People who are on a mission move; people who are on a mission let nothing stop them. They are not distracted by side issues, they focus all their energies on getting their mission accomplished. People who are on a mission do whatever it takes to get to their goal.
But people who are not on a mission spend time on the whim of the moment, and wonder, at the end of the day, where the time went.
I’ve been struck by one of the words in our purpose-driven life series. That is the word “driven”. “Driven” We’ve talked about purpose, and we’ve thought about purpose in our lives. But that word “driven”. We haven’t said much about what it is to be “driven”.
Last week you seemed to learn from my metaphor about servers in a restaurant, as we thought about how we are shaped for God’s service. Maybe today a different image will help you – the image of driving, driving a car, being driven. The word “driven” helps us understand that we were made for a mission. For people who are on a mission move. People who are on a mission are not deterred or distracted. They are driven. They have a destination in mind, and they go for that destination.
The Bible tells us about that destination. The Scriptures speak about the place toward which we are driving. If you want to know where we are headed, look toward the end of the Bible. In fact, look at the very last verses of the Bible. The Bible begins with “in the beginning” and speaks to us about why we were put here in the first place. But then the Bible ends with a reminder of where we are going, where we are driven.
You were made for a mission. And people who are on a mission are driven. They are neither deterred nor distracted. People who are on a mission do whatever it takes to get to the destination.
I
First, acknowledge with me that God is inviting us all to take this trip with Him. God is inviting us all to an ultimate destination. God is going somewhere with His plan, and He is inviting us to come along for the ride. The issue is whether we understand that we are to invite others to come along with us.
Look at how much the Bible speaks of coming. Here at the end of the Bible it says, “The Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come.’” That means that God is urging everyone to come and be a part of His eternity. Any disagreement about that? God says, “come”.
All right, now look at how much those whom God is inviting want to come. Do the people around us want what God has to offer? The end of the Bible says, “Let everyone who is thirsty come. Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift.” Sounds like what God has to offer is attractive, doesn’t it? And I would in fact argue that just because someone does not seem to want God, just because someone does not appear to want His offer of life, that does not mean that’s the whole truth. I would argue that deep down in every heart there is a thirst that only the Spirit of God can slake. There is an emptiness which only God can fill. They may not look at the moment like they want to come to the Lord, but they do. Ultimately they do.
So what have we established? That the Lord is always inviting people to come to His destination, and that they really want to come, down deep they want to come. But there is another ingredient. There is a missing link. And that is that someone must invite them. Someone must speak the word, “come”. Who is that? Who has that mission? “Let everyone who hears say, ‘Come.’” Let everyone who hears say, “come”. Let everyone who really grasps and understands the good news say it, “come”. Say “come” to the excluded, say “come” to the wounded, say “come” to the cynical. The mission God has given us is to say make the invitation clear. To be an inviting people. To see the goal and to pursue it and bring others along with us. To speak, “come”.
Several years ago I officiated at the funeral for one of our members, Chief John Layton. A few of you will remember Mr. Layton. He had been chief of the Metropolitan Police, retiring in the late 60’s. When he died, the police department sent its top leadership to the funeral here, and, more than that, sent several police cruisers and a phalanx of motorcycles. There was so much blue around here I felt like I was drowning! Now the burial was at Cedar Hill Cemetery, all the way across the city. We formed our procession, and started out; but instead of the usual slow, dignified funeral procession, this one picked up the pace quickly, very quickly. Let me tell you, you have not lived until you have been whisked down North Capitol Street at sixty miles an hour, with police cars and motorcycles everywhere, every intersection blocked, screaming sirens in your ears, escorts to the right, to the left, in front and behind. Nothing stopped them, nothing slowed them, nothing shook their focus. Those police officers were on a mission to honor their chief, and all their energies were concentrated on it. Urgency, intensity, focus, on a mission.
As for me, I was swept up in it. I had little understanding of the route we were taking, I had only a little experience with the destination. I knew I wanted to get there, but I needed their help to do it. I needed to be driven to my destination; it happened because people on a mission said “come” and put the pedal to the metal to get me there.
God is going somewhere with His plan. He is inviting us to come along for the ride. The issue is whether we understand that we are also to invite others to come along with us.
