We'll be looking at Mark chapter 6, you can either follow along in your Bible verses 7 through 13 and verse 30, or you can find the text in your order of worship. Let's say to you here the Word of God and he called the 12 and began to send them out two by two and gave them authority over unclean spirits. He charged them to take nothing for their journey except the staff, no bread, no bag, no money in their belts, but to wear sandals and not put on two tunics. And he said to them, whenever you enter a house, stay there until you depart from them. And if any place will not receive you and they will not listen to you when you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them. So they went out and proclaimed that people should repent and they cast out many demons and anointed with oil many who were sick and healed them. The apostles returned to Jesus and told him all they had done and taught. Let's pray. While I prayed this morning that you would open the eyes of the blind and the ears of the death that you would teach us of the gospel, not just teach us the gospel but teach us what is expected of us in it. I pray that you would be in my head and in my thinking, in my heart and in my understanding and in my mouth and in my speaking. In Christ's name we pray these things, amen, amen. Well if you've been here for the past couple of months, we've been looking at the gospel of Mark. And as we look to the gospel of Mark, you see it, if you remember, it's almost like riding bumper cars, Mark sort of bumps from one thing to the other. It seems. And really up to this point, we've seen Jesus rejected a number of times. By the end of chapter three or by the beginning of chapter three, we saw that Jesus was rejected by the religious leaders, by the Pharisees and scribes and the Herodians. And then we saw Jesus ultimately rejected, sort of by his own family. They thought he was crazy. And last week we looked at the fact that Jesus was rejected by his own hometown. But in his own hometown, he was unable to perform many miracles there. It's had because they did not believe in him. They had no faith. Yet what's interesting is before these times of rejection, you also see Jesus having great times of success. If you remember in chapters four, five and six, Jesus exercises his authority in four different ways at least. Remember, I told you he's like the dog whisperer. And so even yesterday I was watching the dog whisperer and Judy came in and Caesar just as she walked in, he told a bull mastiff was coming at him and he went, and the thing just cowered in front of him. I put it on pause and looked at my wife and I said, I love Caesar. Caesar can can halt dogs with his authority. Jesus can halt the wind and the waves we learned. Not only can Jesus halt the wind and the waves, but Jesus was able to cast out two thousand demons from one individual. And last week we looked at Jesus, healing a woman who had been sick for 12 years. He had authority over disease. And then he also raised a little girl from the dead. He had authority even over death. And then he went to his hometown and experienced very little success. In fact, some might call it a failure. Now it's interesting. If you were Jesus and you had authority over all this stuff and then you just experienced failure, what would you do? Usually most of us would think, well, I'm going to go with something I know and get some, get some more success under my belt. And then I'll head back out to the mission field. And what does Jesus do instead? At the moment when he seems to have failed, what he does is take 12 individuals who have impeded him up to this point. They've misunderstood him up to this point. They try to stop him up to this point. And they certainly don't seem to know what's going on. And he takes them and sends them out on their own mission. That isn't probably what I would have done. The question is, why would Jesus send people who don't really get it out to preach the gospel? Why would he send people who sometimes they understand? Sometimes they don't. Sometimes they're faithful. Sometimes they're not. And the answer is just this because that's the way he always does it. He's done that. He did that with the disciples. He does done that with the church for the past two thousand years. And he does it with us even now. So the question is, what does it mean for us to do what they have been charged to do with here? It's going to look at three things this morning as we look at this text. Jesus tells the disciples. He basically tells them what to take. He tells them what to do. And finally, he tells the disciples what to expect out on this mission field. So the first thing we'll look at is what they should take. We give verse seven and eight, even nine. He says, and he called the twelve and began to send them out two by two and gave them authority over unclean spirits. He charged them to take nothing for their journey except the staff, no bread, no bag, no money in their belts, but to wear sandals and not put on two tunics. So just as a little context, remember that Jesus in chapter three called the twelve unto himself, but he didn't just call them unto himself. He called them for