This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

Hi, this is Pastor Tom and I want to welcome you to our 12th week of our look to
the book of Matthew. That means we're in Matthew chapter 10 this week. We took a
couple of weeks on some of the chapters.

And Matthew chapter 10, along with Luke chapter 10, which have many parallel
verses to these, these are deeply meaningful passages of scripture for how we
reach out to the world around us. As we see in this chapter, we're going to see
Jesus giving instructions to the disciples for how to go out on mission, how to
make a difference with their lives. Now he obviously knows that even thousands
of years later, we're going to be reading these same instructions.

So these instructions weren't just for the first 12 or the first 70 who went
out. These are our marching orders as well. Now, as we walk through this this
week, you're going to get in a sense, a seminary level education on missions.

How do you do missions in the world? How do you make a difference? But you're
also going to get the personal word of Jesus on your mission, what he wants to
do in your life, how he wants to work through your life.

He tells us how to be the most effective. He tells us what to do and he tells us
what not to do. These verses that we're going to look at, they could be looked
at and they can be looked at through the lens of specific steps to take when we
go on mission.

First you pray, then you select the right workers, then you send them out, then
you look for a receptive person. That's all in there. They can also be looked at
through a different lens.

They also give us our values for missions, for being an evangelist. We value
prayer, we value teamwork and on and on. But in this study this week, I'd like
to look at these words of Jesus through a third lens.

That of the mission principles that we see in these words of Jesus. One of the
reasons that we have frustration and failure in our personal and organizational
even mission efforts is that we follow our own principles instead of these
principles of Jesus. When you understand, when you implement these mission
principles of Jesus, it's the key to best getting out the message to the most
people the message of Christ's love.

So let's jump right into it. Principle number one that Jesus teaches us is this.
You specifically call and you specifically send people on mission.

Listen to verses 1 to 5. He called his twelve disciples to him and he gave them
authority to drive out evil spirits and to heal every disease and sickness.
These are the names of the twelve apostles.

First Simon who was called Peter and his brother Andrew, James son of Zebedee
and his brother John, Philip and Bartholomew, Thomas and Matthew the tax
collector, James son of Alphaeus and Thaddeus, Simon the Zealot and Judas
Iscariot who betrayed him. These twelve Jesus sent out with the following
instructions. Now we'll wait a minute for the instructions.

But let's begin with this first direction that Jesus gives us about how to do
mission in the world. You specifically call and specifically send people out on
mission. We think that God's going to do the calling and the sending and in one
sense of course he does.

God initiates the call and the send yet he almost always communicates that call
and that sending through a local body of believers, through the body of Christ
in the world today. The New Testament example of this is the church of Antioch
which saw the need for Paul and Barnabas to go out to the Gentile world and so
they called them together and they sent them out together as a church. Because
the local church is the body of Christ in the world, this is where the call and
the sending most come into our lives today.

Sometimes through an individual church, other times through a group of churches
working together. The wonderful thing about this is then we see the support, we
see the prayers of the family of believers as we go out to make a difference in
the world. Now let me just say to you that unless this call to be sent is made
clear through a local body of believers to an individual believer, people will
not go.

One of the keys to going out on mission, whether it's in my neighborhood or in
another country, is a leader who will stand up and say, "God wants you to go and
this is where he wants you to go. " Now remember, again, being sent is not
necessarily meaning going to another country. God is sending you every day in
the relationships that we have all around us.

Being on mission is a lifestyle, not some trip. But you have to be called, you
have to be sent. Now for me, this means I must listen to the prompting of God's
Spirit when he's sending me to share the good news with someone.

But personally, it also means that I have to listen to the leadership of others
who are expressing the call on the sending. Maybe someone in my small group,
maybe a pastor in the church. Just be aware of the fact that you will often feel
resistant at first when you hear the call.

You can check the stories of most of those who were called in the Bible just to
confirm this. You often feel resistance at first. This is an area of our lives,
going out, telling other people the good news where most of us need the
leadership and encouragement of others to help us break through the natural
resistance that we have, to help us get outside of ourselves, what's going on in
our lives, to share the good news of Christ.

So the question for you right now is what person is God calling you to share the
good news with? What place is God calling you to go, whether it's near or far?
What's God doing in your life right now?

It starts with being called, with being sent. Second principle we learned from
Jesus about going out and making a difference in the world is you have to give
authority with responsibility. When Jesus sent his followers out, he gave them
the authority to do the job that he had sent them to do.

He gave them the authority to heal, to cast out demons. He trusted them, even
though they had a lot to learn, still made a lot of mistakes. He trusted them
with the authority to do what he called them to do.

Now it's good to organize support and training for those who are doing missions
or going out on a mission. We sometimes do that through a church or we do that
through a mission organization. But when the organization becomes too complex,
it can easily become a barrier to the very mission that it's trying to
accomplish.

