Nations Sunday – Word Become Flesh

“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us…”
John 1:14 is one of the most important passages in all of Scripture, describing the great journey that Jesus made from the culture of heaven to the culture of earth, where we could “behold his glory.”

Often we have asked what this verse means theologically–what does it say about God?

Perhaps we have pondered it metaphysically–how can the divine become flesh?

We will consider what this passage means missionally–because at the core of John’s Gospel we see God’s great heart for all nations. As we consider this passage, we will celebrate how God has worked through our church in the nations, pray together, worship, and hopefully even open our lives to the leading of God’s Spirit into his calling for all nations.

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Grace Fellowship Church

Jon Stallsmith

Series: The Gospel of John

January 11, 2015

Nations Sunday: Word Became Flesh

John 1:9-16

This morning we’re going to continue in the book of John, so if you have your Bible, open it to John 1. If you don’t have a Bible, slip up your hand. We’ll put a Bible in your hand. You can read along with us, and you can also get a notes sheet. If you didn’t get one of these “Going” guides on your way in with all of our trips this coming year (home, away, near, far), all sorts of ways to get engaged…

It is actually Nations Sunday. As Aaron mentioned in the announcements, this is kind of an experiment for us where at each of the Grace campuses (Midtown, Snellville, New Hope, Monroe, and Athens) we’re all going to be working from this same text, and all are really going to be asking God to speak into our hearts about the nations.

The passage we are on is pretty well known. It’s an important passage and familiar probably to many of us. John 1:14: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us…” (John 1:14) We’ll read the rest of the passage in just a moment, but that phrase, “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us…” Much has been written. Much has been spoken on what that phrase means theologically. What does it tell us about God?

Much has been written and spoken about that phrase metaphysically. What does it say about the nature of Jesus? The first several hundred years of the church had many debates. The Word becoming flesh. Does that means he’s fully divine and part man, part divine and part human, or… How does this all fit together? Of course, the reasoned and secure conclusion of the church is that Jesus at once is both fully divine and fully man.

Much has been written and spoken about what this verse means for salvation, that Jesus came to the earth, became like us in every way yet without sin, subject to the brokenness of the world so he might be a perfect substitute. But what we’re going to do this morning is actually talk about what that phrase “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us” means for us in terms of mission, what God is doing in the world to be known.

As I was thinking about this passage this week, I had a few different thoughts and encounters that were provoking my interest. Yesterday, we had our medical mission team down in Clarkston. There’s a community of doctors, nurses, pharmacists, medical personnel who a couple of times a month go and serve, put on free medical clinics in Clarkston and Monroe, other areas of underserved healthcare and coverage, primarily with refugee communities and refugee families, international folks.

So I was down there yesterday. Amy and I went just to say hey and hang out with them a little bit. Plus (and this was not my primary motivation) I was struggling. You might hear my voice is a little bit weak. I’ve had a cough, so I thought, “I’m not a refugee, but maybe if I just go and talk to the doctors down there; kill two birds with one stone.”

Actually I ended up getting a steroid shot just to help my voice, which is why I have my bottle of water as well. Really, just so you know, if I hit a home run with this sermon, there should be an asterisk next to it. Performance-enhancing drug. Sports fans are laughing. Everybody else is like, “Why would you put an asterisk next to a home run? I don’t even know who Barry Bonds is.” So yes, it was just for my chest. I’m not lifting any weights, obviously. My voice…

Anyway, I’m down there. Back to the point. We’re down there, and I was talking to all these folks. We had translators there. Beautiful time and some great conversations. Really, really powerful stuff that was going on down there. But I just in the back of my mind had that question, like, “Why do such successful, busy, prominent people in our community take a perfectly good Saturday and spend it in a basement of the Clarkston Oaks apartment complex serving refugees? Why? Like, what motivates people to do that?”