purpose. And that's something Christians today we need to hear as well. Remember he says he called the twelve unto himself for two reasons. The first reason is that they might be with him. That they may be with him to learn from him that he might disciple them and two of them teach them to train them for ministry, but also that they might go that he might send them out to preach. In other words, he brought them in in order that he might send them out. In other words, he gathered them in order to grow them in order to send them out to gather and serve themselves. Is that sound familiar to you? At the mission, a vision of our churches is every member gathering, growing, serving and going. And that's exactly what we see here. Jesus, when he calls them to himself, he calls them with a purpose. I mean, certainly he saves them from their sins. He saves us from our sins, but he does not call us simply to grow. I'm always amazed that, you know, if a Martian came from, you know, from the outer space and you told him, just look at a church. For any church, let's just say ours, for example. Look at this church for two weeks or a month and at the end of it, I want you to evaluate what these people think is important, gathering, growing, serving or going. In most churches, it would be what? Growing. And why would you think that is because you see people sitting in Sunday's school, sitting in places like BFF, sitting in Bible studies, sitting in all of these kinds of things and they're constantly saying I need more knowledge in order to grow. And all those things, by the way, are great things, but at some point, you've got to go. At some point, you've got to become a gatherer yourself. If you're only growing, if you're only sort of taking in information and you're only benefiting, you're not actually going to end up really growing because unless you're trying to gather, you can't grow as well. One of the big questions in this text is, why did Jesus send these men out? Did He send them out for the sake of the people to whom they would preach or to descend them out for their own training? I think it was both, but in reality, I think mostly it was for their own growth. In order to grow them, He made them into gatherers. That's why He called them unto Himself. And then what did He tell them to take with them? It's easy to skip over some of the most important things He told them to take because it's not so obvious, but the first thing He tells them to take. Let me read it to you. It says He called the twelve and began to send them out two by two. The first thing He told them to take with them was a buddy. The first thing He told them to take with them was a ministry partner. Why did He tell them to go out two by two? He could have, wouldn't it be better if He sent them out just one by one at a time than He would have, His ministry surface area would have been doubled. He would have had twelve people out doing the job, but instead He sent them two by two. Why? Well, there's some practical reasons for that. There's some theological reasons for that. There's even some legal reasons for that. What's the practical reason? Well, the practical reason is just this. It was safer to go two by two. It was safer. There was issues of companionship. You might not get lonely, but the real, what's the theological reason? It's just this. You'd need someone not just to preach with, but you need someone who will preach to you. In other words, the two by two, they're going out together and from time to time I'm guessing that one or the other would have to preach to the other one. We need to keep going. We can't give up. Now they were there to encourage one another. In other words, you know, when I was in Ranger School, the first day of Ranger School, the very first thing they do to you is they sort of pick lots and you have to choose a rain or they assign you a Ranger buddy. What you're Ranger buddy is an individual who you are not allowed to be out of arms reach from for 58 days. You're not allowed to leave that person's side. Unfortunately, for me, I don't know that it's ever happened before, but I went with another person from my platoon named John Kraft and in this lottery, this random choosing, the one person that was assigned to be my Ranger buddy was someone who was already my buddy before I went. They almost separated it because they thought that was so bizarre. The Kraft and I stayed together. Why was it important to have a Ranger buddy? You don't know. You think why are they making such a big deal about this until the end? And at the end, I realized that if it weren't for Kraft, I wouldn't have graduated Ranger School. And if it weren't for me, Kraft wouldn't have either. You see, Kraft, he had gotten married a few months before he knew he was going to go to Ranger School. His wife was pregnant and there were times, you know, when you're out in the woods, there are not a lot of phones where he said, I'm just going to quit. I can't take this anymore. I need to find out how my wife is doing. I need to call her. I need to see how the pregnancy is going. I need to go out and he could spend out of control and I would crash shut up. Snap back to it. You know, we