God's Mission and Our Talent

Something occurred to me as I was preparing my sermon this week. God's mission is accomplished (saving people from their sins) largely through our time, talents, and treasure. God uses us as His instruments with the time, talent, (skills, abilities, and gifts) and treasure that He has given us. We do not have the ability to do any of this apart from Christ. He is the one who gives us all this according to our abilities and expects us to multiple them accordingly.

These gifts that He gives us are bigger than we can imagine or think. In the parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14-30), Jesus uses the talent (a unit of money in those days worth about $400,000) to make a point that He is far more generous than we can think or imagine. He gives one fellow 5 talents ($2M), another 2 talents ($800k) and the last one, one talent ($400K). Metaphorically, He is communicating that He give us an amazing amount of stuff (desires, intelligence, gifts, abilities, skills, critical thinking, etc.) far more than what we think we have to do His work.

He expects us to increase what He has given to us through effort, perseverance, and passion for what we are doing, anything less doesn't cut the mustard. For there will come a day when He will ask each of us what we did with all the stuff He that has given us. How will you answer Him?

Shooting Ourselves in the Foot

We can learn a great deal from the latter stages of Solomon's life. Solomon was David's son who was one of the richest and wisest men in the world. He built God's temple and ruled Israel during a time of unprecedented peace and wealth creation. It was common during that period of time that when nations traded goods and services, they also offered their women as part of the deal. Solomon received hundreds of foreign women and loved about 1000 of them.

Knowing the softness of a man's heart for a woman, God specifically instructed the Israelites not to marry or be with foreign women because they will "surely" turn the Israelite men's hearts after their gods. As many of us know, men have a difficult time not being unduly influenced by women. Soon Solomon began building temples in honor of these "gods" to please his women despite God commanding him to discontinue these relationships.

God finally had enough and ripped Solomon's kingdom away from him by raising up adversaries. God eventually divided the kingdom into two...10 tribes to the north and 2 tribes to the south after Solomon's death.

As we look at this in the context of God's mission, we see that God expects us to finish as we started. If we don't because we moved away from him, he will simply let us go our own way and he will raise someone else to do his will. God's plan will not be held captive by any human being. If we become obstinate to His will for our lives, He will find someone else to carry out His plan and we lose out on the blessing that He freely gives to those who obey Him.

Power Over Fear

Can even the most unfortunate situations serve to advance the mission of God? Philippians 1 gives us evidence that it can. Paul was writing from a Roman jail to the church in Philippi when he writes this: "I want you to know brothers, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel, so that it has been known throughout the entire imperial guard and to all the rest that my imprisonment is for Christ. And most of the brothers having become confident in the Lord by my imprisonment are much more bold to speak the word without fear." (1:12-14)

Paul didn't let his circumstances stop him from proclaiming the gospel and being a cog in God's wheel as God fulfills his mission. In fact, he saw his circumstances as a way to advance God's mission to groups of people that would otherwise may not hear the gospel...the prison guards.

Not only that, but his boldness in difficult circumstances gives others courage to be bold as well. Prison is used as a deterrent to modify behavior. If Paul was thrown into prison for preaching, he was demonstrating that the threat of prison is no match for God and His gospel. The gospel would advance regardless even to those administrating his sentence.

The power of the gospel remains the same today as in Paul's time...so the question becomes what deters us from advancing God's mission? Examine yourself, give your fears to God and let God work through you to advance His mission. There is nothing powerful enough on earth to deter God, even your fears and anxieties.

Instruments in the Redeemer's Hands

So is the title of Paul David Tripp's book on helping others through difficult times in life. It is also used in Acts 9 - albeit in a different way. God tells Ananias that Paul is His chosen instrument "to carry my name before the Gentiles" (v. 15)

God continues to march on to accomplish His mission of bringing salvation to the ends of the earth. At the time Paul was just the latest human that He was going to use to to accomplish His mission. As we will see in the the coming days, God used Paul in the a variety of contexts crossing national boundaries and cultures to redeem His people.

God uses us in a similar way today. We are all ambassadors of Him who have relationships with others across many different segments of society. This is most readily seen for those of us who work in large offices or institutions like hospitals. In work places like this we see the economic and ethnic diversity from the support staff to the executives and everyone in between.

God puts us in places with our co-workers, neighbors, friends, and family so that He can accomplish His mission through us...for we are instruments in the Redeemer's hands.

Another Aspect of What God Does

As God marches through time accomplishing His mission, "He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds." (Psalm 147:2) This is a way that God shows up in people's lives to demonstrate that He is a living God and continues to build on His testimony of who He is and what He can do.

