Defined by the God We See: Mission

[Audio available here.]

This morning we conclude the series, “Defined by the God We See” by talking about the mission of the church. One way to approach this would to be look at our mission statement on the back of the bulletin, where it says “We exist to glorify God by…” and third on the list of how we do that is, “reaching out with the gospel of Jesus Christ.” This morning is about reaching out beyond our church community in a desire to bring other into our community.

But I want to take a slightly different approach; I want to talk about this phrase, “Defined by the God We See.” What does it mean to be defined by something that we see?

Many of you were present at the cookout in May when Rachael and I were visiting and praying about this opportunity at Whitton, so you got to hear the story of how we met and fell in love. One of my favorite parts of the story comes after our first date, when my dear nocturnal mother, up reading the paper at midnight when I came home, looked up at her love-smitten son and asked, “What happened to you?!?” My response was a good Southern, “I think I’m in love, Momma.”

But I wasn’t in the frame of mind to realize that I didn’t actually answer her question. If my head would have been back in earth’s atmosphere I could have answered her, “I saw Rachael Nobles, Momma. I saw her for the first time. I had seen her a hundred times before as the girl who plays the harp or the quiet sophomore or the alto in choir or the girl from Virginia, but tonight I really saw her for the beautiful, sweet, virtuous, woman of God that she is. And I think I want to spend the rest of my life with her.” It was when I saw Rachael for who she was that my life was changed by her.

When we talk about being defined by the God we see, we mean that our vision of God will determine everything about us. If we think about God as boring and distant, then our worship and preaching and prayers will be boring and distant. If we never think about God’s power, we will never trust him to meet our needs. If we never think about God’s wisdom, we will never seek him for guidance. If we never think about God’s love, we will never be a truly loving community. We are defined by the God we see, and that is why we must remain in awe and adoration of the all-powerful, all-wise, all-loving Creator who is faithful to the people he redeems. We may have seen him a hundred times in songs and Bible stories, but until we encounter the living God in all his glory we will never be shaped into the people he wants us to be.
The church’s mission is no exception. We take all of our cues from God when it comes to the work the church is to be doing in the world. So what I want to do for the remainder of the sermon is to look at God’s Word to get a big picture of the mission God has been on in history and see how he calls us to be part of that mission. We’re going to be flying the plane at 35,000 feet, so we won’t look at every last text that talks about God activity, but I want us to see three connected points in Biblical history that make God’s mission and the church’s mission clear.

The first major point is in Genesis 12, so please open your Bibles with me to Genesis 12. In Genesis 10 and 11 we get the story of how the earth was filled with all different nations following the great flood, and specifically how God scattered these nations by giving them different languages. And as boring as all the “begats” in the Bible may seem, the genealogies of Genesis 10 and 11 serve as a crucial backdrop for understanding Genesis 12, which we must understand when we talk about God’s mission and ours.

“Now the LORD said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.””

God tells Abram, “I will make of you a great nation.” What nation was that? Israel. And why did God choose to create this nation called Israel? The rest of verse 2 tells us—“I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.” A blessing to whom? Verse 3 makes that plain: “in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

In other words, God looked at all these groupings of people who were multiplying in the earth, scattering to Asia and Africa and Europe and the Americas, and decided to create a nation out of some old wanderer in Ur and use that nation as his means to bless all the other nations. Israel would be holy like God is holy, and he would use them to show the whole world who he is. And thus Israel was born. She was God’s special people for the sake of all the peoples being blessed.

There is so much more to talk about here, but as we fly over 2,000 years of history from Abraham to Jesus, the first major point I want us to notice is that God’s activity with Israel in the Old Testament is built on this purpose: “in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

We see the second major point as we look out the airplane window at Jesus of Nazareth. And as we come to the life of Jesus, we ask the question, how did his ministry relate to Israel’s purpose to bless the nations? The reason I ask this is because I think we read Jesus’ biting criticism of the Pharisees and Sadducees and think that he was distancing himself from Israel.