only have 30 more days. 30 more days you can do anything you want. But until then, you got to just zip it because all you have to do to quit is go up and tell him you quit and you're out. Now, unless you think that I didn't have my issues, my particular issues had to do with hypothermia. There were a couple of times when I was doing what we called the kick and chicken. It just couldn't move. We're Kraft would wrap me up in his rain ponchos and he slapped me around and say, Alan, you're not quitting. That's why Jesus sends these guys out two by two, I think. Because there had to be times when they were facing rejection, when they're facing persecution, when they're facing hardship, and they needed to preach the gospel to each other. And if you're a Christian here today, you need someone like that in your life or many people like that in your life. I think one of the things that encourages my wife more than anything else is how many men there are in this church who are willing to take care of me, who are willing to ask me hard questions, who are willing to encourage me. And the question is, do you have someone like that? You know, we have a session retreat every year and this year we determine that what we need to do is we really need to emphasize two things in our church and really only those two things. One is worship and one is small groups and the reason for the small groups angle is because you need people who are walking along with you and that could be a men's group, it could be a women's group, it could be a couple's group, it could be a knitting group, but the question is, are you in some kind of group integrating and interfacing with other Christians? People who can help keep you on the road, people who can help keep you moving forward. If you're not, I ask you to tell the welcome center, tell someone and we will do everything we can to get you into a group. And if you say, I don't know if that's good for me right now, I don't know if I need it. You know, one of the saddest things for me as a pastor, and it happens more often than I like, is when people come to me and their marriage is breaking up or they have some major issues in their life and you can almost read a script. In fact, I do read a script and it's in my head, but the first question you ask is when someone comes and they say our marriage is falling apart and the first question I ask is, are you connected with anyone else in the church? One hundred percent of the time the answer is, nah, not really. Are you in a men's group, women's group? Nope. Usually they're completely disconnected. There's no one in their life who can ask them how their marriage is going and then it goes on like that for years and years and years and years and by the 10 years later it's almost too late. Outside of the gospel doing major work, which it does sometimes. But don't think you're above being in some kind of small group context, some kind of partner in context, you need it. So the first thing Jesus told them to take with them was a Ranger buddy, if you will. They went out two by two. What's the second thing he told them to take? Take his authority, but not only his authority, it wasn't just his authority, but it was his authority to do something. And it was basically his authority that would give them the ability to do deeds of mercy. If you look at the end of this text, it says they did three things. They preached repentance and they cast out demons and they healed many diseases by anointing people with oil. In other words, Jesus doesn't just send them out to preach, but he sends them out to preach and do deeds of mercy and could be because when you look at the new testament, preaching and deeds of mercy go hand in hand. In fact, they almost can't be separated. In fact, some people, but the error that many people make is I think I'm just responsible for preaching the gospel to somebody. I put the truth out there and if it takes, it takes, if it doesn't, it doesn't and you know, it's up to people if they don't get it. Other people say, you know, I'm just here. We're just here to be the hands and feet of Christ. We're just here to serve people and hopefully eventually one day they'll get it. Well, both of those extremes are wrong. We need to preach. We need to tell people about Jesus on one hand, but we also need to serve people on behalf of Jesus. We also need to do deeds of mercy. And you know, our deacons here, you've heard me rave about them all the time. And I mean all that. But the question is for the rest of us, how are we serving? You know, we have a serving team that's actually working as well to provide opportunities for us to provide deeds as well as words. It struck me how important that was when I was in Ethiopia. And you know, we would go to home visits and things like that. And there was one part where several days in a row, I had to go visit support groups. And these are people who have HIV positive and on drug. And they support one another. And they are almost none of them are Christian. The most of them are Muslim as a matter of fact are orthodox Christians, which they would say are not. And I remember one day going in and discussing with a bunch of women and