Unit One: A Few Covenant Essentials 

Lesson Nine: Doing Good

Every person must have a mission. A purpose. A reason for living. It can be cheesy or noble. Silly or serious. But ya gotta have a direction for your life, or you will just sit and waste your time.

What about us? What’s our mission?

If you want to follow Jesus, there are some very interesting priorities that tend to creep into your life—like doing the right thing, spending time with God, and letting God shape you to be more cool.

But there’s something else. There’s a purpose that is bigger than just us. It’s bigger than just us and God.

It’s us and God and the world. That’s our mission. That’s the effect that our lives should have, at some point, in some way.

In a way it’s one big mission, and in a way it’s two. We’ll call the first part Mission One, and the second will be Mission Zero.

Let’s look at Mission One. Check this out:

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

James 1:27

This is a guy names James writing to his friends. He describes true religion as something very practical. Or maybe two things very practical. Or three things, maybe. What are they?

One mission is very personal. It’s about living a clean and respectable life. Doing good. Doing the right thing for yourself.

But the other is about somebody else. It’s about taking care of someone, and the someones that James mentions are the weak and poor, who would have no way of taking care of themselves in the society of that day.

The situation probably hasn’t changed much.

James gets some support from Jesus, which is no surprise. Somebody asked Jesus to choose the two all-time most fantastic laws in the Old Testament.

Check this out:

One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: "Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?"

Jesus replied: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."

Matthew 22:35-40

The first law is easy. Love God. It’s not easy to do, but it’s an easy choice for the best law. It’s the homecoming queen of laws.

The second law is not so simple. Or maybe it is. What is it?

All other laws are kind of included in these two. Get the first best law right, and you won’t insult God or neglect him or not live for him. Get the second best law right, and you won’t steal, lie, gossip, or treat people bad.

Remember the story of the Good Samaritan? Some guy saw a need and decided to help, even though he didn’t know the person he was helping. The truth is the two dudes might have been rivals, or enemies. But the Samaritan guy still helped.

Jesus told that story to explain the second best law. You can look that up in Luke 10, starting in verse 20. It’s the same question, the one about the best laws. But some guy wants to weasel out of his responsibility to help, and Jesus tells him NO.

So that’s Mission One, to take care of the people around you. There are a lot of ways to do that. You can just be nice to the people you meet, or you can go paint someone’s garage or help someone who is injured at the side of the road.

If you don’t know a way to help, don’t worry. There are projects that help people on a global scale. The shoebox ministry of Samaritan’s Purse reaches out to tons of countries, and Covenant World Relief sends help to victims of floods and famine.

So what is Mission Zero? How is it different from the one we just saw? Jesus gave us a mission statement at the end of the book of Matthew. People call it the Great Commission, because it’s so important. I’ll print it here:

Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."

Matthew 28:18-20

Maybe that’s too many words crowded into a little paragraph. Let me trim it down a bit. I’m leaving out some good parts, so don’t forget them.

Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.

Matthew 28:19-20a

Still too many? Okay. Let’s get serious.

make disciples … of all nations … baptize them … and teach them …

from Matthew 28:19-20

The mission is to take the gospel everywhere and share it with the people we meet. And if someone wants to follow Jesus, our job is to help them grow. That’s the mission.

The important phrase is make disciples. A disciple is someone who follows Jesus. So we could just say that our job is to help people follow Jesus.

How might we do that? What kinds of things could the church do to help people follow Jesus?

Now we have Mission Zero and Mission One. But in reality, they are two parts of one mission, something that you might call Mission Zero-One. Nobody actually calls it that, but they might as well. 

The point is that the two mission statements get squashed together. Missionaries often started schools and hospitals. They couldn’t separate kindness from the gospel. So they tried to meet two kinds of needs.

Let’s look at a few imaginary case studies. The people aren’t real, but you might find the same situation if you look around a little. Read through the cases and think of ways that a person might complete their mission to share the gospel or to help those in need.

Note: You don’t have to come up with an easy idea. Most mission work is difficult, and churches struggle to make the necessary sacrifice. We’re just thinking here.

Case One: A large number of migrant workers come to the community each year to help with harvest. They stay in poor housing and make little money at their job. When the work is finished, they move on to another harvest in a different state.

What kind of needs might you find among these people? How can the church accomplish its mission here?

Case Two: The population of a small town is growing older and older. The mayor is beginning to complain that houses are not being maintained, and when the small senior center serves a meal, the tables are filled with people who can no longer cook for themselves.

What kind of church project might help this community? What can one small youth group do to help the situation?

Case Three: The island of Pa’a’ha’na’a’ka was struck by a massive tidal wave that destroyed three villages and left several thousand people without housing and clean water. Pa’a’ha’na’a’ka is on the other side of the world from Red Rock Church, but a group of middle school students from the church still want to help.

What can they do? What kind of agencies in the Covenant Church might help? What might they do on their own?

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