01/05/2025: Matthew 22 & 28: "Our Mission"

This episode centers on the core mission of the church, focusing on the imperative of glorifying God and making disciples. Through insightful discussion, we explore the elements of message, mission, and method while emphasizing the need for church members to actively engage in disciple-making relationships and adapt methodologies to thrive in an ever-changing world.

• Clarifying the mission of the church: glorifying God and making disciples
• Importance of faith, worship, and service in glorifying God
• Illustrating the consequences of confusing methods with mission
• Necessity of intentional disciple-making in the church
• Encouraging personal engagement in community and service
• Flexibility in methods while holding fast to the unchanging message of the Gospel
• Adapting practices to better serve the changing needs of the community

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:21

Well, good morning church. Welcome to Ice Storm Central. I am the Heatmiser and we are reporting from the church this morning. I'm glad that you could actually join us through the live stream today. We've got a dedicated crew here in the house with us and some hearty souls that joined us in worship this morning. Today we are going to be in the book of Matthew Matthew chapter 22, and also Matthew chapter 28. So if you have your Bibles and also Matthew chapter 28. So if you have your Bibles, go ahead and turn there. I'm actually reading from the NIV.

Speaker 1 0:50

This morning I'm going to pray for our time before we go to the Word. Our great God, we are so thankful that we have a place like this to be, that we are able to come and broadcast as we are, and we pray for all the souls that are home today that you might bless them all in a very special way, draw them all closer to you, lord, and we just pray that we would be more and more like our Savior, jesus Christ. And as we go to your word, we pray that your Spirit might be our teacher, and we pray all this in Jesus' name, amen. I'm going to be starting in Matthew, chapter 22. I'm going to read verse 36 through 40, then I'm going to flip over to Matthew, chapter 28. Matthew, chapter 22, 36 through 40. Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law? Jesus replied love the Lord, your God, with all your heart and with all your soul, with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment, and the second is, like it, love your neighbor as yourself. All the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments. Matthew, chapter 28,. I'm looking at verses 16 through 20.

Speaker 1 1:57

Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw him, they worshipped him, but some doubted. Then Jesus came to them and said all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you, and surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age. This is God's word.

Speaker 1 2:24

There's three really important words for us to understand and to consider this morning. That is, message, mission and method. Last week we considered our message, which is the gospel of Jesus Christ. This morning we're going to consider our mission. Our mission, to be as plain as I can, is this Our mission is to glorify God and to make disciples, and we do this mission by bringing our message to bear upon the lives of men, women and children. And that is method, or the how. How do we do this? How we bring that message to bear? That is our method and we're going to consider that also this morning. Our method could be life groups, it could be Sunday schools or Wednesday night programs, community programs, you name it. Our message never changes. The gospel never changes. Our mission never changes Glorify God and make disciples. Our method, however, that can and should change from time to time. That can and should change from time to time. The challenge is when we confuse the method with the mission. Let me explain it to you this way.

Speaker 1 3:32

If you're from Gen X, which is the best generation not the greatest generation, but the best generation, I'm certain the majority of your book reports, if you are Gen X now be honest here the book reports that you did in grammar school or even middle school came right from the pages of the Encyclopedia Britannica and you didn't even try to change the words slightly. But the home encyclopedia collection has gone the way of the mimeograph machine. Some of you likely remember film-based cameras. I know some are still in use today, but they're more of a novelty and not even the norm. 1984, I was nine years old. My mom gave me a Kodak disc and I was going to be the next big thing in my mind. That is, of course, until I broke it, and it didn't really take that good of pictures anyway.

Speaker 1 4:20

But Kodak, like Britannica, failed back in 2012. They declared bankruptcy after dominating the film-based photography market for about 100 years. Why did they fail? This is from Forbes magazine. They said because they refused to respond to the massive changes in culture which had become dominated by digital photography Massive changes in culture which had become dominated by digital photography. Kodak they bet their future on their past and they lost the bet.

