One of the reasons that missions is at the very heart of Christianity is because Jesus teaches his people, teaches us, to see the world in a way that is totally different than the way we would ordinarily look at

it if we just saw it through the eyes of television say or just saw it through the eyes of

the secular media or through the theater or through ordinary business enterprises.

If you see the world, the way ordinary American culture sees the world, you will not be able to make any sense out of world

evangelization or out of missions. It will be a big confusion. In fact, if you want to

do a little test, which is sort of scary to do, but I invite you to do it for

your own soul's sake, you can measure, I think, the degree to which you are controlled and shaped by American culture by asking how great

is your burden for world missions.

Because the only way to sustain a burden for world missions is to see the world differently than the way you are trained to see it by watching television or by

reading secular magazines or reading the newspaper or all kinds of other innocent things.

They just don't teach you to see the world the way it's got to be seen if missions is to make

any sense.

So what I want to do as we move toward our text this morning, which is John 4, 31 to 38,

I want to take you toward that text by walking you through some illustrations in the Gospel of John of how he blew the mind of people's way

of looking at the world again and again.

Let me show you what I mean.

We'll start in John chapter 2. You can either look at these with me or you can just

listen because I'm going to pass through them fairly quickly. The first illustration of how Jesus

sees the world so differently is in John 2 and he's talking about the temple and he makes a whip and he goes into the temple and he drives out the money changers who are there

dealing and selling pigeons and goats.

And he says in verse 19 of chapter 2,

Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.

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