Priority: Spreading
Good Morning Main Street church, it’s good to be with you all this morning, my name is Jack and yes, I know, crazy, two weeks in a row. Watch out Ryan, coming for you.
Over this summer we have been discussing multiple different priorities that we have as a church, we have talked about:
Worship
Witness
All peoples
Discipleship
Prayer
And today is on Spreading. Now when you hear spreading you might be thinking, hm that seems similar to witness and all peoples and maybe even discipleship. Why do we need to talk about spreading? Well in short it is because we want others all over the world to experience and know our God just like we do! But there is a lot more to unpack there.
The definition of spreading that we are using is:
The godly ambition to see spiritual good and progeny that aim to cover the earth with the glory of the Lord through faith in Jesus Christ.
We will touch on progeny later but, progeny means offspring
One of my hopes today is that afterwards we see how important our mission is to spreading the gospel and that we as a church are a group of people that are excited and passionate about seeing the glory of God spread throughout the earth.
We are going to go over a few different things today
We, as Christians exist to spread God’s Glory
Spreading is empowered by God and is an expectation
Spreading happens through replication
Spreading happens locally and globally
Introduction: We Exist to Spread
As humans, we do many things.
We connect so we don’t feel alone.
We create so we leave something behind.
We explore so we understand our place in the world.
We care so we make life better for others.
We eat so we have energy to… eat again.
All of these things matter, in their way, but they’re not the ultimate reason we exist. As followers of Christ, we exist for something far greater: to spread the gospel and share His glory with the world.
No matter where disciples are made across the street or across the world the process might look different, but the result is the same: followers of Jesus, living for His glory.
Jesus’ Great Commission, in the last verses of Matthew, is a great place to look for spreading, it is one of the more quoted verses in the Bible: Matthew 28:18-20
Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
Matthew 28:18-20
BUT the Book of Acts is where the real movement takes place, I love this book. If you want to know more about how the gospel was spread, history of the early church, Saul becoming Paul, overcoming challenges in spreading the gospel, Acts is an awesome book for those things.
Acts 1:8 is a really good summary of the book,
But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”
Literally the next verse Jesus is taken up on a cloud into heaven and the disciples are left without him, with the command to spread the gospel being filled by the spirit… maybe a little like the first time you are left home alone as a kid, or dropped off at college, like wow okay here we go, its all on me now.
This verse assumes movement. There are about 120 or so followers of Jesus that receive the holy spirit and are empowered by him to spread the gospel.
To Jerusalem, Judea & Samaria, to the ends of the earth. We heard that phrase often in this verse but what I think is cool is that Jerusalem, Judea & Samaria, to the ends of the earth means something different to the disciples than to us
This map I think is helpful — show map on slide
Jesus ascension takes place on the Mount of Olives which is in Bethany just two miles outside of Jerusalem
Jerusalem - those we know well
Judea & Samaria - somewhat close
Ends of the Earth - everyone
To the disciples, "the end of the earth" would mean the farthest reaches of the Roman Empire. Paul did hope to go to Spain although we're not told if he ever made it. Church tradition says some of the disciples evangelized parts far to the east. Today, of course, we know the gospel has reached the ends of the earth and farther.
When we truly see, savor, and are satisfied in God alone, we can’t help but want to share Him with others.
Spreading isn’t optional in Scripture… it’s expected.
We want to encourage diverse ways of spreading the gospel.
Spreading in God’s Big Story
From the Beginning, Eden’s Mandate
Humanity was meant to “fill the earth” with God’s glory, we see this in Genesis 1:28;
And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.
Genesis 1:28
The Garden of Eden was meant to spread the blessing of God’s presence outward. This is where God walked and talked with humanity, Genesis 3:8 says
And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.
Genesis 3:8
The garden was the first temple where God’s Spirit dwelled and the mandate to fill the earth should be understood as both population expansion where God’s people are filling the earth with His glory…but also the garden-temple is expanding as well...
This was the way that things were supposed to be, but as we know…
There was a Problem,
We messed it up, Adam and Eve sinned against God and as the representatives of the human race we are all born into sin and will sin against God.
