GO TO THE NATIONS: THE WHAT AND WHY OF MISSIONS SELECTED SCRIPTURES I started studying for this sermon series almost 13 years ago. A man who was involved in a kind of mission ministry that we already were a part of in a part of the world where we were already supporting a missionary and with an organization that appeared to be doctrinally sound called me and asked if he could have some time with me to talk about his ministry. That kind of call is not unusual and because of overlapping interests I met him for lunch one day. But during that meeting, it became apparent that our church and his ministry would not synchronize well. So I told him that we wouldn t be able to partner with him. But I also realized that we did not have a document that articulated what we believed about missions and how we might identify the kind of missionaries that we would support. So following that meeting I began working on a document that gave a brief overview of what we believed about missions and the kind of missionaries we wanted to work with. But I wasn t satisfied with that policy and over the years, the elders realized we needed something more robust to articulate what we believe about missions. So several months ago I tackled the project again, doing additional study and reading and crafted a document that more exhaustively articulates our philosophy of missions. And at first we thought it would be a document that would only be used to guide decisions and policy on the elder board, but as we worked on it, we realized it would be a benefit to the entire church body. So this sermon series is an expansion of that document (which will be made available to the church body at the conclusion of the series). I am excited about this series and about this document because GBC loves the gospel and loves missions. And this document should make us more effective in the missionary expansion of the gospel. How will we summarize our commitment to missions? THE GOAL OF GBC MISSIONS IS TO CULTIVATE A NETWORK OF MISSIONARIES THAT WILL EXPAND OUR GLOBAL INVOLVEMENT AND SEE PEOPLE FROM ALL THE NATIONS TRUST CHRIST, LOVE CHRIST, AND LIVE FOR CHRIST S GLORY. To say it more simply, our goal is to be involved in taking the gospel to other parts of the world so those who don t know Christ will come to know Christ. This morning we want to address two questions about missions: what is missions and why is missions important in the ministry of the local church? page 1 / 7
1. What is Missions?! Missions is GOSPEL-focused! Missions is CROSS-cultural 2. Why is Missions Important?! God is a MISSIONARY God! Christ s command to the 12 is a command to ALL believers! Hell is HORRIBLE and eternity is LONG! There is only ONE gospel page 2 / 7
THE GOAL OF GBC MISSIONS IS TO CULTIVATE A NETWORK OF MISSIONARIES THAT WILL EXPAND OUR GLOBAL INVOLVEMENT AND SEE PEOPLE FROM ALL THE NATIONS TRUST IN CHRIST, LOVE CHRIST, AND LIVE FOR CHRIST S GLORY. 1. What is Missions? Missions is GOSPEL-focused! The primary task of the church is to take the gospel to the unbelieving (Lk. 24:46-49; Acts 1:8). The believer s fundamental task is to be a witness/testimony to the truth of Christ and the provision of forgiveness through Him.! This is what the first church did (Acts 5:32; 8:35; 9:20-22; 10:38-43; 11:18). The missionary is someone who is sent with the message of Christ and His forgiveness and freedom.! Missions is about evangelism (in foreign countries). Consider the great commission statements: o o o Matt. 28:18-20 And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. Luke 24:46-49 and He said to them, Thus it is written, that the Christ would suffer and rise again from the dead the third day, and that repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in His name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. Acts 1:8 but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth.! And the primary task of missions is to take the gospel to the unbelieving nations (above).! And in the early church this was dominant; consider that in all three of Paul s journeys, the preaching of the Word and the gospel was central: First journey Acts 13:5, 32-39ff, 46-47 Second journey Acts 15:35; 16:4; 17:22-30 Third journey Acts 18:28; 19:1-5, 8, 20; 20:25, 27 (which explains both his evangelistic work and the ongoing work of the church). Mission expansion was about the proclamation of the gospel and the development of the biblical church in those places. This is even true of Paul s imprisonment in Rome Acts 28:23, 28-31 (to the Jew and then the Gentile).! So as we think about missions, we are thinking particularly about the spread of the gospel to the nations. And by that statement, we are also intentionally excluding things like social justice from missions. Social causes might be compassionate and the legitimate work of individual believers, but they are not the task of the church (as an entity) and they are not missions. Missions is always about the gospel and the development and growth of churches. page 3 / 7
