Good morning everybody. It is a good morning.
Despite the snow outside, it is a good morning.
Yesterday was the first time that I used a pickaxe in my life
to shovel all the snow out of my driveway.
Took about an hour and I discovered that it was a time
for sanctification and holiness. So in that sense, it is a good
morning. The snow is good, helping us
become more like Jesus. If you are new, my name is
Somane Megadi. I'm one of the pastors here.
We are in the book of Matthew, and today we're going to be
talking about being disciples on mission with Jesus, being
disciples on mission with Jesus. When Jesus began his ministry
back in chapter 4 of Matthew, he first of all goes to the
northern part of Israel, not to Jerusalem, but to the northern
part of Israel where there were a lot of Gentiles, but still
part of Israel. And these people were living in
darkness. They were the unreached people,
so to speak. And then he calls his first
disciples Peter, Andrew, James, and John.
And in Matthew chapter 4, verse 23, we read Jesus was going
throughout Galilee teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming
the gospel of the Kingdom and healing every disease and every
sickness among the people. And that's the pattern that we
see in Matthew from that point, chapter 5 to Chapter 9, that
Jesus is going about healing and teaching.
So chapters 5 to 7, the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus interprets,
explains the law of God, and then he comes down from the
mountain and it's healing, followed by healing, followed by
healing one after the other. He cleanses A leper.
He marvels at the faith of a centurion and then heals his
paralyzed servants at a distance.
He heals Peter's mother-in-law of a fever.
Then many people bring their sick ones to him and he heals
them. He cast out legions of demons
and then he raises somebody from the dead.
He is on mission. He is indefatigable.
He's just moving. He's just moving and moving.
And then we come to our passage, Matthew Chapter 9, verse 35 to
10, verse 15, if you want to follow along, it's on page 764
in the Pew Bibles in front of you, the ESV, the black Bibles
in front of you. In that, in that at the
beginning of that passage, Matthew repeats what he says in
Matthew 4, verse 23. He says Jesus was going through
all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and
proclaiming the gospel of the Kingdom and healing every
disease and every sickness, almost word for word.
What he said earlier, it's an intentional signal to us to help
us notice the pattern. Jesus has been going to
unreached places. He's calling people to himself
and he's teaching and he's healing and he's about to repeat
the cycle again, but he's doing something different this time.
He's going to send out 12 disciples, 12 apostles to the
unreached, to the House of Israel that is lost, to teach
and to heal and to proclaim the Kingdom, to do what he's been
doing. So he's calling his disciples to
be on mission with him, just as he sent them.
He has sent us as well, we who are surrendered to Jesus Christ
and see him as our Lord. We are his disciples.
And so today we're going to look at certain things that we need
to do that Jesus does in US that helps us, that help us to be
disciples on mission with Jesus. The first thing is formation.
Any disciple on mission with Jesus needs to first of all be
formed by Jesus. So up to up to this point in
Matthew, Jesus is doing everything.
He's teaching, He's preaching, he's calling people to himself,
he's healing, He's doing all these things by himself.
And the disciples, they're watching, they're learning,
they're participating in the background.
Jesus is forming them by the sort of passive presence with
him. First, he wants them to have
compassion on the harassed and helpless.
Jesus sees the crowd and what he sees are harassed and helpless
people. The same crowd that others would
look at and see sinners that they just want nothing to do
with. The same crowd that others would
look at and see rabble rousers good for nothing except for
taxes and tribute. Jesus sees harassed and helpless
people, sheep without a shepherd, and he has compassion
on them. And the disciples are being
formed to see the crowd in this way, to see that without Jesus,
all of us are plagued by darkness, by sickness, by
disease. So ask yourself, is this how you
see the crowd, the people in your own life?
I have been in rooms where from the mouth of professing
Christians I have heard things like I wish we would just nuke
the Muslims and just get it over with.
I've heard people mistreat others that are harassed.
I have witnessed atrocities. Sometimes I have treated myself.
I've treated people with nuisance or just completely
ignored them. The person sitting by the side
of the road I just they are, they are a problem, not an
opportunity. I need to repent of that.
What Jesus sees is a harassed and helpless crowd.
He wants us to have that perspective as well.
He wants us to be formed in that way and to have compassion.
For out of that compassion comes the kind of prayer that then
Jesus says for his disciples should pray in verse 37.
The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.
Therefore, pray earnestly, earnestly to the Lord of the
harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.
A heart of compassion for the crowd helps us to pray earnestly
for God to send out laborers into the field.
