Mission and Ministry

[00:00:01] Speaker A: Okay, so it's been a couple of weeks, so we'll do a review in a second. But I have a question to start. What are some. We'll call it pre game rituals that you do? It doesn't have to be for a sport. Not everyone plays sports. But if you do anything, any sort of ritual, something you do to get ready for something else. Yes. [00:00:29] Speaker B: What? [00:00:32] Speaker A: Of what? Getting burned alive. No, no, no, no. Stop. [00:00:37] Speaker B: Stop. Being burnt alive like, by, like, a baseball team before, like, the championship game. Got her. [00:00:46] Speaker A: Okay. Okay. I never in a million years would have guessed I would hear that sentence. Okay, yes. You have something more normal. [00:00:57] Speaker B: I blast extremely loud music out of my bedroom. [00:01:02] Speaker A: Loud music. Okay. And that gets you ready for whatever you're getting ready for. Okay. Yeah, that's great. Yeah. [00:01:11] Speaker B: I do not play sports, but I do theater. [00:01:14] Speaker A: That's right. A shakedown. [00:01:19] Speaker B: And then you do it on your legs and you go four, three to one, and then you go down to one. [00:01:25] Speaker A: A shakedown. That sounds like a really fun. Really fun Levi music. And then I'll just, like, put on my baseball, like, uniform, like, really slowly. You played Mac DeMarco? Yes. [00:01:46] Speaker B: In my mind, I'll visualize my races, like, every part of it. The things that I have to work on in my races. [00:01:52] Speaker A: Like Lightning McQueen, sort of. Yeah. Yeah. I am speed. Well, you may. You didn't say you do the affirmations like he does, but. Yeah, maybe some people do that. Yeah. [00:02:05] Speaker B: What I do when I get ready for, like, a show, I practice like the weekend before, next day before the show with my friends. [00:02:14] Speaker A: Practice. [00:02:15] Speaker B: That's what I do. [00:02:17] Speaker A: Yeah. Nice. Nice. [00:02:18] Speaker B: My horse was like. He's like, oh, [00:02:26] Speaker A: The hor. The horse got really runny. David. I'm about to lift heavy in the gym. I'll envision myself lifting the weight first. Okay. Yeah, that's good. You have something? [00:02:37] Speaker B: I stretch before I run. [00:02:39] Speaker A: Okay. Boring. [00:02:42] Speaker B: Owen, when I have everything on, I'll, like, go outside and, like, grab a stick and I'll pretend it's a sword and I'll absolutely beat down our shed. [00:02:52] Speaker A: What does that prepare you for? War? [00:02:55] Speaker B: I just do it every time. [00:02:57] Speaker A: Every time. What, every what time? Oh, games. Okay, okay. I get you. [00:03:04] Speaker B: Lincoln, when I used to play football, tackle football, it was pretty obvious that when I got all my stuff on, I would stretch with my team. [00:03:15] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:03:15] Speaker B: Yeah. He said running. [00:03:20] Speaker A: Yeah. Ezra, before I lift weights, I'll wake up. [00:03:24] Speaker B: Yeah, that's nice. [00:03:25] Speaker A: That's nice. Okay, last one. Okay. Okay. Okay. Well, those are all very good. You know you can think of some. I always think of sports, but there are. We heard some examples of other, like shakedowns, other things we can do to get us ready. And, you know, we can think of iconic ones. I think of. I think of Ray Lewis if, you know, you know, I think of LeBron James, you know, just some iconic pre game ritual sorts of things. Now, all sorts of things I've done in my life, especially when I was an athlete, but when I played, probably the most important sport I ever played, when I played flag football as an elementary student, my friend and I, we would watch the speech from the movie 300. So if you've seen that, you know, it's hilarious. Partly because we were playing flag football. You know, why did we need to get that psyched up? Like we're about to go fight a battle with only 300 men, you know, I mean that. But we would watch it and it maybe would help us, but again, it was ridiculous. But, you know, I think what's helpful, especially some of those where you're kind of thinking and mentally preparing, physically preparing by stretching, it kind of just reminds you what you're about to do. You're thinking about it, what it's going to look like before you lift it, and that gets you ready to actually accomplish what you're going to do. So hopefully that's what we get from this lesson. I hope it kind of serves in that way for us to think and visualize what is the mission and ministry of the church. [00:05:13] Speaker B: How. [00:05:13] Speaker A: How's it going to work? And then we can be motivated by the Word to do that. So before we get into it, let's do our review. What is theology, Asher? [00:05:28] Speaker B: It's the study of God and how to be more like Him. [00:05:30] Speaker A: Good. And what doctrine are we studying? We've been doing it for a while, Connor. Well, that's the lesson we're going to cover, but kind of like what that. Oh, my goodness, Kellen, you guys are all over. Yeah. Doctrine of the church. And so we're covering the mission and ministry of the church as one of those kind of lessons underneath that. But what are the other lessons we've covered about the church? Yeah, worship. Yeah, we did that last time, Lincoln. [00:06:09] Speaker B: It's something