“Warming Up”

In the last week, I had the great pleasure of attending a training on nutrition at our men’s meeting given by Brother Jon Haliscak. It was incredible information on all the things God has designed to fuel and run our bodies. If you missed it, you might be able to visit with him about bringing that topic again at some other time. Staying on the subject of personal health, I’ve noticed there has been a uptick in people at my gym over the last month. That stuff goes up and down. It goes up-up-up for a couple of weeks in January, then dips back down. Then February 1 it picks up again for the two weeks leading up to Valentine’s Day, then February 15 the gym is emptied out. Things pick back up again the first week of April and I think it’s because people are trying to get fit for summer.

Speaking of that phrase, “Fit for Summer” is the name of the series of messages God will bring us this month. And no, I don’t mean gym-fit, so don’t worry, I’m not going to call us all to start doing jumping jacks or something. I know most people have a love-hate relationship with working out, emphasis on the hate. This last week I overheard someone asking about signing up for the gym and the person at the desk said that they’d do a deal - three months of access for $120. The person signing up said, “Thanks, but that’s $60 per visit. Not that great of a deal.” But the person thought for a second and then the person said, “Well, can you teach me to do the splits?” The worker asked, “How flexible are you?” The person said, “I can’t make Tuesdays.”

Why we’re getting “Fit for Summer” has nothing to do with our individual physical fitness but it has everything to do with the health of our church. As I’ve read for you from the beginning of Luke 10, we see a transition in Jesus’s teaching. Where in Luke 9 I told you that the emphasis of that chapter was on discipleship, the shift in Luke 10 is to the mission of God. And if any of us here today are disciples of Jesus Christ, then there is a very important word for us in this chapter and in this particular passage of God’s Word for us this morning.

We’re gearing up for summer at First Baptist. For awareness, the months of June and July are high levels of ministry activity for our church. The first week of June is Mission Devine, where we join with other Christians in Devine to love our neighbor. Following that, we’ll send over sixty students to Camp Zephyr. Following that, we’ll send elementary-aged boys to RA Camp. Following that, we’ll send 34 missionaries from First Baptist to eastern Kentucky on our annual mission trip. That’s June. In July, we’ll be finishing off preparations for VBS the first week and the second week we’ll welcome a few hundred children from the area to share the gospel with kids. Then the week after VBS, we’ll send our elementary-aged girls to camp, too. Oh, by the way, we’ll have two food distributions on the fourth Monday of each month where we’ll continue to help over 700 of our neighbors in their food insecurity.

That’s just what’s planned. And all of it will be blessed ministry. And as a church family, we all need to get ready for it, we need to get fit for summer. Which brings us this morning to this question:

How should we prepare for this summer?

As I lead us through answering this question from what God’s given us in his Word, I will be starting with statements about “The Church.” When I say that, I am making conclusions from this text about any local church, but I am specifically talking about us, the body of Christ called First Baptist Devine. There are three things we each need to come to understand if we are going to get fit for summer. The first is that

The Church is Sent

Remembering back to last week’s message where we saw that Jesus was a man with purpose, we saw in Luke 9:51 that Jesus “set his face to go to Jerusalem.” We remember that we learned that the meaning of “setting his face” was like someone leaning into a strong, opposing wind. Jesus knew that every step towards Jerusalem was a step closer to the cross. Every step closer to the cross meant that God Incarnate was going to turn the sinful ways of man upside down as he revealed his perfect kingdom.

And in the opening verse of this morning’s text, we see the Lord appoint and send out seventy-two others who were with him to go ahead of him. If we can remember back far enough to the opening of Luke 9, we would be reminded that in the opening of that chapter, Jesus sent out the twelve apostles to go proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal. As it would turn out, while the twelve did go do just that, when the twelve returned to Jesus and in the days that followed, we discovered that there was a whole bunch of correction they needed. And now here at the beginning of Luke 10, Jesus sends out a different and larger group. Luke doesn’t say the twelve were among the seventy-two, so we should conclude that these were seventy-two other people who had began to follow Jesus since Jesus began calling people to follow him in Luke 5.

As we make our way to Jerusalem with Jesus and encounter his cross and resurrection, we’ll see that Jesus continues to expand the group of those he sends to proclaim the kingdom of God until he declares the Great Commission, the grand mission of the Church universal:

Matthew 28:18 (ESV)

And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

Matthew 28:19 (ESV)

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,

Matthew 28:20 (ESV)

teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

Let me sum up this sub-point this way:

Jesus Sends Us

And from that Great Commission, he sends us, the church, to make disciples of all nations. And for the sake of clarity here, Jesus is not saying that we are supposed to go reach geo-political states like Yemen or Mexico for Christ. When you and I are sent, we are sent to reach people groups with the gospel. A people group is defined as a collection of people who understand each other reasonably well and have shared cultural and relationship customs. Why we have to make this clarification about nations is that if we look to the country of India for example, there are an estimated 20,000 people groups in that country alone. And we, the church, are sent to reach the nations to declare to them the rule and reign of Jesus Christ.

