Power Shifts #2 - Actions

Have you ever heard the phrase “Actions speak louder than words?” You can find this playing out in much of Scripture. The apostle John clearly indicated throughout his writings that love and obedience—attitude (what we talked about last week) and action—must go hand in hand.

1 John 5:3 NIV

3 In fact, this is love for God: to keep his commands. And his commands are not burdensome,

And James reminds us of this...

James 2:26 NIV

26 As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.

God doesn’t give commands without expecting our obedience, and the Great Commission is no exception. We know from Scripture that just before He ascended to heaven, Jesus gave His disciples specific instructions.

Acts 1:8 NIV

8 But 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.”

These are the last words of Christ! We need to listen and obey! All Christians and all congregations are to be involved in some type of ministry in their locality (Jerusalem), in their country (Judea), in neighboring countries (Samaria), and in the spiritual frontiers of this earth (ends of the earth). This ministry is to happen simultaneously— we don’t have to win everyone at home before we step out of our own neighborhoods.

Actions of the Jerusalem Church didn’t show it. They experienced God’s power, as revealed in Acts 2, but they didn’t move very far out of their cultural comfort zone. On the day of Pentecost, people from all over the world heard the gospel. But outside of that preliminary evangelistic thrust, the Jerusalem Church did little to push the gospel outside the limits of its own city.

Don Richardson said this, “Hundreds of millions of Christians think that Luke’s Acts of the Apostles records the 12 apostles’ obedience to the Great Commission. Actually, it records their reluctance to obey it.”

He also notes that they quickly evangelized Jerusalem at Pentecost and in the days that immediately followed, so that Acts 5:28 records the apostles’ critics complaining, “You have filled Jerusalem with your teaching.” Still, Richardson adds, “Twenty-five percent of the book of Acts was already history, and as far as the record shows, they were not even making plans to obey the rest of Jesus’ command.”

This Jerusalem congregation was on the verge of the us 4 and no more theory until the Jerusalem laypeople went out and planted a church in Antioch. When the Jerusalem Church heard about it, they convened a council. If this council had not allowed God to break through, something would have happened to this church. They would have died on the vine. God didn’t need them to finish His mission—just like He doesn’t need this church. He’ll scoot around us and go fulfill His plan, whether we go with Him or not. But we will miss the great joy that comes with obedience

If you have your Bibles, let’s take a look at this Jerusalem Council. Go to Acts 15. I want to begin at verse 4.

Acts 15:4–21 NIV

4 When they came to Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the church and the apostles and elders, to whom they reported everything God had done through them. 5 Then some of the believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees stood up and said, “The Gentiles must be circumcised and required to keep the law of Moses.” 6 The apostles and elders met to consider this question. 7 After much discussion, Peter got up and addressed them: “Brothers, you know that some time ago God made a choice among you that the Gentiles might hear from my lips the message of the gospel and believe. 8 God, who knows the heart, showed that he accepted them by giving the Holy Spirit to them, just as he did to us. 9 He did not discriminate between us and them, for he purified their hearts by faith. 10 Now then, why do you try to test God by putting on the necks of Gentiles a yoke that neither we nor our ancestors have been able to bear? 11 No! We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved, just as they are.” 12 The whole assembly became silent as they listened to Barnabas and Paul telling about the signs and wonders God had done among the Gentiles through them. 13 When they finished, James spoke up. “Brothers,” he said, “listen to me. 14 Simon has described to us how God first intervened to choose a people for his name from the Gentiles. 15 The words of the prophets are in agreement with this, as it is written: 16 “ ‘After this I will return and rebuild David’s fallen tent. Its ruins I will rebuild, and I will restore it, 17 that the rest of mankind may seek the Lord, even all the Gentiles who bear my name, says the Lord, who does these things’— 18 things known from long ago. 19 “It is my judgment, therefore, that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God. 20 Instead we should write to them, telling them to abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals and from blood. 21 For the law of Moses has been preached in every city from the earliest times and is read in the synagogues on every Sabbath.”

