We Labor in Mission

So today we're going to look at the reality that we as a people labor in mission.

And I think that one of the best ways that we can model or understand what mission looks like is through the life and ministry of the Apostle Paul.

There's probably no greater person in history that made a missional impact on the world outside of Paul.

Now, here's the reality.

I understand we, most of us, grew up in the you can do anything you want to do world, right?

We've lived the mantra of you can be anything you want to be to such an extreme degree that we're seeing societal collapse because Michael Jordan did a commercial 20 years ago, right?

Um I want to be like Mike.

No, you can't be, you have a three-inch vertical.

Uh but um uh most of us might not live lives like Paul did, but we can use Paul as a model for what it means to live life on mission.

And where we're entering into the text this morning is Paul is in a city called Miletus.

He's at the very end of his missionary travels and journey, and he knows that the end of his life is near.

And so, in this city called Miletus, which is in the southern part of Asia Minor.

So, for those of you who don't know, Asia Minor is the west half of what we call modern day Turkey.

So, Paul did a lot of his missionary journeys in modern day Turkey on the western half, more toward Greece, Italy, and so forth.

And in this city, Miletus, he he calls to himself the elders from the church in Ephesus.

And these Ephesian elders, who many he appointed by his own hand, gather together, and Paul begins to make his case for his faithfulness in mission as he's coming to the end of his life.

And so we see here in verse 17, he says, Now from Miletus, this is uh uh Luke's account of what took place in the book of Acts, he sent, being Paul, to Ephesus and called the elders of the church to come to him.

And when they came to him, he said to them, You yourselves know how I lived among you the whole time from the first day that I set foot in Asia.

So here's what Paul's gonna read to do.

When God called me to mission, and he gave me a specific people and context to pre uh proclaim the gospel of our Lord Jesus.

This is how I lived from the very first day that I set foot in Asia.

And we have to realize that meant all of us who are in Christ, our footsteps have been ordered.

The Bible says that the footsteps of the righteous are ordered.

Ephesians says that we walk in the good works which were ordained for us before the foundations of the earth, that we as a people, if we are in Christ, are under the sovereignty of our God, and the very footsteps that we take are ordered.

And they're ordered for service, for mission.

And so if your footstep finds yourself in the executive offices of PG, if your footstep finds yourself in the school district of Lakota, if your footstep finds yourself in your living room with four Hellions who don't love Jesus, they're ordered.

And this is what mission looks like, so that the kingdom can continue to advance.

And so when we look at this first part of the text in verses 19 through 21, we see this mission requires humility and boldness.

Mission requires humility and boldness.

I love what Paul does at the very beginning as he's addressing the elders of Ephesus in the city of Miletus, he almost summarizes his entire life in three words.

Served the Lord.

That was Paul's life.

That was Paul's dying endeavor that he would serve the Lord.

But the unique thing about this is that Paul doesn't go on to list all the ways that he served the Lord in common uh ways that we would think of, right?

I I was there praying in the church all the time.

I I made sure that that the potlucks were organized and everybody got fed.

I was there laboring in this ministry.

I was there serving in the kids' room.

I was there doing all these things when we think of serving the Lord.

Paul sees no separation or differentiation between serving the Lord and serving people.

And so he's getting ready to actually lay out all the ways he labored for them, and he classifies that as his service unto the Lord.

And so there's no distinction between these two realities of Paul saying, I gave my life to serve the Lord, and I'm gonna prove it to you by showing you all the ways that I labored for your good.

He characterizes this service and what it looked like by three kind of characterizing statements.

He says, first, that I did it with all humility.

With all humility, he says.

This language of humility is this lowliness of mind.

Paul did it in such a way, he lived his life in such a way that he actually counted other people's lives as more significant than his own.

And this really sets the bar for mission for Paul.

This should set the bar for us also.

If we actually count other people's lives as more significant than our own, it will drive mission because it will drive us to serve them for their good.

Paul wrote about this uh multiple times throughout his letters in his apostolic ministry, and we see a couple places where he very specifically drives down this emphasis of humility.

He says in his letter to the Philippians chapter 2, verse 3, he says, Do nothing, literally nothing, from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility, count others more significant than yourselves.

Philippians 2:3

This is really the functional definition of what humility is.

