Principles of Mission
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2012 · 18 November 2012
Let us continue to examine Matthew 10 to learn what the Spirit of God has for us here when our Lord sends out His disciples for the first time. We now, 20 centuries later, have also been sent to reach our world and we can learn much from what He said to them.
Matthew 10:5-7, “These twelve Jesus sent out and commanded them, saying: “Do not go into the way of the Gentiles, and do not enter a city of the Samaritans. 6 But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. 7 And as you go, preach, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
Matthew's message is clearly that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah. In the first nine chapters of his gospel, Matthew verifies that Jesus is God. He has shown this by Christ's genealogy, His birth, the devotion He received from eastern kings, His preaching, His teaching, His miracles, His power and His words.
One of the things that happened from all of these testimonies of Christ was that His fame began to spread everywhere. So while His fame spread abroad among the people, the religious leaders were convinced He was Satanic. Yet Matthew 9:35 says, "Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people."
One day, as Jesus stood on the edge of a hill and surveyed the crowd beneath Him, he was moved with compassion. Matthew 9:36, "But when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion on them, because they were faint." Literally, they were beaten and bruised by their own leaders, who had imposed on them a false, legalistic system of religion that denied the truth of God.
And Jesus said to His disciples in Matthew 9:38, "The harvest truly is plenteous, but the laborers are few." What He means by the 'harvest' is the judgment of God. He had to enlist others to assist Him, so He asked the disciples to pray for more workers. And now Jesus calls His twelve disciples to Himself and gave them power to minister. Matthew 10:5 says, "These twelve Jesus sent out."
Now it is time to send them out in a training mission format, for only few short weeks. He sent them out to get a taste of what it would be like, and what they will inevitably experience as a way of life. So this is their first short-term missionary assignment - they were the first ones Jesus sent forth.
What motivated Jesus as well as Paul is the inevitability of judgment. Paul said in II Corinthians 5:11, "Knowing, therefore, the terror of the Lord, we persuade men." Jesus saw the harvest and called for laborers to go and warn men of that inevitable harvest.
The instruction that Jesus gives the disciples is for a short-term mission. But as we go through the chapter, He releases to them more information that will help them for the life of their ministry. Some of it is defined and some of it is very broad. So here are principles meant for them on their first short-term mission, and yet they can apply to all of us now who go in the name of Jesus Christ to reach people.
Matthew 10 is divided into three parts. The first section is in verse 5 - 15 and ends with, "Assuredly, I say to you." That section talks about the task of the one sent. The second section is from verse 16 - 23 and ends, "Assuredly, I say to you," and it talks about the reaction to the one sent. The third section goes to verse 42 and ends, "Assuredly, I say to you," and it talks about the cost to the one who is sent.
We will look at the task this evening and for next Lord's Day. In verses 5-15, you have effective principles for mission work. If you are send out to do the Lord's work and you represent Him, it is essential that you understand these principles. Unfortunately one of the tragedies of contemporary Christianity is that the people who say they represent Jesus Christ really don't represent Him at all.
So what are the principles for an effective mission? Number one, a commission from God. Matthew 10:5 says, "These twelve Jesus sent out and commanded them." The apostles didn't volunteer to go (although they were willing to go - Christ did not act against their wills), they were commissioned, much like Jeremiah, of whom the Lord said in chapter 1:5, "Before you were born I sanctified you; I ordained you a prophet to the nations.”
Mark 6:7 is a comparative passage that tells us Jesus sent them two by two. They would strengthen each other in times of temptation; and they would encourage each other in times of persecution. And they could relieve each other in the matter of preaching and healing. And it was well known that the testimony of anyone was to be confirmed by two or three witnesses.
It probably only lasted a few weeks, but the apostles were still the ambassadors of Christ, officially sent. They were in the same category as Paul, who said in II Corinthians 3:4, “And we have such trust through Christ toward God.” That was such a serious matter that Paul said in I Corinthians 9:16, "Woe to me if I preach not the gospel," in other words, "Curse me if I don't preach."
In their case, their commissioning was direct. They didn't pray for the Lord to show them signs. With us, our calling is a little more indirect. People, going into ministry will often ask, "How do I know if I am called to the ministry?" Basically, there are three criteria. Number one is a strong desire. If you delight in the Lord, He will give you the desire of your heart; God has planted in my heart that desire.
Secondly is the confirmation of the church. That is what Paul was saying when he said to Timothy in 1 Timothy 4:14, "Do not neglect the gift that is in you, which was given to you by prophecy with the laying on of the hands of the elders," confirmation of those around you in the church.
Finally, the ministry is made possible by circumstances. In I Corinthians 16:9, Paul says he is in Corinth because, "A great door, and effectual, is opened to me." So you have to have desire, confirmation and an opportunity. And we are learning now through Experiencing God that we personally need to change in order to work for Him. And if you go through all of those things and your heart is set, then that is a call of God.
So you are commissioned by the Lord Jesus Himself, and that you have no choice but to respond because you are a soldier and He is the commander; because you are the one who is to live the life and He is the one who sets the moral standards; because you can only carry out the task and He is the one who determines how it is to function.
What God wants in a ministry is not your creativity and innovation; what He wants is your obedience. The preacher or the evangelist is not a chef; he's a waiter. God doesn't want you to make the meal; He just wants you to deliver it to the table without messing it up, without adding or taking away something. That's all. We are servants under divine commission. We all are bound to obey Christ's call to go and represent Him in this world.
