Co-Missional: The Promise Is The Foundation

Pastor Ian Graham looks at the great commission, our theory of spiritual formation, and Jesus’ command to go.

Transcript

Why Lent Matters Now

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Good morning. How many of you are from traditions where Lint was observed? Just raise your hand. Okay. Like good good percentage of the room. That was not my story. And so I I do want to be sensitive to those of you who are like, why Ash Wednesday and what is Lint? Just briefly here. Lint is a season in the life of the church. The church has its own alternative calendar. Did you know this? Good. And it's a good way of accounting for time in a world that thinks we can manage time and always account for it. The church has its own witness to what is happening in the course of time. And throughout the tradition of the church, one of those seasons that we observe collectively is called Lint. Especially in a culture of abundance, in every form of the word. And usually when I talk about abundance, I'm talking about information overload. Lint is a time to till the ground and to say, what can I dispense with and get rid of in such a way that I can clear the ground so that I can hear God? We get a good picture of what Lint is when we see winter. Winter is a time where things lie fallow so that things can grow again. But oftentimes what's happening is not incredibly obvious. So as a church, we throughout the course of our life together have observed Lint as a time to simplify, to take on some things and also put some things away. But if you're from a tradition where it's like Lint is this like militant legalism where you're giving away one thing and there's all these weird uh caveats to the rules and loopholes, uh, I would encourage you probably not to do that. Uh because that probably becomes a thing in and of itself. Uh take on something simply, put away something simply, and allow God to meet you there. Uh another thing with the observation of Lint that is important. Uh, whatever you sort of clear away in your life, uh, the church tradition is sort of genius in its acknowledgement of human frailty and what human nature is actually like. Uh so when Ash Wednesday uh begins the season of Lent, there are 46 days between Ash Wednesday and Easter Sunday, which is the end of Lent, the end of fasting, resurrection. Amen. But there are 40 days of Lent. And so in the church traditions, Great Genius, those six days, that the difference, the delta between those two, are Sundays, the Lord's Day. And the Lord's Day are always feast days. So a little bit of pastoral um directive to whatever you put away, uh, you can still take up on that Sunday if you know if you can do it without it derailing your whole project there. But uh, that is enshrined within the observance and the collective witness of Lint. But just want to make you a little bit aware of that. As we especially gather here on Wednesday evening, we will impose the ashes, we will tell you that you're gonna die, which is the truest thing I can say to you. Uh but within that very somber testimony, there is life and life to the full. Uh, Luke, do you mind uh turning down? Oh, is he up there? No, he's not up there. All right. Um, my microphone might be a little hot, Alfredo, if you're out there. Um we'll see how this goes. If not, I'll pick up this one. We've been talking about the Great Commission. And we were spending two weeks prior to Lint talking about Jesus' compelling invitation to go. The Great Commission is found in Matthew 28. You can turn over there. We're gonna begin it. If you memorized it, maybe you were part of a Bible club or something growing up, usually you start it in Matthew 28, 19. We are gonna go to Matthew 28, 16. And I just want to read this for you as we begin here today. And Jesus, actually, verse 18, excuse me. Jesus came to them and said to them, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore 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 that I've commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. We got into this a little bit last week, but we want to go back to the central premise of the Great Commission. It's not about our going. Like even that label commissioning can sound like, okay, now the important thing is that we go. That is important, but it's not of primary importance. The most important things about the Great Commission are the promises that frame it. And they're twofold: one at the beginning, one at the end. Jesus says, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. It's all mine. And we focused a lot about different expressions of authority that are present in our world. And Jesus is gathering up all of them, as fragmented as they may be, as subversive to the goodness of God's kingdom as they may seem, Jesus is reorienting them over his long trajectory of bringing all things to new creation and redemption under his lordship and reign. All authority in heaven and on earth belongs to Jesus. That is the first promise. And the other one is parallel and holds up its end of the foundation. At the end of this great commission, Jesus says to his disciples, and I will be with you always, even to the end of the age. It's these promises that frame our response and our going. It's all undertaken from the ground of grace, of freedom, of invitation, that Jesus says to us, go into all the world. And these promises make our going not a project, not a daring endeavor, not something that we could come up with on our own, but a response and a witness to reality. And it's these