ON A MISSION

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If every professing Christian, everywhere in the world immediately shared the gospel with everyone they know and all of those people instantly professed faith, you would still have 2 – 3 billion non-Christians in the world. Let me say that again. If every professing Christian, everywhere in the world immediately shared the gospel with all the people they know, and those people all immediately became Christians, you would still have 2 – 3 billion non-Christians in the world. I took that quotation from David Platt a pastor in the south that was trying to help people understand the difference between a lost person and an unreached person.

Joshua project defines an unreached people group as less than 2% evangelical Christian and anything above this number is considered reached because they have enough believers to continue to evangelize their own population.

I serve overseas in the middle east among one of the largest unreached people groups in the world and witnessed first hand how reached countries have a nearly infinite amount of resources at their disposal to learn about Christ while the “unreached” places have comparatively almost none. They don’t know a Christian that could even tell them about Jesus, that could share with them the riches of salvation that we have in Christ Jesus. Which leads us to the conclusion that we must move to different places, we must move to the spiritually darkest places of the world in order to fulfill the great commission. For those who may not know, Jesus tasks the church with making disciples of all nations, baptizing them and teaching them to observe all that he has commanded. This task is impossible if we stay where we are. This is just practical reality, the task cannot be finished if the church stays only where it already exists. It leaves 2 – 3 billion people in the world with no one to tell them about Christ. So let’s get into our text today,

Luke 12:35-48

' “Stay dressed for action and keep your lamps burning, and be like men who are waiting for their master to come home from the wedding feast, so that they may open the door to him at once when he comes and knocks. Blessed are those servants whom the master finds awake when he comes. Truly, I say to you, he will dress himself for service and have them recline at table, and he will come and serve them. If he comes in the second watch, or in the third, and finds them awake, blessed are those servants! But know this, that if the master of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have left his house to be broken into. You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.” Peter said, “Lord, are you telling this parable for us or for all?” And the Lord said, “Who then is the faithful and wise manager, whom his master will set over his household, to give them their portion of food at the proper time? Blessed is that servant whom his master will find so doing when he comes. Truly, I say to you, he will set him over all his possessions. But if that servant says to himself, ‘My master is delayed in coming,’ and begins to beat the male and female servants, and to eat and drink and get drunk, the master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he does not know, and will cut him in pieces and put him with the unfaithful. And that servant who knew his master’s will but did not get ready or act according to his will, will receive a severe beating. But the one who did not know, and did what deserved a beating, will receive a light beating. Everyone to whom much was given, of him much will be required, and from him to whom they entrusted much, they will demand the more. '

I really struggle with any sermon that even hints that God needs us and sometimes that can be the temptation with a sermon about missions, but scripture is emphatically clear that God does not need us. The Lord of hosts that commands angel armies is not dependent upon us. Given this reality, I prefer to approach this subject as a function of stewardship.

Jesus ascribes to us two different roles in this text, the servant and the manager. First let’s talk about the servant. Jesus calls the servant to be ready. The servant should be waiting and ready for his master to come home from the wedding feast. This language is celebratory, blessed be the servant whom his master finds awake and ready to do his will. The master comes home after a long day and finds his servants ready and eager to do his will, to serve him as king and Lord.

The Lord uses the awake/asleep analogy often throughout scripture to describe our attitude towards him. In the ancient Roman world where this event is set, everyone would have understood this setting. The Roman household and family included the master of the house, likely multiple wives, children, and servants. How infuriating would it be to come back to servants that are asleep. You come back from a long day expecting to be served and the people that are supposed to serve you are dead asleep.

While I was living in San Antonio, I worked in the hotel industry and often you get customers who come to the desk in the middle of the night. They were either looking to check-in or ask a question as one does at a hotel, this was normal as a 24 hour enterprise. Every once in a while, someone who was not used to being awake for that shift would be sleeping when a customer arrived waiting to be served. How infuriating! Maybe some of you have been there, in a situation where the person who was supposed to serve you was sleeping, or disengaged, angry or rude. Jesus calls us to stay awake, we can’t be that way towards the Lord. Why? Because he could come back at any time.

