Ep. 259: The Missionary God

Isaac Dagneau:

Hey, welcome to indoubt. My name is Isaac. I’m one of the hosts of indoubt as well as one of the pastors at North Valley Baptist Church in Mission, British Columbia. This week on the show, we have the great privilege to talk with Dr. John Neufeld. So it’s great to be talking with you today, John.

Dr. John Neufeld:

Isaac, what a joy to be with you.

Isaac Dagneau:

Someone might be listening right now to indoubt and they might be completely unfamiliar with the name Dr. John Neufeld. So maybe just for that person, could you just share just a brief little introduction of who you are just so they can get an idea of who this guy is that’s talking with us today? Maybe how you were saved. That would be kind of a neat personal way to introduce yourself.

Dr. John Neufeld:

Well, I was saved when I was 18, Isaac, after a long protracted struggle in war against God, which I had. I grew up in a Christian home, but it was a unique kind of a home. My folks were refugees and I grew up in an old German-speaking church and it was a struggle growing up to figure out which community I belonged to. The wider English-speaking world that I could not be a part of, but then there was also that other world. And so somehow struggling my way through. I decided, look, I just going to abandon whatever I got from my home, my home church and everything else. And I gave myself fully to a life of carousing and drunkenness. And at the same time, pursuing business interests I had. At the age of 18, was already managing a restaurant. So all this stuff kind of came in together and God has never let me go. A number of things happened to me that got me ready for Christ. One is I actually got into a fistfight with a guy next door in. He operated the garage and I can’t remember what the argument was about, but it got so intense. The manager of the restaurant and the guy that owned the service station were actually beating on each other. And I broke my glasses in the meantime, and this was in a Hope, BC and I had to go to my optometrist that was in Chilliwack. So I drove, it was then, just a single lane highway and I always drove fast. So I was driving out to pass a large semi-trailer. And halfway through, I realized that I was coming head-on to another car and I realized it was going to be a front-on car crash. And somehow, I just veered into the semi-trailer. And I don’t know to this day whether it was an angel that actually intervened at that juncture, but I found myself behind the semi rather into it and the car just went whistling by and how fast. I found the first place to stop and I was kind of shaking. And I realized I had enough within me to know that I would have gone to a Christ-less eternity. That I knew. It was that event and a second event with a godly, loving pastor that finally broke my heart. And then one evening, it was a summer evening, I parked my car beside exactly … if you’ve seen the old Rambo movie where Rambo crosses a bridge, that’s exactly where I parked my car. I surrendered my life to Christ as my Savior and Lord. I heard Christ speaking to me. And that was my new birth, Isaac. I mean, that was the moment that Christ got ahold of me and I have never been the same, so praise God.

Isaac Dagneau:

That’s so cool. Well, John, today, we’re going to talk about something important, which is the topic of missions. Well, I want to talk about what missions is because I think this word kind of gets thrown around in church circles. It becomes one of the many sort of programs you could say or ministries of a church. And maybe just because it is sort of a … there’s the women’s ministry, there’s missions, there’s kids, there’s all these different things. Maybe in some people’s minds, it could just sort of be, “Oh, maybe I’ll dip my feet into missions here. Maybe I won’t.” And it kind of becomes this possibly, potentially could be a thing where we can decide to be a part of it or not. But anyways, let’s just talk about what missions is and you’ve been in ministry for quite some time. So when you’ve looked around, what do you think people think about when they think about missions?

Dr. John Neufeld:

Yeah, the definition of missions is really important. Because from my perspective, it gets used in so many different ways. I think we probably should just begin with the great commission. Go into all the world. Preach the Gospel to all nations. So we have in Matthew 28:19-20, Christ’s last command to the church, which is to be our marching orders, what we are to do. And then immediately in the book of Acts, before Jesus ascends into heaven, His last words to His disciples are to begin in Jerusalem … and see, this is really at the heart of missions, to begin in Jerusalem. And then in Judea and Jerusalem was located inside of Judea. And then to Samaria and then to the ends of the earth. So progressively, the Gospel is to go to people in the culture and then one step removed from the culture and then into cultures that have almost nothing in common with ourselves. So historically, Isaac, missiologists have used a number of numbering systems in terms of when the Gospel of Jesus Christ is brought to a culture most unlike ours. So I think missions has been understood historically in the church in terms of taking the Gospel beyond the ethnic community that we are a part of. So I think we can say that. And of course, the Gospel can’t be brought to any culture unless there is a church that is established, the Gospel that is being proclaimed, individuals who are one to Christ and trained to be faithful to Christ in everything. That’s the task of missions.

