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Sent by the Missionary God The Gospel from Everywhere to Everyone · Reformed Thinking

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Imagine for a second watching your own child suffer from a
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severe brain injury just day in and day out.
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Oh yeah, you know, you're sitting by a bed and you're
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watching someone you love just endure this intense, agonizing
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pain and there is absolutely nothing you can do to stop it.
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Right, which is just a terrifying reality.
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It really is. And for Arun Shari, who is this
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brilliant Indian social activist and writer, that agonizing
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reality led him to a really stark, unyielding conclusion.
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Yeah, you had to make sense of it somehow.
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Right. Looking at the raw, undeniable
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brokenness of the world, he reasoned that the tragic
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ugliness of his son's condition basically proved one of two
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things. OK.
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What were his two options? Well, he said either a loving,
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all knowing God simply does not exist, or the entire concept of
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Christian missions. You know, this whole idea of a
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divine rescue plan is just an absolute cruel joke.
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Wow. I mean that is a heavy place to
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start. It is, but welcome to Reformed
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thinking. I'm your host, and today you and
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I are taking a deep dive into a stack of texts examining the
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theological and biblical roots of global Christian missions.
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Specifically, we are looking at the concept of the Missio Day.
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Right. The mission of God.
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And we're starting right here in the visceral, terrifying reality
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of human suffering. Because I mean, if our theology
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cannot answer a father weeping over his disabled son, it really
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has no business being preached anywhere.
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No, I totally agree, and honestly, Shari's conclusion is
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entirely logical if you were operating from a detached
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philosophical framework. Which a lot of people do.
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They do so. He documented his crisis and
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corresponded with an evangelical reformer named Vishal
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Mangalwadi. OK, and what did Mangalwati say
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to him? Well, Mangalwati offered a
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rebuttal that really cut straight to the core of what the
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Miss You Day actually is. He pointed out that in, say,
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pantheistic frameworks or certain Buddhist traditions,
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suffering and evil are often viewed as intrinsic fixtures of
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the created order. Like they're just baked into the
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universe. Yeah, pretty much.
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They're elements of the universe that humanity must just accept.
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With fatalism, you know, you detach yourself from the desire
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for things to be better. Oh wow, so you just sort of give
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up on fixing it? Right.
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But Mangalwati argued that in the Christian worldview,
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suffering is an aggressive anomaly.
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It is an invader. An invader.
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I like that word. Yeah, it stands in direct
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hostile opposition to the holy will of the Creator.
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And God's definitive answer to this cosmic brokenness is not a
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cold philosophical treatise mailed from heaven.
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Right, he doesn't just send a textbook.
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No, His answer is the dispatching of missionaries, the
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sending of his people into the timeline of human history.
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Is God's concrete boots on the ground response to initiate a
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massive cosmic restoration? You know, think of the
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difference between an architect who mails you a blueprint from a
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secure climate controlled office versus a general who actually
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drops into the hostile muddy trench with you while the
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artillery is firing. Oh, that is a great way to
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picture it. Yeah, and the text we are
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looking at argue that God is the latter and mission is his
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tactical advance. It is God intruding into the
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brokenness to fix it rather than just sending us a manual on how
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to cope with the pain. That is so true, and our
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material actually highlights a brilliant historical parallel to
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this idea. It brings up Blaise Pascal's
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radical conversion note from 1654.
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OK, Pascal the mathematician. Right, a towering intellect.
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But after a staggering spiritual experience, he wrote this
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frantic, tear stained note and actually sewed it into the
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lining of his coat. Wait, he sewed it into his coat.
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Yeah, to keep it close to his chest for the rest of his life.
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That is intense. What did it say?
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It read Fire, God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not
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of the philosophers and the scholars.
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Wow, Pascal is drawing a massive line in the sand right there.
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He really is. Because I mean, the God of the
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philosophers is this passive, detached entity.
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It is an abstract first, 'cause who winds up the universe like a
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grandfather clock and then just steps back into the shadows?
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Yeah, hidden behind a veil of mysticism.
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Right. And you can only reach that kind
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of God if you are an intellectual elite sitting in a
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pristine library. But Pascal realized the living
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God of Scripture is terrifyingly active.
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Yes, he speaks. He chooses.
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He enters the messy, painful narrative of human history.
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And that active, intervening nature is the very essence of
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the Missio Day. The mission originates entirely
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from divine authority. Which means it can't be driven
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by our own human ideas, right? Right.
