Church on Mission - Part 2 [Jesus Loves CA]

Good morning, church family.

My name is Colleen, and our scripture passage this morning is from the book of Matthew.

We'll be in Matthew 28, verses 18 through 20.

Matthew 28:18–20

This passage will start on page 835 in the church Bibles behind the back chairs.

Matthew 28, starting in 18.

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

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.

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

This is the word of the Lord.

Good morning.

Well, if I don't know you, my name is Adam.

I'm one of the pastors here.

I get the gift of being on staff.

And we get the gift of today of having students in the room with us.

Can we give it up for our student worship leaders?

I love it.

I did youth ministry for 15 years.

I love seeing them.

I love having them up here.

Well, it is good to be with you.

We are in week three of our series that Jesus Loves California.

And in this series, we are being reminded that no matter how good or how bad California can be, Jesus still loves it.

And he loves the people in it.

That is what we are called to as Christians.

So in week one, Pastor Sam introduced God that God is the initiator and the ultimate purpose of our outreach.

We don't share Jesus with others to try to just fill seats and feel good about ourselves.

We share Jesus not for the name of Mission Hills to get higher, but for his name to be glorified.

We are here for Jesus and we share for Jesus.

We are always people who are receiving what has been sent, as Pastor Sam talked about.

And then we are the sent ones to go tell the whole world about Jesus and the good news that he brings.

In week two, Pastor Sam talked about the church's sending is an extension of Jesus' own sending.

The calling believers is not merely reporting facts about God.

We are not just reporting facts, but we are called to reveal Jesus' cross-shaped sacrificial love through our daily lives.

And then when it hurts, keep loving.

And at the end of that sermon, I was like, Yeah, that's true.

I can't.

And I told Pastor Sam that.

I was like, I can't.

He's like, good, that's why you're preaching this week.

You can tell us how we can do it.

I was like, all right, thanks, Sam.

Appreciate you.

Now in week three, we're gonna look at this sending, this famous passage that we've seen over and over.

It's painted on walls at the church.

It is all around, and I'll put it up on the screen.

Hopefully, this will work.

There's some technology that does work.

Awesome.

All authority in heaven on earth has been given to me.

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you, and behold, I am with you even to the end of the age.

And what I do every single week while I'm prepping and thinking and praying about what is going on, it's like, Lord, what does this passage bring up?

What do you want to say?

And I'm the thing that came up was very surprising to me.

I didn't think that this would actually come up.

I grew up in a suburb of Seattle called Samamish, and I love, love being up there.

And my parents found out this great thing that they could do with their very rowdy two sons.

My sister wasn't super into it, but their two sons were very into it.

They found this thing called a ski bus.

Have you guys ever done a ski bus?

Anyone?

No, we live in Southern California.

What a dumb question.

A ski bus is when you ride a bus up a mountain that happens to have snow on it, and then you ride on that snow for you Southern Californians.

But so they would put us on the ski bus, they would give us some money, and we would go up from 9 a.m.

till about 5 p.m.

and we would just ride our snowboards.

And they would give us some instruction.

There was a whole group of these kind of young adults, college kids that would meet us while we were going up the hill.

And then one instructor, I don't remember his name, but I remember his face because he would just take us up the chairlift, help us buckle in, and then he would go, just send it, bros.

And then he would leave.

Every time, every time.

We went up every Saturday for years, and he was the same.

He was consistent.

We would get to the top of the chairlift, he would help us buckle in, and then he'd go, send it, bro.

And we would just fail miserably.

He could care less.

He didn't care if we did anything.

He's like, you just gotta do it, bro.

I was like, I'm not doing it.

I'm breaking.

This doesn't work.

And it made me think when we would ride the chairlift, my brother and I, as we were going up, we would always try to see where he was.

Because if he was leading a group, it was always gonna be really entertaining to see who came down the mountain.

And I don't know if you've ever seen these videos on the internet.

I found one where people are kind of failing.

So I want to watch it together.

So there's a video that I would love for us to see.

