2022 FIRE Midwest Regional Fellowship The Beauty of Christ (Session 3)

We didn't have time for it, so we'll start out with Steve and Chris, who's a communicator worldwide.

All right? Steve. Good afternoon.

I'll be brave so the other guys can go walk or whatever they want to do.

Yeah, so greetings from, specifically, some of you are friends with, either personally or on Facebook, Jim Eliff, who's the president of Christian Communicators Worldwide.

And he's doing well, thankfully. He's had a little bit of health stuff going on, but he's just back from ministry in southern

Arkansas with pastors. And so I'm really thankful for that, because it's been a bit of a challenge for him the past five or six months.

I think the best thing, if you're interested in Christian Communicators Worldwide, who we are, what we do, go to our website, which is ccwtoday .org.

You might write that down and just check it out later. Blip over there, quickly realize,

I don't want to look at this anymore. Or you may want to stay there and see it. And so ccwtoday .org.

We are really about encouraging the church, teaching, kind of have itinerant teaching ministry, stuff that we do.

We do some writing. And you'll see some articles there. We're about training church leaders, both in the

United States, but also around the world. And really love that. We've been in some churches for what we call

Bible intensives, and it's just hours, Friday evening, holiday Saturday, of inductive

Bible study, really leading groups of people, either leaders or men or men and women, whatever, in just a wonderful time of highly interactive inductive

Bible study. So you may read about that there as well. They're called Bible intensives or Bible intensive retreats.

So ccwtoday .org. We also, I have a table back there, and there are books there that you might notice are free.

So we have, for decades, charged for our books, which makes sense.

There's a good reason for ministries to ask for a little bit of money for books that they write. And we just have decided for this season, however long it is, that the

Lord's provided and we want to give our resources away. So we hope they're helpful resources, and you know, now these things, these books do cost a little bit, so we hope you won't just pick up a book and just set it on the shelf.

So we really would like you to, if you're going to pick up a book for free, or go online and you can order a book or books, only pay shipping and handling.

We have to pay that person, who happens to be my daughter, who does that. But still, you'll get the books free and just pay for the shipping and handling.

We hope you would either read it or strategically distribute them. So, for example,

I mean, you know, Jim Elliffe, a couple of his books have been distributed by the hundreds of thousands in English alone.

They've been translated in multiple languages, Pursuing God, Wasted Faith. And guys are getting these and using them for evangelism, and we're happy for that, to just give them to you for that purpose.

One book I really hope you'll pick up, this is our newest book, and I wrote this book, and it's about John Wycliffe, a

Bible man in England when there was no English Bible. And I tried to write it in a way that it wasn't very boring.

So that's hard sometimes, the church history. Tried to have some application there, and really, hopefully it'll be inspirational.

You can even read it with your families as well. I think kids can understand. An amazing story.

He was a Bible man. You know, the first English translation of the Bible from John Wycliffe.

And then there wasn't anything until Tyndale, and that was quite a while later on.

Amazing, amazing thing to read about and hopefully inspirational. So, again, you can get those books on the book table.

Check out our websites, ccwtoday .org. Finally, please pray for one of our team members, and in particular, his wife.

Cole Farney was a pastor in Kansas City with us, but he was also part of this ministry, and he had to move back to Sterling, Kansas with his wife, who is unbelievably ill.

She's in her 30s. Some of you knew Jordan Peterson's thing, akathisia.

Perhaps have heard what he came out of. I mean, I just was re -looking at this. Rachel put this list together.

This is akathisia every morning. There are no words to describe this except hell on earth, she says.

Nothing makes me want to die more. Burning, crawling, itching skin, grief, the sense of loss, everything good in my life constantly overwhelms me.

Morning cortisol adrenaline surges. My brain has been hijacked and imprisoned and is being tortured relentlessly.

She's in agony constantly, physical agony, mental agony, and Cole has gone from— he is a really good

Bible teacher. He was the most pastoral among all the pastors in our church, and he has just—he just can't do any of that now.

He just is taking care of his very ill wife, and she has been like this for multiple years now.

And some of you know this situation and get the updates from Cole, but we would just really appreciate for you to pray for Rachel Farney and also to pray for Cole.

He is doing some things for the ministry. He's able to do menial tasks, financial stuff, and work on the farm for his dad.

But otherwise, here's a brother who has tremendous gifts to write and to teach the

Bible, and he just hasn't been able to do it. He's been in a deep, deep valley. So pray for Cole as well.

Thank you. Well, good afternoon, brothers and sisters.

I want to just say first off the bat I do not normally wear this. So this is, as you can see up on the screen, my wife and I and our children are preparing for gospel missions in the nation of Iceland, and this is called a lappepesa, which is essentially the traditional

Icelandic wool sweater. It is very itchy. It is very warm. But I thought it would be helpful for you to see.

So as I mentioned, my name is Dale Keller. I am not a part of a fire church, but I am a friend of LaRue Baptist Church.

Pastor Andrew is a dear brother, a dear friend of mine. We've been connected for a long time, seeing each other through quite some difficult ministry experiences as well.

So I'm so appreciative for him as a brother. Before I begin to tell you a little bit about our ministry,

I want to read the passage that Pastor Dana preached from last evening. I thought it was so pertinent to the topic of missions.

Reading from Psalm 96, Oh, sing to the Lord a new song. Sing to the

Lord all the earth. Sing to the Lord, bless his name, and tell of his salvation from day to day.

Declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous works among all peoples.

For great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised. He is to be feared above all gods.

For all the gods of the peoples are worthless idols, but the Lord made the heavens.

Splendor and majesty are before him. Strength and beauty are in his sanctuary. And that's what we go as we go, not only to our neighbors, but to the nations and take the gospel to foreign lands.

