Seeing Jesus -- Freely you received, freely give

This is funny, like the daylight savings time thing, you know,

where you kind of are able to like lie to yourself because you didn't actually

reset the clock. It's interesting.

There's probably some lessons to be learned there about just just getting on

with life and like, well, it's going to happen and act like we're not tired. We're all tired.

OK, you can take a two second nap. Go. OK. All right. We feel rejuvenated.

Ready to go. Opening up the Gospel of Matthew to chapter 10 this morning.

If you want to find that in your Bibles, first book of the New Testament,

Matthew, and then chapter 10, you just count to 10, you can do it.

We've been going through here. And I mean, like Matthew is a narrative. It's a story.

The book of Matthew is just telling us the story of Jesus, the true story of Jesus formed of,

you know, combination of eyewitness accounts and, and things that the community

knew about Jesus and some firsthand experience from Matthew all collected here in this book.

And up to this point, you know, like all narratives, like there's a plot and there's focus.

And up to this point, the focus has been squarely on the person of Jesus.

It's seeing Jesus, right? It's all the beginning of Matthew and it's all the things.

Where did he come from and what did people think about him and what was his early ministry?

And then what did he teach? What is the content of his teaching on the Sermon on the Mount?

Focused in on that. And then we've been looking at the last like three chapters

or so, like all the things that he did. So he went around teaching and he went

around doing all sorts of things. He healed a lot of people.

And here at the end of chapter 9 and into chapter 10, there's this kind of transition

chapter, which is 10, that we're going to look at. And the shift stops happening.

It's like we're stopping narrowly focusing on the person of Jesus.

And we start to see Jesus' ministry, particularly in the context of his disciples

and their interaction with him. So there's a shift in focus from just squarely

on Jesus to the people who are around him.

And last week, we talked about the end of chapter 9, and we talked about his

reaction when he saw the crowds, right?

And this is kind of the transitional verse that gets us to focusing on his calling

and commissioning of the disciples.

So I'm just going to revisit it really quickly because I think it's important.

It's going to kind of frame up the rest of chapter 10 here.

So chapter 9, verse 36, if you go back just a little bit, he's gone around,

he's healing, and everywhere he's going, he's seeing crowds. And this is what he says.

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

and dejected like sheep without a shepherd.

And then he said to his disciples, well, the harvest is abundant, but the workers are few.

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

So this kind of transitional chapter points us to Jesus's compassion.

Jesus goes all over the place and he's always acting in compassion.

He's acting in love. He sees broken people and he just heals them.

Anyone who wants it, anyone who comes to him seeking healing,

he is just always healing.

And so out of his compassion for all these throngs of people who are constantly

coming to him, he realizes that something needs to happen because he realizes

that he's, as much as he's God, you know, God in the flesh, he's just one person

and he can only be one place at one time.

And so he says, he prays this prayer, pray to the Lord of the harvest that he

would send out workers into the fields.

And so he looks at all the brokenness and all the need of the world.

And he says, we need more workers. We need more doers.

We need more people who are able to meet this need and to respond to this compassion

and to bring in this harvest.

And I said last week, I talked about last week, you know, this observation by

Christopher J.H. Wright, the British theologian.

He says this, it's not so much the case that God has a mission for his church

in the world as that God has a church for his mission in the world.

Mission was not made for the church. The church was made for mission, God's mission.

So like the need that he observes, like there's all this brokenness and all this pain.

And there's all these people who require an intervention, who require somebody

to come and have compassion on them and be kind to them and serve them in a

spiritual way, like to meet their spiritual needs.

All of that precedes the mission, right?

And in fact, it precedes the church and it motivates the church and it shapes

the church. It is the need that forms and creates the purpose of the church.

God didn't say, well, I've got my people.

Who I love, and I've got to give them something to do or else they'll get bored, right?

He didn't do that. He had a mission. And for whatever reason,

he decided that the best way to enact his mission and to fulfill his purposes

in reaching people is to call a group of people together and to work through

those people to meet the needs of the world.

And I would say the whole Bible, if we were to look at the narrative structure

of the Bible from the very beginning, the book of Genesis, it's God doing that.

It's the story of God forming a people through whom he intends to work to bless

and serve and save the world.

That's what the Israel project was, calling Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and saying, I'm going to bless you.

And through my blessing of you, I'm going to bless the whole world.

God has this pattern of intervention in the world where he doesn't just directly

do things. He does things through his people.

And that's a really good thing for us to know. And it's a really good thing

to know that it's just like the mission that drives our purpose.

Because there will be times when you, as somebody who's called and called and

set on mission and called to share the gospel and to love people,

you're just not going to feel up for it.

Me too, by the way. You are. I'm not.

We tend to, I think most of us, our default is feeling alone,

feeling insecure, feeling weary, feeling meh.

We've even created a little word for it. Meh.

A lot of us just feel that way all the time.

And when we feel that way, when we feel like we're not up for it,

like we don't want to be a part of it, we can actually,

it's important for us to remember this, we can remember that as much as we might

not feel an intrinsic motivation to be a part of God's mission in the world,

we can understand that it's actually really part of our purpose in life.

