Sermon Tone Analysis

Living Sent

We have been on a series simply called Multiply.

It is where I am fundamentally unpacking what it means to be a multiplying church.

And the reality is that in order to be a multiplying church we have to become a multiplying people...

Our lives need to produce fruit

Last week we looked at the chief analogy of humans in the bible is that we are supposed to be like trees…Being fruitful…staying connected to the main tree which is Jesus

And I think one of the good things to understand about fruit is that it was ancient dessert …It was the good stuff that only really came around every so often

Fruit is the Good stuff that comes from following Jesus

Like Love

Peace

Patience

Kindness

Gentleness

Joy

Goodness

and Self Control

So when Your life starts producing the good stuff out of your relationship with Jesus then God is freed up to use you in powerful and profound ways

When my life produces fruit, I can be the key to unlock salvation for someone else.

Now can God use people who’s life is is not producing fruit for his Glory, Yes…Of course..

If God can use a donkey to turn a life around he can use anything

But the life that produces fruit is far more effective at reaching others for christ

So I wanted to start with this scripture:

The apostle Paul is talking about salvation here and here is what he says

A faith multiplier lives a sent life

As a christian there are two ways in which we can approach the world.

We can come to church and consume…Great message…Great worship…Great life group…And you can even serve maybe in facilities or security or something like that

But then you leave here and all you are is a consumer and you never see yourself on mission to reach the world for Jesus

This path leads to spiritual gluttony

Or you can choose to live sent.

We come to church

we come to life groups

we can still do all the church things but the shift is that you view yourself as the key that will unlock faith in someone else

And that every day that job you hate can actually be transformed into a mission field

Every day that coworker that just drives you nuts becomes the person whom you pray for

See you can either live as a spiritual consumer or choose to accept that your story can be a key to faith for someone else.

So what I want to focus on today is what it looks like to live sent lives…and I want to call all of us to live in a way that is intentionally sent out of here to the rest of the world...

Discipleship to Jesus leads us to a sent life

So the first call of Jesus is to be on mission with him!

I like the older translation of this a little better only because I think it might be a bit more faithful to the original Greek

19 And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.”

When I am a disciple of Jesus, he will transform my life to make me into a sent person

There are three parts to this call

Come Follow…And some of you are there

I will make…Jesus will remake your life…He will prune the branches that are not bearing fruit, Often times this is where people get really serious about following Jesus or they flame out

Into Fishers of Men…Into the sort of person who is on mission with me...

Being a disciple means that you are an apprentice of Jesus

Apprentices need to learn from someone who is a master and a teacher...

And here is an impotrant question...

Many of you have accepted Jesus as your savior, but have you ever accepted Jesus as your teacher? as the best one to learn about life from?

have you ever thought about that before…We say Jesus you are my savior but we look to the world often times as our teacher

Our favorite podcasts, youtube channel, the pundits on the news we allow them to be our teachers...

But have we really surrendered to the fact that Jesus is our teacher

And when Jesus is our teacher in all of life then that is when we can truly flourish, be made new and reach this world for others

After Jesus spent three years with his disciples and allowed them in to every part of his life he gave them what is known as the great commission…let’s go there

So here Jesus is saying to his people…go make disciples!

Sometimes we mistakenly believe that if we go make a new church then we will get disciples

But what Jesus actually said was go make disciples and guess what…wherever you make disciples you will always get a church

So disciples live sent lives but then churches for years, we changed evangelism methods all the time…Like a new pair of pants

And none of these are bad, I mean they were getting christians mobilized to share their faith

There is evangelism explosion,

the roman road

the four spiritual laws

Friendship evangelism

And again anything that gets you to share your faith us wonderful

but some feel like putting a square peg in a round hole…Some of you might remember that the church as a whole used to go door to door and then you would basically read from a script and ask the question “if you got hit by a truck tonight where would you end up?

“

Its an impotrant question…what is your eternal destiny?

But its not a very natural question to ask of someone you don’t know.

Its really because of these styles that rubbed me the wrong way that I was not a very good evangelist until I understood that Jesus had a different model of evangelism...

But before we get there…I want to tell you a story

When I was in my undergrad in college, Campus Crusade for Christ would send people out two by two to evangelize the campus

I remember this interaction clear as day.

One guy walked up to me and said, Hi do you mind if I ask you a question?

I was unaware that I was about to get the Jesus sales pitch

They asked me if there was ever stuff in my life that I was disappointed in

I said yes all the time

They said, do you ever wish that stuff could go away

I said, yes all the time

They asked have you ever heard that Jesus died so he can take all of your imperfect stuff away

I said, yeah I had heard that before

They said do you believe that there is an actual heaven and Hell?

I said, Yes I believe that...

I mean I am answering everything they way they want…all roads for them was leading to a salvation...

Then they said, well do you want to accept Jesus and get that forgiveness and go to heaven?

and I said, oh no I don’t want to do that

And I took the wind right out of their sails…they said why...

I said guys, I am a christian and not only that I have been working as a youth pastor for the last year…You just asked me basic questions that everyone would answer the same way to without even getting to know me.

I am not going to invited Jesus into my life with you guys because he’s already there...

They didn’t take any time at all to ask about me, who I was, what was impotrant to me, they didn't realize that they were trying to convert a youth pastor

Now I don’t fault these college kids at all…They were living out the faith in really bold ways, while the rest of the church sat on its hands...

But these guys hadn’t learned the really easy method of Jesus...

So here is my point on this:

We come up with all sorts of methods to “live sent” and they are all well meaning...

But what if we just read the Bible and did what Jesus said to do?

I think this is way easier...

Turn with me to Luke 10

in Luke 10 we find the strategy of Jesus and it is totally freeing!

Jesus send them as a team: Luke 10:1, and He sent them out two by two

See Jesus never sent anyone out alone...if you are trying to share the gospel all alone then you are walking with a leg cut off…You need a team!

Who is another Christian at the office?

Who is someone you can partner up with?