Our Role in Global Missions
So we as the people of God — as the church of Jesus Christ, as this local assembly called Cities Church — we have a missionary calling. We saw last week that, going back to the very beginning and all throughout the Bible, God has called his people to be a “so that” people. We exist not only for ourselves to know and enjoy God, but also so that others from all nations may know and enjoy God.
We’re here because of the church’s missionary calling, and we’ve also inherited that calling. We now get to join in on God’s global work — and my prayer is that we would. My hope for last week’s sermon, Part One, and this week’s sermon as a Part Two, is that God by his Spirit would lead us to step into our missionary calling with a renewed passion and energy. I want us to choose greater faithfulness in God’s purpose to magnify his glory among all nations.
And this week, as a Part Two, I want to get practical.
There are three things that we must do as part of our missionary calling, and that’s where we’re going to spend most of our time, but before we get there I want to tell you the meaning of Psalm 68.
I do have a sermon outline for those of us who appreciate such things. And for those of us who don’t like sermon outlines, you’re a weirdo. Either way, I’m answering two questions:
First, we’re asking: What is the overall meaning of Psalm 68?
Then second, How do we as Cities Church step into our missionary calling with a renewed passion and energy?
Overall meaning. Local church application.
And before anything else, let’s pray again and ask for God’s help.
Father, in this moment again, here by your grace, we ask that you, by your Spirit, would speak to us through your word. You are at work in your people, in us, and we surrender to your work now, for your glory. In Jesus’s name, amen.
1) The Meaning of Psalm 68
We saw last week that in the Book of Psalms overall — and especially in the immediate psalms leading up to Psalm 67 — there is an all-nations theme that’s been building. Psalm 67 is like the high point of that theme where the psalmist is exuberant in his hope that all nations will worship God. When he says, Let the peoples praise you, O God, let all the peoples praise you! Let the nations be glad and sing for joy! — when he says that he’s describing future reality. Psalm 67 ends with that hope, verse 7: “let all the ends of the earth fear him!”
And we should wonder: How will Psalm 68 follow that up? Is the ‘all nations theme’ over or will Psalm 68 continue that theme?
Well I want to show you that Psalm 68 does continue the ‘all nations theme’ by showing us how the ‘all nations hope’ will be realized.
Here it is: The ‘all nations hope’ will be realized by the coming of a victorious divine king.
That’s the message of Psalm 68, which is a Psalm of David — and that’s significant. The composer of the Psalms wants us to see that the ‘all nations hope’ and the hope for the Messiah are one and the same. The divine King who will bring about the worship of God from all nations is the Messiah, going back to Psalm 2. God has made the nations his heritage, the ends of the earth are his possession (see Psalm 2:8).
The way we see this in Psalm 68 is that God is described as a divine-warrior king who has come to defeat his enemies. David recounts who God has shown himself to be through his past actions: the exodus is alluded to; the Book of Judges is alluded to; the conquest of the Promised Land is alluded to; but the main thing here — the featured presentation — is that God chose Jerusalem, Mount Zion, to be his dwelling place.
That’s what’s going on with the mention of the mountain of Bashan in verse 15. Bashan was another mountainous area close to Jerusalem that, historically, was a fertile, productive place. It was a great mountain, a great place to live — in all the top five lists. But here, in verse 15, the mountain of Bashan is personified as being jealous of Mount Zion because Mount Zion is, verse 16,
“the mount that God desired for his abode.”
Mount Zion, Jerusalem, is the place that God had chosen to make his dwelling place.
The Procession
So, as we’re tracking with the psalm, the divine king has been victorious; he has settled the place of his throne, his presence; and then there is a victorious procession. That’s verse 18. Look at this:
You ascended on high,
leading a host of captives in your train
and receiving gifts among men,
even among the rebellious, that the Lord God may dwell there.
This is part of the procession, and there’s a big celebration surrounding it — singers and musicians and the people of Israel. They’re coming to worship God in Jerusalem, but look at this! It’s not only Israel that’s part of this celebration. Verse 31:
Nobles shall come from Egypt;
Cush shall hasten to stretch out her hands to God.
Now what do we know about Egypt and Cush? These are the nations. They’re
Gentiles. We know about Egypt (they’ve been part of the biblical story). Cush is
actually another word for Ethiopia. So verse 31 is talking about Egypt and Africa.
