Today marks the end of a week set aside to pray for missions and our friends of our church who are spread around the globe for the cause of introducing people to the love of Christ. Let’s spend a few minutes of concentrated prayer for our friends.
Father in Heaven,
I pray You make Yourself so great in our eyes today. I pray You take small-mindedness away from Your people. Take away the paralysis of fear and You would remind us of Your great authority over all the nations. We are helpless without You. So we come to You, trusting You to bless us. We come to You to listen intently to You. Today, we pray for Steve and Michelle Farris and their work in Colorado Springs. We pray for the D & T people of SE Asia.
We pray for the new work here in North Fort Worth among us at Cross Church. We pray for Stephen and Sonya Stallard and their two children. I pray for their rich encouragement in Christ. We lift before you Victor and Candice, Sanwoo and his wife, and Kim in Vancouver. Let them know afresh how You love them. Raise up missionaries in our midst and send us to the corners of the world. Cause our minds and hearts to say, “Yes” to Your command. Make the heart of this church beat for the Great Commission. Do this in our midst today.
In Jesus Name, Amen.
Sermon Preview
I want to invite you to invite a friend and join me the next two Sundays. This is a short series nestled in around the Thanksgiving holidays entitled Creation & Conception: Obstacles to Faith.
Sunday, November 20: Did God Create Life: A Look at Evolution
Sunday, November 27: Why Are Christians So Pro-Life?
This will be an excellent opportunity to bring those who have decomitted to the Christian faith (were once involved in church, etc.) or those who see a conflict between God and science. The second Sunday, I’ll spend a good deal of time on building a case for the pro-life argument from science. Invite a friend and join me.
Are you a global Christian? By the end of the message, I want each of you to mark an “X” on the scale that accurately tells where you presently are.
A Global Christian grows in at least three ways…
1) Understands God’s Word
Mission and missions are not something the Bible merely speaks about – mission and missions are what the Bible is about. Since creation, God has been interested in redeeming all peoples to Himself. From Genesis to the Revelation, God is inviting all believers to join Him in bringing every people group to His throne.
Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country2 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. 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.” (Genesis 12:1-3)
Abraham is important. Today, Abraham is honored as the father of three “religions of the Book” – Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. Today, you can drive by synagogue, mosques, and churches – all of which consider themselves children of Abraham. Jews, Muslims, and Christians have named their children “Abraham” for 4,000 years in honor of Abraham’s place in all three religions. You will not be able to understand the world itself if you don’t understand this man’s story.
Abraham was one of three brothers who hailed from the southern part of present-day Iraq. Not only was he wealthy but he would mount a small army (318 men) to defeat 5 kings to save his nephew’s family (Genesis 14). God changed his name from Abram, which meant, “father of many,” to Abraham, meaning “father of a multitude” – e.g. “Big Daddy!” Abraham’s life is intentionally placed squarely in the center of Genesis.
The highest thing Abraham you should know is this: to honor His promise to Abraham, God brings His people out of Egypt and brings His Son to the cross. You will not be able to understand the world itself if you don’t understand this man’s story.
God made six promises to Abraham and God uses the word “bless” 5 times in the midst of these promises. The result is witnessed in Abraham’s name change: God changed his name from Abram, which meant, “father of many,” to Abraham, meaning “father of a multitude” That was God’s original promise to Abram.
Abraham is this one man is chosen out of all the families of the earth and this one man receives an avalanche of blessing cascading one after another on him. God blesses Abraham so that in turn, Abraham and his family can be a blessing to all the people groups of the world. Interestingly, this command was not for Abraham alone. This responsibility was for everyone in Abraham’s family. They were a missionary family.
Some years later, God repeated the instructions to Abraham’s son: “Your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south, and in you and your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed.” (Genesis 28:14)
Have you ever wondered why in the Bible God is referred to as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? Why it's not the God of Abraham, Moses, and David? It’s because this promise, this mission, is given to this family, that through them God will extend His blessing of salvation to all other people. Just to make the connection to us, we are spoken of in the New Testament as being the spiritual descendants of Abraham, fellow members of his family (Galatians 3:29, Ephesians 2:11-19, Romans 9:8).
If we are in the family of God we are a part of the mission of God. Repeat this with me: If I am in the family of God, I am a part of the mission of God. We have inherited the same mission that the people of God have had throughout the whole Bible.
