Mobilize for Missions
Notes
Transcript
Two weeks ago I began laying out for you our purpose as a church. First we talked about how we exist to Magnify God. In Psalm 34:3 it say, “Magnify God with me, let us exalt his name together.” Based on that verse, I believe our purpose is to come together as a church and exalt God in such a way that He takes His rightful place at the center of all that we do as a church. For that to happen, He must first be the center of our worship in our personal lives. We exist to magnify God.
Last week, we talked about how we not only exist to Magnify God, but we also exist to Multiply Disciples. The Great Commission, given by Jesus to the Disciples and expected of us today, commands us to “make disciples…teaching them to obey all the Jesus has commanded...” Therefore, our purpose as a church is to help new and long time believers move forward in their faith journey and equipping them to do the same for someone else. Our purpose is to be a church that is making disciples who are making disciples who are making disciples.
This morning, we come to the third and final part of our purpose statement as we talk about we exist to Mobilize for Missions. Remember, last Sunday morning, I told you that we are laying the foundation for the years to come. The first part of the foundation is Magnifying God, the second part is Multiplying Disciples, and this morning we put the final blocks of the foundation together as we talk about Mobilizing for Missions.
A missionary in Africa was once asked if he really liked what he was doing. His response was shocking. "Do I like this work?" he said. "No. My wife and I do not like dirt. We have reasonable refined sensibilities. We do not like crawling into vile huts through goat refuse...But is a man to do nothing for Christ he does not like? God pity him, if not. Liking or disliking has nothing to do with it. We have orders to 'Go,' and we go.
Church, we have our orders. From the mouth of Jesus Himself in Matthew 28:18-20, He commands us to, “Go!” Therefore, we have no choice but to mobilize and “Go!”
To help us understand Jesus’s command to go, let’s turn to Acts 13 and read the story of Barnabas and Saul being set apart and sent off on their first missionary journey.
READ ACTS 13:1-5
I. The City of Antioch in Syria
I. The City of Antioch in Syria
When we come to Acts 13, Luke’s focus shifts from the ongoing work of sharing the Gospel with the Jews in Jerusalem by Peter and the other disciples, to Syria and the City of Antioch. From this point forward, the book of Acts focuses on the missionary journey of a new convert, a man named Saul.
Antioch was the third largest city of the Roman Empire in the first centuries BC and AD. It was a Hellenistic city because of the Greco-Roman religious beliefs and worldview that was deeply embedded in the culture. Antioch was 300 miles north of Jerusalem.
Luke records in Acts 11:19 that after the stoning of the Apostle Stephen in 35AD, believers fled Jerusalem out of fear and traveled to Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch. At that time, the scattered Jews only spoke the Gospel to Jews. In verses 20-21, however, Luke says that eventually, some men from Cyprus and Cyrene came to Antioch and started sharing the Gospel with the gentiles. When this happened, a church was formed in the city that was made of both Jews and Gentiles. At this point, Luke tells us that the mother church in Jerusalem sent Barnabas to Antioch to check out what was going on. In verse 23, Luke writes that “When [Barnabas] came and saw the grace of God, he was glad, and he exhorted them all to remain faithful to the Lord with steadfast purpose...” In verse 24, Luke tells us that a large number of people were added to the Lord in Antioch. Following his time in Antioch, Luke says that Barnabas went to Tarsus to get Saul and bring him back to Antioch. And that’s where we begin this morning.
As we come to our verses this morning, we should understand that the Church in Antioch is a thriving and growing church.
II. The Church at Antioch
II. The Church at Antioch
1. Their Diverse Leadership
1. Their Diverse Leadership
In verse 1, Luke explains that there were both prophets and teachers at the church in Antioch. But, I don’t want to miss something of extreme importance that he tells us. Luke lists five men who are a part of the church.
Barnabas: Acts 4:36 tells us that Barnabas was a Jew from the city of Cyprus.
Simeon: Who was nicknamed Niger because of his dark skin and hair, was also a Jew.
Lucius: Was from the North African city of Cyrene and potentially one of the founders of the Church at Antioch(Acts 11:20).
