Why do Christians exist?
Why is there such a thing as the church?
Why doesn’t God just rapture people into heaven the moment they become believers?
What is the point of history now that Jesus has come?
Last week we read three episodes in the life of Jesus, narrated back-to-back here in the Gospel of Matthew:
First, we saw Jesus calling Matthew the tax-collector to be one of his disciples, and the controversy that created when Jesus began socializing with the sorts of friends Matthew had (9:9-13).
Second, we saw Jesus being asked by the followers of John the Baptist why Jesus didn’t make his disciples practice religious fasts. Jesus’ reply was that his time among his disciples was a time of rejoicing, and that fasting would have not been an appropriate response to his presence (9:14-17).
And third, we saw Jesus being called away to heal a girl who had died. On his way to the girl’s house, a woman approaches Jesus from behind and touches him, hoping to be healed of a chronic bleeding. In the law, a woman was considered unclean during her menstrual cycle and would be barred from corporate worship until her cycle had passed. More than that, she could not be touched or touch anyone, as that would have rendered whoever touched her unclean as well. This woman’s permanent state of bleeding had rendered her permanently unclean, and she approached Jesus sneakily because touching a holy man in her condition would have been considered outrageous, to say the least. But instead of her uncleanness contaminating Jesus, Jesus’ goodness instead makes her well. Something greater than the law is now here (9:18-26).
In our passage today, Jesus is looking out upon the crowds to whom he ministers. He has compassion on them, Matthew tells us in verse 36, because they are “like sheep without a shepherd.” They have no guidance. They are wandering in their sin, suffering, and confusion. “The harvest in plentiful,” Jesus tells his disciples, “but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest.” And then Jesus does just that. He calls his twelve disciples to himself (verses 1-4 of chapter 10) and sends them out to do what he has been doing.
They will heal the sick and cast out demons (verse 1).
They will raise the dead and cleanse the lepers (verse 8).
They will proclaim the arrival of God’s kingdom (verse 7).
They will gather the lost sheep of Israel (verse 6).
What follows in the rest of this chapter, some of which we will look at next week, is a collection of sayings—some from this original context, and some undoubtedly gathered from Jesus’ more general instructions to his twelve apostles—about their mission in the world. At the end of the book of Matthew will stand Jesus’ Great Commission (which we looked at the other week), when Jesus sends the apostles out into the entire world to share the good news. But here he restricts them to Israel (verse 5). The mission of God begins at home.
At the beginning of this sermon I asked why the church exists. Why doesn’t God just rapture us when we accept Christ? Why did history keep going now that Jesus has come?
We get a bit of an answer to those questions here in our text.
There is something about God, now that he has created the world, that doesn’t want to work his will in the world apart from this world. Now that God has made a world and filled it with human beings, he wants to work his will in this world, and among these human beings, through this world and through thesehuman beings. In Genesis 1, when God made humanity, he put them in charge of his world. In Genesis 2, when he made Adam and Eve, he gave them a garden to work. When humanity fell into sin and wandered away from God’s ways, God began again through Noah and later through Sarah and Abraham.
He began again in his world by means of his world.
And when the fullness of time came for God to save the world through his Son, he sent this Son into the world by means of a birth. The Son of God became the Son of Man. The second Person of the Trinity took on flesh. And redemption played out in this world, by means of a community, a cross, and a tomb—things of this world.
This, I think, tells us why there are such a people as Christians…
Why there is such a thing as the church…
Why God doesn’t just take us straight to heaven the moment we believe…
Because God has a plan for the world, and he is bound and determined to involve us in the process.
When God created the world in Genesis 1, he created it as a temple in which he could dwell. He placed his image in its midst—you and me. And he said to us to be fruitful and multiply and fill the whole earth. He made us stewards of the planet, caretakers of his creation. And there is nothing about sin and the fall that changes God’s desire to work his will in creation by means of his creation.
One day, all the earth will know God. “The earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea” (Habakkuk 2:14). And part of how the earth will know God is by means of God’s people—not us on our own, but God working through us as we repent, believe, and obey.
When we heal, when we serve, when we listen, and when we speak, God is at work in his world through his church. And when men and women respond to God’s grace through the presence of his people, those men and women also become caught up in the drama of Jesus’ redemption of the world.
Now, none of this means we are all supposed to become pastors or missionaries, or (God forbid!) that we are supposed to spend fifty hours a week at the church. It means we are salt and light in the world.
When we love our neighbors, do our jobs, honor our marriages, and repent of our sins, we are salt and light in the world.
When we raise our kids to know Jesus, or bring a meal to our neighbors, we are salt and light in the world.
When we pray for the sick, or when we sit with the sick because they aren’t getting better, we are salt and light in the world.
Because the reason history keeps going, even though Jesus has come, is because history is the invention of God. The human story is the story, also, of God. He is working out his will in the world, and he is including you and me in the process. He is including our friends, families, neighbors, and enemies, too. He is drawing those who don’t know him to himself, and he is drawing those of us who know him more deeply into himself…by sending us out into the world.
So this week, as we live out our lives and wonder if there’s a purpose to our existence, know that the reason we are here is to be part of God’s story, to be signposts of Jesus’ mercy for those who need it, and evidence—despite all our sins and our shortcomings—that Jesus has given us a better way.
Let’s Pray
A Witness 