It's to count others as more significant than yourself.

He also wrote to the church in Thessalonica and in 1 Thessalonians chapter 2, verse 6, he says, Nor did we seek glory from people, whether from you or from others, though we could have made demands as apostles of Christ.

1 Thessalonians 2:6

Here's what Paul's saying.

He said, If I had, if I if anybody had the right to make demands from the people whom they were engaged with, who they had relationship with because of their status in life, it was him, a Pharisee of the Pharisees, a Jew of the Jews, an apostle of Jesus Christ, one who was appointed by the very resurrected, risen Lord uh to carry his gospel to the ends of the earth, right?

If anybody had any right to make demands from the people he was serving, it was him.

And he says, We didn't come making demands, we didn't come seeking glory, even though we had the right to, because Paul really had a life of humility in the way that he was living on mission, to count others more significant than himself.

He also says, with tears, with tears.

Uh uh Paul constantly communicates this deep affection for the people that he is serving.

Uh, he labors in tears because he loves them so much.

Many of us might look at the life of Paul, who endured many trials and sufferings, who uh had faced not only all these uh situations in his life, but faced hardship and relationships of people who abandoned him, who turned their back on him, who went apostate, denied the gospel, even though he but but even in all of his sufferings and his trials, his tears were more communicated through the deep love he had for the people that he was serving.

He actually writes to the church at Corinth in 2 Corinthians 2, 4, for I wrote to you out of much affliction and anguish of heart and with many tears, not to cause you pain, but to let you know the abundant love that I have for you.

Paul loved the people he was serving, and he loved them so much that he labored in tears because he so desired their good.

He then also says, with trials, with trials.

This language with trials means to prove.

When we look throughout the scriptures, as Christians, of those of us who are in Christ face different trials, tribulations, testings.

All of this language is this proving of the faith that we confess that we have.

So if we say that we have faith in Christ, the Lord sovereignly allows us to go through different trials and testings that that faith we confess to have is proven through them.

The Bible also talks about this as a refiner's fire.

What does that do?

It puts this gold, this precious metal, into this process to get out of it the dross, to get out of it the impurities of it, that on the other side what is true, what is of its essence and purity, is proven on the other side of that fire.

And so Paul went through these trials to be able to prove the gospel that he declared and the faith he confessed to have in and of himself.

Another apostle, Peter, writes about the purpose of these trials.

In 1 Peter 4 12, he says, Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial testing when it comes upon you to test you as though something strange was happening to you.

This is a reality of our Christian faith.

And there's a lot of effort and energy in culture to not have to suffer, right?

We put a ton of resources into avoiding suffering in our lives.

Even if you look at the cultural worldview, the philosophy that society is formulating, it is ultimately that they might not have to endure suffering.

And what does the Bible tell us?

That we should count it all joy when we face suffering, for we take on the sufferings of our Lord Jesus, that through these trials we might be made like him.

And so Paul says, Through these trials I've proven to you my affection for you, my love for you, but the gospel that I proclaim as being faithful and true also.

You see, we see in Paul's serving the Lord and the people that he lived among that his mission was really marked by this all-encompassing reality of humility.

His life was one of tears and trials, ultimately because he counted others as more important than himself, or more significant than himself.

But his mission was also marked by boldness.

So we have humility on one side of Paul that drove him to serve people, to love them, but he had boldness.

This also empowered him to serve people in mission.

He says these words.

He says, How I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable.

I love what Paul's saying here.

Because here's what here's if we could start to break this down.

This language for shrink literally means to suppress.

It means to draw back and hide or conceal.

Paul said, I did not suppress.

Suppress what?

The truth of God that was profitable for you.

This language of profitable actually means to bear fruit in you.

See, Paul understood that we were to bear fruit.

And as we're connected to the vine that is Christ, an evidence that we are connected in him is that we would bear the fruit of the Lord, that we would bear the fruit of the Spirit in our life.

And Paul said, I did not suppress the truth of God that's purpose was to cause you to bear the fruit that you're supposed to in your life.

You see, the truth of God for us is supposed to cause our flourishing as image bearers of our Maker.

When we submit to the law of God, when we are obedient to His commands, when we embrace His word as truth, it causes for us as His image bearers our ultimate flourishing.

