You are on a mission - 12/08/19
What do we know?
Halloween was a little over a month now. Depending on how old you are, you may have dressed up or helped a sister or brother with their costume. You then went out and got candy from a bunch of peoples houses, whom you may or may not know. Or, you waited till sister or brother got home and picked through their candy. In either instance there was a candy reward at the end of the night.
What all goes into a successful Halloween? Coming up with a good costume idea, finding the things you need to put the costume together, making the costume, putting on the costume, going out and getting candy, and coming home to count all you got. Lots of candy equals mission accomplished, right?
Think about it, on Halloween, you are on a mission. You go undercover and gather all the candy reward you can before returning to your everyday life. It is a short lived mission but you get an idea of what a mission is. It takes planning, preparation, and execution.
The Big Idea
As followers of Jesus, we are on a mission. We are on a mission because He put us on a mission.
What is the mission
What is a mission? A mission can be defined as an important goal or purpose that is accompanied by strong conviction; a calling or vocation.
Jesus put us on a mission and we know this mission as the Great Commission from Matthew 28:18-20. All the things we should be doing once we give Jesus our ‘Yes’ should be based within this command from Him. When we listen to or read this instruction from Jesus, what stands out? Is it the actions we are to do? There are three things it sounds like Jesus wants us to do. However, He told us to do just one thing which I’ll explain in a few minutes.
Before we talk about the one thing, I want us to rethink, meaning we change the way we think, how we see the mission. Usually when we hear mission we think about going on a trip to a different country to share the gospel and create new relationships. These are short-term mission trips. You also hear about people moving to a different country to become missionaries. Going on short-term mission trips and/or becoming a missionary are great, kingdom-serving things. But if we are going to rethink the mission, we understand those things are only parts of the mission.
I want us to think about our mission with a specific order in mind, starting with this: WHY do we have a mission? After you think about the mission beginning with WHY, follow it with HOW and with WHAT. There has to be a reason WHY we have a mission for us to even want to be on a mission. No WHAT or HOW of the mission has any meaning without the WHY of the mission. The WHAT and the HOW of our mission should only come after the WHY of our mission. This means when we go spend a week in a different country, that is a HOW of the mission. If you go live in a different country, that too is a HOW of the mission. Our mission as a servant of Jesus does not begin with a HOW or WHAT but with WHY.
So then what is the WHY? Jesus tells us in Matthew 22:37–38. He says, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment.” The greatest thing we can do is to love Jesus with everything we have. This is the WHY for all of our missions. Mine, yours, all of God’s children. When we get out of bed in the morning and dread the day, we remember the WHY. The WHY motivates us more in times of trial than it does when things are going well. Loving is easiest in good times but harder during challenges.
Let’s go back now and summarize the Great Commission as WHY, HOW, WHAT.
WHY: Love and serve Jesus, following His instructions.
HOW: Going, baptizing, teaching.
WHAT: Make disciples.
Result: We have friends and neighbors connected to Jesus, not separated from Him. They love and serve Jesus, following His instructions.
Earlier I mentioned it sounded like Jesus gave us three things to do but it was just one. In the WHY, HOW, WHAT idea, that one thing becomes the WHAT. As you see above, the WHAT is to make disciples.
Preparing for the mission looks different when we put our WHY at the beginning of it. We love and want to serve Jesus and He said He will equip and prepare us.
Preparing for the mission
In Ephesians 2:10, Paul tells us, “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” Did you hear that? We who are saved have already started to be prepared. God has our preparation outlined for what He has planned for us to accomplish. You may think, “Hey, that’s great! Can we get that outline so we can help God out?” This would deny God the glory and make the work ours wouldn’t it?
When we did the discovery exercise recently you answered a few questions. Did you think by answering “What do you enjoy most” and “What are you afraid of most” would have anything to do with the preparation of your mission? Questions have a way of nudging us to provide insight on ourselves that we may not give on our own or understand how they fit into our discipleship. Jesus definitely knows this, of course, as God. Jesus is a question asker. Jesus knows the answer. Jesus wants us to discover and understand what He has in store for us so we go and do it. We aren’t inventing things to do and getting them approved by Jesus. He has them planned and revealing them to us when he has prepared us to do them.
John 21:15–19 shows us an instance how Jesus gets information out of us in order to prepare us for the mission. Here Jesus is with Peter, giving him clear instructions, but the instructions aren’t the only focus of this conversation. Why is Jesus asking Peter basically the same question multiple times? Three times to be exact. Who remembers what Peter did the night Jesus was betrayed and taken to Pilate? He denied Jesus three times, just as Jesus foretold. Jesus is asking Peter three times to restore him, repairing him per se. Peter was a DIY disciple but could not DIY his relationship with Jesus. Only Jesus could fix it and this is what Jesus is doing here.
The greatest preparation, in my opinion, Jesus does for us is to show us how we have to truly depend on Him. Jesus did this for Peter by the fire, showing mercy to restore him. Go back to the beginning of John 21 and read verses 1-14. It sounds like a great fishing story, right? But here is what is going on. Remember, all these guys are professional fisherman. It is what they do for a living. Before Jesus showed up, they had not caught any fish. They had been out all night and just as the day was beginning, Jesus shows up and BAM they have fish. Jesus shows us His majesty not only in great miracles, like raising Lazarus, but also in what we would see as trivial (fishing). He is the God of all and can prepare us for all He wants for us to accomplish.
Going, Baptizing, Teaching
Reading Ephesians 2:10 again, let’s focus on the part of the verse “created in Christ Jesus for good works”. Remember our HOW from our mission? Here it is. Going, baptizing, and teaching are all good works Jesus has called us to and sends us out to do. These works don’t save us but show we have been saved; don’t forget that.
This excerpt from a commentary on Matthew’s gospel gives us a fantastic summary on our HOW:
“Disciple making is not simply what happens in a classroom for an hour or so each week; it's what happens when we walk through life together as a community of faith, modeling for one another how to follow Christ. We show one another how to pray, how to study God's Word, how to grow in Christ, and how to lead others to Christ. This is what Christ's body is to be about.”
As our HOW, going, baptizing, and teaching can sound simplistic but does it need to be complicated? No. But since it is a HOW it won’t always look the same. Going can be to your next door neighbor or a discussion with a person in the frozen dessert aisle at the grocery store. Being on a mission can be anywhere you are or directed to a specific place God is calling yo to go. Then there’s teaching. This calls us to be prepared. How’s your Bible knowledge? You able to teach in the frozen dessert aisle at the grocery store?
Now what?
This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to our mission. Hours can be spent talking through details on prepping and going. Hours should be spent talking through those as you are being discipled. A couple hours on a Wednesday night and Sunday morning hearing messages does not represent the full picture of discipleship. If you had a 1,000 piece puzzle which represented your discipleship, Wednesday and Sunday would only be a couple of pieces. How do we fill in the rest of the puzzle? Only by being in the Word, relying on the Spirit to reveal the pieces to put the puzzle together over time.
What does scripture tell us?
Matthew 28:18-20
And Jesus came and said to them, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age."
Ephesians 2:10
For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
John 15:8
“By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples.”
Matthew 7:21–23
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’
John 21:15–19
When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” He said to him, “Feed my lambs.” He said to him a second time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” He said to him, “Tend my sheep.” He said to him the third time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” Peter was grieved because he said to him the third time, “Do you love me?” and he said to him, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep. Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were young, you used to dress yourself and walk wherever you wanted, but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will dress you and carry you where you do not want to go.” (This he said to show by what kind of death he was to glorify God.) And after saying this he said to him, “Follow me.”