All Send, Some Go

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All Send, Some Go

Raz Bradley

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That. You know, it's a good set when chunks of drumsticks are flying around. I don't know if any of y'all caught that or not. I think there's a small piece of drumstick in the baptismal back there. I know what you're thinking. Who is this guy?

My name is Raz. If you've been around here for a while, I'm the hidden pastor who doesn't come up and speak here very often. Despite the fact that I spend the least amount of time speaking from this stage this morning, I am easily, easily, like worlds apart, the most qualified of our four pastors to speak. The topic is missions, particularly overseas mission, and I am an overseas missionary. I was sent as a missionary to the long lost nation across the Pacific, the United States of America, a decade ago. And for the last 10 painstaking blood, sweat, and tearsy years, I have labored for the kingdom.

History books have not yet been written that will include the name of Raz Bradley and his missionary conquest of the United States of America. If you haven't heard me speak before, yeah, it's always like this. When I first moved to the States, I moved straight here. I moved to Columbia. I went to CIU for grad school. And one of the first things that struck me as I was touring, I guess, the city, one of my friends took me for a tour downtown, was the overwhelming number of churches, church buildings specifically.

And I remember standing in downtown Columbia, and I was on the corner of, I don't know which streets they are, and I could see eight different churches from one corner. And some of them I'm giving myself credit for with like a steeple over there. But I could see the existence, the presence of eight churches from one corner. In downtown Columbia, there is two Lutheran churches that are separated by one block. They had enough people in that Lutheran church to start a second one a block away at some point. But the fact is, there is more churches than houses in downtown Columbia.

The very building that we're in was formerly known as First Baptist Church of Casey. If you go this way for about a mile, you'll hit a church called First Baptist Church of West Columbia. And in order to get there, you have to get on State Street. But while you're driving from First Baptist Church Casey to First Baptist Church West Columbia, you will pass on State Street, State Street Baptist Church. That's three churches, three Baptist churches on a one mile strip of State Street. Well, I'm giving us credit.

We're a block off. If you go out these back doors, you'll be on a street that goes this way called Holland Avenue. If you take Holland Avenue that direction for about a mile, or you'll take Holland Avenue for about half a mile, and you'll take 12th Street for about half a mile, you'll come to another Baptist Church. This Baptist Church is called Holland Avenue Baptist Church, which is curious, seeing as we're on Holland Avenue and they're on 12th Street. Go figure. The point is, on a world scale, the saturation of churches in this area is kind of crazy.

Which is why when I say I am a brave missionary to the United States, we all kind of know that that's a joke. And it's not that we don't think that America needs the gospel. I think we would all probably claim that. But it is amusing to think of America, this area, as needing missionaries. But why?

Why is that? If I'm a Christian and I want to tell others about Jesus and I leave my motherland and I travel 15 hours on a flight to go somewhere else to tell people about Jesus, why shouldn't that count? And whether or not we like to admit it, I think we all intrinsically have an answer. Whether or not it's the correct answer, I don't know. We have an answer. And the answer is, bro, there's already churches here, right?

Access to the gospel here already exists. If you meet someone around here who's never heard the name of Jesus, it's because they just arrived here from somewhere else. If you're from here, you've heard of Jesus and you know where to go looking for him if you want him. And so a great irony exists here. The American church sends the vast majority of its money and missionaries overseas to places that already have access to the gospel. And we don't realize that we're engaged in exactly the same logical fallacy that makes the idea of Raz Bradley being a missionary to the United States amusing.

I'm supposed to be wrapping up this series today, but the truth is we are just getting started. So at risk of being slightly repetitive, I'm going to be restating a lot of the stuff that we've already talked about throughout this series. Uh, this is the conclusion to the introduction. And I know that y'all don't speak the Queen's English, but in real English, when we conclude an introduction, the entire point of that is to set the stage for what's about to come for the rest of the story. And that's the point of today is to conclude the introduction, but set us up for what comes for the rest of the story.

Uh, let's pray as we, we kick off this morning and turn to God's word. Father, we thank you for the privilege of living in an area where there is easy access to the gospel. Please give us a desire to see the good news of Jesus reach into the darkest places in the world, that those who are far from you could come to know Jesus. Amen. Let's take a quick look at the guiding verse on missions.

It's called the Great Commission. This is when Jesus sends out his apostles at the end of the book of Matthew. This is going to be up on the screen, uh, Matthew 28, and I'm going to start in verse 18. It says, and Jesus came and said to them, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the father and of the son and of the Holy spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you and behold, I am with you always to the end of the age. The word, the, the section we're really focusing on today is, is that middle section in verse 19 and specifically the words that Jesus spoke that are translated to all nations.

Uh, in previous weeks, Chet has talked about how the, the original word in Greek is S. N. And so most of y'all, I'm assuming don't speak Greek. That says Panta, T. S. N.

That means all of the nations, or at least S. N. A. is translated in that section as nations. And what we talked about is that a better translation than nations, because when we hear the word nation, we think of countries with borders and governments and that kind of thing. A better translation would be people group or ethnicities. And that what Jesus is actually commanding is for us to take the good news to every people group.

Now it wasn't always this way. The evangelical church has erred on the translation for some time. Uh, we even called, if we go to the next slide, we even called our sermon series, all nations. And we did that knowing full well that in that section of scripture, we don't prefer the translation nations. We prefer a different translation, but guys, if you didn't know yet, I'm a little bit of a wizard with computers and things like this are easily fixed. And so you can just get a little bit of Photoshop in there and change it.

I was on my work computer. I didn't have Photoshop. That was paint, but you get the point. All nations is, is not the preferred translation. All ethnic, all people groups is how we should think about it. In my brief semesters as a missiological historian in seminary, I wrote papers on what is now commonly known of as the Lausanne movement.

Lausanne is the name of a city in Switzerland where a number of, uh, mission, uh, conferences were held in the 1970s. Uh, the first one was in July of 1974, 2,300 evangelical leaders from across the world, about 150 countries were represented. They all came to Lausanne in Switzerland to discuss the status of God's mission. Uh, essentially it was a state of the union for global evangelism. This is a big oversimplification, but one of the main questions that was being asked at the conference addresses the very nature of this all nations idea, this, what do we do with the all nations phrase? Because in general, in throughout evangelical, uh, history up to that point, the rallying cry of evangelical Christianity was that we should have a Christian church in every nation that is in every country and that God's mission would somehow become accomplished if we could just get a church in every country.

In fact, uh, there's an Anglican archbishop. His name is William temple. This is 30 years before Lausanne in 1942. He wrote that the great new fact of our time is the existence of the Christian church in nearly every nation on earth. So, uh, if God's mission was almost accomplished in 1942, how come in 1974, they were having these massive conferences in Switzerland to discuss whether or not the mission was done yet. And why are we still talking about it today?

Uh, at Lausanne in 1974, there was this bloke, his name was Ralph winter. Ralph winter, uh, was a relatively unknown person at the time, but he, he made his, he made his name at Lausanne. Uh, and he died. What he diagnosed was that in the church was what he called people blindness. And so I'm going to read a chunk of what he said at Lausanne in 1974. He said, I think this is up on the screen.

He said, I'm afraid that all our exaltation about the fact that every country of the world has been penetrated has allowed us to suppose that every culture has by now also been penetrated. This misunderstanding is a malady so widespread that it deserves a special name. Let us call it people blindness. That is blindness to the existence of separate peoples within countries. The nations to which Jesus often referred were mainly ethnic groups. The phrase make disciple of all ethnic does not let us off the hook.

Once we have a church in every country, God wants a strong church within every people. Uh, he went on in that same speech at Lausanne to estimate that, uh, over 95% of all missionaries deployed outside of the West, uh, were sent to be among other Christians or to countries that had established churches. He confronted at Lausanne, the global church for sending only a tiny fraction of all missionaries to what he described as the largest proportions of non-believing people groups, primarily the people groups among hidden Hindus, Muslims, and the Chinese. That was all in 1974. So fast forward to today, 2022, it's 48 years.

Let's call it 50. Uh, you've seen this map. This map has come up in previous weeks, uh, in green are areas, not countries because it's kind of split up all over the place, but areas in which access to the gospel is easy. In yellow is areas that have limited access to the gospel. And in red are areas with almost no gospel presence. In week one of this series, Chet, uh, quoted from David Platt, who spoke at this year's Together for the Gospel Conference.

Uh, it's a huge conference that happened in Kentucky. All of our pastors and Isaac went to the conference. Uh, there was 10,000 people there and, and he diagnosed three problems. And I don't want to talk about the second problem. Uh, but instead of quoting him again, I actually want to, uh, do something pretty cringeworthy, which is play a clip from another sermon inside of my own sermon. It's not really kosher.

You're not supposed to do that, but I'm going to do it today because I think Platt's demeanor and the visual that he draws attention to, uh, something that would be missed if I just kind of read what he said. And so, uh, we're going to play about a minute and a half of what Platt said at Together for the Gospel. Now, before we do that, uh, it's going to sound a little echoey. He was in a massive hall with 10,000 people in it. So that's not an effect that we're putting on there.

It's just the nature of the recording. So let's watch that. The church, our churches are practically ignoring the 3 billion people who need the gospel most. And this statement is not just anecdotal. I could show you the research, give you the Numbers. I'll let just one summarize the picture.

We as Christians in our country spend most of our money on ourselves, but we do give, we give collective billions of dollars to our churches, most of which we spend on making our churches more comfortable for ourselves. And then out of that money we give to churches and ministries, we give billions of dollars to missions, to gospel and church work and other places in the world, what we would call missions giving. But did you know, we've done the research that approximately 99% of our missions giving, so not talking about all of our resources or not even all of our giving in the church, like specifically that which we're giving to missions, approximately 99% of missions giving goes to people and places in the world that already have access to the gospel. to green and yellow places on this map. So the problem that he diagnoses is that the church is practically ignoring the people and places most unreached by the gospel.

50 Years later, after Ralph Winter diagnosed a problem of people blindness, Ralph Winter diagnosed that we're sending missionaries to places that already have the gospel. 50 years later, what's the update? I know it's a different statistic, but it's very closely related. Platt said that 99% of church giving, church giving specifically to missions, goes to countries and places that already have access to the gospel. So have we got better?

Or have we got worse? About the same. In no unclear terms, a problem has been diagnosed. And this is the problem that Platt said. The church is practically ignoring the people and places most unreached by the gospel. So what next?

Let's turn back to God's word and think through some practical steps for the global church, for Mill City Church, and for each of us as believers. I will go back to Matthew 28. This is the Great Commission again, just verse 19 this time. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. If you're relatively new at this church, we have four pastors. They all have different personalities, different types.

I am typically known in our church as the nicest of all the pastors. I'm the one who's always kind and polite, never sarcastic or abrasive. I don't know why y'all are laughing. But for the purpose of reinforcing the way that people view me, I'm going to be very dramatic in the way that I read exactly the same chunk again to almost condescendingly draw really obvious attention to the really obvious command here. All right, y'all ready for this?

Go and make disciples of all people groups, all ethnic. Go and make disciples of all people. This is something we are missing regularly. All people, all people groups, all ethnicities. Go and make disciples of all people. And in order for this to happen, somebody has to go.

That's the point there. The call here is urgent. The mission is critical. And yet, those willing to do it are few. Now, it can't be everybody, obviously. But it has to be somebody.

In fact, it's going to be somebody. It can't be everybody. But it has to be somebody. So here's how I want us to start thinking about this, how we should be shaping our conversation in a healthy way so as not to overburden or guilt trip ourselves, but at the same time to actively contribute to God's mission amongst the nations, amongst all people groups in tangible ways. And here's what I want us to remember. Remember, everyone sends and some go.

Everyone sends and some go. Now, to be clear, this is the most all-encompassing version of the word everyone. This is not one of those ones with exceptions where you say, I told a joke and everyone laughed. That could be true. That might not be true. This is everyone, unequivocally everyone.

All Christians are senders. They are supporters. They are cheerleaders. They are funders. They are ralliers. They are burden carriers.

They are sustainers. They are boosters. They are advocates. They are prayer warriors. There are missionaries on the front line working to get into the darkest places to bring the good news that Jesus rescues us from sin and gives us a path to salvation. If we put faith in him.

There are people in the darkest places in the world trying to get that message through. And if we're not there holding their hand, we ought to be supporters who are sending. I think we get this idea. It may come easier with an example. During World War II, the U.S. came together as a nation to fight the evil Axis powers. There was a bunch of soldiers who went.

They all went overseas to go off and fight the war. But there was a lot that happened on the home front as well. Folks rationed. Entire factories were transformed to stop producing things for household goods and cars. And instead, they produced munitions and tanks. Everyone sacrificed together because they knew the stakes.

And they believed in the cause. That is what the church does when they support those who go. We give financially. We pray daily. We correspond when we can. And we engage with those on the front lines.

Christians are senders. Everyone sends and some go. Now, we don't know who among us will go yet. I pray that that number increases. I pray that as we have a burden for global evangelism, that the number of us who would go would increase. In the past few weeks, we've had David Taylor from Empower One and Ben Johnson from 1040 Hope, both encouraging our church family to pray and consider the possibility that you might be called to go.

And specifically, to the red places. It's my hope that each one of us can see enough of the beauty of Jesus, enough of that to take that missionary call seriously. Seriously enough that we would consider it. Seriously enough that we would pray about it. Am I called? Should I go?

And if you feel that there's a part of you tugging you, urging you forward to answer some part of that call, then your response is to take next steps, to learn more, to talk to Ben, and begin a conversation about what it looks like not just to go, but to be prepared to go and reach people in the red zone. Everyone sends, some go. Now, it would be negligent to spend a whole mission series and not circle back to look at what beauty is accomplished when the mission is complete. We looked here in week one. This is going to be Revelation 7. It'll be up on the screen.

This is the Apostle John writing about the vision that he has at the end of time. He says this, You want to know what that means? Guys, someday, and it may not be today, but someday, the gospel will infiltrate the ethne. The people groups in the red zones in Afghanistan, in Yemen, in Somalia, in Sudan, Pakistan, Syria, Iraq, Mali, Libya. Those are countries. We've talked about the fact that we're not talking about countries.

We're talking about people groups. The Tajik, the Pashtun, the Uzbek, the Hazara, the Emak. All of these people groups have less than 0.02% evangelical Christians as part of their population. All of these people groups speak different primary languages. All of these people groups reside inside of the nation of Afghanistan. And there's about 35 million of them in just those people groups that I named, along with another 70 individually identified unreached people groups that also reside inside of Afghanistan.

Now, to our Western ears, that is a pretty scary list full of hostile-sounding countries, potentially hostile-sounding people groups. It is no wonder that there is not a line of people who want to go serve there. We're not talking about mission trips to the Bahamas. We're talking about mission trips to the hardest places in the world. It's dangerous. It's hard work.

But someone is going to go. And when they do, when the gospel takes root, a glorious and beautiful picture will come to fruition, like the final pieces of a 10, no, 100,000-piece puzzle, finally coming together so that we can see it in its true glory. At the end of time, in the throne room of the king, a great multitude that no one could number from every nation, every tribe, every people, every language, stand before God in awe and worship. You may be thinking similar thoughts that I think the first time, or that I thought the first time I heard a lot of this. In the grand scheme of things, I'm one little person in a country of 330 million on a planet with some 7.5 billion.

Multiply that by the generations that have existed in the couple thousand years since Jesus and multiply again by the generations before that. What good, how big a part am I actually going to play? Admittedly, and we have to admit it, it's a pretty bleak mindset. It's a pretty defeated mindset. If everyone had this mindset, no one would go. But if every church, every believer shifted that mindset, baby steps shifted that mindset towards obedience to God's call, to Jesus' commission, then we would see the kind of global changes that it would take to reach all of those people in the red areas.

If God's mission is that the church would go and make disciples of all people, what's my role? Well, we beat the drum of local missions for years at Mill City. That is the idea that we would talk about Jesus to our colleagues, our friends, our neighbors, our family. That's part of it. That's day-to-day life. That is easy-ish, but it's low-hanging fruit.

It's right in front of us. We should be engaging in that as commonplace. But there's also the part that includes reaching those people groups that no one else is going to. Everybody sends some go. Now, maybe you should go. Maybe that's something that you should be having conversations about.

But you should definitely send. In the past month, again, David Taylor and Ben Johnson, both of whom work for organizations reaching red countries, both of whom have offices in our building right there, they've been platformed to talk about different ways that we can send. You should also know that we, as a church, have increased our missions giving this year. And since the Rockies returned from the field, we've taken everything on that budget line item and allocated that directly to support 1040 Hope. We now give 1040 Hope $575 a month. That may seem like a lot.

That may seem like it's insignificant. I don't really know how you interpret 575 bucks a month to the red areas. But what it represents in our church is a down payment on where we're going long term. It is a down payment that we are committed to reaching unreached areas. And one of the difficulties in my life is picking and choosing the kinds of things that I want to support. I think, to a degree, everyone has to make those decisions.

It's not just how much money should I be giving. It's also who should I be giving that money to. And I have to admit, sinfully in my own heart, that some pretty awful stuff happens when I start to consider something like missions in Afghanistan. I have trust issues. Is that organization going to waste the money? Is it going to get stolen?

Is it going to impact anything? Will there be a return on investment? Is it going to be a return on investment? Worse, there's downright racism. Afghanistan? Aren't they the guys who are trying to kill everyone in the West?

Why should I care what happens to them? Why should I care if they meet Jesus or not? Aren't they the enemy? There's lack of faith. That country is too far gone. I don't think God could perform a miracle and save them.

There's pride. You get very little recognition when you give to something that happens on the other side of the planet. It's much easier to give to something right here where you can take a photo of yourself, handing over a big check, and put it on Facebook and look really good. Sometimes they slap your name on a building. And of course, there's comfort. Why give my money away to something that seems hopeless when I can just spend it on me on Amazon?

In general, I am likely to have a lot of reasons that I don't give to something like this. But ultimately, what that does, what all of my reasons, what all of my excuses do, is highlight the different areas that I don't believe in God's plan to reach all people. That I am out of sync ultimately and not lined up with God and his desire to reach all people. And that needs to be fixed in myself. So what is the correct response to this?

