May 31 we will study John 17:13-19. Discussion questions are: 1. What’s the difference in loving God and loving church music? 2. What’s the difference in being a “people-person” and loving people? 3. When Jesus said he was sending us into the world as God had sent him into the world, what did he mean? 4. If our mission is revealed by that which we spend the most time on, what is the mission of our church? 5. What is the connection between joy (vs13) and mission (vs. 18)? 6. What is the message for our lives when we learn about men like Abraham, Moses, Joshua, and Paul spending their lives struggling to reach a destination but never enjoying the fruits of arriving at their destination? 7. If Jesus sent us on a specific mission, how important is it to accomplish that mission? 8. How do you understand this statement: “By exaggerating my significance I have lost my significance.”? 9. How should the truth of this statement affect your life: “God will never bless you except to be a blessing.”? 10. What is the significance of our mission in vs. 18 being sandwiched between 2 verses about our being made holy? 11. These comments were made this morning about what the lost world wants to see: “They long for a next-door neighbor in whose life Jesus makes a real difference. They long to see a churchgoer who is the kindest person they’ve ever met. They want to know someone who is pure in heart, who never assassinates the character of other people, who sees hope for the next generation.” a. If you were to grade yourself “A – B – C – D – F” in each of those 5 categories, which one would you most need to start praying about?

Sermon: God’s “Show and Tell” Time John 17:13-19 Jesus was sent to this earth to show us God. In showing us God He also wants to tell broken people how to become whole and sinful people how to become holy. Our task as his followers is to do the same thing - show and tell. We talked last week about Jesus’ summary of discipleship: love God and love people. In today’s text he shares with us the most basic way of doing both those things. You love God and people when you show God to others and tell them how to find salvation from their sinfulness. People have a certain tendency to make loving God and people some sentimental thing. If you like a certain kind of church music and it gives you a spiritual buzz then surely you must be one who loves God. If you enjoy being around most people then surely you must be one who loves people. Those are commendable behaviors but there is something more fundamental in the lives of those who love God and people. If you love God and people like Jesus did then you participate in the mission of Christ - to show God to others and to tell them the good news about salvation from their sinfulness. Listen to Jesus’ mission statement: “As you have sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world.” (John 17:18) We are called to go do what Jesus did with his life. What was his mission – preaching sermons? Only one of his full-length sermons is recorded in the Bible, so his mission cannot have been preaching sermons. Was his mission singing hymns of praise? I know of him singing one song and we aren’t told what song that was so his mission cannot have been singing songs. Was his mission praying? Only 2 of his recorded prayers are long enough to dissect. He did not come to this earth primarily to have a place to pray. Was his mission to partake of the Lord’s Supper? He only partook of the Lord’s Supper once in his life so his mission surely was not eating supper. Was his mission to oversee a budget? He appointed an embezzler as the first church treasurer and never asked for an audit so his mission surely was not managing the church budget. Does it concern you that Jesus’ mission was not the things that most occupy our time in the 21’st century church – things having to do with public worship and managing church funds? What I am trying to tell you is we are in danger of losing our mission as a church - and that is not peculiar to this church. It is the nature of the church all over America. One generation abandons the mission and the next generation forgets we are even supposed to have a mission. To realize that we have a God-assigned mission as a church and to admit we are backing off of that mission is a bitter pill to swallow. That’s the bad news. The good news is this - when we resume our mission the result will be joy. It’s right there in the text. “I say these things that they might have the same joy I have.” (John 17:13) There is a direct correlation between lack of mission and lack of joy in your life. Little children know that. Have you noticed how little children love stories about heroes who save the world? Ask any little kid, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” and they will not likely say, “Oh, I’ll probably just sit in an office somewhere and enter things into computers and shuffle paper.” They all plan to be Spider Man or some similar hero who has this grand mission. Kids understand mission and they all have the dream! Have you ever had a little kid tell you his dream to be Spider Man and act depressed and forlorn while he told you? Of course not! There is a link between joy and mission! Joy goes out of our lives when we decide our purpose is to just check in at work every day and go through the motions. Joy returns to our lives when we discover that our mission is not to just show up at work and plod through the day but to see work as a place where we make an impact for God. A Christian who works at the sewer plant doesn’t merely show up every morning and wade through a miserable routine. He goes to work looking for an opportunity to show God to his fellow sewer workers and bring them into a saving relationship with Christ. A Christian brain surgeon’s mission is not limited to removing brain tumors. It is expanded to showing God to those he comes into contact with and help bring them into a saving relationship with Christ. The Christian rocket scientist and the Christian truck driver have the exact same mission. The Christian housewife and the Christian female executive at the biggest industry in town have the exact same mission. The Christian junior high student and the Christian professor at a university have the exact same mission. What happened to our mission? It disappeared when we bought into personal fulfillment. My generation swallowed hook, line and sinker the idea that nothing is more important that personal fulfillment. No marriage vow, no church commitment, no financial integrity is as important as personal fulfillment. We became a generation that found out the hard way you cannot accomplish the mission of Christ if your top priority is personal fulfillment. My generation came up with the great idea of changing the dates of 4 holidays a year so that they always fall on Monday. Why did we do that? So that on Memorial Day we could better honor those who gave their lives for our country? Of course not. We did it so we could accomplish our mission of self-fulfillment. Care to guess which Sundays have the poorest church attendance every year? Those that precede the 4 Monday holidays. Those weekends are not about mission. They are about self-fulfillment and they seriously damage the body of Christ. Those of