19th Sunday after Trinity

SERMON - Mission Work from the Inside Out

INI

Text: Philippians 3:7-11

Grace, mercy, and peace be multiplied to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Dear fellow Christians,

Our text for this special Mission Festival Sunday is found recorded in Paul’s letter to the Philippians, the third chapter:

But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. ⁸ Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ ⁹ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith; ¹⁰ that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, ¹¹ if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.

So far the very words of God. Remembering that these are not the words of men but the words of God, so we approach them now with reverence and study them as that which they truly are - God’s words! To this end we also pray, “Sanctify us through the truth, O Lord. Your Word is truth!” Amen.

We could hardly believe it, but it turned out to be the right answer! “Y’all are in the right place!” In that place and under those particular circumstances everyone just stood there with mouths agape, but the man was right. They were in the right place! The setting was this: The extreme southeast corner of one of the largest cattle ranches in Nebraska - the Three Bar Cattle Company. The nearest town, if you want to call it a town, is over twenty miles. The nearest house from that point on the ranch is at least a twenty minute drive cross-country by pickup.

Now, imagine yourself quietly fixing fence in this remote corner of the Great Plains, miles from any civilization, when suddenly a ridiculously elaborate RV comes lumbering over the nearest hill and pulls up alongside one of the workers. Understand that we never see anyone out there. It’s a difficult enough trip by horseback, it’s not on the way to anywhere, and it is miles and miles off of any road traveled by the public. Besides all that there must be a dozen fences and gates between there and the nearest public road. The very last thing you would expect to hear from the man talking to the driver of this wayward Winnebago would be, “Y’all are in the right place!” And yet, as you heard, it turned out to be the right answer! What in the world…?

What the driver of the RV said when he rolled down his window was simply, “We want to get to New Mexico and we don’t want to go through no towns or nothin’” Everyone thought he was lost. In fact he was right where he wanted to be. Our foreman, after assuring him that he was in the right place, just pointed in roughly the direction the RV had been traveling and said, “Well, that there’s south-west…” The man thanked him kindly, rolled up his window and lumbered off across the prairie. The job of those left behind was, of course, to stand there staring dumbly after them - mouths still hanging open – like cattle staring stupidly at a new gate.

I have thought of that episode many times since then, and then one day it dawned on me that far too many of us Christians live out our faith lives just like those folks in that wandering Winnebago. We want to get where we are going, but “we don’t want to go through no towns or nothin’.” In other words, we might do a fair job of keeping our eyes fixed on our final destination - we know we want to go to heaven - but we find ourselves wanting to avoid all contact along the way. Jesus told each one of us in Mark 16:15 to, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.” At times it seems we are more intent on avoiding religious confrontation of any kind. So many of us have become introverted and selfish with the Gift of Life we have been given.

Thanks be to God that our Lord Jesus was not that way! True, Jesus never once turned aside from his goal - that long tortured walk to the cross. And yet Jesus took every opportunity to “go through the towns.” He took every opportunity to let the world know who he was, what he was doing, and where he was going. Think of how much easier his life would have been if he had taken every opportunity to avoid human contact. How much easier it would have been to avoid sin and temptation. But that would not have been the best thing for those souls who so desperately needed the Savior’s touch – the Savior’s hand to pull them from the despair of spiritual death. The fact is Jesus knew that man can also sin by not doing what he should, just as easily as doing what he should not.

The point here is that when it comes to mission work, the problem is not that we don’t have any idea what we ought to be doing. A child could do it. (And isn’t it a revealing fact that children most often witness much more openly and honestly than adults. Adults, after all, have their reputations to consider.) The problem is that we know pretty much exactly what we ought to be doing, we just don’t do it. Mission work is not just about “over there”; it is all about telling those folks we meet in our own individual circles of life about the rescue that God the Father has provided also for them in the person and work of Jesus Christ. It is simple law and gospel. The power to change is not yours. That means the effectiveness of your witness does not depend on how skillful you are in your presentation of the facts of Life. The power will be supplied by the Word itself. Gone therefore is the excuse “I don’t know what I ought to say,” or “I’m afraid I might say something wrong.” In fact it is most comforting to remember that we are called by God to be a witness. A witness is never asked to testify to what he does not know. We are called to tell what we do know, which is something every one of us can do. We take comfort in the promise that our Lord gave to his other disciples in Matthew 10:18-20: “You will be brought before governors and kings for My sake, as a testimony to them and to the Gentiles. But when they deliver you up, do not worry about how or what you should speak. For it will be given to you in that hour what you should speak; for it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you.”