Here’s something for you to be aware of… Did you know that approximately 40% of the world’s population is unreached by the gospel? Here’s what David Platt, pastor and former president of the International Mission Board says about unreached people groups:

“When we say unreached, we’re not just talking about lostness; we’re talking about access. Unreached means that they don’t even have access to hear the gospel. There’s no church, no Christian, no Bible available ... God has not just commanded us to make the gospel known among as many people as possible. He has commanded us to make the gospel known among all the peoples.”

Jesus sent out the seventy-two ahead of him to go to the places that he himself was preparing to go. Jesus has commanded us to go ahead of him, too. Like the seventy-two, we are to go and proclaim the kingdom of God, to tell of Jesus’s cross and his resurrection, because just like the seventy-two, Jesus is preparing to return to rule and reign over all the earth and all the people of the earth. So that means we are sent to go around the globe, ahead of Jesus’s return.

There’s just one more thing I need us to see about our sent-ness as a church. I suspect it’s easy to feel excited about coming to a church that has a busy calendar and in a sense, claim a part of whatever God chooses to do here because you come here. But here’s the other thing:

Jesus Is Calling You

Notice in Luke 10:2, in his sending out the seventy-two, Jesus first calls them to pray. Just as I told you that 40% of the world’s 8 billion people don’t have access to the gospel, Jesus tells those seventy-two to pray because there are so many people who need to hear. And sadly, there are too few willing to go and tell.

And into the reality that there are so few willing to go and tell of the kingdom, Jesus says to Luke 10:2 “pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” He tells the people who he’s going to send out, to pray about God calling people to be sent out. That should tell us something about prayer… Prayer is not an exercise to get man's will done in heaven; prayer is the way for God's will to be done on the earth. Some people believe that the effect of our prayer is to change God’s heart. Not true. Furthest from it. When we pray, God changes our hearts…our desires…and through prayer God aligns our hearts with his. When these seventy-two pray about God calling people to go into the great harvest of souls, their prayers reveal to them that they are themselves the one God is calling.

When God calls us to salvation by trusting in Jesus Christ, my friend, among all that comes with being a child of God, he calls you to join in this mission to make disciples. That’s not an optional part of the Christian faith. God didn’t save you for yourself, he saved you for his glory. To quote my father in the faith, Dr. Steve Spivey, who served this church so well, “we don’t get to fill a pew to the glory of God.”

And on this subject of calling, I do want to say one more thing. Every Christian is called to go and tell, that’s a general call for you and me as the Church. It is true also that there are specific calls that the Lord makes upon lives of individuals. I believe God is calling men and women right here in this church right now with specific calls to ministry. He did so to me in 2016. That started for me, right there, in row number five, to my left and your right of the center section. As I sat there, the pastor was preaching but I wasn’t listening. No, it’s not what you’re thinking. I was gripped with a burning in my bones and an inescapable sense that I can do that, too. It was like that for weeks and it drove me to prayer. I was scared. I think my wife Yvette, her sister Cheyenne, and Brother Charlie Stricker are the only ones here who knew me before Christ and before ministry, and they’ll tell you I wasn’t a public speaker. The whole thing terrified me. And yet, as I prayed, the Holy Spirit testified to me not only that I can do that, but that I will do that.

Whether the general call to mission applies to you or you’re wrestling with a specific call to ministry, the application here is the same: pray. Pray and you’ll find that God’s will is going to be done in your life and in this church.

Speaking of God’s will in this church, to get fit for summer, we must come to recognize that

The Church Reflects Christ

Notice with me that after the call to prayer for the Lord to raise laborers to go and tell of the kingdom of God, in Luke 10:3 Jesus then commands the seventy-two to go. Jesus is commanding the seventy-two to go out into their labors, to go out into the fields of souls that are ready to hear and receive the kingdom of God. Where in Luke 10:1-2 Jesus commanded these disciples to pray, now in Luke 10:3 the answer to their prayer that asked God to raise kingdom laborers was that they themselves are the ones God has prepared. The seventy-two prayed and discovered that in the course of praying, God changed their hearts so that they were available and willing to go.

