. Jesus's argument is essentially, why are you whispering? You are already safe in me. You do not need

to be afraid. But then Jesus says, you do need to be afraid of the right thing. He says in verse 28, do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the one who can destroy both soul and body in hell. So look at how Jesus is putting this together. He's not telling them that their enemies are harmless. He's telling them that their enemies have a ceiling, that there's a limit to what they can do. Everything that frightens you has a limit.

It can reach your body and then it stops. It can't go one inch further than that. But God, he has no limits. God has no ceiling. So Jesus says, if you're going to be afraid of someone, be afraid of the one whose reach never ends now look when jesus says fear the one who can destroy both body and soul the person he is talking about is god some act as if that's satan but it can't be satan because satan has no authority to send anyone anywhere satan is not the judge he is a defendant he's the one on trial and the command to fear god is found

throughout the bible isaiah eight says do not fear what they fear the lord almighty is the one you you are to regard as holy. He is the one you are to fear. So Jesus is telling them to fear God. That's been the message throughout the entire scripture. Doesn't the gospel say that if I'm forgiven, I don't need to fear God? So why would I fear God? That's a great question. But fear isn't the opposite of love. It's fear like standing close to a holy, all-powerful, all-majestic God. It's the fear you might have if you're standing outside in the middle of a lightning storm or the kind of fear that means you don't stroll casually up to the edge of a cliff. A Christian shouldn't fear God because of what he might do to you.

Fearing God is the proper response of knowing who God is, of who it is that told you to not be afraid. The person who fears God has run out of things to be afraid of. Not because the other fears are gone, but because something larger walked into the room and all those other fears, well, they went quiet. that's how fear actually leaves a person not by being argued with but by being outmatched and then finally he says do not be afraid because you're counted jesus causes us to think about god and who he is and then he focuses our attention on a bird he asks are not two sparrows sold for a penny now sparrows were the cheapest meat in the market sparrows are what you bought if you couldn't afford anything else you could buy two of them for

the smallest coin that people used. So Jesus talks about sparrows because they're unimportant and insignificant. And he says not one of those sparrows, not one of those unimportant and insignificant birds will fall to the ground apart from the will of your father. He's saying no sparrow hits the ground outside of God's control. The promise is that nothing will happen to you apart from God's will. There's no such thing as an event in your life that he is not ultimately in charge of. And then in verse 30, he says, even the hairs on your head are numbered. Notice he doesn't say he counted them one time. No, he says, numbered. The God who governs the world so that even a small bird doesn't fall to the ground apart from his will, that same God knows how many hairs are on your head all the time. So he knows

how many came off in the shower and got rinsed down the drain that no one else noticed. He knows that number. And then verse 31, he puts it all together. He says, therefore, don't be afraid. You are worth more than many sparrows. Notice he doesn't say you're worth a lot. He says you're worth more than the thing. He just told you that God is paying very close attention to. What God is saying here is if he cares about the sparrows, if nothing happens to them apart from his will, if God has numbered every hair on your head, then of course he's paying attention to you. Of course, nothing will happen to you without his permission. God is control of all things, even when his son went to the cross to bear our sin. God handed him over to the Jewish leaders and to the Roman government, according to his

specific plan, according to his foreknowledge. It wasn't an accident. The father was watching over Jesus, but he did not spare him. He did not step in to prevent the crucifixion. The one who has our hairs numbered, watched his own son go down in death, and he did not intervene. But he did raise him from the grave three days later. So when Jesus says, you are worth more than many sparrows, that's not just some sentiment. There's a price attached to it, and the price has been paid. This is not God telling you to cheer up, that everything will work out. No, God is telling you that he sent his son to die for you to take care of your deepest need so you can trust him with every part of your life, which brings us back to where we started.

The email you're dreading to open, the conversation you're dreading to have, the test result you're dreading, the fear of being found out. Look, I'm not going to tell you that those things aren't frightening. Of course they are. Jesus didn't say to his disciples, look, everything's going to turn out like you want. Not at all. What I'm telling you is that the largest question about you has already been settled, and it was settled in your favor, and it cost God everything. The biggest thing that could ever go wrong for you has already been dealt with by someone else.

So you can stop managing the small fears in your life. You are being kept by the one person in the universe who knows all things and controls all things, and he told you to call him Father. Let's pray. Father, I pray that we would take our worries, our fears, our fears, our things. concerns to you. You're the one who knows us and loves us, and we can trust you with our whole life. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.