And the thing about purpose, and this is a little controversial,

like we kind of want to believe in our secular

culture our culture more broadly that that we can have purpose

without any direction and that's a lie if you've

ever tried to live that way like to live for nothing in

particular it's it's it just leads you

nowhere it doesn't actually give you the rest you think it will to not

care about things and not value things and not have anything in

your life worth fighting for or care or striving for it

actually surprisingly makes you more exhausted

and more anxious and more frustrated and

more dissatisfied it was actually i was this is this

total aside i was at we went to u-dub i

had never been to the u-dub campus before and it was a beautiful day and we

were like oh i gotta do something with these kids and get them out of the house anyone know

anyone feel that it's like let's go anywhere and someplace

free would be even better so we went to u-dub and we

walked around u-dub and right on the quad there and u-dub right they

have those beautiful buildings that obviously like they were probably made in

the 70s or in the 80s or something like that but they're

done in this kind of medieval style right this kind of high

middle ages style and they have this ornate brickwork and

masonry and stuff right it's really interesting though

because i noticed this because i'm a nerd and they they have like if you kind

of look up on the quad you look around they have these little things that are

the cupolas they're little little buildings and in medieval buildings they're

kind of set into the the masonry and And normally you find the saints inside

those little houses, right?

And so they're figures of Mary, you know, figures of Joseph.

And so they have all this style. But you know what? There's nothing in the cupola.

Because they were like, we can't put a religious figure in there.

Because then we'd be like endorsing a religion. And so we'll just put nothing in there.

And I don't know. Maybe I'm being a little cynical. But I thought, wow.

How exhausting is that? It's like, oh, we want to celebrate beauty.

We want to celebrate goodness.

We want to have some pictures, something to strive for. Academic achievement

to inspire people. We can't put anything in there.

Because we can't come to an agreement about what's good and what's beautiful

and what's valuable. And we couldn't possibly adopt a religious symbol.

Because that would be unfair, right?

And so what our world tries to do and just say, just try to celebrate just generally

like goodness and like you can pick your own adventure in life and you can care

about and value the things that you want to value and like, yeah, great.

But honestly, like the most freeing thing in the world is having somebody tell you what's good.

And Jesus tells us what's good. Like his compassion and his love and his mission

in the world, like it's something that we can buy into and we can just say,

oh, no, this actually is going to like scratch the itch of purpose that I'm going to feel.

Because wealth won't do it and idolatry won't do it and all the things like

career and self-satisfaction and feeling good all the time. It's not going to

do it. It's never going to satisfy you.

Being a part of God's mission in the world, that actually will be satisfying.

There's an old saying, so it's like it's good to know that that God has a mission

and it precedes like me and it

precedes my ability. It's good to know that when I don't feel up for it.

An old saying that I've heard so much growing up in the church,

it's like one of those sayings where it's like, who knows who said it because

everybody said it. But I actually think people don't say it anymore,

but I'm going to tell you what it is.

It's God doesn't call the qualified. He qualifies the called.

God doesn't call the qualified. He qualifies the called. And so the point is

that our calling, the root of our calling—.

And the root of everything in the kingdom just comes down to that.

It doesn't hinge upon your abilities and your skills or your unique giftings.

You come to have a purpose and you have a part to play in the kingdom of God

simply because God's mission precedes you and you get involved in it.

It doesn't have to do with your skills or your merit or your qualifications.

You get the qualifications because God has the mission.

So like you get to be a participant and like a front row,

like not a bench sitter and the team in the kingdom, not because you're qualified

or because you're so great, but because God has a mission and that mission is

enough for you to sit in that place of value.

That mission is enough for you to be something satisfying that you can participate in.

And that's on full display as we get in here in the commissioning and the sending

of the disciples. So picking up in chapter 10, verse 1, summoning the 12 disciples,

he gave them authority over unclean spirits. Oh, this is such a weird passage.

My intro and you're going to be like, and he did what? It's good. So prepare yourself.

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

them out and to heal every disease and sickness.

And these are the names of the 12 apostles. For Simon, who was called Peter,

and Andrew, his brother, James, son of Zebedee, John, his brother,

Philip, Bartholomew, Thomas, and Matthew, the tax collector,

James, the son of Alphaeus and Thaddeus, Simon the Zealot, and Judas Iscariot, who also betrayed him.

It's a really fun thing to go back and look at like the profiles of these early disciples.

I recommend that you do that sometime. And it's, I mean, they're called to this

high thing, go and do this thing like authority to cast out demons and heal

people and do all this stuff.

But you would be right to wonder, and people have often wondered,

right? And it just kind of illustrates my earlier point.

What business do any of these guys have being apostles and being given that

kind of responsibility or that kind of authority?

If you look at their profiles, they are a confederacy of losers,

just like they were totally uneducated fishermen who were just like, that's all they did.

They just, they ate and slept and fished and that made them qualified for whatever reason.

Probably not, but God called them in. There were a bunch of anarchistic revolutionaries,

some of them, the zealots, you know, these people who are just like,

we're going to burn the government down.

And Jesus is like, I see you, Dan. I see, you know, it's like,

yeah, you know, the sister. is broken.

We're going to be aggressive, right? We're going to fix things.

