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Evening Fellowship Service
All right, good evening, welcome back.
Beautiful day today, hope you had a good afternoon, restful afternoon.
So, it was a blessing this morning to see those couple of baptisms.
And it's always, you never know, you never know what can happen in the
baptistry pool.
Right, Dave?
Yeah.
So, there you go.
Expect the unexpected, you're never surprised.
Well, anyway.
Let's turn tonight, as we begin, to number 574.
574, am I a soldier of the cross?
Stand together as we sing.
574.
Am
I a soldier of the cross, a follower of the Lamb?
His cause or blush to speak his
name?
♪ ♪ To the skies on flowery beds of ease,.
Tell others fought to win the prize, And sailed through bloody
seas.
There are no foes for me to face, I not stem the
flood.
Is this vile world a friend to grace, to help me on
to?
I must fight if I would reign,
increase my courage, Lord.
I'll bear the toll, endure the pain, supported by
thy word.
Shall we?
Our Father and our God, I thank you today for the blessings that have already been ours in this Lord's Day.
Thank you for the wonderful testimonies this morning, your grace.
Thank you for your word, from which we've learned and been challenged.
Thank you for the opportunity to regather tonight and to end out this day.
Focusing on things of the Lord, the ministry of Christ as it is even
ongoing today.
So bless this evening, we pray in Jesus' name, amen.
Thank you, you may be seated.
Tonight, let's turn to Mark chapter six.
Mark chapter six, be looking at this passage this evening for a
message.
And it seems like an interesting juxtaposition of two things.
And you kind of wonder, well, how do these two things fit together?
There's two events or episodes recorded in verses one to 13.
Jesus is rejected and then he sends out the 12.
So follow along in your copy of scripture, let's read this passage.
Speaking of Jesus, says, then he went out from there and came to his own country and his disciples followed him.
And when the Sabbath had come, he began to teach in the synagogue.
And many hearing him were astonished saying, where did this man get these things?
And what wisdom is this which is given to him that such mighty works are performed by his hands?
Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon?
There are not his sisters here with us?
So they were offended at him.
But Jesus said to them, a prophet is not without honor except in his own country, among his own
relatives and in his own house.
Now he could do no mighty work there except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and healed them.
And he marveled because of their unbelief.
Then he went about the villages in a circuit teaching and he called the 12 to himself and began to send them out
two by two and he gave them power over unclean spirits.
He commanded them to take nothing for the journey except a staff, no bag, no bread, no copper in
their money belts, but to wear sandals and not to put on two tunics.
Also he said to them, in whatever place you enter a house, stay there until you depart from that place.
And whoever will not receive you nor hear you when you depart from there, shake off the dust under your feet as a
testimony against them.
Assuredly, I say to you, it will be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for that city.
So they went out and preached that people should repent.
And they cast out many demons and anointed with oil many who were sick and healed them.
Lord add his blessing to the reading of his word together tonight.
Continuing on this theme of soldiers, number 592.
So what we're gonna be focusing on or seeing tonight in that passage is that
the rejection of Jesus turns into the expansion of his ministry.
And it's an expansion that continues to this day as we are called to be soldiers in the
army of the Lord, if you will.
So 592, soldiers of Christ arise.
We'll sing this hymn together and then I have some opportunity for some testimonies
tonight as well.
592.
Soldiers
of Christ arise and put your armor
on Strength which God supplies through his
eternal son Strong in
the Lord is more than
conqueror And then in
his grace take to
heart That having
all
things
done
Take every virtue, every grace and fortify your
heart By the whole from strength to strength
go
on
So this evening, a testimony of what God's been doing in your
life this week.
How have things, how has he blessed you?
How has he worked?
What has he done?
What's he taught you?
Anything this week?
Pause and think.
This old radio show used to go, start off, it's been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon.
It's been a quiet week in the Sauk Valley.
Lord hasn't been doing anything at all.
Thank the Lord for a good day yesterday.
I typically take Saturdays off.
