What’s going on?
---->When Hurricane Katrina left the Gold Coast in shatters, thousands of volunteers went to New Orleans and the outlying regions to help, and millions sent financial help to assist those displaced from their homes. The Red Cross set up and served hot meals to thousands, including in the cities where families were flown or bused to. Eighty percent of the volunteers who prepared and served those meals were Southern Baptists, working alongside and giving assistance to the Red Cross.
---->When the coal mine collapsed in Utah earlier this year, again it was Southern Baptists working with the Red Cross (Randal and Barbara Smith of our own church were two of those who traveled up there and helped) who responded in supplying meals and tangible help for the families awaiting word on their loved one who had been trapped in the mine.
---->This year alone, the Arizona Southern Baptist Convention has watched over and provided care for over 100 “orphaned” children, assisted many young women carry their babies to full term and then assisted them in being matched up with couples and helped work out the details for adopting those babies, assisted numerous couples and individuals in crisis counseling, disbursed clothing and food assistance to thousands.
Why would they do such things?
---->Well, part of it is that human beings are capable of “philos” love, caring for and showing compassion toward fellow human beings, even if those showing compassion are not followers of Jesus. There are agencies and movements all over the world who run races to raise funds for breast cancer, host concerts to benefit poor farmers, assemble blankets to make people aware of the tragedy of A.I.D.S., employers encourage their employees to participate in charitable donations to United Way, etc.
---->But, as Christians, it goes beyond just being “charitable.”
<>It’s part of our purpose as believers and as a church.
I invite you to open a Bible and once again turn to Matthew, chapter 25.
------ILL>A folktale tells of a king who had twin sons. There was confusion as to which son was born first, so as the two young men grew toward manhood, the king sought a fair way to designate one of them as crown prince. Calling them together into his council chamber one day, he told them, “My sons, the day will come when one of you must succeed me as king. The burdens of sovereignty are very heavy. To find out which of you is better able to bear them, I’m sending you together to a far corner of the kingdom. There, one of my advisors will place equal burdens on your shoulders. My crown will one day go to the first one who returns bearing his burden like a king should.” So they set out and received their burden from the king’s advisor, then began to return to their father. Soon they came upon a frail, elderly woman struggling under a heavy weight. One of the sons suggested they stop to help her, but the other declined, explaining that he was going to let nothing deter him from his mission of returning home to their father...as a king should demonstrate singleness of purpose. The son who stayed and helped soon came upon many others who needed help: a sightless man for whom he provided needed assistance home; a lost child whom he carried back to her worried parents; a farmer whose wagon needed a strong shoulder to push it out of the mud. Eventually he did arrive back at the palace, and was met by his brother, who had a large frown on his face. His father’s advisor who had given the two boys their “burdens” came out of the palace then, just ahead of the king. The returning son asked his frowning brother, “What’s wrong, brother? You got here first, why are you so sad?” Before his brother could answer, his father the king spoke. “Son, you handled your burden in the way that is most fitting of a king...you laid yours down in order to help others with theirs.”
Today is our fourth message in the series, “The Pursuit of Purpose.”
----We have examined our purposes of worship (“Reaching Up”), evangelism (“Reaching Out”), and discipleship (“Growing Up”).
Today, in “Reaching Across,” we’re going to examine our fourth purpose: MISSIONS...Helping those who are in need.
---->We know the WHEN of missions...we’re to help whenever someone is in need.
---->We know the WHO of missions...we’re to help everyone we come across who has a need.
Today we’re going to examine the WHAT, WHY, and HOW of missions.
1) WHAT?
-----What are we talking about when we talk about missions as being a purpose of the church?
<>When you hear Christians speak of missions, it can be confusing if you don’t understand that they may be talking about either one of TWO ASPECTS of missions:
----a) EVANGELISTIC INVOLVEMENT.
---------Involvement outside our immediate contact area.
----------Acts 1:8 -- “And you shall be My witnesses...even to the remotest part of the earth.”
--------<>We have the responsibility of being witnesses to the remotest / uttermost corners of the earth.
------------->Sometimes that means we personally need to go and be witnesses.
-----------------I surrendered to God’s calling on my life to the vocational ministry while serving as a summer missionary to New Jersey in 1971.