We are proclaiming that there is one only true God who made the heavens and the earth. So before I begin,

I want to tell you a little bit about Iceland. If you're anything like me, up until two years ago, the only thing

I could have told you about Iceland was that Iceland is green and Greenland is icy. It has something to do with Vikings, and that's about it.

That's what most people know. One of the first questions I usually get, and I'm just going to answer it right off the bat, is no, we are not going to live in an igloo.

I cannot tell you how many people have actually asked that question. So geographically,

Iceland sits right on the Arctic Circle. It's just this little hunk of volcanic rock that's floating out there in the middle of the

North Atlantic all by itself. Here's a map of what

Iceland looks like. So as you can see, there's nothing here in the middle.

That's because that is all glacier, mountain, and volcano. So every community in Iceland is a coastal community.

Most of them are small little fishing towns. And the capital area, which is Reykjavik, which is right over here, that is where most of the population of the nation live, which is where we are also going to be ministering when we get there.

Because it sits on the Arctic Circle, oh, there's a picture of Reykjavik, population is about 136 ,000 people.

So kind of just to give you a mindset. So it's equivalent to the size of the

Lower Peninsula of Michigan. I'm from Michigan. I don't know if that helps all of you. It helps me. So the

Lower Peninsula of Michigan, but the population is right around 375 ,000 people, which is a quarter of the size of the county that I live in.

So it's a very sparsely populated nation. And because it sits on the Arctic Circle midsummer, if you're familiar with Alaska, pretty similar, midsummer they experience 24 hours of sunlight for about two months of the year.

And then in the winter, of course, it's the flip, they get about three hours of sunlight in midwinter.

So that's a whole climate challenge that we're going to have to deal with and to face.

Iceland was settled by pagan Vikings around the year 864. They got fed up with their king from Norway, and they got on a boat and said, we're getting out of here.

Landed on this little rock and said, I guess this is ours now. So they settled. And pretty quickly, what was interesting is that Catholicism actually arrived only about 150 years after Iceland was settled.

Of course, if you know anything about the history of Europe, national conversions usually were done at the point of the sword, unfortunately.

And Iceland was no different. The king of Norway set his missionary sites on Iceland and sent some of his comrades to go and to bring the faith to the

Icelandic people. And they essentially said, you either convert or we're going to invade and take over.

So the chieftains at that point in time figured it was in their best interest to stay in power. And by doing that, they should probably convert to Catholicism.

So it was a national faith that was adopted. Once the

Reformation in the 1500s, of course, swept through Europe, Iceland also was reached with the

Reformation, came to Iceland around the year 1538. But again, unfortunately, most of those conversions to Lutheranism were done at the point of the sword.

Those who wanted to remain Catholic were beheaded. And since then, Iceland has been officially Lutheran about the year 1550 to the present.

So the state -sponsored religious body in the nation of Iceland is the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Iceland, which is about 63 % of the population are still members, registered members of the church.

And of course, if you know anything about any denomination that starts with Evangelical Lutheran Church of, it's usually not evangelical.

It's barely Lutheran, and it doesn't really present itself as a church. And unfortunately, the

ELCI in Iceland is similar. So all throughout the nation in Iceland, every community has a little church building in them.

Many of their communities are actually named after their churches. So they're all over the place. They're beautiful, just little historical buildings, and they're empty shelves.

There's no congregations. There's no pastors. Someone I was talking to earlier said they were going through Germany, and they said it's very similar.

They're basically museums to a bygone era. So a lot of Europe is that way, and Iceland is no different.

So when we think about the Icelandic church, they have strayed very far into secularism.

Just to give you kind of an example, back in 2020, at the height of COVID, they thought the best thing that they could do was kind of to wave the flag of secularism.

So in 2020, their children's Easter Sunday school program had a transgender Jesus in it, which kind of tells you all you need to know about a church when this is what they're putting out for their children in the church.

Likewise, just a couple months ago, after the reversal of Roe versus Wade, a coalition of Icelandic bishops got together and essentially said that the

Bible is pro -abortion, and if you disagree, you're part of a cult. So again, just painting the picture of what the

Evangelical Lutheran Church of Iceland is like. And of course, as goes the church, oftentimes so goes the people.

In a recent national survey, those aged 30 and under who participated, not a single person in Iceland said that they believed in a creator

God, exactly 0 .0%, which is hard to believe considering if you've ever seen pictures of Iceland, the landscapes are beautiful.

God's creative hand is so present there, and so just that denial of what is clearly evident before them.

Atheism has been on a very quick rise, especially amongst the younger generations, and it's not so much hardened atheism like we think about, it's more so, like in America, we're facing, of course, a growing group of nuns, religious nuns, people who don't care, or apotheism is what it's being termed now, just people who don't have any concern or any care for life's biggest questions.

The other thing that's taken place recently is a resurrection of Norse paganism in Iceland. Of course, this is mostly cultural heritage, but there's a growing movement of what's called Ásatrú,

Norse paganism, which was officially recognized as a recognized religion in Iceland in the 90s.

So that's actually gaining a lot of speed as well, people returning to their Nordic roots in order to participate in that.

So as we think of how people perceive themselves religiously, sociologists look at five different aspects of how this comes out in personalities.

The first one is, of course, self -identification. How do you identify as an individual? Most Icelanders will still identify as Christian because many of them, most of them, are still members of the state church.

Babies are immediately baptized upon their birth, and they are then registered members of the state church.

So you're baptized as an infant, and that's about it, that's the extent of participation.

So public practice, as I mentioned, they're baptized, they're married, maybe, that's not a very common thing that happens anymore, and then they're buried.

So after a baby is born, that's usually the last time they'll step foot inside a church until they pass away.

