Mission of God Bible - Overview 3

Jesus taught in parables most of the time. He’d say things like, “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who found a treasure in a field,” or “The kingdom of God is like a woman who lost a coin.” People didn’t always understand what He was talking about and even when they did, they still had questions.

I’m not Jesus, so here are some anti-parables. These are things the kingdom of heaven is not like:

The kingdom of heaven is not supposed to be like a carpenter who only works on his own house. When his neighbors try to hire him, he says he’s too busy today—maybe come back tomorrow. And when the bill collectors show up at the end of the month he gets evicted from his own home because he can’t pay.

The kingdom of heaven is not supposed to be like a coffee shop franchise that tries to lure customers from other shops, then when they put the other shops out of business they raise their prices until most people stay home and drink coffee alone—or stop drinking coffee altogether.

The kingdom of heaven is not supposed to be like a country club for members only, with mediocre music and boring TED talks.

The kingdom of heaven is not supposed to be like a cruise ship that fills all the cabins by lowering the price, serving poor quality food, non-alcoholic drinks, humorless entertainment, and never leaving the dock. After buying the ticket, everyone is disappointed and will never go on a cruise again. And there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

In other words, the kingdom of heaven isn’t supposed to look like the ministry of most American churches.

People talk about the “mission of the church.” The church doesn’t really have a mission. God has a mission, and His mission has a church. Today we’re going to look at the mission of God as a way to understand the Bible. 

Prayer: Father in heaven, show us what Your mission in the world is, and how we can be part of it. Help us to see Your Word, all of it, through the understanding of what You are doing to save us. AMEN

The mission of God is the Gospel. The Gospel is the key to everything.

Gospel. Everyone’s always talking about the “Gospel.” Gospel music. Gospel preaching. Some churches say they have the “full Gospel.” Kemper, Ryan and I made an album called Gospel Cola 20 years ago. Do we even know what Gospel means? People are like, “Gospel means good news.” Well, what’s the good news? They’re like, “the good news is you’re going to hell.” It’s like the old Larry Norman joke: “That doesn’t sound like good news. What’s the bad news?”

The good news is that Jesus came into this world to save us, so we don’t end up in hell. The whole Bible is the story of how that happened and how we can be part of it.

So in the beginning: What do you think the first Gospel act in the Bible was? Adam and Eve decided to call God’s bluff and eat the poison fruit, first Eve—Adam watched her eat it. Figured if she died, he’d have plausible deniability. Then God could just make him a new wife. Maybe one that didn't talk to snakes. 

So she doesn’t die, didn’t even gag, Adam figured he might as well try it. They didn’t die right away but something changed because all of a sudden they felt funny standing out in the open naked. It says they felt naked and ashamed so they hid from God. Playing hide and seek with God is stupid but that’s what they’re doing right there in Genesis chapter three. Then comes the first Gospel act in the Bible—God comes looking for them—even though they had done exactly what He told them not to do and ran away from Him and tried to hide—He goes looking for them, He calls out to them. He gives them a chance to admit what they did—to confess their sin. Of course, they mess that up, too.

They were just like all of us: Who me? I didn’t do anything wrong. It wasn’t my fault. Adam said Eve made him do it. Eve said the devil made her do it. The devil said it was God’s fault for putting the tree there in the first place. Bart Simpson said, “I didn’t do it, nobody saw me, you can’t prove anything.”

God’s like, “So anyway, life’s gonna suck now, don’t say I didn’t warn you. Also, the snake’s gonna die, and one of Eve’s sons is gonna bruise his heel crushing its head.” This is the Gospel plan that the rest of the Bible is going to lay out for us. The rest of the Old Testament is the story of the generations of Eve’s sons leading to the birth of Jesus, He was going to be the one who would save mankind from the curse that Adam and Eve brought on us all. 

Isaiah 53:5 says:

“He was wounded for our transgressions,

He was bruised for our iniquities;

The chastisement for our peace was upon Him,

And by His stripes we are healed.”

Talking about Jesus, the snake crusher.