And Jesus says, you need some authority to cast out demons.

You need authority to go out in my name and be a part of my mission, right?

And you see tax collectors, right? People who are totally in with Roman tax

collectors and anarchistic revolutionaries, like those were like, they were opposites.

Those were people who were trying to destroy one another, right?

They were an existential threat to each other in their occupations and in their interests.

And they're together called for the same purpose.

And then there's, of course, just the top, just the cherry on the cake,

the guy who would end up selling out Jesus and betraying him.

He's also sent out with this authority.

So it's a very interesting group. If you're going to find, if you were tasked

with assembling a group of 12 people sent out to be used for God's mission in

the world, you would never choose these guys.

You would never choose these guys, but God has qualified them.

So if he qualifies them, then I mean, what excuse do you have?

And it says, and this is the weird part, he gave them authority over unclean

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

Again, not because of their natural aptitude or their gifting,

but simply because, well, God has a mission.

He sees a need and he's filling in that need with people who have a calling

to be a part of that mission.

And he's decided to move his mission forward through his people.

So he just grants them this authority.

So let's talk about this whole authority thing because it's a word that makes

a lot of us really uncomfortable.

It's a theologically divisive word.

In the contemporary, it's like, you might not know this and it's fine,

but like in the divide between, say, usually more reformed leading,

less charismatic Christians and those who are more charismatic,

the more charismatic folks tend to emphasize authority and there's a lot of

theology and books written about our spiritual authority, right?

And it's drawn from texts like these, which are legitimate.

And like Jesus is sending these things out.

And there's oftentimes a lot of skepticism on the other side about authority

and what's the extent of authority and what is the biblical rules around authority?

And you know, there's all these debates and divisiveness going in here.

And I'm honestly not even going to go there because it's like,

I don't know, read some books.

You know, you can do what you want with it. I think the text is pretty limited,

though I think it's important.

The thing is, my conviction about Scripture is I can't just ignore any passage.

And so I just can't ignore that this is in here.

It's there, and it's pretty central, and it's not the only time Jesus talks about authority.

So I don't want to ignore it, right? I want to find its rightful place in the

whole of the book, right, in what it really means for me to follow Jesus.

But it's there, and so I can't ignore it.

And I think it makes some people uncomfortable.

So there's this discomfort between theological disagreements.

There's also some discomfort. I think I want to say it's particularly strong in my generation.

So I'm 40, and I think maybe less so in older generations and maybe more so

in younger generations, though maybe the verdict is still out on that.

My generation, at least to speak for myself and for people I know,

has a lot of skepticism about authority in general, not even just spiritual

authority, but just authority in general and culture.

Like we were raised to be super skeptical of anyone who's who tried to push

their agenda and to push their authority.

You know, we are kind of the children of postmodernism. Thanks,

mom and dad, you know, not not particularly you guys.

But I know you didn't do anything. You didn't do anything. But like you guys

like discovered this whole like in the 50s, 60s and 70s.

And the hippie movement and all this stuff, like discover this postmodern idea

and we're critical of everything and skeptical of everything.

And then us, your children are just like, well, what? Like, we just have to be totally skeptical.

So millennials, which is what I am, I guess. I don't know. We're super skeptical.

And we're particularly Christian millennials are super skeptical because many

of us have seen, and we've all seen this over the last 30,

20, 10 years in the world of church, that there's so many people who seem to

have a lot of spiritual authority and spoke as if they had a lot of spiritual

authority, who claim to have a lot of spiritual authority, claim to love God.

And we've seen them trash their ministries and we've seen them be abusive and

cheat on their spouses and just not hold true to the things that they said they were about.

So that makes people skeptical makes people

skeptical who are like speaking so

in such big powerful kind of definitive and finite ways which is not to to excuse

any of that right again i think we have to deal with the text we have to say

okay well what does jesus say we get what why we're skeptical of all these things

and all these people but what does jesus say and so.

When it comes to scripture, we're reading this through a filter of our experience.

When it comes to scripture, we read about authority that Jesus gives to his disciples.

And if you're like me, you're like, okay, Jesus, great back then.

I guess I can accept that now. But I don't really want to go there.

I don't really want to go there with this whole authority business.

It's like someone offering, I was going to say offering you,

but I'll say offering me Brussels sprouts.

I'm going to be very polite. I'm not going to say gag, right?

But that's what I'm thinking inside.

I'm just going to be like, you know, I'm just stuffed. I could be starving.

And I'd just be like, you know, I just had a big meal.

I don't need any Brussels sprouts. Thank you very much, right? But here's the thing.

I believe, and this is the thing that we have to come to him to when we come

to objections with scripture.

We have to believe that God wants good things for us. Why? Because he tells

us over and over and over and over and over again that he wants good things for us.

And his wanting good things, I believe.

Is expressed by his giving us the kind of authority that he's talking about

here and calling us to be part of his work in the world, which involves having this kind of authority.

If you accept that Jesus has given you his authority, And, you know,

I mean, maybe not like all the representations of it, but like the true thing,

the thing that Jesus is actually calling them into here.

If you accept that, I believe that it will actually help you be the Christian,

the kind of Christian that you want to be.

