This Is Your Mission (Matthew 9:35-38)

Hello, friends.

This is Pastor Creighton.

Thank you for tuning in to Newsong Church's Sermon Podcast.

At Newsong Church, we want to see Jesus lifted high in Port Perry, Ontario, as we worship, grow, and serve.

You can learn more about us and find contact info at newsongportperry.ca.

This is the holy gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Matthew.

Glory to you.

And Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction.

When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.

Then he said to his disciples, The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.

Therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.

This is the gospel of the Lord.

Praise you.

Therefore, pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.

Let's pray.

As individual Christians before you, as a parish family gathered this morning.

Lord, would you pour out your Holy Spirit afresh?

Renew this glorious hope, this gift of the gospel.

Give us that heart that you have to see us move forward in the mission you're calling us to, this adventure you're inviting us into.

All of this we pray in Jesus' precious name.

Amen.

Please be seated.

So one of my uh favorite taglines or introductions or whatever it is is a very classic uh phrase.

I'm sure you're gonna recognize it.

It goes something like this.

Um, your mission, should you choose to accept it.

We recognize that's from Mission Impossible, which is a bit of a misnomer, let's be honest, because they always accomplish the mission at the end of the episode, at the end of the adrenaline-fueled Tom Cruise movie.

It's always possible, it's just very, very difficult.

But the truth is, I wonder, uh, somewhere before the tape self-destructs, uh, when an axis question would, if you choose to accept it, I always sort of wonder what would happen if they just said, yeah, not today.

Like, I got stuff on, and I gotta get some groceries, and like I gotta drop my kid off at soccer practice.

Like, maybe, maybe next week we'll revisit that, right?

And that's never the case.

I mean, partly because it'd be a really lame movie, although we'd probably be talking about it a lot.

Um, but the truth is the stakes are too high to refuse.

And that's what Tom Cruise knows.

The stakes are too high to refuse the mission.

And the mission is calling.

It's right in front of them.

There's really only one answer to give.

We're here to talk about our mission as Christians, as a parish family.

And I think our gospel reading this morning in Matthew makes it quite clear the stakes are quite high.

And we're called to an important mission together.

In fact, we can't help but be about mission if we're going to be Christians, if we're going to be a parish family.

Here's something that a biblical scholar named Christopher Wright says in his book, The Mission of God.

He says, our mission, that is our mission as Christians, as the church, our mission means our committed participation as God's people, at God's invitation and command, in God's own mission within the history of God's world for the redemption of God's creation.

The key word there, I think, is participation.

Mission is not something we look at from a distance, something that looks really good when we hang it on the wall and admire it.

Mission is something we do.

We're about.

Our mission means our committed participation as God's people, in God's own mission, within the history of God's world for the redemption of God's creation.

The other thing that that means is God's mission precedes ours.

He's inviting us into his mission.

He doesn't throw us out into the world and say, do your best and then report back to me.

He's inviting us into what he's about, what he's doing in the world that he created for its redemption.

This is our mission if we choose to accept it.

We get to participate in that.

I think our gospel this morning identifies some key components of this mission, participating in what God is up to in this world in which we live, in this community of Port Perry in which we live.

Here's some essential elements of mission.

Here's three things the gospel tells us about God's mission.

This gospel tells us about what the work of mission looks like.

This gospel tells us what the heart of mission is.

And finally, I think this gospel tells us the mandate of our mission.

The work of mission, the heart of mission, and the mandate of mission.

So, friends, do you choose to accept it?

If not, you can.

No, I'm just kidding.

Let's explore this together.

The work of mission.

Pull out your Bibles, pull out your order of service, let's look at Matthew chapter 9 together.

Matthew 9 · chapter mention

What does the work of mission look like?

I think Jesus tells us in verse 35.

Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every disease and every affliction.

So you'll notice three verbs here, key verbs.

Teaching, proclaiming, and healing.

I think this is what the work of mission looks like.

I think this is what Jesus has in mind.

Jesus teaches, he gives instruction.

I think we're coming just a couple of chapters earlier.

In fact, last couple of Sundays, we've had a look at the Sermon on the Mount.

I think this is the epitome of Jesus' teaching.

This is what the kingdom of heaven looks like as it's realized on earth.

And here's the full implications of what it means to live a life as a follower of Jesus.

We can find his teaching presented to us in the Sermon on the Mount in that way.

And in fact, as Jesus is concluding the Sermon on the Mount, the narrator says that he teaches as one with authority, not like the scribes.

