On Mission
Marc Jolicoeur · Tidal Church Moncton · July 24, 2022 · Recharge series
Marc Jolicoeur looks at Matthew 28:16-20 and the Greek word behind "go," showing that the Great Commission means both being sent and simply going through everyday life. Every follower of Jesus is on mission, and He goes with us.
More from Marc Jolicoeur · The Recharge series
Topics: Mission & Outreach, Discipleship
Transcript
[0:01] That is really, really good news. I got you guys clapped at the appropriate time, actually, during that video. So hope everybody online also heard that there was this moment where we realized that all of a sudden God did something that this church or this organization didn't plan and that's, that was what I was hoping people were gonna take away from the story this morning, is that God is moving and if we, if you if we were hoping that only this organization was going to be able to solve it. Oh, we're in trouble. And so what we need is all hands on deck. So that's a really powerful story, and I'm really glad that Yuri was able to share it with us. Now, today's main scripture, and this is going to be a sermonette. It's like a sermon's little brother. So it's gonna be short, but today's main scripture is going to be from Matthew chapter 28, verses 16 to 20. So maybe you want to get that cued up. However, right before we read that, this'll give you a moment. I believe, if everything goes well, we're going to have just a brief message from our friends across the way over in Kids World from the Life Center. Is that true?
[1:02] Are you guys on there? Is this working? Testing, testing, is this thing on? CE Okay, so if you didn't understand what they said, they said hi. So can we do it, can we do a solid, and maybe let's even stand to our feet for just one second so we can get some our lungs filled, and let's let them hear us back, and let's just say a quick That's right.
[1:50] They didn't see that, but maybe they heard it. I say, hey, Stacy did for just one second. Here is a bit of a change of atmosphere. We're gonna read through this text, but really briefly before we get to this text, I want to say something to many of you. This video that we just saw makes me very, very happy, and it makes me very happy for a lot of reasons, but not least of which is because I think that for some of you, that video, the hundreds of kids that are gathered over here in Life Center, represents not merely joy, but it also represents sacrifice. I think for some of you, if, because you're human, you would have this natural tendency inside you to want to gather with people who share your same culture, who share your same, frankly, your same language, people who look and sound like you. It's completely normal to want that, and yet not only for yourselves but also for the sake of your children, you have laid aside some of your preferences and some of your rights so that not only you but also your kids can be raised in this multigenerational, multiethnic culture.
[2:57] And listen, you watch that's good. We can celebrate that. I'm glad for it. Yeah, it's good. And we walk a bit of a tightrope, don't we? Because we want our kids to understand and appreciate our own cultures, in some respects their own cultures. We want that, right? Yet we want it to be understood that all of those cultures, even, you know, the so-called majority culture, all of those cultures are subservient. They play second fiddle, to use an Englishism, to the Kingdom culture that Christ Himself instituted and the Holy Spirit is building in our midst. And so, as a leader in this church and as father of two little people who happen to be over there learning about Christ alongside people from at least a dozen, at least a dozen countries this morning, from the bottom of my heart, I want to say thank you. And I want to say, I know I speak too fast, and I am working on it. Okay, Matthew.
[3:56] Matthew chapter 28, and then I'll let you sit down, I promise. But Matthew 28:16-20. This is from the NIV. The 11 disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. And when they saw Him, they worshiped Him, but some doubted. And then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in Heaven and Earth has been given to Me. Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations." Say, 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, teaching them to obey everything that I've commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age." You may be seated.
[4:42] Now, these last two verses, verses 19 and 20, they're often referred to in English as the Great Commission. Now, for roughly the last four years of our church's life, we have closed our service with what we kind of call our mission statement. You've maybe heard it: God's love in us to the world. And maybe you've heard us say that this is sort of an amalgam of two different things. So the Great Commandment, which is love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength, and the Great Commission, which I just read. Now, for some of you, this is news. That's okay. Welcome. I'm glad you're here, after the first or the 13th time, whatever. We're really glad you're here. Some of you maybe grew up in the church. Some of you are maybe as old school as I am. And when you hear the words Great Commission, maybe you're even going King James on me, because honestly, when I hear Great Commission, I hear, "Go ye therefore, go," you know, I suddenly turn into like a Shakespearean actor, whatever. I hear the words Great Commission, and that's a bit of an inside joke. I'm sorry, but that's kind of what I'm used to. However, here's the truth.
