Different people have different missions. There are diplomatic missions. When diplomats or representatives of a given country go to another country, that is their diplomatic mission — to establish peace or to conduct certain negotiations that will secure particular agreements for the benefit of their country. There are also space missions. These are those expeditions into space in which, with the help of rockets or spaceships, people travel to the moon or to space stations in orbit around the earth. When the astronauts or the diplomats return, respectively, to earth or to their homeland, they say that their mission is accomplished. They had some assigned task, and they carried it out.
So then, there are military missions, diplomatic missions, space missions, but there are also spiritual missions. We, every one of us, have our own mission. That is why we must know what our mission is, so that we can accomplish it.
The fact that we use the word “mission” does not mean that we are saying something new, because in fact the word “mission” means “task.” In God’s Word, Jesus Christ spoke of many tasks that He set before His disciples. For example, the parable of the talents. It tells of a master who went to a distant country. But before he departed, he gave his servants talents and assigned them a task. Their task, or mission, was to multiply these talents. In other words, they were to be faithful in the stewardship in which their master had placed them. And remember what the master said to those of them who accomplished their mission. Their master said: “Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!” (Matthew 25:21,23). Glory to God! This is why we speak about the accomplishment of our mission. The question I would like all of us to reflect on is: “How do we accomplish our mission?” We will look at several series of teachings on this question, since this is not something that can be completed in a single worship service. This series is called: “The Mission — Accomplished!” The question we will try to answer through it is “How do we accomplish our mission?” In this teaching we will look at three elements that would help us accomplish the mission God has given us. What would help us accomplish our mission, so that one day, when we stand before God, we would not be ashamed, but would say: “Yes, Lord, I did Your will.” Or, to put it another way: “How can we live in such a way that when we draw near to death and look back over our life, we can say: I do not regret the way I lived.”
LIFE IS SHORT
Because our life is short. If you read history, in it there are various figures, and they all have a date of birth and a date of death. If you go to a cemetery or look at an obituary, there it gives the date of birth and the date of death of the given person. And there, in the middle between the two dates, there is a little dash. And in fact a person’s life is precisely that dash. We too have a date of birth, and at this moment we are living in that little dash, but our date of death is coming as well. We do not know how many years we have left on this earth. On the internet there is an interesting site. It is called “the death clock.” In English its name is deathclock.com. When you go to this website, you enter your date of birth, how many kilograms you weigh, how tall you are — which indicates your body mass index or how much you are overweight, whether you are a pessimist or an optimist, and it automatically calculates for you approximately when you will die — it tells you, for example, that you will die in 7 years. This death clock is, of course, not realistic, but I suppose that the authors of this site use statistical research. Because there are statistics that show what the average length of human life is, how long men live or how long women live, and so on. This does not mean that you will die exactly on that date. But this website was made in order to remind you that your life is short and that you must think about how to live so that it may be full and meaningful.
A LIFE ACCORDING TO GOD’S WILL
All of us who are here, within fifty or sixty years, will all be dead. There will not be a single one left. But the question will be: “How have we lived our life?” And whether, when we have lived it and turn back to look at our life, we will be able to say: “I do not regret the way I lived, because I lived according to God’s will.”
We see an example of this in Jesus Christ. When He was near the end of His earthly journey, He turned in prayer to God the Father and said to Him: “I have brought you glory on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do” (John 17:4). Jesus was satisfied with the life He had lived, because He had lived His life according to God’s will.
We also see the apostle Paul, who was a persecutor and blasphemer of the church, but God called him to be His instrument. And when he is finishing his earthly journey and writing his last letter to Timothy, when he knows that he is already about to be condemned to death and beheaded, he says the words: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day — and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing” (2 Timothy 4:7-8). So the apostle Paul, just like the Lord Jesus, when he looked back, said: “I lived my life according to God’s will.”
And we see not only Paul, but also many other men of God, of whom it is said that they lived their life according to God’s will. For example, of David it is said that “in his own generation” he “served God’s purpose” (Acts 13:36). So David, although he sinned (as we all sin), yet on the whole he lived his life according to God’s will. Likewise Moses, or Joshua, or the other heroes of faith such as Daniel — they lived their lives in such a way that when they looked back, they could say: “The life that I lived, I lived it in such a way that I am satisfied with it; there is nothing I would change.” And in fact this is exactly what I want to speak to you about — to live in such a way that we do not regret the way we have lived our life.