there were a few men there. And you know, what's how are you doing? Are there any issues you need to talk through? You know, you're basically taking care of them. How are your medicines going and all this stuff? And I said, well, okay, good. Nice to be with you guys. And we went to take off and the translator said, tell me please stop. You've got to love the translators that are willing to tell you like it is. And I said, yeah, her name was Olaf. She said, I think you should tell them about the eternal life now. I said, okay. Okay. I never would sit back down. And I asked them, I said, how do you, how are you going to have it? How do you know that God would accept you into heaven? And we went around the room and said, 15 people said, good works, good works, good works, good works, good works, good works, good works. I said, okay. I said now, how many of you guys think you're actually good enough to do that? Crickets, crickets, crickets, crickets, crickets, nothing. We ended up having an unbelievable conversation about the gospel that it's free, that Jesus offers forgiveness to anyone who would receive it. In fact, that you guys think that because you have HIV and AIDS, this is them, that you're the most outcast there are. And yet you know what I'm going to say, when Jesus was here, he didn't pursue the good people. He didn't pursue the religious people. He pursued the people who are the very worst and people with all kinds of diseases like HIV, for example. Now, I don't know how they're going to respond to that ultimately. But I was reminded that deeds need to be accompanied by words as much as words need to be accompanied by deeds. And that's what Jesus told them to do. And that's what that's what Jesus told them to take. What else did he tell them to take? It's interesting. Look at verse 8, says, he charged them to take nothing for their journey, except the staff, no bread, no bag, no money in their belts, but to wear sandals and not put on two tunics. So what does he tell them to take? Nothing. I mean, nothing except the barest essentials. And why is this? On one hand, there's no question that he wants that he's doing that to teach them a lesson. He's doing it to help them to understand that they need to trust him, that everything they need for their mission, he will provide. But I think something else is going on here as well, because the same things that Jesus tells his disciples to take are the same things that God tells Moses and Israel to take during the Exodus of Egypt, when they leave Egypt. Basically cloak belt sandals and staff. That's it. Exodus 12-11, I believe. If you want to check me on that. Why would God tell them, when you leave Egypt toward the promised land, I only want you to take these four things, cloak belt sandals and staff. And the answer is pretty simple. It's because when you're heading from Egypt to the promised land, you don't need anything else bogging you down. That the easiest way to get from point A to point B is to travel light. And that's what Jesus is telling them to do as well. And that's the question for us as well. I mean, this mission here is specifically for the disciples. I can't, it's descriptive. It's not prescriptive. He's not telling us we have to do these things, but the question arises from this text. As we seek to serve Jesus, are you traveling light? In other words, do you have too much stuff? And as a rule, if you live in the United States, you probably do. But the question is, what are you doing with your stuff? And is your stuff keeping you from pursuing the mission Jesus has given you? And the calling Jesus has given you? Or is it helping you? In other words, when you look at the Bible, the Bible does not have anything negative to say about wealth or great wealth in and of itself. What the Bible has talked negatively about is the way we tend to use wealth and what wealth tends to do to us. So having wealth and using wealth is actually a great blessing. And it's not a bad thing. But the question is, are you using what God has given you or the sake of the mission he's called you to participate in? Or are you not? Are you just accumulating stuff and the stuff at some point gets to a point where it actually kills you, where it actually crushes you? Remember Mrs. Blueberry from Veggie Tales? Right? She has pictures in her house of all the stuff that she wishes she could have and then right across the street from her house, a stuff mart is built. That's what my family calls Fred Meyer ever since we watched that show. And it represented some stuff mart come over to her house and convince her of how much stuff she needed and she fills up her tree house with stuff to such extent eventually her tree house just falls over and breaks. Is your tree house ready to break? At what point do you have enough stuff and at what point do you need to travel a little bit lighter? Jesus tells the disciples in this mission, travel light because by traveling light that means you got to trust in me and by traveling light you're able to move quicker and do more things. So he tells them what to take. And the next thing he tells me, after he tells him what to take or what not to take really, he tells