The Great Promise

I love the great promise of Matthew 24:14. This Gospel will be preached to all nations, and then the end will come. Is there a sweeter 'and then' in all the Bible?

Jesus doesn't say the Gospel should be preached, or might be preached, or could be preached, He says it will be preached to all nations, and then the end will come. And we know Jesus is coming, we know the end is coming, so we know that the Gospel will fill the Earth as the waters fill the sea.

Nations doesn't mean Canada, Mexico and Brazil, but language groups or ethnic groups. The Gospel will be preached in and to every language, and then Jesus will return. So there's no fence sitting in the Christian life. There's no waiting around to see who wins, and then jumping in, we commit to pray, participate and proclaim.

We commit to pray. Jesus told us to. When He looked at the fields white for harvest, He didn't tell us to go, he told us to pray. How we pray for the end is how we gauge our passion for Jesus return. We don't prepare for His return with rapture wallcharts and collecting tinned food. Neither do we prepare for His return by doing nothing about it. We pray, maranatha, come Lord Jesus.

As we pray, we participate. We take part in the life of our local church, we commit our time and our treasure and our talents to what our church is doing. We share our faith with our friends, we let them know that we have found a feast in the wilderness, we ask them to come with us, because we will do them good, we tell them of our beloved and invite them to enjoy Him with us. We pray and we participate.

And we proclaim. The Gospel isn't true because it works, but it does work because it is true. It changes people, and so, because know the Gospel overcomes, we share the truth of it with people. We're not worried about being slurred because we believe in one God and one way to Him, we go and we lay down our lives to share the Gospel, like the millions before us have.

Is the great promise of Matthew 24:14 making a difference in your life? Are you praying? Are you participating? Are you proclaiming?

Marks of the Messengers 3: Faithfully Repetitive

On Saturday morning we had our church leadership conference, an annual morning where we get together and share the vision for Trinity in 2013. I spoke on 'Marks of the Messengers,' from Mark 6:7-14. You can view part one here and part two here.

But we have to remember, that hopefully at least, it’s not us they are rejecting, it’s our message. And it’s a message we repeat. We see in verses 12-13 that messengers are repetitive. Look at those with me. What did Jesus send the 12 out to do? Preach repentance and heal the sick. Call people into the Kingdom and exorcise demons. Jesus didn’t tell them to make it up by themselves, He told them to repeat. This is just Jesus’ version of 2 Timothy 2:2, ‘what you have heard from men the presence of many witnesses, entrust to faithful men, who will able to teach others also.’ What’s our aim this year at Trinity? To discover some great new idea? To be novel? No! To be old and faithful and orthodox and repetitive. To remember that the Gospel is the only relevant message, and to repeat it. And repeat it. And repeat it!

This is particularly important in youth ministry. There’s always a new curriculum, always a new dvd series, always a new guy with trendy facial hair telling us how he went from five teens to five million in five easy steps. Do you know how your teens are taught? Verse by verse, through books of the Bible. Read and explain, read and explain. It’s deeply unpopular, and deeply fruitful. Last Wednesday we looked at Mark 7:1-30 together, this Wednesday will be Mark 7:31-8:21. And when we’re done with Mark, we’ll go to chapter one verse one of somewhere else. Because Christian ministry is a ministry of repetition.

Christian messengers are always ready, sometimes rejected, and faithfully repetitive. And from this faithfulness, this obedience, the Lord gives fruit. I always pray for growth in two different ways. I pray we’d grow wider and deeper. Deeper in our knowledge and love and obedience to Christ. Deeper in our response to the Gospel, deeper in our prayer life and Bible reading. And that growth is happening in many, many teens, and that’s exciting. And width growth, growth in numbers. More people in Sunday school, more people in teen church. And that’s happening, slower than I would prefer, but happening all the same.

Everything that this youth ministry does, whether it’s bowling or a mission trip is informed by this philosophy. This is why we do awana, this is why we have Sunday school and this is why we have Wednesday night classes. We never do something just to do something. The teens who come bowling tonight will be challenged from the Word, a message I’m ready to give, a message that may be rejected, but a message that’s repeated.

As we go out as messengers, and as we train people to go out, we must prepare to be ready, to be rejected, and above all, to be repetitive.

Marks of the Messengers 2: Sometimes Rejected

On Saturday morning we had our church leadership conference, an annual morning where we get together and share the vision for Trinity in 2013. I spoke on 'Marks of the Messengers,' from Mark 6:7-14. You can view part one here.

But we have to remember, as Jesus warns us in verse 11, that sometimes we’ll be rejected. Read that with me. This is not a new teaching from Jesus. Remember He said if He was called Beelzebul as the master of the house, what will they call the servants in the house. Jesus was rejected wasn’t He? He came to His own, but His own didn’t receive Him. He was rejected in Nazareth; a prophet is not without honor, except in His hometown. He was rejected by the crowds in John 6, and finally, but the majority of His disciples. Jesus was a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief, and rejection.

Should we expect any better? Of course not! Paul warns us in 2 Corinthians  2:16 that we are the aroma of death to those who are perishing. That’s rejection. When you smell something like death in your house you throw it out, you don’t make a bouquet out of it. So many problems that the evangelical church gets itself into these days are because we’re afraid people don’t like us, we change to be liked. We worship a guy who got murdered, of course people don’t like us, of course our message is offensive! If we are going to be effective messengers, we have to get over the idea that everyone, everywhere is going to like us, sometimes they’ll shut the door in the face of your teenage son, sometimes they’ll ignore you in the checkout line, sometimes they won’t send you a Christmas card. That’s ok, that’s a mark of the messengers.

Marks of the Messengers 1: Always Ready

On Saturday morning we had our church leadership conference, an annual morning where we get together and share the vision for Trinity in 2013. I spoke on 'Marks of the Messengers,' from Mark 6:7-14.

One of the best things, and most vital things about Christian ministry is resisting the temptation to re-invent the wheel every year. Avoiding the thought that just because something is new, it’s also better. In 2013 there will be new books written, new programmes published and new ideas followed. But we know our responsibility, we know what will grow a church, and that is staying faithful to the plan that God reveals in the Bible. So, it’s with great joy that I take you to a two thousand year old book and share with you how Teen Ministry at Trinity fits into the overall philosophy of our church.

We see in these 7 verses from Mark’s gospel three things I’ve called ‘Marks of the messengers.’ Marks of the messengers. We’re the messengers, just like the original 12 were back then, what are to be our distinctive, what are to be our marks? We see in these verses that messengers are ready, messengers are sometimes rejected, and messengers are repetitive.

The messengers are ready, look at verses 7-10 with me. Jesus tells the 12 what to wear, how to dress, were to stay, what to bring. Is that important? Why couldn’t they bring bread or money with them? Because they had to be ready. They had to have a single focus on the task that Jesus had given them.

He doesn’t send the 12 out as sightseers; they’re not going to catch up with friends. They are going with a message. They don’t need money or food; they’ll be fed and accommodated. They need a staff, but not two coats, nothing that would distract them, nothing that would weigh them down. The instructions Jesus gives here are similar to those given by the LORD to Moses before the Passover escape. Moses is told that the Jews must eat ‘with your loins girded, you shoes on your feet and your staff in your hand,’ (Ex 12:11). They had to be ready to eat, and we have to be ready to carry the message where we go, and where we are.