The attitude of christian service
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
In our third part on Christian Missions, the study of Matthew chapter 10, we will be dealing with the issue of the christiant attitude toward missions.
As we saw in the last two weeks, the two clear realities in this chapter is that
The Lord chooses those whom He wills regardless of their qualification, and then moulds them into vessels that He indends to use. He doesn’t choose the qualified, He qualifies the chosen. Now, that might sound to you as being entirely encouraging until you realise that it comes with the caveat that if He intends for you to cross into the jungles of Peru with nothing but a Bible in your hand as you’re surrounded by the dangers of man and animal, He will qualify you no matter how unqualified you think you are. And when you look back at God and say, “I can’t”, you sin.
The commendable and faithful men of Scripture and not those who said, “I’m not here!”. It’s those who said, “Here I am. Send me”.
If you think that there’s no way that God can use you for ‘this’ or ‘that’, you are not looking at God but yourself. It’s as though you’ve got this great heap of burden that you’re carrying and you come before a mighty God whose appearance and power covers the whole earth, but you can’t see Him with all that weight getting in the way. And He tells you of all the mighty things that He is going to do through you, and you go, “No Lord, I can’t. You see, this thing I carry is inevitable.” And that burden you carry maybe the fact that you are old and not young anymore. Or that you don’t have the ability to learn and memorise the word like this man or that woman. “I can’t Lord. See?”
And you have this gigantic, unstoppable, nothing impossible with Him Being, on the other side of all that heap in your hands, and He says, “It’s not about you can do. It’s about what I can do”. “No Lord, I can’t”.
You know what that makes you? STUPID, with a capital S-T-U-P-I-D!
So you don’t get to come to this chapter on what God intends to do through you, and suppose that He can’t. If now you feel, “Oh no, I can’t. I don’t want to even if I can”, then I suggest you turn off Zoom right now and run. Run as far as you can, and tell me which mountain exists that can cover you from His sight. Which valley can overshadow you, and which seas can drown you that this God cannot reach beyond?
For after we study the beautiful truths of this chapter, the only reason for our denial to submit to the sovereignty of God is sin.
Come beloved! Come and meet my God! Nothing, with a capital N-O-T-H-I-N-G, nothing is impossible with Him (Luke 1:37).
And the second reality is that the call of the Gospel Mission is not reserved only to the missionaries. It comes to all of us who bear the mark of Christ. For the missionary serves in his/her capacity, the pastor in his, the deacons, the members, the servers, the encouragers, the apologists, the wives, the husbands, the children; everyone. But these offices and silos don’t diversify the weight of the call to the mission. We all bear it together.
Our reluctance to feel that weight, is precisely that, our reluctance. The salvation of our land, the reclamation of the Gospel in our churches, the rise of godly young men and women, the training and instruction of new leaders; these are not things that you get to hand over to those around you because it’s not yours to give.
For the one who sees the Lord, would sail a thousand seas with the scrolls of the Gospel in their hands.
Remember, the Christian age is the age where people are sent out to save the world, not where the world is sent to us. And that is the starting point for our look at the passage today, starting in verse 5.
Exegesis
Exegesis
Matthew 10:5 (ESV)
5 These twelve Jesus sent out, instructing them...
Now, as the Lord sends us out, He does not do so without first instructing us. The rest of this chapter revolves around Jesus instructing and preparing the hearts of His disciples in order that they may be equipped for the task ahead of them.
Somehow, this is often a lost doctrine amongst the people of God in these days. For many who love to do missions, want to avoid the training. In fact, it is even propogated by many these days that to pursue biblical instruction and preparation is trusting in man, and just blindly stepping out into the mission field is trusting in God.
This is not true because it is an oversimplification of the truth. Can God thrust a man into such circumstances if He so chooses? Yes. Has He? Yes, I think so. But you’re not that man or woman, till God thrusts you into such a position. Remember, that Jesus’ methodology of preparing His disciples involved teaching and instruction.
20 Listen to advice and accept instruction, that you may gain wisdom in the future.
13 Keep hold of instruction; do not let go; guard her, for she is your life.
8 I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my eye upon you.
16 All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.
Do I need to keep going?
I cannot stress the importance that godly fellowship and healthy churches can bring to meet this expectation of training in righteousness. I meet a lot of young people, and even old people, who don’t know what the call of God is upon their lives. And the overwhelming majority of them are not plugged into healthy local churches.
