Merry Christmas! On this day of exchanging gifts, in these few verses Jesus tells us a lot about how we should give and how we should receive.

Jesus says we should receive prophets. This means we should recognize that their messages come from God and thus that we should obey what they have to tell us. Doesn’t this mean that we should give special attention and reverence to the words of the prophets and the apostles today, reading and believing the Holy Scriptures to be the very Word of God?

Jesus says we should receive righteous persons. Doesn’t this tell us a lot about how we choose the people with whom we spend time? Doesn’t it also challenge us to give more value, more credibility to the words and ideas of those who are consciously trying to live according to God’s Word?

And how should we give? Verse 42 assures us that no gift is too small to make a difference, when given to those who are disciples of Christ, those who are seeking to follow the Lord. But in the verses immediately preceding this passage, Jesus calls all of us to the same sort of radical giving that He practiced – to deny ourselves and take up our own crosses, not seeking to enhance our own lives, but giving all we are and all we have to His glory and for the good of others.

For isn’t that what Jesus did on the first Christmas? Didn’t He give up all He had to share in our poverty and suffering? So, how else can we truly receive Christ and His prophets unless we do the same thing? How else can we enjoy the company of Christ and those who follow Him unless we also give of ourselves so that others might be blessed?

Matthew 10:40-42 (ESV)

40 “Whoever receives you receives me, and whoever receives me receives him who sent me.
41 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.
42 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.”