Isaac Dagneau:

That’s so good, John. Let’s back up one step, I think, and just come to grips with … You talked about Matthew 28, you talked about Acts 1:8, to be my witnesses of Jesus. If missions is this task of going to the unreached or whatever, going to these places and speaking the Gospel, sharing the Gospel, proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus, I think we just need to take one step back and say, “Why is this so essential? Why is this important? What is the Gospel maybe? Out of all the things, why is this the one commission that he kind of gave us? What’s one step back? Why is missions the sort of the thing that Jesus ends with before he goes up into heaven?”

Dr. John Neufeld:

Issac, and it’s basic, we say that Jesus is our Savior. Now, to say that he’s our Savior is to indicate that we needed to be saved. And if we needed to be saved, there was something drastically wrong with us. So I like to use the example of imagine that you’re taking an ocean voyage and you’re in a wonderful cabin. And you’re out looking over the ocean and somebody comes and says, “Well, you need to be saved.” And you’re saying, “Well, life’s pretty good.” But if somehow you fall off the edge of the ship and now you find yourself in the ocean and you see the ship sailing away. And somebody says, “You need to be saved,” well, now suddenly makes sense. I’m drowning. I can’t, with my own strength, do anything about my situation. Somebody needs to intervene and rescue me. So at the very heart of this is that the human race, all of us, you and I, everyone else are lost, alienated from God, we are under the wrath of God and that we are also unreconciled to God and we are awaiting a final judgment, and we can do nothing about our own condition. It’s not only true of us. It’s true of others. And what’s driven missions forward is that Jesus is a great Savior. He saves us from our lost condition. And if we have any compassion at all, for those who have never heard, if it even matters in inkling, it’s going to say to us that we must not remain content while there are still people in the world who have never heard the message of Christ. And at present, missiologists can talk about a 10/40 window. It’s a geographical location in which the majority of the world’s population lived. And yet, the majority of people have never heard the message of Christ before. It should keep us awake at night. We should be unable to sleep because of the appalling nature of our losses.

Isaac Dagneau:

To maybe give some specifics there, Joshua Project is a great ministry. They have researchers and they seek to do their best to help us see where those unreached people groups are. And in their estimates, 3.23 billion people in our world are in those unreached people groups. And these unreached people groups are people groups where there’s no self-sustaining ability for the Gospel really to go without outside help with outside sources. So that really puts in perspective just what you’re saying that this is a huge chunk of people in the world who have never tasted the goodness of Jesus’ salvation. One thing also I would want to mention John is that it’s important … And you’ve mentioned this already. It’s important to realize that the salvation of Jesus is not just this sort of I’m guilty and he makes me innocent and I get to go to heaven. It’s that sin really has caused guilt, but it also has caused shame. It’s caused this sense of defilement. And we believe that the kingdom of God, that Jesus brings through His ministry and death and resurrection is a salvation that actually we get to feel today, that there’s this sense of being lifted from our shame, lifted from our guilt and lifted from our defilement. When we think about going into other countries, countries that may be don’t have this sort of guilt mindset, the salvation of Jesus affects their whole life. Not just their eternal destiny, but even right now. I was recently reading an evangelism book and it was talking about a man I think in Saudi Arabia who was a Muslim and they’re a very shame-based culture. And he was committing adultery with his wife, but he had to go to the mosque to pray. So he went home and he had a shower first before he went to go to the mosque to pray and then he was fine. But in our minds, that’s totally off. He didn’t have any sense of guilt for breaking the law, but he’s like, “I need to cleanse myself from the defilement and the shame so that I could go.” And so anyways, but my point is that I think we should also be thinking about going to other people groups. We get to really emphasize the holistic salvation that Jesus brings.