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It cannot be driven by Seeker sensitive metrics, pragmatism or
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cultural paternalism. The living God is already
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dictating the terms. Because, you know, we really
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like to think of church expansion as a corporate
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marketing strategy. 100% we love our strategies.
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We map the demographics, finalize the metrics, execute a
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rollout, but the Missio Day dismantles that human centric
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planning. God acts 1st and the mission is
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just an overflow of his character.
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So true. So if this tactical strike force
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didn't originate in a modern boardroom with whiteboards and
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spreadsheets, we have to look at the original launch point.
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OK, let's go there. Where do our sources start?
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Well, the launch point happens in a world that would feel
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entirely alien to us today. We are talking about the ancient
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Near East. Specifically Mesopotamia in the
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early 2nd Millennium BC. Yeah.
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What was the vibe there at that time?
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Well, the cultural landscape of Mesopotamia was completely
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saturated with rampant polytheism.
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The soil, the rivers, the cities, everything was divided
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up among localized territorial deities.
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So like every town had its own God.
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Pretty much a God was tied to a specific piece of dirt or a
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specific bloodline. The book of Joshua chapter 24
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notes that Abraham's own ancestors lived beyond the
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Euphrates River and worshipped these other gods, right?
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No one in this era had the category for a global cosmic
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creator who held absolute authority over every single
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nation and every square inch of the globe.
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They are living in a completely fractured reality.
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I mean, every clan has their own regional deity to appease and
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their only concern is their localized survival.
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Yeah, very small picture thinking.
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And to understand the magnitude of God breaking into that
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reality, you have to trace the literary structure leading up to
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it in the Bible. OK, let's look at that
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structure. The 1st 11 chapters of Genesis
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depict this devastation stating downward spiral of human
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rebellion. The progression is a relentless
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catalog of ruin. It starts with the fall in
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chapter 3, moves to Cain's fratricide in chapter 4, reaches
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the total depravity that necessitates the flood in
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chapter 6, and culminates in Genesis 11 at the Tower of
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Babel. And Babel is just wild when you
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think about it. It is the ultimate humanistic
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self salvation project. Humanity basically decided to
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make a name for themselves by constructing A localized,
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autonomous empire. It was a collective, centralized
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rebellion against the Creator's design for them to fill the
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earth. Right.
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They wanted to stay in one place and build their own tower, and
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the response to that rebellion is divine judgement.
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The languages are confused and the nations are scattered across
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the earth. So the global picture at the end
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of Genesis 11 is this fractured, cursed, scattered population
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living under the tyranny of localized false gods.
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It is a really dark scene, but immediately following that in
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Genesis 12, God initiates his historical counter offensive.
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And he doesn't send another flood.
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No, he does not. Yeah, he by casts all the
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scattered nations and selects one specific man, Abram, living
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in the Pagan darkness of her. Which is just a crazy tactical
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move. It is, and the sheer weight of
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this call becomes visible when you look closely the Hebrew
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syntax. In Genesis 12, verse one, God
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issues a sharp dramatic command. Lek leka.
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OK, looking at the linguistic notes provided in our material,
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Lek Leka is identified as an ethical dative or a dative of
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separation. Yeah, those are big grammar
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terms. Right.
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So for a listener who you know isn't trained in ancient
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languages, that basically means God is demanding a total
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systematic stripping away of every single creaturely security
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Abram possesses. Yes, he has to leave his
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country, his kindred and his father's house.
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And in the ancient Near East, severing those meant walking
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away from your geopolitical origin, your cultural safety
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net, and your patriarchal economic protection.
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Yeah, you did not survive outside of your tribe.
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God is demanding that Abram walk into the unknown in absolute,
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terrifying dependence. But he follows that severe
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stripping away with a massive series of promises.
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He does. The text lists 7 distinct future
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oriented cohortative verbs. God says I will make of you a
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great nation, I will bless you, I will make your name great, and
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so on. But you used a heavy theological
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word in your notes to describe these promises.
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You called them a monarchistic act of sovereign grace, right?
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Let's define monarchistic for a second, because that implies God
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is the sole actor working here with 0 cooperative help from
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Abraham. That is the crucial distinction,
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yeah. Monarchism means the work is
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accomplished by 1. Agent Right.