-----------------Some of my favorite memories have been as a part of evangelistic teams that have gone across the country and into Mexico.
-----------------The group who came here this summer and led our VBS came on a mission trip to present the gospel to children.
-------------->But sometimes it means giving financially to support other missionaries already serving in remote areas.
------------------It is in this sense that many times the distinction between evangelism and missions is sometimes “cloudy” in people’s minds.
------------------In the weeks to come we’ll be giving to financially support foreign missionaries through the Lottie Moon Christmas offering for international missions.
------------------Around Easter we’ll give to financially support missionaries serving on the North American continent.
------------------Next September we’ll give to financially support the work of the Arizona State Baptist Convention and its work of starting new churches in Arizona.
----b) PRACTICAL HELP.
---------Helping people for the sake of helping people in need.
----------Galatians 6:10 -- “So then, while we have opportunity, let us do good to all men...”
--------<>This practical help is missions in its purest understanding....helping just for the sake of helping.
------------->It’s why our men helped the Sachs family move into a new house yesterday...because they needed help.
------------->It’s why our ladies will be meeting this Saturday to send homemade cookies to soldiers serving in Iraq...just to be supportive and helpful.
------------->It’s why we’ll be heading to Nogales on the Friday after Thanksgiving to prepare and serve lunches to the homeless and needy people who will come to the rescue mission.
------------->It’s why we’ll be putting together shoe boxes stuffed with toys for children overseas...to give them something to take their minds off their poverty, to bring a smile to their face, and to tell them how Jesus loves them and that we do too.
------------->It’s why we’ll be engaging ourselves in servant evangelism projects and looking for ways to help people in need.
2) WHY?
----Why do we participate in missions?
----a) BECAUSE WE CARE.
-----------Romans 12:15 -- “Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep.”
-----------Matthew 25:35-36 -- “For I was hungry, and you gave Me something to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me drink; I was a stranger, and you invited Me in; naked, and you clothed Me; I was sick, and you visited Me; I was in prison, and you came to Me.”
------<>When we have Jesus living within us, our hearts begin to FEEL what HIS HEART feels and as His heart feels.
----------->He had compassion on the multitudes and wept over them.
----------->He saw the grief of Lazarus’ friends at the tomb and He wept again...because He hurt for them and “felt their pain.”
----------->After He had taught the crowd of 5,000 families on a mountaintop, recognizing that they were hungry, He fed them.
----------->The poor, the hurting knew they had an Advocate in Jesus.
------<>Do the multitudes know what WE care?
----------ILL>Dwight Morrow, the father of Anne Morrow Lindbergh, once held a dinner party to which Calvin Coolidge had been invited. After Coolidge left, Morrow told his remaining guests that Coolidge would make a good president. The others disagreed. They felt Coolidge was too quiet, that lacked color and personality. No one would like him, they said. Anne, then age 6, spoke up: “I like him.” Then she displayed a finger with a small bandage around it. “He was the only one at the party who asked about my sore finger.” Then she went on, “and that’s why he would make a good president.”
----------ILL>Similarly, Mamie Adams always went to a branch post office in her town because the postal employees there were friendly. She went there to buy stamps just before Christmas one year and the lines were particularly long. Someone pointed out that there was no need to wait in line because there was a stamp machine in the lobby. “I know,” Mamie said, “but the machine won’t ask me about my arthritis.”
------<>Why do we help people? -- Because we genuinely care about people.
---------->We hurt and weep with those who are hurting and weeping, and we rejoice with those who are rejoicing.
------<>Why do we help people? -- Because we “see” their need and inwardly we’re moved to be of help.
----------LYR>We heard the lyrics a moment ago in the multi-media presentation: “Every day they pass me by, I can see it in their eyes: empty people, filled with care, headed who knows where.--People need the Lord. When will we realize that we must give our lives, for people need the Lord?”
----b) BECAUSE WE CAN.
-----------2 Corinthians 9:7 -- “Let each one do just as he proposed in his heart; not grudgingly or under compulsion; for God loves a cheerful giver.”
-----------Galatians 6:10 -- “So then, while we have opportunity let us do good to all men, and especially to those who are of the household of the faith.”
---------QUOTE: John Wesley said it this way: “Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can.”
------<>Simply put, if someone has a need, we are to be ready and willing to be of help, because God makes us able to help.
