God is a Missionary

We as a congregation have built this idea and this identity around one concept, which is we want to exist to fulfill Christ’s vision. We didn’t want to build our own vision. We don’t want to decide how to move things forward. We want to identify what Jesus would desire and then try to do that. Really, much of our lives are about fulfilling God and Christ’s vision. In a bit, I want to explain to you something that we believe is a part of Christ’s vision, which is the planting of new churches. I just want to be able to launch all that. We’re excited about that. Before I do any of that and talk about the what, I’d like to spend 25 minutes or so and talk to you a little bit about the why, and why all of this matters. It’s easy to participate in something without really understanding why you’re participating in it. I’ve shared this story with some of you, but the first time I was ever a part of one of these services where we got to give a large donation to the work of the church that goes beyond the local borders, I was probably 16 or 17 years old.

I had gotten my first real job and I was excited about participating in it. I had heard for weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks about being part of the work of the mission. I was like, I want to be in it. I want to participate in it. I remember getting that very first paycheck on a Friday. I got about, $215 from Coldstone Creamery. I worked my tail off for that money. I decided I was going to give a donation as I was sitting here compelled by the speaking to give a donation. I thought, you know what? I’m going to be really radical. I’m going to give $200 of the $215 that I got. I wanted to participate. I don’t know if I was more emotionally compelled than I was intellectually compelled. I sat there in the seat like the seat you’re in now and I wrote a check. It was a long time ago. So you wrote a check then. I wrote a check. I had barely learned to write a check, but I wrote a check for $200. I wrote it. I wanted people to look at me and see the number I was writing on there, $200 I’m flaunting it like, Let me just let it dry. And as the trays are being passed, this is before our global pandemic stopped us from passing trays, we were passing our trays back and forth. And here I was and I dropped my $200 check into the thing, making sure everyone could see that I’m dropping it in there. And immediately as I’m dropping it in, as I left my fingertips, immediately I regretted dropping the money in. I regretted it so bad that when it passed me on the back row, I was trying to figure out, can I just reach in and grab it? So actually, and funny enough, I reached over and was like, Oh, can I just see? And people looked at me really strangely. I said this is not the moment to do this. And the whole time, I’m listening to whatever people are saying, but honestly, I’m not caring about anything. I’m thinking all of my life savings are in this check for the church. And so eventually the money gets taken away into wherever it’s taken away. I’m thinking, How do I get in there? How do I get it back?

And I did not have the courage to go back there and just say, hey, I’m sorry. And so what I did was that same day I called the bank and I canceled the check. I am the worst of sinners. You know when Paul talks about that? I actually told the bank, and the bank said like, Okay, who’s it made out to? I’m like, The Church. The bank teller guy is like, It’s not the first time it’s ever happened. I’m like, Wow. But anyway the point is, you’re given money and you didn’t really get it. You didn’t really get it. I didn’t understand it. I want to prevent any of us from giving under compulsion. Instead, I want to explain to you why it really matters. It matters because today as a congregation of believers, we get a chance to celebrate one of the central themes of the purpose of God’s community. That’s what we’re participating in. It’s a central theme. It’s the mission of God’s people. But I want us to get there and really, truly understand it so that we have deep convictions as we think about participating in this.

And so I’d like to do a bit of systemic theology, a walkthrough with you in the Bible, and the importance of what it means to be a part of the mission of God’s people. Is that good? Can we do that together? It’s important for us to remember as we begin this that the story of the Bible is one overarching story. From the start to the finish, from the Book of Genesis to the Book of Revelation given to us through God, through to John, all of this, all of the pages of Scripture, really give us an up close and personal look at what God is after. What does God want? And we get to see it in the pages of the Scripture. We get to see what God wants. And in this amazingly complex book, this millennial spending book, there are those defining moments where we get up close and personal, we get to actually see what God is after. I want to highlight some of those moments, and then I want to come back and tie it all together and tell you how it matters as it relates to the offering we’re giving today.