Like a person who's full of joy and full of confidence and full of peace and

not discouraged in the world, not discouraged around people.

Like, I think this kind of authority that he's giving his disciples is actually

a pretty important way point on the way to maturity, it's not going to turn

you into the kind of person you don't want to be.

I think it'll actually help you be a kind and faithful and loving person who's

full of integrity and who's eager to engage with hurting people.

And I know some of you probably are still a little skeptical, and that's fine.

I don't want you to take these giant leaps and just trust me.

I'm not asking you to trust me, but you have your issues.

And one of them is probably this. This is the other thing that I think that

a lot of people are skeptical about authority because you're thinking that authority

is just another word for responsibility.

And you've got enough of that on your plate right now.

Like you don't want to do just one more thing, one more thing that you need

to take charge of, one more thing that you need to manage because we know what

authority means. Oh, here, I'm going to give you some authority.

And now you're on the hook. You need to do this stuff. And it's just like more to do.

But again, I want you to consider what's at stake.

I think that God has a good thing for you and that this authority given is not

merely responsibility.

I think that the authority that Jesus gives his disciples here,

it's just part of completing and rounding out their calling.

And it's as much an enabling as it is an authority that's given.

And I actually think that to try to be a Christian without embracing this kind

of authority that Jesus is talking about is actually way more exhausting than

saying, okay, Jesus, let's do this.

To try to be a Christian who's on mission and who cares about the world without

any kind of empowering and authority that comes from the Lord,

how discouraging is that?

I can tell you it is very discouraging because I've tried to do that for a long time.

It's like being asked to do a job, but being withheld the tools to do the job.

Anyone ever been in that position?

Ever had that job before? right like lawn

work without a rake is really like you just one

leaf at a time now that's a new england analogy i'm sorry you guys don't know

about that yeah i mean like like like this authority that jesus gives like it's

a tool for our calling and if we want to engage the world and care about the

world and really meet the deep the deep spiritual needs of people.

Without this authority, we're going to be broken, right?

I mean, I've talked about this before a couple weeks back, but it's like,

you know, we're going to go down to Reach Ministries here two Saturdays from

now, really encourage you to come out.

But, like, I mean, like, you go out there and you want to talk to Jesus about

people who are just, like, stuck and chained in addiction.

Do you know how discouraging it is to feel like,

oh, I have to give hope to these people, but I don't have

really anything to offer them that could be mean could meaningfully meet

their need I think that's how I that frankly

that is how the world feels about drug addiction right I

mean the secular world the whole world of the west coast like

how do we manage this drug addiction thing and the best thing we can come up

with is what we just let people shoot up in the streets is that really the best

thing that we can do for people I don't I mean and I I really feel that the

political world is just at a loss for this problem because it's so entrenched.

I'm not being judgy about it. I get it.

If you have no tools, then what else can you do?

But what I'm saying is that Jesus provides these kind of tools,

this spiritual authority, because he understands that the world is so deeply broken.

And sometimes you need this kind of intervention to do anything in it.

Sometimes people are so bound up and stuck in their patterns and in their brokenness

and in their spiritual discouragement that the only thing we can do is come

with authority and just break some things.

And if you don't have that tool, then man, what do I have to offer to people? I don't have much.

So Jesus gives his authority some disciples and he sends them out and he does

that for a reason because it helps them to do what they're called to do.

And so minimally, like again you have all

these kind of you know some weird things about what things

christians do and you don't want to be weird that's fine don't be weird but do

understand that i think if you don't integrate this kind of authority into your

life like like you're going to be depriving yourself of a really important tool

and then the idea of mission is just going to become a point of exhaustion for

you so so try to define the idea in a way that you can accept like in a way

that you can integrate into your life. Okay.

And I think Jesus kind of, kind of, I think Jesus gets this.

I mean, he's sending these disciples out to do something super uncomfortable, right?

I mean, and he knows it's uncomfortable. So he gives them some instructions,

right? We read about them as we move on here. So here's, here's Jesus's instructions.

He says, Jesus sent out the 12 after giving them instructions.

And here, here's the instructions. Don't take the road that leads to the Gentiles.

Don't enter any Samaritan town. Instead, go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

As you go, proclaim the kingdom of heaven has come near. Heal the sick,

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

Freely you receive, freely give.

He goes on. That's as far as we're going to get today. I know. I know.

He goes on. He gives some more instructions. But I really just think this is

funny because if I were to recap, if Jesus was giving a PowerPoint presentation

to his disciples, it would look like this.

Slide number one. Here's what I want you to do, guys. I want you to go to the Jews.

We're not going with the Gentiles today. We have a minimal mission.

This is your first time out. We're just going to focus on the Jews. Why?

We'll talk about that later, right? It's not that important right now.

Okay, so just go to your people. Go to your people. Why?

You know them. You speak the same language, the same culture.

Like, it's a little bit easier. Let's just start with that. Okay, step one. Step two.

Step two is proclaim the kingdom, right? Literally gives them a script.

Walk into the town and say, the kingdom of heaven has come near.

Like, ah, they're probably like, okay, we can do that. We can do this so far.

I'm with you, Jesus. Step three.

Step three is heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, and drive out demons.