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Agent OK. These promises are entirely
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unconditional. They rely solely on divine
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grace. They are initiated exclusively
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by the I Will of Yahweh. So it's not a negotiation.
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Not at all. The promise is not a cooperative
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arrangement dependent on Abraham's intrinsic
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righteousness or his ability to meet certain conditions.
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God is unilateral in His declaration.
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But I mean, put yourself in the shoes of someone reading this
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narrative for the first time. God is looking at a globally
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fractured world. After Babel, with dozens of
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Statard nations, picking just one guy in the desert seems
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wildly exclusive. If the end goal is to reach the
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nation's, narrowing the focus down to a single individual
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feels kind of counterproductive it.
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Does feel that way. But that paradox is the core
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tension of redemptive history. How do our texts describe it?
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They describe it as particular election for universal blessing.
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God chose Abraham not as an act of ethnic cronyism or divine
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favoritism, but to establish a historical pipeline.
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A pipeline. I like that, yeah.
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He selects one man to build one family to form 1 nation, so that
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through that specific lineage, the blessing of justification
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would eventually be channeled back to all the scattered
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families of the earth. Right, because the final promise
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in that sevenfold list is explicit in you.
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All the families of the earth shall be.
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Blessed. Well, I should say spot on.
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The particular election of Abraham was always a tactical
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maneuver targeted at a universal global end.
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So you have this pipeline established through Abraham, but
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for thousands of years that pipeline seems blocked, right by
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rebellion, exile, human failure. Yeah, it gets pretty messy.
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The Old Covenant promises just sit in waiting.
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So the question becomes, how does God force that final valve
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open? How does the global blessing
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finally explode onto the world stage?
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Well, to answer that, the timeline shifts drastically to
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the Roman Empire zeroing in on a 1st century synagogue.
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OK, set the scene for us. What is happening in the 1st
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century? The historical setting of the
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1st century is just thick with political tension.
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The Jewish populace is living under the suffocating weight of
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Roman imperial occupation, which was brutal, incredibly brutal.
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And the historical expectation of Second Temple Judaism was
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intensely nationalistic. They were waiting for a
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militaristic political Messiah. So they wanted someone who would
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execute immediate violent judgment on the Pagan Romans and
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restore literal geographic sovereignty to Israel.
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Yeah, they wanted a warlord. They wanted someone to March
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into Jerusalem, evict the occupying forces and just hand
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their land back to them. That is the powder keg Jesus
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walks into when he entered the synagogue in his hometown of
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Nazareth, as recorded in Luke 4. Right.
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And he stands up, takes the scroll of the prophet Isaiah and
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reads what messiologists call his messianic manifesto.
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And the Greek text in Luke 4 is a highly concentrated
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Messiological statement. Jesus reads.
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The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me.
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OK, what is the Greek behind that?
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The word for anointed is ecris and me.
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It is an aorist active indicative verb referring to a
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definitive historical act. It immediately links Jesus to
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the Hebrew term Messiah, the anointed. 1 The Messiah.
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So he is publicly claiming the title, right?
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Then then he says he has sent me.
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The Greek phrase here is apistoc in me.
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This is the perfect active indicative form of the verb
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apostolo. And the choice of the perfect
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tense is not an accident, right? Not at all.
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It denotes an action completed in the past but with permanent
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ongoing results. Oh wow, so Jesus isn't just
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saying he was sent on a temporary errand, no.
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He is declaring that he is the permanently sent one.
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His mission defines the entire reality of the present age.
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And the content of that permanent mission is to proclaim
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liberty to the captives. Right.
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And the Greek word for liberty or release is.
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What did that mean back then? Well, in classical Greco Roman
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usage, this word did not mean a vague emotional freedom or a
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general sense of well-being. It specifically meant a judicial
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release from a legal sentence or a debt.
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OK, so this brings up something we need to mention the texts we
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are analyzing. Note a modern debate surrounding
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how this liberation is interpreted today.
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Yes, there are critical theories and liberal theologies that
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interpret Luke 4 as a mandate for horizontal economic
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redistribution. Right.
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Essentially treating Jesus as a political revolutionary
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restructuring society. Now to be clear to you
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listening, we are just reporting what are provided material
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argues here. We are impartially laying out
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the debate as it exists in the sources.
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And the authors of our sources specifically reject that
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horizontal interpretation. OK, what do they argue instead?
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They. Argue the Greek word Ephesus is
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focused on a vertical judicial pardon for sin.
