John 17, beginning to read at verse 18. As you sent me into the world, I also have sent them into the world, and for their sakes I sanctify myself that they also may be sanctified by the truth. I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they all may be one as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be one in us, that the world may believe that you sent me. And the glory which you gave me, I have given them, that they may be one just as we are one, I in them, and you in me. that they may be made perfect in one, that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them as you have loved me. Father, I desire that they also whom you gave me may be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory which you have given me, for you loved me before the foundation of the world. Oh, righteous Father, the world has not known you, but I have known you, and these have known that you sent me. And I have declared to them your name, and will declare it, that the love with which you loved me may be in them, and I in them." Father, I thank you for this word, and I thank you for the privilege that we have of imitating the Lord Jesus. You have called us by His grace to have His life lived through us, and I pray more and more we would be conformed to Your Son. I pray for Your blessing, in Jesus' name, Amen. Well, as we think this week about the birth of Jesus, I want to focus on one facet of his incarnation, and that is that Jesus came into the world with a mission that drove every aspect of his life. And that mission was planned long before there was a world. Before there was a world, Father, Son and Holy Spirit were in holy covenant with each other. And they made a plan, a comprehensive plan for this world. Theologians speak of it as the decrees of God. And that plan covered everything in Christ's life, His incarnation, His life, His death, His burial, His ascension, His current reign and the consummation of history. It's a very comprehensive plan. Our redemption was planned out long before there was a world. Ephesians 1-4 says that the Father chose us in Him before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love. Titus 1-2 says the Father made a promise to Jesus before time existed, and that promise involved yours and my salvation. But at the heart of this comprehensive plan was a purpose and a mission statement from which everything else flowed. When you're driven by a plan, it energizes you. And over and over again, Jesus spoke about being driven. He must, He must, He must. It's the Greek word de. There is a divine purpose in His life that drove everything that He did. Now, we're never going to have a perfectly mapped out plan for our future like Jesus did, but we're going to look at a verse here, verse 18, that shows at least in some faint way We must have a mission statement like Jesus had a mission statement. Now, where in the world would I get that idea? Let's read verse 18 again. Verse 18 says, as you have sent me into the world, I also have sent them into the world. And the Greek is actually a little bit stronger. It is just as you sent me into the world, I have also sent them into the world. In John 20, Jesus says the same thing. As the Father has sent me, I am also sending you. And so this morning, I want to compare the father's mission and sending Jesus into the world with the father's mission for us. And I have three main points. The father's mission sent with a purpose, the opposition to the father's mission. That's the world. And then all of the father's resources for that mission. Just as you have sent me, I have sent them. Now, if we have been sent just as Christ was sent, my first question would be, for what purpose was I sent? Why have I been sent? Do I have a mission? In verse 4, Jesus says, I have glorified you on the earth. I have finished the work which you have given me to do. If we do not have a strong sense of God's call upon our lives, we're not going to know if we've finished the work God has given us to do on any given day, let alone at the end of our lives. But Jesus understood His mission. It was so concrete that He could say, I finished everything that the Father has given me to do. And since Jesus sends us in exactly the same way that the Father sent Him, Jesus wants us to have a sense of purpose and mission in life. Now, yours and mine and His are going to look quite different. It's been popular in some circles for people to write a mission statement of what they want to be and do, but I think that a Christian mission statement needs to be looking at what the Father wants us to be and to do. We shouldn't be inventing our mission, we should be discovering our mission. In fact, throughout our lives, I'm convinced we're going to have to constantly be fine tuning our mission statement to make sure it's lining up with what God's giftings for us are, what his call upon our lives, what has he crafted us to be and to do. We're all sinners. We're never going to be able to say at the end of our life what Jesus said in verse four, that we've completely finished what the Father has sent us to do. But I developed several decades ago a chart I hear that I spent quite a few weeks, months laboring over to seek to give a sense of what it is that the Lord is driving me to be. And based on Romans 8, verse 28, that all things work