MADE FOR A MISSION
Have you ever wondered, "When a person becomes a Christian, why doesn’t God just take them directly on to heaven?"
The answer is that God has an assignment for each of us; you and I were made for a mission.
What is that mission? You don’t have to speculate. Just as Jesus was leaving to go back to heaven, he left clear instructions for each of us. Today we’re going to examine the only one of the five purposes we won’t be able to do in heaven!
Let’s just quickly recall our first four purposes:
1. To bring God pleasure by loving Him and that is called worship.
2. To be a part of God’s family and that is called fellowship.
3. To become like Christ and that is called discipleship.
4. To serve God by serving others and that is called ministry.
To start examining our fifth and final purpose, let’s read our first two Scriptures together: “Jesus said, ‘In the same way that You gave Me a mission in the world, I give them a mission in the world.’” And “As the Father sent Me, I am sending you”
The Father gave the Son a mission to complete while He was in the world. Now that He is in heaven, He isn’t doing that mission anymore. He passed it on to us. That mission is to tell all the people who don’t yet know Him and have not yet joined His team about the great love of God. There won’t be any non-believers in heaven, so there won’t be any mission.
Last week we talked about ministry.
• Ministry is primarily our service to other believers. It is when we feed the hungry and clothe the naked and take care of the widowed and homeless and build up the Body of Christ.
• Mission is to those outside the Church of Jesus Christ to let them hear how God loves everyone and wants to love them intimately. As believers we have this mission in common.
• Story of a new monk in the monastery – afraid to preach – his prior gave him the assignment to preach the next day – “Brothers, do you know what I am going to say” (All shook heads – NO. He said “Neither do I – Let’s stand for the benediction” – Prior angry – ordered him to preach next day. Same thing. “Brothers, do you know what I am going to say?” This time – they nodded YES. “Well, if you already know, there is no need for me to tell you. Let’s stand for the benediction.” Prior furious – ordered him to preach the next day or lose his meal privileges for a week. Next day, “Brothers do you know what I am going to say?” Half nodded YES and half shook heads – NO. So he said, “Well now will those who know, please tell the other half who don’t. Let’s stand for the benediction”
Read the next verse with me. “The most important thing is that I complete my mission, the work that the Lord Jesus gave me – to tell people the Good News about God’s grace.” We have a mission and God expects us to finish it before we get to heaven.
Underscore the text in bold on your outline. My fifth purpose is to share the Good News. God really expects us to share our first four purposes in life with people who don’t have a personal relationship with Him. Now the word for that assignment is one that has come to have some negativity associated with it - That word is evangelism. But the Greek word that we translate into evangelism - euangelion – literally means good news. That’s all God wants us to share is the good news that He loves everybody and is willing to forgive sin so that everyone can be adopted into His family.
Jesus gave a plan to the disciples about how to do this. Read the next verse with me. “After the Holy Spirit comes upon you, you will be My witnesses in Jerusalem, and Judea, and in all Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
• Jesus told the disciples to start at home with the people who are closest to them and had things in common with them. That is your Jerusalem.
• Your Judea means people like you but not in your current circle of friends and family.
• Samaria are the people that aren’t like you but are around you.
• The ends of the earth means everyone else. Jesus didn’t leave anyone out!
It is important to understand that God is not asking us to become His defense attorney. Some people are afraid of sharing the Good News because they might get asked questions that they can’t answer. God doesn’t need you defending Him. Nor does God want you to be a prosecutor going around judging people and their actions. He is better equipped to do that than we are. Nor is God looking for a salesperson. He doesn’t want us to try and sell Him to anybody. Being a witness means telling people what you have seen and experienced.
If you were a witness of an accident, the police would want you to tell them what it was you saw. They don’t want you trying to convict the person you thought was at fault or defend the person you thought was innocent. They don’t want you to try and convince them that what you are saying is absolute truth. They just want to know what you saw and experienced. That is all God wants us to do when we witness about Him. Just tell people about the wonderful way God has made a difference in your life.
Your life is unique. Your experiences are not anything that have to be defended or sold. They are what they are. People want to hear how God makes a difference in people’s lives especially your own.
You may wonder why we should do this. Do you remember your second purpose? It is to be a part of the family. The whole point of life and history is to build God’s family. Read the next scripture with me. “This was God’s plan for all of history which He carried out through Christ Jesus our Lord.” Jesus carried out the mission that God had planned from the beginning, to invite people to be a part of God’s family. The mission that God is asking us to accept isn’t a mission impossible. It is a mission inevitable.
