This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “Misc. OT Sermons” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, August 21, 1977.
About this sermon
Missions has real roots in the Old Testament, contrary to the modern church’s assumption that it begins at Pentecost or the Great Commission. Isaiah 42’s servant song sets the proper aim: not church growth or cultural influence, but God’s own name sanctified among the nations. Three conclusions follow from that aim, each measuring missions against the same standard.
Sermon transcript
a text for my new exegesis of these things. So, Isaiah 42, verse 9, verses, “…behold, my servant whom I have hold, my chosen one in whom my soul delights, I have put my spirit upon him, and he will bring forth justice to the nation.” He will not cry out or raise his voice, nor make his voice heard in the street. A bruised green he will not break, and a dimly burning wick he will not extinguish. He will faithfully bring forth justice. He will not be disheartened or crushed until he has established justice in the earth, and the coastlands will wait expectantly for his law.
Thus says God the Lord, who created the heavens and stretch them out, who spread out the earth and its offspring, who gives breath to the people on it, the spirit of those who walk in it. I am the Lord. I uphold you in righteousness. I will also hold you by the hand and watch over you, and I will appoint you as a covenant to the people, as a light to the nations, to open blind eyes, to bring out prisoners from the dungeon, and those who dwell in darkness from the prison. I am the Lord. That is my name. I will not give my glory to another, nor my praise to graven images. Behold, the former things have come to pass. Now I declare new things. Before they spring forth, I proclaim them to you.”
Our Father in Heaven, we are asking, as we always do, for the ministry of Your Word to be with power in us, that in hearing the Word, we in our hearts, being humbled, might be willing to obey. Father, put far from us the thoughts of a mindless attention given to Your Word. Instead, our God, may we concentrate our hearts and focus our attention upon what it is You have to say to Your people. us, our Father, in the message of your word, and encourage us, though we find in it many perplexing things. Bless us this evening, Lord, in this period of time in which we concentrate upon what you are saying to us. For Jesus’ sake, amen.
In the weeks to come, we are going to be looking at the various divisions of the session that I have announced to you, the divisions of worship, education, and mission, and in succession we’re going to try and take these various aspects of the Church and its life and deal with them and try to come to some sort of understanding about what the Scriptures say about these particular areas in the life of our own congregation and the life of the Church at large. We’re not going to take them in that order—worship, edification, and mission. We’re going to reverse them, and we’re going to begin and we’re going to think about mission, and within mission try to understand a little bit more what the nature of evangelism is within the Church, and the obligation that is laid upon the Church evangelistically.
Now, at the end of these evening services and these messages, I hope to be able to inject some conclusions into some messages that I bring on Sunday morning, and there particularly deal with some practical matters. I hope to take up some practical matters in the area of worship, and as some of you have requested, to concentrate on the area of giving in particular. A number of you have asked for direction in giving. And I hope to be able to give some attention to that area at the conclusion of these messages on Sunday morning.
Also, we have the perplexing question of Christian education. We are in a unique position in our day. There are certain assumptions, educationally, that are being made by the Church, which may or may not be good things. I’m not in a position to say at this point. But I believe that it would be good for us to take stock of the position of the Church with regard to education and ask ourselves some very pointed questions.
Now, I don’t want to scare you all away, but to ask such pointed questions as, is the Sunday School really the vehicle most able to carry on the educational ministry of the Church? Or, what about our vacation Bible school program that we have had in our congregation for a number of years, but this year we were unable to have it? Is this a ministry that we should feel obligated to return to, and if we do go back to it, with what attitude should we approach it? What about the area of the Christian school? Is that a proper area to consider?
In the area of mission, we are particularly concerned with personal witnessing, and I know a number of you have spoken to me on this matter, spoken to me of your concerns with regard to the outreach of our own congregation, and I hope to be able to say something positive about witness Now, with regard to mission, which we take up this evening, I’m breaking this down into these areas.