That is to say, many folks from every generation can testify to God's love, grace, mercy, provision, and comfort because of the work that He has done in their lives. He is the true and living God who is abundant in power and infinite in understanding...one whose compassions are new every morning. This is life transformational stuff that encourages our hearts when we hear how God has entered into a someone's life and transformed it.

This could also be used as part of our testimony as we describe to others how God has worked in our lives and what He means to us.

Let's praise God today for how He has healed us and ask Him to strengthen us to tell others about the marvelous works of our Lord and Savior.

How God Advances His Mission Part 2

It's interesting that God uses people like us to accomplish His mission. He promised that the Israelites would have their own land and then He used them to fulfill His promise. In Joshua 10 and 11, the Israelites are taking the promised land one tribe at a time by utterly destroying each of them. What's interesting is that the Israelites are not defeating these tribes under their own power, but by God's power who has gone before them. (10:8) Couple this fact with the commands that God had given the Israelites in the last part of Deuteronomy and the first of Joshua that they take the promised land and you have God telling the Israelites what to do and then going before them to clear the path so that they may be successful.

We find the same pattern in the New Testament. Jesus commands believers to go and make disciples (Matt. 28) and then we observe that all the way through the book of Acts that He went before them to clear the path so that they could make disciples.

The same holds true today. God has given us a clear mandate to make disciples and He goes before us to clear a path so that we can. He is divinely turning hard hearts into soft ones ready to receive the Gospel and trust Christ in each of our cities on a daily basis.

Joshua was Moses' right hand man for many years and when he took over for Moses after Moses' death God told him on different occasions to "be strong and courageous" and "do not fear" but do as I told you and live according to the way that I have told your forefathers and I will give you success.

It's helpful to be reminded that God is with us as He was with Joshua and that we have nothing to fear because God has gone before us to transform our cities through Christ. So be of good cheer and make a difference in someone life today...it may be an eternal difference. God is with you!!!

A Missional Imperative

There is a consistent pattern throughout Scripture regarding God fulfilling His mission. He always goes before His people in order to secure His victory. In Joshua 3, God tells Joshua that the ark of the covenant must go into the Jordan river first before the people can cross the swollen river. (At the time the ark was the dwelling place of God on earth.) Joshua tells the Israelites that this act will let them know that the Lord is with them and that He will deliver on His promise. As the priests who are carrying the ark enter into the water the overflowing waters recede, the river bed dries, and about 600,000 Israelites walk through the Jordan River...dry.

The point we should consider in the context of our cities is that in order for us to see God at work, the Lord must go before us. We can not go before Him. We must seek His will, purpose, and timing, not ours. We must wait on Him and not rush off before Him. We must remember that His timing is perfect, ours is not. This is the only way that we will see God fulfilling His mission. Let's all seek the Lord first as we seek to transform our cities for Christ.

God's Mission Transcends the Generations

This maybe a "duh" to many of you, but as I was reading through Deuteronomy 33 this morning the Bible makes an obvious point: God's mission transcends the generations. In the last paragraph of this chapter God tells Moses to go up on the mountain of Abarim and look across to the land of Canaan which God is going to give to the people of Israel, but Moses will not be going with them, for he will die on the mountain.

In the prior chapter Joshua was named to succeed Moses in another example of generational change. Today, there are many churches that have long histories (some have 200+ years of history) as they have passed on what Christ is doing in their communities to the next generation. Undoubtedly, this will cause some tension because the generations may have different ideas on the ABC's of ministry. Sadly, this diverts energy from what the real mission is: going in our neighborhoods and communities, by the grace and power of God and letting God use each of us as His instruments to transform our cities.

Just think for a moment if the Israelites were so bogged down in what to do about the ABC's of ministry that they never crossed the Jordan River to claim the promised land. They would have certainly missed out on God's blessing as God would raise up another generation to fulfill His promise. Regardless of which church you are currently attending, please be mindful that God's mission will transcend your lifetime; that His mission is about Him - His glory, His word, and His love - it is not about us; and that we are to be used by Him to transform our communities.

By being mindful of these things and practicing them, we will have taken the focus off of ourselves and placed it squarely on God by sacrificing our individual preferences. In turn, God will continue to work through your church body as you pass His mission to the the next generation.