God calls us to take the gospel to all people. And we've been ignoring those who need it most. Some should go. But all of us, Mill City Church, should and will send. The hardest hitting part of David Platt's message, the message that we played a clip from, the hardest hitting part for me in that sermon, the part that kind of hurt, that was a gut punch, you have to understand, he was addressing church leaders from across the country and across the world. There was 10,000 of us there.

The room was massive. And he said to all of us, at some point, collectively, we've got to decide to rectify this great imbalance and obey this great commission. We've got to mobilize billions of dollars and tens of thousands of missionaries to get the gospel to the red zone. This all-nation series, this all-ethne series, it's intended to serve as something of a pivot point for us as a church. These conversations about the red countries, we've referred to it sometimes as the 1040 window. We want all of this language, all of this idea of the unreached or the red areas, we want this to be commonplace for us as we talk consistently about missions and reaching every tribe, tongue, and nation.

Some of us will go. All of us at Mill City are going to send. Matt Freeman's going to make his way back up. I'm going to close out with three thoughts of things we get to do in response, not just to this today, but the whole series. Y'all should be able to predict all three of these. They're very straightforward and very simple.

The first one is pray. Pray for those who are already on the field. Pray for the organizations trying to reach the unreached. Pray for those who are going to be called. And pray for those who live in the red zones. The second one, also very obvious, is give.

Look at your budget. What does it show about what you care most? What changes can you make in order to reorient yourself towards God's mission? Some of y'all should start giving directly to organizations that send people to the red zones on top of what you're already giving to Mill City and other causes. The third one, also obvious, is go. I realize that this one is not going to be for everyone, but it will be for some.

Some of y'all need to stop ignoring the call to missions. You need to take steps to see what it would mean to begin training and eventually be launched specifically to the red areas on the map. Like I said at the beginning this morning, today is the conclusion of a series, but it is the beginning of a new way of thinking for us in Mill City about global missions and for our church. And in obedience to him, all of us will send. And I pray that some of us will go. Let's pray.

Father, we recognize this morning that the message of the gospel, the good news that Jesus came for us is for all people. And that there are billions of people who don't even know who Jesus is and don't even have a way to find out more about him. We pray for those in the red zone, that they would meet a Christian. We pray that organizations sending to the red will be able to penetrate into countries that are very hard to gain access to. We pray that we would give generously to organizations that are working on this. We pray that for those of us who will go, that you will be opening doors and guiding that path.

In Jesus' name, amen. This morning we're going to take communion. If you are not a believer, this is just kind of one of those rituals that Christians do. You're invited to stay seated. Matt's going to sing a song. There's going to be words on the screen.

If you're not a Christian, just stay there and consider some of the things you've heard this morning and whether or not you want to learn more about Jesus. If you are a Christian, come and receive Christ's body and his blood was shed for you. Do this in remembrance of him. There is gluten-free options for those of us with sensitive tummies in the back. But for everyone else, anytime during this song, feel free to just move and take communion.

Here's what the doctors said. Thank you. I'm so sorry to see you. Take communion. There is a place like this happening there. Like this for me.

Let's go to Ephra топ.

Plant Churches

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Plant Churches

Spencer Cary

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Good morning. My name is Spencer and I am one of the pastors here. We are in a four-week series called All Nations. In week one, Chet introduced us to the Great Commission again that we center our hope on as Christians, that we are called to go and make disciples of all nations. And one of the things that we're emphasizing in this series is that fulfilling the Great Commission means making disciples of all nations. The Greek word for nations there is ethnos, which is where we get the word ethnicity.

This is all people groups everywhere. And in week one, he introduced this map from the Joshua Project that emphasizes where the greatest amount of lostness is amongst people groups in the world. That red area in the center is typically referred to as the 1040 window. This is the latitude, longitude window on that map that has Christians that not only don't, or has unbelievers that not only don't know Christ, some of them don't have a Bible in their language. Some of them don't have a Christian that speaks their language for hundreds of miles. There aren't churches in these areas.

And if we're called to go and make disciples of all nations, that involves going to those places, the hardest to reach places in the world to deliver the gospel. So Chet introduced that week one, week two. He walked us through a little bit of one of the two kind of big questions that come out of that as we biblically approach this. I would encourage you to go back and listen to that if you missed last week. Today, we're going to take a look at the first missionary journey that went to actually tackle unreached people groups. That went to specifically make disciples and plant churches amongst places that had none.

The first big step in fulfilling the Great Commission, and that is found in Acts 13 and 14 in Paul's and Barnabas, their first missionary journey. So, that means it's Acts 13 and 14. We have two chapters of material that we're working through today. So, typically, we say you can grab a Bible, but we also have the Bible on the screen that you can follow along with us. That is not the case today. We're actually going to have a map on the screen of the missionary journey so that you can follow along.

That will help kind of us see where all this is happening, which means you really do need to grab a Bible. If you don't have a Bible, there are Bibles around you, and the blue Bibles, it's on page 537. But we'd encourage you to have a Bible. You can also pull it up on your phone. Just don't check your email. Don't go to Facebook.

Don't do the things that... It's a lot of material anyways to get through all at once. You don't need anything to distract you beyond that. So, we've got two chapters to work through, and there are three main encouragements that come out of these two chapters that I want us to see. The first is the mission of God begins with prayer. Second, the mission of God invites suffering.

And third, the mission of God plants churches. Okay? We're going to see that in order as we walk through the text. So, let me pray, and then we'll jump in. God, I pray that you would open our hearts to this bold call, this beautiful opportunity to make disciples in places that have none. God, I pray you'd help us see that today in the Scriptures, and that we respond in faith and repentance and worship and obedience.

We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Okay. Verse 1, chapter 13. Now, there were in the church at Antioch.

Okay. So, this is an overview of the first missionary journey that Paul and Barnabas went on. Each of these missionary journeys start in the city of Antioch, which is in modern-day Syria, also known as ancient-day Syria. It has not changed its name for 2,000-plus years. So, they're in the city of Antioch. In the previous chapters in Acts, you see God is doing a great work.

They're in that city. And then, it says, they were at the church at Antioch, which, by the way, the next slide, just to help us a little bit. It's going to be hard to see, I know. The gold star. That's going to be Paul and Barnabas trucking along the way. So, you see the gold star.

Follow the gold star. You know where we're at. Okay. So, now, there were in the church at Antioch prophets and teachers, Barnabas, Simeon, who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manion, a lifelong friend of Herod the Tetrarch, and Saul. While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, set apart for me Barnabas and Saul. Okay.

So, the book of Acts is going to shift from calling him Saul, which is his more Jewish name, to Paul, his more Gentile, Greco-Roman name. But this is Saul, Paul, the apostle Paul. Set apart them for the work to which I have called them. Then, after fasting and praying, they laid their hands on them and sent them off. So, being sent out by the Holy Spirit, they went down to Seleucia and from there sailed to Cyprus. Okay.

The first thing I want us to see is that the mission of God begins with prayer. The mission of God begins with prayer. The early church believed this. They believed this. They lived this out. In verse 2, it says, while they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, that doesn't seem to be something that they did especially for this.

This wasn't like a prayer meeting that they came together for, which those are good. But that doesn't seem to be what's happening. This seems to be a regular rhythm of what the church did at the time. They were praying and they were fasting and they were worshiping. In the midst of that, God speaks to them in a powerful way and says, set apart for me, Paul and Barnabas, for the work to which I have called them. And this is to make disciples amongst unreached people groups.

To go to the Gentiles. To go to those who don't have the gospel. To go into the darkest places of the world. Brothers and sisters, if we want to reach Casey, which we do. If we want to reach Columbia, which we do. If we want to obey the Great Commission and make disciples of all nations to go into the darkest, most remote parts of the world that desperately need Christ.

It begins with this rhythm of normative, dependent prayer. That we do over and over and over again. But we overcomplicate this sometimes. We will, listen, we will strategize the heck out of anything. Like that's something that we as Western American Christians will do. We will find a strategy or a program or, you know, a series, right?

To tackle this. But it begins with normative, dependent prayer. John Piper says, a prayerless Christian is like a bus driver. A bus driver who's in a ditch trying to get out of it. But he fails to see that he has Clark Kent on board.

And he's pushing the bus to get it out. But he fails to see that Clark Kent Superman is on board. That's us as prayerless Christians. We fail to see that if we want to be obedient to this calling, we have the Holy Spirit at work in us. We have the God, the universe behind us. And it begins with normative, normal, dependent, regular prayer.

Praying for the nations. Praying that God would do a work in the city. Praying over and over and over again. And in the midst of this type of prayer in this church in Antioch, the Holy Spirit says, Set apart for me Paul and Barnabas to be sent out. So they lay hands on them.

The Holy Spirit sends them through his people out. And they're off. And they travel down to, say, Lucia, port city. And then they're off to Cyprus. Verse 5. When they arrived at Salamis, which is the port city, they proclaimed the word of God in the synagogues of the Jews.

Now, you can notice that's a normative pattern that happens in the book of Acts. They go to the Jewish synagogues first, proclaim Christ, and then it expands out from there. And they had John to assist them. This is John Mark, the writer of the Gospel of Mark. He's along with them for this part of the journey. Verse 6.

When they had gone through the whole island as far as Paphos. So, all across the island, sharing the Gospel, they get to the other side of it at Paphos. They came upon a certain magician. Verse 6. A Jewish false prophet named Bar-Jesus. Now, Bar is Aramaic for son of.

Son of Jesus. This is not our Jesus. Jesus was a common name at the time. So his father was named Jesus. We're going to learn in a moment. His name is Elimus, the magician.

This is Elimus, son of Jesus. So, he was with the proconsul, Sergius Paulus. He was to be the Roman leader of that area. A man of intelligence who summoned Barnabas and Saul and sought to hear the word of God. So he hears about the Gospel.

He wants to hear about this. But there's this Elimus, the magician, who's in his ear. Think less Harry Potter, more Jafar in Aladdin. Kind of working behind the scenes, whispering evil into the ruler. Verse 8. But Elimus, or Elimus, sorry.

The magician, that is the meaning of his name. Opposed them, seeking to turn the proconsul away from the faith. So, this is the classic evil magician in your ear. This is Lord Voldemort in the ear of King Theodon using the force to keep Thanos on the iron throne type of magical story. Not really. That's just a troll.

A lot of the nerds that we have here. Quite literally, this is what's happening. This is satanic forces of evil at work to oppose the Gospel. So, when tapping into those forces to oppose the work of Christ with false teaching. And Paul, don't play. Like, he's not having that.

He aggressively combats that in verse 9. But Saul, who was also called Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, looked intently at him and said, You son of the devil, you enemy of all righteousness, full of all deceit and villainy. Will you not stop making crooked the straight paths of the Lord? Will you not stop getting in the way of the Gospel going forward? And now, behold, the hand of the Lord is upon you, and you will be blind and unable to see the sun for a time. So, he strikes them blind, which I wish was a spiritual gift that still existed.

Then I could just, like, turn on TBN or get on a YouTube channel and just strike false prophets blind. Because, you know, good hobby. But, because they're the worst. Okay. Immediately, mist and darkness fell upon him. So, they strike him blind.

He went about seeking people to lead him by the hand. Then the proconsul believed when he saw what had occurred, for he was astonished at the teaching of the Lord. So, this sways the proconsul. It's the miraculous work that they just did combined with the Gospel, the teaching of Christ. He believes. It's almost as if, if you remove a false teacher from somebody's ear, they can clearly hear the Gospel and respond in faith and repentance.

That's what happens. So, this happens, and then they're off. They leave Cyprus. Verse 13. Now, Paul and his companions set sail from Paphos and came to Perga in Pamphylia. Okay.

So, now they're in Perga. That is modern-day Turkey. That's where the majority of the rest of this mission is going to be. It's in modern-day Turkey. So, this is the pattern of Paul. They were in Cyprus.

They made disciples, establishing the church, and they're out. That's part of what he does, is what Chet introduced us to in week one. They make converts. They plant churches. They're on to the next unreached area. And then it quickly says, and John left them and returned to Jerusalem.

So, John Mark leaves them. We found out a couple chapters later that this was not a good leaving, because when they go, gear up to go on a second missionary journey, John Mark wants to join them. Barnabas says yes. Paul says no. They actually have a sharp disagreement and divide, and don't do mission work together again. We know from the rest of the scriptures that reconciliation happens, that Paul, in his final letters, is writing, asking John Mark to come and see him.

But this is a painful experience, nevertheless. Now it's just Paul and Barnabas as they continue. And now they're going to go to Antioch in Pisidia. This is a different Antioch. Same name, different city. Now this group of cities up here is in a region called Galatia, which should sound familiar if you know the New Testament.

That is the letter that was written to the Galatians. So the letter to the Galatians, the book of Galatians, was circulated amongst these next four cities that we're going to see. Verse 14. But they went on from Perga and came to Antioch in Pisidia. And on the Sabbath day they went into the synagogue and sat down. After the reading from the law and the prophets, which that's a normal thing that happens in synagogues, have a reading from the law, have a reading from the prophets, the rulers of the synagogue, were in verse 15, sent a message to them saying, Brothers, if you have any word of encouragement for the people, say it.

Which I'm sure Paul was delighted to be asked. I know as a Christian when someone says, Hey, tell me about what you believe. Tell me about what it means to be a Christian. Like my little heart just flutters. Because I'm like, yes, this is my moment. I will.

You've teed it up. I grabbed the driver. I'm going for this. And that's exactly what Paul does. He launches into a sermon. So verse 16.

So Paul stood up and motioning with his hands said, Now, for the sake of time, we're not going to go through what he said. It's a great sermon. Traces from the Old Testament. Christ from the Old Testament all the way to the New Testament. Where you have the death and resurrection. And he preaches the gospel.

And then people start to place their faith in Jesus. Skip down to verse 42. Verse 42. As they went out, the people begged that these things might be told them the next Sabbath. And after the meeting of the synagogue broke up, many Jews and devout converts to Judaism followed Paul and Barnabas. Who, as they spoke with them, urged them to continue in the grace of God.

How good is that? They preach this gospel and people start placing their faith in Christ. So much so that they begged them to come back next week. We want to hear more of this. And when you talk to people who do mission work in areas where God is going to do work in. This is a little bit of what Chet was getting at last week.

That when God has elected believers. When there are believers that are there to be, the harvest is plentiful. And they're called to go in there and see this happen. When this happens, the response is profound. That they are so hungry. They've been so deprived of the gospel, of the word of God.

They hear it and they believe. Verse 44. The next Sabbath, almost the whole city gathered to hear the word of the Lord. The whole city is beating down the door to hear more of this. But, verse 45. When the Jews saw the crowds, they were filled with jealousy.

And began to contradict what was spoken by Paul. Reviling him. This is going to be a common theme that continues throughout the rest of the book of Acts. That Paul over and over again, a Pharisee, a teacher of the law formerly. Is going to be heavily persecuted and reviled by the Jewish people. They do not believe.

Over and over and over again. 46. And Paul and Barnabas spoke out boldly saying, It was necessary that the word of God be spoken first to you. Since you thrust it aside and judge yourselves unworthy of eternal life. Behold, we are turning to the Gentiles. So because you've rejected it, it's now going to the Gentiles.

For, so the Lord has commanded us saying, I have made you a light for the Gentiles. That you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth. Paul says, because you have rejected it. Just as the Jewish people have done for hundreds of years at that time. They rejected living in the covenant of God. They were supposed to be a kingdom of priests.

A royal priesthood. They were supposed to be a light to the nations. Where the Jewish people fell, Jesus steps in and succeeds. And now becomes a light to the nations with his people. Not just Jews, but non-Jews, Gentiles. God is coming for everyone.

Everyone's getting the gospel. That's the point that's being made here. Verse 48. And when the Gentiles heard this, they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord. And as many as were appointed to eternal life, believed. How good is that?

That is what you want. As many as were appointed to eternal life, believed the gospel. They are rejoicing that they now take part in the covenant faith. They are a part of this new family of God. Verse 49. And the word of the Lord was spreading throughout the whole region.

It is spreading like wildfire throughout Galatia. So, verse 50. But the Jews incited the devout women of high standing and the leading men of the city. So in Antioch, you've got the movers and shakers. You've got the devout women of high standing. You've got the leading men of the city.

They stirred up persecution against Paul and Barnabas with these people. And drove them out of their district. But they, this is Paul and Barnabas, shook off the dust from their feet against them and went to Iconium. So, that's something that Jesus actually taught in the gospels. He says that they reject the message, take off your shoes, dust it out, get the sand out, and move on to the next city. That is partly judgment against those who have rejected it.

But also, quite literally, that's moving on. Like the Holy Spirit leads. You don't have to, you have to go with his leading. He doesn't call you to stay in the same place. Sometimes he calls you to go to the next place. That happens with Jesus.

That happens with his apostles. They're going to the next city, which is Iconium. So, now they've traveled. They're now in Iconium. And the disciples were filled with joy and the Holy Spirit in the midst of this. The second encouragement I want us to see from this missionary journey is that the mission of God invites suffering.

The mission of God invites suffering. Paul understood this, what Jesus taught when he said, If the world hates you, you know it has hated me before it has hated you. That what you stand for in Christ, the world stands against. The very nature of the world is opposed to the very nature of Christ. It's very clearly taught in the scriptures. So, it should come as no shock that the Jews are raging against them.

When you preach the gospel, opposition comes. And when you do it in cultures, you don't have the gospel, the opposition can be heavy. Ben Johnson, one of our church members, director of missions organization 1040 Hope. He was in Sudan a few weeks back and he was talking with a Sudanese pastor. And this pastor was in prison for three years for sharing the gospel. He was in prison for three years.

And when he got out, actually America offered him asylum. That he could come here and not get killed. And he said, no. He stayed. He stayed because in Sudan they need the gospel. And those are his people.

And he ain't leaving. And out of that, he got some street cred. And he's planted five churches since then. And the work is continuing. And Ben got to go see that firsthand. That oftentimes when persecution begins and opposition to the gospel begins, God starts to work boldly through it.