And so Paul loved these people so much that he wanted them to flourish in the way that his that that God had created them to.

And so he said, I didn't suppress that truth from you.

I was bold in declaring it to you.

But but what we're experiencing in the church today is that our mystiology has changed and it's shifted to try and be friendly to the culture of which we live in.

And so you hear church after church or pastor after pastor saying, You gotta be careful what you say.

You can't say all these things.

What's he telling you?

He's saying you got to suppress this stuff.

You gotta start pulling back.

But here's the thing: in doing that, we're not communicating a love for the world.

We're communicating that we hate them, that we don't want them to flourish in all the ways that God has designed and created them to, that we don't want their ultimate good and best.

Because if we really wanted that for them, if we really love them, we would not shrink back from declaring the truth of what God's word has for them, that they might actually obtain and know and experience their ultimate good.

Paul says, I didn't suppress that which caused your flourishing.

There's another place in the scriptures where we see the effects of a truth suppressed.

Romans chapter 1 talks about the destructive realities when the truth of God is suppressed by man.

Romans 1 · chapter mention

And this is the outcome.

This is the reality of what happens when we do that.

Is that God, uh man stops worshiping God as creator and starts worshiping creation itself.

And in that pursuit, all wickedness, all deviance, all sin starts following after it.

That's the outcome of the suppression of truth.

Church, we have to be a mouthpiece that declares the truth of God with all boldness because we love the culture we reside in.

Paul says that this boldness was both public and private.

He says, teaching you in public and from house to house.

There's a boldness that has to come about where we're not afraid to say truth, to speak truth in public spaces, whether that be in our jobs, our school systems, our homes, our neighborhoods, the relationship with our family and friends.

But we also need to have a private reality where we also, with boldness, declare that truth, where we have relationships that have equitable trust in them, that we've built together with one another, that have an intimacy in them, to where we have the ability to confidently speak that truth to other individuals who know beyond a shadow of a doubt that we love them.

And so there's a public and a private reality to that boldness.

But what was Paul's ultimate declaration?

What was his bold proclamation?

The essence of it was this repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.

That's how he summarizes it.

The message of the church has never changed.

The message of the church will never change.

It is the unfading truth of God that he calls all men to repentance and faith.

And so, us as the church, we have to be ruthless about preserving that gospel message.

If sacred mission is going to be known for declaring anything, it will be repentance and faith.

It won't be clean yourself up, make sure that you get everything right before you come to God.

Hey, you got to quit doing all these things or else God will never accept you.

Hey, your behavior has to modify, or else things aren't going to go right for you.

That's not what it is.

All those things will come through the transformative power of the Spirit when we first repent and put our faith in Jesus Christ alone.

And so a gospel-centered church is not a church that calls the world to behavior modification.

A gospel-centered church is one that calls the world to lay aside their arms of rebellion against their maker, to repent and turn toward him and place their faith in the death, burial, and resurrection of his son.

That's a gospel-centered church.

We can deal with all the other stuff after that.

But the first thing we got to deal with is that you would stop your pursuit of rebellion against your maker, and that you would turn to his loving open arms.

In verses 22 through 23, we see this that mission requires spirit dependence and confidence.

He says, and now behold, I am going to Jerusalem, constrained by the Spirit, not knowing what will happen to me there.

Man, uh Paul is just, he, I mean, he's a guy to model our life after.

He's saying that he's actually bound by the Spirit, as if he is in chains of the Spirit, and the Spirit is the one leading him to the places of where he's going.

There's a huge dependency that Paul's communicating about his relationship with the Spirit.

Think of it this way: if you were in prison and you were going to be transferred or moved to somewhere else, you'd be bound in chains.

You'd be dependent upon that warden or that guard to lead you to the place that you're actually going.

This is literally what Paul's communicating.

I'm bound in such a way that if the spirit doesn't lead me to my next place, I'm unable to go there.

Many of us, if we're honest with ourselves, we make so many decisions and choices and moves in our life where we haven't even gone to before the Lord and asked the Spirit, what do you want me to do?

Where am I to go?

If you're not going there, I'm not going there.

Where you lead me, I'll go with all confidence and strength and boldness.

But Spirit, where do you want me to be?

See, this binding dictates his very decisions and actions.