The problem therefore is not that we don’t know what to do. Nor is the problem that we don’t understand the consequences for the unbeliever if Christians fail to witness. Everyone here knows full well that there is but one path to God, one path to heaven. “He that believes and is baptized shall be saved; he that believes not shall be condemned.”

Nor is the problem that we have no opportunity to witness. There are, in fact, dead souls all around all of us every day of our lives. The problem is not even that we don’t want to witness. The problem is simply in bringing ourselves to do that which we know to be right and good and vitally necessary. How do we do that which, according to the new man within us, we dearly want to do?

Have you ever tried to fix something - like a car, computer, TV, tractor – anything that had more than one thing wrong with it? Then you know how difficult that can be. That, fortunately, is not our problem in connection with mission work. We really don’t have lots of problems here. We have just one - one obstacle between you and the personal Christian missionary you want and ought to be. There is only one door to be opened so that God’s saving Word can flow to those who so desperately need it. That last obstacle is our mouths. How do we overcome the fear, the worry, the uncertainty about simply opening our mouths and thereby playing a role in the saving of souls?

For advice and guidance we turn this morning to someone who was really very good at exactly what we are trying to do: the Apostle Paul. Paul had no trouble opening his mouth and telling everyone he met about the facts of eternal life that he had come to know as the ultimate truth. How was he able to do it? For Paul it became simply the natural thing for him to do. That which was in his heart could not help but to flow from his mouth.

This is the key for each one of us here today. That last hurdle to clear in our Christian witnessing – simply opening our mouths and sharing the news that we have heard – that last obstacle is best overcome when Christianity and the Christian faith is your whole life, not just a part of your life. When “to live is Christ, and to die is gain,” then you will have no trouble opening your mouth and telling others how they too might be saved.

Listen again to our text, where Paul tells about this transformation that took place in him: “But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith; that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.”

In mission work we talk a good bit about “gains” and “losses.” When a small congregation has only a handful of members, every “gain” is a cause for celebration, and every “loss” is felt as a serious blow. Paul was a very religious man long before he ever heard of Jesus Christ, but Paul was no good at all to Jesus (let alone as a Christian witness) until he first endured his own gains and losses. He needed mission work on the inside before there could be any mission work on the outside.

For Paul, the first thing that had to go was the only religion he had ever known. Paul had lived every day of his life firmly convinced that a man is saved by what he does for God, rather than by what God does for man. This Paul had to lose - all of his superficial “good-deedyness.” These were the very things Paul thought would save him, and yet in our text he says of them, “But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ”

Paul was able to freely talk about his Savior with those around him because his Savior was his very life. As true Christians we do not want to make Jesus a part of our life. We want to make Jesus our life! Jesus himself told us that we cannot serve two masters, and yet somehow we still imagine that we can be part-time Christians and part-time heathens. The lesson we learn from Paul is a simple one. The best mission work must come from the inside out. Whenever Jesus fills your life (or as we heard in our New Testament Lesson this morning, whenever “the Word of Christ dwells in you richly,”) then you will not be able to stop sharing with others the facts of Life! That last obstacle to personal mission work will finally be conquered.

Finally this morning, dear Christians, I would ask you to take a look back at your own life - your own personal history. Look back, and as you do, answer this one, simple question: What have you done in your entire life that is lasting? More specifically, what have you done in your lifetime that will stand through the fires of Judgment Day? When all is said and done, when all of the rubble of this world is burned away, nothing of this earth will stand. All wealth of every kind will be destroyed. The only thing that will stand, and therefore the only thing that has any lasting value, is the human soul. Each soul, each human being, is eternal. That means every man, woman, and child will spend an eternity in either heaven or hell. With these facts more clearly in focus, and filled with a sense of comfort and relief at our own rescue, resolve from this day forward that no soul, no human being in your circle of life, will die eternally without having heard at least one time the pure, sweet facts of eternal Life. He that believes in Jesus Christ, and is baptized, shall be saved. He that believes not shall be damned. May God the Holy Spirit give each one of us such a love for souls, and courage to reach out to those who are in such desperate need. Amen.

Pastor Michael J. Roehl
St. Paul Lutheran Church
Bismarck, ND