Last, let's see, Monday, Monday, I sent a text to a pastor friend
who's going through a particularly difficult time in relationship to his
church and just texted him and they had, I kind of mentioned it last week, they had this meeting that was
one of those Baptist knock -down, drag -out things, you know?
And so I sent him a text Monday and said how to go, how are you doing, et cetera.
And he turned around and called me and he said, what in the world are you doing thinking about things of the ministry on a
Monday?
I said, well, Mondays, I don't take Mondays off, you know?
And Monday's a work day.
And he said, how in the world do you do that after Sunday?
Because he says, I've never been able to do that.
I just need a day on Monday, I need to crash, you know?
I said, well, I usually take Saturdays off.
He says, how in the world do you do that, take Saturdays off before Sunday?
So I just explained, I got into that routine when the kids were small and at home and
going to school Monday through Friday and then they're off on Saturday.
I said, I just couldn't see, you know, going to the
office and study and all that kind of stuff to get ready for Sunday and the kids are home, you know, it's like, when do we ever do anything as a family, you
know?
So I just got into that routine.
So it's been that way ever since, even though it's been a long time since the kids have been little.
But anyway, it's just a refreshing day yesterday, good day with
my bride and digging the last of the potatoes out of the garden.
Anybody else do that this week?
Dig stuff out of the garden, work in the garden?
All right.
Well, thank the Lord for his provisions.
Just a reminder, next Sunday night, we'll not be having the Sunday evening meeting here at
the service.
We'll have the young married single adult meetings that will take place here.
That group will meet here in the fellowship hall and then everybody else, let's meet in homes and get together and have
times of fellowship next Sunday night.
Next, of course, Saturday, we set our clocks back and get an extra night's sleep, an extra hour
of sleep that night.
I did see an interesting meme thing somebody posted on Facebook.
It said something about, we lose an hour of sleep next week.
I wonder where it's gonna go.
Something to that effect.
I said, wait a minute.
No, we gain an hour of sleep.
We get that hour of sleep.
Set our clocks back.
So somebody got that mixed up.
So don't forget to do that so you're on a good routine Sunday.
All right, well, let's take our supplement book then and turn to number 52.
Last song we sang, Soldiers of Christ Arise, and this hymn, O Church
Arise.
And let's stand together as we sing, shall we?
Number 52 in the supplement, O Church Arise.
O
church arise and put your armor on Hear the call of
Christ our captain For now the weak can say that
they are strong In the strength that God has given With every
shield of truth We'll stand against the
devil's lies An army bold with that old cry
is love Reaching out to those in darkness Our call
to are to love the captive soul But to rage against the
captor And with the sword that makes the wounded
whole We will fight with faith and valor When faced with
trials on every side We'll know the outcome is
secure And Christ will have the price for which he
died An inheritance of nations Come see
the war us where love and mercy meet As the son of God is
stricken Then see his foes lie crushed beneath his
feet For the conqueror has risen And as the
stone is rolled away And Christ emerges from the
grave This victory march continues till the day Every eye
and heart shall see him So spirit come put
strength in every stride Give grace for every hurdle
that we may run With faith to win the prize of a servant
good and faithful Hold still line the
way retelling triumphs of his grace We hear
their calls and hunger for the day When with Christ we stand in
glory Thank you, you may be seated.
Well, oftentimes things come into our lives, circumstances occur that leave us sort of
scratching our head.
We don't understand why this has happened or what's going on.
And we long for some kind of an explanation and we don't get one
that leaves us a little bit perplexed.
We want answers.
You know, think for example of the prophet Habakkuk.
You remember Habakkuk in the Old Testament?
He saw, he looked all around him, he saw the sin and corruption that was really just surrounding
him.
And he wondered, you know, why in the world was God allowing this to continue?
And he just had to kind of stand away from it and he's scratching his head.
And then he appealed to God for answers.
How can you let this be?
You are purer eyes than to behold iniquity.
Or think for example of the missionary Adoniram Judson.
He gave up everything to serve the Lord in Burma, modern day Myanmar,
but what a cost, what a cost.
