God Is Worthy of Our Going and Sending

In Revelation 5 John looks and sees God seated on the throne with a scroll in his hand. The scroll has writing on it, and it is sealed with seven mysterious seals. While he is looking at the Father he also sees an angel very loudly saying “Who is worthy to open the scrolls and break the seals?” These seals usher in God’s judgment on evil and help fulfill his plan of redemptive history but no one in heaven or on earth or even under the earth was found worthy to open it or even look into it. This makes John weep loudly! All that God has created to help his creation know him, honor him, and flourish has been attacked or deformed by the kingdom of this world. Imagine history ending this way. Imagine evil not being judged or wrongs not being made right. Imagine God’s perfect plan never being completed in full. So John weeps loudly….but he does not weep for long.

And one of the elders said to me, “Weep no more; behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals.”…And they sang a new song, saying, “Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation, and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth.” Revelation 5:5,9,10

We should all rejoice that Jesus is worthy! Jesus being worthy means that evil will be judged by a holy and righteous God. Christ has conquered the sin that is in our hearts and the sin that is in the world so our hearts should be filled with gladness and appreciation. Jesus is worthy to take the scroll and open its seals because he was slain. He came down from heaven and took on flesh, was tempted in every way but did not sin. The blood that he shed ransomed his enemies from every tribe, language, people, and nation. This blood has not only paid the price for our sins but also for our conformity to his image and our acceptance into his kingdom as priests.

In other words, when Christ died for us he didn’t merely cancel our sin debt to make us even with God. He canceled the debt and made an eternal contribution to our account. Christ transformed us from being debtors to God to those who have access to all things according to his riches and glory (Philippians 4:19). Our receiving the shed blood of Christ transforms us from orphans to heirs (Romans 8:17); it transitioned us from sinners to priests (1 Peter 2:9).

We also see here how God’s worth is tied to missions. By going we show that God is worthy to us, and by having us go with him God shows that he is a loving leader to his people. One day we will all be able to gather together at God’s throne and be amazed at his plan for redemption over so many ages to save people from “every tribe, language, people, and nation”.

You may say to yourself, “Well, I’m not currently going, so what about me? If goers go, what does that make me? Am I just a stayer? No. Goers go because God is worthy and those who support them are senders because God is worthy. Sending is not a lesser role in God’s plan for redemption. It is neither passive nor unessential. It’s part of God’s design to conform us to his imagine by sacrificially sending in a manner “worthy of God” (3 John 1:6). Remember that one day we will all be before the throne of God not as goers or senders but as one people redeemed from many peoples. We will sing praises to our God because he has overcome death, and he has finished the work that he planned before time began. He is worthy to judge the world because he redeemed the world and our church is actively playing a part in that redemption. The God of the universe has called us in various ways to help fulfill his good plan so ultimately going and sending is one work to honor a God who is worthy of both.

 

 

 

The Master’s Questions to His Questioners

If you could ask God one question, what would you ask Him? This is a key starter question from evangelism training that some of us have attended in past years. It is also a feature question from one of our online courses at Billy Graham. Here are some actual students’ responses from just this past week in the course. (One question for God, what would you ask Him?).

  • Why is life so difficult?
  • How do I use my challenges to benefit the world in a realistic and tangible way?
  • What can I do for my friends and family to know and believe in Him?
  • How can I forgive without hurting when remembering the incident?
  • Why was I created?
  • How long will I be suffering in this world my Father?

These are genuine, raw questions!

How do you think God would answer those questions?

How would you answer those questions if asked??

There will be times in all our lives where not only will we have questions, but we’ll encounter loved ones, friends, neighbors, and coworkers with eternal questions. So how do we know how God would approach these questions and how He’d want us to as well?

One of the great things about the Bible is that it reveals to us, from start to finish, the character of God. In fact, the Word of God is God revealing His own character, so we might know Him, enjoy Him, and rightly worship and reflect Him in the world.

