Each One Sent

Well, once again, everybody, good morning. My name is Chris Pavila. It’s good to be with you guys today. It’s daylight savings time and you guys are here. I’m proud of you. You did it. Honestly, no, I mean this though. Thank you for fitting your week around your worship instead of the other way around. I mean that. Thank you for making this a priority. I believe that you will be blessed by just your time here today. We are continuing this series, each one, reach one, where we’re talking about how God so loved the world he sent you. And just his plan to save the world includes each one of us to just kind of take ownership of this command, this order, this mandate to go and make disciples. And before we’re getting into the tips and techniques of how to connect with people in a conversational way and to reach people, and that’s where we all want to go, right?

(01:14)
But we have to first establish some ground rules and some foundational principles. Last week, we established just this idea that this starts from God. That if you have a heart to reach one, it begins with God’s heart for each one. And really it’s that heart transplant that he gave us his heart that beats and burns for the lost and the people around you. And we have to start there that this is not about you trying harder. This is about letting God’s heart beat within you and being sensitive to where he is leading you, which then leads us to this week where we’re talking about how you are sensed. Like we heard in the reading just a moment ago from Grant talking about beautiful feet and the feet of those who bring the good news. It’s funny, I was reading that this week and getting ready for the message and I thought about the one and only time I’ve gotten a pedicure.

(02:17)
I worked very briefly at an office right out of college and it was an office full of women, which is fine. But when they had like a staff building day, we went away, everybody was getting pedicures. And I’m like, “What?” And I went and you put your feet in things and then people touch your feet. And it’s wild. And I lasted about three minutes because I’m tickle-ish. I just, I am. And it was very traumatic. And so needless to say, I did not work there very long, but hopefully today is more enjoyable because our feet can be made beautiful today. We’re going to be making our feet beautiful. Hopefully it’s far less traumatic for you as we talk about getting a pedicure today, how God can make our feet more beautiful, how we can be sent with this message of Jesus. And then next week, and the week after that, we’ll get into some tools and techniques and stuff like that.

(03:11)
But this idea of being sent, this is all over scripture, just this idea that God is ascending God. He sends Jesus to save the world, right? But if you just kind of take a step back and you do just an overview of all of scripture, you see that he has been sending since the beginning, right? I mean, you could say like he speaks a word and says, “Let there be light.” And he sends a command. Everything comes from him and through him is what scripture says. And then right away, you get guys like Abram who he says, “Go from where you are to a strange land.” And he’s go and he sends him. Or then like a guy named Moses, he says to Moses, “Go. I am sending you to Egypt to speak to Pharaoh.” And then like with Ezekiel going to the people in Babylon, go to the people in Babylon.

(04:07)
Jonah, if you grew up in church, you heard the story of Jonah on the whale and God said to Jonah, “Go to Nineveh and bring this news.” And it continues though. It’s Isaiah is sent. Samuel is sent. Nathaniel is sent. Just sending all of these prophets, go. And then when we get to the New Testament, Paul kind of aptly describes Jesus. He says, “This is how God showed his love among us.” He say it, say it. There you go. “Send his one and only son into the world that we might live through him.” That’s the whole gospel right there. He sends Jesus and Jesus goes. But then you see guys like John the Baptist is sent into the wilderness to go prepare the way for the coming of the Lord. And he sends him into the wilderness or Jesus sends his disciples in Paris ahead to the cities where he’s traveling to prepare the city, to hear the word of the Lord.

(05:05)
And then he heals people and again and again, he sends the people he heals, sends them back to their hometowns. Go back to the people and tell them what God has done for you. And then Paul, the apostle Paul, when he’s called by Jesus, he says, “Go, I am sending you to the Gentiles.” And then the favous words that we read a little bit earlier responsively, as the Father has sent me, Jesus looks you dead in the eye, staring through your retina into your soul. “I am sending you. “And we hear that and we’re like, ” Oh man, I’m sent. “You are sent by God.

(06:00)
And we hear that and we’re like, ” Okay, maybe like missionaries who go to Malaysia are sent, maybe like a pastor is sent to a seminary and a pastor have sent to a church, but does this mean I have to like move, put my house in the market, in this market, and move and go somewhere? “We’ll talk about that, but the point is, is that you are sent. And more so, you’re sent to send a message. And this is a very simple metaphor, but don’t let it simplicity deceive you to think that it doesn’t have depth, power, and meaning, okay? Because it does. But this is a letter that I’m going to send tomorrow to somebody. It’s a letter and I wrote it and it has up here a return address. This is who is sending it. And then right here is a two address.

