Seeing the End

Fulfilling the Great Commission: Seeing the End

 Welcome! Today we begin a new series entitled “Fulfilling the Great Commission”. This series is loosely based on a book called “What Jesus Started” by Steve Addison. I want to start this series with a well-known passage from Matthew 9:

Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness. When He saw the crowds, He had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then He said to His disciples, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into His harvest field.” – Matt. 9:35-38

Many of you have probably read this passage and heard messages on it many times, but I want you to look at it freshly. Who is Jesus with? Who is He talking to? His disciples. I want you to imagine that you are one of these disciples. Maybe you are a fisherman, doing your job on a day that started out like any other day, when Jesus comes to you and your fellow shipmates and asks you to follow Him. Something about Him stirs your heart in a way that you have never experienced before. There is something about Him, something that makes you say in your heart, “Yes! I need to follow Him!” You vaguely sense that He offers life, or meaning, or peace, or love – something that you have always desired but never been able to grasp. Somehow you know that He knows and has these things. Somehow you know that this is the most important choice of your life – to follow Him, as He has invited you to do, or to give Him excuses about things you need to do. And although your friends and family normally say you are a dependable person, someone who doesn’t do rash things, your heart is telling you to forget about everything and quite literally, now, follow Him. You know it is crazy to even think of doing so, but another part of you tells you that you would be crazy not to follow Him. All of this goes on in your head and heart for only a few seconds. You don’t even know where you will be going, or for how long. You don’t know anything. But impelled by something you don’t even begin to understand, you quite literally drop what you are doing and go.

What is it like to go with Jesus? Jesus is traveling from village to village throughout the region. He is proclaiming the good news of God, saying “The time has come. The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!” People are responding. Jesus is also going into the synagogues and teaching there. He teaches with wisdom and authority, in a way that is utterly unlike the way any of the other rabbis teach. He is not concerned with interpretations of interpretations of the law, but with people’s hearts and how to respond to what the Scripture says. And He has authority in other ways. When a person who is compelled/controlled by evil spirits comes before Jesus, Jesus commands the spirits to be silent and to leave. Everywhere people are talking about what Jesus is doing and they are coming to see Him. Jesus is also healing people of their illnesses, even “incurable” diseases. Sometimes Jesus leaves the disciples, often in the night or early morning, where he goes off to a solitary place to pray. When they find Him, He often leads them to a new village, where the whole cycle begins again. 

But Jesus is teaching His disciples, including you, something more. He is teaching them His heart. And Jesus’ expectation was (and is) that you would have this same heart. When He saw the crowds, He had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. The word “harassed” can also be translated “distressed”, “troubled”. The word “helpless” can also be translated as “dispirited”, “downcast” or “thrown down.” It is interesting that sheep, if they fall and land on their backs, are truly helpless because, much like palmetto bugs, they get stuck and can’t get back up. As for these fallen sheep, their legs flail all around, but it doesn’t help them to get up. Other sheep will leave them behind, and left alone, a fallen sheep is completely vulnerable to attack. Other sheep can’t help them up – but a shepherd can. He has great compassion towards his fallen sheep, and Jesus has the same kind of compassion for “fallen” people.

Do you ever get among crowds and look at their faces? I do. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at about 9 am, I am on the library bridge on campus along with a ton of students. When I look at their faces, what do I see? Do I see distressed and troubled faces? Helpless or downcast faces? Not really. On some, on a few, I can see this. More look sleepy. But most look, well, simply intent on getting from point A to point B. To see what Jesus saw requires spiritual insight rather than physical sight. Jesus saw their hearts.

In fact, most people go to great lengths to hide from others what their hearts really are like, what they really feel. They also hide it from themselves, using distractions such as social media or video games or pornography or numbing agents such as drugs and alcohol. I have in my mind a picture of a sheep stuck on its back, and another sheep notices and says, “Hey, you OK, bro?” The affected sheep quickly folds its legs together as if nothing is wrong and says, “Oh, yeah, I’m fine. Just resting a bit. You go on.”

But Jesus sees past all this, and He wants you, His disciple, to see past it too. It is incredibly important that we do so. Otherwise, we will see the crowds as annoyances rather than as Jesus saw them, with compassion. (If you remember, the Gospels show that the disciples frequently made the same mistake.) Unless we see people as Jesus did, we will have no interest in doing what Jesus did, no interest in helping them, caring for them, introducing them to the Master Shepherd. Unless you talk with them, showing and demonstrating love and concern, they will never reveal to you that they are, in fact, stuck, legs up.

Jesus said the harvest is plentiful. Do you, disciple, believe this? I often think this is our greatest impediment to talking to strangers about spiritual things. We often take a quick look at someone and decide that there is no way that they will be open to spiritual things. We look for the “goldilocks” person, just right in every way, because we believe that only such a person is actually open. But Jesus said the harvest is plentiful. He said it again to the disciples after speaking to the Samaritan woman at the well, saying that the fields are white for harvest (that is, that they are ripe, ready for picking).

