#2 God is the Missionary.
A proper understanding of missions begins with the Missionary Himself—God. God is the One on mission and we are following after Him. He is the missionary and we are the co-missionaries. God is primary to missions and we are secondary. All complete understandings of missions begins and ends with God.
DISCUSS
#1 How is God like a missionary? Or better yet, how are missionaries like God?
The Christian God is a Missionary God. What are all the characteristics of God that can be used to understand Him as the Missionary.
#2 We are missionaries, aren’t we?
Read 2 Corinthians 5:16-21. How is God’s missionary purpose and our missionary purposes intertwined?
DEFINE
The Missio Dei literally means the mission of God. Our missionary God came to the mission field to save and send His missionary force.
Differentiating between the Mission of God and missions.
Gospel-centered mission puts God and what He has done and doing at the center of any missions discussion. Gospel-centered missionaries derive their motivation, power, hope, and queues about world evangelization from their God who Himself is on mission. They understand missions, in contrast, to be the rightful response to what God has already done and is doing in the world. The Great Commission is merely joining God in His already great missionary enterprise.
What should be at the center of any missions related discussion?
What are the ramifications of not getting this right?
“God had one Son and He made that son a missionary.”
David Livingstone
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. John 3:16
For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” Luke 19:10
INTERACT
Below is a map displaying a need for missionaries in the countries of our world. What do you learn from the map below? Where is the need concentrated? Where are you surprised by the need? Which country do you feel particularly burdened for?
Missionaries Needed
If the World was 100 Christians…
Look over this graphic depicting the world as 100 Christians.
What are the two most surprising details about the global church as represented in this graphic?
What does this tell you about the missionary heart of God?
Read Revelation 5:9-10, Revelation 7:9-10, and Revelation 14:6-7. What has Jesus’ missionary life and death accomplished for heaven?
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, 10 and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth.”
Revelation 5:9-10
After this 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, 10 and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!”
Revelation 7:9-10
Then I saw another angel flying directly overhead, with an eternal gospel to proclaim to those who dwell on earth, to every nation and tribe and language and people. 7 And he said with a loud voice, “Fear God and give him glory, because the hour of his judgment has come, and worship him who made heaven and earth, the sea and the springs of water.”
Revelation 14:7-7
EVALUATE
Jesus, the Greatest Missionary Ever
Will you follow in His steps?
Jesus knew His mission. He knew why the Father sent Him into the world. He aligned Himself with this mission. Everything that He did, everything that He taught, everything that is recorded of His life in the Gospels was focused on accomplishing the mission for which He was sent. At the end of His life and ministry, He prayed to the Father, “I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do” (John 17:4). Mission accomplished.
Jesus was a missionary. This application of the term missionary to Jesus Christ may sound strange, but Jesus exemplifies in the truest sense what it means to be a missionary. Most Christians understand that a missionary is one who has been sent with the gospel to a foreign people to lead them to faith in Christ and among other things, multiply disciples, and establish churches. Jesus was sent to earth by the Father with the gospel. He was not sent “to condemn the world, bur rather that the world through Him might be saved” (John 3:17). He proclaimed the gospel, He made disciples, and He established His Church. Then, He sent His followers as missionaries with the gospel to Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8). He commanded them to make disciples, to baptize, and to teach obedience to all that He commanded (Matt 28:19–20). Jesus initiated a missionary movement! Every follower of Jesus instantly became a missionary—sent with the gospel message.
If you define a missionary, as many do, as someone who crosses cultural boundaries to take the message of the gospel to those who have not heard, then God, in Jesus Christ, is the consummate missionary.
Anthony Steele
In evaluating Jesus’ mission, one must observe the pattern of Jesus. As He traveled among the villages, He trained His disciples to do what He was doing. Yet when He left, He summed up the mission He was giving to His disciples in the Great Commission in Matthew 28; that commission to make more and better disciples remains the mission of the Church today. As John Kaiser notes, “The object is not to find them, gather them, or improve them. The object is to make them.” (Winning on Purpose, 59Jesus sent every believer as a missionary with the gospel together in community with other Christians to visibly and incarnationally display and proclaim who Jesus is to those in the culture around them. Every Christian, like Jesus, is a missionary. Every neighborhood and workplace is a mission field. As Dick Hillis, missionary to Asia and founder of OC International (formerly Overseas Crusades) has said, “Every heart with Christ, a missionary; every heart without Christ, a mission field.” (“The Dick Hillis Story,” www.onechallenge.org)
Throughout the book of Acts, the Church is seen as the people of God “on mission”—sent by Jesus with the gospel in community to the culture! Essentially, the Church is a missionary Church! The Church is sent by Jesus! The Church is proclaiming the gospel! The Church is making disciples! The Church is on mission!
Everyone who is a committed follower of Jesus has been sent by Jesus on mission to reach those around you for Christ! Missions does not begin across an ocean or on the other side of the world. According to Acts 1:8, it starts across the street (in “your” Jerusalem). Every church needs to be a missionary church. Every Christian needs to recognize that Jesus sent you with other believers to bring the gospel of Christ to your culture, to your neighborhood, to all of your zip code and beyond!
https://missionalchallenge.com/the-greatest-missionary-ever-jesus-christ/
Q & A
What was the main point of this article?
In what ways is Jesus like a missionary?
Where is “your” Jerusalem? Who is “your” Jerusalem? What is your next step in imitating the missionary heart of God in that place or with that person?
PRAY
Prayer for the CO international ministries
Use the video below to pray for our ministry in Brazil. Pray through the prompts at the end of the video.