It is just over 10 years since the flood of the century. Since we came here, I have listened to a lot of stories about the flood and also about how volunteers came to help protect against the flood. I spent a few days sandbagging at the time as well. One day I was just east of Lowe Farm protecting a farm house. I heard some of the people say that it really wasn’t necessary to sandbag this house because the flood wasn’t going to come this far anyway. It made me wonder if our resources could have been better used. I suspect that there were cases in which some homes had lots of volunteers, but the need wasn’t very great. On the other hand, I suspect that there were places where help was desperately needed and no one was available. I suspect that there are people who can identify with this and perhaps even have deep feelings about it. From a philosophical point of view, it doesn’t make sense to add more help to a situation that is well covered while at the same time there is a desperate need somewhere else that is not being met.
Can that same principle be applied to the task of God’s mission of making Jesus known in the world? Should we spend more and more resources feeding “well fed” people when there are people in the world who have never heard about Jesus? A few months ago, our EMC leadership got together to see where God is calling us as a denomination. In part of that report it said, “One of the new priorities is an emphasis on un-reached people groups.” What do we at REMC think about this? How would God have us involved in His work in the world? This morning I would like to think with you about the need of the world and God’s invitation to us to become involved in meeting that need. I would invite us to listen to hear what God might be saying to us.
The World Needs Jesus!
The world is lost
God loves the world. By the world we mean all the people living in His creation. He made the world as a place of blessing and created people to know Him and relate to Him in a beautiful relationship and in a setting of paradise. The garden of Eden is the picture of what God intended for the world.
But the world does not love God. In Adam and Eve we see the beginning of the lost state of all human beings. Although people don’t see it, being lost is the condition of every person. I heard someone say, “I’m never lost, sometimes I just take the scenic route.” We can’t say that about the spiritual condition of the people of the world, all are lost.
A while ago the news reported that two young boys got lost while hiking in the bush. Although they found them fairly quickly because they did what you are supposed to do when you are lost and that is stay put and wait to be rescued, it still must have been a frightening experience. Can you imagine what it must have felt like for them when they realized that they were lost? Being lost is an awful thing. Ephesians 2:12 describes being lost as, “separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world.” Being spiritually lost is not a good thing.
The world needs to know Jesus.
People in the world need to be found, they need Jesus. They don’t need religion. There are lots of religions in the world and more ways of people deciding how to please God or come to God are not necessary.
They don’t need the church. Now I don’t want you to misunderstand. The church is important and once you become a Christian, being a part of the church is exactly what God does want for you, but people do not need to be invited to church first of all. There are lots of churches and lots of people attending churches who are still lost. In doing evangelism, we better understand very clearly that inviting people to church must always be only a strategy, not the end of our goal.
What people need is Jesus. Jesus is the one who gives life. Jesus is the one who forgives sin. Jesus is the one who promises eternal life. Jesus is the one who comes into a person’s life and makes them a new creation. Jesus helps people be found.
There were some people in the church in Corinth who wanted to attach themselves to a human leader and to make divisions because of human connections. Paul accuses them in I Corinthians 1:12, “One of you says, “I follow Paul”; another, “I follow Apollos”; another, “I follow Cephas…” In verse 23 he points to the center of the gospel, when he says, “but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, 24 but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.”
The greatest hope we can offer to any person on earth is that they will meet Jesus.
How shall they hear without a preacher?
But how do they get to know Him?
Salvation is an act of God. He draws! He forgives! He redeems! He causes people to be born again! Yet, God invites us to be involved in the process. Romans 10:13-15 indicates our part when it says, “’Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.’ How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? 15 And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “’How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!’”
There need to be people who will tell others about Jesus. We need to demonstrate the new life of Jesus and we need to proclaim Jesus to all those who are lost.
Jesus is the redeemer, but, as I Corinthians 12:27 says, “you are the body of Christ.” What does it mean that the visible presence of Christ today is found in those who are His followers? It means that the life-giving message of Jesus is communicated by us and through us. It is through us that people meet the one who can find them, the one who can forgive them and give them life.
