God is the Great Missionary

For the Father is seeking such people to worship him. John 4:23

Missions isn’t an addendum stapled onto normal Christianity. It’s at the heart of Christianity because it’s at the heart of God Himself. God is the Great Missionary of the Scriptures. We see His missionary heart from the beginning of time, when He sought out our lost and evasive parents in Eden. We see it when He promised Abraham that all the nations of the world will be blessed through his (and His) seed. We see it when He promised to make the Messiah the King of an unending Kingdom and the Light of the darkened Gentiles. We certainly see it in John 4. Jesus’ interaction with the spiritually thirsty woman at the well is a microcosm of God’s work in the world. Again and again, through the conversation with her, with the disciples, and with a village of Samaritan converts, God’s heart for missions is shown in all its glory.

The Great Missionary is seeking worshipers.

In the middle of His discussion with the Samaritan woman, Jesus makes a startling and apparently random comment in verse 23: “The Father is seeking . . . people to worship Him.” That’s one of the most important statements in Scripture. God is seeking worshipers. It’s amazing. It’s life-shaping. It’s the plotline of the whole Bible. God made us for His glory. Though we rebelled, God planned to save us for His glory, and He carried out that plan through the incarnation, life, death, and resurrection of His Son. God is the Great Missionary. He’s not distant and ambivalent, perhaps willing to forgive sinners should we decide to seek after Him. On the contrary, He’s the Planner of salvation. The Initiator. The Accomplisher. The Goal. In the memorable first words of John Piper’s Let the Nations Be Glad, “Missions exists because worship doesn’t.” God is seeking worshipers in order to display His glorious grace (Ephesians 1:6, 12, 14).

The Great Missionary is making worshipers.

Here’s the thing. When God looks throughout the earth, He doesn’t find a bunch of good-hearted people just waiting to be assembled into a heavenly choir. Rather, He finds rebels. He sees only our backs as we defiantly run our own way (Isaiah 53:6; Romans 3:10–11). Yes, God is seeking worshipers, but He doesn’t find them. He makes them! From what? From Samaritan women, for starters! From sinners like us. That’s why the context of John 4:23 is so crucial. The statement that God is seeking people to worship Him in spirit and truth isn’t coming in a treatise about music or liturgy. It’s coming in the midst of one of the great evangelistic conversations in history. Jesus is telling a disreputable and broken woman that God is seeking worshipers—and making them out of people like her! The location of worship (about which she had asked in v. 20) wasn’t the issue. Her sinful past wasn’t the issue (vv. 16–19). Faith in Him as the saving Messiah was (vv. 25–26). Thus, God is seeking worshipers (v. 23) as Jesus seeks and saves the lost (Luke 19:10). Those two statements are essentially the same!

The Great Missionary is calling us into His great missionary work.

Christ’s agenda included much more than this unnamed Samaritan woman. In His missionary zeal, He next focused on His disciples, urging them to emulate His missionary heart (vv. 27–38). Though all they could see in the Samaritan people were rivalry and race, Jesus told them to open their eyes and see a spiritual harvest (v. 35). An entire village of lost people was in the process of becoming worshipers of ‘the Savior of the world’ (v. 42). The disciples needed to get with Christ’s program. They needed to learn the joy of doing the Father’s will—missions (v. 34). They needed to pray for laborers who would participate with God in the execution of His eternal, doxological rescue mission. They needed to devote their lives to bringing in that harvest. And they would. Will you?

Let the gospel open your eyes to the harvest of worshipers around the world.

This article is reprinted with permission from Gospel Meditations for Missions, a 31-day devotional focused on the Great Commission written by Chris Anderson, Joe Tyrpak, JD Crowley, David Hosaflook, and Tim Keesee. Chris has written further on John 4, Jesus, and the Samaritan woman in his book The God Who Satisfies. Both titles are available from Church Works Media. Chris Anderson now serves as the Vice President of Global Opportunities with Biblical Ministries Worldwide.