He was there for 14 years, or he was married for 14 years, and there in Burma
he had lost his three children and he ended up losing his
wife after 14 years of marriage.
And having gone through all of that in such a relatively brief period of time, and under those circumstances, Lord,
I've left all to serve you and to follow you and I have now lost everything
that I brought with me.
The only thing he brought with him was his wife and he was left to ask why.
Well, and what about in your own life?
Maybe in the last week or the last month, what's happened that has left you kind of wondering,
Lord, why, I mean, what's going on here?
What's your program, what's your purpose in this?
Well, in this evening's text, I can imagine that between verses six and
seven, the disciples are kind of scratching their heads and wondering a little bit of why.
You know, they have seen, they've come with Jesus, they've come to his hometown, and
they've seen as his own neighbors, people he, Jesus, grew up with,
and who knew him, knew his family, that they've basically rejected him,
they've been offended at him.
And he has to essentially leave.
They've gotta be wondering why.
Well, in the last half of the section that we read, verses seven to 13, I believe their questions are
essentially answered, and that is that Christ's rejection only
serves to aid in the expansion of his ministry.
So this passage divides into these two parts, his rejection and then the expansion.
So let's look at the rejection in verses one through six as Christ's ministry
is rejected.
As a prelude to that rejection in verses one and two, Jesus journeys from Capernaum,
says then he went out from there, and the there is Capernaum, and he came to his own
country, that would be Nazareth.
Capernaum, of course, was sort of like, I guess one way to look at it is Jesus' Galilean
headquarters.
He often resorted to Capernaum and kind of launched Galilean ministry from that city
on the Sea of Galilee.
So that was kind of like his headquarters.
And Nazareth, of course, was Jesus' hometown.
And so he journeys from this headquarters to his hometown.
It's a journey of about 20 miles.
So it's a day's leisurely walk, getting from one to the other.
And he takes with him his disciples.
He includes his disciples.
As at the end of the verse, his disciples followed him.
And the whole purpose for the disciples even being with him on any
occasion is to learn, to learn along the way.
And he wants them to come with him to Nazareth because he's got something, he wants them to learn there in his
hometown of Nazareth as well.
And again, as a prelude to the rejection, it hasn't come yet, in verse
two, he taught in the synagogue.
So Jesus, his disciples come to Nazareth and it says when the Sabbath had come,
they went in the synagogue and Jesus began to teach in the synagogue.
And this was pretty common, customary, customary thing.
A rabbi who's visiting in a synagogue would often be asked to say a word or to
offer a teaching.
And Jesus would be recognized as a rabbi because he had a following, because he had
disciples.
So the people he was teaching.
And so, you know, the opportunity was given him to speak and to teach and so he did.
And that left his hearers astonished, verse two says.
It says many who were hearing him were astonished.
And they were astonished at the depth of wisdom that he had.
They were astonished at the extent of his authority.
Because normally what would happen is, you know, a visiting rabbi would come and they'd say, okay, you know,
they're going to expand upon or expound upon some passage in the
law of Moses or something, and then they would spend most of their time talking about this is
what the rabbis have said, this is what the Mishnah says.
It's like the commentary on the law.
And they would just talk about what others have talked about regarding the law.
But Jesus didn't approach things that way.
Jesus basically just came and said, this is the way it is.
This is what you need to know.
And he didn't appeal to anybody else's authority, he just taught, he just came out and said, this is the way it is.
And so this is astonishing to those who hear him.
All right, so that's the prelude to the rejection.
Now what prepares the rejecters for rejecting him is
a series of questions that they have.
And a couple things I would point out about this, one of them is that, interestingly, when
somebody, you know, if you're working with somebody one -on -one and they, you know, with the gospel, especially
to share the gospel, and they're getting a little uncomfortable, one of the things that they will do
is ask diversionary questions.
They'll ask some kind of a question to take off, take you off subject, so that it gets the heat off of them,
they seem to think.
And so that's a pretty common thing.
But the questions that are behind the questions that these
people raise are actually inherently legitimate questions.
