What Missions Is All About

This is Post #2 about missions. See Post #1 here.

Why do we do missions? What is the point of spending years - decades even - laboring to take the gospel to the nations and build a church where there is none?

Missions is not about doing good things for others. It is not about giving peoples things they don't have. It is not about sparing people from hell. It is not about doing what Jesus told us to do. These are all great things, and they are all vital to our missionary efforts. But they are not the end - only a means to an end. So what is missions all about?

It's about worship.

John Piper says it better than anyone I've heard say it (outside of the Bible at least):

Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Missions exists because worship doesn't. Worship is ultimate, not missions, because God is ultimate, not man. When this age is over, and the countless millions of the redeemed fall on their faces before the throne of God, missions will be no more. It is a temporary necessity. But worship abides forever. ~John Piper, Let the Nations Be Glad

Missions won't be around forever, but worship will. We see this in the book of Revelation, when missions has ended:

After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands,10 and crying out with a loud voice, "Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!" (Revelation 7:9-10)

So when the nations have come, when there some from "all tribes and peoples and langauges" have come, we won't find them doing kind things for others. We don't see them rescuing people from hell. We see them worshiping. This is indeed what we were created to do.

My friend at A Boy and His God summed it up well after he visited Stonehenge:

Mankind was created to worship. What we choose to worship is up to us. Worship like the druids and praise the sun, moon and stars. Worship like the Hindu, a god for every aspect of life. Worship like the entrepreneur and live for money. Worship like the athlete and live for glory. Worship like the atheist, who worships himself.

But we were created to worship our Creator.

Romans 1 tells us that the fundamental sin of the nations (and every person) is the exchange of the "glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things" (v23). Basically, we are condemned because we worship things other than God. Some people worship a concept of God that is not the true God of the Bible (Romans 1:25). These are all forms of idolatry.

So when we do missions, we are calling people to turn "from idols to serve the living and true God" (1 Thessalonians 1:9).

And when we enter in to true worship of the true God, we find gladness and joy Consider Psalm 67:4-5: "Let the nations be glad and sing for joy, for you judge the peoples with equityand guide the nations upon earth.5 Let the peoples praise you, O God;let all the peoples praise you!"

King David sums up the call of missions very well in 1 Chronicles 16:

23 Sing to the Lord, all the earth!
Tell of his salvation from day to day.
24 Declare his glory among the nations,
his marvelous works among all the peoples!
25 For great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised,
and he is to be held in awe above all gods.
26 For all the gods of the peoples are idols,
but the Lord made the heavens.
27 Splendor and majesty are before him;
strength and joy are in his place.

The call of missions is a call to worship. It is a call to turn away from worthless idols to the true God and to find delight in him alone. So let's call the nations to eternal gladness in the immortal God!

How do you see worship as the goal of missions? How does worship fuel your desire to do missions? How can you partner with God in bringing the nations to worship him?