Both are outside of Israel — they’re two examples of all nations, and here they’re
worshiping the God of Israel — verse 32:
“O kingdoms of the earth, sing to God; sing praises to the Lord.”
It’s the ‘all nations hope’ again. See, the theme continues! And what Psalm 68
envisions here is what the Book of Revelation describes — Revelation 7:9,
… and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, [were] standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, 10 and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.”
The worship of God from all nations is the hope that runs through the entire storyline of Scripture, and that hope comes to be through the victory of the Messiah!
The Hope and How
That’s Psalm 68, and I know that’s a quick overview, but I want to confirm for you that Psalm 68 really is about Jesus. This is based on something that Paul says in the New Testament:
The apostle Paul, in Ephesians Chapter 4, when he talks about the purpose and mission of the church, he quotes Psalm 68, verse 18 — the “you ascended on high” verse — and Paul says that the ascension mentioned in Psalm 68 was fulfilled by Jesus in his resurrection from the dead and ascension to his heavenly throne — that’s when Jesus led his victorious procession and gave gifts to the church for the church’s mission.
We don’t have time to get into all the details, but Paul connected Psalm 68 to Jesus and therefore we must make that connection. The concluding, overall message of Psalm 68, in light of the whole Bible, is that the death and resurrection of Jesus — the victory of Jesus — is how all the nations will come to worship him.
That’s how Psalm 68 fits with Psalm 67 and the ‘all nations theme.’
And when it comes to our mission, we always have to hold these together: the hope of all the nations worshiping God, and the how of the gospel of Jesus. You can’t separate them.
Another way to say it is that the goal of Revelation 7 (when God is worshiped by all nations), that is accomplished through the mission of Matthew 28 (when Jesus tells us to make disciples of all nations).
Matthew 28: make disciples of all nations ends up in Revelation 7: all nations worship God.
The church’s present disciple-making labor is what leads to the end-time worship of God from all nations.
Missions exist for the sake of worship.
Missions exist right now because we’re not there yet — but that’s where we’re headed.
Okay, now we gotta get practical. This is application part. The question now is: What is our role in all this?
Application for Cities Church
How do we, practically, as Cities Church, step into our missionary calling with a renewed passion and energy?
There are three things we must do.
1) We must be a contrast people
To be a contrast people means that our church — our community here — must be different from the world that surrounds us. And this is part of our missionary calling that goes back to the Old Testament, to God’s missionary calling on Israel.
We saw last week that God made a radical promise to Abraham to bless all the families of the earth through him, and then later in the Book of Exodus, when God rescued Israel and established them as a nation, God restates his promise to Abraham to be accomplished through Israel. He says to Israel as a nation:
you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; 6 and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. (Exodus 19:5–6)
Israel had a priestly calling for the sake of the nations, and that priestly calling went together with their holiness — they were to be different. They were set apart for God’s purpose. When you’d see Israel next to everybody else, Israel was to be a contrast people. One theologian says that the contrast was seen in what they displayed. They were to be a “showcase to the world of how being in covenant with Yahweh changes you.”
This was one important purpose of God’s law. God’s law — his instruction, his word — was meant to be a guide for how Israel should live as a contrast people among all the other peoples of the earth. And we see this in two ways:
First, God’s law was meant to lead Israel to embody their values.
The nation of Israel — like God’s original plan for humanity — existed to value God more than anything else. God’s greatest commandment, Deuteronomy 6, was to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might” (Deuteronomy 6:5).
And then the second greatest commandment was to love your neighbor as yourself.
Those are the two greatest commandments, the two highest values: Love God and love people. All of God’s other laws and commandments are simply extensions, applications, of those two values.
And — because what you value most will come through in the way you live — God’s law was meant to be a guide for how everyday life looks when you love God more than anything (and you love others right after him).
God’s law was meant to show us that every area of our lives — every area — is meant to be lived under the direct and radical supremacy of God — everything is from God and by God and for God. Everything is ultimately, truly, about God — and God wants his people to show that in their lives.
And, if we’re honest, that’s actually too much God for a lot of people. (The only way you could have more of God in your life than that is if God actually indwelled you by his Spirit.) And that’s certainly too much God for anyone who doesn’t love God more than everything else.
