If you have not been able to hear each of the sermons in our summer sermon series on Disciple-making: Seek, Serve, and Send, you can follow this link to find the Sunday(s) you have missed and catch up: https://chbchurch.org/resources/sermons/sermon-list/.
Each week this year, my CHBC article has been on one of those words: search/seek, serve, or send. It is my hope that discipleship becomes a part of our culture as a church. We are always alert to those who do not know Christ, we are actively serving one another as a means of representing to the world that we are disciples of Christ, and we see ourselves (and therefore every believer) as a sent people with a mission. You can find all those articles at this link: https://chbchurch.org/resources/articles/.
Here is an excerpt from the sermon on August 2. The main point of the message that morning was for us to realize our sent-ness. We are a sent people. Are you ready to embrace what that means?
First, remember this: if you are a Christian, then you are a disciple. In Acts 11, the disciples are first called Christians. We should use these words interchangeably. They are the same word and have the same meaning. Second, true disciples make disciples. You are being discipled by people, your interactions, your social media, your workplace, TV news – your whole environment all the time. We need to be intentional about being discipled by the Word of God and the people of God. And you are discipling others all the time. If you claim to follow Christ, then you are teaching others who Christ is, what He is done, and what He expects of His followers by the way you live and respond. We cannot escape the fact that we are disciple-makers. Will we make disciples of Jesus or of the world?
Third, disciple-making is simply defined this way: people need to become Christians and people need to be taught how to act, think, and feel like Jesus. This second aspect of discipleship is a life-long process of seeing people converted, baptized, and taught all things Jesus commanded. Evangelism and discipleship are two sides of the same coin. They are the two wings on the plane. They are the two oars in the water.
Every disciple is sent by God through Christ on this mission of making more disciples. The church is an equipping and sending station. God is sending through the church disciple-making disciples. Every one of us is to live a missional life. I am distinguishing that from a missionary life in this way. Some of us are to live a missionary life, meaning God is sending us to take the gospel cross-culturally as a vocational pursuit. Every believer is to live a missional life, meaning we understand that God is sending us to our neighborhood, our school, our workplace, and all the other places we go throughout the day.
God is a sender. Jesus is both sent and sender and His church is to continue His ministry as both sent and sender. The church is the instrument of His mission. Consider the theme of “sent-ness” in the Bible:
- The Father sent the Son – John 20:21
- The Father sent the Spirit – John 14:26, “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you.”
- The sent-ness of Jesus is for the establishing of God’s Kingdom – Mark 1:15, “and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”
- The church is established by God placing people in Christ’s Kingdom – Col. 1:13, “For He rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son,”
- The church is empowered to imitate the sent-ness of the Son – 2 Cor. 5:20, “Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.”
We are ambassadors for Christ. When you hear the word ambassador, you have a fairly modern context for that language. An ambassador is sent or located by one nation into another nation in order to establish some kind of peaceful diplomacy between the two nations. But in the days of the Roman Empire, they did not send ambassadors. They sent conquering armies and then established a governor over the conquered people. Weak nations on the edges of the Roman Empire would send an ambassador to Rome to attempt to set up a peaceful existence with Rome by offering their nation as a vassal state. In other words, they were begging not to be conquered by offering themselves as servants to the Roman Empire. The all-powerful Roman Empire would not send out ambassadors to these weaker nations.
But the all-powerful, loving, good, sovereign, perfect, and merciful God says that we are ambassadors for Christ. The king of a far greater kingdom sends ambassadors to the weak and broken, not to conquer but to set free. To make them His own children, not to set them up as utilitarian servants. So, this glorious, all-powerful God sends ambassadors on His behalf. It is a glorious scandal that confounds the wisdom of this world. You are sent. So, live the sent life. Seek, serve, and be sent.
By His Grace and For His Glory,
Pastor Mark