II
Now what happens is that between the invitation and the destination there is hesitation. Between the invitation and the destination, there is hesitation. You and I know that we were made for a mission, and that mission is inviting others to Christ. We know that down the road there is an ultimate destination, the issue of where we may spend eternity. But the problem is that between the invitation and the destination there is hesitation. We stop and we stall, we shimmy and we shake about voicing that word, “come”. We’re not very good at telling others about Christ.
The Bible warns us about something. It warns us that we are to take it seriously, the whole thing, neither more nor less. Here at the end of the Scriptures, it says pay attention, leave nothing out; and don’t add a bunch of extra garbage either! Specifically, it says, “If anyone adds to [these words] God will add to that person the plagues describe in this book; if anyone takes away from the words of the book ... God will take away that person’s share in the tree of life...” That’s pretty strong stuff, isn’t it? It means, “do not edit out the commands you find uncomfortable, and do not squeeze in ideas that get you off the hook!” Take it all seriously.
Now, brothers and sisters, that means we are not free to do a Thomas Jefferson Bible! Have you read about Jefferson’s Bible? Our third president did not believe that Jesus was God come in human form, and so he took a Bible and a pair of scissors and quite literally clipped out all the parts that referred to the divinity of Christ! He was left with a tattered mess, the Bible he had invented for his own comfort! Well, we are not free to do that if we hear this warning about neither adding nor taking away. And yet, I tell you, that is exactly what we do! We edit the Bible – not with scissors, but we edit with our attitudes and our actions.
Let me go into some detail about this. I am saying that our purpose is that we were made for a mission and that that mission is to tell others about salvation, to speak the invitation, “come.” That is our mission. But between the invitation and the destination there is hesitation. Hesitation that comes when we add to or take away from the whole truth. We do the very thing that this word warns us against. I’ll put it quickly under three headings. I’ll attempt to show you that we drive off course with diversion, dissension, and dissipation.
Follow me now: we are called to be on a mission, driven toward God’s destination, inviting others to come along with us. But between invitation and destination there is hesitation. We drive off course with diversion, dissension, and dissipation.
A
Diversion first: we hide from reality. We prefer to look at pleasant things and not reality. We don’t go where we know we will see the aching emptiness of the human heart. I found out, years ago, that if I want to go downtown, I have two choices. I can drive through the streets of the city and see the evidences of crime and poverty and sin on the streets. Or I can drive through Rock Creek Park and see only the beauty of God’s creation. I hardly even know that I am in the middle of a great city. If I drive along this primrose path – if I live my life out with church friends and if I see only the saints – then I can be diverted from reality. I will have left out the harshness of human sin and will have prettified life so much that I won’t remember I have a mission. We drive off course with diversions.
But the Bible speaks of the harshness of sin. We may not want to see it, but we dare not leave it out. Diversion.
B
Or, second, we drive off course with dissension. We lose our way because we are so busy figuring out ways to put one another down that we forget where we are going. Someone has said that the Christian church is the only army in the world that shoots its own wounded. I have named that issue before, but I must continue to do so. When all some of us want is to make our voices heard and stop others from accomplishing something, we have driven off course. We drive off course when we allow dissension to consume our energies and absorb our attention.
My daughter will tell you that when her I am driving, it’s better not to engage me in too much discussion, or I will lose my way. Once I was taking her on a mission to buy a car somewhere out in Anne Arundel County. En route we got into so much discussion and debate that I missed three turns and almost never got her into that new car! Dissension consumes our energies and absorbs our attention. When the Bible tells us to love one another, we edit that out! When the Scriptures say that we are to good to all and especially to the family of faith, we trim that out. And we drive off course. Diversion and dissension.
C
And then there is dissipation. Diversion, dissension, and dissipation. Wasting our time and energies and resources. Some of us will spend our time on everything in the world, and then will say we don’t have time to invite others to come to Christ. We will pour our dollars and our efforts into things that look good, but do not get to the heart of the matter.
You know, when I first came to Washington, I wanted to see it all. Every aspect of this city fascinated me. Since I was working as the chaplain at the University of Maryland in College Park, I didn’t get into the District all that often, so whenever I was expected at a meeting at the Baptist Building at 16th and R Sts., I would leave College Park early, so that I could drive around and see more of the city than I had seen before. I would wander all over, into Northeast, Southeast, even Southwest. Did you know that you can actually go from Southwest to 16th St.? It’s not easy, but if you wander around enough, you can do it. The only trouble was that most of the time, when I wandered around, I used up all my time and was late for the meeting! It wasn’t easy to tell my boss that I had left College Park an hour ago but was late because I had dissipated my time on sightseeing!