[5:45] And this is the truth of the changing reality: many of you read the Bible in the language that is not English. And so I actually have no idea how your version of the Bible renders the Greek original. I will say that I've surveyed a lot of English translations, and the overwhelming majority of them, whether they're newer ones or older ones, they all do something similar to what we've already heard this morning, which is, go. The Greek word that we are looking at here, originally, and I might butcher it, I'm sorry, is poreuthentes, poreu- thentes. And some of you are experts in Greek. I am not, and so dangerous territory. But if you see here this word, it shows up a number of times elsewhere in the scriptures, actually. Without getting into the weeds here, I'm not going to. The word is translated elsewhere sometimes as go.
[6:36] Sometimes it's translated as went. And sometimes it's translated as having went, and that last one is because the word is actually a participle. Can you say that? That's fun, participle. Oh, so a verb is like, you know, walk. So walk, and a participle is walking. So that's the -ing part of it, right? So talk is like a verb, and then talking is a participle. Or if you have what we have here, a past participle. So in other words, like, having walked or having talked or having bored people to death. Now, okay, can we stick with me? There's a reason for this, I promise. And the reason that we're talking about grammar is because it is perfectly appropriate to translate the word poreuthentes as go, but if we don't also kind of understand it as going, that I believe we are missing, or could be missing, part of an aspect of the command, because sometimes, church, you go.
[7:42] And sometimes you're going. Sometimes you go. And sometimes you're going. And that might not make sense yet, but stick with me, and I believe that it will. Now, it seems wise to me in a service like this to kind of highlight some of the traditional ways that our church partners in missions. But I want to rattle through this. I know I said I was gonna try to speak more slowly, but just right now I'm gonna kind of blow through. Okay, so over the last year we've invested over $300,000 into missions by partnering with local, regional, and global missions organizations. We directly support missionaries in Haiti, South Africa, and Burkina Faso, and members of our church have stepped up and stepped out in faith, personally intervene in disaster relief in various countries through World Hope International, and this, my friends, is just a sampling of the quote unquote official ways that this body has taken seriously the call to global mission. There are no doubt hundreds of you who support missionaries and missions agencies in your own way. And in the days ahead, this church is hoping to bolster our relationship with some overseas communities, not by only sending money, but by sending people.
[8:50] We always have been, and we plan to remain, a church that is very serious about global missions, about fulfilling this particular understanding of the Great Commission. And as Pastor Joel said just from this very platform last Sunday, we are a sending church. If you'd like to find out a little bit more information about missions or maybe even keep track with us, things develop, all of it is available online, at least a lot of it, at MW Church slash missions. Now, one last little understanding of global missions before we move on, and this is where I'm going to have to beg you to pardon my ignorance. Would have been about three or four years ago. I remember clearly standing out in the atrium here, just outside the walls of this sanctuary, and I ran into a man who was an Arabic speaker from Turkey.
[9:36] And after a few minutes of a conversation, you know, kind of getting back and forth and trying to refine terms, it became clear to me that this man did not come to Canada primarily as a refugee. He didn't even come here primarily as an immigrant, but in his own understanding, he had come here as a missionary. And I will be honest, in that moment I became surprised. I was surprised because I had grown up thinking that wasn't really how this worked. I was raised to think that we would send people over there, and that's how this would work. Now, I'm not here to do an infomercial for the Wesleyan Church. Some of you don't even know that you're in a Wesleyan Church. Welcome. This is a denomination called the Wesleyan Church, but we're glad to have you here whether you know about this denomination or not. I will say, I'm not on the take here. I'm not getting any money for this, I promise, but there is going to be coming up here in just the beginning of August a membership class. And so I would actually recommend, if you are not currently a member of this church but you consider this to be your home, there's some things coming up in the next few months that you may want to have a say in. And so heading over to MW Church slash membership and finding out how you can become an active and engaged member of this congregation might not be an unwise thing to do.