So that's the public practice of people in Iceland. And so, of course, if that's the minimal public practice, then private practice, there's essentially nothing when it comes to Christian faith.

And Icelanders, they are very intelligent, very educated and well -read, and so there's a lot of materialism within the

Icelandic mindset, very minimal belief. And so the importance of religion, then, is essentially, it's just cultural.

It's what you do. If you can imagine, if your grandparents have been members of the state church their whole lives and they want you as their grandchild, you have a new baby, they're like, please, you know, get our kid in the state church.

And so it's really that family pressure, that's the only reason that the state church basically still exists anymore.

So what does Iceland need as gospel missions go forth? So first of all, obviously,

Iceland is substantially post -Christian. It's right around .03 % evangelical, which, because of the population of the nation, comes out to about 200 people in the entire country that self -identify as Bible -believing

Christians. So clearly there's a huge need there and a huge lack of true

Bible -believing Christians. There are approximately right around three churches in the entire country that actually preach any semblance of the gospel, and all three of those are within the capital area.

So every other town and community around the nation, they don't have a single faithful biblical local church body in them.

So that's, of course, a huge need as well. Clearly, the state church presents a false gospel, which can only offer a false sense of hope and security.

So there's a huge need there for the gospel to go forth as well. Then the other thing, which is no surprise, is that there's a huge lack of theological education for church leaders.

One of the elders of the church that we're going to be partnering with when we get there, he went and sat in on the first introductory class of the religion department at the

University of Iceland, and he was informing us that the first thing that they say when you sit down in this class is that if you've come to learn anything about Scripture, Christ, or creation, you've come to the wrong place.

I guess at least I appreciate that they put all their cards on the table, but there's no wonder why the church has drifted this far into secularism.

So when we think about the Icelanders, they have this unofficial slogan, which is tetraredist, which loosely translates into English as everything will work out in the end.

If you can imagine a people group that has been in survival mode since they've basically existed, whether it's a volcano going off in your backyard, whether it's the sheep are being decimated by wild animals, a plague, a famine, whatever it may be, the

Icelanders have been in survival mode since their very beginnings. And so they've adopted this mindset of everything will work out in the end.

You could say hakuna matata. We will make it through no matter what happens.

And as believers, especially as Reformed Christians, there is a whole lot of truth that we can recognize to this statement.

Romans 8 talks about for those who love God, all things work together for good.

God is in control, God is sovereign, and everything truly will work out in the end.

But when you remove any mindset of faith or Christianity or anything gospel -minded, when you remove that out of the equation, you have to fill that hole with something, like why is everything going to work out in the end?

Why do you believe that to be true? So what's interesting about Iceland, it is a land of contrasts, darkness and light, fire and ice.

It's called the land of fire and ice, glaciers and volcanoes. So it's a land of extremes.

Just to kind of paint that picture for you. So I'm not sure how you do this, but apparently every year there's some organization out there that measures world happiness.

I'm not sure how you do that, what the equation is for that. But almost without fail,

Iceland comes in at the top five of the world's happiest people almost every year. Last year they came in at number three in the world for the happiest people.

Iceland consistently comes in at number one on the global peace index. They're the only nation in Europe that has never been in a war, and the only nation in Europe that doesn't have a standing army.

So it's a very peaceful, very happy. They also are well -known around Europe as being one of the best places for women to live, because they have the highest level of gender equality in the workplace as well.

So you would imagine if they're this happy and they're this peaceful and they're this equal, okay, we're good to go.

So the other issue is that in 2020, Iceland consistently also comes in at number one in the world for the highest consumption of antidepressants.

Now how you put the happiest, the most peaceful, the most equal and the most depressed all together in one equation, and I'm not entirely sure how you do that, but that just reveals the state of the spiritual need of the

Icelandic people. And so this is really the challenge of ministry in a context like Iceland.

It's a people group that don't see a need for a savior. They're apathetic about life's biggest questions, which we all seek to answer.

And Mark chapter 10, if you're familiar with that at all, that's the story of the rich young ruler who comes to Christ.

And what's the first thing he asked Jesus? He says, what can I do? What can

I do to inherit eternal life? He doesn't say, you know, how do I inherit life? It's what can I do?

And Christ very quickly reveals the flaw of his very beginning question. And of course, we know the story ends with the rich young ruler going away very sad because he had great possessions and great wealth.

And this is the Icelanders. They see no need for a savior. They're apathetic about life's questions.

And so that's the challenge of how do you bring the gospel into that type of type of culture? So, of course, how did we get here?

Right. That is now that we know all of this background information about Iceland. The next question people typically ask is like, now, how on earth did this chunk of rock come onto your radar?

And truthfully, it all started in the year 2020. We all remember it well.

And in the midst of the pandemic, my wife and I, we had just moved out of a ministry position.

I was serving as a pastor at a church in northern Michigan, and we had just moved down to the metro

Detroit area, which is where we live now. And because it was 2020, you know, we all seem to find a little more free time in our schedules.

And so I figured, why not? Let's read a book about the Black Plague. It's topical. It's 2020.

So as I was reading this book about the Black Death, the author made this comment.

And she said, if I was alive during the Black Plague, I would have wanted to have lived in Iceland because it never even made it there.

And then she just kept on going. And it was like this light bulb went off in my mind. And I thought to myself, first of all, where is this place?

I had no idea where Iceland was. I couldn't have pointed it out on a map. I had nothing, no context for what it was like at all.

But it was just this like a pebble in your shoe. I kept thinking to myself, has the gospel even reached it?

Like, where is this place that the plague that wiped out 50 % of Europe never even made it?

Has the gospel reached Iceland? What are the state of the church in Iceland? And that just continued to fester and to grow.