Or then I started thinking about last week. Some of you may remember last Sunday we had Kenny and Kristin with us. Kenny, of course, grew up through Grace and was on staff here for awhile, and they were a big part of our Grace family, but currently they live in Jerusalem. Last summer there was a war between the Israelis and the Palestinians in Gaza. They were in Jerusalem the whole time. They had their baby there just about nine months ago in Bethlehem. The baby was born in a hospital. Not all babies are born in mangers there.

But still, what compels them, successful, bright, engaged people to move toward the war and the conflict, to have their baby in Bethlehem, to live their lives there? Why would they do that? Most of us, if we’re honest, make our choices where to live based on safety and school systems and probably on comfort.

Then actually this week is a big budgeting week around here at Grace. Many of you know, coming into December, because of the expansion and growth at New Hope that it was a bold year in terms of both spending and income. So we were coming in December going, “Lord, you really need to provide or else we may not end up in a good spot financially.”

Actually, as we’ve seen the numbers, and we’re still processing all of those (and I know the elders will be here in the next week or two to help communicate some of this in more detail), but just by a miracle of the grace of God working through the generosity of this community, it looks like we finished the year very close to even, which is something worth thanking God for because it was amazing. Thank you, guys, for the way you responded at the end of the year. It just was such a sweet year, 2014, of ministry and growth in so many years.

But looking to 2015 now, we’re saying, “How do we steward these resources wisely and budget within our means so we’re able to accomplish the ministry but also hopefully not be coming into December facing the kind of deficit we were this year?” Of course, as I’m looking at budget numbers, it’s right up at the front, right off the top at this church we have committed to more than tithe all of our income to nations.

Fifteen percent of what we bring in goes off the top into missions. That goes to local stuff that’s happening outside of the walls of the church but also to the stuff that’s happening overseas and to our church planting. So then I’m looking at that, and in the back of my mind I again have that question, “Why do we have 15 percent that goes straight into this? What makes it so important?” because that’s a significant chunk of money.

Then even tomorrow we’ll have 22 students from Kosovo, Muslim students primarily from Kosovo who are going to be coming to Atlanta for the next month, and they’re going to be staying with many of you guys. You have opened your homes and said, “We will gladly host some of these Kosovar students while they’re taking classes and getting exposure to American culture, exposure to the church, exposure to the kingdom of God.

Again I thought in the back of my mind, “Why? Why would you disrupt the routine of your life to invite two or three or four strangers from Eastern Europe just to live? Why would you do that?” So these are the questions. I know that at probably an intuitive level most of us are like, “Well, it’s the right thing to do?” But what’s really going on? What’s the root of that?

As far as I can tell, it all comes down to this, this passage where we are this morning. We’re going to start in John 1:9. I’m going to read through verse 16, and then we’ll unpack it a little bit. So John 1:9, speaking of Jesus, begins, “The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him.

He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.” That the fatherless are found.

Verse 14: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John bore witness about him, and cried out, ‘This was he of whom I said, “He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me.”‘) For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.” (John 1:9-16)

What a passage. Again, this prologue of John is in many ways a preview of the whole gospel of John, letting us know, “What’s at the heart? What are the key themes? What are the things that really matter?” Right at the heart of the gospel of John is this message, the mystery of the incarnation. That’s the big theological word to describe Jesus leaving heaven, coming to earth as a man. The incarnation. Taking on flesh.

Why is this passage so important? Why is this passage at the root of that question why people would spend a Saturday in a basement in Clarkston giving free medical care, or why we as a church would devote 15 percent to missions, or why Kenny and Kristin would live in Jerusalem, or why we’d open our homes to Kosovar students? Why is that at the root?

Part of the answer is that Jesus (it’s so clear in the gospel of John) perfectly reveals the heart of God. Jesus in leaving heaven and coming to earth reveals perfectly that God is a goer, that God as part of his nature chooses to go, to initiate, to seek and to save. We see this all the way back in that Genesis account at the creation. After making a perfectly good, wonderful earth and cosmos, Adam and Eve are in the garden, and they chose to disobey God, committing high treason against the source of all light and life by listening to the Serpent.