And then Jesus moves on and says, any questions.

And if I were sitting there in this PowerPoint presentation,

I'd be like, step one, check. Step two, got it. Step three.

And then he's on the question, he's like, could you go back to step three, please?

That's, I feel like there should be a sub presentation, Jesus,

on some methodology here because that's a long list.

Even one of those things feels like a lot. Heal the sick, raise the dead,

cleanse those with leprosy, drive out demons.

That feels pretty heavy. And Jesus's little presentation doesn't feel very helpful to me, honestly.

So here's the thing, like we live in an age that is uniquely obsessed with technique.

We think if we know how to do a thing, then we know the thing.

We understand the thing. We can have mastery over the thing.

So if I ask you to do anything, you need to have this question of how do you

do it in order to feel confident like an Abel.

And in that, with that reality, like these words of Jesus here are a little,

a little irritating because it seems like the most obvious area to address,

but Jesus just brushes past it.

Now we can maybe say, and I think it's fair that the disciples have been watching

Jesus for a long time, right? He's been doing all these things and they've seen him doing it.

And it's like, okay, so they have some, some kind of context of what that might look like.

I mean, maybe he's even given them some specific instructions before.

So maybe this isn't new to them.

But frankly, even if that were the case, I can't imagine these disciples felt

super confident about any of this.

Because they're going out, they're doing it alone, they're being sent out,

they're being tested, even if they had some basis for this.

The point is, you go and you do it now, by yourself.

And my guess is, you might feel the same way. Maybe you think,

well, I might be open to this whole idea of authority, spiritual authority,

granted all the weird stuff, and maybe you don't get demons and you don't get all that.

And whatever, we're not going to get into the particulars of that.

You might sit at the point where you're just like, okay, I believe that Jesus

has some power and I believe he calls people to intervene with his power, with his authority,

to do things in the world for the sake of ministering to people and you can get all that.

But even if you, maybe you'd be open to that,

but surely you think that there's a right way to do all these things and you

just want to know what's the way and so look I like I said before there's lots

of books you can read that I've read like so many books about spiritual stuff

like like healing and stuff like that and I find them all interesting.

But here's what I can say. I'm just going to sum them all up to you, okay?

There are lots of, like, in every book about healing and it's,

like, the how-tos of this kind of stuff, they all give you a model.

Maybe it's, like, a script or just, like, a way, a mental model for how do I

think about what I'm doing when I'm praying for someone for healing or when

I'm praying to cast out a demon and stuff like that, you know?

And, like, stuff that, like, may be really out there for you.

They all have a model some of those models are better than others and models are helpful,

because they help us people who need to know what

the technique is have some confidence about what to do right because if we have

a map of what we should do then we feel like we can step out and do it so there's

there's lots of ways to do it and lots of models out there and honestly i'm

not going to tell you which one is the best but in the end i think everything

just boils down to this faith is the only technique.

Faith is the only technique when it comes to spiritual authority.

The thing that every model that I've ever read, you know, and there are varying

degrees of quality and varying degrees of biblical fidelity and all this stuff.

But when it comes to spiritually intervening prayerfully with Jesus's authority

in people's like deep pain and brokenness and stuff like faith is the technique.

There isn't, I don't think there is a right way to heal or a right way to pray for healing.

I don't think there's a right way to drive out demons or cleanse lepers or all this stuff.

The right way is the way of faith.

And I know, like, what is that? Well, what does that mean? Like,

what is the way of faith? What is the faith technique?

And interestingly, like, if we look at the text here, Jesus actually sort of,

I think, illustrates that in his little last little saying. He says, do this.

And this kind of, he has this little phrase, freely you received, freely give.

So instead of technique, Jesus tells his disciples, freely you received, freely give.

Where am I at? Yeah.

It's helpful to them, I think, in the moment because it actually asks them to

recall, well, when Jesus did something for you, what was that like?

And it was this freely receiving thing.

And so the practical side, the instructive side is just as someone did that for you?

Like Jesus sends his disciples out. He basically tells them,

remember how you came to me and how you were like a fisherman or a tax collector.

You were just minding your own business. You were all in your discouragement

and despondency and you weren't even looking for me. And I just showed up in your life, right?

And I just like blessed you or I said, follow me or I, you know,

prayed for your mother-in-law or, you know, all the different things that he

does within the calling of his disciples that we've already looked at.

He just says, look, I just showed up in your life with my power and kindness and authority.

And you got something from me. You stood as a recipient of my grace and my love.

They were directed towards you. And it wasn't conditional.

It was just like, you came to me and I was like, I have so much love for you.

And so I'm just gonna intervene in your life with love. and it was just free,

unconditional kind of love.

And then he says, okay, so remember how that was. So you want some practical

advice about going out into the world with authority?

Just go and do that for other people.

That way that I was with you, like saying, I'm going to call down the kingdom

of heaven and all the love of God and all the kindness and healing and grace.

That's what I want you to do for other people.

Someone gave you hope. Someone led you to Jesus at some point in your life.

And somebody maybe, like some of you guys, maybe had some miraculous things that led you to faith.

Maybe not. And maybe they weren't, you know, leprosy cleansed,

dead raised, all this healing kind of stuff, right?

