-Transcript-
00:35 Amen. Glory to God. Welcome to the program today.
00:38 Good to be here. God is so good. He is so wonderful.
00:43 And today, as usual, as always, we are getting into His Word. We’re getting into God’s Word. I’m so thankful for God’s Word.
00:49 That’s our whole ministry here. It’s just digging into the scriptures and learning about what God would have us to know from His Word, specifically how we can be saved, how we can live for Him, and how we can be a witness to others. Right? Those three kind of cover it.
01:09 Salvation, edification of the saints, and evangelism. And of course, in those things, especially edification of the saints, it’s pretty much everything else you need to know about life. And that’s what God’s Word is so good for teaching us about life.
01:25 And today, I have a message entitled, Sandals, Staff, and Go. Sandals, Staff, and Go. From a great passage of scripture, a very familiar passage of scripture, Mark 6:7-13.
01:34 Mark 6:7-13. And he called unto him, this is Jesus, the twelve, and began to send them forth by two and two, and gave them power over unclean spirits, and commanded them that they should take nothing for their journey, save a staff only, no script, no bread, no money, in their purse, but be shod with sandals, and not put on two coats. And he said unto them, In what placesoever ye enter into a house, there abide till ye depart from that place.
02:07 And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear you, when ye depart thence, shake off the dust under your feet, for a testimony against them. Verily I say unto you, it shall be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for that city. And they went out, and preached that men should repent.
02:24 And they cast out many devils, and anointed with oil many that were sick,and healed them. Amen. So look, there’s a lot happening here in this verse, and it’s a beautiful verse.
02:36 Now it’s Jesus sending them out two by two, and they are to go witness unto others for repentance. Now under our modern day doctrine, the church age doctrine, we are the Gentiles, right? We’re saved by grace alone, through faith alone, and Jesus Christ alone. And the doctrine of that salvation experience hadn’t come out yet, because Jesus hadn’t yet been crucified on the cross.
03:08 And so this is to typically, as I understand it, the Jewish people, that they should repent for their sins, because the kingdom was at hand, right? So this is a different time than we are in now. But there’s so much that we can learn from this, in witnessing to others about the saving blood of Jesus Christ. It’s only by the blood of Christ that we can be saved.
03:31 About that saving power of God, through what Jesus Christ did on the cross. This is a great way for us to understand how we should approach it. And just to be clear, we’re saved by grace alone, through faith alone, and Jesus Christ alone.
03:46 We believe that Jesus Christ died on the cross for our sins. The idea here is that substitutionary death. That we are sinners, and we can’t fix the problem ourselves.
03:56 And that that sin has been passed on from the beginning, from Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden. When they ate of that forbidden fruit, they sinned, and that sin has been hereditary. It’s been passed on from generation to generation, and all have sinned.
04:08 The Bible says all have come short of the glory of God. We’ve all sinned. We’re all sinners.
04:12 And here’s the big one. We have a need. Many people say, I don’t have a need.
04:17 I’ve even heard a person I know say, I don’t go to the altar because I don’t think I’ve done anything wrong. Well, that’s a problem, because we all need to realize that we have done something wrong, very wrong, that we’ve transgressed. That we’re sinners.
04:28 And if you really get into like the Old Testament and the law, and you want to see God’s standards, I have news for you. Your standards are not high enough for God’s standards. God tells us that our righteousness is as filthy rags, Amen. We don’t measure up our good deeds, and they’re nothing to God.
04:45 In fact, they’re offensive to God if our good deeds are not done through and with Jesus Christ. Because He sent His only begotten son to die for us on the cross, so that we might have life, Amen. And we might have it more abundantly. And that we might be saved from hell or the devil, and be gloriously entered into the Lamb’s book of life, to have our name written down there, to never be blotted out or erased, to be in heaven with Jesus Christ for an eternity, and to worship and praise him.
05:11 That’s what’s at stake with salvation, and that is what we are preaching as we witness to others. And Mark 6-7 teaches us so many principles that we can really cling on to. On number one here, we see here that Jesus said, look, I’m going to send you two by two.
05:25 And we always are more effective with a brother and sister in Christ working alongside us. I know that I am, and God has given me a good one. I got brother John Cruz, and the Lord had us before.
