Ripe for Harvest

S ESSION 2: P REPARE • 159

II. Is Our Team’s Mission to the Poor Rooted in Our Understanding of Jesus?

We are not in mission on our own initiative, rather we are ambassadors who act and speaks as those representing someone else. Our mission is simply the continuation of Jesus’ mission. Or to put it another way, Jesus’ example and teaching are the standard for evaluating our claims to know and represent God’s message. John 14.23-24 – Jesus answered him, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. [24] Whoever does not love me does not keep my words. And the word that you hear is not mine but the Father’s who sent me.” 1 John 2.4-6 – Whoever says “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, [5] but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him: [6] whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked. For Jesus the Messianic mission was defined primarily as preaching liberating news to the poor and oppressed. The Gospel was the good news that the Kingdom had come to those who had no hope. We serve as representatives of Christ only to the extent that our mission conforms to his.

A. Jesus identified himself with the poor.

2 Cor. 8.9 – For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.

1. Born to poor parents

Luke 2.22-24 – And when the time came for their purification according to the Law of Moses, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord [23] (as it is written in the Law of the Lord, “Every male who first opens the womb shall be called holy to the Lord”) [24] and to offer a sacrifice according to what is said in the Law of the Lord, “a pair of turtledoves, or two young pigeons.”

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