Have you seen them movie ‘Hacksaw Ridge?’
War movie that came out in 2016, based on a true story from the second world war about a man called Desmond Doss > he was a medic on the front lines, but he refused to use or carry a weapon of any kind > talk about an IMPOSSIBLE MISSION there, being on the front lines in a war, let alone without a weapon!
His unit comes under heavy attack and many soldiers are injured, many presumed dead.
But Desmond goes back to the scene to try to help, and he ends going back again and again, taking an injured soldier back with him to safety each time until he has rescued 75 of them, each time praying for just one more soldier to save.
Incredible true story of grit and determination, also a story of faith – his unwavering faith in Jesus and in God’s word went with him through the significant trials he faced.
Interesting how if he had set out to save 75 people from the start, maybe that might have been a mountain too high to climb, an IMPOSSIBLE MISSION. But he didn’t, he just went for one at a time and trusted in God to provide for him what he needed.
So that’s the first IMPOSSIBLE MISSION I want to share with you this morning, ‘Desmond Doss at Hacksaw Ridge.’
The next one is:
‘Sharing the gospel with our family and friends.’
Does that sound like an IMPOSSIBLE MISSION? It might sound a bit tame, a bit safer than being on the front lines in a war, it might seem like the stakes are a bit lower, we’re not talking about life and death here… Or are we?
The Christian faith is actually a matter of life and death, we believe in Jesus and we get to be in a relationship with him and live in heaven with him forever, and without Jesus we don’t get those things > it’s not nice to talk about, or to think about, and it’s also something that’s ultimately in God’s hands not ours. The ‘disowning’ part of our passage from 2 Timothy today points to this. There’s more to it than that, but this is a matter of life and death.
Paul also says this today – ‘If we died with him, we will also live with him’ (2 Tim 2:11). Life and death there, words we use when we prepare to receive communion, the dying to sin and rising in Christ that happens in our baptism when our sins are forgiven.
So if this is matter of life and death, that means it’s important!
It goes with us beyond our Sunday morning expereince, it’s not just for us but for all people.
But sharing the gospel, even with our own family and friends, is hard. This is not easy. That’s why it can fit into the category of IMPOSSIBLE MISSION.
Have you got family and friends who are not in church, who are not Christian, even who may have walked away from the faith at this point in their lives? Safe to say all of us have this experience with our own family and friends, if you don’t you must have all the answers!!
This is not easy stuff, this can be very deep and personal stuff. We can be heartbroken when we see loved ones drifting away from knowing the love of Jesus in their lives. Important to acknowledge the difficulty here, and to hear that we’re not alone in our broken-heartedness! God loved the world enough to send his son into it, so we can have hope that an amount of love as big as that is the source of strength we can depend on.
And Paul gives us a few tips today on how to go about this seemingly IMPOSSIBLE MISSION of ‘sharing the gospel with our family and friends.’
If we look at verses 14 and 15 in our passage today, Paul talks about reminding people of these things, of the things of God. Warning people about arguing, about wrangling over words, which ‘only ruins those who listen’ – stern warning there. He says to present yourself to God as one approved, as who is genuine, who has integrity and is trustworthy we can say, as ‘workers’ or ‘labourers’ who are not ashamed but handle the word of truth correctly.
That last word ‘correctly’ doesn’t simply mean doing it right as we might think in our modern English, but it actually has a more interesting meaning in the original Greek, the original sense of what Paul was saying.
The Greek word here is ‘orthotomeo,’ and it’s only used once in the bible, another rare word!
You’ll notice the ‘ortho’ part at the start, which today is a specialty dentist, an orthodontist, whose specialty is correcting teeth and jaws and mouth-related things…
I don’t know about your experience of orthodontists, but you have to trust them with what they’re doing don’t you! I had braces as a kid, so that meant lots of trips to the orthodontist – always funny how my orthodontist would ask me questions while he was literally working on my open mouth, very hard to respond with someone doing corrective work on your teeth!
The word literally means to ‘cut straight’ or the ‘rightly divide,’ used in the sense here of ‘accurately handling’ the word of truth, which is God’s word.
Cutting through is a good image for us, cutting through the noise of life to be able to see the truth. And that’s what we would love to see isn’t it, some cut through so our loved ones can see and know the love of Jesus in their lives. If only it was a quick fix, a procedure (maybe not like an orthodontist because that was pretty expensive!), a course correction so people could be back on track with Jesus, or even on the track of a relationship with him in the first place. Not so easy for us, anything is possible with God as we know but sometimes it seems like it’s never going to happen.
So what can we take way from what Paul says here >
Remind others about the good news! Remind each other, remind ourselves, Be reminded by the good news of Jesus and what he’s done for each of us > none of us are entitled to what we have in Jesus because we’ve lived a good life or done something special, none of us deserve anything from God. But we are seen and known and loved because he decided to do that.
Warning others is an interesting one, the sense here is of solemn affirmation… It means getting serious about what this is all about, it’s about life and death! Not ‘telling people off’ but much deeper than that, cutting through to the truth of God’s word which is far more than a warning against hell but an invitation to heaven. More than a warning against hell, it’s an invitation to heaven.
We are workers who are called to practice what we preach > meaning God is the one in charge, not us. He has the grand plan, not us. We are workers in his field, in his kingdom – not our own kingdom. And to be ‘orthodontic’ about this, we are called to practice what we preach as in apply God’s word to ourselves before we can share it with others. We don’t want to be orthodontists with bad teeth do we! We want to know why this stuff matters to us and to others, we want to know the deep and rich relationship we can have with Jesus which compels us to share it with others in gentleness, respect and humility.
The third and final IMPOSSIBLE MISSION to finish with today is the one we all know about, we’ve all been on the end of, we might even take it for granted at times because we know it so well.
Of course this is the IMPOSSIBLE MISSION of Jesus coming to be one of us, to save us from our sin, to give us new life and a place in his own family. The extra set of footprints in the sand there, Jesus is here with us on the journey > thinking back to Desmond Doss, not thinking about saving a huge number of people or doing some great work, but simply focusing on each one, taking it one step at a time.
All IMPOSSIBLE MISSIONS there, IMPOSSIBLE for us but not for our God!
He made all of those IMPOSSIBLE things actually happen!
He took us from wounded sinner to forgiven child, we are faith-less but he is faith-ful.
IMPOSSIBLE things for us to achieve, but exactly the things Jesus has achieved for us. Jesus is a master at achieving the IMPOSSIBLE.
More IMPOSSIBLE ways Jesus works:
When it feels like no understands what we’re going through, Jesus is there.
When it looks like we’re on our own, Jesus is there.
When the MISSION in front of us seems IMPOSSIBLE, we are reminded that we have all the hope and the love we need in Jesus, the one who can do what no one else can.
Lord we thank you for the gift of faith, that in trusting in you we can see things the way you see them. Help us when our hearts break for people we know who don’t know you, remind us of our need and wake us up to your grace, you who would do the impossible for us. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.
Tom Kitson 