They are questions that need to be answered before somebody's going to trust Christ.
So the first question, the first essence of a question
is the question, who is he?
Who is he?
Here's this teacher, he's teaching us these things.
Now the way they frame that question is seen in the beginning of verse three, where
they say this, is not this the carpenter?
Isn't this the carpenter?
The son of Mary, whose brothers are with us, and his brothers and sisters are with us, is not this the
carpenter?
What they're asking is, who really is he?
Now that is an important question, and that is a legitimate question to consider related to
Jesus.
You have to establish the identity of who Christ is before you're going to
be able to truly trust him for what he can do and what he has done.
So for example, in Romans chapter 10, verses
nine and 10, if you confess with your mouth, Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that
God's raised him from the dead, you shall be saved.
What's that opening confession?
Confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord.
That's confessing the identity of who Jesus is.
Now several years ago, there was, in that regard, in that subject, there was a big
hullabaloo over the idea of the teaching of the Lordship of
Christ, Lordship salvation, and there was a
bit of a misemphasized focus in that
subject, in that topic, that almost bordered on a works salvation sort of thing.
But the essence of that idea of, quote, Lordship
salvation is not in error.
In other words, some would argue that you don't have to accept Jesus as Lord,
you just have to accept him as Savior.
Well, the problem with that is that the Savior is the Lord, and you
have to accept the identity of who Jesus is, and that's what Paul's getting at there.
He says you have to confess with your mouth, Jesus is Lord.
If you look at Jesus as just a Savior, but not as your master, you're not accepting the
whole Jesus for who he wholly is.
See, that's the essence of that.
You have to understand the identity of Jesus.
So this is a good question.
A second question that they ask, in essence, the essence of their question is, what is his
wisdom?
What is his wisdom?
In the middle of verse two, they ask, where did this man get these things?
What wisdom is this which is given to him?
And this also is an important issue to settle.
What wisdom?
In order to trust Jesus as Lord and Savior, you must also accept the fact that
Christ is truth.
When Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life.
And the interesting thing about the framework of their question is that his wisdom was given to
him, and that's one thing they don't understand about the nature of his wisdom.
It wasn't given to him, it is his.
He is the wisdom that he is teaching.
But that is a good question to ask.
It's a legitimate question that has to be asked and answered in order to trust Christ.
Because here's the thing, if you don't come to the conclusion that Jesus is true, that he is the truth,
then you have to conclude he's something other than the truth.
And if he proclaims himself to be the truth, and he's not the truth, then what does that make
him?
It makes him, in essence, a fraud and untrustworthy.
It's a good question.
A third question that is really just preparing for the rejection to come is, the essence of their
question is, where did he get his power?
Where did he get his power?
So at the end of verse two, what wisdom is that which is given to him that such mighty works are
performed by his hands?
This gets to the idea of his authority.
By what authority does he do what he does?
Remember, there are other occasions when, another occasion when Jesus had cast out
demons, and Pharisees are criticizing him, and they're saying that by the authority of Satan,
he's casting out these demons.
Well, where did he get his authority to do what he did?
To exercise the power that he exercised?
Again, it's a good question to ask, because in order to really truly trust Christ as one
savior, you need to accept his authority, trusting him as
Lord and savior.
If his power is not a divine power, then he is something,
someone, less than God, less than divine.
So these are good questions that need to be asked, legitimate questions, but then comes the
rejection itself, and the rejection is expressed in verse three.
When you come to the end of the verse, it's clear that they have rejected him.
So the problem, look, the problem here is not that they had some questions that needed to be
answered, but what's behind those questions, the attitude that is behind those questions,
and the attitude comes out in what they, in the frame in which they put their
questions, and as you read their questions as they phrase them,
you see that they have an unhealthy attitude that lies beneath them, and the
unhealthy attitude is simply this, my mind is already made up about the questions that
I'm asking.
I've already got the answers to these questions, and you see that in the way they ask them.
So their attitude is, my mind is already made up, so don't confuse me, don't confuse the issue here with
facts, you know, with some other idea.
