This morning we are going to talk about missions. We are going to start by asking the simple question: Why missions? Why do Christians feel compelled to leave their homes, families, culture and country and go to other countries and impose our beliefs on them? Why do we want to interfere with their life when they are perfectly happy to be left alone? Why do we think it is necessary for us to impose our western, American Christianity on someone else in the world? Why in the world would we want to do that? Why missions?

Wouldn’t it be better off, instead of trying to change the way they believe to sit down and learn from them, try to understand them? I mean at least we would have something to unify us. Wouldn’t we be better off developing tolerance for the beliefs of other people instead of getting all bothered with taking our American Christianity all over the world? Why in the world would we do something like that?

Don’t you think that it is a little bit arrogant to think that we are right and everyone else is wrong? Who do we think we are to imagine that what other people believe doesn’t matter to God? After all, aren’t we all just trying to get to the same place? So who am I to tell someone else that his or her path is wrong and mine is right? Besides the arrogance issue, don’t we have enough problems here? Aren’t there enough problems within blocks of our church to keep us busy? We live in a culture with more violent deaths than any other nation in the world. We are part of a culture that continues to allow pornography to grow at an astounding rate. We are a prime target for every illegal drug cartel in the world. I mean, come on, why are we so interested and so concerned about the problems in the other countries when we have enough of our own? Why are we so concerned to send people all over the world who are very content with their belief system and impose our way of believing on them? Why in the world do we care about missions?

Why do feel like we have to tell everyone else how to believe? Why can’t Christians just believe what they believe, let everyone else believe what they want to believe and leave other people alone? Why can’t Christians be content with a relationship with someone who believes differently rather than trying to change them? Why are we so intent on cramming our religion down everyone else’s throat? Why do we do that? Why in the world do we ask people to leave their religion and culture and embrace Christianity? Why do we do that? Why missions?

This morning I want us to find the answer to the question: Why missions? We’ll find the answer from truly the world’s greatest missionary, called Paul. Paul was a person from another religious culture and background other than Christian. He was a Jew and more that that he was so convinced of his Jewish belief system that when Christianity started to interfere, Paul was involved in trying to physically destroy persons who were Christians. Yet Paul accepted Christ as the way to have eternal life and became a Christian. He spent the rest of his life telling everyone he could about Jesus Christ.

One of those persons he told was from a religion and culture that was not Jewish whose name was Titus. He was a non-Jew but when Paul told him the truth about Jesus Christ, Titus chose to believe in Jesus Christ himself. He not only believed but would give his life to share that message of love with everyone he could. He would believe so much that he would go to a small island in the Mediterranean Sea called Crete and tell those people how Jesus Christ could change their lives. Why would he do that? The reasons he did that are found in the letter that Paul wrote to Titus and they are our text for today. In Paul’s words to Titus there are three reasons that Christians are involved in missions.

The first reason is because the grace of God is a gift for all people (Titus 2:11). Paul said, "For the grace of God has been revealed, bringing salvation to all people." Paul calls the whole story of the purpose of Jesus Christ’s coming to earth, becoming human and dying on the cross as a sacrifice, "the grace of God." He says that story has at last been "revealed" in a person called Jesus. He is implying that the cross event was God’s public message to all people of his offer of salvation. This message was exposed in one person and one person only, Jesus Christ. The result of this "grace" being "revealed" is that "salvation" is now available for all people. People can now have a relationship with God that gives them hope now and hope forever through the person of Jesus Christ. When Paul says "all people" he is saying that there is no human for whom the grace of God is not intended.

This is something that we forget: the grace of God is not something that is localized and it isn’t cultural. Salvation is not for America or for Westerners or Southerners. Christianity is not a localized religion. Many religions in the world do have a localized religion. If you are from Israel, you will most likely be a Jew. If you are from Saudi Arabia, you will be Muslim. If you are from India, you will most likely be Hindu. Christianity is different. It has nothing to do with America, the West or Europe because "the grace of God" is for "all people." Christianity isn’t local; it is global.

Christianity isn’t cultural. For many people, such as Egyptians, the religion and the culture are the same. Nearly all Egyptians are Muslim. The government does everything it can to keep the people of Egypt Muslim. They have laws that will put you in jail if you convert to Christianity. Why? Because their religion is tied to their culture. Yet Christianity is not cultural. Oh, we get the form of our Christianity confused with its function and assume that a church in Botswana has to look like a church in Bono but that’s wrong. Christianity isn’t cultural. It is transcultural. It goes beyond every culture. Christianity isn’t American. Its truth fits in every culture and in every life.

In researching, on the Internet, for this message I discovered a fresh reminder of how true the words of "all people" really are. I was amazed to learn that there are 2,040 unreached people groups that have over 100,000 people in them in our world (A people group is a culture within a culture that have their won language, customs and beliefs.) There has been a least some attempt to engage those groups of people. Yet what I was astounded to see was that there are 644 people groups that have over 100,000 in them who have, according to Southern Baptists’ best research, had no one to engage them with the gospel of Jesus Christ. I saw on one spreadsheet, line after line of people groups, I had no idea ever existed--all the way from the Qizilbash in Afghanistan to the Omani Arabs in Yemen. Millions upon millions of people without anyone reaching them and every one of those groups and every person in those groups is someone for whom the "grace of God" is available but inaccessible!

The reason that matters is because the only way we know that those people will ever have their eternity directed toward heaven is because Jesus said about himself, "I am the way, the truth and the life…" (John 14:6). The reason we are involved in missions is because the grace of God found in Jesus Christ is a gift for all people.

