Envisioning GracePoint: 
Life-Giving Missional Outreach  
Matthew 28:18-20

Introduction
We are on week three of a six-week sermon series exploring together our new Vision Statement.  Each week we are exploring one of the seven Biblical purposes of why we exist as a local congregation.  This morning we will explore what does it mean for us to be a people who engage in “Life-Giving Missional Outreach.”

Let us pray…        
Scripture reading…
Matthew 28:18-20
“Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.  Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."


Inhabiting God’s Story: Seeing our Story Connected to God’s Story

Our Bible passage from Matthew is referred to as the “Great Commission” given first to the apostles, and then through them to all of God’s people through the ages.  This Great Commission is the Church’s marching orders, it is its reason for being, it is the central purpose of why God saves us and calls us into community.  

You have heard me say this repeatedly over our last year and half together, and you will continue to hear me declare this truth so long as God keeps me here as your pastor:  The main reason you are on planet Earth after becoming a Christian, instead of being taken directly to heaven, and the main reason each local congregation exists, is to glorify God by partnering with God in reaching those who are heading to eternal hell with the gospel so that as many as possible can discover forgiveness and eternal life in God’s kingdom.  Everything else is secondary and supportive of this mission and calling.

There are many attributes of our triune God that in knowing them, we understand God better, and so love, worship, and serve God in spirit and in truth.  God is holy, just, merciful, sovereign, etc.  But to fully grasp and join in on the main activity of who God is and what God is doing in the world, we must first and foremost understand that our triune God of grace is a “Missionary God.”


Our Vision for Missional Outreach

Here is how we are applying this Bible passage in our Vision Statement:
Life-giving MISSIONAL OUTREACH, reclaiming God’s people and world  (Matthew 28:18-20)
Our missionary God’s primary activity is seeking and saving the lost.  Thus, Christ calls us to live and proclaim the gospel as the primary thing in all we are and do.  We engage in and support local and global outreach demonstrating Christ’s love, power, and grace, and expanding God’s kingdom reign over individuals and society.
To say it again differently: “Our missionary God’s primary activity is seeking and saving the lost,” and “reclaiming this rebellious world back under His kingdom reign.”  

There’s a popular phrase right now of WWJD, “What would Jesus do?”  There is always just one answer to that question:  Jesus right now, all the time, until He returns again in power, is always doing what He began to do when He first visited planet Earth.  

Christ is fulfilling His mission that He revealed when He quoted Isaiah that we now read about in Luke 4:18-19:
"The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to release the oppressed,
 to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."

Through the Holy Spirit and God’s Spirit-empowered people, Christ is always at work “reclaiming the captive, restoring the wounded, and redeploying the equipped.”  And so for us to be like Christ means above all else to be a people who likewise center our lives around seeking and saving the lost.  As our vision statement expresses it: “Christ calls us to live and proclaim the gospel as the primary thing in all we are and do.”  

You positively cannot claim to be living in obedience to Christ if you are not actively working with Christ in some manner in God’s soul-saving, disciple-making work!  Today, in response to this sermon, through our Ministry Fair, you will have the opportunity to discover all the many ways this congregation is participating in this missionary work of God.  If you are not already actively engaged in service here at GracePoint, then today is the day you can reenlist in one of these exciting missional ministries.  There should be no member of this congregation who is not on at least one ministry team.  


Living Great Commission Lives

A common catch phrase to help us keep reminded of this defining calling on each us is to “keep the main thing the main thing, and the main thing is the gospel.”  Let the Great Commission be the driving force, the guiding direction, the overarching story, of how you live your life.  

When you think about:
•    What’s my purpose in life:  To participate in the Great Commission
•    How do I make major life decisions of time, talent, treasure, schooling, career, marriage, lifestyle, location, etc:  By whatever will help you better fulfill the Great Commission
•    What’s our purpose as a local congregation:  To participate in the Great Commission primarily in Dubuque, and secondarily in the world.  

So if we are going to live Great Commission lives, we must understand all that is included in this life-defining mission.  So let’s “break it down” as they say:
“Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.  

Living Great Commission lives requires the power and authority of Christ.

If a president sends an ambassador on a peace mission, that ambassador must carry with him or her the necessary authority and power to make whatever deals need to be made in order to broker peace.  If a general sends a squad into battle, those troops better have all the weapons and power needed for victory.  

Christ has given us the most eternally significant peace mission in the universe.  Christ has sent us into the fiercest battle that will ever be waged with the destiny of eternal souls at stake.  Christ does so from a position of having been granted by the Sovereign Father God “all authority in heaven and earth!”  