Dr. John Neufeld:

I think at the heart of our lostness is what is alienation from God? I mean, we often, in Christian circles, talk about the word fallen, which means that we have fallen from our position of a whole relationship with God, that is sin has tainted us at every level. If you want an image of that, it is what is fallenness like, it is nothing works the way it’s supposed to work. Everything is broken. You talk about a guy who’s committing adultery. You see, it’s faithfulness between a man and a woman who loves each other for life is how God created us. But now, that’s broken and it’s filled with not only the adultery, but it’s filled with the lies and the deceit and the hiding from others and pretending to be something you’re not. But here’s another thing about a broken world and people of missionaries have always understood this. There are so many resources that God has placed in this world that every single human being can have enough. We can live well because of the richness of the world that God has created. But with so much corruption and everything else that happens, the poor or among us and people who have no resources, no access to healthcare, everything else. So you talk about holistic missions, the good news of Jesus says, “Look, we want to set right that which is broken.” So that’s why missions has always been on the forefront of building hospitals, building schools, and stressing literacy, helping individuals with farming projects and learning to care for themselves. And also to build a mentality that says, “Not only do I care for me. But now that I’m in Christ, I start caring for the people in my community.” So missiologists, these people who study missions, they’ll say, “Well, yes, but see, there’s a thing that’s happened in every community that’s grasped hold of the Gospel. It’s something called redemption and lift.” That is to say, you hear the good news of Jesus. He has come to save you from your sins. He has come to cleanse you and make you whole and acceptable before God. But soon, that spills out into other relationships. So that within a generation, the economic condition of a group of people is enhanced. I mean, I know that’s not the goal of missions, the goal of missions is to get right with God, but getting right with God overflows to every other area of our humanity.

Isaac Dagneau:

Yes. Amen. Amen. That’s so good. John. I want to jump to how Israel fits in with this and God’s plan. But before we go there, I think just at the beginning because I don’t think we can talk about missions without just making clear the point of the exclusivity of Jesus as the Savior. I think there are lots of people, people that even self-profess as Christians, who still, especially in the North American mindset … maybe they wouldn’t say it. But deep down, they sort of do believe that Jesus is one of other worldviews or ideas that can bring salvation and help. And I just really want to make sure that we make clear, gently, but forcefully that this is an exclusive salvation, that people need to hear the Gospel.

Dr. John Neufeld:

It’s something surprising to a great many people and that is I like to say, for people who say “Look, you think you’re the only way.” My response is, “Well, look, here’s the thing. Tell me which other saviors are out there. I’d like to hear about them.” The reality is that if our situation is that we’re lost, separated from God, that we have sinned against God, that is we’ve broken His law and we’ve done so with impunity and God’s laws is perfect, who will forgive us? And here’s the thing. There is no religion in the world that offers someone who will save us from our sins. If you go to Hinduism and Buddhism, they don’t even talk that language. If you talk up in Islam, they’ll say, “Well, your good deeds need to outweigh your bad deeds.” However, my response is then in that case, you’ve got to save yourself. But nobody says, “Listen, if I can’t save myself, here is someone within my religious system or my philosophical system or whatever system there are that says here’s a Savior.” In fact, I always say, “I’m interested in hearing of other candidates.” There isn’t one.

Isaac Dagneau:

Yeah, no, that’s great. And I think that’s important. We need to remember that. Let’s jump to Israel. A huge portion of our Bible focuses in on this nation of Israel. Most of the Old Testament, basically. Well, it’s all about Israel in many ways. If God is a missionary God, a God that seeks to save the world, then why this focus on this one nation, Israel? And that’s a huge question. If someone came up to you and said, “What’s with Israel? What’s the purpose of Israel and what do they have to do with missions?” How would you respond?