  • He shows His character through wisdom literature like Psalms and Proverbs.
  • He discloses Himself through His words to and through His Prophets.
  • He makes Himself known through the mighty promises and faithful actions in the books of the Law and with Israel.
  • He demonstrates who He is through logical conclusions in the letters.
  • He reveals Himself through the glorious defeat of evil and eternal reign as the King of kings and Lord of lords in Revelation.

But in the Gospels, we see the life and Person of Jesus laid out—the perfect image of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15a). Here is truly on display God in human flesh making Himself known. You could look at His teaching, His miracles, His parables, His prophetic fulfillments and see great heights of His nature and the essence of His character.

However, one thing God has laid on my heart over the last month or so is to look deeper into how Jesus answers His questioners. During Jesus’ lifetime, He fielded many questions. I’m still working my way through the Gospels, but I counted 38 direct questions thrown Jesus’ way in Matthew. This won’t be a surprise to many of you, but Jesus answered 11 of those 38 questions with a question of His own.

Think about that. God Himself, who has the answer to every question and is the most loving being in the universe, did not always count it best to initially and directly answer His questioners. He asked questions back to them.

Today we’ll look at three instances where our Savior and Lord, questioned His questioners.

I. Change the Frame

Our first instance comes in Mark 2:18. The context concerns John the Baptist’s disciples and the Pharisees fasting. So some people come up to Jesus and ask Him, “18Why do John’s disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but Your disciples do not fast?”

The question Jesus gives in response is the first type we’ll ponder. Let’s call it, change the frame—the frame of reference that is. This question rightly notices a difference in behavior between Jesus’ followers and those of John and the Pharisees. However, it wrongly assumes Jesus is on par with John and the Law. Jesus is the One to whom John’s whole life has been called to point to. He is the Giver and perfect fulfillment of the Law. Jesus is other, above, beyond, greater than any prophet, priest, or king and is the perfect embodiment of what a life in obedience to God and fulfillment of the Law looks like. Jesus’ initial question is going to change the frame. It’s meant to reset the frame of reference for the questioners. It’s meant to lovingly show them someone different is in front of them that they need recognize.

In verses 19–20 Jesus says,

Can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in that day.

He uses a picture of a groom and the celebration he brings to help his questioners understand His disciples are acting differently because the One who makes their joy complete is in their midst. He asked a question to change their frame of mind, to see Jesus as different, set apart, and bringing in a new era.

II. Turning the Tables

The second example of Jesus answering a question with a question comes from Matthew 15:1-9. We’ll call this turning the tables through pointing out hypocrisy. Here the tone from Jesus’ questioners is accusing His disciples of wrongdoing. “1Then Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, ‘2Why do Your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat.’” Here Jesus question doesn’t seek to help explain or answer where they’re hung up. It turns the tables on His questioners by exposing their “acceptable” sin and underlying hypocrisy.

Hear Jesus’ words in verses 3–9:

And why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? For God commanded, “Honor your father and your mother,” and, “Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.” But you say, “If anyone tells his father or his mother, ‘What you would have gained from me is given to God,’ he need not honor his father.” So for the sake of your tradition you have made void the word of God. You hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy of you, when he said, “This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; 9in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men” (cf. Isaiah 29:13).

The Pharisees were making new laws of tradition to pile on others while they were not even keeping God’s Law itself. Jesus lovingly, directly, and bravely calls them on their wrong, knowing that they will be offended. Some of us run to this option too often. We imagine ourselves as hammers and most conversations as an opportunity to nail others where they’re missing it. Others of us are too afraid of offending others. The fear of people has a hold on us instead of the love of Christ. For those of us in this category, we need to prayerfully risk offending others and love them enough to point out the truth.

III. Drawing them Out

Now for a third way Jesus questions his questioners. This a famous one and is a bit different. It’s in Luke’s Gospel, Chapter 24, starting in verse 13 with the two men on the walk to Emmaus. We will call this one drawing them out.

Proverbs 20:5—The purpose in a man’s heart is like deep water, but a man of understanding will draw it out.