For our life to be full and meaningful, we must accomplish the mission that God has for us. God has a mission for us, God has something for us that we must carry out in our life. We must be aware of this, so that one day — when we have one month left before we die, when we learn that we are sick with an incurable disease and the doctors are already telling us: “Go home, there is nothing more we can do for you” — we may depart aware that we have lived our life fully. Because sooner or later this will happen, will it not? I am not saying that God does not work miracles, but I am saying that one day we will all die. The question then is, before we die, or when we have one month or one week left — when we can no longer change the things of our life, but can only look back — what would we say about ourselves? Would we be satisfied with the life we have lived?
PURPOSE, FOCUS, AND PRICE
In God’s Word we see three components that would help us accomplish our mission. They are:
- A very good awareness of what our mission is. We must know very well what our mission is. Every one of us must know very well what his mission is and must fulfill it. If we do not know it, this will hinder us from following it. So this is the first thing that will help us accomplish our mission: a very good awareness of what our mission is, what our purpose is, what our God-given task in this life is.
- A clear focus on our mission — not to be diverted from it, but to hold strictly to it. Because there are people who know what their mission is, yet they are distracted — one thing draws them here, another thing draws them elsewhere, and they cannot follow their mission — because they are not focused.
- Paying a price for the accomplishment of our mission — a readiness to endure suffering for the achievement of a higher goal. Because, although salvation is free for us, since Jesus Christ paid the price, the accomplishment of our mission is something for which we must pay a price — we must sacrifice ourselves in order to accomplish our mission. And here the question stands: “How ready are we to endure suffering for the achievement of a higher goal?” Because the accomplishment of our mission is a higher goal that God has set before us.
Purpose, focus, and price — these are the requirements for the successful accomplishment of our mission.
GOD’S MISSION
The first of these three things is the awareness of what our mission is. So let each one of us ask himself the question: “What is important to me? What is my mission?” As Christians and as God’s children, I would say that what ought to be important to us is what is important to God. Our mission, which God’s Word reveals to us, is bound up with God’s mission. Because God also has His mission. God is a God of purpose, of intention, of foreknowledge. He predestines, foreknows, has intention and purpose, and He accomplishes His purpose and His mission. What is important to God? What is the most important thing to God? What is God most interested in? What would you say? The salvation of creation. God is interested in each one of us — in how much we love Him and how much we obey Him. But viewed more globally, on the whole what God is most interested in is the salvation of His creation. Because God created everything in this world, and as the crown of His creation He created man. But man sinned, and through that original sin, sin entered the world, and as a result, as the apostle Paul says, “the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time” (Romans 8:22). Because sin has entered into man, and through man sin has entered into all of nature — that is why there are earthquakes, there is suffering, and even the animals suffer and have no peace. So in fact, this is precisely God’s intention, and it is seen quite clearly in John 3:16 — the golden verse of the Bible.
16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16)
God loves every single person in this world and desires that he be saved. The “world” spoken of in this verse is His creation, because He created the world through His Word. So this is God’s mission. This is what is important to Him — the salvation of the lost. The redemption and salvation of His creation, which is in fact man, is so precious to Him that for this salvation He gives the most precious thing He has. Is there anything more precious to God than His one and only Son? No. But He gave His one and only Son for this salvation. So this is what is precious to God — lost human souls, the creation that is sinking into sin, sinners. In Romans 5:8 it says:
8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8)
So this is what God seeks and what is important to Him, and this is His mission — the salvation of the world and the redemption of sinners. He has in His heart mercy toward mankind. In Ezekiel 18:23 it says: “Do I take any pleasure in the death of the wicked? declares the Sovereign Lord. Rather, am I not pleased when they turn from their ways and live?”
