The Church's Mission

Welcome to the teaching ministry of Kungsvinger Lutheran Church.

Kungsvinger is a beacon for the gospel of Jesus Christ and is located on the plains of northwestern Minnesota.

We proclaim Christ and Him crucified for our sins and salvation by grace through faith alone.

And now here's a message from Pastor Chris Roseberg.

Our text for.

Tonight for our meditation, this third Wednesday of Advent, is taken from

the gospel of Matthew chapter 28 verses 16 through 20.

Now the eleven disciples, they went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed

them.

And when they saw Him, they worshipped Him.

But some doubted.

And Jesus came and said to them, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

Go therefore 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 observe all that I have commanded you.

And behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.

This is the gospel of the Lord.

In the name of Jesus.

Amen.

Ah, what a day.

So when I was a kid, when I was a kid, in fact, I'll even admit it, when I was an adult,

I loved to go to Disneyland, of all places.

Now I remember even as a kid, there's this amazing thing that happens when you go to Disneyland.

First you have to pay $100 per person, I think now.

But once you get past that initial shock, then what happens is you go through the turnstiles, and there you

can see a very large floral depiction of Mickey Mouse.

You can see the train that circles around Main Street, USA, and on into

Fantasyland and around the park.

But there's a bridge that goes under one of the, goes under the track, and it's the entrance into the park

itself.

And it's that entrance where, once you cross that threshold, you are really in

Disneyland.

And right above the arch of this train bridge, it says this, here you leave

today, here you leave today, and you enter the world of yesterday, tomorrow,

and fantasy.

And as a kid, oh man, you'd read those words, and goosebumps would get going, and you would be so excited, the adrenaline

would start pumping.

It would just be amazing.

Now, this Advent Tide, we've been looking at, what is the church?

What is the church?

How is it made?

Last week, we talked about the marks of the Christian church.

We've noted already in our little study that the church, well, it's not the building, the building is

named after the people.

The people, the congregation that meets there.

And so this Konzwinger Lutheran Church building is named after the fact that there's a church that meets here.

And then we talked about the marks of the church, that word sacrament, the gospel preached, the word, the

sacraments administered according to the gospel.

And now today, we're going to talk a little bit about the mission of the church, and talk about a

good way to think about, well, church buildings.

Think about church buildings.

I always remember those espionage films where there's a U .S. agent on enemy territory, or

in Europe, or something like that, and the bad guys are trying to get him, and all he's trying to do is reach

the embassy, because once he gets to the embassy and crosses the threshold, he is no longer

on foreign soil.

He's on, well, U .S. territory.

That is, that's the good way to think about it.

So, think of these words from 2 Corinthians chapter 5.

Paul writes,

Now, all of this is from God.

And you'll notice the us there.

Paul isn't saying, the Lord gave me the ministry of reconciliation.

He only gave this ministry to pastors.

No, no, no, no, this is all of us.

This is an epistle written to a congregation.

He has given all of us the ministry of reconciliation, so that, that is, in

Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not

counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.

So, therefore, we are ambassadors.

Ambassadors for Christ.

Now, it's a big deal.

Every time, you know, there's a new president in place, and they're talking about who's going to be the ambassador to this place and that place.

Getting an ambassadorship is a big deal.

And, all of y 'all, we, together, we are

ambassadors.

So, Ambassador Miles, Ambassador Marilyn, Ambassador Barb, Ambassador Lane,

Terry, all of you.

Today, I would argue that, well, if you're ambassadors, the word says that we are, that when we gather together,

once we cross the threshold, take the coats off, if you would, hang them on the hook, get the snow

and the dust and the rocks off of our boots, and step across the

threshold into the church, that we are no longer on U .S. territory.

This is an embassy of the kingdom of God.

King Jesus reigning presently now.

All authority already having been given to him.

You see, this is one of the reasons why, don't tell on me, I'm not a big fan of the flags,

because that doesn't make any sense.

If we're going to think of embassy, the flags belong just as you're leaving to come into

here.

To say, this is where the U .S. ends.

And this is where Christ's kingdom meets.

It's kind of an interesting idea, when you're thinking territorial like that.

And if we're ambassadors, ambassadors always are on a mission.

Ambassadors have a mission.

They have kingdom business to do, or in our case, the business of the Republic of the United States.

But, as ambassadors in an embassy, we have a mission.

And listen to this.

You see, God is making his appeal through us.

To the world around us.

To our neighbors, our friends, our family.

God is making his appeal through us.

God works through means.

And so therefore, we implore you on behalf of Christ, to be reconciled to God.

And here's the great news.

You see, for our sake, God made Christ to be sin, who knew no sin, so that

in him, we might become the righteousness of God.