Paul says, I'm going to Jerusalem.

Why is Paul going to Jerusalem?

Because it's a nice place to retire?

No, it's basically from there, he's going to go to Rome and get beheaded.

He knows what's happening, he knows what's coming in front of him.

But it's the dependence on the Spirit that dictates the decisions and actions Paul makes.

But it also fosters deep confidence.

Because here's what's funny Paul says, not knowing what will happen to me there.

You see, Paul's confidence isn't that when he gets there, everything's going to be great.

But Paul's confidence is that when he gets there, the Spirit's with him.

Paul's relationship with the Spirit gives him this great confidence that the Holy Spirit testifies to me in every city that imprisonment and afflictions await me.

This isn't a confidence that the Spirit is going to keep him away from suffering.

This is a confidence that the Spirit is going to see him through suffering.

And I think that there's a reality here where when we exhaust ourselves in trying to avoid suffering, we fail in mission.

If we're going to exhaust our life in trying to avoid suffering, we will fail in mission.

That's not the gospel.

That's not what the Bible declares as truth for us or good for us.

We have to create and foster a deep dependence on the Holy Spirit and a confidence that no matter where He leads us to, He will lead us through.

And that will give us the courage and the boldness and strength to face anything.

You see, without dependence and confidence in the Spirit, mission will suffer.

We will labor more in the avoidance of suffering than the endurance through it.

As we look at verses 24 through 27, the closing parts of this text, we see mission requires sacrifice and fortitude.

Mission requires sacrifice and fortitude.

Paul says, but I do not count my life as any value.

This word value literally means unable to be communicated through showy words.

Paul's saying, it's really nothing to talk about.

You see, Paul constantly fought.

The temptation to boast in himself, to have build value in who he was through the words that he said or spoke about his own life.

Isn't culture kind of structured to be that?

It's an effort for all of us to try and build value into our lives by showy words.

I mean, I go through social media and I look at people's posts, and like, you all know those people, right?

You know those people.

I pray to the Lord you're not one of those people.

But you see their anniversary pop up this week, and it's just full of like these pictures and statements like, oh my God, I wouldn't change a thing.

I wouldn't change a thing.

Um, these last several years have just been the best.

And you know, no, they haven't.

No, they haven't.

Your life is a wreck.

Uh and what are they doing?

They're literally striving, they're laboring toward trying to build value into their life.

They're laboring toward to try and use showy words to prove to the world that there's some value that they have.

Paul says, I don't need that.

Man, we got to stop getting sucked into that.

Of only posting all of our best things on social media, like the birthday, like you, you just you just threaten to toss your kid down the steps, but then, hey, they blew out their birthday candles.

Uh, it was amazing.

I love them so much.

They're a gift.

Oh, okay.

Um, why do we do these things, right?

We're not honest about who we are and the things that we struggle with.

And then we put in front of society these fetal attempts to build value through showy words.

Paul says, I don't count my life that way.

I don't count it as something worth talking about.

But Paul says also, I don't, nor as precious to myself.

When we think of precious things, we often come to that with a sense of preservation.

We preserve what is precious.

If you think about something that you have, a keepsake that you have, something that you love, and it's precious to you and it and it's worth, you want to protect it.

You want to preserve it.

Paul says, No, my life is not something to seek to preserve or to protect, but it's laid down on the altar of mission for the glory of God and the good of all people.

But so many of our work and labor is focused around preservation.

Can we preserve our future through our education or our career choice or our 401k status?

Can we preserve our security in the neighborhoods that we move into and the security systems that we put in place?

Can we preserve all of these things that we count as precious to us?

And we put a ton and ton of resources and energy in trying to preserve something that Paul himself said, not precious.

And I love his reason.

If only I may finish my course in the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus for what purpose?

To testify of the gospel of the grace of God.

Paul's saying a lot right here.

Think about this.

Whose mission is this?

It's the Lord Jesus Christ.

Paul what?

Received that mission from him.

So what was Paul's responsibility?

To steward it faithfully.

Everything that we have in this life, including our mission and purpose in life, has been given to us by our Maker.

And we are called to be faithful stewards of those things for his glory and the good of all people.

And what did that look like for Paul?

To testify, to proclaim the gospel of the grace of God in Jesus Christ.