Jesus is saying something, Jesus is saying something in a new way.

Not just with a sort of derivative authority, like, wouldn't it be nice?

Or suppose this.

Jesus is saying the kingdom of heaven is.

Jesus can speak with authority because he is the king of this kingdom.

And Jesus is teaching in their synagogues, and I think that's supposed to clue us into the fact that Jesus is interpreting Scripture in such a way that it's pointing to himself.

He is the fulfillment of all of God's promises up to this point.

That's what we see in the Gospels.

When Jesus explains a passage of Scripture, he says, it's fulfilled in your hearing.

It's pointing to me.

I think that's the right way to read Scripture, by the way, friends.

I think that's the right way to read the Old Testament.

All of this is pointing us to who Jesus is and what he has done and what he is doing on our behalf.

So he's teaching.

He's offering instruction about the kingdom and the king in the kingdom.

He's proclaiming, he's heralding, he's announcing.

What is he heralding?

Well, he's heralding good news.

Let's look at uh where is that?

He's proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom.

We know that this word gospel, evangelion, means good news, and he's proclaiming good news about the kingdom.

The kingdom is uh this wild spiritual reality that Jesus seems to, he only seems to be able to communicate it through images, through stories.

Matthew chapter 13 is like the chapter in the Gospel of Matthew on the kingdom.

Matthew 13 · chapter mention

And the kingdom is communicated to us with these vivid images.

It's the kingdom is like a it's like a seed being sown in a field, growing up together with wheat and tares.

The kingdom is like a mustard seed, the smallest of all seeds, so easy to overlook, and yet it grows into this massive plant.

It's like leaven that works its way into the loaf.

It's like hidden treasure buried in a field that is worth selling all that you have so that you can buy this one field and claim the treasure for yourself.

In the same way, it's like a fine pearl.

Something that maybe is easy to miss, but having found it, it's worth everything to you.

And the kingdom is like gathering fish.

It's like casting your net wide and drawing folks inward.

And the kingdom of heaven, Jesus has already said in the Sermon of the Mount, belongs to people such as the poor in spirit and the persecuted.

This is a kingdom that's easy to miss.

This is a kingdom that's unlike other kingdoms.

It's almost like this kingdom is not of this world.

But this is a kingdom that belongs to those who recognize their utter dependence on God's grace and those who are willing to suffer in his name.

These are not the people you'd expect to receive such a kingdom.

This is not a success story in the way that we would frame a success story, is it?

The kingdom is easy to miss, but it's of absolute importance.

So Jesus is proclaiming that this kingdom is arriving.

This word evangelion, which is used in the Greek, is a very familiar word to Jesus' audience.

Evangelists were those who would, let's see, so Rome would go out and Rome would conquer whatever territory or whatever kingdom, and then a herald would come back to report in all the cities, you know, this great victory that Caesar has just won.

He would go and he'd proclaim good news to Roman citizens.

He would proclaim an evangelion, a gospel of this conquered territory.

Well, now Jesus is saying a different kind of kingdom has arrived, and it's conquering in a different kind of way.

It's working itself into the fabric of lives of those it touches.

Brings healing with it.

That's the third verb we see, isn't it?

We could also translate this as curing or serving.

It's healing every disease and every affliction.

That's the work of mission that Jesus is about.

And that might raise the question, well, what do you do with that?

You know, Jesus is going around healing the blind and the lame and the deaf.

And I don't know, if your experience is like mine, you don't see that every day.

What do you do with that?

Well, on the one hand, I think we can acknowledge that the work of healing is particularly associated with the coming of the Messiah.

Isaiah 35 points us forward to the Messiah and talks about his healing ministry.

The Messiah's the Savior, the Christ's presence, his arrival on earth, and the inauguration of the kingdom is something that brings this remarkable healing with it.

But I think we can also acknowledge that this ministry of healing continues.

You know, a little while ago I was at St.

Joseph's Basilica.

Maybe you've been there yourself.

It's in Montreal.

It's St.

Joseph's Basilica, right?

You could go and you can see a wall that's been lined with crutches.

All these folks who've received the gift of healing and cast their crutches aside, it bears witness to God's healing work in the world we live in.

But even beyond that, I think we need to acknowledge that healing has many dimensions to it, beyond just physical healing.

When the gospel meets addiction and it breaks down the bonds, healings occurred.