And we started to do, you know, research and everything. And if you Google what is the state of Christianity in Europe or in Iceland, the first thing that it will say on Google, excuse me, is that 90 % of Icelanders are

Christians. Which, of course, if you know anything about world history, you might say, oh,

I don't believe that at all. That's exactly what I said. I don't believe that there's any nation in Europe or in the world that's actually 90 %

Christian. And so it didn't take very much digging to find out all these things I just shared with you about the true spiritual state of Iceland.

So at that point in time, we had just become members at our church in Auburn Hills called

Five Points Community Church. It's not named that on purpose, but it's very good that we're a reformed church, because that'd be awkward to be called

Five Points Community Church and not be reformed. So as my wife and I were sitting down for our membership interview with two of our elders, they began to ask us what was our passion in life, what sort of ministry did we want to get engaged in.

And we began to tell them a little bit about Iceland and God laying it on our hearts. And one of the elders was sitting there just smirking this whole time.

We're thinking, well, this is strange. And at the end of sharing all of this with him, he smiles and he says, well,

I have some good news for you. He says, I'm the head of the missions committee. My family is all Icelandic.

And my wife and I have been praying for 30 years that God would send a family to Iceland. We're like,

OK, God clearly brought us to the right church. We must be at the only church in Michigan, if not in the

U .S., that has an Icelandic elder who is over the missions board. So we got connected with Reaching and Teaching International Ministries, which is our sending agency.

And very quickly we got connected with the Iceland Project, which is a church planting network there in Iceland, whose vision and goal is to see churches planted all around the nation.

So the church that we're going to be joining is called Lofstafan, which just means upper room.

And this little church has quite a story. So one of our brothers this morning shared that their church basically began as a

Bible study in their living room. And that's exactly how Lofstafan started. So Gunnar, that strapping young Viking guy right there, he is one of the pastors.

He was the planting pastor of Lofstafan. And when we first met him, he explained to us that he grew up, he said if Benny Hinn and Joel Olstein had a baby, that was his father in Iceland.

He grew up in the number one prosperity church in Iceland. And that was his context.

That's what he thought Christianity was. So when he became 18, he said, I want nothing to do with this.

And he came to the United States. And he became an associate pastor actually at a church here in the

States. And after about three years, he realized, wow, I've never actually been a Christian. So he thought,

I should probably not be doing this. So he stepped out of ministry and then started going through some training and some discipleship and then actually truly came to faith in Christ.

And then he just winds up, he just so happens to wind up at a church in Virginia that had already been praying about planting a church in Iceland.

But they had no clue who was going to go do it. They didn't know who was going to be willing to do it. And in walks this kid who he ended up going through theological training.

They discipled him, grew him. He went through an internship there. And they looked at him and they said, you need to go back.

And he said, there's no way I'm going back. And they said, well, you're the guy. God is calling you back to Iceland.

So he and his wife went back to Iceland. Gunnar essentially posted a post on Facebook and said, we're going to start a

Bible study in our living room. And if anyone would like to join us, we'd love to have you join us. And Frithberg and Kristine were the only other two, the only other family for the first year of this church that faithfully came to this

Bible study in their living room. So the first year it was just two families praying together, studying

God's word, sharing their faith as much as they could. And now Lofstefan has grown to about a membership of 40 people with over 12 different nations represented.

So it's, I mean, it's a small church, but it's actually the third largest congregation in the nation as well with 40 members.

And it's just incredible to see this little beacon of light in this nation of darkness.

They also sponsored the only ministry to university students in the nation, which is just an incredible way to spread the gospel to the nations.

So Lofstefan is the only church right now in the Iceland project. It's the only one in this network of churches.

So it's not really a network yet, but one of the elders is actually going to be leaving.

He and his wife and a couple other families are going to plant another church within the next year.

So we praise God for that as well. So our journey, our goal as a family to get there, we're aiming to get there by June of 2023.

That's our vision and our hope. We've committed to a minimum of three terms of service in Iceland, which with our agency, a term is four years.

So we've committed to 12 years of a minimum serving there in Iceland. Our first term is going to be primarily focused on learning the language and adjusting to the culture and learning the mindset of the

Icelanders. Their language, which is Icelandic, is an extremely important part of their culture.

So we're going to be, of course, doing as much as we can to learn the language. My wife and I are both going to be taking university classes as we continue to pour into our church as well there.

The second term, our focus is going to be on, the goal is for me to be an elder of Lofstefan and to continue to receive ministerial training.

And then our third term, our vision is for my wife and I and another core group of believers to launch out and to plant another church wherever the need is discerned at that point in time.

So ways you can pray for us. Some of these may be obvious, but first of all, praying for Iceland.

Pray for the faithfulness of the young community of believers that are there, the small community. As you've seen, it's hostile to Christians.

It's not a persecution issue, but Christians all around the country are considered to be bigoted.

They're considered backwards thinking, you know, not up with the times whatsoever. So it's a very hard climate to be ministering in, especially in such a small community.

Of course, we long to see the repentance of the Icelandic people en masse. They say that two baptisms a year is essentially a revival, so it's very slow work.

But that's, of course, what we long to see. Naturally, they also need a lot more help.

Iceland is not on basically anybody's radar, understandably, so there's so few laborers there.

And we truly do believe that the harvest is ready. So pray for more laborers to go and to be willing to take a part in the ministry.

And then, of course, their long -term goal, their hope, is to become a mission -sending force themselves, to see

Icelanders taking the gospel to the nations as well. So continue to be praying for that.

And how you can pray for us, we ask that you would pray for patience in this season, as we are very excited to get there, but we also don't want to lose sight of the forest for the trees.

We want to continue to invest in our church as long as we're here, in our community, in our neighborhood.

