One of my favorite sections in the newspaper is the comic section. Cartoons have a marvelous way of conveying a message whether that message is political in nature, or simply humorous, or focuses on some irony in life. One such cartoon shows a psychiatrist’s office with shelves of books, floor to ceiling, on each wall. Hanging on the walls were the various and a sundry display of diplomas, awards, certifications and licenses. The psychiatrist is busy listening to his patient, lying on the couch. As you look at the patient, it is obvious that something has startled him. His face has a look of both horror and surprise. His eyes are focused on the corner of the room. The man is stunned. He can hardly believe it for up in the corner of the wall, the wallpaper is coming unglued. It is rolling up revealing that the books, the diplomas, the licenses, and awards are nothing more than clever pictures on wallpaper.

This man is on the couch desperately needing help, opening his life to this psychiatrist who is revealed to be a fraud. There are no words in this cartoon. You feel the man’s predicament and pain, and no words are needed.

What do you do when your world rolls up and reveals bare sheetrock? What do you do when the trusted answers are found to be wanting and are revealed as no answers at all? Without a doubt we are not only living in troubling times, but in confusing times as well. Life is changing. Society, the economy, neighborhoods, people, government—all these and much more are changing. The church is even changing. SUMC isn’t the same church as it was in 1965, nor as it was in 1977 or 1990 or even 2002. This world is certainly not the world I grew up in—in some ways a lot better and in other ways a lot worse. And the world in which we live is going to change a lot more. Wouldn’t it be great to take the best of then and combine it with the best of now? (How about sitting in an outhouse with your I-pod?) Unfortunately I have determined that to be impossible! By the way our church will continue to change because change is inevitable. The only people who don’t change are lying across the street in our cemetery.

The morning I want us to focus on the theme of confident living in confusing times. How do we deal with the kind of despair and fear and confusion that we face today? In His day, Jesus faced confusion, hopelessness, and despair. His answer was simply: the Kingdom of God is at hand. He then began to train His disciples to go into the world to change the world from a navel-gazing mentality to a God-gazing perspective and experience. That is the key to living confidently in confusing times.

Matthew 10 is a large portion of Scripture that deals with the instruction and training of the disciples in an age that was coming apart at the seams.

There are several great principles from this Scripture that we can use for our own confusing times.

First, we can discover that the call of Jesus is not to a new religion, but to a new relationship. Verse 1--“He called his 12 disciples to Him….” It is to Jesus that we are called. All others who offer salvation or the good life or ultimate meaning have paper curling up on the corners. Jesus calls us to His Kingdom, His purpose, His mission, His message, His plan and His power. We are under His protection and authority, and it is in Him that we find the dynamic and confident meaning for life.

There is a lot of what is called “pop religion” in our day. These are attractive religions that are faddish and that often infect the body of Jesus Christ. We saw it in the Hare Krishna days and we see it now in the New Age emphasis. We also see it in a Christianity that is very much ‘me-oriented.’ Jesus is reduced to an errand boy who does our bidding. His sole purpose as Savior is to make me happy and provide for my wants and needs, and give me a sense of direction and who will answer my prayers as I pray them. So Jesus becomes a divine vending machine who gives us our selections of customers, jobs, success, a mate, a new car or whatever.

Notice that Jesus cut deep into this image that we often have by calling the 12 disciples to Him. They didn’t call Him. Jesus said, “You didn’t choose me, but I have chosen you.” Jesus gave them His authority—to do what? To become rich and famous and comfortable? No, He gave them authority to heal, to be liberating messengers of hope. I’ve always like the James Bond movies and one reason is that when the situation was hopeless, James Bond always had some secret gadget to get him out of a jam. As Christians we don’t have any secret gadgets to get us out of a jam. What we do have is actually more powerful and real—it’s called authority.

When we look at the disciples of Jesus, it is quite clear that they have no authority in and of themselves. They are a pretty motley crew—fishermen, a tax collector, a revolutionary. These are not exactly what we might call ‘the upper crust of society’s pie.’ In fact they look more like the burned edges. The utterly astonishing thing is that Jesus chose the most unlikely followers and gave them His authority to continue His work. He sent them out and actually expected them to succeed. Jesus called these 12 disciples to a new relationship with Him and gave them His authority.

Second, we see Jesus’ method of discipleship training: He sent them out! The 12 had heard the Sermon on the Mount. They had observed the healings and miracles of Jesus. Jesus doesn’t keep talking and training, He sends them out. There is a point when we have to stop listening only to the gospel and start doing the gospel. One of my favorite subjects in school was America history, but I really learned American history when I had to teach it to 6 classes of 11th graders at Lafayette High School in Lexington, KY. And Jesus sends out the very ones we know shouldn’t be going. They love to sit around the campfire and sing “Kum Ba Yah.” They love walking with Jesus through the hillside talking theology and listening to Amy Grant or Caedmon’s Call on their I-pods. They don’t even mind rowing across the Sea of Galilee because they know Jesus has the power to calm storms. As long as they are with Jesus, everything is hunky-dory. But the thought of going out on their own strikes fear into their hearts. You see, it is great to watch Jesus do battle with Satan and evil. They are content and quite happy to sit in the grandstands and watch the spiritual super bowl between Satan and Jesus.

God, however, never meant Christianity to be a spectator sport. Christianity is a participant sport. It is never to be watching someone else do faith, it is getting down and dirty yourself and that is where the thrill and the blessings are. Jesus is ready to send the disciples out but they want to stay in the seminar, to take more courses, to learn more so that they can be better prepared. It’s so much easier and definitely more comfortable to be a perpetual student, but Jesus says, “Go!” and they go. He sent them; they didn’t send Him. The best discipleship training comes not from listening to it, but from doing it!