promises that have sustained the church in the face of all kinds of totalitarian regimes. From places like Soviet Russia in the 20th century. People gathering faithfully, under threat of punishment, to share the Eucharist and to preach the gospel. I have preached in China several times. I've preached in church in China several times. And people are always like, How does that work? I'm like, well, it was the expat church in China, the expatriate church, people that lived in China from all over the world had gathered in Shanghai to have a church. And the Chinese government said, Go for it. That's great. Only thing is, we're going to check passports at the door to make sure that there are no Chinese nationals being welcomed into your gathering. It's illegal to proselytize to Chinese nationals in China, but they will let the people that are there that are foreign-born gather all they want to. You see this in the witness of the black church. There's a great book that it's called Though He Slay Me. And it's about the sermons that were preached in black churches under the rule and regime and evil of slavery. And it's an incredible witness to what it looks like to be faithful to God. Amidst all-encompassing pressure, amidst all-encompassing circumstances that would suggest that Jesus is Lord for some people in a different way than he is Lord for them. And describing the way that these people, because this was so attuned to their reality, saw the kingdom of Jesus not as somewhere else, but as near and present, and the story of the Exodus and the stories of liberation that are contained within the gospels as something that weren't just a nice idea, but something that were the very bread of life. You see this in present-day places like Iran, where the church is exploding and multiplying, largely under the guidance of faithful and courageous women who are under great threat of persecution, bodily harm, and other evils lead the church in courageous ways. Oftentimes, when our world and the powers that be are confronted with the authority and power of Jesus, they have no idea what to do with it. You see this exemplified in Pilate. Jesus is on trial before Pontius Pilate. He's dragged before him. And Pilate is interrogating Jesus. And at one point he's almost exasperated. He's looking at Jesus and he can't understand this person that's before him. He says, Don't you know? I have power. I have power to kill you, I have power to release you. And Jesus is like, you have no power over me unless it were given to you from above. But when the self-proclaimed powers of our world encounter the power that is often manifest in weakness in Jesus, they are often puzzled, perplexed, and exasperated. They don't know what to do. And more often than not, the way that they try to power up one more time is by wielding the one weapon that remains to them, that being the threat of punishment, often the threat of execution. Don't you know I have power to kill you? And this has been true in totalitarian regimes throughout the history of the world. We see it in the earliest church, we see it in the stories that cascade from the first three centuries of the church. We see that people faithful to Jesus have always lived under the threat of subversion and of death. But Jesus taking on the cross has shown us the shape of this power, the undaunted nature of this power. Jesus not only uses death as a portal to the resurrection, not just a sleep and then he wakes up vindicated as the Son of God. Jesus takes death into his very fullness of life and thus upends death, exhausts its power. And this is a very important thing for us to grasp here today. Because as we're talking about these two promises that frame the bedrock of the Great Commission, all authority in heaven and on earth have been given to me. The scriptures use the image of the keys of Hades and death being given to Jesus. Jesus going down into death, not seeming to die, not just kind of dying, taking death and all of its ramifications into his very life, has completely eradicated death. He has named it as an enemy, 1 Corinthians 15. The last enemy to be defeated is death, and he will put all things under the feet of the rightful reign and Lord of Jesus. He has undone death. But within that same breath, the promise that I will be with you always, even to the end of the age. Within the Gospel of Matthew, which is the biography about Jesus' life, according to this man named Matthew, that end of the age has a very specific meaning. But we can transpose that a little bit. Have you ever felt like you've come to the end of your own age? Have you ever felt like you've come to the end of yourself? The end of your own capacity, the end of seeing any silver lining or any way out. Have you ever felt this place of desolation or despair? Jesus says to you, irrevocably, I am with you there. I am with you always, even to the end of the age. The Catholic theologian Carl Rahner says this, and I love this, because it talks about how Jesus not only undoes these places of desolation, of death, and despair as a matter of idea, he undoes it because he has taken them into his very life. Look at what he says. He says, Christ has accepted death. Therefore, this must be more than merely a descent into empty meaninglessness. He has accepted the state of being forsaken. Therefore, the overpowering sense of loneliness must still contain hidden within itself the promise of God's blessed nearness. He has accepted total failure. Therefore, defeat can be a victory. Now, Ecosia, have you ever felt like life was