A Call to Reach the Nations - October 6, 2024

It is my privilege to invite you to today's sermon podcast.

I have made the Apostle Paul's prayer request my own.

When he states in Ephesians 6.19, Pray also for me, that whenever I open my

mouth, the words may be given to me, so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel.

May today's sermon come alive to you and aid you in your understanding of God's plan for your life.

How you doing out there? All right. all right, got to check in once in a while, you know.

A lot of things happen during our worship gatherings, and I just need to make sure everyone's good.

If I don't make sure, I know Noah will, because he wanders around this church.

I think he does laps about 12 times a service, so he'll make sure you're okay.

He's always done that since he was a boy, as soon as he could learn to walk.

You know, it's a good thing to make sure everyone's okay. I know as pictures

and news stories started coming in about the devastation that was left in the

wake of the storm that blew through the southeast, you began to think,

boy, who's helping them?

I know in Idaho here, neighbors help neighbors.

When someone's stranded on the side of the road, their hood's up,

you want to stop and see if you can help them, see what's going on.

And I remember that annoyed me once as a teenager, because I just put my hood

up to put some antifreeze in my old little Datsun that, you know,

it didn't look like he could drive it.

It looked kind of like one of these cars we saw last night there,

a dog out at the racetrack, you know, just beat up and busted up headlights

or, you know, but people were just so nice. They kept stopping by.

And I said, no, I got it. I'm good.

Then another one would stop by. No, I've got it. I'm good. But it's just the

spirit that people have to help one another out when they're in need.

And I know the spirit's alive and well in our Southeast.

And, you know, you think about people that need hope. When I first started seeing

the pictures, it took a moment for it to dawn on me that my family and I,

we drove on that highway last year.

We were on this road and now the road is gone or it's in pieces.

And you just look around at all the devastation that's happened because of the

torrent of water that just blew through there.

And in your mind, you're just flabbergasted and you wonder, well,

what hope do these people have?

In Christ, we know we have hope. In Christ, we know that God watches over us.

And I came across this news story I want to share with you in just a moment

here about a pregnant lady when all this came down.

And listen to this story. It's really interesting. We've got a clip to show you.

Emily mentioned the hope of rescue. I can't imagine being in this lady's circumstances.

For one, I'm a male, and males do not become pregnant.

Males do not. But to be pregnant with rising stormwater floating on a mattress

with her dog, and the peace that she says that came over her,

I just can't imagine that.

But you think of just that phrase, the hope of rescue. you, how many people

in our own nation, how many people in our own world have that same desire, have that hope?

And it seems like circumstances draw worse, they get worse, the fear becomes

bigger, and sometimes that hope goes away.

And I think for a believer in Jesus, we should never lose sight of that hope,

and we should never lose sight to share that hope that God gives us,

even in circumstances that just seem so dreary,

even in circumstances that seem like Like, there's nothing that's going to save me.

All over our world, people are hurting.

We've got people in our own nation that are afraid and they're lonely.

As you saw on the video clip, this couple, this new young family is going to

have another baby and what are they going to do? They don't even know what jobs they'll go back to.

And so a destruction, a chaos is just always there creeping in.

And if we lose sight of hope, we lose sight of the salvation that God wants to bring to us.

We lose sight of the life, the true life that God wants us to live.

But we know that people are hurting.

We know that people are lonely. We know that people are overwhelmed and many

are just trying to escape, trying to get away from whatever ails them.

We know that they have no hope.

And they're looking sometimes in the wrong direction to find some hope, to find some help.

And even looking sometimes toward our own government, they're going to be disappointed.

Crazy, isn't it? But we know that we have the answer of the greatest hope.

We have the answer of the hope that brings a peace that surpasses all understanding.

And we have also the mandate to proclaim that message of hope to the nations.

And yeah, we make the proclamation with our mouth, but boy, we better back it

up with our actions, with what we do.

