Lesson comes from the book of Matthew, chapter 10 and 11. These twelve Jesus sent out instructing them. Go nowhere among the Gentiles and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. And proclaim as you go, saying, the kingdom of heaven is at hand, heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons. You received without paying, give, without pay. Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me. And whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. And whoever finds his life will lose it. And whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. Whoever receives you receives me. And whoever receives me receives him who sent me. The one who receives a prophet because he's a prophet will receive a prophet's reward. And the one who receives a righteous person because he is a righteous person will receive a righteous person's reward. And whoever gives one of these little ones even a cup of cold water because he's a disciple. Truly, I say to you, he will, by no means, lose his reward. When Jesus has finished instructing his twelve disciples, he went on from there to teach and preach in their cities. Now, when John heard in prison about the deeds of Christ, he sent words by his disciples and said to him, are you the one who is to come or shall we look for another? And Jesus answered them, go and tell John what you hear and see. The blind receive their sight and the lame walk. Leopards are cleansed and the death here, the dead are raised up and the poor have good news preached to them. And blessed is the one who is not offended by me. The word of the Lord. But to the sermon, it would be a great response to what I want to talk to you about today. Just that second verse really struck me, it's all good. Lead on, O King, eternal, till sin spurs, war shall cease, and holiness shall whisper the sweet of men of peace. We're not with swords loud, clashing, nor rolling, nor roll of stirring drums, with deeds of love and mercy, the heavenly kingdoms come. Kingdom comes. That's kind of what I want to talk to you about today from our reading this morning. You probably recognize that text, it is where Jesus calls the Twelve Disciples whom we refer to most commonly these days as apostles, and he commissions them to enter into his work. And what I'd like to do is just start by reviewing the gospel, kind of what the gospels tell us about the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. And then really the outline is almost more three applications that flow from it. And it's just kind of a short message this morning. But the Lord willing something that's encouraging to each of us as we reflect on God's goodness to us. The gospel was preached very well even in the prayer of confession because we acknowledge our sins and our shortcomings and that we have nothing in our hands to bring to redeem our souls, but Jesus Christ paid it all and God sent Jesus for that purpose. That's really in a sense, I guess we could start even earlier, but let's start there this morning. God sent his son, Jesus Christ, into the world to save us, and that is good news. God sent his son into the world to save us. When we think about our world today, we know how good of news that is. We think of those 200 girls that were kidnapped and presumably sold into slavery in the neighboring nations and such. It's a devastating thing. We can read in the news about the ongoing war in Syria and the millions of people that have been displaced, the millions of people that are in harm's way. I believe it's over 100,000, if not hundreds of thousands killed, just a terrible war, civil war in Syria. If you follow the news at all, you come to Ukraine and you realize, oh, this is a very scary place, a scary situation, and I guess the Prime Minister of Germany recently said you've got to stop. If you go too far with this, it's going to be unstoppable. The burning of one of the government buildings and such, just a terrible situation. And that's before we even get to our own neighborhood and human trafficking and the Miami Valley, the struggles we have in our own lives. We need good news. We need to know that God cares and loves. And the gospel is incredibly good news into the darkness, into a fallen world where things go awry, where even good people do bad things and fall short of the glory of God. God has taken note and he cares and he demonstrates incredible love by sending his son, Jesus Christ into the world. And our gospel takes up with Jesus, incorporating not just himself, but his followers to continue this work. Jesus Christ was sent into this world to seek and to save the lost. And that's exactly what he went around doing before he died for those three years of public ministry, well, from the time of his birth through the three years of public ministry. He lived. He lived a perfect life. He did for us what we could not do for ourselves. God sent him to live perfectly for us. One of the ladies in our church that's presenting her children for baptism works at Cracker Bell and there's a day where she couldn't work a week or two ago. And one of her co-workers worked the shift for her. That's pretty amazing in and of itself. But then the woman brought her the proceeds that she had made working the shift and gave it to her. That's the idea of doing for