Missionary Theology and the Nature of God

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Myron Townsend
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1 Missionary Theology and the Nature of God We can easily make (and have been making) a case from scripture that shows missions is the very basis of the Bible. Another very powerful argument for this can be made when we look at the very nature of God Himself. Listen to the words of Robert E. Speer, and you ll get the point we re trying to make here. Robert E. Speer The last command of Christ is not the deep and final ground of the Church s missionary duty. That duty is authoritatively stated in the words of the great commission, and it is of infinite consequence to have had it so stated by our Lord Himself. But if these particular words had never been spoken by Him, or if, having been spoken, they had not been preserved, the missionary duty of the Church would not be in the least affected. The supreme arguments for missions are not found in any specific words. It is in the very being and character of God that the deepest ground of the missionary enterprise is to be found. We cannot think of God except in terms which necessitate the missionary idea. Though words may reveal eternal missionary duties the grounds are in the very being and thought of God, in the character of Christianity, in the aim and purpose of the Christian Church, and in the nature of humanity, its unity and its need. Let s look at this concept, particularly the thoughts expressed in Speer s last sentence, as a strong motivation toward missions involvement. Before we do that, there s something we need to recognize first: I. Most Christians Tend To Involve Themselves In Missions for the Wrong Reasons. A. Most missions conferences, teachings, etc. emphasize human need. 1. We are shown pictures of starving children, poor people. 2. Songs communicate this same idea, People need the Lord 3. We are told of the numbers who are slipping into eternity without Christ every second. 4. There is no doubt that human need is great all over the world, and that multitudes do need the Lord desperately. However 5. You need to realize that when you get there, most won t receive you with open arms as long lost brothers! They aren t looking for you, they don t even want you to come a lot of times! 6. A black friend told me that when white inner city missionaries came, the other blacks told her they resented them! 7. Many won t be thankful for the sacrifice you make for them. 8. Realize too that most who are needy don t even know what their greatest need is they think it s material and your words are useless, they don t know that they have a great spiritual need. B. Human need must not be our ultimate motivation! 1. Not the glory of man. 2. Not even the well-being of man. C. Not even church growth should be our motivation! D. Certainly it shouldn t be for political or sociological reasons. 1. Not to fight communism or any other isms, not to fight Islam or any other false religion. 2. Not just to educate the poor, ignorant masses. E. These kinds of motivations not only leave Christians disillusioned, they also can cause great harm to the cause of Christ! 1. They confuse the people, giving them a wrong impression of Christianity and the gospel. 2. That s why in Africa missionaries were associated with imperialism. 3. Those causes are inferior, unworthy, and not 100% of God they can be a mixture of human and divine, and sadly many times they are mostly human and not of God! That s why Christians should be careful of being too close with politicians or politics in general it makes it look like to be a Christian you must be of one party or another, and if the party does anything wrong (which sooner 1

2 or later they will do), then it looks as if Christ is wrong, or the sponsor of wrong. II. The Only Correct Motivation is a Theocentric One! A. We must do what we do because it is the desire of our Father and we want to please Him! 1. If we do it for people, we ll be so disillusioned if they spit in our faces, or aren t thankful. After all, our focus would be upon them, so they would let us down. 2. If our focus is upon God Himself and we want only to please Him, we shall certainly receive our reward. 3. Peter said, We ought to obey God rather than men, but this could also be expressed as We ought to seek to please God rather than men and be just as true. 4. Paul said, for of Him, and through Him, and to Him, are all things, to whom be the glory forever. 5. Rev. 4:11 says that God has created all things, and they exist for His pleasure. B. The Ancients had to learn that the earth wasn t the center of the universe. 1. They thought everything revolved around the earth, when in fact it revolved around the sun. 2. Though today we laugh at this, in fact many modern people have a similarly foolish view of life in general they think and live as if it revolves around themselves! 3. The only wise course is to reject this humanism and accept a God-centered view of the universe and life in general. It brings greater peace and happiness, and puts life into perspective and divine order. C. Christ lived His life with this perspective. 1. He did nothing on His own (Jn. 5:19) 2. He came not to do His own will, but the will of the Father. 3. He sought the glory of the Father in everything. 4. He refused the devil s temptation to do things for selfish gain, and said, man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. (Mat. 4:4) 5. He prayed, Not my will but thine be done. D. The Apostle Paul also taught this. 1. He speaks of all being to the praise of the glory of His grace that we should be to the praise of His glory, who first trusted in Christ (Eph.1:3-14) 2. He also speaks of everything as fitting into an eternal plan, the eternal purpose of God which He purposed in Christ (Eph.3:11) 3. He tells us that all things are of God, through God and to God, (Ro.11:33-36) III. God Himself is the Primary Motivator Toward Missions A. His Nature and Character is Outgoing or Missionary 1. God is Light outgoing, diffusive, penetrating, searching, spreading itself over all space, entering into every nook and cranny. Darkness cannot hide it, cannot restrain it. Light radiates out from itself to others. 2. God is Love No other god or religion expresses such a concept. * God is Triune. Therefore, He is a Community. He is an eternal relationship! * Love means God moves out of Himself and relates to mankind. It motivates Him to communicate and impart Himself to creation. It is the quality that makes Him seek the wellbeing and highest good of His creatures. * Love is an outgoing, dynamic relationship. It is a sacrificial, active relationship. * You can t love and be self-absorbed or reclusive. Love requires relationship, therefore, love is outgoing! Since God is love, God must be outreaching in mission! 3. God is Spirit therefore not self absorbed and interested in only self-containment. He is in every place, and He seeks worshippers (Jn. 4:24) 4. God the Father is missionary in His outlook, character, being, history. He sent the Son to save the world. 2