“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, 10 and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb” (Revelation 7:9-10)!
God is a missionary God, and from cover to cover He is showing us His mission. This mission is the context of the story of the Bible and the overarching narrative that drives all that God does
A Global Christian grows in at least three ways…
1) Understands God’s Word
2) See God’s World
The global Christian has a global perspective. She sees the world and the world’s need for Christ.
The Great Commission
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” (Matthew 28:18-20).
I want as your pastor for the week of prayer for missions to be a vital week. I want this week that is cherished and taken seriously by everyone who calls our church home. For this to happen, we need to change the way we see the world.
Ralph Winter
To see the world, you need to know something about a man named, Ralph Winter. Ralph Winter was named one of the 25 most influential evangelicals in American by Time magazine in 2005. Born in California, Dr. Ralph D. Winter graduated from Caltech with a B.S. in Engineering, then taught one year at Westmont College. His interest and concern for the world grew, and after attending the first “Urbana” (at Toronto) he helped organize a pioneer non-professional missionary effort to Afghanistan. He continued in graduate work, earning an M.A. in Teaching English as a Second Language at Columbia University, a Ph. D. at Cornell in Structural Linguistics with minors in Cultural Anthropology and Mathematical Statistics, and later a B.D. at Princeton Theological Seminary. Winter addressed the Congress for World Evangelization in 1974 and it was a watershed moment. He was 49 years old at the time when he introduced a concept that revolutionized the way you should see the world. The phrase “unreached peoples” was first defined by Winter as a people group that were being bypassed by Christian outreach. There, he redefined as a group of people with their own distinct culture or language that does not have a viable homegrown (indigenous) church movement that seeks to share Christ with others. Dr. Winter argued persuasively that the biblical mandate was to reach every culture with the Gospel, every people group, every ethnolinguistic entity; that’s the biblical definition of “nation.”
GOSPEL ACCESS
33% Christian (includes everyone, Catholics, Mormons, Easter and Christmas attendees, my parents are “Christians” and so I am, etc)
38% Gospel Access (could hear of Jesus if they wanted to, but choose not to)
29% No Gospel Access (never hear the name of Jesus)
So with Ralph Winter’s concept in mind, how’s our progress to date? The people who are lost, the Unreached People Groups of the World, are not “more lost” than your neighbor or family member who does not know Christ. But, they are “unreached” in the sense that they have not had an opportunity to hear the Gospel. The issue is their lack of access to the Gospel.
It’s this vision of allowing everyone to have access to the gospel that motivates Stephen Stallard.
Insert video of Stephen Stallard, a church planter in Brooklyn
A Global Christian grows in at least three ways…
1) Understands God’s Word
2) Sees God’s World
3) Partners in God’s Work
The Point Church, Vancouver BC
The Point Church in Vancouver, BC, just a few hours above Seattle.
You are seeing Victor and Candice Thomas in the middle of the picture with their child. To your left is Sanwoo Kim and his wife, who lead NextGen Church. And the couple to your right is Josh and Lucy who are over discipleship. 41% of Vancouver claims no religion and 2% are in a Bible-teaching church in greater Vancouver.
Mosaic Baptist Church, Brooklyn
Reminder: You meet this couple just a few minutes ago via video. This is a church planter, Stephen and Sonya Stallard, and their daughter and son.
Mosaic is only one of two Bible-teaching churches in this area of 200,000 people. Today, the church is around fifty people in worship from fifteen different cultures. The Crown Heights area is where Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in the 1940s. A race riot in 1991 broke out again between Orthodox Jews and black residents over a car crash.
The D & T People of SE Asia
The people groups are the Danu and Taungyo, or the D & T people. I was just with this person in July. In the villages, people are coming to Christ against incredible spiritual darkness. Millions of people have never heard of the name of Jesus.
Mission Trips
Take a moment to look at the number of opportunities for a moment with me listed in the prayer guide. Let me share with you some Practical Ideas for you to engage in your mission. The nations have come to our backyard in DFW. Be kind to them and invite them into your home. I want to challenge you to join in on today’s offering that goes to global missions ($200,000 per year). And go on a mission trip this year.
I want each of you to mark an “X” on the scale listed for you that accurately tells where you presently are.
Conclusion
I want to close by simply encouraging you: You will never be alone. You will never have to do this on your own. Christ will be in you with divine power. And Christ will be above you with all authority. Amen.
