Sharing: God’s Mission Through Us | Matthew 28:16-20 & Hebrews 13:15-16
This message was preached at Sherwood Community Friends Church on Sunday, February 26, 2023. You can watch the video in full by clicking below.
Key Scriptures
Hebrews 13:15-16 “Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise—the fruit of lips that openly profess his name. And do not forget to do good and to share with others, for with such sacrifices God is pleased.” NIV
Matthew 28:16-20 “The eleven disciples traveled to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshiped, but some doubted. Jesus came near and said to them, “All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. 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 everything I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” CSB
I was told recently that sermons are persuasive speeches. As I thought about that, I believe it holds validity. And I believe of all the topics in the Bible to teach on, outreach, missions, and evangelism must be at the top tier of persuasive speeches.
To begin our conversation today, I think it’s important to define these three terms so we are all speaking the same language. Your definition my vary from mine, but for the sake of consistency today, we can begin here.
Outreach, Missions, and Evangelism are often used interchangeably or even incorrectly. They are all words that can be intimidating, but I believe that is largely because we don’t understand them or their role in the fulfillment of the Gospel.
Outreach is the moving of the Gospel outside of the four walls of the church building. Often, this is a larger, more encompassing word for different facets of a missional life. Social justice and reform efforts from the church could fall into this category. Outreach takes shape in community involvement designed to insert Jesus into the world that doesn’t understand him.
Missions will put images like this in our minds. We traditionally think of mission as a destination trip to share Jesus and the Gospel. This could be short-term or long-term, international or domestic. Ultimately, this can be defined as goal-oriented and destination-focused outreach and evangelism work.
Evangelism is the one that triggers most of us into a state of panic. We often think about Billy Graham or street preachers.
In reality, it’s more like relationship built around a table.
Evangelism is far more of a relationship-based, long-term approach. It’s a form of discipleship to bring those who don’t know Jesus yet to know Jesus. The primary form of communication of evangelism is simply - sharing our story in light of how Jesus changed our life and inviting others into this same relationship. And this is done by doing life with people.
My relationship with a missional mindset
As many of you know, I am enrolled at Barclay Bible College, and the specific degree I am pursuing is my Master of Arts in Missional Multiplication. That’s a fancy way of saying my concentration is designed to provide me with the biblical, theological, and missiological perspectives and tools to serve in missions. I have been on seven international short-term mission trips, six of those in the last 10 years. Years before entering my graduate program, I took a 15-week college course on the missional movement from Genesis on. Prior to moving to Oregon, I was on staff working in the Outreach department, working closely with our local Community Impact team. For the last year, I’ve been serving on the Board of Local Outreach with Northwest Yearly Meeting.
To say that sharing Jesus with the world is important to me would be an understatement. I don’t share all this with you to boast about me. I struggle with the same fear and tension you might when it comes to talking with others about my faith.
So why I have staked my current and future vocation on it, in a world that is increasingly hostile towards people of faith.
It’s not about a life to come after death. It’s because I want others to experience this today. I have experienced personal transformation and miracles because of Jesus’ intervention. Others shared Jesus with me. With you too.
We each have a story of how Jesus saved us from a life of hopelessness, anger, frustration, darkness, mediocrity, and purposelessness. He removed these heavy weights from us and replaced them with hope, with love, with joy, with purpose.
Why wouldn’t we want to share that with others?
Why does it matter?
Why is it becoming increasingly important for us to share Jesus? Aren’t there people who sign up to do that, like missionaries and pastors?
In a recent report done by Pew Research, they estimate that by 2070, if historic religious conversion trends hold, at best 46% of Americans will identify as Christians, and at worst, only 35% will identify as Christians. This is a significant drop from the estimated 64% of Christians as of 2020, which is a decline from the 90% in the late 1970s.
What is your initial response to the projected decline?