We say, and we've said many times since I've been here, we support Lifeline Pregnancy Center.

Well, some guys yesterday put their backs and their muscles and every part of

their body into saying, this is how much we love you. We're willing to serve you here.

Put in some concrete, dig up some dirt, try to make things there more useful

for the folks that are there.

And there's times where we do give monetarily, but we also give of ourself.

And we think about what Jesus has done for us and how Jesus came for us.

And then what Jesus said to his disciples and what he says to us today,

continuing in that, in this vein of this call to reach the nations with this message of hope.

And there's no greater a picture of this than at the very end of the book of

Matthew in the New Testament, Matthew 28.

And listen to what it says, Matthew 28, 16, closing out the chapter in verse 20.

Hear the word of the Lord from the gospel of Matthew.

Then the 11 disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go.

When they saw him, they worshiped him, but some doubted.

Then Jesus came to them and said, All authority on heaven and on earth has been given to me.

Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name

of the Father, the Son, and of the

Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.

And surely I am with you always to the very end of the age.

May God bless the reading of his word to your life today. You may be seated.

We think about this simple message that if you've been in church,

especially if you've been in my church any amount of time, you hear this quite

often as part of the purpose of the church.

As part of why we do what we do, as part of the reason we have two scripture

verses mounted here on the sides of our sanctuary.

This is also known as the Great Commission, the Great Mandate.

And this, along with the Great Commandment to love the Lord your God with all

your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself.

These are the things that drive us, that give us purpose as the church of the living God.

And this morning, as we consider the message here, it's just really simple.

In our call to reach the nations, Jesus says, go and make disciples.

We think about the setting here of this passage. Eleven disciples show up at this mountaintop here.

Now, I said eleven because one betrayed Jesus, Judas, and he went out and he killed himself.

Here they are on the mountain in Galilee, where Jesus told them to meet him

after his resurrection.

And they're gathering. Now, remember what these guys have been through.

There's been nights of fear.

There's been some days of hiding and questioning. Are they coming for us next?

There's been what would seem all these things to provide a lack of hope or a

lack of a future for them because they had seen what happened to Jesus.

Now that Jesus appears to them and Jesus calms their fears, tries to instill hope within them.

But did you catch part of the scripture reading this morning?

It says some still doubted.

What in the world is wrong with these people?

You saw Jesus die on a cross, or maybe you heard about it because you were in

hiding because you were afraid that was going to happen to you.

But then Jesus appears to you, the resurrected Lord, and he says,

hey guys, I want you to meet me on this mountaintop here pretty soon.

And some still doubted.

Boy, for some of us, that should make us maybe feel normal in our Christian

walk with doubts that we wrestle with. for these people to have seen Jesus and still doubt?

That's kind of a head scratcher. But some did.

But here they are. What does Jesus say to them?

Let's break it down in verse 18. Jesus makes a great claim.

He says that all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

Wow, you talk about some power. All authority was granted to Jesus.

Isn't that amazing? raising the authority that has been granted to Christ,

the authority that was given to him, and for what purpose?

So he could go and just strike the Romans down and kick them out of the holy land?

Is that what Jesus was going to use this authority, this power for? He could have.

But he didn't. All authority to wipe out all sin for once and for all,

just to get rid of it all as long and as well with all the people that were sinners around.

He had the authority to do so. But did he? No.

You see, he has a different purpose in mind, a different mission in mind,

and it's actually the continuation of the ministry that he started.

It's the ministry that we have here, Luke 19.10, written on the wall of our sanctuary.

Jesus came to seek and to save that which was lost.

That is his mission, to seek them out, not to destroy them, but to save them

from that destruction, to save them from that sin, to restore the relationship

between God and his creation as human beings.

And in this, Jesus has the authority to continue this mission.

And in verse 19, we see this great command that Jesus gives.

Again, therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the

name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

What does Jesus do with this authority? He shares it.