Here we go.

Oh yeah.

He sent it though.

He's sending it and almost dies.

Isn't that scary?

Next one.

Scooter, scoot life or no life.

Ouch.

Here's the snowboarding I was talking about.

Yes.

So fun.

I don't know why people do this.

This is crazy.

That's why you don't do that.

And then just riding a bike, you know what?

Having fun.

Here we go.

Nope, not having fun.

Another scooter got in the way.

Toodles.

Ouch.

Skateboarding.

These guys are crazy.

Ooh, ooh, ooh, that's fun.

There's a few more.

You know, just chilling, riding, crack, boom.

Gone.

Ouch.

These scooters, I tell you, they're dangerous.

Ah, one more.

This is the last one.

Just rollerblading, having fun.

Oh bye.

Yes.

I love the internet sometimes.

It's just so fun.

I've watched those endlessly.

Maybe you hate them.

I'm sorry.

Yeah, don't go do that.

Don't send it like that.

But what it feels like to hear a sermon like this, I've given sermons like this before, is as funny and painful as those videos can be, it can feel at times that when we are a sent church, going and sharing our faith with others, growing in our discipleship, putting others in places of vulnerability and even getting rejection.

You can hear sermons all the time of go share your faith.

Go talk about Jesus with people.

Get a nice little dose of guilt in your heart.

And then you send it and you fail miserably.

I know I have.

I have in sharing my faith.

But today I want to walk through practically how we can live this out.

This wonderful and universal invitation for Christians from our loving Savior Jesus, not to just send it and see how it happens, see what comes up, but to send it in Him and with Him, with Jesus.

And there's four things I want to touch on in our past.

Oh, you don't need to see that.

That's just me going snowboarding.

If you want to know my happy place, it's snowboarding.

I was supposed to put that up during my story.

Anyway, there's four things I want to highlight this week.

I want us to highlight in this passage that we are called to go.

We are called to make.

I'm going to call that share.

Teach, I'm going to call that grow.

And then I am with you.

I'm going to call that abide.

So four points today.

Go, share, grow, and abide.

Go, share, grow, and abide.

So first, grow.

Jesus has come to the end of his earthly ministry as we find him in Matthew.

And he's about to ascend back to heaven, and he gives this command.

It's not a suggestion.

It's not just, hey, if you feel like it or if you're wondering what you want to do while I'm gone.

He says, no, you, these disciples, my best friends, these followers, you go.

You go and make disciples.

We as Christians, we are a sent people.

We are a sent people.

Christians are not looking for a holy land.

We're not looking for a place to set up our headquarters on this earth that Jesus has sent us through all the earth in his spirit, in the church, to go share his name to anyone anywhere.

That is our calling.

And in this calling, we get his authority to share his good news.

Now, if you're a Christian in here, you've been sent.

Surprise.

Happy Sunday.

You have been sent.

You've been sent to your workplaces, to your families, to your neighbors that you live by, to your schools that you attend, the friends that you have, the places that you shop, where you eat.

You can even be sent to the DMV because you did it wrong online, and then you have to go in and grab a number and sit there for a really long time.

Guilty.

We are sent wherever we go.

You do not have to go across the world to be on mission for Jesus.

Wherever you are, that is where you are sent.

He has sent you to the place, to this place, and to these people to share the good news of who Jesus is.

As Christians, we never go anywhere in this life without a purpose or a mission.

Every step we take and every move we make, which is a great song, by the way, if you've ever heard that one.

For those of you who are younger, it's old, but it's good.

Every step we take, every move we make, God is sending us to love the neighbors that we have.

The neighbors that we have.

Like someone in our church told me last week, on this cruise of life, we are the crew, we're not the passengers.

Wherever you are, wherever you live, wherever you go to school, wherever you're around people, when you go and eat lunch later after this, you've been sent there as Jesus' ambassador to go and make disciples.

Everywhere you go.

There are no accidents in following Jesus.

There's no, oh, I can't believe that happened.