meaningless? Vapor? Have you ever felt incredibly lonely? Have you ever felt defeated and without any way forward? What Carl Rahner is bearing witness to is that is the place that Jesus has gone to already. To both disarm their claims and also to demonstrate and testify that's where Jesus is. Therefore, God is near even when we believe ourselves to have been abandoned by him. He has accepted all things, therefore, all things are redeemed. He's gathering up all things. In the martyrdom of Polycarp, which is a third-century witness to the Bishop of Smyrna, who was executed by the local Roman authorities for his witness to Jesus. He's an old, old man. And they're like, Polycarp, like you're really old. We don't want to kill you. It just feels weird. We kind of have to, but we don't want to. So we just urge you, recount, recant your faith in Jesus. Just say, ah, he's not, he's not who I've been saying he is. He's not Lord, Caesar is Lord, and we'll let you go about and finish your day. And he says, 86 years I've served my king, and he has never forsaken me. How could I forget the king who I've served for this long? It's beautiful stuff. But there's this book that has been written about the martyrdom of Polycarp. It has elements of mythological ramifications, like at one point they stab Polycarp and he bleeds so much that it puts out a fire that they're trying to kill him with. I don't know if that happened. That'd be pretty crazy. But in the intro to what's called the martyrdom of Polycarp, you can read this on your own time, it talks about those who were martyred by the state under the threat of the sword, under the threat of punishment. It says, But they reached such a pitch of magnanimity that not one of them let a sigh or a groan escape them, thus proving to us that all these holy martyrs of Christ, at the very time when they suffered such torments, were absent from the body, or rather that the Lord then stood by them and communed with them. You see this in Acts chapter 6 and 7, when Stephen is bearing witness to the story of Israel, and they take up stones with which to kill him. The first martyr, Stephen, is telling the story, and they surround him to kill him. And Stephen looks up to heaven and he sees not only Jesus seated at the right hand of God the Father, he sees him standing. But somehow at this place of utter desolation, which we see exemplified in these moments of crisis and despair, we see that Jesus is there. The bedrock of the Great Commission is about the authority that Jesus has undone death, which is the ultimate threat to us. And he has filled all those places of desolation, despair, failure, loneliness with his presence. He cried out on the cross, Lama, Lama, Elohi, Sa La Sabactani, because He was abandoned so that we will never be abandoned. Forsaken so that we are never alone. Any place that you feel desperate and desolate, he is there. Just like gravity, if I were to drop something on the ground, it would fall. This is the gravity of the kingdom of God. We exist as the inheritors of the promise, of presence, of power. But we only come to know these promises as we find, as we go. The initial call to given to the disciples in some form or fashion, come and follow me. The life of Jesus flows downstream from a yes to receive the gift of his presence and to obey his summons. It is the most cliche thing that any of us who perform weddings, who have the opportunity to counsel people before those weddings about what married life actually looks like. And we say to them, on that glorious wedding day, which will be beautiful and magical, you're gonna make promises that you have no idea what you're saying. Not the most like simplest clue about what in sickness and in health actually looks like, or for richer or poorer. You have no idea what you're saying. And you're making promises, committing to a lifetime of fidelity to this person. And following Jesus is not that different. You're saying yes in response to this love that has been revealed to you, this grace that has been revealed to you, your sins have been forgiven. There is meaning and purpose for your life, there is goodness that awaits you not just now but forevermore. You say yes to that, and then you start walking. And you find that life truly is lived by faith and not by sight. And that sometimes that's not the most pleasant reality. But Jesus knew that to come to know him was to walk with him. That he couldn't just download a bunch of information to his disciples, but he needed to follow. He needed them to follow him, to come with him. Because of our bias towards information in our culture, we tend to ignore Jesus' way of formation. Jesus' way of formation is not focused on gathering intelligence alone. How many of you like to study for the test before you take the test? And we're in Princeton. I assume a lot of you, young people. Now, how many of you have showed up to a test where you're like, I don't know what's on this test? And thank you, thank you. This is good. Presumably we were told, right? I that was my assumption, as I'm like, I'm sure they told me this at some point. I just wasn't quite listening. Jesus invites us to a furnace of transformation of Christ-likeness. And that furnace includes things that we've kind of quantified as four C's of cultivating a life with Jesus. I want to put these before you. Uh that picture, Ellie, thank you so much. Now, this is where we need the artists, because this is terrible. I did this. But you see, like all of reality is sort of contained in Christ. You can see that big circle there, right? All