Now here's something fascinating.
The word that is used in English for send outs in Greek is the
same word that Matthew uses to describe when Jesus casts out
demons. It's a word that implies force,
that implies urgency. There are simpler, gentler words
for sending out that Jesus could have used.
He chose this one Ekbalo. Like just throw it out there.
It's almost like he's like he's saying, ask the Father to drive
workers into the field to launch them out like arrows into the
harvest. When we have compassion on the
harassed and the helpless, this is how we'll pray.
We will pray earnestly and urgently for the Lord to send
laborers into the field. So they're being formed to see
the world the way Jesus sees it and to pray the way he wants
them to pray. But the disciples are also being
formed by Jesus's teaching and his healing ministry.
They're not just, you know, absorbing contents, memorizing
all the lines, etcetera. They're doing that, of course,
but they're also by following him, committing to live by his
teaching. And when I say teaching, I'm not
just, I'm referring to everything the Scripture teaches
here, all of the Old Testament as well, for the for the
apostles, but for us, the whole Scriptures, God's truth.
And because it is truth, it inevitably shines light on the
lie. It shines light on what is
broken, what needs to be freed. So just like the first
disciples, we will always need Jesus to heal us.
Because when you subject, when you submit yourself to the
teaching of Jesus, you'll realize that teaching reveals
what needs to be healed in you. Because that's what teaching
does. And sometimes that includes
physical healing, but it will always include spiritual
deliverance from the Kingdom of darkness.
We will continue to need this as we follow Jesus, submitting to
his teaching and receiving his healing.
Now, there are churches that pride themselves in getting the
teaching right. There are churches that pride
themselves in getting the healing right.
Jesus does not separate the two. It's all part of the gospel.
So we need to be a church that does both.
We need to strive to be that kind of church.
It's one of the reasons why we're carefully developing a
healing and deliverance ministry here at the church.
It's in response to Jesus's pattern in Scripture.
So disciples on mission with Jesus need to be formed to have
compassion on the harassed and helpless, to pray earnestly and
urgently for more laborers, and to receive Jesus's healing and
teaching formation. That's the first one.
The second thing that helps us on this mission as disciples is
Jesus's authority. Exercising his authority, Jesus
calls 12 of his disciples, and he gives them authority to do
exactly what he has been doing, proclaim the Kingdom, teaching
and healing. Now, authority here means the
right to do something in his name.
It's the same word that John uses in his Gospel chapter 1 of
John when he says that Jesus gives us the rights to be called
children of God. That's the kind of authority
we're talking about here. And he's saying that this
authority for these disciples, these 12, is over unclean
spirits, diseases, and sickness. Why 12?
He picks these 12 disciples. A motley crew by the way, James
and John, hot heads always jockeying for position and
wanting to call fire from heaven down on people who disagree with
them. You have Matthew, a tax
collector viewed by many as a traitor of his people.
And then you have Simon the Zealot, an anti Roman
revolutionary who probably got along splendidly with Matthew,
right? No, they have Judas Iscariot, an
eventual traitor, and you have all these men's from different
backgrounds, economic and social classes, political
understandings, different temperaments, and yet Jesus
calls them together, He gives them authority together and
sends them out together. There are 12 because Jesus is
here signalling that God's long-awaited restoration of
Israel has begun. Just as the 12 tribes of
Israel's formed the foundation of of God's people in the Old
Testament, so these 12 men formed the foundation of a
renewed people of God. The new Israel located in Jesus
Christ, what he calls his church, you and I.
And it's marked by allegiance to Jesus.
Now, Jesus later expands his authority to include all his
disciples. We read in Acts chapter one that
the Holy Spirit came upon them and they had power to declare
the gospel message all around the world.
And so we come, when we come to Pentecost, we're going to focus
on that, that you and I have also received this authority in
Christ Jesus. Yes, all of us have received
that authority in Christ Jesus, but it's never separate from the
life of the body. When my nephew was four or five
years old, my nephew in Nigeria, something happened to him.
My sister was folding laundry and he was playing nearby in
the, I think in the bedroom or something like that.
And then suddenly he screams. Mommy see fire.
And of course she's scared. She turns around and she looks
at him and she doesn't see any fire.
What she sees is her son, scared, petrified, looking at
something that she cannot see. And she knows in her spirit
something is wrong, something is bothering her son.
And so she sits him down. She does two things.