For the last few weeks, we’ve shared that we have a specific need to serve in our 2 and 3 year old classroom and praise God, two sisters have said that they feel God’s call to serve there. I’m grateful for them and I’m confident that the Lord worked on them in a similar way to these seventy-two… They started to pray for the need in this, their church, and with prayer and time, the Lord showed them that they were the ones he was calling.

And this confidence of calling is crucial when God commands anyone of us to go. You’ve got to be certain that it’s the Lord who has told you to ‘go’ because when you go out in Jesus’ name to serve in any capacity, the Lord sends you out in the manner that we see at the end of Luke 10:3 “… as lambs in the midst of wolves.”

What?! Why would God send poor, defenseless Christians where the wolves who resist the gospel reside? Well, the answer to that is found in how we, the church, are called to reflect Jesus Christ. The answer to that is found in how Jesus, who is the Lamb of God, came and dwelled among us, subjecting himself to the wolves of this world who sought power and self-righteousness, not God and his righteousness. The wolves whose pride and self-righteousness blinded them to the Savior that the Scriptures testified to. The wolves who would arrest Jesus. The wolves who would beat him, spit on him, whip him, rip his body to shreds, make him carry the instrument of his execution only to ultimately nail him to the cross upon which he would die for your sin and mine.

When Jesus set his face toward Jerusalem, he knew all that the wolves…all that sinful humanity…would do to him. And he didn’t guard his life selfishly. Why not? Because God loves the world and even the wolves in it. Jesus himself was sent by the Father in the very love of God for this world. This is maybe difficult to comprehend, but it was the love of God to make available the opportunity of salvation to even those wolves who beat Jesus, spit on Jesus, whipped Jesus, and nailed Jesus to the cross. And Jesus pressed on towards the cross in love because he knew that beyond the cross was an empty tomb and unimaginable glory in dealing sin and death their deathblow.

So when Jesus sends us in his name, when Jesus sends the church, he sends us to follow him down the narrow path as lambs. When we go, we do so with that same love for others that Jesus has shown and given us. Maybe all this talk of lambs and wolves is a bit confusing. Let’s put this in other terms based on when Jesus already taught us this same concept earlier in

Luke 6:27–28 (ESV)

But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.

Here’s a hard truth that we in the church need to be reminded of often. If you have been saved by Jesus, before you were saved, you were once an enemy of Jesus Christ. We each were the wolves who resisted the advance of the gospel until the Holy Spirit opened our eyes and hearts to the gift of grace. Once enemies of God, now sons and daughters of God, when we go into the field of harvest, we are to love those who are enemies of God. When you go to the homes of folks in Devine in June during Mission Devine, you could be replacing the roof of an enemy of God. Bunking next to you at camp could be an enemy of God who are only there because their parents made them go. Filling our halls in July will be all those adorable little wolf pups.

Love them. Do good to them. Bless them. Pray for them. For you and I who are in Christ were once like them, in need of God’s grace.

And as you and I who are in Christ do those things, we must do so with a sense of urgency, depending on the Lord to provide every step of the way that we see Jesus talking about in Luke 10:4. Don’t get paralyzed in over-thinking. Learn to depend upon the Holy Spirit, who is God in you. That’s how we can show them Jesus, church.

In fact, speaking of urgency, I need to say that if you came here this morning and you’ve never placed your complete and total faith in Jesus Christ, oh you may say, “I’ve got nothing against Jesus. I’m not hostile towards him. I’m just not sure about him.” The word of God is clear, you are an enemy of Jesus and you are so because you are dead and you are not alive. Jesus’ kingdom is one of life and grace and mercy and love and forgiveness. And Jesus offers you all those things as a gift, he’s calling you to be born of the Holy Spirit, to be a child of God and brother or sister of the King of kings and Lord of Lords.

Here’s one last thing we need to see this morning as we prepare for the summer:

The Church Must Have a Frontier Mindset

When I say frontier, I am calling for us to realize that as Christians, the lives that we live exist on the boundary of two kingdoms. If you are familiar with the history of this great nation, those who originally settled here from Europe did so on the east coast. And as the men and women who settled these lands progressed from the east coast to the west coast, those on the edge of civilization were said to be frontiersmen. These frontiersmen were the representatives to the indigenous people in America.

And as the church, we must recognize that we are a sort of frontiersmen ourselves. Scripture sometimes speaks of Jesus’s kingdom as the kingdom of light and the opposite of Jesus’s kingdom is the kingdom of darkness. Church family, until Jesus returns, we are at the edge of the two, called to let his light shine through us into the darkness that surrounds the Church.