We get our very first snapshot in Genesis 1, verse 27. This is what it says. God created mankind in his own image. What is God after? In the image of God, he created them. Male and female, he created them. God blessed them and said to them, Be fruitful and increase in number. Fill the earth and subdue it. The creator God speaks to his brand new creation. First off, he says, You are going to be my image bearers, which means you will fill the earth with the image of your creator. You’re going to bring beauty, you’re going to bring creativity, you’re going to bring meaning, you’re going to bring purpose to the rest of the earth as I did for you. From the very beginning, we learned that God’s intention was to fill the earth with the image of its creator. But you know how the story goes. It all goes horribly wrong. And instead of filling the earth with the image of their creator, men fill the earth with the stain of their creation. It goes horribly wrong. Men and women, immediately we bring into the scene fear and slander and shame and death and murder, and we fill the whole earth of it.

We do it so badly that by the time we get to Genesis 3, things are so horrible that we’re kicked out of the presence of God. And then there’s the first murder, and then you get to the guy named Lamech, and he’s like, Cain kills one. I’ll kill my thousands. It’s death upon death and sin upon sin. And by the time you get to Genesis 12, sin and disobedience, and rebellion against the creator have brought disastrous results. Evil and sin have weaved their way into every aspect of God’s good creation. And in every dimension of human personhood and in every aspect of life on earth, there is just torment and destruction. Sin is a terrible thing, and there seems to be no way out. But in Genesis 12, we’re introduced to this man named Abraham. He’s a vagabond. God says, Hey, come from your homeland. He makes him a promise. He says, I’m going to give you this land and I’m going to bless you and I’m going to make your name great. I’m going to establish a new community through you that’s going to replace the old community. God says this is another snapshot in Genesis 12, verse 2, I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you.

I will make your name great and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and whoever curses, I will curse. And all people on earth will be blessed through you. Because sin has affected every dimension of the world. God gives Abraham a mission that is as comprehensive as the scope of the problem. God tells Abraham that through him, he will bless the world. Your descendants have destroyed the world, but through you, I will bless the world. Go and do what I told your ancestors to do that they could not do. But you know how the story goes. It all goes horribly wrong. The family of Abraham grow to be named Israel, and they haven’t really blessed anybody. Instead, they’ve been as corrupt as their ancestors were. And so you fast forward to Joshua 24, 500 years later, and God brings the community of Abraham back together. They have grown now from just one to about a million strong. They’ve been freed from Egypt. They’ve been given the land promised to their forefathers. And Joshua stands up in the middle of everyone and he reminds the people of the promise that God gave Abraham, that they are supposed to be a blessing to the whole world.

Joshua says, look, choose this day who you will serve. Will you be a person that brings about destruction and trauma and pain, or will you bless the whole world like you were supposed to bless? Will you serve the Lord? And they say we will serve the Lord. But it’s only for a short amount of time that they serve the Lord because only a few generations later, the rebellion of Israel has reached a climax, and God’s people are sent into exile. But through the prophetic words of people like Isaiah and Jeremiah and the like, we hear the voice of God calling his people back into who they were supposed to be. But it becomes increasingly clear that Israel not only could not but would not succeed in their mission to bless the world. Man, it’s a terrible moment. Who’s going to be the hero? The New Testament presents us with a character, a God-man who would become exactly what Israel was supposed to be, exactly what Abraham was supposed to be, and exactly what Adam was supposed to be. When it says this, the Bible tells us that, But when the set time had fully come, God sent his son.

It’s like you couldn’t do it so I’ll just send myself. You guys all failed. I’m just going to do it myself. And you know how this goes. Jesus lives a perfect, perfectly on the mission. He is killed for being perfectly on the mission. And then after Jesus’s resurrection, he gathers the 12 and gives them the charge on the bank of the Sea of Galilee. The risen Christ says these famous words, Then Jesus came to them and said, All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and teach them to obey everything I’ve commanded you, and surely I’m with you always to the very end of the age. He gives them what we now call the great commission, the marching orders for all of God’s people. And in a different account of this same command, Jesus adds this line. This is John 20, verse 21. He says, As the Father has sent me, I am sending you. Here’s the question. What are they being sent to? Well, you can answer that by saying, What was Jesus sent to?

