God’s Character Requires Him to be Missional

This morning we conclude our series on the attributes of God. We have established that He is Infinite, Immutable, Holy, Merciful, Sovereign, Relational, and Jealous. Many lists and lots of different words are used to describe God, but I would argue that almost all the aspects of God’s character tie into one or another of these categories. I’ve tried to cover the totality of God’s character.

Today we add the final piece to the description of the character of God, one which is required based on all the other character traits. This last trait describes the actions of God, recognizing that He is a God of order and purpose rather than one of chaos or of just letting “whatever” happen. Today we will see that God is Missional. Some of you may not be familiar with this word, but I will show you how it best describes this final aspect of who God is and how He works consistently for our good and to achieve His desired outcome.

Let’s talk about this word “mission” for a moment. It can be used in a variety of ways, but they all come back to the same concept: having a purpose to achieve.

“Mission” Defined

1. A pre-established and often self-imposed objective or purpose. God chooses His own mission. It comes from inside Him as opposed to an assignment or task that comes from someone else. Also, it has been pre-decided. God is not haphazardly choosing what to do from moment to moment; He has an end goal in mind.
2. To send on or entrust with a mission. A second meaning is “to send out.” You often hear the phrase “sent on a mission.” (Make a note of that; we’ll come back to it later.)

In Discovering the Mission of God, Christopher J. H. Wright says: The whole Bible renders to us the story of God’s mission through God’s people in their engagement with God’s world for the sake of God’s purpose for the whole of God’s creation. Mission is not just one of a list of things that the Bible happens to talk about, only a bit more urgently than some. Mission is, in that much abused phrase, what it’s all about.

To show how true that is, let’s take a walk through history. I want you to imagine the time, before our time began, when God existed in three persons before the creation of anything else. These three persons were fully powerful, holy, filled with love, relationally connected, and in perfect harmony.

God was experiencing something so beautiful and wonderful that He simply wanted to share it. If you have a favorite activity or special place you love very much, it’s even better if you get to share it. For me, that would be taking the youth to Wisconsin Dells or the Badlands. I’ve heard that hunters love a chance to take kids out hunting for the first time. Sharing your favorite things heightens the experience.

In the same way, God wanted to share what He had, and so He CREATED – first, a perfect home, then life of all kinds to fill that home, and finally Adam and Eve, the first of humanity. God shared His breath and His very image with these first people! Things were going splendidly – for a moment.

Genesis chapter 3 tells us that Adam and Eve decide they want to be MORE like God. They are deceived by the serpent and eat from the ONLY tree in the garden they have been told NOT to eat from.

In that moment, God’s intended plan (from our perspective) took a nasty turn. I don’t think God was surprised when this happened. Remember, He sees time differently than we do and knows the past from the future. But the plan for a perfect experience with God, filled with peace and harmony, was forever changed.

Yet we see that even in this moment, God already had a pre-established plan to get things back on track. Look at the curse God puts on the serpent who deceived Adam and Eve:

Genesis 3:15 – And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.

You see, even this world-altering event wouldn’t derail the purpose of God. He was still to share the blessings of Himself and the perfect experience of love and holiness with His creation in an incredible and unadulterated home. Now, however it was going to take a NEW heaven and a NEW earth.

The God Who Sends

With the perfect relationship between God and humanity now broken, God was on a rescue mission to move everything toward His final goal. He could accomplish His goals by sending others on mission to move all of humanity toward His desired end. Remember, the verb form of “mission” is “to send.” The rest of the Bible is a story of God sending. The Bible speaks of God “sending” over 200 times. He truly is a God who sends.

God Sent Abram to the Promised Land.

Genesis 12:1-3 – 1The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you. 2I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. 3I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”

God Sent Moses to Free Israel.

Exodus 3:9-10 – “9And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. 10So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.”

God Sent Prophets to Warn.

Isaiah 6:8 – Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I. Send me!”

God Sent John the Baptist to Prepare.

Malachi 3:1 – I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me.

God Sent Jesus to Save.

John 3:17 – For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.

God Sent the Holy Spirit to Empower.

John 14:26 – But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.
Acts 1:8 – But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you.

The rest of the New Testament is the story of how the Apostles built up God’s church and how the power of the Spirit worked through people to establish more churches and spread the good news that Jesus saves.

Now God sends His church into the world. We join this mission of God as part of the church. One interesting way to look at this is: The church doesn’t have a mission; God’s mission has a church. This means it’s not up to each church to come up with its own wild ideas for what should be its focus. God pre-established our mission; all we do is fine tune it.

Let’s go back to Acts 1:8 and read the complete verse: 

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

We have a mission to share Jesus with everyone, both near and far. Yes, churches do a lot of activities like fellowship events, teaching, and community events like movie night and the water war. But all of it falls under the big umbrella of God’s mission to help connect people with Jesus.

We share Jesus with others in two primary ways: through Word and through Deed.

Word – People need to hear the Gospel message. Traditionally this was called evangelism. In the 1980s and 1990s, church people talked about evangelism all the time. But now, most churches talk about being missional because it captures the evangelistic nature of what we are called to do as the church: telling people about Jesus, but also living out the Gospel through our actions.

Deed – When our lifestyles – and how we help the hungry and the hurting – display an alternative set of values to the world, we are allowing our deeds to point people to Jesus. The “other half” of our mission is sharing Jesus with the world. For some people, a message about a saving God from a person who doesn’t lift a finger to help others isn’t a very convincing message.

It’s because of this message from Jesus that as a church we seek to be a family of faith for the next generation. For the most part, the older generation in our community has at least heard about Jesus and the Christian Gospel. But here’s the crazy thing: there are many, many young people in our community who have not heard about any of this! They are completely unaware. That’s why we need to make them our mission. And it’s because of that mission to reach the next generation that I think the sanctuary renovation is so important.

Everything we do as a church has a purpose, just like our missional God. I don’t lead events or activities that don’t have a targeted purpose, and I feel the sanctuary renovation has a targeted purpose. I’ve seen what happens when churches invest time and money in enhancing their facilities to better suit the expectations of younger people. These churches tend to see an increase in attendance, baptisms, and impact for the Kingdom.

And I want that for First Baptist. In the same way this facility has served hundreds of young families over the past 170 years, I want us to be set up to serve young adults and young families for the next 30 to 50 years.

Conclusion

Way too many people see God as distant and uninvolved. They don’t think He cares what is going on in our world. Or, worse, they see all the chaos in our world and think our God is a God of chaos. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Our God is not a God of chaos, but of purpose. Satan wants to bring chaos and shatter our peace.

Every act of God has a purpose it seeks to accomplish. In fact, consider the chaos Satan seeks to bring into your life. God meets it with His grace and redeems it for His glory and your good.

Romans 8:28 – And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

Ever since the perfect peace experienced in the Garden of Eden was shattered, God has been on a mission to redeem and restore our relationship with Him. From beginning to end, He is a God who wants to bless others, and He wants us to experience what He has always known since before the beginning of time.

As we sit in the middle of the story, we have the opportunity to join the mission of God as the sent ones who go near and far sharing Jesus in word and deed. We do it all with one eye toward heaven, knowing that God’s mission to bring us all home to a new heaven and a new earth is just around the corner. His very nature guarantees it.