Romans 10:14-15 ESV
How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, "How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!"
Mr. Kevin Cain
Genesis 12:1-4 ESV
Now the Lord said to Abram, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed." So Abram went, as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran.
Rev. Dwight Yoo
This chapter marks a change from macro level perspective to just one man, Abram. Genesis now focuses on this man and his family line.
God's Missionary Heart
Throughout Genesis, we notice a pattern of human sin and judgement. But if we look closer, we should notice that each judgement includes an element of grace. Protection for a murderer, promise of life after the fall, dispersal of people who do wrong... God has a heart for sinners. God could simply end it for all of humanity. Yet He does not. The heart of God is underestimated. He wants and loves sinners. Especially those who grew up in the church, we can overlook the heart of God. The bible is about God, the great missionary, searching out sinners to bring them home. From creation to new creation. He takes on our clothes, our language, comes to us, so that we could be saved. A note of application, Abram was blessed to be blessed. It is the same for us, we are blessed to be a blessing. After you have met Jesus, there is only one reason why you are still here. You have a part to play in expanding the kingdom of God. This call does not end when you finish college, when you have children, when you get a job, when you retire... it ends when we go home or Jesus comes back.
God's Enormous Enablement for Missions
Abram is called to leave when he is an old man. He is called to leave his family. That meant leaving everything that meant security in those times. It is a crazy call. But what follows is a set of crazier promises. God calls him to leave his family to make a universal family. He is asked to leave his nation, but will become a father of nations. The promise for those who answer the call of God is much more than what we are leaving behind.
Mark 10:29-31 ESV
Jesus said, "Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last first."
In this life, missionaries will find themselves as spiritual parents. They are enabled by God to give birth to new believers. Also, missionaries will get more of God. The presence of God is with those who walk in the path of God. Our experience of God becomes richer with our walk in His mission and plan for the salvation of every tribe and nation.
God's Method for Missions
God uses very ordinary people to reach the nations. The foolish and the weak are those who he uses. He picks an old man with a barren wife. The nation of Israel was considered least of nations. Jesus was a normal guy, son of a carpenter. He chooses disciples...fishermen. Normal people. Weak, scared, and normal people...those are the ones God uses.
Genesis 8-9:17 ESV
But God remembered Noah and all the beasts and all the livestock that were with him in the ark. And God made a wind blow over the earth, and the waters subsided. The fountains of the deep and the windows of the heavens were closed, the rain from the heavens was restrained, and the waters receded from the earth continually. At the end of 150 days the waters had abated, and in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. And the waters continued to abate until the tenth month; in the tenth month, on the first day of the month, the tops of the mountains were seen. At the end of forty days Noah opened the window of the ark that he had made and sent forth a raven. It went to and fro until the waters were dried up from the earth. Then he sent forth a dove from him, to see if the waters had subsided from the face of the ground. But the dove found no place to set her foot, and she returned to him to the ark, for the waters were still on the face of the whole earth. So he put out his hand and took her and brought her into the ark with him. He waited another seven days, and again he sent forth the dove out of the ark. And the dove came back to him in the evening, and behold, in her mouth was a freshly plucked olive leaf. So Noah knew that the waters had subsided from the earth. Then he waited another seven days and sent forth the dove, and she did not return to him anymore. In the six hundred and first year, in the first month, the first day of the month, the waters were dried from off the earth. And Noah removed the covering of the ark and looked, and behold, the face of the ground was dry. In the second month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, the earth had dried out. Then God said to Noah, "Go out from the ark, you and your wife, and your sons and your sons' wives with you. Bring out with you every living thing that is with you of all flesh—birds and animals and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth—that they may swarm on the earth, and be fruitful and multiply on the earth." So Noah went out, and his sons and his wife and his sons' wives with him. Every beast, every creeping thing, and every bird, everything that moves on the earth, went out by families from the ark. Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and took some of every clean animal and some of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar. And when the Lord smelled the pleasing aroma, the Lord said in his heart, "I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intention of man's heart is evil from his youth. Neither will I ever again strike down every living creature as I have done. While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.
And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. The fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth and upon every bird of the heavens, upon everything that creeps on the ground and all the fish of the sea. Into your hand they are delivered. Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. And as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything. But you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood. And for your lifeblood I will require a reckoning: from every beast I will require it and from man. From his fellow man I will require a reckoning for the life of man.
