What Is Our Message? Series

WHAT IS OUR MESSAGE?

In this award winning film called “The Mission,” Robert DeNiro plays a mercenary named Mendoza who has taken asylum in the local church after killing his brother in a fit of jealous rage. He eventually leaves the church and heads to a mission post located above the waterfalls in a South American jungle. Because of what he has done, and how bad he feels, he ties himself to a several-hundred pound net of items that represents his sinful life. He feels compelled to drag this sack of sin around with him as a way to do penance for what he has done. As you watched this clip you’ll see him slip under the burden of his past, with the rope choking the very life out of him. He feels terrible and yet doesn’t know what to do with his sin and the shame that comes with it.

Have you ever felt like that? I suspect that some here today still feel tied to some transgressions. You go through life dragging around that hurt and pain. Others of you carrying the guilt of things that happened long ago. God wants to free us this morning. He wants to help us throw off the things that hinder and the sin that so easily entangles. He wants to make us whole.

Today we are concluding our series Made for Mission. We have looked at the questions ‘Why do we go? Where do we go and Who will go?’ Today I want to ask another basic question; ‘What is our message?’ As we go, what is it that we want to share with others?

We can only share with others that which we have first received. I remember when Naomi and I first went to the Doulos, the ship was still in dry-dock. We had some visitors to the ship one day and they asked me to show them around. We wandered through the ship and I told them what I knew, which was not much. Compare that with having lived for 2 years on the ship, when you knew where everything was and you had experience of living onboard.

Likewise, in our faith we can only share what we ourselves have first experienced. Today I want to look at he story of a man in the bible who truly understood what it meant to be transformed by Jesus.

Mark 5:1-2 They went across the lake to the region of the Gerasenes. 2 When Jesus got out of the boat, a man with an evil spirit came from the tombs to meet him.

What is our message? Three things;

1. Jesus Wants to KNOW You

When Jesus and His disciples arrived at the far side of the lake they encountered a demon possessed man that came towards them. The following verses describe what happened;

Mark 5:5-9 Night and day among the tombs and in the hills he would cry out and cut himself with stones. 6 When he saw Jesus from a distance, he ran and fell on his knees in front of him. 7 He shouted at the top of his voice, "What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? Swear to God that you won't torture me!" 8 For Jesus had said to him, "Come out of this man, you evil spirit!" 9 Then Jesus asked him, "What is your name?" "My name is Legion," he replied, "for we are many."

The first thing the man shouts is “What do you want with me?” In other words, “Jesus, why are you here? What are you going to do?” Jesus says to the man, “What is your name?” What did Jesus want? He wanted to know him. Jesus wanted to get involved in his life. He wanted to help him, and that meant finding out what was going on.

This is the heart of message that we seek to bring to all the peoples of the earth. God loves you.

The love of God is one of the great realities of the universe, a pillar upon which the hope of the world rests. But it is a personal, intimate thing too. God does not love populations, He loves people. He loves not masses, but men -- A. W. Tozer

There was a great theologian who came to the USA from England and was being interviewed by a group of seminary students. The question was asked, “What is the most profound thought that ever occupied your mind.” The answer was, “Jesus loves me this I know for the Bible tells me so.”

You may go very, very deep in theology; you may become a scholar; you may become a philosopher, but you’ll never ever understand anything more profound than to understand that God loves you so much He gave His Son the Lord Jesus Christ.