That's heavy.

That is really, really, kind of mind -blowingly important.

Ambassadors.

And this is exactly kind of the point of what Jesus was saying to the disciples.

The church is on a mission.

And when he sent his first emissaries, the apostles, out into the world,

and we continue that mission, he said to 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 observe all that I have commanded

you.

And he has promised that I am with you always, even to the end of the age.

Kind of by saying that, then, he's saying that the church's mission, the embassy, the

ambassadors, don't get to change the mission.

The mission stays the same until that hour, that day, when the trumpets sound and

Christ descends from the clouds to judge the living and the dead and establish his visible kingdom

and reign in a world without end.

Until that time, he's building that kingdom.

God is making his appeal through his ambassadors to be reconciled to God.

And so we are to teach, preach, baptize all that he has commanded.

Nothing else, nothing more, nothing less.

You'll note you would be a bad ambassador if you got off mission.

In fact, you'd probably lose your ambassadorship.

Or an ambassador who makes policy decides to insert his own

ideas into the messages that the king is sending.

That would be a bad ambassador.

And see, this is exactly how Luke describes this same sending out, this same

mission for us.

It says this about the disciples.

He opened their minds in Luke 24 to understand the scriptures.

And he said, thus it is written that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead

and then here's our charge that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be

proclaimed in his name to all nations beginning from Jerusalem.

And we see this exact message, this message of reconciliation in one of the very

first and most famous ambassadors of the kingdom of Christ, the great apostle Peter.

In his brilliant sermon to the house of Cornelius, he says this,

truly I understand that God shows no partiality.

Instead in every nation, anyone who fears Him and does what is right is acceptable to Him.

As for the word that He sent to Israel preaching good news of peace through Jesus Christ, after all, He is the

Lord of all.

You yourselves know what happened throughout all Judea, beginning from Galilee after the baptism that John proclaimed,

how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power.

And He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him.

And we are witnesses of all that He did, both in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem, and they put Him to death by

hanging Him on a tree.

But see, God raised Him on the third day, made Him to appear, not to all the people, but to

us who have been chosen by God as witnesses, who ate and drank with Him after He rose from the dead.

And He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that

He is the one appointed by God to be the judge of the living and the dead,

and that to Him all the prophets bear witness that everyone who believes in Him

receives the forgiveness of sins through His name.

And so the same Jesus, who in His earthly sojourning went about doing

good and releasing those who were oppressed by the devil, He is

continuing that work today.

He is doing it through His mighty Word that He has given us to speak.

Remember, His Word is living and active.

Ours are not.

And He has made us ambassadors, going and proclaiming reconciliation,

to let a sinful fallen world know that they are bled for, that they are died for,

that what the angels said, that God has sent to us a Savior who is Christ the Lord.

We have good news to preach to everybody and to bear witness that He is the one appointed by God.

He is the one to whom the prophets testify.

And we who are once under the dominion of darkness have

been set free because of His great mercy and grace.

And so we are now ambassadors,

reconciled ambassadors.

And God is making His appeal to us to continue to reconcile people to Himself through the preaching of this

gospel.

Let us always remember that the Church's mission is to

preach Christ, baptize, teach, wash,

rinse, repeat.

Nothing sexy about it.

It's kind of humble.

We have a word found in a book.

We have some tap water and some bread and wine.

That's what the world sees.

But here in this embassy we recognize that that word is living and active.

That that water has been united with Christ's blood.

And through it He unites people to Himself and washes away sins.

And that what looks like to the world is only bread and wine is in fact His very body and blood given and shed for us for the

forgiveness of our sins.

So what is the Church?

The Church is the community of those who have been forgiven, raised to life.

And they're on a mission.

A mission to spread the good news of Jesus.

We will be hated, persecuted, crushed, beaten down.

And we shouldn't be surprised at the fiery trials when they come our way.

Such is the lot of ambassadors.

But that's okay.

Because there is a day coming when the King Himself will appear.

And the Church, having done its work, there will be Christians on the earth when Jesus returns.

Not because the Church is so great, but because it's not He who plants or He who waters anything, but the

one who gives the increase.

And the one who gives the increase is Christ.

The very living Word of God.

So there you have it.

This is what we are.

This is what we are to do.

This is how you can tell what God's Church is.

And whether it is there.

Many different ideas run around the landscape today.

Many different things jockeying for our attention within what's called the Church.

And so much of it is just a distraction.

You think of Vince Lombardi having to tell his football players again

that this is a football.

Go back to the basics.

This is what the Church is.

This is who we are.

This is what we are to do.

And we deviate from it to our own expense.

In the name of Jesus.

Amen.

And again that address is.

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And again, thank you for listening.