Speaker 1 4:58

And so we see these massive organizations just fading away, and the sad part is the local church is not exempt from this. Some churches are fading away because they lost the message and they lost the mission. Many mainline denominational churches, even in the Southern Baptist organization, have confused the method with the mission and, as a result, they're fading away. About 15,000 churches close their door every year and even more, don't have full-time staff. That's according to Lifeway. The reasons, I'm sure, are legion, but of those that I have studied, they have elevated their method or how they do things to a priority over their message and their mission. Kodak's mission was photography, but their method was film-based photography and they were adamant about not joining the digital photography craze that was happening. Britannica's mission was knowledge, but their method was books, and, like Kodak, they made their method their mission and, like Kodak, they faded away, although both of them still have a very small online presence today and they're trying to break back into the market.

Speaker 1 6:12

We have a message the gospel of Jesus Christ. We have a mission to glorify God and make disciples. No matter what's going on in the culture, no matter what the future holds, we must never forget our message and our mission. The methods will come and go, but Jesus, his gospel, our work in the gospel, is forever, and so today I want to clearly understand our mission and then consider some of our current methods.

Speaker 1 6:39

Let me call this first heading mission part A, that is, to glorify God. Our message is the gospel. Our mission is to glorify God and make disciples. Matthew 22,.

Speaker 1 6:53

A man said teacher, what is the greatest commandment in the law. Jesus replied love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is, like it, love your neighbor as yourself. All the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments. So the first and great commandment is to glorify God. If I could say it another way, this reflection of God's glory happens when we love Him with all that we are and we love others the way that we love ourselves. Or, if I could say it more precisely, and we love others the way that we love ourselves. Or if I could say it more precisely, god glorifies Himself by calling and enabling us, his people, to glorify Him through what we do.

Speaker 1 7:34

So to glorify God is action. It's not a vibe right, it's not a state of being. To glorify God is action on our part. That is why one part of our mission is the action of glorifying God. Now, this idea of glorifying God seems to be quite nebulous, but we can say that's our mission. But what does it mean? Well, glorifying God, as I said, is an action. So let me share.

Speaker 1 8:00

There's at least three actions that fall into this category. The first is we glorify God by our faith, since our salvation in Christ comes by faith alone and since faith is the root from which all of our good works flow, we would expect to find this indelible connection between faith and giving glory to God in all of our conduct. You see, god made many promises to His people and, of course, christ is the fulfillment of those promises. He is the great yes to the great promises of old. The Bible tells us. Faith gives its assent and embraces God's promises in Christ. We glorify God when our faith is in Christ and frankly, I don't think it's possible to glorify God apart from faith in Jesus Christ. Secondly, we glorify God by our worship. So it's faith and then worship, and, at the very heart, worship ascribes all glory to God alone. We can glorify God in many ways, but Scripture indicates that nothing we do delights God more than calling on His name with sincere hearts and declaring that all glory belongs to Him.

The Mission

Speaker 1 9:18

Some people at times speak that all of life is worship, such as going to work is worship and playing basketball is worship, or practicing the piano is worship, and I think it's proper to honor God in all of our endeavors. But worship, however, is a distinct activity in which we set aside everything else and we set our minds and hearts fully on the Lord in order to receive His Word and respond back to Him in prayer and in song, whether we do it in private or in families, or in the context, like this, corporate worship. You see, in many biblical texts about worship, the repeated exhortations are to call on the Lord, to sing to the Lord, to praise the Lord, and other similar practices provide abundant evidence that God has he takes special delight in the distinct activity of worship. When we declare God's glory in worship, we have the privilege of echoing and joining the angelic song that's in heaven even right now, anticipating the day when our co-worshippers will be visible to us and we'll be together in one great company. We will worship the Lamb who was slain, and so we begin now, with imperfect hearts and faltering voices, and to do that, but we will do it forever. We will give glory to God in worship, and I said last week that disconnecting yourself from community is actually much less faithful than connecting yourself to a flawed community.