someone what they can't do for themselves. And that's exactly what Jesus did for us. God requires of us that we do only good all the time that we have a heart of devotion, of love, of obedience, of adoration for him, all the time and without shortcoming. And we failed. And we can't do that for ourselves. And here comes Jesus doing that for us in the same way in a sense giving us the proceeds. But you know, even with that it wouldn't be enough. Even with Jesus' perfect obedience we would have trouble because we would have to pay the fees, the penalties if you will for our sins. We have not only not done the good that we should have done, but we have done the things we should not have done. And we have a debt to pay and according to the Scriptures we have hell to pay. The wages of sin is death, it's the wrath of God poured out upon us and we commonly talk about it as hell, a place of torment, a place of punishment for rebelling against the creator of the universe, the God of all creation. And God in love, sin to son, Jesus Christ, not only to live for us and to do for us what we could not do for ourselves but then to die and buy his death, to make payment, to again as our substitute to suffer the wrath of God on our behalf. So having both perfect obedience because Jesus did that for us and a death for our sins and God raising him from the dead, we find that Jesus did a wonderful things for us. He saves us, he rescues us, he saves us from ourselves in our own self-destructive behavior. He saves us from the wrath and anger of God and the consequences paying the penalties for our sins. And he set us free from the tyranny of the devil because it's not just us and God but we have an enemy of our souls who kind of from the beginning, if you remember, tempted Eve to eat the forbidden fruit and has been hounding and tempting and leading people astray all these days. Well God has defeated all of them through his son, Jesus Christ. And that's the good news that we proclaim. And the thing that I find amazing is that as we respond to God in faith, as we receive the good gift of Jesus Christ which God has sent, we have not only forgiveness of sins and we have not only deliverance from the temptations and the assaults of the devil, okay, we still face temptation in this life, but he's been conquered and we have that victory assured to us. We also find God at work in us, delivering us from our own self-destructive tendencies and calling us to enter into the very ministry of Jesus Christ. And so we can sing, lead on, O King Eternal, lead on, we will follow and we will preach the good news of the gospel and that's what our passage is all about. Jesus is summoning the twelve and they are to take on this ministry of our Lord Jesus Christ. It's not their own ministry that's not their own thing, but they enter into what Jesus is doing. Jesus is going about preaching the good news of the kingdom. Jesus is the one who's earning the salvation and the disciples are to point to Jesus Christ. That's what this story is all about. And so three simple imperatives, three simple applications from this text. The first one is this, show incredible love. When Jesus summons the twelve and he calls them by name, we read this in verses five through eight. These twelve, Jesus sent out, instructing them, go nowhere among the Gentiles and enter no town of the Samaritans, but rather go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. And proclaim as you go, say, the kingdom of heaven is at hand, heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons, you receive without paying, give without paying. Now there's three aspects of God's incredible love in here that we are to enter into and it's important for us to see the first one is God's initiating love, that it's God who sends us, right? He's the one who sent the Lord Jesus Christ and Jesus is the one speaking and he's the one who sends us and he says, don't go to the Gentiles and to the Gentiles cities right now, but to the the lost sheep of Israel and we find this pattern in the Lord Jesus Christ and in the the growing of the church, it's the gospel goes to the Jew first and then to the Gentiles. Jesus will after his resurrection tell his disciples go into all the world and make disciples of all the nations, but when he started, he started in Jerusalem and then Judea and later on, it would be the surrounding areas even to the remotest parts of the world. But he sends them and the point I'm trying to get across is that love initiates, love initiates. He saw us ruined, he saw our need, he saw that we were enemies and he moved toward us. And if we are to take on the ministry of our Lord Jesus Christ, if we are to show the incredible love of God, we need to be initiators. In this fallen world with all sorts of death, with all sorts of hostilities, we move in and we show kindness, we show love, we move toward. The second thing about God's incredible love is it comes with words. In fact, let me give you all three of the things I want to tell you. God's love initiates, God loves speaks and God's love does. Works of mercy and compassion. And they all go together. The moving in, it's not just going in and doing good, it's going in and speaking. We see that in verse 7 and proclaim as you go, saying the kingdom of heaven