1 Sermon: Mission in Christ Introduction When I finished school in 2004 I got my first real job. It was in an Optus store in Orange, it was full time, and I got paid a grand total of $9 an hour. And this booth where I worked in a shopping centre, it was like an island with walkways around it so there was absolutely no privacy, there was no natural light. And it was right opposite a Boost Juice and a Sanity you know the old CD store? There s still some around. And all day every day they d be competing with each other for who could play the worst music the loudest. And I would sit there, earning $9 an hour, listening to my humps by the Black Eyed Peas and you re beautiful by James Blunt at the same time - thinking about my future. I didn t know what I should do with my life but at that point I was willing to consider anything besides retail even accounting looked good! I know some of you are thinking about what you want to do with your life. You re getting to the pointy end of school or uni, you ve got some decisions to make. What s next? Some of you are in the early stages of your career and you re wondering if it s all going to work out? Where s my life going? What s it going to amount to? I started this series about 10 weeks ago by asking the question who are you? And we saw that the answer to that question, if you ve given your life to Jesus, is that you are a new creation, you re God s handiwork. You re like his masterpiece [Stradivarius]. But today I want to think about where you re going. Cause if you re a Christian, you should know who you are. You should know that your identity and your values comes from him. Who you are isn t about your family, or you background or your gender or your age or your sexuality or anything else
2 because that person died with Christ, and you re God s new creation, seated in heaven with Christ. And if all this is new, I encourage you to go back and listen to that talk it s on the website. But tonight, now that you know who you are, and whose you are, I want us to think about why you are? [slide: robot]: what s your purpose? What are supposed to do with your life? What s your calling in life? Because, God doesn t just give us a new identity in Christ, he a new purpose. And as I said when we kicked off this series our purpose is to do the good works that God has prepared for us (Eph 2:10). [slide: robot 2] That s a little bit vague. Tonight I want us to dig deeper. What are these good works? Are they just a random collection of tasks? Or does it amount to something bigger? Why has God remade us? What s the purpose of this new life that we ve been given in Christ? To answer these questions, we ve got to understand God s mission. God has a people for his mission Having a clear mission statement is very important isn t it? Because your mission statement in life is supposed to determine everything you do. Every organisation is supposed to have a mission statement. For example, [slide: NASA] NASA s mission statement is to pioneer the future in space exploration, scientific discovery and aeronautics research. Everything they do is about achieving that mission. [slide: google] Google s mission statement is To organize the world s information and make it universally accessible and useful.
3 What about God s mission statement? [slide: cross] To bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ (Ephesians 1:10). Everything united under Christ. That s God s mission. And it s an urgent mission. Right now when we look at the world it doesn t seem united. On the international stage, we ve got Donald Trump and Kim Jong-Un threatening each other, people are blowing each other up in terrorist attacks, and Australia is tearing itself apart over a postal survey. And that s before we get to personal stuff like broken relationships. The world is divided and God s mission is to unite everything again under Jesus. To unite most importantly to unite human beings with himself. That s God s mission. But God doesn t work alone. He works through his creatures. And he s put together a team to accomplish his mission of uniting everything under Christ. And that team is you and me. God has made us for this mission [identity] Have a look at 2 Corinthians 5:20 with me. [slide: 2 Cor 5:20] 20 We are therefore Christ s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ s behalf: Be reconciled to God You and I together the church - are ambassadors created for God s mission of unity. [slide: mission]
4 What does an ambassador do? An ambassador represents the government of one country to another. Joe Hockey in Washington speaks to the USA on behalf of Malcolm Turnbull - the PM. An ambassador represents and acts in the interests of their leader. And when the ambassador does something, it s as if the leader themselves is doing it. Your purpose is to represent Jesus to the world. That s why you were made. Jesus says in Matthew 28:18-20 all authority has been given to me, therefore what? Go and make disciples of all nations. Go and bring unity. Go and be my ambassadors. You and I are made for mission. That s our purpose. But how do we do the mission? What s the strategy it s really important. God has a strategy for his mission: love In the 1800s the explorers Burk and Wills had a mission [slide: Burke and Wills]. They were supposed to go from Melbourne to the gulf of Carpentaria and back. No one had done that before, and they going to do it and they hoped they d find some good farming land on the way. And so, given they had a journey of thousands of km through deserts, and swamps and wilderness, they did what anyone would do, they set out from Melbourne carrying a huge formal oak dining suite. Because that s what you need in the central deserts of Australia. It took them a month just to get to the NSW border. They were absolute amateurs and had no idea of what they needed to do to achieve their mission. And it ended up costing them their lives. God s strategy for his mission is pretty simple. It s love. Infectious love. Attractive love. Contagious love. Because love is what he used to win us to Jesus isn t it? At the end of the day, that s why we re here.
