Mission in the life of the church is often thought of as a balancing act.
On the one hand, church exists to glorify God. On the other hand, we exist to reach out to the world.
On the one hand, we worship God. On the other hand, we evangelise.
On the one hand we seek holiness. On the other hand we sully ourselves by going out into the world to make disciples.
Mission is considered a counter-balance to the other activities which we know to be important. And maybe we think it's a major counter-balance. Maybe we think it's incredibly important and the mission side of things dominates how we shape church life. At that stage the glory / worship / holiness people say "You've forgotten our core business in the church!" And the evangelistic people say "You've forgotten the lost!" And probably both sides will make excellent points as they debate each other. But they're both wrong if they think that theologically there's a trade-off. Theologically there's no trade off.
Here's my central contention for this morning: The glory of God, the worship of God, the holiness of God are thoroughly missional. Such that you cannot have the glory / worship / holiness stuff without the outreaching / evangelistic / missionary stuff. And if you think you can have holiness without outreach, you haven't just lost outreach - you've lost both. Because these things come together. It's a job lot.
This morning we're going to look at Isaiah and see that Glory and Worship and Holiness are thoroughly outgoing things because God is fundamentally an outgoing God. If that's true, what does it mean for our churches?...
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