When a gospel enters into marriage and brings reconciliation and forgiveness, a healing has occurred.

A gospel might heal relationships, might bring a sense of inner peace.

All of these works are dimensions of this healing that the gospel brings.

I mean, the work of mission, be it teaching or proclaiming or healing, makes known a simple principle that things on earth are being made as they are in heaven.

The kingdom of heaven is arriving.

It's breaking into our lives, it's breaking into our communities.

All we have to do is behold it.

So when Jesus gives the great commission at the end of the Gospel of Matthew to go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey all that I've commanded you, that verb go and make disciples can just as well be translated as you are going.

God has it in mind that you would be sent into the communities and vocations that you have right now.

And as you are going, you are called to bear witness to the kingdom breaking into the order of earth and reordering it, pointing it all towards Jesus.

Someone who understood this very deeply is the church reformer Martin Luther.

He writes about Christian vocations against this idea that, you know, priests or monks, they hold the real vocations that God is really happy with, and all of us just kind of toil away to support them.

He says every vocation is something that's sacred.

He says ordinary work is a divine vocation or calling.

Does that feel does that ring true for your ordinary work?

Maybe some days more than others.

But he says ordinary work is a divine vocation or calling.

In our daily work, no matter how important or mundane we serve God, we serve God by serving the neighbor.

And we also participate in God's ongoing providence for the human race.

I wonder if we could just as well say when we go about our divine vocation, we participate in God's ongoing mission with and for the human race.

God has it in mind that you would be doing what it is that you are doing.

And as you are going, bear witness to the kingdom.

Point to Jesus, make his name known, in word and in deed, point out his beauty and his splendor, and how the kingdom is bringing a renewing work of healing in our midst.

This is the work of mission.

Teaching and proclaiming and healing.

That's why we preach sermons.

We need to be reminded of this.

We need to be taught this over and over again because my heart is so inclined to forget.

This is the mission we're called into.

This is the work of mission.

Let's look at the heart of mission, verse 36.

What's the heart of the mission?

What sort of heart are we supposed to have as we go about this mission?

It says that Jesus saw the crowds.

When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them.

Because they were harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd.

The heart of mission is a heart of compassion.

We see that chiefly in our Lord Jesus, and he calls us into the same.

This word compassion you could translate as it's pity, it's empathy, it's it's an outward sense of mercy.

The Greek word here is a great Greek word.

It's uh shpleck, sh, shpleck.

Sh ble.

Give me a minute.

Uh shplek nizomai.

Oh man, I should have written that damn word clearly.

You can ask me for clarification after if you really, really like.

I just like the first word, shpleck.

It's like you can't say that without feeling it somewhere deep down here.

And that's the idea.

This is coming from somewhere in this region, this sense of compassion.

Literally, it means it's like a it's like a uh a it's a gut reaction.

I don't know, that doesn't do it justice.

It's it's feeling deep in your guts.

It's not a compassion that truthfully I feel sometimes when I hear the news or read the headlines, I go, oh, that's that's sad.

That's too bad.

And then I just kind of keep going on about my day.

This is something deep.

This is something that deeply affects Jesus.

When he sees the crowd, he's moved in its guts.

When he looks at you and I, he's moved in his guts.

We see this a number of times with Jesus in the Gospels.

This tracks with God's character throughout Scripture.

Psalm 103 says that as a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion on those who fear him.

Isaiah 49, just a few verses after our reading today, says this.

God asks, can a woman forget her nursing child, that she would have no compassion on the son of her womb?

Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you.

What's God saying there?

It is more likely for a nursing mother to forget and neglect her child than it is for me to forget and neglect you.

To put it another way, ain't gonna happen.

That's God's compassion from the guts towards his people.

That's Jesus' compassion from the guts towards those he would call to himself.

He's moved that way because he recognizes they're like sheep without a shepherd.

A shepherd leads, a shepherd cares for, a shepherd provides for the well-being of the sheep entrusted to them.

And what we read in chapters like Ezekiel 34 is Israel's leaders have failed to be the shepherds that God intended them to be.

They've abused the sheep, they've gobbled up the sheep, as it were, for their own self-interested purposes.

They haven't cared for the sheep.

Jesus recognizes the shepherds have failed his people, but now the good shepherd has arrived on the scene.

This is a good shepherd who feels it deep for his sheep.

Compassion is the heart of Jesus' mission.

Compassion is what leads our good shepherd to lay down his life for the sheep.