There is a story about God speaking to one of the angels about humans. He tells the angel about how He gave the humans the Good News to share with each other so that more people would become a part of God’s family. The angel asked God what plan B was if the humans didn’t share the Good News. God’s answer was, there is no plan B.
If God has placed that much trust in us to fulfill His mission, how on earth can we complete it? There are three things we have to keep in mind:
1. The first is that we must share with those in our world.
Make it personal. I must share with those in my world. There is a story about a guy who got healed by Jesus and wanted to keep following him around. Read Jesus’ response with me. “’Go back home and tell people how much God has done for you.’ So the man went all over town telling how much Jesus had done for him.” I’m sure this man told everybody about the miraculous physical healing. But God has done so much more for all of us: how about the wisdom to know what to do about a difficult situation; how about the peace that comes after praying about hard times; how about the joy that comes from knowing that God loves you and is with you every moment of every day. Those are the things we can share with everybody.
So, why don’t we do it? I think one of the reasons is we think people aren’t interested in spiritual things. That really is a myth.
• Gallup did a pole and found out that 65 million people in the US have no church home.
• Out of those 65 million 34 million said they would attend a church if someone asked them. More than half would say yes to an invitation to go to church with someone they knew.
• Teens are more interested in talking about God than they are about drugs, sex or music.
• What I think people don’t want to talk about is another list of rules and regulations that will make them have to give up something. Our Good News is not about law, but about relationship.
Read the next verse with me. “Be ready at all times to answer anyone who asks you to explain the hope you have in you.” The second reason people don’t share the Good News is because they don’t know how. I’ve included in your bulletin a business card that has a simple way of presenting the gospel to people who are interested. It uses the word BASE as an acronym to remember what to base your life on. “B” stands for “believe God made us to love us and love Him back.” “A” stands for “admit that I have been living for myself.” “S” stands for “switch to living for God and His purposes.” “E” stands for “express my desire for Jesus to be Lord and leader of my life.” Let people know how much God means to you and them share the BASE info to help them know how they can let God mean a lot to them as well.
You know, in heaven you will be able to sing and pray and fellowship and serve God. The two things you won’t be able to do is sin and witness to non-believers. We all agree that we haven’t been totally set free from sin while we are still living. We haven’t been set free from our mission to share the Good News either.
That’s why God leaves us here for a while. When we get to heaven our mission will be done but if you are still drawing a breath, it isn’t over. Read the next verse with me. “…God does not want anyone to be lost, but He wants all people to change their hearts and lives!” If there is only one person who still has the old stony heart of rebellion, our mission isn’t over. WE have to care because GOD CARES. What matters to God is not our bank accounts, or the make and model of car we drive or the kind of house we live in. What matters to God are people and especially those who are still far away from Him.
Remember the one line at the beginning of the book, “It’s not about me”? At one point it was about you. When you were young it was about God inviting you into the family. If you didn’t accept Jesus when you were young, it was still about you. It was about you until the day you said yes to God’s proposal. But now that you are in the family, it isn’t about you anymore. It is about those who aren’t in the family yet.
Imagine that you were a part of a wilderness camping group. A storm comes and for some reason everyone scatters for safety and gets lost. Rescue teams are dispatched to find the lost. And once an individual is found, the team turns its attention away from the one who is found to the ones who are still lost. You and I were those who got lost in the storm of life. God sent out his rescue team of parents, friends, Sunday school teachers and youth workers to find the lost. Once you were found, however, they didn’t keep focusing on you. They kept on looking for all the others who were lost. It’s time we quit getting the rescue teams’ attention and let them get on with the work. Better yet, why don’t we join them to help find the rest of the lost?
2. The second thing to keep in mind is that I must dare to reach beyond my world.
Love demands I move beyond my comfort zone. Let me say that again. Love demands I move beyond my comfort zone. Rescue teams don’t make a camp and sit and drink hot chocolate until the lost stumble into their camp. They get out into the uncharted areas and look. They don’t walk through the forest quietly either. They yell at the top of their lungs. If you had the cure for AIDS I bet you would be talking as loud as you could so that others could have the cure as well. I don’t have a cure for AIDS but I have something even better. I have the path that leads to eternal life. So do you. Which do you think would be more important to shout while you are walking through life?
Read the next verse with me. “Whatever a person is like, I try to find common ground with him so that he will let me tell him about Christ and let Christ save him.”