[10:56] In that process, you'll find out a little bit more about this denomination. That was a little bit of a rabbit trail. Let me get back on point. The point is that this denomination has kind of come alive over the last few years to the growing reality that we no longer live, and maybe never even did, frankly, in a world where so-called developed nations send help over to developing nations as though we have it all figured out, but rather we are a part of the way that God is building His kingdom by sending all people from all nations to all nations, and whoever is most equipped to lead and to build at any point in time is empowered by the Holy Spirit to do that. The Wesleyan Church actually has a bit of a slogan for this, and they call it "from everywhere to everywhere," from everywhere to everywhere. And I think that that's a really helpful thing to think about this morning. It not only is a vision that our church can get behind, but I think it's some respect. It's also a description of where we've been the last five years or so. So back to the Great and back to Matthew 28. Sometimes you go, and sometimes you're going. I just spent a few minutes unpacking the more traditional understanding of missions within a church's context, you know, these are women and men who feel a particular call to a particular place and for a particular time, and then they go to that place, they relocate, whether it's permanently or temporarily.
[12:19] These are go people. Now, the version of the Great Commission that we read, as I mentioned, is from the Gospel according to Matthew. But if you're looking for examples of how this commission played itself out, the prototypical place you're going to want to look is the book of Acts, and inside there we're going to see a whole bunch of go people, not least of which the man, the myth, the legend, the Apostle Paul. And so we'll take a look at just two examples really quick. Okay. So this is from Acts chapter It says, "In the church at Antioch there were prophets and teachers: Barnabas, Simeon called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen, who had brought up with Herod the tetrarch." Which sounds he must have been hoity-toity. "And Saul." And "while they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, 'Set apart for Me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I've called them.' So after they fasted and prayed, they placed their hands on them and sent them off." I would submit that that's a fairly textbook example of a faith community sending someone out to go. But we also read just a few chapters later in Acts chapter 16: "During the night Paul had a vision of a man of Macedonia standing and begging him, 'Come over to Macedonia and help us.' And after Paul had seen the vision, we got ready at once to leave for Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them."
[13:45] See, Paul's not just a Go guy. He is a Go Go guy. And I'm grateful for the fact that he was willing to answer that call, because in some respects we have not just the church but also a lot of the New Testament because of it. So Paul exemplifies for us this sort of sent aspect of go, but also in the book of Acts, we see not just sent, but we also see scattered, a few chapters earlier from the ones we read, in Acts chapter "On that day a great persecution broke out." And that day they were talking about is the day that Saint Stephen, who was the first martyr recorded in the New Testament after Jesus. That is, first person, first Christian follower to have died for his faith, on that day a great persecution broke out against the church in Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria. Those who had been scattered preached the word wherever they went.
[14:46] Now, if you take the time to read through the book of Acts, and if you haven't, I'd suggest that you do, and observe the places where people are specifically called or made to go, I think you're going to notice a whole bunch of them. You're also, however, if you keep your eyes open, gonna notice a whole bunch of people who are not currently going to a certain place. They don't seem to have a destination in mind. They just happen to be living for Christ, kind of wherever they are. And I think you would have to work really hard to read into the text somehow that's a bad thing. In fact, I don't find too many places where it says that what they're doing in those moments is wrong. I'm not going to rattle off a bunch of examples, but let's take a look at one that I bet you a lot of you will know: Acts chapter 2, verse 1.
[15:34] "When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place." Now, you could say, you know, I'm kind of cherry-picking a verse, low-hanging fruit. We know what happens next, right? Like, it actually this happens before the great scattering. Well, let's look again at Acts chapter 13, the verses that we looked at just a few moments ago. "Now, when the church at Antioch, there were prophets and teachers." Barnabas, Simeon, Lucius, Manaen, and Saul. "While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, 'Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.'" So after they fasted and prayed, they placed their hands and sent Barnabas and Saul bracket off. So, what about Simeon? What about Lucius?