like church doors. Church. [00:06:12] Speaker A: Church doors. Is that what you said or did I miss here? Membership. Yeah, I think we probably talked about that in a few different lessons. I mean, I know we did. That wasn't necessary. We talked about church discipline, which is tied to membership. So that's maybe what you're thinking Of. [00:06:30] Speaker B: No, I was talking about something like. You said something like windows. Something like church. Church offices. [00:06:38] Speaker A: Church offices. That was a different one. Yeah, it's a little different than membership, but, yeah, we talked about church offices. Yeah. Baptism. Yes. Church discipline. Yes. Marks, Purity and unity. Yeah. I think there's just one more. That's right. There we go. There we go. We got them. And so today we're doing mission and ministry. So the definition of this or the summary of this lesson is that the mission and ministry of the Church consists of its purposes and services focused on making disciples of all nations. The mission and ministry of the Church consist of its purposes and services focused on making disciples of all nations. So first point, first thing we want to affirm and believe is that the Church's mission is to make disciples of all nations. As we just said, the Church's mission is to make disciples of all nations. Now I want to ask, why would we think that the. So we're talking about, what does the Church do? What's its purpose? What's its mission in the world? And I'm saying, what is the mission? Why would we think that the mission of the Church is to make disciples of all nations. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So we can go there and read the full passage. So go to Matthew 28. So the answer is because the Bible tells us so, plain and simple. Let's go to Matthew 28, the very end of the book of Matthew. We're going to look at the last few verses. Okay, you guys there. Can someone read all of verses 18 to 20? [00:08:50] Speaker B: 18. [00:08:52] Speaker A: 20. Owen, you got it. [00:08:55] Speaker B: And Jesus came to them and said to them, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to you. 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 commanded you, and behold, I am with you always to [00:09:15] Speaker A: the end of the age. Good, good. So Jesus says, plain and simple, go and make disciples of all nations. Now, there are a lot of questions about what the mission of the Church is. It seems clear, you know, I'm giving you this verse. And so you might think, well, it's obvious is what you do. But there are many things that people might do, churches might do, Christians might do that we think are important. We would even say this is the Christian thing to do that don't necessarily seem like making disciples of all nations. So what about serving the poor, serving the hungry? What about transforming the culture or those sorts of missions? How do we think about those things? Are those things the mission of the church? [00:10:06] Speaker B: Yeah, they can be the means, but they shouldn't be the mission. [00:10:10] Speaker A: How can they be the means but not the mission? [00:10:13] Speaker B: If we're reaching out to the poor, it should be for the ultimate purpose of proclaiming the gospel through our works. [00:10:21] Speaker A: Yeah. So if we are serving the poor, we should keep in mind that we're doing it in order to make disciples even of those poor. Is that what you're saying? Yeah, I think that's a good way to think. Did someone else have their hand up? I thought I saw something. Yeah, I think that's. That's a good example. Now, you know, this kind of brings us to a quick application. So the first application is that the church should make the mission of the church the primary purpose of most things that it does. So the church should make the mission of the church the primary purpose of most things that it does. So I'm saying most things because we're going to inevitably to do things that may not fit perfectly into this mission. We want to the best of our ability to keep the mission of the church in mind, to make the things we do purpose towards that. And so we can serve the poor, but we want to make sure that we're using that as an opportunity to share the gospel whenever possible. But especially those things that we do that cost the church money. So if we're putting it in our budget, people are giving and money is going towards that, I think all of those should have disciple making purpose. But the reason I'm saying the primary purpose of most things, you know, we should keep the mission of the church in mind as the primary purpose of most things. Because sometimes we might do things, I think legitimately that aren't necessarily the mission of the church but are still okay for us to do. So if we go and we decide to clean up the adjacent neighborhood, mow all of their lawns, clean up trash, do that sort of thing completely for free, and that's it. I think that's fine and good. That helps the neighborhood around us to say, hey, that church, they're kind, they represent Christ well, they're humble, they're generous. And having a good reputation for the church, I think is important. But especially when we can and especially when we are giving money towards it, I think we should have something in there where we are specifically