Jesus lived in a day when Israel was struggling to maintain her identity while under Roman rule. And the Pharisees were going around, saying, “This is how to be a good Israelite—live this way.” And the Sadducees were going around saying, “No, this is how to be a good Israelite—live this way.” And into that context Jesus came to the lost sheep of Israel, gathered—not 8, not 15, not 29—but 12 men around him, and proclaimed, “I am the way.” He was the bronze serpent that the sick could look to and be healed. He was the Passover Lamb whose blood covered the sins of God’s people. He was the one who did not give into temptation in the wilderness but perfectly trusted God. He was the presence of God in the midst of Israel that no temple could rival. Jesus embodied everything that Israel was supposed to be and was the fulfillment of all God’s promises to her.

So what did Jesus do after dying for the sins of his people and rising from the dead? He called his disciples around him and told them how they as Israelites were going to fulfill Israel’s calling to be a blessing to all the families of the people. Turn with me to Matthew 28 as we read Jesus’ Great Commission in verses 18-20.

“And 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.””

Do you see how this is a continuation of God’s words to Abraham? God said, “I am going to bless you so that you will be a blessing to all the families of the peoples.” And while this was fulfilled in various ways throughout the Old Testament, it reached its ultimate fulfillment in the person of Jesus Christ, who offers, by his death and resurrection, the forgiveness of sins and eternal life to all who would believe. And he continues the focus on blessing the nations with his command, “make disciples of all nations.” Paul makes this connection in Galatians 3:13-14 when he says, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”— so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith.”

So what do we see about God in all of this? We see that God is a missionary; that he is on a mission to redeem for himself a people from every nation. And we are defined by the God we see. When we see God as a missionary God who is working in the world to draw worshippers to himself from every people group, we join him by obeying Jesus’ command to “make disciples of all nations.” Paul expressed this in Romans 15, where he said that he made it his ambition to preach the gospel where Christ had not been named.

We still have one more piece of biblical history to see, but before we get there I think we need to land the plane and look closely at the phrase, “make disciples of all nations.” Specifically, I want to look at the word “nations.” When we hear the word “nation,” we typically think about countries like Mexico, Scotland, Croatia, or Germany. But that is not the case here. Whether it is the promise to Abraham that “in you all the families of the peoples will be blessed” or Jesus’ command to “make disciples of all nations,” our missionary God is not only concerned with political entities but with ethnic groupings or what missionaries call people groups. Take for example the country of Cameroon, which is in West Africa. There is only one country there with one government, one currency, etc. But within Cameroon exist 295 people groups that each have their distinct dialect, dances, foods, stories, and leadership structures.

This shapes the way we think about God’s mission in a few ways. First, the mere talk of God’s mission to bless every ethnicity with the gospel allows zero room in our lives for ethnic prejudice. God calls us to bless other ethnicities, not to belittle them because they are different. Let it never be said that Whitton Avenue Bible Church is a place where people who don’t look or talk like us are not welcome. My prayer is that each one of us would not only be open to other ethnicities but pursue relationships with people from other ethnicities. How can we make disciples of people we don’t know?

Another reason it is important to see that “nations” refers to “ethnicities” or “people groups” is because it helps us define the remaining work of God’s mission. For instance, it is one thing to say that Afghanistan is in desperate need of missionaries right now. So we’ll send a team over there, and the problem is solved, right? Wrong. There are over 70 people groups in Afghanistan, and among those there are 47 different languages. So it’s not like coming to America where you could preach the gospel from New York to LA and use the same language. The task is quite daunting just for that one country.

So how much work remains? How many “families of the peoples” have no disciples of Jesus Christ? Often the remaining task is defined by how many people groups have little or no access to the gospel. According to the International Mission Board, there are about 5,000 people groups that are considered unreached. Those 5,000 people groups represent about 1/4 of the world’s population. That is over a billion and a half people who have never been told that Jesus Christ died and rose again to offer them forgiveness of sins and eternal life.