Tonight we will be considering mission and the Old Testament. Next week we’ll be considering Jesus and mission, and we will search the Gospels. Then we will take up the difficult portions of this picture. If you don’t think these are difficult, wait until you get to Acts. Acts and mission, the book of Acts, and if that isn’t difficult enough for you, wait until we get to the epistles and consider the subject of mission. And then, finally, we will be taking up mission and the contemporary Church.
Now, I believe for myself that there is a dilemma in the Church today, in the area of mission, as that encompasses evangelism, and I believe that that dilemma has arisen because the Church has forgotten that its motivation is to arise from the Scriptures and from the Scriptures alone.
And I get the feeling, often, that there are, in a number of works that have been published on the matter of evangelism and mission, a reading back into the Scriptures themselves, contemporary problems and contemporary situations. so that it isn’t any longer the scriptures that appear to be normative. Rather, it seems that certain circumstances of our day have demanded certain practices or certain ideologies with regard to missions that don’t necessarily flow directly out of scripture, but are arrived at by ingenious methods of induction. Now, I think that there are other things that need to be brought to the attention of the Church. The fact that the net result of this approach to the matter of missions has resulted in a loss of the Bible’s point of view, and also a flattening out of the Scriptures without appreciation for the historical progression of God’s unveiling of himself, so that no matter where one might turn in the Scriptures, he tends there to find proof texts for his own position rather than trying to understand the context in which those texts arise. Now, in this I am, if I seem a little enigmatic at this point, taking some hopshots at a systematic theological approach to the issue of missions. And I know that there are some classic books that have come out in Reformed circles on the matter of evangelism and missions that have not endeavored to trace out the development of the theme of mission scripturally, but rather merely assumed a certain amount of baggage textually with regard to the matter of missions, and they have gone on and presented their arguments without real close examination of the texts that they’re using, and without a sensitivity to the historical context in which those texts appear.
Now, the tragedy of this, I believe, is that it is laid obligation possibly—I don’t just say possibly at this point, I’m not going to say it too definitely—possibly it is laid obligation on the mass of Christendom that the Scriptures themselves do not lay on the masses of Christendom. and creates within the Church a tension where people are laboring with a guilty conscience for things they shouldn’t have a guilty conscience about, at least in the way in which the contemporary expositor of missions has outlined their obligations. There might be other ways in which they should feel guilty with regards to missions, but very possibly it should not be in the way that contemporary theologians have laid that obligation on the people. Okay, are you with me so far? I hope that just isn’t a lot of excess verbiage. I hope that… I hope we can get through them rather quickly.
The problem for contemporary mission theology is as much what the Bible says about missions as it is what it doesn’t say about missions. We begin there as a starting off point for our consideration of missions in the Old Testament. I’ll pose a problem. Is there truth a mission or an evangelistic command laid upon Israel. And by that I mean, is there a command in the Scriptures anywhere to be found in the Old Testament that lays upon Israel an obligation to go out to the nations for the purpose of converting them and bringing them within or under the umbrella of God’s covenant. Think about your own testimony. That’s the question. Is there truly a mission command laid upon Israel in that Israel is commanded to go out to the nations for the purpose of converting them.
The man is to the nation as a whole, yes. All right, let’s take a few verses, for instance. There are those who have suggested I think that this is primarily found in the liberals of the turn of the century. There are those who have turned to the law and seen there verses which they felt were declaring an international brotherhood which laid constraint upon Israelites to indeed bring those who are outside of Israel, within the umbrella of the covenant.
They would turn, for instance, to the command in Leviticus 19.18, which simply says that we are to love our neighbors as ourselves. That’s addressed to Israel, that the Israelites are to love their neighbors as themselves. And they have understood neighbor in the broadest sense of the word. in terms of an international brotherhood which lays obligation then upon Israel to bring the nations, or to go out to the nations with an eye towards involving them in the worship of the covenant God of Israel.