I recently discovered that there is a difference between going on missions and being on a mission. Going on missions means that we take some time out to go on a trip and enjoy the responsibility of helping people find Jesus - for a while. Then we go back home to our normal life. That is how we often look at the ministry of evangelism, but God has not called us to go on missions, He has called us to be on mission. To be on mission, means that we are always doing God’s work. Whether we go on a missions trip or are at home going about our ordinary activities, we are always on a mission of bringing people to Jesus.
By being Christians we have a responsibility. We are on a mission. We are God’s servants.
Who In The World?
But how and where will we carry out this mission?
The Call To All Nations
The Jewish view of God’s call extended to the borders of Israel and no further. If someone wanted to join them, they could come to Israel and were allowed in, but in general, Israel had a limited view of God’s invitation.
We sometimes have such a limited view as well. We are here. If someone wants to find Jesus, they can always come to church and we will help them. But, what is God’s perspective?
The beginning of the nation of Israel is founded on the call of God to Abraham. In His first conversation with Abraham, God said, “all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” From the beginning, God wanted all nations to find life!
Psalm 96:3 invites God’s people, “Declare his glory among the nations, his marvellous deeds among all peoples.” Notice the mention of “the nations” and “all peoples.” God wants His people to proclaim the glory of God to everyone.
So even in the Old Testament God already had his eye on saving all those who were lost from all nations.
Jesus continues to emphasize this intent and upon His departure sent us on a worldwide mission when He said in Matthew 28:18-20, “…go and make disciples of all nations…”
In Matthew 24:14 this call to mission is even attached to the time of Jesus’ return when He said, “And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.”
The intent of this broad call is so that people from all nations will be able to be in heaven and the promise of Revelation 7:9,10 is that they will be. It says, “After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. 10 And they cried out in a loud voice: “Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.”
As we understand the desperate need of lost people to find Jesus, how big is our vision? Do we just see ourselves or our family? Do we see the person across the street? Do we see the people across Canada? Do we have hearts that care about the salvation of people araound the world? God’s Word invites us to such a broad perspective.
Of course our first responsibility is for ourselves. Most naturally we will be most concerned for our family and we need to do what we can to introduce them to Jesus. Since we are “on mission,” God calls us to love our co-worker and to love the people in the store and to let them know about Jesus. We have talked about this before and I want to encourage all of us to continue on this mission. This morning, however, I would like to invite us, as a church, to think about being on mission to the broader world. Are we, as a church, doing all we can to make Jesus known to the nations?
Nations And People Groups
How should we look at the idea of “all nations?” We have sometimes looked at nations as political entities defined by borders on a map. So we send missionaries to Paraguay and believe that we have covered the country of Paraguay. But I think we know that this is not an adequate way of looking at the ministry. In Paraguay, there are many different people groups. Dave & Judy work with a people group which crosses several boundaries but has in common a connection to AIDS/HIV. In Paraguay there are Spanish speaking people, Low-German speaking Mennonites, Guarani speaking people and many other people groups. People groups are those who have a common language and culture. To plant a church in Paraguay and think that we have reached the nation is not adequate because there are many people groups in that country. This is true throughout the world. In fact, some people groups live in several different countries. The people group called Uzbeks live in Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and other places. In the same way, Low-German speaking Mennonites are a people group and we know that they live in many places. To reach them probably means doing ministry in Ontario, Manitoba, Belize, Mexico and other places in the world.
So we need to adjust our thinking and not only think of going to the nations in terms of going to countries with political boundaries, but also to think in terms of people groups, and being on mission to these different people groups.
Unreached People Groups
Let us think further about what it means to be “on mission” as a church and what it means to fulfill God’s commission to go to all nations. A good question would be to ask, “Where is the need greatest?”
English speaking people groups around the world have many churches among them and many resources for nurture. There are many churches among English speaking people which are planting other churches. English speaking people are, for the most part, well reached with the message of Jesus. The Joshua Project, a group which has researched people groups has found that among English speaking Canadians, 80% are Christian.