3 5. God the Son came as a missionary. We ll talk about this more further on, but the incarnation, death and resurrection of Christ is really all that s needed to prove the point of God as missionary. He is the revelation of God in human flesh, and what do we see there revealed? God as missionary 1000%! 6. Likewise, the Spirit is here to empower Christ s disciples to be witnesses unto Him (Acts 1:8), and to carry on the missionary enterprise of the church to all nations. B. The whole Bible is the story of God s intervention as a missionary into this world of space and time. 1. A missionary seeks to identify with his target people and communicate the revelation of God with them, to point them toward relationship with the one true God. 2. From the beginning God has sought to identify with mankind. He has revealed Himself to us through nature, the scriptures, His interaction with human beings. 3. God has communicated by using human words and thoughts. He has used allegories, illustrations, word-pictures, visions, stories, judgments, signs and wonders whatever would communicate. 4. In a sense the whole Bible is missionary in character, because it is God communicating with man revealing Himself, calling man back to Himself. C. One cannot know God well and not see that His heart is for the nations. 1. How can you say you are someone s friend if you don t know what their passion is, and if you don t share any of that passion? 2. My wife knows my passion for missions/theology/preaching, etc. Likewise, I know that her s is for juveniles and children. 3. Maybe some could ve focused upon other aspects of God and never seen this but if you spend time in the scriptures and open your eyes to what you see there, you will see this overarching emphasis of His being. D. God calls us to know Him and make Him known. 1. Jesus called his disciples to be with Him, and to go forth to preach (Mar.3:14) 2. As we fellowship with Him, draw nigh to Him, we see His way of looking at things and catch His vision. 3. There is healing and restoration that goes on, and training as well. 4. In time, the need to get involved comes clear and we are stirred to action. 5. We therefore seek to serve in God s mission because we love God and desire what He desires. We desire to obey and please God. We also share something of His heart. This is the only proper motivation for missions, and the only one that will stand the test of time and heat of the battle. E. Look at scriptures which communicate God s heart for lost mankind 1. Jn. 3:16 God so loved the world. He loves so much He gave the ultimate sacrifice. Isn t it obvious He yearns for mankind to be saved and to come to Him? 2. 1Tim. 2:4 God wants all to be saved. 3. 2Pet. 3:9 He is not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance. 4. Ez. 33:11 He gets no pleasure at all out of the death of the wicked, but wants them to turn to Him and be saved. 5. Rev. 22:17 Whoever will is invited to come and drink the water of life freely. 6. So many other verses communicate these attributes of God: Ps. 103:13,14, As a father pities his children, so the Lord pities those who fear them * The grief God felt when man sinned Gen.6:6, also **Jud. 10:16 ** * The great love, kindness, mercy, forgiveness of God, Ex.34:6,7 7. This kind of God cannot be aloof, uncaring about mankind s fate. This kind of God must be a missionary God! As we get to know Him, we must have a missionary heart as well! * Let us look briefly now at the other points mentioned by Speer: the character of Christianity, in the aim and purpose of the Christian Church, and in the nature of humanity, its unity and its need. 3

