Sent with a Purpose - Matthew 9:35-20:8

Music.

Prominent and widely publicized search and rescue efforts ever attempted was

the search for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.

The flight disappeared on March 8th, 2014, while en route from Malaysia to Beijing,

China, with 239 people on board.

239 people. That's a lot of people. The initial phase involved extensive multinational

search and rescue operations across the South China Sea and the Strait of Malacca.

Satellite data later revealed the aircraft's possible trajectory into the Indian ocean.

And so the search shifted dramatically to one of the most remote and challenging

ocean regions in the world.

The operation spanned years, involved dozens of countries, and became the most

expensive search in history, costing over $150 million.

Despite using advanced deep sea search technologies and combing thousands of

square miles of ocean floor,

only scattered debris from the aircraft was eventually found washed up on the

shorelines, actually thousands of miles from the suspected crash site.

The scale, the international coordination,

the oceanic challenges, and mystery surrounding flight MH370 make this one of

the most significant search and rescue efforts in modern history.

Despite all of the efforts, the crash site was never discovered.

Let me tell you about another rescue. More recently, you may remember another mission.

It was the largest and most intense search and rescue missions ever attempted for lost people.

And it was in 2018 in the rescue of 12 boys and their soccer coach trapped in

the cave system in Thailand. How many of you remember that?

It was all over the news and in the papers, right? What's a paper?

The boys were ages 11 to 16 and their coach was a 25 year old young man.

And they all became trapped when a sudden monsoon rain flooded the cave on June 23rd of 2018.

The search and rescue operation grew into a massive international effort involving

more than 10,000 people.

Can you imagine? 10,000 people.

It included Navy SEALs, cave diving experts, military teams,

and volunteers from over a dozen countries. Nice.

The cave presented immense challenges. Narrow, flooded passages had developed strong currents.

There was no to low visibility and unpredictable conditions.

It took nine days just to locate where the group was in the cave system.

They used incredible technology. They used search dogs and drones and underwater robots.

And once they were found alive on July 2nd, that's when the rescue planning began to happen.

And so what they ended up doing was they had to sedate and transport the boys

through a complex underwater cave system assisted by professional cave divers.

And all 13 boys were successfully rescued between July 8th and July 10th.

This captured global attention not only because of the conditions that they

were in But because of the age and the youth of them,

One Navy SEAL lost his life during the effort And a second diver later died

to a blood infection contracted during the mission,

This rescue remains one of the largest and most challenging search and rescue

efforts for a lost group of people in history.

It's incredible the lengths that we go to rescue people.

But this morning, I want to tell you that you and I have been called to an even

greater rescue mission, the most important mission of all eternity.

And there's more at stake in this mission than any one mission that's ever come before.

There are lives that need to be rescued. we lose people to death and eternity

every day but we can save those who are still alive and who are holding out hope to be rescued.

But we have a serious problem. There aren't enough people who have responded

to be sent out on this critical recovery mission.

Some of us were afraid.

Some of us were tired. Some of us were too busy or lazy or for whatever reason,

people choose to sit out and they're content and comfortable while the waters

rise and the people perish.

If you have your Bibles this morning, turn with me to the book of Matthew.

It's the first book in the New Testament, and we're going to be in chapters 9 and 10 this morning.

And I really want to encourage you to bring a physical copy of God's Word with you on Sundays.

If you don't have one, we have some at the Welcome Center.

We would love to get you a copy because I want you to write in it,

and I want you to circle and underline and highlight it.

We want you to fall in love with God's word because it never returns void,

and it will accomplish so much more than anything else in your life.

Follow along. Matthew 9, we're going to start in verse 35, and we're going to

be reading a lot of scripture this morning, and we're going to break it down verse by verse.

Verse 35, Jesus continued going around to all the towns and villages,

teaching in the synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom and healing

every disease and every sickness.

When he saw the crowds, he felt compassion for them because they were distressed

and dejected like sheep without a shepherd.