I know the answers to the questions I'm asking, and any other answer must
therefore be wrong.
That's the attitude that underlies these questions.
Now look at the answers to their questions, and you can see, you
can see the phrasing of their rejection before it's even
clarified for us.
Who is he, is the underlying question, right?
Their self -answer at the beginning of verse three is that he is the son
of Mary.
He's the son of Mary.
Now, that says a lot.
That says that they are looking at him only as a human being,
only as the son of a woman that they know, and not
as the son of God.
And even the way they phrase this, this is the son of Mary.
Normally, a son would be identified with his father, and so they
don't even express this, that he is the son of Joseph.
And there may be a dig here.
A lot of the Bible scholars, commentators, see in this a
sort of an assault on the legitimacy of Jesus' birth.
Accusing him of being an illegitimate child.
He's not the son of Joseph and Mary, or the son of Joseph.
He is the son of Mary.
And so even in that, there is a term of derision.
Well, I've got the answer to that.
He's just the son of Mary.
And then there are other questions, okay?
Where did he get his wisdom?
Where did this come from?
Their answer is expressed at the beginning of verse three when they say, is not this the carpenter?
The carpenter.
He's nothing more than a carpenter.
He's merely a carpenter.
The only schooling, the only training he's had is in how to carve a
leg to make a table.
Or how to whittle away something to make a door lock or something of that nature.
He's just a carpenter.
He has no rabbinical training.
He has no formal schooling.
So whatever he's teaching here, this wisdom that he's
sharing here, he's gotten it from somebody else.
He's just a copycat.
He would be like today's, one of the things that's happened in recent
months or so is some very well -known pastors
have gotten caught plagiarizing other works.
So like the current president of the Southern Baptist Convention just got elected back in
June.
Shortly after he was elected, it came out that he had preached a message where he had
plagiarized another minister, another pastor.
And I think it was the previous president of the SBC, if I'm not mistaken.
And in the message where he plagiarized that other pastor, he didn't give credit.
He didn't say, by the way, this is what so -and -so, this is so -and -so's outline.
He just went and preached it as if it were his own.
Well, that's essential.
And he got in all kinds of hot water for that.
And so that's essentially what these people of Nazareth are saying about Jesus.
He's a copycat.
He's plagiarizing somebody.
And what about his authority?
Where does his authority come from?
His authority to do this stuff, this power that he's expressing, as they put it
at the end of verse two.
His authority is, the only authority he has is rooted in his
Nazarene family.
It's not just the carpenter, the son of Mary, and his brother, James, Joseph, Judas,
and Simon are with us, and his sister's here with us as well.
He has no authority outside of the fact he's somebody from the Nazarene
community.
The point is that nobody else in his family has any authority, so he doesn't really have any
legitimate claim to authority either.
Where did he get this authority?
It's not legitimate.
If you conclude that his authority is not a legitimate authority, then you're in the same camp as the
Pharisees and the Sadducees who are declaring that Jesus is a fraud, and he's getting
his power from the wicked one.
This is at least their questions, and the way they answered it themselves.
But the bottom line is, it's clarified at the end of verse three, they're
offended by him.
They stumbled at him.
They stumbled at their self -knowledge.
What they thought they knew about him caused them to reject him.
They stumbled at their inability to reconcile what they're hearing and what they're
seeing in the person who is before them with what they know about
him, whom they're hearing and seeing.
They couldn't reconcile the two, so the conclusion is, we reject him.
We reject him.
And the outcome of that rejection is seen in verses four through six.
There's three results of that rejection.
One of them is that, one of the results is that Christ identifies himself
with rejected prophets.
See this in verse four.
Jesus said to them, a prophet is not without honor, except in his own country, among his own relatives, and in
his own house.
We use the phrase, familiarity breeds contempt.
And Jesus is appealing to that fact from prophets of old who, in their own communities,
in their own tribal areas, they were rejected because people knew who they were.
I'm not gonna listen to this guy.
He's just one of us.
Why would I listen to him?
