Church On Mission: Against all the Odds
About this series:
The opening lines or pages of a book are often designed to set the context for all that follows. For example:
‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness…it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair’ (A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens).
‘It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen’ (1984, George Orwell).
The same is true of the Bible. The opening pages set the stage for all that follows; it’s long, unfolding story can invariably be traced back to these scenes. In particular, we see God eternally existing and then choosing to create all there is out of nothing. He commissions mankind - the pinnacle of his creation, made in his image - to, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule…” (Genesis 1:28). Then sin enters the world and there follows a spiralling downward away from harmony with God and with people. And yet there is the gospel promise of Genesis 3:15.
And then, following a restating (to Noah) of the commission to, “be fruitful and increase in number; multiply on the earth and increase upon it” and the establishing of a covenant (Genesis 9:1-11), we’re introduced to Abram (from Genesis 11:26), called by God to become the one through whom he will accomplish the mission given to mankind and through whom God’s intended blessing of mankind will come about.
This series is designed to explore a few points in the biblical journey that flows from these opening scenes in the Bible, the story of how God’s blessing will fill the earth. It’s clearly only a very few of the many stages on that journey that we could talk about, but they will serve to show how God’s people have always been on mission and how the church today is still on mission today.
Importantly, it is God’s mission. Christopher Wright has said, ‘God doesn’t have a mission for his church, he has a church for his mission.’ God’s intent has always been to fill the earth with his blessing and his people have always been his means for bringing that to pass. It’s important that we have an understanding of the biblical storyline and that we see our involvement as being in God’s mission rather than imagining that we are asking God to bless our mission.
This eight-part series will begin with three practical steps we can all engage with in order to become people on mission - Prayer, Care and Share. These three words represent vital practical elements of a missional lifestyle and they contain a logical progression too. Please keep these three words in mind as we work through the series, especially as ways to apply what’s being said - for example:
What does it look like to be sent? Prayer, care & share.
How can we still be on mission against all the odds? Prayer, care & share.
About this talk:
The story of the early church is one of huge expansion and huge opposition:
Expansion: 3,000 were added to the church on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2:41); “the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved” (2:47); “many who heard the message believed; so the number of men who believed grew to about five thousand” (4:4); “more and more men and women believed in the Lord and were added to their number” (5:14); “The number of disciples in Jerusalem increased rapidly” (6:7).
Opposition: Peter and John are seized and put in jail (4:1-3); on being released they are “commanded them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus” (4:18); the Sadducees arrest the apostles and put them in jail (5:17-18); they are re-arrested, flogged and ordered not to speak of Jesus any more (5:27-40); Stephen is falsely accused and brought before the Sanhedrin where false witnesses testify against him (6:11-15); Stephen is stoned to death (7:54-60).
On the day of Stephen’s death, “a great persecution broke out against the church in Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria” (8:1). Saul, “began to destroy the church. Going from house to house, he dragged off both men and women and put them in prison” (8:3). And yet against all the odds, this most unlikely setting at the start of ch 8 becomes the occasion for an expansion of the church’s mission. Just as the opposition in ch 4 led the church to pray, “Lord, consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness” (4:29) and despite the imprisonment, flogging and threats in ch 5, “they never stopped teaching and proclaiming the good news that Jesus is the Messiah” (5:42), here in ch 8, persecution just means the mission expands (rather than contracts) because the disciples’ attitude is: whatever happens, the mission continues.
So in ch 8, we have an account of the believers in general on mission - “Those who had been scattered preached the word wherever they went” (8:4) - and Philip in particular on mission - “Philip went down to a city in Samaria and proclaimed the Messiah there” (8:5). In British culture we can have a general concern about being in a post-Christian culture and how that makes being a witness difficult. And we can have a personal concern that if we become witnesses we may offend people or encounter rejection. And yet in the anti-Christian culture of first century Palestine, it seems that nothing will hold the church back. They take both expansion and opposition to be the normal circumstances for the gospel and so the mission must continue, however tough some of their situations are.
The believers are also confident of God’s sovereignty (as expressed in their prayer in Acts 4:24-30). They know he is at work in / behind the opposition - “They did what your power and will had decided beforehand should happen” (4:28) - and so they trust God is working even when things look bleak. Jesus had said, “you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (1:8) and here God is fulfilling that promise through opposition: “all except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria.” God is using the persecution following Stephen’s death as the means of the mission going forward.
Saul’s intent was to destroy the church (see also his accounts in 22:4-5 and 26:9-11) and there are many today who would be delighted to see the church cease to exist - those who hate our message that contradicts the narratives of our day, those who believe we trust on fairy tales, those who believe as Richard Dawkins does: ‘I think of religion as a dangerous virus…I think a case can be made that faith is one of the world’s great evils, comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to eradicate.’
But nothing should hold us back. God’s mission will advance against all the odds and we should not wait for what might appear to us to be more favourable circumstances. Expansion and opposition go hand in hand.
Audio only