Here two disciples are walking from Jerusalem. They are looking sad and talking about the things that have happened in the wake of Jesus’ death. Jesus comes up behind them and initiates the conversation with a question, asking what they are talking about among themselves. Then one of the guys named Cleopas answers, “Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?”

How ironic is this that the One to whom they’re asking the question was the very One who endured all of the betrayal, arrest, whipping, shaming, and crucifixion. What’s more, He had planned this with the Father from the foundation of the world. Nevertheless, our all-wise King in awesome love, humility, and wisdom draws them out by asking in verse 19, “What things?”

Only after they’ve explained the things on their heart does Jesus give them a rebuke and then the most amazing Bible study that we’ve mentioned many times! By drawing out where they were, He allowed His great lesson of the Scriptures being centered on His crucifixion and resurrection to fully sink in.

So what can we glean from our Savior at times questioning His questioners? A few takeaways:

  1. It’s a helpful thing to ask questions. It shows other people you’re interested in them. It keeps them engaged. It allows for dialogue.
  2. Of the three, it seems like the “drawing them out” method should probably be our bread and butter. Unlike Jesus, we don’t already know people’s hearts, or the thing that they need the most to hear. After praying for wisdom and the Spirit’s guidance, drawing them out allows us to better know where someone is coming from and gives us a sense of their worldview. It also shows us areas of common ground to start from and build toward Christ and the Gospel.
  3. All three methods of answering with questions are helpful and useful and called for in different circumstances. Sometimes analogies and visuals can help change the frame of people’s mindsets and reference points to see truths of Scripture and who our God is in a new perspective. Even turning the tables is needed at times to lovingly stand on truth and point others to the most flourishing way forward.

In all of this, we are called to “speak the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15) and follow our Savior who is full of “grace and truth” (John 1:17).

3 reasons to commit to Cross-Cultural Worship

 

This weekend at DGCC we plan to have a joint service with our Kiswahili-speaking congregation. We will worship and honor the living God by singing, reading, and preaching God’s word in different languages and by developing deeper relationships with each other. Our commitment to grow into one body reflecting diverse cultures, tongues, and ethnicities is no easy task. The challenges of overcoming differences in language, culture, and expression can cause us to question diversity as a goal altogether. So why should we be committed to cross-cultural worship and diversity? Here are 3 reasons that should encourage us to keep this focus despite the difficulties.

A hope for today found in the Old Testament

Cross-cultural worship serves as a reminder that God’s promise to Abraham to bless all nations through His offspring (Genesis 22:19) is not only an Old Testament promise but is also a living and abiding hope today. Gathering together with believers across different tongues and ethnicities reminds us that Christ has come to fulfill this promise. It is through Christ, the promised descendant of Abraham, that God has blessed all people who come to Him to receive the free gift of salvation. This is our hope today! We pray that all nations – created by God and for God but now separated from Him because of sin – will return to Him and joyously worship together.

A forward look to Heaven

This is not only our hope today but also our future in the new heavens and new earth. That is, cross- cultural worship gives us a visual and auditory preview of what is described in Revelation 7:9.

“I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, And they cried out in a loud voice: “Salvation belongs to our God, who sits
on the throne, and to the Lamb.”

We bring this scripture to life when we gather in diverse congregations to worship. We get to see now what we will experience at the culmination of history when all of God’s people will gather around His throne to express joy and affection toward Him. Just as the promises of the past can ground our hope in Christ today, seeing our future unity in diversity deepens our delight in picturing that in the present age.

Gracious opportunities to love one another

While we wait for that fulfillment, we have the opportunity to express our genuine unity through loving one another across our differences. When language is a barrier, we are forced to listen more intently and speak more thoughtfully. When we interact with our brothers and sisters from different places and backgrounds we are encouraged to be focused on others and not ourselves. Interaction across cultures can help us be more careful to not offend and allow us to easily extend grace if there is a misunderstanding. While we should be mindful to do these things every day, cross-cultural engagement provides the environment for us to focus on these simple but impactful acts of love toward each other.

