A Missional People Series

A Missional People

Series: ROOTS

Brad Bailey – November 13, 2022

Intro

Take a moment …amidst the weekend of Veterans Day…Honor to Veterans.

The decision to serve is a tangible declaration that you love your home—the place and its people—

enough to bear profound burdens to sustain its existence and its way of life.

Memorial Day is the day set aside to remember our fallen brothers. Veterans Day is a day dedicated to

the living, the people who stood at attention, honored the lost, absorbed their grief, and then did their

job, day after day, month after month, year after year.

I know that due to time since the most major of wars… and the Los Angeles… Westside… we become

less connected… and there may be … all who have served in active duty… across every branch…

and the National Guard.

And since we rarely stop to honor that unique position… of risk…I want to take this opportunity to ask all

of those who have served in active duty as law enforcement or firefighting. Let’s pray for these lives and

who they represent.

PRAY

Today… God has a call to a different type of active duty…as we engage the mission of God.

REVIEW

This Fall we have engaged in a series entitled ROOTS: Rediscovering our Foundations. It is based on

the Biblical Book of Acts. We are given an account of how the church began…. our ancestry…

spiritual DNA…

What do we learn from our spiritual “roots”… about who we are?

• We are those who join in the reuniting of human community through Christ.

… who unites us in God. (Profound uniting)

• We are bearers of the Message of Life.

• We gather to grow together… in the pattern of Jesus.

• We practice generosity… by trusting God as our provider.

• We discover and develop Christ’s compassion.

• We engage in teamwork to make the Kingdom dream work.

And today we conclude…by hearing how from the beginning… there was something expansive at

hand.

These are the words which Jesus said to his followers…

Acts 1:8

“…you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in

Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth."

They were being commissioned to that which was expansive… which would begin in Jerusalem… their

local city,,, expand into Judea and Samaria….nearby regions that shared some cultural connection

…and to the ends of the earth… far beyond what was known and familiar.

Jesus is calling them to join God’s expansive work…God’s mission.

This is God’s nature…

Genesis 12:2-3

“I will make you into a great nation,

and I will bless you…and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.

It’s through his line and his descendants that we get Jesus, God’s blessing for all peoples.

God had chosen to make himself known through a people… not a hovering UFO over the world….but

through those created in His image….

The prophet Isaiah said this of Israel.

Isaiah 49:6b (ESV)

I will make you as a light for the nations,

that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”

What is the source of this movement…and mission?

He says…I will make you as a light… it is my salvation.

This movement and mission does not begin in us…it begins in God.

It is the very nature of God. We are part of God’s mission.

It is referred to as the “Missio Dei” which is the Latin term that can be translated as the "mission of

God," or the "sending of God." [1]

God the Father …sending the Son, and God the Father and the Son sending the Spirit was

expanded to include yet another “movement”: The Father, Son and the Holy Spirit sending the church

into the world.

Mission is a movement from God to the world.

The church does not simply have a mission…but rather there is a divine mission that has a church.

We don’t simply have a mission… but rather a mission has us.

So the first thing for us to grasp, is that….

As a missional people…

1. We become active participants in the mission of God.

To be united with God is to be united with the missional nature of God. [2]

The Book of Acts continues the story of God’s mission through his Church.

We have engaged the first six chapters.

There we find the core values of God’s missional community… but a community still amidst

Jerusalem….where they first began.

What unfolds in the rest of the Book… through a full 28 chapters… is how it all expands.

Gospel… the good news of God’s kingdom reign breaking in through the coming of Christ… was

breaking out. It is the account of how this expansion began….from Jerusalem,,, to nearby regions…and