For me, heartbreak. I love Jesus and I love his church. Both and. My life is on a whole different trajectory because of Jesus and the people he placed in my life along the way. Truly doing life with others. They discipled me. They taught me. They evangelized to me because I didn’t understand that giving my heart to Jesus wasn’t enough. That what Jesus really wanted was my full surrender - not only my heart, but my mind, my soul, and my strength too. And what happened when I finally got it, when it clicked for me, well, that’s when my life changed radically. And I want others to experience the transformation I experienced too.
Unfortunately, we as the church are largely responsible for the decline because we have abdicated our missional responsibilities to “someone else.”
What does Jesus say?
Let’s look at our two passages for today. If you have your Bibles with you, you’ll want to turn to Matthew 28 and Hebrews 13. By the way, do you know the only offensive piece of armor against the attacks of the enemy that we have according to Ephesians 6? Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. To fight off the attacks of the enemy, your weapon is Scripture.
As you are turning in your Bibles, let me lay some groundwork for you. Jesus has risen from the dead and has been interacting with the disciples for the previous 40 days. As the time of his ascension to heaven was approaching, he had this interaction with the disciples.
Matthew 28:16-20 “The eleven disciples traveled to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshiped, but some doubted. Jesus came near and said to them, “All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. 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 everything I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” CSB
All authority has been given to Jesus and it’s by his power and authority that we GO. Going is active. It indicates movement. We go across the street to our neighbor to help them with their housework. We go to meet up with a young believer for coffee. We go to give someone a ride who doesn’t have a car. We invite the unbelieving friend to dinner. We go to our local festivals, looking for opportunities to make new connections.
We go. What do we do?
What’s the purpose of our going? To make disciples, ones who both accept and assist in the spreading of the doctrines of Jesus. As a disciple of Jesus, we both accept his teaching for our own life, observing what he has commanded us, and we are vocal with others about His teachings.
And we go out to make disciples of all nations. The Greek word is ethne, where we get the word “ethnic” from. When we read nations in our translation, it’s more appropriate to read it as people groups, which could be identified by: linguistic, cultural, social, economic, geographic, religious, or political groups.
Following the text, when we make disciples, we baptize them. That is we walk with them through a significant and distinctive marker that they are now surrendered to Jesus. In the Old Testament, this distinctive marker was circumcision. In the New Testament, this was water baptism. In Bolivia, among the Aymara, some of those markers included the destruction of calvarios--a sacred stone or mound that was thought to hold magical qualities. Among the Chamar people in India, cutting off one's hair lock took on a similar significance. In Kenya, Arthur Chilson, whom we’ll discuss later, became convinced that publicly denying the amulets of witch doctors was a necessary step toward spiritual growth. For many Christians in America, including some of our Friends fields today, public water baptism still signifies for them incorporation into the body of Christ.
A disciple recognizes that their life is no longer their own. They have given up their life, and they now experience the baptism of the Holy Spirit, so that they then can equally be empowered to observe all that Jesus told them, and as in the Scriptures, and to go and make disciples.
Especially noteworthy is that Matthew doesn’t end with the ascension. In fact, he doesn’t even mention it. This passage of scripture, which we know today as the Great Commission, was what Matthew wanted to leave lingering on the minds of his readers. The job of going and making disciples of all peoples, this was a big job given to us by Jesus, and he wanted them to feel the weight of this. And through all this work that Jesus asks us to do, we are confident we go in his power and authority that he has been given and he will be with us throughout it all.
Now we will jump over to our second text in Hebrews.
By the time we get to chapter 13, the author in the first 10 chapters has laid the groundwork of who Jesus is, elevating him to the highest status by comparing him to key historical figures in the Old Testament. This affirms to the audience that Jesus is God’s word, the hope for new creation, the eternal priest, and the perfect sacrifice. Chapters 11-13 is the challenge to the followers, who were experiencing persecution, as noted in Hebrews 10:32, to follow in line with the great models of faith. We find Hebrews 13:15-16 to be at the near end of this letter.