But somebody shared the gospel with you and the Lord intervened in your life.

And you had this deep like flood of knowledge that, man, God loves me.

And it's not because I'm great. And in fact, he loves me despite how disinterested

and how much I'm just stuck in sin.

Like Jesus's love came like freely to me despite like so much opposition in me from it.

He just gives and gives and gives. And so he calls you to be somebody who does that.

Be somebody who had, like, in the way that you received, like,

turn that around and give to people that way.

Which, of course, is to take on, like, some authority, right?

I mean, you're taking on some authority because you're saying,

oh, Jesus loved me through someone else.

And then what I'm going to do is I'm going to love somebody else,

like, and tell somebody else about the love that Jesus has for them.

So you have this authority and you need to go out authoritatively to people and just say,

I can tell you with 100% confidence and certainty that Jesus Christ loved you

and he died for you and that whatever your need is, whatever you need to receive

from him, he is willing to freely give it. That's the technique of faith.

It's having faith, faith enough to understand that what Jesus did for me when

I met him, he wants to do for other people too.

And so the technique of faith is coming with faith on their behalf and being

an ambassador, an emissary, a representative, someone who has been given the

authority to intervene in their life with that same kind of love and grace and kindness.

Faith involves The way of

faith involves not looking for yourself As somebody

who's qualified And who's capable of

telling people Of showing people that Jesus is love And looking at Jesus Who

is wanting to flow his love into me And then be someone sent out in the world

with his love Faith involves not being discouraged Oh, I can't.

I can't love this person well. I can't do all this stuff.

And like faith, the way of faith and like stepping in and loving people in Jesus's

name and having authority is understanding that it doesn't matter what you can

or can't do. It really only matters what he can do.

It really only matters what he can do. Faith is looking to Jesus and saying,

okay, Jesus is here. This person is here. I'm the go-between.

And it's his authority that I'm coming with. And so I just say,

all right, Jesus, I'll be like the guy who grabs both electric wires,

right? And you get zapped in the middle, right?

It's great. That's the kind of authority you have. You're the one who gets to

bridge the gap between the love that he has and to say, no, I'm going to confidently

minister that love to somebody else.

And that like takes some chutzpah. It takes chutzpah.

It takes guts to go around to somebody and just say, you are loved by God.

Like that's a gutsy thing because who am I to speak for God?

Well, I'm one of his kids who has freely received his love and that paradigm is true for all people.

I know because he told me that he demonstrates his love for the world by dying

on a cross to effect and to take care of all sin so that anyone could come by faith.

So that includes everyone in this room and everyone that I'm going to meet today.

I can confidently say with authority from Jesus that they are loved by God and

that he wants to intervene in their life and he wants them to receive his blessing

and his freedom and whatever the thing is that they're tied up in.

Spiritual, if it's like I need some healing, healing in any kind of part of

your life, if you need salvation,

if you need whatever, like we can be people who are going and just saying,

no, no, no, no, I'm sure that my God will be the one who supplies for your need, whatever that need is.

But it takes guts, right? Because you're kind of underwriting for Jesus.

You're saying, no, no, for sure.

He's going to do it because he's that kind of God. But that's what faith involves.

It involves having a great confidence in the power of God. So faith is the only technique.

You come in, you see really broken people. You look at them and you just say,

you have the chutzpah, the guts to just say, no, no, God's up for even your problem.

God's up for, like, if he was up for my problems, he's up for the problems that

I've seen my friends go through, then he's definitely up for your problems.

So you don't look more at yourself or what you're able to do.

You look at Jesus and what he's able to do and then you just meet the needs

that you're faced with, with his love.

And I think another thing that needs to be said, especially those who are like

a little bit discouraged or like just not wanting to be involved with this whole

authority thing, who are a bit

sitting on the sidelines, afraid of the authority and the responsibility,

is that when we do this, love is the only motive.

Love is the only motive that brings us out to be people who have authority.

Freely you've received, freely give. As people who are given authority,

we need to be careful to use our authority well.

And I think a lot of us are afraid because we've seen people abuse their authority.

And so we don't wanna be coming around and people being like,

oh, I know what God wants for you. He loves you so much and he wants freedom

for you. And I'm just going to actually pray for you right now.

And I'm going to expect him to do it because we've seen people manipulate that.

And then they use God's power to build themselves up and to make themselves

look good and to use that stuff in pride and to abuse people.

Like we've seen it. I've seen that.

And so we just say, no, I'm not going to do it because I don't want to mess

up or I don't want to be involved in this.

And this feels like icky and manipulative. and like yeah when it's icky and

manipulative it's so icky and manipulative yeah.

But if God loves the world, and out of that great love, he's formed the church

and sent disciples out into the world to minister his love and his freedom and his grace,

then who are we to not just say, ah, that's authority and responsibility.

And it's so important because people don't know how much they're loved.

So yeah, people have abused this, and maybe I've seen it be abused,

And maybe I've been hurt by people who talked a big game about their authority.

And they have manipulated.

So just don't. Just be a person who freely gives and who's freely receiving. Who's okay with that.

I think that that involves two things. It involves one thing two different ways.

And that's just that we don't withhold anything.

