The Joyful Mission 

Thank you for that warm welcome. Of course, they say it depends on whether they applaud after the sermon as to how the whole thing went.

Folks, have you been having a great night tonight or what?

The joy that has filled this room! And as Dwan has said, this is diverse Memphis worshiping the Lord together because we're believers. We have the Lord Jesus Christ in common. We come from many different backgrounds, different ethnic groups, different ages. I can prove that with my white hair! Different denominations historically, and we're here to worship the Lord.

And it's appropriate because this is City Serve Weekend at Second Presbyterian Church, and the theme you see right up here in this banner: In Memphis as It Is in Heaven.

And I kind of think we got pretty close to heaven tonight. Don't you think?

It's just been a joy to sing and to worship with you, and it is truly the high point of the entire week. We start off with this joyful celebration of praising the Lord.

There's no name that is higher than His name. There is no being who is more gracious than He is. There's no one more powerful, no one more merciful to you and to me than the Lord Himself. And we have enjoyed worshiping and praising Him.

For those of you who were not with us this morning, we had extensive discussions as we studied the Word and looked at missional strategies about how to help bring heaven to earth in Memphis, Tennessee.

We looked at our educational problems, our racial, financial, and economic injustices. We looked at the child poverty that soars in Memphis, even more than twice the national average. We looked at the crime that is committed in our city and saw many things that Christians need to address if we have the mind of Jesus Christ, if we're looking at our city missionally.

So we're in a joyful environment like this, just taking the roof off and praising Him. And then we all know, okay, Monday, we've got to face the business. We've got to go out and do the work. We ought to go out and share Christ with others. And we have to go out and exercise social justice and deeds of mercy to the poor, to those who have not had the same privileges that some of us have had.

And the danger is that we think the joy is to decline from Sunday to Monday.

And I'm here to talk to you about the joy of Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday, Friday and Saturday when you're serving the Lord.

The Christian Mission Is Every Christian's Mission

And to that end, I want you to look with me at Luke 10.

We were there this morning, those of you who were with us, verses 1–6. And we saw some very important things about the Lord sending out the 70, which represents the entire church of Jesus Christ. It represents all of the new Israel being sent out into every town and village.

And we saw five things about the mission of Jesus Christ that we're all engaged in.

Number one, the Christian mission is every Christian's mission.

Number two, the Christian mission is an everywhere mission.

Every town and village, every one of our 127 neighborhoods in Memphis, every one of them are to be the objects of our affection and our service in the Christian mission.

We saw that the Christian mission is costly because He said to His disciples, "I'm sending you out as sheep among the wolves."

You know, wolves eat sheep. And so we're going out among those who don't have our best interests at heart. But ladies and gentlemen, we've got their best interests at heart. And that's the way the Lord sent us out. He sent us out in a costly mission.

And then we saw in verse 9 that the Christian mission is a holistic mission.

It involves deeds of love and mercy. It involves exercising social justice among all peoples. And it obviously involves the proclamation of the kingdom.

He says to them, "You go out and heal the sick and then tell them the kingdom of God is near you."

That's what the deeds of love and mercy represent, that God has come. His kingdom is moving among us. And so it's a holistic mission. It involves both serving the temporal needs of people, but then especially the eternal needs of people.

And then lastly, we looked at verses 10–16, and we saw that the Christian mission is an urgent mission.

Those who reject you when you're sharing Christ with them, they've not just rejected you, they've rejected the Lord Jesus. That's what He said. And then He said when they reject Me, they reject God. They reject the One who sent Me.

That's what we saw this morning.

There's a huge mission in front of us. And there's a huge commission given to us by the Lord Jesus.

And now you might expect, well, okay, let's get back to work. It isn't going to be easy. Put our shoulder to the wheel. We've got to get it going.

And sometimes we think that we're in sort of a perpetual state of anxiety and misery because we have to work so hard.

And I want to challenge that this morning.

Mission Begins With an Explosion of Joy

Lesslie Newbigin, who was a bishop in India—he was an Englishman but a bishop in India for many years in the last century—wrote this. He said:

There has been a long tradition which sees the mission of the church primarily as obedience to a command. It has been customary to speak of the missionary mandate. This way of putting the matter is certainly not without justification. And yet it seems to me that it misses the point. It tends to make mission a burden rather than a joy, to make it part of the law rather than part of the gospel.

