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We're gonna read God's word together
now from Matthew chapter nine. Matthew nine, verse 35, and reading
through chapter 10, verse 13. The sermon text will be chapter
10, verses one through eight. And we'll begin reading in Matthew
nine, verse 35. This is God's word written for you
and for me. Then Jesus went about all the
cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching
the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and every
disease among the people. But when he saw the multitudes,
he was moved with compassion for them, because they were weary
and scattered, like sheep having no shepherd. Then he said to
his disciples, The harvest truly is plentiful, but the labourers
are few. Therefore, pray the Lord of the
harvest to send out labourers into his harvest. When he had called his 12 disciples
to him, he gave them power over unclean spirits to cast them
out and to heal all kinds of sickness and all kinds of disease. Now, the names of the 12 apostles
are these. First, Simon, who's called Peter. And Andrew, his brother. James,
the son of Zebedee. And John, his brother. Philip
and Bartholomew. Thomas and Matthew, the tax collector. James, the son of Alphaeus. And
Labaius, whose surname was Thaddeus. Simon the Canaanite, and Judas
Iscariot, who also betrayed him. These 12 Jesus sent out and commanded
them, saying, do not go into the way of the Gentiles. Do not
enter a city of the Samaritans. But rather, go to the lost sheep
of the house of Israel. And as you go, preach, saying,
The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Heal the sick. Cleanse the lepers. Raise the dead. Cast out demons. Freely you have received. Freely
give. Provide neither gold, nor silver,
nor copper in your money belts, nor bag for your journey, nor
two tunics nor sandals, nor staffs, where a worker is worthy of his
food." This is for God's word. Let's
pray and ask his blessing on it. Lord Jesus, we thank you that
you speak to us. We hear so many voices in our
lives all week long They clamor, calling us this way and that. And we confess that often we
turn our ears to them and our hearts are even led astray by
them. And we fall into sin. And it
leads our hearts far from you. But oh, how we thank you, Lord
Jesus, that week after week you speak to us. Your voice calls
out from heaven in the reading of your word. And your spirit works to take
that word and mold and shape our hearts so that we might be
led to you, that we might know you, that we might have fellowship
with you, and that our hearts and souls might receive the words
that we truly need. Bless us as we come to you in
your word today. Amen. Sometimes we send people on missions. Maybe you, as a child, children,
maybe your parents send you to go do things, go clean up your
room, or go get this or that to help mom and dad. Mom and
dad are sending you on a mission. They're giving you a task to
do. Sometimes they authorize you for that task. They give
you the permission or the authority to tell your brothers and sisters
to help you in whatever that mission is. You see people in the Bible being
sent on missions. For example, maybe you remember
the story of Joshua and the Israelites when they come to Jericho. Before
they get to Jericho, Joshua sends two men, the two spies. They
go on a mission to spy out the city of Jericho. We send people on missions today,
too, not just our children to do things around the house, but
we send people on missions to do all kinds of things. A little
over half a century ago, I guess, we sent three men on a mission
all the way to the moon. We send people to do things.
Jesus himself was sent on a mission. Book of Hebrews calls Jesus an
apostle, one who was sent. Jesus tells us that he was sent
by his father. His father gave him a mission,
to come and to seek and to save that which was lost. Jesus was
on a mission sent by his father. Here in this passage we see Jesus
sending other men on a mission, sending the apostles. We'll look
at how Jesus sends the apostles. First, as he sends them with
power, sends them with power. Secondly, as he sends them to
the lost. And thirdly, as he sends the
apostles to preach. So sending with power, sending
to the lost and sending to preach. First, Jesus sends the apostles
with power. The apostles have a special role. We might say they fill an office. We have people in our society
who hold special roles in society or hold a special office. We
have judges that have authority in courtrooms, right? We have
men who serve as presidents. congressmen and so forth, they
have an office or a special role, something to do, and it's official. The apostles in Jesus' kingdom
had a special role, an official role, and the word apostle tells
us what that role is. The word apostle simply means
someone who is sent. These are the men whom Jesus
sent. Now, It implies that there's
something official about this being sent. They're sent with
a special purpose. These apostles are sent to represent
the person who is sending them. That is, they are sent to represent
Jesus. They speak on behalf of Jesus. They act on behalf of Jesus.
