Outward Bound 1979

Starting out in Matthew 28 Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them and When they saw him they worshiped him but some doubted and Jesus came and said to them All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth Go therefore and make disciples of all nations Baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit Teaching them to observe all that I've commanded you and lo I am with you always to the close of the age It was the smallest kingdom in the world It consisted of a single mountain jutting up into the clouds whose peak had never been seen by human eyes Coming down from that peak was a stream of life-giving water which had healing properties The people of this small kingdom were extremely healthy because they drank this water And although they were a small nation They had health which most of the nations around with all their resources of gold and oil and iron did not possess The king of this kingdom had been instructed to take his subjects out beyond the borders of their small kingdom With this living water to bring healing to the nations around They had a better idea They decided that instead of taking the living water out for healing to those nations They would arm themselves with powerful weapons And begin pushing back their borders because these other nations were half sick anyway And Gradually, of course the small nation grew larger and larger and larger until finally in it engulfed the entire earth The king proclaimed a victory feast And in the middle of the feast There was a rumbling in the earth dishes on the banquet table began to dance and rattle and bounce on the floor and smash Somebody came running with news that the mountain in the center of the kingdom had become a volcano Now instead of giving forth life-giving water, it was spewing an ocean of lava that soon engulfed the king and his kingdom Centuries passed The nations of the earth were back to what they were before going about their business and around this ancient mountain The survivors descendants were farming and herding their sheep and their cattle in what was again the smallest nation in the world Again, the stream of living water was flowing down for the mountain peak in the clouds The new king was told take your subject out beyond your borders to the nations around with this living water and bring help And he was instructed do not expand your borders get beyond your borders This time he and his subject obeyed and in a very short period The earth was made whole and ready ready for its final healing Doesn't really much matter Whether we're a congregation that has met in the same spot for five generations or whether we're a booming missionary enterprise with 4,000 missionaries and 35 nations Our tendency always Is to establish our own religious kingdom with well-defined borders guard those borders with our lives Build up the kingdom inside and then begin to expand That's how Israel looked upon its destiny They took the land Establish themselves there And when they got strong enough, they began to push out their borders They grew larger and larger under the kingdom of David and then Solomon Occasionally a prophet would come along who would proclaim that that was not the purpose of the kingdom But that the purpose of the kingdom of Israel was to proclaim and bring life-giving water to the whole world On that day living waters shall flow out from Jerusalem half of them to the Eastern Sea and half of them to the Western Sea It shall continue in summer as in winter and the Lord will become king over all the earth on that day The Lord will be one and his name one Behold is it not from the Lord of hosts that people labor only for fire and nations weary themselves for naught For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea The sucking child shall play over the whole of the ask and the weaned child shall put his hand at the adders then They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain For the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea in that day The root of Jesse Jesus shall stand as an ensign to the people him shall the nation seek his dwellings shall be glorious There were moments when that nation of Israel caught that vision and began to rise up to it But very quickly there were always leaders Who would make sure that the light didn't get too bright and would kill it So the chief priests and Pharisees gathered the council and said what are we to do for this man performs many signs If we let him go on to us Everyone will believe in him and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our nation But one of them Caiaphas who was high priest that year said, you know, nothing at all You do not understand that it is expedient for you that one man should die for the people and that the whole nation Should not perish the church Was created by God For the same reason to Kate take living water out to the world beyond So when they had come together, they asked him Lord. Will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel? He said to them it is not for you to know the times of seasons which a father has fixed by his own authority But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem Judea Samaria and to the uttermost parts of the earth But they kept sitting right You know building up the kingdom inside the Jerusalem you want to see something really good come to us Until God had to blast them loose and send them out by means of persecution The exact same tendency is in us We always want to do that too. We want to build our little kingdom Define our borders and then say if you really want the truth, this is the place to come Look what God is doing among us Then as the people pour into our wonderful thing We get larger and then we can push out the borders and it becomes greater and greater and greater But that's not what our Lord ever created us for The Lord very clearly has called us to get out beyond our own borders Beyond our own little kingdom lose ourselves and our kingdom In the sending forth of his gospel to the world beyond we were to go out Like like Abraham went out not knowing whether The direction of the body of Christ from its beginning until its fulfillment is always out So Jesus also suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his blood outside the gate Therefore, let us go forth to him outside the camp bearing abuse for him for here We have no lasting city, but seek the city which is to come And he called the twelve together and gave them power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases And sent them out to preach the kingdom of God and heal After this the Lord appointed 70 others and sent them on ahead of him two by two into every town and place Where he himself is to come And he said to them the harvest is plentiful But the laborers are few pray there for the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth Go therefore and make disciples of all nations The call of the spirit of God to us corporately and individually Is to forget about fooling around building our own thing developing our own kingdom Go beyond our own borders Out there outside our little kingdom to the nations of the world to the people outside with living water And manifest God's mercy to the world out there Specifically this means we have to go out beyond our own place But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you And you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and to the outermost parts of the earth We start out in Jerusalem where we are, but we move out beyond that into territory Which is unfamiliar and which is very often uncomfortable and strange and even dangerous For some of us that may mean that we go into another land or another part of the country But it can also mean that you enter into the unfamiliar world of your neighbor's house or the corner bar Or the drinking fountain at work Or the halfway house, the convalescent home Some place where you no longer feel safe and comfortable and at home and secure Out whether it's to the streets and lanes of the city to the poor the vain to hold the blind Or the highways and the hedges where the people are running away, but we go out We are also called to go out beyond our own time What happened with the early Christian church, the believers Was they began to move out from their place Now those who were scattered because of the persecution that arose over Stephen Travel as far as Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch speaking the word of God to none except Jews Oh yeah, they went out, but everywhere they went, they look for their own kind and that's where they stuck We do the same thing, you know, even when we go to a foreign culture, we try to make it our culture But there were some of them men of Cyprus and Cyrene who come into Antioch spoke to the Greeks Also preaching the Lord Jesus and the hand of the Lord was with them and a great number believed and turned to the Lord Now these men, you know, finally took the big risk It wasn't a one-shot deal to the Greeks, but it was a continuous, a commitment to these people And it was a sharing with them as brothers.