Living in Accordance with God's Mission

People, especially young people, today can smell phoniness and hypocrisy very quickly. They yearn for authenticity, reality, and truth. They tell us not to say one thing and do another. They tells us that our hearts have to align with our words, attitudes, and actions otherwise we will lose credibility with them fast.

Jesus addresses these issues in Matthew 6 by teaching that we need to "beware of practicing righteousness before other people in order to be seen in by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven." It seems like the quickest way to lose credibility with others and God is to do something under a false premise. In Matthew 6 Jesus provides three examples where this plays itself out: giving, praying, and fasting. In each of these examples, it appears that the person giving, praying, or fasting has the need to draw attention to oneself rather than to God. Jesus points out hypocrisy in this type of behavior.

How can God work in people's lives who don't know Him, if we are continually drawing attention to ourselves and away from God? What does say about our hearts? Are they on board with God's agenda or our own? It seems that throughout Scripture the message is to lay low (position of humility) and look high (directing our affections and thoughts to them, not ourselves).

Let's examine ourselves and root out our behaviors that others can sniff out as not being true and authentic toward God. Let's live in accordance to God's mission.

How We Fit Into God's Plan

Being missional is more than just the lastest buzz word and craze in Christianity. It is at the very heartbeat of God. God is on a mission to fix what was broken in the Garden of Eden. God makes it clear that in order to be in His presence you must be pure and spotless (holy). That is to say you can't make any mistakes in thoughts, words, or deeds (you can't sin)...that you must obey all of God's commands all of the time.

Now we know that is an impossible task, even the atheist will confess that we all make mistakes, so how is God going to fix what was broken? Enter His Son, Jesus.

About 700 years before Jesus was born, the prophet Isaiah wrote:

"I will make you as a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth." (Isaiah 49:10 ESV)

This verse predicts that God will make someone (Christ) the way to salvation. Jesus testifies twice to this very thing, once in John 8:12 (ESV) "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life." and in John 9:5 when He healed the blind man. "As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world." (ESV)

Not only that, but when the angel appeared to Joseph in Matthew 1, he told Joseph that Mary "will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for will save his people from their sins." (1:21 ESV)

God has made a way to fix what was broken in the Garden of Eden, He name is Jesus. But God's mission has not stopped there, in some respects it has just begun. The second part of Isaiah 49:10 is just as important as the first: "that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth." He needs a way to distribute His missional story and this is where we come into the picture. Now, He can accomplish his mission any way He wants, but He as chosen people like you and me to distribute the story through word (proclaiming the Good News) and deed (loving and serving others as ourselves).

We are a vital part of how God is going to redeem His people. As we look at our cities today and recognize that many of the younger generations don't know a thing about the God of the Bible, we have to think like missionaries in order to engage them. In many ways that starts off by getting to know them and their concerns, finding common interests, and building friendships before bringing up anything spiritual. At some point, God will have laid the ground to have a honest and forthright discussion about the importance of Jesus in many of those relationships. Remember, He is on a mission to spread His salvation "to the end of the earth" and He will not rest until He accomplishes His mission.

Salvation To The Ends of the Earth

Why is Morningside so intent about being missional? Because God is intent about being missional as He makes it unmistakably clear in a prophesy about His Son in Isaiah 49:10.

"I will make you as a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth." (ESV)

"I will make you" is a clear promise of God's intent to reach the far corners of the earth with the Good News. Not only that but when we look at Acts 1:8 as Jesus charges his disciples,

"...and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth." (ESV)

we begin to see God's progressive revelation and His ultimate plan. Today, we are a part of this plan, witnessing the word and deed of His Good News in each of our communities. May we keep in mind that we are a small part of the greater plan who will work together to accomplish the plan; that by our love and tolerance of outsiders (think woman at the well) the light of Jesus will drown out the darkness in our cities; and that people will see our hearts transformed and healed, thus giving them hope that theirs may as well.

God is on a Mission - Don't Lose Heart

God is on a mission and His timing is not our timing. This often troubles our hearts when we don't see God working like we think He ought. Because of our limited perspective on God's larger plan (that is to say that we can only see what we can see), there are times we get discouraged. Yet, God doesn't. He continually reassures us in Scripture that no one is like Him, that He has made a promise and He will fulfill it, and that we can attest to His mighty acts. (Isaiah 44)

Not to be trite, but God is in firm control and His plans will not be thwarted. He will be victorious and we have the privilege of being used by Him to that end. The next time that we are discouraged because we are not seeing the results we anticipated, may we be reminded of these simple truths and may we know that these truths are capable of soothing our troubled hearts and encouraging our wills to keep on keeping on.