This council met to discuss a spiritual foothold established among the Gentiles in Antioch. Simon Peter supported this outreach. Barnabas and Paul described what was happening there. And finally, James, also supporting this new endeavor.

As we read scriptures, we can understand that God’s church is being built prophetically. The tabernacle was the place where God disclosed Himself. It revealed the presence of God in the Kingdom of God, which in the end time is the restored Body of Christ. “After this I will return,” God said, referring to Pentecost. That outpouring leads to rebuilding and restoring the church. And restoration leads to the ethne—that is, people from all ethnic groups—seeking the Lord.

The implication from this passage, in context with Acts 1:8, is that God wanted His followers to understand why He gave the Holy Spirit—it was for the purpose of action, for expanding the borders of God’s Kingdom all over the world. By containing it in our own cultural framework, we disobey God.

Throughout history, we can see that those involved in missions have experienced power shifts like that described in Scripture for the Church at Jerusalem. The great Reformation of the 16th century, which gave birth to Protestant Christianity, did not launch any real missions zeal. Protestants were doing their best to just hold their own against Roman Catholic opposition. They did not have a ready-made mission force. But also, their theology stood in the way of cross-cultural ministry.

Martin Luther, for example, was so certain of the imminent return of Christ that he overlooked the necessity of foreign missions. He believed the Great Commission was binding only on the first-century apostles, and Calvinists followed a similar argument, but they also believed the doctrine of election eliminated or at least reduced the need for foreign missions since “God had already chosen those he would save.”

Among Protestants, it wasn’t until the 1700s that the Moravians, William Carey, and a few others began to see what God has always seen and felt for those who have never heard the gospel. They pushed from inactivity to becoming involved among the people groups who lived on the continental coastlands. Next, people like David Livingstone and Hudson Taylor, pushed from the coastlands to the interior, strategically targeting hidden people groups.

Now we know who is unreached. We can discover them by becoming familiar with the country listings of unreached people groups. As a matter of fact, I have an app on my phone that gives me a different unreached people group each day so that I can pray for them.

I want to do my part to help finish the Great Commission. Some day when God looks at me, I want him to say, “Well done my good and faithful servant.”

There are five specific things that need to happen for us to finish the Great Commission.

1. All Churches Need to Come Together

We must move from local church competition to a movement of coming together. Christ did not intend for His Bride to be at war with herself. He has a role for each individual, each congregation, and each mission’s agency to play, and it’s a cooperative role—not a competitive one.

Consider, for example, the results that could be accomplished for God’s Kingdom if a group of churches and agencies targeted an unreached people group in a desert region. Suppose a national church could provide missionaries. Two or three western churches could provide funding and training. An agency agrees to dig wells. Another provides projectors and screens for the missionaries. Another provides the Jesus film. Another provides Bibles and follow-up literature.

Once the wells are dug, they become the social hub for the region. The national missionary shows the Jesus film there and provides Bibles and discipleship materials. He or she meets with the group of converts on a regular basis and teaches them the principles of multiplication. In a brief time, these individuals and churches and agencies have established a self- replicating church planting movement within an unreached people group, and then they are free to move to another group. These kinds of results, though, are only possible in an atmosphere where actions demonstrate an atmosphere of cooperation rather than competition.

2. Missions-Mobilized Churches

We must move from inactive churches to missions-mobilized churches.

What would a missions-mobilized church look like?

This church should engage in prayer on behalf of the whole world, and also on behalf of at least 3-5 unreached people groups.

This church should be raising resources to fuel and fund the Great Commission movement. One of the things that Cliff Terrace does is anything that you give that is marked tithe or not marked at all, we take 10% of that off the top and give it to missions. We work to support missionaries that are called to go to areas where there are unreached people groups.