leveraging the gospel. So you could imagine doing that, serving houses and seeking to have conversations when possible. But sometimes you might just be doing work for the sake of generosity. And I Think that's okay too. You know, we can think of how a lot of times in our youth, nights in the summer, we may not open a Bible. But I think those can even serve the purpose of discipling by promoting fellowship, promoting a welcoming atmosphere to outsiders that then serve disciple making throughout the year. People come in, they might feel comfortable, they make friends or friendships deepening, and that helps us throughout the year when we are meeting in small groups and opening the Word every Wednesday. Does that make sense? And so we can do things even if there's not immediately a gospel, obvious gospel presentation involved, but that should be in mind somewhere at least down the road, does that make sense? Any questions about that? Now the first error, we want to avoid ignoring the mission of the church even while doing good things. We don't want to ignore the mission of the church so we can do good things. But if we're completely ignoring why we do good things, then we're just doing good things just because it's still going to seem good, people are still going to be served, but we're not fulfilling and working towards the mission that Christ gave to his church. And so we want to make sure we take that seriously. So the church's mission is to make disciples of all nations. The second point we want to affirm is that the church's mission glorifies God. The church's mission glorifies God. So go to Psalm 67 and we're going to read that psalm. I'll give you a minute to get there and then I'll read it. I think this is a helpful passage to help us understand this point. The church's mission glorifies God. Okay. May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face to shine upon us that your way may be known on earth. Your saving power among all nations. Let the peoples praise you, O God, let all the peoples praise you. Let the nations be glad and sing for joy for you. Judge the peoples with equity and guide the nations upon the earth. Let the peoples praise you, O God, let all the peoples praise you. The earth has yielded its increase. God our God shall bless us. God shall bless us. Let all the ends of the earth fear him. So according to this psalm, how does the church's mission glorify God? Yeah, Lincoln, [00:16:18] Speaker B: because it, like, tells them that, like, it makes them think, oh, wow. It makes them think that, like, we're doing like, we're doing like, good but for God. And it like, makes them want to come to church and make someone act like us. And then Maybe. [00:16:47] Speaker A: Yeah, maybe we probably want them to want Jesus more than we want them to just be like us. You know, if they just want to be like us, that's maybe not necessarily a good thing. But I think I see what you're saying. Does anyone have another answer? Ezra. It says he shall judge the people righteously. Yeah, it does say that. [00:17:16] Speaker B: I mean, that brings him glory. [00:17:19] Speaker A: How does that bring him glory? [00:17:20] Speaker B: Does it bring him glory? [00:17:21] Speaker A: Well, so he's sovereign over everything. And he will like. [00:17:29] Speaker B: Says he will govern the nations. [00:17:31] Speaker A: Everything will go according to his will. Yeah, everything flows out from Him. Yeah. And judgment leads to justice. And justice is good. It reflects his holy character. So I think you're right, that that does lead to his glory. I think another thing we see relevant to the point that I'm making is we see that your way may be known on earth, your saving power among all nations. So what the psalmist is writing here is that his saving power, his ability to save people, who he is, may be known. This grace shall be known in all the earth. Well, Christ gave to the Church the mission to make that known in all the earth. So as we do the mission of the Church, as we seek to make disciples of all nations, this will begin to happen. Saving power is and will be made known in all the earth. And what happens when God's saving power, or we could say the gospel is known in all the earth? Let the nations be glad and sing for joy. Let the peoples praise you, O God. Let all the peoples praise you. So all peoples will praise him. They will sing for joy. They will be glad. And this glorifies God. And it's not that God can't make this happen. Right. He says, may God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face to shine upon us, that your way may be known in all the earth. So for God's way to be known in all the earth, all he has to do is to make his face shine upon the peoples. He just has. In other words, he has to make Himself known to the people. And ultimately that's what's happening. When someone comes to know the Lord. It's not because we've convinced them with a really stellar argument, but it's because God has chosen to make Himself known to that person. But the point I'm also trying to make is he doesn't necessarily. He can make Himself clearly known in all the earth at any given moment, but he has chosen to use the church for his glory because we then get to play a part in it. We get to serve him. We get to see people come to know the Lord and kind of have a