God then chooses Israel as the nation that he will expand through, by making a covenant with Abraham that he will bless the people of Israel and the idea was that through Israel, God's blessings and knowledge would eventually reach all people BUT again we see a failure. Israel failed to display God’s glory to the nations. Over and over again in the old testament we see False idols, worshipping a golden calf, lack of faith, disobedience, breaking the covenant, we see the Tower of Babel: trying to stay and make our name great instead of going and making His name great. Solomon, the son of King David, builds the first temple which was made as a holy place to worship and make sacrifices, but we continue to see failures and that this is not the way to spread God’s glory.
But we see in Leviticus, God makes promises to dwell among His people
I will make my dwelling among you, and my soul shall not abhor you. And I will walk among you and will be your God, and you shall be my people.
Leviticus 26:11–12
And since Israel fails over and over,
God’s Solution is Mobile Temples
It is Jesus becomes the true temple
John 2:21 he was speaking about the temple of his body
We see Jesus, the incarnate Word, the word that became flesh, he makes His home among us, Immanuel, God with us. It’s amazing, another layer added to who Jesus is and what he means to us!
Now the church is the temple, God’s Spirit dwells in us is says in Ephesians 2:20–22
built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.
Ephesians 2:20–22
In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. That should be exciting and also make us realize how important it is and how serious this is!
Spreading is empowered by God and is an expectation
Our Calling now, is to take God’s Presence Everywhere
The Spirit in us means we are the mobile temples carrying His presence to every place and people and the church is now the temple of God’s Holy Spirit
1 Corinthians 3:16 says Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you?
Jesus promises to dwell in those who love and obey Him
John 14:23 Jesus answered him, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.
In 1 Peter 2:5 it says: you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
With the holy spirit in us, we do not have to go to a specific place, or talk to specific people to cleanse us of our sins or to talk to God!!
What a great gift that is, the Holy Spirit is with us, inside of us, so that we can be empowered to share the gospel with others, near and far.
When we think of spreading, some of us might immediately go to spreading overseas, but spreading happens in many different ways!
At work,
in a mom’s group,
at soccer practice,
in our neighborhood
These everyday moments are just as valuable in the kingdom as global church planting. No spreading effort is too small or insignificant
We want to celebrate all forms of gospel spread, whether global outreach, local outreach, or everyday witness.
We will choose strategic priorities as a church, that we will support, we have members here at our church that engage full time in local and global outreach. But we also want to encourage individuals to follow the Spirit’s leading in their lives and the things that they are passionate about!
We want to highlight and value many modes of gospel spreading passionately throughout our church and in our community.
We also have an Individual Role in Spreading
We have to truly see, know, and love God in order to share with others
Each believer has a role in discipleship, care, and spreading the gospel. But we have to know and love him first before we can spread. We have to know the God who we are spreading. There will be people that have hard questions or that don’t know anything about God and while we don’t want to discount that the spirit can and will move, we need to love God so that we can share him.
Our relationship with Him is the foundation of all true spreading, because we can only give what we have received. When we truly know and love God, our words and actions naturally flow out of that love, pointing others back to Him.
But no matter the different ways we are spreading the gospel,
Spreading is best done through Replication
We see this in many different ways in our lives:
Starbucks and McDonalds have the two most locations for any fast food restaurants in the world, part of why they are so successful is because they have the same menu items, same store design, same employee dress code. Replication
Parents pass on values, habits, and skills to their children. I remember first meeting the Morgan kids, watching the run around the church being all crazy and then I met and got to know Kyle and I was like ya know this all makes sense
But spreading through replication in a gospel sense is done in a couple different ways:
Spiritual Progeny
What does Spiritual Progeny even mean? Well it means Spiritual descendants — a great example of this is Abraham, not necessarily just physical descendants but those who share the faith too! Those who share faith in Jesus are spiritual descendants of Abraham, Jesus is the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham back in Genesis and as it says in Galatians 3:29 and on my brother Cole’s tattoo And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to promise.
Unlike being born into our earthly families, we cannot be born into the kingdom of God, we must be born from above.
John 1:12–13 says
But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.
John 1:12–13
We can’t cause people to be born again, but what we can do is faithfully preach and spread the gospel to them! The Bible says “faith comes by hearing…and hearing by the word of Christ.” So as we share the word of Christ, the gospel, the power of that word awakens faith in the sinner, transforms their heart, so that he receives Jesus and is brought into the family, becoming God’s children.