Why would God reveal His specific call to anyone who does not heed His will for you that He has already revealed?
So, just because the Lord qualified those whom He calls, does not mean that we can jump the valuable training in righteousness. For He prepares those whom He sends.
Now, if on hearing all of this, you think that this training is entirely the intellectual learning of truth, remember, “Stupidity is never a long term solution”. Your life must be transformed.
So, Jesus sends them out with the following instructions. These instruction are specifically given to how the 12 are to handle themselves in that particular circumstance. Therefore, we’ll read it through in that context and then pull out the lessons here and how it applies to us.
5 These twelve Jesus sent out, instructing them, “Go nowhere among the Gentiles and enter no town of the Samaritans, 6 but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
We must not fret when we come upon such verses. Was Jesus partial? Why would He say such an insensitive thing? Because beloved, this isn’t about partiality or insensitivity, it is about redemptive history. Jesus is the God of the Jews who have forever wandered away from His rule. All through the laments of Jeremiah, we read of God’s judgment driving these people away into foreign lands to be ruled over and oppressed. But now, He’d come to them, and Jesus tells the 12 - not to the Gentiles, go now to the Jews.
Why would we ever fret upon such a verse? Look at where we are, a bunch of Gentiles glued to their Zoom screens in order to worship Yahweh!
Elsewhere, Jesus said,
24 He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”
For the glory of God in this redemptive plan of His, Jesus came to the Jews and through them it spread to the ends of the earth.
22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.
What then is the lesson in this? That God is the grand orchestrator of history, who plans and appoints the dates according to the counsel of His own will. When we bear the joyful weight of this great call to serve Him, He alone ordains the path we take. Do not let your dreams of great ministry works cause you to stumble from His instruction.
May our plans be made in complete submissivness for the Lord knows what we must do and what we mustn’t. If to the house of the Jews or Gentile He sends you, go.
[Example - Why aren’t we a Malayalam Speaking Church in Kerala?]
7 And proclaim as you go, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’
This is the message we are called to carry. Do you know that feeling you get when you hear good news, and you can’t wait to call and tell everybody? You feel like if you keep it in you any longer, you’re going to explode.
Is there greater news than this? Picture this, a world so riddled with pain and loss amidst all the great acclaim of this world, and up in the sky, from behind the clouds, approach this great and glorious sight of creatures whose spleandour no eye has seen, thunderous and mighty the entrance of fiery chariots, and trumpets sound the coming of the Great King who sits on the Great White Throne.
And you turn to one another and say, “The kingdom of heave is at hand”. Behold the end of all pain and misery, loss and persecution, the end of all wickedness for the Lord approaches from beyond the horizon.
This is the posture of the christian life. The heavenly kingdom is here. Ready yourself!
Now, we like the 12, can sit and dream that beautiful sight. For that was probably the kind of thoughts that ran through their minds, but we along with them fail to see a more beautiful sight. The face of God in front of them.
For the kingdom of God had come to them, not from the sky, but through the womb of young girl, and was laid in a manger.
“Go”, Jesus said, go proclaim it on the mountains and the rooftops, the King of heaven is here! The King has come!
This is the message of all Christian ministry, whether it is in writing hymns, books, preaching, teaching, evangelising; whatever we undertake, this truth undergirds it all.
8 “Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. Freely you received, freely give.
When we say that a kingdom is at hand, it is a sign of war and invasion. When the kingdom of Israel were led by Joshua out from the wilderness, all the other kingdoms dreaded to hear the words ‘the kingdom of the Jews are here’. In much the same way, when the kingdom of heaven is at hand we should expect heavenly soldiers invade our world.
But, the soldiers that the Lord raises are from this world. Oh how precious and delightful it is that the Lord our God authorises us, whose hearts and minds have been invaded by the Gospel, to go out as His instruments of righteousness taking the same Gospel to the ends of the earth.
If the peace, the hope, and the joy of the kingdom that invaded their hearts were given to them free of charge, then they too were to give it to the world free of charge.
And so we learn two things about Gospel ministry
The power of the kingdom to restore this broken and corrupt world rests in the authority of Christ who died to purge that corruption, and rose again to renew us to newness in life; us who would believe in Him.
This same power of the resurrection is now at work in us as Jesus authroizes us to take the Gospel to the ends of the earth to proclaim the Gospel, and to exercise in prayer the healing and restoration of the nations.
28 Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ. 29 For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me.