When they did it, of course they immediately felt shame, and then they heard God coming in the garden, walking, and they hid. God in that moment very easily could’ve withdrawn and said, “Well, you betrayed me. You blew it. Good luck on the earth. By the way, your fruit is going to start rotting now.” But he didn’t, did he. He pursued them. He went after them. God is a goer. He said, “Where are you?” and Adam and Eve came out.

This is the pattern again and again through the Old Testament, that God doesn’t withdraw, except in a few occasions when he’s extremely unwelcomed. He says, “Okay, I’ll withdraw for a time.” But overall, his huge direction and momentum is toward his people, to reveal himself. God is a goer to Abraham. He goes to Abraham and he says, “Hey, I want you to be my man and I’m going to bless you so that all the nations of the earth can be blessed.”

God goes to live among his people. Remember the people of Israel, the descendants of Abraham? After the 10 plagues and the exodus out of Egypt, as they’re wandering in the wilderness, he gives them very specific instructions about how to build this sacred tent, a tabernacle, in which his glory will dwell. We see Exodus 40, his glory actually being there. Part of the point of that tabernacle is that God is among his people. He goes with his people. That’s what sets them apart.

They arrive in Israel and eventually they build a temple and there God once again goes to be in the temple. God is the one who goes, who initiates. He was a goer to Joseph in the dreams. He goes to Samuel. He goes to David. He goes to Solomon. He goes to Elijah. He goes to Ezekiel. Over and over, this is God’s movement. God is a goer.

Isaiah, in his great, great prayer in Isaiah 64, puts it this way. He says, “Oh that you would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains might quake at your presence…to make your name known to your adversaries, and that the nations might tremble at your presence!” (Isaiah 64:1-2) God is a goer. That’s what Jesus is revealing about him in coming to earth. Why would we do all of these things we do for mission? The way 1 John 4 puts it is that we love because he first loved us. He’s the goer. He is the initiator.

Then the next question is really…To whom does he go? What’s his goal in going? What we see again and again in the Bible is that his heart for the whole earth. In fact, in verse 9 we just read, it talks about the true light, Jesus, which gives light to everyone. That word everyone in the original language, in the Greek, means the whole of mankind. It’s a hugely inclusive word. Jesus, according to John, is the light for everyone. God’s heart is for all mankind.

Even, it says, Jesus came to his own. We understand that to mean the Jewish people. Jesus was born in the Jewish community there in Israel, but in that he was trying to reignite the calling of the Jewish people. If you remember the Jewish people were called (we see this in Isaiah 49 and Isaiah 42; we see it in Genesis 12) to be a light to the nations. So Jesus is the light to all mankind. He comes to the Jews so they can fulfill their calling to shed the light of Jesus for all mankind.

Again and again this is the pattern. God’s heart. He’s not just a goer to certain places or certain peoples; his heart is to be known by everyone. This is what Habakkuk is talking about when he says that one day the knowledge and the glory of the Lord will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea. Everywhere! That’s God’s heart.

This is why in Ezekiel 18 God says, “I do not delight in the death of any wicked man no matter where they’re from.” Or maybe 1 Timothy 2 puts it in a very good way speaking about how God our Savior desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. As I was thinking about this, I began to just realize that God’s heart is for the whole world. In fact, he sees the whole world as his space in which he wants his kingdom and his name and his glory to be known.

It made me think of an occasion a couple of years ago when I had an office here at the church and it was right over there actually where some of you guys are sitting now. That used to be my office, so I’m glad you’re sitting there, Danny. But the way we’ve continued to open up this space what we want to do is be able to accommodate as many people to worship as possible, and obviously we need it, so that’s a good thing.

But when I did have an office back there right off of the hallway, it was also around the same time when my brother was an intern here. He came one summer and he was interning with the student ministry. I got to church one Sunday morning early, and I was walking toward my office, and I turned the corner, and the hallway and the door to my office was right off to my right.

