Church And Its Call Series

The Church and Its Call

(Matthew 16:21-28)

Introduction: We live at a time where the whole world is in a revolution. Nations are in debt, and with every terrorist attack there is more evidence that the world is moving from civilization into chaos!

But the core question this morning is: Can the church still make a difference in the midst of these difficult problems? - Or is it sadly too late for the church to act?

Absolutely not, if we understand the Call of the Church!

The theme we have this morning is entitled, “The Call of the Church.” Now one can take various biblical dimensions across the Scripture to address this theme. But this morning we will take the dimension from the text that was read to us from Matthew16 to understand the Call of the Church.

We read here that Jesus considers His call and the call of the church with a code name, “Operation Cross.”

Until this point, Jesus has been preaching, healing and doing some wonderful things. And while these things were necessary, they were not His ultimate mission; because He had come primarily to redeem sinful people through His death.

But Simon Peter in Matthew 16:22, objected to this and took Jesus aside and said “Never!” In the Greek, the word means “may God be gracious to you.”

Peter’s objection was out of concern for His master, to protect him from the suffering. Peter meant to say, “Jesus you don’t have to bloody yourself on the cross.”

But if Jesus had not suffered and died, Peter would have died in his sins. This is why it was necessary for Jesus to ignore Peter’s distraction in order to fulfill His call.

Nevertheless, Jesus knew that the source of the distraction came from Satan – that’s why He said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You do not have the concerns of God.” (v23).

Satan was trying to distract Jesus under the disguise of a concerned friend to go easy with His Call. But Jesus had a clear sense of God’s call for his life; and therefore He was able to withstand the Devil’s distraction.

This is the Call of the Church to withstand the devil’s distraction and have a clear sense of God’s Mission. (v22-23).

a. And friends, when the church undertakes the Call to do God’s mission, there will be distractions and adversity on the way.

Peter was distracted towards complacency, and so he felt that God’s mission should be done without the cross – without suffering.

It’s like telling your insurance company that it doesn’t need to pay for the damage you did to your car. Well if the insurance company isn’t going to pay, then who is going to get it fixed? Similarly if Jesus hadn’t died on the cross, we would still be on the hook for our sins.

It was the cross that defined the Call of Christ and it is the cross that defines the call of the Church. C.H. Spurgeon once said, “To tell about Jesus without the Cross is to betray Him with a kiss.” We the church cannot become distracted for the sake of complacency and be less truthful about the greatest Gospel.

The church cannot become distracted from its main mission to share the gospel and make disciples (Mt.28:18-20).

So number one, the Call of the Church is to withstand the devil’s distraction and have a clear sense of God’s Mission.

Jesus then goes on to say that: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” (v24)

b. The Call of the Church secondly is to deny the negative desires of the body & the soul.

When Jesus said that we must ‘deny ourselves’ it means that we must say ‘no’ to our ambitions, our likes and dislikes, when they begin to compete with Jesus.’

Yes, denying our desires is hard because by nature every breath we take is in the hope of accomplishing our will. Babies for example learn to talk not because they want to appreciate their mother on how the food tastes; but babies learn to talk because they want to communicate their needs for food, companionship, or even for a clean diaper.

This self-centeredness doesn’t end when a baby becomes a toddler; it gets more interesting. And as we grow older we simply get better at our self- desires; and we’re still thinking: “If only I had that, if I had only married him, If I had only married her, if I had only worked there, …then I would be happy.”

But boy I tell you - it never works out that way. Because you see as soon as we stretch a HD TV screen across our wall, we start wishing we had a better sound system. But the Call of the Church is to deny the negative desires of Consumerism, Secularism and Skepticism in God. And the way to deny all these is by carrying the cross of Discipline.