together for good, for those who love God, those who are called according to His purpose, my upward mentor. Every year I've tried to have somebody that I could learn from, and this is probably the most significant life-transforming exercise I have ever been through. And Initially, I went into it a little bit reluctantly because it was a lot of work, and I thought, is this really going to be worthwhile? But it proved to be very, very worthwhile for me. So based on Romans 8, 28. He had me look at all of the influences in my life going back as far as I could remember and he said it doesn't matter whether it was influencing you for good or Influencing for you for bad take a look at all of these things and we're gonna start Labeling these things and so as thoughts came to me of some of the people and the events that happened in my life I'd write them down on a sticky note I would put it up onto a big whiteboard and I started organizing that whiteboard according to chronology from the time of my birth and on. And we labeled them in this book, which I'll be talking about in a minute, he gives all the definitions of these terms, but we labeled them as integrity checks, word checks, divine contacts, faith challenges, destiny guidance, negative preparation, life crisis, ministry conflict, leadership backlash, and isolation. And as I began putting those up on the board, I began without even having realized it, I came to the conclusion God had been using all of those things to craft me and make me into the leader that He wanted me to be. And without even realizing it, each of those events, even the bad events in my life, were beginning to develop values in my life over time. There were gradually formed values. And those are all listed at the bottom of this chart. And you'll see that the whole chart is shaped like an arrow that is piercing the darkness over here. This darkness represents all of the things in the world that God has been burdening me to change. These are the things that I weep over in the middle of the night. They're the things I want to influence and challenge and make a difference in. And the tip of the arrow right here is my mission statement that God has been crafting into my life. Now yours is going to be totally different than mine. But let me read my purpose statement and then my vision statement and then my mission statement. The reason I'm doing this is it might give you a little bit of an idea of how a mission statement can look and perhaps motivate you and encourage you to maybe go through the same exercise for yourselves in the new year. I hope you do, at least some of you. So, my purpose statement here is actually pretty brief, pretty generic, to glorify God in every area of life, to enjoy Him fully in all that I am and do, and to be used by God in bringing others to do the same by God's grace. fairly general purpose statements generally are, vision statement of a little bit more concrete, a little bit more specificity, to live in the reality of God's authority, presence, and power so fully that every facet of my leadership, teaching, hospitality, evangelism, and other service is done with joy, out of deep devotion and love to God, and in a way that brings glory to Him alone, and that promotes not only the well-being of my family, but within the realm of influence that God allows, the well-being of the whole bride of Christ and the nations which are destined to become disciples of Christ. So it's a little bit more specific and unique to me. Yours is going to be quite different than that. And some of that involves work within the church, some outside the church. I'm very grateful this church has been willing to enable me to be involved in being a Reformer outside of the church. I think it's a part of my calling. And let me read the mission statement next. I want to live out my callings as husband, father, pastor, writer, teacher, and reformer with a constant dependence upon God's authority, presence, and power, and with an eye to pleasing Him rather than man. I want every facet of my ministry to be characterized by the overflow of the Spirit's power. I want to know Jesus and the power of His resurrection in all that I am and do. I want to model what it means to love and lead my family in the Lord. I want to enable my whole family to feel that they share in my ministry and to find satisfaction in the sacrifices that they make. I want my wife and I to provide an inheritance of spiritual values, skills, and resources that will enable our children and grandchildren to stand on our shoulders and go beyond what we will be able to achieve in our lifetimes. I desire to pass on a heritage to my children's children. I also dedicate myself to extending the kingdom of God through the local church in outreach, discipleship, teaching, writing, and equipping the saints for the work of the ministry. Beyond the work of the local church, God has also given me a burning passion to pray and work towards seeing the whole Bride of Jesus Christ strengthened, united, and better resourced for the culture-transforming work of discipling the nations. When God brings such revival upon the world that nations as nations are discipled, I want to have prepared an abundance of materials that can be used by God to help in the process of teaching nations to observe God's biblical