Empowered by God

I had this sermon that I remember so vividly. It was just a bomb. 10 people fell asleep in the middle of the sermon. Like it just was not good. And this faithful lady in our church, she came up to me and said, "That was the best sermon you've ever preached." My first response was, I want to argue with her. But then it was the constant reminder in the back of my head that God has given me for 10 years. That is not about you, but it's about when the word of God is read and the Holy Spirit starts moving in people's hearts that all the sudden what we cannot do under our own ability, God through his word and through his spirit can change lives. So if you have your Bibles, go and open some Matthew chap 28. Because you see, this is not something that we just woke up one day and said, "Hey, we have this good idea. Let's do this." Instead, this is an initiative. This is baked into our core of who we are as cross church based on his word and what it calls us to do. Last week as we unpacked this, we started in Matthew chap 28. In Matthew chap 28 and verse 19 and 20, you see the great commission where Jesus as he's gathering his disciples, he says, "Go." He says, "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing in the name of the father, the son, and the holy spirit." And we asked the question, okay, if we are to go, if we are to fulfill the commission, if we are to do the thing that Jesus told us to do, what does it look like? And we unpack that here at Cross Church, we believe that what that looks like, how we fulfill the commission the greatest way is God has called Cross Church to be fulfilling the great commission one church at a time. Because here's what we believe. That churches make Jesus known. That churches baptize people. that when people are baptized, they start following Jesus. As people continue to follow Jesus, they become a mature disciple. That as mature disciples, they begin to disciple other people. That they begin to make Jesus known even more boldly that they share their faith. And then they start more churches. That's repeats the cycle. And through 2,000 years of church history, that's been exactly what's happened is God has used his church to take forward the gospel to make him known to the world around him so that lives can be changed. In last week, we said here's the motivation for all of this. It starts in our worship. we could summarize all of last week's message that if we believe that Jesus Christ is the God of the universe and if we believe that that's a big statement to make then we can't help but to tell other people about him like hey there's Jesus he he's kind of the God who created everything who sustains everything and continues to push it forward I want you to know him but today we kind of shift gears and ask well then how in the world do we do this is do we have the power do we have the ability do we have the strength to make this happen. And the answer is no. This past week, um I actually, it's funny, at our school on Monday, it was read across America. So the mayor of Surprise came to our school and we were one of four schools, CrossChristian Academy, that he kind of went around the city and he spoke to and he read. And I saw it on the calendar that the mayor would be here. But for some reason, my brain didn't put two and two together. So I had a hat on. I had shorts cuz it was 90° outside, a pair of books. My outfit had was fly or, you know, the drip was great as the kids say, but it wasn't the outfit I would wear to meet the mayor. So, I go meet the mayor and he's we're talking a little bit and uh as we're chatting, he's like, "Man, you seem really young to be doing this." I was like, "Yeah, I've been with Cross Church for 10 years." He's like, "You started when you were 5 years old." And I'm like, "Huh?" Um and and as we're talking and we get to like unpack a little bit and and I shared with him I was like you know what our church has this heart and this passion where we want to make our city a better place and we want to make our city a better place and we believe the best way to do that is to tell people about Jesus who changes their lives. And as we started talking about that he's like man I just love that. That's so great. And we had this great conversation. Now me and the mayor are on a firstname basis. Uh he's my bro. Um, but as we had that conversation, then in my brain I walked away and was like, because this links straight into our message. I'm like, now how do we make our city a better place by making Jesus known? And then I thought about how big our city is. And just in Surprise alone, there are 150,000 people in Surprise. You add in, and maybe you don't live in Surprise, but maybe you're in Sun City proper or West or Grand or Festival. Maybe you're coming from Buckeye or Wikcinberg or Whitman or Morristown. Maybe you're in Peoria and you see the reach very quickly that our city becomes and inside almost a 10mi radius you have about 300,000 people and even asked the question can cross church truly change can truly make an impact can truly start a movement where there's 300,000 people or do we have the power to change to help to change people's lives and make a difference