right. These four are anytime you're trying to extract things that are inextricably linked, you're kind of you're you're fighting a losing battle. But visually, it's good to help represent these different ways. So contemplative is the way we talk about our life individually with God. And it starts with C, which is also important. But for us, the Bible's distinction between when we're talking to you as individuals and when we're talking to you all is often quite murky. But we have a, we've been called as an individual son, individual daughter, an individual expression of what it means to be made in the image of God, to live a life before God. And so the contemplative captures that which we are called and summoned by our Lord and King and Father to his goodness. But what we find is that we cannot do that alone, right? I have had the unique experience several times in my life where I'm spending time in prayer early in the morning. It is rich, it is meaningful, see the beauty and intricacy of the world, and then I go wake my children up. And the demands of the day punch me in the face. And all of that goodness, all that like floating like Cinderella through the story that I was doing just a moment ago, all of a sudden met with reality. And we need community. Because what's the greatest commandment? To love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Oh, if I could just be shut up in my room and just commune with God, I could do that fairly well. But then I have to go face people. And I have to go be met with my own selfishness and that which is broken in me and half-hearted in me. That doesn't feel so good. Because the second piece of that commandment is to love your neighbor as yourself, right? And we're confronted with ourselves when we are face to face with our neighbor. So we need each other. We need to live life with one another, not just within our nuclear families or whatever version of that, whether that be your dorm room or whether that be your closest neighbors at your house. No, not just those. But we need people that come alongside of us and both encourage us in the way of Jesus and perhaps challenge us a little bit in the way of Jesus. This is the communal level. The third I think is really important, and it's something we both we both give a lot of weight to and also probably don't give enough weight to, the congregational. There is something magic that happens when we're here. Again, church is more than Sunday. We clear? But it's it's not less than that. And I think this was one of the great challenges of the sort of the COVID experience for many of us. Is this was largely paused. And this I think is still the primary tool of spiritual formation that God uses to bring us into his kingdom imagination. For whatever reason. Church begins when you don't get to pick who shows up, which is an incredible thing. Like you didn't choose the people sitting next to you for the most part. They're just here. And you get to see something, a glimpse of the mosaic beauty of the kingdom of God in this gathering. And for us in Princeton, we have a greater invitation to be that. We were singing in Japanese. I had never sung in Japanese before. That was really lovely. But we have this invitation because in this small town in central New Jersey, for whatever reason, people from all over the world have come and converged. And what an invitation for us as a people. But we need the gathering of the saints. We need to be together. And so we gather as a people. And then the last layer that I think, again, all of those sort of intuitively, we know we need to find a small group, we need to do all these things. We have to go. And this is Jesus' genius. He knew that the classroom setting was not enough to give us the information, the formation, the invitation, a relationship that entails the kingdom. And so he said to his earliest disciples, just come with me. Where are we going? Not telling you. But come and follow me. Come join me. We see this throughout Christ's interactions with his disciples. He seems far less interested in the disciples doing it right, whatever that means, and far more interested in the faith and obedience that going and doing requires. And because he's a genius teacher, he knows that the classroom setting can only go so far, that the real proving ground of faith will be circumstances and situations that not only require faith, but are only possible through faith. Okay, with all of that in mind, I want to ask you a very simple question. Where are you trusting God for a purpose that is bigger than your own? Or asked another way. How do you feel consciously that you are on mission with God? Which is a very Christianese thing to say, right? I I some of you probably did wake up and you were like, I am on a mission with God. Not all of you. I didn't. No, I asked that question not to shame you, but to provoke you a little bit. Let's step aside. As you contemplate that, I want to put a question before you that I'm inviting you to answer. I want to make that clear. So you can answer it out loud if you're comfortable. You don't have to. I won't call on you. What is the mission of God? Life abundant? Beautiful. What does that mean? Okay. I like that. I like that. What else? Good. Seek and save the lost. These are things Jesus said, right? I've come that they might have life and life to the full. I've come to seek and save the lost. Telling a story about a shepherd leaving the 99 and going after the one. That's bad economics. Not efficient. But that's the kind of God we serve, right? What else?