Jesus knows where you are going and he wants you.

In some ways, my instructor was right, he wants you to send it.

He wants you to go as you go, but how do we do that?

Well, that's our second point.

As you go, you don't just go and figure it out, you share.

How do we share?

We are sent everywhere to share the good news of who Jesus is.

We do this in word and in deed.

You share with your mouth and you share with your actions that Jesus is Lord and Savior.

And we care about the whole person when we're sharing.

It's not like we're just throwing gospel Hail Marys when they don't have food.

James talks about this.

That as we share, we're sharing everything that Jesus did on the cross in his cross-shaped love.

And as you care about someone, you care about their soul, their body, their heart, their mind, their strength.

You cannot make disciples by shouting at people on the street.

You can't do it.

Making disciples demands a relationship, it requires a journey, and God has sent you on a journey with the people that you're around all the time.

Now you may not be play the whole part in the journey.

Their salvation is not your responsibility.

You are not Jesus, you can't save anyone.

But you are called to share the gospel with them so that they can meet the Savior.

That is what we are called to do.

Jesus has called us so that we are involved in other people's lives, in sharing and caring about who they are and what they're going through.

And this can come in a simple way.

All of the church is invited into this.

This isn't just a pastor's job or people on staff.

If you are a Christian, this is all of our jobs to go and to share.

In a simple way that I heard a pastor talk about it recently is this kind of formula to have in your heart while you're talking with people.

Something that you can do while you're sitting and going and praying and where you are.

It says, how do I take this relationship from surface to serious to spiritual?

How do I take this relationship, this getting to know you?

How do I take it from surface to serious to spiritual?

How do I do that?

Well, it's happened these last couple weeks.

I got invited to go golfing while I was on my sabbatical.

It was great.

I'm still terrible at golf, but I was with these three other guys who golfed together every single week for the last 10 years.

Must be nice.

I wish I could do that.

And all I did, we're on the second hole, they're getting ready to hit.

I've already lost three balls.

And I asked them, I was like, Where are you guys from?

And the one guy said, Well, I grew up in Detroit, but I joined the military, came here, I've been all this time.

And the guy that he has been golfing with for 10 years, he looked at him and he said, I never knew you were from Detroit.

And I went, What?

You guys have sat in a golf cart together for 10 years every single week.

You're more consistent with them than you are with probably some other people in your life that you love, and you don't know where he's from.

You just say, good hit, and then you drive?

What an awkward cart! I don't I would not want to be in that.

But here's the truth.

Here's my heart.

Absolutely, I can do that.

Sitting on an airplane, headphones in.

Please, Jesus, don't make me talk to them.

That is such an unchristian prayer.

But I pray it.

I pray it.

I'm a pastor.

You're laughing because you pray it too.

Welcome.

We can come out of hiding.

The invitation here is to just how do I get this from the surface to serious?

And that happens with one word curiosity.

Curiosity.

All you have to do is ask a question.

Hey, where are you from?

We were doing a little get together with my son's soccer team.

We did a pool party because we won the first two games, but now we've lost every other game.

But they wanted to celebrate, so we did a pool party, and I'm sitting there with all the parents around the pool party, and this lady walks up, she sits down, and I was like, just tell me about your family.

Two hours later, I'm hearing about how she's a single mom wrestling with these things, and she has an older son who's really fallen off the wagon and she's worried and she's scared.

I asked one question.

We went from the surface of, yes, I coach your son, he's pretty good, it's fun.

But tell me about your family.

And we went all the way down to saying, hey, if your son ever needs help or he wants to get a burger with a pastor, I'll buy it.

And we're working on going from that surface to serious to now, hey, I want to talk to your son about God.

Because I think he needs Jesus.

One question.

It's that simple.

Can you share with curiosity?

Can you be curious about the people that you work with?

Can you be curious about the person that you're sitting next to you?

Can you be curious about the neighbor that's the worst?

Can you do that?

Because Jesus did enough for us to come to know him.

And now instead of him just showing up, he sent you and he has sent me.