On the other hand, there are many people groups where the gospel has hardly gone. In mission circles, these are called un-reached people groups. Unreached people groups are defined as “A people that does not have a viable indigenous community of believing Christians with adequate numbers and resources to evangelize their own people without outside, or cross-cultural, assistance.” There are probably Christian churches in most “nations” but there are many people groups who do not have a Christian presence, or a gospel witness. Earlier we looked at how many Canadians are considered Christian. In contrast, Among the Tajik people of Afghanistan only .01% are Christian, the rest are Muslim. This people group desperately needs to know about Jesus. George Miley says, “All peoples minus all reached peoples leaves all unreached peoples, or the task remaining.”
As farmers, we would not reseed a field when there are un-seeded acres still to seed. Yet in the church we continue to put much energy into reaching those who are already reached and not nearly the same energy into reaching those who are un-reached. That is not to say that we should stop doing evangelism in Canada. However, is God perhaps inviting us to broaden our heart for His work? He is a God of compassion, grace, forgiveness and reconciliation. His message of love through Jesus Christ is to all nations. When Paul was proclaiming the gospel, he said in Romans 15:20, 21, “It has always been my ambition to preach the gospel where Christ was not known, so that I would not be building on someone else’s foundation. 21 Rather, as it is written: “Those who were not told about him will see, and those who have not heard will understand.” What is God’s word to us regarding this call?
What are we doing about it?
The Heart of God
The first thing we need to do is to examine our hearts to see if we have the heart of God within us. God’s heart is to redeem a lost world. In II Peter 3:9 it says that God is “not willing that any should perish.”
I do not think it is God’s intent to motivate us by guilt or in a negative way. Have you ever felt strong emotion when you heard that someone become a believer? I would suggested that such an emotion is evidence that the heart of God is within us. I love the way Paul puts it when he speaks about His heart for the lost. In II Corinthians 5:14 he says, “For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died.”
Sometimes our hearts become lazy, fearful or sleepy. As we examine Scripture, let us allow God to stir our hearts once again so that the love of Christ will move us to be on mission.
What Can We Do?
The theme of our mission conference this fall will invite us to four responses in the recognition that we are “on mission.” Those four responses are to know, to pray, to give and to go. Each of us needs to ask God, “what can I do?” As a church, we need to ask, “what can we do?”
All of us can seek to know. I have appreciated the effort our mission committee has made to help us know what is happening to our missionaries. When we get newsletters from missionaries or mission agencies, do we take the time to read them? I spoke earlier about unreached people groups. There are some great resources to open our eyes to see the need. Check out the Joshua project at http://www.joshuaproject.net/index.php. to learn more about unreached people groups.
All of us can pray. We can pray for our missionaries and I am sure that we are. We can pray for nations. One way to pray for nations is to pray for one continent each day of the week. We can pray for people groups. I would encourage us to check out the resources regarding un-reached people groups and choose one group which God lays on our hearts and begin to pray specifically for that people group.
All of us can give. When it comes to giving, it isn’t the amount we give, but rather that we give out of a cheerful heart. If our heart is filled with Jesus and being on mission, then our treasure will also belong to Him. What would that mean for you?
We can also all go. There are many ways in which many of us are already going. MDS, service groups, Singe stunde, Spanish ministry, VBS and camp are ways in which people from this congregation are going.
Are there more opportunities? In the Convention report which comes out of the Messenger it said, “the BOM is focusing on two primary objectives: one is to give priority to developing and strengthening partnerships with agencies working among un-reached people groups.” What is God calling us, as a congregation to do as we recognize that there are people in this world who are un-reached? As we pray, let us open our hearts to God’s call in this area.
Conclusion
My goal this morning was to call us to the heart of God. God loves the world and longs to give life to all who are lost. Do we have the heart of God for the world?
The other goal is to invite us to open our eyes to new possibilities in mission – as individuals, and as a church.
Will you join me in praying that God will help us to see what His plan is for us as individuals and for us as a church in the mission He has given us?
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