That was his whole life aim and endeavor.

A life of sacrifice is one where your loss joyfully comes at another's gain.

Their gain coming from knowing and receiving the grace of God in the gospel of Jesus.

He says, and now behold, I know that none of you none of you among whom I have gone about proclaiming the kingdom will see my face again.

Paul knows what mission will cost him.

It'll cost him everything, even his very life.

But he says something here.

He says, Therefore, I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all.

Look at the weight of which Paul understands mission.

He actually tries to compare it to someone who would be found guilty of bloodshed if he failed to do what God called him to do.

He says, I stand innocent before all of you, of the blood of you.

There's a weight to mission.

Where when we are given the responsibility to steward it faithfully, it is people's lives that are at stake.

And there's going to be a call to account at the end of time.

Do we want to stand before our Maker and say, Lord, what you handed me, I did nothing with?

And we stand before God with bloody hands because we didn't do anything with the mission that He gave us?

Or do we want to stand confidently before Him and say, Lord, I'm innocent.

I proclaimed the gospel of the grace of your Son.

I testified to the grace that you have in His finished work.

I made sure people knew that there was a way to be reconciled to you by your Son.

My hands are clean and I stand before you that way.

Stewards of the mission that God has given to us, Paul correlates it to such weight as if he failed to do it, he would be guilty of bloodshed.

But why was Paul able to have such confidence that his hands were clean, that he was able to declare his innocence?

For I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God.

He doubles down.

He says, I didn't suppress, I didn't pull back, I didn't try to conceal the truth.

I gave everything to you because of how much I love you, how much I love my Maker and my Savior.

Love drove Paul to have innocent hands.

Paul showed great fortitude in mission.

Fortitude is uh courage in the face of pain and adversity.

For someone like Paul, he had to have great fortitude to persevere through mission.

Man, if if we're honest with ourselves, and I'm this isn't me like casting guilt on you.

This is me owning this too.

We can probably think of friends, coworkers, family members who the Lord has told us to proclaim truth to them.

You know that the way that they're living, the choices that they're making, the things they're they are running headlong into death and destruction.

And what have we done?

Man, we've shrunk back because we love what the relationship gives us more than we love their soul.

And man, we've got to we've got to cast off that selfishness, we've got to cast off that timidity and fear, and we've got to get in our heads and hearts that if we love them, we will not shrink back from presenting to them what is profitable for them.

You see, I think there exists a harmony between sacrifice and fortitude.

The desire to remain unknown so that at any expense to self, Christ might be made infamous.

I believe that we should echo the anthem of John the Baptist.

He must increase, but I must decrease.

Here's what John's saying.

As I labor in mission, I hope that I become less and less and less known, and Christ becomes more and more infamous.

You see, what I believe we need to see this morning, church, is that we labor in mission for the glory of God and the good of all people.

All of these virtues, humility, boldness, dependence, confidence, fortitude, sacrifice, they converge themselves into what it looks like to be on mission.

But we can't understand mission solely by the how.

We have to try to work to understand the why of mission first, because it's the why of mission that informs the how of mission.

And the why is that we do this for the glory of God and the good of all people.

And so with that understanding, it drives us to be humble, it drives us to be bold, it drives us to be dependent and sacrificial and have fortitude.

It drives all of these things because it's when we are faithful to proclaim the glories of Christ in his gospel that God is glorified.

As those who repent and turn to him and place their faith in Christ, God is glorified as his church abandons preservation of self and labors in mission for his kingdom to advance.

God is glorified, and in all of that, it works itself out to the good of all people.

That when the reigning rule of Christ is manifested and known in all creation, his image bears will know and experience their ultimate good.

That's the end of this whole thing.

The end of this whole thing is that we are with God in the new heavens and earth, in communion with him, and we are subjected under in joyful obedience to his ruling reign on creation.

That's the end.

And we're working toward that end here and now.

When Jesus says, on earth, as it is in heaven, pray this way, he's praying to what end?

That one, where we live with God in perfect relationship because we are subjected under his dominion.

This is the why that drives the how.

So we labor.

Not for the glory or good of self, but for the glory of God and the good of others.

Richard Baxter, he was a very uh prominent Puritan pastor and writer.

One of his most famous works was The Bruised Reed.

