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Today marks the beginning of Advent, the season of four
Sundays leading up to Christmas. Traditionally, Christmas marks the beginning
of the Christian year, and the season of Advent marks its end. Christmas
celebrates the coming of Christ into the world; Advent originally was a time of
preparation and expectation of His promised second coming. In recent
generations, the two ideas have blended together with Advent and Christmas
being seen as one season, and with the emphasis being on the birth of Christ.
In Southern Baptist Churches, December also signifies something else. It is
during this season that we place special emphasis on International Missions
through the annual Lottie Moon Christmas Offering. There are a lot of ideas
going on here – Christ’s first coming (Christmas), His second coming, and
missions. But these ideas are not unrelated. The purpose of Christ’s coming in
the world is the basis of our commission in the world – a commission that we
are to be fully devoted to until He returns. Our text today encapsulates these
ideas in a concise way. “As the Father has sent Me, I also send you.”
Many of you are new to Southern Baptist life, and may not be
familiar with this person, “Lottie Moon” that we speak so much about during the
Christmas season. Charlotte Digges Moon, better known to us as “Lottie,” was
small in stature – 4’2” – but made a giant impact for Christ. In 1873, at 33
years old, she became one of the first single women appointed by our Mission
Board and set sail for China
where she would invest the next 39 years of her life. The Evangelical Dictionary of World Missions says of her, “Personal
discipline, institutional loyalty, and generous hospitality characterized her
relatively stable missionary career. Competent in Chinese and sensitive to the
Chinese cultural restraints on women’s roles, she made friendship a means to
evangelism.” Her work in the town of Pingtu
led to the establishment of over 30 congregations. Today Lottie Moon is known
for her stirring letters which sent back to the American Christians encouraging
selfless devotion to Christ and sacrificial support of world missions. Her
letters have been published in a book edited by my Baptist History professor,
Keith Harper, called Send the Light. Her
life story was written by Catherine Allen, entitled The New Lottie Moon Story.
In 1912, Lottie’s colleagues discovered that she had been
giving away her food and her money to help those around her, and they found her
in poor condition, suffering from a severe case of malnutrition. What little
she had left to her name was loaded into an old steamer trunk, and the frail
Lottie Moon boarded a ship to return to America for much needed medical
treatment. However, on Christmas Eve, 1912, Lottie Moon died on board that ship
in Kobe Harbor , Japan
The Christmas Offering for International Missions
bears her name today because she compelled Southern Baptists to begin the
practice of sacrificial giving for global missions during this season. She
wrote: “Need it be said why the week
before Christmas is chosen? Is not the festive season, when families and
friends exchange gifts in memory of The Gift laid on the altar of the world for
the redemption of the human race, the most appropriate time to consecrate a
portion from abounding riches and scant poverty to send forth the good tidings
of great joy into all the earth?”
Lottie Moon understood why the God of the Universe clothed
Himself in humanity in His incarnation, and sacrificed Himself for the
salvation of the world. And Lottie Moon followed her Lord to her very own
death. She understood the commission Christ gave us when He said, “As the
Father has sent Me, I also send you.”
This single verse teaches us some very important lessons
concerning the person and the purposes of Christ.
I. The Person of Christ
“The Father Sent Me”
No fewer than 33 times in the Gospel of John, Jesus refers
to Himself as being sent by the Father. What does this mean? It says something
about His incarnation. On that first Christmas, something very significant took
place. Galatians 4:4 says it this way: “When the fullness of the time came, God
sent forth His Son.” That baby in the manger was not just any baby. That baby
was God’s Son. What does this mean? There are many ways to misunderstand the
phrase “Son of God.” Some understand it to mean that He was something other
than, something less than, God. But that is not the way Jesus intends us to
understand His relationship as the Son to His Father. When He speaks of Himself
as the Son, and of God as His Father, He is speaking of the fact that He is of
the same nature and substance as God. In the words of the Nicene Creed, Jesus
is “true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the
Father.” In speaking of His relationship with God as Father and Son, Jesus is
saying that He is God in the flesh. In Jesus Christ, God became a man.
There are many
religions which claim that men can become gods, but only in Christ does God
become a man. This is the incarnation: God taking upon Himself human flesh. In
Colossians 2:9, Paul says, “In Christ the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily
form.” The Council of Chalcedon in 451 AD consolidated all the Scripture
teaches of His divine nature by describing Jesus Christ as “at once complete in
Godhead and complete in manhood, truly God and truly man, … of one substance
with the Father as regards his Godhead, and at the same time of one substance
with us as regards his manhood; like us in all respects, apart from sin; … one
and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, recognized in two natures,
without confusion, without change, without division, without separation; the
distinction of natures being in no way annulled by the union, but rather the
characteristics of each nature being preserved and coming together to form one
person and subsistence, not as parted or separated into two persons, but one
and the same Son and Only-begotten God the Word, Lord Jesus Christ.”