Church Planting
This is something that we can replicate and spread together as a church! Just like parents replicate through children, churches should replicate through new churches.
This requires leadership training so we have “too many leaders” to keep in one place.
As a church we should want to not just spread our local and global outreach but we should also want to train up leaders so that we have too many leaders here that leader capable people aren’t able to lead and have to go plant.
One of the best ways to spread throughout our local cities is by creating a healthy church that we want to plant from, that goes from leadership, elders, staff, the entire body, down to children too.
I was very lucky to grow up in a church that my family was apart of the first 50 or so people that helped plant a church when I was in 6th grade and they are now about to plant their THIRD location, which is just so awesome and fun to see their impact on the community in Bothell, Woodinville and now Kenmore.
Discipleship
Discipleship is formation, not information
Jesus models 1on1 discipleship and being in each other's lives, not just sermons and lectures. The idea of discipling someone or being discipled can see really glorifying but it also can be messy, truly being in each others lives might look like honest conversations about struggles, accountability on hard things, but also can very fun and funny, sharing victories over sin, exciting things that are happening in life and fantasy football championships.
Discipleship is a huge way of how we grow and spread the gospel, real relationships.
Our final point is that
Spreading happens locally and globally
I think we can look at Paul’s method here for how he was sharing the gospel in Acts in, chapter 17:1–4 it says,
they came to Thessalonica, where there was a synagogue of the Jews. And Paul went in, as was his custom, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead, and saying, “This Jesus, whom I proclaim to you, is the Christ.” And some of them were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas,
Acts 17:1–4
They were said to be “turning the World upside down” not by violence, politics, it was ordinary men and women who persistently and faithfully sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ as they were empowered by the Spirit. And as the message spread, it challenged and changed lives. In ~30 years, Acts believers changed the history of the world, through the Holy Spirit. These were ordinary people with an extraordinary God.
Particularly in Acts 17 we see Paul & Silas in Thessalonica, they arrived in a city that was in decline, and under Roman influence. When they got there, they spent three straight weeks in the synagogue, sharing with people who knew Scripture but didn’t yet see Jesus as Messiah. Sharing the message that through Jesus, they could find hope and peace and be reconciled with God.
We learn about Paul’s Method here. That he spent time, listened, was winsome, cared deeply about the people that he was ministering to, it was not about quick wins or public shouting, it was about relationships, real relationships that Paul was building because that was how Jesus shared as well.
Yet we see in verse 4 that, only some were persuaded, many were not.
Evangelism’s fruit is more evangelism, not always immediate harvest.
Our goal when spreading the gospel is not to get as many people as possible to hear it so that we can say “Look at us, we got so many people” only to watch them fall away because there were no real relationships.
Instead, spreading the gospel begins with genuine love, real relationships rooted where God has placed us.
We must first focus on Boise, Meridian, Eagle, Kuna, Nampa. That's our Jerusalem!! Learn to love our city and the neighboring cities around us and see how God loves it. These can be the easiest to overlook and complain about. “I see the way people in Boise drive”
Ask yourself: Where has God placed me to carry His presence?
We may never feel “ready” but the Spirit makes us capable
Now the Global Application
Speaking of never feeling “ready,” global missions and spreading the gospel to the nations is an area where I don’t think anyone ever feels perfectly prepared.
Earlier this week, I got to have lunch with Josef Sandahl and Christian Phillips. If you don’t know these guys or don’t hang out with them often, I highly recommend it—they’re awesome. Both of them have a huge passion for global missions, and they currently work with Frontiers. I asked them about this idea of feeling “ready,” and Joey said something that stuck with me: “Place yourself in the disciples’ shoes—illiterate, outcast fishermen. They spent three years with Jesus, and then, as we see in Acts, they changed the whole world while being equipped with the same Holy Spirit we are.”
That perspective matters, because readiness isn’t about us being flawless or extraordinary—it’s about obedience. Some organizations only send the “best of the best,” while others send anyone and everyone. The reality is somewhere in the middle: it’s not about being perfect, it’s about being faithful.