Dr. John Neufeld:

Well, I would begin by saying that God has … Habakkuk says this. I think it’s also in Numbers, that the earth will be filled with the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. And God, for His own wise purposes, has decided that he would progressively fill the earth with the knowledge of God. He started that with a man by the name of Abraham, who he called out of a pagan background. Abraham and his descendants become the people of God. But from the very outset, Abraham is told that God says to him, “I will bless you. And through you, all the nations of the earth will be blessed.” The story of Israel is the story of a group of people who were called by God to be the source of blessing to the world. Now, Israel rebelled against their calling and that’s just true. I mean, Solomon, the great King of Israel later, dedicates the temple and prays fervently that when a Gentile will come toward this house and pray towards you, that God would answer their prayers. I mean, there was all sorts of provisions that were constantly made that Israel should be sensitive to and bring the glad news of their God to the world. The rebellion against God is really a picture of all of our rebellion against God. So then Jesus comes, who is the fulfillment of the hope of Israel. The religious leaders in Israel reject the Messiah. And through that rejection, the Gospel is forced out of the Jewish community and into the rest of the world. And this is Paul in Romans 9. That’s the wisdom of God. That’s what he had planned. So the entire Bible is the story of the wisdom of God in how he starts with one man. And progressively, finally brings the saving news to the entire world.

Isaac Dagneau:

That’s amazing.

Dr. John Neufeld:

Take a long time to explain all that, but that’s a nutshell of what the Bible’s all about.

Isaac Dagneau:

That’s so good. And the whole story of the Bible really does help flesh out that one sentence that Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 1 about God uses the foolish and weak things of the world to shame the strong and the wise. I mean, that’s the whole purpose. Abraham, Israel, they were weak and rebellious and broken people and God’s still progresses His plan of salvation through them, so that’s amazing. Yeah.

Dr. John Neufeld:

Absolutely. And every one of us who’ve come to know Christ, I mean, we do say to Israel, “Look, we have a debt that we can’t repay you because you brought us the Gospel. That’s a fact. And the one we call Savior and we bow before was a first-century Jew. So Israel has become the source of salvation to the world.

Isaac Dagneau:

Praise God. Question I had as I was thinking about this because you mentioned Genesis 12:1-3, about the promise to Abraham, that through you … I’m going to bless you. And then through you, I’m going to bless the whole world. All the families of the world will be blessed. So you really get this idea that God blessed Israel and loved Israel so that they might be a way to show the love and the blessing of God to all the world. Is there a similarity there that we are saved not just for our own individual enjoyment, but are we saved for a purpose? Would you see a similar there?

Dr. John Neufeld:

Absolutely, absolutely. Anyone who calls Christ Savior and Lord has been …, we’re talking about missions has been called on missions. To simply say, “I will receive bread or sustenance, salvation. I will receive goodness from God and not care about the person who lives beside me or around the world. And I don’t care about that person.” And let me just simply say when I say care, I don’t mean virtue signaling the way that we do it today. To care means that I will sacrifice and that I will engage to make sure that the good news, the salvation, the saving news of Jesus to bring human beings into reconciliation with God must go throughout the world. It is unacceptable. So whatever it costs, I must be a blessing to the world. So I’m going to say that if you call Christ your Savior and Lord and are not interested in missions … I mean, I don’t know about the first part of the equation, I don’t know that you’ve truly come to know Christ.

Isaac Dagneau:

Amen. That’s right. You can correct me. I’m going to get this probably wrong. But there’s a story of those lepers in Israel who found all the spoil of the army that had left and they started to collect it for themselves. And they said to one another, “We can’t do this. We have to go back and tell everyone else.” And that just reminds me of that they didn’t feel right just to hoard it for themselves. They had to go back and tell all Israel. And the same thing, we just can’t enjoy the salvation for ourselves. We’re compelled to go and share the blessing which we found in Jesus.

