Mission, Motive and Means
Notes
Transcript
PRAY
Up until this point in Matthews Gospel
- Jesus has been both the hero (although many at the time considerd him the villan),
but also Jesus has been the one doing all the work.
He has preached - that glorious sermon on the mount,
he has taught,
he has debated,
He has healed,
he has driven out demons,
He has raised a young girl from the dead
He has proclaimed the Good news of the kingdom of Heaven,
He has pointed people to who he himself is
- the Son of God - the saviour of humanity.
And these short few verses introduce the next phase of His master plan.
The disciples - His 12 friends and followers -
Are now invited into the same task and responsibility that Jesus had.
The first few vs of chapter 10 as we’ll see next week - makes it very clear:
Jesus called his twelve disciples to him and gave them authority to drive out impure spirits and to heal every disease and sickness.
v6-8
Go rather to the lost sheep of Israel. As you go, proclaim this message: ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received; freely give.
It’s an identical list to what we have been used to Jesus doing so far.
Jesus is demonstrating how his mission to the world
- throughout time - is going to be effective.
It starts with him -
It’s given to the disiciples with an equal amount of power and authority that he himself had
- of healing and casting out of demons -
And finally at the end of Matthew’s gospel,
the task is extended to the whole church of Christ -
since that time to this very day:
Mat 28v18-20
Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
The immediate disciples - could never reach ‘all nations’ themselves -
and so the book of Acts shows us how this authority and responsibility
was passed onto the church as a whole.
This is the heart of Jesus -
The basis for the disciples mission,
And so the basis for ours as well.
These verese are an introduction to the principles that ought to govern how we spend the rest of our lives!
It shows us: our,
1 - Mission 2 - Motivation 3 - Method
1 - Mission 2 - Motivation 3 - Method
1 - Mission:
1 - Mission:
Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness.
Jesus went through all the towns and villages.
All is a Big word!
This is what Jesus was about!
Going everywhere, stopping always - to reach everyone he could!
Someone has done the maths and recons Jesus potentially visited 204 cities - 15000 people across Galliee!
Exhausting and Exhaustive
The churches mission remains today to reach ‘ALL’ for Jesus.
The world’s Population is 8 Billion
3.4 Billion people are unreached by the Gospel.
Meaning they have no viable means of even being exposed to hearing the good news of Jesus.
42%!
I’d say we have our work cut out as a church.
I’d say we ought to be doing all we can to reach those who have not heard about Jesus.
Of course that means some must ‘Go’ to the places in the world were whole people groups have not heard at all.
There are in fact 7276 unreached people groups still in our world!
That’s extraordinary, and sad!
The mission is extensive and exhaustive.
Jesus started it by going to all the unreached people - who didn’t know about him and the Kingdom of Heaven. - Which was, well everyone really at the time.
We too should adopt the same attitude.
We can’t be content to just tell those immediently around us about Jesus,
we must keep pushing the boundirers to share Jesus with those who ahve not, and will not hear unless we go.
OUr Enlist team as we budget our mission giving as a church,
are trying to steer more and more of our support to those who are working with the unreached.
So, Margot Knight who will be here in a couple of weeks is heading to Chad with her new husband to an unreached people.
There is more to be done if we are to be exhustive and exhusted!
So how are you doing as an individual?
how you are putting an emphasis on the unreached.
Where does your spending money go?
On a Coffee everyday or on supporting a family trying to get the gospel to those who have never heard?
Where does your 5 year plan take you?
To the next senior level of management,
Or to a relaxing retirement?
To morgate free fincial bliss andf hlidays
Or to frontline mission work in the middle east
or Pakistan to reach the millions of unreached Muslims who need Jesus?
Or to drastically increasing you giving to send or support a Mission partner reaching refugees in southern Europe
Or to retiring to North Africa so you can share the good news with those who will never hear otherwise.
Not everyone can go to the unreached - but everyone can seriously consider it!
ANd everyone can support and pray for those who do Go.
ALL is a big word!
So, the Mission is big.
But what is the actual mission?
That same verse gives us a great summary.
1 - teaching in the synagogs, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, healing every disease.
1 - teaching in the synagogs, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, healing every disease.
Jesus taught in the synagogs - in other words - he used the OT scriptures, the bible to teach those who would listen, the truth about God.