It's the same idea that the citizens of Nazareth are expressing.
I'm not gonna listen to him.
So Jesus identifies himself with these rejected prophets.
That's one of the results of the rejection.
A second result is that Jesus limits himself in what he's going to do in his own
hometown because of the unbelief.
So it says in verse five.
He could do no mighty work there, except, you know, he laid his hands on a few people and a few sick people, and
he healed them.
The works and the results of those works are scanty in Nazareth compared to other
places.
Other places, he did many mighty works in their midst.
And a third result, in verse six, is that Christ modifies his program.
It says he marveled because of their unbelief, and then he went about the villages in a circuit teaching.
Rather than staying there in Nazareth and teaching and witnessing of himself
to his fellow hometown people, he left
and he went out to the rural areas, these little villages where there are little pockets of people, and
he preached there and he taught in those areas.
He changed his program, if you will.
He modified his program.
So the outcome of the rejection is that Jesus leaves.
He's not welcomed, he's not accepted, and so he leaves.
Now at this point, I want you to put yourself in the position of the disciples.
You're watching all this, you're listening to all this.
And you've got to be kind of scratching your head a little bit, you know, like, why?
I mean, these people know him.
Why wouldn't they, why wouldn't they welcome him with open arms?
I had kind of a, kind of a experience like this.
Let's see, it just occurs to me.
Today is the end of our 19th year here, right, 19th year.
Next Sunday begins our 20th year of ministry here in Sterling.
Well, a little over 19 years ago, before I even made any
contact with the church here, the church in Lombard,
Grace Baptist in Lombard, the pastor there left.
Now the thing of it is, that's the church where, that's the church where Chris and I got married.
That's the church where we met.
First time I saw her, she was in sixth grade, came into the church and said,
I'm an eighth grader.
Okay, let's kind of keep this perspective here.
And she walks in and said, hmm, who's that?
You know, that kind of a thing.
She looked at me and she said, oh, who's that?
But it was that church.
And, you know, I was a part of that church for eight years, you know, through junior
high and high school years and then college years.
And she was, that was her home church as well.
And they were without a pastor.
And somebody, I can't remember who it was, but somebody who was familiar with the church there
and the need, knew that I needed to get into a ministry and said, hey,
did you know Grace Baptist is looking for a pastor?
I said, oh, no, I didn't know that.
So, okay, you know, they said, send your stuff to this person, the chairman of the pulpit committee,
whom I knew.
I mean, I knew his name, I knew who he was, from childhood.
I sent my letter, sent my resume, you know, very cordial,
you know, I'm the hometown boy, kind of a thing, you know.
And never heard a word from him.
Not a word, not even a thank you for writing to us, nothing, not a
word.
Well, okay, I think back of my junior high and high school years, maybe I can understand why
they wouldn't be interested in even considering me for the ministry there.
The prophet is not without honor, Jesus said, except in his own country, among his own
relatives, and in his own house.
Familiarity breeds contempt.
So the disciples are seeing this and have to be scratching their heads a little bit.
All these places where Jesus has gone and he's taught and people hung on to
every word he says, they followed him, they wanted to hear more from him, and they were eagerly
interested.
And so he goes to his hometown and they reject him.
Why?
Well, in verses seven to 13, the second half of this section we read, Christ
expands his ministry as a result of that rejection.
Now Jesus has been preparing his disciples all along.
Anyway, back in chapter three, verse 14, Jesus chose these 12 to be with him,
to learn of him, to gain all they could from their experience of
ministry, traveling in ministry with him.
And Jesus gave them special insight as he's preparing them.
Remember back in chapter four, after he told the parable of the
sower, the seeds in the soil, and they didn't understand it, they wanted to know what this was all
about.
Jesus says to them, to you it has been given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God, but to those who are outside, all these things are
coming in parables.
So I'm gonna give you insight.
I'm gonna give you insight.
And he's been preparing them all along, these disciples of his, by allowing them to witness
his consistent ministry.
Everywhere he went, he taught.
And his teaching was always consistent, never contradicted himself.
