Keep Your Eye on the Task
Matthew 20:17-19
April 20, 2008
NOTE: THE ME/WE/GOD/YOU/WE FORMAT USED IN MY MESSAGES IS BORROWED FROM ANDY STANLEY’S BOOK, "COMMUNICATING
FOR A CHANGE."
A woman was working in her yard with the weed whacker, when she accidentally cut off the tail of her cat.
She ran screaming into the house, and told her husband, wondering what to do.
He replied calmly, "Get the cat, and the tail, and we’ll take them to Wal-Mart."
She was incredulous. "How could that possibly help?" she asked.
"Well," he replied, "they’re the world’s largest retailer." (Cybersalt Digest)
Today, you’re in for a shorter than normal sermon. I know – you pay good money for me to preach to the point that you have to eat what everyone else rejected at the buffet, but there you go.
Today you’ll actually be able to get there ahead of the crowd, for the most part.
Forgive me? Whew! Thanks! So let’s dive in, shall we?
Me: You know what I hate? Walking into a room and forgetting why I went in there.
I know that you’ve only read and heard about stuff like that happening to people, but it actually happens to me sometimes.
I’m only 43, and I get frustrated by something that I figure shouldn’t be happening to me quite yet.
Another thing that gets my goat is when I get distracted by something and I forget what I was doing.
I might be in the middle of a very important task or project, then the next thing you know, I’m hours into something else entirely.
We: Anybody else like that? It’s okay – you can be honest. No one’s going to laugh at you – too hard…
It’s easy to get distracted from our main purpose in life by, well, life itself.
We’re trying to make a living, trying pay the bills, trying to get kids to soccer and dance and baseball and whatever other activities they’re in, trying to get dinner on the table and diapers changed, and the lawn mowed.
We can get very busy doing the stuff of life that we can lose sight of what life is supposed to be all about in the first place.
God: Jesus was a busy guy. He had people to heal, miracles to perform, religious leaders to call out, and all sorts of stuff.
But as great as all that stuff is, Jesus had one mission that had to be taken care of above all else.
Matthew 20:17-19 –
17 Now as Jesus was going up to Jerusalem, he took the twelve disciples aside and said to them, 18 "We are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be betrayed to the chief priests and the teachers of the law. They will condemn him to death 19 and will turn him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified. On the third day he will be raised to life!"
This is the third time Jesus has mentioned His upcoming death.
And you know what – I was tempted to just skip over these three verses, but a number of years ago I came to the conclusion that there is a reason for everything in the Bible, and therefore there must be a reason for this portion.
And so I thought we’d better cover this section to see what we can learn that can help us know Jesus better and love Him more.
Even though this is the third reference, it contains some things they hadn’t heard before:
That Jerusalem would be the actual setting of His death, that it would involve the Gentiles, and that He would be crucified.
One thing to note here about Jesus’ mention of the Gentiles here is that their method of capital punishment was different than the Jewish method.
Do you know what the Jewish method was? Stoning.
The Gentile, or Roman method of capital punishment was crucifixion.
Up to this point, Jesus had mentioned Jerusalem as where stuff would start happening, that He would be put to death, and that He would rise again on the third day.
But these were new details that they needed to know as they got closer to Jerusalem to face what He knew would be the final week of His life on earth.
So why would He take the time to tell them one more time about what was going to be happening very soon?
I can think of a few reasons:
1. To give them more details.
He wanted them totally in the loop, so when everything unfolded, they wouldn’t be caught by surprise, although they still didn’t understand everything, which leads me to the second reason Jesus might have done this:
2. The disciples still weren’t grasping His mission.
Luke tells us in chapter 18 of his gospel that when Jesus tells them this third time about His upcoming death and resurrection that –
34 The disciples did not understand any of this. Its meaning was hidden from them, and they did not know what he was talking about.
We don’t know why they didn’t get it. The Scripture doesn’t say if it was because they were blind to the real purpose of the Messiah, or because their hearts were hardened, or because God had purposely kept this understanding from them (possibly because they still might have tried to prevent Jesus from being taken), or because they were just too dense to figure it out.
We don’t know why. But it could be that He simply wanted them to hear it one more time so they could have another opportunity to get it.
3. So they would better understand their mission when He was gone.
And it’s this third possible reason that I want to explore for the rest of our time today.
I think that Jesus might be telling these guys to keep their eyes on the task at hand that He needed to accomplish.
Their futures would be forever tied to what Jesus was about to do.
Jesus’ mission was to die for our sins and rise again so we could be forgiven and have a home in heaven. So our relationship with God could be restored.
And He accomplished it.
So what was the mission of the disciples? What was the task that they needed to keep their eyes on? Their task had two parts to it:
* To tell others about Jesus and His mission.
Acts 1:8 – “…you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth."
The second part of their task was to…
* Help others live for Him.
Matthew 28:19-20 –
19 “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, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you."
So what is our task?
The same things!
The task isn’t done. And it won’t be until the end of time on earth.
We still have a job to do. And to be quite frank, not nearly enough Christians are involved in getting the job done.
And there are a myriad of ways to get involved, and the vast majority of them are things that anyone in this room can do to help the message of Jesus spread.
You can pray for your friends and loved ones find Christ.
You can prepare yourself to be one of the people who can tell them about Christ.
You can invite them to church, to a concert, or to your house for a meal.
You can introduce them to someone who is able to love them and tell them about Jesus.
You can make sure NOT to introduce them to certain other people – you know, like the brother-in-law with ties to organized crime or the guy who spends more time trying to learn how to speak Klingon than he does on his hygiene. You know people like that?
You can volunteer to help with our Sunday School, Wednesday night ministries, or VBS.
You can lead a small group study in your home that’s geared to those who don’t yet know Christ.
You can help immature believers learn to live for Christ by meeting with them one-on-one or in a small group.
All sorts of ways to do it.
But before you can do that, you first have to be convinced that you do have a part in all of this.
I wish I could do that for you. I wish that I had some magic words that would convince you that everyone in this room can be used by God to tell others about Jesus and His mission and help them live for Him.
But since I can’t do that, I’m going to trust that maybe even right now He’s nudging some of you to find out how you can best help in that task.
You: I’m going to ask you to do two things that you can do right away:
1. Ask God to show you one thing that you can do to help others find Christ and live for Him.
Not ten things, not five things, not even two. Just one. Write down some things and see if one jumps out at you.
2. Intentionally look for opportunities to do that one thing.
Whether it’s through the ministries of the church, or something that you can do in the normal routine of your day and week.
I have found that when you’re actually looking for opportunities, you’ll recognize them when they come.
But it takes guts to do that. The kind of guts that come when we sell out to Christ. When we do that, then God fills us with His Holy Spirit so we can do the task.
We: One of the complaints that people have about Christianity nowadays is that there seems to be a hierarchy where pastors do all the work and the rest just kind of hang out and do nothing.
But the fact is that Christianity was never meant to be a spectator sport. It’s always been something that everyone needs to get involved with.
Of all my hopes for this church, one of the greatest is that this church will be characterized by the sheer number of people who are involved in the life and ministry of the church, reaching out and loving people in the name of Jesus.
Helping them see the love He has for them, helping them see that they can be washed clean of their sins and can have the full life that Jesus wants everyone to have.
You see, people expect pastors to do stuff and talk about Jesus.
What blows their minds is seeing you do that. Not because it’s expected, but simply because you love Jesus. And because you love them and want them to have what you have.
But it takes you and me keeping our eyes on the task. Taking our eyes off ourselves and seeing others as Jesus sees them.
Will you do it? Will you ask God for the courage to get in the game?
That’s my prayer for you.
Let’s pray.
