Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction - Call to Worship Psalm 67

What is the Church

For the past two weeks, we have been learning about what or who is the church.

Pastor Shaan has labored in teaching us through a definition of the church given by Collin Hanson and Jonathan Leeman in their book Rediscover Church.

That definition goes like this: A church is a group of Christians —> Who assemble as an earthly embassy of Christ’s heavenly kingdom —> to proclaim the good news and commands of Christ the King —> to affirm one another as his citizens through the ordinances —> and to display God’s own holiness and love —> through a unified and diverse people —> in all the world —> following the teaching and example of the elders.

What is Our Purpose and Mission

I want to streamline some of those statements for us to sharpen our focus on the topic today.

We Christians assemble to proclaim the good news of Christ the King and display God’s holiness and love.

This is our purpose.

This is our why - to proclaim and display, to exalt and magnify, to declare and to glorify Christ our King.

All creation exists, every mountain, every molehill, every molecule, every man, woman, and child, and especially and most triumphantly, every congregation of the blood-bought redeemed exists to worship God.

As Paul declared in Col 1:16 “16 For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him.”

And again, Romans 11:36 “from Him and through Him and to Him are all things.

To Him be the glory forever.

Amen.”

We have been made as a church for Him - for His pleasure and for His glory.

We exist and we gather together for Him - to worship Him.

Proclaim To Whom?

But to whom do we proclaim?

To whom do we declare the gospel and display the glories of the God of the gospel?

The answer is our focus today and the answer is this: all the world.

To use a familiar term, that is our mission.

Our purpose as the church is to worship God.

And our mission as the church is to evangelize, baptize, disciple, and plant and grow churches among all the peoples of the earth so that all the peoples of the earth may worship God.

Main Point and Structure

So if this is our mission, what is our motivation?

And the answer won’t surprise you, it is worship.

John Piper, in his book, Let the Nations Be Glad, said it much better than I, “worship is the fuel and the goal of missions.

Worship is the goal of missions because in missions we aim to bring the nations into the white-hot enjoyment of God’s glory.

It is the fuel of missions because we can’t commend what we don’t cherish.

We can’t call out, “Let the nations be glad!” until we say, “I rejoice in the Lord.”

Missions begins and ends in worship.”

And this is my aim today, to show you that the mission of the church and the primary and most foundational motivation for that mission is one and the same: it is worship.

The mission of the church and the motivation for that mission is worship.

I want to try to show you this by taking a 20,000 foot view of what the Bible says about Missions, looking from Genesis to Revelation.

And this trip through the Bible that we will take has two parts: Mission Failed and Mission Accomplished.

Transition

So then we will begin this journey through the Bible in Genesis and work our way from there.

I will entitle this section, Mission Failure.

Mission Failed

Fill the Earth With Worshipers - Creation

At the beginning of our Bibles, we read that God created the world in 6 days by the power of His word.

On days 1-3, God formed the universe by creating light and darkness on day 1, the sky and the sea on day 2, and the dry land on day 3. On days 4-6, God filled the universe he made with the sun, moon, and stars on day 4, the birds in the sky and creatures in the sea on day 5, and the beasts of the earth culminating in the creation of man and woman who are to subdue the earth on day 6.

As theologian Jim Hamilton comments, “In days 1-3 God forms the canvas of creation and in days 4-6 God fills that canvas with His creatures.

He built the world as a cosmic temple which is later represented by the tabernacle and the temple God gives to Israel.

And in this cosmic temple, God puts the image of His own likeness, the living, breathing, worshipping, human being.

And that being, mankind represents God’s power and authority and reign in God’s cosmic temple.”

And we see this role of representing or imaging forth God in the very first command that God gives to man.

Genesis 1:28 “28 God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

See that He commands the first man and woman to fill the earth by being fruitful and multiplying and to subdue it - or give it form.

Man and woman were made to fill and form the creation just as the Creator filled and formed the creation.

From the very beginning, we were made to be mirrors, to reflect the nature and character of our Maker.

And thus bringing Him glory.

And one of the reasons God created the institution of marriage was to make more mirrors, to multiply His image-bearers.

And He makes this command to fill the earth so that every corner of creation will be filled by His image-bearers who represent His character and bring Him praise and glory.

It is from this first chapter in our Bibles that we see two things.