DGCC is committed to being a diversity-loving congregation not just because it is part of our DNA as a church but because when we gather together our diversity shows that our God is the God of all peoples, languages and cultures. He is worthy to be praised by all. So this Sunday, in our worship service and at our picnic, reach out across the cultural distance. Rejoice in our common Lord and Savior. And thereby live out the Old Testament promise; picture the coming culmination; and display the love of God for all peoples.

A Great Commission Resurgence?

For the last several months, Danny Akin, President of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, has been advocating a “Great Commission Resurgence” in the Southern Baptist Convention. In his chapel address on April 16th (audio), Dr Akin laid out twelve axioms required for such a resurgence. Since then, SBC President Johnny Hunt has embraced this message, and modified the axioms somewhat, reducing them to ten, as available here.

In many ways, I am impressed with the Great Commission Resurgence document, and believe the SBC should move in the direction it lays out. Here are some of the axioms that clearly resonate with our theology, vision, and values:

1: We call upon all Southern Baptists to submit to the absolute Lordship of Jesus Christ in all things at the personal, local church, and denominational levels.

2: We call upon all Southern Baptists to make the gospel of Jesus Christ central in our lives, our churches, and our convention ministries.

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A Life Lived to God’s Glory Among the Nations: Ralph Winter, 1925-2009

(For a version of this devotion that is easier to print, see this link).

Ralph Winter died on Wednesday night, at the age of 84. I am confident that the Lord Jesus welcomed Dr Winter into His presence, saying, “Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of your Master!” In the new heavens and the new earth, when we recount the history of the greatest accomplishment of all time – God bringing all the nations to Himself – Dr Winter will be among the most prominent figures who by God’s power worked to fill the earth with His glory as the waters cover the sea.

I only met Dr Winter once. When he was about 80, after being diagnosed with an incurable cancer, during a period of remission, he came to Columbia to teach. He flew into Charlotte, and met with several of us that evening. Our conversation showed him to be what I already knew – an academic in the best sense of the word. Dr Winter was a man of ideas – and he was always looking for people to challenge those ideas, to engage him in debate over those ideas, to sharpen his thinking and to stretch him further. So when I thanked him for his profound impact on me and on the worldwide church, he brushed it off, and immediately began asking me questions. In short order, he discovered an area of disagreement: He believed each local church should be focused on one small slice of the demographic pie, in order to most effectively reach unbelievers like them; I believe God is most glorified when the local church transcends the cultural boundaries that so often separate believers. He wanted to debate the issue, and I gave him that pleasure, uncomfortable as I was – despite being a former academic myself, I was there that evening to honor him!

But that interaction displays the character of Dr Ralph D Winter: He was an incredibly creative man of ideas. He was always searching, always thinking. In my view, he propagated a few wrong ideas. But in God’s providence, he was the man most responsible for pushing the worldwide church to embrace a whole series of right ideas – biblical truths that had been overlooked, or not widely known. Here is a list of some of Dr Winter’s key ideas. See more of my favorite Ralph Winter quotes at this link.

God’s missionary mandate to the church is a cross-cultural mandate. Dr Winter’s address to the 1974 Lausanne International Congress on World Evangelization was perhaps the most important paper presented at any conference in the last century. At that time, almost every mission agency thought of the biblical missionary mandate as a command to reach every nation – that is, country – with the Gospel. Dr Winter argued persuasively that the biblical mandate was to reach every culture with the Gospel, every people group, every ethno-linguistic entity; that’s the biblical definition of “nation.” God’s design is for His church to plant a thriving, evangelizing church in every people group of the world. Thirty-five years later, almost every missions agency agrees with this analysis. This insight led to the founding of the US Center for World Mission and the development of the Perspectives on the World Christian Movement course.

God’s cross-cultural mandate to His people permeates Scripture. Dr Winter emphasized that our God is a missionary God, calling all the nations to Himself, and that this has been His purpose from the beginning. The calling of Abraham in Genesis 12 is itself part of the cross-cultural mandate. Missions is thus not a mandate resting on a few, isolated verses here and there; it is the central part of the biblical storyline.