And letting light shine into darkness is exactly what Jesus is preparing the seventy-two to do. In fact, Jesus is telling them to specifically prepare for two responses from the towns they enter. In Luke 10:5-9, he’s preparing them with what they’re to do when the message of God’s kingdom is received and what they’re to do when the message of the kingdom is rejected in Luke 10:10-12.

Make no mistake, when we proclaim the gospel, there’s no such thing as a neutral response. The gospel is either accepted or the gospel is rejected. And since we’re talking about getting ready for the summer, in anticipation that each of you will go and tell somebody about Jesus, do you know why people reject the claims of Jesus Christ today? It’s the way our society is structured to support the self. In other words, every way in which this culture operates inflates who we are as individuals that people become so obsessed with themselves, when the Christian starts talking about God taking on flesh in the Person of Jesus Christ and his call to self-denial, following Jesus just sounds silly. Lots of people hear that and say, “But I’m building my own brand, cultivating my reach and increasing my influence.” Everything about how this world operates revolves around self-importance, not self-denial. I mean, Subway doesn’t hire people to make sandwiches, they hire sandwich artists. Coffee shops don’t hire coffee-pourers, they hire baristas. Even the most menial of jobs have to be referred to in a way that sounds important.

I can go on about this, but the simple point is that when we go and when we reflect Christ, the message we share will be received or it’ll be rejected. And no matter the response, as we live and conduct ourselves on the frontier, we must do so with this at the forefront of our minds:

1 Peter 3:15 (ESV)

…in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you…

As you honor Jesus the Lord, be ready to tell people why you are following Jesus in the life of self-denial, serving others as Jesus has served us. Your message get rejected, but don’t let that potential outcome discourage you. Believe it or not, more than half of people in this country said in a 2021 survey that they want to know from Christians why they’re devoted to Jesus. (1) Odds are better than a coin flip that every person you encounter is willing to hear from you about why you are a disciple of Jesus.

The harvest is plentiful, my friends.

So, let me summarize where we’ve been. As we’ve been seeking an answer about how we as a church family can prepare for this summer, this passage has invited us to recognize that Jesus has sent the Church into the field to gather the harvest of souls he’s prepared. To recognize that as we go to collect that harvest, we do so reflecting Christ in a willingness to deny ourselves as Jesus denied himself, fully dependent upon God to sustain us and provide for us. And we’ve got to recognize our place in this world, that first of all, we’re in it. We are citizens of Christ’s heavenly kingdom who are at the frontier of that kingdom that is invading earth.

In sending out the seventy-two, Jesus is preparing them to participate in the mission of God to make lost souls worshippers of Jesus Christ. That’s God’s mission, to make people worshippers of him. And God’s mission is the mission of the church, my friends. If you get nothing else from today, Jesus is calling us to be committed to this mission as we prepare for summer. To recognize that

The mission of God is our mission

Here are some ways you and I can prepare and commit to support the church in pursuing God’s mission this summer:

Pray that God would raise laborers. (Luke 10:2)

Many hands makes light work at Mission Devine. Two regular needs are:

Skilled labor to lead projects (carpenters, plumbers, electricians, etc)

Youth are desperately needed to serve

VBS needs support a lot of support and registration will open in a few weeks

There are a number of openings to teach first thru sixth grade children during Sunday school

We need more help at the monthly food distributions

Be available because God may call you to serve. (Luke 10:3a)

Some adults have been enjoying their Sunday school class, being fed, but now it’s time for you to feed others

Explore if your employer allows volunteer days - many do!

Give them Jesus and rely on the Holy Spirit. (Luke 10:3b-4)

When you love your neighbor, that opens a door to conversation

Don’t overthink that conversation, trust the Holy Spirit in you to guide you and your words

Set up recurring giving. (Luke 10:7b)

You may have plans to be away for the summer, but God’s mission will still be going on here

If you don’t already, consider setting up your recurring financial support to the church through your bank’s BillPay or the ChurchCenter app

Share the gospel wherever you go. (Luke 10:9)

Remember, the mission of God is our mission

And this isn’t complicated stuff, but we really do try to make it difficult. Adults try to put the gospel into a test tube and analyze it and Jesus said, “It’s like being born again.” The reason some of you have not yet given your life to Christ is that it sounds too simple to be true. Remember, you must become as a little child to enter the kingdom of God.

So, let’s heed the words of Jesus. Will you ask God to burden your heart for the moral condition of our community and our country? Will you be a part of God’s mission? The mission of God is our mission as a church. Will you let your light shine forth this summer into the darkness? Will you come today and put your faith and trust in Christ? Don’t wait. Today is the best time to be saved that you’ll ever have.

(1) https://research.lifeway.com/2022/02/22/most-open-to-spiritual-conversations-few-christians-speaking