Is this text indicative of the purpose of the law? that those outside of Israel might be impressed with Judaism and want to it? Is that the purpose of the law in the Old Testament? Does Israel keep the law in order to win converts, and is there this missionary dimension to the law itself?
I think if we read that passage as it is in its context, the neighbor there spoken of is the fellow Israelite. The neighbor there spoken of is the person who is already under the umbrella of the covenant, and within that chapter there are particular prescriptions with regard to the stranger who comes into the country, or into the town, or into your house, and how you are to behave towards him. The stranger is the non-Israelite. The neighbor is the Israelite in that commandment.
What about the psalms? We read, for instance, this morning a psalm that might suggest that Missionary obligation is laid upon Israel. You remember our response of reading this morning, Psalm 96, how it begins, sing to the Lord a new song, sing to the Lord all the earth, sing to the Lord, bless His name, proclaim good tidings of His salvation from day to day, tell of His glory among the nations, His wonderful deeds among all the people. Now, from a surface reading of that, it seems as if there is obligation then laid upon Israel on the basis of this psalm for them to go out to all of the earth and proclaim God’s glory to all peoples.
But is this truly an obligation in this psalm laid upon Israel to engage in missionary activities? Much rather, this is a call to Israel to declare God’s glory to the nations that have come to her. You see, it’s not Israel going out to the nations, it is the nations coming to Israel. And then, you see, those nations that have come to Israel are commanded later on in the psalm to come into the courts of the Lord, into His very sanctuary, and when they come, they are to bring an offering with them.
In view is the day of the new psalm, and this psalm then is prophetic of what shall surely come to pass. It is, in view is the day of salvation when the whole universe will praise God, and that’s how the psalm concludes. Israel is not seen here as going out to the nations, but the nations rather are seen as coming to Israel and to her sanctuary in Jerusalem, to worship the God of Israel as the only God.
What about the prophets? Now, there are some theories about prophets. A lot of the theory concerning the prophets is that most of the prophets that you have in your scriptures, what they have written, came from the post-exilic age, and actually returned from Babylon, and that the prophetic message developed in contrast to the strict, legalistic, priestly cult that was ruling in Jerusalem. And the prophets were sort of the forerunners of Jewish liberalism. Remember those strict injunctions of the priests and the leaders, Ezra and Nehemiah. And this brought response from the prophets who were motivated, so it is said, by a grander view of God.
It is suggested then that what we have at the conclusion of Isaiah, chapters 40 through 46, are a missionary obligation laid upon Israel in terms of Israel being the servant of the Lord. who in her task is to take God’s law to the coastlands, and we read about that in Isaiah 42. Indeed, many of the Jews who were contemporary with Jesus understood these portions of the prophets in this manner, but Jesus had some rather scathing things to say about that interpretation of these prophets. And you can read that in Matthew 23, verse 15. These passages concerning the servant of the Lord, though there is application for Israel, certainly focus on the future and the coming of the Messiah. And they are simply, for the most part, reiterating the perspective of the Psalms. It is not Israel that is going out to the nations, but rather the nations that are being gathered to Israel and to Jerusalem itself, and to the sanctuary that is set there. I guess the most perplexing prophet is Jonah. What about Jonah? Isn’t Jonah a missionary book? Is Jonah written to chide Israel for not being missionary-minded?
Is that the purpose of the book? Much rather, the purpose of Jonah is to set forth the nature of God. that the God of Israel is the God of all the earth. It is to set forth the character of the servant of God, his prophet, or those who would agree with God’s purpose in his kingdom. That purpose is ultimately to bring covenantal blessings to all of the nations. Jonah is a divine warning to God’s people, as God’s people are embodied within Jonah himself. A warning to God’s people for the time when God will send forth His message and His call to the nations. But it is not a chiding of Israel for not being missionary minded, it’s a chiding of in that they do not understand the universal implications of the God whom they worship. If Israel is given no missionary command, what is her relationship to mission?