And that's the thing.

So I think a lot of spiritual manipulation about this stuff and about praying

for people is that we withhold things.

And so we can't withhold nothing from people when we're praying for them and

when we're trying to intervene in their lives.

And we have to understand this.

We have to iron out this one theological

issue. We need to understand that kindness precedes repentance.

I think a lot of manipulation happens in the spiritual world when we dangle

the love of God as a motive to change people But what is the gospel?

The gospel is that while you were still sinners, Christ died for you.

It's not, Christ will die for you once you be less of a sinner.

That's not the gospel. That's the anti-gospel.

It's terrible. Like we have these old sayings, like church sayings that come

from certain theological movements, like, oh, God can't be around sin. Yeah, he can.

He definitely can. God is everywhere. So he's definitely around sin plenty.

And I mean, I get this. Like he deals with sin. He cleanses sin.

He doesn't love sin, right? But God died for sinners. So I think he can be around sin.

Jesus was around sinners in every moment that he was on earth.

Like he can be around sinners.

What does Romans 2, 4 says? Do you despise the riches of his kindness,

restraint, and patience, not recognizing that the kindness of God is intended

to leave you to repentance?

So we go out there with authority. We don't have to withhold anything from people.

We don't have to look at people and be like, oh, I know once you kick those

drugs, God will bless you. We can go with the spiritual authority and just be like, you know what?

God loves you right now. He loves you on your worst day.

And we cannot be afraid of people's worst day and their ick because we have

this great confidence that his love can intervene and break chains and like

break through all of this stuff and all of people's oppositions because his

kindness precedes their repentance.

People can absolutely take the kindness of God and say, thanks God,

I'm out of here. I don't need anything more from you. That's on them.

You don't have to manage that for people. You can just go with authority from Jesus...

Whatever, like, brokenness, whatever pain is, like, we're going to pray with

faith that God will take care of it.

If it's healing of any kind, if you need salvation, if you are stuck in patterns

of sin, we can just go kindly and unwithholdingly with the love of God and let

God work out the details.

And I'm not suggesting by any means that at any point we let people think that

their sin is not a problem.

I actually think that that's not, like, that's not going to come into play.

In the end, if you introduce people to the love of God, I think God convicts

people of sin, righteousness, and judgment.

And so we'd be ministers of the Holy Spirit. We'd be ministers of the gospel.

And God will work it out. And that's not going to be overnight.

People aren't going to change overnight. I didn't change overnight. Did you?

You know, I didn't come to maturity overnight.

It's okay. So we can come in with spiritual authority and we can minister the

gospel and we can pray for people. And we don't have to pray contingently.

Freely we received we can freely give pour

out the blessing god pray his love and

his kindness and his favor and his forgiveness over people and let them do it

whatever you know they want to do between them and god so we don't withhold

anything we don't do this carrot and stick thing with with with our spiritual

authority no try to manipulate people don't do that the second side of this though,

of not being spiritually manipulative and not withholding things from people

is that we need to let ourselves be moved by love.

And this is a real, again, this is it. We don't want the responsibility.

We don't want the responsibility. We don't want to have to care about more things.

I think that is very true of our day and age and our culture.

Like the world is exhausted by its many responsibilities.

And to.

Like if I look at people in all their hurting and all their brokenness to be

the sort of person who gets on my feet and walks over and says I would like to pray for you,

and to have that awkward conversation and to be weird right which is just weird

and people are like well I would prefer you give me money and you say well I

would prefer to pray for you,

you know or whatever you can give me money whatever do whatever you want to

be that sort of person like requires a level of caring that's gonna cost you something.

And a lot of us, I think, are like, oh, I love Jesus.

I don't really want to like be motivated by his love in the world.

I don't want to be a part of this thing. Like, it's just a lot.

But man, I think that when Jesus is sending out his disciples into the world,

like he's doing it because he says, no, like out of compassion,

like there's this great need.

There's all these people and they need needs. And so they need people who are

going to go and tell them about Jesus, proclaim the kingdom.

And they need people, like part of this proclamation of the gospel is they need

people who are going to look at them in the eyes, recognize their need and pray

for them, that God would supply whatever it is that's required.

Christy Wimber, who's John Wimber's daughter-in-law, says this,

she wrote a little book. I thought this was really good.

The goal of healing is for all people to be loved by a loving God.

Therefore, when someone is struggling with sickness, with an addiction or pain,

it's an opportunity for the church to demonstrate love to them.

It's an opportunity to, It's not an opportunity to build a ministry,

but an indicator of where God

is giving us an opportunity to reveal his wholeness to that individual.

It is very personal.

Love is why healing exists.

It is why the Apostle Paul said in 1 Corinthians 4, 1, follow the way of love

as he's commending the church to partake in spiritual gifts.

It is clear that love is to be the foundation and goal of all ministry.

Our purpose for healing then becomes our goal.

Our purpose is for people to encounter God and to be loved by Jesus.

Therefore, our goal is that everyone we encounter in ministry should be better

off having encountered us.

Worship team can come up here. We're starting to wrap up. But here's the thing is like.

I think people who are sold out on mission and sold out on authority and like

embracing this authority in like a healthy kind of way are people who are just

saying, okay, I'm not going to hide.