I walked down the hallway and I see all of the contents of my office are outside of my office in the hallway. I can tell there’s meticulous care put into duplicating the arrangement of my former office in the new arrangement in the hallway. So I’m looking at a mirror image of everything in my office except it’s outside of the office. And I was mad…unrighteously mad. I was mad beyond what I should’ve been mad, but it really, really bothered me.

So I started looking around, because I felt like my office is important. I’ve got secret documents and legal pads. I’m a pastor. It’s high sensitive stuff. And I have some pens that could be taken by anybody. So I was just getting more and more worked up, and I started going like, “Who did this?” I’m asking the various people, and it got back to me that it was my brother.

He had pranked me, and my level of anger went from here up to that space that is only preserved for sibling anger. Do you know what I’m talking about? It’s like, “Yeah, this is kind of my max anger level,” except if it’s a sibling, it’s like another gear just ramps it up even… I had this big lecture. I lectured my brother about the importance of offices and respect and legal pads. Hopefully, I’ve matured beyond that. Yikes.

I was thinking back to that, about why that was such a troubling and bothersome moment. I think a lot of the reason I was so bothered by it is in my mind that office was my turf. It was just a little space, but it was kind of like my turf where I could have things as I wanted them to be. When somebody came in and messed that all up it really bothered me.

Then I realized that God when he looks at the earth he looks at the whole earth that way. Like the entire planet and all mankind are his people. That’s his turf. When people run away from him or things get out of whack or they go against the ways of his kingdom, he’s troubled by this. Of course, he’s not like immaturely angry the way I was, but he’s troubled by this because this is his whole turf.

It just made me wonder for us, “Where do we draw the line of turf in our lives?” For some of us, maybe it’s our homes. Our focus is on maintaining order. We want to raise our families in godliness within the walls of our home or on our property line. That’s our turf we really care about, and that’s a good thing. It’s a godly thing. We should want to see the ways of the kingdom flourish in our homes.

But maybe God is challenging us to look a little bit farther than that. Maybe he’s calling us, since his idea of his turf of the space in which he wants to see his kingdom flourish is actually beyond just the property lines we own and stretching into the neighborhoods around us, stretching into our workplaces, perhaps even stretching beyond our national boundaries.

Sometimes we have a tendency to think, “Well, if our country is okay, whatever else happens in the world, blah, blah, blah. At least our turf is okay.” Maybe God is even pressing and challenging us to think beyond that because God is a goer and his heart in going is not just for our home or our neighborhood or even our nation but for all the nations of the earth.

Understanding this about God is part of what it means to know God. Part of receiving Jesus in our lives is receiving this heart of God for the whole earth. Now if you know me and you get to know me a little bit or we talk or have some conversations, it probably will not take you long to recognize that I love my wife Amy a lot, that I love my family.

Have some more conversations, you’ll probably pick up that I have a real affinity or heart for the Muslim world. Before long, you will almost certainly recognize I am a big Packers fan. There’s a big game today, so don’t worry, I’m going to get home. I’m not going to preach too long. That’s part of what it means to know me. You get to know what’s on my heart, the things I love. That’s how we get to know everybody. Sometimes in a sense we are defined by our passions.

The truth is in getting to know God what we discover is one of his deep passions (in addition to the Packers) is for the nations, for the whole earth. This is God’s heart. So if we seek God and get to know God, we will discover mission. However, if we have been seeking God and we have not found mission, it means we’re probably not seeking him according to his purposes but rather according to our own. Part of knowing God and receiving Jesus means being drawn into God’s heart for the whole earth.

Now that’s a big calling. A little bit overwhelming I’d even say. The whole earth. That’s where this passage also is so encouraging. We’ve seen God’s heart for all mankind, the light for everybody, God the goer for the whole earth. That’s his purpose and his cause in the world. But then this is also about dwelling, about something local.

It’s about the Almighty becoming a baby. It’s about the cosmic becoming local, the Ancient of Days coming and living everyday life with us right here. It’s about the King of Kings, as Eugene Petersen puts it in his Message translation of this verse 1:14, moving into the neighborhood. Jesus dwelt among us in a specific time and a specific place. Part of the way Jesus accomplished that great calling of God for the whole earth was by living his life really well in the place where God called him to live it. Then out of that, the reverberations fulfilled the great purposes of God.