Then he said to his disciples, the harvest is abundant.

But the workers are few. Therefore, pray to the Lord of the harvest to send

out workers into his harvest. Chapter 10, verse 1.

Summoning his 12 disciples, he gave them authority over unclean spirits to drive

them out and to heal every disease and sickness.

Then he goes on and Matthew names the 12 apostles here.

First, Simon, who's called Peter, and Andrew, his brother, James,

the son of Zebedee and John, his brother, Philip and Bartholomew,

Thomas and Matthew, the tax collector, James, the son of Alphaeus and Thaddeus.

Verse four says, Simon, the zealot and Judas Iscariot. We all know that name,

right? Who also betrayed him.

Verse five, Jesus sent out these 12 after giving them instructions.

Don't take the road that leads to the Gentiles. And this is very important here.

Don't take the road that leads to the Gentiles and don't enter any Samaritan town.

Interesting instructions Jesus

is giving here. Instead, go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

And as you go, proclaim the kingdom of heaven has come near.

Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those with leprosy, drive out demons.

Freely you received, freely give.

So here in the gospel of Matthew, we see this. This is a pivotal transition

moving from Jesus's ministry of just personal ministry of him doing it by himself

and alone teaching and healing to now sending out the 12 apostles to extend his mission.

What was and is the mission of God? What's the mission of God throughout scripture?

Luke 19.10 sums it up in this way.

For the son of man has come to seek and to what?

Save the lost. The mission is to seek and save the lost.

That's the mission, to seek and to save the lost. The Father sent Jesus to earth

to seek and save the lost.

Get that into our minds. That's our purpose, to seek and save the lost.

And that's what Jesus is doing in verse 35. Jesus was teaching in the synagogues,

and he's preaching the good news of the kingdom, healing every disease and every sickness.

In the New Testament, we read a lot about the kingdom of God.

But what exactly does that mean?

Well, if we're looking at scripture, verse 35 says that Jesus was preaching

the good news of the kingdom.

Teaching the good news of the kingdom. Was announcing that God's reign was breaking into the world.

That God was bridging the distance between God and man. Right?

Jesus had come. That's what we celebrate at Christmas.

Emmanuel, God with us.

And God is now bridging that distance. the kingdom of God, God's plan is coming

into fruition, and it's showing up here on earth now.

And he's offering the forgiveness of sin, and he's giving us the hope of eternal

life through repentance and by the turning away from our sin.

And so here in Matthew 9 and 10, we see a summary of Jesus's threefold ministry.

Jesus had a teaching ministry and a preaching ministry and a healing ministry. That's what he did.

Teaching, preaching, healing. And Jesus addressed spiritual and moral and physical needs.

That is the mission of God, to seek and save the lost. That's what we do.

That's what we do. Now, let me talk to you for a moment about the motivation of God.

Follow along in verse 36. It says, when he saw the crowds, he felt what?

Oh, come on, church. He felt what? Compassion. Why?

Because they were distressed and dejected like sheep without a shepherd.

The motivation of the mission is compassion. It's compassion. It's love.

When you dig into this, this word distressed here, it refers to the condition

of a people who are weary, who are troubled, who are burdened, who are lost.

And it conveys the idea that they were harassed and oppressed by difficult life

circumstances, even spiritual confusion, and most definitely lack of guidance.

And Jesus saw that his people were suffering and without direction and in need

of care like a sheep without a shepherd.

And so this word expresses not just physical hardship, but also emotional hardship,

spiritual hardship, spiritual exhaustion.

You ever get exhausted emotionally, physically, spiritually?

It goes just beyond their immediate needs and it focuses on their lostness.

See, everything that Jesus did, he did it motivated by compassion.

What fuels us with every ministry that we take on here at Generations Church,

it better be fueled out of compassion for those people.

Our student ministry better be motivated for compassion for those boys and girls.

Compassion. Some of us, we need a little bit more compassion and love for people.