So please pray for us that we would be patient and trust God's timing. Protection, this has been already a season of highs and lows.

There's been great opportunities, but also just doubt and distractions.

So pray for protection for our family from that. Grace, between my wife and I, as well as with raising our three young kids, not exactly the point of life that we thought we would be heading to the missions field, as we have three kids under the age of four.

So we need continued grace poured out upon us as well. As I mentioned, we want to continue to be faithful while we are here.

So faithfulness in our ministry and in our community. And lastly, just that we would continue to find avenues of building a strong support team, both financially and prayerfully.

Of course, that is how we get there. So just be praying for that.

This is the last slide, I promise. This has essentially become our family's life verse,

John 1, 5. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. As we consider a spiritually and physically dark nation like Iceland, we're comforted and we are assured of the fact that the light of Christ will shine in the darkness.

We know that as, you know, it's not just a maybe, that's a promise. We know that when

Christ comes back and when the saints are gathered around the throne, there will be men and women from every tribe, tongue, and nation.

And we know without a doubt that Icelandic will be one of those languages, praising God. So that's our heart, and that's our ministry.

And thank you for your time. That's it.

Wow, it worked. It did. I want to say, to start off, a big thank you to Steve.

I just met the brother yesterday. And a good audiovisual sound person is a gift to a church.

So you are blessed. You are blessed. You are blessed. That was me.

That will teach me to just... I know. That will teach me to shift my foot right as I'm in the middle of introducing myself.

This is my first time to visit a fire conference. It is my privilege and my pleasure to fellowship with all of you.

My name is Craig Thompson. I am with Cary International Pastoral Training, a missions organization that provides training for pastors around the world.

And it is my delight to be here with you today. I am first time here, but Cary has been here in the past.

It's possible at a former conference, you might remember a colleague of mine, Paul Hudson, he sends his greetings.

He is on his way to Uganda later on this month. And actually, we'll be seeing a short video in just a few minutes about my latest trip to Uganda.

So you can get a flavor of what Cary is all about. But you may want to know a little bit about me.

You may not want to know a little bit about me. That's fine too. I was sitting in the back and I was hearing

Steve present his ministry and then Dale presented his ministry. And I was like, man, they both did such a great job.

I feel really bad for the guy at the end. That's me.

Did you have one of those wonderful little clicky things? That would be wonderful.

Once again. Thank you. My official title with Cary is

International Trainer. But I am not James Bond. A little bit about me.

I've been married to my wonderful wife, Ricky, for 26 years. We grew up in southern Ohio. After attending

Gordon -Conwell Theological Seminary, I said to the Lord, I'll serve you in ministry anywhere.

But if you can keep me in New England for a while, that would be wonderful. So for almost 10 years, we served a small

Baptist church in north central Vermont. After that time, we served a church in Pennsylvania and spent some time serving a church in Michigan.

And about May of last year, the

Lord opened my eyes to possibly considering joining Cary.

Didn't even know they existed. And the more I spent time on their website, I'm like, this is cool,

I could do this. And I really knew it was a possible leading from the Lord when

I told my wife about it the next day and she said, you should apply. Never expected that.

She has been supportive and encouraging. So I served as a solo pastor for about 18 years.

Started with Cary last September, I guess October. And the reason that Cary exists is because of the great need.

One of the points that Dale made was there's very little quality seminary training for pastors in Iceland.

That's true around the world. 85 % of churches in the world are led by men or women who have received no formal theological training.

And leaders from every non -Western region say their number one need is leadership training.

And that's why Cary exists. That's why Cary exists. The founder of Cary, a man by the name of Bob Pinheiro, in the 90s was taking a mission trip to Romania.

And while he was visiting in a hospital, seeing ministry opportunities in this hospital, he saw a man standing not too far away, watching his every move.

1990s Romania, he was a little unnerved by that. The next day he's at an orphanage and as he's seeing ministry needs in the orphanage, he sees that same man with more men gathered around and they're watching his every move.

So he plucks up his courage. He says, Why are you following me? They said, Sir, we know you're a pastor.

We're pastors too. We just want to know how it is to do what you're doing.

And that is how Bob Pinheiro became aware of the need. And so 25 years ago, he began this humble effort to meet the leadership training needs in Romania.

And that has grown over the last 25 years into Cary. Named after William Cary, the first modern missionary to India.

Our mission is to train spiritual leaders that shape the church and influence the nations.

What do we do? We provide Bible college and seminary level courses to pastors in nations that don't have easy access to that type of training.

It might be persecution in the nation. It might be poverty. There might be reasons. There may not be an institution that's providing quality training.

We bring college to them. We bring seminary to them. It might be helpful to think of us providing a full tuition scholarship to these church leaders.

They're already doing ministry. They just haven't been equipped. They haven't been educated. And so we invite these pastors to come.

We provide two weeks of training at a time, two different courses. For example, when

I was in Madagascar in August, I taught systematic theology one week and the life of Christ the next week.

During those two weeks, we provide their lodging. We provide their educational resources.

We provide their food. And in some cases, we provide cost offset.

We pay for their travel expenses. There are times when we're not able to be there in person.

There are times when it is either just not politically allowed for us to go into a country or certain situations have developed.

We had a very well -established training center in Myanmar up until the military coup about a year and a half ago.

And so we have been Zooming instruction into them. I've had opportunity to pray by Zoom with a pastor who has said, because of the situation in Myanmar, people can't gather in groups.

So he goes out into the jungle with his phone, with a flashlight, with a notepad, and that is how he receives his coursework.

That's how he receives his instruction. They are that committed to being trained.

And so we will provide that type of training any way we can.

We also have distance education courses on our website. They're free. You could take a course from Cary if you would like.