"Whoever sheds the blood of man,
by man shall his blood be shed,
for God made man in his own image.
And you, be fruitful and multiply, teem on the earth and multiply in it." Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, "Behold, I establish my covenant with you and your offspring after you, and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the livestock, and every beast of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark; it is for every beast of the earth. I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.And God said, "This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: I have set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh. And the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth." God said to Noah, "This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth."
Rev Dwight Yoo
A Promise of Peace
God could have just ended the story of humanity here. But He does not. Instead God keeps His promise... What promise? The promise of love and intimacy from the beginning. He keeps His promise even when we break our part of it. God makes new covenants when the old one was broken.
God makes a promise not to flood the earth again. He will hang up His bow in the sky. He will no longer make war on mankind. Why? It comes after Noah's burnt offering. This sacrifice is not itself the reason. It is a symbol for the lamb of God. The one who would bring everlasting peace. The whole wrath of God is poured out onto Jesus. The judgement is taken by Christ. But there is a flip side. God will take up His bow again in the final judgement. The earth will end in fire.
A Pattern of Grace
You have to have storm clouds to see the rainbow. This makes up part of the pattern for us too. Israel went to the promised land after: slavery in egypt, the pharaoh's refusal and the sea in front of them. And that's when they see God part the sea and destroy pharaoh's army.
Storms in life are not judgement for the Christian. They are so God can show us His character and His provision. We need rain for the rainbow. God shows up in the darkest of darkness. No storm of God's sending is permanent.
Proper response to Grace
After the flood, Noah sacrifices a burnt offering. This burnt offering is Noah surrendering his entire life to God. That is the only proper response to God's grace. Absolute submission to God. Giving the whole life over to God. His will be done. Not the Christian spin on the American dream.
2 Kings 17:1-17 ESV
In the twelfth year of Ahaz king of Judah, Hoshea the son of Elah began to reign in Samaria over Israel, and he reigned nine years. And he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, yet not as the kings of Israel who were before him. Against him came up Shalmaneser king of Assyria. And Hoshea became his vassal and paid him tribute. But the king of Assyria found treachery in Hoshea, for he had sent messengers to So, king of Egypt, and offered no tribute to the king of Assyria, as he had done year by year. Therefore the king of Assyria shut him up and bound him in prison. Then the king of Assyria invaded all the land and came to Samaria, and for three years he besieged it. In the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of Assyria captured Samaria, and he carried the Israelites away to Assyria and placed them in Halah, and on the Habor, the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes. And this occurred because the people of Israel had sinned against the Lord their God, who had brought them up out of the land of Egypt from under the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and had feared other gods and walked in the customs of the nations whom the Lord drove out before the people of Israel, and in the customs that the kings of Israel had practiced. And the people of Israel did secretly against the Lord their God things that were not right. They built for themselves high places in all their towns, from watchtower to fortified city. They set up for themselves pillars and Asherim on every high hill and under every green tree, and there they made offerings on all the high places, as the nations did whom the Lord carried away before them. And they did wicked things, provoking the Lord to anger, and they served idols, of which the Lord had said to them, "You shall not do this." Yet the Lord warned Israel and Judah by every prophet and every seer, saying, "Turn from your evil ways and keep my commandments and my statutes, in accordance with all the Law that I commanded your fathers, and that I sent to you by my servants the prophets." But they would not listen, but were stubborn, as their fathers had been, who did not believe in the Lord their God. They despised his statutes and his covenant that he made with their fathers and the warnings that he gave them. They went after false idols and became false, and they followed the nations that were around them, concerning whom the Lord had commanded them that they should not do like them. And they abandoned all the commandments of the Lord their God, and made for themselves metal images of two calves; and they made an Asherah and worshiped all the host of heaven and served Baal. And they burned their sons and their daughters as offerings and used divination and omens and sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking him to anger.
God's people have a tendency to go with their preferences. And their preferences are always end in idolatry.
This is a community gone wild. The community is no longer about God. Worship is no longer about God, but rather idols that they have fashioned.
Why?