We are called to build bridges to the people around us by finding the things we have in common with them. We aren’t supposed to be building walls to keep people away. Because we have the mission, God expects us to make the first move toward others. We do that by being friendly and open to everyone around us for the express purpose of getting the opportunity to share Christ’s love with them.
Galatians 6:2 says, “Stoop down and reach out to those who are oppressed. Share their burdens, and so complete Christ’s law.” What is Christ’s law? It is to love your neighbor as yourself. Remember whom Jesus hung out with? It wasn’t religious leaders or family. It wasn’t with only those who made him feel good. It was with the sinners and tax collectors and prostitutes. It was with the people that society said were too low to matter. Jesus stooped down and walked with them so He could tell them about God’s love.
Last week after our worship time we had some people talk about some of the various ministries and ways of serving in this congregation. These are all opportunities for reaching out not only to the family of God but to people who might not know God. If you have not yet found your place in ministry, talk to us after the service and we’ll be happy to show you some options.
One day in our future God is going to audit our lives. He is going to be looking to see if we lived lives of love or if we were just good talkers. It isn’t about what we say, it’s about what we do. Our actions are proof of our love. Read the next verse with me. “Real religion, the kind that passes muster before God the Father, is this: Reach out to the homeless and loveless in their plight.”
Sometimes we will have to sacrifice to reach beyond our comfort zone. Mark 10:29 says, “Jesus replied, ‘Let me assure you that no one has ever given up anything… for love of Me and to tell others the Good News, who won’t be given back, a hundred times over…’”
What sort of things might we have to sacrifice? Probably things like our time, our family, our friends, our security and maybe even our lives. There are Christians all around the world today who are in danger of being killed because they are doing God’s fifth purpose in their lives. Is there anything in our lives that we might have to give up that comes even close to that? I don’t know but I doubt it in this country at this time. We can give up the things of this world because we will be given back so much more in eternity. That’s what “a hundred times over” means.
What if you could invest your retirement money in an account that made you 10,000% every time you did? I don’t know about you, but I’d put as much as I could into the investment.
God is asking us to invest in His family and promises a 10,000% return on our investment of time, family, friends and possessions. The return isn’t going to come necessarily in this life. God may wait and give it to us in the life to come after we retire from this life. Wouldn’t you like to have that kind of investment waiting for you when you get to heaven?
3. The third thing we need to remember is that we must care about the whole world.
“Jesus said to His followers, ‘Go everywhere in the world, and tell the Good News to everyone.’” This wasn’t a suggestion. It isn’t a suggestion for anyone who is a follower of Jesus.
This challenges us to rise to a new level of spiritual maturity. We have to decide whether we are going to be followers or observers. Observers can leave when they feel like it. If they get bored following Christ, they can go do something else. But followers do what Jesus does. Jesus went fishing for new family members. If we aren’t fishing, we aren’t following. We are just observing.
A dad took his son and three of his best friends to an amusement park. The dad would walk with the kids and when they came to a ride, he would hand out a ticket to his son and three friends. Another ride and another four tickets. When they got to a ride after lunch, however, there was a fifth hand reaching up for a ticket. It was a little boy who was kind of dirty and messy. The dad looked at the little boy and asked, “Why do you think you get a ticket?” The little boy replied, “Your son told me that you were giving free tickets to all of his best friends. I’m his newest best friend.”
You see, I’m not the dad. Our heavenly Father is the dad. I’m just a son who is inviting people to become my new best friend and receive the gift my Father has for them.
Read the next scripture with me. “If you insist on saving your life, you will lose it. Only those who throw away their lives for My sake and for the sake of the Good News will ever know what it means to really live.”
Are you really living? Is what you have been living for as meaningful as finding new eternal brothers and sisters? Is there anything you have or do that is more important than a person’s place in eternity? Our fifth purpose is to share the Good News with everyone who doesn’t know it. We begin with our immediate friends and family and look to those like us then those not like us and then everyone else.
Acts 13:36a says, “David served God’s purpose in his own time.” That is what I pray for you and me that we might serve God’s purpose in our own time.
There are four responses we can have to this message:
• We can respond like Moses and say, “Who, me?”
• We can respond like Jonah and say, “Not me!”
• We could respond like Habakkuk and say, “Why, me?”
• Or, we can respond like the prophet Isaiah, “Here I am. Send me!”
Let’s let Psalm 67:2 be our prayer: “Send us around the world with the news of Your saving power and Your eternal plan for all humanity.”