Also, a missions mobilized church should raise up career missionaries that will go into unreached people groups and share the Good News of Jesus Christ. Christ told us to ask the Lord of the Harvest to send out laborers. It seems that the best place to begin is by asking Him to call them forth from among our own congregations.

This type of church should help other churches be mobilized for missions. They pass their vision along to other church leaders and enlist other churches in the task of building God’s Kingdom throughout the world through cooperative endeavors.

A missions mobilized church should network and partner with international, indigenous churches, organizations, and individuals in the global Great Commission community.

3. Strategic Churches

It is important for us as a church to be a strategic church and not a reactive church.

Reactive churches prefer the status quo. In reactive churches, if they change their program at all, they generally choose to simply adopt programs that were successful elsewhere. They are consistently in a reactive state rather than a proactive posture, surprised by events and by twists and turns in circumstances.

Strategic churches, on the other hand, are planning for closure of the Great Commission. They hold the goal of reaching the world for Christ to be a priority command, not just a suggestion. For instance, they might choose to give a larger portion of their budget to a missionary working among the unreached than to someone working in an area with local churches that have already been evangelized.

Why do we need to be strategic? Because everything that we do is about people. God loves people. People matter to God and since they matter to God then they should matter to us. We need to do our part in reaching God’s people and it is going to take a strategy to reach them. Let’s put love into action.

4. Missionaries with Specialized Skills

We must move from fostering general missionaries to fostering specialized missionaries. We can’t just send willing “warm bodies” to foreign countries. We need to Encourage people to train for specialized ministry. Then enable them to go somewhere else and train a national to do a specific ministry task. Our end goal should be to put ourselves out of business.

One missionary group that I like to invest in is Chi Alpha missionaries. Why? Because students come from all over the world to get an education here in the United States and then a Chi Alpha group reaches out to those international students and present the Gospel to them while they are on the University campus and then that newly saved international student goes back to their country and becomes a missionary to there home land. All because they attended a university in the United States. Chi Alpha likes to call it missions in reverse.

5. Expand into New People Groups

We must move from expecting growth only in existing outreaches to expansion within new groups. Statistics indicate that, even if revival broke out in every church in the world, and if that revival never went beyond the cultures that already have churches, then 3.14 billion people would still go without the gospel. Revival alone is not the only answer.

Revival needs to produce equippers who understand God’s strategy. It is especially important that we also send missionaries to regions and to people groups where there is no church. We must preach in Jerusalem, but also to the ends of the earth, among people who have not heard God wooing them into a relationship with Him.

The Old Testament prophet Jonah tried to refuse God’s direct order regarding cross-cultural ministry, and he experienced severe discipline. If we refuse to reach out in all directions, taking God’s love to our neighbors and to the darkest regions of the world, then we can expect the same type of “training.” But even beyond the desire to avoid discipline, if we spurn our Lord’s direct command, we will disappoint our Father. And that, in itself, should be the motivation for our obedience.

The last words of Jesus were strategic and directed to the geographic and cultural targets of Jerusalem and Judea, the distant provinces of Samaria and the remotest parts of the earth. We are called to reach all of the global targets cited in Acts 1:8. Let me read it to you from The Passion Translation.

Acts 1:8 TPT

8 But I promise you this—the Holy Spirit will come upon you and you will be filled with power. And you will be my messengers to Jerusalem, throughout Judea, the distant provinces—even to the remotest places on earth!”

Let’s be seized with the power of the Holy Spirit and trust Him to help us simultaneously impact all four parts of the world.

Today, we are supporting as a church, missionaries from all four parts of he world that Acts 1:8 mentions.

In our own city, we are supporting the local Chi Alpha group. We provide food to our county. We support the homeless in our area.

In our own country we support other Chi Alphas that are located in different communities. We support missionaries that reach out to athletes and the inner city youth of Denver.

And around the world we support missionaries that are living and working in areas that the gospel needs to go.

We are doing something, but we can do more. We must allow the Holy Spirit to work through each of us and through this church to complete the Great Commission.

Related Media

Related Sermons