Sermon Notes: Society
Genesis 1:26-31; 2:18-25
The good news of the kingdom makes disciples who hear and obey God’s word.
Those disciples are baptized and become members of the local church.
Those disciples embrace Jesus’ call on the local church as their own, together with fellow church members, to make disciples of all nations.
From every disciple making disciples, Jesus builds his church.
KDSC
This glorious and supernatural calling for the church is too big for a few missionary minded Christians while the rest cheer them on.
From 1792 and William Carrey’s founding of the Baptist Missionary Society to the Haystack Prayer Meeting in 1806 in America that mobilized college students to Carrey’s work, there was a movement to the great commission by college age folks. These students experienced resistance from local pastors and churches.
The result of this resistance was the birth of mission sending agencies that would raise funds and send willing workers to the field, like Hubson Taylor, who we just studied for All Saints Day.
This great move of the Spirit has led to the salvation of untold numbers of people and the breaking out of the kingdom of God in hard places.
It has also resulted in the ongoing challenge of a tiny percentage of Christians from the local church engaging places where the good news has never gone, and less than 1% of financial resources from the local church funding the work to get the good news to the places the good news has never gone. William Carrey and Hudson Taylor’s challenge is still the challenge today because the local church does not own the Great Commission.
There is much to do. The task Jesus left us with has not been accomplished.
Is it ok to give Jesus’ call to the church to agencies who are not the church but have to fight to get the church to join in the work?
It’s not sin that we have mission agencies doing the church’s work, and yet it seems like there is something that is not quite right. Can the local church do it better?
We believe that God intends every follower of Jesus to be part of his great work to see the nations worship Jesus by their involvement in making disciples from the local church in the mission field of every domain of society.
That does not mean every follower of Jesus taking a mission trip.
It means every follower of Jesus being faithful to engage in the domains of society and since these are global, Jesus may just take our local work and make it global.
The truth is that God’s vision for his glory in discipling the nations is for the whole church, and not just a few. So, we have to begin to attempt to make sense of Jesus’ call in the Great Commission.
The way to think about being on mission and getting after God’s vision is this: Every Disciple. Everywhere. All the time.
No one Christian and no one church can do this by themselves. It’s every disciple. Every church. Everywhere. All the time.
KDSC is the spiritual DNA that will release every healthy disciple, everywhere, all the time.
So, we ask this question: What if the whole church were the missionary?
Afterall, is there anything in Matthew 28:16-20 that indicates only some disciples or some parts of a church should participate in the Great Commission?
“S” of KDSC is the part of our DNA that serves as our way of looking at all of creation as a way of releasing the whole church to be the missionary in God’s natural flow of creation.
The work of engaging every part of society is where the “rubber meets the road” for ministry.
We have chosen to use the word “domains” to capture the distinctions in creation placed there by the Lord as a natural grid for us to operate within for mission.
Created society is composed of groups of people who work and live within Jesus’ created distinctions or domains in creation.
Domains are core structures the wise Creator Jesus fashioned as the created order.
Examples: agriculture / water / education / art-media / science-technology / government / biology / medicine / economics /
We can get super granular with the domains of created order or keep it general. For our purposes, we want to keep things general because the worlds vocations (paid and unpaid) often span multiple domains of Jesus’ created order of society.
Using domains of society as a tool helps us to see that God designed us to be actively involved in creation, and as followers of Jesus Christ on the mission of the good news of the kingdom, our work from the home to the marketplace has divine significance for mission, and thus the whole church can and should be the missionary.
The Christian home that makes up the local church transcends created order and thus sits over created order as the source and means of seeing the redemption of created order. Please don’t hear us diminishing the home and its order in our emphasis on using domains of society as the grid we operate in. The home is the building block of society. Thus, when the local church reaches a home we are restructuring all of society one family at a time.
Prioritize your home and its health to do your best to fill all of creation with the healing of the kingdom of God. Make zero mistake, this will be the battleground. And the push and pull of life will invite the fight into your home and you will take the fight from your home out to the marketplace. And make zero mistake, we can’t avoid this conflict in our homes and thus in the local church.
The question is what are we going to do as ambassadors of God’s kingdom and how will we do it together?
Domains of society are crucial in the stewardship of and transformation of creation as it is organized into cities, states, and nations.
Domains of society are important because God created them, and their wise management is part of the healthy maintenance of creation. - Genesis 1:26-31.
People who take leadership in the domains of society have the potential to reshape the values, priorities, and practices of their city and ultimately the world.
