“You Were Made For Mission”
A
40 Days of Purpose Sermon Based on Colossians 4:2-6
Preached
November 16, 2003
Ah, Bob!
We’ve all met him, although maybe it wasn’t at a car lot. Joan and I ran into him at an appliance
store. After several minutes of hard
sell—including the use of a couple of profanities—he asked what I did for a
living. He nearly swallowed his tongue
when I told him I was a preacher.
As much as we dislike such characters
when it comes to cars or appliances, we really dislike them when it comes to
religion. If someone on the street were
to come up and ask, “Are you saved?” we would probably mumble and turn in
another direction. And if we will admit
it, many of us have hidden in the back room rather than open the door to a
Jehovah’s Witness. Such is our disdain
for those who seem to push their faith too hard.
But if there is anything we fear more
than encountering a religious Bob, it is the thought that someone somewhere
might think of us as one. The thought
that we might be counted about those who intrusively or obnoxiously push their
faith on others scares us near to death.
And that fear can keep us from fulfilling one of God’s purposes for our
life—namely our call to mission or, more specifically, evangelism. While “you were made for a mission,” our
fears can make completing that mission impossible.
This week you will read in The Purpose
Driven Life about the importance of this particular purpose. You also will identify that which God has
given you to help fulfill this calling.
But today I want to look at clues the Apostle Paul gives us that can
help us share our faith without being obnoxious. And we find those clues in the letter to the Colossians, chapter
4, beginning at verse 2.
Devote
yourselves to prayer, keeping alert in it with thanksgiving. At the same time
pray for us as well that God will open to us a door for the word, that we may
declare the mystery of Christ, for which I am in prison, so that I may reveal
it clearly, as I should.
Conduct
yourselves wisely toward outsiders, making the most of the time. Let your
speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you
ought to answer everyone.
According
to the letter, Paul is in prison for preaching that Jesus is Lord. That imprisonment had thwarted his work of
sharing the Good News of God’s love and grace with the Gentiles. Nothing bothered Paul more than being unable
to fulfill his mission, and so he not only urges the Colossians to constantly
pray, but to pray “that God will open to us a door for the word, that we may
declare the mystery of Christ.”
Note that
Paul is not praying for his specific benefit.
He doesn’t say, “Pray that I might be released from prison so that I
might preach the Gospel.” While he
certainly would not have minded freedom, his primary concern was that God would
open the door so that the Gospel might be shared, that God would provide an
opportunity for telling others about Jesus Christ.
What Paul
reminds us is that our mission, our attempts to share our faith with others, is
a spiritual issue.
For the
last number of years, a lot of Christians in a lot of churches have confused
evangelism with marketing. Many of us
have approached sharing the gospel the way McDonald’s sells Big Macs. We have focused on advertising with catchy
slogans and slick mailers. We have
tweaked our existing offerings and expanded our church menu. And that is not all bad. But true evangelism is a spiritual
issue. That is why it begins with
prayer. It begins not with promotion or
programs but with people praying for God to open the door for sharing, for God
to provide opportunities to tell others about Jesus Christ.
There are
no two people more different than Bill Boswell and Jim Cymbala. Bill was the former regional minister in
Louisiana. He came to that post after a
pastorate, I believe here in Texas, marked by significant numerical
growth. Cymbala, on the other hand, is
the senior pastor of the Brooklyn Tabernacle, a large, diverse church in New
York City. The theologies, experiences
and ministries of these two men are quite different, and yet both have said
that the turning point in their congregation’s came when people began to devote
themselves to prayer, particularly praying for God to open the door for sharing
the Gospel. When they began to pray in
that way, God began to guide them to people who needed to hear about and
experience God’s grace. They didn’t
have to use a hard sell because the people with whom they were sharing were
already open to the word they had to speak.
If we are
to fulfill our mission, then we begin with prayer, asking God to create
opportunities for us.
But Paul
offers other clues, specifically he tells us to “conduct yourselves wisely
toward outsiders, making the most of the time.” Another translation is helpful here. It says, “Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make
the most of every opportunity.”
New Testament
scholar Ralph Martin points out that the “early Christian communities were
conscious of a distinct identity.
[People] ‘belonged’ to the church, but not in an exclusivist sense as
though they felt...obligated to withdraw from...society.”[1] They recognized that they were “in the
world” but not “of the world,” that they were called to live among people who
didn’t share their faith but that they were to live among them in a particular
way. And that way was “wisely.”