Second question, page five. We’re getting there. That was pretty good, wasn’t it, Earl? What is your relationship to mission? Israel’s election is for mission. You remember Abram’s call in Genesis 12? The third verse, how does it read? Genesis 12 verse 3, the very last line, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. Israel’s election is for missions.
Abram’s call points that out, that the eventual destiny of the election of Israel is in order that all the nations might be blessed, and it is this that the visions of the prophets focus upon in their vision of the coming manifestation of the fullness of the kingdom, which means all the nations then are going to be brought within the umbrella of God’s coming.
But further than this, Israel’s deliverance—remember her redemption from Egypt? is a picture of mission fulfilled. This is a picture of the gathering of the nations yet to be accomplished. In Israel, the blessings promised to Abraham begin And the blessings to the nations have begun in that Israel is the picture of all the elect, redeemed by the mighty act of God.
So it is as an exodus that we have a picture of God not just calling to himself one ethnic but a people for his own possession, a people in whom he dwells. Not defined ethnically, but defined religiously. Here, then, as I said, is a picture of the blessing In this sense, then, Moses is rightly compared not only to Jesus Christ in the book of Hebrews, but to the Apostle Paul by Paul himself in 2 Corinthians chapter 3. Moses becomes an Apostle, and in the word of the Apostle, the nations then by the message that he has been ordained to give are drawn unto the God who has made the world and redeemed his people. But this isn’t the final picture, because you know that Israel then goes on to become established. Israel’s establishment in the land is a picture, in some sense, of a continuing mission of the kingdom of God.
What is the obligation that is laid then upon Israel after it has experienced this redemption and been brought together by God at Simon? It’s the obligation that they themselves, as the peculiar treasure of God, are to keep His law, are to keep His commandments from the heart. You can read of this in Deuteronomy 28, verses 9 and 10. You can also read about it in Exodus 19, verses 5 and 6.
The continuing mission, then, of the established Israel is not so much focused upon a going out to the nations as it is to the sanctifying of God’s name before all people by keeping his commandments from the heart. Israel, which has become The reason for the blaspheming of God’s name among the nations is chided by Christ indirectly in the Lord’s Prayer, when He, in establishing the new Israel, teaches His disciples to pray, “‘Hallowed be thy name.’” The object, then, of the ministry and the message and the mission, it seems, at least from this particular angle, is that the name of God might be sanctified in the midst of those who have been called. To this end, we might trek through all of the epistles of the New Testament, and in the epistles of the New Testament you will find that it is this image that lies behind Paul’s, John’s James admonition to the Christian churches that have already been established, that in them God’s name is to be sanctified by the kind of life they live in response to what God has done for them. The emphasis of the epistles is not mission in the sense of going out to your neighbors, going out to the ends of the earth, but rather the emphasis of the epistles, it seems to me, is on being the established community in which God’s light is clearly seen through people who obey obediently from the heart God’s commandments.
We’ll try to take this up a little bit more when we get to mission and the epistles. Now, please try to understand this. This does not mean that I am saying that there is no evangelistic responsibility on the Church of Jesus, nor on you. Nor is it saying that I believe that missions are over with and it’s time for us to be doing something else. What I am trying to do is understand the silence on the matter of mission in the epistles to the Church. and be sensitive to the structure of the Old Testament in seeing as a possible background for that emphasis in the New Testament, certain standards in the situation of Israel. What is the model that stands in the back of the mind of those who write to those Christians in the established churches? Let’s think about the conclusions here for a minute. Basically, I have three. There is no missionary command laid upon Israel.
At the same time, secondly, Israel is a vehicle of God’s mission to the world through Abraham, and also through his promise to Abraham and through the vision of the prophets, as they foretold the coming day, a blessing to the nations. Israel is a vehicle of God’s mission to the world through Abraham’s promise to Abraham and through the visions of the prophets of the coming blessing and glory to the nations. At the same time, thirdly, Israel is a picture of missions at various stages. In one sense, in picture form, Israel, as the elect, is the nations being redeemed and gathered by God for worship of Him. But more than that, Israel is also those nations established by God in the world.