Some of us, some day, are going to stand before the judge of all the earth, who will ask us what we did with the mission for which He made us, and we are going to have to hang our heads and tell Him we were driving aimlessly, wandering around, dissipating our energies, knowing what the goal was, but not pursuing it as people who were made for a mission.
The Lord’s warning is that we are not to edit out of our Bibles His command to go into all the world and bring the gospel to everyone. The Lord’s admonition is that we not clip out of its pages the call to be witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth. A pastor friend of mine told me last week that she was heartsick over some of the attitudes in her church. She said that one group had actually said to her, “Don’t preach the Bible. We’ve heard all that. We’re beyond the Bible now.” And then they went on to say that they were not interested in reaching anybody new for their church; they were comfortable with it just as it was, all fifty of them. Do you see what happens when we dispense with God’s commands?
Between the invitation and the destination there is all too often hesitation. Between offering the invitation to come to Christ and the destination of eternity there is too much hesitation, born out of diversion, dissension, or dissipation.
III
But I have spoken of a destination. I have spoken of a goal. I have tried to remind you that God is going somewhere and wants us to come along with Him. He wants us to invite others to take the journey. And I have said that here at the end of the Bible there is a focus on what our mission is and where it is leading.
In simple but majestic language, in words that ring across the ages and sound through every time and place, the Scripture ends with another invitation. It cries out with another “come” word. “The one who testifies to these things says, ‘Surely I am coming soon.’” And then John, the seer of Revelation, echoes the word of his Lord, saying, “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!” “Come, Lord Jesus.”
Oh, but I do not know that I am ready for Him to come. I do not know that I can really echo that plea, for have I performed my mission? Have I spoken that “come” with urgency and passion to those who are lost? Have I understood that when it’s over, it’s over, and there is no instant replay? Dismiss, if you will, any concern about the coming of the end of human history; you would be in error to dismiss that, but even if you did, would you not be concerned about the destiny of a human soul? Do we really want to stand before the Lord to give an accounting of our mission, and have to say to Him, “No, I spoke to no one about salvation. I offered no one the opportunity of life and death. No, Lord, I brought no one to you, not even my wife, my husband, my son, my daughter. I didn’t pursue this with my brother or my sister or my neighbor.” Oh, I think we are not ready to say, “Come, Lord Jesus”. I suspect we are not yet at the destination.
And even if you dismiss any concern about the coming of the end of human history, and even if you do not really believe that souls are in jeopardy without Christ – I say again, you would be gravely wrong to do that, but let us suppose that you said there was no heaven and no hell, no ultimate consequence. Even if you believe something like that, what about the quality of life here in this community? What about what life is like in this city? A young man came to town to work with me several years ago, and when he saw the crime and the poverty and sin in this capital city, his comment was that it was clear the 800 churches and countless Christians of this town had not been doing their jobs. Oh, I do not think we are ready to shout with John, “Come, Lord Jesus”, because if He were to come, we would be ashamed, of what we have allowed to happen?
We were made for a mission. We must be driven by that purpose, to tell others of Christ and to do whatever it takes to say “come”. No more diversions, no more dissension, no more dissipation of resources.
A few weeks ago, one of our members was in a bookshop trying to figure out what Bible to purchase and what spiritual resources might help him in his quest for Christ. He looked up and saw another of our members sprinting across the room, obviously in a great hurry. But he thought she might have advice to offer. So he ran – literally ran – and intercepted her and asked his questions: what Bible should I get and what else can I purchase to help me understand it? To his amazement, he says, although she was clearly in a hurry, she stopped, she answered his questions, she helped him find what he needed, and she took the time to explain it carefully. In other words, this sister knew what her mission really was. And this brother will someday stand at her side before the Lord and both will be ready to say, “Now we are at the destination. Now it’s all over, but it’s all right. Now, come, Lord Jesus”. For we were made for a mission and we have driven to the end of the road. People who are on a mission do whatever it takes to get to the destination.