And you can actually answer that question by saying, What was Adam sent to do? What was Abraham sent to do? What was Israel sent to do? And so now the answer becomes clear. And now you understand exactly what they’ve been sent to do. Go and bless the whole world. That’s what they were sent to do. The question for us, because this is your mandate, this is your calling, go bless the world. This is exactly the same thing you’ve been called to do. Here’s the question, what exactly does this mean? I’d like to give you three big ideas that spell out this concept of the missional mandate and then hopefully also give you a little bit of a theology of the mission of God’s Church. Three things. They’ll be super quick. We’ll get right through them. To build our theology of mission, to give us some confidence, and then also to give us a deeper understanding so we actually have conviction about what we’re participating in when we talk about participating in the mission of the church. Three things, number one, God is a missionary. The mission starts not as a command.

It’s not a command for something. It starts with the very person of God. From the very beginning, we learn that in love, God created all things. In his last act of creation, we read this verse before, God makes mankind. Man is placed in the garden to live, to work, and to exist in the presence of their creator in perfection. But almost immediately afterward, everything goes awry. Eve, deceived by the serpent, disobeys God’s command. She believes that her way is best and her husband follows suit. They both eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. And in that moment, the destiny of man is forever revealed. Men will forevermore question their creator. They will rebel against their creator. They will chart their own course, and they will find themselves destroyed because of it. Mard, scared, broken, guilty, ashamed. Sin, as we know it, will be released like a plague on the earth. And so here’s the problem. So what does God do? In Genesis 3, verse 21, The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. Let me tell you what I would do.

I would kill them. Your dust-born creation has decided to rebel against you and infect your entire good world with evil things. What do you do? You take care of them. The Lord God banished them from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had taken, been taken. Here’s this all-powerful, fully just creator God, and one of his dust-born creations rebels against him. They do understand that the wage of their sin is death, but they choose to abandon the destiny of their creator. God, in his compassion, protects them, redeems them, then banishes them. Then the Bible says, He goes with them in the banishing. He leaves the garden with them. See, from the onset of the infection of the world by sin, God saw the suffering that we would do to ourselves, the pain we would cause ourselves, and the evil that we would cause ourselves. The Bible tells us He longs to bring us back into His presence and to recapture our purpose on earth, that’s incredible. When the Bible says that Christ comes, that climactic moment of God’s redemptive history, the Bible tells us exactly why Jesus comes. What does he come to do?

The son of man came to seek and save the lost. The son of man, Jesus comes to continue the work of the Father. Finally, after his death and resurrection, in the passage we just read, God then sends his church to go seek and save the rest of lost humanity. What am I trying to illustrate? Simply this, God is a missionary. That’s who he is by nature. And that’s the starting place for our conviction and our conversation about reaching the world. The mission is to participate in the life and identity of our Father. We are on a mission because he is on a mission. And what’s the mission? Well, here’s the second big idea. The mission of God is to bring healing and renewal to all things. Here’s how it works. The beginning, we talked about this already, is the creation. The creation narrative provides us with an answer to the fundamental question of who are we and does our life really matter? Yes, it does because you’re made in the image of God. Amen. Then comes the fall, the fall where human disobedience and rebellion against the creator God brings disastrous results. I can talk about this forever because this is the main part of the story.

Physical destruction, because of our sin, we are now subject to death and decay. Intellectual destruction, we now use our incredible powers of rationality to explain, excuse, and even normalize our own evil. How normal is that? We’re so smart, we’ve invented new ways of doing evil. We used to only kill people by pulling them into the forest and beating them or something like that. Whatever Adam, whatever Cain did to Abel. But now we’ve come up with all these complicated ways. Do you want an unmanned drone to kill some people in Cambodia? We can do that. You want to pull out guns that can kill hundreds and hundreds of people at a time, we can do that. Do you want atomic bombs that can kill all cities? We can do that. Do you want unmanned submarines that have nuclear power plants on them that send out nuclear bombs to destroy more people? We can do that, too. We’ve used our incredible intellect to create more evil. This is the result of the fall. Oh, you want to create systems of evil? Yeah, we can do that, too. Enslave millions of people? Yeah, sure, we can do that. Do you want to set up systems where people are totally seen as less than others?