In other words, as those sent with this special purpose, They
get to speak Jesus' words to people as though Jesus himself
were speaking. They get to do things as though
Jesus himself were doing them. They act as his representatives. Now in order to be apostles,
to fill this special role, they need authority or power. And so we see that Jesus has
to send them with power. What is that like? Well, it's
kind of like in our day, we have people who we, as a nation, send
out to other nations. We call them ambassadors. And
the ambassador has a special role or office, and he gets to
act on behalf of the United States of America. Ambassadors go to
other nations and they negotiate treaties, perhaps for peace or
perhaps they negotiate terms for trade deals. They act with
a kind of authority on behalf of the nation that sent them.
The apostles are similar in this fashion. They come with authority
that Jesus has entrusted to them. So the apostles are special role,
those sent with authority to act on behalf of King Jesus who
sends them. We need to think a moment then
about that power or authority that Jesus gives these apostles.
In verse 10, we see that, I'm sorry, verse one of chapter 10,
we see that Jesus gives them authority or power to cast out
demons. He gives them authority or power
to heal. And a couple of verses later
in verse six, I'm sorry, verse seven, He gives them the authority
to go and preach, to speak in his name. Power to cast out demons,
power to heal, power to preach or speak in King Jesus' name. Why is it that only these men
have this authority to do these things? Perhaps we might ask
the question a different way. Why can't anyone be an apostle? Now, that's a very American question
to ask. That's the kind of question that
we would ask as people who live in a democracy. We live in a
nation where there is no king. We take great pride in that.
We are citizen rulers. We're all our own man. We're
all equals with equal rights. Everyone has the freedom to do
pretty much whatever he wants. Nobody's the boss of me. I can
do what I want. Why can't I be an apostle? After all, as an American, I
have the freedom to do anything. That's the American dream. Why
can only some men be apostles? To be an apostle, Jesus had to
call these men and to give them special authority. so that they
could do the job that he called them to do. Now, this makes sense
if we realize that Jesus is coming, not bringing a democracy, but
he comes bringing a kingdom. He's the king. He chooses who
his servants are. He chooses who he's going to
give authority to, who he's going to call and send who will act
as his representatives. He has the power, he's in charge,
he gets to choose. We see further that these men
whom he chose and called to be apostles were called at the heart
of their work was preaching, and this preaching required training. Jesus called these men to follow
him, and as you read through the story of the Gospel of Matthew,
We see that back in chapter four, he called some of these men like
Peter and his brothers, and then as they followed around after
Jesus, Jesus was training them for the job. They needed training
to know what to preach, how to preach, who to call, and who
to heal. We see too that the work that
Jesus called them to require not only training from Jesus,
but it also required actual power from Jesus. Jesus was sending
these men to heal the sick, not as men whom he had trained for
three years in medical school to go use medicine like doctors
to heal people, but in Jesus' name to declare to people that
Jesus was healing them. And when they spoke in Jesus'
name, they were healed. This meant Jesus had to give
them the power to heal people, likewise with casting out of
demons. This means setting someone free
from the devil, from his power, from his kingdom. This required
authority from Jesus. The apostles had no power in
this to do themselves, in themselves to do this. Jesus had to give
them authority. What kind of an authority does
he give them though? We see that they need to be authorized,
they need to have power. It is Jesus' own power that he
gives to them or delegates to them. They were going to be doing
the very same things that Jesus had been doing. We read verse
10, Jesus gives them power to cast out evil spirits to heal
all kinds of sickness and all kinds of disease. And then in
verse seven, he sends them out to preach the gospel of the kingdom. These are the very same things
we read of Jesus doing in chapter eight and in chapter nine. In
the end of chapter nine, we read in verse 35, Jesus went about
all the cities preaching the gospel of the kingdom, healing
every sickness and every disease. The authority that Jesus gave