It is very possible that when Paul becomes silent with regard to the matter of mission to the Church, that he sees the established Church not so much as the nations being gathered or gathering, as it were, before God, but rather… Excuse me, I’d better go back and start again. It could possibly be that Paul doesn’t see the Church as the nation being gathered in the process of being gathered, or gathering, as it were, in the process of gathering, but rather as gathered already, as already established. The nations gathered already, and with that attitude he approaches the Church.
I think that you can get a feel for where I’m going. I seem to be wrestling with the problem of the absence of missionary directors to the Churches in the Epistles, trying to account for that. Now, I am not suggesting that what I am going to propose is going to find acceptance with everyone, but I hope that in this we can just be faithful to the scriptures and also try to understand what lies behind this direction struck by the Father. Next week we’ll take up Jesus and mission, how he sees mission in the Gospels.
Do you have any questions? I know that’s Mark’s clue, but I’m trying to… Alright, okay. I think to a degree that that is true. In fact, I was reading one man this last week who said that the Floss, Professor Michens at the Pre-University of Amsterdam… No, I think that that is probably the right direction. They are the messengers to the world. That is dissolving. So you can trace out that idea of dissolving. I guess you can get a flavor for it in Philippians chapter 2.
I think that’s a good passage to look at in terms of how Paul preaches the church, possibly on the background of his Old Testament, how he sees the church on the background of the Old Testament. He says, do all things without grumbling and disputing. You know where that came from. that you,” this is verse 14, 15, and 16 of Philippians 2, “…that you may prove yourselves to be blameless and innocent, children of God, above reproach, in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you appear as lights in the world, holding fast the word of faith, so that in the day of Christ I may have cause to glory, because I did not run in vain or toil in vain.” It’s almost like he has the experience of Moses in the back of his mind there, when he portrays his own ministry, giving his instruction to these people. But, you know, when we think about the Church as being light to the world, we usually think of that in terms of mission, but it seems here from this passage that what Paul has in mind is ethical behavior, holiness. Let your light. Right. Matthew 5. Right.
One kind of comparative defense is that God created man and created man for the purpose of indulgence. And indulgence is God. Man is seemingly God, but it’s indulgence. There’s a whole history of the world in the Scripture that God’s working to bring man back to indulgence. So on his covenant of indulgence for the purpose had its place within that list. I mean, hand it back, oh, hey, you’re God.
And the government was given a model that could be used elsewhere as well. So the people were extremely engaged, showing that the government was not meant solely for Israel, and that Israel was going to be used as a missionary, a professional missionary. Well, I wouldn’t necessarily see If I define missions narrowly as going out to the nations, I wouldn’t see that circumstance as missionary activity. We understand it. I see that as the nations coming up into Israel, indicative of what is taking place in Israel during this particular period of their history. The nations, in a sense, are coming in, and you’re observing that process by the stranger and the soldier within the gauges must submit himself to the law. And, in fact, many of them did become Israelites themselves.
But it isn’t missionary activity in the strict sense of the word. I mean, it wasn’t because of actual problems I just had, you know. Commissions being dispensed from Jerusalem to go to the ends of the earth for that purpose. Now, in Jesus’ day, the Pharisees enjoyed doing just that, just that very much. And they were involved in the activistic missionary endeavors.
Jesus says, you’ll circle the globe to get one thonder. And you’ll make him, I don’t know how many times a child would tell it himself, but that was his indictment himself. I think there’s a couple of things involved. Jesus is really tied into the history of his redemption, and knows himself that missions in the truest sense cannot be carried out until after Christ dies and the grave begins for redemption. to be able to adjust the time in the present.
And then, in about the middle of the year, about twelve-ten, the plan did find me to start this job on the south side of Nantucket. And that’s just the beginning. And all I’ve said is that I’m just going to keep doing it. That’s it. He should have been married by now. He should have been married by now. Well, let’s conclude with hymn number 371.
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