Jordan Byrd
God On Mission
Genesis 1-2:3; John 17:24-26 (NIV)
In 1905, Sherwin-Williams introduced a memorable logo: a globe being covered by a bucket of paint. This image represented their big dream of spreading their brand of paint around the world, aiming to cover every surface everywhere. It captured their vision of making a global impact with their products.
I couldn’t think of a time that I’ve spilled paint everywhere, but I could remember a time, not too long ago, after we just bought a countertop water filter. A few times per day, we fill the top container with tap water, and the water drips through filters and spills into the bottom container, where it can then be accessed for drinking. One day (when I was already at the church building), the top canister was full of unfiltered water, and the whole filter-system got tipped over. And that’s when I got the phone call from Julia, “YOU WON’T BELIEVE WHAT JUST HAPPENED! THERE IS WATER EVERYWHERE!” The water spilled onto the countertop, onto the kitchen floor, under the stove, under cabinets, into the living room, onto the living room rug, even all the way onto our couch (which is on the other side of the living room from our kitchen). Even though there was only a couple of gallons of water in the filter, it seemed like the waves of this water ceaselessly filled our home.
A few years ago, when I was in Ocean City, MD with some students a Christ In Youth conference, we went to the beach for a day. And, I remember the waves being just right for body-surfing. It was so fun, but my body also felt beat-up!... after being tossed and carried to shore by those waves for several hours. It seemed like there was no end to those powerful waves. Even, when I’ve been on vacation by the ocean – I’ve always been amazed how there is no end to the spilling of waves on the shore: wave, after wave, after wave, after wave.
Paint covering the earth. Water spilling everywhere. Waves ceaselessly spilling onto the shore. What about God’s love covering the earth? What about God’s love spilling into your life? What about God’s love spilling into every facet of creation wave after wave?
Today, we’re beginning a series of messages reflecting on missions. Specifically, we’re looking at God on mission. Typically with missions, we mentally turn our attention to missionaries sharing about God to a people group or culture or language, very different from our own. And while that is part of missions, that is not the origin point of missions. For many of us, our first encounter with the love of God was from a missionary, or a preacher, or multiple followers of Jesus. But, these encounters are not the origin of God’s love. Missionaries, preachers, or followers of Jesus have simply partnered, or jumped-on board to ride the wave of God’s love that began spilling from the life of God before creation began. And as God’s people ride the wave of God’s love, that wave eventually hits the shores of other’s lives. And each encounter is another wave of God’s love crashing into the lives of humanity. God’s ceaseless love spilling into humanity, wave after wave.
God’s mission is to make himself known.
Today, I hope you hear the good news from God’s word that the mission to make God know to the world isn’t human grunt work to make an elusive God known. I hope you hear the good news that the mission to make God known to the world isn’t just a rescue mission to save people from sin. It includes this, but it’s also so much more. I hope you hear the good news that the mission to make God known to the world is inherently part of who God is. I hope you hear the good news that God’s very nature is love. That God’s very nature is to make himself known to another. That God’s very nature is for his love – to spill into the lives of others – including his creation (including us, including you and me).
Know that God’s love ceaselessly spills into your life.
Today, God’s word invites you to know that God’s love ceaselessly spills into your life. Know that God’s love ceaselessly spills into your life. And God spilling his love into creation is what drives missions. God the Father sharing his love with his Son, Jesus and further sharing his love with all of creation. This the mission of God: to ceaselessly share his love.
As we’ll reflect on further next week, sin (or separation from God), is not the origin point of God loving his creation. It’s a hindrance to God loving his creation for sure. But, it’s not the starting point. As we’ll encounter today, God has been loving his creation from the beginning. God’s mission has been, is now, and will forever be about sharing his love with everyone who will receive it.
From eternity, God’s love has ceaselessly spilled from his life. And today, God’s love continues to ceaselessly spill into your life. Today God’s word calls you to know that God’s mission is for his love to ceaselessly spill into your life. God’s word calls you to know that God’s love ceaselessly spills into your life. Know that God’s love ceaselessly spills into your life.
We know a couple who is expecting a baby in the next few months, and the other day, one of my kids asked how old the unborn baby was? Things that make you go: hmmmm???, right? I struggled to answer the question. I couldn’t answer: 0, because the baby’s life has already started, since it’s conception. Yet, we don’t normally count age, until the baby is outside of the womb. But technically, the baby is already alive.