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Christ is addressing those who are, as the text says,
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oppressed. And the Greek word used there is
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tetrausmanis. Yeah, it describes a condition
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of being utterly crushed or shattered into pieces.
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That is a heavy word shattered. It is this is not just a
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sociological oppression. It is the staggering weight of
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sin and the curse of the law shattering a human soul.
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I mean, it is the difference between Jesus showing up to hand
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out stimulus checks to the financially oppressed versus
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Jesus showing up as a Supreme Court Justice to wipe a
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permanent death penalty off their record.
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That is a brilliant way to put it.
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And the crowd in Nazareth? They wanted a revolutionary to
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fix their temporary political problem.
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Jesus essentially says he is offering a supreme judicial
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pardon to anyone who is shattered.
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And their reaction to that is absolute fury.
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Why were they so mad though? Their fury is ignited by the
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historical examples Jesus uses. Immediately after reading the
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scroll. He reminds the crowd that during
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the days of the prophets Elijah and Elijah, Israel was in a
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state of severe famine and leprosy.
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Right. But God bypassed the apostate
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Israelites entirely. He sent his prophets to minister
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to Gentile outsiders, a Phoenician widow in Zarephath
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and Naaman, A Syrian military general.
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You know, you really have to understand the psychology of 1st
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century religious privilege to grasp why this caused a riot in
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that room. Yeah, they were very protective
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of their status. Clinging to a localized,
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exclusive deity gave them a sense of national identity and
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political hope, telling them that God's favor was bypassing
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them to heal a Syrian veed. I mean a representative of the
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very Pagan nations oppressing them that felt like an
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existential threat to their survival.
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It did. The Nazarene's nationalistic
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pride just erupts into a murderous rage.
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They drive him out of the town and literally try to throw him
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off a Cliff. Which is an insane reaction to a
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sermon. It is, but they simply could not
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tolerate A Messiah whose mission ruptured their exclusive claims
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to divine favor. The Missio day shatters human
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categories of who deserves grace.
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So Jesus establishes the judicial pardon, and he
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establishes that the scope is going to be global, but then he
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ascends. Yes, he leaves.
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He leaves the execution of this global rollout to a group of
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fragile, flawed human beings. The King departs and the
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timeline shifts to the Book of Acts to see how this actually
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plays out on the ground. And we reach a massive literary
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and historical pivot in Acts Chapter 13.
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Right, because up to this point, the book of Acts has been
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heavily Jerusalem centric. It operated under the leadership
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of Peter, focusing primarily on Jewish and Samaritan believers.
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But in Acts 13, the geographical center of gravity completely
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shifts away from Jerusalem and lands in Antioch of Syria.
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And Antioch is not just another dot on the map, it is a
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completely different universe compared to Jerusalem.
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Oh, totally. It was a strategic,
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cosmopolitan, commercial powerhouse in the Roman Empire.
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It was chaotic, diverse and morally notorious.
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Providentially, though, because of the scattering that followed
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the persecution of Stephen in Jerusalem, a church was planted
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in Antioch. And the diversity of the
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leadership in this local congregation is just staggering.
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Let's run through that list. The text list Barnabas, A Levite
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from Cyprus, Simeon called Niger, which suggests an African
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association, Lucius from Cyrene on the North African coast,
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Menane, a man who had been brought up with Harry the
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Tetrarch, and Saul, a strict Pharisee from Tarsus.
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When you look at that list of leaders, a Levite, an African,
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someone connected to the corrupt political elite and a Pharisee,
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you are looking at a sociological impossibility for
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the ancient world. Yeah, they had no business being
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in the same room. You do not get that group of men
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sitting at the same table unless something entirely outside their
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cultural conditioning has completely rewired their
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allegiances. And that rewiring creates the
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necessary environment for what happens next.
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The text says these prophets and teachers were ministering to the
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Lord and fasting. So their posture is entirely
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vertical before it ever becomes horizontal or strategic.
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The sources draw a sharp contrast between the posture of
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the Antioch church and the posture of modern pragmatic
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evangelicalism. A very sharp contrast.
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I mean, think about the organization's businesses or
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even churches you might belong to.
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How often is the next big initiative born out of a quiet
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vertical focus rather than a frantic boardroom brainstorm?
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Almost never. We usually want to start with
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the whiteboard, A demographic survey, and a cup of coffee.