And in Christ, we exercise that same authority as we live and declare the gospel.  Christ declared over us that not even the gates of hell will be able to prevail over His Church!”  In Romans we read that we don’t ever need to be ashamed or timid in declaring the gospel, because the “gospel is the power of God for salvation.”  The gospel doesn’t just declare God’s power , it is the power.  When we declare the gospel, the Holy Spirit empowers that message to pierce hearts, to save, heal and deliver!

Therefore go and make disciples of all nations,

Living Great Commission lives requires making disciples of Christ not just decisions for Christ.

The purpose of living and declaring the gospel is to make disciples not decisions.  Our goal isn’t to just get people to say the “sinner’s prayer.”  Christ commissions us to make passionate, devoted followers of Christ as our own mission statement declares.

baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,

Living Great Commission lives requires bringing people into Trinitarian relationships with the Trinity and the family of God.

To “baptize” is to bring one into active membership in the Body of Christ, into intimate Trinitarian relationship with God and other believers.  Being in close relationship with God and other Christians is not one aspect of being a Christian, or an optional component.  Being in Trinitarian relationships is the very essence, the very definition of living in the kingdom of God now and forever.

and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.

Living Great Commission lives requires living lives saturated in God’s Word.

Fulfilling the Great Commission, and living Great Commission lives, requires living lives saturated in God’s Word so that we are continually being shaped by who God is and who we are as God’s adopted children.
 
And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."

Living Great Commission lives requires doing all ministry in participation with Christ’s ongoing ministry.

We must always remember that all ministry, and everything we are and do as Christians, is always done in participation with Christ, in union with Christ, in partnering in what Christ is already doing.  When we forget this, we think and act as if we are operating in our own power, and for our own purposes.   

When we pray, we are joining in on the prayers Christ is already praying.  When we preach, teach, do acts of kindness and love, worship, whatever we do, we are joining in on Christ’s preaching, teaching, and outreach.  This is what makes our worship, prayers, and service acceptable to God and effectual for changing the world!


Discovering our Missionary God

So what is missional outreach?  It is joining in on what our missionary God is already up to in Dubuque and the world.  Namely, God is all about reclaiming the captive, restoring the wounded, and redeploying the equipped!  

Our God has always been a missionary God.  What else could God be given that the human race fell into rebellion and therefore separation from God right from the beginning?  When the first humans rebelled and become alienated from God, and infected God’s creation with the cancer of sin, God had two choices.  Destroy everything, and try again.  But to do this would be to declare that God had made a mistake, that He was not all-powerful and sovereign.   

So God chose the only path an all-loving, all-merciful God could choose.  God chose to make a way of redemption, forgiveness, reconciliation, and restoration.  Adam and Eve believed the lie of Satan the serpent and so sinned, and God promised that someday a child that comes from Eve’s lineage would crush the Evil One’s head.  So God began to orchestrate all human history to bring this Satan-crushing, sin-defeating, human-race-restoring deliverer, hero, messiah, savior into the world.  

You cannot understand human history or your own life history until you see it in the perspective of what our missionary God is up to in reclaiming the human race, and all creation, back into the kingdom of God, and restoring the universe back to a condition in which we can fulfill God’s original intent for Earth and Humanity.

All of human history, every rise and fall of every nation, every war and victory, every world ruler and power, every major event good and bad all centers on what God was and is doing in making Himself, His plans, and a way of salvation known to His chosen people throughout all the centuries until Christ returns.  It is only when we rightly perceive this world, this current age, and our lives from this kingdom perspective, and perceive God as a missionary God, that we will be driven in all we do to partner with God in His missionary work; to live Great Commission lives.  

What compels us to live such Great Commission lives?  The same force that compelled the apostle Paul.  The same force that compels our missionary God.  We discover this motivating, driving force in 2 Cor 5:14-15
“For Christ's love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died.  And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.”  

No one can claim to love God and hate others at the same time, the Apostle John warns us.  And we cannot claim to love others if we are willing to let those still caught in sin and darkness stay in bondage, or let those still unsaved continue on their way to eternal punishment, when we have the power to set them free through the gospel!
 
As you watch this music video by Casting Crowns, Does Anybody Hear Her,' pray that the Holy Spirit will being to continually reshape your heart to break over the lost the same way the Father’s heart breaks.  

“Does anybody hear her?  Can anybody see?
Or does anybody even know she's going down today
Under the shadow of our steeple
With all the lost and lonely people
Searching for the hope that's tucked away in you and me
Does anybody hear her? Can anybody see?”