Mission Is...
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John 17:13-23: “But now I am coming to you, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. 14 I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. 15 I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. 16 They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. 17 Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. 18 As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. 19 And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth. 20 I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, 21 that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22 The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, 23 I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.”
This morning we want to continue working off of the metaphor of a three-legged stool. The legs are Gospel, community and mission. Without having all three, a church will be either visionless, cold, or confused because all three bring clarity to one another.
Much like a mullet, Nascar and a mobile home can only really be understood together, so it is with Gospel, community and mission. Without the others, you’ll simply scratch your head in bewilderment.
The first week we looked at the Gospel, what it is and how we understand it, and last week and this week we are looking at what the Gospel does. How the Gospel creates community and of course today, how the Gospel motivates that community missionwards, or put another way, how the Gospel makes us for others both in and out of the church.
As we’ve mentioned each week, in explaining our convictions and practice, we don’t want to give the impression that there are no other legitimate ways that community and mission can be and are exercised outside of Kaleo. We simply want to make clear our convictions so that we’re clear as a family what we mean and what we’re calling you to if you call Kaleo home.
God is a Missional God
Just as we began our last two messages by looking at our Trinitarian God, we want to do the same this morning. We won’t understand mission if we don’t understand the Missional God we worship.
God created us for the express purpose of loving Him above everything else. In loving Him as a child loves His good father, we glorify Him. He created us so that we could enjoy Him and then enjoy everything that He’s made for us. He made us for relationship and community with Himself. On this basis, all other communities that we would create would be centered on the loving relationship we have with Him.
The King who made heaven and earth called us to be his vice-regents or co-managers of His creation. He wanted us to rule with Him over all things and shape it and mold it into a beautiful picture of His glory.
In fact, God called our first parents to be fruitful and multiply so that we could even enjoy a kind of co-creation as we multiply His children throughout the Earth. He could have simply made all beings by Himself, but instead He gives us the amazing responsibility and joyous experience of having children out of a loving relationship, to create out of an overflow of love for one another just like Him.
All living things He made were giving the seed to be able to reproduce. From plants and animals to humans, we were created with fruit-bearing capabilities. Healthy things grow and He wanted the earth to be a beautiful picture where He creates the canvas, colors, and brushes and we get to participate in painting it with Him.
Yet this was not enough for us. We sinned against Him through pride and self-centered obsession. We wanted to be equal with God instead of being like God. Instead of living in a relationship of sonship, we wanted to be peers. But there is only one God. And this God always intended for us to give ourselves away to Him in trust, in faith to Him as we believe His word and enjoy His loving reign over our lives because He’s good to us.
This sin broke us. It changed the dynamic of our relationship. Our rebellion caused death and destruction instead of life and reproduction. But God did not give up on us. He is holy and He is just but He’s also gracious and merciful. Even though we shattered the divine gift of relationship with Him in a perfect world, He is committed to making everything that is wrong right again.
He begins by rejecting Adam and Eve’s attempts to cover themselves by the work of their hands. Instead, this God comes looking for them. He initiates when He could have simply left them on their own, hiding in the dark.
He calls them out of the shadows and He not only initiates by coming for them, He also provides a way for them to be covered. This just and gracious God spills blood in the Garden by killing an animal and covering them. Their rebellion is great, but God’s grace is greater.
He makes a promise to Adam and Eve and tells them that one day her seed will give birth to a champion that will be sent to endure a strike of the enemy, but He will crush that enemy’s head.
God Continues His Misisonal Journey through
God begins to fulfill His mission by forming a special people, a people picked out of all other people, not because they were special but because God is gracious. He could have picked any people, but He wanted to create a people that knew Him and loved Him and would make His justice and grace known to all the nations.
But like their first parents, they repeatedly rebel and reject His gracious rule and instead go after false gods called idols.
But God is patient and righteous. He uses their rebellion to show off His character, and through their prophets He makes clear how His promise is going to be fulfilled.
God promises to restore the earth and save His chosen people through a unique person who would extend salvation to all the nations. This unique individual would be the suffering servant of God. He would be sent into this world on His Father’s mission and would come to do what no other man could do; bear the sin, suffer the punishment, and become the very sacrifice whose blood would be spilled so that we could be made whole.
This person would be God’s only Son. And His Son would perfectly come to seek and save that which was lost, to set captives free, give sight to the blind, comfort the brokenhearted and announce God’s victory and grace to all who turn from their rebellion and trust in Him again.
The OT closes with this promise:
Malachi 4:1-2: "For behold, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble. The day that is coming shall set them ablaze, says the LORD of hosts, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch. 2 But for you who fear my name, the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings. You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall.”
The sun of righteous will rise with healing in its wings. The Son of God is coming on His Father’s mission to bring freedom and judgment.
The Opening of the NT begins with the birth of the promised One
The promised one to Eve is the promised one born through Mary. Where Eve failed to turn from her own desires Mary gave herself willingly to her Father’s will.
This Son was sent on His Father’s mission empowered by the Holy Spirit. As the Son lived out His missional call, He was mocked, misunderstood, insulted, and eventually He would be betrayed and handed over to be killed.