Speaker 1 10:56

This is one of the major reasons why the Christian life is not a solo mission. Our salvation is a very personal matter, one that is between you and God, I can't have faith for you. But our sanctification, that is the working out of that salvation, and you see it in the Old Testament and the New Testament is always done in the context of a family like this, as imperfect as these human organizations can be. This is where we glorify God most clearly, when we are connected in spirit, in worship, in the Word and in our mission with one another. So our faith glorifies God, our worship glorifies God. But we also glorify God when we serve others. So to glorify God, as you can see, it's all outward, it's never inward. We can't glorify God if we are so inwardly focused that we're only thinking and acting upon ourselves. We don't glorify God when we won't share our gifting with the kingdom.

Speaker 1 12:01

The New Testament clearly teaches us to glorify God with our conduct, especially that which builds up the local assembly, the body of Christ. The pattern, it seems to be this to me anyway that as we believe in Christ to the glory of God and we declare His glory in worship, grateful obedience then flows from that, and then that glorifies God even more, especially when it's works of service that bless the church of Christ. Jesus said it in Matthew 5, let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven. So Jesus clearly commands that the goal of our lives should be to behave so that God gets the glory, live so that men will see your life and give your Father in heaven glory, not you. So it should be very clear that glorifying God is not just faith, it's not just gathered worship, it's a peculiar kind of living.

Speaker 1 13:04

So in order for God to get the glory from the way we live, we must be engaged in doing good. It's not so much by avoiding sins that God's people display as glory, but rather in the pursuit of that which is good, acts of generosity, works of kindness. And it's God's goal to be glorified in His people. And Jesus says this happens when we do good deeds. We would expect the Bible then to tell us that God's goal in redeeming a people is that we might do good deeds. And we see that Christ died, that we could be redeemed, that we could be saved and, as a result of that salvation, that we might do good deeds for God's glory and so bring even more and more glory to our Father in heaven. How do we do this? How do we serve or do good things that God gets the glory?

Speaker 1 13:57

Well, the answer is that in order for God to get the glory, we have to do good as one who is depending on God's strength. Not mere good deeds, but good deeds done in a spirit that comes from a joyful dependence on God to help us, and that's what glorifies God. Every one of us owes every ounce of strength that we have to God alone. We owe every fiber of intelligence to God, and the slightest resolve to do good is a gift from God. If the totality of our dependence on God would hit us with full force, I think we would live and do good in a much different way than we do now. We wouldn't boast in our achievements, we wouldn't criticize the speck in our brother's eye, we wouldn't grumble about our inconveniences, we wouldn't be presumptuous in any way. And if even existence itself could be taken for granted, we do. I mean a person who truly owns up to the fact that he exists by the Word of God, that all his strength and moral resolve is a gift from God. That person will have a spirit of joy and gratitude and lowliness about them, and in serving this way, god gets the glory.

Speaker 1 15:20

We glorify God through faith, through worship and through acts of love, a service to others. That's part one of our mission. We want to glorify God. The second part, or mission part B, if you will, is to make disciples. Matthew 28 again, verse 18,. Then Jesus came to them and said All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore, go and came to them and said All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you, and surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age. I mean, let's consider our message, and this is a short recap from last week.

Speaker 1 16:01

Our message is the gospel. It always is the gospel, full stop. We are people of the gospel Four fundamental elements of the gospel, and if you remove any one of them, you no longer have the gospel. That is God. God made us man. We are sinful, we have rebelled against God. Therefore we're separated from God. Jesus is God's solution to our problem and through Jesus we can be reconciled. That's part four. That's our response. We respond in repentance and faith to what Jesus has done. That's the simplicity of the gospel. But without those things it's not the gospel. So the command for the church is to make disciples. We take that message of the gospel out there and we share it and we teach it.

Speaker 1 16:47

Now the problem is, for far too long the church has said, yes, that's good, but that is something that religious professionals do. That's why we hire staff, that's why we hire pastors. There's an old Hebrew word for that and it's called hogwash. The mission of the church is the mission of the church and you are the church. That's why we exist. We glorify God and we make disciples In the context of the local assembly.