There’s a reflection, or a poem, written by James Allan Francis in 1926 called One Solitary Life, and I think it helps us to get our heads around how Jesus fulfilled the great cosmic calling of God, the goer to the whole earth by dwelling in one place. It says, speaking of Jesus, “Here is a man who was born in an obscure village, the child of a peasant woman. He grew up in another village. He worked in a carpenter shop until He was thirty. Then for three years He was an itinerant preacher.

He never owned a home. He never wrote a book. He never held an office. He never had a family. He never went to college. He never put His foot inside a big city. He never traveled two hundred miles from the place He was born. He never did one of the things that usually accompany greatness. He had no credentials but Himself.

While still a young man, the tide of popular opinion turned against Him. His friends ran away. One of them denied Him. He was turned over to His enemies. He went through the mockery of a trial. He was nailed upon a cross between two thieves. While He was dying His executioners gambled for the only piece of property He had on earth—His coat. When He was dead, He was laid in a borrowed grave through the pity of a friend.

Nineteen long centuries have come and gone, and today He is a centerpiece of the human race and leader of the column of progress. I am far within the mark when I say that all the armies that ever marched, all the navies that were ever built; all the parliaments that ever sat and all the kings that ever reigned, put together, have not affected the life of man upon this earth as powerfully as has that one solitary life.”

The Word became flesh and dwelt among us in a local place for a period of time, investing his life, speaking among us, living among us, working among us. So right after we ask the question of the extent to which we know God’s heart for all the nations and his calling to help us recognize our turf as kingdom people extends around the earth, right after that question comes the next question. “Lord, where are you calling us to dwell? Where are you calling us to invest our solitary lives? What do you want us to do?”

Jesus, at the end of the gospel of John in John 20:21, after the resurrection, comes to his disciples, rather startles them. They thought he was dead, and they locked the door, and then he just kind of walks in like the resurrected Lord of the universe, and he says, “Peace be upon you. As the Father sent me so I’m sending you.”

Where are we called to dwell? Jesus says, “In the same way the Father sent me I’m sending you.” How do we imitate the way of Jesus in our own dwelling, in the places where we invest our lives? One thing you can recognize from the ministry of Jesus (we will see it through the next months as we read the gospel of John) is that Jesus had a priority on the lost and the least and the lonely and the last. Jesus went to those places that were the darkest. He prioritized the places that were the most lost.

One of the ways that modern mission research has helped to identify some of those same places in our world today is by studying where the gospel has made great advances in peoples and where the gospel seems to have barely made a dent at all. So this morning is Nations Sunday, and when we’re talking about nations we’re not strictly talking about geopolitical borders around a country, like France has a border or Portugal has a border, but rather the word nations in the Bible comes from this word ethnos, the same word that gives us our word ethnicity.

Really, it’s speaking about people groups who share a culture and a language and a lifestyle. India is an example of this. Massive country. Massive nation, but within this nation are all these nations, all these thousands of different people groups, tribal groups speaking different language in different places and all the rest. So as we’re thinking about “Where do we dwell and invest our lives?” we know God’s heart is for all the nations, and the research shows there are some nations, some people groups that would be considered unengaged.

That means there’s no one among them working to share the good news of Jesus with them. No one at all. It’s hard for us to even fathom here in the South, but then you go to these parts of the world and you mention the name of Jesus, and they say, “I’ve never even heard that name,” and you realize, “My goodness.” Unengaged still in our globalized world.

Then on top of that, there’s another way they think about people groups. Sometimes they speak of least reached or even sometimes you’ll hear unreached, and it means that you have fewer than 2 percent Evangelical or 5 percent Christian in general among those people. There’s just not much progress of the gospel. As Jesus prioritizes those places it seems in his lifestyle so we as a church want to be recognizing those areas to step into in those places and ways in which we can engage where the light seems not to be shining so brightly.