blueprints. I want to train and raise up others who will do the same. Now, again, that's unique to me, and it captures the particular way in which I believe God has sent me into the world. But I would urge you to think about what mission God has created for you from the moment you were conceived and actually before that. After the service, you can flip through this book by Terry Walling here, which is the book that we use to take me step-by-step through this process of understanding God's call upon my life. It's called Perspective Timeline. You were conceived and you were brought into this world with a purpose. And it was not to be a selfish purpose, self-serving. It was to be a purpose of glorifying God. And if you're a homeschool child, your schedule is going to look totally different than mine. Same with a homeschool mom. But I think that there's going to be some overlap of your deepest passions with my passions and the passions of the Lord Jesus Christ as expressed in this prayer here. And to get at some of those passions, I want to look at several verses here that at least give you hints of how your own mission statement might need to be tweaked. And we're going to start with verse 1. Jesus spoke these words, lifted up his eyes to heaven and said, Father, the hour has come. Glorify your son that your son also may glorify you. Christ had a passion to glorify the Father in all that he did. Now, he did it in a different way than you and I would do it. But as we approach the beginning of the new year, I think it's worth asking whether our mission statement, the way it's worded, needs to be tweaked so as to highlight or glorify our calling in a way that glorifies God. Here's how Jesus worded it in Matthew 5, 16. Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven. So he's not denying that you have glory, that you have light, but he's saying the way in which you engage in your works and show forth that light, it needs to be crystal clear to others that this light originates in God and glorifies God. OK, let your light be done. Excuse me. Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your father in heaven. So that's really one way that we could parallel Christ in verse one in a very faint way. Look at verse two, as you have given him authority over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as you have given him. Now, we obviously don't have authority that Christ has over all flesh. But just as Christ had delegated authority, we have some delegated authority, not all the authority Christ had. But the authority that we have over our bodies, over our resources, over our families needs to reflect Christ. Christ had authority because he was under authority. And our mission statements are going to look different than Jesus's and different than each other's. But that does not mean that there are not some common elements in it. Do we see our authority as delegated, accountable? And secondly, is our exercise of authority for the purpose of giving life and benefiting others? Or is it a selfish exercise of authority? I think it's a good question to ask. We have a stewardship of things and of people, and we're accountable to the Father to exercise it to His glory and also for the best interests of others. Look at verse three. And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent." Now, throughout this prayer, Gary has been showing us that one of the purposes that Christ had was to help us to know Him and the Father better. Intimacy with God does not just happen. It needs to be planned for. And Christ's plan dovetailed with the Father's plan and also enabled others to know the Father in this way. So does your mission statement include a passion for knowing Jesus? It really should. And has that part of your mission statement and all of the other parts we're gonna look at actually made it into your schedule? Because if it doesn't make it into your schedule, it's just theoretical. It's not truly a goal, it's not truly a mission. Paul said that his goal in life was that I might know Him and the power of His resurrection, Philippians 3.10. Look at verse four, and I've already read this one, but I think it bears reading again. I have glorified you on the earth. I have finished the work which you have given me to do. And don't think of Jesus's work as only being preaching. You know, we tend to just write off verses like that because we're not preachers, so we're not going to even think about how we could imitate him. No, part of of the work that God the Father had given to Jesus was to be a model toddler. Luke 2 verse 40 indicates that during his toddlerhood and young childhood, he engaged in it all with grace and wisdom. And so he's a model to you children, and we need to imitate him on that. Luke 2 verse 51 indicates that Jesus pleased the Father by the way that he submitted to his earthly parents as his authority. So you teenagers, You know, even though you've not fully developed what your mission in life is, it's very unlikely, sometimes people do at a very young age have a clear view of that, but it doesn't matter. You know that at least it includes honoring the Lord in your teenage responsibilities. How about Jesus' carpentry? Most of Christ's life, He was involved as a carpenter up to age 30, which to me proves beyond any shadow of a doubt, there is no such thing