We also publish our own books. We do this because it's more cost effective.

If we would have a book by R .C. Sproul, then we would have to pay the copyright fee before we could translate it into another language.

So to be good stewards, we publish our own books. We have copies on the table in the back.

If you would like to acquire a book for yourself, I would love to say that they are free, but our books are not free.

But if you would be willing to make a donation to Cary, then we will be able to provide these very books for free to the pastors we train.

Where are we working? We are working many, many places.

Some of our most well -established training centers are in the

Philippines and Madagascar. Some of the most recent training centers are in Uganda and Tanzania.

We've just got those started off the ground. Because I'm new to Cary and because we have new training centers, a lot of my trips this last year have been to Uganda and Tanzania.

Although, as I said, I've been in Madagascar in August. We also have some training centers in development.

What happens is we will have pastors approach us or apply online and say, we'd like a training center in our country.

We take them through a vetting process to see, does this pastor have a good reputation in the community? Does this pastor have a good network of pastors who might be willing to invest this time?

Is there a safe location for them all to gather together for our instructor to come in?

We take them through a vetting process. There are some countries that we're hoping to get into soon.

Those are the ones in yellow. They're the pre -launch evaluation stage. What I love most about working for Cary is the ability to go in, not only provide education, but to encourage pastors.

They are dealing with ministry situations that in many ways I can't even imagine. But to come alongside them, to partner with them, and even though we're providing education, we're not coming in and saying, and let us tell you how to do your ministry.

They know their context much better than we do. And so we provide them the materials, the equipment, and we also pray and partner with them and come alongside them.

All right, I have a few disclaimers before I share this video. I wanted you to get a flavor for what a mission trip that I've taken part in, what

Cary's ministry looks like. There's just two things I need to say. Uganda's training center, we don't build the building.

Basically, we partner with a ministry and they provide that space. This particular training center in Uganda, in Tebe, the top floor is where the pastors meet.

The lower levels have a school. So you're going to see some pictures of kids. That's the first disclaimer.

Did I say two? I'm a pastor. I'm going to make it three. The second disclaimer is Steve and I have been working and the brother's been helping.

We're not quite sure if the audio and the video is going to sync quite, so it might look a little disjointed.

But for the times when the pastors are giving testimonies, I have the most important stuff they're saying printed up on the screen.

So there shouldn't be that level of difficulty. The third thing, and this is the most serious disclaimer, this is my first time at a fire conference.

People in Africa worship differently than we do here in fire churches. So there might be scenes that are not safe for us reformed evangelicals.

There is some dancing. So I wanted to make that disclaimer not only for here but for our live stream.

Pastor Tim, I hope a riot doesn't break out. It's possible a revival will.

I don't know. So this is Pastor Fred. Pastor Fred's not talking.

My audio keeps kicking off and that's on me. That's not you. But I, honest, before I turn the computer or after I turn the computer on,

I turn the audio on. So it's playing through my computer but not over the sound system.

Okay, this may work. If it doesn't, I'll be playing the video back at the table and I really encourage you to watch the video and get a chance to meet these pastors, these wonderful, wonderful people.

We're good? Okay. Here it goes.

Hi, guys. They are in the USA and everywhere as you are watching me and seeing me.

Welcome to Israel. I've been in the ministry for over 25 years but I'm seeing new things through this kind of training.

I want to thank God and thank you all for allowing these wonderful teachers to come and train us and teach us.

It is my prayer that as you continue to support us, we are going to be strengthened.

We are going to preach the gospel. The gospel is going to reach all over. So I pray that you continue to support

Calvary. You continue to send us teachers more and more so that they can teach us, so that we can also go out and teach.

Thank you so very much for sending these teachers to come and teach us in Uganda, to come and equip us in the world.

Thank you. I take this opportunity to appreciate

Calvary University for the wonderful tutors and the management of Calvary and our coordinator in Uganda for the beautiful work they are doing.

Honestly, Calvary University has impacted our lives at the

Word of Christ. He has sacrificed his life for us.

Reverend Thompson sacrificed his time. Others have sacrificed their resources for us to be sanctified with the truth.

And that's the Word of God. We give glory and honor. Whenever I've watched that video, the joy is infectious.

To minister alongside these co -laborers in the gospel is a privilege and it's a pleasure.

I am not a giggler, but throughout my very first trip with Carrie back in January, I just kept giggling saying,

Lord, why me? How am I so privileged? And so I want to thank you for allowing me this time to present the ministry of Carrie.

Why am I here? Well, I'm inviting you to partner with me as I partner with pastors around the world.

Pray for me. I'm going to be back in Tanzania in November, and then I'll be teaching in Philippines, Lord willing, come

February. Pray for me in my travels. I have prayer cards on the table in the back.

If you can pray for me and for my wife, we would be most grateful. If you'd like to invite me to come and present and speak at your church,

I love preaching. And so let me make a deal with you. If you are a fire church pastor in Ohio, I would love to come and visit.

If you are in a state surrounding Ohio, I would like to come and visit. If you're beyond that circle,

I am willing to come and visit. I'm willing to travel to Madagascar.

I would definitely be willing to come to Wisconsin. So there you are. Even the uttermost parts.

There might be some Christians who aren't here today or some pastors or some churches that you know that I don't.

And if you think, I bet they'd like to meet that Craig guy, I welcome that.

Please, I have a sign -up sheet with information. If you provide your information or if you want to check with them and provide their information,

I'd love to start those conversations. I have a semi -regular monthly email that details what's going on in my ministry.

If you'd like to sign up for that, that's also in the sheet in back. It's possible that you're a pastor and you say, you know what,

I'd like to take two weeks of vacation time and go to one of these countries and maybe help with the training.