In the last 10 or 12 years at our church here at Grace that has meant significant engagement with the Muslim community. Many of you know Buddy Hoffman, who’s the lead pastor of the whole Grace family of churches, started this church 1983 here in Snellville, and he’s been a real vision caster and standard bearer in this engagement with the Muslim community. We have a short, three-minute little video where he explains even more about how we as a community are called toward that direction. Let’s play it.

[Video]

Buddy Hoffman: Our journey in respect to focusing in on reaching the Muslim world with the message of Jesus began when 9/11 took place, and we just started into a journey seeking God to lead us in what we should do. Our first journey was to New York right after the bombing, and we worked with the firefighters and first responders.

I remember when we were there. It was the second day or so, and it was very late into the night, about 3:00, and something occurred to me at that moment as I looked into that mess that the only way this was ever going to find an answer was going to be if people’s hearts were changed. There was a question and it really seemed to me the Holy Spirit posed to my own heart, “Are the Muslims the enemy or the prize?”

Deep inside my soul I heard God say, “I sent my Son for them. He died for them.” We said and we came to a consensus that we were going to focus on the least reached, and the least reached in our generation is the Muslim world. There are literally hundreds of thousands of people, millions, 1.57 billion Muslims, and in many places there the church simply doesn’t exist.

We as a church have focused on this. We focused our money. We focused our prayers. We’ve trained. We’ve shaped a training program called “Jesus and the Qur’an.” We found that God honored his Word and God was already at work and we weren’t really going to do a work for God; we were joining in a work he was already doing.

I could talk to you for hours about committed Muslims who’ve had visions of Jesus and they’re just waiting on someone to talk to them about who Jesus really is. It is a grand adventure to join God in what is on the heart of God. We have to ask ourselves, “If our heart is not broken by that which breaks the heart of God,” then we need to pray and ask God to give us his heart, because his heart is for the world.

[End of video]

Yeah. Amen. So I began to think about that question as God is leading us as a church, “How did I end up in this spot where I too share a similar passion for the Muslim world?” I think it goes back to some rather peculiar artifacts of my past. One of them was a Tintin comic book. Did anybody ever read Tintin? No? Oh my. Okay, like three of you. Great. So there is a comic book, and I loved reading it, and it was this comic book called Prisoners of the Sun. I think I actually have a picture of the cover.

Then the second big influence was a record, an album, The Best of Three Dog Night. Did anybody ever listen to Three Dog Night? Okay, a lot more hands. So you guys are way more into Three Dog Night than Tintin. That’s fine.

But I remember reading Tintin. I was probably 9, 10, maybe 11 years old. It’s the story of this young guy with a little swoop of hair, who is a journalist, and he in this particular comic book goes to South America in the Andes mountains, and he encounters this lost group of people, the last of the Incas, and they have these great adventures together.

I was just a young guy. I remember thinking that it was the coolest thing I’d ever read, and I thought, “I’ve got to go to the Andes and find some Incas or something.” But it was just that little seed was planted in my heart. Nothing real spiritual about it. Nothing prayerful or some big moment walking forward in a service or anything like that. It was just I had that little seed.

Then a couple of years later, I was a young teen, and I’d started a little lawn mowing business. Mowed some lawns in the neighborhood, got together a little bit of cash, and finally had enough to go buy my first CDs. So I bought Creedence Clearwater Revival Greatest Hits and The Best of Three Dog Night.

I came home, and I was listening to that Three Dog Night record, and there was that song on there, “Never Been to Spain.” Do you guys remember that one? I see some head nods. “Well, I’ve never been to Spain but I kinda like the music.” The rest of the lyrics are ridiculous so we won’t sing any of them. Completely unspiritual.

At one point, they’re like, “I’ve never been to heaven but I’ve been to Oklahoma.” It’s like, what does that even mean? But the Lord works through all sorts of things. So that was in my mind too. I’ve got this desire to go to the Andes at some point, then I grew a little bit and I was like, “Man, I’d love to go to Spain.”