When Christians are imprisoned overseas, those are opportunities. That's what we should pray for those disciples. Not just for their safety. But so that the gospel might spread. Because often historically, God uses moments of persecution and suffering to advance the gospel. Those are the moments where we should be sending money and resources.

And everything we can to see those churches advance. That's part of what's happening here. That's part of why the disciples in this city are filled with joy. God uses temporary suffering to bring about eternal glory through belief in Christ. Over and over and over again. And if we American Christians could see suffering as a weapon.

If we could see it as a weapon that spreads the gospel more as these early Christians did. Goodness. The dent and lostness that we could make here and abroad. If we just owned that as an opportunity. So, they convert new believers. They're kicked out of the city.

They're filled with joy. They move on to Iconium to preach Christ again. Verse 1, chapter 14. New chapter. Now at Iconium, they enter together into the Jewish synagogue.

And spoke in such a way that a great number of both Jews and Greeks believe. Again, this is the pattern. They go into a city. Go to the Jewish synagogue. Preach the gospel. God starts moving from there.

But, the unbelieving Jews stirred up the Gentiles and poisoned their minds against the brothers. The unbelieving Jews poisoned the well. Opposition. Verse 3. So, they remained for a long time. Speaking boldly for the Lord who bore witness to the word of his grace.

Granting signs and wonders to be done by their hands. So, they stay longer. They stay longer. They continue to preach Christ in this city. Verse 4. But the people of the city were divided.

Some sided with the Jews and some with the apostles. Which happens if you preach Christ. You make enemies. You make converts. That is what happens. Verse 5.

When an attempt was made by both Gentiles and Jews with their rulers to mistreat them and to stone them. They learned of it and fled to Lystra and Derbe. Cities of Lyconium and to the surrounding country. And there they continue to preach the gospel. So, when they're about to be murdered for preaching Christ. They move on.

It's not their time to die yet. That's coming. Paul will be eventually executed for preaching the gospel. It's not yet. So, they're going on to the next city. Which is Lystra.

Where they're going to preach Christ. Listen. I have been belittled for sharing Christ in the past. That people make fun of me behind my back. I'm not saying that's not fun. It's not fun.

But, compared to this. Compared. Sometimes American Christians, we get this complex. Like, oh, we're suffering. It's like, yeah, but comparatively. Like, keep things in perspective.

No one's grabbing a stone to just absolutely pummel you to death. That's not. A mob of people is not about to execute you. But that does. That happens all across the world with our brothers and sisters in Christ. All over the 1040 window.

Now, verse 8. Now, at Lystra. So, they're in this new city. There was a man sitting who could not use his feet. He was crippled from birth and had never walked. He listened to Paul speaking.

And Paul looked intently at him. And seeing that he had faith to be made well. Said in a loud voice, stand upright on your feet. And he sprang up and began walking. So, they enter Lystra with a bang. With a miraculous healing.

And it sets the city on fire. Verse 11. And when the crowd saw what Paul had done, they lifted up their voices, saying in Lyconian, The gods have come down to us in the likeness of men. Which is not the response I think they expected. It says, verse 12. Barnabas, they called Zeus and Paul Hermes because he was the chief speaker.

So, if Chet and I went to a foreign culture and we went and preached the gospel and this happened, I guarantee you there would be an inside joke. Going forward. Because Zeus is the chief Greek God. He's like the king Greek God. And Hermes is lesser than. The inside joke would be, hey, you know, I got called Zeus and he got called Hermes.

How's that? You can speak on my behalf from now on. I'm better than you. That would be our inside joke. They were more mature than us. That is not how they responded.

In verse 13 it says, And the priest of Zeus, whose temple was at the entrance to the city, brought oxen and garlands to the gates and wanted to offer sacrifices with the peoples. So they are Greek pagans. They interpret this through their Greek pagan lens and say, The gods have come down before us. And Paul and Barnabas' response was aggressive. Verse 14. When the apostle Barnabas and Paul, when the apostles heard of it, they tore their garments and rushed into the crowd.

So there was no inside joke yet. I like to think maybe later, but not yet. They tear their garments and run into the crowd. Okay? Tearing your garments was a deep sign of lament and grief. Okay?

It doesn't really convey for us anymore. Only people that tear their garments now are in the WWE. That's for different reasons. But they tear their garments. They rush into the crowd, crying out. Verse 15.

Men, why are you doing these things? We also are men of like nature with you. And we bring you good news. That you should turn from these vain things to a living God. So they preach the gospel.

Who made the heaven and earth and the sea and all that is in them. In the past generations he allowed all nations to walk in their own ways. Verse 17. Yet he did not leave himself without witness. For he did good by giving you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons. Satisfying your hearts with food and gladness.

So this is a little bit tied to some of the things that were said last week. We don't have time to get into this. But he's just giving them a bigger picture of God's redemption and what he's doing here. And then in verse 18 it says, Even with these things they could scarcely restrain the people from offering sacrifice to them. They could barely keep them from offering sacrifice and being treated like gods. Now, in comes the curveball in verse 19.

But Jews came from Antioch and Iconium. Now we're starting to get a picture of what happens in this region. There's a Jewish network of angry Jewish persecutors that do not like the work that is happening. They're traveling from city to city following Paul and Barnabas. Trying to stir up opposition against them. And in this city they are very successful.

And having persuaded the crowds, they stoned Paul and dragged him out of the city supposing that he was dead. So that's mob rule right there. Mob violence. In one moment, they're about to worship them as gods. Then all of a sudden these Jews come in and they start stirring the crowd against them.

When I went to India years ago, they said, Stay away from the large crowds because they quickly can turn on a dime. And that's what happens. They stir the crowds against them and they stone him to death. They stone him, y'all. They took heavy objects and beat him and broke his... Like this weekend I was trimming a tree limb and foolishly didn't think about how angles work in geometry.

And it came back and it swung and it hit me in the shoulder. Like I just... That's painful. My brother did the same thing when I was 15 or 14. I was on an ATV and he took a large tree limb and he broke it over me. Not a stick.

A tree limb. Which for context... Okay. Not the brother you know that's part of this church. Because he's like 15 years older than me. And that image, if you just had that, was super weird.

That was a grown man striking a child with a tree limb. Not that brother. My older brother who's a few months, 18 months older than me. That hurts. That's painful. That's one object.

They took stones and they pummeled his body until he was bleeding internally to the point of death. They drag him out of the city and leave him for dead. His body is lifeless. Verse 20. But when the disciples gathered about him, he rose up and entered the city.

And on the next day he went with Barnabas to Derbe. So presumably the disciples gather around him, pray over him. Now the text doesn't tell us if he was completely 100% dead and was raised or was at the point of death. Nevertheless, this is a miraculous event. You don't just spring up and walk into a city after your bones have been broken by stones. They were very good at stoning.

Okay? You don't just pop up and walk in. This is miraculous. He raises up. And listen, I feel like he could have just said, you know what? It's been a long day.

I'll go ahead and grab my stuff. I'm going to camp out here. We're going to Derbe anyways. I'll see you all tomorrow. No. He walks straight into the city where the people just stoned him.

What a G. That is Paul. He is just fierce. He walks right back into the city. Grabs his stuff. They're off to Derbe.

On to the next city. So, continuing to preach Christ. Verse 21. When they had preached the gospel to that city and had made many disciples. That's it. That's all we get in Derbe.

It's like Luke. It's like you get the picture, right? This is what they do. They come in. They preach the gospel. There's opposition.

Scores and hundreds of people come to Christ. Like, it's just like that's all you get. This is what happens in Derbe. We're moving on. They returned to Lystra and to Iconium and to Antioch. Strengthening the souls of the disciples.

Encouraging them to continue in the faith. And saying that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God. And when they had appointed elders for them in every church with prayer and fasting, they committed them to the Lord in whom they had believed. This is the third encouragement I want us to take away from this. The mission of God plants churches. The mission of God plants churches.

Listen, they doubled back and went through the cities that they did work in. They went through all these cities. Derbe, Lystra, Iconium, Antioch. And they ministered to these churches. If the mission of God is the great commission to make disciples of all nations. Okay?

Part one. And Paul's missionary journeys give us a template of what that looks like. Part two. It is clear that the ultimate mission of God is to plant churches amongst all peoples. Paul proclaimed Christ. He got beat around.

He made converts with Barnabas all over the region of Galatia. They preached Christ. Moved to the next city. Preached Christ. Moved to the next city. And they planted churches.

And they go back through. Let me show you this next slide. Actually, no. Don't go there yet. They plant churches in these areas. Galatians.

And one of the things that we see very clearly in the first two verses of the letter of Galatians is that these were established churches. Galatians 1 verses 1 and 2 says, Paul, Paul, Paul, Paul, Paul, Paul, Paul, an apostle, Paul, Paul, an apostle, not from men, not from men, nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead and all the brothers who are with me. Hear this. To the churches of Galatia. That is, next slide, all of these cities in the north and the churches they planted before. But the writing, the letter of Galatians is written to these established churches in these cities that they planted.

And they go back through and they start to give these churches structure. They appoint elders, which is what we're called to do. That's why we're elder led as a church. There are four elders in this church. They appointed elders in these cities, in these churches in these cities. They give structure to them.

They minister to them. But that was Paul's mission, was to plant churches where there were none. That's why in week one, when Chet mentioned Romans 15, when Paul says, but now since I no longer have any room for work in these regions, you look at that and it's like, no, that doesn't make sense. There's plenty of work to do in these regions. There's lots of lost people in these regions. But that wasn't his primary aim.

His primary aim was to fill the Great Commission, making disciples of all nations. Certainly, the rest of the New Testament bears that we're absolutely called to continue to minister to Christians. That's what we do here. Make converts, we minister. That's what Paul did. Part of establishing these elders was to minister to these churches.

But the Great Commission aim was to plant churches where there were none. That doesn't mean that we don't do the normal things that we're called to do as Christians. That doesn't mean we don't care for one another. That doesn't mean that we don't do things like combating sex trafficking, which is great work, or orphan care, or adoption, or all the good endeavors that God calls us to, the good ministries that we can take part in, that the church should be leading the way on. But I want to be very clear that fulfilling the Great Commission is not primarily that.

That is the overflow of doing it. The primary aim of the Great Commission is to plant churches amongst every people group where they don't have the gospel. And that's what Paul and Barnabas do. They retrace their steps and they continue all the way back. It says in verse 24, Then they passed through Pisidia and came to Pamphylia. When they had spoken the word in Perga, they went down to Atilia.

And from there they sailed to Antioch where they had been commended to the grace of God for the work that they had fulfilled. Verse 27, And when they had arrived and gathered the church together, they declared all that God had done with them and how he opened a door of faith to the Gentiles and they remained no little time with the disciples, which is a convoluted way of saying they stayed there a long time. So, we did it. We just walked through the entire missionary journey. Two chapters in 30-ish minutes. Okay?

They get back to Antioch and I can imagine sailing back to Antioch in Syria. They had stories. That when they finally showed up two-ish years later, the people were like, Tell us what happened. And they said, It was amazing. We planted churches. We saw thousands of people come to Christ.

I got murdered. It was amazing. This was incredible. And here's the deal. It's like the end of a superhero movie. They're celebrating.

They beat the bad guy. And then all of a sudden, the post-credits. You see, Oh, wait. This is a sequel. This keeps going. There's going to be more of these.

And that's what happens. There's a second missionary journey. They go further. There's a third missionary journey. Historically, it's debated, though I agree, there's a fourth missionary journey, just not in the scriptures. Okay?

And then the book of Acts, after the third missionary journey, it just ends. It just stops. There's no conclusion. It just stops. Luke just stops writing. And that's because the story keeps going.

It keeps going. The work continues. We are part of two church planning networks. We're part of the SEND church planning network with the North American Mission Board. That's our Southern Baptist network. We're part of Grassroots Church Planning Network.

That's a local network. It's Midtown Church. Some other churches are in that network. Smaller. We're part of those two networks. We have no plans to add anymore.

Okay? There is a network out there that has the best church planning network name, period, end of discussion. And they're called Acts 29. That is an amazing smaller church name. Okay? You know why it's 29?

Because there is no 29th chapter of the book of Acts. They're continuing the work of planting churches. That's what we're called to do. Listen. If we want to be obedient to the Great Commission, we're either Paul and Barnabas going into the frontier seeing churches planted where there are none. Or we're Antioch.

And we're sending. And we're praying on our face. And we're funding. And we're sending missionaries. And we're taking trips with them. And we're praying as they suffer that the gospel go forward.

We would need to do all of the above if we want to be obedient to the Great Commission.

10/40 Hope Interview with Ben Johnson

Proclaim the Gospel

Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Proclaim the Gospel

Chet Phillips

Transcript

Good morning. My name's Chet. I'm one of the pastors here. Grab your Bibles and go to Romans 1. That's where we'll start this morning, although we are going to look at a lot of different passages. We're in the second week of our All Nations series.

Last week, we looked at this map. Not that one. Not that map. And what we said was, that's a map. It's from Joshua Project. I would encourage you, you can go to their website and check it out.

You can also go to the IMB's website. They have similar maps. But that is showing unreached people groups. It's a map of unreached people groups. And as we talked about this, we stated three problems that David Platt listed, and we read through them. And it's over three billion people are currently unreached by the gospel.

That was problem number one. Now, unreached does not mean that over three billion people are not Christians or not believers. Unreached means that they don't have access to the gospel. As we said last week, it's unreached does not communicate to you someone standing before God, but their access to the gospel. And so these unreached people groups don't have churches around them, don't have the Bible in their language, don't have any sort of evangelical presence where people are trying to proclaim the gospel to them. Now, this is a map.

Yeah, you don't have to go back. I just forgot that it wasn't going to be there for a second. This is a map done by evangelicals. So there are places on the map that maybe have some Catholicism or some of the Orthodox Church or whatever. But this is just saying these are places where we don't know of anybody proclaiming salvation by faith, by grace in Christ.

We just don't we don't have that at this point. We said the second problem is that the church is practically ignoring the people in places most unreached by the gospel. That ninety nine percent of funds that go to missionaries goes to areas in the green and yellow and three percent and ninety seven percent of missionaries go to the green and yellow, which means that only one percent of money and three percent of missionaries are making it to the most unreached peoples. And we said the third problem was that the number of unreached people is higher today than ever before and will continue to increase until the church decides to change.

The number of unreached people is higher today than ever before and will continue to increase until the church decides to change. This is what we looked at last week. So look at the map again. We said we've got to go. The church has to get to the red area and the red area is difficult to get to. Unreached peoples are unreached for a reason.

They don't want to be reached. They're hostile to the gospel. Their governments don't want Christians there or they're just in really difficult locations. They're hard to get to. And so as we talked about this last week and we said that there's something needs to change. And the church, when I say we, I mean the church, but we're a part of the church.

But the global church has to begin to pursue these areas. We have to change where our money goes. We have to change where our missionaries go. But one of the things that that gets is kind of a natural response. I find that there's there's two. One of the first natural responses is this general.

That's awful. And I don't want to think about that too much. Because I don't really want to have to change what I'm doing. I don't. Oh, man, that's that's terrible. Please let us leave so I can go to lunch and try to think about something else.

I mean, that really is kind of it's a natural that if I think about it too much, the Lord might tell me to do something. If I pray about that, that he would call people, he might call me. So I don't know how like it there's that's part of it. And we've got to overcome that. But one of the other responses is just kind of a is that really how it works?

Like we said last week. That there are three point one eight billion people in unreached people groups. in the 1040 window and that many of them will be born. We'll live and we'll die and we'll have never heard the gospel, never heard the name of Jesus. But they'll live many of them in really hard places, that they'll live in a functional earthly hell, and then they will enter into an eternal reality without Christ. that they'll live in an earthly hell and go to an eternal hell. And one of the responses that is that really how is that really how it works? Is that is that fair?

So I want to address two questions that I think are genuine, come from genuine places as people consider the vast amount of lostness in the church's need to address it. The first one that we're going to look at is doesn't God have a plan for those who never hear? Another way of putting that is how is it fair for people to go to hell for not hearing about Jesus? Maybe a way you've heard it put is does the innocent person in India really go to hell because they never had a chance to hear about Jesus? Is that really how it works? How is that fair?

That's the first we're going to look at. We're going to try to walk through that idea. And the second one is this. If we believe in election, if we believe in the doctrine of election, if we believe, like Ephesians says, that God chose us in him before the foundation of the world, or as we looked in Revelation, that he's already purchased people. We said last week he's purchased people out of every tribe, tongue, language, nation, people group that we that they belong to him and that we can go. If we really believe that.

Isn't God just going to do what he's going to do? I mean, I got a lot going on. Can I just be trying to follow him here and just trust that God's going to do what he's going to do? If we really believe that, do we really have to hustle? I think those are two questions. I think those are two big questions.

I think those are two genuine questions. And we are going to try to trace out an answer to both of those this morning. And that's, we've got all of our work cut out for us to try to talk through both of those this morning. Both of them could have their own Sunday. They could have their own series. They could get their own books.

They're worth looking at and considering. We're going to try to give brief responses, almost the beginning of a response, to try to help us start in the direction of this is how the Bible responds to that. And we can talk more as we go if these are genuine things you struggle with. But we're going to try to trace out an answer to both of those. So we all got to put our adult pants on and get to moving this morning.

So let's pray for the Lord to help us. And we're going to read through this this morning. So, Lord, we ask for your grace. We pray that you would give us ears to hear and hearts to hear. That we might trust your word and trust your goodness. And that you might help us to respond in faith and faithfulness.

In Jesus' name, amen. First question. Doesn't God have a plan for those who never hear? Or how is it fair for people to go to hell for not hearing about Jesus? Or does the innocent person in India really go to hell because they never had a chance to hear about Jesus? The first thing that we need to see from the scriptures, I believe, is that no, the innocent person in India does not go to hell.

The problem is there is no innocent person in India. The Bible tells us that there are no innocent people. There's no innocent people in Yemen. There's no innocent people in Casey. Romans 1. We'll look at verse 18.