How many of you are familiar with Kanye West? How about Adam Tyson? Well, Adam Tyson is the pastor of a 300-member predominantly white church in the Los Angeles area. He is a graduate of a very solid Bible seminary and the church services he leads have strong Bible-based teachings. He had a new-member meeting and a lady there told him that she had been a nanny for Kim Kardashian (Kanye’s wife) until she gave birth to her own daughter, after which she stayed at home. But her husband worked for Kanye and continued to do so. The pastor thought this was interesting but didn’t think much more of it. But after several months, the couple was in the pastor’s small group, and the husband asked for prayer because he had been having conversations with Kanye who, he said, was really interested in the Bible. The pastor, who prior to all this, didn’t even know who Kanye was – because that is not the kind of music he listens to – encouraged him to keep on having these conversations with Kanye. These reports continued week after week, and the husband then asked if the pastor would talk to Kanye, because Kanye had some questions he didn’t really know how to answer. The pastor agreed and asked the husband to set it up. Nothing happened for several months, so the pastor assumed that nothing more would come of it. But the husband said Kanye continued to ask him questions, and one of the other small group members said, “Hey, you need to invite Kanye to church!” The whole small group laughed because the idea of superstar Kanye coming to their humble “white” church just seemed ridiculous. But the husband said he would invite him, and next Sunday, Kanye came! He came a bit late, sat in the back, and left a bit early. The pastor didn’t even know he was there, but the members told him. The next week he came again. To quote the pastor, “Then I knew God was at work, because nobody comes back to our church unless they are seriously hungry for the Word.” At work Kanye told the husband that he loved the pastor’s preaching. He didn’t come the third week, but he came the fourth, and this time he hung out at the end. The pastor was shaking hands as people left, and Kanye came up and the pastor said, “Hi, nice to meet you. I’m Adam. What’s your name?” (I love that.) Kanye introduced himself and asked to talk with him. They did talk, and Kanye told him, “Pastor, I got ‘radically saved’ five weeks ago.” They talked further to explore what Kanye meant by this, going over the gospel, and it certainly looked like the real thing. He said he had felt under great conviction for his sin, and then He gave His life to Christ and that Christ had “radically” saved Him. After a few weeks, they met again and they met for 3 hours, talking through John 3:16 and the “Romans road” and other classic gospel verses, and Kanye affirmed that this is exactly what he believes. He was so interested in the verses that he took pictures of the Bible pages with these verses with his phone. You may have heard that Kanye has gone on to produce a Christian music album, and that he has been doing what he calls “Sunday services” which are extended worship times with a huge choir along with a teaching – many of which have been done by Adam.

This news about Kanye is a big deal – it is one of the most trending stories in all of YouTube and on other social media platforms, and Kanye has also been invited to lots of different TV shows. I saw a clip of one in which he is on a major late-night talk show where the host says, somewhat sneeringly, “So, Kanye, are you a Christian musician now?” Kanye replies, with a big smile, “I’m a Christian everything,” to which the audience goes wild and the host looks quite uncomfortable, as if he has, maybe for the first time, lost control of his audience.  In another interview, he was asked how he spends his evenings now, and he said he just plays with his kids, puts them to bed, and then he and his wife go to bed. He said that in bed she watches some kind of TV show and he reads the Bible. “You read your Bible?” the interviewer asked incredulously. Again with a big smile, Kanye replied, “Yes, I read my Bible.”

I share all this to emphasize that we cannot predict exactly who will be “the harvest,” but that the harvest is plentiful. If you know about Kanye’s former life – from his addictions, to his music that glorified the worst parts of humanity, to his constant profanity, to his outbursts (including rushing up on stage on TV when someone received an award that he disagreed with), to his hospitalization for a nervous breakdown a few years ago, to his living an exceedingly lavish lifestyle – you understand that anyone can be “the harvest.” Remember the parable of the prodigal son. The prodigals are ripe for the harvest! As for that new album, here are some lines from one of his recent songs, called “God Is”:

Everything that has breath praise the Lord
Worship Christ with the best of your portions
I know I won’t forget all He’s done
He’s the strength in this race that I run

Every time I look up, I see God’s faithfulness
And it shows just how much He is miraculous
I can’t keep it to myself, I can’t sit here and be still
Everybody I will tell ‘til the whole world is healed

King of Kings, Lord of Lords, all the things He has in store
From the rich to the poor, all are welcome through the Door
You won’t ever be the same when you call on Jesus’ name
Listen to the words I’m sayin’, Jesus saved me, now I’m sane

And I know, I know God is the force that picked me up
I know Christ is the fountain that filled my cup
I know God is alive, yeah,

He has opened up my vision, giving me a revelation

This ain’t about a dead religion

All the captives are forgiven, time to break down all the prisons

Every man, every woman, there is freedom from addiction
Jesus, you have my soul, Sunday Service on a roll

All my idols, let them go, All the demons, let them know

This a mission, not a show, this is my eternal soul
This my kids, this the crib, this my wife, this my life
This my God-given right, thank You Jesus, won the fight

I don’t know about you, but these lines make me excited! I especially like how he, as a brand-new believer, wants to tell everybody about Christ!