I got to college at Furman University, up the road in Greenville. I’m in college, in my freshman year, and I met Tyler Thigpen, who is Buddy’s son-in-law. He was not Buddy’s son-in-law at the time, but he was a senior at Furman, and he actually worked here at the church for a few years as the high school pastor. I was talking to Tyler, and Tyler actually wanted to disciple me. He was a senior and I was a freshman, and I said, “No, I’m not interested.” So that was that.

But the one thing that did really impact me was that he had gone on a study abroad trip to Spain. All of a sudden I started thinking, “Well, man, I’ve wanted to have adventures overseas and I’ve never been to Spain but I kinda like the music. I need to be a Spanish major!” because I’d heard that Spanish majors had a better chance of getting on the trip to go to Spain. So that was my completely spiritual reason for being a Spanish major.

Not thinking about my career at all. “What are you going to do as a Spanish major?” “I don’t know. Maybe be a pastor,” because I preach so often in Spanish these days. So I get to go on this trip to Spain, and I’m there. We got there in late August. It was 2001, and we go to classes. It was a little Spanish university there, doing language learning. One of the other guys in the class from another place was actually an Iranian Muslim named Hussein.

As we were in class, I could see he was having some more trouble with the language than I was, and so we struck up a friendship, and we ended up spending time after class going over stuff. I kind of tutored him a little bit. As far as I can tell, he was the first Muslim I had ever met and interacted with. My first Muslim friend ever in my life.

We had this little friendship. Three weeks later was September 11 and the attack on the World Trade Center. I remember being in Spain and seeing that and just thinking, “Oh God, what is happening?” and feeling anger and all the things we all felt about the tragedy of that moment, revulsion at the terror, the senseless violence, all of those things just welling up within me, and yet I had this friend Hussein from Iran who was a good man and who I could tell even at that stage of my faith was someone God loved.

If God hadn’t brought me to Spain in August of 2001 and if I hadn’t met Hussein that autumn, it’s quite possible that 9/11 would’ve come and gone and I would’ve spent the rest of my life never having met a Muslim at all. Because I would’ve done what so many people have done, which is said, “Oh, enemy. They’re the enemy. I don’t even want to talk to them. Don’t want to deal with them.” But God, in all of his goodness, had brought things together in such a way that I had a tender spot in my heart.

Then several years later I graduated from Furman. I was working up at the school at the time, and my buddy called me and he said, “Hey, why don’t you come down to this church where Tyler Thigpen works and where Buddy is.” I came down and started working at Grace. A week into my job at Grace, Buddy said, “You know, we want you to go to London. We have a team going to work with Muslims.”

So I went to London on that first trip, and something happened in my heart. I had done a fair amount of traveling up until that point internationally but never for any purpose other than tourism or education or something. Nothing like intentionally godly. We got to London, and it was a hard trip. Everybody didn’t want to talk to us. A couple of our guys on the team got beat up. It was a long trip.

It wasn’t like particularly enjoyable, but I remember something deep down in my heart awakening and I felt like somehow I was suddenly fulfilling all these dreams God had planted in my heart as far back as a Tintin comic book and a Three Dog Night song. It was like all coming together, and for the first time I realized this is what it’s like to be tapped into this big, global God’s going into the whole earth in where I’m dwelling right now. It was the most enlivening thing I had ever experienced. I thought, “How did I live apart from mission before this?”

So now since that time my life I feel like has just been exploring with God how he’s putting together these pieces to continue to call us, Amy and me, into dwelling missionally in a local place for the sake of God’s great call to the nations. Sometimes we sit around and say, “Well, should we move to Jerusalem? Or what about the Middle East?” There are times when we weigh these things and we pray about it. It feels like to us right now God has us called here and that’s our way of dwelling in the midst of God’s great cosmic purposes.