GOD’S MERCY TOWARD THE LOST
And likewise in Jonah 4:11. In Jonah it tells how God had decided to destroy Nineveh because of its sins. But so as not to strike them down without warning, He sent them the prophet Jonah to preach to them so that they might repent. And then they repented, but Jonah became angry and said: “And now, what has happened — I turn out to be a false prophet. Because I preached to them: ‘Forty more days and Nineveh will be overthrown,’ and yet now they have repented and Nineveh will not be overthrown” (Jonah 4:1-2). Because God had said: “I have relented from my intention to destroy Nineveh” (Jonah 3:10). Jonah became angry, but the Lord taught him a lesson by giving him a plant, or a gourd, which grew very quickly — overnight. The purpose of this special plant was to give him shade (Jonah 4:6). But the next day this plant, over which Jonah had been so happy, was eaten by a worm and withered (Jonah 4:7). Then, when the sun blazed and beat down on his head and he had nowhere to hide from it, Jonah said: “Lord, why did the gourd wither?” (Jonah 4:8), and he grieved over the gourd, since he had nothing under which to hide in the shade from the sun (Jonah 4:9). And see how God answered him (Jonah 4:10-11):
10 But the Lord said, “You have been concerned about this plant, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. 11 And should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left — and also many animals?” (Jonah 4:10-11)
All of this shows us that God has mercy on people, and that for Him there is nothing more important than people, than the lost in this world.
CHRIST — THE FRIEND OF SINNERS
We see that the Lord Jesus Christ too, when He came to this earth, was accused by the Pharisees of eating and drinking with the harlots and with sinners (Luke 15:2). But what did Jesus say to them? “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners” (Mark 2:16-17). So we must in no way disregard any person whatsoever. Rather, we should know that every human soul we see, every person we meet, whatever kind of person he is, whatever label society has placed on him — whether he is a thief, whether he is a mobster, or whether she is a prostitute — God loves prostitutes and wants to save them. God loves mobsters and murderers and wants to save them. God loves every person — if there is a soul in him, God loves him. God hates sin, but He loves the sinner! And this is God’s mission. That is why He gave His one and only Son — to save every single person on this earth. The blood of Christ is sufficient for every one.
This was also the mission of Jesus Christ. What was the most important thing to Jesus? For Him there was nothing more important than the salvation of the lost.
An interesting case is the rich young ruler. You remember him, don’t you? He was the one who was concerned about what he should do to inherit eternal life (Mark 10:17). Jesus said to him: “You know the commandments: ‘You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, you shall not defraud, honor your father and mother.’” Then he said that he had kept all these commandments “from his youth” (Mark 10:20). In Mark 10:21 it says:
21 Jesus looked at him and loved him. “One thing you lack,” he said. “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” (Mark 10:21)
Hearing these words, the rich young ruler became sad and downcast, since he was a man of great wealth and did not want to part with his riches (Mark 10:22).
Did Jesus know that this man was going to refuse to follow Him — did He know? He knew. But notice, this is the miracle of God’s love — even though Jesus knew that the rich young ruler would not follow Him, Jesus still “loved him.” So God loves sinners, whether they accept Him or reject Him. He loves every single person in this world, and God’s desire is that this love of His for people would enter into us, and that we too would love people unconditionally. Simply, that when you see a person, you would see the eternal soul that God has placed in him, and that God desires that soul to live in eternity. Then to say to yourself: “I will tell him about Jesus, because these good tidings that I will share with him will save his soul.” Because, as the apostle Paul says in Romans 1:16, the gospel of Christ is “the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes.” In this way we accomplish our mission.
JESUS KNEW HIS MISSION
Jesus knew His purpose. He knew His mission. That is why He said in Luke 19:10:
10 For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost. (Luke 19:10)
Part of Christ’s mission was for Him to reveal God. Because in Hebrews 1:1-2 it says that “In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son.” For although God had revealed Himself through nature, through His Word which He gave to His people, and although God had revealed Himself through His deeds, the perfect revelation, the perfect disclosure of Himself which He gives us, is in the person of His Son Jesus Christ. Because when He became incarnate, He Himself is God, and there is no other way for God to show us what He Himself is like except through His Son, who entered into human flesh and became one of us. Only then could we see His glory — “the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). So Jesus revealed God the Father perfectly — He spoke God’s words, He did God’s deeds, and He fulfilled God’s mission. That mission was — for Him “to seek and to save the lost.”
Jesus knew His purpose. From the very beginning, when His ministry was beginning, when He was in the synagogue in Capernaum, He found the place in the Book of the prophet Isaiah (Luke 4:17) and said (Luke 4:18-19):
18 “The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (Luke 4:18-19)
This was His mission, and He began to fulfill it from the very beginning of His earthly ministry. And after He had revealed God to us in His fullness, after He had worked miracles, after He had healed the sick, and after He had taught the truth of God’s Word, in the end His mission was for Him to give Himself for the sin of all, to save all humanity, and to become the Savior of the World. He knew this, and that is why He said in Luke 19:10:
10 For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost. (Luke 19:10)
This was something the people of that time could not understand. Their idea of the Messiah and of the Redeemer was that He would be some kind of earthly king of Israel who would establish political power and independence from the Roman Empire. But God’s thoughts are far higher than our thoughts (Isaiah 55:8-11). God did not desire to give political freedom only to one nation; He desired to give redemption to all creation from sin, so that all who believe in Jesus could live with Him in eternity.