Wow. Isn't that great? He shares this authority with his followers.

He says, if you follow me, you disciples, you have followed me. You 11 have followed me.

Now you're going to join me on this mission, and I'm authorizing you to do so.

Last night, we were at the Meridian Speedway with the Anders family,

and there was a sheriff that was, or a guy that was running for sheriff of Ada County.

And one of the things he said caught my attention because I hadn't heard it in a while.

And one of his, part of his platform, I guess you call it, was to bring back the old posse.

And I remember the old posse from the Western shows that I watch.

And, you know, there's a criminal on the loose. There's just one guy in a town, the old sheriff.

And, and what's he going to do? He's got to go catch this guy,

but he can't do it alone. So he's got to gather a posse together.

He's got to deputize them and authorize them to join him and going out to search for the bad guy.

And my mind just kind of went wild with some of the Western shows that I watched before.

I love those Western shows. You get them for free over the air.

And that's, that's a great thing. I don't like to pay for TV,

but that's another story.

It's easy to get me off track today. When we're thinking about the authority

that was granted to Jesus that he shared with his disciples,

it wasn't to round up a posse to go get the dirty, rotten sinners,

but it was to round up the sinners, but to give them hope, to round up those that were lost,

those that were wayward, those that were so steeped in their sin,

they couldn't think of anything else because they were so much in despair that

they could not get away from any of their problems, any of their troubles.

They had no hope. hope, Jesus authorizes his disciples to go, to go on his behalf,

to go continue the mission that

Jesus started to seek and save that which was lost, to go out to them.

You know, this idea of going, we see, is that we together continually are going out.

I'll talk about that in just a a second, because this isn't like an optional thing.

Jesus makes a promise here in verse 20, teaching them to obey everything I've commanded you.

And then he says, and surely I'm with you always to the very end of the age.

So it's not like they had to go out on their own and do this,

but Jesus would be with them.

His spirit would be with them in filling them, empowering them to do what God had called them to do.

It's this great promise of always.

And the always was necessary because God had in mind that we are to go,

in verse 19, the Greek is as you go.

It's a continuous action. It's not like, oh yeah, I had a great mission trip.

I went to this great foreign land and I shared the good news and now I'm home

and I have fulfilled the great commission. mission.

No, it's not a one-time thing.

It's a continuous action. We're always going, and you don't have to go to a faraway nation.

Sometimes you just have to cross the boundary that is your street.

Sometimes you have to cross the boundary line that maybe you've put up that

says, I can't go and talk to people.

I can't go and talk to those kind of people. They won't want to hear me.

Sometimes when we think about going, it implies you're going to cross some kind of boundary.

Sometimes it might be a sea. It might be an ocean. It might be a river.

But maybe the boundary is just a simple, like I said, of crossing the street

to invite an unsaved person to come over for dinner, to go meet them for coffee,

to go grab a soda with them and just get to know them.

Sometimes the greatest boundary that we cross when going is just our own comfort zone.

Stepping out of that into a different way of doing things.

Stepping out of what it means of this building even to know,

hey, we could talk about Jesus all day and hear Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.

But we go out those doors and it seems like a fear captivates us.

Sometimes we call fear reality.

And it's real, the mandate that Jesus says to go, to share this hope,

share this good news with others.

And folks, what I want to do this month, and we're going to work up to something

great that's happening at the end of the month with, you know,

the chili cook-off with a little harvest party together.

I want you to begin to think of who you can invite. And we're working up toward

that. I don't want you to be afraid to share hope with somebody else.

You think that was Jesus' idea with his authority? I'm giving you all authority

because it's been given to me to go and be fearful and share the hope of myself

with others. Jesus didn't say that.

He gave us the boldness, the courage to do so.

You see, we're supposed to go and we're supposed to make disciples.

We're supposed to make disciples is what the scripture said.

When you make something, what do you do usually? Usually.

