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:
- euangelizo , from which we get our word evangelize means "Announce the good news."
- diangello , "Widely announce."
- katangello , "Publicly announce."
- kerusso , "Proclaim, Herald" I saw a modern day example of this on TV after William and Kate’s son George was born...
- 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
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