It's simple, it's hard.

But there's another piece of this going.

We go, we share, but we also grow.

You cannot do the Great Commission.

You cannot follow Christ without growing.

Sharing is a great way to grow, but that doesn't mean that's the only place we do grow.

We are called to make disciples, not converts.

We are called to make disciples, not converts.

This means that when we become Christians by God's grace and his mercy, we start this lifelong journey of growing in love and knowledge and obedience of Jesus.

We are all on this journey, if you're a Christian in this room, taking steps at a time.

Maybe it feels like you're taking 50 steps back to take one step forward, but we are on this journey together.

It would be a problem if I started snowboarding back in the day with that instructor, and I just kept sending it over and over and over and over again, and I kept falling over and over and over again, and I never asked the question, what am I doing wrong?

It would be a problem for my two wonderful kids that I love if they never grew.

If they stayed in a baby form at 15 years old, that would be creepy.

If things, if we are not growing, then there's something that has gone wrong.

We are called by Christ to grow in the knowledge of who He is.

We are never done growing in this Christian life.

We are never done learning or failing or confessing of learning what to do with our heart, learning how to forgive.

We are always called to grow, to teach all that Jesus has commanded.

So maybe there are some ways, some questions that we can sit with.

Maybe growth looks like for you reading the Bible in the morning before you go to your phone.

It's a hard one.

That's why I try to leave my phone in the kitchen and I try to put the Bible right next to my head, but half the time I go to the phone anyway.

Maybe it means trying a devotional with your family once a week, once you sit down for dinner together.

Maybe it's trying to chat with the neighbor as we take out the trash instead of avoiding eye contact and keeping our headphones on.

I'm just saying that's hypothetical, not that I've done that.

And as I was sitting and praying about this, three words came up for me that have been the most powerful words in my growth journey with Christ.

I got to go to college, I went to Biola, I got to do graduate school, I went to Talbot.

Those things have helped me grow, but these three words have never have, that was the wrong word, have always helped me grow more than anything else.

These are the three words that I have used that have helped me grow in my faith more than anything else.

I need help.

I need help.

Those words have helped me grow following Jesus more than anything else in my entire life.

I need help in reading the Bible.

I'm not disciplined enough.

I actually don't know what's saying.

Half the time it's confusing.

I need help reading the Bible.

I need help seeing if baptism is my next right step.

Go therefore, make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Maybe I'm supposed to get baptized.

I need help understanding how I can get past this lust or this anger or this pride or this pain.

I need help as a parent because here's the truth.

I have no idea what I'm doing.

I need help.

I need help to stop drinking or shopping or gambling or eating.

I need help in my relationships where I'm just burying everything and my heart is getting hard and I'm just resentful.

I need help learning how to take the plank out of my own eye instead of just judging people so fast on the internet.

I need help to learn to mean what it forgiv what it means to forgive 70 times 70.

I need help because I can't do this on my own.

I need help.

So maybe your call or your next step.

In growth this year is to come out of hiding.

To finally get help for the thing that has been weighing you down or holding you back, and you're going to offer it to someone within the church.

We need help with whatever we've been avoiding in Jesus' name so that we can be a church that not only goes and shares, but that we grow.

That we grow.

So I pray that you can do that.

The last thing that we do in all of this, I've been telling you everything that you're supposed to go do without telling you the most important thing that God has given to us.

Yes, we go, we share, we grow, but none of this can happen without abiding in Christ.

At the end of the passage, Jesus says this.

Hey, I've told you some things to do, and then he says, Behold.

It's a powerful word to sit with.

Hey, pay attention.

Behold, sit with this.

I am with you always.

I am with you always.

There is no place we can go, no sharing the gospel that we can do, no growing in our relationship with Christ that does not happen without Jesus being with us.

Without Jesus being with us.

You and I cannot do this alone.

And God knows that.

We are not a group of people that bring Jesus places.

He's already there.

He's already there.

