God’s People On God’s Mission

What Is Church?

If somebody asks you, “What is church?” Not “What church do you go to, ” but just, “What is church?” What is that? What would your response be?

Most of us know it’s not a building, right? Church is not a building. But sometimes I think we speak like it is. So if somebody says, “Hey, where are you going?” you say, “I’m going to church.” Well, that’s a place, right? There’s a location. They might say, “Hey, what’s the address? I might come with you.”

Or sometimes we sound like it’s a service. Let’s say it’s not a building, but it’s a service. You can have the service in a forest, you can have it in a building, you can have it in a home, but it’s a thing that you do together as a church. So if somebody were to say, “What did you do this morning?” and you say, “Well, we had church. We have church every Sunday.” Well, you have church, okay—that’s a service. It’s something you do when you get together.

And I don’t think those are necessarily wrong. I speak like that too. I get it. But really, church is not a building, and church is not a service. Even though churches meet in buildings, and even though churches have services, that’s not what church is.

Church is a gathering. It’s an assembly of people.

It’s what the word literally means. The Greek word ekklesia sounds like the Spanish iglesia. That’s where it’s from. And the Greek word means a called-out assembly of people. It doesn’t matter what the service is. It doesn’t matter where the location is. It’s a people that are called out together. That’s what church means.

And it’s a people with a specific identity. It’s not an identity that we get to drum up.

I’m somewhat concerned when other pastors frequently ask me, “What’s the vision of your church?” I want to say, “I hope it’s not different from the vision for your church.” We get a little too caught up in branding, a little too caught up in marketing, a little too caught up in carving your own niche so that you can get other people to join your church—sometimes ditch their church, their boring church, to come to your exciting church because you have this exciting vision.

On one level, we should provide a boring answer. If somebody asks you, “What’s your church about? What do you guys think church is?” it shouldn’t be innovative. It shouldn’t blow somebody’s mind. It should just be scriptural, man. It should just be from the Bible.

And that’s what we’re going to see today. As Jesus forms the church, what is he doing by forming the church? What is this called-out assembly, this gathering of people—what’s it for? What’s their identity? What are they supposed to be about?

It’s a specific identity that, if we lose, it doesn’t matter how many services we have or what the building looks like that we meet in. If we lose this, we’ve lost it.

Why This Identity Matters

What is church about?

So as we turn to the Gospel of Luke, Luke reminds us that the church may meet in buildings, and the church of course will have services—that’s important—but the church is a people. What kind of people?

As I look out at you, church, what kind of people are you? Who are we? I’m part of the church. Sometimes when we do votes, I almost forget to ask for a ballot, right? I’m one of us. It’s us. Who are we? What are we doing here? What did Jesus intend in putting us together?

The answer to this question, believer, is more core to who you are than your ethnicity. The answer to the question “Who we are as a church, ” Christian, is more foundational to who you are than whatever the acronym was on the last personality test you took. Who you are as a church is more foundational to who you are than anything else that ever brings a group of people together.

Even those of you who are married—husband, wife—the answer to who you are as a church is more foundational to your existence, your purpose, than even your marriage.

In fact, isn’t that what Paul teaches in Ephesians 5? Husbands, love your wives like Christ loved the church. Wives, submit to your husbands like the church submits to Christ. What’s Paul doing there? He’s saying, ever since the beginning in Genesis, the purpose of Adam and Eve getting hitched—the purpose of marriage—is to display to the world the relationship between Christ and his church.

Church is not a picture of marriage. Marriage is an illustration of the deeper, stronger, more important reality that is church as the bride of Christ.

So to answer the question “What are we?”—that’s a pretty important question. If we don’t answer it correctly, we don’t even know what our marriages are. What is my marriage reflecting if I don’t know what church is?

So let’s go to a place in Scripture that talks about the beginning, the formation of the church. A lot of people go to the book of Acts—I get it—but it’s before that, when Jesus forms this original group of apostles in Luke 6: 12–19. Not a ton of verses today, but 12 through 19 is where we’re going to be. So turn to Luke chapter 6, and we’re going to be in verses 12 to 19 to answer this question: What is the church?

Jesus Forms a Continued People

The first thing that we see here in today’s passage is that Jesus creates the church not as a new people of God—like, “Old Testament, that didn’t work, scrap that plan, this is plan B, I’m doing something totally different.” It’s not that.