as a secular calling. His carpentry was a part of the Father's mission. It was God's desire that He engage in carpentry to the best of His ability, and He was probably a fantastic carpenter because He wanted to please the Lord in His carpentry. his caring for his mother, and her old age was a part of the work that the father gave him to do. And so the point is, he was a model child and teenager, and a model custodian of his mother, and he also modeled for other people how to preach. and how to engage in leadership training and evangelism and other things like that. But Colossians, just going back to some of his maybe not as interesting work, although I find carpentry very, very interesting, but And during that period of time, it was manual labor. And let's just imagine you have a job that is ultra, ultra boring. Well, Colossians and Ephesians says that the slave laborers of that day were able to engage in their day-to-day activities in a way that was service to Christ and that glorified the Father. Okay, so we ought not to be pietistic. You don't have to be pietistic to have a good mission statement. In fact, I'd go beyond that, I would say. If you have a pietistic mission statement, it's not really completely fulfilling the will of the Father because God has crafted you to need finances, to care for your body. All of these things that are left out of pietistic mission statements are a part of God's mission for you. And so the point is we need to be missional in absolutely everything that we do, just as Jesus was. Even the giving of a cup of cold water. Now, again, none of us are going to be able to say we've perfectly finished the work that God has given us to do, but it should be our longing as it was Paul's longing. Look at verse six. I have manifested your name to the men whom you have given me out of the world. They were yours. You gave them to me, and they have kept your word." Now, that's an amazing statement. Gary pointed out some weeks ago that you are a gift that the Father gave to Jesus. It's just awesome to think about it. It melted my heart when Gary was preaching on that. It not only shows that we are property of the Father and the Son, but that you are precious. You're a gift to the Son. J.C. Ryle said, an unspeakable comfort to remember that Christ cares for that which the Father has given to Him. And the flip side of the coin is that we should care for the Father and the Son because God has given Himself to us, right? And so we are stewards of our relationship with the Father. But beyond that, there is a sense in which God gives people to you just as God the Father gave people to Jesus. Now, for elders and deacons, it might be quite a few people that He's given to us that we're responsible for. If you're a child, it may be the parents or the siblings that God has given to you that you're responsible for. But all of us have to relate to people that are gifts from the Father. And do we relate to them selfishly, or do we treat them as precious gifts that are precious to the Father? And I think our mission statement needs to in some way incorporate that. Look at verse 7. Now they have known that all things which you have given me are from you. This speaks of stewardship of knowledge and passing on knowledge. How good are you about receiving knowledge from the Father and then passing on that knowledge to other people? And I think even you kids can do this. In Luke, it says that Jesus grew in knowledge, and He must have engaged in that stewardship quite well, because by the time He was 12 years old, He was in the temple dialoguing with the teachers there, and they were learning things from Him. Now, you may not know as much as we adults know, but you children may be entrusted by the Lord with insights into His Word that we have not gotten, and we parents need to be humble enough to learn from our children. So even that can be a part of our mission statement. Look at verse 8. For I have given them the words which you have given Me, and they have received them, and have known surely that I came forth from you, and they have believed that you sent Me." Now, I'm not going to go through every verse. I think I've gone through enough for you to get the point. But if you went through every verse in this chapter, I think you would realize that Jesus is an incredible model about what it means to live by the Father's mission in absolutely everything that we do. He received His mission from the Father. He fully lived it out. He did not invent it, and neither should we. In verse 9, the Father's mission involved passionate prayer. Verse 10, it involves commitment to community. That's huge. In verse 11, it involves radical antithesis from the world and a passionate desire for holiness. In verse 12, it involves looking to the welfare of others, being grieved when others fall into sin. In verse 13, it involves joy, a supernatural joy that comes from the Father to the Son through the Holy Spirit and into our lives. And if you continue to read verse by verse, you can see that from the time that Jesus was conceived in the womb of Mary, To the time of this prayer, he had been driven by the Father's mission. Everything he did had a purpose and a meaning, even his babyhood and school years and his carpentry. So a lot of people speak of putting Christ back into Christmas. Why