Our dear heavenly Father, we pray now that You would stoop down to our meager comprehension and speak to us, that we may understand. Teach us, rebuke us, correct us, train us in righteousness, that we may be wise unto salvation and competent for every good work. Help us to listen, help us to understand. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Wasn’t last week great? With Elias preaching to us? I hope to have that energy about something in my life someday. That was, that was so encouraging and inspiring, and if Elias was preaching to us and helping us to think about opening our mouths and evangelism and speaking the truth of God’s Word and inspirational and exhortational, then this message, this conclusion to Missions Week, is going to be more global than local. It’s going to be theological and hopefully in that inspirational.

But I want us to think together about one very specific question: What is the mission of missions? What is the mission of missions?

The question is simple, the answer is not. In recent years, there has been a great deal of conversation among missiologists and in mission literature and among practitioners and pastors about what exactly we mean or ought to mean with words like mission, missionary, or a newer term, missional.

I bet if we were to take a poll, you would all be for all of those things. Yes, I like mission, missionaries, missional.

And then if we were to go around and ask “give a definition of mission, missionary, missional,” we would find almost as many nuances as there may be people in this room.

I wrote a book with a friend of mine, Greg Gilbert, several years ago called What is the Mission of the Church? which was our attempt to, sort of, throw our two cents into the conversation, because it seems that it is no longer self-evident what we mean by mission, or missionary, or missional.

For some people, mission means nothing but evangelism. It is a synonym for evangelism, while others would rather have mission include every good thing that the church might do, or everything that you might do as a Christian in obedience to Christ.

So ask yourself some of these questions: Is environmental stewardship mission work? What about teaching people to read and write? Or agricultural development? Or medical care? Or digging wells? Or building orphanages? Or developing the arts? Or refurbishing a park? Or planting a tree? Or lowering unemployment? Or working for religious liberty? Or feeding the poor? Or pursuing social justice? And the list could go on and on and on.

Those may all be good things. The question is whether these activities by themselves constitute the mission of the Church. Those are certainly things Christians can do and many Christians ought to do, but our question is more narrow. What is the mission of the mission of the Church?

So before we get to our text, let me just be very clear with what I’m not saying, lest in providing some clarity and definition to the word “mission” you would leave here and think “pastor thinks that what I care about doesn’t matter.” So listen carefully: I am not answering the question “what are all the good things Christians can do or should do to love their neighbors and be salt and light in the world?” That is not the question that we are seeking to answer. Second, I am not answering the question “what are all the things we might care about or do as a congregation?”

So when I wrote the book What is the Mission of the Church? even though it was giving a narrow and I think from this text which we are about to read , a biblical definition, I did not write that book so that Christians would stop being involved in politics or education or the arts or justice or issues in healthcare or law or a thousand other areas where we need Christian interests and worldview and passions. No,

Brothers and sisters, what a great privilege for me to be here this morning. And as I shared also at the Seniors’, I’m really in the Seniors’ category, class, by my accent you realize I’m not, English is not my first language. And sometimes I used to apologize for that, but I’d like you just to understand that English has been the fourth language in my life that I have to be acquainted with, and it’s not to show off, but to tell you this: That you have to pay very close attention [laughter] because if you know English better than I do, that’s your problem, to figure out what I’m trying to say. And I hope that you pray as we are reading and studying the Word of the Living God.

Open your Bibles, in Matthew chapter 4, and I’m going to read from verse 12 to 17. This is the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry, and tonight we are going to study on Matthew 28, a very known passage as you come to the end of this Gospel, therefore from the beginning of Matthew to the end of Matthew’s Gospel, so that we may see how consistent the Lord Jesus Christ is, in the mission, or in the work, that He was sent in this world to preach and to do and to fulfill, and therefore for us Jesus Christ is really the missionary.