him what they should do. Luke verses 10 and 11, he said to them, whenever you enter a house, stay there until you depart from there. And if any place will not receive you and they will not listen to you, when you leave, shake the dust off, shake the dust that is on your feet, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them. So it's interesting how much the issue of money and wealth comes up in this text because when Jesus tells them, wherever you, when you go to a village and you stay with somebody, stay there. What is Jesus telling them to do there? He's actually encouraging them to be content. He's encouraging contentment. You see in the ancient Near East people, it was sort of an obligation when you came into a town to first people to show you hospitality. And so if you came into a town and your disciples, let's just imagine a scenario, you come into a town, you're the disciples and someone who has a one bedroom shaft with no television and no running water says, do you guys want to stay with us? And at the time, you have no other options. And you say, well, sure, thank you for the hospitality. And the next day, as you're preaching after the service, someone comes up to you and says, hey, man, we got six bedrooms, wide screen TV and an Olympic-sized pool. You want to stay with us? What would you be tempted to say? I would be tempted to say, of course. Yes, of course, I'd rather stay there. And Jesus says, whenever you go someplace and you're taken in, stay in that place. Because what does it do for one, it confirms that there's a relationship there and you're not just using people in order to see the gospel spread. I mean, they're helping you to see the gospel spread, but at the end of the day, you care about them because you're content. I'm just assumed to stay here with you with the one better place as I would with the person with the big place. I'm willing to be content because imagine what the people would think if you did that. The day after you took a meager housing, then the next day you took an offer from someone with great housing, well, don't you think rumors would begin to spread about you that all you really care about is using people? That's what philosophers did in those days. And Jesus says, you don't do that. Wherever you go and you get put up, you stay put on one hand, on the other hand, if no one will receive you. He says, after you were there, he says, to shake, when you leave that place, shake the dust off your feet as a testimony against them. And that gets back to the beginning. Remember I said, Jesus sent people two by two and there was even a legal aspect to that. You look at the book of Deuteronomy, there are several places where it talks about the testimony of two witnesses being required to make a case in court. The testimony of two witnesses either to accuse someone of something or the testimony of two witnesses in order to defend something, but there needs to be testimony given. And Jesus says, for a village that won't receive you, there's two of you, so the counts, here's what I want you to do as a testimony against them. And I'll read that to you again. He said to them, if any place will not receive you and they will not listen to you, when you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them. So what's he talking about here? You see, the Ancienaries, apparently, when a faithful Jew would leave the Promised Land, when he would leave Israel, into going to Gentile territory and come back home, before he actually stepped back in Israel, stepped back in the Promised Land, he would stop and shake the dust off his feet and his clothing as a symbol of shaking off the sort of Gentile pollution and the sin of the world and before he entered back into the Promised Land. Now why is that important here? Because did you notice that the disciples are preaching at or all Jewish villages? They're not preaching to Gentiles, so what Jesus is saying here is that what's important here is not whether you are ethnic Israel or not. What is important here is what you do with me. And the same applies to us. What is important is not whether your Presbyterian or Methodist or Episcopal or Catholic or Baptist or anything else. What is important is what you do with Jesus. Have you trusted him for the forgiveness of sins? Because at the end of the day there are people who have trusted Jesus for the forgiveness of sins and there are people who remain in their sin. And Jesus is those who remain in their sin will have testimony against them. In this particular case it's the disciples shaking the dust off of their feet. That's pretty big. So we saw what they should take, we saw what they should do. Now what should they expect when they go? Let me read you the next two verses. Verse 12 it says so they went out and proclaimed that people should repent and they cast out many demons and anointed with oil many who were sick and healed them. And the member of verse 30 says the apostles returned to Jesus and told them all that they had done and taught. What should they expect? The first thing they should expect is some level of success. It says here that success they went and preached that people should repent. They