And our prayerful discernment, humble, maybe even terrified way of sharing and growing in the gospel is to say, Lord, I don't even know what to say.

Give me some words.

Lord, I don't even know where to start with this person, but would you help me?

Would you give me an opportunity?

Lord, I'm terrified to grow in you because I feel like I would have to see things and face things that I don't want to see.

Lord, may you be with me.

And wherever you're going to go, whatever darkness you need to face, whatever rejection you may have ahead of you of sharing your faith, Jesus is already there.

He is already with us.

This is not a sermon of Jesus being like my snowboard instructor.

Send it, bro.

I'll meet you down there.

Jesus is the polar opposite of my instructor.

Praise Jesus.

He is with us every step of the way, every fall and failure as we go.

He lifts us up when we fail, and he carries us when we can't do it anymore.

God has sent us to go and grow and share, but he has done it because he is in us.

That as you know Christ, the Holy Spirit has come into you, and you now have the power and the authority to go be curious, to go love and maybe even be bold in your faith.

Jesus shows us in his own life and death on the cross that he goes before us, that there is no suffering or rejection that he doesn't know, and that he promises that he will finish whatever work he has started in us and the people around us.

You do not have to do this on your own.

You can't do it on your own, but Jesus can.

Jesus can.

So to conclude, this is what I want to send us with.

If you have a phone, you can pull that out.

There's prayer cards in front of you if you want to write it down.

I'm asking you all to do that.

So if you have a phone or a pen or a card, I want to send you with two things this week.

As we've been talking about sending.

And then what is one step of growth that the Lord might be putting in front of you this season?

So here's the prayer that I want you to pray this week.

And you can take a picture of this or write it down.

Lord Jesus, would you please give me the courage, compassion, and curiosity to love blank as you love them?

Lord, would you give me the courage, the compassion, and the curiosity to love them as you love them?

Who is one person in your life where you're kind of sitting on the surface, and maybe you've been sitting on the surface for 20 years?

That we can go from the surface to serious to spiritual.

Who's one person?

I want you to pray about it this week.

Does God bring up one name for you?

And then maybe this year, this is the year that we just try.

We try.

And then the second prayer is, Lord Jesus, what is the next step in discipleship that you are leading me into?

Lord, what is the next step in discipleship that you're leading me into?

That could be reading the Bible, that could be getting baptized, that could be joining a life group, that could be getting mentoring, or it could just be saying to someone that you're sitting next to right now, I need help.

I need help.

But what Jesus gave his disciples thousands of years ago, he is now giving you through his word being preached.

That if you are a Christian in here, you are called to go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

And God is going to be with you as you do it.

And lastly, as we conclude, if you don't know Jesus, I have been sent by him to share it with you today.

That you've heard now that Jesus loves you, he's died for you, that all your sins can be washed away, and that you don't have to live a life without purpose.

That whatever darkness you're facing or hope you're trying to find, that there is no eternal hope without him.

Jesus is the answer.

And if you want to start that journey or decide to follow him today, elders will be up here.

I'll be at the doors in the back.

I would love to talk to you.

But Jesus knows you, he loves you, and he's just waiting for you to open the door as he knocks.

Lord, I need you.

Lord, I need help.

So may the Lord be with us.

Let's pray.

Our Father in heaven.

I am terrified to evangelize.

There's times where I fear rejection more than almost anything else.

But Lord, you were sent.

You came down, you humbled yourself, and you know right now where we are, what we're dealing with, what we're wrestling with, and you love us.

So I pray, Jesus, now for anyone in this room, if they don't know you, today they would surrender.

Just say, God, I'm done doing life on my own.

I give it to you.

Help me.

For those of us that are Christians in this room, God, would you give us a name this week?

Who is someone in our life?

And maybe we feel our hearts beating faster and our stomach tightening up because we're scared.

Lord, would you meet us in our fear?

Who is one person we can share the gospel with?

And what is one step that we can take?

But God, I pray that everyone walks out these doors knowing that you are with them, that they are not alone, and that Jesus is near.

We pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.