Those involved in doing the ministry, they can get frozen in waiting for
permission to act because we trust the organization somewhere else to make the
decision instead of trusting those who are doing the ministry. Of course, there
are times when you need the wisdom of a bigger group of people getting together,
deciding where to go. But the authorization to do the day-to-day ministry, it
has to stay as close to those who are doing the actual ministry as possible.

One of the great works of ministry is to keep the organization of ministry as
simple as possible with authority to do the ministry given as freely as
possible. Roland Allen writes, "Elaborate organization exercises a strange
fascination over the minds of men. It tends to become an end in itself.

" The problem with organization is sometimes it begins to exist for the
organization. Now, this give authority with responsibility on an individual
level. It's important to remember that you, every person that God has called,
God has sent, he has authorized every one of us to share the good news of Jesus.

This call isn't just for pastors or missionaries. It's for every one of us. And
so the power, the strength to share the good news is given to every one of us as
well.

Jesus gives us the power to do what he's authorized us to do. You are an
authorized representative of Jesus Christ. Now, as we walk through these
principles that Jesus has given us here in Matthew chapter 10, the third
principle has more to say to us about the sending, where he's sending us to.

The third principle is you have to focus your target to be effective. You have
to focus your target for effective evangelism. In verse 5 and 6, Jesus said,
"These 12 Jesus sent out with the following instructions.

Do not go among the Gentiles or enter any town of the Samaritans. Go rather to
the lost sheep of Israel. " Jesus' strategy, his focus during his public
ministry was to reach out to the lost sheep of Israel.

Now, there was a theological reason for this. It wasn't yet the right time for
the message to be taken to the Gentiles. God had a timing in this.

He knew what he was doing. So he sent Jesus first to the people of Israel, to
the Jewish nation, and then the message would go out from there. Whether they
accepted or rejected would be their choice, but then others would get to hear.

As they go out to share the message, there's also a practical, a strategic
reason. You can't reach everyone, so you have to choose your focus. You have to
choose who you're going to talk to.

And Jesus said, "Just as my focus is right now on the lost sheep of Israel,
that's who I want you to talk to. " Now, if you ask the average church member,
"Who are we trying to reach as a church? " the obvious answer is everyone.

But when you look at this more deeply, the truth is no one can reach everyone.
First, there are too many people to be reached. There's too many places to go
for any one church or mission organization to reach them all.

And beyond that practical consideration, there's also a demographic reality.
Some groups are better at reaching some areas, some people, than others. So you
need to know who your target is, the target that you're reaching out to, so you
can better develop methods to reach after that group of people.

You reach farmers in a different way than you would reach doctors. You reach
young people in a different way than you would reach old people. There just
would be, for instance, if you were doing a worship service for young people or
older people, do you think you'd use different styles of music?

Of course you would. So you have to focus. Now, we focus not to be exclusive.

We want to reach everyone, but to be effective. Of course, our heart is to reach
out to everyone. But the reality is you can't be everywhere at once, so you have
to focus.

And one of the reasons we're not effective is we don't focus on what God wants
us to do next. The reality is there are some people that you can best reach out
to, better than anyone else. And those are the people that we have to focus on
as a church and that you have to focus on as an individual.

As individuals, our focus often starts with our own family, with our own
friends, with those who are closest to us. It is often, honestly, the most
difficult to reach out to those who are closest to us because we feel their
rejection or sometimes their ridicule. What stings the most if they, because we
share the gospel with them, reject us or ridicule us.

But the truth is these are also the people who've seen firsthand the changes
that Jesus is making in your life. And so as we have an opportunity to reach out
to them, we have an opportunity that no one else will really have because
they've seen what Jesus is doing in your life. God often works in families,
working through one person to lead many in that family to Jesus.

So when it comes to who you are and what God has done in your life, here's some
things to remember, just to personalize what we've talked about today. As we
walk through this week, we're going to talk about this broadly but also
personally. And I hope you get benefit from both.

On the broad side, what can we do as a church? How can we work as a small group
to effectively reach out for Christ? On the personal side, what does God want me
to do?

But I want to end with the personal each day. And personally, remember these
things. You are called.

You are sent. You are authorized. And you must focus.

What does God want me to do next? Let's ask for his wisdom in that right now.
Jesus, we pray.

We know you've called us. We know you've sent us. But we're not always sure
where.

We get caught up in our lives and in what we're doing, and we're not sure the
best place to be sharing the good news. So help us to see where. Who in our
family, what friend, what place do you want to send us to?

Some place that's close to us, maybe some place that's far away. Lord, where are
you sending us? Where do you want us to focus right now?

Who do you want us to share with next? Open our eyes to see what you're doing,
because you have a message to share through us that will change the world. We
pray this, Jesus, in your name.

Amen. Tomorrow, we're going to talk together about how we connect what we say
and what we do.