The Mission Of The Twelve Series

• Next Week, we will recognize those who have volunteered for this next year's service for the Lord in the Church.

• I am asking all of you to bring a covered dish and dessert for the noon meal, and let's make it a great day.

• A great day, of course, includes coconut cream pie.

• There will be some places still open next week, I assume, and it would be a great time to sign up.

• We are signing up for ministry teams. We are going to really use these teams this year.

• If you are on a committee, ministry team, or agreed to work in a ministry, we are praying for you regularly.

• Your name will go into my book and be distributed to our prayer teams with a schedule.

• We will be looking for your monthly reports and will celebrate Christ breaking out in you.

• This is going to be an awesome year. This is your mission field.

• We thank you, and we will thank you again, for your faithful obedience, willingness to serve, love for Christ and example of His sacrificial service.

• Our appreciation is so shallow compared to Christ's recognition planned for you.

• Some of you feel uncertain about your positions and how it will go.

• Just trust God. Relax in faith.

• Even if you feel you may have accepted for the wrong reason, God used the reason to get you here.

• He planned your service. Trust Him. He is that awesome. He is faithful.

• The job you signed up for is one of the most important positions in the World.

• The old Standard Oil Company offered an enormous sum of money to Hudson Taylor, a very successful missionary in China to work for them, to help with the development of Standard Oil in China. Taylor turned them down. So they doubled the salary offer. He turned them down again. They said, "What do you want? We can't give more money than that.: He said, "The money doesn't have anything to do with it. The job is too small."

• Our mission field is as close as our neighborhood and as near as our front door.

• Our mission is here, but our motivation is the same as those who travel to distance shores.

• When Hudson Taylor was director of the China Inland Mission, he often interviewed candidates for the mission field. On one occasion, he met with a group of applicants to determine their motivations for service. "And why do you wish to go as a foreign missionary?" he asked one. "I want to go because Christ has commanded us to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature," was the reply. Another said, "I want to go because millions are perishing without Christ." Others gave different answers. Then Hudson Taylor said, "All of these motives, however good, will fail you in times of testings, trials, tribulations, and possible death. There is but one motive that will sustain you in trial and testing; namely, the love of Christ." Source Unknown.

Mar 6:12 So they went out and proclaimed that people should repent. 13 And they cast out many demons and anointed with oil many who were sick and healed them.

• Prayer.....

• Missions Here, Missions There. Mission Here. Missions here is missions now.

• I guess I can continue that thought adnauseum and say, “Missionary here is missionary you.”

• Jesus prepared His disciples for Missions There by sending them on short mission trips, or Missions Here.

• Today's passage records one of the mission ventures of the disciples.

Mar 6:7 And he called the twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits.

• Jesus called them together, commissioned them and sent them out.

• They went out two-by-two.

• Funny story, a young preacher asked during one of his sermons, “Why do we send people out on visitation in pairs. There is nothing biblical about going out in pairs.”

• I don't know how many people came to him after the sermon and showed him this passage, but I know I did.

• He said, “Yeah, yeah, so I hear.”

• In the Jewish culture, two people could represent an authority, teacher or leader with full legal weight.

• Jesus gave the disciples authority (exosia), meaning having the power to legally represent him, bearing the weight of his person.

• That is why Jesus told us, “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld." John 20:23.

• Let me insert here, God gave us that same authority to seek the redemption of men, women, boys and girls.