Cary has always welcoming, good, reformed teachers. We want to provide the word of God.

And so we would welcome cultivating that relationship with you as well. And then, of course,

I would welcome the support of my ministry and Cary's ministry with a financial gift.

You can make checks out to Cary International Pastoral Training. And if you'd like that money to come to my fundraising efforts,

I'm about 33 % supported at this point. You write

Thompson Support in the memo line. If you say, hey, it sounds like a really good ministry, but I don't want to support that guy, then you can just make the check out to them and I'll make sure to get that to them.

Also, you can donate online. There's information not only on the slide behind me, but it's also available in the brochures that were in the folders.

And I want to say a big thank you to Sharon for putting Cary's brochure in with your registration folders.

Thank you for your time. And thank you for your prayers. God bless.

All right, quickly, real fast. Book. This is for the person here who's the most reformed.

I know. Member of fire the longest. Who's been a member here of fire for the longest?

Come on, somebody. Time's running. 2003. Anybody earlier than that?

Jeff. Charlie was the member.

We didn't. We're excluded. All you guys who got books.

I forgot. I'm supposed to take your picture, too. All right. So I'm gonna have to get your picture.

That's what they asked me to do. All right. Dan. Let's stand.

Stretch your legs while we're stretching. Let's sing. Page 187.

For the throne of God. Before the throne of God above.

I have a strong hand. Perfectly. A great high priest whose name is love.

Whoever is. For me to introduce to you our next speaker.

Pastor Andrew Beebe. Andrew's been ministering here alongside me now for a little over a year.

And it has been an experience for both him and me. In terms of vocational ministry,

I've kind of been alone and it's. Different now to have someone in the office right next door and.

Someone I can talk to. I'm a whole lot more nervous when I preach because there's another pastor sitting in the audience.

But. Pastor Andrew's had a tremendous ministry here in our church.

I think he is. Given us new perspectives and has helped us a great deal.

And so Andrew come and preach the word of God to God's people. Thank you, brother.

How many of us have fasted? Lift up holy hands.

How many of us have fasted? A few of us. Well, we're all going to fast now. All right. It's getting past dinner.

You're getting hungry. I know we're Baptist here and we like our potlucks, so it's difficult.

But hang with me. It has been a pleasure to hear the different ministries, though.

It is wonderful to see that we're not an island that God works throughout all the world.

It's always good to be reminded that. Let us go to the Lord in prayer. God in heaven,

I'm thankful that Jesus truly is beautiful in all his ways. I'm thankful, Lord, that we can and we can never exhaust the beauty that's found in Jesus.

So, Lord, help us, Lord, in this moment. Help our hearts to be open to the word.

And let us be exposed again to the further beauty of Jesus. I'm so thankful that you have saved us and you have showed us

Jesus. Lord, just let our worship amount to his beautiful, beautiful face.

We were once dead in our sins and we had no taste for the grace that Jesus provides by his work.

But you and your kindness have made us alive together with Christ. And so, because of that, he is beautiful to us.

Lord, how many times I wake up and I don't find him beautiful. I repent of that.

I repent that my heart cannot take in the full capacity of his beauty.

And so, God, I pray that you would meet us in our need and open our eyes further to the glory that's found in Jesus, our risen

Lord. May he be honored here and now. In Jesus' name, amen. I love to get up early in the morning.

I am convicted, I'm convinced that as you get up in the morning and you hear the birds chirping, you're hearing creation start to worship and wake up and worship

God. And I'm convinced as you see the sun coming over the horizon, you're seeing the beginnings of the sun worshiping our

Lord as well. And it's deep -rooted within my heart as creation wakes up and worships

God, I shall do it too. And so, I love to walk out in my yard and watch the sun come up.

I can't get too close. There's a pig farm back there that we got a pig farmer. So, if I get too close, I might pass out from that.

So, I got to keep my distance from that. But I love to watch that sun coming up. I love to see just the beauties of the sun kissing the horizon as you just see it.

And then it just bursts forth in all its glory. And it's wonderful to me as well as I then turn from the essence of the sunrise itself.

I turn around and I see the golden hue across the landscape. So, not only is the essence of the sunrise beautiful, but everything that it touches becomes beautiful as well as it lights up in golden glory.

And I just found that to be so awesome that not only is the sunrise beautiful of itself, but everything it touches, it makes beautiful and beloved.

That is what we're doing with Jesus, is it not? Jesus of himself is beautiful in all of his essential glory.

All that he has done to come to die for us, to raise up into new life, and to be at the right hand of the

Father. This is the essential glory of our Lord. And we also get to see the golden hues of his glory as it manifests in the lives of his people.

The beauties of a changed life from death to life is a glorious thing that we get to behold.

So, not only is Jesus himself beautiful that we get to celebrate, but then we get to see the golden hues that come forth from him as it grows across the landscape of the church.

Beloved, it is our duty, it is our privilege, to see the beauty of Jesus in all his ways and all that he influences.

Do you understand how wonderful it is to be known and found in Jesus and behold his beauty?

Don't live a complicated Christian life, but live a very simple life. And your life is meant to find the beauties in Jesus in all that it entails.

And it is boundless as we behold the golden hues of his work.

And part of that beauty is found in his judgment. We think of the beauty of Jesus, we can think of it in all sorts of different ways, but we might not think of his judgment as being one of them.

But beloved, this truly is part of what we get to appreciate of Jesus, is that he is a judge and he has came to judge.

Now that might be a very Puritan title, the beauty of Christ in judgment, but nevertheless it is true.

His judgment is beautiful and I want to look at that in the next few minutes that we have.

See, this is a difficult concept for our minds to grasp because the judgment of God has fallen on dark times, has it not?