If one looks at the New Testament evidence, one gets another impression. Mission begins with a kind of explosion of joy. The news that the rejected and crucified Jesus is alive is something that cannot possibly be suppressed. It must be told. Who could be silent about such a fact?

Brothers and sisters, what we're being taught is the joy that's in this room explodes into the streets for the rest of the week until we meet again.

The joy of worship is the same joy as ministry because in worship we're celebrating the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit to His face. We're speaking to Him and celebrating Him.

When we go out from here, we're proclaiming Him and celebrating Him among other people.

Evangelism and ministry is doxological by its very nature in the Christian faith.

And I want you to look at this text with me in Luke chapter 10, which follows what I just said about the earlier part of chapter 10.

Would you look with me then at verses 17–24 in Luke 10?

Here is when the disciples, two by two, return from the mission to which the Lord Jesus sent them. And let's see what their experience was, and therefore what our experience also must be as we serve Him in His great mission.

Opening Prayer and Scripture Reading

Let us pray before we read His sacred Word.

Father, we thank You for sending the 72 into every town and village, and we thank You for sending us as well into 127 neighborhoods in our city and into all the world.

And we pray that we may do so in a way that honors and glorifies You and brings great joy to each of us.

This is our prayer as we study Your Word. Speak to us, O Lord, for we are Your humbled, waiting servants, through Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.

Luke 10:17. Hear the Word of God.

The 72 returned with joy, saying, "Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name!"

And He said to them, "I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. Behold, I've given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall hurt you.

Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven."

In that same hour, He rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and said, "I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children.

Yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my Father. And no one knows who the Son is except the Father, or who the Father is except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him."

Then turning to the disciples, He said privately, "Blessed are the eyes that see what you see. For I tell you that many prophets and kings desired to see what you see and did not see it, and to hear what you hear and did not hear it."

All flesh is like grass, and all its glory is like the flower of the field. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the Word of our God stands forever. Amen.

1. There Is Great Joy in Sharing the Gospel

I want you to notice the great joy of the disciples in verse 17.

They returned with joy.

They were sent out two by two to go visit people they had probably never met before, to exercise spiritual power and to move out the powers of darkness and to bring in the power of the Holy Spirit, and particularly to declare to them that Jesus was King and that the kingdom had come.

Something that would terrify any of us, and often does.

And yet look at their experience when they returned.

Ladies and gentlemen, the first thing I want us to notice then in verse 17 is this:

There is great joy in sharing the Gospel.

There is. And when there's not, what we need to be saying to ourselves is, "There's something wrong with the way that I'm approaching this ministry."

When it's simply a burden to us, when it's simply a duty to us, we're not sharing Christ in the way in which He should be shared.

Think about the energy and the joy that we all expressed just a few moments ago in lifting up His name to His face.

That's the same joy that we take out into the world.

Who out there wants to hear you say, "Come join our miserable church and come be unhappy with us on Sunday morning. We're a bunch of grumps, and we like being grumps, and you'll enjoy being a grump too. And you should see our choir. They never smile. They just grump and gripe and whine."

Who wants to go to a church like that?

[.text-color-blue]The Boy Selling Mangoes[.text-color-blue]

I remember a friend of mine who was an evangelist in Uganda. He himself was Kenyan, but he was a Ugandan evangelist. And he told a story that he said was a true story.

It was about an African boy who was selling mangoes.

And he got up early in the morning, went out to sell his mangoes, and he didn't sell one mango. It was a miserable morning.

Finally, he just gave up, and he sat under a mango tree. And he took one of his mangoes, and he just peeled it back, and it sprayed a little bit, and the aroma began to waft in the air.

And he just got a big smile on his face.

And before you know it, there was a line a mile long waiting to buy mangoes because the boy was enjoying his mangoes. Everybody could see it.

And ladies and gentlemen, that's what it means to know the Lord and to make Him known.

We can make Him known. What has He done for us?

He's forgiven all of our sins. He's removed our shame. He has prepared a place for us. We know where we're going. We have a purpose in life. He's dramatically changed our lives.

That's the story that we have.

And if you don't have that story, you're not telling the truth because that is the story. That's what's happened to you.

And so they returned with great joy because they were talking about the One in whom they were joyful.

And they returned with great joy because they experienced His power.

Look what they said to Him: "Even the demons are subject to us."

The powers of the underworld are submitting to our ministry. This is really something else.