Look with me in Luke and in Matthew. And I just want to give you a couple times

that Christ said he was moved with compassion.

When the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her and said, don't weep.

Matthew 15, 32, Jesus called his disciples and said, I have compassion on the crowd.

Why? He says, because they've already stayed with me three days.

They've been following me and they have nothing to eat.

I don't want to send them away hungry. Otherwise, they might collapse on the way.

Listen, Jesus cares about physical needs and spiritual needs.

He cares about your struggles with depression. He cares about your struggles

with being alone or anxiety.

He cares about your prayer life. He cares about how you serve, how you give.

He cares about your family and your kids. And he cares about your marriages.

He cares about every aspect of your life.

And Jesus was sent to seek and save the lost.

And he was and is and always will be motivated by compassion.

He loves us so much.

Verse 36 says, he saw the crowds, he felt compassion for them.

Verse 37 says, then he said to his disciples, the harvest is abundant or plentiful,

but the workers, they are few.

Therefore, which just means because of that, pray to the Lord of the harvest

to send out workers into his harvest.

And Jesus shifts from this metaphor of sheep to that now of a harvest and the

harvest, it symbolizes an urgency that the product,

the fruit, the vegetables,

the whatever it is, the wheat, that it's ready to be picked.

There's a readiness and an urgency to receive the kingdom a message that salvation has come.

Jesus said the harvest is abundant, but the workers are to bring it in, but they're few.

Why pray for more workers?

Why? Because God's mission requires human participation.

That is both a responsibility and it's also an honor that the God of the universe

who spoke everything into existence wants to use you and me, this broken,

sinful dude.

He wants to use you for his kingdom. It's one of the greatest and coolest things

about the gospel is that he allows us to be part of saving the lost.

So now we move into chapter 10, and we see this transition that I talked about

of he's now commissioning the 12.

Follow along. Verse 1, summoning his 12 disciples, he gave them authority over

unclean spirits to drive them out and to heal every disease and sickness.

And then he goes through the names and he gives them instructions.

I want to stop here for a moment. We've seen the mission of God.

We've seen the motivation of the mission that's compassion and love.

But I want to talk about the mandate of the mission.

And the mandate of the mission is that we go in authority.

He's given us the authority, and now we go and we move in authority.

I like that word mandate because it's both a noun and a verb.

And here it's a verb that means to give someone authority to act in a certain way.

So here we read in verse 1 of chapter 10 that Jesus gave the disciples authority

in every situation there over unclean spirits to heal every disease and sickness.

And then Matthew lists these names of the 12 apostles. Notice at the beginning, they were disciples.

Now they're referred to as apostles here for the first time.

And the word apostle simply means sent ones. And I love this.

Sent ones with the authority of the sender.

Sent ones with the authority of the sender.

Christ selected these 12 to be his apostles, whom he sent out to take the message

to the world and then raise up churches.

Later, we find out that Paul has been selected by Christ to be an apostle as

well, and you find that in Acts 9.

But to be an apostle, and I'm going to take just a teaching moment,

and I don't, my intention is not to,

we're all about love, we're all about unity, but this is what I believe is taught

about apostleship when we read about it, when we read about it.

According to scripture, a man had to have two things. The first one was a direct

witness of the risen Christ.

The apostles had to have seen Jesus after his resurrection.

This is clearly outlined in Acts 1.22 when the remaining apostles looked to replace Judas.

The candidates had to have been with Jesus from his baptism to his ascension

and were required to be witnesses of his resurrection.

And then secondly, an apostle had to have been a personal selection by Jesus.

The original apostles were chosen by Christ during his earthly ministry.

And then Paul is considered an apostle because he had a direct call from Christ

on the road to Damascus in Acts 9 and Galatians 1.

And I know there are a lot of denominations and faith backgrounds that we've been associated with.

And like we said last week, there are essentials and non-essentials.

If you call your pastor or if you've known someone and they're apostle so-and-so,

I'm going to disagree. They're not an apostle.