It’s not a new people, but a continued people of God, with greater focus and more effectual power. And hopefully that makes sense in a few minutes. Jesus isn’t scrapping the old and starting the new. Remember, we’ve talked about that before. He’s saying the two go together. “I’m continuing, but I’m ramping it up.”

This is more powerful than the Old Testament. This is more effective than the Old Testament. You read the Old Testament and you get dizzy from the ups and the downs. They sin, and then God saves them, and they sin, and God saves them, and you’re like, “What in the world?”

Well, that’s not supposed to be our lives. We’re not supposed to be a rollercoaster wreck, right? It’s better, it’s improved, but it’s not different. It’s not wholly different, and that’s going to make a little more sense in a minute.

He forms the church and he builds the church on a theme of continuation, not disruption.

If it weren’t continuation, guys, why would we preach out of the Old Testament? Your Bible would be a lot lighter. You wouldn’t have to buy the pocket version—it would already be the pocket version, because most of the books would not be that relevant if we scrapped that and started over.

But no, we spend time in the Old Testament because what Jesus is doing is not scrapping it, but building upon it. That’s important to know. You can’t know your identity—who you are now—unless you understand what was going on then.

If you read the Old Testament and you scoff at Israel—“They’re a bunch of idiots. What a bunch of fools. I’d never put out a fleece, dumb Gideon. I would never get sidetracked by a girl, stupid Samson.”—you’re supposed to read it and go, “That’s you, ” right? “That’s me.”

Every sermon I prepare, I’m like, “Man, he got me again, ” right? It’s always us.

So it’s a continuation of what we’re seeing before, but the problems are being solved and focused in Christ the Messiah. They had a fuzzy vision of this Messiah that would come, but we know who it is. It’s not a mystery to us. It’s Jesus proclaimed.

And he’s forming this group that the New Testament eventually calls the church. The word church is not in this passage, but this is the beginning. This is the foundation.

Check it out in verse 12, and we’ll just go to verse 16 for now.

Twelve Apostles and an Organized Church

So a lot of repeated names. Half the list is repeat names. So if you ever commit to memorizing the first twelve apostles, it’s not that hard. There are two Jameses, there are two Simons, so you have a little bit of a head start there.

But what is the point of this list? He doesn’t unpack who they are. He doesn’t give us all their resumes. As we continue to read the Gospels, we learn a little bit—poor Thomas gets the bad rap for being “Doubting Thomas.” I think most of us would have been right there: “Are you for real, back from the dead? Or are you a ghost?” and he has to touch the scars.

We know a lot more about Simon called Peter, a lot less about Simon the Zealot. We know more about Judas Iscariot because he became the traitor. Interestingly, Jesus spends all night in prayer for God to tell him who to pick, and he intentionally picks one who he knows is going to betray him. That’s part of the plan.

But what Jesus is doing here—don’t miss this—is so important, so momentous, that he spends all night in continuous prayer to do it. This isn’t like on the playground in junior high and you’re picking teams for kickball. He stays up all night, he skips sleep, and prays throughout the entire night, which is a feat in itself, right? He continues in prayer all night, and then when day breaks, he comes down and makes these twelve selections. It’s important enough for an all-night prayer vigil for Jesus up on this mountain.

And just in that detail alone, we already see this key resemblance to an important Old Testament event. You remember when Moses went up a mountain to commune with God and then come down to his people. It echoes Moses going up the mountain to receive God’s express commands for Israel. Moses gains what he needs from God, he gets the tablets, and then he comes down to the bottom of the mountain to give the instructions to the people.

Well, do you realize that what’s coming up in Luke 6 is basically the Sermon on the Mount? Jesus is going up the mountain, getting what he needs from God, coming down from the mountain, and now—instead of giving ten commandments—he’s going to give the Beatitudes. He’s going to upgrade the commandments. “You’ve heard this, but I’m going to tell you this, ” right? Luke has his own shorter version than Matthew does in chapter 5, but it’s the same thing happening.

When Moses came down from the mountain, he’s coming down to give instruction to this people—and these people are going to go out to conquer the land, expel the wicked people, and take the promised land, right? But Jesus is going to send his people out not to a promised land, but to all the world; and not to expel wicked people, but to expel wickedness from people. Upgrade, right? Isn’t that better?

The difference is, when Moses came down, they were already organized into tribes. It was an organized, official group. That was Israel. They already had the twelve tribes even during their 400 years of slavery.