To be effective you have to have a clear objective. Look at verse 5 again. Jesus commanded them saying, "Do not go into the way of the Gentiles, and do not enter a city of the Samaritans.” Why, is the kingdom limited?" In verse 6 He says, "But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." This is not a permanent command. This is a narrow statement, limited to this time and place and this for that time was the plan of God.
Unfortunately self-styled messiahs often want to conquer the world and win it now without God’s input. Consequently their perception of ministry is so vast that it winds up being like a big birdbath - a mile long and only an inch deep. The focus that our Lord gives the disciples here is a narrow ministry.
Does God not care for Gentiles? Of course He does! Listen to what Jesus says in Matthew 8:11-12. He says, "And I say to you that many will come from east and west (of Palestine), and sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. 12 But the sons of the kingdom (the Jewish people) will be cast out into outer darkness. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
We're going to see in chapter 13 how Jesus begins to turn away from Israel and begins to talk about the church, which Paul calls, "The fullness of the Gentiles." The Lord always had the Gentiles in His plan. "Does He have hate the Samaritans?" No, the Samaritans were OK, but the Jews hated them. Jesus loves all people..
The first person recorded in Scripture to whom Jesus announced He was the Messiah was a Samaritan woman living in the city of Sychar. She had many husbands, and at the time was living with a man who wasn't her husband; she was not a nice lady. Yet it was to her that Jesus revealed that He was the Messiah. When Jesus taught how we should love our neighbor, He used a Samaritan as an illustration.
You might say, "If God loves Gentiles and Samaritans, then why does He tell them not to go to them?” There are three reasons He told them not to go there. Number one, the Jews were God's chosen people and they were the ones to whom were given the promises and the law. So in the line of God's plan, they were to be offered the Kingdom first. That's all.
John 4:22 says, "Salvation is of the Jews." That doesn't mean salvation was only for them, it means it comes through them; they were to be the emissaries, the witnesses; Jerusalem was to be the launching point for evangelism, the place where the nations came to see the Messiah. They were to be His witness people, so He said, "Go there first," much like Paul on His missionary journeys.
The second one, the disciples hardly were equipped to reach their own people, to say nothing of trying to reach the Gentiles and Samaritans, whose culture they did not understand that well, whose biases and prejudices they could not have overcome easily. They were not ready for that.
Thirdly, the reason they were sent only to the Jews was because of that special point of concentration. You can't be going madly in all directions. You have to be specific. The possibilities were varied, so Jesus gave the disciples a specific target. “Just do this: go to Galilee and the Jews, who are the lost sheep of the house of Israel."
Do you realize that the Lord Himself never went to the Gentiles? His ministry was almost exclusively to the Jews. In Matthew 15:24, He says, “I was not sent except to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” They were His focus. The Gentile world would come after that. Jesus had a tremendous clarity of objective.
One of the things that frustrate people in ministry is that they don't have a clear objective. Many of them are doing a little of everything. Know your gifts, what God has equipped you to do; find where God is working, see the opportunities and join His ministry and run in it.
You say, "What about this? What about that?" and you can get all concerned. The Lord will take care of it; He has got many other people. I don't have to do it all. If I just do one thing right, just one thing He gave me to do, I trust that He will take care of all the rest that needs to be done.
The third principle is as far as we'll go this evening. Effective mission work involves not only a central objective, but a clear message. Unfortunately the message of Christianity today is not clear. Listen to what Jesus says in Matthew 10:7, “As you go, as you preach, say, 'The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.'" So if you want to say something, make sure you talk about God's projects, not man's projects.
Preach the Kingdom, the rule and reign of God, that heaven has come to earth. The Kingdom of Heaven is seen three ways: in conversion, when men enter the Kingdom; in sanctification, when we live out the Kingdom (Romans 14:17 tells us that the Kingdom is not eating and drinking, but righteousness, peace, joy in the Holy Spirit); and in glorification when the Kingdom comes to earth in its millennial form. Until that time, we preach the Kingdom.
It can get very confusing for people when they listen to preachers preach all kinds of stuff! The normal unbeliever who turns on the television finds such a disparity that it's virtually impossible for him to know what the real message is.
Satan is very clever. The best way to obstruct the Gospel is to make sure no one knows what it really is. The message that we have to bring is that the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand; that it is available to every person and that it is the rule and reign of God in their lives here, now and forever.
I will not get pulled into politics, although I have some strong feelings about things. I just do not like to be distracted; I say 'no' to that stuff all the time because my focus cannot change from the Kingdom. I wish that every time a Christians opens his mouth, something about the Kingdom comes out. Wouldn't that be good?
Let's talk about God's rule and His Kingdom. I just love that Jesus says to them, "Just say that the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand." Now what were they going to do? Just go around saying that over and over again? Of course not, He was implying to fill it up with all the content that term deserves, and we've been through that term many times in the previous ten chapters, so you know what's there.
There is a sense of urgency in that statement. We know that it wasn't long after this that the Lord turned away from Israel because they didn't accept the message offered to them. There is an urgency in this world as well; we don't know how long we have before the Lord comes back, so we need to be proclaiming the Kingdom with urgency. Effective missionaries have a divine commission, central objective and a clear message.
Do you know what is interesting? The next point that we will discuss is actually the best point of all, but we will cover that next week. I would like to ask you how spiritual you really are, but I am going to wait till next week. I'm just going to pray that you will come back next week because it really is the best point of all. Let's pray together.