in our sphere of influence. influence. And the honest answer is no, we do not. Your pastor is not smart enough. He is not good-looking enough. He is not funny enough. He is not charismatic enough. And you're just staring at me and not laughing because you agree on all those things. But here's the thing is we do have a God that does. And this is the question I want us to spend some time wrestling with is where does the power for the mission come from? If we have this mission where we want to start more churches, where we want to make our city a better place, where we think we need to tell people about Jesus because it will change their eternity, that we want to reach people who then are baptized, who become disciples, who all of a sudden start more churches, who eternities are changed. How in the world can we do that? Well, we don't do it on our own ability, but instead we look to the God who can do it. And I want us to start our time in Matthew chap 28. We're going to start in verse uh 18. And we're going to really land and spend some time in today because here's the thing. Before Jesus said, "Go therefore," he had a preamble to this. And in verse 18, it says, "Jesus came near and said to them that all authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth." The first thing we see when we ask this question, where does the power for the mission come from? The first thing we see is that authority has been given. Jesus starts this and he says before he says go therefore and tell people about me. But go before he says go therefore and baptize and teach and make disciples. Before any of that, he says all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to him. Before he ever says go, before he mentions these, he gives this foundational truth about who he is. And that truth he shares is that he has all authority. He doesn't have regional authority. He doesn't have spiritual authority in a limited sense. He has all authority both in heaven, the next life, and on earth, this life. Think about this statement for a second. Jesus saying that the totality of power in the cosmos is vested in the risen Jesus Christ. Alexander the Great considered one of the greatest leaders and military tacticians in history. When he died in 323 BC around 32 or 33 years old depending on how they date it, he had already conquered most of the known worlds. His empire stretched from the Balkans to modern-day Pakistan. He is considered just this amazing wartime leader. Probably will never be matched again. But here's the funny thing about his life. Immediately after his death, his generals began fighting over his empire. Because all of a sudden, when he died, the authority that linked them together, the authority that kept them all in check was gone. And within one generation of him dying, his entire kingdom was in shambles, was shattered, and was spread apart. You see, that's what happens when authority is limited to one person's lifetime. But Jesus here is not speaking as a conqueror who built an empire. Instead, he's speaking as the risen Lord. He's speaking as the one who has defeated death itself. His authority doesn't dissolve when he's no longer physically present. Instead, it expands. I'm excited. We are just less than a month away from Easter. And coming out of Easter, we'll be starting a new series that we're going to call um that's going to be about the miracles throughout the book of Matthew. And there's, as I've been studying it, there's this constant push of looking at the different authority that Jesus has. And I love one of the questions as Jesus is performing miracles, this question keeps popping up. They're like, "Who is this man? Who is this man who has this authority that is unlike others? Who is this man that is different, that is not the same? It is this man who has all authority in heaven and on earth. Now think about who he is saying this to. He is saying this to 11 men, mostly fishermen and trades people, those who are his disciples who had followed him for the last 3 years. One of them had even denied knowing Jesus just days or weeks earlier. All of them had scattered when he was arrested in fear. They were not an impressive group. And that gives me encouragement because we are not an impressive group. I'm speaking of myself. All right? You are offended by that and you're like, I am not impressive. You can agree with that at least. All right. Um, but Jesus uses not impressive people to do impressive things. But here's the whole point about this is he uses these broken men who the world had rejected, who the world had thrown away. But the one with all authority is the one who is commissioning him, the one that is sending them out. I started my first real big boy career job at 21 years old. And after I graduated from ASU, I used to have a lot more pride in ASU, but all of our sports teams are trash, so there's nothing to be excited about. I was a UFA fan that said that. Oh my. But as I graduated and left ASU, uh my first job at 21 years old, uh was as an HR manager at Target. And it was funny as I walked into that job, I was actually backfilling a guy who was in his late30s who had kids, who had a family to support, and he got fired. And