Matthew 10:1-8 Discipleship and the Gospel

So if you would open your Bibles to the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 10.  I call this chapter “The Animal Lovers Chapter”.   Think about it, sheep are mentioned, wolves, snakes, doves, and sparrows. We're only going to look at the first 8 verses for this communion meditation.

First, Jesus calls His twelve disciples.  Eleven of those twelve (plus Paul) were used by God in a very special way.  They were used to initiate the spread of the Gospel, and the birth of the Church worldwide.  I want to tell you, some 33 (almost 34) years ago, Jesus called me to be His disciple.  In that same way, to this very day, Jesus is calling disciples.   There are lots of different aspects to what a disciple is, one being a student, like Pastor Shane said.   I had this confirmed to me a several years ago, when I gave a coworker a Gospel of John.  This coworker is Chinese, and I gave him a Gospel of John in Chinese.  He read it, and came back to me with questions; I just remember him calling the disciples, “Jesus students”. 

Another aspect of what a disciple looks like was illustrated to me by of all things, my dog this past weekend.   I told you this was an animal lover’s chapter.   I took my dog, Stella for a walk this past weekend.   She’s a very sensitive dog.  I just talk to her and give her little cues and directions about which way to go.   You know, “go this way, not that way”, but all the while, she thinks she’s in control.   She thinks we’re going where she want.   Our master does the same with us, we just need to listen.  As well, she likes to stop and sniff everything.   I gently, but firmly pull the leash, and say “no, don’t stop, keep going”.   The LORD does the same with us when we get stuck.  He motivates us and pushes us to keep going.   Lastly, we were walking on the sidewalk at a pretty good clip, because we both need the exercise, and there was a guy on the other side of the street walking his German Shepherd the same direction as us.   As we came up from behind, and got even with them, the Shepherd started barking its head off, like a maniac.   Stella took off, ears back, we hit a full sprint.   When we got far enough ahead, the Shepherd stopped barking, and Stella slowed back down to a walk.   After a second, she just stopped, turned around to me, and jumped up on me with tail wagging, as if to say, “I just love you so much, thank you for protecting me from that maniac”.   We feel that same way toward our Master.   How often do we say, “Thank you LORD for getting me through that scary situation.”

Then, it says that Jesus gave His disciples power over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal all manner of sickness and disease.   You and I both know the Lord has all-power over all these things.  Practically, in our lives, prayer, and faith are how God works these things out.  I see it as a privilege and an honor to pray for you if you are sick or troubled, but I don’t have any special power myself.   I can only point you to Jesus.  I see many of you praying for each other as brothers and sisters in Christ; now that’s church.

Then Jesus tells his newly commissioned disciples to go to the lost sheep of Israel.   This kills me here.   This idea of people being ‘lost’.   The thing is, most people who are lost, don’t even know they're lost.   Just like a sheep can happily graze itself right into a canyon or get stuck in a gully, people can be very happy without God.   The Bible says there is pleasure in sin for a season, but oye vey, the consequences are severe.  Apart from Jesus Christ we're all in the same boat.  Apart from Jesus Christ  everyone's a lost sheep, in need of a Shepherd.

Next, Jesus gives his disciples an imperative; an order, a command.   He says go out and preach, and tell people that the Kingdom of heaven is at hand.   I’ve taken Jesus command to heart, and put it into action.   Jesus says “Preach”, I preach.   The idea of preaching may seem awkward and out-of-date but it is biblical.   Preaching though is not just standing on a stool on a street corner and crying aloud, lifting up my voice like a trumpet as it says in Isaiah 58:1.   Preaching can be sharing the Gospel with your coworkers at break time.   Preaching can be sharing the Gospel with your neighbors while you’re chatting over the back fence.   Preaching can be sharing the Gospel with your friend while you're sitting in Starbucks, sipping a cup of coffee.   There are like 13 different Greek words for the English word ‘preach’ in the new testament.   The five main ones are:

1. euangelizo , from which we get our word evangelize means  "Announce the good news."
2. diangello , "Widely announce."
3. katangello , "Publicly announce."
4. kerusso , "Proclaim, Herald" I saw a modern day example of this on TV after William and Kate’s son George was born...
5. dialegomai , "Discuss, to reason together", we get our word dialogue from that

Ushers, if you’d go ahead and serve the communion…

I’d like to share the Gospel message with you, if I may.  Even if you’ve been a Christian as long as you can remember, there's power in the Gospel, so track with me for just a little bit longer…