They ignored God's instruction. Verse 14
They invested and found interest in idols. Verse 15
They became ignorant and instruments of idolatry. Verse 15b
They imitated a non-biblical way of life and instituted it. Verse 15c
They shared intimately and intentionally in idolatry. Verse 17
We are supposed to go from total depravity to total dependence, not independence.
Counterfeit gospels
Formalism
Activism
Socialism
Biblicism
Mysticism
Legalism
Psychologism
These all get in way of true community and being on mission. Do not try to adjust your life to make this fit. You will have to lose something. Dreams. Parental expectations. Hobbies. Careers. Die to yourself and live to Christ.
Pastor Diddy
There is the Lostness to this world, emptiness, and a void. We as Christ disciples must own the lostness of the world. And we must also own the sentness by which Christ charges us.
The neighborhood is your context. It is not just an obstacle on the way to church. You should have a heart and compassion for west philly. That is the lost that we own. Not the pastors and the staff. But everyone who breathes of the Spirit is charged. We are not simply gathered, but primarily sent.
Missional Maturity
The church is an army of missionaries. To desire for the most known name in philly is not Michael Vic, but Jesus.
Missional Momentum
The church as a whole and individuals chasing the least, the lost.
Missional Mythology
The gospel is the center. We should worship Jesus rather than ideas about Jesus. We worship ideas rather than Christ. We are to love God rather than church hobby horses.
None of these things make disciples, Christ does
- coffee shops
- interactive web pages
- dressing down as opposed to dressing up
- saying church buzz words
- theological swag
Missional Mobilization
As the church scatters each day, they will create an environment of hope and grace. That those who have no hope, will see hope. At every point of contact, they see a kingdom beyond the pain and suffering. A place where broken messed up can worship God.
Practical ways to engage your Neighbors
+ Give holiday cards
+ Invite to breakfast, lunch, dinner, and cookouts
+ Rake leaves, shovel snow
+ Ask them how your can pray for them, pray for them, and tell them that you always do
+ Find out their interests
Some practical ways to engage your City
+ projects together as a community
+ random acts of kindness as a group
+ sports activities as a group, inviting nonbelievers and people
+ participate in efforts of city renewal
+ volunteer at schools
+ shop at the same stores
Some practical ways to engage one another
+ live out the "one-anothers"of scripture
Pizza, pitbulls, and the power of God
http://thriveinthecity.org/pizza-pitbulls-and-power-the-of-god/
1 Corinthians 12:12-13, 27 ESV
For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit.
Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.
Pastor Doug Logan (Diddy)
This is not going to be an exegesis. The individual rules we learn from church can muddle our theology. What saves, what is appropriate... In the garden at the fall, we see bad theology, pride, and radical individualism. We want to go solo, do our own thing. Salvation means we are now in a community. It is not a solo thing. Individualism is an effect of the fall. We need to fight it intentionally to move towards community.
A picture of individualism
- Self at the center
- Everything revolves around the person
- Desire the world to nurture, exalt, and gratify self
- Personal success at the cost of all else
- Driven by satisfaction of self
- Standing up for one's right
- Getting one's due/Getting mine
Aspects of community that can be perverted
Sanctification:
+ a work of the spirit to bless the community
- a holy journey towards God
Sacraments:
+ strengthening affirmation and being brought to the corporate unit of the church
- ones continual reaffirmation
Jeremiah 29:4-9 ESV
Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Do not let your prophets and your diviners who are among you deceive you, and do not listen to the dreams that they dream, for it is a lie that they are prophesying to you in my name; I did not send them, declares the Lord.
Pastor Doug Logan
Background on Being a Community on Mission
There is a false dichotomy between holy living and mission minded. But we are in Christ, and in Him, we are missional as well as holy.
God sends the church into the world. Mission is the purpose and reason for the church. Mission exists because worship doesn't. The mission is hard to see as a movement of believers. We draw people through the unity in our church. We are convinced that we are posturing to convince people to follow God. But that is not missional. The community is not a bunch of lone rangers!
Mission is not going or getting, it is knowing. Unless you know God's sending mission, you don't get it. Understand the task, then you can get there. Not only is the church sent. But the holy spirit is sent as well.
The sending God sends the church
John 20, Hebrews 1, Acts 1
Mission is not about ideas or theology. It is about God who loves us saving our slimey stinking souls.