Jesus went to the places where people would listen - and even though he knew he’d be rejected by many and eventually killed for his teaching - he did it anyway.
Mission is simply to teach the bible to those who will listen to you.
But it’s not just general biblical teaching or theology - it is teaching that proclaims the good news of the kingdom.
Jesus proclaimed the Kingdom of God.
A kingdom of joy and perfectign For God rules there.
A kingdom that is open to all who come to Jesus.
A kingdom that cannot be earned, but is a free gift - through the eventual death and resurection of Jesus.
Who deals with our sin and the sin of the world in his death -taking the wrath of God on himself - so that we do not face right eternal judgement in hell,
But instead are given a resurection life in Jesus - eternity with Him as our king!
MIssion is not social aid work - although that is a good and lving work that may open peoples hearts to listen to our message,
But mission work must be a verbal, understandable proclamation of the Kingdom of God.
As Jesus the King.
Mission is to befriend people,
to live amongst people to gain their ear
to learn their languages
so that we can proclaim Jesus.
To deliver people from hell, to heaven, with Jesus, forever.
Jesus also, alongside his proclaiming, was
Healing every disease.
If you read the NT, and the life and work of Jesus, he was utterly extraordinary!
He healed anybody and everybody of terrible diseases and Even death!
He never failed - he never did a half job -
he never offered slight improvements, or temporary repairs.
We’re not talking colds, and sore backs.
We’re talking the dead raised, the paralysed walking, the blind seeing!
He Could have walked into Kingston hospital and sent everyone home.
Nothing has ever - or will ever - happen like that again -until Jesus returns and does it agin eternally.
He will eliminate death itself - and those who call on his name will be saved and live eternally with Him.
Jesus’ power displayed should leave us in no doubt of who he is.
This was to fulfil what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah: ‘He took up our infirmities and bore our diseases.’
In other words - Jesus did all those things to proove to the world he was truely the Son of God!
He was the promised saviour of the world.
He was the Messiah.
The one promised from the OT.
And if he can do the miraculous physically - he can do the miraculous spiritually!
The spiritually dead will live,
The spiritually blind will see,
As we procliam JEsus, we don’t need to perform miracles to convince people.
We need to point people to Jesus and what he did, so they see He is their saviour.
So they see what sort of Man, what sort of gracious and all powerful God he is.
Yes he healed every disease on earth,
but in just 2 years time from this account,
Jesus will face
A death where he willingly accepted the punishment we deserved from God,
and in exchange gave us his own righteousness - his perfect and good relationship with God!
Jesus will heal our eternal death, and give us himself as Lord and King.
An eternity with no pain, suffering, anxiety, confusion or death.
The Mission Jesus had was to:
Teach ALL who would listen to the truth about who he was from the bible,
Proclaim the good news of salvation to ALL, becasue of who he was .
and to heal their diseases so that they would know Who he was -
the eternal healer of sins and judgement,
Our mission remains the same.
the next question then is what was Jesus’s motivation:
2 - Motivation:
2 - Motivation:
When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.
How extraordinary, that The God that we as a human race reject,
comes down to earth to become one of us,
and despite our continued rebelion, he has compassion on us!
He describes the crowds - people - like you are me,
as helpless and harrassed!
That’s probably a pretty apt description for most of us in general!
But Jesus isn’t rely just talking about life being harassing -
but that spiritually we are harassed and helpless.
We are like -Sheep without a shepherd.
Now, it’s quite easy to read a verse like that and think -
we should be motivated to tell people about Jesus because we feel sorry for them,
They are helpless and harrassed, they face the judgement of God to come,
and no-one is telling them,
or shepherding them safley into to the loving salavtion of Jesus.
That is sort of true, but I’m not sure it’s quite the right attitude here.
It is Jesus who sees them as sheep without a shepherd, and Jesus who is the shepherd.
We are not the shepherds, Jesus is - we are sheep!
We should be motivated to tell others about Jesus because Jesus himself loves them enough to pursue them as a shepherd.
Jesus has compassion on both us, and those around us.
We are not wonderful Christian people who have got it sorted,
and so ought to take pity on those poor people around us
who haven’t yet turned their life around to follow Jesus!