Yeah, I say usually because sometimes it doesn't happen this way.

But what you do is that you plan it out.

What you do is you begin to shape it or begin to build it to see it take a form.

You begin to form it out. It may start in your mind, but then you see how it becomes a reality.

That's what making disciples is all about. We're all a work in progress.

We're all continually being formed. and why I have you do these shape assessments

is to see how God has been forming you and how he wants to continue to make

you into the disciple that he wants you to be.

So it's a useful tool in seeing God, how he's crafting you, how he's made you,

and how he wants to utilize you for his kingdom.

You know, none of us arrives, and I use that word arrives in quotation marks,

none of us arrives spiritually on our own.

It takes the investment of other

believers. And I I talked about that last week. I won't go into it again.

But it takes all of us working together, serving together in this.

When I think about what else it takes, it takes all of us using the gifts that

we have to serve together, to bring about, to help grow up the body of Christ,

to build up the body of Christ, as we've said.

The Scripture goes on to say the components here of the Great commission.

As we go, as we make disciples, it says we are to baptize them.

And when we baptize, we paint the picture of the death, burial,

and resurrection of Jesus Christ in a person's life.

And we've talked about that before here recently, so I don't have to go into that very much.

But just to know that baptism, how important that is, how important it is to

illustrate what God has done in your life.

And that's what we want to see happen in the lives of others who are searching for hope.

It gives them hope that their old self is dead and gone, and they have a new

life in Christ now, a new life in which they can live and be the people that

God has created them to be.

Well, another component of the

Great Commission that it goes on is that we are to teach others to obey.

The verbiage, again, literally means to keep on teaching.

Faith in Christ is a lifelong process. It's a lifelong learning process,

and we should always be growing.

Have you noticed that no one ever graduates from the adult Sunday school class?

The only graduation that happens is if you pass on and you go to be with Jesus.

That's intentional. I want you to know that.

The only way you could escape Sunday school is to die. No, the only graduation

from the adult Sunday school class is when you get to be with Jesus, when he calls you home.

But I'll tell you, the reason that we have a continuous Sunday school class

is because we believe we continue to learn and grow in Jesus.

And let's not miss that fact that the teaching them to obey is continual.

It's part of my ordination. I promised that I would continue to be a lifelong learner.

And there are certain learning hours that pastors continue to have as they go

throughout their ministries. Why? We don't want stale pastors in the pulpit.

You don't want a stale pastor in the pulpit.

You want someone that continues to grow in their faith and that doesn't stagnate.

You know, there's really no stagnation in your faith.

You're climbing new heights every day, or you're sinking down into new depths.

It's one way or the other.

You know, it's like an airplane. You might glide for a little bit,

but even when you glide, pretty soon you have to start going down or you lose the momentum.

Folks, we're always learning. We're always being taught by the Holy Spirit.

We're always being taught by one another and challenged to grow up into Jesus. us.

Last but not least this morning in these components here of the Great Commission,

is that we are to remember that God is with us.

God is with us through it all until the very end of the age.

Do you believe that part of the scripture passage?

That Jesus is still with you? That his Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit of God,

Jesus' Spirit, fills you as within

you as you go about sharing everything that Christ has done for you.

Through the peaks and through the valleys.

When you hear the congratulations, good job. When you hear the,

oh, I'm sorry that's happened.

Through those highs and lows, he never leaves us. As a matter of fact,

the scripture says he never leaves us nor forsakes us.

He's always with us through whatever we're going through.

To our friends in the southeast, Jesus is with them.

To those that are mourning the loss of their homes, mourning the loss of their

friends, maybe even family members, maybe their places of worship,

Jesus is even with them at this very time.

And so what's the problem then? them. If we have all this hope to share with

the world, what is the problem that we run into?

And maybe it's not our problem per se, but maybe we've seen it illustrated before.

And perhaps the problem is that we want all the privileges of God's love without

the responsibility for the nations.