But the church has not been organized like Israel was organized. So before Jesus does this, he chooses twelve—twelve people, just like there were twelve tribes.

So in keeping with that continuity between the church and Israel, Jesus is choosing twelve heads—twelve founding fathers, twelve patriarchal leaders, you can call them. These guys are supposed to serve as the foundation of this great gathering that will be called the church. It starts here. Pentecost is when they get the power. This is the organization of it.

You know when people say, “Oh, I don’t like organized religion”? Well, then you don’t like the one who organized it. Jesus organized it, right? He organized it. That doesn’t mean he made denominations. I’m just saying it’s not disorganized. He had disciples, and from those disciples, twelve leaders. He chooses those twelve out of this larger group.

Look at the text, verse 13: “When day came, Jesus called his disciples and chose from them twelve.” Sometimes we have this image that Jesus spent his whole ministry with just twelve dudes following him—eleven, and one of them was already stealing stuff. But no, it was a large group of disciples, which is different from the crowds.

There were crowds, yes. But there was a large group of disciples—and out of those, he chose twelve by name.

And that twelve is not a random number. The twelve-ness of the group of the apostles is symbolic. It’s nearly impossible to read the Old Testament and not be familiar with the number twelve: the twelve tribes of Israel. Israel’s identity is centered on the number twelve. Why? Because Jacob had twelve sons, and those twelve sons became the twelve tribes.

So when Jesus is choosing twelve, he’s not forming his first small group. He’s not picking teams. He’s not saying, “I’m so tired, can twelve people help me?” He’s doing something very intentional. He’s reconstituting Israel.

He’s not replacing Israel, but he’s also not starting a whole other entity that has nothing to do with Israel. God has always had one people of faith. Some Israelites believed; some Israelites didn’t believe. Just like today in churches, there are a lot of people sitting in the seats, but not all of them necessarily believe. Some are here to check it out. Some are here to hear what’s up. Maybe some people are confused. They think they believe, but they don’t. There’s a mixed bag. There’s always been a mixed bag.

But what is being clarified here is that true people of faith trust in Jesus as the Messiah. And as Jesus brings the people of God into focus, he’s reconstituting it with these twelve to represent that this is the people of God. It’s not some other program. It’s not plan B. The Old Testament didn’t get derailed and he’s doing something else. He’s continuing it—but improving it, upgrading it, empowering it—and making it effective and successful.

That’s why it’s twelve. Jesus is focusing the plan, and rather than a people of faith looking forward to an unknown Messiah, they’re a people of faith that know the Messiah and take the message of the Messiah to the world.

These twelve apostles are messengers. The word apostle means messenger. At this time it just means messenger. Eventually apostle takes a capital A, and it’s like “the Twelve Apostles.” That’s why today, if somebody tells you, “Oh, I’m Apostle Lucas, ” or whatever, and you might feel like that’s weird—well, it is weird, because the term apostle became a title for those who were with Jesus from the beginning, and they had special authority to found the church.

When they wrote stuff down, a lot of that stuff became Scripture. This is not, “Call me whatever you want”—you’re not going to put anything I write as the 67th book in the Bible, and you should not.

So Jesus elects these twelve apostles, these messengers, as authoritative founders of the church. Why? In order to set up the people of God for the mission of God.

That’s why I’m spending so much time on this. I need you to understand: it’s not different. The whole Bible is united. It’s continuous. It works together. And he takes these twelve apostles to set up the whole people of God for the mission of God. That was always the plan, but now it’s going to be effectual, powerful, explosive, and global.

So he’s reforming the people of God. We can say the church—not as some second track, or a second people of God, but as the people of faith that have always existed, that have always shared the same essential mission—except now, with Jesus’ accomplishment, what we just recognized in communion—his accomplishment in his life, his death, his resurrection, and his ascension—God’s people can carry out this mission overtly, powerfully, skillfully, and most important, successfully.

You remember he told the disciples, “From now on, you will catch men.” He didn’t say, “From now on you’ll try to fish for men.” You will catch men, just like you caught that amazing catch right now. “I’m going to do it. It’s not based on your skill, it’s not based on your programs, it’s based on me and my accomplishments.”

So it’s now an effective and powerful mission. What is that mission?

A Healing Mission for the Nations

What we have so far is our identity: we are the same people of God that have always been the people of God through all of Scripture. But what’s the purpose? What’s the mission?

The mission of God’s people is to bring the power of Jesus’ name to bear on their lives for healing.