There is a second reason we are compelled to be committed to missions. We are involved in missions because the grace of God has the power and truth to set people free from the domination of sin. (Titus 2:12). Paul tells Titus that the grace of God has an ethical or moral component. It isn’t something that you just believe but what you believe has the power and truth to transform your life. The grace of God instructs people in places where they need to turn from sin and it gives them the power and ability to do that. It then teaches a person how to live their life now so that their life can be fully pleasing to God and be satisfying to them as well.

Here is what is hard for us to accept: the culture of other people isn’t a moral free zone! We want to imagine that if we expose people in other cultures to the grace of God in Jesus Christ, then somehow we will be destroying their culture. That’s because we confuse our American cultural Christianity with the purity of the simple gospel of Jesus Christ. The truth is that simply because the culture of a people may be the way they live, it doesn’t mean it is morally acceptable. There are things in other cultures and other world religions that are morally wrong and do not align with the truth found in Jesus Christ. Those persons will continue in those ways because they don’t know anything else unless someone tells them differently.

Take for example the AIDS epidemic in Africa. Three million people in the world died in 2005 with AIDS and the vast majority of those are in Africa. In the area of West Africa, 72.5% of the population is 30 and younger. Why? Because of AIDS. 9.3% of the population of that region will have full-blown AIDS by 2010. As a result 3.3 million children in West Africa will be orphaned by 2010. Both the SBC International Mission Board and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship are working in every way possible to give help, hope and healing to those people particularly.

Why is AIDS so rampant in Africa? One key reason is moral and cultural. It is because of the belief in that region that men show their strength through unprotected sexual power. It is a moral and cultural issue that is reflected in the disease. It is when the truth of Christ comes to a man’s heart and shows him that a man’s worth is not based upon sexual conquests that they, in turn, will cease the sexual exploitation of women and children. It is a matter of the truth of the grace of God exposing a person to a whole other way of life that will cause them to change their actions. That isn’t American and it isn’t Western. It is a matter of truth. If the heart of a person can be changed by the grace of God, then there is the ability for this horrible disease to be diminished. Is it that simplistic? Does that mean that all we do is preach to people and tell them they are wrong? No, but it means that the hope for change lies in the power and truth of the grace of God!

You can take this one principle and multiply it over and over and you begin to understand the reason we do missions. The grace of God contains the power and truth to set people free from the domination of sin. It is for all people, all nations, at all times. Why do we do missions? Because it sets people free!

There’s one last reason we do missions and that is because the grace of God includes the only promise of heaven (Titus 3:13). Paul tells Titus that the result of the grace of God changing people’s lives now is that it gives them hope for eternity. He says, "…while we look forward to that wonderful event when the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, will be revealed." (v. 13) It means that a person who experiences the grace of God has the promise that when Jesus Christ returns they will have nothing to fear and only heaven to gain. All that is involved in the return of Christ becomes something they can’t wait to happen because they have experienced a relationship with Christ in this life.

Why did he come the first time? John 3:16 tells us, "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life." Jesus came the first time because he knew that without his coming humanity would perish in hell. He came that first time to tell the world that there is a God who loves us and wants us to be saved from the penalty of our rebellion against God. Christianity is the only religion in the world that talks about God having unconditional love for his creation. Only the grace of God has the promise that life now can be a taste of what heaven will be like forever.

Recently a group of students from Kentucky State University joined with other students from the U.S. to go to Lima, Peru to work with Gina and Quentin Roberts in a mission called Esperanza Urbana (Urban Hope). Urban Hope sits in the center of the city dominated by prostitution and dance clubs. The KSU team was struck by the darkness and hopelessness of the people. For instance, a prostitute can make about $3.70 a day. A forty-year-old woman may be a prostitute all her life to feed her family and her daughter will do the same because that is all they know. There is no political, social, legal or medical intervention for these women. Their prostitution and the diseases that accompany it travel through generations. Yet those missionaries and students are offering through their love a promise of heaven for the hell these women are living in now.

You see these students are not interfering with their life. It’s not about being Western. It’s not about being American. It’s not about structures or worship styles. It’s because Jesus Christ came into the world to save humanity. Gina Roberts said, "We need to answer God’s call to those who need to find their way…We have an obligation as servants of Christ, as missionaries and as believers to go share the Gospel—to share that truth with others." Why does she say that? Because she knows that the grace of God is the only promise of heaven for all people. That’s why we do missions.

Did you hear those words of Gina’s, "We have an obligation…as believers to go share the Gospel—to share the truth with others"? She said it is our "obligation." First Baptist Church, we have an obligation to share the grace of God with all people. We need individuals to begin realizing that we are to be world Christians, global Christians. We say in our Mission Statement that we are committed to "sharing the unconditional love of God by proclaiming Jesus Christ as Savior to the communities of our world." That is a mission that is waiting for your personal involvement.

Perhaps as a student you need to decide now that "my summer isn’t for me; it’s for the world" and go out to the world. As an adult, you may have vacation time that you can give to go for a week or two weeks and serve. You may be retired and you aren’t ready to just settle down and you can go. You may be someone who knows that God is calling you, not for a summer or when you retire, but for your life—now! Maybe it’s time all of us began to rethink our obligation to the world!

The grace of God is for all people—it’s a gift, it transforms lives and it has the promise of heaven. Why missions? Because, "…the grace of God has been revealed, bringing salvation to all people."

Sunday, November 26, 2006 a.m.

Dr. Bruce Tippit, Pastor

First Baptist Church

Jonesboro, Arkansas

btippit@fbcjonesboro.org