don't we think about putting the Father back into Christmas by being missional in everything that we do, being driven by the Father's mission. Now, verse 18 also implies opposition to the Father's mission, and it's seen in the word world. But that opposition is made crystal clear in other verses as well. Look at verses 14 through 15. I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. I do not pray that you should take them out of the world, but that you should keep them from the evil one. So that's opposition. Christ received opposition from the world and from Satan from the very first Christmas. There was no room in the inn. Satan and Herod were trying to kill Him, and He guarantees us that if we are united to him, we're going to receive opposition from the world as well. And our goal should not be to escape from the pain in the world. Our goal is not self-preservation, but preservation of the mission. Let me repeat that. Our goal is not self-preservation, but preservation of the mission. And. The. The fact that we have been sent into the world with a purpose should really energize us. And just before this prayer in chapter 16, verse 33, he indicated he's given us the resources because he's overcome the world to be able to go into the world with confidence. When I was trained on how to discern God's call upon my life in a far more specific way, the pastor who was training me, as I pointed out, had me write down every significant event or person or failure or success or book or anything else that had influenced me for good or for bad. And As I was putting them up on the board, I began seeing patterns that developed. For example, one of the patterns that came out was that before every time that God was transitioning me into a new stage of growth in my life, He introduced a whole bunch of painful things into my life. And if he hadn't done that, I would not have moved. I'm a status quo guy. You know, if it's comfortable, I'll just keep coasting in that direction. And now I do try to move because I don't want the pain in my life. You know, I try to anticipate God's call for me to move. But I talked to this pastor, and I asked him, how frequently has this been the case with others? He said, everybody. He's taken thousands of people through this, and he said, every single person, it seems that there's these patterns where there's coasting, then God brings pain, and without that pain, they wouldn't move into the next stage of their life. And I began seeing other patterns begin to come up. based on Romans 8, 28, that all things work together for our good. He had me process through why did God allow these good things, these bad things, all of these influences into my life? He said, you got to figure out you can't go on to the next stage of this book until you figure out what God's purpose was. What values has he instilled into your life? And so at the bottom of this page, we've got these We've got all of these values that began developing in life, and then over here is a synopsis of all of the values that continue to drive me today. And I saw these things begin to come together, and I recognized God's hand in even the painful events in my life. It's like He was crafting me. It was very, very exciting. There was a purpose for even the painful events. In fact, one of the things that moved me to tears, you heard, I don't know, was it last week, a few weeks ago, some of the painful things that I went through in boarding school. Well, for the first time in my life, I saw how I had to go through those painful events for God to craft me into the specific kind of leader that I needed to be. And so what I began seeing is that Satan and the world were just tools in God's hand. They were puppets. They were being used not to destroy me, but actually to help me to grow. For one thing, it gave me a new sensitivity to be able to counsel people who are going through similar kinds of problems. And so if you examine the things that I've put into the bad things of life, that's all the darkness of the world over here. Those are very unique to me. But that opposition that was over there did not discourage me or take me down in any way. In fact, to this day, when I look at those things, I'm energized to do something about it. A lot of people get very discouraged when they see the bad stuff that's all around them, and I think, no, that's why I have a purpose in life. That's why God has sent me into the world. Now, I'll hasten to say this chart represents my own unique calling. You cannot copy it. You can look at it to get some ideas, but it's going to be completely foreign to you. God's got a unique calling for each of us, and we need to discover them on our own. But the things in that right column, those are the things, as I mentioned, that make me wake up in the middle of the night and weep. and pray and want to write something new, you know, to influence and to make a change. And because I have this sense of mission that the Lord has sent me into the world, rather than giving up, it energizes me. And so the Father's role in the Christmas story reminds me that just as the Father sent the Son into a world of opposition that desperately needs changing, He sent me into a world that hates Him and that desperately needs changing. Your calling may be to just bring your toddlers into a stronger awareness