4 IV. The Character of Christianity (and the aim and purpose of the Church) A. The word Christian means little Christ. 1. Little Christ because Christians are called to follow and imitate the Lord (Mar. 1:15; 1Cor. 11:1) 2. The original disciples are examples of what all disciples are to be, no? They stayed close, learned of Him, were trained, did the works He did, carried on His mission. B. From the start, the disciples knew Jesus was on a mission 1. He called them to be fishers of men a mission to save, to recruit, to disciple. 2. He told them He was to build a church, a called out body of co-laborers. 3. After His death and resurrection, they went into the world to carry out the commission He had given them, and the Book of Acts is that missionary history. C. Why did Jesus start the institution of the Church? 1. Was it not a case of The Kingdom Strikes Back?! 2. God purposed even before all time to crush the serpent s head, allow His Son to have his heel bruised, (slain before the foundation of the world), and thus to reestablish His reign, redeem man, and demonstrate to the universe His divine power and wisdom (Eph. 3:10) 3. The Church therefore, is to be the community of the King, the redeemed ones, purchased by God so that they might submit to His loving lordship and bring back fallen man to His creator and Redeemer, bringing the universe back into divine order. Ralph Winter The first eleven chapters of Genesis constitute a trenchant introduction to the whole problem. These pages describe three things: 1) a glorious and good original creation; 2) the entrance of a rebellious, evil, superhuman power who is more than a force, actually a personality; and the result 3) a humanity caught up in that rebellion and brought under the power of that evil. In the whole remainder of the Bible, we have a single drama: the entrance into this enemy-occupied territory of the kingdom, the power and glory of the living God. From Genesis 12 to the end of the Bible, and indeed until the end of time, there unfolds the single, coherent drama of the Kingdom strikes back. In this drama we see the gradual but irresistible power of God reconquering and redeeming His fallen creation through the giving of His own Son at the very center of the 4000 year period we are just now ending. 4. The Church then is part of this strike back effort of God. Therefore, the Church, and Christianity in general, must be a missionary movement, for that is the heart of why it exists. 5. The Church is the beachhead where God lands His forces, heals and restores mankind, and then uses that restored force to penetrate and take back more territory from the enemy who has held it. Christianity must be a missionary movement, and the Church must be a missionary organization. V. The Nature and Need of Humanity * We do not need to spend much time here, but must at least call attention to this situation, for it further proves that God must be a missionary God. Missionaries go in obedience to God, but they also go because mankind is lost and God Himself wants them to come back to him. They go to save man. God, in Christ, took action as the supreme missionary to save man. We must take action to make sure they know, and to see to it that The Lamb who was slain should receive the just reward of His suffering. A. Sin is the universal problem of all mankind. 1. Ec. 7:20; Ro.3:10, 23 none is righteous, all have sinned. 2. Ez. 18:4; Ro. 6:23 the wages is death, eternal death, do we believe that? 3. Since Adam, all sin, all are dying; all are born separated from God. (Eph. 2:1) B. Man s state as a result of sin 1. Spiritually dead Eph.2:1 2. Blind, can t see the kingdom, Jn Corrupt, unrighteous, Is. 64:6 4

5 4. Un-loving, selfish, or a lover of self, 2Tim.3:2 5. Disobedient, a child of the devil, Jn. 8, Eph Deceitful, Jer. 17:9 7. Condemned, under the wrath of God, Jn. 3:36 Missions makes sense only in the light of the emergency of sin and the conviction that a solution to this universal malady is available. Sin makes salvation necessary and sin makes Christian missions necessary. Sin is war against God, tries to strike a sword thrust into His heart. Sin is the unsheathed sword and the straight thrust at the heart of God. It is the crucifixion of the good, the slaying of the Son of God nature, the murder of life divine. Sin never rests till it has crowned innocence with thorns and made its spear-thrust into the heart of unsullied righteousness. John B. Champion C. No one is able to save him/herself 1. God demands perfection, Mat. 5:48 2. No one can be saved by the works of the law, Gal. 2:16 3. For only one sin, Adam and Eve suffered banishment, died physically, were cut off from God s presence. 4. Even the greatest of saints, Moses, David, had their failures. None can save themselves (or anyone else, Ps. 49:7-9) D. Christ is the only answer for sinful man. 1. What else do verses like Jn. 14:6 and Acts 4:12 mean? 2. He alone is presented in scripture as God s propitiation or atoning gift for sin 1Jn.2:2 3. Many stumble at this point, even scholars attempt to find other ways, to be inclusive why? Because it is easier to sell, and seems more agreeable to human logic. 4. The examples of William Booth s vision of the storm wracked island, and the missionary example of the island on fire with only one narrow bridge to land. There must be another way! 5. Any faltering on this point and the missionary enterprise is jeopardized. 6. Anyone who is firm on this will realize the necessity of missions, and understand why God is a missionary God. 7. If Christ is the only answer, then missions is the only lifestyle for the Christian! Thus we see that we must have a Theo-centric paradigm for missionary service. Anything else falls short. We understand that God is a God of mission it is an expression of His very being and character! The Church, Christianity itself, is a missionary outreach of God, designed to function as a continuation of His mission to the world. The need of man is universal, all have sinned, all need God s salvation, that salvation is only available through Christ. We must receive Him, and by the power of His Spirit, we must preach His Word to all the nations! Our God is a missionary God, and He calls us to join Him in the missionary enterprise. 5

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