Sent, Part 1
Matthew 10:5-8
We’re spending the next few weeks in the second recorded sermon of Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew. This is the commissioning of the disciples to go out and minister in the name of Jesus. One of the things we see is the type of people Jesus calls. If you or I were Jesus, we probably wouldn’t choose the people Jesus chose. I would go look for more prominent type people if I was going to build a worldwide mission. But Jesus chose ordinary people and in many cases social outcasts and people who were not successful. But there’s a reason that God can use these types of people: broken people know they need God. Religious people want Jesus in their life but not necessarily have him be their life. The problem becomes that they never ewant to leave their comfort zone to join Jesus in their mission. Broken people, hurting people, hungry people, desperate people know they need Jesus to be their life because there is no other hope.
Now the people Jesus called had their identity in their relationship with him. The first thing that Jesus calls us to is a relationship with him, not good works which are just a by-product of a relationship with God. We are not just to have a relationship with Jesus but rather to draw our identity and being from Jesus Christ. A lot of people believe in Jesus but their identity is in their profession, or in the kids or in their politics. But the people who Jesus called find their identity in Jesus Christ and it is this relationship which defines who they are and unites them with other followers of Jesus. Our unity is not based on ideologies, politics, morals and even enthnicity but rather our common identity in Jesus.
Now the word ‘sent’ in Greek is the same root word as apostle. So apostle means ‘one who is sent out in the name of Jesus.’ That means every disciple makes a life commitment to Jesus’ mission. Every Christian has within himself or herself the potential for a change the world movement through the Holy Spirit. And every believer in Jesus signs up for this mission. But what are we sent to do? The first verse of Jesus’ sermon answers that question when it says Jesus “gave them authority to drive out impure spirits.” This is the mission God has engaged us in and in the 8th verse he says we are to drive out demons. We are not to be bystanders in the faith where we come and learn religious things and are fed spiritually, we are to be partners in the ministry of Jesus. We are not to be bystanders but upstanders, we are to stand up for people who have fallen victim to evil in the world.
Who’s going to stand up for people who are sick, hurting, despised and taken advantage of? Let’s go to the story of the Hebrew people. In the book of Exodus we have the story of the Hebrew people’s deliverance. Four hundred years before this, the Hebrews went into Egypt due to drought and famine. Joseph, who was a Hebrew who had risen to high ranking position over the storage and distribution of food, provided food for Jews and they settled there and eventually prospered. As a result the Pharaohs feared them becoming a mighty people and so they enslaved them. In other words, the Hebrews were victims of evil. The Pharoah even ordered the death of all Hebrew babies and so Moses’ mother had to hide Moses. For generations the Hebrews cried out to God to deliver them, asking the question, how could God allow such evil to occur, especially to them. So Moses became a wanted man after stepping in to protect his Hebrew brothers and killing an Egyptian soldier. He started working for his father-in-law tending sheep and approaching 80 and he sees a burning bush which is on fire and not being consumed. “The LORD said, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey.” You can almost hear Moses say, “it’s about time God! For generations we have cried out to you.” And God says, “So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.” And Moses says, “I thought you were going to do it.” God responds, “I am…through you.” Now here’s the lesson for us: God never intervenes, except through a person. When a person cries to God in prayer, God says, “I hear your prayer. I am concerned. I am coming to do something about it and I am sending someone.” Who? You! This is what it means to say yes to Jesus. God never does anything without sending a person as an answer to prayer. There are mothers praying for their sons to get out of a gang. There are people praying for a job. There are the hungry praying for their next meal and you are the answer to their prayer. And we are the answer to that prayer.
We are not bystanders waiting for God to come and take us to heaven, we are participants in His plan of salvation. This is what Jesus means when he says, “So as the Father has sent me, so I send you.” And more than that, Jesus says we are going to do even greater works than he through the power of the Holy Spirit. So what we see in Jesus’ second recorded sermon is the formation of a community which embodies the summation of the Law. You remember when the man asked Jesus which law was most important and Jesus first responded with the Great Commandment: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength.” That’s our first duty but then Jesus combines another commandment with it which we know as the Great Commission. “Love your neighbor as yourself.” So God calls us first to himself and from that should come the good work of loving others. What does it mean to love others? It’s doing what’s best for them. That’s what it means to love someone. When we re-connect with this vital loving God in a personal relationship which not only defines who we are but what our life is all about then we naturally move from loving God to loving God’s children. This is our life mission. Your place in history is not your story but His story and so you are to give yourself to His mission. You are not here to make a living but to build the kingdom of God here. What is the kingdom of God: it’s anywhere the will of God is being fulfilled. That’s why the most important thing we can do is to figure out our role in God’s plan of salvation and be about it because we don’t have a lot of time here on this earth. And each of us are going to have to give an accounting of what we did and accomplished for Him.
