Sermon Tone Analysis

*6-2-02*

*Driven By God’s Mission*

 

Today I am beginning a series of messages over the next several weeks about the principles that are foundational to the life and effectiveness of the church in the days and years ahead.

Two months ago I expressed these principles to the staff and elders.

Yesterday I communicated them to the men at our men’s retreat at Camp Christian.

In the next several weeks I am going to try to explain them and instill them in our minds and lives.

Jesus made a statement recorded in Luke 16:8 that’s a little hard to understand exactly, but it can mean something to the effect that, “Sometimes people of the world ‘get it’ when God’s people don’t.”

That 30 second video bite from the profane Blues Brothers I think illustrates this when it comes to a mission from God.  Christian people can have all kinds of explanations for what they do or don’t do.

But the world simply understands that if there is an Almighty Creator of the universe and He has given someone a job to do, there’s no questioning of it, you do everything you possibly can to fulfill it and it doesn’t matter what happens to you.

The very first principle which I am starting with today is the most important of them all.

This principle is the principle of Purpose.

The church of Jesus is primarily a mission agency on a mission.

The church of Jesus is Driven By God’s Mission, but we too often don’t get it.

The first question to ask in order to determine the effectiveness of any organization or any activity even on a personal basis when you want to know if you’re doing anything or getting anywhere instead of wasting your time and effort is to ask, “What is my business?”

What is it exactly that I’m supposed to be doing?

This is where we start because the issue of purpose divides people into two groups:  those who get it and those who don’t.

This is illustrated by an old story that comes from Europe.

It happened during the construction of one of Europe’s great cathedrals.

I don’t remember which one.

The architect of the grand cathedral visited the site during the construction process and walked up to a man who was mixing something.

The architect asked the worker what he was doing, and the laborer said he was mixing mortar for the men setting stones.

A little while later the architect saw another man doing the exact same thing and asked him what he was doing.

The man replied, “Well, sir, I’m building a cathedral.”

We have to see the big picture.

“What’s our business?”

We’ve been given a mission by God and we must be driven by that mission and that mission alone.

First of all we have to...

 

*I.

Accept the Mission*

 

Many people today are familiar with a very popular 1960’s television series because of the recent feature film productions of Mission Impossible I and II.

At the beginning of the movies as in the television program instructions for a very dangerous, highly confidential spy project are presented through a recorded message that self-destructs after being played.

The recorded voice says, “Your mission--should you choose to accept it--is...” and then goes on to describe what was needed to be done.

I watched a lot of episodes of that tv show.

Never once did the recipient refuse to accept the mission.

That was what the show was all about.

If the recipient had refused to accept the mission there wouldn’t have been anything but commercials to fill the next 29 minutes of tv time.

Whoever got the secret message always decided to accept the mission.

That’s what their job was and that’s what the show was about.

Now, I know it was just a show for entertainment, but what a contrast that is with people who sincerely think they are followers of Jesus who gave a completely public, mission possible to everyone of His followers without suggesting  they had any choice in the matter but they often walk away from it.

Jesus has never said, “Your mission should you choose to accept it.”

He has said, “I have a mission for you.”

He said either we’re with Him or we’re against Him.

Either we’re doing His mission or what we’re doing is not with Him.

The only choice followers of Jesus have is to accept the mission.

There is no choice to not accept the mission.

That’s why we’ve got to accept the mission the Jesus gives us.

In order for us to accept it we have to know what it is.

You’ve probably heard it hundreds if not thousands of times.

It’s stated directly in different ways in each of the four Gospels and in the book of Acts, and indirectly all through the Bible.

In case you somehow missed it, let’s read it again.

“Jesus said to his followers, ‘Go everywhere in the world, and tell the Good News to everyone.’”

[Mark 16:15, New Century Version]

 

There is no alternative suggested here.

This is an imperative.

I want you to see the big picture that this has always been God’s purpose for those who belong to Him.

A way to generically state this is that we have been given the job of taking territory for God.

Win the world for God.

It started in the very beginning.

In the creation God said to Adam and Eve:  be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and “subdue it” that means “bring it under your control” (Gen.

1:28)  Well that didn’t last long.

Our first parents didn’t gain control of the world, they gave up control of the world.

They gave control to the enemy of our souls by listening to him and doing what he said.

Things went downhill from there so far that God was sorry He had ever made humans and He started all over again with Noah.

God gave Noah the same command He gave Adam and Eve only it became a little tougher because the animals were now adversaries--afraid of what humans would cause to happen to them again.

After a period of time God determined that the efforts to gain back the world from the enemy’s hands should be concentrated so He chose one man and his descendents to do it.

God told Abraham to move to a specific foreign land that his descendants would establish as a beachhead of God’s territory in the world and move out from there to win the world back to Him.

It took several hundred years even before Abraham’s desdendants began to take over the original land God promised to them.

They never got anywhere in winning the world and returning it to God’s control.

God knew that was going to happen.

Those Hebrews were part of His process to prepare for His ultimate tactic--providing His own Son, Jesus for the task.

Jesus died as a sacrifice to provide a way for everyone to get to God.

He was put in a tomb but He rose from the dead in 3 days.

And before He returned to heaven 40 days later, He restated God’s purpose that His people show the whole world the way back to God.

And God’s purposes have never changed.

So, how are we supposed to go about doing it?

How are we supposed to go about bringing the whole world out of the control of the enemy and delivering it back to God?

In principle we do it the same way God planned to do it with Abraham.

We establish a beachhead in the midst of enemy territory and we do everything we can to free the captives from the enemy’s clutches and get them safely into God’s hands.

Maybe you have never heard it put quite like this, but this is essentially what we’re to do.

Let me explain.

We start by moving into enemy territory and establishing a beachhead.

Here’s what the Bible says about that.

“You were chosen to tell about the wonderful acts of God, who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light...Dear friends, you are like foreigners and strangers in this world.”

[1 Peter 2:9,11, New Century Version]

 

From the position of foreigners in the world we have been chosen to tell the wonderful acts of God.

Followers of Jesus have been given a mission.

This makes all of the followers of Jesus missionaries and we need to think, live and act like missionaries.

Think of the missionaries to this land before there was a USA.

The predominant church of the 17th and 18th centuries was not very healthy spiritually, but for very mixed reasons they did have missionaries.

Their concerns were more for political and economic power than for spiritual purposes, but when the New World of North America was discovered, missionaries were among the very first to explore what was here.

This is how we got cities named St. Louis and San Francisco.

Missionaries were taking territory for the church (not necessarily for God but for a religious institution.)

Along the California coast 21 mission outposts were established by the Franciscan order of the Catholic Church.

The architecture is still today appreciated for its historic value.

These missionaries went to a foreign land, established a beachhead and sought to bring the people of the land into subjugation to the church.

Their methods and spirit were wrong.

Their purposes were probably wrong, too, but the theoretic model was right.

Establish a beachhead in order to win territory.

Spiritually we must do the same thing.

Some people have very literally done so.

Two weeks ago I told you about Margy Gorman’s mother who in the late 1960’s as a single mother packed up and moved out of her safe midwest culture and banded with a few other families who moved to the northeast US for the express purpose of establishing a church where there were very few at the time.