05:40 The Lord had called me to plant a church. The Lord had us together in youth ministry, teaching in literally like a little building in the parking lot of our old church. And we taught together, and he’s a music minister and a preacher, a fine preacher and a fantastic music minister.
05:51 And we worked together there, and the Lord sent him the very first Sunday. I didn’t even know until I saw him there. As I understand, I didn’t know until I saw him there, that little chapel in the field.
06:01 The Lord had called me to plant a church there with brother John, and that was God’s way of saying, look, brother Clark, you’re not alone. You’re going to go two by two. You’re going to go two by two.
06:12 And shortly thereafter, we started going and knocking on doors in the community and inviting people to church. And we’re inviting people to church, not for the food, not for the coffee, not for the entertainment, but so that they could be saved and then be edified in the word. Amen.
06:24 And I’m so thankful for that. And that is a little story or note about my experience, but maybe you have one too, about how God has allowed you to have some partner in the ministry or partners in the ministry. And we see that so clearly in the scripture, because that’s what Jesus did.
06:41 He sent Him out two by two and commanded that they take nothing for their journey, only a staff, no script. What’s a script? That’d be like a bag or a messenger bag, a backpack, a purse that don’t take anything. Right.
06:53 No money, nothing. And just don’t even put on two coats, just put on sandals. Don’t even put two coats on.
06:58 Right. And just go, you know, don’t, don’t overbear to overpack. And if you’re going vacation, uh, you got an overpacker in the house.
07:05 My wife is an overpacker. She doesn’t like to travel, but when she does the whole house, it’s like, we’re moving out every time we go out of town. Amen.
07:12 Uh, and, and Jesus is saying, no, no, no, you just trust me. If you trust me, you don’t need anything. And then what did Jesus do? He gave them power.
07:20 Amen. He gave them power. We have to understand that we can do nothing for God without the power of God.
07:26 We can do nothing for God without the power of God to get God’s power. We must be in line with him. We must repent of our sins.
07:32 We must be living for him. Amen. The Bible talks about a bad tree cannot bear good fruit and the good tree cannot bear bad fruit.
07:38 You want to bear fruit for the Lord. You need to get right with the Lord first. You can’t do anything for Him.
07:43 If you’re out in the world, he can’t use you. You have to have a soft heart. You have to be humble.
07:49 It doesn’t mean you have to be perfect, just repentant. Amen. Secondly, he told him to take nothing.
07:51 Do we have faith to leave our wallets at home? What are things like money and food symbolized to us? Comfort, safety, and by the way, less dependent on God, you know, and now I would say money, food and a cell phone, you know, try to take a cell phone from someone. It’s like you’re taking their whole life away from them. But we need to think about that.
08:11 Maybe, maybe it’s, uh, clearly it’s in case you get a flat tire to have a phone on you or to have a wallet on you. Uh, but maybe we need to trust God more in our lives. And especially when it comes to things like social media, you know, if that thing’s bringing us down, maybe just delete it.
08:24 You know, I’ve deleted mine several years ago. My wife had deleted hers a little bit before then. And we’re very thankful that we’re just not on there.
08:31 Now our ministry has a little page and for work, I have to get on there for job site stuff, but I don’t personally have any profiles. And you know, it may, it’s a weird sometimes people were like, why aren’t you on there? But it’s a blessing. And we’re more dependent on God with our free time.
08:45 It says the old school way of that was like when the people living for the Lord would take the TVs out of the house. And everyone’s like, you’re crazy, but I can see that. I get that.
08:57 Let’s depend more on God for our quiet time and less on the things of man. Thirdly here, um, we’re told that many will reject, right? And that that’ll be a testimony to, uh, uh, that they showed up and brought the message. And I can tell you my little example, that most doors we knocked on, we either didn’t get an answer.
09:13 We got a mean answer, or we got an evasive answer. Very few people ever wanted to come to our little chapel in the field. And we were just standing by and saying, Hey, you know, here’s, here’s a little information about us.
09:26 We just planted this church. We’d love to have you there. And most people won’t.
09:29 And, uh, for, for the person that was angry, that hates us because they hate God, uh, Lord’s telling us that’ll be a testimony against them because they’ll be at the judgment and they’ll say, Oh, no one ever invited me. No one ever told me. And God will say, wait a minute.
09:35 Let me, let me take you back to this time. Amen. Let me take you back to this time.