you in my generation will remember when speakers at graduations used to say, “Leave this world a better place than you found it.” What happened to that idea? What happened to it was, it died when we replaced it with self-fulfillment. In the early 60’s my generation of college students looked at racism and injustice and sang, “If I had a hammer I’d hammer in the morning. I’d hammer in the evening all over this land. I’d hammer out danger. I’d hammer out a warning. I’d hammer out love between my brothers and my sisters all over this land.” What happened to that righteous indignation? It got replaced with self-indulgence. So it is in the kingdom of God. The more life becomes about me and my creature comforts the less it becomes about the mission of Christ. As the years have gone by some of us from the 60’s generation have come to realize, “I have nothing to live for except me.” Here’s the irony of that. By exaggerating my significance I have lost my significance. By making my needs more important than anything else I no longer have anything to sacrifice for. I no longer have any cause that I am part of. Didn’t someone once say, “If you seek to find yourself you will lose yourself but if you lose yourself you will find yourself.”? Suppose someone here today says, “You’re right. I have lost my God-given mission. I want it back. Where do I get the power to make my mission the same as Christ’s mission?” Jesus attributed the power of his mission to God. “As you sent me, so I sent them.” Do you remember that time Isaiah went to church and saw something he never expected to see there? He saw God! And God said, “I need someone to go on this mission and preach to people who will never, never, never listen to a thing he says.” How did Isaiah respond? Did he say, “Will it interrupt any of my scheduled 3-day weekends?” Did he say, “Let me talk this over with my wife and I’ll get back to you.”? Did he say, “I am so touched, I’d like to stand in a circle with some other believers and sing, ‘Kumbaya’”? He said, “Here am I, Send me!” God once came to Abraham and said, “Abraham, I will make you great and I will bless you.” Lots of people in my generation quit reading right there. They decided, “That’s great! That’s the kind of God we want. One who will serve us.” But before that sentence is over God says, “But Abraham you have to be a blessing. Now get out of this country and go on mission.” Now let me ask you a very important question: Is Abraham’s mission to get to the promised land as fast as possible and find a nice shade tree down on the banks of the Jordan where he can get away from the world or is he supposed to bless everyone who crosses his path on his journey. Is Abraham’s mission to get to the Promised Land or to bless people along the way? Have you ever noticed how many Bible characters are on this journey to some place and when they get there they die. It’s as if getting to their destination is almost beside the point. It’s how they behave on the journey that counts. For Abraham it’s all about the journey. How about Moses? He only made it to the border of the Promised Land. It was all about the journey. How about Joshua? He spent the first third of his life as a slave, the middle third wandering around in the desert, and the final third fighting every imaginable enemy in the Promised Land. You never read about him spending his last 40 years sitting by the Jordan watching the sunsets. For Joshua it was all about the journey. How about Paul? Most of his Christian life he was trying to get to Rome. When he gets there he doesn’t hold crusades with thousands thronging to his messages. He is put under house arrest until they can execute him. It was all about the journey and the sense of mission he had along the way. It was about the people he met and the influence he had on them as he made his way to Rome. How about Jesus? For 3 ½ half years he heads down one road after another always ultimately headed for Jerusalem. When he finally gets to Jerusalem they kill him within 24 hours of his arrival. For sure Jerusalem was the climax of his mission but his mission was also very much about the journey and who he encountered along the way. How about you and your fulfilling the mission Christ gave you? Do you understand it’s not about your climbing the corporate ladder? It’s not about your getting the advanced degree. It’s not about your finding the right spouse and having beautiful children. It’s about the journey and who you meet along the way and how you show God to them. Let me tell you a great truth. If you ever internalize this truth it will change your life forever…GOD WILL NEVER BLESS YOU EXCEPT TO BE A BLESSING! The one requirement of missions is holiness. “As the Father has sent me so I have sent you.” What does it mean to say we are sent by Jesus in the same way the Father sent him? That statement in vs. 18 is sandwiched between 2 holiness verses. Those 2 verses are a call to holiness. They are saying we cannot accomplish our mission unless our lives are holy. Listen to the mission statement and the holiness qualifications that surround it: “ 17 Make them holy by your truth; teach them your word, which is truth. 18 Just as you sent me into the world, I am sending them into the world. 19 And I give myself as a holy sacrifice for them so they can be made holy by your truth.” (John 17:17-19) The mission is to show God to people with your life and to tell them how to have a saving relationship with Christ. That’s not the same thing as getting someone to come to church with you. I know it’s challenging to get folks to come to church with you these days. People for the most part aren’t sitting home on their front porches on Sunday mornings thinking, “Man, I wish I knew where I could go to church and hear a good sermon.” But I will tell you what they do long for. They long for a next-door neighbor in whose life Jesus makes a real difference. They long to see a churchgoer who is the kindest person they’ve ever met. They want to know someone who is pure in heart, who never assassinates the character of other people, who sees hope for the next generation. They aren’t interested in sermons. They are interested in your holiness! Their brokenness will begin to heal when they come into contact with your wholeness. No life could have less joy than to live for yourself for years. I cannot imagine having no higher ambition than to live for a nicer house or more time and money to travel. Some of you are smothering under those small ambitions. Your heart and your spirit were made for nobler things than that. You were made for a world-changing mission! I heard last week about a high school football player who dropped a critical pass in a football game. After the game his coach walked up to him, handed him the football and said, “I want you to hang on to this football for a week. Never put it down for one second. I want you to hold it while you eat. I want you to sleep with it and shower with it. Do not put this ball down for one week.” He did and when Friday night came he caught every pass thrown to him. He absolutely made catching the football his mission. When are you going to make Jesus’ mission, your mission? Jesus said, “My meat and my drink is to do the will of my father.” When are you going to get there?