How old is God? When does God’s life begin? God is uncreated. God is eternal. God has always been. Age is a created reality – counting forward from the beginning of something’s life/existence. If God is uncreated, what was he doing before creation came to be? Was God just a lonely being in the ether of eternity? Why did God even create the world? Did he need us to have someone to interact with? What was happening before the world began? Was God just a passive being who was bored?
God has always been a Father loving his Son. (“Father… you loved me before the creation of the world.” John 17:24)
According to Jesus’ words in John 17:24, God was not lonely, or in need, or passively bored. According to Jesus, God has always been a Father loving his Son, Jesus, through the love of the Holy Spirit, “Father… you loved me before the creation of the world.” (John 17:24). Jesus is our clearest look into the life of God. As John’s gospel says in it’s opening paragraphs: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. … The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:1-3, 14)
The Word (Jesus) was with God and the Word (Jesus) was God and the Word (Jesus) became flesh, so that we see God. Or, as Paul’s letter to the Colossian church says, The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. (Colossians 1:15-17)
Jesus is how we see the invisible, uncreated God (mind-blowing). Jesus is the eternal firstborn child of God, born before the rest of created children of God. Jesus was part of bringing all of creation into existence. God’s life and our created lives are bound together because of Jesus.
What we gather from Jesus’ words is that God is known for loving. Jesus’ eternal experience of God the Father is ceaseless, unending, overflowing love. God’s nature is to ceaselessly share his love with his Son, Jesus. The mission of God, from eternity, is to ceaselessly spill his love into another.
It’s this mission that drives all that God is and does. It’s this mission that Jesus says is what he desires for all people who follow him, My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, 21 that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. … I have made you[e] known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.” (John 17:20-21a, 26)
The eternal mission of God is for everyone to experience his overflowing, unending, ceaseless love. The eternal mission of God is for his love to ceaselessly spill into your life. God’s love ceaselessly spilling into your life is the mission God has been on for eternity – before you were ever created. This is the mission of God: God’s love ceaselessly spilling into your life.
The entire upstairs of my house is entirely designed for my kids. My boys’ room is up there. My daughter’s room is up there. We spent months finishing the attic space to be a play area, and a playhouse/reading nook. The entire space is made for them to play, sleep, and keep their stuff. That entire space is there because Julia and I love our kids. The rooms and play areas are made for them out of an overflow of our love for them.
In Colossians 1:15-16 (which we already heard earlier), Paul says something similar, The Son is the image of the invisible God…. all things have been created through him and for him. (Colossians 1:15-16)
What we can gather from this is that all of creation came to be out of an overflow of God the Father’s love for his Son, Jesus. We can also gather from this dynamic of God’s life is that new life results from God’s love. New life is the fruit of God’s other-oriented love. God’s love is always flowing and spilling outward toward another; and as it ceaselessly spills into another it continues to spill into others.
Our very existence is a result of God extending and inviting us into his eternal love.
We encounter, here, that our very existence – and the existence of this world is a result of God extending and inviting us into his eternal love. We encounter that creation, new life, fruitfulness, production of life, the increase of life, and the filling of the earth with life – is part of the DNA of God’s love. New life is always possible when love is shared with another.
You see this dynamic in gardening and the growth of any plant. Every dynamic of the growth process is a series of creative elements giving of themself for the benefit of another: the seed shell gives way to the ground. The ground gives way to the sprouting plant. The water gives way to the new plant. The sunlight gives way to the new plant. The fruit-bearing plant gives way to new seeds, new fruit, or nourishment for animals or humans.
We see the ceaselessly flowing love of God flowing into creation, and the life of creation all throughout the creation narrative in Genesis 1. The entire narrative begins with the one who has eternally existed: God, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” (Genesis 1:1)
There is an interesting dynamic with the term for God here, that we miss in our English translation of the Hebrew word: “elohim.” “Elohim” literally translates as “gods.” But, this is not a reference to multiple gods, but rather a reference to the communion of multiple persons bound in one singular being. Throughout the Bible, we gather that these persons are: God the Father, God the Son (Jesus), and God the Spirit (the Holy Spirit). Later in Genesis 1:26, we encounter God creating male and female humans as a communion of persons, “Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness….” (Genesis 1:26).