09:43 Um, what did they preach? They preached that man should repent. Again, we are now in the age of grace and we preach Christ crucified and we preach the blood. Amen.
09:55 Uh, and yet repentance is still very important because as a, my old preacher told me, he said, well, I don’t, he didn’t openly preach a ton on repentance, but he said, how could you have that change of heart? Where you realize your need as a sinner and not be repenting. That kind of is one of the same, as I understand that the, the word repent, uh, uh, means to, to identify with the sin, you know, in, in a biblical sense to identify. So God says, repent, you’re a sinner.
10:21 And we say, yes, that is a sin. You know, curse is a sin. Loss is a sin.
10:28 Coveting is a sin. Lying is a sin. Murdering is a sin.
10:30 Uh, um, uh, pride is a sin. Uh, gluttony is a sin and we understand it. Like we’re not saying, okay, it’s a sin and we don’t believe it, but we believe that we understand it.
10:42 And I think you have to get to that point. Maybe not being able to identify all of them, certainly not being able to identify all the sins in your life, but just understanding it grieves God and that it should grieve God and it should grieve you. That’s kind of the point of that soft heart.
10:50 When you’re ready to accept the Lord, when you’ve just been brought so low. And that’s why oftentimes you’ll hear preachers mentioned, like how low do you need to be brought? How much do you need to be broken before you get saved? Damon, that’s that idea. And then we see the fruit from their effort, you know, because we see here in Mark at the end here, Mark 6:13, and they cast out many devils and anointed with oil, many that were sick and healed them.
11:15 And so they had God’s power. God anointed them with that power in the beginning, sent them out two by two, uh, through the person of Jesus Christ. And then that power bore fruit for them.
11:25 There was fruit from their witness. There was fruit from their efforts. And we see that when we do things in a godly way by God’s program.
11:36 And by that, I mean a biblical way. As we learn the scriptures and we study the scriptures to show ourselves approved unto God, as we’re not ashamed of rightly dividing, as we live for God and we go out there, we do what God calls us to do. Fruit will come.
11:47 Amen. We may not see it. Honestly, we may not ever see it, but God will, will, will honor our effort.
11:52 I believe that. And he, and he knows everything. Like he knows our hearts.
11:58 So we put ourselves in these uncomfortable situations in the ministry. God knows it’s uncomfortable. Have you ever thought about that? You know, like you’re like, oh, I really don’t want to knock on this door is, you know, it’s like a pit bull inside of there.
12:09 And this person looks very mad that I’m here and I’m going to do it because I love Jesus. And you knock on the door and say, do you want to come to church? Or do you know, do you know where you’d go if you died today? You know, your, your heart’s beating, your palms are sweating. God’s going to honor that.
12:22 Hey, many fold, many, I don’t want to say tenfold, but many fold. God will honor that. There’ll be a reward in heaven for that effort.
12:29 And God bless the soul winner. God bless the soul winner. And why, why can’t we do more soul winning? You say, well, God didn’t make me like that.
12:37 I don’t have the time or whatever your reason might be. Well, what can you do to win souls? Can you, can you write a social media post if you’re on there? Can you write a letter? I’ve done that before. There was someone that was clearly lost and I wrote them a letter or yeah, I sent, mailed them a gospel track in a letter, mailed it to the gospel track.
12:52 So it wasn’t in that area. You can mail a gospel track. You can go cover the laundromat with them.
13:00 You can go share the gospel with students in college or high school. You can volunteer, guardian ad litem. I’m learning about that in foster care training.
13:09 You can volunteer to represent children that have issues in the sense they’ve been separated from their parents. And you can volunteer and do that and represent those kids. And you can witness to those kids and the families about the love of Christ.
13:23 And there’s so many, that’s just one, you know, opportunity of so many opportunities that you can be a witness even in unconventional ways in these last days to show who Jesus Christ is and to win the lost. And my point here is that we follow God’s program to have faith in him, to not rely on our worldly comforts or safety or anything like that, but to go by faith and to do what God calls us to do, to realize it’ll even be a testimony against those people when they reject you, to preach the true gospel message found in 1 Corinthians 15:1-4, by the way, and to see fruit from that effort. We will be blessed for it.
14:01 We’ll be so blessed for it. Isn’t God good? He’s given us a program. Let’s go do it.
14:06 Let’s go out there and share the good news. Thank you for listening. Take care.
14:10 God bless and amen.