And they saw, they heard his teaching, they saw his work in showing
compassion on those who were in need, and they saw the extraordinary power
as he exhibited it in casting out the demons and healing the sick, even
raising someone from the dead, and most recently, stilling that storm
on the sea.
They saw all of this.
And the point, of course, is that all that the disciples have been through within
their experience with Jesus is to bolster their faith in the
Lord Jesus, whom they are going to be proclaiming.
I mean, if they're going to be proclaiming Jesus is the Messiah, then they have to be convinced in their own
heart of hearts that he is the Messiah.
Jesus has been preparing them to come to a place of full confidence in him whom
they are to proclaim.
So he's been preparing them all along, and now he also empowers them
for some special tasks.
He's done so before.
Back in chapter three, verses 14 and 15.
Verse 14, it says he appointed the 12 that they might be with him, and that he might send them out to preach
and to have power to heal sicknesses and to cast out demons.
And here in chapter six, verse 13, you see that here, as this ministry
expands, that's exactly what they do.
They cast out many demons, and they anointed with oil many who were sick, and they healed
them.
Now, this ability on the part of these disciples, unlike Jesus, was
not an inherent ability.
It wasn't a learned ability.
In other words, there wasn't a formula that they had to, an incantation that they had
to use to get these things to happen.
No, it was a given, Christ -given, delegated ability.
He gave them this ability to heal the sick, to cast out the demons.
And I think by way of application here, what we should understand is that Christ enables us to do what he
has given us to do.
We're not left to our own devices and our own formulas of power and authority or
anything like that.
Whatever work, whatever ministry, whatever life that Christ has called you to,
he equips you to the doing of that, as he has for these disciples here.
And in verses eight through 10, notice how he has instructed them for some special
situations.
He instructs them in verses eight and nine to trust God to provide for them.
He commands them to take nothing for the journey except a staff, but to wear sandals and not to put on two tunics.
He says, okay, don't make all kinds of provision.
Don't get a 45 -pound backpack to put on your pack full of all kinds of provisions.
Trust God to take care of you.
And in verse 10, he essentially tells them by way of special instruction, use good sense
as a guest wherever you go.
He says to them, in whatever place you enter a house, stay there till you depart from that place.
Now, he's telling me a couple different things here that make good sense.
One of them is don't snub one host for a
wealthier host.
Whatever place takes you in, just stay there.
Now, don't be looking for a better feathered nest
somewhere else, just stay there.
Because if you snub that guest or that host who's provided for you a place
to go someplace that's nicer, then how are they gonna?
But then on the other hand, he says, don't wear out your welcome.
You need to depart.
At some point, you need to depart.
Don't wear out your welcome.
The Lord is providing some guidelines for the service that these disciples
are to be engaged in.
So he instructs them.
But then notice how he, in this special situation,
he guides them in reacting to this situation.
And here's where you get the connection between verses one through six and verses seven
through 13.
In verse 11, he says, whoever will not receive you nor hear
you, when you depart from there, shake off the dust under your feet as a testimony against
And here's the thing.
They had just lived with Jesus what was
anticipated somewhere down the road.
They watched as Jesus takes them to his hometown and those
in his own hometown reject Jesus.
And what does he do?
They watched his hometown people reject him.
And as Jesus left the area, they followed Jesus as Jesus left
the area and went into these other villages to teach.
In other words, Christ is verbalizing in his instructions what
he himself has just practiced.
What does he tell them?
The first part of verse 11.
Don't force your ministry on those who reject it.
Whoever will not receive you or hear you, leave.
Depart from there.
The people of Nazareth, they wouldn't listen to him.
They wouldn't accept what he had to say.
They were offended by him.
Well, Jesus didn't stick around.
He wasn't gonna force himself and force his ministry on those who rejected.
A second thing he verbalizes is, he says, compel them to think
about what they have done.
And he uses this very vivid methodology.
He says, when you depart from there, shake off the dust under your feet as a testimony against them.
To shake the dust, in this Jewish culture now, to shake the dust
was communicating that they're pagans.