unknown 25:22

Bring us closer to him.

SPEAKER_00 25:23

Bring us closer to him. Union with Christ, that we would be united with Christ, is our ultimate end. Not that we would just have a home in heaven, but that our very life would be infused with his eternal life, that we would eat from the tree of life in the imagery of revelation, right? What else?

unknown 25:42

Greater unity here on earth.

The Four C’s Of Formation

What Is God’s Mission

Reconciliation, Vocation, And Joy

John’s Commission: Peace And Spirit

SPEAKER_00 25:44

Yeah, amazing, right? Yeah. Ephesians 1 is about this cosmic reign of Jesus. That he is at the center of the cosmos. He is gathering up all things in himself. The Greek word there is one of my favorites. Ephesians 2 is about the manifestation of that rule. He has broken down the wall which divides you. And he's not talking to people and God, he's talking to Jews and Gentiles. The way that we bear witness to the reality of the kingdom is these different, disparate groups being united by the Spirit of God and the mission of God into one new humanity. And within that one new humanity, not losing those beautiful things that make us and our cultures, but bringing them as gifts and expressions of what these things look like transfigured by the love and presence of God. Reconciliation. I have a friend I've become acquainted with, his name is Jonathan Tremain Thomas, which is not Jonathan Taylor Thomas. Sorry. Home improvement from the 90s. Jonathan Tremain Thomas, thank you for laughing. When the events broke out in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014, there were a lot of protests, counter-protests, there was all this movement and noise online. He and a group of people went to Ferguson and said, you know what? We are going to be agents of peace and reconciliation in this place. We're going to fast and pray for all that's going on here. We're going to minister and love on the police officers that are here. We're going to minister and love on the protesters that are here and be agents of reconciliation and transformation here in this place. His ministry is called civil righteousness. Pretty good name. It's about the reconciliation that Christ is wanting to enshrine within our very lives. Again, beautiful, beautiful stuff. The ministry of reconciliation is kingdom work. Yeah. What else? Anyone stay at home with their kids? Yeah. Yeah. Ronald Rollheiser is a Catholic monk, essentially, a teacher. He's like, he's like, all of our monks and all of our secluded little cabins, we don't know the first thing about the kingdom of God that a stay-at-home mom or dad knows. Don't know the first thing, or a caretaker of an elderly parent. He's like, because ultimately we're kind of, it's it's me and Jesus, you know, it's us alone. Confronted with a little person or a dying person that is taking all of your time and resource and energy and has no regard for your self-care? I'll teach you something about the kingdom. His kingdom work. What else? Any of you studying? Yeah? Yeah. Have you ever seen just Jesus leap off the page of the quantum physics book? Or the ethics? No. She's an artist, it doesn't count. Or the art textbook? I don't know. What are we doing here? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Amen. So again, oftentimes, and we do this because we're taught to do this. So I asked you kind of a leading question, then I I subverted it. But we often have a very narrow category for what kingdom work is, right? And we don't want to lose the edge of what Gene said, like that Jesus is seeking and saving the lost. Somehow, sometimes it's hard for us to equate that which brings us great joy with what God is up to and reconciling all things. I understand that. But how many times do we see that God's kingdom is so much bigger, so much more expansive than we ever realized? That's his world. He made it, he called it good. He's invited us to explore and to experiment and to understand it. And this can be an act of worship. So I ask you again, where are you consciously on mission with God? Relying on him for purposes that are bigger than your own. I think for many of us, yes, there are times where God is not even inviting, he's compelling us. He's like, you gotta go. The only frontier of transformation is going out of your comfort zone and walking with me. And there are seasoned saints in this room that could tell you, hey, the best thing I ever did was the scariest thing I ever did. But I found that God was good there, that he was with me always to the end of the age, that all authority belonged to him. And at the same time, how many of us need to just open our eyes a little bit? And to see that the ground that you're already standing on requires you to remove your shoes. That's holy ground. And that God has been working through you even when you were unaware, and he's probably calling you to see. Hey, look, look at the majesty of what you're up to. I want to look just briefly at John's Great Commission. At the end of each of the gospel stories, so there are four gospels. I didn't explain this in the first service, and a very dear young woman who's a new Christian just asked me, she's like, What do you mean there's only four gospels? I was like, Thank you for asking that. So just a little review for some of you. There are four biographies of Jesus, there are four testimonies about what Jesus did and what he's up to. