BaptistWay Bible Series for July 19: God’s mission: Embodied in Jesus

The past seven lessons have shared critical biblical texts revealing God’s mission on earth and have challenged you or your Bible study group members to know more about God’s mission. The first four lessons made up Unit One, “Foundational Truths About God’s Mission.”

This lesson is the final of a three-part Unit Two that has informed us, “What God’s Mission is About.”  This third lesson may be the most critical lesson in our three-month study. Why? Because it is a bridge, a connection between the first six lessons and the next seven. While the first six focused on the climactic—or crucial—texts about God’s nature and mission, they all lead to this lesson, which will share God’s mission embodied in Christ.

While it is the final lesson in Unit Two, it must be seen as the necessary first step of the six lessons in Unit Three. Why? God’s mission is fulfilled through Jesus Christ. It is through the filter of Jesus, his purpose, his new covenant and his saving grace that we participate in God’s mission on earth. Everything we have studied in this unit and all we will study in the next unit comes down to Jesus.

This lesson will share the nature, purpose and person of Jesus Christ. It will set the stage for the next six lessons that offer us ways to participate in God’s mission—but all of these ways must start with Jesus Christ. If you are studying this online, or preparing it for a Bible study, this is a great lesson to expose your listeners—or yourself if you are seeking a relationship with Jesus—to the need for nonbelievers to accept Jesus as God’s son and believe he can save them from their sins.

This belief is the most critical tenet of the Christian faith. It is also the starting point for our final unit, which, over a six-week period, will urge us to:  

• Experience God’s good news

• Live in faithfulness to God

• Engage in God’s mission together

• Tell the good news of redemption and reconciliation

• Minister to people’s physical needs, and

• Participate in God’s mission to everyone

I hope you will take time during this lesson to invite listeners to accept Christ. Don’t take it for granted that they have. Your goal this week is to lead adults to commit themselves to follow Jesus as he embodies God’s mission, ministering to both physical and spiritual needs. That could mean they need to take the first step of acceptance.

God’s Mission: Embodied in Jesus

This week’s five focal passages reveal God’s nature and mission by revealing the nature and mission of Christ. Jesus embodies God’s mission of redemption and reconciliation, restoration and justice. These climactic passages offer us a definitive word about who Jesus was and is and define his place in God’s mission.

Restoration and justice (Matthew 11:2-6; 23:23-24)
 
These two passages offer a definitive description of Jesus’ messiahship and his priorities for man. In the chapter 11 passage, we find John the Baptist, the herald of Jesus’ ministry, in prison and in doubt. Apparently, John had expected the Messiah to begin an immediate earthly ministry of judgment on the wicked; to be, in John’s prophecy in Matthew 3:10, the ax “already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.”

So John sent some of his disciples with a straightforward question to answer his doubting mind: “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” (v. 3). Jesus’ answer to John in verses 4-6 is a clear answer of his identity, and a clear answer to those in doubt in any time period. “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.” By itemizing his works, he authenticates his role as the Messiah and encourages John to remain faithful. He also provides an authentication to us of his power to heal and save.

In the second Matthew passage, Jesus is preaching to a crowd and his disciples, urging them to obey the ruling religious leaders of their day in verse 23:3, but also urged them to “not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach.” Jesus then delivers seven indictments, or “woes” on the scribes and Pharisees. Verses 23-24 is the fourth indictment, one that condemns them for focusing on the unimportant (tithing minor spices) while neglecting that which is most important to the kingdom of God: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. It is these you ought to have practiced without neglecting the others. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel!”

Questions to explore

• What do Jesus’ works in Matthew 11:2-6 show us about the full scope of God’s mission? What roadmap do they give us for ministering to others?

• Matthew 23:23-24 uses a descriptive metaphor of straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel. What are the gnats and camels we face as Christians when trying to emulate Jesus’ call for restoration and justice?

Redemption and reconciliation (John 1:10-14; Romans 3:21-26)

This passage from John has a timelessness and a definitive nature that has earned its place as one of the great climactic descriptions of Christ. John refers to Jesus as being the Word of God before time, but even though he is eternal, the world did not recognize him or accept him for what he was and is. Verses 10-11 recognize his eternal nature.

Despite this lack of recognition to most of the world, there are those, says John, who have “received him, who believed in his name,” and to these he redeemed and reconciled to God—“he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God” (vv. 12-13). These verses recognize his redemptive offer to make us children of God.

But this same eternal being, God’s son, also was fully human. He writes in verse 14: “And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.” This verse recognizes how Jesus shared his reconciling glory with us, in the only way we could understand. We had to hear it from a man.

While the John passage gives insight into Christ’s eternal and redemptive nature, Paul, writing in Romans 3:21-26, shares Christ’s credentials under the (old Jewish) law and invites everyone to experience his redemption personally through faith.

In verses 22-25, Paul climactically defines Jesus’ redemptive ability (through his sacrificial blood and righteousness), how it is offered (through Christ’s grace by faith in his ability) and to whom it is offered (“all who believe. For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”). This passage outlines Jesus’ salvation of those who believe through faith he will. It is a cornerstone passage of our faith.  

Questions to explore

• What does it mean to be children of God? What qualifies us to be children of God?

• What is redemption as found in Romans 21-26? How can it be offered?

Our response to Christ (Philippians 2:9-11)

In the preceding passages, we’ve been exposed to a Christ who is eternal, powerful, able to bring us into a relationship with God and able to offer us eternal life just by believing in his sovereignty and his ability to do so. So what is our response to this Jesus Christ? What do we do in the face of his power and love for us?

The answer, says Paul in Philippians 2:10-11, is to worship him because:
a.    God also highly exalted him
b.    God gave him the name that is above every name
c.    Because he did, at the name of Jesus every knee should bend in heaven and on earth and under the earth
d.    Because he did, every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Paul’s writings are not totally original. As a Jewish scholar, he probably was well-acquainted with Isaiah 45:23, and points to it as a fulfillment of prophecy.

Questions to explore

• What does it mean to bend your knee and confess Jesus is Lord? How often do you truly worship Christ in this way?