Speaker 1 17:16

Disciple making is an intentional process. It starts with evangelizing people who don't believe or people who haven't heard the gospel, and then we then establish those believers in faith and then, third, from that we equip leaders who mature, making disciples. It implies intentionality and process. Disciple making doesn't just happen because a church exists and people show up. Disciple making is a deliberate process.

Speaker 1 17:50

First step, of course, you need to share the Gospel. If you're not in Christ, I can't make a disciple out of you. That's the work of the Holy Spirit when your mind and your heart come in contact with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. So, step one, our church, our job together you are the church is to share the gospel with those who are lost. That means we all have to be where the lost exist. We cannot do that in a church bubble, can we? If you say, well, I have this church thing over here and then I'm going to go to this church thing over here, then I'm going to go to this church thing over here, then I'm going to go to this Christian thing over here, you're missing the point of our mission. You're staying in this underground, sub-christian culture and you're not going to affect the culture at all.

Biblical Discipleship and Church Methods

Speaker 1 18:35

The second part, of course, is establishing believers in the faith, or teaching. That's right, where most of us think. That's what we think of when we hear making disciples, and rightly so. It's a significant part of the process. I truly believe every single one of us now church, listen to me every single one of us should have at least two people in our lives One that we are discipling and one that's discipling us. We should all have those two people in our lives Someone that we're discipling and someone that's discipling us. We should all have those two people in our eyes Someone that we're discipling and someone who is discipling us. It's going to look different in the different seasons of life, but you're always going to have those two people and I can tell you, the best place to see that begin is in our life groups, which are going to be starting up again soon. Find one and join it, and if you're shy and introverted, find an extrovert to go with you. It's only awkward once, unless you're extroverted, and then it's never awkward at all. It's just a good time.

Speaker 1 19:34

Jesus didn't have in mind maverick disciple makers. He had in mind a community of believers who, together and under the authority of the local church, seek to transfer the faith to the next generation. When Jesus said make disciples, we can't help but remember how he did it. He did it three years of teaching twelve rough men on a dusty road. Disciple-making is the Word of God, shaping men and women within life-on-life relationships, and it's demonstrated in Paul's relationship with the Thessalonian church. And he said, being so affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us. It's the men and women regularly teaching one another to obey what Jesus commanded. We try to help others follow Jesus and we do deliberate spiritual good. We pray for gospel influence in their life, we proclaim God's words and we do this all for the sake of the last day, if you will. We see some fruit now, but the goal is always to present people mature in Christ when they stand before Him.

Speaker 1 20:46

What is discipling? In addition to helping others follow Jesus, it's doing them spiritual good and it's initiating a relationship in which you teach and correct and model and love. And it takes a lot of time and it takes a lot of humility and discipling at its core is that teaching. We teach with words. We teach all the words. Jesus taught All the words of the Bible Corporately. This is why we preach expositionally and consecutively through books of the Bible. We alternate between the Old Testament and the New Testament, big chunks of Scripture with little chunks of Scripture. We also encourage people to attend our adult Sunday school and that is a several year curriculum through the Bible itself. Life groups that's where smaller groups of folks gather together to go deeper into the text of the message and to make it clearer and to go even deeper into life with each other, and sometimes discipling requires that you warn others about the choices that they're making. People grow when you teach them general truths, but also when you correct error.

Speaker 1 21:57

Part of being a Christian is recognizing that sin deceives us and that we need other believers to help us see the things we can't see about ourselves. One author said that joining a church, joining this type of community, is like throwing paint on the invisible man. New sins become visible in the course of our relationships, our discipleship relationships. In fact, you can lead in a discipling relationship by inviting others to correct you and making it easy for them to do so. I think the vast majority of the correction in a church should happen in the private context of one-on-one discipleship.