We're going to look at Romans 1, Romans 2, Romans 3, and then we'll look in Ephesians 1 at the passage we just read together a second ago. Romans 1. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. Meaning that in our sin, we fight against what is real. We fight against what is true. For what can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them.

For his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made. And this next part is key. So they are without excuse. That God has displayed his godness, his divinity, his greatness in creation. And that in creation what we do is we see that and reject it wholesale. Humanity rejects God's glory in creation.

That in our sin and our unrighteousness we suppress this. He goes on to say that we then elevate other things. But he says this. We'll read verse 21. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened. That we choose darkness.

That we can see and perceive the glory of God in creation and that humanity rejects that. And so therefore, God's glory displayed in creation is effective only to help us reject him and to make a conscious choice to elevate something else or ourselves and to be darkened. And we are without excuse. Romans 2 verse 12. He says it this way. As he's talking to both Jewish people about Jewish people and Gentiles and he's trying to show them that even the law, understanding the law doesn't help and not having the law doesn't help.

He says, for all who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law. And all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law. So he's talking to Jewish people and saying, y'all have the law and all that's going to do is condemn you and they don't have the law and all that's going to do is condemn them. That it's effective for them to perish without it because sin is sin and we've all sinned. Romans 3 verses 10 through 12. As it is written, none is righteous, no not one.

No one understands. No one seeks for God. All have turned aside. Together they have become worthless. No one does good. Not even one.

That our position before God is a position of rebellion and rejection and there is no innocence globally. Or as Ephesians 1 says, as Paul's talking to the church, we read this just a second ago and it gets really encouraging, but it starts very discouraging as it's talking to Christians. But this is the state of humanity without Christ. It says, you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind.

That is humanity before God, carrying out the desires of the flesh and the mind, desires of the body and the mind, children of wrath. That's mankind without Christ. As you begin to wrap your head around this, one of the first things that we want to say, that I want to say, that I used to say, was that seems very unfair. It goes against my general sense of fairness, which we've developed very, very young. Nobody really had to teach you fairness. You would yell, that's not fair.

We were doing something yesterday, and my younger son yelled at his older brother, he's cheating, he's breaking the rules. And we were participating in something that was not a competition, and had no rules. He just suddenly decided, what you have done is wrong. You've broken a rule. He was asked, what rule? And he said, I don't know.

I could just, I could sense it. But we have this sense of fairness, and our two kind of understandings of fairness are fairness of outcome. Everyone gets a treat. Everyone gets a trophy. And we feel this. If you sit a bunch of children down, and you hand out marshmallows, and then you just skip two of them, there's this sense of, oh, you forgot my mom.

I need a marshmallow. And you say, no, you just don't get them. It's like, this is very unfair. There's fairness of outcome, and fairness of opportunity. Everyone who works gets a marshmallow. Well, you didn't do your chores.

You don't get a marshmallow. That feels fair to us. So we have fairness of outcome, and fairness of opportunity. And when we look at the scriptures on this, we say, well, this doesn't feel like it fits either. It doesn't feel like this fits. Either sense of fairness.

Fairness of outcome, we all get the same thing. Or fairness of opportunity, we all get the opportunity to hear the gospel, and reject the gospel. If I knew that everybody would hear the gospel, and reject the gospel, that would feel more fair to me. If everybody would be told that Jesus will save them from their sins, and they would actively choose to reject Christ, that feels fair. Or if we all end up with the same outcome, that feels fair. And the response to this is, I don't think it is either one of those versions of fair.

And Paul, in addressing this in Romans 9, says, is there any injustice in God? So he moves it out of fairness to injustice. He says, no. And the reason he gives in Romans 9, is that God chooses to have mercy. That's very helpful for us to see. He says, there's no injustice.

There's mercy. Because the problem is, we're standing looking at this backwards. The question of the scriptures, is not, why does God not save some? It's, why does God save any? And the answer is, mercy. So it isn't fair, because fairness, is that we are all destroyed, dead in our sins.

What we receive from God, is grace, and mercy. And there is no injustice, because he pays the debt, of those whom he redeems, and pours out grace, and mercy. So the response to this, is to say, thank you Jesus, that I know this, that you in your grace, have redeemed me, that you have offered me mercy. Even if you aren't, a Christian, and you're just checking this out, or you've been around for a while, and you're not sure, how you feel about this, I want you to understand, the grace, and the mercy of God, that you have even been able to hear, that Jesus Christ, offers you salvation, if you will follow him.

Because, there's people all around the globe, that don't even get that, news. So, there's a logical argument, that helped me, because I used to feel this, I'd say, well it feels like, and I would just say, well maybe God does something, maybe God has some kind of plan, for those who don't hear, maybe God, you know, and it's this idea, it's what's called inclusivism, which is this idea that, you know, Jesus has died to save us, from our sins, and there's no salvation, outside of Christ, but maybe God works, in some way, for those who've never heard him, and he just includes them. As long as they've never heard, he just brings them along. But I heard a logical argument, I read it in a book, and it helped me, because it pokes a hole right in that, and what he said was this, if you never hear about the gospel, and by never hearing, you're automatically included, if we believe those are true, then the absolute worst thing, we can ever do to someone, who has never heard about Jesus, is tell them about Jesus.

If we were standing somewhere, and there were people, refugees, pouring off of an airplane, and we saw someone, going to tell them about Jesus, and we knew they'd come from some place, that had never heard the name of Christ, what we should do, if it's true, that they're automatically in, for never hearing the name of Christ, we should not run over, and tell them about Jesus, we should run over, and punch the people, who were trying to. Because all they're going to do, is increase the odds, that this person will reject Jesus, they're fine without him, but if they hear about him, they might reject him. If that's true, then 1040 Hope, is a despicable organization, and Empower One, who we're going to get to talk with, later today, should be removed from our building. We should not call ourselves, send, in the Baptist church, we should refer to it as stay, it should be like three S's, stay, shut up, the reality is, it's insane to think, that you would come to the scriptures, and come to the conclusion, that the worst thing I could do, is share the gospel with somebody, when we are told, explicitly, consistently, that they need to hear.

In the Baptist church, we should refer to it as stay, it should be like three S's, stay, shut up, the reality is, it's insane to think, that you would come to the scriptures, and come to the conclusion, that the worst thing I could do, is share the gospel with somebody, when we are told, explicitly, consistently, that they need to hear. What is, what happens to those, who never hear? The answer is, they are not held accountable, for not hearing, they are held accountable, for their sin. We are not condemned,

For our lack, of hearing the gospel, we are condemned, for our choosing, to reject God, rebel, against him, and the Bible is clear, that it is the gospel, proclaimed, that people need, if you look at Romans 10, love this passage, after Paul, in Romans 9, and if you have concerns, about this, questions about this, read Romans 9, spend some time there, but after Paul, discusses this idea, that God has mercy, and there is no injustice,

In him, he then says this, how then, oh verse 13, for everyone, who calls on the name, of the Lord, will be saved, and I want you to see that, if you have not placed, your hope in Jesus, I want you to know, that everyone, who calls on the name, of the Lord, will be saved, he will not fail, to save anyone, who comes to him, and asks for salvation, and forgiveness, you aren't too far gone, you aren't too sinful, you aren't too broken,

You aren't too anxious, you aren't too messed up, everyone, who calls on the name, of the Lord, will be saved, but then he says this, how then, will they call, on him, in whom they have not believed, so you have to believe, in him, to call on him, how are they to believe, in him, of whom they have never, heard, so he's addressing, this question right now, how will they, believe if they've never heard, he says, how are they to hear,

Without someone preaching, and how are they to preach, unless they are sent, as it is written, how beautiful, are the feet of those, who preach the good news, there are people, who have not heard, there are people, who do not, have not called on him, because they have not believed, and they need to believe, and in order to believe, they need to hear, and in order to hear, somebody's got to go, tell them, in order for them to go, God sends them, and the church, sends them, Paul when he's writing this,

He's going to end by saying, I'm going to come visit y'all, and y'all are going to send me to Spain, I hope to be helped, and sent along by you, to Spain, meaning that the church, sends and goes, and that somebody's got to proclaim, this message, because John 14 6 says, I am the way, and the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the father, except through me, that there is hope of salvation, but it's in the name of Christ, it's in the work of Christ, and it's in those sent by Christ, to proclaim the name, and the work of Christ, we've got to go, second question,

Again that is not, a full answer, but I think it is a helpful answer, second question, is if we believe in election, isn't God just going to save, who he's going to save, isn't God just do, what he's going to do, when we talk about election, I know for some of us, we immediately freak out a little bit, but that's just because, you're an American, and elections are stressful, but when the Bible talks about election, here's the idea, that it's coming with, just try to define, what I'm talking about, Ephesians 1 said, even as he chose us in him, before the foundation of the world, meaning that God did choosing,

He chose, his prerogative, before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy, and blameless before him, in love he predestined, predestined means destined, is the end, pre is the beginning, so he predestined, us for adoption to himself, as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, not ours, to the praise of his glorious grace, meaning that he offers grace, 1 Corinthians 1 26 29, says it this way, for consider your calling brothers, not many of you were wise, according to worldly standings, again it's a calling, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth,

But God chose, what is foolish in the world, to shame the wise, God chose, what is weak in the world, to shame the strong, God chose, what is low and despised in the world, even the things that are not, to bring to nothing, the things that are, so that, no human being, might boast in the presence of God, this idea that we would not, stand in front of him and go, I'm the one who chose, I'm the one who figured it out, I'm the one who sought, I'm the one who, that's not how it works, we don't boast in his presence, Romans 9, though they were not yet born,

And had done nothing, either good or bad, in order that God's purpose of election, might continue, not because of works, but because of him who calls, or as Jesus says in John 6, no one can come to me, unless it is granted him by the father, so the question is, if that's true, why the hurry, what's all the fuss about, I got personal things, I got to work on, can't we just do, what we're supposed to here, well the Bible, turns that attitude on its head, in an extremely encouraging way, the Bible doesn't say, that election slows down, our drive for mission, it says election,

God's redeeming of those, whom he will redeem, by his grace, drives our mission, Acts 18, I love this passage, Paul's in Corinth, facing opposition, and Jesus says, the Lord said to Paul, one night in a vision, do not be afraid, but go on speaking, and do not be silent, keep proclaiming this message, for I am with you, no one will attack you, to harm you, that's good, because sometimes that's not true, for Paul where he's in places, so if he says that, it's like sweet, for I have many in this city,

Who are my people, you keep proclaiming this message, there are people, who are going to be saved, they belong to me, do not stop talking, you continue, you press on, you don't be afraid, you stand strong here, because we're about to do something, in Corinth, and there are people here, who are mine, I want to read, two quotes, about this idea, from two people to us, who are well known, helpful theologians, one's an African pastor, his name's Christian Lawanda, maybe we don't know him that well, I heard a sermon,

We preach, and he said this, and I felt, it was helpful, he says, preaching is not just a command, this idea that we're to go, proclaim this message, that we're to teach the word, that we're to call people, he says, it's not just a command, it is a divine honor, that we get to participate, in what God is doing, it's not just a command, it's a divine honor, and the well known theologian, George Garcia, who's one of our community group leaders, he said it this way, God's people are out there, we know that, via scripture,

And he has strictly, and graciously, commanded us to go and speak for him, what a wonderful, undeserving opportunity, that is, strictly, and graciously, commanded us to go, and speak for him, what a wonderful, undeserving opportunity, that is, they're there, they belong to him, we get to, go, we have to go, and we get to go, by God's grace, that's the way, the Bible treats it, Acts 13, 48,

Says when the Gentiles, heard this, they began rejoicing, and glorifying, the word of the Lord, and as many, were as appointed, to eternal life, believed, they went, and proclaimed this message, and as many, who were supposed to believe, believed, as many, who were as appointed, to this, believed, which means that, we have the freedom, to proclaim, trusting God, and his sovereignty, to work out,

His gracious work, to redeem, that we get to proclaim, this message, and people will respond, why should you be aggressive, in sharing the gospel, with the people at your gym, because those who are going to believe, are going to believe, and you need to, you need to talk to them, why can you pray, and plead for the people, in your office, and why can you talk to them, and why can you go out on a limb, to share the gospel with them, because some of them, are going to believe, why can you knock on doors, in your neighborhood, people don't do that anymore, well,

People don't have a wonderful message, to share with people, get to know your neighbors, invite them to your home, have a cookout, offer them breakfast, give them coffee, and tell them about Jesus, and why can we do this, why do we go out of our way, to do this, because there are going to be people, who believe, because God has chosen, in his grace, to redeem, and we get to participate, that's what Paul says, in 2 Timothy 2 10, therefore, I endure everything, for the sake, of the elect, that they also,

May obtain the salvation, that is in Christ Jesus, with eternal glory, I love that, he says, I endure everything, for the sake of the elect, so that they might, obtain, salvation that is in Christ Jesus, why would we go, why would we spend our money, why would we spend our time, why would we spend our energy, here and there, why would you, who don't want to talk to anybody, talk to somebody, who you've never met, why would you endure that, so that the elect, might obtain the salvation, that is in Christ Jesus, with eternal glory,

Why would you change your budget, to support missionaries, why would you endure that, so that the elect, might obtain the salvation, that is in Christ Jesus, with eternal glory, why would we learn a new language, why would we translate the Bible, in that language, why would we spend the money, and the effort, and the lives, to get to a place, where people don't want us, why would we endure that, so that those who belong to Jesus, will obtain, salvation, and joy, and hope, and glory, in Christ, if you believe,

In the doctrine of election, that does not slow you down, that spurs you on, if we believe, that God is going to redeem, then we go with confidence, not trepidation, if we believe, that there is hope, of salvation, for those, in every tribe, in every language, in every nation, in every people, that they will all be gathered, around the throne, then we go, to every tribe, and to every language, and to every people, and every nation, why, so that they also,

Might obtain, the salvation, that is in Christ Jesus, with eternal glory, why will we endure it, because we have brothers, and sisters, who are going to belong to us, and to the king forever, and how will they hear, if no one preaches, and how will they preach, if they aren't sent, so we go, with joy, and delight, and confidence, in the glory of a good God, who redeems, what, doesn't God have a plan, for those who have never heard, yes, it's his church,

That we would be obedient, and go, trusting in his sovereignty, to redeem, and to save, because he's good, it's John 10, 27, where Jesus is speaking, he says, my sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me, so we go, and we proclaim, here, and there, knowing that Jesus, is going to work, and bring about, redemption, the band's going to come back up, and this morning, together,

As a church, we're going to take, communion, we're going to celebrate, that Jesus Christ, died to save, sinners, that we were, like the rest of mankind, children of wrath, that we were, guilty before God, that we were, undeserving of grace, that's the reality, not that God is unfair, in condemning sinners, but that God is unfair, in saving us, that he's merciful, he's not unjust, he's good, and that if we can sit, for a moment,

And know the level, of our sin, and wickedness, and sit for a moment, and clearly see, into our own hearts, how despicable we are, and be overwhelmed, that God would look upon us, to tell us of his son, to pour his love, and his grace on us, and that we might celebrate, one more time together, that Jesus Christ, died to save sinners, and that one day, he's coming back to claim us, that's what communion is, that his body was broken for us, that his blood was shed for us, that our sins are covered, by his work, not ours,

And that we stand, in the middle of two points, two points in eternity, that Jesus Christ came, and he died, and that one day, he returns, to rescue, and reclaim his people, and we have just a little bit, of time here, where we proclaim, his death until he comes, and that's a reality, that we're doing, when we take communion, and that's what our lives, are supposed to look like, that we proclaim his death, until he comes, that Jesus Christ, died to save sinners, so we participate, in his goodness,

In his grace, knowing that he works, to redeem, and to save, so I would, have you take a moment, to consider your sin, to consider, the grace, of your savior, and then to consider, all those in the world, who have not heard, this news, and to ask the Lord, that we might be people, who care, that we might be people, who see that, and that are willing, to change our lives, that we would not, one day stand before him, and have our money,

And our time, declare to us, and declare to him, that we were good Americans, who lived lives, of luxury and comfort, and failed to see, the glory of joining him, in his gracious, eternal mission, but that we would be people, who look like we believe this, so by God's grace, we're going to celebrate, that he saved sinners, both us, with hope, to proclaim his death, until he comes, if you are not a Christian, communion is not for you, this is something, that Christians partake in, taking very seriously,

The work of Christ, on our behalf, if you are not a Christian, I would invite you, to call on his name, and to be forgiven, and redeemed eternally, now, because all who call, in the name of Jesus, will be saved, let's pray, God I pray, that it would be true, for us, that when somebody, asked us, to give an account, for our lives, to give receipts, to explain, why we live, and work the way we do, that we would be able,

To answer in chorus, with Paul, I endure everything, for the sake of the elect, that they may, obtain salvation, in Christ, that by your grace, and the empowerment, of your spirit, that that would make sense, of our lives, God we thank you, that you have, mercy, that you do not leave us, in our sin, and our wickedness, and our rebellion, that you do not leave us, in a place, where we hated you, and love to everything else, so Lord,

As we take communion, this morning, we praise your name, that you are good, and merciful, you, to help us, and we should steadfasten, and both of us, and remaining, as we may as well, and for the sake of the most, as we may as well, as we may as well, as we may as well, as we may as well, as we may as well, and ouraaloo account, and the sign, as we may as well, as we may as well, and almost as we may be,

Empower One Interview with David Taylor

Exalted and Enjoyed

Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Enjoyed and Exalted

Chet Phillips

Transcript

Well, good morning. My name is Chet. I'm one of the pastors here. Grab your Bibles and go to Psalm 67. We'll look at a few other passages before we get there, but we'll be in Psalm 67 and we'll be in Romans 15 this morning and we'll also have some other things we jump around to. Right after Easter, on the Monday after Easter, the pastors met over here and Isaac, who's an elder in training.

We met over here early on Monday morning, loaded up in a rental van and drove to Louisville, Kentucky to go to T4G, which is a pastor's conference in Louisville. And this was the last time they were having it. So Spencer loved that conference. He kept telling us we should go. We kept telling him, neat. And then when it was the last one, he was like, you're all going or I'm fighting all of you and then we're all going.