They may have the gift of apostleship, which just means they've been sent out,

but I'm not going to refer to

them as a pastor or as an apostle because Scripture teaches against that.

Again, non-essential. Verse 2, let's continue. These are the names of the 12

apostles. He lists them.

And for time's sake, I'm not going to list them again. But why is it significant

that Matthew gives us a specific list of the apostles?

He gives us the names. He gives us families of origin for some of them.

He talks about their economic statuses, jobs, the diversity of their backgrounds,

even the vast range of their cultural backgrounds of those whom Jesus chose for his mission.

And I think it serves to underscore the fact that Jesus calls individuals from

every walk of life. I'll see you next time.

Every walk. It doesn't matter what their background is.

Jesus calls them, whether they were a fisherman making an honest living or whether

they were a tax collector and were struggling to be honest before they met Jesus.

God takes all of us and he calls us all to repentance, to the lordship of the

kingdom of God, and then he sends us out.

So that's encouraging to me. God can take anyone and use them for the kingdom of God.

Now, Jesus instructs the 12 apostles,

and he gives them some very specific instructions for this mission.

If you look at the text, who did he commission them to go to?

He says, go to the lost sheep of Israel.

Indicating that the initial focus of God's plan here where we find ourselves

in the timeline of the Gospels was to plan to go to the Jewish people first.

Later on, it would extend universally to the Gentiles, praise God,

because that's the rest of us.

But here in Matthew, which is a Jewish book written to Jewish people,

the apostles are supposed to take the Gospel to the lost sheep of Israel.

And their ministry was to mirror Christ's ministry,

healing the sick, raising the dead, cleansing those with leprosy,

driving out demons, in order to demonstrate the validity and deity of Jesus

Christ, that he indeed was God.

He wasn't just a carpenter's son. He was and is the King of kings and the Lord of lords.

And their ministry of miracles were a sign to the unbelieving Jew.

Now, if they had power to perform miracles, it showed the Jews that there was

hope for life transformation.

Remember just a couple chapters earlier, didn't Jesus have a man lowered through

the roof? And he said, what do you want?

Would you rather, is it more, you know, should I raise you to walk or do you

want your sins forgiven? Which is easier.

So what did he do? He did both.

Jesus was concerned about his physical well-being, but he was after his heart.

I want you to notice finally the manner of the mission.

The manner of the mission is grace. Jesus said, freely you received, freely give.

And what Jesus is reminding the apostles of is the impending soon to come cross.

You see, they weren't going out quoting John 3, 16 to people.

They didn't have it yet. Telling them what Jesus had done for them on the cross.

No, they were telling them the kingdom is here. this long-awaited Messiah that

our ancestors have prophesied about, have been praying for and begging God for. He's here.

We know him. His name is Jesus.

And then they perform the miracles to validate that he was the true son of God.

So now here we are 2,000 years later on the other side of the cross,

on the other side of the resurrection.

The Holy Spirit has been given now and is at work in our lives.

And we too have a mission.

What is it? Matthew 28 says this, go therefore and make disciples of all nations,

all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit.

That previous chapters nine, that was given specifically to the apostles to

go to the people of Israel.

And now it's to all of us.

Go, make disciples, baptize them in the name of the Father, Son,

and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything I've commanded.

And remember, I am with you always to the end of the age.

If you've accepted Christ and you've made him the Lord of your life,

you have been given a mission.

You've been given a mission. You have the motivation of the love of God.

1 John says we love him because he first loved us.

Our motivation is compassion for the lost, compassion for the weary,

compassion for the dejected.

You've been given a mandate. You have the authority and you have the power of the indwelling spirit.

And the manner we will do it in is freely by grace.

Romans says, how then can they call on him they've not believed in?

How can they believe without hearing about him and how can they hear without?

Music.

There are people that are lost and dying out there.

They're not going to just magically appear in our church.

We have to go out and we have to bring them in.

We pass them by every day.

