I write this article just a few days before one of our partner churches sends another family out on mission.
It’s a thrilling prospect. Praise God that he’s raised up more workers for the harvest fields in hard to reach places! At the commissioning service a few weeks ago there was a real sense of purpose,
a thankfulness for God’s leading and a tangible expression of gospel partnership as a body of believers in Nottingham committed themselves to sending and supporting gospel workers in a manner worthy of the Lord.
Yet I was struck again by the sacrifices that are being made so that the Gospel can go to a needy part
of the world. Just think for a moment about the missionaries themselves, never mind the church that is sending them.
There are the obvious, physical things. They’ve already packed up their house. They’ve sold or passed on a load of their stuff. They’ve squeezed their material life into a few suitcases. And they’ve given up their jobs – their well-paid, status-rich jobs.
And then there will be the unseen sacrifices. The tears when separation from family and friends feels too much to bear. The frustrations of life in a new language (I still remember the pain of not being understood when just trying to order a pizza on the phone about 6 months into our time in Indonesia). The daily, beneath the surface, stress of living cross-culturally and always being the foreigner.
And then there are the sacrifices that to many look, at best, plain mad and, at worst, simply irresponsible. Taking the little ones out of an education system that is world-class and a health system that is known and that works. And going into a country recovering from war, where security is volatile and support structures weak. Is that where you’d want to see your children or nephews or nieces in the future?
And so, perhaps, it’s good to pause and reflect on this kind of sacrifice in reaching the nations for Christ. Is there a danger we can take things too far?
The call to sacrifice: “Follow Jesus, whatever the cost!”
If our trust is in Jesus, then we’ve been set off on a road that leads to life. It’s wonderful, it’s precious and it’s glorious. But it comes at a cost. Jesus makes that plain, perhaps most famously, in Mark 8:34, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”
It’s a theme that Jesus returns to in Mark 9:49,50, “Everyone will be salted with fire. Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with each other.”
In the Old Testament, when the priests made the offerings to God in the Temple, we see these two concepts – fire and salt. We’re told that burnt offerings were to be totally consumed by the fire if they were to be acceptable to God. And we’re told that salt was also to be used in the sacrifice as a sign of the relationship that God had with his people. See Numbers 18:19.
And, so, someone has said this: “Fire and salt appear to be symbols of the trials and costs of discipleship, of following Jesus. Discipleship to Jesus lays a total claim on one’s life. In the language of sacrifice, it must be totally consuming or it is worthless.”
This is challenging stuff. A totally consuming sacrifice, or no sacrifice at all.
And the power of this challenge is reinforced when we read the context for Jesus’ words about sacrifice. In the preceding verses, 9:42-48, he has been speaking plainly about the reality of hell. There is nothing worse than being sent there, Jesus says in v42, “It would be better for him to be thrown into the sea with a large millstone tied around his neck.”
People should do anything to avoid going there, v43-47, even if it means chopping off your hand, or cutting off your foot, or gouging out your eye. And yet, through Christ, there is a better way. There is the opportunity not to be thrown into hell, but to enter life and the Kingdom of God.
What is the implication of such stark teaching from Jesus? There is an urgent need for Christians, filled with compassion for the lost, to speak the Gospel message. That whilst there is nothing worse than hell, there is something so much better. That whilst sinners deserve God’s judgment, there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. What sacrifice would not be worth making to see someone saved from hell and saved for heaven?
About 10 years ago the same church in Nottingham sent another UFM family to Greece. They were the first missionaries to be sent by that fellowship for a long time. It was a time of rejoicing and, in many ways, it felt unique, very special. Yet at the commissioning service the pastor reminded us that there was a danger that we made that day seem too unique, that we held the missionaries up as people doing something quite unusual. His challenge to us that day has stuck with me through the years, “Today is a very normal thing for a church to do and what they’re being sent off to do is a very normal thing for a Christian family to do.”
So as another family is sent off, it’s a normal thing that’s happening.
Yes, they are making extraordinary sacrifices. Yet in God’s economy they are ordinary, extraordinary, sacrifices. The kind of sacrifices we’re called to make wherever we are.
– Michael Prest