It’s from the God who is eternally a Father loving his Son, Jesus, through the Spirit that creation comes to exist. It’s in the image of the God who is eternally a Father loving his Son, Jesus, through the Spirit that male and female humans were created. It’s from this ceaseless union of outward spilling love between the persons of God that creation takes it’s cues in how it functions. We see this dynamic of God’s love spilling into creation by how creation is described throughout Genesis1: In Genesis 1:11-12, God says, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.” And it was so. The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. (Genesis 1:11-12)
Just as creation as a whole is the fruit of God’s ceaseless love spilling outward so also, vegetation carries that same DNA: producing, bearing fruit with seed. God’s creation carries God’s mission. God’s creation is a result of God’s ceaseless spilling love; and it continues that outward spilling love into new life of it’s own kind.
We see this dynamic of God’s love spilling into creation by how water and bird life is described. In Genesis 1:20-22, God says, “Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the vault of the sky.” So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living thing with which the water teems and that moves about in it, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth.” (Genesis 1:20-22)
Just as creation as a whole is the fruit of God’s ceaseless love spilling outward so also, water and bird life carries that same DNA: being fruitful and increasing in number. God’s creation carries God’s mission. God’s creation is a result of God’s ceaseless spilling love; and it continues that outward spilling love into new life of it’s own kind.
Lastly, we see this dynamic of God’s love spilling into creation by how human creation is described. In Genesis 1:28a, God says, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth…. (Genesis 1:28a)
Just as creation as a whole is the fruit of God’s ceaseless love spilling outward so also, human life carries that same DNA: being fruitful and increasing in number – filling the earth. God’s creation carries God’s mission. God’s creation is a result of God’s ceaseless spilling love; and it continues that outward spilling love into new life of it’s own kind.
From the very inception of our existence, God’s creation has been caught up in God’s eternal mission of ceaselessly spilling his love into another. We’ve been caught up in God’s mission of ceaselessly spilling his live into others who spill that love into others who spill that love into others.
Missions originates with God on mission. Christopher Wright is quoted as saying, "It is not so much the case that God has a mission for his church in the world, but that God has a church for his mission in the world. Mission was not made for the church; the church was made for mission—God’s mission." (The Mission of God, Christopher Wright)
God doesn’t have a mission for the church. God has a church for his mission. God is on mission; God has eternally been on mission to ceaselessly spill his love into others. And God invites us to participate in his mission – to ride the wave of his mission into the context of our lives.
Next week we’ll reflect on this further, but for today, I invite you to at least consider that as much as God will ceaselessly spill his love in our direction, wave after wave – we still have to receive it. We still have to respond to it, and allow his love to drive us, like it did for Jesus, whom we’re called to follow. And as we encounter the surf of God’s love, we have the choice to be on board with riding that wave, or jumping off of it. We have the choice to reject his love, or embrace it. We also have the choice to join his mission – to make his love known to everyone – or jump off, and miss the opportunity to help others encounter God’s love when it hits the shore of their life. God will never stop being on a mission to make his love known to everyone. It’s up to us, if we’ll jump on board with his mission that is already happening.
Know that God’s love ceaselessly spills into your life.
Today, God’s word invite you to simply know that this is who God is. This is his eternal nature. That his nature is ceaseless love flowing and spilling into the lives of others, including our own lives today. God’s word invites you to know that God has always been pursuing you with his love – from before your life began, now, and he wants to incorporate you into his love for eternity with him. God wants to ceaselessly spill his love into your life and produce abundant life. It’s up to us to believe, to trust that’s who he is, to embrace and live into his self-giving, outward focused, overflowing, and ceaselessly spilling love. God's love ceaselessly spills into your life. God's love ceaselessly spills into your life. God’s inviting you to ride this eternal wave. Will you jump on board God’s mission? Or jump off?
If you’ve never encountered the ceaselessly spilling love of God before, Psalm 34:8 says, “Taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the one who takes refuge in him.” Taste and see (Psalm 34:8). God’s word invites you taste and see if God’s love ceaselessly spills into your life when you turn to him as Lord as the authority in all of life and living.
God’s word invites us to know that the mission of God is to ceaselessly spill his love into your life. Know that God’s love ceaselessly spills into your life.