As a launch pad for the Gospel, I have one last bit of animal trivia.   There is a turtle named Jonathan, who lives on the island of Saint Helena, which is a British territory in the south Atlantic. It's believed that Jonathan  hatched in 1832. If they're correct, that'd make him 186 years old, which is not impossible for a tortoise. There was another story of a tortoise that lived to 189.   Although you might live a long life, you certainly are not going to live to 186.  My point is that there is coming a day that will be your last day here on planet earth, so you ought to be prepared for that.   After death, we will be made to give an account of our lives to God.  So the important question is, how does God see you? In other words, how will God judge?
RIGHTEOUSNESS,
TEN COMMANDMENTS as a mirror.
The GOSPEL.
REPENTANCE
FAITH
FORGIVENESS
NEW BIRTH and NEW LIFE

A Reminder - Jesus is our soon returning King

Hi friends, my name is Keith and I’m a born again Christian, and I’d like to share the Gospel message with you.  Gospel is an old Bible word that means “good news”.   I want to share the Good news about how to be reconciled to God, in other words, how to be made right with God, so you can have eternal life, live forever.   In other words, how you can survive death.  But, first I’m going to start with a story as an illustration.

You probably saw recently, in the news, all the stories about the mudslides that happened in California.   One story that really stood out to me was about this mudslide swept through a neighborhood in Montecito, near Santa Barbara.  The mud and debris tore through this house where the family was in the house when it happened.   The news showed the rescue workers using the jaws of life to spread the collapsed walls out of the way so they could pull a 14 year old girl out.   She had been trapped in the mud in her house.   They used the jaws of life to save the girls life.

In a sense you and I need to be rescued from a mudslide of God’s judgement. We need the jaws of life from heaven to free us from The jaws of death.

I know this is a touchy subject.   Can we talk here?  I mean, can we speak frankly?   I know this is a difficult thing to talk about.   I'm sure, you don't very often discuss the subject of death, even with your closest family members.   You can't talk about death around the water-cooler with your co-workers.   It's too sensitive.   You just keep the conversation at a surface level.    You don't normally talk about death with your friends.   You're don’t want to offend them.   You don’t talk about death with your neighbors, they'd think you were weird.   Even parents probably shy away from talking about death with their kids, because it is so serious. They don’t want to scare them.

But this is something we ought to talk about.   So, God brings a street preacher to you to talk about something no one else will talk to you about.   God sends a street preacher to you to remind you that there is coming a day that will be your last day here on planet earth.   God would try to get your attention, to wake you up to the fact of your mortality.

Death.   We will all die.   We all fear it.   We don't want to die.   We love live.  Life is good!   We all have a built-in fear of death.   Whether young or old, big or little, juvenile or adult, none of us wants to die.   We don't look forward to it.   Yet, it will come for every one of us.   One hundred percent of the human race will experience death sometime during their life.   I'm not trying to scare you.  It's just a fact.   If that's disquieting to you keep listening; I’m going to turn this around; there’s hope.   If it’s discomforting to you, track with me for just a little while, I’m going to share with you the solution to our greatest problem.  

So we all have an appointment with death. The reason we die is because of sin. The soul that sins, it shall surely die.   The wages of sin is death.   Just as sin entered the world through one man, and death came through sin, so death spread to all men because all have sinned.    All have sinned and fallen short of God's glory.   After we die we will all have to stand before God and give an account of our lives.    It is appointed to man once to die after this, then the Judgment. The standard we'll be judged by is the the standard of righteousness.  That means God's going to judge the heart.   God sees our hearts.  He sees the secret things. The things we thought were hidden, the things we thought were done in darkness,  God sees as though they were done in the light of day.    Even down to every idle word spoken, every careless word.   We’ll be judged by the standard of the 10 Commandments.

If we’ve looked with lust, then we’ve committed adultery in our hearts. If we’ve hated someone, the Bible says we’re murderers. If you tell one lie, you’re a liar. If you steal one thing, irrespective of its value, you’re a thief. The Bible says, ‘The eye of the Lord is in every place, beholding the evil and the good. There is nothing hid before His eyes.’ The day is coming when God will judge the world in righteousness. There is nothing hid before the eyes of Him.

It’s a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the Living God. Hell awaits those who’ve transgressed that Law. Yet God was rich in mercy. He sent forth his Son, born of a woman, to die on a cross. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, being made a curse for us. He satisfied the demands of eternal justice, rose from the dead, defeated the power of the grave, and all who repent and trust in Him receive remission of sins and the gift of everlasting life.”