of the Lord and to be more consistent in the way in which you chain them and discipline them. Or your calling may involve leveraging your work for advancing the kingdom. But it's guaranteed that all of us are going to have the world of flesh and the devil resisting us and opposing us to some degree. And if we look to what the And what Jesus has provided, what the Holy Spirit empowers, we're going to face those things with faith, with hope, with love, and not with despair. And so we've seen that we have a mission just like Jesus had a mission. We have opposition just as Jesus had opposition. But let's look lastly at the fact that just as Jesus was given adequate resources to be able to fulfill His mission, the Father has given us adequate resources for our mission. And I'll just look at a sampling of these resources. The first is joy. Christ wants us to have such fullness of joy that it spills out of us. Verse 13 says, but now I come to you and these things I speak in the world that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. That's a resource. If it's a resource, what did the joy that Jesus had do for him? How was it a resource? Well, Hebrews tells us that for the joy that was set before him, he endured the cross. So there was some way in which that supernatural joy enabled him, empowered him to endure the unendurable. It's a resource. Nehemiah 8, verse 10 says, The joy of the Lord is your strength. It's a resource. So Christ was concerned that His disciples not grow weary in their work. And for that purpose, He prayed that they might have the same joy that He had. John 15, verse 11 says, these things I have spoken to you that my joy may remain in you and that your joy may be full. John 16, 24, ask and you will receive that your joy may be full. You know, there's really nothing worse than going about our service with a total lack of joy. And I guess it's better to limp along. I've had times where I've limped along without joy and you're making progress, but so much better to go into the world with this resource of joy. And any time that we are out of fellowship with God, this joy tends to dry up and it makes our ability to minister in the world much more difficult. David cried out, restore to me the joy of your salvation. Anybody who's had a serious fall into sin knows exactly what David was talking about. That was after his affair with Bathsheba. He realized this temporary happiness robbed him of his joy, and it absolutely was not worthwhile. 1 Peter 1 describes the unbelievable suffering that these believers had, and yet they were sustained in the midst of it with this joy. It was a resource. He says in verse 8, yet believing you rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory. So don't blame your lack of joy on your circumstances because Satan, your world, your children, your spouse cannot take that joy away from you unless you let them do it. OK. God sends us into the world, but he never does it. He never sends anybody into the world without providing the resource of overflowing joy. And the Sermon on the Mount, Christ said, Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for my sake. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad for great is your reward in heaven. For so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. OK, a second resource that the father gave Christ was glory, and he gives his glory to us as well. Now, I had to really study and study and restudy that because it almost seemed unbelievable that we could have the same glory that Jesus received. It almost seemed blasphemous to affirm this. But commentators over and over. Yes, it's from this. Look at verse 22, John 17, verse 22. And the glory which you gave me I have given them that they may be one just as we are one." Now, we're not talking about the glory of splendor that he's going to show at the second coming, but it really is the glory of God's power flowing through us. That is glorious. For example, James connects the joy that we just talked about with glory. He said, you rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory. Why is that joy full of glory? Because everybody realizes it's not our joy, it's his joy. It's his power working through us. Here's how Jameson Fawcett Brown, in their commentary, words this glory. They say, the glory then, here meant, is all that which Jesus received from the Father. The glory of a perfect acceptance. The glory of free access to the Father and right to be heard always. The glory of the Spirit's indwelling and sanctification. The glory of divine support and victory over sin and death and hell. The glory of finally inheriting all things. This glory, Jesus says, not I will give, but I have given them, thus teaching us that this glory is the present heritage of all that believe. This is awesome. This is incredible. You have access to the same glory that Jesus has that was coursing through him to be able to course through you. Here's what Second Corinthians three verse 18 says. But we all with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the spirit of the Lord. Now, we have this tendency to feel sorry for ourselves and excuse the fact that we're not taking our mission. We're not doing what God has called us to do because we don't have adequate resources. And Jesus denies it. He says we have the same resources