Charles Wesley attempted to capture the splendor of the
incarnation in Hark! the Herald Angels
Sing, as he wrote in the second stanza, “Veiled in flesh the God-head see;
hail th’ incarnate Deity, pleased as man with men to dwell, Jesus, our
Emmanuel.” In the third, he wrote, “Mild he lays his glory by, born that man no
more may die.” This is what He did in His incarnation. He laid the glory of
heaven aside, and veiled Himself in human flesh to dwell among us and to die for
us.
In the words, “the Father sent Me,” we find a great
depiction of the Person of Jesus Christ – God in the flesh, whose coming into
the world we celebrate at Christmas.
II. The Purpose of Christ – As the Father has sent Me, I also send you
Now, seeing as how the manner of the Father’s sending Christ
has a direct bearing on the followers of Christ, the question is begged: How has the Father sent Him? I want to
know this, because this is the way in which Christ has sent me.
A. The
Purpose of His coming
Jesus Christ was sent with a purpose. In Luke 19:10, Jesus
said that He had come “to seek and to save that which was lost.” In Matthew
9:13, He said that He had come to call sinners to repentance. In Matthew 1:21,
the angel who announced His birth said that He would “save His people from
their sins.” In Mark 10:45, Jesus said that He had come to serve, and to give
His life as “a ransom for many.” Seven
centuries at least before His coming, the prophet Isaiah spoke of the one whom
God would send, saying:
He was pierced through for our
transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; The chastening for our
well-being fell upon Him, And
by His scourging we are healed. All of us like sheep have gone astray, Each of
us has turned to his own way; But the Lord
has caused the iniquity of us all To fall on Him. He was oppressed and He was
afflicted, Yet He did not open His mouth; Like a lamb that is led to slaughter,
And like a sheep that is silent before its shearers, So He did not open His
mouth. … But the Lord was pleased
To crush Him, putting Him to grief; If He would render Himself as
a guilt offering … He poured out Himself to death, And was numbered with the
transgressors; Yet He Himself bore the sin of many, And interceded for the
transgressors. Isaiah 53:5-12 (NASB)
He came to save the world. He came knowing that this would
mean suffering and death that He did not deserve for sins He did not commit. He
knew He was born to die, and to die for us and our salvation, to deliver us
from sin. He came, compelled by the love of the Father, because a lost world
was destined to perish eternally. He came so that all nations might have the
opportunity to repent and receive God’s forgiveness and be saved.
That is how the Father sent Him. As the Father has sent Me, Jesus said, I also send you. And this brings us to …
B. The
Purpose of Our Commission.
In Luke 24, following His resurrection from the dead, Jesus
said to His disciples, “Thus it is written, that the Christ would suffer and
rise again from the dead the third day, and that repentance for forgiveness of
sins would be proclaimed in His name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem . You are witnesses of these things.” He is saying that everything that
happened to Him was in accordance with the predetermined plan and foreknowledge
of God. It had been written in advance by the prophets of God. It happened on
purpose. It was why He had come. It was His mission to come and die for the
sins of humanity. That was a mission that only He could carry out. But, then He
relates His mission to our commission. He says that, because these things
happened just as was written, now “repentance for forgiveness of sins would be
proclaimed in His name to all the nations.” But who would proclaim these
things? He says to His followers, “You are witnesses of these things.” This is
our commission. As the Father sent the Son into the world to accomplish the
salvation of humanity from the bondage of sin, so the Son has sent His
followers – including you and me – into the world to announce that this
salvation has been accomplished in Jesus Christ. We are the witnesses who are
sent to proclaim repentance for the forgiveness of sin in His name to all
nations. “As the Father sent Me,” Jesus says, “So send I you.”
He wasn’t calling us to a soft and easy pathway. It wasn’t
easy for Him; it will not be for us. It required His suffering and death. It
may require the same of us. It required Him to leave the comforts and familiar
surroundings of His eternal home in heaven. It will require us to leave our
comfort zones as well. Our commission is to take this good news to all nations.
As John Piper has said so well, “to follow Jesus is to embrace the nations.” I
like to say it this way: If you follow Jesus you will go where He is going. He
is going outside your comfort zones, to the nations, to the hard places, to the
unreached and unengaged peoples of the world, and to the unlovable and
untouchable ones. If your path isn't taking you to those places, you might want
to check and see if there really are sandaled footprints on your trail. Can you
truly be following Jesus if you are not going where He went? Can you truly be
following Him if you are not going where He has sent you?