Human beings, as co-regents who bear the Lord’s triune image, function with a delegated authority from the Lord, whether they follow Jesus or not.
Humans, by design, have built-in gifts and the ability to bring order to creation.
God sits sovereign over his creation, and his image-bearers exercise his delegated power and influence over his creation.
This is why it matters who sits in authority and oversight in the world. It matters that Christians sit in the position to rule well over created order, and from that place of influence make disciples.
Christians, the church-the body of Christ, have a special Holy Spirit capacity to be in the domains of society as ambassadors of Jesus to GOVERN all of creation well, INFLUENCE the way created order functions, BE INSTRUMENTS of Jesus' kingdom, PREACH the good news of the rule and salvation of Jesus, MAKE DISCIPLES, and MULTIPLY local churches from every created part (domain) of society.
Let’s read it in the Bible: Genesis 1:26-31
What do we need to observe in God’s creation of man for mission?
God creates man in his triune image. Genesis 1:26
God creates man like himself in such a way that man is equipped to be God’s representative on earth, and he gives mankind the ability, we will see, to make other image-bearers in a family unit that displays the Triune image in father, mother, child.
This is a big deal, and it is more than we have time to deal with here.
Suffice it to say that we have God’s image created in us so that we have what we need in being like him in such a way that we are to be his hands and feet on earth.
God creates the family that reflects his Triune image as the building block of society. Genesis 1:26-28; 2:18-25
Genesis 2:18-25 gives us a glimpse into the first wedding ever performed, and it is performed by the Lord because marriage and family is the Trinitarian God’s idea, it is good for humans, and thus it is good for all of creation as God made it: One man. One woman. In covenant. Distinct with distinct roles. One flesh.
This is just one place among many we see God’s good love for humans, his creatures, and all of creation.
At the apex of creation, for oversight and infiltration, God made the family not as a domain or sector of society, but the very fabric of society. No family. No society.
So, we don’t isolate the family and thus the church to a domain. The domains are ours like we belong to God. We are the fabric that makes them, and we don’t isolate from them. We are to run them as God’s stewards from within them because we make them up.
God made the Trinitarian family unit as the building block of order and good.
NOTE: Please never hear any word I say, sermon I preach, or strategy I seek to make sense of as demeaning God’s building block of society, the family. Default to your family. Invest first in your family. Nourish and cherish your family. Build up your family. Do that in any and every means you are compelled to or explicitly called to in obedience to God and his mission. Do this without judging anyone else who has a different strategy for building family health and influence. Do what you must do to be at optimal health to share that optimal health with all of creation to seek the kingdom of God break out in all of creation.
God “blessed” the family. Genesis 1:28
What does it mean that God “blessed” the family?
Bless (barak) means “to kneel”.
By making man and the family in his image, God blessed, “kneeled” toward mankind and the family.
God does not “kneel” in the sense that he bows down to man to worship him. God “kneels” in the sense that he condescended, came to us where he created us, to give us his image as his representatives and co-regents to manage his creation with him and for him. This “kneeling” is to be seen by us a fatherly loving gesture by God for us.
God kneels in the sense that he has joyfully loved us and given us the image of himself and knitted that blessing of himself into what it means to be human in relationship to another human in marriage to create other humans to fill all of creation with more humans to oversee all of creation by humans.
He also blesses the human who may be single to still be in relationship to other humans who are together filling creation with disciples by making disciples and managing creation for God’s glory.
NOTE: The image of God is not possible faculties (like will or ability to reason). Image is concrete as representative. Otherwise, our pro-life ethic is only possible upon the gaining of faculty. As representative, from conception to death in all forms broken or not or perceived broken or not, a human is God’s physical representative on earth as in heaven.
Imagine a good daddy kneeling to give something good to his child simply in love and joy to share something good from them with their child.
God kneels like that in blessing us with himself.
This “blessing” of mankind is the source of mankind’s authority over and co-regency of creation with the Lord.
As a result of this blessing, all of Adam and Eve’s descendants will carry this spark of blessing with them for their work in creation as families on mission.
Mankind has the “blessing” of being made in God’s image that will multiply into all of Adam and Eve’s descendants which is why all humans are precious and full of potential for good.
God gives mankind, and thus, the family 5 commands with the scope of those 5 commands. Genesis 1:28
NOTE: THESE COMMANDS BEGIN WITH THE FAMILY AND MOVE FROM AND THROUGH THE FAMILY TO THE PUBLIC SQUARE THE FAMILY IHABITS.
1. Be fruitful: In the labor of co-regency with God in the created order as image-bearers, we are to be fruitful.
We were made to produce, and that is why we get satisfaction from a job well. Doing work and producing is a source of dignity for image-bearers.