is at hand. The kingdom of heaven is at hand, God is here. That's an important thing, you know, we need words. We never just do the good things. We need to put the words around it, words define and explain and make sure there's no misunderstanding about why the good deed. It delivers from manipulation or at least it defines in a way that keeps us from being manipulative and that sort of thing, or misunderstood. Remember, Glenn, I was falling in love with my dear wife. I was a little bit hesitant to say words and so one day we were walking out of the hospital from where we were visiting a fella and I just grabbed her hand and said, hey, come on, let's go this way. And I never let go of her hand. Everyone knew we liked each other, including us, but we had never talked about it. And this was the first time I was kind of making my move. It took about two blocks before she either got up the courage or said, I can't stand this anymore. You'll have to ask her, but she said, do you realize you're holding my hand? To indeed, I thought it was obvious. And she forced me to use words. Yes, yes. Well, why? Because I like you. Is that all right? Oh, yes. And a way we went and words and deeds are very important. They go together. And the deeds are no less than what God calls the disciples to do. Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons. You receive without paying, give without pay. It's an amazing aspect of love that God calls. It's an incredible demonstration of love. The God who has the power to raise the dead and cleanse and heal. In our Lord Jesus Christ did that and gave this power to his disciples, and he hasn't given that power to me. But he had, and maybe not to you, either to raise the dead and such. He has given it to others than by himself. I mean, Elijah raised the dead, so, but I'd go astray. We can show incredible love in our deeds. And that's exactly what the Scriptures call us to do. It's an amazing thing to demonstrate the love of God by our deeds. And so all three are important. We initiate, we speak, and we do the good deeds which God has called us to do. We can show incredible love. And the things that he mentions are things that should still direct what we do. Even if we don't have power to heal, or cleanse of leprosy, or these sorts of things, Jesus is still one whose ministry is identified by seeing hurt and moving toward it. He didn't come and tell us disciples, put the fear of God in those people, command the buildings to fall down and do a Darth Vader death grip on someone's throat if they don't bow and prepare for my coming. So he said, move toward the hurt, move toward the pain, do what you can. And I think that we can do is, can we not? We can move toward it. We can move toward people in their pain. It seems to me that's where the love of God is the most powerfully seen. It's where we show something that's really true. It's where our needs really lie. It's important. Let's move on. Maintain incredibly high loyalty to Jesus. Now we skipped a lot of verses. He gave a lot of other instructions about where to go and how to minister and what the disciples would face. Not only in the short term of preparing the cities for Jesus to come in himself, but he speaks in a longer term paradigm. And I think this is part of it. He tells us in verses 37 through the end of chapter 10, whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me and whoever does not take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. Whoever receives you receives me and whoever receives me receives him who sent me. You see that chain, don't you about God sending the son, the son coming, the son sending the disciples, the one who receives a prophet, receives, he will, I'm sorry, verse 41. The one who receives a prophet because he is a prophet will receive a prophet's reward and the one who receives the righteous person because he is a righteous person will receive a righteous person's reward and whoever gives one of these little ones even a cup of cold water because he is a disciple truly, I say to you, he will by no means lose his reward. Just some quick thoughts from this passage. Jesus calls us to maintain a higher loyalty to him than our own parents, verse 37. Jesus calls us to maintain a higher loyalty to him than to our own children, verse 38, I'm sorry, verse 37 as well, and then verse 38, Jesus calls us to maintain a higher loyalty than our own lives, verses 38 and 39. It's an amazing thing. He tells us he is greater, he is significant, we should be faithful to him no matter what. And he tells us something about the fact that there will be those who receive this message, this loyalty to Jesus no matter what, some will receive it. Even as apostles or a prophet or a righteous man, the word receives happen several times in a row and then whoever gives a cup of cold water to one of the least of these little ones, that's a wonderful phrase, one of these little ones. The little ones, if you do a quick word search, you'll find it's predominantly children, it's almost always children, except sometimes when you read Jesus, he seems to be referring to more than just children. He seems to be often referring to his disciples, and in this case maybe even the twelve that are going out, but it's not that far from the idea of children. He