Christopher J. H. Wright

It's about the mission of God as a big topic.

I love what Chris Wright says.

He says this: "It's not so much the case that God has a mission for his church in the world, as that God has a church for his mission in the world."

Amen.

So now I wanna talk to you about live on mission.

I love this quote from a theologian by the name of Christopher Wright.

He says this.

"It is not so much that God has a mission for his church as that God has a church for his mission." Let that settle in for a moment.

You see, we're continuing to look at our series on mission this evening, discovering what our place is as individuals and as a kind of corporate gathering as a church in the outworking of the gospel, both here in Belfast and further afield.

And for the last few weeks, we've been using a book written by a guy called Chris Wright, and it's called The Great Story and The Great Commission.

That's been helping us and will continue to help guide us through this series.

And you might wonder why we're talking about mission.

with evangelism and teaching.

It all begins with people who have hearts transformed by the good news of what Jesus has done and who are planted in good soil.

Chris Wright talks in this book that we're going through about what he calls the primacy of evangelism.

And the primacy of evangelism is this idea that probably many evangelical churches like ours have given evangelism primacy over every other tenant of the gospel.

Can I get an amen to that? Okay.

So Christopher Wright, who was a theologian, wrote a great book.

Actually, a couple of great books, but the one that I'm going to be leaning on a bit here is The Mission of God's People.

We're talking about identity, authority, and mission.

Yeah.

I think what C.J.H. Wright that says God doesn't have a mission for his church as much as he made a church for his mission.

Mm-hmm.

which means that any passage of the Bible that is not connecting to God's global mission of seeing his good news of salvation extend to the ends of the earth, you probably haven't read or applied it correctly.

And that's what it felt like every week.

It's just clear from the scriptures.

And it's actually a Christopher Wright book for me also.

I came across one of his books and he said a lot of people are waiting for a Damascus Road experience to be called to missions.

And according to the Old Testament, this is founded in the commandment, thou shalt not murder.

Old Testament scholar Christopher Wright in his commentary on Deuteronomy says this, this commandment bears on all ethical matters in which human life is at stake from its beginning in the womb to its waning and old age in terminal illness.

Ultimately, this commandment is about honoring the dignity of human life.

So this morning, I'd like to talk about that in three ways.