(Text and Audio)
Title: He Did What Now?
Let me begin with a short story that will make more sense in a few minutes.
(Story of HBC having too much food for the AU football players.)
A few weeks ago as we transitioned out of the end of the sermon on the mount in chapter 7, I told you that chapters 8 and 9 of Matthew run together blending stories of Jesus’ miracles with intertwined teaches as well.
So far, we’ve covered three miracle accounts: First we looked at the encounter Jesus had with the leper, next we looked at Jesus’ encounter with the Centurion, and last week we looked at the accounts of Jesus healing Peter’s mother in law and then also healing the multitudes of sickness and demon possession.
Well in today’s passage Matthew is going to offer a break from the miracle accounts and focus on a very important theological point that Jesus makes through two separate encounters with these two men.
I want to stress to you this morning that one of my frustrations with American Christianity is that I don’t think we really hear the words and the consequences of the words that Jesus speaks today, so I’d really like for us to consider the difficulty of swallowing this teaching.
I toiled over how to teach these four verses (18-22) and ultimately decided the best route is to have a shorter message today, and a slightly longer message next week. So while our entire message focuses on the content of 18-22, today we will start with a small point about Jesus’ ministry that I think we often miss, and then next week dig into two really interesting theological points that Jesus makes about discipleship.
Let me illustrate it this way. Let’s say I get it in my head that I’m going to climb Mount Everest. I set a five year plan and say, “Five years from now, the summer of 2016, just before my 40th birthday, I want to climb Mount Everest.”
What do you suppose would be one of the first things I would do as I start my preparations? (take answers)
My answer: I would talk to people who have done it. I would want to know exactly what the risks are, exactly what I should prepare for. I’d also want to know, in every detail, how did they do it. In other words, I want to know exactly what I’m committing to.
Let’s keep that in mind as we turn our attention to the Scriptures.
Read/Pray
Jesus departed to the other side
I’ve spent most of my career in ministry, at least in part, praying for a full church. I want these pews to be overflowing, I want us to have to move to two services, I want us to have to build a new building because we are bursting at the seems, I want us to have webcasts, audiocasts, podcasts. I want us to have a presence on the internet. Ultimately, I want Carol Fox to come to me, with shock on her face and say, “I can’t believe it, we ran out of food at a potluck.”
I admit, with no reservation I want us to have those kinds of problems Why? So that I might ask for a salary increase? So that I might not have to be bi-vocational? So that I could hire an actual staff to help me? So that Heritage’s name would be up in lights. So I could write a book with some ridiculous title like “The Jesus Effect” and people would walk by that book in Christian Bookstores and say, “Hey! He’s that pastor in rural Ohio who took a little church of 30 and turned it into a phenomenon. I’m going to buy his book because he has a big church church, he must know what he’s talking about!”
No. So why do I want these things? (take answers)
The reason I’d love for Heritage to grow is much simpler than all that. I believe in what we do, and I wish more people were exposed to it, and became as passionate about it as most of us have become.
Here’s what gets me about Jesus.
He gets the Billy Graham crusade type crowd, and leaves it behind. He gives his disciples the command to get in the boat at the Sea of Galilee and sail across to the other side so he can distance himself from the crowd.
Now, this is just a rough estimate, but if he crosses the sea near Capernaum, near Peter’s house and goes straight across, that’s about a 5 mile voyage. For the crowd, to walk the perimeter of the lake to catch up with Jesus, that would be somewhere between a 10-20 mile walk.
My point is, they aren’t meeting him at the other side. He’s leaving them in the dust.
Why? (take answers)
Main reason: Some of what Jesus taught was meant for the masses. Most of what Jesus taught was meant for his disciples.
Jesus was a disciple maker.
I believe, without question, that discipleship, one on one, small groups, is the most Biblical way to not only spread and teach the Gospel, but to follow Jesus command at the end of Matthew’s Gospel to “Make Disciples and teach them all he has commanded us.”
Now, Jesus wasn’t against mass teaching. We just came off of the sermon on the mount, which was, to be sure, a mass teaching. We just read last week in verse 16 that he healed “many” who were sick and possessed. So Jesus did teach and talk to the masses, but not nearly as much as he invested in the lives of those closest to him, those he knew the best, those he loved the most.
I don’t want to be Billy Graham. I couldn’t be. And even if I could, how would that help you? You’d look at my life and try to emulate what I was doing, and then we’d have a church full of 60 people trying to be Billy Graham, what a disaster.
But if you look at me, and see me as a discipler. Teaching small groups. Meeting weekly with Eric Pollitz, Mike Jeffery, Cory Finton. Teaching small groups like Sunday School here, Wednesday night here, Fuse at GBC. If you see me investing in lives of others, teaching at ACS, playing hoops for fellowship on Tuesday nights…I think these are things you could do.
My point is this: It is okay to move away from the masses to correctly teach the few. Teach them how to teach and you will reach more people than mass evangelism ever could, and the quality of the believer will be much better.
How many of you have been discipled?
What do you think the advantages are to being taught this way verses being taught in a mass setting? (In other words, what are the advantages of a small classroom?)
How many of you have ever taught anything, ever?
What are the advantages of teaching this way?
When Jesus crosses the Sea of Galilee he’s not abandoning those people, in fact he’s paying attention to one’s that are already his responsibility.