------------God has blessed us with so much, we now have a responsibility to use what He’s benefited us with in order to help the needy.
---------------Proverbs 21:13 -- “He who shuts his ear to the cry of the poor will also cry himself and not be answered.”
---------ILL>A one-legged schoolteacher from Scotland came to Hudson Taylor to offer himself for service in China. Taylor asked him, “With only one leg, why do you think of going as a missionary?” George Scott, the one-legged man, answered, “I want to go because I do not see those with two legs going.”
------<>It is also important to understand that God has put us together as His church so that we’re able to help more together than we could help individually.
----------FACT>In a recent study by the Association of Life Underwriters in Washington, D.C., it was shown that for every dollar that actually reaches the needy, the sick, the underprivileged child, and the elderly adult, the cost of channeling it through voluntary charitable organizations (United Way, Sally Struthers’ organization, etc.) was 27 cents. If you chart what it costs for the Federal government to render one dollar of assistance to the needy, it ends up costing the government three dollars for every one given! However, through the church it was just eight cents!
----------FACT>In 1986, Robert Polk, the director the Baptist General Convention of Texas’ Cooperative Program Promotion, did a study of the six leading television ministries. He discovered that of the $684 million given to them, besides paying for television time, donations supported a total of 4 schools, 1 hospital, 3 churches, 2 ministries to needy children, 1 ministry to others in need, and 1 home for unwed mothers. In that same year, the $635 million given to the Southern Baptist Convention’s ministries (in addition to the 40,000 local churches’ ministries) showed a startling contrast! The $635 million supported 52 children’s homes (compared to 2), 48 hospitals (compared to 1), including 32 hospitals overseas, 67 colleges and universities (compared to 4 schools by the tv ministries), and 33 nursing homes; it also supported 3,756 foreign missionaries, 3,637 missionaries in the United States, and ministries to college students on 1,100 campuses. It also supported 6 seminaries, which enrolled 1/5 of all the seminary students in the United States, and their own ACTS television network which was carried in over 100 cities nationwide.
----c) BECAUSE WE’RE CALLED.
-----------Acts 16:9 -- “A vision appeared to Paul in the night: a man of Macedonia was standing and appealing to him, and saying, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.”
-----------Ephesians 2:10 -- “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.”
------<>Although we’re not saved BY good works, we are saved and called to DO good works once we’ve received Jesus.
---------->Yes, we’re be messengers; yes, we’re to be witnesses; but we’re also to be God’s ministers, ministering to and helping others in Jesus’ name...showing God’s love in how we help people.
------<>Again, it’s not a suggestion, but a matter of Lordship and obedience.
---------->We’re to go into the world, be salt and light.
---------->We’re to let Jesus shine through us...as we reach across the man-made or mental barriers to help people.
---------->James 1:27 tells us -- “Pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.”
------<>Reaching people with the gospel and also helping meet people’s needs in the name of the Lord needs to be a driving force behind everything we do.
-----------ILL>Years ago Standard Oil offered an enormous sum of money to a missionary in China to work for them, to help with the development of Standard Oil in China. When the missionary turned them down, they doubled the offer. When he turned them down again, they asked him, “What do you want? We can’t give more money than that!” The missionary replied, “The money doesn’t have anything to do with it. It’s the job that is too small.”
3) HOW?
----How are we to participate in missions?
----a) GOING WHERE THEY ARE.
-----------Acts 1:8 -- “...and you shall be My witnesses, both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth.”
--------ILL>A man described his mother as being love personified. He told this story: “As a boy I found her sitting at the table with an old vagrant one day. Apparently she had gone shopping, met the vagrant along the way, and invited him home for a warm meal. During the conversation, the vagrant told me mom, ‘I wish there were more people like you in the world.’ Mom replied, ‘Oh, there are. But you must look for them.’ The old man simply shook his head, saying, ‘But, lady, I didn’t need to look for you. You looked for me!’”
------<>We must go where the hurting people are, where the hungry people are, where the hopeless persons are.
----------LYR>Two weeks ago we participated in a candlelighting exercise while our praise team sang these words, “Carry your candle, run to the darkness; seek out the hopeless, confused and torn. Hold out your candle for all to see it. Take your candle, go light your world.”
