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.
When Jesus says that we the Church need to deny our self, He didn’t mean to say that we need to create scarcity and pain for ourselves; but to deny ourselves is to be prepared to let go of anything that competes with His kingdom principles.
Sometimes the church finds it so hard to deny its envy and prejudice and carry the cross of forgiveness which is kingdom principle. The Call of the Church is to carry the cross of forgiveness.
I remember a story of a young boy named Andy who was born to a very immature father. His father mocked him because Andy had difficulty in athletics and in relating to girls. Andy was tempted to hate his father; he even had dreams about killing his father. But Andy was a Christian, and his pastor recommended that he read the Gospels to learn about Jesus. And as he did that he came to this passage that we’ve read today, and he realized what his cross was. It was his difficulty to forgive his father.
From that moment on he stopped hating his father and began to pray for him. He grew up and advanced far beyond his father’s achievements in every way. But he did not flaunt his success in front of his father. But he prayed for him and felt sorry for him. I wish I could tell you that his father finally came to repentance, but I can’t. But Andy carried the cross of forgiveness in obedience to God’s Word.
The cross that Jesus asks us to carry has nothing to do with your migraine, or with your loneliness, these are not the cross that Jesus speaks about.
To ‘carry the cross’ means – to quit blaming others for your failures and live in obedience to God’s Word. To carry the cross means to be prepared to obey God’s Word no matter the consequences.
So number two, the Call of the church is to deny our negative desires and carry instead the cross of obeying God’s Word.
c. Third, Jesus warns in v25: “whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.”v27 “The Son of Man will reward each person according to what they have done.”The Call of the church finally is to look forward for eternal rewards.
When Jesus was talking about saving one’s own life, his focus was on its fulfilment in the next world by its commitment to God now. His point was profound: what he meant to say is if we spend all our energy to save our life now with no commitment to God, we will lose the entire point of this life, which is about investing now for the life to come later. Friends, if we are too concerned about protecting our finance, security and happiness, then we are going to squander the opportunity to increase our reward in eternity. (This verse has nothing to do with having a Life Insurance).
To this point in human history, every man-made attempt to save this body hasn’t worked. People have their heads frozen in cryogenic laboratories in the hope that one day someone will find a way to bring them back into a world where people don’t die.
- How many of us are trying to save our life from dissatisfaction? Running from one job to another because we want to save our life (protect our life) from people and problems; but we don’t want to reflect as to how this will affect our eternal rewards. We don’t carry the cross of doing God’s will!
- There are people who are trying to save their life from troubled relationships. There is this Dominos Pizza advertisement, where a girl tells her friend, “Babe, order a pizza” and her friend asks her, “Kis kushe mien” (Hindi language meaning: on what occasion). And the girl says, “Because I dumped him”?) I wonder which pizza she ordered to celebrate her break-up!
You know after watching that ad you get the feeling when you pass by a Dominos that everybody inside have dumped somebody outside. I've nothing against Dominos, but my point is about how people are saving themselves from!
Jesus says, whoever want to save his life will lose it, so stop trying to get your way.
- Today people love to be torn apart between morality and reality so that they can save themselves from any moral commitment;
- There are many youngsters today who love to choose between determinism and existentialism to save themselves for relativism.
The Modern Man has so little resistance to endure pain and is attempting to save himself to make life comfortable. And it is very sad that it has come to a state where he has become so selfishly-confused that he fails to understand whether he has to ‘save sex for marriage’ or ‘save marriage to have sex.’ That’s Disturbing!
What are your trying to save yourself from?
- are you trying to save yourself by not involving in the wings of the church because you had conflicts with one of our members?
- are you trying to save yourself by dumping someone because of your personal desires?
Church, is this the way we invest for our eternal rewards?
Malcolm Forbes the man who coined the phrase “he who dies with the most toys wins”; collected scores of toys. He bought motorcycles, castles, and countless other toys that he can no longer play with. But in 1984 he visited Egypt, and there he observed the tomb of King Tut; and as he kept observing it, he began to get reflective. He turned to one of his associates and asked with all sincerity, “tell me”, he said, “Do you think I’ll be remembered after I die?”
Oh yes he will be remembered as one who played with many toys, but was doubtful about his eternity.
Is the Church playing with its toys or is it head-on with the Gospel message? Politics, traditions, favoritism, jealousy, property scams, all these are the toys of the universal church. And these toys have become the way for many churches to save themselves into complacency.
Conclusion: Friends this morning I call you to loosen up yourself in Jesus and trust Him with your life because He knows what you need and he will provide.
Church, we need to invest our time and energy in serving God and others with the Gospel message. That’s the way we invest for our eternal rewards; and not by playing with toys.
In A D 1000, officials of Emperor Otto re-opened the tomb of Charles the Great (Charlemagne). Before them was an extraordinary sight. In the midst of all the gold and jewels buried with him—Charles the Great was still seated on his throne wearing his crown. But on his lap was a Bible, and a bony finger rested on Mark 8:36: “For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?”
I wonder what answer Charles the great gave. But the core question this morning is: What answer will the Church give? –The Church has a Call...
And The Call of the Church:
1.Is to withstand the devil’s distraction and have a clear sense of God’s Mission.
2.Is to deny negative desires and carry the cross of obeying God’s Word.
3. Is to look-forward for eternal rewards in God’s Kingdom.