Speaker 1 22:37

And it's worth noticing Jesus didn't just say teach people. We're not theological eggheads transferring data to other people. He told them to teach people to obey, obey, jesus. See, the goal of discipling is to see lives transformed, isn't it? Which means it involves more than just reading a book, or even the Bible with another person. It's being part of their life. And then, third, ultimately, discipling involves living out the whole Christian life with others. We communicate not merely with our words, but with our whole life and what happens in that relationship requires more than just classroom teaching. It requires the kind of instruction that occurs like an apprentice would get on a job or a personal trainer would give to somebody who hires them or personal trainer would give to somebody who hires them. See, helping others follow Jesus can never be done without risk.

Speaker 1 23:34

Just as you have to humble yourself to be discipled, you have to humble yourself to disciple, because discipling involves difficult things like saying no or persevering through troubles, or knowing when to bear with someone and knowing when to let that discipleship relationship go. We disciple not just through our strength but also through our weakness. I mean, christian discipling isn't so much the work of experts and theologians. It's the work of one beggar who's teaching other beggars where they found bread. That's what we do when we disciple others, and the local church is the best place where these relationships grow.

Speaker 1 24:15

A church can be thick with mentoring relationships, even if they aren't formally called discipleship relationships. After all, discipling really is just a bunch of church members taking responsibility to prepare one another for glory. It's one way to see the New Testament idea that we are a kingdom of priests, that we are a holy nation. That's why we talk about life groups so much. They're a method, right, not the mission, but right now they're the most healthy way for you to be discipled and for you to experience pastoral care and community here. And as the church continues to grow and by all indications it will the more we will learn that all of that stuff happens primarily in those small groups.

Speaker 1 24:57

Okay, last then, is that we need to understand that the method always changes. The method always changes. No amount of cultural shift will change the gospel. You see, our message will never change, the mission never changes, and the mission and the message of the church here is the same as it is in Bangalore and Boston. Their mission statement might read differently. In the end we all are here to glorify God and make disciples. The message and mission of this church has not changed since its founding. The message is the same, the mission is the same. It may be worded a little bit differently today, but it's all the same. The method of First Baptist Church has changed many times over.

Speaker 1 25:50

There used to be a stone church on this property, as so I'm told and I've seen the pictures of it, and that was called First Baptist Church. One person I met here when I first got here said that's the real church. This isn't the real church. The stone church was the real church and I get that because nostalgia is powerful. But that stone church is gone and here we are and there are many who have spent your whole life here. Glory to God. That's an achievement, that's a stick-to-it-ness that we just don't see much anymore. And you can testify to the fact that the method has changed, but the message and the mission will never change. But far too many churches have mixed those things up, the method with the mission and people say, well, I remember when this church did whatever it is. The problem is that whatever that is probably wouldn't work in this culture the way it might have even in the last generation. Method is how our mission and mission are brought to bear upon our community.

Speaker 1 26:53

I think of the Awana program. If you're familiar with the Awana program, I think most people in Baptist life are that's a good program for kids. It always has been, and the team that manages all that content. They do a good job with it. The church that I pastored in Connecticut had an Awana program when I first arrived but it was struggling because to have a successful Awana program you need a lot of volunteers. You need like one adult for every four or five kids. So we stopped using the Awana model and just did a fun kids program with many of the same elements and a lot fewer leaders, and it worked. But we lost a lot of families because Awana was what they were looking for. We want this thing, we want this method Now. Awana isn't bad, but it wasn't the right method at the time. But there is an Awana cult out there. Isn't there? And if you're a part of the Awana cult, don't send me any messages, because I just don't care, because some people think Awana was given by the Lord himself on stone tablets down to Moses. It wasn't. It's a method. If you don't have Awana, the world won't end, and it didn't. And fact, the smaller scale kids program in Connecticut is still healthy and successful.