Have you ever experienced this?

Now, unlike Dwan, I don't have a Pentecostal background. So when I'm dealing with demon possession, I send them on down to the Assembly of God pastor.

But that doesn't mean that I haven't seen the power of the Holy Spirit work among the demonic world. I have.

And let me tell you how it works.

[.text-color-blue]A Man's Life Changed by the Gospel[.text-color-blue]

I remember a man came to me, this was years ago, and he wanted to marry one of the really beautiful and kind girls in our church.

You know that happens oftentimes. It's amazing what you Christian women will fall for.

And this guy comes in, and I could tell from the very beginning he never went to church. He wasn't a believer. He admitted he wasn't a believer.

And I looked at the woman. "What are you doing?"

But I made a deal with him. I said, "Look, we don't marry believers to unbelievers."

I said to her, "Are you a believer?"

"Yeah, I'm a believer."

"Well, he's not. So we don't do that here."

But I said to him, "I'm going to give you a chance. I'm going to meet with you now every week for four weeks, and I'm going to give you a chance to understand the Gospel and understand Jesus Christ and what it means to become a Christian. You in for this?"

He said, "Okay, I'll give it a shot."

So I had him read through the Gospel of John, one chapter a day, and keep a journal on what he didn't understand, anything he didn't agree with, and any implications for his own life.

We went through this every Monday, seven chapters per Monday, and we reviewed his journal.

We got to the end of it three weeks later, 21 chapters in John.

And I said, "Anything here you don't agree with?"

He said, "No, I thought it makes perfect sense to me. I just don't know what difference it makes."

I said, "What difference it makes? Are you serious?"

I jumped up out of my counseling chair, and I lost all my decency. And I got in front of him and said, "Have you ever heard of heaven and hell? That's what difference this makes."

And I said, "Look, this is your assignment. By next Monday, you receive Jesus Christ as Savior."

I heard somebody else do that once, and I didn't think it was theologically very sound, but I did it anyway.

And I had put him in a Bible study, and the Bible study was on Sunday nights.

He came back the next Monday, and he said, "Pastor, I don't know that you'll understand what I'm going to say to you, but I came out of that Bible study last night, and the cosmos was different."

He said, "I looked up at the stars in the heaven, and I realized God made those, and they're beautiful, and He made me. And He sent His Son, and His Son paid the price for all of our sins. He died for us."

He said, "Do people around here know about this?"

That's what he said to me.

And I confess I paused for a moment because honestly, I wasn't quite sure whether they did know about this because we weren't as excited as this man was.

He was excited. He had joy.

And let me tell you something. So did I.

But I had more joy the next week.

It was our missions conference. And in our missions conference in this church, this was 30 years ago, people gave pledges, and they gave commitments, financial commitments, to promote the mission all around the world.

Well, we had a treasurer.

She was a very discreet woman. She never gossiped or told me any information about anybody in the congregation and what they gave. She was very careful about it, and I was glad for it.

But she thought it would be safe when I was walking down the hall on Monday morning after the missions conference to say to me, "Pastor, you won't believe this. But yesterday in the offering plate, there was a $25,000 check for missions from a person who's not even a member."

Now, of course, I didn't want her to know that she had just told me something about an individual.

So I said, "Dot, that's really interesting, isn't it?"

So I very calmly and coolly walked down the hall, opened my office door, went in, closed the door, and I said, "Yeah!"

Because the man wasn't just excited about his sins being forgiven. He was excited about sharing that with somebody else. Amen.

He was knowing the joy of missions and being engaged in your neighborhood and being engaged with the lost and sharing Christ, wanting to know if everybody knew about this.

That's the sign of conversion. That's the first joy.

But folks, you're not finished yet. And neither is this preacher, because you've got to look at the next verse.

2. There Is Greater Joy in Knowing You Belong to Jesus

Verse 18.

The Lord says to them, "Look, I knew this. I saw Satan fall."

Why did Jesus see him fall?

How in the world does anyone go into the house of a person and plunder them unless they first bind the person who's in the house?

That's what Jesus says back in Matthew.

He says, "Of course I know the demons were subject to you. I did it. That's how you did it. It was Me working through you. I'm the One who bound Satan so that now you go into his house and you plunder it."

People say this is the kingdom of the evil one. Oh well, maybe so in some ways, but we're taking over because the Lord Jesus Christ has bound the evil one, and we get to go in and plunder and lead people to Christ.