Missions is CROSS-cultural! One of the problems of the word missions is that it is not a NT word (the only time it appears in the NASB is in Acts 12:25 and it is the word service or ministry (from which we get deacon ). The word mission actually comes to us from the Latin word mitto, meaning, I send. The Latin word is closely related to the NT word apostello to send ( apostle ). While the noun is virtually always used of the office of apostle, the verb is used more broadly about sending people with a particular message (Rom. 10:15; 1 Cor. 1:17).! And as we have considered how missions began in the NT, we have come to see that going is inherent in missions (Mt. 28:18-20; Acts 1:8).! Missions is not what we do when we stay; missions is what we do when we go. While we do ministry locally that is distinct from missions. Ministry to the body of Christ is what we do inside the church and evangelism is what we do outside the church and missions is evangelistic and church-building work we do outside the borders of our culture.! So missions is both related to and different from evangelism. It is related to evangelism in that both are attempts to proclaim the gospel to unbelievers. It is different from evangelism in that it is conducted in cross-cultural settings (generally, foreign countries, though occasionally different cultural settings within one s home country).! I appreciate what one book says about missions: A missionary may be seen as an ambassador sent on a mission for the King. This does not suggest a special rank, but a unique role. [Spitters & Ellison, loc. 954.]! Additionally, a missionary is one who is sent. As one writer noted, a missionary is not one who has gone out, but one who has been sent out. [Peters, Let the Missionary be a Missionary. ] In other words, the church has identified, equipped, charged, and sent the missionary to his task. He does not operate alone, but under the authority of the local church.! The going and sending is of individuals or groups, but by the church (the church oversees the sending of missionaries); it s the task of churches to identify, equip, and send missionaries. Consider the three missionary journeys of Paul Acts 13:1-3 the men who were sent were spiritual and were sent by the Spirit and church Acts 15:22, 33 notice that in both verses that they were sent by the church after the church had identified them as being equipped and able for the task. (Cf. also 16:4) Acts 18:27 while Paul had a desire to go, it was only after the church confirmed his desire that they sent him.! Every missionary endeavor involves no less than two aspects: 1) someone is sent (to another place) by the church; 2) the one sent is given a specific task with the gospel page 4 / 7
2. Why is Missions Important? God is a MISSIONARY God! We love and want to do missions because God loves and does missions. God s plan for humanity was for mankind to live with Him for all eternity.! From the time of the first sin, His plan has been redemption (Gen. 3:21ff).! We see that plan being worked until His final redemption of the redeemed (Rom. 8:28-30; Rev. 22:1-5, 14-17). So since the Garden of Eden, God has been executing His missionary plan for the redemption of His people Israel, and the nations. God has been exalting His name in the nations so that men will be saved from His wrath and out of their sin and learn to delight in Him. Even when God identified and called His chosen people Israel to be His own covenant people, He still had a passion to reach the Gentiles with salvation and called the Israelites to be His ambassadors to the nations (Gen. 12:3; Is. 12:4; Jer. 1:5; 3:17; Lk. 2:31-32; Acts 28:28; Rom. 9:17; 15:9; Rev. 5:9; 14:1-6; 22:2).! God s missionary plan is also being worked out until the final condemnation of the unredeemed (Rev. 20:11-15). The missionary plan includes a message that those who reject Him will be condemned for that rejection (more on that in a moment).! God is committed to missions and has been since the first sin of mankind. And aren t you glad He is committed to missions! (We would be rightly under His condemnation without it.) Christ s command to the 12 is a command to ALL believers! Christ s fundamental call to the apostles to take the message of salvation to the nations is a call that is for all believers (Eph. 6:19-20; Col. 4:5-6; 2 Tim. 4:5).! And of course the most well known passage is Mt. 28:18-20. I always assumed that Jesus was speaking there to only the 11 disciples. But notice to whom the invitation to that event went: It was given to the disciples in the Upper Room on Thursday night (Mt. 26:32) It was given to the women and disciples (Mt. 28:7 And it was given to my brothers (Mt. 28:10). That s an interesting phrase. Since the angel invited the 11 in v. 7, it seems that Jesus is using it differently. And Jesus only uses it one other time in the NT (recorded in 3 places): Mt. 12:48-50. My brothers refers to all believers. It seems likely to me that Jesus has waited for this declaration on the mountain until a large number of his followers could be gathered together to hear him. Remember that Paul said that after the resurrection Jesus appeared to more than 500 on one occasion (1 Cor. 15:6)? It is very possible that this event in Mt. 28:18-20 is that occasion.! And as someone has noted, the command for missions would still be a command even if we didn t have Matthew 28 page 5 / 7