[16:21] What about Manaen? What about the unnamed people in their story? What about the low profile people who are members of that church? What's their story? How were they called to fulfill the Great Commission? The point is the text doesn't actually tell us. Now, I'm not saying that the presence of these texts or our understanding of them should somehow overshadow these other texts or other understanding. What I'm saying is that actually, as we read through the way that the Great Commission unfolded itself, you'll actually see both things happening at the same time. You see, the Great Commission is not just a command that was given to 11 people on a mountainside, but it was a command that was given to 11 people on a mountainside, and yet at the same time it was also a lasting, enduring command that was given from Christ to His body here on earth, which is, of course, church. And as a body, as a living, breathing, growing, and changing body, it will manifest itself in different times and in different seasons, through different people, for different purposes in some respects, and yet ultimately, at the end, all of those differences are wrapped up and are serving one goal, namely the building of His kingdom here on earth. See, that's the understanding. Sometimes you go, sometimes you're going. Different churches and different people, they emphasize one of those kind of aspects or callings over the other, and maybe for a time and for a place that's okay. But ultimately, in the end, the church, those who are called to follow after Jesus, we have to live our lives and even our corporate life the way that Jesus Himself did.
[18:17] You know, the Gospels give us all kinds of little snapshots and glimpses into the life of Christ. And even though, we wish we had a whole lot more, if you read through them, I think it's really easy to see that Jesus was a kind of a go person, right? I mean, not only did He have one goal in mind, namely the cross, and, you know, what came on the other side of that, but there's all these different instances as you're reading through where He's obviously going from one place to another place, like, purposefully. He was a man on a mission. And yet He didn't wait until He got to those places to be who He was. He was who He was every step of the way. I mean, we don't have an opportunity to go through too many examples here, but if we take a look at just one, so Matthew chapter 14, He had just heard the news that John the Baptist, his friend, his ministry partner, and his cousin even, had lost his life, and you can see here that He's deeply impacted by this.
[19:20] When Jesus heard what had happened, He withdrew by boat privately to a solitary place. He's going to recoup, to regroup, to grieve. He's going from here to there. But hearing of this, the crowds followed Him on foot from the towns. And when Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, He had compassion on them and healed their sick. Why? Because Jesus was who Jesus was everywhere that Jesus went. See, sometimes you go, and sometimes you're going, and church, that is how we need to live together, both the go and the going, both the mission and the day-to-day life. I hope, maybe, that you're starting to get a sense of why I took just a few moments to take a look at grammar together. See, church, in this community and in this season, I believe that we need to catch on to the fact that regardless of our age, regardless of our ethnicity, regardless of our education level or of our employment level, regardless of our gender or our bank account or our successes or our failures, that all of us, all of us who are following after Christ, need to do so and need to witness by the power of the Holy Spirit to the fact that Jesus Christ is King, to the glory of God the Father, because this world needs all hands on deck. There are no passenger seats on this particular boat.
[21:00] Now, okay, yeah, I'll allow it all out. I see that hand. See both of them. So here's the thing: We can't do it by ourselves. We can't even do it. We can't even do it with all of us together, unless, of course, Christ goes with us. But here's the good news today, is that sometimes you go, and sometimes you're going, but if we're going with Him, then He is going with us. Now, in just a few minutes, we're going to close the service together today in communion, and there is an ancient text of the church. That's not, it's not in the Bible. It's a very old text called the Didache, or the Teaching of the Twelve. And in this text, the writers that they talk about communion as, as, when they reference the bread, they say that this bread was once wheat that was scattered abroad the fields, and yet it was brought together, winnowed, and it was sifted, and it was kneaded, and it was now one loaf. And yet in the moment of communion, it becomes what it becomes: broken again, it becomes scattered. And I believe that that's a powerful image, church, for us here, for us today. And that's what I see in the coming years, not months, weeks, years, for the life of this community, is that we are in some respects a staging ground for the kingdom. There is ministry that is going to be happening that we have no idea about, and it's going to be led by people like you.
[22:40] And when we come together, all we're doing is being regrouped and essentially sent out again. And my friend and a board member, it's Uche. He's going to be leading us in communion in just a few minutes. A few years ago, he was an immigrant, like many of you, to this place. And yet now he is, like I said, a member of our board, a very active leader within this church. And so we're really proud to be able to have him lead us in communion this morning. Before we even get to that though, I want to turn your attention to the screens, and we're going to see a video from a couple different people, and it's just one example, one of the ways that just by going through our life with our eyes Kingdom focused, huge impacts can happen. And so it's my prayer that through this, through the story, your eyes will be opened as well.