But then keep reading.

He said, "I've given you the authority to do this."

Nevertheless, verse 20:

"Do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven."

Here's what He's saying. This is the second main observation you want to make.

Not only is there great joy in sharing Jesus Christ in His mission.

There is greater joy in knowing that you belong to Him.

You're His.

He's got a hold of you. Your names are written in heaven.

That's unchangeable.

Ladies and gentlemen, when He brought you to Himself, your name is inscribed in the eternal Book of Life, and no one can take it out.

There's nothing that can separate you from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Lift up your hearts and rejoice about that, would you?

He says you can rejoice that you're experiencing spiritual power in going in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and seeing people come to Christ and seeing even the city experience some of the foretaste of heaven itself.

But don't rejoice in that ultimately.

Rejoice rather that you're His, that He loves you.

And ladies and gentlemen, you'll not be effective in sharing Christ until you have this greater joy of knowing that the Lord loves you and you belong to Him.

And what you're doing when you're sharing Christ, you're inviting them into the same relationship you have with the Lord.

And you say, "Pastor, you're starting to go over my head. This is all just too great for me."

Well, I ain't finished yet.

3. The Greatest Joy Is Seeing the Joy in Jesus' Heart

But what you've got to do is look at verse 21, and you see there's not only a great joy and a greater joy.

There's the greatest joy of all.

Do you see what it is?

The greatest joy of all is seeing the joy in Jesus' heart.

That's what brings joy to the believer.

In that same hour, it says in verse 21, He rejoiced in the Holy Spirit.

Brothers and sisters, this is the only place in the New Testament where you have that kind of language.

Jesus was a man of sorrows. He bore our sins on Calvary's tree. He sweat blood in the Garden of Gethsemane.

The man knew sorrows and grief and lamentation. He understood it all.

But when He saw the kingdom expanding through His disciples, and He saw His power being exercised through these sinful and broken and limited people, His joy went through the roof.

And the joy of the disciples is looking upon His face and seeing His joy.

Our joy is derived from His joy.

And look at what He's joyful in.

If you read the rest of the text, you see because the Gospel is saving people like you and me, not the rich and the powerful and the philosophers and the learned.

Now, some of them sneak in. You know what I mean?

God is gracious to the rich too. He loves the rich. The problem with the rich is that fewer of them accept the Gospel than the poor.

And Jesus takes special delight that people who never went to school, the little children, the ones who are unlearned, they're coming to Christ.

And look at the Father's pleasure.

Jesus is delighting Himself in this, that He is revealing Himself to the simple people of the world.

And this brings Him great joy.

So ladies and gentlemen, next time that you think about evangelism being a burden, just think again.

There's joy in your sharing Christ and exercising spiritual power that comes from Him.

There's joy in knowing that you are the object of His affections in the Gospel. Your names are written in heaven.

And the highest joy of all is that He takes joy in it.

So rejoice, brothers and sisters, in the joy of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The Fullness of Joy in Heaven

You know there are many things you can do that bring joy.

A special loving relationship, you know, with your boyfriend or your girlfriend, your husband, your wife.

Being in the delivery room when your child is being born.

I'm just thinking of some of the moments of highest joy.

When you're hiking in the Andes or you're in the Swiss Alps and you see the beauty of the surroundings, you can just be overwhelmed with joy.

But think about this.

There's no joy greater than knowing the joy of Jesus Christ, when we gaze upon His face and see His joy.

So one day we will experience the fullness of what we're simply tasting right now.

What we are tasting today is an hors d'oeuvre. It comes before the main meal.

The main meal is that every tribe and language and people and nation from every continent on the planet, from all the ages past and the ages present, all of them are assembled, male and female, old and young alike.

They're gathered around the throne.

And they saw Jesus joyful in this moment, but they never saw Jesus at the moment we're going to see Him one day when He is full of joy and He's on the throne and everyone is gathered around Him and absorbed in His everlasting praise.

That's when heaven has come to earth and is coming for us.

Rejoice. Rejoice. Rejoice.

Closing Prayer

Lord, we thank You for the joy You give us in worshiping You and the joy You give us in proclaiming You and serving You in a broken world.

Please move upon our hearts that everyone who knows us will say that our ministry to the poor and to the lost and the marginalized is fueled by the joy of the Lord Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray.

Amen.