RESOLVED TO FULFILL HIS MISSION
So Jesus not only knew very well what His mission was, but He also fulfilled it most diligently. In Luke 9:51 it says:
51 As the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem. (Luke 9:51)
Here begins a part of the Gospel of Luke that is called “the Travel Narrative.” Jesus was traveling to Jerusalem. Why? Because there was the cross, because there He had to sacrifice Himself and be crucified.
In this verse there are two interesting phrases. The first is: “As the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven.” The second hand of death had already begun to count down the last days and hours of Jesus’ life. Jesus knew that He had about a month left to live. He had to go to Jerusalem and there give Himself as a sacrifice for all humanity. The days for His being taken up were “approaching,” but before the ascension there were other things through which He had to pass. Before the ascension was the resurrection, and before the resurrection was the descent into “the lower, earthly regions” (Ephesians 4:9), and before that was the death, and before it were the condemnation and the scourging, and all that anguish and shame which He had to endure. So Jesus knew what lay ahead of Him.
The fact that His days were “approaching their fullness” means that the last days of His life were running out. This is a word we would use when a given cup is being filled with liquid to its very brim and is about to overflow. So too His days were simply “being fulfilled.” The cup of His life was almost full and was about to overflow, that is, for death to come.
Aware that the date of His death was drawing near, Jesus “set His face to travel to Jerusalem.” This too is a very powerful phrase in Greek. It means that Jesus made death lower its gaze. Jesus looked death in the eyes, and when their gazes met, death lowered its gaze. It did so because Jesus was firmly resolved to pass through the cross and to die. The setting of the face is in fact a Hebrew idiom that means determination. This idiom is used perhaps most of all in Ezekiel, where it says that God made Ezekiel’s forehead like a stone “harder than flint” (Ezekiel 3:8-9). In other words, God said to him: “When they are against you, your resolve will be greater than theirs, and you will prevail over them, you will defeat them.”
8 But I will make you as unyielding and hardened as they are. 9 I will make your forehead like the hardest stone, harder than flint. Do not be afraid of them or terrified by them, though they are a rebellious people. (Ezekiel 3:8-9)
Jesus set His face toward Jerusalem, and this meant that He was resolved to go to the cross, and the cross for Him was in Jerusalem. Jesus focused on Jerusalem, and more specifically on the cross that awaited Him in Jerusalem, and He determined to pass through it. He would allow nothing to stand in His way, because He knew that He had to die on a precisely determined day and in a precisely determined manner. And He allowed nothing to divert or distract Him from fulfilling this part of His mission. Because God the Father had given Him a mission: “Go and give Yourself as a sacrifice for the redemption of creation, so that I may receive them to Myself.” To which Jesus perhaps replied: “This will be very hard, but I will do it.” When He was on this earth, Jesus was both God and man at once, and in Gethsemane Jesus prayed: “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will” (Matthew 26:39). Jesus knew His mission, and He knew that there was a price He would have to pay for its accomplishment. Nevertheless, He was firmly resolved to fulfill it. He “set His face toward Jerusalem” and went toward it with unshakable resolve.
DEALING WITH THE OPPOSITION
Jesus’ road to Jerusalem was not smooth and trouble-free. Jesus met with outright opposition. Jesus was rejected by people, but rejection was nothing new to Him. He was used to it. The Pharisees rejected Him, even hated Him, to the point that they were seeking a way to kill Him. The rich young ruler rejected Jesus’ offer of eternal life (Mark 10:21-22). Even His own brothers — His relatives — rejected Him as the Messiah, because they did not believe in Him (John 7:5). The Samaritans rejected Him, since they knew that He was on His way to Jerusalem (Luke 9:53). But all this rejection did not divert Jesus from His road. He faithfully kept His course set toward the cross.