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Right? And all of it cascades from there. And each of them have their different textures and characteristics. I am partial to John. Anybody else? No, again, aspiring artsy fartsy person like me, John has some. Now, I I find Mark bristly. Like a little too, I'm like, easy guy. But I know several people that are just like, Mark just, you know, he just says it plainly. So you can usually find an overlap between the way God designed you and the way that he has borne witness to his good news in the witness of the scriptures. But I want to read John's Great Commission, which is not one we often call a Great Commission, but we see that Jesus commissions his disciples in different ways at the end of each of the four Gospels. As a way of sort of capturing in a widely orbed way what Jesus is up to. Alright, John chapter 20, verse 19. When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors were locked, where the disciples were, for the fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, Peace be with you. After he'd said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you. And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them. If you retain the sins of any, they are retained. Now the disciples are hiding in a locked room. They have no idea what has transpired, they are terrified. Jesus was their leader. He has been tried and executed by the Roman government. He was handed over to the Roman government by Jewish leaders. And their presupposition is that those same people are going to come for them. And so they're hiding in a room. Now, also, when all of this went down with Jesus, when the crisis came, what did the disciples do? They meet the moment with faith and fidelity and boldness in the way that Jesus asked. Well, they tried to meet it with their own ways of that. Peter draws a sword, right? He says, Jesus, I will fight and die for you. And Jesus, as Peter slashes the arresting guard's ear, Jesus heals it and says, This is not the way. So once Peter is absolved of his notions of revolutionary zeal, he's got nothing left. And he flees, he denies. He doesn't maintain fidelity to Jesus in the way that Jesus has prescribed, and he is indicative of the other disciples. Now John writes the book of John, and he seems to suggest that he stayed at the cross while everybody else was gone, but he also outruns Peter to the tomb. You can do with that what you will. But the last we've seen of the disciples and their interactions with Jesus is fleeing in terror and not standing by him. Jesus comes into this locked room of which they are hiding, and he stands among them. And what does he say? Weaklings, sinners, cowards. He doesn't say any of that, right? Peace. This is what heaven has to say to earth. Peace. In that one word, encapsulating all that Jesus has won by giving of himself, mending, reconciling, redeeming, restoring, renewing, Jesus says to them, peace. And the disciples, they place their hands in his wounds, they see what he has done for them, and they are filled with joy. It's a wondrous thing to stand in the presence of God and see that he likes you. To see what he's done for you. To find that he doesn't quantify you or put you in a category by the worst thing you've ever done. He's not like, ah, I remember when you did that. I do. Peace. Elsewhere, he calls them friends. This past week at Southeastern University, there was a move of God that broke out. And it's a weird thing to live in an age where this happens and you immediately know about it via social media, where it's like, you know, people almost hyping themselves up. I'm like, I don't know what to do with that always. But when I heard the story of what transpired leading to this outbreak of the presence of God, I thought it was quite beautiful. At the end of this conference, it's hosted at this Assembly of God school every year. Students were led to audibly confess their sins. Which is a bold move. Especially I went to a Christian college, doubly bold. They spoke aloud things that all of us would rather remain hidden. They exposed that which we would all rather keep in the dark. And you know what they found? Not condemnation from their neighbors, certainly not condemnation from God. They found that the Spirit was meeting them with more freedom. And that brief expression of trust, of saying, God, I entrust myself to you by confessing the worst that is in me, the Spirit breaks out. And one of the precursors that we see to the mission of God is that God is cultivating a people who are holy as He is holy. And we have all these conceptions of what holiness means when it comes to God. Honestly, if you read some stories in the Old Testament, holiness seems really terrifying. But when we see God is holy, what we see is that He is wholly free. He is not fettered or encumbered or enslaved by anything. He is utterly and completely free. And God calls us to be holy as He is holy. He's saying, This is what I am making you into. This is what I am forging in you, this kind of freedom, this kind of holiness. And for us today, I