The next section in your bulletin won’t be directly up on the screen so track with these two verses and our conversation.
Hebrew 13:15-16 “Through Jesus, as I’ve said before, what is about to be said by the author, it must be through Jesus. Not from our own efforts, but with Christ at the center… therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise—the fruit of lips that openly profess his name. How frequently should we be offering God praise? And how are we to profess his name? There’s a saying out there that we should preach the Bible at all times, and when necessary use words. But this is directly contradictory to what the Bible teaches us. We absolutely must use our words to “openly profess his name.” But it’s not only words. And do not forget to do good Doing good is a vital part of justice in our broken world, but again, it must be centered “through Jesus,” otherwise this becomes just another task list of how to earn my recognition by people and salvation by God. and to share with others, I think of sharing, and I think of hospitality, generosity, giving to someone else to meet a need they have, giving our most limited resource- time, even if it stings a little for us. for with such sacrifices God is pleased.” NIV
God recognizes the sacrifice to openly profess his name, that there are people who will hate us simply because of that verbal declaration. He sees the sacrifice of time and effort to do good, to be an extension of honor to the oppressed.
God sees the sacrifice of sharing what we have, the challenge it is to us to change our thinking from “what’s mine is mine” to “what’s mine is yours.” Doing good and sharing with others remind me of the call for social justice and reform, but we cannot separate scripture apart from itself. We must equally, and perhaps even more importantly, include a verbal declaration of who Jesus is alongside our good works.
Our history as Friends
Understanding just 2 of many passages in Scripture that affirm a missional gospel is great. What does our history as evangelical Friends on the topic of missions and outreach look like? We see a blend of all three elements - outreach, missions, and evangelism - equally in play among some key individuals and groups from our history.
In the late 1600s, the Valiant Sixty, a diverse group of men and women from a variety of backgrounds, took the message of Friends, which is the simplicity of the Gospel, throughout England, despite the probability of persecution and even death.
The missional movement was not only abdicated to men. Women took matters into their own hands in the development of mission organizations through prayer, fundraising, and organized local mission work. You may know this group as Friends Women, the very branch of our church that puts on our garage sale every year.
Ruth Esther Smith brought her previous urban mission work and administrative strengths into Guatemala. She used what she had. She led through hospitality, relationship building, and evangelism, especially serving in a variety of roles, from preachers to teachers to Bible school superintendents and so on.
Arthur Chilson went to Kenya and combined industrial work alongside evangelism, hiring people from within the community. It provided more of a “coming alongside” rather than an imperialistic approach to evangelism. Arthur had a single-minded focus on evangelism as the goal of his work, with industrial development as a vehicle for evangelism. Sounds like a missional community to me.
Jack Willcuts followed the lead of the Holy Spirit to serve the Aymara people in Bolivia, bringing both evangelism and social assistance. He says this, “…kingdom ministry happens when God’s will is done on earth, and evangelism, compassion ministry, and social reform are all God’s will for his people.”
Social reform efforts have been integrated into Quaker missiology, especially with an emphasis on education, but not exclusively. Quakers were also a part of the anti-slavery movement and prison reform.
India missionary Everett Cattell reminds us that the call to mission is not an optional career choice but is rooted in an authoritative command to ‘Go.’ Each person has the call to be evangelistic, to be a missionary from their backyards all the way to the ends of the earth. This responsibility doesn’t lie solely on those with a pastoral title. This leans into the core belief of Friends found in
Ephesians 4:11-13, “So Christ gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.”
While holding appropriate space for past forms of outreach, mission, and evangelism, we must keep a broad perspective on how we integrate social justice efforts with the evangelism of the Gospel.