Paul’s use
of the word “wise” is significant. The
wisdom of which Paul speaks is not merely believing in certain
affirmations—that Jesus was the Christ or that he had been resurrected from the
dead. Instead, to live “wisely” is to
possess, as one scholar put it, “knowledge of God’s will and walking worthily
of the Lord.”[2] It is to live a godly life, one that would
honor God and would not cause anyone to reject the Christian faith. It is only by living in such a way that
people are in position to make the most of every opportunity that God provides.
In short,
Paul reminds us that how we live will in large part determines whether we can
seize the opportunities God gives us to share our faith.
When I was
in junior high I played on a Little League baseball team. The coach was a man who lived nearby, a man
devoted to his little church. He was one
of the first coaches I knew who had us gather for prayer before each game. As a person who was just beginning to
develop an interest in the Christian faith, I watched him closely. He had an opportunity to share the Gospel
with an impressionable youngster.
But midway
through the season a bad call by the umpire set the coach. He argued with him, kicked dirt over the
plate and all the stuff you might expect a baseball coach to do. But then, out of the earshot of the umpire,
he told the catcher to let the ball go by so that it would hit the umpire. In that moment, the opportunity for our
coach to share the faith with me or anyone else there disappeared—destroyed by
the way in which he had acted.
On the
other hand, those who were able to witness to the faith—some of my teachers in
high school, a good friend, a neighbor or two—lived lives that made their
witness to Jesus Christ credible. They
weren’t perfect, but they were wise in the way they lived.
For us to
fulfill our mission, we need to reflect the character and virtues of Christ in
the way we deal with those around us.
We need to live wisely if we are to take advantage of the opportunities
God provides.
Still, Paul
suggests another clue for real evangelism.
He tells the Colossians, “Let your speech always be gracious,
seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer everyone.”
The great
saint Francis of Assisi urged those who followed him to, “Preach always; when
necessary use words.” It is a nice
thought. But Paul understood that words
are always necessary for communicating the Christian faith. Remember, this is the man who wrote
elsewhere: “Faith comes by hearing and
hearing by the Word of God.”[3] He knew that to share the faith the
Colossians would have to not only live among their neighbors but to speak to
them as well. And just as the way they
lived mattered, so was the way they spoke to those outside the church.
Their
speech was to be, first of all, gracious, gentle, kind, winsome, respectful,
even charming. They were to speak in
such a way as to build people up, to invite wholesomeness, joy and hope. For Paul, the way the Gospel was proclaimed
was to reflect the Gospel. Good news
deserved to be delivered as good news.
But even
more important, their speech was to be specific to the person or persons to
whom it was addressed. That is what
Paul means when he speaks of “[answering] everyone” or [responding] “to each
person.” As scholar G.B. Caird put it,
“Everyone is to be treated as an end in himself and not subjected to a stock
harangue.”[4]
Stating it
as a principle, Christians are to choose their words so that they will be
appropriate to the person or persons with whom they are speaking.
Part of
what we don’t like about Hardsell Bobs is that they treat us all the same. They assume that we are all in the same
place, all with the same problem, all concerned about the same existential
issue. And we are not.
·
Some
people need to hear that through Jesus Christ they can be released from sin and
guilt.
·
Some
people need to hear that through Jesus Christ they can find the power to
overcome temptation.
·
Some
people need to know that through Jesus Christ they will receive eternal life.
·
Some
people need to know that through Jesus Christ they will be welcomed into a
community that is not defined by ethnicity, economics or nationality.
·
Some
people need to know that through Jesus Christ they can experience the love of a
parent that will never leave them nor forsake them.
Each time we share the
Gospel we do it to a specific person or persons and the Gospel that reflects
that reality will be welcomed.
None of us here this
morning want to be associated with Hardsell Bobs of the world. But I hope that every one of us wants to
fulfill our mission in life—and that mission includes sharing the faith with
others who may not know or follow Jesus as Lord. We can do that. And we
can do it well. All we have to do is
follow Paul’s counsel. Pray for God to
open the doors, to create the opportunities.
Live lives of holiness so that when the opportunities arise people will
care what it is that we have to say.
And finally, share the Gospel with grace, not to some cardboard cut out
of humanity, but to a person of flesh and blood, of wants and needs, of hopes
and dreams. That is the mission for
which you have been made.