Dr. John Neufeld:

Yeah. It’s a great illustration that you’ve used. I think that during the time of Hezekiah when the Assyrians were, were surrounding city and the angel of the Lord goes out and puts a number of them to death. And so, I mean, but still the people inside the city, I mean, it’s so desperate in there that people are basically eating the dead. There’s no food left. It’s so desperate. They are dying. And they don’t realize that the Assyrian tents, because they’re a distance away surrounding the city, that they’re all now evacuated and they don’t know that. And so these two lepers, they’re dying and they say, “Well, I going to go out to that camp because, I mean, if they kill us, we’re dying anyway and we’re dying of leprosy and we’re dying of everything else.” So they hang out over there and they find the places empty scattered and there’s food everywhere. And they’re gorging on this stuff. And then they say, “This is not right. This is not right. How can we live in this kind of abundance when the people whom we love are just over there in the city and we don’t go back there.” So that’s a great illustration because this is our problem to actually be among the fallen children of Adam, to be in the ruin of the fall and to recognize as I did. You talked about my conversion story. God protected me from death and from the judgment seat and everything else. And I have received mercy to simply say, “I’m going to now revel in that,” which I must. But to say, “I’m not going to tell the authors who are in the exact state that I’m in” or I was in and to simply be silent is to be in a state of such callous disregard for my fellow human beings. If you believe the Gospel … I’ll say it again. If you believe the Gospel, you’re engaged in mission and you’re also targeting those areas of the world that have not heard.

Isaac Dagneau:

Yeah. Let’s, in the last few minutes, jump into a question that books and books have been written about probably. What happens when people who have never heard of Jesus and the Gospel, what happens when they die? This is a question that lots of people think about. Is there room for interpretation or is it black and white? I don’t know.

Dr. John Neufeld:

Well, I mean, the Bible tells us that there is no other Savior outside of Jesus. So if we’re actually lost, then we’re lost. Then, we’re outside. Now, look, Isaac, I can’t tell you what happens to a person at the very point of dying. I don’t know if Jesus comes to everyone and declares His Gospel or he goes to no one or to a select few and gives them a last chance. I don’t know that, but I do know this. Apart from Jesus, there is no Savior. I know that. The Bible tells us that. We also know because we talked about it earlier. And no one else is even suggesting any other names as our Savior. This is what we do in the West. We have these, “Well, are they really lost?” I mean, so we do this among Western Christians. Because in our complacency, rather than feeling launched out into mission and sacrifice, we think it’s better to have a philosophical discussion about what should happen to the lost, instead of let’s share the Gospel with the lost. However, it needs to be answered. And the answer has to be is it true that we are in sin? Is it true that we’re fallen from grace? Is it true when the Bible says, “But we are all dead in our trespasses and sins and are by nature, children of wrath?” Ephesians 2:1-3. If that’s true, then we recognize that the greatest problem the human race has is our alienation from God and that we will stand and be judged eternally before him and we will suffer the consequences of our rebellion against God. That’s just what’s true of all of us. So if that’s true and if it’s true that there is no other Savior even on the horizon, we can keep talking about this forever or we can actually say, “It’s just true. And God, show me what I must do in the present now.”

Isaac Dagneau:

That’s so good. I recently heard from a pastor as well that if there’s a room in our personal theology for people that have never heard to receive the grace of God without someone going and telling them about Jesus, then it removes that sense of zeal to go and share Jesus. And that just really hit home for me.

Dr. John Neufeld:

Historically, the driving motivation behind all Christian missions is the loss of humanity. Lose that, you’re not going. Or never think about it again, you’re not going. That’s just a fact. You won’t go and share the Gospel and the lost will go into eternity and say, “Not one person cared enough to come and share with me the good news,” So let it strike you in the heart.

Isaac Dagneau:

Amen. Amen. Well, let’s end there. John, thank you so much for taking the time to do this with us.

Dr. John Neufeld:

Isaac, I always think it a privilege to spend time with you. Great to see you, my friend.

Isaac Dagneau:

In a letter written by Paul in our Bible to the Roman Christians, Paul says right off the bat that the reason for spreading the Gospel to all nations is for the sake of Jesus’s name. All people must honor and enjoy and glorify the name of Jesus. And the name of Jesus is all of who he is. Missions finds its center, its focus and purpose in the passionate activity of making the name of Jesus known, praised, enjoyed and worshiped among all peoples. We thank you for joining us this week. And we really do hope that our brief conversation inspired you to think about and act on, pray for the work of missions in our world today. Join us next week as we hear from Duane Fraser, who works at Joshua Project. It’s an incredible ministry that seeks to help Christians know and get involved with the unreached people groups of the world, so we’ll see you next week.