So we just said, okay, we'll go. So we went and it was encouraging. There was about 10,000 people there and it was a pretty intense conference. The first session we went to was four hours long and they had a lot of sessions that were from seven o'clock to 10 o'clock at night. And so you would show up early in the morning, go to a session, you go to lunch, you go to a session, you go to dinner, you come back, go to a session, you'd go home and try to sleep at an Airbnb where elephants had rented the room above us. So, and we, but it was, it was great.

We ate really well and then went to hear a lot of preaching. And then we sang hymns to a piano with 10,000 people. It was, it was very encouraging. I was well fed both at restaurants and in the conference. And I think all of us thoroughly enjoyed it except for maybe Isaac who doesn't like to eat as much as we do and wants to move around a lot more than we did. So he, he, he struggled through a little bit, but the rest of us, I think, ate it up.

And we, there was a session there where David Platt spoke. And David Platt is a pastor of McLean Bible Church in, around DC. And he was the, he wrote the book Radical. And if you're familiar with that, and he was the president of the International Mission Board for about four years. So from about 2014 to 2018, he was the president of the International Mission Board for the Southern Baptist, which is the foreign, it used to be called the Foreign Mission Board, but it's sending missionaries from the U.S. overseas.

And he spoke about the need and the call for global missions. And as he spoke, we just, we sat there. When he was done, everybody, you know, dismissed, people got up, moved. We didn't. The, the five of us just sat and didn't have much to say and then started looking at each other and going, okay, we need to, we need to address this. We need to talk about this with our church family.

We need to acknowledge some of what he walked through. And so that's what this is. We're going to walk through much of what he went through. I'm going to quote some of his stats. He actually listed three problems. I'm going to read word for word those three problems as we go through this morning.

And then the next couple of weeks, we'll continue to look at this idea and kind of how we get to respond as a church. So that's what we're doing today. I would encourage you to go watch it. After you listen to this, you can get online, go to T4G, watch David Platt's most recent sermon there. You'll say, hey, that sounded a lot like what you said. Yes, because a lot of this is stuff that he walked right through.

So we're going to walk through that this morning. Let's pray and we'll jump in. God, we thank you for your grace. We thank you for your glorious, joy-filled, eternal plan to rescue the nations. We pray, Lord, that we'd get to participate as those who are going to live eternally with you, that we would be about your business while we're here. We ask for your grace and your help and your empowerment in Jesus' name.

Amen. So this is a direct quote. It's a helpful way to word this. Anybody could kind of come to this conclusion from the scriptures. It's just well-worded. It's the ultimate goal of God is his glory enjoyed and exalted among the nations.

If you've read much of John Piper, you'll hear phrasing like that. But it's looking at the scriptures and saying this is God's plan. The ultimate goal of God is his glory enjoyed and exalted among the nations. And we're going to walk through and help show that through the scriptures, that this is his plan. This is what he wants. And it's wonderful that the word enjoyed is in there.

That's part of his plan, that he will be enjoyed and exalted among the nations. So we're going to walk through and see those three things, enjoyed, exalted, and among the nations. The first place we'll look is Genesis 12. It'll be on the screen. We won't spend much time here and we'll get to Psalm 67 in a second. Genesis 12.

This is God calling Abraham. It's before he's even renamed him to Abraham. But this is in the book of Genesis. We fall into sin and there's a promise that God's going to fix this. And then this is the first bit of God fixing this where he's coming to begin his rescue plan. And here's the promise he makes to Abraham.

It says, Now the Lord said to Abraham, Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation and I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing. And I will bless those who bless you and him who dishonors you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. So the very first time God says to Abraham as he begins to call him and begins to work out this plan, He says, In you all the families of the earth will be blessed.

It's in God's mind at that moment that this will not just be for the nation of Israel. This will not just be for Abraham and his bloodline. But that his plan is all the families, all the peoples, all the people groups of the earth to receive this blessing that's going to come through Abraham. And ultimately the blessing that comes through Abraham is Jesus. So at Galatians 3.8, Paul picking up on this says this, Says the scripture foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles, that's all the peoples who aren't Jewish.

So if he's going to justify the Jewish peoples and all the people who aren't Jewish, I don't know if you have a Venn diagram of people, but that's all of them. Okay? He's going to rescue all peoples, all nations, all families. He says, Preach the gospel beforehand to Abraham saying, In you shall all the nations be blessed. So this justifying the Gentiles is the preaching of the gospel.

He's going to justify the Gentiles by faith, meaning that's the stuff we talked about. There's justification by faith that if you trust in Jesus, he forgives us and makes us right. That's the gospel. And he's saying that gospel was preached the very first time he mentioned it to Abraham. This is how this is going to work. That I'm going to rescue through you the nations, and that ultimately comes through Jesus.

That Christianity is not tethered to a language. It's not tethered to a location. It's not tethered to a people group. That Christianity, that the center of Christianity has actually moved around the globe throughout history because it is for the nations. Psalm 67. We read this together just a few moments ago.

But this is a blessing in the Psalm. And the Psalms are songs and poems that God gifted his people in order for us to understand who he is, in order for us to worship. And it says, may God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face to shine upon us that your way may be known on earth, your saving power among the nations. So this is a Jewish blessing that the Jewish people would be blessed so that the nations will see God's glory, so that the nations will be able to participate. Let the peoples praise you, O God. Let all the peoples praise you.

Let the nations be glad and sing for joy, for you judge the peoples with equity, and you guide the nations upon the earth. Let the peoples praise you, O God. Let all the peoples praise you. So I want to show you a few things here. This is God's plan. This is the plan that God has for the nations, is that we would praise, and that in our praise, our gladness and joy would be tied up.

Did you all know that about genuine praise? I've given this some thought, and you might come up with some other categories, but I think we have flattery, begrudging acknowledgement, and genuine praise. Flattery is where I say something nice to you that I don't believe for my own good. I'm just saying things, but usually that's just for my purposes. And if you've been around someone, and you can pick up on it when they're not good at it, and they're constantly flattering, there's something kind of gross about it. But that's, the Proverbs talk about this, this flattery, this buttering somebody up.

That's not what God wants. He doesn't want us to flatter him. Then there's begrudging acknowledgement. This is when they interview the fighter who lost, or the coach who lost. They will say, well, you've got to give them a lot of credit. They don't want to have to give them a lot of credit, but you've got to give them a lot of credit.

They played really well. He's the best there is. They say these kind of things. Maybe there's enjoyment there, but usually it's just begrudging acknowledgement. He hit me harder than I hit him, and that is why I passed out. Begrudging acknowledgement.

And then there's genuine praise. And whenever we're in genuine praise, there's genuine delight. They go together. Whenever you're just overwhelmed by something so that you begin to talk about how great it is, your enjoyment is tied up in that. If you've ever been eating a meal and just went, oh my goodness. People are like, what?

And you had stuck food back in your mouth already. It's like, I'll tell you in a second. And you finish chewing, you go, these biscuits. Like that idea that we're just caught up. If you've ever been in love, or you've been around someone in love, and they won't shut up about the person they love, there's genuine delight and enjoyment that rolls up into praise. And God is glorious and delightful.

There's pleasures at his right hand forevermore. He's wonderful. And so when he calls us to praise, I remember my cousin arguing this out with my grandmother at one point, that God calling people to praise him, God saying you will glorify me was narcissistic. Not if God is the most glorious thing, then it's gracious. God who made all things, if he said I've made everything and what y'all should really, really like is money, what does that say about him? If he said, y'all, I'm telling you, roller coasters.

He just needs some adrenaline. That's where it's at. No, he says I'm where it's at. And he's graciously having us participate in his goodness. And us singing his praise is enjoyment and delight and gladness. That's what it's saying.

Let the nations be glad. Let them praise you. Let them see how wonderful you are so that they are swept up in it. That's the hope. That we would get to know him so well that we get swept up in all of the joy and all of the delight and all of his glory, that he would be enjoyed and exalted among the nations. Revelation 5.

Let me say this about God having us participate in his enjoyment, in his glory for our enjoyment. His exaltation is our enjoyment. I remember in elementary school, my dad picked me up early from school one day because it was my birthday. And his plan was come hang out with me. That was it. He came and picked me up and we just went and did stuff.

And I just got to hang out with my dad for a day without my brothers there ruining it. And it was great. And he understood that the right relationship between us is enjoyment and that it would be enjoyable to just get to spend time with him because he's my father. And that's what God's doing when he invites us in. He's saying this is actually the right relationship is enjoyment and mutual love and delight in one another. He's inviting us into that.

Okay, Revelation 5. Verse 9. It says, They sang a new song saying, Worthy are you to take the scroll. These are the angels in front of God. Sing a new song. It says, to sing it to Christ.

It says, Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals for you were slain and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation that when Jesus died he purchased with his blood people that now belong to him through his sacrifice and where do they come from? every tribe every people every language every nation and it says all that so that we won't get confused. well is it does it have to do with like national borders? Does it have to do with heritage? Does it have to do with the way you talk? Yes. He's gotten all of them. He's ransomed from all of those places.

Well is it does it have to do with like national borders? Does it have to do with heritage? Does it have to do with the way you talk? Yes. He's gotten all of them. He's ransomed from all of those places. Somebody belongs to Jesus. And then as John gets to look forward he gets to actually see in a vision what this looks like at the end of all time in Revelation 7 two chapters later it said

After this I looked and behold a great multitude that no one could number from every nation from all tribes and peoples and languages standing before the throne and before the Lamb clothed in white robes with palm branches in their hands and crying out with a loud voice salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne and to the Lamb. Look back at verse 9 from every nation from all tribes and peoples

And languages standing before the throne the first time God says this he says you're going to be a blessing to all peoples and then in Genesis and then in the book of Revelation it says he did it. it will be accomplished all of them will be present everyone will be represented God did not make a language that will not sing his praise God does not have a people group that will not get

To participate in his glory no one is excluded that is his plan that God's glory the ultimate goal of God is his glory enjoyed and exalted among the nations and we could we could say that because that is true then we could say that the ultimate goal goal of his church is his glory enjoyed and exalted among the nations if it's his goal

Then it's our goal if that's where he's moving history then that's what we're participating in so I want to talk a little bit about our church before we look at this idea of the mission of the church from the scriptures when we first felt called to plant a church and felt called specifically to the south we had a lot of people say like there's a lot of churches in the south

Yes there are a lot of churches in the south and my general response to that usually was there's also a lot of people who don't know Jesus in the south and there's also a lot of people who think they know enough about Jesus they've been inoculated to the gospel they know enough things about Jesus to think that they don't need him and so we set out to reach people who weren't going

To go to a church if you wanted to show up to a church there was a church to show up to so we said we need to get out in places where these people have no desire to go to the church we need the church to go to them we need to join their jobs we need to join their gyms we need to live in their neighborhoods and we need to harass them until they love Jesus and some of you are a testimony

To that that was your baptism video they would not shut up and now I love Jesus and he's great but that's it we said we needed to do those things we needed to participate in that and that we needed to set about the work of convincing some people that they were not Christians so that they could become one and when I grew up I had this understanding of missionaries

Were people who left the country and then everybody else just was here and basically what God wanted from you was like some general good behaviorousness like just show up do what you're supposed to and I kind of missed that there were people who needed Christ here and that we're supposed to be missionaries here so when that clicked and we went to plant a church

And felt like we were supposed to be here that was the song we played that's what we've said over and over again if you've been around enough you've heard everyday missionary you've heard groups on mission you've heard that you're supposed to be a missionary you're supposed to look at your schedule we don't want to fill up your schedule with a bunch

Of things we want you to look at your schedule and already see where are you where do you spend 40 hours a week where do you spend 50 hours a week and then you need to use that as an opportunity for mission and we've said if you look at your schedule and realize I'm not around anybody

Then you have to add some things to your schedule to be around some people who don't know Jesus you've got to start walking around your neighborhood you've got to start prayer walking in your cubicles you've got to start making a friend if you're bad at that you need to go with someone in

Your group who's good at it and make a friend with their friend so that you can participate this is what we've said and we've said it over and over again but there's a danger that we miss the grand picture of God there's a danger that we get a little tunnel

Vision and we miss that his desire is his glory enjoyed and exalted among the nations if you get to spend enough time with me you'll learn that I have great ideas and I don't understand the laughter and because I care about you if I'm

Around you enough I will share my great ideas with you I'll watch your life and then I will give you good helpful suggestions for your life because I care about you and I want your life to be good so I'm going to share one such idea that

I had that I have shared with some people who have just failed to see how good of an idea it is Chris and Danielle Rocky are in my community group for a couple years and then we helped send them to Honduras

And then they have come back they were overseas missionaries for a little over a year and came back and they were up here this morning that's Danielle's bass guitar and this is where Chris is playing drums and so here's my

Suggestion that I've made to them and I'll help them do it I've even offered to help execute this we help make some photos of a band that they're in and we book them some gigs but when they show up it's just the two

Of them and they act like they're all aggravated that the rest of their band quit right before the gig and they see how many songs they can play just from the bass and the drums before they make them stop that's my plan

Like I want Chris to go free bird one two three and then just play the drums and her just be on the bass going and I want them to pick really where like the bass doesn't do much and the drums don't do

Much and maybe even at times go this next song's acoustic guitar and just sit periodically Daniel can lean into the mic and go ooh cover as many hits as they can but just from the

Bass and the drums and just see if they can get away with it and we'll book them as many gigs as we can around town they have not taken me up on that and you can tell foolishness I know y'all can talk to

Them about it afterwards here's the danger and the way we've talked about mission is that while the idea of what we're talking about is important and important for you as you live here and important for us as a church is we are sent to

This area very specifically if that's all we ever talk about then we're just a bass line and you're missing the whole beautiful song we're just the drums and that's our part that's where we are we get to participate in that but we miss the rest of it

If that's all we ever talk about so I want you to see that this goal of God is also the specific mission given to the church let's look at this so Genesis 12 he always chooses people to participate in his plan God wants

This to work out through human actors he wants to not just rip open the sky and announce it but he wants humans to participate in what he's doing he's always inviting us into relationship with him and participation with him and so that's what happens in Genesis 12 in

Matthew 28 it says this this is the great commission go therefore and make disciples of all nations that that word there is ethne or ethnos it's all ethnicities all people groups baptizing them in the name

Of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you and behold I'm with you always

To the end of the age one of the things that David Platt said that I thought was extremely helpful was the great commission

Is not to go make as many disciples as possible but it is to make disciples of all nations that God's plan is not

Just a lot of believers but believers from all the peoples Matthew 24 14 this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the

Whole world as a testimony to all nations and then the end will come Luke 24 47 repentance for the forgiveness of sin should

Be proclaimed in his name to all nations beginning from Jerusalem this is what it says in Acts chapter one that they would begin in

Jerusalem and they would work their way out to the ends of the earth or Romans 1 5 Paul Paul Paul's writing he says through

Whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all nations if

We belong to the church we care about the nations if we belong to Christ we care about the nations Romans 15 this is

Paul writing in the book of Romans he's walked through all of the theology he's finishing his letter and he says this we're starting

Verse 18 for I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me to bring the Gentiles to obedience

By word and deed that links back to what he just said in Romans 1 that it's this obedience of all nations and by

Power and signs and wonders by the power of the spirit of God so that from Jerusalem and all the way around to Illyricum

I have fulfilled the ministry of the gospel of Christ and thus I make told of him will see and those who have never heard

Will understand this is the reason why I have so often been hindered from coming to you but now since I no longer have

Any room for work in these regions and since I have longed for many years to come to you I hope to see you

In passing as I go to Spain and be helped on my journey there by you once I have enjoyed your company for a

While at present however I am going to Jerusalem bringing aid to the saints this is the apostle Paul he's gone on three missionary

Journeys at this point this this is his first one they're in Antioch the Holy Spirit says to set Paul and Barnabas aside for

The mission so they leave the church at Antioch they go down to Cyprus they loop around in the area of Galatia and they

Come back that's missionary trip one missionary trip two they leave from Judea they go up to Antioch they go through the places they

Had already been and then they work their way across through Asia then they feel like they're supposed to go to Macedonia so they

Go up that way that's where they hit Philippi Thessalonica Corinth and Ephesus and they work their way back down that's missionary trip two

Missionary trip three they leave Antioch you notice they go back to Antioch a lot they leave Antioch they go through the areas of Galatia

They cut through Colossae they go through Ephesus back around Philippi Thessalonica Corinth back up another loop come back down back over Caesarea Judea and

Then he says I have no more room for work I did it nothing else to be done around here so he says I'm coming

To Rome and then y'all are going to send me to Spain that's the plan now look back at that verse verse 23 since

I no longer have any room for work in these regions what you read the New Testament there's no room for work in Corinth nothing to do there Galatia

Maybe doesn't need you to swing back by everybody here knows Jesus you did it mission accomplished banner we've done it that sounds crazy

Yeah I made three laps nailed it I'm out of here no more room to work what he doesn't mean is that there's nothing

Else for the gospel to do here there's nobody else to be reached the reality is when he sent out of Antioch everybody is supposed to

Stay except for two of what Paul is saying is I'm supposed to preach where they haven't yet heard that's verse 20 I make it

My ambition to preach the gospel not where Christ has already been named lest I build on someone else's foundation and then he says

In 21 those who have never been told of him will see and those who have never heard will understand we have to have

A special place in our to Spain I hope to see you in passing as I go to Spain and be helped on my journey

There by you he just says I know that nobody's been telling anybody about Jesus in Spain so I'm going so David Platt who

Was over the international mission board for several years who's now a part of joining with his radical organization with Joshua Project he listed

Off three problems that we are currently facing the first one is this over three billion people are currently unreached by the gospel it's 3.29

Billion people are currently unreached by the gospel there are 7.9 billion people on the planet so that's around 41% of the people on the planet now we

Have to define the word unreached unreached does not mean they do not know Jesus unreached means no one around them is going to

Tell them about Jesus the way he put it is he said it does not define one's status before God but one's access to

The gospel the word unreached does not define one's status before God but one's access to the gospel meaning that there are people who

Do not know Jesus in your neighborhood where you work out or at your work but they are not unreached because you are there