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Not with fasting and silence before God.
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Right. We want action items, but the
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material provides A sobering critique of that modern impulse.
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It argues that a church with no appetite for worship will
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eventually turn its mission into a corporate performance.
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Wow, a corporate performance. Yeah, a church that cannot fast
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from the world has no authority to preach to the world.
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Mission flows out of the adoration of God because the
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entire goal of mission is to produce the worship of God among
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the nations. The furnace of Antioch's mission
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was their worship. And it is out of this furnace of
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worship that the Holy Spirit speaks.
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The Spirit says Set apart for me, Barnabas and Saul for the
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work to which I have called them, and there is a fascinating
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dual agency at play here. Right, the Holy Spirit
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originates the call. The work is for me.
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The Spirit says the mission belongs to him.
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The human workers are not self appointed freelancers coming up
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with a good idea. But simultaneously, the church
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responds. They do.
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The congregation fasts praise, lays hands on them, and
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physically sends them away. Luke even writes in verse four
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that they were sent out by the Holy Spirit.
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So the Church is the visible instrument, but the Spirit's
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will is the invisible engine. Exactly.
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Biblical mission is never an individualistic adventure, and
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it is never just an institutional bureaucracy.
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The spirit of Points and the local church participates
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through recognition and support. So they are sent out, they
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travel through Cyprus and they head into the rugged terrain of
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Asia Minor, arriving at a place called Pisidian Antioch.
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Pisidian Antioch is a Roman colony with a significant
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diaspora Jewish community. And Paul and Barnabas step right
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back into the synagogue environment.
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Paul stands up and preaches this massive, sweeping sermon.
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He traces Israel's history, announces that Jesus is the
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promised Savior from David's line.
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Proclaims the resurrection and explicitly offers justification
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and the forgiveness of sins. And the initial response is
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incredibly positive. The people beg to share more,
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and by the next Sabbath almost the entire city gathers to hear
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the word of the Lord. But this massive influx of
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gentiles triggers a severe reaction from the Jewish
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leaders. Here we go again.
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Yet they are filled with intense jealousy and they begin publicly
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contradicting and reviling Paul. And this jealousy stems from the
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exact same psychological root we saw in Nazareth.
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Yes, it is moral and social opposition.
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The Jewish leaders see their historical privilege slipping
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away. The texts warn that religious
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privilege easily metastasizes into a prideful idol when it is
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severed from humble faith. Because God chose Israel so that
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blessing might flow to the nation's.
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But these leaders had turned that stewardship into a dam.
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They wanted to hoard the blessing within their familiar
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controllable boundaries. Seeing the unwashed gentile
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masses offered the same judicial pardon was abhorrent to them.
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So, faced with this intense contradiction, Paul and Barnabas
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make a historic pivot. They do not dilute the message
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to appease the synagogue leaders.
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No, they turn directly to the Gentiles, and they ground that
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decision explicitly in the Old Testament text.
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What text do they use? They cite Isaiah 49.6 where God
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says to his servant, I have made you a light for the Gentiles,
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that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth.
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OK, so the apostles recognize that the Jewish rejection is a
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judicial hardening, and they boldly align their mission with
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the prophetic trajectory of the Messiah.
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Right. Turning to the Gentiles was not
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a pragmatic contingency plan because the first audience got
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mad. It was direct obedience to a
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divine command. This brings us to the climax,
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the historical pivot in Acts 13 found in verse 48.
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This is where the grammar of Sovereign Grace takes center
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stage. And it is one of those fiercely
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contested grammatical clauses in the entire New Testament.
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Right when the Gentiles hear the message, they rejoice.
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And Luke writes, as many as were appointed to eternal life
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believed. The theological weight of that
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phrase relies on the Greek construction is on tetagmanoy.
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It is derived from the verb tasso, which means to arrange,
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ordain or a point. OK.
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And grammatically, what is it? Grammatically, it is a PLU
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perfect paraphrastic passive construction.
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CLU perfect paraphrastic passive.
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Let's break that down for someone who is not reading a
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Greek syntax manual. What does that actually mean for
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the chronological order of salvation in this narrative?
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Well, the PLU perfect tense describes an action that was
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completely finalized prior to the main action of the sentence.
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In this specific verse, the main action is the Gentiles
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believing. The appointing happened before
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the believing, and the passive voice means the action of
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appointing was performed upon the subjects by an external
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agent, namely God. The sources point out that some
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theological camps, specifically Armenian or synergistic
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commentators, try to translate this differently to preserve
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human free will as the deciding factor.