God has been working throughout history to fulfill this cross-cultural mandate. In telling the story of missions, many have written as if nothing happened prior to 1792, when William Carey sailed for India. Dr Winter emphasized that God has been at work in fulfilling the missionary mandate throughout time, using different methods in different periods of time. For pedagogical purposes, he broke history down into 400-year eras, and argued that one way of advancing the Gospel was prevalent in each era. I am not alone in rejecting some of those generalizations as too broad and thus unhelpful. But his emphasis was right: God has indeed been at work over the centuries, well prior to 1792.

God’s church needs bands of people focused on missions to assist in the fulfilling of the cross-cultural mandate. Building on the functioning of Paul’s missionary band, Dr Winter argued that such groups of missionaries are a vital part of the church. Indeed, he argued that each missionary band was fully a church in its own right – just a different type of church than the normal within-one-culture church. Here again, in my view Dr Winter took a valuable insight and went too far with it. By all means, mission agencies have a vital role to play in fulfilling the task. But each missionary should be part of a local, home church, living as one extended arm of that local church, as the local church plays its role in obeying the cross-cultural mandate.

Use all that you have, throughout all of your life, for God’s glory among the nations. Dr Winter exhorted others time and again to live this out, and then set a sterling example of what this means. He worked for God’s glory among the nations until the day before he died. He left a safe and secure job to start the US Center. He called all of us to a war-time lifestyle, and then he lived such a lifestyle, never accumulating possessions, always giving away much of what he received. Furthermore, he called the church to prayer for cross-cultural missions, and then prayed diligently himself.

For those of you who have been part of Desiring God Church for some time, these points may seem almost passé. You have heard me say them – as well as variations on these themes – time and again. That’s the impact of a man mightily used by God – His profound insights and ideas become so widely taught that we begin to take them for granted.

So let us thank God for this man:

I praise you, Lord God, for the gift of Ralph Winter to your church, and to me in particular. May you raise up many more like him because of his faithfulness to Your calling. And may we fulfill your cross-cultural mandate to the church in this generation – in part because of the faithfulness of Ralph D Winter. All glory and praise is Yours, O Lord.

(For more on Ralph Winter, see key quotes; John Piper’s tribute; another online tribute; and his autobiography. Best of all, take the Perspectives course!)

Prayer and Mission

The mission statement of this church is: “We exist to spread a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples through Jesus Christ.” How can we be used by God to fulfill such a huge mission?

Isaiah 55:6-7 answers the question:

“Seek the LORD while he may be found; call upon him while he is near; let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the LORD, that he may have compassion on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.

Fred and I believe this is a clear call for Desiring God Community Church in 2009: Seek the Lord! Call upon Him! God invites us to do so, saying whoever seeks, finds!

But seeking Him means more than saying, “God, help me!” Note what the prophet says MUST accompany our seeking the Lord: Forsaking our wicked ways and wrong thoughts, repenting and returning to the Lord. We all need this regular examination of our own hearts, this regular turning to God, this taking account of where we are before Him. (more…)

How Do I Respond to God?

In the sermon text for this coming Sunday, God says that missionaries will bring “all your brethren from all the nations as a grain offering to the LORD” (Isaiah 66:20 NAS). In this context, the grain offering is a particularly powerful symbol. Unfortunately, I doubt that I will have time to bring out the rich imagery of this offering on Sunday. So here is an excerpt from a sermon I preached ten years ago on this offering. You can see the entire sermon – about twice as long – here. May we present ourselves – all of ourselves – as this type of offering, holy and acceptable to God – Coty

How should we respond to God’s love? The grain offering described in Leviticus 2 pictures our proper response beautifully.

In this offering, God shows us that we should respond to His love by offering our entire lives back to him. And He shows that a life holy and acceptable to God is not the result of our naturally sweet disposition; there should be no self-glorification, no pride in our status before God. Instead, a life offered to God needs to be characterized by prayer, infused with the Holy Spirit, and based on the promises of God

This is the picture of the grain offering. Let’s look at now in greater detail. (more…)