He says this about mission.

He says, We have greater work here to do than mere securing our own salvation.

We are members of the world and church, and we must labor to do good to many.

We are trusted with our master's talents for his service and our places to do our best to propagate his truth and grace and church and to bring home souls and honor his cause and edify his flock and further the salvation of as many as we can.

All this to be done on earth if we will secure the end of all in heaven.

Man, you gotta love the Puritans.

They understood the weight, they were able to put language around the weight of what God has called us to as his people.

But many of us, if we're honest with ourselves, we struggle with laboring and mission.

Primarily because I think of two reasons.

The first one is this: many of us, we labor for our own glory.

We labor for our own glory.

If we're honest with ourselves, the time, the energy, the resources that we expend in our lives are an effort to acquire for ourselves glory.

What is glory?

Glory is most easily defined as weight or substance.

Because when something is weighty, when something has substance, it actually demands honor and praise to be given to it.

We really work hard to make people believe that there's some sense of substance in our life, that there's some sense of weight we hold.

And in response to that, we long to have praise and honor be bestowed upon us.

We're very intoxicated with the notion that our lives must have this weight or substance to them.

We see this, like I said earlier in social media and in content creation.

Like, right, if you have a YouTube channel or like a TikTok account or whatever else, like you're pretty much there just to try and build substance or weight into your life so that you might get praise and honor.

But it comes in the form of likes and loves and comments and shares and all of these other things that, oh, look how much praise and honor is being given to me because I've convinced them there's some amount of weight or substance in my life.

The last couple of years we've heard this term virtue signaling a lot, right?

Virtue signaling, for those of you who don't know, is someone who points out how they're morally superior than others by uh, you know, pointing to some type of social injustice or something of that nature.

Let me tell you something.

It's not virtue signaling, it's the labor for glory.

And we need to start calling it what it is.

Virtue signaling doesn't hold the fullness of what they're actually chasing after.

These people are trying to point to the reality or the false reality that they have any sense of weight or substance in their life that you might give them praise and honor for who they are.

It's not virtue signaling, it's a labor for glory.

Some of us we do this in the accumulation of debt or the insatiable spending that we participate in to acquire stuff, just so that we might hold weight with our neighbors, families, friends.

We have a dark and driving need to be seen, to be heard, to be recognized, respected, or envied.

If we're really honest with ourselves, this drives so much of our existence.

But let me submit something to you: that the desire to have glory is not wrong.

In fact, you were designed to have glory.

Because you were made in the image of the most glorious being.

Glory is supposed to be applied to you.

See, that's the rub.

What we desire is good, where we seek it from is sinful.

Let me put it to you this way.

We were created in the image of an infinitely glorious God.

And he has promised to his people that we will be crowned with glory also.

But the glory we act that will actually satisfy us does not come from creation.

It comes from our Creator.

The only praise and honor that will satisfy us is not out of the mouth of finite fallen beings, but out of the mouth of the infinitely glorious Judge of the universe, when he looks upon us in our end and says, Well done, thy good and faithful servant.

The praise and honor our soul really longs for, that will give us glory, can only come from the mouth of our Creator, but we seek it from the mouth of others.

I love how C.S.

Lewis puts this in his book, The Weight of Glory.

He says this: he says, the promise of glory is the promise.

Let's stop.

We are promised glory because that's the right and good thing that is given to us by our Father, by our Maker.

Almost incredible and only possible by the work of Christ that some of us shall find approval, shall please God, to please God, to be a real ingredient in the divine happiness, to be loved by God, not merely pitied, but delighted in.

As an artist delights in his work or a father in a son, it seems impossible, a weight of or burden of glory which our thoughts can hardly sustain, but so it is.

Church, we labor for such pathetic glory when we are promised infinite glory from the one whom we serve.

Some of us, though, we labor for our own good.

So much of our striving, strain, and struggle is ultimately for our own good.

We labor extensively for our own comfort and our own conveniences and our own securities and safeguardings.

We consider our lives as holding precious value, so we labor to preserve them.

The decisions we make in our relationships, our professional careers, the social circles we find ourselves in all lean toward our own betterment.

But the problem is it usually comes at the cost of others around us.

You see, and ultimately this comes, this laboring for glory comes because we don't really believe the gospel.