---------->Our motto and the reason we named our church Desert Springs Community Church as are based on our wish to take living water to the desert of the Phoenix metroplex.
----------QUOTE: C.T. Studd: “Some wish to live within the sound of church or chapel bell; but I want to run a rescue shop within a yard of hell.”
------<>It’s not about us inviting people to come where we are, but going first to where they are, with a cup of cool water.
----b) GIVING WHAT WE CAN.
-----------James 2:15-17 -- “If a brother or sister is without clothing and in need of daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, be warmed and be filled,’ and yet you do not give him what is necessary for their body, what use is that? Even so faith, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself.”
------<>The idea of giving to missions is something we unashamedly promote...because it’s what God would have us to do.
---------->We give the first 10% of everything received by way of budget offerings immediately to missions.
---------->No, our monthly contribution by itself won’t change the world, but coupled with thousands of other Southern Baptist churches doing the same thing, we can make a real difference.
----------QUOTE: Hudson Taylor: “When God’s work is done in God’s way for God’s glory, it will never lack God’s supply.”
----------QUOTE: Unknown: “It’s not what you do with the millions if fortune should e’er be your lot, but what you are doing with the dollar and quarter you’ve got.”
------<>We’re not to wait until we can give millions before we give of what God has given to us.
----------ILL>A man had a heart attack and was rushed to the hospital. He was only allowed a limited number of visitors, and was not to be excited. While in the hospital, a rich uncle died and left him $1 million. His family wondered how to break the news to him with the least amount of excitement. It was decided to ask the pastor if he would go and break the news quietly to the man. The pastor went, and gradually led up to the question. The preacher asked the patient what he would do if he inherited a million dollars. The man replied, “I think I would give half of it to the church.” At that point, the pastor dropped dead from a heart attack.
-----------QUOTE: George Mueller: “God judges what we give by what we keep.”
-----------QUOTE: Peter Marshall: “Give according to your income, lest God make your income according to your giving.”
----------->Many times what the person needs most is a listening ear....or a shoulder to cry on...or a place where he knows he will be loved and accepted, warts and all.
--------------And that is something we can always give.
----c) GIVING GLORY TO GOD.
----------We minister to people so God will be glorified by it.
-----------Matthew 25:40 -- “...to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine; even the least of them, you did it to Me.”
----------->A few years ago, Tony Campolo fell out of the good graces of many in the evangelical community for things he was advocating and teaching as a sociology professor in the northeast. However, one thing he said that was “right on” and which should make us think is this: Tony said, “I see Jesus in every person I meet, whether they be Christian or heathen. There is within each person a Divine quality.”
----------------Many were critical of that statement, because the Holy Spirit does not dwell in persons who have not received Jesus.
----------------However, the context of the statement is Matthew 25:40, when Jesus told His disciples that to the extent they had fed someone, or gave a person something to drink, or clothed the person, or visited and ministered to the person when he/she was sick, or came and talked with him/her while he/she was in prison, when they ministered to that person they were also doing it to Jesus!
------<>God is glorified and pleased every time we minister to someone...every time we help someone.
------<>When we minister to others, we’re ministering to the Lord, and we’re bringing glory to His name.
<>SO, BECAUSE WE CARE...BECAUSE WE CAN...AND BECAUSE WE’RE CALLED....WE’RE TO GO WHERE THEY ARE....GIVE WHAT WE CAN....AND GIVE GLORY TO GOD IN THE PROCESS.
---->It’s one of the purposes God has outlined for the church.
---->And it’s what missions is really all about.
BRINGING IT HOME..
<>Let me ask you three questions today:
---1) Do you have a need today?
------->Is there a way we can be of help to you today?
------->We’re not looking to embarrass you, we want to encourage and help you.
------->Will you come and let us know that today during the public invitation?
---2) Are you being a missionary where God has placed you?
------->It’s no accident God has placed you where you are, and wants you to serve Him here.
------->You already know the language, you already know the culture, you already have contacts in the community.
------->Before you think about serving the Lord on a foreign field, you need to be serving Him locally.
---3) Are you supporting missionaries around the world?
------->With your prayers each day?
------->With your finances?
------->Are you willing to go and serve alongside them where they are?
MISSIONS...it’s right here, right now.