I'm a 20year-old kid still living at home, expected to fill this guy's shoes and do better than he did. And as I went into that role, I was borrowing the confidence of my district manager who said he believed in me. He was probably lying, but I believed him cuz I didn't believe in myself. And as I was going in there, I was laying I was depending on the authority of the position that I was established in in the policies and procedures that how we ran things. And here's the thing I realized very quickly is I had no voice in the lives of my team because I had not added value to them yet. And in order to get a voice, I had to slowly add value in helping oversee this store of 200 employees and seeing how this all worked that I was totally unqualified for. But I was representing and I had the authority of an organization behind me. And here's the thing, the great commission, it is not about our ability. It is not about our strength. It is not about the value we bring to the table. But it is about the authority that goes behind it. In the great commission, it doesn't even begin with go before there is go. It begins with all authority has been given to me. The command is grounded in the authority of the commander. And the commander says he will go with us. You see, when cross church plants a new church and a new community, Jesus has authority there. When we send workers into places that have never had a gospel- centered church, Jesus has authority there. We saw the story of Phoenix and in Donna and Scott, how they were there and have been there for the last 10 years. When we started that church in 2016, there was six churches in five years when we started there. I thought we would make it two, but we've made it 10. Why? Cuz I was so smart and all of a sudden learned to preach. No, it was so bad for like 5 years, right? It was because the authority of Jesus Christ was there. And here's the deal is when our life and the mission and the vision that God gives us, when it feels hard, when it feels uncertain, when it feels like it just costs too much, when it feels like we cannot do it, we cannot. But the one who commissioned us hasn't lost a single ounce of authority over anywhere he goes. You see, the mission that we're joining is backed by the one who holds ultimate authority over everything. But authority alone isn't enough. We also need power. If you have your Bibles, go ahead and turn over to Acts chapter 1. And we looked at a little bit of this passage last week, and we're just going to see one verse in Acts chapter 1, starting in verse 8. We want to take some time and just parse this apart. But after Jesus has said, "Hey, all authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth." He says, "Now go make disciples." He then spends time building them up. He He is pouring into them. He's showing how the whole Old Testament attests to himself and how they are to preach the gospel. He builds them up just like we build up as we gather the church. But here in Acts chapter 1, right before Jesus ascends back into heaven, right before he is going to leave them in Acts 18, he says this, "But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come on you. You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you." He doesn't say, "Hey, you might receive it. I I might give you some resources to help you out." Not you could receive it if you are faithful enough. If you're paying attention enough, if you're righteous enough, he says you will receive power. This is a declaration. It is a promise. Charles Spurgeon is widely regarded as the greatest preacher of the 19th century. Uh by his early 20s, he was filling the largest auditoriums in all of London. Thousands of people would gather to hear him preach week after week after week. His sermons were were so impressive that they were printed and they were mailed around the world. We're on YouTube and I'm glad that my mom watches it every week. All right, my sermons after I send them to her and say, "Hey, can you watch this so we get another view on there?" But thousands of people around the world, they're watching and they're listening to his sermons. By any measure, you would hear him speak and be like, "This guy is gifted beyond all measure." But Spurgeon, what I loved about his story is he was relentless about one thing. He told people over and over again as they would heap praise on it that none of it was his. Every Sunday as he climbed into the steps of the pulpit week by week, month by month, year after year, as he climbed those steps in the pulpit, every step he took was, "I believe in the Holy Ghost. I believe in the Holy Ghost. I believe in the Holy Ghost." He would elaborate on this throughout his ministry. He says if we have not the spirit which Jesus promised, we cannot perform the commission to which Jesus has given us. He says the Holy Spirit is absolutely essential. Without him, our office is a mere name. You see, the man who preached to some estimate 10 million people across his lifetime, a man with every natural gift you could ever want, refused to take a single step toward the pulpit without first confessing that he was solely dependent on the Holy Spirit for God to take his word