Lackadaisical, laissez-faire, nonchalant, lukewarm attitudes towards the Master upon his return are utterly unacceptable because he is God and we are not. He’s the master, not us. Notice that nowhere in these stories does Jesus even hint that we are the master, it is only and ever him. So firstly, he calls us to stay awake and be ready to serve him.

Secondly, Jesus compares his followers to the manager of a house. Not the master, but the manager. The person who was trustworthy enough to be left in charge of the staff, the financial affairs, the business of the house. This would be the person that the master held responsible for the affairs of the house. He’s not just a servant ready and waiting at the door to carry out his role, but someone entrusted with important responsibility. In modern Christianity, we usually use the word stewardship to describe this type of positioning. Nothing really belongs to the manager, he is merely utilizing what he has been given to the best of his ability. He is a steward.

Jesus once again promises blessing to the faithful steward and then follows up with a warning to the unfaithful. In verse 43, Jesus says “Blessed is that servant whom his master will find so doing when he comes.” Jesus promises blessing to the faithful and those who are faithful to the master ought to derive great comfort and security from verses like these. What a joy and privilege for Jesus to come and find us faithful.

But there is one statement of blessing here and 3 statements of warning. 1 manager is taking advantage of the master’s kindness, he notices that the master is delayed and starts treating the stuff in house like they are his. What does it say? He beats the male and female servants then he eats and drinks and gets drunk. His life is characterized by laziness, drunkenness, debauchery and abuse. When the master finds him, he receives the worst punishment. He is cut into pieces and put with the unfaithful.

If this is you today, I would invite you to return to the master. If you have presumed upon the kindness of the Lord by thinking that what he has given belongs to you, if you have used what he has given for your own selfish ends, if you have lived a life characterized by drunkenness, abuse, and laziness, I would call you to return. For those among us that don’t yet know Christ, I would invite you into a genuine relationship with the master. You will submit your life to a master, the only thing that will change is who or what that master is. It could be yourself and your own desires. It could be sex or money which are popular masters in our day. ' In Matthew 6:24 Jesus says: “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.'

Jesus Christ is the only worthy master. He came into the world as God in the flesh. He came to people who hated him and spurned him as master and Lord. Rather than execute the punishment for mankind being unfaithful. He extended an offer of grace. He lived a perfect, sinless life, died on a cross in our place for our sin, then rose from the dead while inviting us into the joy of the master. Not because of our good works, by grace through faith we receive the promise of eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord. He promises us eternal life for those of us willing to turn and trust in him as Lord, master, and king. If you are outside the joy of the master, step into it today.

For those of us that have received Christ as Lord, I believe Jesus has a different warning for us in this text. In verses 47 and 48, Jesus talks about two people. One who knew the masters will and failed to respond to it and they receive a severe discipline. Then the person who did not know the will of God, receives a less severe discipline. Jesus is communicating a principle here that we find all throughout scripture.

God holds us accountable for the knowledge that we have. Knowledge is a gift to be stewarded like anything else. One may be tempted to say “Well, if God holds us accountable for our knowledge, then isn’t ignorance better? We can’t be held accountable for something that we don’t know.” The problem with this is then we become an unfaithful servant of a different type. In another parable about stewardship, the master gives money to a servant who, rather than invests it, buries it in the sand. He is also meets with God’s wrath rather than his mercy.

So what’s the point? Jesus sums it up for us at the end. “Everyone to whom much was given, of him much will be required, and from him to whom they entrusted much, they will demand the more.” The more we’ve been given, the more that will be required of us. As I read this verse for the first time back in my college years, my heart broke as I reflected on how much I had been given. So I ask, do you see yourself as one who has been given much? Like many things, this is completely and utterly a matter of perspective. I’d like to talk about this in two different ways, both the corporate and the individual perspective.

First the corporate perspective, the US has more Christians numerically than any other place in the world. The most conservative data I could find (Pew Research) as of 2023 62% of people in the US identified as some form of Christian. That did include some groups that we might not consider Christians (Mormons, Jehovah’s witnesses) but even if we remove those groups, we are still left with the most people of any country on the planet (around 200 million) that identify as Christian.