these men was the same authority or power that he himself was
exercising, the power of Messiah, the anointed one. It's very clear
here in the context that Jesus is raising up the very workers
for the harvest fields, the men, to do the same thing that he
had been doing and bringing lost sinners into the kingdom of God. Jesus had told them, just a couple
verses earlier, that they need to pray to the Lord of the harvest,
to raise up workers for the harvest, because the harvest was so great. Now he begins to raise them up,
but in order for them to do the work of the harvest, they need
the same authority Jesus has. Now there's something unique,
something very special about the work that Jesus called the
apostles to do. Something very special or unique
about their mission, about their office, and about the power that
Jesus gave them. Yes, they were preachers just
like preachers today. Just like pastors today who stand
before you preaching the gospel, they were preachers. So there's
a kind of overlap between the work that preachers do today
and the work that the apostles did. Preachers call men into
Jesus' kingdom by preaching his gospel. Preachers work in building
up the church. But these 12 men, whose names
are called out for us, were given a special role. There's overlap,
but there's also something unique or different about the 12. There's
a direct connection, direct overlap between Jesus' ministry while
he was on earth in Israel and the apostles' ministry. As he
gives them power and authority and sends them out, they become
an extension, you might say, of the work that Jesus is doing,
not only in preaching, but in exercising the authority of the
kingdom to heal and to cast out. So their work is very much connected
with Jesus' work in a special way. And the New Testament describes
this work as a foundational work. Now, if preachers, you might
say, build up the church or the house of God by calling men out
of darkness and into Christ's kingdom, if the house is built
as people are added to Jesus' kingdom, the apostles' work was
the work of laying the foundation. When you build a house, the foundation
is the very first thing you build, right? You build that and it's
firm and sure and everything else is built on top of it. The
walls of the first floor, the second floor, the roof and so
on, all of it is held up by that foundation. And once the foundation
is completed, you don't add to the foundation, it's complete,
you build the rest of the house. Ephesians chapter two says that
the church, like a household, is built on the foundation of
the apostles with Jesus Christ as the chief cornerstone. These
12 men have a special role that isn't repeated by later preachers
in laying that initial foundation. And so they're given special
authority to do it, to heal, to cast out demons, and so forth. Now we come to these 12 men.
We've been talking about their authority But even as we talk
about the power that Jesus sent them with, we need to think about
the 12 men. Who were these men who were given
such great authority and such a special role? In the Gospel
of Matthew, we read their 12 names. If you look at the Gospel
of Mark, you find we're given their 12 names again. And then
again in the Gospel of Luke, And then a second time, Luke
gives us the 12 names of these men in Acts chapter one. Four times are given their names.
It seems important. Certainly they have a special
important role. So it makes sense that their
names are repeated. But who were these men? What
do we know about them? Well, perhaps you might say,
well, I know some things about Peter. He wrote two letters. We read about some things he
did, some silly, foolish things he did in the gospels that Jesus
had to rebuke him for. He denied his Lord. Jesus restored
him after the resurrection. And then we read a little bit
of Peter's ministry in the book of Acts. And you might say, well,
we know something about that guy, John. He wrote a gospel,
just like Matthew. He writes three letters, but
beyond that, there's not a whole lot we know about him. And as
you go through the rest of the list, you realize we know less
and less about the rest of them. That's about what we can say
about these 12 men. Such an important role, foundational
role, such special authority entrusted to them by the king
as apostles. And yet these men are nobodies,
uneducated men, The chief priests and scribes will criticize them
in the Book of Acts for being uneducated men. Backwater men. Men without worldly power, prestige,
or wealth. Men of whom we know very little,
except that their names are recorded four times. Men who lived their
lives not in prosperity, but largely in suffering for Christ
and dying for his name's sake. Yet we know little about them.