Here’s at least one thing this means: if the moral will of God — which is what we find in the Bible — if the moral will of God found in the Bible seems too demanding of us, that says more about us than it does God and his Word. Check your values.
God intends for his people to have a lot of him in everything. His law, his moral will, his word shows us this, and it guides us in how we live that out. And it was also meant to do something else.
Secondly, God’s law was meant to lead Israel to challenge the surrounding idolatry of the nations.
And you can see how this is related to embodying their highest value. A people who is radically centered on God and who genuinely care for others — that people stands out, they’re a contrast people. And, that contrast stands against / pushes back / opposes the worship of lesser, rival gods.
In other words, an Israelite could not truly worship the true God and at the same time be okay with their neighbor offering child sacrifice to Baal.
Now we might think: But that was back in the Old Testament, today don’t people have the religious liberty to worship Baal if that’s what they choose? Don’t people get to choose who they worship?
Well the answer is: Yes, in our pluralistic society people have that right to worship whoever they choose, but they should not have the right to sacrifice and mutilate children.
And I wanna be clear here, because if we as a church are not a contrast people who stands against that, then what do we think we have to say to the other peoples of this world?
We need to understand that being a contrast people is what confirms that we are missionaries of the true God, not missionaries of the idols of our culture.
We cannot export or spread what we do not have. If we wanna take the good news to the other nations of this earth, then we need to live here in the difference that good news makes. The quality of our community here — our shared God-centeredness, our love for others here — that has to be the foundation of our mission to others way out there. We must be a contrast people.
The second thing we must do if we’re gonna step into our missionary calling with renewed passion is:
2) We must join the advance
Now a keyword here is join. Again, I said this last week: we are not reinventing the wheel; we’re not trying to be on the cutting edge of anything. We are only gladly participating in a work that was started a very long time ago, in Acts Chapter 1, verse 8 when Jesus empowered his apostles to be his witnesses to the ends of the earth.
We see that already being fulfilled in the Book of Acts, starting in Chapter 13 when the apostle Paul was sent on this first missionary journey. This is where I think perspective really is important.
Use your imagination for a minute. Imagine that you get a magazine sent to you about global missions. Global Missions Magazine. I want you to visualize the front cover of this magazine. It has the big words, “REACHING THE NATIONS” and there’s a photo of a person from the nations right beside those words. How do you imagine that person looks?
Well, if you’re like me, maybe you imagine that person has over 100 beaded necklaces around their neck. They’ve got long, huge ear-rings, maybe a big nose ring. They have a colorful headdress, and markings and ornaments on their forehead, and they’re holding a spear … If you’re like me, maybe when you imagine a person from the nations you imagine a person who looks very different from how we look in here. And that’s not wrong, because some people from the nations do look different from us in here, and if that Global Missions Magazine was printed in America it makes sense that the front-cover photo is of a person who looks different from Americans.
But imagine for a minute that the magazine was printed in Jerusalem by the apostles. Pretend for a minute that the early church printed a Global Missions Magazine. Never mind the time period, just imagine that the Acts 2 church in Jerusalem released a Global Missions Magazine. How do you think the person on the front cover would look?
They would look like you and me. Take any photo of the people in this room and that could be the front cover of the magazine. I explained last week that, biblically speaking, we are part of all nations. And I know I said that, you’ve already heard that, but as a thought-experiment, imagine this: there’s a Global Missions Magazine cover that says “REACHING THE NATIONS,” and imagine it’s your face beside those words.
I don’t know how that makes you feel, but I think we should be so humbled by that.
The ends of the earth includes you and me. I want us to really get that.
What It Does and Does Not Mean
And now let me tell you one thing that means, and one thing that does not mean. I’ll start with what it does not mean.
First: Understanding that we are the nations does not mean that we only do missions to people who look like us, here in America, and we still get to call it global missions. Not at all.
Instead, we should think of global missions not as trying simply to “reach the nations,” but as trying to reach the nations different from us in a place different from here.
It started in Jerusalem, so we are the ends of the earth, and there are other ends of the earth who have never heard the gospel, and we must go there. We must send and go to the places where Christ has not yet been named, to people different from us and places different from here.
We are the nations, and the second thing that does mean is that our sending and going in the work of global missions is sending and going as those who owe their existence to global missions.