Manaen: A Jew who was either an adopted brother or intimate friend of the same Herod of Antipas who had John the Baptist beheaded.
Saul: the Greek-speaking Jew from the city of Tarsus. He was a Roman Citizen and member of the Pharisees. Later in life, he converted to Christianity and had his name changed to Paul.
The point is this. Here are five men from different cities, with different backgrounds, working together to fulfill the mission of the Great Commission to “Go” and “make disciples.” Here they are in a city made up of both Jews and Gentiles working out of a church that was made up of Jews and Gentiles. Four of the five are Jewish, one is dark skinned, and one is from North Africa. One of them was a close friend to a feared ruler, and the other used to kill Christians. These men optimize exactly what the church is supposed to look like. They are from different ethnicities, cultures, and backgrounds yet they have been brought together as brothers in Christ Jesus with the shared mission of taking the Gospel message to the nations. This is the universal Church of Jesus Christ coming together and mobilizing to take the Gospel to the ends of the earth! It is exactly who we are supposed to be here at Monaghan Baptist Church.
Whenever a church is mobilizing for missions and reaching people who are far from God with the Gospel, then the church is going to resemble the city, town, or community where it’s located.
In his book, Autopsy of a Deceased Church, Thom Rainer explains research he conducted on fourteen churches that had to shut their doors. He says that in several of these churches, the members no longer resembled the community. Churches who don’t resemble their communities are churches that no longer have a purpose where God placed them.
So, what does our community look like?
Within a three mile radius of our church, there are:
an estimated 50,890 residents
Caucasian = 51.7%
African American = 26.8%
Latino = 18.6%
What these numbers tell us is that if Monaghan Baptist Church is going to reach our community with the Gospel, then we must Mobilize to reach Caucasians, African Americans, and Latinos who are far from God. Sin is colorblind and so is the Gospel. Therefore, we must be colorblind as well.
I love what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 9:19-23 when he explains, “I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them. To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though not being myself under the law) that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (not being outside the law of God but under the law of Christ) that I might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings.”
Whether they are White, Black, Brown, or Red doesn’t matter when it comes to sharing the Gospel with people who don’t know the Lord. All that matters is our church doing all we can to be “all things to all people, that by all means [we] might save some.”
2. Their Posture and Their Mission
2. Their Posture and Their Mission
Verse 2 opens by telling the reader that these five “prophets and teachers” “were worshipping the Lord and fasting...” So, in addition to their responsibilities of preaching and teaching about Jesus, these leaders came together for a time of worship, fasting, and prayer. While our verse doesn’t definitively state that they were praying, we believe this was the case because whenever people fasted in that day, it was to deny themselves of any distractions so they could hear directly from God. Thus, they prayed while they fasted. But why did they take on this posture?
Based on the result of their worship and fasting, which we will talk about in a moment, I believe they were seeking God’s direction regarding the purpose of the church. In other words, they were asking God to reveal to them what they were to do next. They are leading a thriving and healthy church in Antioch, and they begin thinking, there has to be a next step. So, they humble themselves before the Lord and seek His will.
A. A Healthy Church Seeks God First
A. A Healthy Church Seeks God First
I am constantly bombarded with emails, phone calls, post-cards, and letters from various individuals and organizations informing us that we need to implement their plan to reach people who don’t know Jesus.
Also, I am constantly hearing or reading about various strategies that we must implement if we are going to be a healthy and vibrant church. Please don’t misunderstand me, many of these ministries and ideas are solid and the people promoting them have pure motives for doing so. But too many church leaders fall into the trap of grabbing on to the next big idea to try and grow their church. And it simply does not work.
Years ago, I served on staff with a Pastor who became so desperate for numerical growth that he would introduce a new strategy for reaching the lost and growing the church practically every other week. And that is not how it works.
The only way to know and understand God’s purpose and mission for us as a church is for us to seek Him first. It is no different than what we are expected to do in our personal lives. Jesus tells us in Matthew 6:33-- “But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”
Antioch was a healthy and vibrant church whose leadership understood that they must Magnify God through worship, fasting, and prayer and in doing so, He would reveal to them their next step.
