The Missionaries Doctrine and Power

The Fields are White For the Harvest
The Missionaries Doctrine and Power: Overflowing in Spirit and Truth
John 4:1-24

Introduction:
Last week I had prepared to preach on the first half of the according to my outline for this series on missions, but we had so much to do in the service with the baptisms and the communion, I decided not to preach that sermon then so this week I have decided to combine last week’s theme, “the Missionaries Source of Power” with this week’s message “The Missionaries Doctrine”.

I do not feel that this is not a concession to pragmatism since the two topics are decidedly interdependent. I say this because it is not possible to be a missionary who is empowered by the Spirit of Truth whose doctrine is not also informed by the Spirit of Truth.

Last week all I did was read the story of the meeting between Jesus and the Samaritan woman, so let’s frame that portrait with the calling of the prophet Isaiah (Turn to Is. 6:1-8)

I. Who Will I send?
“Who Will I send?” God asks, “Who will go for me and proclaim my message?” We call this Isaiah’s calling, but really, it’s Isaiah’s response to his calling. Having been given this extraordinary glimpse of the holy majesty of God, Isaiah’s response could be nothing less then an unreserved, unconditionally wholehearted, “Here I am send me.”

There are two words that do not belong together, no matter what language you speak- those two words are, “No Lord.” This is an oxymoron, like saying “Microsoft works” or, “organized religion” or “unbiased opinion”; if Jesus is your Lord, you cannot say no to him.

Would a soldier say no to his commanding officer? Would a servant say no to her employer? Would an Ambassador say no to his king? So why do we say ‘no’ to the Almighty King of Kings and Lord of Lords while claiming him to be our Lord and Saviour? If he’s our Saviour then he’s also our Lord.

I think our North American Evangelical attitude has mutated the meaning of “Lord.” Oh, we have no problem with Saviour, that’s totally acceptable to us because all we have to do is believe and he does the rest. What a great religion.

It’s the Lord part where we struggle, because, as Canadians, we are autonomous, self determining individuals- we elect our leaders so that we can criticize and denounce them. Our duty to our superiors is to disdain, distrust and undermine them. Isn’t that true? We Canadians hate authority. As a culture we have very few heroes- unless they’re dead. That’s one thing that distinguishes us from Americans.

And that hero spurning, anti-authority mentality comes into the church too; we even bring that into our faith. How often is Jesus spoken of as friend and presented that way in gospel presentations? Yes he is our friend, but we should not permit our special relationship with Jesus allow us to become casual and irreverent in the presence of the Lord of Glory.
When we overstate the friendship aspect of our relationship to Christ, the result is that our references to his lordship loses its meaning. At best, Lord is just a synonym for ‘friend’- we might just as well say he is my Friend and Saviour and no one would notice the change.

“Who Will Go?”
“Here I am, send me!”
This time it is the voice, not of Isaiah, but of the Son. “Here I am send me so that I can leave the riches and supremacy of heaven to become a frail man and be tempted and suffer and be rejected by those I came to help, whose lives are but dust to me; I will go and die a brutal and humiliating death…. Here I am, send me.”

Those were Jesus words, spoken before the creation of the world and the giving of the Law.

My son Parker likes to put puzzles together. He’s like any task-oriented male, when he starts something, he becomes so focused and so obsessed with its completion.

Sometimes he gets so focused on one piece and he’ll try every piece in that one spot to see if it fits. But he totally forgets about the rest of the puzzle; he won’t try the pieces in the other empty places. I get so irritated with him and I’ll say, “Why don’t you try that piece here?” I have to show him the picture of the completed puzzle just to get him back to focusing back on the big-picture. Once he sees the full picture, he will get out of the rut.

Our Christian life can be like that too. We get bogged down in these ruts where we become consumed with one element of Jesus, like his teaching on the nature of the Trinity, or the doctrine of election, or justification or the second coming and we’re like Parker trying to fit every other piece into that doctrine.

The only way to get out of that rut is to look at the picture- Jesus and how he lived out the truths that he taught; and then we get the right perspective. We must not divorce his teachings from how he lived them out, or minimize his life for the sake of one or two pet doctrines.

What do we see when we see Jesus… when all the pieces of doctrine are put together into one picture? The whole becomes greater then the sum of the parts and all those pieces come together to form something more beautiful, more life changing then any atomization of Jesus’ life and teaching.

In Christ, we see someone who was sent not only to preach the gospel, but to live it- Jesus was a missionary.