The night before His murder He gathered His new community together to speak to them and to cleanse them. Up to chapter 12, the Gospel of John has moved quickly over the course of almost three years. But when we come to chapter 13, everything slows down and the remaining chapters are devoted to one week that Jesus spends with His disciples.
He begins in chapter 13 by cleansing them. The God-Man, Jesus Christ, humbles himself, gets on His knees and begins to wash the feet of His loved ones. He teaches them that this is the kind of humble service they’re to give to one another.
John 13:15: “For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you.”
And the reason their love in action is so important is because it will show the world that they truly are His disciples.
John 13:34-35: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. 35 By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
How they love one another will prove to the world that they are Jesus’ disciples.
Chapter 17 begins with Jesus praying to His Father right before He was betrayed. This prayer is from the heart of Jesus for His community.
And as He reflects on leaving His disciples and going to His Father He prays this for us:
John 17:13-23: “But now I am coming to you, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. 14 I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. 15 I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. 16 They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. 17 Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. 18 As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. 19 And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth. 20 I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, 21 that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22 The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, 23 I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.”
When someone is about to leave and you may never see them again you hang on their every word. Their words are often thoughtful and profound. Their wishes are clear and their words carry great weight. This prayer carries that same weight as He prepares for His death.
The Centrality of the Gospel Word in
Verses 13-14: “But now I am coming to you, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. 14 I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.”
Jesus began His public ministry by “proclaiming the Good news of God” (Mark 1:14). Jesus has given us His word and His word shapes us for mission. It is a word that not only convicts us and restores us but is a word to be shared.
The Gospel is news to be declared not simply advice to follow. If it were advice to follow then good works would be enough for us. And, no one would hate us. Why would the world hate us? Because in the Gospel word we are shown that we can never earn God’s favor by our goodness and that we are all responsible to Him and must give an account.
Men would rather have religion than have grace. It is the default mode of our heart. It is natural to be religious. But the Gospel word proclaimed to us and to others says “This is good news! You don’t have to earn favor, you don’t have to live up, you don’t have to have the right education, the right family, the right past or a bright future. All you have to do is declare bankruptcy and bring nothing to me and receive what I give to you by grace.” Righteousness is a gift to be received. God’s good news is a word to be shared and spoken.
If all we did was live righteous lives without speaking the Gospel, people would think God loves them by following our example alone.
The Centrality of Gospel Truth
Verses 15-19: “I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. 16 They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. 17 Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. 18 As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. 19 And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth.”
God’s desire is not to take us out of the world; it is that we would be kept from sin and Satan. We are not like the world because we are a people created by grace.
God’s gospel truth sanctifies us and makes us a holy and gracious people.
Jesus sends us into the world as He was sent into the world.
As we stated, our God is a missional God. The Father sends the Son, the Son sends the Spirit, and the Spirit fills the church and sends it on mission and power into the world. To be on mission is simply to be like our God. It’s to understand His redemptive plan. It’s to join in His story. It’s to see our identity as it truly is.
This is not some thing we do along with many other ministries. It is our very identity. It’s who we are. Everything we do is in the context of being sent on mission into the world.
There are no such things as missional Christians and non-missional Christians. There are only poor missionaries who bear no fruit or effective missionaries who bear fruit by God’s grace.
Our community is to hear Jesus’ words of being sent into the world as non-optional. If we have a difficulty with hearing this, it is more of a problem with Jesus’ prayer to His father and clear command to us than it is a missional church. There is no other church than a missional church. Its shape, leadership, structure, and practices are to be missional.
In each of the Gospel accounts, there are commissioning and sending statements.
Matthew 28:19-20: “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, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
Mark 16:15-16: “And he said to them, ‘Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation. 16 Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.’”
Luke 24:45-49: “Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, 46 and said to them, ‘Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, 47 and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. 48 You are witnesses of these things. 49 And behold, I am sending the promise of my Father upon you. But stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.’”
John 20:21-22: “Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.’ 22 And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’”
The Centrality of the Gospel Community in
Verses 20-23: "I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, 21 that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22 The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, 23 I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.”
He came to create a new humanity that would be saved from their sin. This new community would then take up our first parents’ calling to be fruitful and multiply., except this multiplication would not come simply through natural birth but through supernatural rebirth.
The Gospel word and the Gospel community are closely connected. The word creates and nourishes the community while the community embodies the Gospel word.
Jesus teaches us the centrality of the Gospel community as God’s great missional plan. At this crucial moment in the relationship of the disciples with Jesus, He is concerned for our love and unity.
They are to love and be one in the same way that He has loved them. And the gauge of that love will prove the cross.
This shows the watching world that Jesus was really sent by the Father, that we really are His disciples and the Gospel really is true.
The cross love of our community is primary. It is a witness to the truth of the Gospel so that others can see it and agree that it’s true. Not new programs or great planning, not our commitment to classes on doctrine (as important as that is), not innovation and planting (as crucial as that is), but simply love and unity. Our love and unity with one another are evangelistic and missional.
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