Let’s go back to Matthew 9:35-38 and talk about the last part of this verse. Jesus instructs His disciples to pray for more workers because although the harvest is plentiful, the workers are few. But more than that, he wants all His disciples to be the workers.  Do you know the content of the very next verses in Matthew? It is Jesus addressing the twelve, giving them authority, and sending them out into the harvest fields!

The title of today’s message is “Seeing the End.” What is the “end”? Jesus had an incredible vision for how the gospel would spread, and He intended to personally equip the disciples to see this end fulfilled. In what is known as The Great Commission in Matthew 28, the risen Jesus says:

Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” – Matt. 28:18-20

Note that He told the disciples to make disciples – not converts, not believers, but disciples. That is, they were to make more of what they themselves were. Because this was Jesus’ command to the original disciples, it also became the command to all of us, to anyone who claims to be a Christ follower. Being a Christ follower is not just being a believer, or a Christian church-goer – it is to be someone who, empowered by God’s spirit, makes more Christ followers. In so doing, the number of disciples will multiply and multiply and multiply until there are Christ followers among every people group on earth. And the passage ends with the amazing promise that we do not attempt to do this alone, but with God, through Him, who is always with us as we seek to participate in this glorious work.

Understand what a radical shift in perspective the disciples had – just a short time earlier, after the crucifixion but before the resurrection, the disciples had fled. Their dreams and hopes were absolutely destroyed. But the risen Lord entered in and showed them at last who He really was – the son of God and God Himself, victorious over sin, victorious over Satan, and even victorious over death itself. He then gave them this impossible assignment, to transform the entire world with multiplying disciples, but did the disciples balk at this task? No, because the risen Lord was with them and promised to be with them until the task was completed.

Being born in the 20^th or 21^st centuries, I think we fail to appreciate just how miraculous the growth of Christianity really is. Steve Addison in “What Jesus Started” writes this:

The world had never seen anything like it. By AD 300, long before Christianity became a favored religion, Christians made up around 10 percent of the population throughout the Roman empire – five to nine million followers of Jesus. As first century Christianity was advancing west throughout Europe, thriving centers of faith also sprang up in North Africa, in the Middle East, and in central Asia. Much of what we call the Islamic world today was once Christian. There is credible evidence that the apostle Thomas established churches in northwestern and southern India. Courage and faith were all that the apostles and other missionaries needed to spread the gospel along the trade routes of the ancient world.

A missionary movement was something totally new to human history. Outside of the faith of Israel, no one believed in one universal religion or one true God. There were no missionaries and no conversion[s]. In a world over which many gods ruled, new gods didn’t replace old ones; they were just added to them. […] The Christian movement was something new in human history. […]

Jesus continues to lead the way. Every new generation of His disciples sits at the feet of Jesus and learns from His example as founder and living Lord of the movement. […] The mission of Jesus was universal. It knew no bounds. No one was excluded. There were no outsiders. There were no borders. The mission was to the ends of the earth and to the end of history. Jesus’ early followers were convinced that forgiveness of sins was possible for Jews and non-Jews, for the educated and for the barbarians, for men and women, for rich and poor – through faith in Jesus, the Messiah and Lord.

Addison also writes:

Christianity did not thrive in the ancient world because the social, economic, religious, and political conditions were right. There was nothing inevitable about the spread of the gospel. Christianity thrived because all authority was given to the risen Lord who commanded His followers to go into all the world and make disciples. Their mission thrived because Jesus is Lord. He still commands us to follow Him, and He still promises to teach us to fish for people, make disciples, and multiply communities of His followers – everywhere.

What do you think Jesus sees when He looks at our campuses and neighborhoods around us filled with lost people? I think He sees the same things He saw in the gospels. He is filled with compassion for the lost. He sees the fields and sees that the harvest is plentiful. And He sees us, His disciples in this generation and in this location, and He says to us the same thing that He told the disciples in Matthew 28. He still has all the authority in heaven and on earth. And He still says to go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything He has commanded us. And He reminds us that He is with us, even to the end of the age.

Is there potentially a cost for following Christ’s command to go and make disciples? Absolutely. Jesus tells us in fact that in this world we will have trouble, but He also reminds us that He has overcome the world (John 16:33). It is more important to follow Christ than it is to live. In fact, to choose to follow Christ over one’s personal life is to declare that you believe that Christ will raise you from the dead into the better, eternal life that is to come.