II. The Mission to the Samaritans
That’s why this picture of Jesus mission to the Samaritans is so brilliant because it takes all these components and it completes them in the person and the ministry of Jesus as a cross cultural missionary. (Read John 4:1-4)

V.1 Jesus went from a flourishing mission to many to a flourishing mission to one lady because his ministry was a threat to the jealous religious leaders who failed to answer God when he said, “Who will go?”
When James Calvert went out as a missionary to the cannibals of the Fiji Islands, the ship captain tried to turn him back, saying, "You will lose your life and the lives of those with you if you go among them." To that, Calvert replied, "We died before we came here." Today Fiji is a Christian nation and many missionaries leave Fiji every year to face the same threat that Calvert once faced.
God, in his providence, used the obstinacy of the religious leaders to draw Jesus into the world mission which began in Jerusalem and Judea, then to Samaria before spreading to the ends of the world (represented by Galilee).

He needed to go through Samaria, it says in v.4, because it was the quickest and most direct route to Galilee.

The Samaritan people are a mixed-race people: half Jew and half Persian. 700 years before Jesus, the Assyrians took many of the Jews from the northern Kingdom and deported them to the eastern region of Assyria (this is what we call the Jewish Diaspora). Some went as far as India.

Then the Assyrians imported another conquered people (likely Persians from Iran). There, the Persians interbred with the remaining Jews and mixed their pagan beliefs with the Jewish faith (Syncretism).

When the Jews of the Diaspora began to return to Israel after the 3rd century BC, they were appalled at the Samaritans for giving up their “racial purity” and adopting pagan practices. The Samaritans even built their own Temple in Sychar (which apparently means “drunken”).
It was into this history that the Jewish messiah was now injecting himself. This story is analogous to the spread of the church. Let me explain:

Jesus, rejected by his own (represented by Jerusalem) turns to the Gentiles, (represented by the Samaritans) and he will accomplish his mission to the Samaritans through one social outcast. Don’t you think that the Samaritans are a good picture of the church? We Christian are now no longer Jews nor Gentiles, but both- we’re a new nation of God’s elect from every tribe and tongue.

And aren’t each one of us just like that Samaritan woman. “Not many wise, not many noble” God chooses the foolish people out of this world to make up His church.

III. The Power and the Doctrine of the Missionary
Let’s look at the power and the doctrine of the missionary:

A. The Power
V. 6 tells us that Jesus became weary from his journey and so he sat by Jacob’s well and waited for someone to draw him water. There can be no shame for God’s missionaries to be weary and rest if there is no shame in God’s missionary to be weary and rest.

In fact- I think it is in our weaknesses that we are most useful to God. Paul, the great missionary once alluded to his infirmity saying:

And lest I should be exalted above measure by the abundance of the revelations, a thorn in the flesh was given to me, a messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I be exalted above measure. Concerning this thing I pleaded with the Lord three times that it might depart from me. And He said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness." Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ's sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Cor 12:7-10).

The Missionaries power does not come from his own ability or endurance, but from the indwelling Holy Spirit. Jesus gives us the living water of the Holy Spirit, who not only quenches our immediate thirst for salvation when we are born again, but also continues to flow through us in power so that we will never thirst again.

V. 6, so the woman said, “Sir, give me this water that I may not thirst”
For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. If a son asks for bread from any father among you, will he give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent instead of a fish? Or if he asks for an egg, will he offer him a scorpion? 13 If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!" (Luke 11:10-13).

Many of our best opportunities for ministry will come when we most tired and afflicted. Then we are able to draw most upon God for His power.

B. The Doctrine Read v. 21 to 24
Missions is an act of worship or it is nothing at all. And true worship is done in spirit and in truth. You cannot have true worship if it is only done in spirit, nor can you have true worship if it is only done in truth.
Worshipping in Spirit without truth is impossible because the Spirit gives life and worshipping in truth without the spirit can only lead to death because it is the ultimate sin to know the truth and yet to reject the Spirit.

Remember John’s testimony, “the Word became flesh… (Jesus the missionary) dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory… full of grace and truth.”

What Jesus means by Spirit is that the worshipper must be born of the Spirit, he must be regenerated by the Holy Spirit who flows through his/her veins full of power to enable his worship to be pleasing in his service to God. Otherwise his worship is sounding brass- it’s the sacrifice of Cain. “For He whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for God does not give the Spirit by measure” (3:34).

Before Jesus ascended into heaven, he promised to send the Spirit of truth to lead us into all truth (Jn 16:13).

The Missionary is not only a worshipper who worships in Spirit and in truth; he is also one who says, “here I am, send me,” so that he can go and tell others of the holiness and majesty and grace and mercy of God so that they can also become worshippers in Spirit and in truth.

That’s the doctrine of the missionary- it’s not found in particularized theological propositions, but in the big picture- Jesus and how he lived out those theological propositions! Every other doctrine is just a small piece of the puzzle, important as they are, but let’s not lose sight of the big picture.