We’re going to see that in Luke 6: 17–19, but listen: Luke is returning again to this theme that he’s been building for the first five chapters. What he’s doing is connecting the naming of the apostles to the healing ministry of Jesus.

You could read Luke and be like, “Oh, he named the apostles. Next, Jesus went and started healing people. Next, he talked about the Beatitudes.” But they’re not separate Post-it notes from Luke’s office that were just thrown together in a document. Luke is intentionally linking things one to the next.

I’ll prove it to you. Look at verse 17, the first phrase: “And he came down with them.” Jesus came down from the mountain with his twelve guys, and now he’s ready to do what? Now he’s going to do this healing ministry thing. So it’s linked.

Basically, Jesus had to choose those twelve before doing this because he’s training his guys to understand: this is what church is. “I didn’t call you to just have sermons. I didn’t call you to just sing songs in a gathering.” That’s the huddle, but when the huddle breaks, what’s the play on the field?

Church is not a huddle. We do huddle, but for what? To move the ball up the field. That’s the plan. As important as huddles are, no team is ever going to win if they stay there.

Look at the text.

Jesus’ ministry here has him standing on level ground with his twelve, and then his great crowd of disciples, and then a great multitude of people that need his ministry.

These people come from Judea and Jerusalem, which is the heart of Israel, because they need to be saved. Just because they’re in Jerusalem doesn’t mean they’re in. They need the message first.

Similarly, just because you grew up in a Christian family doesn’t mean you’re in. Just because you go to a church on a Sunday doesn’t mean you’re in. Those are important things. Those are blessings—just like Israel had a blessing to be in Jerusalem. They had the Old Testament. They had access to Scripture like the Sidonians didn’t have. There’s privilege there, but it’s not an automatic in. They need the gospel.

So Luke starts by saying the audience—the great crowd, the multitude that needed him—came from Jerusalem and Judea. But not only there. They also came from Tyre and Sidon.

Now, if you’re not familiar with your Old Testament, you’re like, “What’s Tyre and Sidon?” It sounds like a wrestling tag team or something. Who are these people? These are Phoenician coastal cities—big cities by their standard—just north of Israel, modern-day Lebanon if you want to look on a map. And these people were thoroughly pagan.

Their biblical history, when you read through the Old Testament, is marked with Baal worship. I’ll give you a couple quick examples. You remember Jezebel? Not many daughters named Jezebel today. If you do, maybe somebody in your family is like, “Ah, maybe something else.” She was the daughter of the king of Sidon, and through her, Baal worship flooded the streets of Israel.

What about Tyre? Isaiah and Ezekiel each feature judgment oracles against the people of Tyre—just a terrible, wicked people.

But now Luke is saying, “Look at these people coming to Jesus.” They’re coming from Jerusalem and Judea—and you go, “Oh yeah, that makes sense”—and from Tyre, and from places you would never think they would come from. That’s how it’s supposed to hit you. It’s supposed to hit you like, “Okay, wait—say what? The Sidonians? People from Tyre?” They’re like the Old Testament bad guys, and they’re coming.

So Luke is saying the nations are coming to Jesus. And if you think about it, this was always the plan. Do you remember when God promised Abraham, the father of the faith, that through Abraham his people will bless the other nations of the world? How do you think that’s going to happen?

Through commerce? Through trade? Inventions? No. The Messiah—the Messiah. That’s how. The nations are blessed through Israel through the Messiah.

And Luke is saying, “Look, it’s happening. It’s happening.” Jesus hasn’t even left the area yet, man. They’re coming to him in multitudes. Amazing.

He says they came to hear him and to be healed of their diseases. Those who were troubled with unclean spirits—we talked about that in a prior sermon—those are demons, fallen angels. They were cured.

I want to point out really quickly that we can breeze past “to hear him” and focus on the healings and the exorcisms, but they came first to hear him. What is he saying? What is he preaching? What is he proclaiming?

Now today, maybe that’s a little lost on us. People say, “Everyone has a voice.” Everyone has a podcast. Everyone’s got a channel. Everyone’s got shorts and reels. It’s kind of tiring, really. “Do something. Show me a difference.”

But you remember when Paul was writing to Corinth, and the church was arguing—churches argue about stupid stuff, and you hear about churches splitting over carpet colors and all that—but this church in Corinth was arguing about who their favorite speaker was, who their favorite orator was.