No,
We too are lost sheep, who once did not have a shepherd,
and are no better, or worthy than anyone else!
The only difference is that we are sheep whom the shepherd has already found!
And as we wander about our field and find other sheep who don’t realise where the shepherd is we simply show them too him!
We too are helpless and harrassad ‘apart from’ the shepherd who leads us by still waters and green pastures.
Our motivation then, to tell others about the shepherd,
about who Jesus is,
about the Good news of salavtion through Jesus the son of God,
is the fact that that we have already been undeservedly saved,
and we know our loving shepherds wants others to receve the same grace and mercy.
We are motivated to save many becasue our shepherd King is motivated to save many out of compassion.
UNfortuanawly we’re so often tied up in our own self-absorbed world, that we barely give a second thought to how we might lead our neighbours,
our extended family,
our friends,
our collegues to the Shepherd.
Career, family, comfort, leisure, all come first.
The good news to others, comes somewhere down the list.
But for Jesus, it was at the top of his list.
It was his purpose for coming to earth to save us in the first place!
Our motivation ought to be both the example of Jesus,
and also an extraordinary gratefulness and joy for our own salvation and life now with our Shepherd Jesus.
There is a second type of motivation though - and that is in v37
Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few.
It’s true isn’t it, and sad.
The harvest - the available population of lost sheep is massive - but the number of sheep to lead back to the shepherd is tiny!
And while a third of the planets population identify as Christian - only about 10% are actually evangelical.
That’s an estimated 800 million evangelical Christians on the planet,
Who take Jesus’ mission and the bibles teaching seriously enough to act.
IF we want more motivation than remembering that Jesus has compassion on the lost - as he does on us,
then remember the harvest is plentiful - but the workers are few.
Do we need more motivation than that of the crops of souls rotting in the ground,
because we are sat here in WP not doing anything about it!
And so finally - what method does Jesus want us to use to fulfil his mission:
3 - Method:
3 - Method:
This is a simple point.
We’ve talked about the churches,
and our indvidual responsibility to teach the bible,
proclaim the good news,
point people to who Jesus is,
be motivated by our own salvation in Jesus, and his compassion for the lost,
But actually,
Jesus hasn’t yet once instructed us or even the disciples to do that in this passage - or even in Matthew’s Gospel yet!
He’ll go onto do that,
But - that is not where we should start.
It is not where the disciples were told to start.
They were told simply:
Ask the Lord v38
Ask the Lord v38
Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.”
Jesus’ method that he commands to his disciples, and by extension us here today, to fulfil his mission - is simple.
Pray.
Jesus points to prayer as the REALLY effective thing.
No matter how great our personal exertion,
we will not be able to gather in the whole harvest.
Therefore we are to pray to him who can send out the workers who are needed.
Pray for more gospel hearted men, women and children to go out and proclaim the good news of who Jesus is!
Simple.
Just pray.
JC Ryle the Bishop of Liverpool in the late1800’s said of this passage:
‘Personal working for souls is good. Giving Money is Good. But praying is best of all! By praying we obtain the help of the Holy Spirit’
to help us pray for more workers,
Go to the joshua project webiste and pray for the unreached.
Go to mission agency websites and pray for them.
Go to our Gospel Partner webpage and pray for those who have gone.
We’ll put some fo those links on this weeks email.
And Pray for each other here at GCWP,
that we have opportunities and people prepared to share the gospel, not just locally, but to Go to the unreached of our world as Jesus did for us..
Pray in the morning,
Pray this week in your home groups,
Pray in your families,
Of course it’s a dangerous prayer -
You will find yourself being part of the answer,
as the disciples do in the very next verses as they are sent out as workers across the region!
But that shouldn’t stop us praying!
That shouldn’t make us fearful of praying.
Quite the opposite!
Just pray! It’s easy!
That’s the beauty of prayer -
It’s not scary - Jesus is our friend,
our brother, the comapssionate shepherd
who only wants what is best for us.
He loves to hear from us.
We don’t need to know the answers,
We don;t need to know what he will do,
We simply need to pray!
Pray
Pray for workers, sheep, to bring the lost sheep to Jesus.
The Mission is that ALL know Jesus
The Motivation is that Jesus has compassion on ALL
The Means is Prayer
Let’s do that now:
ADVERTISEMENT