This is known as Kingdom Justice. As Christ-followers, evangelism of the Gospel must be a priority. In a world where people of all faiths or lack of faith step in to do good, honest, social justice work, we must be diligent in following the leading of the Holy Spirit to guide us to the felt needs of our communities and seek to bring both social reform and the Gospel. This is more than simply efforts to “make the world a better place.” Jesus himself tells us that the poor will always be with us. Our efforts must be primarily focused on bringing God glory with our words through social reform efforts.
Vision for Sherwood Community Friends Church Mission Theology
What is it about how we practice our worship to God, our faith, our leadership structure, our mission that is worth being here Sunday after Sunday? These differentiators are what we’ve been talking about since January, when we started with Belonging and then Pursuing. In a couple weeks, we are going to talk about Honoring. Each of these 4 words hold meaning and value for who we are as a church body at Sherwood Friends. Not for our own glory but for the glory of God.
But a vision is only effective if we are all on board. Are we all seeking to go the same direction? Are we believing the best about our brother or our sister as they operate in the ways that God has gifted them and wired them? Are we unified to bring the fullness of the Gospel, sharing Jesus in Sherwood, Oregon?
What does it look like at Sherwood Community Friends Church to be a sharing church on mission, passionate about both doing both outreach and evangelism?
Last week, Bob talked about missional communities. Every person in this room has a hobby or an identity of some kind. How can you take that and turn it into a missional community? Maybe this doesn’t mean that you START the missional community. Maybe you FIND a community in place already and you join it for the purpose of being missional.
We commit to going out from our normal routines, people, and activities and we seek out ways to engage with people who don’t know Jesus. Or who don’t know Jesus in the way that you do.
What can we do about it?
Harry Gamble says this, “Christianity did not begin as a scriptural religion. The faith of the earliest Christians was evoked by and focused on a person, Jesus of Nazarath, and he was apprehended not in written texts but in the preaching about him as the crucified and risen Messiah, and in the charismatic life of the Christian community.”
We can be a people of outreach, mission, and evangelism. We, you and I, can decide, right now, today, that we aren’t going to abdicate the command from Jesus to go and make disciples to someone else or to the church down the street or the mission organization across the world.
I want to be clear that when we receive Jesus and surrender to him, that is by grace only. But if I receive the grace of Jesus, yet do nothing to impact what God has entrusted to me, well then shame on me. The fullness of the Gospel is that Jesus died for me so that I receive his grace to then go out and invite others to know him as well. I share because I don’t want to keep him for myself. Jesus has asked that I go and make disciples. Here am I. Send Me Lord.
When he asks who will go, will you cry out like Isaiah “Here am I send me”?
There is a section at the bottom of your bulletin where it says My Next Step. Let’s all take a moment to write down our next step we are going to take this week.
Open Worship
Penn Jillette, from the famous Vegas act Penn and Teller and a devout atheist, shared a video a number of years ago about a man who gave him a Bible after one of his shows. He was very complimentary of the man and even seemed to admire him. He concluded his video with this statement, “If you believe there’s a heaven and hell, and people could be going to hell, but it’s not worth telling others about this because it would make it socially awkward - how much do you have to hate someone to not share this with them?”
We sang earlier “His love is strong and His grace is free. And the good news is I know that He can do for you what he’s done for me. Let me tell you bout my Jesus. And let my Jesus change your life.”
As you’re listening today, you know you are an active disciple maker, sharing Jesus with others. That’s awesome! Share your stories with us. Let us learn from you.
You might be here today, and you might need to confess to Jesus that you’ve had an internally focused faith. You haven’t been seeking ways to “go and make disciples.”
Our prompts for Open Worship are on the screen are from our yearly meeting queries. The mic is open for anyone who feels led to share something with our congregation today.
Does your inward faith turn outward?
Have you examined your beliefs and prepared yourself to share them, with sensitivity and humility, as the Holy Spirit leads?
We are going to close with “I love to tell the story.” Let this be a song of conviction, a song of remembrance of the fullness of the Gospel, both receiving and pouring out.