People would stand on the corner—look, they didn’t have movies. There was no Netflix, right?—and if someone could stand on a corner and really deliver a speech, it’s like, “Oh, I’ll buy that guy’s T-shirt.” They had swag, basically, because they would say, “Hey, I’m of this guy. I’m of this guy.” And Paul’s like, “What are you guys doing? It’s about Jesus. It’s not about the speaker.”

Sometimes we do that too. We might pick a church solely on the quality of the sermon and the pulpit. Sermons are important, but that’s not what a church is. It doesn’t just amount to that.

Notice: they came to hear him. What are they listening to? It’s not Jesus going, “Okay, I’m going to roll up my sleeves, and this guy—I’m just going to touch him.” And then he does it. And then, “Okay, guys, next, I’m going to do something different. I’m going to turn my back and she’s going to be healed. I’m not even looking at her.” Ha, ha.

No. It’s the gospel. How do we know that? If you’ve been with us in the first five chapters of Luke, it’s obvious. Luke keeps emphasizing that Jesus’ message wasn’t “Get in a line. Form a line. I’ve got to do this quick.” It’s the gospel, the gospel, the gospel.

And then yes, he heals—but he heals after presenting the gospel. Almost like we might demonstrate something on a slide to show a point, he’s demonstrating with the healing his point about the gospel.

So they came to hear him—the proclamation of the gospel—and to be healed and cured of unclean spirits. These are secondary things, but they’re still important. Don’t mishear me. The healings and the exorcisms are still important, but they’re important because they confirm the message. They’re not separate.

They worked as illustrations and proof that what he’s saying in the message is real and it’s true. “Let me show you, ” and then he would heal. So even in the healings, he’s pointing back to the message.

Verse 19 makes it clear that they wanted to be touched by Jesus. Why? Because power came out of him and healed them all. That doesn’t mean everyone everywhere was healed; it means those who were touched by him were healed. Jesus’ touch reverses disease. Jesus’ touch expels the most powerful of evil forces.

And this is Luke’s way of saying, “Guys, don’t be confused on what your mission is as a church.” The mission of the church is not directly about feeding the hungry or housing the homeless. That is a tremendous act of compassion. But that’s not the mission.

Don’t hear me say it’s unimportant to address those things. I’m not saying that. I’m saying sometimes those can be confused with the mission, and that’s not the mission.

What is the point of clothing someone on their way to hell? What is the point of providing educational programs to people who are still ignorant of the only thing that can save them—still ignorant of the gospel?

The mission of the church is not directly about gathering together. As important as it is to gather together—the songs, the sermons, the fellowship—it’s wonderful, but what’s it for? Yes, it’s to glorify God, but it’s also to build one another up so that we can be a healed people who bring healing to people.

Bringing the Healing Gospel Into Everyday Life

I realize that we’re not a Pentecostal church. Which makes sense because I’m not Pentecostal, and probably if I asked most of you, you would say that you weren’t either. We don’t rag on Pentecostals here. I’m just saying we’re in different streams or traditions, as we learned this morning.

But you know what I appreciate about a lot of our Pentecostal brothers and sisters? They’re always laying hands on people. Not just to install someone into an office—but if you ask them to pray, they lay hands, man. They get in circles, they huddle, they put hands on shoulders.

I’ve been in circles where there are so many hands on me, I’m getting pressed into the floor. They start leaning on me. I’m like, “Dude, use your quads.”

But why do they do that? I think it’s because they have this understanding that they’re not powerful, right? They don’t have mutant powers in there. They understand that God is powerful, and they’re asking God—through them—to do something to this person, whether it be healing, or fix their marriage, or clear their minds, whatever it is.

A lot of laying on of hands, not because they’re more physical people, but because they understand this sort of transfer idea: that we’re people who have received and do receive healing from God, and we’re supposed to be conduits to other people.

That is real power. And if Jesus meant to do all of this healing by himself, he would still be here in person doing it. But you remember he told his disciples, “Hey, I have to go. I have to ascend. The Spirit is going to come.” And you know what’s better than me in one body, traveling the world, laying hands on people? It’s you all doing it—so that the people from Tyre turn around and take this message back to Tyre, the people from Sidon turn around and take the message back to Sidon, and on it goes. This globalizing of this power—Jesus is not going to do it in one body, but through his body, which is the church.

That’s the mission, and that’s who we are. At the inner core of who we are, we are people who receive healing and offer healing.