Why? Why? Because what matters is
not the men. the power of Jesus that was exercised
through their ministries. That's what matters. That's what's
important. That when Jesus sent them out
with power and they went and did the things that Jesus called
them to do, Jesus was at work. When they preached, Jesus was
speaking. When they commanded spirits to
leave a man and set him free, Jesus was acting to set that
man free. The men themselves, we don't
need to know anything about them. We need to know that Jesus was
acting through them to build his kingdom. That's the great
wonder of these men. Not so much who they were, but
what Jesus did through them. If we look in our English Bibles,
there's a book called Acts, and usually it says the Acts of the
Apostles. But if you were to ask Matthew
and the other apostles, they would tell you, no, rewrite that. Say the Acts of Jesus. And if
you have to say something about us, say the Acts of Jesus through
his apostles. we need to flip around how we
think about the apostles. When they spoke with the authority
of the apostles, they spoke with Jesus' authority. That is to
say, when they spoke, Jesus spoke. When they acted, Jesus acted. Their words and their actions
were for Jesus, to bring his kingdom, his reign, and his power
and authority to the hearts and lives of men. And the result
was that the Church of Jesus Christ was founded, a kingdom
where Jesus reigns. Here we have a truly wonderful
thing, a thing that in its principle continues to this day. When Jesus
acts with his authority through weak and sinful men, he brings
his gracious and forgiving rule his blessings to sinners. This
is something Jesus still does wherever he sends his preachers
to do his work in his name with his power. So Jesus sent the
men with power but he sent them to the lost. He sent the Apostles
to the lost. This is their mission. We have
a branch of the military service called the Coast Guard. Sometimes
we forget that. They're a part of the military.
The Coast Guard. And the Coast Guard sometimes
receives an SOS call, a literal save our ship call. There's a
ship out there somewhere in a storm. The captain radios in the coordinates.
Here's where we are. And we're taking on water and
we're sinking. and the Coast Guard sends out
a boat with men on it with a mission. Go find that sinking boat, save
the captain and the crew, and bring them back safe and alive. They have a mission. Jesus gave
his apostles a mission. Go find the lost sheep and bring
them into my kingdom. Now he tells them, don't go to
the Gentiles. Don't go to the Samaritans. Not yet, anyway. This might seem
a little confusing to us. Jesus is saying, first go to
Israel. First go to my covenant people,
the ones with whom God made a covenant with Abraham long ago. Paul speaks
of them in Romans chapter 11. He says that Israel is beloved
for the sake of the fathers. God's beloved chosen people were
to receive the gospel of the kingdom first. Later, Jesus will
send his apostles to the Gentiles. Of course, God had promised a
savior to all mankind. Immediately after the fall, God
promised that he would send someone, a seed of the woman who would
crush the serpent's head, who would reverse the effects of
the fall and of the kingdom of darkness. God later promised
Abraham same language, a seed. Abraham would have a seed, a
descendant, in whom all the nations of the earth would be blessed.
Matthew told us at the opening of the Gospel of Matthew that
this Jesus was that son of Abraham, not just the son of David, the
king, but the son of Abraham, who would bring that salvation
to the Gentiles. So as we read the Gospel of Matthew,
we know this is coming. But Jesus says not yet. First
go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. There's a connection
between this initial mission to the Israelites. There's a
connection between this initial mission and the special ministry
of the apostles, the 12. Like the 12 sons of Jacob who
fathered the 12 tribes of Israel, These 12 men were the beginning
of a new Israel, or you might say a renewed Israel. A renewed Israel where God, through
Christ, the Messiah, would reign over his people. A renewed Israel
where the son of David, King Jesus, would truly reign in the
hearts of men, leading them in righteousness and justice. And
that's exactly what Jesus came to do. to form and shape a new
people of God, to make with them a new covenant in his blood.
And so the ministry of the 12 was to gather the lost sheep
of the house of Israel and to bring them, Jesus' sheep, into
his sheepfold, to gather his people into a new congregation,
a new church, a new kingdom of God. In Revelation 21 verse 14,
We read of that new church that came down out of heaven, a new
Jerusalem, a new people of God. And we read this about that new
people of God. Now the wall of the city had
12 foundations and on them were the names of the 12 apostles
of the lamb. Jesus calls these 12 men out
and sends them out to gather his people out of Israel first
to begin shaping and forming them into a new Israel, a new
people of God. That was their mission. And as
they do so, Jesus sends them to the lost. Israel's shepherds,
we looked at last week, the Pharisees and the rabbis, they weren't
feeding God's people. And so the sheep strayed. They didn't hear the gospel from
the Pharisees, so they strayed away from God, wandered far from
him, and they became lost. Lostness, waywardness, wandering
from God because they weren't reading, receiving, following
his word. Wandering from God is just another
way of saying rebellion and sin. They're lost in their sins. But in their waywardness, what
happens to lost people? Even lost Israelites, lost descendants
of Abraham, God's chosen people, what happens to them? As they wander from God, they
wander in their sin, and they wander into another kingdom. They wander, as it were, away
from God, out of his reign, and into the reign of the devil.
