Jesus explained further how the 12 Apostles were to conduct themselves on their mission.
10:9-10 They were not to take enough money with them to sustain them while they ministered. "Acquire"(NASB, Gr. ktesesthe) can mean "take along"(NIV, Mark 6:9) or "procure"while they ministered (Acts 1:18; 8:20; 22:28). Probably Jesus did not want them to accumulate money as they ministered or to take along enough money to sustain them. They were not to take an extra tunic either. In other words, they were to travel lightly and to remain unencumbered by material possessions. As a general principle, those who minister spiritual things have a right to expect physical recompense in return (Deut. 25:4; 1 Cor. 9:4-18; 1 Tim. 5:17-18). That is the principle Jesus wanted to teach His disciples.
10:11-15 They were to stay with "worthy"hosts, not necessarily in the most convenient or luxurious accommodations. A worthy person would be one who welcomed a representative of Jesus and the kingdom message. He or she would be the opposite of the "dogs"and "pigs"Jesus earlier told His disciples to avoid (7:6).
The greeting the disciple was to give his host was the normal greeting of the day. If his host proved to be unworthy by not continuing to welcome the disciple, he was to leave that house and stay somewhere else. By withdrawing personally the disciple would withdraw a blessing from that house, namely his presence as a representative of Jesus. The apostles were to do to towns as they did to households.
"A pious Jew, on leaving Gentile territory, might remove from his feet and clothes all dust of the pagan land now being left behind . . . thus dissociating himself from the pollution of those lands and the judgment in store for them. For the disciples to do this to Jewish homes and towns would be a symbolic way of saying that the emissaries of Messiah now view those places as pagan, polluted, and liable to judgment (cf. Acts 13:51; 18:6)."435
More awful judgment awaited the inhabitants of the Jewish towns that rejected Messiah than the judgment coming on the wicked residents of Sodom and Gomorrah that had already received divine destruction (Gen. 19). The unbelievers of Sodom and Gomorrah will receive their sentence at the great white throne judgment (Rev. 20:11-15). The unbelieving Jews of Jesus' day would also stand before Jesus then. One's eternal destiny then as now depended on his or her relationship to Jesus, and that was evident in his attitude toward one of His emissaries (cf. v. 40; 25:40, 45). The apostles could anticipate opposition and rejection as Jesus experienced and as the Old Testament prophets had as well.
