Embracing Our Mission: The Power of Table Fellowship

And I want to just talk a little bit about missions and then focus a little bit later in the message about how we can, you know, prepare our hearts at this time for our future, whether it be here in Australia or beyond Australia. God has something for us to do. So, you know, God, Jesus gave this great instruction just before he went back to heaven. He said, go into all the world and make disciples. [00:01:12]

And the book of Acts is a story of church planting. It's a story where people like Peter and Paul and others went to new locations where there were no churches and began to make disciples. and I've recently read some history about that. They were all pretty small churches in those days, mostly meeting in houses, a lot of them led by women, praise the Lord, girls. [00:02:04]

There were more lady pastors in those days than men. The men were out working, earning the money, and the girls were at home talking the gospel over the back fence and pastoring the people. You know, they did the best they could. There were no church buildings for the first 300 years. There were no denominations, no Bible schools. But, you know, with the resources they had, they did an incredible job. [00:02:29]

So the root word missionary, where does it come from? Well, it's actually from a Latin word, mito, which means I send. Of course, the Bible is not written in Latin, but written in Hebrew and Greek. And in the Greek New Testament, the word apostello, apostello, has the idea of being sent. We get the word apostle, of course, from that. From it comes the word apostle, which means sent one. [00:05:42]

And there's two things that set that apart. And I'm not saying you're not all missionaries. I believe we aren't all missionaries. We're not all missionaries. Because we're all sent out. But the unique job of perhaps going to another culture is a unique missionary calling. And there's two things that set those missionary people apart. And the first, of course, is that they probably leave their profession and become a full -time missionary. [00:08:12]

But God has placed us there. We've got some great friends in both countries and doing what God has called us to do. But, you know, the adjustment is you have to, to adjust to a new culture, you know, when you're doing missionary work. And I believe that God will speak to people, even in this congregation today, about missionary work. When you get Pastor John here next weekend, he'll be waving the flag saying, come on, where's the new missionaries? [00:13:02]

i don't feel like i've sacrificed anything i love what i do i love being in those countries sure there's challenges the heat the traffic you know the disease all that stuff it's a challenge but i don't hate it i love what i'm doing that's why i keep doing it and i want to say that you know if god calls you to another nation he'll give you a love for it it won't be like you're they're under sufferance and under duress all the time you will love what god has called you to do [00:13:47]

to we find a just a quick snapshot of the activities of the the first church you know Jesus had said to them go into all the world and make disciples but he didn't give them a lot of detail and here we find that this is their interpretation of how they should go into all the world and preach the gospel so on the day of Pentecost in Acts chapter 2 it begins with the coming of the Holy Spirit and here's a good point to remember Jesus told his followers he said don't go out and start making disciples until you receive the Holy Spirit can I say to us all here this morning the Holy Spirit is our ministry partner you cannot make disciples without the work of the Holy Spirit in your life without his partnership you know so he said specifically to them don't start this job until you receive the Holy Spirit [00:16:40]

I reckon this is the core of making disciples this is the core of the church these are the four things that you and I need to devote ourselves to and whether we're serving God here or overseas nothing will change these are the four activities and I only want to talk about one of them this morning one of them of course is your fellowship I think we understand that hanging out with other believers it's a good thing to do you know some people don't think it's important but I like to I like to hang out with other Christians I think it's great fellowship is important and it seems like they were meeting daily from house to house I don't think everybody was meeting every day but there was something happening in some house every day of the week where people were gathering together also there was prayers and I think we understand that clearly enough that you know we need to be a people of prayer prayer needs to be a foundation of what we do praying for the lost praying that God would send workers into the the harvest field then of course it talks about the the apostle's doctrine I talked a little bit about this yesterday at the district meeting you know how that you know there was no resources written or recorded back in those days it was all worded word of mouth, you know, just chatting between themselves. So when you went to one of these house meetings and they were, you know, following the apostles teaching, they didn't have anything written down. The New Testament has not been written. There is no copies of the Old Testament available unless you go to the synagogue. There's one there. The printing press is not invented for another 1400 years. So there's no books, there's no studies, there's no podcast, there's no DVDs, there's nothing. [00:18:52]

And we know that in the early church, his history tells us that they gathered to have meals. We know that, you know, when Jesus instituted the last supper or the communion service, it was in fact a meal. And during that meal, Jesus just picked up bread off the table, picked up the cup off the table, blessed it and said, you know, when you gather in this manner, remember me. [00:23:24]

So I believe that recovering table fellowship as a spiritual discipline would mean reconnecting with some of the important aspects of the life and ministry of Jesus, because he made that such an important part of what he did. And there's a beautiful example of how Jesus actually used meals. I'll just share this example with you. It's in John Chapter 21. [00:29:50]

In other words, you know, it's an experience of heaven when you sit down with a godly person and have a meal with him. So I believe that meals are a great place to connect, to come into relationship, not only with Christian people, but also with unbelievers. And I think we need to recover the importance of gathering with people around our tables for the purpose of enjoying a meal and sharing the gift of God's grace with other people. I think that our meal tables can be the most missional places we have in our domain. [00:32:40]