She sits him down and she tells him, look, God is with you and
he is greater than you. So whenever you feel or see
something that scares you, I want you to say to the thing or
to the Spirit, get out in the name of Jesus Christ, you don't
belong here. The second thing that she does
is that she walks around the house and in the way that only
Nigerian woman can do, she casts out the devils in the house,
basically saying look, you have no authority in my house.
God's presence is here, go away. It happened again to my nephew
that he saw this thing, this fire that he was talking about,
but my sister overheard him saying, go away, evil spirit,
you have no power here. I don't belong to you.
I don't want you here. And it never happened again.
What's interesting is that later they found out that their
neighbor was involved in a cult practices, which, you know,
indicates why he was sensing these things.
Now, like my nephew, all of us on mission with Jesus Christ can
exercise this authority. Scripture is clear about that.
That, of course, does not mean that all authorities exercise in
the same way or with the same scope, with the same level of
responsibility. When I have a common cold, I'm
going to go to CVS and I'm going to buy drugs and I'm going to
treat medicate myself because I it's a common cold.
It's fine. When I have something much more
serious that I'm dealing with, the last thing that I should do
is go to Web MD and Google to try to find out what's wrong
with me and to try to treat myself.
No, there's a whole institution of trained physicians and
doctors that I should go to. The same principle applies here
as well. We all share in Christ
authority. That's true, but not all are
trained to handle the same cases.
Some situations require deeper discernment, wisdom, experience,
formation. This is why we need to exercise
our authority together within the Church for accountability,
for help. That's why I'm here as your
clergy. That's why you have clergy here
to help you. The question is, do you believe
that you have this authority? The Christ has empowered you by
His Holy Spirit to teach and to heal as well.
Formation authority. The third thing is trust.
Disciples on mission with Jesus Christ need to trust Him.
Jesus tells his disciples to go to the lost sheep of Israel
only. Don't go to the Gentiles just
yet. He does this because God's
promises to Israel had to be fulfilled first.
Their repentance and renewal was the starting point of the
kingdom's expansion. Like you said to Abraham,
through you I will bless all the nations.
Somebody had to start with Israel 1st, and then he declares
in verse 8, heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast
out demons. If I was one of the disciples of
this point, I'd be like, say what now?
I've seen you do all these things.
I've never done it before. What are you talking about?
I would be afraid. I'd be worried.
I'd be like this. This is new territory.
I don't feel safe. He goes on in verse 9, verse
verse 8, you received without paying, give without pay,
acquire no gold or silver or copper for your belts, no bag
for your journey, or two tunics or sandals or staff for the
laborer deserves his food. Now we know that this
arrangement was temporary because Jesus later says to his
disciples in Luke, when I sent you out with no money, bag or
knapsack or sandals, did you lack anything?
They said nothing he said to them, but now let the one who
has a money bag take it, etcetera, etcetera.
But what Matthew is saying here is very, very important because
Jesus instructions they not only safeguard the gospel for being
used to gain wealth for personal benefit, but it also teaches the
disciples and us to depend entirely on God's provision here
in this context, through the hospitality of others.
Disciples on mission with Jesus must trust that Jesus will
provide. Now.
Care and planning have their place.
It's important. But no amount of planning can
ever account for God. You just never really know what
God is going to do specifically. And many of us, myself included,
want all our ducks to be in a row before we take the step into
a thing that God has called us to.
We want to reduce the risk, and that completely makes sense.
But that mindset can actually reduce faith to a strategy.
And that's a temptation we have here in DC.
We want to throw a program at problems, and that's not how it
works. Faith cannot be reduced to
strategy. We have to be wise and
discerning, but our common sense must be rooted in faith and
trust. Now, not everyone is called to
be an itinerant missionary like Paul or the apostles, constantly
moving from one place to the other and preaching, leaving
their home. But every single one of us is
cast into the world to be on mission with Jesus.
At your workplace, at your home, schools, neighborhoods, wherever
you find yourself, you're supposed to be proclaiming the
Kingdom. And we do that through the
integrity of our lives, the integrity of our work, the
integrity of the how we speak. That means that we need to learn
how to speak properly. This message, the Kingdom of
heaven is at hand. We must know how to declare that
message. I remember being in an Uber once
with a friend. We were heading to the airport
after a conference and I was tired.
I was exhausted and I just wanted to get home and be with
my wife and my friend. God bless his heart, I love him.
Start talking, starts talking to the the Uber driver and
basically starts evangelizing him.
And I'm like I'm so tired. I am not here for this.