Yeah, we can do that. The amount of the fall had impacted every single thing. Intellectually, and socially, every human relationship is now fractured and destroyed. You can’t trust people. You can’t rely on people. We live in insecurity. We live ashamed. We live fearfully. Even though we are image bearers, spiritually, we’re alienated from our God, rejected from his goodness because we have rejected his authority. The fall was really, really, really bad. Then comes the story of redemption, right? From Abraham to Jesus, where all of this stuff is worked out about how to save the lives of people. Then I love the end. Here’s what happens at the very end. Do you want to see it? It’s called recreation. At the very, very, very end, this is the arc of the Bible. It goes from creation to recreation. In recreation, do you know what happens? No more violence, no more injustice, no more killing, no more raping, no more pillaging, no more stealing, no more enslaving, no more insecurity, no more anxiety, no more fear, no more death, no more sadness. In God’s good purpose, there lies a new heaven and a new earth where only righteousness exists.

God himself replaces the sun, it’s incredible. Everything goes away. All of the evil is banished into a lake of burning fire and everything is restored and made brand new. This is Revelation 21, Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth. For the first heaven and the first earth had passed away and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride, beautifully dressed for her husband. I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, Look, God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eye. There will be no more death, mourning, or crying, or pain for the old order of things passed away. This is what we have to look forward to. This is the promise of recreation. There is healing in the Cosmos. Everything evil goes away and is replaced with God himself. In Revelation 21, everything is restored and this concept has been life-changing for me.

See, my theology about the mission, I think, was too small. It was only about bringing people to church. And don’t get me wrong, bringing people to church is paramount. But what we see is that God is after the restoration of everything. It starts from the inside of the human heart, and it starts with the human heart then promoting everything that changes. But he’s after changing everything in this dark world. Freedom for the oppressed is a part of our mission. Salvation for the lost is a part of our mission. Restoring the beautiful life God had intended as part of our mission. Restoring families, and broken families is a part of the mission. Rebuilding our communities, repairing broken hearts, and healing people who are just deeply, deeply sorrowful is a part of our mission. Mending human purpose, and restoring human dignity, these all fall under the mission of God. See, it’s wider than just bringing people to church and sitting on Sunday morning in a room for an hour and a half. It’s much wider than that. God wants to change everything. It’s about helping people reclaim their humanity, their initial role, which was to bring the beauty of its creator to the creation.

Man, I want that. I hope you want that, too. I was so infected by the black dye of sin in my life that every single thing I touched was stained with it. I think about it like scrap metal. You throw a grenade into the room and then everybody’s affected by it. It’s not the explosion. It’s just like every single little thing. Everyone gets hit by a little… If I did something crazy in here today, this room would never be the same again. If I did something really sinful up here, people would be like, You would never want to come back to this church. This room would be marred by the destructive force of sin. It’s like a dye. Everything you touch is infected in every relationship. Oh, gosh, every interaction, the money you engage with, your job, everything is just destroyed by the power of sin. But I love that God’s purpose is not just to heal someone’s heart and make them have a close personal relationship with Jesus. It’s about editing and cleaning everything we’ve ever touched so that it all comes back to the beauty of God’s initial intention. That’s what God is after.

That’s what God is after. It starts in your own heart. It starts in your own heart, but that is what God is after. And so here’s the question. If that’s what God is after, how does it happen? Last point. God wants to bring healing and renewal to all things through missionary people. How is the world going to change? You’re the only option. You’re like, I’m just going to pray that all the stains go away. It doesn’t work like that. You’re the only option. It’s through missionary people. As early as Genesis chapter 12, where God speaks over Abraham as the founder of Israel, we see that to be his goal. I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you. I will make your name great and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and whoever curses you, I will curse. The last line, all people on earth will be blessed through you. How does it happen? It happens by you being the light you were supposed to be. You being the righteousness you were supposed to be. You are the man or woman that God had called you to be.