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Yes. Some attempt to translate the
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verb in the middle voice, which would suggest that the gentiles
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dispose themselves or align themselves to believe.
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But the linguistic scholars in our material push back on that.
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Heavily, they argue this is a grammatical impossibility.
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The text is undeniably passive. It means that the believing of
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the Gentiles was the direct effect, not the cause of their
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pre temporal sovereign ordination by God.
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So God did not appoint them because he foresaw they would
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believe. No, they believed because God
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had already appointed them. You know, it is the emotional
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difference between showing up to a massive concert hoping you can
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somehow convince the bouncer to let you buy a ticket at the
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door, versus walking up and finding out your name was
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already written on the VIP list before the stadium was even
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built. I love that the anxiety of
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performance just vanishes. Right, the appointment causes
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the entrance, not the other way around.
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That analogy captures the security of the doctrine
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perfectly, and we have to ask the practical question, what
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does this doctrine of sovereign election do to the messenger?
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Yeah, if God has already decided who is going to believe?
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Some argue that evangelism becomes pointless.
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Doesn't this breed total passivity?
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Why preach if the VIP list is already finalized?
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The text argues the absolute opposite.
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Sovereign grace does not weaken evangelism, it is the only thing
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that guarantees its success. The preacher does not know who
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was on the VIP list, so the preacher scatters the seed
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indiscriminately to everyone. The electing God has ordained
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not only the end result, salvation, but also the exact
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means to achieve it, prayer, preaching and hearing.
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Because if salvation depended finally on human eloquence, the
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persuasiveness of the speaker, or the unassisted free will of a
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hardened Sinner, missions would be a terrifying, fragile
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endeavor destined for failure. You would constantly be crippled
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by the fear that your marketing pitch wasn't polished enough or
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your music wasn't culturally relevant enough to close the
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deal. That sounds exotic.
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It is, but because salvation rests on the unshakable mercy of
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God, missions is flooded with hope.
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You can walk into a hostile Pagan environment, preach a
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message that is intrinsically offensive to human and pride,
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and know with absolute theological certainty that
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everyone who has been appointed to eternal life will eventually
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respond. It removes the pressure of
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psychological manipulation and replaces it with bold, restful
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confidence in the word. It really does.
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So if this text in Acts 13 is the unshakable blueprint for how
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the Monsieur operates, it casts a very harsh light on how we
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operate today. A very harsh light.
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If we transition to the present day, what do the global
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statistics actually look like? Are we anywhere close to
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finishing this mandate? The statistics pulled from our
25:48
material present a staggering reality check out of a worldwide
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population of approximately 8 billion people, over 40% that is
25:57
more than 3.4 billion individuals currently live in
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what missiologist categorized as unreached people groups or UPGS.
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Let that sink in. 40% If you are listening to this on your
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commute or at the gym, you likely passed 3 or 4 churches
26:13
just on your way there. Yeah, access is everywhere.
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For us, you can turn on the radio and hear a sermon.
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You can open an app and read the text in a dozen different
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translations. It is almost impossible for us
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to comprehend what 0 Access actually looks like.
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It really is an unreached people group means there's no
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indigenous gospel preaching church and no access to the
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Bible in their native language. These are 3.4 billion people
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living their entire lives, completely cut off from the
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historical message of Christ. It exposes a massive, glaring
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blind spot in the modern West. The sources heavily critique
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comfortable Country Club churches that carry on with
26:49
business as usual while ignoring this statistic.
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What do they? Say about these churches.
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They describe them as congregations that function as
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enclaves of spiritual self indulgence.
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They spend millions of dollars on internal comforts, aesthetic
27:01
upgrades, and entertainment while just totally ignoring the
27:05
agonizing spiritual needs of 3.4 billion people.
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And to ignore this reality is to repeat the exact same sin of the
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synagogue leaders in Pacinian Antioch, hoarding the blessing
27:16
within your own borders instead of sharing it with the outsider.
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But the material also points out a massive demographic shift that
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brings a lot of hope to this global picture.
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Right. The center of gravity for the
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global church has moved. It is no longer where we might
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assume it is. No it is not.
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Today, over 60% of all Bible believing Christians reside in
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the Global South. So we're talking about
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sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and parts of Asia.