God has commissioned someone namely you to be there to pray for them to plead with them to tell them about Christ but there

Are 3.29 billion people without anybody that knows them that loves them that's going to share the gospel with them there are plenty of

People in this area who don't know Jesus but there are people here proclaiming Christ but there are 3.29 billion people around the globe

In areas where no one is proclaiming Christ this is a map from the Joshua project green is areas that are reached that there's

Gospel work there there's access to the gospel there yellow is areas where it's in the middle and it's either in the middle because

It's growing or because it's declining it used to be an area of strong faith and now it's less and less Christian or it's

An area where it used to be red and now it's becoming more Christian and red is and nations and nobody's telling them about

Jesus and there's 3.29 billion people in the red and in that section of red right there where it's all clumped together it's the

1040 Window and 3.18 billion of those people are there so there's little spots of red if you look around and the reason that

Place is red is because they are hostile to the gospel they are hard places to go they are hard languages to learn they

Don't want you there telling people about Jesus but Jesus does the second what that means for places that are unreached like Algeria like

Sudan Yemen like Yemen Yemen right now is in the middle of a crisis and war there are people who will be born who

Will live their entire life and who will die and they will never heard the hope of the gospel they will never heard the

Name of Jesus there are billions of people now who will live who will die and will never hear about Jesus and in many

Of those places they will have lived in an earthly hell fighting to survive fighting to eat fighting just to just to straggle along

And then they will go to an eternal hell never having anybody tell them about Christ so the second problem he listed is this

The church is practically ignoring the people and places most unreached by the gospel the church is practically ignoring the people and places most

Unreached by the gospel so look at this map again this is a stat I came across as I was looking at this in the US people who

Are Christians 98% of their income goes back to them so that 98% of the money that comes in is spent on them their household

2% Leaves for charitable purposes I would encourage all of you to actually look at your spending and see where you fall in that

Of that money that goes out billions are given to churches most of the money is spent locally so a lot of that makes sense

But that's how it works most of the money is spent locally most of our we pay for plumbers to come by here twice

A week spend most of our money locally then billions of dollars are still given to global missions 99% of the money given goes to

The green 97% of the missionaries go to the green green or yellow 99% of the money goes to green or yellow 97% of the missionaries goes to

Green or yellow which means that 1% of the money and 3% of the people are going to the red now again some of

That makes sense we have access we have inroads in the green people take mission trips to the green they have their heart touched

They want to go back and serve they see needs we don't take many mission trips to the red it's hard to take people

You don't pile people don't go to the red there's a lot of languages that are hard to learn there's a lot of small people groups

In those red some of them belong to Jesus he's already purchased them but there are a lot of people groups in the red that

It's hard to learn their language it's hard to get there we don't have direct connections with them and the people in the red

Don't want you there so there's a lot of avenues for us to send money to the green and a lot of avenues for people to

Get their heart to where they fall in love with an area of the green and go back and there's needed work there we're

Here this place is green and you know there's people who need to meet Jesus and some of you are thankful that we came

Here if 97% of our missionaries keep going elsewhere and if 99% of our money keeps going there I mentioned the Rockies earlier they

Won't do my band idea but they did do God's idea of going overseas to share the gospel with people and we got to

Get behind them and participate and we got to help send them to Honduras and I'm not saying that kind of work is needed

I'm here I think this kind of work is needed but the church has to get really serious about the red or it'll stay

Red third problem he listed is this the number of unreached people is higher today than ever before and will continue to increase until

The church decides to change the number of unreached people today is higher than ever before and will continue to increase until the church

Decides to change unreached meaning having no access to the gospel that number is growing not shrinking so the church has to do something

Has to participate in God's plan I'm going to read one more quote from him he said if we are not living and dying to make

Disciples of unreached nations then we are disobeying the great commission and disregarding the goal of God that if we don't care about that

If the church is not living and dying for that if we are not sending some money towards that if we are not giving

Effort towards that if some of us are not going towards that then it is a practical rejection of the great commission which calls

Us to go to all nations now the United States is among the nations but we currently sit in a place of affluence we

Currently sit in a place where we spend money on things we do not need and we currently sit in a time when there

Are more unreached peoples than ever before and something has to change those are the three problems I have three encouragements for us as we finish

Up our time first one God's plan is wonderful that his desire is to rescue people from all nations from all tongues from all

Tribes to bring them to himself for an eternity of delight that's wonderful and if you belong to Jesus that is your future that

I actually have an eternity before me where I have all my good things there which means that all my good things aren't here

If you belong to Jesus all your good things are there they're not here so we ought to live as if we know that

And we ought to be willing to sacrifice here so that more people can get there because there's 3.29 billion people in unreached people

Groups that currently have no hope of getting there but his plan is wonderful secondly God's plan will be fulfilled Revelation 5.9 says worthy are you to

Take the scroll and to open its seals for you were slain and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe

And language and people and nation the church can send people to the red we can send people to the most hostile areas on

The globe some of them will die and step into a glorious eternity and we can send over and over and over again with

The knowledge and the certainty that somebody is coming out somebody there is going to praise the name of Jesus for eternity so we

Can go you can send money and you can go personally and we can send missionaries and we can go not knowing how it

Will turn out ultimately with our lives but knowing ultimately how it will turn out with somebody that tribe is going to be there

God will not fail to have a tribe or a language or a nation or people gathered around his throne we don't know how

Many but we know somebody is coming out we know that God will fulfill his mission and by his grace we get to participate

By his grace you get to join in the delight of God to rescue the nations that's my third encouragement is that we as

A church are uniquely positioned we are uniquely positioned as a church to join God's global plan and not because KC South Carolina is the epicenter

Of travel or something there are three missions organizations that do their work in the red that we give free office space to they help pay

Some utilities three one of them is in power one they're doing work in Sudan and a few other places and they're right over

Here another one is Novo a member of our church family Patricia is married to Ben Johnson she works for them she's there United

States eastern office I don't know if she has that kind of title but she's here working out of here for Novo who's doing work in Lebanon in the Middle East

And Ben Johnson his organization 1040 Hope who we've gotten to go on a trip to Egypt with is here our church that has 10 community groups 130 members

Has three missions organizations in our building that are going to the 1040 window praise Jesus and how dare we not join in what he set up for us praise Jesus and how dare we not

Participate in his goal to be exalted and enjoyed among the nations for eternity and if we belong to him this is our heart because it's his and we get the hope of enjoying

And exalting in him forever and may we live as if that is true and may we participate in his mission to see some of those people come out to praise his name in a tongue we don't

Understand the band is going to come back up we're going to get to sing together over the next few weeks we're going to get to talk about this we're going to get to have some of those organizations come talk to us

Answer some questions tell us about what they're doing so that we might continue to pray and see how we might participate in what God's doing my hope from today is that we would begin to wrap our mind around this and begin to ask the Lord

How can I participate where would you have me let's pray by the way thank you for your grace we thank you that by your blood you have ransomed from every tribe and every language and every people and every nation someone out

Of their sin someone out of darkness someone out of hopelessness into your glory and we thank you that for all of those who have trusted in Jesus who have been justified by faith who have been justified by your grace who have

Been justified by the work on the cross through Christ that we have an eternity filled with delight Lord we don't know why you've placed us where you've placed us we pray that we'd be mindful of the people who don't know you around us we pray that we'd

Be active in being missionaries here but Lord we know that you've given us an opportunity to go to the nations to participate in what you are doing to send and to serve and Lord may we by your empowerment

Through your Holy Spirit fulfill the good work that you've laid out for us and we ask this in Jesus name Amen

The Blood Water Offering

Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

The Blood Water Offering

Spencer Cary

Transcript

So good morning my name is spencer i'm one of the pastors here we are in week two of our gift series we're going to be in 2nd Samuel chapter 23 verses 13 through 17 today a brief story in the old testament you can turn there we'll thought you could fall on the screen behind us we'll be there in a moment when i was in high school i was very excited about uh the xbox 360 which is a gaming system that was going to come out and and i was like i want this.

But it was in the holiday season when it came out and they just said if you want this you're probably going to have to enter into the holiday craze in order to get it and i hate shopping it's just it's not my thing especially around the holidays i just in christmas time i i don't like it but i was like i want this so i'm going to go for it i had really three options at hand to be able to get an xbox 360 the.

First was in the the day that it came out the night before to go out and camp uh which i was never going to do because i don't camp a whole lot anyways i'm certainly not going to do it for a gaming system so that one didn't make sense the second one was to show up the morning that it came out and and get in line very early and hope that you could you know be one of the people that got in line and got one uh the.

Third option uh was to rob somebody to to show up early to find an easy week mark go get a biscuit from mcdonald's come back and then take it from them but i talked it over my mom she said that was not a good idea i might miss christmas in jail so we went with option two so i showed up at five o'clock at target in irmo and i got in line and i was one of the last four people in line to get one of the vouchers that would get you an xbox 360.

So i was excited and then as a few minutes went by more people got in line and there were parents behind me that were excited about getting one for their child who were very disappointed to get a different voucher that voucher was if we get a shipment before christmas you've got one so they still had to stay in line very upset that they were going to get one for their kids and there were a group of younger guys at the very front they had been there since the night before and they were they were talking about their intentions uh what they were going to do with their xbox 360.

Loudly about selling it on ebay for double the price so as these parents who are behind me that you know possibly not going to get one of these for their kid for christmas are hearing these young guys up front talking about selling these online for double the price you can imagine about how that went they were very upset they were starting to argue they were starting to verbally attack the guys i thought we were going to have an arnold schwarzenegger situation from jingle all the way or terminator or predator it was going to get violent.

But that listen we tell stories like that every time around this series because that highlights the insanity of this season every year we talk about pausing for gifts series because we've lost the thread on what christmas is supposed to be and we get all caught up in the holiday craziness the christmas craziness of getting presents and materialism and everything else so we we hit that every year that's why we pause for this series however in having kids now i can at least.

See that when parents go crazy over getting toys for their kids that it's actually a good desire that's just gotten corrupted right i mean the good desire is that you would get your child a gift and on christmas morning they'd be really excited and you'd see their face light up that's that's a good desire that their desire becomes our delight and we get to be excited about it it just goes a little crazy right and people get violent and all the youtube videos that we've seen of how people go a little crazy.

But at its core it's a good desire that's become corrupted and today we get to sit in a story where these uh we're going to look at three soldiers uh these are David's uh soldiers who uh want to get something for David they want to cheer him up and we're going to sit in this for a moment and glean from it and hopefully as we step back from it at the end we're going to see that this actually helps us grow in generosity and growing a normal of.

Jesus so let me pray for us and then we will jump into the story father i thank you that we get to pause every time this year and remember the Gospel and remember that it calls us to walk in generosity God i pray that you would bless this time grow us and shape us and mold us into your image we ask this in Jesus name amen all right so some context because we're jumping into a very obscure passage from the old testament all right.

So first and second Samuel really highlight the rise of David all right the one of the greatest kings in the history of Israel so we're at the end of second Samuel uh and and what this story is doing is in a series of stories that are highlighting some flashbacks and they're flashing back to uh David's 30 mightiest warriors all right so this is a series of stories that are talking about the the baddest of the bad they're called the chief men the 30 mighty men these are the baddest of the baddest warriors that fought.

For David think the expendables but less botox all right so for those of you that have never seen the expendables there you go that these are the baddest soldiers that he's got i'll just give let me give you three different highlights from three different guys that show this one uh soldier his name is jay shabiam which for those of you that are having boys it's a strong name all right jay show all right jay shabiam killed 300 men at one time with one spear all right went toe-to-toe with 300 men with one spear killed them all the.

Second uh uh banaya banaya was one of David one of David's bodyguards so banaya uh went toe-to-toe with a with a lion and a snowy pit all right and he killed the lion one-on-one he also killed an egyptian giant a seven foot five soldier so he killed shaq and he killed a lion all right and that's just to be David's bodyguard all right uh we'll give you one more eleazar eleazar was uh there's a story where he um with the Israelites or they have a barley field they're defending.

But they flee from the barley field when the philistines come eleazar posts up in the middle of the field and defeats all of them by himself all right these are the baddest of the battle these are David's mighty men and specifically in this brief story that we're going to be in today this is three unnamed men we don't know which ones they were i like to think that joe was in this bunch but we don't know all right three of his men and we're gonna pick up in.

Verse 13 and what they did 13 and three of the 30 chief men went down and came about harvest time to David at the cave of adulum when a band of philistines was encamped in the valley of refugee David was then in the stronghold and the garrison of the philistines was then at bethlehem all right so this gives some context for the situation so David uh and his men they are encamped their stronghold is at the cave of abdullah that is about as a few miles southwest of Jerusalem the philistines are encamped throughout uh they are spread out through the valley of refugee and their stronghold is in the town of bethlehem and that is.

Very sad news for David because that is David's hometown that is where he's from and the philistines are his greatest enemy the philistines i mean he has a history with him right remember David and Goliath Goliath was a philistine that's how he made his entrance into being a great military warrior he defeats Goliath there's another story where he goes he wants to marry king Saul's daughter and king Saul really wants to get rid of David because he's a threat so he says go and kill me 100 philistines and and David goes and kills 200 philistines and brings back some some goodie bags which.

For small ears we're not going to go into but you can go back and read the story the philistines hate him all right it is and that is his greatest enemy and they have taken his hometown his land where his home is and and he is deeply dismayed at this it's in caves like the cave of abdullah that we get psalms like psalm 57 there are a few psalms that were written uh in the cave and it's you can connect the dots and think this is probably one of those psalms was written during a time like this in psalm 57 1 he says be merciful to me o.

God be merciful to me for in you my soul takes refuge in the shadow of your wings i will take refuge till the storms of destruction pass by he's lamenting he's he's in the midst of storms of destruction uh there's another psalm psalm 142 same thing written in the cave when he says when in 142 3 says when the my spirit faints within me you know my way his spirit is weak he's dismayed you could even say he's probably depressed this is the state of David all right that's the context.

For verse 15 when we hear what David says in 15 and David said longingly oh that someone would give me water to drink from the well of bethlehem that is by the gate so some context for this all right the the structure of this sentence i looked at this alongside some commentators this this is not a command okay he's not saying somebody go out and get me some water he is simply expressing a deep longing probably talking to himself oh if someone would get me water from the.

Well specifically the one by the gate in bethlehem all right this could be nostalgia for missing home right i got like if you're traveling abroad and you're like oh i miss my wife's cooking oh i missed my mama's cooking i longed for this all right it could be that the water is better there i remember when my wife and i we moved back from we lived in louisville kentucky when i was in seminary for five years when we moved back we realized something that the water in louisville is actually really really good people rank city waters.

Because they have time on their hands and it makes the top 10 across the country every year i don't know how because the ohio river is gross but they've got some type of filtration system and the water tastes very good and when we moved back here you know the lexington and now we live in lakes west columbia area every summer i don't know if you know this if you live on this side of the river but every summer uh the water tastes they say earthy that ain't earthy it's it's gross it's dirty it's.

Because there's an algae bloom in the lake which by the way that's where we get our water from on this side of the river and every it just it tastes not that great and when i taste the water sometimes i'm like man i really miss the water that i had in louisville that didn't taste like dirty algae i it listen it could be for nostalgia reasons it could be the water in bethlehem takes better than the cave for whatever reason he longs.

For the water that he used to drink at home and his longing does not go unheard verse 16 then the three mighty men broke through the camp of the philistines and drew water out of the well of bethlehem that was by the gate and carried and brought it to David all right so three of his mighty men they hear this and they spring into action they are going to get this water if it is the last thing they literally do they're going to risk their lives.

For this it says they break into the camp now i want to make sure i understood this correctly that they weren't just kind of sneaking in at night what so i looked at the hebrew for the word break and it's a violent breaking which means they fought their way into the camp all right risking their blood probably shedding some of their own blood and shedding the blood of others they got to the well drew the water out presumably defending themselves and they had to get out of the camp which means they probably fought their way out of the camp and ran all the way back to the cave of adul think about that what kind.

Of devotion is that what what kind of what what compels people uh men to do this to risk their lives for a drink of water it's because they loved David they loved him they loved him fiercely they're in the midst of David's depression and his sadness he expresses a a whim a desire oh that i'd have a drink of water and and his very win all right his very longing that he expresses becomes their complete and total devotion that they're willing to risk their lives that's love that is love.

For David that you would risk they'd risk their comfort their safety all for a drink of water you might be thinking well i mean these are his men right don't i mean they have to be obedient that's that's part of it right well here's the deal first off it's not a command as we just said but also obedience is not enough to compel this type of action it's just not in high school i uh i played two sports play baseball and football and my two coaches.

For baseball and football could not be any different my baseball coach was very successful in building a program won lots of state titles partially because he recruited players to come in and then my junior year i guess he stopped recruiting because we weren't very good uh and and he just gave up on us for two years he just he just gave up on us and he he didn't love us we were in we're a means to an end in winning titles and and we just we kind of went through the motions of the baseball season i.

Remember going into my senior year we had not taken the field for actual practice and we had a game five days later we still hadn't taken he was running us to death every day and conditioning i remember specifically one day he had an excuse that they'd been raining a lot but it was very it was dry enough for us to go and practice and and he said all right put your tennis shoes on which meant we were going to run some more and i just i just stared him down i was furious and our team was just we were.

So upset he was was was furious with us he pointed to the state championship banners and said you're never going to win any of these walked on us walked out on us and then we went out and practiced without them all right it was just completely different though the relationship we have with him than with our football coach our football coach loved us and we loved him we would run through a brick wall for him my my sophomore junior season we were not good at all we didn't win a lot of games and we loved him we fought to the finish in every game two very different relationships we do anything.

For our football coach because it was based on love and our baseball coach he was half hearted obedience and that's the difference love versus obedience love produces true devotion obedience just produces the mere semblance of devotion it's not the same love is an all-out response while obedience is just walking through the motions love is the foundation for devote for this type of devotion for these men they love David and it shows up in how they respond to him so they bring this water back to him.