out. And you see, this was not false humility on the part of Spurgeon. This was the theology of Acts chapter 18 lived out. Spurgeon understood that what Jesus was saying that the power for the mission is not generated by us. It is given to us. It comes from the spirit and the holy spirit without it the mission is just an assignment we cannot fulfill. Spurgeon understood something that we need to understand this morning is the holy spirit is not an option for the mission. It is a necessity for it. And here's the deal is we can have the best strategy. I I would encourage you and you can go even right now uh when you're on your phone and when you're scrolling uh get off of Facebook for a second. If you go to crossurchcares.com/letsgo, you can see our strategy for what we want to do over the next two years of how we're going to use the funds, how we're going to use the people, how we're going to start this. And there has been a lot of prayer and a lot of time that has been spent of how do we best have the strategy of fulfilling the great commission to the best of our abilities. And here's the thing as our elders, our pastors, our leadership, we have devoted time and energy to do that. But here's the problem is that if we do that without the Holy Spirit moving in us, then it is all worthless. And you see in this this principle that I want to put in front of us is that that God never commands us without also empowering us. He promised that he would send this power in the Holy Spirit and he continues to deliver time and time again. You think through the great narrative of scripture, you have guys like Moses who went to approach Pharaoh, the most powerful man in the world at that time. And he didn't approach him under his own strength and under his own power because Moses was deathly afraid with a stutter. Instead, as he approached him, God had already spoke to him in a burning bush and equipped him with people around him, knowing that this mission was going to be carried out by God. You look at a guy like Gideon in the Old Testament. Gideon went into battle with 300 men. And he went into a battle, and the Bible describes the army they were fighting was like locust for number. Now, thank goodness we don't have locust in Phoenix. All right? I don't know what we would do with locust, but like go count bugs in the desert, right? It's you're going to lose count very quickly. And it says this army was so big there's no way that they could beat him. But with 300 men, Gideon was successful because God was behind it. The disciples in Acts and in the New Testament, they didn't rush out of Jerusalem the day after the resurrection, start planting churches in their own ability. It said they waited, they prayed, and when they received the Holy Spirit, all of a sudden, when this amazing thing happened in Pentecost, the spirit fell on 120 people in the upper room and 3,000 came to be saved. And it wasn't because of clever presentations. It was because the Holy Spirit showed up and lives were changed. About 6 months into me pastoring here at Cross Church in surprise, I had finally felt like I was, you know, getting in a rhythm and getting my feet going and and all of a sudden like things were like, "All right, I'm getting comfortable. I'm learning people's names. Everything's going great." And then I had this sermon that I remember so vividly. It was just a bomb. I know that's shocking, right? You're like, "No, man. You never bomb." Okay, it was one of those bombs. Like, all of a sudden, I was like, "Man, I could tell like 10 people fell asleep in the middle of the sermon." Like, it just was not good. I was like, there was no amens. I was like, it it was just it it wasn't there. And so, I went out to the hub right after service, as I always do, and was greeting people and talking to some of our new guests. And this faithful lady in our church who her and her husband lead a Bible group, they serve, they're involved in every way possible. She came up to me and said, "That was the best sermon you've ever preached." And my first my first response was, "I want to argue with her." I'd be like, "Let me tell you why it wasn't." All right. Uh cuz last couple weeks, I've been laying down some bangers. And that was not one of them. I was like, "Let me tell you that was not it." But then it was the constant reminder in the back of my head that God has given me for 10 years that it's not about you, but it's about when the word of God is read and the Holy Spirit starts moving in people's hearts that all the sudden what we cannot do under our own ability. We cannot argue Jesus into someone's heart. We cannot make someone believe. But God through his word and through his spirit can change lives. And we see here that when the power of the Holy Spirit shows up, we cannot accomplish this mission on our own, but God can. And cross church as we go into this season where we're attempting something through Let's Go that is going to be beyond our ability, beyond our budget, beyond our comfort zone, beyond our strength. It is beyond our organizational capacity. It requires something that only the spirit can supply. And let me tell you, that's really exactly where our church wants to be. Because