But what about you guys? For some of you, perhaps the Lord has been putting together pieces in your past that are leading you toward a place where you can engage in a deeper way in some of this calling, in some of this mission for the nations. For some of you, you’re rooted. You’re settled. You go to the playground with your kids. Engaging in that part of the mission, dwelling in a place and engaging in the nations simply means talking to some of those people from other nations who have their kids at the playground too.

For some of us, we work for multi-national companies. Perhaps God’s stirring your heart to transfer to that post in United Arab Emirates. For others, sometimes it simply means having a conversation with the people in your office about the Lord, taking a step out, whether they’re the same ethnicity or nation as you or from another nation. But I encourage you, start taking stock. What has God been putting along the path that would lead you into the next place of engaging in that mission? Where are you going to dwell?

Then the final point. We’ll really briefly just touch on it. As we go along with God into his mission, it’s for glory. Glory is when God… That’s his awesomeness. God is glorified when people recognize his awesomeness. In this passage, it’s not just that the Word of God became flesh and dwelt among us, but we have seen his glory, glories of the only Son from the Father.

This is all about God’s glory being known in the whole earth. Like we mentioned earlier, the glory and the knowledge of the Lord covering the earth as the waters cover the sea, or in the book of Revelation talking about every living creature, in Revelation 7, crying out, “Glory to God!” What’s happening (and Buddy referenced it on the video) is that Jesus is being known in an increasingly accelerated way around the world.

A couple of years after I got to Grace, I got the opportunity to go with one of our teams down to Peru…to the Andes mountains. I’m thinking, “This is amazing! Just like Tintin.” But when we got there, do you know what we found? Because we’d been investing and working and God had been on the move there for quite some time, there was this whole movement of Quechua Indian believers who were following Jesus and making disciples, and that blew my mind. I was like, “I found the descendants of the Incas and they’re already believers! This is great!”

We went down with another trip and took a team over to Ecuador with those Quechuan believers from Peru over there, and they started making disciples among the mountain peoples there in the Andes on the Ecuador side, and I just started to see how the movement of God was multiplying and growing, and this people who once were least reached are now multiplying themselves into other places. I started thinking, “Wow, okay God, you’re on the move.”

That was when the Lord started to shift our focus toward the Muslim world. Now as we’ve traveled in parts of the Muslim world, what we’re seeing is God is raising up believers and movements and peoples among the Muslim communities who are reaching their communities and their nations.

We were just a couple of years ago in East Africa, and we were in a room with 26 leaders from about 15 different Muslim groups. All of them are believers and all of them are passionate about reaching their people. They wanted me to do some training, and I was like, “I’m 29 and American. You guys know what you’re doing.” But we went through some stuff, read some verses together, and they are seeing such amazing fruit. They have whole strategies of their own about joining in with God’s great calling for the nations.

We went to China. We get to China and we see there that China is mobilizing people into the least reached areas. They have this whole Back-to-Jerusalem movement where they want to take their workers and send them all across Asia. It’s like the Chinese church who’s strong in China are saying, “Hey, guys, we’ll cover Asia. We’ve got like a lot of people, so we’ll work on Asia.”

We went down to South America. The last time we were in South America just a couple of years ago, we went to Columbia. Actually, we’re going to take another trip back to Columbia not so much to do evangelistic work, because there are all of these great, big churches in Columbia, but rather to do some training and figure out how we partner to help send South American workers into the Muslim world. Absolutely beautiful! This is God’s glory beginning to be known around the whole earth on a scale and a pace that is unprecedented in our time, in any time.

We have this idea sometimes that the mission of God and going and all of that is kind of like from the West to the rest. So here we are in America or Europe or something and we have to go to all the rest. But the truth is that actually now there are more believers in South America, Africa, and Asia than there are even in North America and Europe.

This thing we’ve been going for is growing. Now it’s not just from the West to the rest. Rather it’s from everywhere to everywhere, which once again just sharpens that question and that calling. “God, for the sake of your glory, because you are a goer and you have plans for the whole earth, where are you calling us to dwell? How are you calling us to live out our lives in a place that accomplishes your purposes among the nations?”