From Disciples to Apostles: Embracing Our Mission

"Notice in verse 1 of chapter 9, Jesus called His twelve disciples. He summoned them. And He summoned them for a particular reason. And in this summation, we see a critically important transition in the lives of the twelve disciples. Now, the disciples are becoming apostles. Now, I've mentioned this before — that sometimes we have the tendency to think that, since the Scriptures speak of the twelve disciples and of the twelve apostles, that the terms 'disciple' and 'apostle' are mere synonyms, but that's not the case at all." [00:02:40]

"A disciple — in the Greek, the 'mathetes' — is a learner, a student; one who followed after Jesus, learning at His feet. But to be an apostle is something quite different. An apostle — the word means 'one who is sent' — is one who is commissioned and called by a superior (such as a king, or a general in the army, or, in this case, by the Lord of glory) and is sent out from those in supreme authority carrying the authority of the one who sent them." [00:03:30]

"Jesus selected, from His Twelve, twelve men whom He would send with His authority. As He would say elsewhere, 'He who receives you receives Me, and if they reject you, they are rejecting Me.' Now, of course, the first apostle in the New Testament — the supreme apostle in the New Testament — was Jesus Himself, who was very conscious that He had been sent by the Father." [00:04:34]

"So, here, Jesus calls the Twelve to Himself for this purpose: to give them power and authority over all demons, and to cure diseases. They had no power in and of themselves. They had no authority in and of themselves. But the authority and power by which they were to exercise this ministry of healing and of preaching was by the power and authority of Christ who, now, distributes that power and authority to His apostles." [00:06:23]

"Take nothing for the journey, neither staffs' — plural — 'nor bag nor bread nor money; and do not have two tunics apiece.' Now, one of the other Gospel writers has Jesus saying, 'Don't take a staff,' and so the critics say, 'Here's a contradiction.' Or they say, 'Do take a staff,' and Jesus is saying, 'Yes, you can have one staff, but not two.' One tunic, but not two tunics." [00:09:24]

"In other words, the mandate that Jesus is giving is, 'You're to go out there and travel light. You're to be on the move every moment, and you don't take anything to even meet your own basic needs.' And then He goes on to say that you're basically to depend upon the Jewish principle of hospitality that was part of the law of Moses; that, if a stranger is in your gates, you are to give shelter, and food, and hospitality to them." [00:09:47]

"Jesus says, 'And whoever will not receive you, when you go out of that city, shake off the very dust from your feet as a testimony against them.' Now, if you've never read the Bible — and that can't be true of anybody in here this morning — but, if you're not familiar with Scripture, you probably have heard of this idiomatic expression of 'shaking the dust off your feet.'" [00:11:31]

"Now, if we follow up on this, we see a scary concept that is found throughout Scripture — from Genesis to the book of Revelation — and that's this: that God and His patience and long-suffering will not last forever. And we have a tendency to postpone our repentance and say, 'I will be committed to God tomorrow. I will change my ways tomorrow. I will give my life to Christ tomorrow. But not yet.'" [00:14:14]

"But the Bible warns us that God's patience does not endure forever. There is a limit to it. And there may come a time in a person's life where it's too late. Now, before I say anything more about that, let me say I know at least five or six people personally who came to Christ on their deathbeds. They repented of their sins and came to Jesus in their dying moments." [00:15:49]

"Let us please not tempt the Lord in His grace and in His patience. I mean, there are people in this room who have heard the gospel time, after time, after time, after time, and, every time they hear it, their necks become more stiff, greater calluses come on their soul, their hearts are hardened and become like stone. You cannot hear the gospel and be neutral to it." [00:19:44]

"If you receive it, you enter into heaven forever. If you reject it, you've hardened your heart, and you are heaping up wrath against the Day of Wrath. And, even in this life, God may give you up, may give you over; which is poetic justice. He's saying, 'You don't want Me? Okay, you don't have to have Me. You love your sin more than you love Me? Go ahead. Take your sin.'" [00:20:27]

"So I plead with you today: do not ever expose yourself to the point where the Lord God Almighty will shake your dust from His feet." [00:20:58]