Compassion is what leads Jesus to promise us everlasting life in his name because he wants to draw us to himself to glorify him and enjoy him forever.

This is his compassion for you and for me.

And if compassion isn't the heart of mission, then it's gonna fall flat really quickly, isn't it?

Last night Rachel and I were watching The Simpsons.

Always a great way to lead into an illustration, right?

In this episode, now, something you've got to understand, The Simpsons, is Homer, the father of this family, has a new job just about every week.

It's part of the comedy, I suppose.

And this week he's kind of he's kind of duped into becoming a missionary.

Somewhere in the South Pacific, he goes to work with this isolated people group.

And the thing about Homer is he's a very selfish person, right?

He's very self-interested.

So he goes into this people group and he is so disappointed that there is no TV and no beer.

Already he can tell this is not where I want to be.

And so what does he do?

He spends his day just kicking up his feet and complaining until it finally occurs to him, I think these people's problem is that they don't have any fun.

They need to have some fun.

So what does this Homer, the missionary Homer, do?

Builds them a casino.

And he says, y'all need to come to this casino.

And then, of course, it just kind of corrupts the moral system of this poor people, right?

It's all.

Here's the thing the writers of The Simpsons understand.

The church can so often fail to have a heart of compassion on mission.

And when it fails to have a heart of compassion, devastating results.

We fail those we are supposed to serve.

We fail those to whom we are supposed to have compassion like Christ has compassion.

It is so easy, isn't it, to slip into selfishness and self-interest.

To ask what suits us and not what we can do to suit up to get on mission.

It's so easy.

Maybe some of us feel like we wonder how we can recover a heart of compassion like that.

Feeling it from the guts.

I don't think we do ourselves any favors by beating ourselves up and trying really, really hard this time to feel compassion.

I don't think that's the answer.

I mean, we can't have compassion on others, I think, if we're not having compassion on ourselves in one way or another.

But how do we recapture a heart of compassion?

I think we have to behold God's outrageously compassionate heart for us.

First and foremost.

We need to be blown away by the fact that God has greater regard for us than a nursing mother could have for a child.

That's mind-blowing stuff.

But that's how God feels about you and feels about me.

That's the compassion that moves him.

And then I think the second way we can recapture a heart of compassion is not by waiting around to follow our heart.

Once our heart feels compassion, we can take action.

I think it's starting with action and letting our heart follow.

Sometimes we need to signal to our heart that you need to catch up, don't we?

Sometimes we take the right actions and we let the feelings follow.

If Jesus is moved by compassion to serve this crowd, then maybe we start by serving the lost and we let the compassion flow.

I think we can't help but discover a heart of compassion when we go about Christ's mission.

This is the heart of mission.

It's having compassion.

Having compassion for those that Christ has given himself for, those he loves and is calling to himself.

The work of mission, the heart of mission, and finally the mandate of mission.

Here's where we want to land.

This is the mandate that Jesus gives to his disciples, recognizing the work, recognizing this is the heart that draws us into mission.

Here's what he calls us to do.

Then he said to his disciples, the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.

Therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.

So Jesus is making something of a proposal here.

He recognizes there's an opportunity.

The opportunity is this the harvest is plentiful.

It's time to start sowing seeds because we're ready to start threshing and gathering and bundling up.

I don't know, I don't plant seeds.

But the harvest is plentiful.

It's time to get out there.

And I wonder if that challenges us when we can so easily slip into a scarcity mindset.

We can look at statistics and we can see, boy, the Canadian Church is not doing so well.

Numbers are going down, finances are difficult.

It's easy to start thinking that the harvest is becoming less and less plentiful over time.

But I think these words are just as true today as they've ever been, as they were when they were first preached.

I mean, my goodness, this is the first century Rome.

None of his disciples are thinking, oh yeah, the church is going to have explosive growth.

It's like, we're going to be met with death, we're going to be met with persecution.

And yet they go about the work of mission.

And we see what happens.

The harvest is plentiful in the first century as it is in the 21st century.

But here's the problem, Jesus identifies, that the laborers are few.

There's always a need for more hands at the till.

Out in the fields, out on mission.

The laborers are few.

Sometimes I wonder if this hits home for churches that know what it is to experience a massive drop in attendance or a massive exodus of people.

Maybe we know that from our own history.

Maybe we look around sometimes and we wonder where are folks?

And it rings very true that the laborers, boy, the laborers seem few.

Jesus recognizes that.

He's talking to twelve disciples here.