Why or why? And we found out the driver's a
Muslim. But I prayed silently to myself,
and I'm like, all right, OK. And I had to push against kind
of like, the nervousness that I usually feel about this things.
And then when I did that, I found myself answering
questions. And I found myself remembering
things that I had learned not just from seminary but from
walking with other people who had done evangelism to those of
other fates. And I found myself remembering
these things and just words were coming out of my mouth.
A minute ago I was like, I can't do this.
And the moment I pray, God showed up.
And as a young Christian, I was always afraid of these kinds of
situations. I was very studious as a
believer. Even in my teen years.
I was reading my dastyological books.
I knew the contents, I knew the arguments, I knew how I knew the
words to say. I knew scripture well enough to
be able to stand on my own, and I knew like what the the
pushback would be. So I practiced those things.
I knew that and all of that is good.
That is something that we should all do for our contexts.
Know the context, know the word, know what to proclaim, etcetera.
But I had to always fight fear and nervousness just to start,
just to begin talking about the gospel.
I had to learn to simply exercise that Jesus would
provide the words to speak and He would provide the resources I
needed. My faith could not depend on my
preparation. It had to depend on Jesus
formation, authority, trust, which conveniently spells fact.
I have one more point. Unfortunately, it's not S so
it's not facts. It's it's, it's you.
So it's for two. Hopefully you use for two to
remember these 54 points. The fourth point is urgency.
Disciples on mission with Jesus, we need to be urgent.
There's an implicit warning in this passage that I want to draw
your attention to. In verse 11, Jesus tells his
disciples, whatever town or village you enter, find out who
is worthy in it and stay there until you leave.
He's basically saying, look for the person who welcomes the
message of the Kingdom and welcomes you as well.
Bless that house with peace. If the person.
If that peace is not received, take it back.
If that town or house refuses what you're saying, shake off
the dust of your feet when you leave that town or house.
Being on mission with Jesus means that we cast the message
widely. And then we pay attention to
those who are spiritually open to IT, people who are asking
questions, who are seeking freedom, wanting healing, hungry
for something more. And when we find them, we invest
in them, we speak peace to them, we stay with them, and we grow
them. But because we're casting the
message widely, there will be many who reject the message and
we do not receive us. And when that happens, we must
learn to shake off the dust from our feet as we leave that town
or house. And shaking off the dust is a
visible symbol, basically, that says you're you've heard the
truth, you've rejected it. I leave you to the Lord.
Jesus sets a boundary here that should spark urgency in two
directions. 1st, urgency toward the world.
The harvest is plentiful, but it's not always going to be
harvest time. Time is finite.
Harvest season will end, and after that comes the judgment.
So the window for people to respond to Jesus doesn't stay
open forever. So we must urgently share the
message. We must not waste time.
Yet at the same time, that means we must learn how to shake the
dust off our off our feet if someone rejects the message.
And that will mean choosing to invest in others rather than
chasing someone who is closed off.
You can be a faithful presence in somebody's life, someone who
who has rejected the gospel. You can continue to pray for
them. But you want to expend your
energy on those who have not yet heard because the harvest is
plentiful and the laborers are few.
Others need to hear and repent. Secondly, that urgency is also
towards us. We must not reject the message
that we preach. We must not.
That's the tragedy of Judas. He received authority.
He cast out demons. He cleansed lepers.
He proclaimed the Kingdom of God.
Freely he received, freely he gave.
He went on mission with Jesus. But at some point, at some
point, he stopped looking at Jesus and he betrayed him.
And his story is a warning that being used by God is not the
same as belonging to him. It's not the same thing.
We can be active in ministry and passive in repentance, and
that's a dangerous place to be that you're preaching to others,
but you stopped listening to the message itself.
So ask yourself, are you still responding to Jesus's call to
repent, to surrender, to trust, to obey Him?
Let us not preach a king that we no longer obey.
Let's not do that. This is not optional and it
takes us back to the very beginning formation.
The Kingdom has drawn near and we need to preach it.
There is judgement coming round, so disciples on mission with
Jesus need to be formed. Exercise authority, trust in
Jesus and do all this urgently. Fatu, let me pray for us.
We are frail creatures, Father, and we are able to fail you in
many ways, but You have given us power by your Holy Spirit to
overcome these things, to be formed by You, to exercise
authority in You, to trust You, and to move urgently.
Give us hearts that are truly surrendered to to You, that
would commit to being disciples with You.
In Christ's name I pray. Amen.