In every Gospel and the book of Acts, we have Christ’s final
words to His followers – a commission to win the world and make disciples for
Him. He has called each and every one of us to continue His mission. For this
reason, He was born. For this reason, we have been born-again in Him. His
mission is our mission. God did not save us so that we could sit back and sing
about how good it feels to be saved. He saved us to serve Him and to continue
His mission to reach every tongue and nation with the gospel. As the Father
sent Him, Christ has sent us, commissioning us to take the gospel to every lost
person, starting in our communities and extending to the ends of the earth.
David Livingstone, that great missionary pioneer in Africa , understood this commission. He said, “Forbid it
that we should ever consider the holding of a commission from the King of Kings
a sacrifice. … God had an only Son, and he was a missionary …. A poor imitation
of him I am … In this service I hope to live; in it I wish to die.” And that he
did.
Lottie Moon understood this commission. She said, “How many
there are … who imagine that because Jesus paid it all, they need pay nothing,
forgetting that the prime object of their salvation was that they should follow
in the footsteps of Jesus Christ in bringing back a lost world to God.” She
said, “I would I had a thousand lives that I might give them to … China .” She had
but one. And she gave it away for Christ in China .
We too must understand this commission. As the Father has sent Me, so I also send you. Christ did not leave
the portals of glory to journey to that Bethlehem
stable, and subject Himself to the brutal agony of the cross, so that you and I
can eat turkey and trim trees and give each other more and more stuff. He did
it to save the world. Christmas means that God loves us too much to let us go
to hell. He loves us so much that He came to dwell among us and save us by
taking our sins upon Himself. And now He gives us this commission – As the Father has sent Me, so I also send
you.
The greatest Christmas gift ever
given is Christ Himself, given for you to save you from your sins. The greatest
Christmas gift you can give to someone else is the eternally and infinitely
good news of His gospel message. Each day, around the world, somewhere in the
range of 150,000 people die in their sins. Some have heard and rejected the
offer of Christ. But, most have never even heard. How then shall we respond to
the commission that has been given to us?
·
Will you pray
that the lost will have the opportunity to hear the gospel and that their
hearts will be open to receive Jesus? Will you pray for God to send forth
laborers into His harvest field?
·
Will you share
Christ with someone who is lost – a friend, a family member, a coworker, a
neighbor, a stranger that God providentially places in your life?
·
Will you go to
the nations? Perhaps you are sensing God’s call to go for the rest of your
life. Maybe you are sensing God’s call to go for a short term assignment – a
summer, a semester, two weeks. Or maybe you are unable to go abroad, but there
are internationals here in the Triad that you can reach out to even more easily
and effectively than you could by going abroad. Are you willing to simply
surrender to the Lord Jesus and say, “Lord, I will go wherever you want me to
go – even if it is here in Greensboro, even if it is Nepal, Dubai, South
Africa, Netherlands, China, Ethiopia, or anywhere else in the world – and I
will tell them about you!”?
·
Will you give
generously and even sacrificially so that those who have said, “Yes, I will go
in Christ’s name and take the gospel to the ends of the earth,” may do so? The
Lottie Moon Offering supports over 4,800 missionaries serving around the world.
Last year, they saw over 266,000 people baptized as new believers in Jesus
Christ. There were over 24,000 new churches started through their work. Yet,
according to the Joshua Project, of the 16,801 distinct ethnolinguistic people
groups in the world, nearly 7,300 of them do not have a substantial gospel
witness among them. Over 40% of the world’s population lives among these
unreached peoples. God loves these people. Jesus died for them. They just don’t
know it yet, and they won’t know unless someone goes to tell them. The Lottie
Moon Offering helps us send those people there to reach them. Our goal this
year is to raise $10,000. That may sound like a lot of money, but consider this:
o
It is about $2.50
per missionary. It is about $1.64 per unreached people group in the world. And
it is only a tiny fraction of a percent of the 175 million dollar goal that the
International Mission Board hopes to receive.
o
If there were
five individuals or families who gave $1,000 each to the LMCO, that would be
half of our goal. If another five gave $500 each, that would be 75% of our goal
– met by just 10 individuals or families.
Jesus said, “As the Father
sent Me, I also send you.” This statement applies to every one of His
followers. So, if you are a follower of Jesus, He is sending you. You are part
of His plan to extend the good news of His glory and grace to the ends of the
earth. So, what part will you play in that mission? But perhaps today, you
might be wondering if you really are His follower … you might even know for
sure that you are not. If that is so, then even this day, you can turn to Him
in repentance and faith, have your sins forgiven, and be saved. You can receive
the ultimate gift of Christmas – the gift of God’s only begotten Son. And as
your turn to follow Him, you can begin to give that gift away to others as
well.