To remove the mandate for fruitfulness from people is one of the most inhumane things we do to people.
How are we to be fruitful?
2. Multiply: We are to increase fruitfulness by increasing God’s workforce by multiplying other image-bearers from the family to fill the earth to participate in increasing the productivity of all creation.
We can do this in childbearing, fostering and adopting, and disciple making that produces family members as spiritual sons and daughters.
3. Fill: Fill means to fulfill, consecrate, accomplish.
In our multiplication, we are to fill up creation with a volume of people and things as well as a quality of production.
This means that the whole of physical creation has a capacity that has not been met in volume and quality, and by design will be at its apex when it meets God’s designed volume and quality that we are to move it toward by multiplying resources in it.
4. Subdue: We are to tame the living creation's holy and wild nature to help us produce volume and quality.
Taming creation is a challenging command.
Subduing creation involves us helping creation operate at its optimal capacity.
As we subdue creation, what action helps produce it’s volume and quality?
5. Rule: Our ruling is to be over an optimally functioning creation that we bring about as God’s representatives.
Our ruling of creation should encompass the previous 4 commands with the care and concern of the Lord over the entirety of creation.
All this work is to be done by a people who worship the Lord, love the Lord, hear the Lord, obey the Lord, and enjoy the Lord.
Where are we to do this? That leads us to the scope of the work God gives us.
Scope: The scope of our obeying Jesus’ 5 commands is the whole earth.
We are to fill the earth to its potential volume and quality everywhere.
God’s creation of the family for mission is very good. Genesis 1:30, 31
All these good commands God created us for are good, and God gave these commands of mission before our parents fell into the rebellion.
Man in relationship with God and each other as his representatives for the stewardship of creation is God’s plan, and it is good.
Application: So what?
If what we say is true that the whole church is the missionary, and if what we have seen in Genesis 1 and 2 is true, then what do we need to do to continue moving in that direction from the historical way the church has operated in the west for the last 234 years?
1. Let’s continue to shift to an assets mindset from a consumption of spiritual goods mindset.
We have to lean into the biblical fact that we are hard-wired, gifted by the Spirit, filled with the Holy Spirit, and supplied all necessary things by the Spirit to do Jesus’ mission in its fullness with each other for God’s glory.
This shift changes the questions from “What did you get out of the service?”, or “what did you get out of small group?”, to “What did I contribute to the health and well-being of my fellow church members, my city, and advance of the gospel through the local church?”
This shift causes us to see every member of the local church as missionary ambassadors of the kingdom.
2. Let’s continue to shift from a programs mindset to equipping the families of the church for the public square mindset.
Programs presuppose a consumption of spiritual goods rather presupposing a cupboard full of Holy Spirit gifted ambassadors.
An equipping for mission mindset keeps all TRC organizationally narrow and focused on God’s mission rather than finding ways to get one person to supply a spiritual good or service to many only consuming one person’s hard work.
Example: If you want “men’s ministry”, rather than trying to start a men’s ministry or asking the elders to start one with someone not asking for something else to do, text the dudes in your RL group and get together and do what dudes do. Repeat.
What if every dude in every RL group did that with the dudes in their RL group?
Are you a member not in a TRC RL group? Get in one. Not a member? Join.
3. Let’s continue to shift from working for the city to working with the city.
This is about relationships in our city and with city leaders. Working with the city changes how we interact.
We do this well. See Restoration Rome.
Every local church should become a trusted partner of their city to create solutions for the city’s brokenness rather than a provider of “holiday booger games” that don’t contribute to the healing of the whole through the restoration of created order as God intends.
This shift makes us value-added partners in the public square, and as value-added partners we take our biblical distinctives to the forefront as we proclaim the good news of the kingdom of Jesus Christ.
4. Let’s continue to shift from managing ministries to mobilizing church members like the Spirit filled disciples/ambassadors/missionaries they are.
We should expect the church body to supply from all its parts to care for and serve all its parts without creating a new organizational limb foreign to a body to be funded and overseen by one person while others atrophy in non-action.
Ephesians 4:16 (CSB) 16 From him the whole body, fitted and knit together by every supporting ligament, promotes the growth of the body for building itself up in love by the proper working of each individual part.
JESUS’ MISSION HAS A CHURCH TO GET IT DONE. Let’s continue delighting in the Lord and each other and his mission as we figure out how to get after it better each day.
THE CHURCH IS THE MISSIONARY. Every disciple. Everywhere. All the time.