This means that the work we do in advancing the gospel is a continuing of the advance of the gospel. We ourselves are proof of gospel advance, and what we’re doing in global missions is joining in on that. We are participating in God’s purpose to magnify his glory among all nations.
And his purpose is going pretty well. Some reports say that more people are coming to Christ today than ever before. For example, here’s a fascinating stat:
In the year 2000, 814 million Christians lived in Europe and North America, while 660 million Christians lived in Africa and Asia. As of last year, 838 million live in Europe and North America … and 1.1 billion Christians live in Africa and Asia. (source)
We get to join in that gospel advance. The gospel is spreading and we can and should be part of that spreading by sending and going.
And I wanna speak here to our church corporately. This is for you if you call Cities home:
So far in the first eight years of our church’s life, our role in global missions has mostly been in support. We have supported (we do support) global missionaries and their work. We’ve supported, but we’ve not sent.
We’ve sent out some church planters for work here in North America, but we’ve not yet raised up and sent out global missionaries to the nations different from us in places different from here. But I am praying that in this new chapter of our church’s life, we will do that. As a church rooted, I’m praying that God would raise up men and women from this congregation — some of you — who we can send to take the gospel to those who’ve never heard.
There are some opportunities for you, that I’d like to tell you about. There’s a lot of info I could give you here, but for now I want you to know that we’ve developed a new Global Missions Pathway to increase your knowledge in global missions and to equip you for that work in the hopes that we can send you.
One of the big reasons we’ve sent out church planters is because we have a pathway to develop and equip church planters, and so we want to do something like that with global missions. If you’re interested in global missions, if you’re trying to discern a call there, I’d love to talk. There’s more info to come on that.
But now, the third and final point. This is the third thing we must do if we’re going to step into our missionary calling with a renewed passion and energy.
3) Love Jesus above all else
Whatever gives us the passion and energy to step into global missions should also be what sustains us in that work. What is the real reason we should step in and stay in the work of advancing the gospel to the other ends of the earth?
There are a few different things we could say here, and some that people do say. One approach is to emphasize the need — because there is a need. The gospel is advancing in some parts of the world, but not in others. So I could tell you that there are 7,327 unreached people groups around the world, and that 59% of the world’s population has less than 2% Christians there. And all of those numbers together with mortality numbers, according to one stat I’ve seen, means that every single day there are 157,690 people who die in their sins, without the gospel. That’s overwhelming. The need is great, and we just keep hammering that.
Or I could just talk about courage and I could challenge you to step out of your comfort zone and do the hard thing and just resolve to do it, to go at all costs, no matter what.
I could appeal to the need. I could appeal to your courage. They both are true, and they have a place. But, the only thing that will truly lead us and keep us in the work of global missions is knowing that Jesus is worthy.
Worthy are you, Lord Jesus, 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.
Jesus is the one who does the saving.
Worthy is the Lamb who was slain,
to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might
and honor and glory and blessing!
And it’s one thing to read that Jesus is worthy, that to him belongs all the glory, but it’s another thing to love him for that. Do we love that he is worthy? Do we delight in his glory? Is Jesus our highest treasure? We must love him above all else.
That’s the difference-maker. The person of Jesus. The real person, Jesus. Jesus. Him. Nothing else really matters. Nothing. It’s about him. We want him. We want others to have him. We love him more than anything.
And that’s what brings us to this Table.
The Table
The heart of the gospel that has changed us, and that we want to give to others, is that Jesus Christ died for us to bring us close to God — and without his salvation, nothing else makes sense.
God made us for himself, for his glory, to have fellowship with him, but our sin has broken that fellowship and makes us deserving of judgment. But Jesus, in his rich mercy, in his death and resurrection, he took that judgment and conquered our worst enemy, so that now, when we put our faith in him, we are forgiven and free and made to be the sons and daughters of God.
If you have not yet trusted in Jesus, you can do that right now. Right now, you can put your faith in him. You can surrender to him and say, Jesus, I trust you.
If you have trusted him, brothers and sisters, now let’s remember his gospel and give him thanks. This is the Lord’s Table for all those who are united to him by faith.
We’ll serve the bread first. Take it and hold onto it, we’ll eat it altogether.
His body is the true bread. Let us serve you.