Sometimes these numbers don’t faze us any more than hearing that our national debt is over $8 trillion. But Rachael and I got a taste of the remaining work when we spent a few weeks in Indonesia amongst an unreached people group. These people adhered to folk Islam, which is like having both a witch doctor and a mosque, so we expected them to at least know about Jesus, since he is mentioned often in the Qu’ran. But imagine our amazement when we learned that the family we were staying with had never even heard the name Isa or Jesus. And this was indicative of most of the 2.2 million people in this people group. And these people, who we got to know during our travel, are just one in 5,000 people groups who have never heard the good news that Jesus is Lord.

Numbers like these can be quite intimidating. Part of the reason I want to consistently set such realities before us is so we don’t sit down and kick back as though there is little Kingdom work left to be done. There is no time to mess around with 5,000 people groups still needing to hear the gospel in their language. At the same time, we should not despair that the remaining work is impossible. So to encourage us, I want us to get back into the plane and fly up to 35,000 feet again to see the third point in Biblical history that deals with God’s mission.

We have already seen God’s heart for all people groups in Genesis with the call of Abram, in Matthew with the Great Commission, and now we go to the end of the story—Revelation. Turn with me to Revelation 5:9-10, where we read the words to one of the songs that will be sung to Jesus Christ for eternity: “Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation, and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth.”

Then turn a few pages over to Revelation 7, where we read a similar account in verses 9-10: “After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!””

Simply put, God assures us in these texts that the task will be completed; that there will be worshippers from every people group around God’s throne for eternity. This gives us incredible hope as we pour resources and time and prayers toward reaching those unreached people groups. It gives us confidence that our labor will not be in vain.

I want to close with 3 application points to us as a church.

(1) Jesus’ command to “make disciples of all nations” is not only to missionaries. It is directed to all his disciples. “All nations” includes red-blooded Americans. So to each believer in this room I ask, who are you discipling? That is, who are you intentionally spending time with to teach them what it means to follow Jesus? For newlyweds it may be your spouse; for young parents it may be your child; for some in the workforce it may be a co-worker. I don’t want to treat discipleship as if it can only happen in a classroom or over coffee. But the fact remains that Jesus commands us all to “make disciples.”

Who are you talking to about the gospel? Who are you challenging in their faith? Whose eternal destiny are you investing in today?

(2) Have you considered that God might call you to make disciples outside America? Is your life completely surrendered to God, so that if he pricked your heart for Afghanistan or Croatia or Indonesia or China that you would be willing to start making plans this afternoon? Are you willing to lay down American comforts for an overseas ministry that might reduce the number of unreached people groups to 4,999? Or, if you have surrendered your life to go wherever God wants you and he hasn’t called you to go overseas, are you investing your prayers, your time, your money, and your advocacy for the cause of the gospel amongst 1.6 billion people who have never heard the good news?

(3) Finally, remember that we are defined by the God we see. We have a mission because God has a mission and has been gracious to include us in his work. But the mission of making disciples of all nations is not only defined by God, it is fueled by God. That is, our vision of God not only tells us of his concern for the nations—our vision of God will sustain us as we go to the nations.

I believe Jesus had this in mind when he issued the Great Commission. The phrase we have been focusing on—make disciples of all nations—is in the middle of the text. But on the outer ends lie the fuel for completing the task. Remember how the commission begins? “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.” And it ends, “and behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” What is it that will sustain Stevo and Sarah in Croatia? What is it that will sustain our missionaries in Japan, Brazil, and Taiwan? What is it that will sustain you when God calls you to give your life for an unreached people group? What will sustain us who remain here to do discipleship and church planting in this valley?

A vision of the risen, reigning, authoritative Christ will sustain us. The presence of Christ in our midst through the Holy Spirit will sustain us. We must keep our focus on him.