think when we talk about the mission of God, we echo the words of 1 Peter, it's time for judgment to begin with the house of the Lord, to allow God to be who he says he is. For so many of us, we acknowledge that Jesus forgives sins. We just don't ever entrust him with our own sins. And for us today, just to say, Lord, I am entrusting to you that which is most broken in me, and you will find peace. You will find that He is showing you, hey, I already knew about that. Look at the wounds in my hand. Undertaken with love. Undertaken in the hopes that all things would be made new. I already knew. But when we confess our sins, he is faithful and just. And as people sent on mission with God, we are being cleansed, renewed, drawn into God's life. The second thing I want you to see, and this is the last thing I want you to see. The Spirit is the agent of the mission of God. The Holy Spirit testifies to the story and presence of Jesus, revealing God the Father. When we yield ourselves to the Spirit of God, we put up a sail to the wind of God, and the wind blows where it will. We are in the words of Luke's commissioning story, clothed with power from on high. The scriptures become alive to us. One of the things I find when we talk about mission, especially as a church, is there's this accompanying pressure. Pressure to be creative or pressure to be right, pressure to almost market the mission so that everybody's going the same direction. But the mission of God is the Holy Spirit's mission. Have you ever read the book of Acts? The book of Acts is basically the Holy Spirit making people do what they don't want to do and going to people they don't want to go to. I mean, Peter has a dream, and he's like, oh, that's all these unclean foods. And through the dream, God is communicating, hey, I want you to go to Cornelius' house. And Peter's like, I don't want to go to the Gentile's house. No, thank you. And the Lord says, Don't call that which I have made clean unclean, Peter. And Peter goes to his house. And that's good news for most of us. I am not, by genealogy, a Jewish man. The Gentile mission is engaged by the Spirit, drawing people to where they don't, by default, want to go. The Lord meets Saul on the road to Damascus. He's blind. He summons Ananias. He says, Ananias, I want you to go to Saul. And Ananias says, Under no circumstance do I want to go to Saul. Lord, I'm not sure if you heard, being Lord of all the earth and such, but Saul likes to persecute Christians, of which I am your faithful servant. And the Lord says to Ananias, Go. Saul is the instrument of which I have chosen. The mission of God, the commissioning of Jesus to go into all the earth is the Holy Spirit's mission. And what we find when we go is that all authority belongs to Jesus. That he is with us to the end of the age. That if we will say yes to him, he will meet us in power and in faithfulness in those places. And that often the manifestation of that power will look like weakness, defeat, and suffering. But it is the Holy Spirit's mission. It is our call to join him. I want to read to you a Leslie Nubigan quote as I invite the worship team forward. As they're coming, John says that Jesus breathed on his disciples. The Ruach Elohim is present at the beginning of the story, Genesis 1, hovering over the surface of the deep. In Genesis 2, God, the Creator, breathes his breath of life into the first man and woman. And here in John chapter 20, Jesus breathes on his disciples, saying, There's a new creation breaking forth right in the midst of this one. And we are called to be a part of it. We are called to steward it, to carry it, to be ambassadors of this kingdom of peace. Leslie Nubigan writes, It is the Holy Spirit who leads the way, opening a door here that the church must then obediently enter, kindling a flame that there the church must lovingly tend. It is the giving of a commission to do something that will otherwise remain undone. That's a stunning claim. And I'm always a little bit questioning God's wisdom and entrusting the most important news the world has ever known to people like you and me. Anyone else? To bring the forgiveness of God to actual men and women and their concrete situations in the only way that it could be done so long as we are in the flesh. By the word and act and gesture of another human being. Where are you on mission with God? Who has God put around you? Sometimes it's as simple as that. Who are the people that I encounter every day? And for me, I always like to start with who is the person that I could least conceive of ever turning their life over to Jesus and surrendering to him? Saying, God, send me on that mission. Make me faithful in prayer, a faithful friend, a faithful person who can ask questions and try to understand where they're coming from. Where are you on mission with God? The forgiveness. Of sins is what makes possible the gift of God's peace. The simplest and most comprehensive way of stating the content of the commission given to the church is therefore to be found in Jesus' initial word, peace be with you. Peace shalom. The all-embracing blessing of the God of Israel. This is what the presence of the kingdom is. The church is a movement launched into the life of the world to bear in its