Jesus was not only rejected by His opponents; He was also misunderstood by His disciples. Again and again He was disappointed by His own followers, and this was one of those moments. When the Samaritans of that village rejected Jesus, James and John asked Him to let them call down fire from heaven to destroy these people. James and John desired retribution. They wanted revenge. But in some New Testament manuscripts there is added at this place a sentence in which Jesus rebuked them, reminding them that He had come not to destroy human souls but to save them. His own followers and friends — those who had been with Him for three years already — did not grasp Jesus’ mission, and He had only a month left with them before the date of His death. Nevertheless, Jesus followed His course and continued to be set toward the cross. In Luke 9:52-55 we read:
52 And he sent messengers on ahead, who went into a Samaritan village to get things ready for him; 53 but the people there did not welcome him, because he was heading for Jerusalem. 54 When the disciples James and John saw this, they asked, “Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them?” 55 But Jesus turned and rebuked them. (Luke 9:52-55)
Jesus had “set His face” to travel to Jerusalem, because He knew that He would have to die on a certain day and in a certain way. He had prophesied that He would die by crucifixion. He could not allow Himself to be killed by an assassin’s sword, nor to be thrown off a cliff, nor to be stoned to death by the crowd. His death had to be a death on a cross in Jerusalem during the Passover. There was no other solution to the problem of our sin. Jesus had a date on which He had to die. He knew not only when but also how He had to die in order to become our “Passover lamb.” If Jesus had died in another way and at another time, He would have proved to be a liar and could not have been a sacrifice for our sin. Jesus lived His life in such a way that He would not regret it. How did He do it? By pursuing His goal the whole time, fulfilling His mission.
JESUS FULFILLED HIS MISSION
Jesus was a teacher of the highest class — He taught the multitudes and everyone listened to Him with bated breath, but this was not His number-one goal in life. Jesus was a miracle-working physician — He healed every disease and every affliction, but this was not His number-one goal in life. His number-one goal in life was to glorify God, and to glorify Him in a particular way. How? By fulfilling the mission that the Father had set before Him (John 17:4).
4 I have brought you glory on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do. (John 17:4)
What was the work, or the task, that the Father had given the Son? Jesus was sent to seek and to save the lost. Through the fulfillment of this mission of His, Jesus glorified God on earth. Whatever He did, Jesus pursued His main goal — the reconciliation of sinful humanity with God through the giving of His life, everything that He was and had — for us. There was nothing more that Jesus could give in the fulfillment of His goal. He held back nothing for Himself; He paid the whole price. He gave Himself!
OUR MISSION
From all this we see that in order to accomplish our mission, we must know what it is. What is our mission? What does God want from us? Our mission has been entrusted to us by the Lord Jesus in what we call “the Great Commission.” If we had to answer briefly the question “What is our mission?”, we could say: “Our mission is to carry out the Great Commission.”
In the different Gospels the Great Commission is given in a different context. For example, in Matthew it says that the disciples were gathered in Galilee, where Jesus had told them that He would appear to them (Matthew 28:7,10,16). In Mark, Jesus appeared to them on the day of the resurrection in Jerusalem (Mark 16:14-18). In Luke, the Lord gave the Great Commission to His disciples again on the day of the resurrection in Jerusalem (Luke 24:44-49). In Acts, the Lord gives them the Great Commission on the day of His ascension (Acts 1:6-9). From this we can conclude that the Lord spoke about the Great Commission not once but many times in the period between His resurrection and His ascension. This was His one and main theme, which He spoke about to His disciples after the resurrection. The Great Commission is Jesus’ vision for the coming of God’s kingdom. He expects it to come through us. That is why we must accept the Great Commission as a mission given to us by God.
What we have formulated as a statement of our mission, and which we have adopted as a church, is the following:
We have devoted ourselves
to LEAD people to God,
to ESTABLISH them in the faith,
and to EQUIP them for service,
by investing ourselves in them,
by motivating and supporting them
to REPRODUCE themselves in many generations
of FOLLOWERS of Christ.
Everything we have said so far about Jesus applies to us as well. We, just like Jesus, have a mission. This mission is called “the Great Commission.” And we, like Jesus, must not allow anything to divert us from our mission. Even though we too will most likely perhaps be rejected, since Jesus sent us out “like lambs among wolves” (Luke 10:3). We speak to people about Christ, we carry this eternal message, and they say to us: “You are crazy, you are out of your mind! Believe it if you want, but do not bother me!” We may be rejected, but should this stop us from following God and continuing to proclaim the gospel? No. Why? Because we have a mission. People may not understand us, they may reject us, even Satan may be against us, but we must not give up, because we know and are aware of our mission.