The US church is the wealthiest church on the planet by far as of 2020 Christian income is 16.4 trillion dollars in the US. The total income of all Christians globally is about 51 trillion dollars meaning the US makes up about 1/3 of the total wealth of all Christians globally.

The US passport is consistently among the strongest passports in the world. Just by virtue of being an American citizen and speaking English as our native language we are allowed into so many countries where people need to hear the gospel.

The Lord has blessed the American church richly, so what are we doing with it? Well as of 2020 of the 51 trillion dollars that Christians globally earned about 850 billion dollars went to churches and parachurch organizations, about 1.67%. Of that 850 billion dollars, 49 billion dollars (about 5%) went to foreign missions. Of the amount that went to foreign missions, we can safely assume given recent historical data that roughly 1.47 billion dollars( 2-3%) goes towards places with the least amount of gospel access, what I referenced earlier as unreached peoples. TL:DR About .003% of global Christian income goes to reach unreached peoples with the gospel. Meaning that most of the money that we earn we spend on ourselves.

Imagine you had $1,000 to feed a neighborhood:

You spend $998.24 on the 30% who already have full refrigerators

You spend $1.76 on the 70% who are starving and have never seen food

Maybe big numbers aren’t really moving or motivating to you and I can understand that. I’m a numbers person, but many people are not. I just want people to have an understanding of the disparity here. The enemy of the great is often good, so we need to be vigilant of how we spend our resources.

Some of you may actually be moved by what I said here today and feel overwhelmed thinking what can I actually do about this. If that’s you, that’s a good place to be so I want to get really practical about the implications here. Here are 4 ways you can get involved in the great commission in a meaningful way, a few ways you could give your life to the greatest master and help others also to know him.

The first is to pray. Jesus says:

'Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”'

Matthew 9:37-38

Listen, I’ve been preaching long enough to know that many of you, maybe most of you, are going to blow me off. Especially when I ask you to pray. Please don’t, of all the things I’m going to ask of you today, this is the one that everyone can and should do because Jesus commands it. He calls us to pray that the Lord would send laborers into the harvest. Don’t phone this one in, as you pray that God would send laborers, ask if you might be among them. Ask if God might be calling you to be the answer to your own prayer. If you don’t do anything else as an application point today, please be encouraged to seriously pray about God sending laborers into the world and how you can be a part of this.

The second is to give. Please don’t hear this as an appeal for myself to give to us, but to give in general. I would encourage all of you in this room to decide what you need to live on. Whatever your annual needs are, tally up that number and anything that God gives you over and beyond that number, give it away. I have heard so many stories of God blessing this practice. I know this may seem legalistic to some, but it really is a guard against greed and a push towards generosity. If you as a family need 75,000 dollars a year to live, then decide to live on that amount and give away the rest. If we don’t do this, then we just continue to increase our standard of living and spend money on things that Jesus tells us are going to burn up and be destroyed.

My understanding is that Johnston family is planning to go to Japan in the near future, one of the most unreached countries in the world. When they come looking for prayer and financial support, they should have no problem getting an appointment from you. May they be sent out by Mission church with great financial and spiritual blessing. May they not struggle at all to raise the funds they need. There are so few people willing to do what they are going to do, that you should joyfully pick up their phone call, respond to their letter and give generously to support them.

Thirdly, you can do international ministry here. God has brought the nations to the US in general and to San Antonio in particular. There are so many people in this city from unreached places. Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists from all over the world are gathered here. Few are reaching out to tell them about Jesus, maybe you can be one of them.

Finally, you can go yourselves, you can respond to God’s call to go somewhere with little access to the gospel and proclaim it yourself. I know that this number will not be most, or even many of you, but for the few that the Holy Spirit may be stirring, I hope that you will sincerely and prayerfully consider this call to arms that you would be able to witness the Lord change lives in incredible ways in difficult places through your gospel testimony.