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Yes, the historical era where missions meant sending someone
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from the West to the rest is definitively over the reality of
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the missio day and today is a multi directional for.
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It is from everywhere to everyone.
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Exactly. You have African missionaries
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planting churches in secular Europe and South American
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missionaries reaching unreached groups in the Middle East.
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As this message goes from everywhere to everyone, the
28:04
sources push back against a very popular modern sentiment.
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Which one is that? We often hear the phrase
28:10
attributed to Saint Francis of Assisi.
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Preach the Gospel at all times. Use words if necessary.
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How do our texts respond to the idea that our actions alone can
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fulfill the mission? Oh, the sources dismantle the
28:24
idea that verbal proclamation can be marginalized humanitarian
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aid, Digging wells, building medical clinics, and fighting
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human trafficking. These are beautiful, necessary
28:35
adornments of the Christian message, right?
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Compassion must never be absent from the messenger.
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But humanitarian aid without the specific truth of Christ is
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incomplete. A church can offer exceptional
28:46
medical care and social uplift, but if it refuses to explicitly
28:49
preach repentance and forgiveness in Christ, it is
28:52
simply polished the outside of the jar while burying the
28:54
treasure inside. Because the core of the mission
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is the judicial pardon we talked about in Luke 4.
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You can build a hospital to fix the physical crushing, but you
29:03
cannot silently mime a judicial pardon for the spiritual
29:06
crushing. It has to be spoken.
29:09
The Supreme Court judge has to actually read the verdict out
29:11
loud. Truth without compassion is cold
29:14
and contradicts the manner of the Savior who wept over
29:17
Jerusalem and healed the sick. But compassion without truth
29:20
cannot save a human soul from the curse of sin.
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Both must combine, but the substitutionary atonement, the
29:27
reality of the cross, and the resurrection must be explicitly
29:30
verbally proclaimed. You cannot guess your way into
29:33
understanding the cross by watching someone dig a well.
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You really can't. Well, let's synthesize this
29:37
massive historical and theological narrative.
29:40
We started with the downward spiral of Babel, A fractured
29:44
globe where humanity tried to build their own localized
29:47
empires. And God initiated the counter
29:49
offensive by calling Abraham, establishing a pipeline of
29:52
blessing out of sheer monarchistic grace.
29:54
The timeline moved to the Roman Empire, where Christ stood in a
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Nazareth synagogue and manifested that mission.
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He declared A cosmic vertical liberation for the shattered,
30:04
completely bypassing ethnic and religious monopolies.
30:07
The king ascends, and he propels that mission through the early
30:10
church. The Holy Spirit initiates the
30:13
call in the furnace of Antioch's worship, sending out Barnabas
30:17
and Saul. They hit the hostile pavement of
30:20
the ancient world. And that very same mission
30:22
continues today. It has shifted from the West to
30:26
the global S moving toward 3.4 billion unreached people.
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It is carried by fragile human instruments, jars of clay who
30:35
rely entirely on the pre temporal appointment of God to
30:38
guarantee the harvest it. Completely flips the script on
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how we view our place in the world.
30:43
Mission is not an agonizing, pressure filled attempt by
30:46
humans to save the globe. It is the active overflow of a
30:49
sovereign creator, guaranteeing the gathering of a multitude
30:52
from every single nation, despite human opposition,
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cultural friction, or our own immense failures.
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It rests entirely on the unshakable certainty of God's
31:00
character. This has been a massive paradigm
31:02
shift, but before we sign off, I want to leave you the listener
31:05
with a final concept to Mull over based on everything we
31:08
have. OK, what is it?
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If the text is accurate and Sovereign Election guarantees
31:13
the mission's success, then nothing in your life is left to
31:16
chance. Consider your exact geographical
31:19
location right now. Your neighborhood, the specific
31:22
desk you sit at in your workplace, The specific city you
31:26
commute through. Yeah, think about where you are
31:28
physically planted. If the same sovereign architect
31:31
who actively dispatched Barnabas and Saul has placed you there,
31:34
What if your daily routine isn't an accident of economics or
31:37
housing prices? What if your current address is
31:40
a highly specific, preorganed placement for a missionary
31:44
purpose you simply haven't recognized yet?
31:47
That is a staggering thought to walk away with.
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Thank you for joining us on this deep dive into the Missio Day.
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Until next time, keep thinking critically.