Declaring that you're just a pagan community.
And it is calling for those who witness this
shaking of the dust to reflect upon what they have done.
To reflect upon what was rejected.
So the people of Nazareth would be called upon to stop and think about, what have we done?
Yeah, we thought we knew who this was, but with what authority he taught, and with what power he
worked, and with what wisdom he expressed his teaching, what
have we done?
Because we've now lost this.
This is what that communicates, the shaking off of the dust.
To compel people to think about their actions.
And then, he verbalizes to disciples,
recognize the greater responsibility those have who have rejected.
He says, I say to you, it will be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than
for that city.
For that city.
So, going back to Habakkuk, all right?
Habakkuk wondered, he questioned, why?
And what Habakkuk ultimately saw was that God is indeed going to
act.
All of this sin, all of this corruption is abounding.
Why, Lord, why?
I'm about to act.
Adoniram Judson saw, after all of the heartache and the grief that
he went through, and teetering on insanity through it all, Adoniram Judson
saw the greatest fruit of his ministry after his wife and children had died.
And it was because the tragedies that he went through as the Burmese people
witnessed him handling those tragedies, it caused their hearts to be softened
to the gospel.
And the disciples, the disciples here in this text, they finally realized
why Christ allowed the rejection experience to happen.
Again, remember, this didn't take Jesus by surprise.
Jesus took his disciples to Nazareth for a purpose.
He wanted them to learn something, to prepare them for the expansion of
ministry, to prepare them to be able to minister effectively without him
being right there with them, as he sends them out two by two.
They will know how to deal with the very thing that Jesus experienced.
And I think this is the principle that needs to guide us when we are also facing
circumstances that may lead to anxiety or the question of why.
God is teaching me, God's training me.
God is in some way purifying and shaping me to the
ultimate glory of him.
So rejection leads to expansion.
Challenges, difficulties, questions lead to depth
and breadth of service for the Lord.
Our Father and our God, we do thank you tonight for what you take us through
because you teach us in those things.
And Lord, I know full well, and I think everyone here would also admit,
that we don't enjoy going through some of those things that lead us to ask the question why,
but I pray that in those times we would exercise faith in the one who knows the answers and
what you're preparing us for.
So Lord, use us and shape us and mold us, and we pray it in Jesus' name, amen.
Well, let's take our hymnals and sing a few stanzas.
Number 541,
number 541, the song Lord speak to me that I may speak.
Song basically is asking the Lord to train us, to mold us, to shape us, to prepare
us to be more effective in our service for him.
This is he did with his disciples.
Let's stand, shall we as we sing 541?
Sing the first, second, and the last.
And then we'll have our quarterly meeting here in just a moment.
Lord, speak to me that I may speak in
living echoes of thy tone as thou hast,
oh, let me seek thy erring children, lost
and lost.
Oh, teach me, Lord, teach me with thy precious
things thou dost impart and wing my words that
they may reach the hidden depths of many a
heart.
And the last.
Oh, use me, Lord, use even me just as thou
wilt and when and where until thy blessed
face I see thy joy, thy glory
share.
All right, thank you.
You may be seated.
And Dan is coming with a quarterly report, financial report.
Let me call this meeting to order.
Quarterly, third quarter business meeting.
So in the clerk's absence tonight, we'll have to defer reading of
minutes from the last quarterly meeting.
Last quarterly meeting amounted to basically this very same thing, just the sharing of the financial report
from the previous quarter.
So I'll just go right into this financial report as you receive it here in just a few moments.
While Dan's passing those things out, let me, and maybe you can scan over this while I'm
yakking, but just to give an update on the canopy out front here.
Just the other day, finally received what is probably the
final drawings for that repair and replacement project.
Those things take time.
There's the initial drawing that the architect has to draw up, and it all has to be subjected
to an engineering review, subjected to city
building codes and all that kind of thing.
So it's quite a process.
But that finally came through the other day.
So the process from here is that once we approve those
plans as drawn up, then we get the pricing on it.