As Paul reminds us in 2 Corinthians 12:9-10
My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
2 Corinthians 12:9-10
God doesn’t call the equipped; He equips the called. We see this all over Scripture:
Moses felt completely inadequate, but God gave him signs, wisdom, and Aaron as a helper.
David was just a shepherd boy, but God prepared him to be king and equipped him with courage and wisdom.
Christian said something that drove this home: “Everyone in the Main Street body is more measurably ready than the disciples were. We have the entire New Testament, literacy, podcasts, books. It’s not the equipping that’s the issue—it’s about what you have the faith to do.”
Now, maybe you’re not called to be an overseas missionary. That doesn’t mean you don’t have a part to play. We can support the global church by providing practical and spiritual resources, education, discipleship, compassion, and encouragement. We can steward what God has given us to strengthen those leaders and communities who are on the front lines.
At the end of the day, our job is the same as it’s always been—to be ambassadors for Christ. As it says in Deuteronomy 6:4-9
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
Deuteronomy 6:4-9
We are called to love the Lord with all our heart, soul, and might, and to pass that love on diligently to others, in our homes, in our conversations, in every part of life. Even on the other side of the world!
We may never feel fully ready or qualified to spread the gospel globally, but readiness is not the requirement. Faith and obedience is. And when we step out in those, God’s power shows up in ways far greater than our own ability ever could.
Conclusion
We talked about the definition of spreading from earlier
The godly ambition to see spiritual good and progeny that aim to cover the earth with the glory of the Lord through faith in Jesus Christ.
And that one of my hopes today is that we will see how important our mission is to spreading the gospel and that we as a church are a group of people that are excited and passionate about seeing the glory of God spread throughout the earth.
I hope we remember that we…
We Exist to Spread God’s Glory
Human existence has many purposes, but as followers of Christ, our ultimate purpose is to spread the gospel and share God’s glory with the world.
This calling is rooted in Scripture, from Genesis (Eden) to the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18–20) and Acts 1:8.
Spreading is Empowered by God and is an Expectation
Spreading the gospel is not optional—it is expected and requires reliance on the Holy Spirit.
God equips the called; we don’t have to feel fully ready. Biblical examples (Moses, David, the disciples) show God’s empowerment in spreading His glory.
Spreading Happens Through Replication
Gospel spreading is most effective when it’s multiplied: spiritual progeny, discipleship, church planting, and training leaders.
Spreading Happens Locally and Globally
Local opportunities (work, neighborhoods, small groups) are just as important as global missions.
Every believer has a role to play, whether directly sharing the gospel or supporting those who do.
If we took steps forward this week in spreading the gospel, let’s imagine what our neighborhoods would look like, or the city of Boise, or even the world!
As we wrap up today I want us to be reminded that
God’s glory will cover the earth. He does not need us to accomplish his plan, instead he chooses to use us, broken people, to accomplish his will. In our weakness, our God is made strong and our weakness brings him Glory. The good news is his Holy Spirit in us means we get to be part of this unstoppable plan. We may not see all the fruit now, but we join in the eternal spread of His glory.
Response and Application
We are going to move into a time of Response and Application
I have a couple different categories and questions to think about today…
Personal
Who in your everyday life needs to hear the hope of Christ?
What would it look like to step toward them this week?
How can you carry God’s presence into your normal routines?
Church
Will we be a sending church, not just a gathering church?
Are we willing to replicate ourselves for the sake of God’s glory?
Application
Commit to one specific act of gospel “spreading” this week
local or global.
Pray daily for one person far from Christ.
The band is going to come up and just play some instrumental music, we are going to have about for a minute or so to give us a chance to reflect on these questions
No need to go pick up your kids yet, they will be ready after the first song we sing
Preparing the Table
If you are a believer and follower of Christ we invite you, over the next 2 songs to grab the communion elements up front or either of the stations in the back.
If you are not yet a follower in Christ there are many people in this room who would love to talk to you about what that looks like so feel free to talk to me or anyone else around you about what following Jesus looks like.
Parents, you can feel free to go grab your children on the ramp out in the hallway
We will take communion after the next 2 songs
Communion
Pray
Benediction
(Numbers 6:24–27 ESV)
“The LORD bless you and keep you;
the LORD make his face to shine upon you and be
gracious to you;
the LORD lift up his countenance upon you and give
you peace.