own life God's gift of peace for the life of the world. It is sent, therefore, not only to proclaim the kingdom, but to bear in its own life the presence of the kingdom. There's a man named Colin Wilkinson, who was the original portrayer of Jean Valjean in the London production of Le Miserab, the theater production. And for decades, most nights, he played Jean Valjean. If you know the story of Les Miserables, it's a beautiful story. It's a great book. It's even a good musical. Jean Valjean is a destitute man. Released from prison, but he carries around basically a scarlet letter, a piece of paper that says he was a prisoner and a convict. Can't get a job, can't defend for himself. And so he resorts to stealing. This bishop, called Bishop Bienvenue, Bishop Welcome, in the novel, welcomes him into his home, serves him a meal, puts him up for the night. And Jean Valjean's like, I got no other choice. And he steals from the bishop. And he makes off with this expensive tableware and silverware. And he's a few miles down the road when the police apprehend him and they see the stuff. They're like, We see your sheet of paper that says you're a convict. We know this stuff is not yours. They drag him back to the bishop's house. And as they put him before the bishop, fully expecting what will come next. Bishop, we know this stuff is yours. Just claim it so we can arrest this man, send him back to the prison camps where he came from. And the bishop, seeing all his stuff laid out before him, just says, My friend, you forgot the candlesticks. And in that moment, Jean Valjean, as the bishop says, is removed from the kingdom of darkness, transferred to the kingdom of light to use the language of Colossians 1. But Colin Wilkinson is Jean Valjean playing this part for years. And then it came time for a motion picture to be made of Les Miserables, Russell Crowe and Anne Hathaway and Wolverine. And Colin Wilkinson was invited to take a part in that film. But he wasn't given the part of Jean Valjean, he's too old. He was given the part of the bishop. And he was reflecting on the parallels. He's like, for years and years I received this kind of grace. To be able in this moment to give it away is the most meaningful thing. In Ecclesia, we are invited to be the recipients of this surprising and astounding and abundant grace, this grace that is freeing and liberating. And we are also invited to be the people who give it away. This is God's mission of peace to the world. That we would be agents of reconciliation and forgiveness, that we would be people who see that He is reconciling all things in Himself and drawing all things to His lordship and reign. Lord, we pray for the Holy Spirit to come. God, we know that your giving of the gift in the way of the bishop is freely given, but not without cost, God. And God, as we consider the cost with which you willingly, abundantly paid, Lord, we find that so often we're holding on to the things that you've taken onto your very shoulders. We carry around our shame. We harbor the lies of the accuser, who tell us that this grace, this freedom is for other people, this holiness is for others, but not for us. And I wonder if here today, in response to you giving of your life, shedding your blood, undoing the powers of death and darkness, God, if we would just trust you with that which is dark in us. As a way of clearing the ground for mission, as a way of clearing that which we so readily think impedes us from joining you where you're going. God, would we just confess to you that which is holding us? And would we give it over to you and find that when we confess our sins, you are faithful and just to forgive, Lord Jesus? There is no darkness within us, Lord, that you have not shone your light upon. So, God, would you meet dear sons and daughters here in this place? Lord, for those who have never heard this story or their invitation to be participants in it, Lord, would they see your gospel clearly for the first time? That the Son of Man came to save and seek that which is lost. Jesus, help mission to begin. As you purify our hearts and our lives and our hands, Lord, that we would go to where you are going. We ask these things and we pray these things. We proclaim these things in your name, in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, we pray. Amen. Echo see, I'm gonna invite you to stand where you are, and our team is gonna lead us in a song and time of response. And just with that same posture, I just want to encourage you towards confession. Just giving over that which Jesus has already taken upon himself, but we so often clutch onto. If you'd like to receive prayer, uh, Gene and some other members of the prayer team, they're gonna make their way to the front. We're just gonna kind of carve out the real estate up here. Uh, and so during this next song or during our invitation to communion, if you'd like to receive prayer, you can just gently slip out of your seat, and these folks would be honored and delighted to pray alongside you. You don't have to know everything you want prayer for. They'll listen with you, listen to the Holy Spirit and what God might be ministering to you in this place. Let's respond in worship. In a few moments, we'll come worship at the table.