The laborers are few.

But sometimes I wonder if we get so focused on the fact that the laborers seem too few that we lose sight of the fact that the harvest is plentiful.

That's what Jesus wants us to keep our eyes on.

We need more laborers, sure, but the harvest is always plentiful.

He's always calling us deeper and further up and further in on mission.

So what does he propose?

He gives us a mandate, he gives us a requirement.

He says, pray earnestly.

For those of us who desire to see growth, growth in a church, growth in the kingdom, the question is this: first and foremost, are we praying?

Are we praying?

Regularly, earnestly, asking for more laborers in the vineyard, that we would be diligent and faithful enough that God would see us fit to grow all the more, to have an impact in this community that God's planted us in.

The harvest is plentiful, friends.

The harvest is plentiful outside these doors.

In the community that you live in.

And in your vocation.

The harvest is plentiful.

Are we praying?

That's the first thing.

I think Jesus would want us to keep this in mind, though.

As we pray for more laborers, let's not forget that we are also the answer to our own prayers.

We are laborers in the vineyard.

We're called on mission.

We're called to be players on the field.

Here's something that the great Bible scholar N.

T.

Wright has to say.

He says, outside the Lord's prayer itself, Jesus often does, pardon me, doesn't often tell his followers what to pray for, but this time he does.

Go to the farmer, he says, and beg him to send workers to bring in the harvest.

And as his followers pray that prayer, the answer comes back worryingly quickly.

You yourselves are to be the answer to your own prayer.

We are those laborers who invite other laborers into the vineyard.

That's part of our mission.

That's part of New Song's mission.

The mission is not something that's accomplished by any one person or any small group of people.

The mission is us.

We are participating in God's work of redemption here in Port Perry.

And we are all of us in this together.

And it requires all of us to be in this together.

We want to see our mission move forward, don't we?

We want to have an impact in Port Perry for the gospel.

And so we make big plans.

Down the pike, we see a partnering with parents ministry where we invite parents and guardians within our community to come and be equipped through seminars and through small group discussions on topics relevant to raising kids in 2023.

We want to strengthen families as a church family because we believe strong families glorify God.

And so we want to partner with parents.

And we want to see this partnership grow the gospel as well.

And we want to move forward with what we've talked about in terms of a curacy program.

We've been praying for a curate to help us move forward in the work of mission and ministry.

We want to see outreach and evangelism and family ministry grow here.

And what we've said in moving forward with this curacy program is we are willing to invest in our family ministry, in our outreach, in our evangelism, because we want to see this mission carried forward.

And friends, that might mean we feel the pinch.

That might mean that there's challenges ahead.

But before we, hmm, before we hesitate, can we pray?

Are we praying for laborers in the harvest?

We pray for wisdom, certainly we do.

But we need to pray for the harvest that God's called us into.

We need to pray to the Lord of the harvest to send laborers into his harvest.

And that's an important thing to keep in mind as well, because we need to be reminded whose harvest this is.

This is not us being tossed out to a field and make the best of it.

This is God's harvest.

He is the Lord of the harvest.

He is sovereign over all of this mission.

And he is calling us to participate in what He is about already.

That should fill us with enormous confidence, knowing that we are not out there on our own, that God will supply us with everything that He knows that we need to meet each and every challenge that comes our way as we are on mission.

We should be heartened by that.

We know the Lord of the harvest.

So, friends, this is our mission, should we choose to accept it.

The work of mission is to make known that things on heaven are, things on earth are being made as they are in heaven because the kingdom of God is at hand.

And we know the heart of mission.

Compassion for those that Jesus is so moved by, who longs to be with himself.

And we know the mandated mission.

Parish, will you pray with me?

Will you pray for more laborers in our harvest?

Will we pray to see our ministries grow here to have an impact for the gospel in Port Perry?

This is our mission.

Let's choose to accept it.

Heavenly Father, we pray that you go before us.

Send out laborers into our into this harvest, Lord.

Show us how we can be faithful and obedient to what you are already doing in our midst.

Give us the gift of faith, Lord.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

Thank you for listening today.

We worship a generous God who calls us to follow Him in giving willfully, cheerfully, and sacrificially.

Newsong Church's mission and ministry is 100% funded by the generous gifts of those worshiping and journeying with us.

If you'd like to offer a gift towards Newsong's ministry, please visit Newsongportperry.ca slash giving for more information on how to do that.

May God bless you and keep you today and every day.