Speaker 1 28:15

I'm going to mention the word life groups again. I like life groups a lot. I love our conversations, how we minister to each other, even during the summer when we aren't technically meeting. Those are the people that I interact with the most often. It's always been that way, and if you're not in a life group, you need to join one. Sunday mornings are excellent, but it's difficult to have deep, meaningful conversations and connections with people when you say hi and zip by or after just a few minutes of visiting and some people that come here are just as soon as I say amen. After the sermon's done, you are out the door so fast that you knock over people when you're leaving because you need to beat Second Baptist Church to the Mexican restaurant. Calm down, you guys are laughing up there because some of you are those people. Don't shut off the live stream. Some of you are trying to beat them to the restaurant. But life groups, man, you're in someone's house, you're eating their snacks, and a few hours every week that's where the good stuff happens.

Speaker 1 29:19

But here's the thing Life groups are a method. They're not the message or the mission. I'm fond of how they're working right now, but if over the next couple of years or however long, they don't work like they're supposed to maybe there's a cultural shift or whatever it is then we reconsider that method and as elders we try to look at the church every six months and say is everything that we're doing working, or do we need to step back and say, okay, this isn't working like it used to work? Method can be good, but it's never sacred. If someone at Kodak would have asked are we in the film business or in the photography business? If they said we're in the photography business, then the steady decline of film being used would have had less impact on their bottom line. Instead, facebook scooped up Instagram because they are in the photography business. And now I think, if I had to guess and this is all anecdotal I'm sure that Apple is the leader in all of photography, because every iteration of the iPhone, the camera, just keeps getting better and better. I mean the majority of pictures taken today. I would wager that they're taken by iPhones. And some people use the other company that nobody likes I think it's called the robot company, but they don't take very good pictures. But Kodak mistook their method with their mission. So what about us? Well, we've gone through major changes that we've had to go through for revitalization. 2025, lord willing, is going to be a year of letting it work, but if we need to make course corrections with method, we will.

Speaker 1 30:56

I remember 2020, we lived in Connecticut. We were just living right outside of New York City by a little ways, and everyone in New York City has a second house up where we lived, and so when COVID hit, everyone went up to their second house and so places were closed. You had to have a mask on to go anywhere, and the whole proof of vaccination to go into places was real. It was madness. And the state of Connecticut said we couldn't have more than 35 people in the church building, which is a whole other conversation. So we just built a stage in our parking lot. We had everyone outside, and that still made some of the panicky Karens in the area mad, but we still did it. We learned that the church, we are not in the building business. We are in the glorify God and make disciples business, and this should be evidence of it. You're sitting at home. We are not in the building business, are we? We're in the glorify God and make disciples business. And so in 2020, I think it was May of 2020, we were outside right up to November, and November in Connecticut it starts snowing, and so we worshipped in the parking lot until it was too cold and it was great. In fact, I had people upset when we moved back inside, but I said, hey, you need to pound sand, because when it's snowing, I'm going to preach indoors.

Eternal Gospel and Ever-Changing Methods

Speaker 1 32:26

Our mission is not programming, it's not doing social media well, it's not even having amazing youth and kids programs. Although we invest in these things, these methods are their methods. Our mission is to glorify God and make disciples. So, friends, let me end this way our message is the gospel of Jesus Christ. Our mission is to glorify God and make disciples. No matter what the future holds, we will hold fast to the message of the gospel. We will be committed to no other mission than what Jesus has given to us in the great commission.

Speaker 1 33:05

The methods will come and go. We can't hold on to them. If we can't hold on to them, programs will come and go. We can't hold on to them if we can't hold on to them. Programs will come and go and we have to be willing to say goodbye to them and try new things. But Jesus, his Gospel and our work in the Gospel is forever. Thank you for joining us today. Let me pray for us and we'll conclude Father, we're thankful for your word. I'm thankful for everyone that's listening this morning. I praise you so much for who you are and I just ask a great blessing upon the people today. Lord, although we are not together, we are together in one accord. We are together in spirit and in heart and in mission, and I pray that we might glorify you with all that we are, and I pray that we might glorify you with all that we are, and I pray this in Jesus' name, amen. And before I end, I got to give a shout out to Pastor Ron Hicks. I love you, brother. You owe me five bucks.