that he was given when he was sent into the world. We have this glorious power. The question is, are we exercising it by faith? make it a part of your mission statement to do so. This has been part of my mission statement that has taken me through very, very tough times and kept me from giving up. The third resource the Father gave Jesus was His Word. Verse 14 says, I have given them Your Word. Do we have access to the same word? Absolutely, yes we do. Verse eight says, for I have given to them the words which you have given me and they have received them and have known surely that I came forth from you and they have believed that you sent me. See, it's only the word of God that has power to bring people to faith. Only God's word is an infallible guide. Only God's word has the power to sanctify us. and we have that Word. Hallelujah. We are not shortchanged at all. Verse 17 says, "'Sanctify them by your truth. Your Word is truth.'" And there are many scriptures indicate we need to be taking this Word into the world, into politics, into every area that we go out into, whether we're discipling our children, or we're changing our minds about our boring jobs. I remember reading a book several years ago titled, Take This Job and Love It. You know what, he was tempted to call it the title of that job. And in the book, he was showing how the Word of God, as he began meditating upon it and actually implementing it the way Jesus implemented it, It completely changed, transformed his perspective on his less than ideal job. I love that title. Take this job and love it. Well, it was the word of God that did that. The scriptures are a resource that we must never neglect as we heed Christ's command to go into the world. Gary and I keep badgering you and badgering you. Prayer, meditation, prayer, memorization. We've got to be in the word of God. needs to be part of our mission statement. There are other resources such as the personal knowledge of God, the privilege of prayer, power of God's name, authority of being commissioned. I mean, these are fantastic resources that are mentioned. I don't have time to get into them. But I want to end with a resource of experiencing God's love, and let's start at verse 26. And I have declared to them your name, and will declare it, that the love with which you love me may be in them, and I in them." Now this is an incredible thought. When God sends you into the world to face trials and tribulations, it's not because He does not care for you. He sets the same love upon us that He did upon the Son when He sent Him into the world. And you might think, well, if God really loved me, why would I have so much painful problems and backlash and resistance to my leadership? Why would I have such pain? Why would I have such losses? But when you really start meditating and thinking about those questions, they're ridiculous questions, because when Jesus was sent into the world and He received pain? Yes, a lot of pain. And yet the father loved him. Did he receive losses? Yes, a lot of losses. And yet the father dearly loved him. And so questions like that, to me, indicate either you lack a mission or you've got a skewed mission that is very self-oriented. And an understanding of each of these resources can motivate us to get on track with our mission. Verse 24 says, you loved me before the foundation of the world. Is the same true of us? Yes, many verses. Jeremiah 31, I have loved you with an everlasting love, therefore with loving kindness I have drawn you. Ephesians 1, 4 through 5 says he chose us in love before the foundation of the world. Now, the reason I call this a resource is because it helps to give us the motivation to keep on keeping on when the going gets tough. When you face the kind of trials that Christ faced in the world, I think it's important to realize that God's love for you is not conditioned upon how well you perform or how good you are. That's what we're tempted to think. And let me emphasize this point by going to the opposite extreme. If you're thinking about God's love resting upon you because of how faithful you are, you're in deep, deep trouble right off the bat, because according to Psalm 5, verse 5, God hates all workers of iniquity. If he considered your works or your sin, all he could do is to hate you. But He loves you. How does He love you? Because He sees Christ in you. That's why the same love that He loves the Son with, He loves you with. And let me give you a few verses to demonstrate that. If you look at verse 26, He says, I have declared to them your name and will declare it, that the love with which you love me may be in them. And notice this phrase, and I in them. if Christ is in us, the Father can love us with the same love that He loved His Son. It's just incredible. Look at verse 23, "'I in them, and you in me, that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that you have sent me, and have loved them as you have loved me.'" It's incredible, incredible promise. Being sent into this world was not pleasant for Jesus. He faced persecution, rejection, humiliation and even death. But God upheld him with his love. And he promises to do exactly the same thing with us. In fact, I want you to turn with me to Romans chapter eight. And this is a description of the world that God, the father, sent Jesus into. And it's the same world that he sends us into. Romans 8, and we'll begin reading at verse 35. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, for your sake we are killed all day long. We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. So that's the kind of world that Jesus went into. It's the same world that he sends us with the message of salvation. Verse 37, yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us for, and here comes the basis for being able to be more than conquerors, for, God's love resides in the Son. And we can only be loved as we too reside in the Son. But when we have the Son, we have everything we need to be able to take our mission successfully. God loves us dearly. And verse 32 says that the Father, having given us the Son, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? Hallelujah. Praise the Lord. Now, next time you have doubts about whether you can really do what God is calling you to do, remind yourself God loves you as dearly as He loves the Son. He will freely give you everything He gave to the Son so that you can live godly in Christ Jesus. He will give you everything that the Son needed to conquer. to be a witness, to learn humility. The Christmas story should remind us that God never sends someone into the world without a mission and all of the resources needed to accomplish that mission. And the question is, will we implement the Father's mission or are we determined on implementing our own selfish mission? Christ is sending you to do something, but will you do it? And again, people, thoughts come into their mind, yeah, if I had more love, if I was more like Pastor Kaiser, if I was more like somebody else, if I had more understanding, more boldness, then I could do my mission. But God gives those graces to people who are willing to serve as they step out in faith in order to do it. It's like the man with the withered hand. You may remember that gospel story. He had not been able to move his hand in years, and Christ comes up to him and He says, stretch forth your hand. Now, that man could have said, Lord, you're asking me to do something ridiculous. I cannot do this. you need to heal me first, then I can stretch it forth. I'm convinced if he had said that, his hand would never have been healed. So it was in the act of obeying Christ, doing the impossible, doing his mission, as it were, that God came through and healed his hand. And we see this over and over and over again in the scriptures. It is as we step out to do the impossible, that, and usually not before, that God comes through for us. I mentioned in another sermon the story of Corrie ten Boom meeting a former German prison guard after a conference, and he extended his hand and asked for forgiveness, the same forgiveness she had been preaching about, and suddenly she found, I can't do this, because he had been so cruel to her, she felt this bitterness, this coldness grabbing her heart, but she resisted it, And because she was willing to engage in the mission that God had called her to do, which includes forgiving our enemies, she reached out her hand and said, yes, I forgive you. And it was in the act of doing that, she says, that she sensed the power of God's grace flowing through her and enabling her to supernaturally love her enemy. And this is the way God works. When was the Jordan River parted? It wasn't before they moved. It says when their feet touched the water. It was when they stepped into their mission that seemed impossible, but in faith they did so, that the waters were parted. When did the disciples catch fish in the boat? It was when—they'd been casting nets all night long. It was when they cast out their net, in obedience to Christ, that it was filled. Read through Hebrews 11 sometime, and you will see that over and over and over again, it's when people step out into the mission that God has called them to do, that God comes through on their behalf. That's why he's glorified. We're doing the impossible and people recognize it's not them, it's God working through them. This is what our mission should be, should be like. Jesus said, just as you sent me into the world, I also have sent them into the world. And so may you enter this Christmas season able to celebrate the fact that you have the same resources that Christ was given when he came into the world. And may you be able to celebrate that because you, too, are willing to take up the challenge. You have a mission from the Father that is unique to you. Be sure to discover it and fulfill it by His grace. Amen. Father, I thank you that you call us to do the impossible. You regularly call us to do the impossible, to cast bitterness out of our heart, to love the unlovable, to forgive the unforgivable, You regularly call us to do the impossible, to do what we are fearful to do. Father, I pray that we would take on the mission that you have for us, doing it in faith, that if Christ is for us, who can be against us? May we not look to our own resources. This was a failure that I had over and over again, looking to my faith, looking to my repentance, always wondering if it was adequate. Father has nothing to do with us. Help us to fix our eyes on Jesus, who is the author and the finisher of our faith. May we be missional in all that we do. And we pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen.