The Mission of the Church

Rural Church Podcast 2.0

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Welcome to the Ruled Church Podcast. This is my beloved son, with whom

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I am well pleased. He is honored, and I get the glory. And by the way, it's even better, because you see that building in Perryville, Arkansas?

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You see that one in Pechote, Mexico? Do you see that one in Tuxla, Guterres down there in Chiapas? That building has my son's name on it.

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The church is not a democracy. It's a monarchy. Christ is king. You can't be

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Christian without a local church. You can't do anything but. And to bend your knee and bow your heart, turn from your sin and repentance, believe on the

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Lord Jesus Christ, and join up with a good Bible -believing church, and spend your life serving

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Jesus in a local, visible congregation. Welcome to the

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Ruled Church Podcast. I am your co -host, Allen Nelson. On this episode of the

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Ruled Church Podcast, we are jumping into a brief discussion on what is the mission of the church.

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This is a hot topic today, as we talk about things like, on one side, maybe Christian nationalism. On another side, maybe things like social justice and those things.

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But this is a brief discussion, after I came back from Mexico on a Sunday night, looking through the scriptures and considering what is the mission of the church, and I hope you find this discussion helpful.

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We're going to jump right into the episode. Here we go. Alright, the first thing I want to talk about then is the cosmic battle.

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In Revelation 12, I have five points. I want to go through these. Hey, that's great for Reformation Month.

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I've got five points. But I want to go through this quickly and just introduce us, if you will, to the cosmic struggle.

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We've been talking about that on Sunday mornings a bit from Ephesians 6. So in Revelation 12, and a great sign appeared in heaven.

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A woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars.

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She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pains and the agony of giving birth.

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And another sign appeared in heaven. Behold, a great red dragon with seven heads and ten horns, and on its head seven diadems.

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His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and cast them to the earth.

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And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth so that when she bore her child, he might devour it.

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Now what is going on here? For one thing I will say this. You shouldn't read

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Revelation as though everything is future. That's not the intention of the book.

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What is this woman? What is this dragon? What is this battle? Dragon, battle.

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What's going on here? It's not as hard to interpret as maybe some people might say.

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I think it's pretty easy. Okay, let's go to verse 5. She gave birth to a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron.

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But her child was caught up to God and to His throne. Okay, who is this child? When you don't know an answer in Sunday school or Sunday night, try

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Jesus. A lot of times it's the right answer, right? And you're right here.

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It's Jesus. The child is Jesus. So if the child is Jesus, who is the woman? Let me stop you. It's not

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Mary. But think deeper than that. If the child is Jesus, who is the woman?

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Mary is the mother of Jesus, but this is deeper than just Mary. Yeah, amen. Yeah, it's a church.

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Okay, I see that. You can speak louder next time. No, you're good. It's the woman is representative of the church.

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It's the true church, right? The true church, as it were, in the

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Old Testament, is the line of the Messiah, right? And so you have the true church, and then you have this birth of Christ, and then verse 6, the woman fled into the wilderness where she has a place prepared by God in which she is to be nourished for 1260 days.

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Look at verse 7. Now war arose in heaven, Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon, and the dragon and the angels fought back, but he was defeated, and there was no longer any place for them in heaven.

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And the great dragon was thrown down, the ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world.

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He was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him. And I heard a loud voice in heaven saying,

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Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of His Christ have come.

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For the accuser of our brothers have been thrown down, who accuses Him day and night before God. And they have conquered

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Him by Christ. I'm adding that. But the text is, They have conquered

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Him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony. For they loved not their lives even under death.

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Therefore rejoice, O heavens, and you who dwell in them, but woe to you, O earth and sea, for the devil has come down to you in great wrath because he knows that his time is short.

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Now, listen to this. And when the dragon saw that he had been thrown down to the earth, he pursued the woman.

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Who's he pursuing? Not Mary. Now, the woman has given birth. This is now past. Okay, not talking about just...

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Well, actually, it is still talking about true Israel. The church hasn't replaced Israel. Church is the fulfillment, right?

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True Israel and the church, we could say, are the same. So, who is the dragon pursuing?

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The church pursued the woman who had given birth to a male child. But the woman was given the two wings of the great eagle.

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So she might fly from the serpent to the wilderness to a place where she is to be nourished for a time and times and half a time.

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The serpent poured out water like a river out of his mouth after the woman to sweep her away with the flood.

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But the earth came to the help of the woman. The earth opened its mouth and swallowed the river that the dragon had poured from his mouth.

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Then the dragon became furious with the woman and went off to make war on the rest of her offspring, on those who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus.

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And he stood on the sand of the sea. So much... I understand. So much. Like, I don't... Like, that's one whole chapter in like two minutes.

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That would take us, what, six years to preach through. I understand. But let me just tell you this as we begin.

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What is the mission of the church? There is a cosmic battle, right? Satan wants to do what to the church?

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Destroy her. He wants to devour her. This mission that we're on, the mission of the church, is part of this cosmic battle, as it were.

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And so you need to keep that in the back of your mind. Now, let's go to the Old Testament. Genesis 12. So, we've got the 12th chapter of the last book.

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Now let's go to the 12th chapter of the first book. Genesis 12 and verse 1.

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Now, the Lord, that is Yahweh, said to Abram, Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land

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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.

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I will bless those who bless you. And him who dishonors you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth.

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In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. So here is the glorious promise.

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God promises to Abram that in him, all the families of the earth, he's going to make a nation of Abram and from him, all the families of the earth, the entire earth, will be blessed.

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Well, who is this ultimately realized in? And the church said, Jesus, right?

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Christ, right? Christ from the line of Abraham is the one in whom all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

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And here's the promise. God is building a nation today. What? Yes. That's what

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Peter says. Peter says that the church is a chosen nation. Right? And so this is the ultimate nation that God is building.

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And this is the promise. Okay, number three, then I want us to turn to the

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Great Commission. The Great Commission. Of course, I'm talking about Psalm 96.

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The Great Commission. I stole that from Randall Easter. Psalm 96.

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Oh, sing to the Lord a new song. Sing to the Lord, all the earth. Sing to the

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Lord. Bless His name. Tell of His salvation from day to day. Here it is, verse 3.

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Declare His glory among the nations. His marvelous works among all the peoples.

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In other words, even in the Old Testament, there's this idea of declaring the glory of God among the nations.

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That God is going to do something among the nations. We have in the back of our minds this cosmic battle between the woman and her offspring and the dragon and all this going on.

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Then we have this promise to Abraham that in you all the families of the earth will be blessed. And then we come into the

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Psalms, and this isn't the only place, but we come into the Psalms and we have songs that are sung that talk about declaring

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God's glory not just to Israel, but to the nations. And then

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Jesus gives us this divine mandate, fourthly, in Matthew 28. This is commonly what we call the

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Great Commission, but I'm going to turn there to Matthew 28. And in Matthew 28, the text says this.

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Matthew 28, let's start in verse 18. And Jesus came and said to them that His disciples, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me.

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Go therefore and make disciples. Of who? All nations.

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By the way, the text is to not... I understand there's some arguments today, but the text is not ultimately about Christianizing governments.

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The text is ultimately about the grammar, the syntax, the point is to make disciples out of all nations.

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Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the

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Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I've commanded you and behold,

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I am with you always to the end of the age. And so the idea here is that the church has a divine mandate, what we call the

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Great Commission, to go into all the world and to make disciples of every nation.

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And then my fifth point's important, so turn to Acts. My fifth point, I just called the

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Abundant Harvest, but Acts 14. What I want to connect in your minds more than anything else tonight is that this mandate, all that we've talked about so far, so we kind of started with it,

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I don't know, I'm running through this really, really quickly because I'm trying to give us time to actually talk about what boots on the ground look like in Mexico.

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Okay, so in Acts 14, how

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I want to say is this, the church has been given a mission and the mission that the church has been given ultimately centers around and is focused on local churches to the glory of Christ.

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So we do evangelism, we make disciples, all these things that we're doing, it's about what, or no, maybe that's not the right way to say it, but the fruit of evangelism leads to local churches.

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That is the mission of the church, is about the church, planting churches and seeing disciples grow and seeing churches strengthen and trusting the mission of the church with the church.

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So we're not after, I'm not against, totally,

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I'm not like totally against mission entities or whatever, like they can be helpful, but the institution that God has ordained to take the mission of Christ to the nations is what?

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The church. So I don't mean to say that every mission organization, every mission entity is always wrong.

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Sometimes they are wrong though. Sometimes they try to take the place of the church. But sometimes, you know, they might be able to foster connections, teaching languages, things like that, that certainly can be helpful.

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So long as a mission entity comes alongside the church to help her and remains under her authority, they can be okay.

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But sometimes they misunderstand that. But from Acts 14, here's what

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I want to say. Verse 23. And it's really kind of a summary of Acts that I kind of want to talk about, but I'll just use this verse.

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And when they had appointed elders for them in every church with prayer and fasting, they committed them to the

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Lord in whom they had believed. So this is what happens in Acts, essentially. I'm giving you like a real kind of general summary.

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The gospel is preached. So Paul, Peter, like they take the gospel places, they preach the gospel, people are converted, and then what happens?

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Churches. Right? That is the pattern of Acts.

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That is the mission of the church. The gospel's preached. Evangelism is done.

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But it's not just like, hey, we're doing evangelism, alright, we're out of here. No. It's done for the purpose of as God is saving

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His people, that churches are springing up. And then the misho, so you have the aspect, the initial aspect of churches, and then you have

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Paul, like in our text, you have Paul and Barnabas and guys, they go and they revisit the churches in order to do what?

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To strengthen the churches. To encourage the churches. To help the churches.

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Because this is God's mission to the nations, the institution of the local church.

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The local church is carrying this mission of Christ. The local church is the one in this cosmic battle with the evil one.

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The local church is the one that Jesus is protecting and promoting.

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So I'm not saying that other things are not mission work, like you can go to Africa and dig a well.

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You can go and you can build stuff, all that. I'm not opposed to those things per se.

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You can send, I want to be careful here because we've done it and I've led in this and I'm not opposed to it.

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I'm not just flat out opposed to it, but I think that we misunderstand. You can send boxes of stuff to people, to kids,

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Operation Christmas Child. But the focus of the church in the mission of Christ is about churches.

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Does that make sense? This is simply the biblical pattern. There are other things that you can do that I do think constitute good things and even missional sort of things.

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But if you do these things, like if you do them under the overarching banner that we're trying to build here as like Christ is about the local church, they're fine.

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But if you do these things as I forget about the church and I'm just doing these things. I'm just like, we're giving money to this organization and then we're hopping around here.

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We're going to Africa and we're digging a well and then we're coming back and next year we're going to wherever.

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You know, we're doing this thing, we're doing that thing. Well, I think churches can actually in the name of good things actually lose track of the thing, right, that we're after, which is investing in and building churches.

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Now, Zechariah 4, we won't go to this, but like in Zechariah 4, the Lord says to Zerubbabel, it's not by might, not by power, but by my spirit, says the

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Lord, will Zerubbabel build the temple? Well, even more so, it's not our efforts that are building, there is a temple that's being built.

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Like a lot of people, their eschatology is we've got to watch Jerusalem for a temple, you know. I'm not,

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I kind of said that a little pejoratively. I shouldn't like be like that. What I'm trying to say is there's already a temple.

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It's already being built. The temple is the church. The New Testament is clear, right, that Jesus is building his temple.

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Like we are the temple of Christ. And so it's not by might, not by power, that this is being built, but by the spirit of Yahweh, by the

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Holy Spirit. So as we go and we proclaim the gospel and preach and teach, make disciples, all these things, it's all about the spirit of God through these weak efforts on our part, but by his strength, by his power, for his glory, building the church.

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Questions, comments there. Now I'm going to get to the point of tonight, which was we're going to share some things about our trip.

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So this is what I'm saying. We are after, what are we doing in Mexico?

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Well, in the providence of God, we've been connected with these churches, several churches, and we are about training pastors, investing in these churches.

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I'm not saying financially, like we don't really give a whole lot of money, and that's not really even what this is about.

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Like, oh, let's do something, you know. That's fine. And like, for example, I think our ladies are talking about, you know, blessing some of these pastors' wives with something, like praise

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God, like that's good. Like I'm, no, amen, let's do that. But what I'm saying is this is not about us sending a check, right?

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That's what some people think mission work is. Why send a check somewhere? No, no, this is about our church praying for these churches.

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When we got there, I was overwhelmed. When we got there, the first night that we got there, well, technically the first night we got there was late

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Tuesday, but the first full day we were there was Wednesday. On Wednesday night, we got there, and we were part of the church in Tuxla, Pastor Felipe's church,

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Pastor Felipe who came here and preached Easter. We broke up in groups, and they prayed for our churches.

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It's like here we are in Mexico, and this group of believers is praying for Providence Baptist Church.

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They're just like lifting our church up, like each kind of group, like the churches split up, so like By the

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Word Baptist, which is in Hazel, Texas, they went with one group. Trinity, which is in Port Arthur, Texas, went with another group, and then me,

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Gunnar, and Braden went with this other group, and they specifically prayed for us.

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Why? Because they want to invest in our church, and that's what we're doing. We're investing in these people, and you say, but are you sure,

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Quattro, like just think about this. Are you sure these little local churches and with these people, like are you sure, like the mission of Christ is so precious, like are you going to entrust that to them?

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Aren't there experts maybe we could appeal to? Isn't there maybe something above them that we could appeal to?

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But shouldn't we entrust maybe the North American Mission Board that's got all this money? Like maybe we should trust them.

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Like are you sure you want to like go all in on these churches? Yes, I'm sure.

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Unequivocally, yes. Unquestionably. Why? Because this is Jesus' plan, and Christ uses the foolish things of this world to confound the wise.

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You think, wow, there must be a better entity, a better organization, something better out there that we could use besides these local churches.

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And the answer is there is none. Because this is Christ's plan. If you really believe the church is the building, the church is the house, the church is what

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God's doing, this is His work. If we really believe what Ephesians says, we are the hoemos, the masterpiece of God.