The whole Bible is the story of God being on a mission to save His people from the death and fallout of that original rebellion. They sinned against God and each other and ruined everything. Every one of their children, from Cain and Abel all the way up to you and me have tried to “that ain’t nothing” the sin of Adam and make it worse. 

God has given us His Word that He’s making things better. He gave us his promise of salvation. He gave us His Commandments and told us how to walk through this snake pit so that we do the least amount of damage. He gave us His Son, the Word of God made flesh. God is on a mission to save His people. That’s what the Bible is all about.

God talks about how He’s gonna save the world again in Genesis chapter 11, this time He’s talking to a man named Abram. He says that through Abram’s offspring that all the nations of the world will be blessed. By the way, Abram didn’t have any kids and wasn’t getting any younger. God wants to make it really clear to all of us that even though He promises to save us, we’re gonna have to take His word for it and trust Him in spite of how things look. It’s gonna be about faith. Abraham was 100 years old before he had the son that God had promised him. Faith is a recurring theme in the Bible. God’s gonna save His people but it’s always gonna be at the last minute just when things look hopeless—that’s the life of faith. We should get used to it.

So God’s mission continues from Abraham to his son Isaac, and his son Jacob, who was renamed Israel, the 12 sons of Israel who became the 12 tribes of Israel, whose children were the children of Israel that were led by Moses to freedom from Egyptian slavery.

God’s mission was carried out by Moses with the plagues thing—Egypt is devastated, completely destroyed—and most people don’t realize this, but when the people of Israel left Egypt, a whole lot of Egyptians went with them—did you know that? They freed a lot of Egyptians from the tyranny of Pharaoh, too. Israel was always supposed to be all the people of God, the redeemed people of faith, the people God had saved—not a particular ethnic race—wasn’t supposed to be a closed community—Israel was to be a blessing for all people, for all nations, all people groups. They were to carry out the mission of God on earth.

When they finally get to the Promised Land, chapter one of Joshua reads like the Great Commission: God tells Joshua that wherever he goes, God will go with him, He will never leave him or abandon him, to be strong and courageous, to obey all the teaching that God gave him—a side by side comparison is amazing. In the Great Commission in Matthew 28, Jesus says very similar things to the disciples: Make disciples of all the nations. Teach them to obey all the commands He had given, and that He will be with them, even to the end of the age. It’s the same idea, but everything Joshua was supposed to do with the sword, the disciples were to do with baptism and teaching—which makes sense because in Romans it says that all who are baptized are baptized into Jesus’ death. The promised Land was taken by blood, but the only blood that’s to be spilled in the taking of the nations for Jesus in the Great Commission is His own. Blood was never optional. The good news for us is that it doesn’t have to be ours, or our enemies. The cross was sufficient. Thanks be to God. But the nations are still to be taken for the kingdom of God. That’s always been God’s mission.

So the Old Testament keeps going, after they take the Promised Land—and when you read how that went down, you’ll find they didn’t do a very good job. They were selfish and petty. They were sloppy. They didn’t take God’s mission very seriously. The people just did what they thought was right in their own eyes.

Eventually they establish a kingdom, with a king and a royal army. They started feeling pretty good about themselves and at a high point, Solomon builds The Temple—the place where God would dwell with His people. The place where sacrifices would be made for all their sins. A place for them to worship and praise God. But the Temple wasn’t just for the people of Israel, listen to Solomon’s prayer in 1 Kings 8:41

“In the future, foreigners who do not belong to your people Israel will hear of you. They will come from distant lands because of your name, for they will hear of your great name and your strong hand and your powerful arm. And when they pray toward this Temple, then hear them from heaven where you live, and grant what they ask of you. In this way, all the people of the earth will come to know and fear you, just as your own people Israel do. They, too, will know that this Temple I have built honors your name.”

The Temple was to be a house of prayer for all the people on earth. It wasn’t meant to be a private club for Jews. They never got that right either.