And I’m saying that because Jesus left it very clear, in John, by the way I’m not preaching yet, [laughter], in John chapter 4 verse 34, you know the context of the Samaritan woman. As He revealed Himself to that woman by the well, and the disciples are coming from the city with some hamburger, because Jesus stayed there by noon, tired, thirsty, and hungry. And has revealed Himself to that woman. The disciples are coming and looked that he was talking with a woman, said nothing, and then they come back with their hamburgers and say “Rabbi, eat” and Jesus looked at it says “I have food to eat that you don’t know of.” And they’re all looking at the hamburger, thinking “someone brought something to eat.” Bad reasoning. The question should be “Jesus, what food is that?”

Don’t you love Jesus, that for Him drinking, eating, are secondary when you have people at stake?

And He says this, in John 4:34: “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me.” God is the sender, and Jesus is the missionary.

My food. In other words, what keeps me going, what strengthens Myself is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to finish His work.

This is a great word. Sometimes when I use the word “mission” it’s too abstract for many people, because they think about mission as something that someone is doing somewhere. Jesus used the work, the word work, as referring to the work of God the Father in reconciling people from every tribe, tongue, and nation to Himself through the Lord Jesus Christ by the conviction and convincing power of the Holy Spirit. That’s what we are talking about here, my dear brothers and sisters. The work of God.

Jesus left it very clear in that context, that was there was sin in this world to save sinners. It was promised even before the foundation of the world, Ephesians chapter 1, I’m not preaching yet but I know my time [laughter].

But I want you to get it. Ephesians 1, “before the foundation of the world, He loved us and sent His Son.”

And in the context of the fall, Genesis 3, God the evangelist, the prophet comes and tells and promised the seed of the woman, and called Abraham and sent Abraham, so that through his seed all the families of the earth shall be blessed. And He speaks to David in 2 Samuel 7, made a covenant with him because the seed of the woman, which is the seed of Abraham, will be the seed of David. The King was supposed to come to grant us royal forgiveness and to bring in His kingdom.

And Jesus come in this world and Peter,

O Lord, that is our prayer. Not simply that we would leave here in 40 minutes feeling good or bad or knowing something we didn’t know, or even understanding Your Word better as important as that is. Our prayer ultimately is that you would show us Christ. You would reveal your glory through the preaching of Your Word until every heart confesses that Christ is Lord. For we know that He was in the world and the world was made through Him, yet the world did not know Him. He came into His own and His own people did not receive Him, but to all who did receive Him, who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God who were born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. And so we pray that some even in these next moments might be born of God and that you would give to us mouths to confess and hearts to believe. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

I’ll be reading this morning from John’s Gospel, chapter 8, verses 31 through 47. John chapter 8, beginning at verse 31.

“So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed Him, ‘If you abide in My word, you are truly My disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.’ They answered Him, ‘We are offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say, “You will become free”?’ Jesus answered them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son remains forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. I know that you are offspring of Abraham; yet you seek to kill Me because My word finds no place in you. I speak of what I have seen with my Father, and you do what you have heard from your father.’ They answered Him, ‘Abraham is our father.’ Jesus said to them, ‘If you were Abraham’s children, you would be doing the works Abraham did, but now you seek to kill Me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. This is not what Abraham did. You are doing the works your father did.’ They said to Him, ‘We were not born of sexual immorality. We have one Father—even God.’ Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love Me, for I came from God and I am here. I came not of my own accord, but He sent Me. Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear My word. You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies. But because I tell the truth, you do not believe Me. Which one of you convicts Me of sin? If I tell the truth, why do you not believe Me? Whoever is of God hears the words of God. The reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God.'”

If your Jesus never says hard things, then you have not the real Jesus. There is no way around it. If you are paying any attention to these verses just read, you will see that Jesus has very difficult things, sometimes even very offensive things, to say to those and about those who do not belong to Him as His disciples.

Now maybe that makes you feel relaxed. You think, “okay, that’s right, Jesus has hard things to say to those who don’t believe in Him, those who are not His disciples. Well, bring it on, pastor. I love sermons where Jesus says hard things to other people. Some of my favorite sermons.” [laughter]

You like when the coach was berating everyone else and you knew that you showed up for practice on time, or you came and you just “I love it, I love these kind of dress-down sermons.”

Well, before you get too comfortable in thinking Jesus has hard things to say for other people,