Every Christian is a missionary. A missionary is someone who goes to minister in a culture or people different from their own. But that’s not how it started with Jesus and the disciples. “These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions: “Do not go among the Gentiles or enter any town of the Samaritans. Go rather to the lost sheep of Israel.” Now the Gentiles were non-Jews and the Samaritans were Jews who had violated God’s commands and intermarried with the Gentiles and thus were excluded from Jewish life. Now for most of Jesus’ ministry, he left the Gentiles out while he focused on the lost sheep of Israel. In fact, one day a Gentile woman came to Jesus and asked him to help her child who was demon-possessed and suffering terribly. Jesus told her he had come for the children of Israel. The woman came and knelt before him. “Lord, help me!” she said. He replied, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.” “Yes it is, Lord,” she said. “Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.” Then Jesus said to her, “Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.” And her daughter was healed at that moment.” Matthew 15:21-28 and he said, “I have come for Israel, why am I going to give food to the dogs?” And her response was, “Aren’t even the dogs worthy of the crumbs under the table?” Up to his death, Jesus focused primarily on the Jews but after the resurrection, Jesus expands his mission to the Gentiles when he says “go into all the world and make disciples.”
Now why did Jesus focus only on the Jews? Because that was his oikos, the people where he had greatest influence. Now the disciples will spend the rest of their life and ministry focused on the culture and the people they grew up in, the Jewish people, all except one, Peter who God showed that the Gentiles were to be the focus of his ministry. The worst thing you can do is spend your life in ministry without God defining what you are called to do. When Jesus was on this earth, he focused on the lost sheep of Israel. Jesus didn’t reach all of the Jews. He didn’t heal all of the sick. He didn’t deliver all the possessed people but at the age of 33 he was able to say, “Father, I have finished the work you sent me to do.” That’s the one thing we should strive to say at the end of our lives. To do that, you need to define your life mission and get to work on it. What is your life mission? As a parent, my mission is to raise a generation that will influence future generations. So that’s why from day one, it wasn’t going to be an option that every time the church opened for worship and Sunday School, my son and daughter were going to be there from day one. I don’t care if they want to. I’m not training them to do what they want, but rather to do what they need. When you understand how evil can come against your generation, we need to prepare them. It’s not about what you want to do, it’s about what you need to do. My second mission is to raise a church of disciples, followers not fans of Jesus, who will build the kingdom of God here on earth. We don’t need another church where people come to get what’s here for them. We need people working and striving to do the will of God. The third is to work for the renewal of the United Methodist Church to once again become a disciple making denomination. This is the one I have struggled with the most and am still working on how that might be lived out in my life. I am 46 and I plan to work until I am 70 and while I still have time, it’s quickly slipping away.
How do you discover God’s will for your life? First, you have to be in a faith community. You need a small group of people who are challenging you to becoming the disciple God has called you to be. Second, find a need and meet it. Don’t wait until you can define your mission, just find a need and meet it. There are needs all around us. God has placed people in your life who he expects you to be the hands and feet of Jesus. If you don’t someone’s need, then ask them. Ask, ‘How can I serve you?’ Third, identify your spiritual gifts and use them. My spiritual gifts are leadership and teaching. What are yours? God has given your spiritual gifts to do His work and we are all going to have to give an accounting of what we did with them.
Fourth, identify your passion and serve out of it. All of us in this room have a passion. There are certain things that energize you and other things that don’t. I don’t have the gift of mercy. When I was at Aldersgate UMC, I was in charge of the Care Team whose mission was to reach out by card or phone call to the sick, grieving or dying. We’d spend two hours talking about the needs of the 1800 members which needed to be responded to and I was physically and emotionally drained by the end each week. My spiritual gift is teaching but my passion isn’t teaching everyone. Teaching and visioning. But it’s not just teaching anyone. On my internship, I was told that I was going to teach the 6th grade class which had 30 kids in it. By the third week, we were playing Biblical hang man and I was ready kill some of the kids. But then they told me to teach a 34 week survey of the Bible called Disciple Bible Study to adults and to teach adult SS classes on Sunday mornings and I loved it! In fact, each week that I taught, attendance grew and I found that was the most energizing time of my week. So while my gift was teaching, my passion was adult transformation. So what’s your passion? What would you rather do for God than anything else? Discover it and then begin serving out in it.