First, God created mankind for worship - to magnify Him by bearing forth His image.

And secondly, God gave mankind the mission of filling the world with worshippers.

This is mission is as old as creation itself.

Filled with Violence – The Fall

But as we know, Adam and Eve failed.

They sinned by eating the forbidden fruit and were cast out of God’s presence in the garden.

Instead of mirroring God’s character and nature, they desired to rule and reign over their own lives.

And instead of filling the earth with worshippers of God, they filled the world with sinners who did not worship God but instead, worshipped idols, the chief among them being the pridful idol of the self.

In the days of Noah, Moses the author of Genesis records that God, Genesis 6:5, 11, “5 saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually…now the earth was corrupt in the sight of God, and the earth was filled with violence”

Every intent of the thoughts of man’s heart was not to worship but to do evil continually.

Instead of the image of God being multiplied and the worship of God filling the earth, the image of God was being murdered left and right and man’s wickedness and violence filled the earth.

And so, God judged the earth by destroying it with the flood.

But His mission did not end then.

He spared Noah and his family on the ark and after God caused the flood to subside and brought the ark to rest, we see in Genesis 9:1 that God gives the same blessing and command he gave Adam, “1 And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth.”

Failure to Fill The Earth - Babel

But just two chapters later in the book of Genesis, we see that instead of filling the earth, all the peoples of the earth settled in one spot.

And they decided to build a tower there up to heaven.

Listen to what they said, Genesis 11:4 ““Come, let us build for ourselves a city and a tower whose top will reach into heaven, and let us make for ourselves a name, otherwise we will be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.”

Notice that they expressly rebel against God’s command to fill the earth.

Instead, they want to build a tower to heaven and make a name for themselves thus demonstrate their independence from God and their power to rule over themselves.

They bought into the same satanic lie that was whispered into the ear of Eve, that they could be like God and sovereignly reign over their own lives.

But God was not to be defeated by such a dumb plan.

Listen as I read Genesis 11:5, “The Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built.”

God had to come down to see that “huge” tower they were building to reach heaven.

The irony of the original Hebrew is very much preserved here.

And when God came down from His throne that is high and lifted up, He accomplished His will and thwarted their plans by doing one simple thing, confusing their speech by introducing languages.

This introduction caused mankind to halt their building project and spread over the face of the earth, establishing the world’s tribes and nations with their separate languages.

However, even though mankind was dispersed in the world, they were still utterly depraved in their hearts.

Blessing to All The Earth – Abraham

And so, God continued His plan of redeeming His worshippers for Himself by calling a man out of all the peoples of the earth by the name of Abraham.

He commanded Abraham to take his wife and leave his father’s family and journey to a land that God would show him.

And then God promised to make Abraham’s name great, that he would be blessed, that he would be made into a great nation, and that in Him all the families of the earth would be blessed as well.

You see, all of those rebellious families in all of those rebellious nations with all of those new languages that were just scattered throughout the earth would one day be blessed through Abraham and His offspring.

Eventually, Abraham’s family grew from 2 people to 3 and from 3 to 4 and from 4 to 18, and from 18 to 70 people in the family of Jacob, Abraham’s grandson.

Those 70 individuals in that now large family traveled down to Egypt during a famine that Joseph, the great-grandson of Abraham, saved them and all the surrounding nations from.

Hmmm.

Moses writes in Exodus 1:7 that It was in Egypt, that “the sons of Israel were fruitful and increased greatly, and multiplied, and became exceedingly mighty so that the land was filled with them.”

They were fruitful, they multiplied, and they filled the land of Egypt.

But instead of subduing that land, they were subdued into slavery.

They filled Egypt so much so that the ruler of that land, the most powerful ruler the world had ever known, Pharoah himself feared this nation of Israel and enslaved them.

Delivered to Be a Kingdom of Priests – Israel’s Mission

And so, God raised up another man, Moses, who would lead the nation of Israel, all 600,000 men plus women and children out of their slavery to Egypt.

And this was done after God systematically dismantled the idols and the ruler of Egypt with 10 separate plagues from heaven.

After leading His delivered people out of Egypt, through the Red Sea, and up to the base of Mount Sinai, God covenants with His people and declares to them that Exodus 19:5-6 “if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be My own possession among all the peoples, for all the earth is Mine; 6 and you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’