The prophet Isaiah, looking forward to the day when Christ would come to save His people said this in chapter 49:6

“He says, “You will do more than restore the people of Israel to me. I will make you a light to the Gentiles, and you will bring my salvation to the ends of the earth.”

The whole Bible can be read through the lens of “God is on a mission to save His people,” people of every nation, ethnic group, and time period. Thankfully, that includes all of us. That’s why we read this book that tells the history of an ancient people called Israel—because it’s our history now, if we’re in Christ. If we’re Christian, it’s our story, too.

I’ve been doing the Bible in a Year plan along with a bunch of you and the other day I read the story of Joseph. All the great people in the Bible point to Jesus, He’s the greater and more perfect version of all of them. I had never thought about some of the ways that Joseph points to Jesus. First of all, his brothers betray him because they knew he was their father’s favorite. That sounds familiar. There’s a lot more similarities but he ends up at the right hand of Pharaoh, just like Jesus ends up at the right hand of God Almighty. Then—and this is the part that blew my mind—Joseph took an Egyptian wife to be his bride. Just like the church is the bride of Christ and includes all the gentile nations. That ought to give you chills.

I used to be critical of Joseph for going native and marrying an Egyptian pagan, but then I realized it’s kinda like when Jesus took me as His own. 

That’s the Gospel. You were the pagan priestess, living in a world of lies and darkness, completely under the spell of that talking snake from the garden of Eden. Then Jesus made you His precious bride. I know the dudes in here are pretty excited about that—what little boy doesn’t dream of growing up and being the princess rescued from a dragon and marrying the prince? Yeah. All of them. All of them don’t dream of that, we all start off wanting to be the dragon and eventually want to be the prince. Unless you’re prince Harry, then you want to marry an American actress and move to Canada.

Men aren’t usually super into the idea of being the bride of Christ—that’s okay, there’s plenty of other images that the Bible gives us to understand who we are as the church, the people of God. Like warriors, the Body of Christ, beloved sons and daughters.

But one of the ways to understand the mission of God, the Gospel, is that the Father arranged a marriage between His Son and a whore—in order to restore her honor and save her from a life of shame. You are the bride of Christ but you need to remember where you came from and who you used to be if you’re going to understand the Gospel.

The whole New Testament is the happy ending to the story that started with Adam and Eve in the Garden. Four biographies that tell the story of Jesus crushing the serpent’s head—by dying on the cross and rising from the dead on the third day. One history of the early church spreading the good news all over the Roman empire, mostly to gentiles. A bunch of letters to the various churches to be read in worship, letters that were written to comfort, challenge, correct and teach the early Christians how to understand all the implications of what it means to be the people of God, the followers of Jesus, in this world now that Jesus has done what He’s done.

This is the mission of God. It’s the story of the whole Bible. It all points to Jesus and what He’s done to come find all the people who are trying to hide from God in their shame. It’s the story of how He bruised His heel when He crushed the serpent’s head. It’s the story of the kingdom of heaven, the Prince of Peace, breaking into the world to rescue pagan princesses like you and me from a bloodthirsty dragon.

The kingdom of heaven is not like a carpenter who only works on his own house. The church exists for the blessing of the whole world, we are to be about the mission of God.

The kingdom of heaven is not like a coffee shop that tries to steal customers from other shops—the local churches are to follow Jesus together, working together in the mission of God.

The kingdom of heaven isn’t a country club for members only—everyone is welcome, everyone is invited to join us.  The church is to be a house of prayer for all the people on earth.

The kingdom of heaven isn’t a cruise ship that tricks people into showing up and ruins the whole idea of cruising in general—what we do here should give God glory, not bore people to death.

In other words, the kingdom of heaven isn’t supposed to look like the ministry of most American churches. My friends, let’s figure this out. Let’s do better.

I’ve asked everyone to join me in reading through the Bible, cover to cover, over the next year. As we do, let’s keep this in mind:

The kingdom of heaven is like a garden that God planted in the world to feed and delight His children, His Word—the Bible—is like seeds that grow in the hearts and lives of those who listen.

“Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches.” Revelation 2:29

AMEN