About three weeks ago Gene Mallett, who succumbed to a two year fight with multiple myeloma last week, asked me to sit and talk
with him about his memorial service. When I asked him what songs he wanted at
the service he immediately said, "God Tell it on the Mountain
and...well...Go Tell it on the Mountain." A couple weeks later while talking
with Sheila I learned he had requested a second song as well, "We Shall
Overcome." Sounds like a great sermon to me.
Jesus began his Apostles ministry in his second year by
sending them out two by two. "Go rather to the lost sheep of Israel. As you
go, proclaim this message: ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ Heal the
sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely
you have received; freely give" (Matthew 10:6-8). Luke records this in
Chapter Nine and then follows that with another sending, "After this the
Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them two by two ahead of him to
every town and place where he was about to go. He told them, 'The harvest is
plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to
send out workers into his harvest field. Go! I am sending you out like lambs
among wolves'" (Luke 10:1-3).
Many scholars believe the seventy were the disciples of the
apostles who were getting their first taste of "going." Even before
Jesus was lifted up on the cross he wanted his followers to know the importance
of always proclaiming the kingdom
of God. That command he
obeyed each day he was on earth and he drummed it into his followers. Before he
left he gave the final commission to go and make more disciples who will go and
make more disciples.
If the apostles thought the task of discipling the world was
too big they never said so. Like the words of the second song they believed
Jesus and his church would snatch the lost from the grasp of this fallen world.
As Peter proclaimed, "The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some
understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to
perish, but everyone to come to repentance" (2 Peter 3:9).
Paul underlined the promise of that second song by quoting
from Isaiah 45:23,
"‘As surely as I live,’ says the Lord, ‘every knee will bow before me;
every tongue will acknowledge God.’ So then, each of us will give an account of
ourselves to God" (Romans 14:11-12)"
For Gene the waiting is over but he knew too many of his
friends and family needed to here the call of God from the mountain so they too
could finally overcome the chains of this fallen world.
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