loves us like a father loves his children. He has an affection that moves him to use this term perhaps as a diminutive toward us. And the encouragement to us, I believe, is when we exercise this kind of loyalty, when we maintain incredibly high loyalty to Jesus, we can be assured of this, there will be people who receive the message, there will be people who respond to the love of God that we show by initiative, by word, and by deed. That moves us to point number three, we need to trust Jesus with incredible difficulties because they're sure to come in our lives. Verse 11, verse 1, and following, I'll just read a couple of them, when Jesus had finished instructing his twelve disciples, he went from there to teach and preach in their cities. So if we follow the flow of the text that we're reading, Jesus is sending out his disciples to preach into the various cities where he himself will be going. And so this incredible love of God is moving into the cities of Judea, and Jesus himself is seeking to save the lost sheep of Israel. And he's brought his disciples in saying, go before me and prepare the way in this way. And as that happens, we have chapter 11 and verse 1, which I just read to you. And then verse 2 tells us, now, when John heard in prison about the deeds of Christ, he sent word to his disciples and said, are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another? I think this is kind of amazing. Let's think about John for a minute, right? Do you remember John the Baptist, I say that, assuming you have Bible knowledge, right? You've read through the scriptures more than what? Do you remember John the Baptist? Do you remember his calling? He's unique in some ways, isn't he? He had a miracle birth. Miracle birth, his parents were like Abraham and Sarah and that they were very old, right? And not only did he have a miracle birth that way that parents beyond the usual childbearing years conceive and bring forth a child, but there's the angelic message. And the angel tells us about this one. You will have tell Zacharias, the father. You will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth for. He will be great before the Lord, and he must not drink wine or strong drink. He will be filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother's womb, and he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God. The very work about God sending his son Jesus into the world to seek and to save the lost, John the Baptist was one of those. And he will go before him, the Messiah, the Lord Jesus, and the spirit and power of Elijah, the great prophet of the Old Testament to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just to make ready for the Lord a people prepared. So that's John the Baptist, a great prophet. In fact, Jesus says of those born of a woman, there is no one greater than him. And I think in the context he means there has been no prophet, no person whom God has sent to proclaim the gospel greater than John. And John himself preached, I baptize with water, but among you stands one. You do not know, even he who comes after me, the strap of whose sandal I am not worthy to untie. So this great prophet speaks of one who's even greater than him, the Lord Jesus Christ. And John is hearing about these mighty works of God from prison. He's in prison. He's in prison because he's been preparing the way for the Lord. Now I will grant you the incredible works, the deeds of mercy and grace we don't necessarily see. He was the one who said, you bunch of snakes who warrant you to flee from the wrath of God, bring forth rude and keeping with repentance. That's how he prepared the law sheep of Israel to come. And so sometimes the ministry of God's people does look a little different, but nevertheless, after you, I think has these passages together to point something out. And even the words of Jesus, if we had read more of what was in chapter 10, he did warn the disciples to beware of men, they'll deliver you over to courts, to flag you in their synagogues, and to drag you before governors and kings for my sake and so on and so forth. He told us that there would be incredible difficulties, and he was speaking primarily and specifically about being persecuted as those who, in Jesus' name, take the initiative and speak and do incredible demonstrations of the law of God, that they will face difficulties. I wanted to point that out this morning because the two families who are presenting their children for baptism are relatively young believers, and I will make applications of them in the service that the Christian faith is sometimes very difficult. And we will face difficulties, but they've tasted, it's delightful to see the incredible love of God, they've tasted it, you've tasted it, you know it's there, it's no wonder Jesus would call us to be loyal to him no matter what to show and maintain incredible loyalty over the long haul because he is worthy, he is worthy, he is trustworthy, in fact, we can trust him. The joy set before Jesus led him to endure the cross and despise its shame, and it's for the joy set before us as believers that we maintain and trust him even with incredible difficulties. Now this morning, I've got just a few minutes to bring one more form of application that's particular to us as a church. Two