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 argument for foreign missions is not any word of Christ's, it is Christ Himself, and what He reveals and signifies. It is in the very being and character of God that the deepest ground of the missionary enterprise is to be found. [Speer, quoted by Peters in Missions in Biblical Perspective. ]! What John Piper said in Brothers, We Are Not Professionals is so helpful: Some of us saw more clearly than ever that if we loved God s fame and were committed to magnifying His name above all things, we could not be indifferent to world missions.! Not caring about missions is not an option. Loving missions and doing missions and supporting missions and sending missionaries are the only options. Hell is HORRIBLE and eternity is LONG! Hell is horrible (Mt. 13:41-42; Lk. 16:19-30).! Eternity is long (2 Thess. 1:9; 2 Pt. 2:9; 3:7-8; Rev. 14:10).! When we don t care about evangelism (local) and missions (international), it means that we either don t believe that Hell is horrible and long, or we don t care that it is.! In his book, Heaven, Randy Alcorn makes this correct statement about Hell: If we understood Hell even the slightest bit, none of us would ever say, Go to Hell. It s far too easy to go to Hell. It requires no change of course, no navigational adjustments. We were born with our autopilot set toward Hell. It is nothing to take lightly Hell is the single greatest tragedy in the universe.! We don t care for this reality, but we must remember that God is glorified in the condemnation of the wicked unbelievers (Dt. 32:4; Ps. 99:3-4; Rom. 1:18-19; 2:1-4; 2 Thess. 1:6).! At the same time, He does not delight in the death of the wicked (Ps. 81:13-14; 103:8; Is. 48:9, 17-18; Ezk. 18:23, 31-32; 33:11; Mt. 23:37; 2 Pt. 3:9).! Because we hate Satan and we hate Hell, we are compassionate toward those who are dying.! And because we desire to see individuals from every tribe and tongue and people and nation delight in God (Rev. 5:9), we are committed to taking the gospel message to them. There is only ONE gospel! There is only one gospel and only one means of eternal salvation from God and His wrath Jesus Christ (Jn. 14:1-6; Acts 4:12; 17:30-31; Rom. 4:1-5; Eph. 2:8-9).! And because there is only one gospel and only one means of salvation, how will the unregenerate of the nations hear unless believers go and tell them (Rom. 10:12-15)? This evangelistic and mission endeavor is a command for the believer (Mt. 28:18-20), but it is also a joy for the believer (Rom. 10:15). page 6 / 7
! There is only one gospel and only one means of hope in this world. And friends, we live in a hopeless world. Satan wants it that way and is working to make people hopeless. Paul tells us that he has blinded the minds of the unbelieving, so they might not see the light of the glory of Christ (2 Cor. 4:7). He blinds them by distorting the truth of Christ (2 Cor. 11:14) and making them hopeless so that he can destroy and devour them (1 Pt. 5:8). We must feel that weight and that weight must compel us to go to not only to our neighbors, but also to the nations.! And brothers and sisters, there is only one message that will free them from that hopelessness. It is Christ and the cross. John Piper was right missions exists because worship doesn t. And our privilege is to take the message of the only one worth worshipping to the nations. Only that will make hopeless men hopeful again. CONCLUSION: I have loved preaching the book of Romans like nothing else I ve preached. I have enjoyed and loved every book I ve preached. But Romans stands apart. And it is that way for many of you, too. But what we are prone to forget is that Romans isn t primarily a theological book (though we think of it that way). It s a book about evangelism. And even more specifically, it s a book about missions. The reason that Paul wrote this book was because of his missionary interest. He was compelled by the gospel to take that message to people who did not know it. And having done that through Asia Minor and much of Europe, he then wanted to take the gospel even further west to Spain. But he needed funding, so he wrote to the Roman church and asked them for funding (15:20-29); and to prove to them that he was worthy of funding that what he preached and taught and believed and lived were biblically true he wrote this letter. So Romans isn t fundamentally about theology or the gospel or the spiritual life as much as it is about missions. So if you love Romans (and I know you do), then you also must love missions. You must love that Christ died for His enemies; and He died for His enemies among the nations. And it is our privileged task to take that gospel to the nations. That s the what and why of missions. And we love and long to do missions. On a more personal level, this has been another hard week in our church body, with Mike Burns death. As I contemplated his circumstances that led to that death, I also listened to a new song by Andrew Peterson, Is He Worthy? It is a song that reminds us of the sorrow of the world and the hopelessness in the world (that even believers sometimes feel). And it reminds us of the only hope we have. Because Christ is worthy, we go to the nations. Listen to and read the words as we close, and then I will pray. BENEDICTION: Jude 24-25 page 7 / 7