The Gospel ministry is NEVER a means to make money or profit. Rather, money only serves as the means to better further the Gospel ministry as we see in the next verse.
9 Acquire no gold or silver or copper for your belts, 10 no bag for your journey, or two tunics or sandals or a staff, for the laborer deserves his food.
The disciples were not to gather and accumulate gold, silver or money belts, but were rather expected to trust in God who know that the labourer deserves his wages. They were not to depend on the things of this world in order to propogate the things of the kingdom beyond this world. For whatever they needed would be given to them from God through many means.
Paul writes in,
17 Let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in preaching and teaching. 18 For the Scripture says, “You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain,” and, “The laborer deserves his wages.”
When in the previous verse, Jesus instructs the Gospel minister not to be money minded in their Gospel ministry, He follows it up in the following verse by assuring them that they will be provided for. Later, we read of how Paul exhorts the churches in his letters of their benefit in providing for Gospel ministers and missionaries.
Tell me beloved, is there any labour more deserving of reward than the labourers of the Gospel ministry? We must be a church that finds missionaries and other labourers in God’s vineyard who are in need, and we must provide for their need. Especially those who’ve given their entire lives to the ministry and hold no other vocation and have no other source of income.
I’ve heard people tell their children that if they want to do ministry, they ought not to expect to raise a family for they won’t have any source of income. Deep within this twisted reality is the expectation of many that those who work this ministry are not deserving of wages.
So here are some encouragments I would give from verses 8-10,
Do not have a money minded approach to Gospel minsitry. What do I mean by that? Do not approach this ministry in order to make money or gather riches, or do not approach this ministry thinking that unless you have the money, you can’t do it.
I have served this church for 5 years alongside others like Ashok, in the preaching, teaching, counseling and serving of the church. And we have never taken anything because God had made a way to provide for our needs through other means. In fact, when we planted the church, one of the major criticisms I received, although not directly, but I heard of what people were saying, that I was doing this to make money. And so, the Lord made it possible for me to do what I do without any burden. So neither have we taken any payment, nor do we intend to. We rejoice in being able to come alongside all of you in the giving into this ministry of the church so that we can take the Gospel to the nations. We don’t do this for money.
However, if tomorrow the Lord raises elders and teachers from RHC, or brings them from afar, and He choses to set them entirely to the task of this ministry, then we must be able to come together and provide and meet their needs. It isn’t biblical to expect that all would be like Ashok and myself. It is biblical to realise that a labourer deserves his wages.
But also, never have we in any of our minstries waited for enough money to do what we believed God was calling us to do. For whenever we’ve stepped out in faith to do whatever the Lord was putting in our hearts, He has met our needs without us having to acquire gold or silver or money belts.
If any of you feel, that we can’t survive without our offertory collections, you’ve got it entirely the other way around. Yes we can survive. We don’t need money, we need the hand of God. He will meet our needs at the appointed time through the appointed sources.
We don’t give and collect the offertory in order to stay afloat as a church. We collect it in order that we all may be blessed in the partaking of the ministry of taking God’s truth and heralding it on the mountain tops.
Conclusion
Conclusion
This concludes our time today in looking at Jesus specific instructions to the disciples as they are sent out to minister to the world.
Do whatever the Spirit of God instructs you to do. You are to be guided by Him and not by your great dreams of what you can do. If to the lost sheep of the house of Israel He sends you, you go.
And in that going out, you both proclaim the Gospel of the kingdom, that Christ has come, and you serve as the instrument of healing, hope and restoration to a broken world. Let the demons be subject to the authority Christ has given each one of you.
We do not do this to attain wealth. For what we freely received, we freely give. But we also recognise that the labourer is deserving of his wages, especially the labourer in God’s vineyard. May we be the instruments of that provision that God uses to provide for struggling labourers. For surely, it is better to give than to receive.
Going back to the example I gave at the beginning. If we are to have such a well balanced approach to the Christian ministry, we have to see beyond the heap of burden we often carry in our hands. Otherwise, all this would seem ridiculous to us. But if we give over those burdens to Jesus, He removes them and we are able to see that this great and wonderful Being before us has made all this possible.
Look, my brothers and sisters, at the King of the heaven who invaded our cursed world by becoming the curse on our behalf and broke the yoke of sin upon our neck, and set us free. Look to Jesus who died that you might live. Look to Jesus to whom the Father has given all authority in heaven and on earth.
He is with us! God is with us!