Verse 16 but he would not drink of it he poured it out to the lord and sometimes we read the bob you're like wait what a second if you're just reading through second Samuel you're like wait what he pours out the water seriously oh i mean they went to all these lengths to do this and he pours out the water uh chet and jordan jordan's one of our members chet's one of our pastors they uh they sometimes talk about this restaurant that they met in in lynchburg virginia at liberty and they talk about this restaurant called osaka it's supposed to be like tokyo grill.

But way better and they swear by they they say it is the best and finally jordan he brought me one a plate that was like a day and a half old i heated it up and it lives up the hype it is it is it is great now imagine i walk into the office one day and i see jordan and chet and they're just sad and they're downcast and they just oh if we could just have some osaka we'd feel better and i hear that and i spring into action and i get in my car and i drive five hours up to lynchburg and i get it and i fight traffic and i come all.

The way back and i bring it to them like guys and i put it in place with some covers to make it here it is boom and they take it they smell it and they just dump it on the ground all of it they take the white sauce and just pour it out it's shocking when all that effort for what they got all the effort they fight they risk their lives they shed their blood for what pours out the water say.

But he would not drink of it he poured it out to the lord and said far be it from me o lord that i should do this shall i drink the blood of the men who went at the risk of their lives therefore he would not drink it these things the three mighty men did David realizes that he isn't worthy of this type of devotion he's not worthy of this type of sacrifice these men gave up blood to secure this offering and he's not worthy of it he realizes that the only one who is worthy of this type of offering offering is the.

Lord he takes their devotion he pours it out to the lord this is this is a drink offering all right in the old testament they had they had drink offerings numbers 15 says you shall offer a a third of the hen of one the picture is it's a pleasing aroma to the lord that a drink offering is poured out that's what he takes he takes the devotion and he pours it out this is hear this this is the most honorable thing he could have done in this moment is to take that devotion and turn it up to the.

Lord far be it from me to drink the blood of my men this belongs to the lord this type of love and devotion belongs to God and that's the story real small obscure story from the old testament and it's it's an incredible story to look at how they honored their king like this is incredible so you might be wondering that's neat why are we talking about this in our gift series what does this have to do with christmas here's the deal we won't understand this series we will understand generosity and we won't understand christmas until we understand that we serve a much better king than David we serve a much better king these men got.

To serve David who was a great king and we see the kind of sacrifice and the kind of devotion that kind of love they poured out to him how much more so should we serve the king of all creation how much more should we be devoted to how much more should we love the king who left heaven to come for us to wage war against the enemy who stepped into darkness David in the midst of his despair doesn't have it in him to go out and get this offering he doesn't have it in him his soldiers go out.

For him our savior our king came he's the one that broke through enemy lines for us when he left heaven and he came to earth we sing this season joy to the world the lord has come let earth receive her king and we look at that song we think that's it's cute it's nice because 30 different pop stars have covered it in terrible fashion it's not cute it is a declaration of war joy to why is there joy because the king came.

For us because he stepped into the darkness he stepped into this domain to wage war against the enemy and we've been in the Gospel of Matthew for over a year now and we've gotten to see how good our king is that he came for us they didn't leave us in our darkness they didn't leave us in our sin that he came we got to see as he steps on the scene in in Matthew 4 right when he's being tempted in the wilderness and he goes toe-to-toe with Satan after 40 days and 40 nights of fasting and drinking no food or water and he's a showdown with Satan and he does what adam and eve couldn't.

Do he remains sinless and we got to see how good our king is and that he teaches us the sermon on the mount is beautiful it is the embodiment of wisdom we get to see over and over again over the last year as our king as he healed the paralytic and said rise take up your mat and walk away as he put his hands on the eyes of the blind and gave sight to them we get to see over and over how good our king is and he does all of this on our behalf and it doesn't cost our blood to obtain this gift we're not being sent out to earn this on our own.

As soldiers no now the king lays down his life sheds his own blood and his blood is poured out like a drink offering how much better is our king than David he's so much better and once we understand that once we understand how good it is the king who came for us how sweet how amazing he is then we can begin to understand how we should respond in worship then we can look at the example of these three mighty men and say i i want to respond like that.

And then some because our king is much much better with the hope that one day we'll stand before our king and he'll say well done my good and faithful servant well done my good and faithful soldier that is how our approach changes to opportunities that we have right in front of us you know oftentimes we get every year we do this and we we have these these opportunities to give to something like this and i feel this there's a part of us that looks at this and says all right.

Well what what do i have to give what is it i mean all right my regular generosity okay it's a 10 is that what i have to give all right do i need a budget for forgive project is that is that what i have to give listen i feel that i do but understand this that respond misses it misses on it misses out on total devotion in love it's a different response than us uh instead of just showing a mere semblance of obedience by going through the motions with how we do generosity instead of doing that how about let's chase after the heart of.

God let's let his his desire become our delight and let's run after that i mean what if like what if we caught a mere whisper of the Holy Spirit like these men did they just caught David talking to himself what if we caught the voice of the Holy Spirit saying to go big to to go maybe he starts pointing out stuff right maybe it's the christmas bonus that you get every year maybe it's it's christmas money that you get every year i don't know what that is.

For you but what if the Holy Spirit just started touching on something a mere whisper and that caught our full attention and we said all right what do you want lord what do you want i'm all in i want to be i want to be completely devoted is it this is it more that's a different response when we go after the heart of God that's the type of devotion that God calls us to my hope is is that we catch a we catch wind of that and we'd respond.

Listen when we sent the rockies out i honestly i thought it was a little hasty i did i talked through i sat with chris and was like are you sure right now you don't have all your support raised are you sure like we're right in the middle of the pandemic i wouldn't hurt to wait a few more months and he said no no we've prayed the lord has spoken and we're going chris and danielle like good soldiers heard the Holy Spirit and they said we're all in we're going we're selling everything we're packing up we're moving our kids and we're going and isn't the.

Lord wiser than we the fact that chris a builder shows up right before hurricane decimates the very village that every town that they were going to reach they were obedient because they are devoted and they love God and they're gonna follow his heart anywhere and the desire that we have right in front of us is this project it is fully funding them at a thousand bucks a month it is building some houses down there my hope is that we can join them with the love and devotion that sent them down there that we might.

See Jesus use them to build some houses to make some disciples to raise up some Church plants and to bring light into darkness as our king came and did for us the band's gonna come up and i just want us to sit in that for a moment before we respond and worship i want us not to feel like we have to but to listen to the Holy Spirit and to chase after the heart of God that his desire would become our complete delight and we respond with however.

God calls us to i don't know what that looks like for you my hope is you'd listen my hope is we listen as a Church and that we respond with the type of love and devotion that these three soldiers did for David and then some let me pray father i pray that you would first help us see what you did in your coming what you did on the cross what you did in the empty tomb and that we be so overwhelmed by you that in worship we'd respond and we'd pray and we'd.

Listen and we trust you i don't know what that looks like for us but God i pray that you would speak to us that we take a step of faith in growing in generosity that flows out of a heart that is totally devoted to you we ask in Jesus name amen.

Community on Mission

1 Peter 2:9-10

Community on Mission

Chet Phillips

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Transcript

Well, good morning. My name is Chet. I'm one of the pastors here. I'm excited. We're getting to continue our series in 1 Peter, so we're just walking verse by verse to the book of 1 Peter. We like to take books of the Bible and just study them and try to learn as much as we possibly can from them.

So we're going to start off with a little bit of interaction, so you've got to be paying attention. I'm going to say two things that are kind of pitted against each other, and I need you to just loudly and possibly angrily vote. So Pepsi or Coke? Pepsi! Neither wasn't an option, but okay, so that sounded about even. I think if you're talking about the drinks, Pepsi or Coke, most people go with Coke, but if you're talking about like Pepsi products versus Coke products, it gets different.

Okay, Mac or PC? Mac or PC? All right. Dunkin' Donuts, Krispy Kreme? Krispy Kreme! Amen.

Thank you all so much. That means so much to me. Moe's or Chipotle? Chipotle! Android or iPhone? Android!

All right. Jordan or LeBron? Anybody care? Jordan! Jordan. Okay, thank you.

All right. Xbox or girls? Sorry. Sorry, it was too easy. When I was making that list, I couldn't help myself. Okay.

All of us have been in discussions that were surrounded around these kind of things. Like we get into these arguments. We argue about donuts. We argue about food. The few, you argue about the way phones work. I mean, you've sat in on these conversations.

A few of my favorites are, if you're ever in the Chipotle-Moes argument. Chipotle people really care about Chipotle. Moe's people are like, I like queso. And Chipotle people are like, no. You must. I've had someone look at me and go, Chet, Chipotle is objectively better than Moe's.

So if you get into these conversations, I think the argument is it's like it's organic or something, which I think means they rubbed dirt on the food. That's what it tastes like. Or like the chickens were happy before you killed them. I don't... This cow tastes like he was pleased right before they killed him and I ate him. If you're ever in that argument, though, this is always the argument I make, which just really makes Chipotle people angry.

So they're arguing about ingredients. They're arguing about organic. They're arguing about stuff. And I always go, yeah, but when I go to Chipotle, nobody greets me. Nobody says, welcome to Chipotle. And I just like people to greet me.

And it makes them so mad because that should not apply to how the food tastes. They want to argue ingredients. And I'm just like, they said hello. And I felt warm when I walked inside. But we all form communities around things that we love.

We all gather around something that we enjoy, that we appreciate, that we find beauty in, that we find satisfaction in. And then we desire to tell other people about them. We want to include more people in that. We watch a movie that we like. We tell a bunch of people. We eat at a restaurant that we like.

We tell a bunch of people. We find other people who enjoy what we like. And that's how we form friend groups. So you've got people that they all enjoy video games or they all enjoy this sport or they all enjoy watching this show and they form communities around it and then they try to convert other people to it. And what we're going to see in 1 Peter is that that's actually in a lot of ways what the church is. It's a group of people formed around Jesus that want more people to know Jesus.

Find beauty and excellence and joy and hope and life in Jesus and want to share that, want to spread that. And so because that's a natural human thing to form communities around something and to proclaim its excellencies, it's honestly one of the things that the church is designed to do. So I'm going to read first. We're all going to read 1 Peter 2, 9 and 10 together. That's where we're going to be this morning. And then we'll pray and we'll kind of break it all down, study it together.

So 1 Peter 2, 9 and 10. It's on page 657 if your Bible looks like this, if you've got one of these in the row. If you don't own a Bible, take this one with you. We want you to have a Bible. So 1 Peter 2, 9 and 10.

And Peter's writing to a group of churches in what's modern-day Turkey, talking to them about how to live inside of a culture where the church doesn't really fit, where the thought process the culture has doesn't really line up with what the church has. And as we've been studying through, he's been really hammering on, this is who Jesus is, this is who this makes you. Because of what Jesus has done, this is who you are. And now in the next couple weeks, he's going to start turning and being like, because that's true, here's what life looks like for you. So 9 and 10.

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. Let's pray. God, those two verses are beautiful. And they tell us a lot about what you've done for us, what you've accomplished for us through Jesus, through your cross.

And we pray, Lord, that you would help us to see that clearly today. That those who don't know you might clearly understand what you have offered them. And those who do know you might clearly understand what you have given them. And Lord, we praise you and we thank you. In Jesus' name, amen. Okay, so Peter, when he starts off in verse 9, he's going to give us a bunch of Old Testament imagery that kind of tells us what the church is now.

So he's going to give Old Testament pictures. It's going to be found in stories in Genesis, in Exodus, in Joshua, Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel. He's going to give pictures from those books that help us understand who we are as the church now. So what he's going to say is these Old Testament pictures apply to us now because of Jesus. And so he starts off with, you are a chosen race. And what picture he's pointing to is Abraham.

Abraham was just a guy. And God just picks him and says, I'm going to make you into a people. I'm going to make you into a family. I'm going to make you into a race. So he was not Jewish.

God just picked him and said, you are going to be my people. You're going to, all of your lineage will be my people. And through you, the whole world will be blessed. And so he picks Abraham and he turns him into a people, into a race, into a family. And then he says a royal priesthood. And so after the people of Israel live over in kind of Canaan area, and then they go to Egypt and are enslaved for 400 years.

And then Moses shows up and he sings that song about letting his people go. And they do sing songs, but that's not one of them. And they don't sing until later when they get out. But anyway, he shows up and they get out. They go wandering into the desert. And God basically says, now I'm going to teach you what it looks like to be my people.

And you're going to be a priesthood. You're going to be the people on earth who relate to me. And I'm going to show you what that looks like. And so Peter says, that image applies to us. And then God, once he taught them what it looked like, actually gives them a nation. He actually gives them land.

He draws their borders for them and says, go. This is the land I've given you. Go take it over. And so Peter says that those images of a chosen race, a royal priesthood, and a holy nation are now what has been given to us through Jesus. What is the church? And the church is all of those on earth who've placed their faith in Jesus, in the cross, and that he died for our sin, that he rose again, and that in him we have life.

And hope and joy and that he's the king of everything. And so what that means is we're a chosen race. The church is a family. We now have a family line that trumps all other family lines. We now have, we are made into a people. The church is.

That we will exist in eternity as brothers and sisters. That's why Christian people say, good to see you, brother. That's what they mean. That's what they're talking about is that we've been made into a family. And then he says you're a royal priesthood. And what that means is that all of us are on the same level.

We get to relate to God. And all of us are priests. Are people who get to relate directly to God through Jesus. So there isn't like a special class of Christians that get to be priests and get to relate to God. No, we all are. We're all made into a royal priesthood.

I was talking to a guy who's looking at getting baptized here in August when we have our baptism gathering. He's a recent Christian. And I was talking to him about stuff. And he said, yeah, I'm a Christian, but I'm not like Christian 2.0. I was like, dude, that doesn't exist. There is no Christian 2.0.

You're either in because of Jesus or you're not in. But all of us will stand before God and have Jesus cover us. We're all under Jesus. Some of us are under Jesus, but also we've added stuff to it. That's not how it works. And so we're all a priesthood.

We're all people who get to relate to God and show the world what it looks like to relate to God. And then he says you're a holy nation. And that image there, I've been recently reading through the book of Revelation. And people get super geeked out over the book of Revelation or they just completely avoid it. Those are the two type of people. Someone who wants to draw a chart and show you a picture of a dragon.

And someone who's like, I've never read it because it scares me. Really, the book of Revelation is just about Jesus. But there's these beautiful pictures of heaven. And there's one that I've been recently just has been imprinted in my mind. And it's that before God's throne in heaven, in eternity, it says that there were thousands upon thousands of people praising him in every tongue, from every tribe, in every language, in every nation, in every people. Do you know what's beautiful about that?

It's telling us something that's going to happen in the future. There are 6,000 people groups right now on earth that do not know about Jesus. There's nobody proclaiming the gospel in their language. Nobody. There's no Bible translated into the language. There are no current missionaries reaching these people.

6,000 People groups. And what the book of Revelation says is they're going to be there. That Christianity doesn't have a culture. It doesn't have one overriding culture. Everyone is welcome. Everyone is invited in.

And God has already set the borders and said, I'm claiming these people. These people are going to be mine. And my church is going to march forward to the borders and invite these people in. So the same way that he said, these are your borders and this is where your nation is going to be, the church gets to be a part of seeing more and more people meet Jesus that he's already said these are going to be mine. These are the borders I've already drawn. This is who's going to be invited in.

And so that's the church. And so what Peter's saying is this is who you are. This is your identity. So in our culture, what you do is your identity. So I do this, therefore I am this.

I do this, so I'm this. And what Christianity says is Jesus did this and he gives you your identity. Your identity comes from Jesus and then you do things out of your identity. But your identity has already been set in Jesus. And so Peter's been saying because Jesus died, because he's made us into a people, because he rose again, because we have a certain hope, now this is who we are and therefore we. And he goes into what we do.

And so what he says is you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession that Jesus has claimed us, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness and into his marvelous light. Jesus has rescued us, has saved us, has made us into a people that we may proclaim his excellencies, that we may tell more people about how amazing he is. And we do this naturally. Some of you saw Guardians of the Galaxy. Then you saw it again.

And then you told everyone you'd ever met that it was the greatest movie you'd ever seen. Some people watched Terminator Salvation and wrongfully went and told people it was a good movie. But there are things that you appreciate and you enjoy and then you go tell people about. You go invite people in on. And what it says is that we've been turned into these people and that we might proclaim his excellencies, that we might make much of Jesus. Now, in our context, the question comes up, is that okay to do?

Is it okay to tell people about Jesus? Aren't we supposed to just kind of keep our beliefs to ourself? Isn't it annoying or even kind of rude for me to come push my views on you? That we have this belief in our culture that is, all ideas are equally good and valuable. All ideas, all beliefs are equally good and valid. And so it's wrong for you to push your ideas on someone else.

It's wrong for you to try to convert someone to what you believe. We've heard that. But all ideas are equally good, equally valid, and it's wrong for you to try to push your beliefs on somebody. So if you're a Christian, if someone asks you about what you believe, or if you build a long enough friendship with somebody you can share, but other than that, you don't really need to be trying to convert people to your belief. You don't need to, if your neighbor is a Muslim, you don't need to try to talk them into being Christians. Because all ideas, all beliefs are equally good and valid, and you don't need to push your ideas on anybody else.

Now, there's a couple of things wrong with that. One is, that sentence, that idea isn't even logically coherent. Because whoever makes that statement is saying, all ideas are equally valid except for the one that says they aren't. And you don't need to try to convert people to your ideas. You need to believe and be converted to mine. Does that make sense?

That's what that sentence is. All ideas are equally valid except for the one that says that they aren't. And you don't need to convert people to your beliefs, you need to be converted to mine, which is a very Western, pluralistic belief system, that all ideas are equally valid. Go to the Middle East, they don't believe that, so what you're saying is Western American culture and the way we hold ideas is actually better than the way other cultures hold their ideas. So immediately, it doesn't stand up in other cultures, and it doesn't even make sense logically, because the only way for that sentence to be correct is for it to be incorrect.

That's the problem. So it doesn't hold up logically, and it's not true. So let me free you up as a Christian. We don't believe that. Yesterday, and I was so happy they didn't come from South Carolina, but yesterday, Klansmen from North Carolina came to our state house to hold a rally. That's a belief system, and it is not equally good or equally valid.

