Journey With Jesus – Steps of Purpose – 10/28/07
Date: 10/28/07
Sermon Series: Journey with Jesus
Title: Steps of Purpose
Text: Mark 6:7-13
“He summoned the Twelve and began to send them out in pairs and gave them authority over unclean spirits. He instructed them to take nothing for the road except a walking stick: no bread, no traveling bag, no money in their belts. They were to wear sandals, but not put on an extra shirt. Then He said to them, “Whenever you enter a house, stay there until you leave that place. If any place does not welcome you and people refuse to listen to you, when you leave there, shake the dust off your feet as a testimony against them.” So they went out and preached that people should repent. And they were driving out many demons, anointing many sick people with oil, and healing.”
Theme: In Jesus’ missional statement to the disciples we can find purpose and mission for the Church. Our focus has to be to complete the task for which we were formed. This is a mission of proclamation, people and promise.
Introduction: The story of teaching the girls how to ride bikes. The emphasis needs to be on the act of letting go of the back of the bike so that they can take off on their own: Also the idea that they need to keep pedaling and looking forward.
Transition: In this passage where Jesus is letting His disciples take a responsible position in the kingdom work, we can find some principles for the continuing Kingdom work that we are supposed to do. These 12 guys have been students for the last year or so, they have absorbed Jesus’ preaching, teaching and focus for all of this time but like all good teaching it doesn’t mean anything until the student has to reproduce the knowledge in a usable way. This section of scripture is also related in the other synoptic gospels: Matthew and Luke. While Luke gives it only 5 verses the account in Matthew covers an entire chapter. Today I would like you to open your Bibles up to these two parallel passages, Mark 6 and Matthew 10, because we will be turning back and forth quite a little bit as we try to pull out more of the application principles for the Church today from this section of scripture.
As we study the gospels you can see that there are several places in the narrative where the writers leave us major breaks in what is happening. I believe that this one of those places. At the end of this long section in the Matthean account the author uses one of his key phrases to mark these changes (Mt 11:25) “at that time.” For me it seems clear that this, sending out of the Apostles on a short term mission trip, marks a change in the character of Jesus’ ministry. Prior to this event all of Jesus’ preaching and teaching seems to be about clarifying God’s principle of grace that is already built into the law that He has provided. After this event it seems to me that Jesus teaching begins to take on the character of calling to task the religious norms and leaders of the people. I believe that this event is the point in the narrative where we start building up to the climax of the redemptive mission that Jesus has come to fulfill.
In this mission, Jesus is giving His disciples the beginning of the commission that will take on larger relevance after His redemptive work is done. In this mission we can find at least three principles for the larger mission of the entire work of all kingdom builders. The disciples are sent out with purpose in mind and given specific charges. We are called to be active in: Proclamation, People and Promise
I. Proclamation
a. The disciples are sent out to proclaim a message.
i. Turn over to Matt. 10:7, the gist of their proclamation is that the Kingdom of heaven has come near.
ii. In order to understand this message that is given to these people I think that we need to remember a little bit about how they are living. Kingdom is an incredibly rich word and the phrase Kingdom of Heaven would be something similar to one of us hearing the strains of the National anthem.
iii. This kingdom language is emphasized in the gospels. The term kingdom of heaven or kingdoms of God (two interchangeable terms Luke 9 uses “of God”) are found a total of 84 times in these four books. To begin to get an idea of the importance of it though we need to turn back to the Old Testament for a minute.
1. One of the first times that the kingdom is announced, with clarity, is in Daniel 2:44ff. To a people who have been hauled out of their own land and taken to serve under a foreign government in a foreign land.
2. It has been understood that the kingdom is likened to the Davidic kingdom.
a. The Psalms
b. Jesus is called Son of David
c. The Matthew genealogy is structured to make this the central point.
iv. These people understood that they were God’s chosen people and yet because of their nation’s disobedience to God they were suffering under the rule of a kingdom that shouldn’t be there.
b. Ultimately the proclamation that the kingdom of heaven is here is understood in the light of the fact that we are living in a condition that shouldn’t exist.
i. The darkness and evil that pervades our world is a shadow that shouldn’t exist and our souls cry out for the justice and love that is displayed by the Creator of heaven and earth.
II. People
a. By people
i. Sent out in pairs, although Mark’s gospel is the only one that records the fact that the disciples are sent out in pairs. The account in Matthew goes on to tells us, apparently, what those pairs are.
1. Matt. 10:2-4
2. Commentators say a lot about why they were sent out, literally, two by two but I think that the teaching is really pretty simple: we are not intended to do ministry alone.
3. We are called to serve in a community of believers and find our identity within the context of that community. There is no such thing as a Lone Ranger Christian. God intends for each of us to both build up and lean on the other members of the community.
b. For People
i. The message was only the first part of what they were supposed to accomplish, did you see that the other main thing that they were supposed to do is what? They were spending a significant amount of their time and resources helping people. We can never allow proclamation, as important as it is; to be all that we do we have to be willing to be people helpers.
ii. An interesting side note here: the verb used in Mark for giving them authority over unclean spirits is an imperfect tense which carries the force that Jesus kept giving them authority over the spirits. Our ability to help others is based directly on our relationship with the Lord.
III. Promise
a. Thirdly you can’t miss the point that these disciples were giving a message and living a lifestyle that exuded the fact that there is more to life then what you can wrap your hands around.
i. Adolph Deissmann, in his work, Light From the Ancient East demonstrates that the traveling bag that is mentioned here would have been what the beggar-priests of the ancient gods would have brought along to collect money from their listeners. The disciples were supposed to be different from the world that they lived in. Their focus was on bigger issues then making money.
ii. Their message called people to repent. Literally a turning around from the previous direction. The idea is that there is a better direction to travel in than the one they are currently on.
iii. For us the principle of purpose is to demonstrate to people that this life is not all that there is. There is a reality that is bigger and broader then the one that we are now living in and if we want to experience that reality it requires us to look beyond what we are experiencing here.