It starts from the inside out and then everything you touch adds a little bit of heaven to it. Every interaction you have, people go, Wow, that guy is really different than every other person I’ve ever met. That woman is really different than every other person I met. All of a sudden we infect this evil world with a little bit of heaven so that renewal can take place. I’ve been thinking about how to reach the 2.3 million people in Broward County, and it dawned on me one day, you know how we reach them? One at a time. Do you know how we impact them? One at a time. And you know how we do that? By each of you impacting one at a time. That’s the only way. Here’s the deal. God’s blessing, God’s blessing of salvation for you. God’s blessing of the restoration of your marriage, God’s blessing of your wonderful kids, God bless you with financial affluence, and whatever he has given you is not so that you would be blessed. A blessing is not a means to an end. Let me just explain this. Abraham being rich, and having a blessed family wasn’t supposed to be the end of the story.

Israel wasn’t supposed to be the end of the story. The point of Israel wasn’t Israel. The point of Abraham wasn’t Abraham. What is the point? It’s this, God didn’t bless them so that they would be blessed. God didn’t bless you so you would be blessed. He blessed them so that they would be a blessing. The point of Israel was never this racially, ethnocentric, nationalistic Jerusalem. The point of Israel was to help the whole world. But along the way, they forgot. They missed it. I would say that sometimes along the way, we forget and we miss it. We think, Wow, I have such an awesome life. God has blessed me with a great marriage. God has blessed me with financial means. Man, I’m just going to retire in the Maldives. I don’t even know where that is. I’m just going to go off and I’m just going to lose myself in the wonderful blessings that I’ve been given. It’s like you’ve missed the whole point. You were blessed so you could bless. That’s the only reason you were ever blessed. There’s a great quote by a guy named Christopher Wright in his book, The Mission of God’s People.

He says this, it’s not so much the case that God has a mission for his church in the world as that God has a church for his mission in the world. The mission was not made for the church. The church was made for the mission. It’s not that the church has a mission. It’s that the mission has you. And sometimes it’s easy to lose sight of that. Sometimes it’s easy to think that we are at the end. Man, it’s so nice to be in the church. We should just border up our doors because we have such a great culture. 600 is a great number. Let’s just do that. Let’s just keep that going. But man, that’s not the point at all. Our mission is participation in the grand plan of bringing God’s work to a climactic force right here in Broward County. That’s what it’s all about. That’s what it’s all about, man. And you’ve been called to it. You are the only option. There is no option B.

There is no one else who’s going to do it. Like, oh, I’ll give them money and they’ll hire someone to do it. That doesn’t work like that. You’re the only person who can do it. Today, when you see that person, when you go to the restaurant, when you see the coworkers, when you see your neighbors when you see that person taking a walk, I want you to be thinking, man, God has put me on this planet to be a blessing to them. That’s why God put me here. That’s what today is really all about and this offering is all about. It’s about going after the mission of God. It’s about realizing that one of our blessings, our financial blessings are not an end, that your job and your career are blessings given to you so that you would bless the whole world. You, my brothers and sisters, are the means of God’s redemptive message to the whole world. You have been called to be hope givers. You’ve been called to be image bearers, to be ambassadors for Christ, to be lovers of the world. And brothers and sisters, this is what our lives are supposed to be all about, showing the rest of the world that there is hope for our failures, that there is freedom for our sin, that there is a truth that is unconditional, that there is the joy that can be unexplained, that anybody can have it if we will just do the work.

That’s a praise to God’s glorious grace. This is our chance to acknowledge through our financial sacrifice that we are behind what God is after in this world. That’s the point. In a moment, we’re going to tell you everything we’re given. We’re going to tell you everything we’re given. But first, we’re going to take communion because Jesus, who is our brother and our Lord, did this first. He sacrificed for the sake of other people being reached. I just want us to take a moment to have a communion time where we can reflect on his example. Then we’re going to have the sendoff for the Borderlands. Then I’m going to come up and just explain a little bit about what we’re giving to. I love you guys.