When Jesus sends out the 12 we see a very important strategy for ministry. In verse 5 we read, “Do not go among the Gentiles or enter any town of the Samaritans. Go, rather, to the lost sheep of Israel.” Does this mean that Gentiles and Samaritans are not important to God? Not at all. What we are seeing here is a timing issue and a plan of action. That plan is to begin with people we know—people with whom we have a built in connection—like co-workers, neighbors, family members, etc. One thing we at SUMC have never had to do is to ‘beat the bushes’ to get new people to walk into our front doors. We get lots of guests and visitors. It’s the nature of our community. People come to a church primarily looking for acceptance and love and I believe the Holy Spirit draws them to us. Right after Matthew responded to Jesus’ call to follow Him, he threw a party and invited all his tax collector friends to meet Jesus for themselves.

In these verses we see that Jesus is showing us that our primary mission responsibility is right where we live. That is were we begin. I am NOT saying that we ignore the people in Africa, South America, Europe, or Asia. Some years ago, Joe Harding, UM pastor from West Coast was visiting Kenya. He asked a Kenyan pastor how he and his church could help the Kenyan Christians. The Kenyan pastor replied, “Spread the gospel where you live.” It is ours to spread the gospel where we live right here in Sicklerville, in Winslow, in Camden County and in South Jersey.

And then Jesus teaches us in this story in Matthew 10 to keep going and not to get stuck in discouragement. There is a realism here because Jesus is quite aware that there will be people who aren’t interested, and there will be people who will lose interest, and others will be out-and-out hostile. Does Jesus speak to this situation? Look at verse 14, “If anyone will not listen, shake the dust from our feet and move on.” Our job is not to convince people, to brow beat them, or to argue them into the Kingdom. That’s the Holy Spirit’s job. Our job is simply to tell people about Jesus.

Here’s what often happens. We start out with great enthusiasm. We anticipate a cakewalk. We begin to run into problems—people aren’t interested, or have questions we can’t answer, or are outright hostile. We get discouraged and tired. We get frustrated at our own lack of spiritual progress, and we quit. A little boy behaved rather badly. That night his mother overheard his bedtime prayer, “Dear God, help me be a good boy; and if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” Jesus is saying here, “Don’t focus on the failures or the disappointments, rather move on because there will be people who will listen, who will respond to the good news.

So begin where you are and keep going. Then Jesus teaches us something about style. Verse 7, “As you go, preach this message. The Kingdom of heaven is near.” The message of Jesus is about new life, about good news, about hope and healing, about positive change and a transformed life. What’s at hand in the world? What’s at hand in people’s lives today? Often it is boredom (and quite often boredom in their busy-ness), a feeling of hopelessness, aimlessness with no direction, and meaningless with no purpose. Disappointment is rampant. Despair is pervasive. People are discovering that the wallpaper of their worlds is coming off. Jesus said, “Preach that the Kingdom of heaven is at hand. Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, and cast out demons—and to it all for free!” As followers of Jesus, it is under his authority that we go out into a hurting, dying, sin-sick world, knowing the reality of God’s Kingdom being at hand. Jesus is calling us to be a channel of His love and His saving grace.

In this on-the-job training Jesus shows us that we are to begin where we are, with the people we know. Then we are to keep going, not allowing discouragement to swamp us rather we are to focus on a message of hope and salvation.

The 3rd element of this training is the danger. Look at verse 16, “I am sending you out as sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves.” The wolves want to destroy the sheep. They key to survival is staying close to the Shepherd. Sometimes in our spiritual bravado and naiveté we prance into the devil’s lair only to discover how powerful and destructive Satan really is. We underestimate the power of sin and the cunning viciousness of evil. Jesus tells us to expect difficulty, rejection, and even persecution. Yet, through it all we can have confidence and be utterly fearless because we also have the promise of Jesus. In verse 29 Jesus says that no one sparrow falls to the ground that God is not aware of it. The promise of Jesus is that when we give our life for His sake, we will find it.

Jesus concludes this charge to his disciples with a word about the power of simple kindness. Verse 42, “And if anyone gives a cup of cold water to one of these little ones because he is my disciple, I tell you the truth, he will certainly not lose his reward.” A simple cup of cold water is an outward and visible expression of God’s love. A cup of cold water is a caring act in an uncaring world. It is showing and doing the gospel. It is being Jesus to a hurting person.

Several years ago there was a television commercial. A grandfather tells his grandchildren about the hot summer day when his car broke down and a pretty girl brought him a cold glass of real lemonade. One of the grandkids asks, “Did you ever see her again?” With a smile and a twinkle in his eye, the grandfather replied, “I married her.” More people are won to Jesus Christ through simple acts of kindness than by any other way. There is no substitute for the personal touch. You remember the story how Captain John Smith of the early Pilgrims sent love letters everyday to his beloved Priscilla by a friend, John Alden. What happened? Priscilla married John Alden. Personal is powerful and there is no substitute for the personal. Jesus is training His disciples and now He sends us out for the real training, which is daily life. We are to be fearless and aware not only of the great tasks, but also of the little things that can make a big difference.

Everything is at stake because people are like sheep without a shepherd…like patients in a quack psychiatrist’s office. The wallpaper is curling, rolling up with its painted books and diplomas.

As followers of Jesus, we are told that it will be dangerous, but it will also be very exciting and thrilling. Why? Because we will be there on the front edge of human existence with healing in our hands, love in our hearts, and a message of hope and salvation on our lips. Under the authority of Jesus we boldly proclaim and we boldly live, “The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.”

Thank You for Taking The Time to Read This Message.
May God Use These Words to Help You and Strengthen You.