(07:16)
Who’s this going to? And then postage. It costs something. And I guess if you think about it, it costs something to send this message. And I don’t know if there’s any … Is there any postal workers in the room? There was in the last service and I do apologize, but sometimes the mail doesn’t get delivered, right? The mailman either drops it in between the seats of the mail truck or gets lost in the sorting. I don’t know how they do that. I don’t know how the machines sort, but they do. Sometimes it gets lost there, or sometimes it gets mailed to the wrong house. I get about once a week, I’ll get something for someone else and it’s like the wrong … And I always have good intentions. I put it on the counter. I’m like, ” I’ll get it to them. “And then three weeks later, it’s still sitting on the counter and I’m like, ” Just toss it and then sort it in the trash.

(08:20)
“I have best intentions, but I just don’t get them their mail because I’m like, ” Yeah, they don’t need this. It looks like junk mail.

(08:30)
“The point is, is that if I write this letter and it doesn’t get to the person I’m sending it, the contents of this letter are valuable. And if it doesn’t get to them, am I upset? Right? Am I upset? I’m disappointed. And so if the postal worker goes up to the house and delivers the message, well, then the message was actually sent. And it’s less about the mail carrier and more about the message. Now, you are sent. Every saint is sent. Saint Markers, you are sent, right? Every saint is sent. You are sent to send a message and has less to do about whether you are with people and more about whether you send the message. And what’s the message?

(09:42)
It’s Jesus. You are sent to send a message about Jesus. And so you can go to a house and hang out and talk to them like if you’re a mail carrier, you could talk about the weather, talk about the tigers, talk about school or whatever, but if that letter still sits in your satchel, did you send the message? If you’re really friendly to the guy at the house, leaning on a mailbox, talking to him, but the message is still in the satchel. Did you send the message? No. No. It’s such a simple metaphor, but it’s so powerful because I think that so many of us, we think we’re sent, but we forget that we’re sent to send a message about Jesus. Not a message about God and how God loves you. A Hindu would agree.

(10:45)
Not a message about God bless you when God is with you and God cares for you. A Muslim would agree. You’re sent to send a message about Jesus, His name. I believe this. When you say His name, it sends tremors and ripples through the supernatural realm. There is power in His name. I believe if you believe the say Amen, there is power in the name of Jesus and it’s in His name alone that we are healed, that we have life, that we have forgiveness, that we find mercy and grace and hope. Jesus is the message and we have to be willing to say the J word with our friends and our families and our loved ones. We have to be willing to be bold enough to say his name, to be unashamed of the gospel and say the name Jesus. This is what Jesus is doing in my life.

(11:59)
Well, I don’t know much about that, but Jesus changes things for me. Jesus has been showing me this, Jesus. And when you say his name, you deliver the mail.

(12:18)
I’m going to push you into this metaphor. Maybe it’s too much. Maybe it falls apart if I push him too hard, but like bulkmail, like if you’re a poster worker, imagine like having a satchel full of bulk mail and how much you hate it. And bulkmail is kind of junk mail, whatever, but like it goes in every mailbox, right? Indiscriminatory, without discretion, just everybody. And that’s what we see in scripture. I think one of the most fascinating things when you look at like this commission, this commissioning from God is that it kind of is vague in general. Take a look. When he commissions the disciples in Matthew 28, it’s called the Great Commission. He says,” Go and make disciples of all nations. “And the disciples are like, ” Okay, which ones?

(13:17)
“All nations, guys. You mean all of them? Yeah, all of them. And then again in Acts one: eight,” You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem. “Okay, Jesus, that’s like a few million people though. Jerusalem. Yes, Jerusalem. And Judea. You mean the whole region of Judea? Yeah, and also the region of Samaria.That’s a big region. Where should we … In fact, guys, the ends of the earth. All of it, all of it. And he calls Paul. He says,” You are supposed to go preach. I’m sending you to the Gentiles. “And he’s like, ” Which ones? ” Yes. All of them.