I can commit to you this morning, that your staff will do our very best to lead the way in seeking God’s Will for our church just as the leadership in Antioch did so long ago. I told the staff when I first arrived that if God is not where we are going, then I do not want to be there.
But it is not just on us as a staff to seek God’s Will first. We must seek His Will together, as a church. We need to come together everyday and pray for God’s guidance in our personal lives and in the life of our church.
B. A Healthy Church is a Mobilizing Church
B. A Healthy Church is a Mobilizing Church
Here’s what I mean. We read in verse two that “While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, ‘Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.’”
Antioch was a thriving and healthy church. It would have been easy to remain in the city, but because the original disciples were passing down to others Jesus’s command to Go, make, baptize, and teach, these leaders knew there was more to their purpose. Yes, they were to continue sharing the Gospel and making Disciples in Antioch, but they understood that it didn’t stop there. They knew they had to multiply themselves, but it’s apparent they were not sure how God wanted them to go about doing so. So they start worshiping, fasting, and praying and God reveals to them His answer. He says, “There is somewhere I need Barnabas and Saul to go, so set them apart.” Then in verse three we read that after they’ve finished fasting and praying, “they laid their hands on them and sent them off.”
Remember earlier when we read from Acts 11 that Barnabas went to Tarsus, met up with Saul, and brought him to Antioch. I believe the reason God sent Barnabas to get Saul and bring him to the Church at Antioch was so the leaders at Antioch could train him and then send him out.
Later on in life, Paul writes a letter to the Church at Ephesus. In it he says that God, “gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God…”—Eph 4:11–13.
The purpose of the Church is to train Christians how to share their testimonies and then send them out into their communities, their neighborhoods, their families, their work environments, and where they play to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ with those who are far from God.
Notice that our purpose is not to equip you to go out and invite someone to a big event that is happening here at the church so we can later brag about how successful the event was because of the large number of attendees. Churches that are built on large events are churches that will fail.
Churches that are built on mobilizing their members to go and reach those who are far from God, are successful churches. How do I know this to be true?
Read vs. 4-5
They are “sent out by the Holy Spirit...” This means that as they go, the power of the third person of the Trinity is with them.
Jesus tells the Disciples in Acts 1:8, “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth.”
From this moment forward, Luke records multiple times when the power of the Holy Spirit fills a speaker or a crowd resulting in thousands coming to know Jesus. When we posture ourselves behind God’s Holy Spirit and we follow Him where He wants us, we are going to fulfill the mission and purpose He sets before us.
Church, when we committed our lives to Jesus Christ, we committed ourselves to being set apart from the rest of the world so that the power of the Holy Spirit can move through us and accomplish God’s purposes for us both personally and has a Church.
So, then, that leads us back to the question, “What do we mean when we say that Monaghan Baptist Church exists to Mobilize for missions?”
It means that In addition to continuing ongoing missions efforts like the Good News Club and ESL classes, we will work to accomplish the following goals in the next five years:
Build on our partnership with Monaghan en Espanol
Utilize our softball field and gymnasium to launch an Upwards Soccer and Basketball ministry to reach children in our surrounding community and their families by utilizing sports as a means to opening the door for the Gospel to be shared.
Launch the Monaghan Academy: A weekday school for children ages 3-K5 that would meet in the mornings. Followed by a free of charge after school program for at-risk elementary age children to come and receive help with their reading, writing, and math skills. They will also receive a meal before they go home.
Launch a Christ-centered, 12 step recovery ministry called Celebrate Recovery to help anyone who is dealing with hurt, pain or addiction of any kind.
Create a Residency in our church where we will train and send out people who are called to either plant, replant, or revitalize churches in our association and throughout our state.
Create international partnerships with Christian organizations and send teams over to help them plant churches in remote areas where the Gospel is needed.
If these ideas are to become a reality, then we must posture ourselves at the feet of the Lord Jesus Christ and seek His guidance concerning how He wants us to carry these out. And then, when He responds, we are to do exactly as He says trusting in the power of the Holy Spirit as He leads and guides us.