In 2006, there was an English climber by the name of David Sharp.

David Sharp. That's a picture of him right there.

He stopped to rest during a climb up on Mount Everest. He was exhausted.

He was cold. He was tired.

He sat down, and before long, his body froze in place.

Though he was still alive, he sat there, and he was unable to move.

As over 40 climbers passed by him on the hike, the trek to the summit.

They believed he was just another body of someone who had passed away on the journey.

Here's the thing. If you Google this or if you study this, there are over 300

bodies on Mount Everest from people who have gotten stuck along the way and

froze to death or fallen to their injuries.

And they believed that he was a man who had died 10 years earlier on the mountain.

When some of the climbers passed by him, Sharp quietly moaned.

And they raced over to help him. But their assistance was too late.

He soon died. The hikers who had passed by did so because he didn't look like

he needed any help. He just looked like he was resting, like he was trying to catch his breath.

It was only those who stopped to listen that heard his faint moaning,

and then they realized that something was wrong.

There were actually members of a commercial expedition that encountered Sharp

and that's a picture of him. That's the last picture of him.

He froze in that position.

And then died. But there was a commercial expedition that encountered him,

and they felt that they would be unable to help him effectively because of the

critical state that he was in but also because of the expedition's priorities,

that didn't line up with stopping and taking time out.

So they continued on by.

Are you kidding me?

He's sitting here frozen and

moaning and you have other priorities or you think they're too far gone.

Got to be kidding me.

We're just as guilty. How many people do we look at in our daily lives and we

say, that person, they're an addict. They're too far gone.

That person, they could never come to Christ. They're too far gone.

Or what about this? Man, I'd invite someone to church. I'm just too busy.

I'm just too busy.

And so we move on.

And then they can go on to eternity in hell.

People are trekking on in this journey. And we ignore the fact that they've

sat down and they're dying.

2 Corinthians 5 says this, therefore we are ambassadors for Christ since God

is making his appeal through us.

You see, God wants to use us. God wants to use you.

Are we too busy to talk to them?

Are we too busy to invite them because of our priorities?

He wants to use us and this is we plead on christ's behalf we plead we beg we,

angel please come to christ come to church with me be reconciled to god.

We are his presence here on earth and in the Cedar Valley.

And we must plead with people with urgency to come and to be reconciled to God.

Listen, look up here.

This isn't a message about church growth.

This is simply a reminder that we must plead with people to be reconciled to come to Christ.

We have a mission. We have a motivation. We have a mandate.

You have been sent with a purpose to seek and to save the lost with the compassion of Jesus Christ.

We are to reconcile men and women and teenagers and children and youth and elderly and everyone.

We're to reconcile them back to Christ to God,

Luke 14 says this I'm going to end with this and Adam's going to come and we're

going to partake in communion,

says this go out into the highways and hedges I love I love this Dr.

Luke doesn't say give them an invitation give them an invite card No,

he says, make them come in.

That's a little forceful than what we're used to. Go out and make them come in. Why?

So that my house may be filled.

Look around you. Last week, we took out probably 20, 30 chairs.

Look how many are empty.

Go out and make them come in,

that the house may be filled so that we can preach the good news that they can

have life and have it abundantly and know joy and know hope.

You can change their life forever. God wants to use you as an instrument of

reconciliation. Let's pray.

Father, we love you so very much.

And we long for you to do something in the Cedar Valley.

We long for you to do something in our lives.

God, we are all guilty. I am just as guilty of not making people or bringing people in.

No, we can't make people come in.

But God, forgive us for not being bold witnesses.

Forgive us for trekking by someone who might be minutes from hell.

Forgive us for not having the priority to stop and to listen to the pains of

those around us give us ears to hear give us a sensitivity to your spirit that we can win some for you,

father thank you for sending jesus out of the compassion of your heart.

Thank you for sending Jesus to die for us so that we can live forever with you.

We want to be obedient to your mission, to your mandate.

Music.