It's like we came to the foot of the cross and there we knelt and left all of

our Our sin and shame, trespasses that we were dead in, we've been made alive in Christ.

And we like it so much that we just have stayed at the foot of the cross worshiping God.

And we don't realize, or maybe it doesn't click, Jesus says, go, get up.

Go out and tell others about what you found right here at the foot of the cross.

Get up and go across the street.

Go across the city. Go across the valley. Allie, go tell that person that I

put on your heart that you know, that you have a relationship with,

that they need what you found, what you've discovered in Jesus.

Just go. Go and share with them. You see, we've got all these privileges of

salvation, this eternal life, peace with God, the fruit of the Spirit being

developed within our own life.

We enjoy that so much that we forget about the responsibility we have to go.

And we can't forget and just have one without the other. We become lazy Christians when we do that.

We need to be obedient Christians, and that means if we're going to be obedient,

we have to have these active minds and active feet to go.

Every local church has this global mandate.

It wasn't just back then, but it's for here, and it's for now,

and it's for you as a follower, as a believer, as a disciple of Jesus Christ.

The same commission is your commission.

Now, I'm not one that likes to use the word mandate, but that's what it is.

She says if jesus said if you're going to be my follower, this is what you will

do Hey, you're going to enjoy all these benefits all these privileges But this

is what i'm calling you to do now go Don't go yet. We're going to have communion together.

I know you're anxious. I know you're ready But what if you're going just means

going to your neighbor's house?

Sharing jesus truth with them. What if going means that you're going to actually

go to another nation then go Wherever god is calling you to go Where are we compelled to go?

Well, I'm going to talk about that a little bit next week, so I'm going to save that for you.

But I've got some action steps. There's something in your bulletin I want to

see as we conclude this today.

I want to ask if you'll prayerfully join me and join this movement to be a Great Commission Christian.

And here's specifically what I'm asking you to do over these next 30 days.

I'm just laying it out there for you. For some, this will be a stretch.

It'll be a stretching of your faith. For others, it will be yeah,

i'm already doing this. So no problem.

Here's my name and email text, whatever But I think we need to take up this

challenge. You've seen the state of our world, right?

You've seen the state of our own nation, right?

When the church steps back, there's a vacuum to be filled, and it's not filled with godly things.

It's not filled with godly people.

And so we need to take a stand and remember what our mission is and who we're trying to reach out to.

And in remembering this, here's what I want you to do.

I want you, if you will take this challenge, now you've got to pray about it.

I don't want you just making a, say, yeah, I'll do it and then not do it,

right? That doesn't do any good.

But I want you to pray about this. And the first thing I want you is to think

of five people that you will pray for each day, people that don't know Jesus,

people that are not saved, as we say.

Ask God to put those five people on your heart. Now, I would love for it to

be five people that you have some kind of interaction with, not some person

you've seen on a TV program.

Oh, they need Jesus. I'm going to pray for them. No, that's good,

and you should pray for their salvation, but five people that you can come into

contact with that God might open the door for you to share the good news of Jesus with.

So be praying for five people. I want you over the next 30 days to receive a text or an email from me.

I want to encourage you as you go through this and through that email,

through that text message I'll send you, we're going to study five different

passages about reaching beyond ourself in the next 30 days. Just five.

It's not going to be exhaustive, intense Bible study, but I want to encourage you with the word.

And so what I'm asking is, would you let me talk to you? Would you let me send

something to you over the next 30 days?

I want you to participate in at least one prayer walk with me.

And a prayer walk is simply, we're going to go find a neighborhood.

We've got several towns that our church is involved with.

We're just going to walk downtown and we're going to pray for each house that

we pass by. We're going to pray for each business that we pass by.

Not just that the Lord would bless them, but that the God of all hope would give them hope.

That if they don't know Jesus, that the households would come to know who Jesus Christ is.