5 God loved us enough to die for us. He loved you enough to die for you. He won you over by love. When you didn t love him, when you didn t know him, when you didn t want anything to do with him, he loved you to death. God s strategy for his mission is love. And God says to us, his ambassadors, go and do what I do. Go and love. God and represent me, go and love your neighbour. [slide: peter] Look at what Peter says in 1 Peter 2:11-12, he s just said how God has made us his people and then he says, Dear friends, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul. 12 Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us. Here s where it gets sharp for us. Aren t we accused of doing wrong? Don t people say Christians are on the wrong side of history? Aren t people accusing us of hate speech and bigotry. Don t people say we re weird and harmful? What are we supposed to do with that? What s God s strategy? Verse 12? Live such good lives among the pagans God s strategy is to win people over with love. It s not about programmes or techniques. It s not like God gives us some formula to carry out and if we do it hey presto, people get Jesus. No God just says go and be
6 passionate and enthusiastic and love people because passion and enthusiasm and love are infectious. [slide; mission] I ve got a kiwi friend, actually I ve got more than one, but my kiwi friend Sam is one of the most passionate people I know. He does nothing by halves e.g. you know Soda stream? The fizzy water thing? He s so into it that invested in a high volume commercial CO 2 storage container because he realised it was more economical than buying soda stream canisters. And he worked out the maximum volume he could get without risking suffocating his entire family in case it leaked. And the thing is, it sounds over the top but you start talking to him and he s just so enthusiastic that you find yourself thinking yeah I should do this. But the thing about Sam is, he s a Christian. And his passion and enthusiasm and love for Jesus are just as infectious. So the first question for you when we re thinking about mission is do you love Jesus? Do you actually love him? Are you on fire for him or are you meh? Jesus is non-negotiable in God s mission. If we don t love Jesus, what are we doing? Who are we representing? Jesus is our whole motivation, he s the reason we re here in the first place. Remember God s mission, he s uniting everything in Jesus. So I ll ask you again, do you love Jesus? And do you know how much he loves you? You might kinda know it, you might know it intellectually. You might ve heard it before. But do you feel it? Is your heart engaged? Because when we fill up on loving Jesus, it will flow naturally into talking about him. You can force yourself to try and share Jesus for a while. And you might stick at it, for a while. But if you don t love Jesus, I guarantee you ll give up. And I guarantee you ll feel guilty about it.
7 But speaking of Jesus is not supposed to be something you have to do, like brushing your teeth or putting out the rubbish. When you love Jesus it becomes the most natural thing in the world to talk about him. So don t even think about how you can communicate your passion for Jesus to others. Just be passionate about him. Meditate on him until he captures your heart again. We ve got to love Jesus if we re going to do this mission. Secondly, we ve got to love people. God s mission for us is to unite everything under Christ, his strategy is love. And so if we don t really love people, we re not doing his mission. If we just see them as projects, or if we like the idea of mission but not the real people we encounter on mission, we re not doing God s mission. We re not fairly representing God because God is love. So let me ask you, do you love people? Do you want to what s best for them? This is tough sometimes. Especially when they re are attacking you. But do you love people? If the answer is no, start praying that God would melt your heart. Start praying that God would give you his heart. We ve gotta love people. Finally, we ve got to love life! The Bible says that the whole world is full of God s glory. Psalm 8 says how majestic is your name in all the earth? Every part of the world is permeated by God s glory. Sure, sin has distorted things. But we can see his goodness all around us. What are you passionate about? Are you into gaming? Rugby? Cooking? Knitting? DIY? Movies? Books? Art? Music? Cars?
8 1 Timothy 4:4 says, that everything God created is good and shouldn t be rejected if we receive it with thanksgiving. Whatever you re into, whatever you re passionate about, it s all good because it s all a gift from God to be received with thanksgiving! So our job is to have fun to the glory of God! How good is that?! We get demonstrate our gratitude to him by enjoying his good gifts! We get to love life. When we re passionate and enthusiastic about God, and showing our gratitude to him, its infectious. And we know that he ll use us to accomplish his mission. All we have to do is be open to it, praying for it, deliberate about it. Application So I want to spend the last couple of minutes getting really practical. How we going to do this mission? I know you guys are creative But I thought I d give you just a couple of ideas to get you started. [slide: practical stuff] 1. Eat with non-christians. a. We had Laura s mother s group and their partners over for a BBQ the other day because I realised, I don t really know any non-christians in the area. It was really easy and one of the other couples has already offered to host the next one. 2. Walk, don t drive. a. When you walk, there s a chance for human interaction. You can t randomly meet people in the car. If you walk your dog, consider inviting someone to walk with you as a way to get to know them better. I love the way Jonathon Dodson puts it save some petrol, the planet, and some people. 3. Watch more TV watch TV with more people a. If you usually watch a particular TV programme like the footy, or the bachelorette hey no judgement here invite some people over to watch it with you. It s more fun that way anyway. 4. Be a regular a. Instead of driving all over the city for different things, go to the same places at the same times and get to know the staff and other regulars.
Michael s done a great job with this down at Imbue Café he s got such a good relationship with them that they offered to host our Alpha course and now they want to employ Jack and Emily. 5. Volunteer with non-profits and local organisations a. There s lots of good organisations out there pick one and get involved once a month. Maybe bring your connect group or just a friend. 6. Serve your neighbours a. If you regularly shop on a Saturday, consider driving an older person to the shops with you so they can do their shopping too. Doesn t add much time and it is a really practical way to love someone. b. Offer to help the neighbours with their gardening. Ask the council about the needs in the area. 9