They weren't writing back to their board or sending out a prayer letter or taking pictures They were not exploiting these Greeks in any way. They were sitting down there with the Greeks and identifying with them And as a result in the city of Antioch, where this went on a powerful church emerged, which became a springboard to the whole world God help us to get out beyond whether we're Jews or Greeks or Lutherans or Pentecostals or young or old Or wise or foolish to get out beyond our own kind We are called to get out beyond our own taste Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear him And the Pharisees and scribes murmured saying this man receives sinners and eats with them Jesus was compromising holiness by spending time and eating with with bums And he was in fact degrading himself and cheapening his message and endangering his own disciples by doing such a thing The truth of course was not that the Pharisees were concerned about holiness The truth was that their taste was offended, their sense of propriety Their refinement was being threatened And how much in our lives that we regard as sacred Is nothing other than our own taste Or our abominable arrogant refinement Which has nothing at all to do with the kingdom of God and everything to do with our egos So the spirit says to us get out beyond your own taste What you consider good Take my living water out beyond that And I promise you that you will enter into the realm of power in my kingdom such as you have never seen before We are called to get out beyond our own methods One man esteems one day as better than another While another man esteems all days alike Let everyone be fully convinced in his own mind He who observes the day observes it in honor of the Lord He who eats, eats in honor of the Lord Since he gives thanks to God And while he who abstains in honor of the Lord also gives thanks to God None of us lives to himself and none of us dies to himself If we live, we live to the Lord If we die, we die to the Lord So then whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's To this end, Christ died and lived again That he might be Lord of both, of the living and of the dead So why do you pass judgment on your brother? Or why do you despise your brother? For we shall all stand before the judgment seat of God So some worship God and honor Him by observing certain days And don't say they belong to the Church of the Antichrist Paul says it's okay Others honor God by observing all days alike Some fast, some eat Some shall praise the Lord, pop their lungs And some whisper their praises with bated breath There is no limit to the ways in which we can honor and worship and serve the living God But we need to get beyond our own method of doing it And enter into genuine fellowship with people who are serving God by means of some other method Genuine fellowship around Jesus with these people If we fail to do that and we only identify and fellowship and spend time with people who use the method we use The real method We will make a God out of our method And very soon we will be drawing people not to Jesus but to our method of serving Jesus We need to get out beyond our own resources Jesus says Take nothing for your journey, no stock, no bag, no bread, no money, and do not have two tunics We have to be willing to put ourselves in situations where our resources are of no avail It doesn't matter how much money you have or how good looking you are or what kind of gift of gab you have It doesn't help at all And you're thrown utterly on God We need to allow ourselves to be in situations or deal with people where the need is so great we're overwhelmed We can't handle it and we have to turn to God One of the advantages of street work, and this isn't a commercial But I believe that people of any age can do this The value of street work is that it's a tiny exercise in being out there like a dummy You're out there, it doesn't matter whether you have sales experience or you think you have a line or anything else Suddenly you're swimming in a sea of humanity and depending on God for something to say and do You don't even know what you're going to do The same thing can happen when we take on a need, a human need that is just too much for us We don't know what the answer is, we don't know how to handle it Nothing we seem to have does it and we have to cry out to God constantly God is gathering together, the spirit of God is gathering together here as in many other places, a fellowship And the purpose of his gathering, people of so many diverse backgrounds Is certainly not that it should become the biggest outfit in the city Nor that it should be the showcase that others come and try to copy The reason he gathers us together is so that he might send us out from here with living water As time passes many of us in this fellowship are going to find ourselves moved permanently to some other place And eventually all of us with no exceptions will be in some other place This place will be gone, meanwhile, whether we're here or there We're going to be going out, if we're in the spirit at all we're going to be going out So Jesus suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood Therefore let us go forth to him, outside the camp, bearing abuse for him For here we have no lasting city, but seek one to come All authority has been given to me in heaven and earth, go therefore and make disciples of all nations Baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit Teaching them to observe all that I've commanded you, and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age Why don't we stand up and just worship God And may God help us to even come out of ourselves and do this And anybody who has anything to say that we can hear, let's hear it loudly enough so we can all say amen to it Lord, we're just asking that today you would move upon us with your spirit And deliver us from our chains, our preconceptions, the limitations we put on your word and your spirit in our own lives Set us free from ourselves and lift us up out of ourselves together before your throne right now Join us with brothers and sisters in the body of Christ across the earth And break down every wall that has no place in the body or in our lives That we may be one, Lord, as you prayed that we might be one with you and with the Father Thank you, Lord