families presenting children for baptism this morning. One of the families, it's a single mom, Madonna, with three children. Two of those children have been diagnosed with the autism spectrum disorder. If you are a single parent or you know a single parent, you know that that's a challenge in and of itself and you add to that to two children who struggle with this disorder, it's quite a challenge. Now there's another family in our church where we've performed the baptism in the last year on Zachary who also has autism, the Chorin's son, and both of these families are in need of some child care. I won't go into the details of why they need it, but if you will trust me as your pastor, they need it. And it's kind of neat to see the shepherding elders ministering to these families, the deacons moving toward these families, the support groups coming toward to help out in these needs, but we'd like to put together resources for child care. And I want to ask you today, if you have the health to do it, if you have the ability to do it, to commit to showing the incredible love of Christ right here in our own church to these families according to this need for child care, they're probably be primarily evening. And maybe some help on Sundays when the children need a little extra help in nursery or children's church, these sorts of things. Thinking just by way of what we're looking for, probably as far as going into the house is we don't want to just send one person. It may be a little bit too overwhelming for one person, at least in one of these cases, two or three kids, two with autism. So we want those who are 18 years or older, physically able to pick up children and give them full attention for the period of time mentioned because, yeah, because of the particulars of autism. I'll talk about that in a second, able to take care of bathroom issues, realizing when these guys have plots and they're not infants anymore. It's kind, gentle, firm, able to stand firm according to the need. Autism is a disability that appears usually in young children, just a little bit of information about it. It has to do with some of the social skills, community skills, awareness of other people, some of the signs that they mentioned when trying to diagnose as your child have it is, they don't return the smile. If there is language skills, they regress in those first few years. Maybe by the age of 12, they're not following the cues or that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that kind of language, this sort of thing. They don't return a smile. They don't respond when their name is called. These are just some of the symptoms that go with that. The child care for them is a little bit difficult because if there's some non-responsive things going on and especially if they're non-verbal, they don't communicate back, it's, it's, there's, there can just be some frustration. So some of the reasons for child care is just to give a parent a break. The marriages that fail with children with special needs, especially autism are much higher than, than the average marriage failure and such, and we want to come alongside the one married family, the Chorans, just to give them some time away to, to be together and such. And, and with Madonna, she's working, a single mom working and she just needs some help. So if you are able to do this, we want to put together kind of a list of immediate needs. We've got some kids already doing that or some folks already signing up for that, but immediate needs in the next couple weeks. We want to put together a team of, and think about how do we manage this over the long call. And so one other person, if you have the skills of management and you can keep lists and you can keep that stuff square in your mind and help us with just saying, okay, we need a family this time, we need a family at that time, these sorts of things, that would be, if you could manage that list in the schedule for us, please let us know that would be great. If you can do that, there's cards, it's us to our guests, but we use them for all sorts of things, and this is one of the things we want to use them for today, while in, in the rest of the service, would you, would you fill out one of those cards and say, I can help. If you know the particulars of what you can do, that would be great. We'll talk to you, we'll make sure, you know, we'll work with you to make sure that you're able to do this, believe me, we want you to succeed, so well that you do it more than once, right? So we won't put you into something carelessly at all, for the sake of the children, like I say, as well as for your own care. Alright, I'm going to leave that now, and we will, let me close with prayer, and then we'll move on. Father, we thank you for the fact that you love us, that you have shown incredible love toward us, that you have moved toward us, in our pain, in our weakness, in our shortcomings. And we thank you that as your children, we have the same privilege into the whole world, as well as in our own church, and so we ask that you would show us the grace of, of loving this way, to care for the families in our own church that have these kind of needs, and, to show this love to the world in general, as we proclaim the greatness of Jesus Christ. We ask in Jesus' name, Amen.