I'm not going to hide myself from the needs of the world, but whatever I see,

I'm going to understand that I've been sent out as someone with a purpose to

be an ambassador of God's love, and I'm just going to be willing enough to ask

God the question when I see a need.

What do you want me to do here?

And here's the thing. The thing that I think we excuse ourselves so often,

and I do this too. I'll just be really honest.

We excuse ourselves so often from just being like,

just doing the simple thing of just asking someone, hey what

do you need like like how can i help you

so we so i think all that we're called

to do is just understand that well look jesus has great love for people and

he invites us to have some authority and some responsibility to be people who

are intervening on their on their behalf which involves surrendering our agency

right our our our will our time our our actions to god and You're just saying, okay, well, God,

what do you want to do with this?

How do you want to express your love to the people around me? Right?

And you have the authority and the responsibility to do those things.

And here's the thing. I think the biggest obstacle is we do this head thing, right?

We do this head thing. We say, well, I don't want to, and I don't feel love for people.

Me too. But the thing about faith and the thing about having authority is that

we can speak truth to people.

We can speak and share the love of Jesus.

We can intervene on people's behalf through prayer with people,

not on the basis of our feelings. In fact, we shouldn't do it on the basis of

our feelings, but on the basis of what we know, what does God feel about that person?

And so, yeah, I oftentimes am not interested in praying with people.

And oftentimes I go ahead and sit in that disinterest and I don't pray with people.

And, you know, that's my immaturity being expressed. But when I'm in a healthy

place, when I've accepted the authority and responsibility that comes along

with being a Christian and being part of God's mission,

then I don't actually look for the feelings within myself because that's not

actually the source of my mission or my calling.

Actually, the source of my mission and calling in authority is God's love and

God's compassion on people.

And so the only question I need to ask when I'm sitting around and I'm wondering,

oh, how or what should I pray? Or how do I share people?

I don't need to ask myself the question is, how do I feel or what I want to do?

That's not the important question. That's not the faith question.

The question is, how does God feel about this person?

What does God want me to do?

And the answer is, well, freely you received, freely give.

How can I demonstrate and enact the free and kind and gracious love of my Father?

How can I demonstrate the gospel to this person? And it probably involves a

couple of things. Looking someone in the eye.

Sensing or asking them what their needs are and putting my hand on their shoulder if they want me to.

And just say with confidence that comes from him, his authority, Jesus loves you.

The Holy Spirit is real. And whatever your need is, like if it's healing,

okay, let's pray to a kind God who loves you for that.

And we're not gonna use that to manipulate them. I'm not going to use it to

force them to come to church.

Of course, we can invite them to come to

church. We can have the follow-up conversation, but we just freely give.

We just say, I know a God who blesses.

He blesses the worst of people.

He blesses the worst of people. He blessed me. So you can just come in that.

And in the end, we have this authority and we have this calling and we have

this responsibility, but it's just not from us.

And so what's the thing that we do? we just develop the habit of asking the

question, well, what does God want?

And the answer is always the same. Well, God wants me to come to this person

and let them know how much they're loved, how much they're cared for,

how much they're wanted.

And you know what? Like that sounds like a big responsibility and a thing,

but it's so much easier than trying to be a Christian without that permission.

It's so much easier to just say, I don't need to be the Bible answer, man.

I don't need to be the person who judges all your problems.

Instead, I can just be the person who has this great confidence that God loves

you and he's going to do something for you.

And I want to be a person who prays that for you and sees that happen.

That's way easier to be a Christian who does that than to be a Christian who

doesn't have the empowerment or authority to do that.

So we're going to pray, and then I'm probably going to come back up here in

a little bit. But Lord Jesus.

You know, your invitations are always good to us. Lord, you don't want something from us.

You want something for us. Lord, I pray that whatever shame that we feel about

all of our failings and all of our stuff, Lord, that we would just remember,

actually, we did not impress you,

when you first decided to start

a relationship with us, when you told us how much you loved us, Lord.

You didn't do that on the basis of how great we were. And so we don't need to

come before you great now, Lord. If we feel shame, we feel like failures. Oh, that's great, Lord.

Freely we receive. Freely we can give. So, Lord, would you remind us of your

grace and your faithfulness and your kindness to us, Lord.

And as we just go out into the world, Lord, and we want to receive a calling

and a purpose and authority from you, Lord.

Would you just be the one who speaks those things to us and who brings to our

mind and our imagination, Lord, the ways that we can be a part of what you're.

Music.

Doing in the world, Lord.

Give us the nerve to believe what you say is true, Lord, that we can be a part of this.

We can be a part of your work in the world. We can be ambassadors,

Lord, not because we're qualified or we feel qualified, but because you've qualified

us, Lord. You've called us to go forward.

So Lord, even as we take some time to worship you, Holy Spirit,

we welcome you in this place. Would you speak to us? Would you build us up, Lord?

We want to receive, yet again, And we stand as recipients of your work and of your grace, Lord.

And whatever's in us, Lord, that needs to go, to be laid aside, Lord.

We ask you to help us to do that right now so we might receive a better thing.

All right, so let's worship the Lord together.