(14:07)
All of them. And the point is that it’s just this bulkmail. It’s this message that gets sent to everyone you encounter. And the more you look at it, the more you realize that it’s as you go, command to go. As you are walking, as you are going, as you are cooking dinner, as you are working, I’m sending you to send a message about Jesus because wherever you are, wherever you are, that’s where you are sent to send a message about Jesus. It’s just this liberal, bountiful, everywhere you go, you just spread it around and you say his name, the name above all names, the name that gives life and salvation is found in his name, the name alone by which we must be saved, Jesus.

(15:22)
I know some of you are thinking,” Well, I’m not very good at that. “Push in again on this metaphor of the mail carrier. Does it matter how beautiful the male carrier is? No. No. Does it matter how tall they are? Does it matter how intelligent they are? They have to at least be able to see a house number, I guess. I don’t mean to minimize. I think it’s an important job and all that. You have to drive and be faithful to do something. It’s very important, but there’s a baseline that’s pretty simple to do this. It’s hard work. That’s why we appreciate them, but it’s simple.

(16:14)
And the same is true. When you deliver the mail, when you deliver the message of Jesus, it doesn’t matter how eloquent you are. It doesn’t matter how intelligent you are, how much you do or don’t know about the contents of the message. You know enough. It’s the name Jesus. You speak it. Even if you stumble through it, his word is powerful. His word is his word. It came from his lips. He owns it. It goes out. One of my favorite passages in Acts 13 in the book of Acts is Acts 13:49. It says,” The word of the Lord spread quickly. “You get this feeling like the church was breathlessly trying to keep up with the word that Jesus spoke that went out. It’s living, it’s active, it gives life, it changes people and it doesn’t matter how good you are at it, how well you speak it.

(17:16)
If you stammer, if you stutter, you just say the name and amazing things happen.

(17:24)
There’s a guy in 1855 named Edward Kimball. You don’t know his name. That’s the only photograph we have of him. It’s a grainy photograph. In 1855 in Boston, he was buying a pair of shoes and he’s at the shoe store and this young man at the shoe store just caught his attention. His heart was prompted, right? Because a heart to reach one begins with God’s heart for each one. And as he’s sitting there at the shooting story, he felt God’s heart for this young man and he was like, ” I need to share the gospel. “And he left the shoe store and he didn’t. He got scared. He got cold feet and he just agonized about it. He’s like, ” I’ve got to say something. I feel the Holy Spirit sending me to say something to this young man. “So he goes back the next day and he opens the door and there’s the young man and he goes up to him and he tells him about Jesus who died for him, but he rose from the grave.

(18:37)
And by believing he can have life in his name, he shared the gospel. In Edward’s own words, he says he stumbled through it. He did a poor job at it. He stammered. He walked out regretting how he said it and wishes he would have said it better, but it was good. It found root in that young man’s heart and that young man became a follower of Jesus. You don’t know Edward Kimball’s name, but you know the name of the young man he shared the gospel with. It’s Dwight Moody, who in the antebellum era led millions of people to Jesus because Ed said the name of Jesus.

(19:41)
Jesus. And so my friends, tomorrow, Monday, wherever you are, you are sent to send a message about Jesus with your coworkers. Say his name. And then Tuesday when you’re folding laundry in the living room with your kids, that’s where you are. Wherever you are, you are sent to send a message about Jesus. And then Wednesday at dance class or gymnastics or soccer, right? Pickleball. Wherever you are, you are sent to send a message about Jesus. Say his name Thursday on a Friday. And then you’re living out what it means to be sent by God. When you say his name, wherever you are.

(20:47)
Let me pray for us. Heavenly Father, first of all, we are sorry and we need your forgiveness. We are sorry that we have hesitated to say the name of Jesus. We have fallen short. We’ve said safe words like God bless you, but you send us to send a message to say the name of Jesus. And so God, I pray for everyone who can hear the sound of my voice, that you would embolden and empower them to be unashamed of the gospel and to say the name Jesus, wherever they are sent, that you would fill their hearts with the sense that they are commissioned by you in this moment to go be every day evangelists everywhere they go. And God, as we go, let your word be made true. That as we speak, your word takes root and gives faith. God, help each one of us reach one more in the name of Jesus.

(22:13)
Amen.