They need to change. They need to believe something different. I was listening to NPR this week to interviews of women who had been captured and held by ISIS, and so they were translating for them, and one of them, this lady was talking, she was 21 years old, she was talking about her ISIS captors who were trying to force a nine-year-old girl into a bathroom with them, or this one guy was trying to force a nine-year-old girl into a bathroom with him, and so she said she fought him, and he fought back and said, I will kill you, and her response was, I'm willing to die for her. She's worth dying for.

Now, ISIS is a belief system, but it is not equally good or equally valid, and they need to change and be converted, and so as a Christian, we have freedom to not believe that idea because it's not true, and for most people, when asked, they will agree that all ideas aren't equally valid. Even though they'll say that statement, you can't get them to believe and agree that the KKK, their ideas are just as good as Mother Teresa's because they're not. Some bring life, some bring joy, and some enslave and harm, and so let me free you up. It is okay to tell people. It is okay to proclaim the excellencies of Jesus, and let me tell you one of the main reasons why.

He is excellent. This is actually good news, and so Peter, in this context, in this text, is going to show us three beautiful truths about Jesus that are real for us because of the gospel. Three beautiful things that Jesus has accomplished for us that are actually excellent, actually beautiful, actually good, actually true, and that we want to share with other people. So we'll start at verse 9 again. But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation.

So this is who you are, this is who you've been made by Jesus, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Now, the first beautiful truth about Jesus for Christians is that he's called us out of darkness. That, ultimately, we know, the Bible teaches this, that God created the world and it was good and it existed in a beautiful relationship with himself, and then humans rebelled. They ran from him in pride, and that Satan, who is a real being, helped lead people astray, and ultimately, everyone is a part of one kingdom.

You're either submitted to and following Jesus in the kingdom of light where there's joy and peace and hope and fulfillment and satisfaction, or you ultimately are following Satan who's doomed to be destroyed by Jesus, that hell is designed for Satan and those who follow him. And most people don't believe they're following Satan. That's not how that works. But either we're in the kingdom of light that follows after Jesus that have been rescued by Jesus or we're in the dark. And for many of us, we were called out of darkness. We were called out of darkness.

We didn't have hope. Didn't have joy. We were chasing after things that would never fulfill us, never make us whole, never bring us satisfaction, that constantly forced us to be enslaved to them in order for us to have any sense of life. They didn't do what Jesus did, which is Jesus does this, so this is who you are. They said, you do this, you work, you slave, you prove yourself, and then you get to. Then you get to achieve.

Then you get to be good enough. Then you get to have done it. He's called us out of darkness. And that's beautiful. And for Christians, you kind of understand what that means. You know what it means to be called out of darkness.

And for non-Christians, for people who don't believe, I'm sorry, I think that point probably was super confusing and sounds weird. The other two are going to be a little more, make a little more sense. But for Christians, you understand what it was like to be in the dark, to be without hope, to be without joy, and then to actually be freed up and to walk in light, to be invited into all that Jesus has offered. The second beautiful truth, the second beautiful, captivating thing about Jesus that he's done for us is in verse 10. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people. And by a people, it means you weren't a family, you weren't a race, you weren't connected.

So some of us, before we became Christians, you had a family. And they were good. They were nice. They believed in you. They loved you. They accepted you.

Some of you, before you became Christians, you had friends, real friends that were beyond surface level conversations at work, that you actually could be around and enjoy being around and you could be open with who you were. You could be real about who you were and you were still loved and accepted. But for many of us, that's not true. It wasn't true for us before we became Christians. Our family, at best, was neutral. They didn't actively harm us.

For some of us, they did. The people who were supposed to love you, guard you, protect you, accept you, defend you, build you up, actually tore you down, assaulted you, harmed you. Your family had a very negative effect on you. For some of us, we had zero friends or just some friends we had in high school that we talked to a couple of times, maybe on Facebook, said happy birthday to each other. Some people we talked to at work, but we didn't have real friends. Honestly, and some of you may be in this position now, you believe your options are be real about who I am, be open and honest about what's going on in my heart and how messed up I am in a lot of ways and have zero friends, or be fake and have some friends.

But they aren't really my friends. They don't really know me. They just know the personified version, the fake shell I've made up. And what it says is that because of Jesus, we're a people. We're a family. And here's how this works.

All of us have our identity wrapped up in Jesus, which means that it can never be taken from us by any of our actions. All of us have our identity set in Jesus and therefore it can never be taken from us. It can never be removed from us because it's set in Him. So all other communities accept some sins, some failures, some brokenness, and not others. So you can be in a biker gang.

And there's some brokenness that bikers will accept. Like stabbing people. And maybe stealing or burning things down. There's like brokenness that biker gangs are cool with. But cowardice, disloyalty, you're not welcome anymore.

You can be a part of a group of people that gets their identity from being tolerant. And as long as you're tolerant, you're tolerated. But anybody who's close-minded or narrow-minded or bigoted, they're not at welcome because it's tolerance that makes us good. If you're a group of people that are friends because you're smart, I was never a part of this group, but if you were a part of a group of people that got your identity from your intellect, then you have to look down on people who are dumber than you. You have to because your identity comes from being smart. And the truth is, as Christians, our identity comes from Jesus, which means that all we need is brokenness.

All we need is need. All we need to do is admit that we need Jesus and then we're in. All of us. All forms of brokenness are welcome and we get to be honest about it because our identity comes from Jesus, not from ourselves. Do you see how beautiful that is? If you're in a community group, they're stuck with you.

Do you know how beautiful that is? The church is stuck with me. I was in my group the other day a couple weeks back and we were just talking about stuff and I had to confess to them that I'd realized that in my relationship with Jesus, I wasn't really pursuing holiness. I wasn't really pursuing Jesus as much as I was just trying. Like I felt like I was okay if I could just kind of surface level feel like I was doing better than them. So I told my group that I really wasn't pursuing Jesus as much as I was just trying to kind of measure myself against them and as long as I felt like I was doing better than them, I felt okay.

Do you know how petty and weird that is? You know how awkward that is to say? That's messed up. I didn't want to tell anybody. I was kind of annoyed when I figured that out. When the Holy Spirit was like, you realize that you're not pursuing me, you're just measuring yourself up against other people.

I had actually removed my identity from in Jesus. I had forgotten what was true and was trying to operate in something else and so I got to confess that because my identity identity is in Jesus, not in any of that. And that's beautiful that because of Jesus we've been made into a family. We get to get past conflict. Some of you have friendships, relationships, even family relationships where the first bit of conflict, you just don't talk to each other for weeks, months. Because of Jesus, we've been made into a people and we get to forgive and we get to be in relationships and we get to work past.

It's beautiful. We've been made into a family. The third beautiful truth that is real for us who are Christians, real for us because of Jesus, once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. mercy, everyone on earth will either pay for their sin or have Jesus pay for their sin. Mercy just means that we have something coming to us. We've earned something.

Something's coming our way and then God relented. He was merciful. We didn't get what we deserved. And for Christians, that is true and that is beautiful because all of us are in trouble outside of Jesus. All of us have been prideful. All of us have run from God.

All of us have trusted ourselves more. All of us have chased after things other than Him. All of us have promised ourselves that we would be fulfilled, that we would have joy, that we would have hope in all kinds of things other than God. We've messed around with such small, trivial things like just being comfortable and having a good life, just having a nice retirement. We've chased after sex and addictions and personal freedom and all of this stuff that ultimately is a rebellion against the Holy God and we all stand condemned. And for Christians, once you had not received mercy, but now you have.

Now you have received mercy because of Jesus. because of what He's done. Do you know how much hope and life and freedom that gives? You ever almost gotten a speeding ticket? Like you deserved it, but you didn't get it? Do you know how much joy that brought to your heart? I'm for real.

Go home today. If you just drive home and don't get pulled over by a cop, that was nice. If you drive home, get pulled over by a cop, deserve to get a ticket, and don't, that was somehow better. Like your day was made better by not getting a ticket that you deserved. You call people on the phone. I can't tell you when Ann and I were dating how many times I got a phone call after she had left my house in the evening and she'd call me up and say, guess who got another warning?

Which was a bunch of mess because I would on that same road get tickets because no one thinks I'm cute or nice or innocent. She called me one time and said the cop got sad when he saw me. She said I could tell he wanted to write a ticket and got to the window and thought I was like 12 and probably shouldn't even be driving but was like... There's something about almost getting a ticket that frees us up that gives us joy and the truth is for Christians we once had not received mercy and now we have because of Jesus. And there is freedom and joy and hope and life and it's excellent. Jesus is excellent and we proclaim his excellencies.

We share this with anybody we possibly can because the truth is everyone we know is either going to have Jesus pay for their sin or they are going to pay for their sin. Everyone in this room will either stand condemned under the weight of your own sin or you will stand free because Jesus stood condemned under the weight of your own sin. Here's what this means when it says we were called out of darkness we were made into a people and we've received mercy it means that because Jesus took what we deserve we can have what Jesus deserves. So we were in darkness and he was in light but he took on darkness so that we could have light.

He had eternal family acceptance between him and God between him and the Holy Spirit and on the cross God sends darkness over the earth and turns his back on Jesus and that relationship between Jesus and the Father is broken. Jesus was separated from his Father so that we could have eternal family. And Jesus stood condemned in our place so that we can receive what he received. He took no mercy so that we could have mercy. He took punishment and guilt and pain and shame and destruction and was crushed so that we could be free. So that we could have life so that we could have joy.

Jesus stood in our place guilty and condemned so that we could have mercy. Either Jesus pays for your sin or you pay for your sin. And all of those in Christ know that we were in the darkness and now we've been called into light. We used to not be a people. We used to not have real relationships. We used to have ones that were consistently there was this tension of we had to hold it together and now we've been given a family because of Jesus.

We've been given an identity a new name a new hope because of Jesus and ultimately we were guilty but now we've received mercy because Jesus took no mercy. And that we are Jesus took what we deserve so that when we stand before the king we get what Jesus deserved which was honor acceptance love freedom hope mercy family and light. and that is good news because it's not about us. We didn't earn it we didn't achieve it it wasn't our morals that got us there it wasn't our ability to be intelligent it wasn't our ability to work it out it wasn't our culture it wasn't our rule following it was Jesus and that is good news that is beautiful news. Last week my cousin Bumi was in town and he was he was down helping us run a firework store because my family runs firework stores and so every 4th of July and New Year's I have to go run a firework store which is kind of annoying but also kind of a redneck so I really like fireworks changing the world one explosion at a time and he was down and he loves to eat at like local places and stuff and so last week he was about to leave and I told him I said okay when we got done you know doing load loading everything back up and putting everything back I told him alright we can go either to Egg Roll Station or La Rivera and it's La Rivera is a Mexican restaurant but it's like very Mexican they don't speak English it's La Rivera La Tienda something something Mexican something like I don't speak Spanish I don't know what it says but it's La Rivera it's right down here on 378 and we said you need to have Egg Roll or La Rivera sketchiness isn't an option but both of the food is delicious they might get shut down any day more Egg Roll than La Rivera La Rivera is a little bit cleaner and nicer but anyway he chose La Rivera and so we went there and he it's a small place and so we were all at different tables and I'm eating with the guys in my community group and Logan and Boomer are at the same table and they're eating Logan's my brother so they're cousins they're eating together and they're just I mean they're pumped they're looking at the menu and getting excited and they're pointing and being like oh they got Mexican cheeseburgers I didn't know those existed they put eggs and sausage and bacon and beef like what is this place like they were so excited and they kept like showing me stuff and then I actually ordered while we were eating I ordered a thing called horchata which is like rice milk which I don't know who looked at rice and was like I wonder how to milk these things but they made rice milk and it's like creamy and good and they put cinnamon in it it's really cold it's kind of like drinking what's left in the bowl after cinnamon toast crunch it is amazing and so I'm drinking that and it's kind of like a dessert drink and while I was drinking that I was just talking enjoying eating my meal which was great and this guy comes walking up with a pitcher and he looks at me and goes do you want more horchata and I like was just stunned I can still see him in my mind and he glows a little bit I didn't in my wildest dreams think I could get a free refill on this drink like I just assumed it would be like if you were at when you get done eating at Chick-fil-A not today because it's Sunday but when you get done eating at Chick-fil-A walk up there with your milkshake and say I'd like a refill and see how they look at you they will not say my pleasure they will say give me money but at La Rivera they have a pitcher and a guy who floats and he comes by and says do you want some more so I was like I look probably like a 13 year old when a girl talks to him like I just was like yes like he laughed at me because of how excited I seemed and I drank way more of rice milk than I should have it's kind of heavy I did not feel good the rest of the day but it was worth it but while we're eating there I look over and Logan and Boomy are reading the menu and they slowly just start looking more concerned and then kind of frustrated and I don't know what they're talking about but they're pointing back at each other and they're cutting their eyes at me and I'm like I don't know so eventually I looked over and I was like what?

I don't know so eventually I looked over and I was like what? My cousin Boomy lays his menu down and he looks over at me and he says how long have you known about this place? Immediately I knew I was in trouble and I was like four months but somebody was there who keeps up with time better than me and had eaten with me before and they said no we ain't here like I said four weeks

And they said no we ain't here like six or eight weeks ago and I was like shut up and I was like six, eight weeks and he looked at me and Logan looked at me and they said four weeks was too long because I had known about something excellent I had known about something beautiful and I hadn't told them hadn't invited them in on it and the truth is if we as Christians have been called out of darkness have been given a family that is eternal

And we have been given hope and freedom and received mercy and we tell no one we don't form communities with the sole purpose of proclaiming the excellencies of Jesus what are we doing? it's real and it's beautiful and it's life giving and it matters we want to tell everyone that's honestly as a church that's what we're about that's why we're groups on mission that's why we stand up every Sunday and say we want you to join a group and here's why

Because we've been made into a family we've been given the identity of a family and we are designed to tell more people about him to go out of our way to proclaim the excellencies of Jesus because of the hope and the life and the freedom and the joy and the eternity that he's given us that's why we talk about groups so much that's why my group is about to multiply and it's really sad we're going to go

From one group to be in two groups and it's always sad because you have these really good relationships but our group is a family but we exist to proclaim the excellencies of Jesus and so if we have the opportunity to see more people welcomed in if we have the opportunity to see more people invited in if we have the opportunity to be in more places so that we can share the gospel with more people as we can see

More people come to know that this is true it's worth it I want us to see something when we started planting the church we drew a map we didn't draw the map we drew a circle on a map and it doesn't include the circle just is kind of around this area so West Columbia is kind of the forgotten middle of our city you got Columbia and nice things go there nobody's putting a dueling piano bar in West Columbia and then you got

Lexington and nice things go there and we felt called to West Columbia and I know we've got a lot of people in our church family that are in different areas but when we got started we drew a little circle that was cut off at the river and cut off at I-20 and we just said we wanted to start praying about what it would look like to plant a church here and how many people were there and there's about 60,000 people in a four square mile

Or four mile radius from just a dot that kind of covers up so it's where we meet and it's just kind of that area 60,000 people that live there and if you've ever been on Augusta Road or Sunset around five you probably believe that 60,000 people and the best estimates we've seen is that about 20% are involved in churches evangelical Protestant churches where they're proclaiming Jesus 20% so that means about 48,000 people most likely

In our city in that little circle that doesn't even include where some of our groups meet don't know Jesus 48,000 people in darkness without family who have not received mercy that will stand before the king of the universe and get what's coming to them that will accept their punishment for their sin and we know that there's hope and freedom offered through Jesus I know that when I stand

Before God I will not receive what I deserve but I'll receive what Jesus deserved because he took what I deserve it's 48,000 people so there's a person lives near you older lady and she's just in the dark she's a nice lady but she just doesn't know about this and ultimately she's living her life for just some comfort for some enjoyment she feels like if she can just

Retire early and be comfortable then that'll be good she'll have been successful she can just have a nice family she doesn't know Jesus and she's in the dark somebody works with you goes to school with you and they are desperately lonely they don't have family they don't have the freedom to be real about their brokenness they don't know Jesus and every person that you work with go to school with live in the same neighborhood with 48,000 of them

Don't know Jesus haven't received mercy don't have life don't have freedom don't have hope don't have all of the three things offered to us by Jesus 48,000 of them 48,000 people in our city don't know what Jesus has accomplished for us the hope and the life that we have because of him 48,000 people and we exist as a church to proclaim the excellencies

Of Jesus because of them because we have the hope and the freedom that he's given us one of the reasons we don't do a lot of ministries is because these 48,000 people are in your neighborhood shop at the same place you shop or a part of the same rec league sports as you are we don't want to take up all your time in the week we want you to be around them we want your group to spend some significant time in relationships

With each other getting to know these people because there's 48,000 in a little circle if we had done a five mile circle around the state house we would have to have poured out double that and we have excellent beautiful glorious news that brings life and joy and freedom and hope and so we as a church are communities on mission

Communities with the purpose of seeing more people and more people and more people have what we have which we didn't earn we didn't achieve which we haven't accomplished which we don't keep but was freely given to us by Jesus who took what we deserve so that we can have what he deserved that's the church a chosen race a royal priesthood a holy nation a people

For his own possession that we might proclaim the excellencies of him who called us out of darkness and into his glorious light into his marvelous light father we thank you for your goodness and your grace we thank you for your freedom we thank you Lord that for those of us in christ

We have been called out of darkness for those of us in christ we have received mercy we have been given a family we have hope and joy and life and we pray Lord that you would rescue and redeem and capture and save and pay the punishment for 48,000 people in our city that are right

Around us Lord we pray that our groups would get to to be intentional about building relationships with real people who have no hope no family no life and ultimately will not receive mercy which is offered freely through your cross and through your son we pray Lord that we would get to be a part of seeing more and more and more people

Rescued by the beautiful and excellent news of the death the brutal painful death of your son where no mercy was shown so that we might have mercy where the relationship between y'all was broken so that we might have family and where darkness was cast so that we might be welcomed into light God help us

To proclaim this message Jesus you are excellent amen for the remembering so we were even more and so we were going to Euh