This week we continued our series. We are talking about the call and
responsibility of EVERY believer to spread the good news of the gospel.
The Great Commission in Matthew 28 is essentially
Jesus’ final instruction for His disciples (and us). There are many great
things we have been told to do as the church and many that Jesus displayed
while on earth, but there is one that is the most important of all – to spread
the gospel. All of the other things we are to do will follow the execution of
this first and most important task. His final instructions were not “go ye and
feed the hungry” or “go ye and heal the sick.” Those are great things we should
indeed do, but not the most important thing we should do.
It is like a boss who is going to leave the country
for a prolonged period of time. He leaves his manager in charge and gives him
this one task – make sure you mail this package. When the boss eventually
returns and meets with his manager, he asks how things went in his absence. The
manager raves about how he reorganized the entire filing system to be much more
neat and efficient. He brags about how he streamlined the staff and increased
sales. But the boss has just one question – did you mail the package? The
manager stumbles and fumbles sharing that he was so busy… He thinks he
remembers assigning the task to a “mail packages” team, but he’s not sure if it
got done.
Jesus has left us in charge with all His power and
authority, and we have a message we need to send. Are we doing it? This was not just the thing most important to
Jesus at the end of His earthly ministry. It was His first words to His
disciples as well. Matthew 4:19 says Jesus found Simon and Andrew fishing and
says, “come follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” Did you ever wonder
why Jesus chose fishermen? Ezekiel 47 gives us some insight. In verse 1 of that
chapter, Ezekiel gets a vision of the future (today) where the living water
flows out from the temple and out to the world.
The funny part is that the further the water goes out, the wider and
deeper it gets (the opposite of what we would expect). The church is the temple,
and that living water should be flowing out of our doors and into a thirsty
world, multiplying and growing God’s kingdom.
We should even be like a nozzle, channeling the water in
a specific direction, with power as it leaves us. John 7:37-38 echoes this also. Streams of Living Water should be flowing out
of us. We are also the temple of the
Holy Spirit. That living water is to flow out of every one of us! Psalm
1:3 we see the results of this living water.
Later in Ezekiel 47, in verse 10, he sees fishermen along the river casting
nets to catch the great harvest of fish. And so we see why Jesus chooses
fishermen. The picture in Ezekiel is of a massive number of fish to be caught. We
can often think that there is no one around us who is open to the gospel
message, but that is not the case. Fishermen
are wise about when and where to cast a net.
We still also need to be sensitive to God’s voice when He tells us to “cast
a net” even though the time and place (and person) don’t seem right.
In Matthew 9, Jesus sees all the lost and hurting
and is moved with compassion. He turns to His disciples and says that the
harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. There are far more people open
to the gospel than we realize. Our job is to be led of the Spirit to be used
when we encounter one who is ready. In
Acts 1:8, Jesus says that the power of the Spirit in us will make a witness for
Him. This shows us how we find the ones who are looking. We operate in the
fruit of the Spirit – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness and
self-control. If we exude those things, we will draw the lost and minister to
them.
This is not a hard thing to do. Sometimes it is
just a smile or a kind word to someone who needs it. It is listening to that
voice inside us that tells us to reach out to that mom at the grocery store or
the man in line at the post office. Also, we do not measure our success on how
many people accept Jesus in our presence. Our success is based only on whether
we were obedient to the voice of the Spirit. That person may walk away
appearing unchanged or even annoyed, but you do not know what that kind word or
gesture meant to them as they walked away. Sometimes we are the harvester, and
sometimes we are planting or watering a seed. Just be obedient!
To listen to the entire sermon go to http://ahwatukeechurch.com/ and click on
online media. To learn more about Living
Word Ahwatukee, visit http://ahwatukeechurch.com/.