role in passing along this message of joy for all the nations. Do you have a question? [00:20:03] Speaker B: Yeah, I was meaning, like my mom taught me, as people, we, like, want to do good because it reflects God. [00:20:12] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:20:13] Speaker B: And, like, when people see us do good, it's reflecting good for God. [00:20:21] Speaker A: Yeah, that's true. [00:20:23] Speaker B: That's what I was meaning to say. [00:20:24] Speaker A: Okay, that makes sense. Yeah. Anyway, so the mission of the church glorifies God by making his saving power known among all nations, which leads to the nations worshipping. And then we can go to Habakkuk 2 14. Can you find Habakkuk? Can someone who can find Habakkuk 2:14 read that verse for us? Caleb? For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. Great. The earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. And so how is the knowledge of God's glory going to cover the earth? How is it going to cover the earth? Yeah, like the waters, like, cover the sea. So, like, totally, you know, there's no part of the sea where there's not water covering it. Right. Because then it's land, it's not sea. But what is the means. How is that going to be accomplished, Owen? [00:21:53] Speaker B: By, like, sharing the gospel and baptizing people all around the earth? [00:21:57] Speaker A: Yeah. Making disciples of all nations. Baptizing them. That's right. Now, you guys probably know, at least by name, maybe you don't. That's okay. This guy named John Piper, as far as preachers go, he's very, very famous. And he's famous for saying that missions exist because worship doesn't. In a wonderful book called Let the Nations Be Glad, Missions exists because worship doesn't. Churches plant churches by making disciples. And this results in worship in places where Christ was not previously known. What Piper is saying, and what I think we can even see in the psalm in this verse, is that God's glory, God will be glorified in all the nations. He will be glorified because the peoples will be praising him and worshiping him in all nations. But there are nations, people groups all over the world where there is little and in many cases, absolutely no praise of Jesus christ. There is no worship. There's no being glad. There's no singing for joy. There's no praising of God in many, many, many places, among some of the most populated places on the planet. And so the reason that we do missions. The reason that the mission of the church is important is because there are places where the worship of the true God doesn't exist. And those people will be judged because the Lord judges with equity and he will be glorified through that as well. And so we need missions. We need the mission of the church. And so the application number two is to pray for our missionaries. Pray for them, you know, especially at this stage of life, you can't get up and move to an unreached tribe in Indonesia. Maybe you will one day and that'd be great. But right now you can pray for our missionaries. Our missionaries are serving the mission of the church. They're not the only people that serve the mission of the church. Every member should serve the mission of the church, but they serve the mission of the church in a really difficult way by going out. So today this is a really practical way to apply this. You can go to the missions table outside the worship room. Does anyone not know what that is? There's a table, it's close ish to where that coffee is. When you're coming down past the kids, check in area, it says missions on it. If you walk up, you'll see like little cards with missionaries and stuff on it. Go there, get a card with Jacob and Taylor Hicks's face on it. Their names will be on it. I think one of them is even a magnet. You can put it on something magnetic. They are missionaries sent out from our church. They just left about a week ago. And they live in Central Asia now. They live in Central Asia and I think it would be helpful to pray for them now. These are currently the only missionaries in the field that we have personally sent. We have other missionary partners, right, that you hear from and we maybe go around the country and partner with them. But those are partners that we've kind of made along the way. These are missionaries that have come from us and gone to the nations. So my encouragement is that put that card or that magnet somewhere and when you see it, just say a quick prayer for them and think about how they're serving the mission of the church and how greatly serve them and encourage them and I think help you to just remember what is happening around the world and what needs to happen now from that. The second error to avoid is that we should not think that international missions is the only thing we do for the mission of the church. The mission of the church is bigger than just being an international missionary. Now, I wouldn't say that everyone is a missionary. Sometimes people say that Just to make the point that every Christian should be involved in some way. But if we just say everyone's a missionary, then it's kind of pointless term. But I'll say that all Christians work for the mission of the church. We should. We might have different roles, evangelism, discipleship, Bible studies, prayer, and more, but we