It is unlikely that our participating in the Great Commission will threaten our lives, but in much of the world this is a daily reality. Today is the International Day of Prayer for the persecuted church, and I want to show you a video provided by the Voice of the Martyrs for this day. It focuses on Pastor Han Chung-Ryeol, a Chinese pastor of Korean descent who shared the gospel with North Koreans in the border between China and North Korea. North Korea has been listed as the world’s worst persecutor of Christians for 18 consecutive years by the group Open Doors USA.

[Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGqEgxkF7I8&t=306s]

All signs point to the fact that Pastor Han was murdered in China by North Koreans for his role in furthering the Great Commission among North Koreans and Chinese of North Korean descent. At the end of the message I would like us to pray for the continued spread of the gospel throughout the world but especially for those in countries where persecution of Christians is severe.

I have provided to you today two powerful but very different modern examples of what it means to be a disciple and of being open about sharing your faith. One is someone who was living in the most extreme excesses of American wealth and self-centered living. Only time will tell to see if this is someone whose faith has been planted in fertile soil, but I believe all the initial signs are there that this is indeed the case. You might think that, being wealthy, Kanye has nothing to lose, but he stands to lose respect and the ability to play his music to a widespread audience. He stands to become marginalized. And he also faces risks in his marriage – his wife is still, as far as we know, an unbeliever, and is still wanting to live the lifestyle she signed up for when they first became married.

The second example is someone who, seemingly worlds away, shared kindness and love and the gospel while in a country that, although not particularly open to faith, was a place that one would think had basic protections. The church he pastored was a three-self church, a government-sanctioned church, not an illegal house church. And yet all indications are that he was murdered openly by foreigners whose hatred of Christianity was so great that an entire country officially celebrated his death. And there is little evidence that his home country either tried to stop it or meaningfully investigated the murder.

What about us? I think we have less at risk than either of these examples – so my prayer is that we would all say, “Here I am, send me!” and be obedient to the promptings of the Holy Spirit as we continue in this series. My prayer is that we as a church would not be the same at the end of this series as we were at the beginning.

I encourage you to watch the video about the growing church in Iran that we sent out in email this past week – I thank Tim who told us about this. I have watched it and it has many powerful moments. One of the things that impacted me the most I want to pass on. Towards the end of the movie, there is this, relayed by one of the people who interviewed the Iranians:

The most impactful thing that he [an Iranian believer] shared with me was a story about his wife, actually something that his wife said that has really stuck in my head. He talked about, years ago, they had an opportunity to move to the United States and live there, so they did, and after being in the United States for a short period of time, his wife began to plead with him to take her back to Iran, which he felt like was crazy. I mean, who wants to move back to Iran, with all sorts of oppression, where the sharing of your faith could bring the end of your life, or brutal incarceration, or rape, or all sorts of horrible things; who wants to do that? I mean, who wants to move from the United States to Iran? She told him, “There is a Satanic lullaby here. And all the Christians are sleepy, and I’m feeling sleepy.” And that little story disturbed me because this woman was discerning a threat to her faith that was a greater threat than the persecution that happens in Iran. And that threat was spiritual sleepiness. That is a more dangerous situation than persecution. And I had to ask myself, “Is that true? Is that true?”

Are we sleepy? Are you sleepy?

When I think of the letters to the churches in the book of Revelation, I know that the most common comparison of the present Western church is to the church in Laodicea, to which the writer says, “You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked. I counsel you to buy from Me gold refined in the fire, so you can become rich; and white clothes to wear, so you can cover your shameful nakedness; and salve to put on your eyes, so you can see.”

But now I wonder if the better comparison is the church in Sardis, to which the letter writer says:

I know your deeds; you have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead. Wake up! Strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have found your deeds unfinished in the sight of my God. Remember, therefore, what you have received and heard; hold it fast, and repent. But if you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what time I will come to you. – Rev. 3:1b-3

Although Christianity in Europe is growing among the Moslem populations, by and large, Christianity in Europe is a mere shadow of what it was at the time of the Reformation and even just 100 years ago. I fear that America is heading in the same direction. Are we asleep? If so, we need to wake up! Are our deeds unfinished? Absolutely. America is filled with people who need the gospel, with people who need the opportunity to turn to Jesus and become disciples of Christ.

Do you “see the end?” Do you see that God wants to use every believer to pass on their faith to others, to be a part of this multiplication process that will result in the gospel being shared throughout the entire world? Not everyone will accept the free gift of eternal life paid for by Jesus’ death on the cross, but everyone should be presented with the gift, through our words and through our showing them the love of Christ.

Are you ready to wake up? Are you ready to join in on the adventure of being a disciple that makes disciples? Pray with me.