a church that only does what it can fund on their own strength is not a church that requires much faith. That's just a nonprofit with good values. A church that operates within its comfort zone is not a church that is missional and a church that is reaching. We want to be a church that asks God to show up and do things that we cannot do on our own. You see, the power of the Holy Spirit had been promised. And God always keeps his promises. When the Holy Spirit fell, all of a sudden, this revival happened. This movement started. Churches were created. But here's the thing. That authority that had been given, that power that had been promised. Now, the question becomes, where were they to take that message, that power, that authority? And check out the second half of Acts 1:8 as it says, you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come on you. He says this, "And you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." We see how the authority has been given, how the power has been promised. And here he shows that reach has been defined. Jesus doesn't kind of leave this ambiguous of where you are to go on this mission. Instead, he told his disciples, the early church, exactly where they are to go. What Jesus gave them wasn't just a command. It was a road map on how to carry this out. And he shows them Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. Each one of those was a concentric circle was expanding out from where they stood. Now, think about this for a second. If you ever have gone to a pond, now we don't have ponds in Phoenix or Arizona. We have creeks that you'll see things. It'll say there's a creek under a bridge and you look over and it's all dry and dirt, right? Um because we get rain like three times a year. But it's always fun when it rains a lot during monsoon season, then you see some idiot in a kayak trying to go down that area. Um and maybe you've been that idiot in a kayak. And I hope it was fun, right? But in there, if you go to a pond and you drop a rock in water when a pond is still, the amazing thing is it hits and it kind of bounces up. But where that water is disturbed, all of a sudden these circles keep reverberating through past that. And this is what Jesus is describing with a great commission here where he's telling them where to go. He's not saying, "Hey, I'm going to send you on four different missions. You go to Jerusalem. You go to Judea. You go to Samaria. You go to the ends of the earth." He says, "Start where you are." And watch how it ripples out from this. And they started in Jerusalem. Pentecost happened in Jerusalem. They they gave a sermon and preached and Peter preached and 3,000 people were saved. A church was formed in Jerusalem. But then as they formed the the church in Jerusalem, all of a sudden they started reaching more people. So all of a sudden they started talking to more people and they shared the gospel here and they shared the gospel here and all of a sudden it went from Jerusalem right around them, the people they were comfortable with, people they were new. Then it went to Judea, the bigger region, all of a sudden started to hear about it. But then Jesus drops in there Samaria. Now, Samaria, funny enough, actually wasn't that much bigger or different than Judea. But Samaria was right among them, but it represented a group of people that they did not like. Samaria was their neighbors. It was in their neighborhood, but these were people who were half-blooded Jews. There were people who made theological compromises time and time again. It was people that were their enemies that they wanted nothing to do with. And Jesus said, "Hey, go tell people about go share the gospel and tell people about Jesus to your enemies as well." We think about this today. That means that if you're a Republican, Jesus is telling you to also share the gospel with Democrats. If you're a Democrat, that means you also share the gospel with Republicans. Now, some of you are quiet. You're like, I don't know if I want to do that. Okay? But even your enemies need the gospel. Maybe even more so. All right? And here he's saying not just share in your home, in your neighborhood where you are, but keep sharing beyond that. Keep proclaiming the news of Christ. Keep making him Jesus known. And then he gets to the ends of the earth. You can make an argument and I think one that is valid that the church has never fully arrived here to the ends of the earth. There are still thousands of unreached people groups, still communities with no gospel uh presence or there are communities with no gospel- centered church. There are still corners of the earth that have never heard the name of Jesus. The mission is not finished. But it begs the question, so what does this map look like for cross church? Because we don't live in Jerusalem. We don't live in Judea. We don't live in Samaria, but we do live in the ends of the earth. What is God calling us to do about telling people about Jesus? If you go out into our lobby, the first thing I hope you see when you leave those doors is our Let's Go lobby display. And I made it really obnoxiously huge so that you could not walk by it and not be able to see it. And one of the