should all seek to be involved in it as we can. The third main point we want to affirm is that the church's mission edifies believers. So that word edifies, E, D, I, F, I, E, S, edifies just means to build up and encourage. So it's a word you will hear a lot in church life. So if you don't know, there you go. It means to build up and encourage edifies. Now, how does the mission of the church edify believers? Yeah, what does edify mean? It means to build up and to encourage. That's okay. Yeah, [00:27:23] Speaker B: sorry, sorry. So I probably like the church's mission edifies religious because it's like, it helps them, like doing like the church's mission or other people doing it as the church's mission. [00:27:45] Speaker A: How does the church's mission edify believers? [00:27:49] Speaker B: It makes them want to do it for God. [00:27:52] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [00:27:53] Speaker B: But if it was like other people doing it, trying to edify believers, it would also help them, like say, oh, there's another person doing it. Maybe I should do it too, to help also God, but also make sure. Like not make sure, but know that I'm saved. [00:28:10] Speaker A: Sure. That can be encouraging to see other Christians doing this. Yeah, yeah. You know, even if I am the one pouring into, maybe a younger believer getting to disciple someone can challenge me. It encourages me. It makes me grow, makes me love Jesus more. And so getting to be involved in any way just is encouraging because it helps you grow, helps you rely on the Lord. And you don't have to have it all figured out to jump in to share the gospel, to seek to disciple. Now you want to make sure that you know Christ and are a believer, but other than that, you can jump in and kind of learn as you go. No one is reaches expert status and then starts contributing to the mission of the church. Instead, you become a believer, and then you start contributing to the mission of the church. And you grow as you do that. Let's go real quick to Philippians 1, Philippians 1, 3, 11. I want you to think about how Paul talks about the Philippians, how he talks about the Philippian believers that he's writing to. So Philippians 1, starting in verse 3, Paul says, I thank My God in all my remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, and I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus christ. It is right for me to feel this way about you all because I hold you in my heart. For you are all partakers with me of grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel. For God is my witness, how I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus. And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus christ to the glory and praise of God. So the way he talks about them, he's filled with joy remembering them. He's thankful for them. He's praying that what God has begun, he will complete. And in them he yearns for their growth. This sort of love, this is the result of discipling other believers. Paul, pursuing the mission of the church, discipled and helped plant this church. And this is how he feels about them. You can't read that and think he's not encouraged by the hard work he put in for the mission of the church in Philippi. Again, this is just the result of the mission of the church for believers. Fourth and finally, fourth main point, the church's mission pursues conversion of non believers. So I want you to think to yourself for a second, how can you pursue the conversion of non believers? You can be specific to your own situation. How can you pursue conversion? So that means conversion is if you remember from our previous lesson, repentance plus faith equals conversion. So how can we pursue calling people to repent and have faith in Christ in your life? We're all in different contexts may be very similar, some of you, but how can you do that? And if you don't even maybe as you sit there thinking about it, maybe you don't know where you stand. That's okay. I would say don't worry about evangelism and discipleship. You need to be discipled. And even if you feel like you know the gospel and you can share it, you too need to be discipled. It can be scary, but you can try asking an older believer to disciple you. I just think that's incredibly worth it. People don't in my experience ever regret doing that, and it's definitely worth it. But even you yourself, if you're a believer, then consider how you can start a Bible study or have conversations that include elements of the gospel with people who may or may not believe so that they can be converted to Christ. Are there any final questions before we wrap up? Okay. Next week Anthony will be here, and then the week after we'll start a different category of theology. It'll be the last one. Not the last lesson, but the last section. Alright, let's pray. Father, thank you for allowing us to consider the mission of the church. We ask that you would raise up, maybe even from among this room, missionaries in the future that would go to the nations to make disciples. Lord, help all of us who are believers in the room to see how we can pursue the mission of the church in our own lives. Finally, Father, we want to thank you for our mothers and our mother figures. Help us to show them our gratitude and thanks for them today. In Christ's name, amen.