The people whom Jesus sends his apostles out to find are lost
and wayward, far from God, but now under the power of the devil. We see why the apostles need
authority to cast out demons. because these men have come under
the authority, these men and women who are lost, have come
under the authority or power of the devil. The devil ruled
the nations. Matthew chapter four, when the
devil comes to tempt Jesus, he claims to have authority over
the nations, and he did. But here we find that Israelites
have come in their lostness and sin under his power. We see why
they need Jesus' power to set men free from demons, because
Jesus is sending them to do battle with the powers of darkness.
They're going out to drive out the kingdom of darkness and to
bring people into Jesus' kingdom, to take people back from bondage
to Satan. Only Jesus can do this. They
need his power. Now this is good news for lost
sheep. Not just in Jesus' day, but everywhere,
even today. It's good news for lost sheep. Jesus has sent his workers out
into the fields to find lost men and women and to bring them
back to Jesus' sheepfold, back to his kingdom, into his new
Israel. Now they were only to go to the
house, the lost sheep of the house of Israel initially. But
after they did so, after they pursued for three long years,
Jesus and then the 12 apostles pursued the lost sheep of the
house of Israel, what happened? Israel heard the gospel message.
They saw the effects of the gospel as people were healed, demons
were cast out. They met their king. And they
put him on a cross. They rejected him. When Jesus
was put on the cross, he died for the sins of his people. Not
just Israel, but the nations. That's the pivotal moment when
everything changes. And it no longer becomes just
about Israel, God's people, whom he brought out of bondage to
slavery, but becomes about all of the nations. whom Jesus has
purchased with his blood. That's what Jesus is saying at
the end of the Gospel of Matthew when he sends his apostles out
a second time. Having raised from the dead,
he says, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to
me. You see those nations out there? They belong to me. I paid for their sins with my
blood. Now go and find my lost sheep. There's hope, hope for lost sheep
in misery, in sin, in slavery to the devil because Jesus has
purchased them with his blood and he sends his apostles to
set them free. So the apostle Peter will write
a few years later of Gentile Christians, of the nations. Peter
says, you were like sheep going astray. but now you have returned
to the shepherd and overseer of your souls. Jesus sent his
apostles for lost sheep. That's their mission. But thirdly
and finally, we see that Jesus sent them to preach. Here we
come to the nitty gritty work of the apostles. They're empowered,
they have authority, they have a mission, they know who they're
looking for, How are they gonna go and find them? And how are
they gonna bring these people into Jesus' kingdom? He commands
them to preach and to heal. What is preaching? We looked
at it last week as Jesus carried out the work of preaching, preaching
the gospel of the kingdom. What is it? It's an official
activity. Here we are back to authority
and something special and official. These men are like a king's heralds. Jesus is the king and he sends
these men out into the world to speak in his name. He's the
king, he issues decrees. His heralds go out and they say,
thus says the king, and they read his decrees in his name. They bring the king's words with
his authority, that is with his power. Everywhere these apostles
were sent, they were to declare, the king has come. The kingdom
of heaven is at hand. Why is the kingdom of heaven,
that is the reign or the power of the kingdom here? Because
the king is here. They were to declare that the
king was present. And because the king was present,
men need to repent. That's the summary of the gospel.
Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. gets truncated even
further here as Jesus sends them out, merely the king is here.
The only proper response for sinners to hear when they hear
that the king is here is to repent. Because Jesus is a gracious king,
a king who comes offering forgiveness. And so his heralds cry out, turn
from your sins, turn to Jesus the king, he will forgive you. Here we find the way to the kingdom
opened up in the preaching of the gospel. The kingdom is a
spiritual kingdom. It's a kingdom that Jesus sets
up in the hearts of men. And the way to the hearts of
men is through the preaching of the gospel, not through armies
with swords and weapons, but through gospel preachers. This
is their work. This is the way they bring men
into Jesus' kingdom. Repenting is a heart matter.