And here's what the gospel tells us: that in Christ, all of the good that you could ever even hope to imagine would be yours is both freely given and eternally secured in Christ.

All the good you could ever imagine that you would even want is freely given and eternally secured in Christ.

And so why would I labor and striving in this life for my own good when by faith I already possess eternally more than I could ever acquire with my own hands?

You see, fundamentally it is a disbelief in the gospel of why we strive and labor for our own good.

Why would I fall to the temptation of laboring for my good if I was ultimately persuaded that I already possessed it in Christ?

Yet we labor on.

We labor on as exhausted and beat down people who are trying to be satisfied from the bread of anxious toil.

And maybe we are the way we are.

Maybe the most common phrase out of our mouth is, I'm so tired.

I'm so exhausted.

Maybe we are so anxious as a society because we're failing to trust the God who we serve.

Because we're failing to believe that there's glory waiting for us.

Because we're failing to believe that goodness has already been acquired for us and we possess it in Christ.

Maybe we are so beat down, tired, and exhausted because we continually and insatiably labor for our own glory and our own good rather than for the glory of God and the good of others.

But here's our hope this morning, church.

Jesus has the authority to fulfill the mission.

Jesus has the authority to fulfill the mission.

He says this in Matthew chapter 28, verses 18 through 20.

Matthew 28:18–20

This is the Great Commission.

So if you're ever wondering what the church is supposed to do, look at the Great Commission in Matthew 28, 18 through 20.

This is what we're supposed to do.

Anything else we're not supposed to do, right?

Uh this is black and white.

Actually, if your Bible's a good one, it's red and white because these are red letters.

Uh and it says this, and Jesus came and said to them, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

Go, therefore, make disciples of all nations.

How do we do that?

We baptize them in the name of the Father, Son, and Spirit, and we teach them to deserve, uh, observe all that Christ commanded.

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

You see, Jesus has been given all authority.

Authority by the Father.

Why?

Because he's been proven faithful to labor for the glory of the Father and the good of all people.

Jesus has been tested and proven.

He's been put through the fire.

He showed it to us in the Garden of Gethsemane as he was laboring in prayer through drops of sweat that looked like blood, that if there was any other way, but here's how his face was.

It was set like flint that he might fulfill the will of the Father for his glory and the good of his people.

And because on the other side of that fiery tribal, he was proven to be tested and true through his glorious resurrection.

The Father has given him all authority.

And guess what?

On mission, he's with us.

That should give us boldness to not shrink back.

That should give us confidence to endure suffering.

That should give us humility to love and serve with trials and tears.

That should drive us on mission.

Jesus has been given authority by the Father because he's been proven faithful to labor for the glory of the Father and the good of his people.

And as the champion of heaven, he has been crowned with glory.

Hebrews 2, 7 and 8 says this You made him, speaking of Christ, for a little while lower than the angels.

You have crowned him with glory and honor, putting everything in subjection under his feet.

You see, it is by the glory that has been crowned upon Christ that we are also crowned with glory as heirs of all that has been put under his subjection.

And in that reality, in that reality of all that his finished work has accomplished, in his faithful and true labor of mission, we can have assurance that the mission will be fulfilled.

Man, the glory that awaits us is so much glorious is so much glorious than what we chase and pursue and labor for here on earth.

The good that has been given to us in Christ is infinitely better than anything our own hands could acquire.

Everything we long for in soul isn't that it's bad to long for those things.

It's that it's sinful that we chase them down in the places we do.

And what we can have confidence to labor in mission because Christ is with us in all that we want, he's acquired because he's been proven faithful and true.

And by faith in him, he freely gives it to us as his people.

So my prayer for us, Sacred Mission Church, is that we would labor, we would be a people who labor in mission.

Seems simple, right?

But man, at the resolve of who we are as a people, I want us to be known as a people who labored in mission with humility and boldness, dependence and confidence, with sacrifice and fortitude.

What did we do?

We could stand before the end of our life and declare of this city, in this region, in this area, and our family members and our coworkers and the moms in the pickup line at school, my hands are clean of your blood because I testified to you of the gospel of the grace of our God in our Lord Jesus Christ.

We'd be a people sent on mission.

Amen.

Let's pray.