cast out demons successfully. They healed many people successfully. That if you're doing gospel ministry and you are really genuinely preaching the gospel you should expect and experience some successes. And if you never experience any successes when you're engaging in some kind of gospel ministry, the question is are you really engaging in gospel ministry? Are you really preaching the gospel to people? You know I've been a pastor now for 15 years or so and you often meet pastors who have preached for 20, 30, 40 years and have not had any success. No one has come to know Jesus and they say I'm just being faithful. You know Jesus wants us to be faithful but if you are never having any success you ought to re-evaluate what is it that I really am believing and teaching and preaching and talking to people about. In the same for a lay person you have any success and you're like you ever invited a neighbor to church and seen that neighbor's heart changed by the gospel. Have you ever served somebody as a deacon? I mean I guess as a deacon you have by definition but if you ever serve somebody and seen their life changed as a result of that. If you're really doing gospel ministry you should expect some successes but then in this passage at least there's a big elephant in the room. An elephant in the room as you should also expect some failures. You should expect it that it's nothing's easy. That's gospel truth. I say that all the time but it's true. What's the elephant in the room in this text? Did you notice? Did anyone wonder as I was reading through this text why I read verses 7 through 13 and then skipped down to 30? The elephant in the room, the elephant in this text is the death and martyrdom of John the Baptist. Remember Mark is fond of making sandwiches. Earlier in this text we saw that Mark made a sandwich between Jesus family and the religious leaders. You see Jesus reacting and responding to his family then the religious leaders accused him and then his family is the other slice of bread if you will. Last week we looked at the little girl who is ill and Mark made a sandwich of the lady who was sick by putting the little girl who is ill on either side of the story and in this story the sandwich is just the disciples going out and the disciples coming back and what is sandwiched in between but it's the death and martyrdom of John the Baptist. And what is the point there why did Mark do that? There are a lot of reasons but one of them is just this that you should expect some failures and ministry some success but you should also expect some failures that when you're really engaging in gospel ministry that when you're really gathering and growing and serving that sometimes things are going to go great and sometimes things are going to go wonderfully and other times they're going to go catastrophically bad and the question is whether or not it's worth it. Is it worth it to risk things going catastrophically bad in order to have things go catastrophically good if you will to have the joy of seeing people come to Christ as have the joy of seeing people healed to have the joy of doing all these things and you can only answer that for yourself. I'm afraid many Christians at least never risk because they're afraid of failure, they're afraid of not doing something right and so they never experience the blessing that comes from this. And what we don't understand as well as when we try, when we engage in ministry that we only see things from our perspective, we don't see things from God's perspective. Remember if you've seen the rookie, the rookie is one of my family's favorite movies. I mean we've seen it too many times to mention here. There is Dennis Quaid, it's a true story of an aging high school coach who used to be a great pitcher and he pitches batting practice for his kids and he throws pretty hard and the kids say you ought to try out, you ought to do professional baseball tryouts. I believe it's a Tampa Bay devil where he's eventually and he says oh no no no no no I can't do that. And then one night lady drives his truck out on a highway where there's a saw you know the signs that tell you how fast you're going when you speed flashes up there and he waits all the cars go by and he gets out of the glove and his ball and he hurls it toward that sign and it says 76 miles an hour. You got to be at least 90 to make it into the throw. So 76 miles an hour and as soon as he turns his back and hangs his head and starts walking away you remember it starts to flicker and the sign changes to 96 miles an hour. And you know that he's got potential to do anything from his perspective. He just threw it and nothing happened. So the question is the only way you can know is to try out. The only way you can know whether or not God has gifted you with regard to ministry and gifted you in different areas is to do it. It's to serve. It's to engage in ministry. And the question is will you? Let's pray about that. Father I pray that as we continue here at our church I thank you for all the blessings you've brought upon us and I pray that you would enable us to use them in order to bless others. In Christ name we praise these things. Amen. And Amen.