Turning from sin, hating it, turning to Jesus and seeking
forgiveness. This is heart stuff. Preaching
speaks to the heart. In the gospel message, Jesus
sets up his reign in men's hearts. We talk about Jesus setting up
his throne in men's hearts. That's what we're talking about.
Hearts changed to obey the words of King Jesus. They were sent
to preach, but they were also sent to preach with actions. What kind of actions? There's
four of them listed in verse eight. Heal the sick, cleanse
the lepers, raise the dead, cast out demons. Don't just preach
that the kingdom is here. Demonstrate that it's here. Sometimes
when we're teaching, I don't do it here from the pulpit, but
sometimes we're teaching, we want to make an idea really clear
to the students. We use a whiteboard or a chalkboard
and we draw a picture or an illustration to help people understand what
it is that we're teaching. Their actions illustrated the
gospel. They didn't just prove it. Heal,
cleanse, raise, cast out, yes, they prove that the king is here.
When the power of the king was exercised, men knew the king
was there. When men who were lame stood
up, when lepers were cleansed, we know the king is here because
we see his power at work. Yes, it proves the message is
true. But it did more than that, it
showed that What King Jesus does to men outwardly, as their bodies
were healed, Jesus was doing inwardly in their hearts as the
gospel was preached. Remember the relationship between
these men, the apostles, and Jesus. What they did was an extension
of Jesus. He exercised his authority through
them. So it was. that as they cast
out demons, Jesus was truly setting men's hearts free from bondage. Jesus, as the gospel was preached,
was not just raising men physically from the dead, but he was raising
their hearts from spiritual death. As lepers were cleansed, Jesus
was showing that he was cleansing men's hearts of their sins. And
as every kind of disease was healed, Jesus was showing that
he came to heal every disease of the heart and soul. We talked about an overlap between
the apostles and preachers. There's an overlap here as well. As preachers seek the lost today,
Preachers don't have the same authority that apostles did.
I can't speak to someone who's sick lying in a bed and say,
be healed and get up in the name of Jesus. It doesn't happen. But I don't need that kind of
power. The work of the apostles is recorded
for us. Their witness and their testimony,
everything they did is recorded for us in the New Testament.
Their work as they went around healing, proclaiming, gathering
a church, and laying the foundation for the church, that work remains. In a way, whenever the New Testament
gospel is preached, the authority that Jesus exercised through
the apostles is exercised again today. Jesus is the chief cornerstone. It's all about him. Jesus sent
the apostles as preachers of the kingdom, but today on high,
he still calls preachers and sends them out into the fields
to work. He spoke through the apostles,
he speaks through preachers today also. When we as preachers call
men to believe in Jesus, Jesus speaks with authority and he
brings hearts to life. When we extend the promises of
forgiveness of sins and of hope of eternal life in Jesus Christ,
Jesus takes your hearts and he heals them and he gives them
hope again. He takes the places in your hearts
that are wounded and torn and Jesus heals them. When we preach,
Jesus sets souls free. Jesus raises dead hearts. Jesus
cleanses sins. Leprosy of the heart. And Jesus
heals sin sick souls. Jesus sent the apostles. He sent
them with authority, just like we send all kinds of people to
do all kinds of things. But the heart of the matter,
the heart of all of this, that you need to carry with you is
that Jesus is working in your hearts today by his word. Turn to him. Let's pray. Our God and our King, we begin by confessing that we
so often come to your word with doubting hearts and with unbelief. Lord Jesus, our hearts are so
distracted, discouraged, and hurting. So as we open your
word to read it in our homes, as we come to hear it preached,
we come with little hope. Little hope for ourselves and
little hope for others. We confess that this is gross
unbelief. We thank you that you are indeed
at work today, that even as you are at work here on earth, You work yet more powerfully
now, having poured out your Holy Spirit on the hearts of men. Open our hearts that in your
word we might find the treasures that our souls so desperately
long for. Grant us faith that we might
serve you faithfully. Hear us, we ask. Amen.
Kingdom Workers
| Sermon ID | 72324145403188 |
| Duration | 44:05 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Bible Text | Matthew 9:35-10:13 |
| Language | English |
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