And along the way, as we see people that are walking the street,

and maybe we'll have a conversation, I just want you to participate in one of

those over this next month.

Maybe even have the courage to organize one, and maybe you know of a neighborhood

right now that needs a prayer walk bad.

If so, you'll have to see me about that. Next thing I want you to do is just

to send a note to five people. It could be an email.

Maybe it's a family you know. Maybe it's a business in town,

a note of encouragement, just a note that says, hey, thank you.

Just five notes over the next 30 days. And then last but not least,

would you invite eight people to visit our church?

Eight people. Hey, it doesn't have to be in-depth. Hey, would you like to come

to church with me? All right.

Hey, we're having a chili cook-off. Would you like to come to church with me?

I mean, just an invitation.

Most people come to church not because they see our great website sight or because

they see our great sign as you go by or because they know there's a church over here.

Most people come because of an invitation, because someone has taken an interest

in them and said, hey, would you come?

Come and be with this great group of people that I'm a part of.

Come and be prayed for and come and pray and come and just meet Jesus.

That's what I'm asking you to pray about, to be part of this great commission movement.

It's something that I think will be be transformative.

Folks, it's something that you get to use the gifts that you're discovering

through your shape assessment, maybe that you already know.

It's a way to use that to bless the kingdom of God in just a simple way.

Hey, it might be scary for some, and that's okay. But remember,

Jesus Christ is with us always, even to the very end of the age.

So we're really not alone. We have the power of God, and we have the power of one another.

I want us to remember that we are are a great commissioned church.

So if five of you will do this, actually, let me step it up.

If 10 of you will join me in this, here's what can happen over the next 30 days.

50 people can be prayed for about their salvation. 50 people.

Man, that was bigger than my congregation in McCall sometimes.

Like a whole church we can pray for to be saved. If you'll pray for the next

30 days with me, 15 of those days praying for an outward focus.

That will be 150 hours if 10 of us pray that way, that we'll be praying for

an outward focus in our church.

In our prayer walks, if 10 people will join me, we'll pray for 600 houses and

businesses in our communities.

Isn't that awesome? That's only 10 people. If we only have 10 people,

that's 50 notes and emails that will be sent out to our communities,

to our friends, to people that we know that will bless them.

And if we invite eight people to church, 10 of us, that's 80 people we will have invited to church.

That's only 10 of us. That's less than 10% of what's here this morning.

But folks, if 25 of us do that, 125 people will be prayed for their salvation.

375 hours or days we will have spent praying for an outward focus.

1500 businesses and homes will be prayed for in our communities.

125 notes and emails will go out, and 200 people will be invited to Mountain

View Church of the Nazarene. That's only with 25.

And that's right, a little bit maybe more accurate, about 10%, 15% of us.

But folks, the 50 of us, I'm getting bold.

I feel kind of like maybe Abraham pleading for Sodom and Gomorrah,

but you're not Sodom and Gomorrah, and we're pleading kind of the other way, right?

25 or 50 of us do it. That means we'll be praying for 250 people's salvation.

Do we believe what's written above me back here?

Prayer is the key to power. We want people to be saved. We got to hit our knees.

We got to stand in the gap for these people that need the hope of Jesus,

that will die separated from God without accepting the goodness of Jesus, the hope that he brings.

And so I pray, I pray that you'll join me in all of this.

I pray more than that. You'll follow the lead of the Spirit as He wants you to. Folks, it's time.

There's a song sang last week as the special, Jesus is coming soon,

morning or night or noon.

Folks, we need to be about the business of Jesus, the mission of Jesus,

because that's why we're here.

And it's a mission that we shouldn't be be fearful of, but it's just simply an invitation.

I want to thank you for joining today's sermon podcast. You can find a copy

of today's sermon, as well as other sermons, and the sermon outline from today

on our church's website,

www.mvcnaz.org.

It is my prayer also that you will seek out a church home that recognizes the authority of the Bible.