things you'll see out there is we have a map of Arizona that has five geographic locations that represent six six different churches in 2026. Those are pebbles being dropped in the water that have reverberating circles that are making the gospel known. Different drops in different places of where people are, of where that church is planted, but is continuing to make gospel impacts beyond what they can see. We have done this globally as well and we have seen in Myamar and in the Philippines. And in the Philippines, we have two in Kennet in Cebu City where we are dropping pebbles in the water of lostness to share the gospel and to see the effects. And here's the thing throughout all of this when we come back and see how are we to make Jesus known? How do we have the how do we continue to preach Christ to those who are far from him, it comes back to this question of do we have what it takes to be successful at this? And the answer is still an emphatic no. But we serve the God who can. And as we go out, as we begin to try to lead in this mission to fulfill the great commission to start more churches, to be on fire for him, here is the truth that we cling to is we go out in his strength, not in our strategy. Should we still strategize? Absolutely. Should we still try to be intentional about how we are going to share the gospel with people? Absolutely. But when we put the weight on ourselves to say, "I'm going to win someone to Jesus," or, "I'm going to make sure my life is figured out. I'm going to make sure that I have all the answers to things." We will fail time and time again because we are broken. And when we put too much things on us, we will fail, but our God will not. In 1969, when Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon, if you believe that happened. All right, I got to just make that disclaimer for the moonlanding deniers. All right. Um, you laugh, but some guy is going to come up with his phone after church and be like, "Let me show you the evidence right here." All right. But in 1969, allegedly when Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon, I believe in it. Okay? Just I'm not a denier. I promise. But when he stepped out, I don't know if he practiced this line. Uh, he probably rehearsed it in the mirror time and time again. But when he stepped on the moon, he said one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. But what I love is he didn't say one small step for Neil. That would have not been a good way to remember in history. One step small step for the USA. He didn't like kind of say or one small step for NASA. He said for man. Because here's what Neil I think represented in that or what he understood in that moment is he represented more than himself. He represented the 400,000 scientists and engineers that made that possible. He he represented the country who beat the Russians. We beat the Canadians a couple weeks ago and we beat the Russians, you know, ever since uh 1969. uh that he represented a country that helped foster this monumental event but he also represent entire race of mankind who took this small step but had this huge representative things of we have reached the moon. You see when we go out and we come out from the church and we go out as a Christian you do not go out just as an individual. You go out as a representative of something so much bigger than yourself. It is not your ability. It is not your strength. It is not just your steps. Those will fail time and time again. But we go out as representatives of the risen Jesus Christ as witnesses to his glory to make Jesus known to the ends of the earth. And sometimes when God calls us to things, when he says, "Hey, maybe I need to get out of my comfort and I need to go." You're like, "God, I don't know if I can do that." When he tells you to give with more than you might feel comfortable with, be like, "God, I don't know if I can do this." He says, "I have the power and the security to do it, you should go." When he says, "Go and share. Go take this." And you're too anxious or depressed or pulled back. God's power goes with you, not your own. And too often, I think we fail because we try to do it by ourselves. We only enter ventures that are big enough for us to achieve on our own. for us to plan out, for us to calculate every risk, for us to make sure success is guaranteed. But here's the deal. God does not call us to live a life that success is banked in and guaranteed and comfortable under our standards. Instead, he said, "Ultimate success has been achieved through me, but I'm going to push you and call you to take a risk and call you to be uncomfortable that are going to stretch you in every way beyond your ability. But when you are stretched, you will depend more and more on me." And that's exactly the point. Christ Church, I hope that today and in the next month and over the next coming years that God pushes in our heart to get uncomfortable, to stretch us beyond our means, to not just go out in what we can strategize, not to just go out in what we can safely plan, but to go out in his strength. to remember that he has secured the victory. But we're going to have to trust him through the process on this side of heaven.