If we tolerate the judgment of Christ at all, it is enough to just blush at it and not really dwell on it too much.

But when we fall into that error, beloved, we fall and we don't get to take advantage of the beauty that's found in the judgment of Jesus.

The judgment of Christ has fallen on hard times. People don't like to mention it too much anymore because we live in a very inclusive culture.

And so when we talk about the judgment of Jesus, it can be very offensive. But whenever that is the case, we lose out on seeing that particular beauty of Jesus on display.

And we can see in scriptures how it can be twisted to see that perhaps we should not dwell on the judgment of God, on the judgment of Jesus.

Look at the story of Jonah and how he wanted so bad for God to judge

Nineveh. He wanted so bad to see that city judged and God had to correct him and say,

I am not judging Nineveh at this time. We can see the story of Jesus coming in John 3.

He came not to condemn but to save. And we can see how the disciples as Jesus is heading towards Jerusalem and that is his focus and the

Samaritans don't even allow him in their city because he's heading to Jerusalem. And his disciples want to rain down judgment of fire upon the city and Jesus has to rebuke them.

You see, we can twist these scriptures to see that perhaps we shouldn't focus on judgment.

Perhaps it shouldn't be something that we look to define the beauties of Christ. But again, this would be a mistake.

If our aim is to find the beauty of Christ in all of his works, in all that it touches, the tragedy behind falling on this side of the ditch is that we will not be enjoying this aspect of his beauty.

But there's another side of the ditch, isn't there? Of past generations. There's another side of the ditch of fire and brimstone preaching of another generation.

As in the 50s and 60s and 70s, as we saw American moralism go down the tank, we saw the rise of fire and brimstone preaching of an obsession of God's judgment.

And even on this side of the ditch, there is great error. I remember early in my ministry, an older gentleman wanted to talk with me in my office about my preaching and he wanted to know where I learned to preach and what

I'm trying to do in my preaching. And he made it very clear to me he really misses the old -time fire and brimstone, he called it, preaching of declaring

God's judgment and hammering the pulpit and even perhaps getting angry as you do it. And it was interesting.

I took it. I wanted to be respectful. But I quickly got to what his spiritual condition was.

And it became very clear that this man was living in sin, unrepentant sin. And he was okay with it.

And I remember saying in a very, I tried to say it kindly, but I said more or less to him, perhaps the fire and brimstone preaching should begin in your own heart.

And the problem with that is that oftentimes when we fall on that side of the ditch, we love righteousness, but it's not

God's righteousness we love, but it's rather our own standard of righteousness. And so there are ditches to fall on, but there is a middle way in which the beauties of Christ is found truly in his judgment.

Because to be honest with you, if we look at scripture, we see it being beautiful.

Have you ever noticed in Revelation the songs of worship in that book? You notice there's songs of worship throughout the whole book of the

Revelation to John. And what do they talk about often? They worship

God in light of his judgment that is happening. And so we see that in scripture, there is an aspect in which the judgment of God is something that we fear and something that we see that we are working towards getting people out of.

But there's also an aspect of scripture where it is very beautiful and celebrated and he is worshiped in light of it.

There is a middle road that we must walk on this in this topic.

So the question I'm asking here is how do we see the beauty of Christ and his judgment and avoid the ditches?

We need to answer this question. We need to know the point of judgment in itself. Why is there judgment?

And by knowing the point, we'll see why it's beautiful. Why does God judge? What is the point of it?

God's judgment is God's way to get rid of the ugly of the sin and place beauty in its stead and that is righteousness.

God's judgment, the whole point of it, is to make creation perfectly beautiful once again by ridding the earth of sin.

That is the point of judgment, is to make things beautiful totally again.

See, something is beautiful when it's a manifestation of what

God is. You understand that? Something is objectively beautiful when it manifests who

God is. And what do we call that? Righteousness. When it is void of sin and it has righteousness.

When it manifests who God is, that makes something beautiful. Something is ugly when it corrupts the manifestation of who

God is. And that, beloved, is called sin. So the work of Jesus in a world that has gone ugly through sin is to make it beautiful through righteousness.

And he does it through judgment. You cannot talk about the beauties of Christ and his work without talking intimately about judgment.

We must know judgment in order to know Jesus. So the person who avoids

God's judgment or mentions it with a blush does not love Christ's righteousness enough and he does not hate the twisting of it.

Again, the one who is afraid to mention the judgment of Jesus, judgment of God, or blushes or tries to avoid it is because they do not love the purity, the holiness of Christ.

The person who loves fire and brimstone preaching and is obsessed with a version of God's judgment really just loves his own version of righteousness and he does not love the version of true righteousness.

We, as God's people, will avoid the ditches by seeing

Christ's judgment as a blessed means to establish the beauty of righteousness forever.

Again, we, as God's people, as we enjoy the middle road, we'll avoid the ditches by seeing

Christ's judgment as a blessed means to establish the beauty of righteousness forever.

So let's see this. Let's see the beauty of Christ's judgment in the believer and in the unbeliever, both in this life and the next.

So let's start with the beauty of judgment in this life and the believer. Turn with me to Isaiah 53.

Let's see the beauty of Christ's judgment on display, God's judgment on display in the believer in Isaiah 53.

The Gospel of Isaiah. Verse 4.

Surely Christ has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we esteem him stricken, smitten by God.

He was smitten, he was stricken by God and afflicted.

He was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities.

Upon Christ was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.

See, all we, like sheep, have gone astray. We have turned every way to his own way, and Yahweh has laid on Christ the iniquity of us all.

He was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth.

Like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shears is silent, so Christ opened not his mouth.

By oppression and judgment he was taken away. And as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people?

And they made his grave with the wicked, and with a rich man in his death.

Although he had done no violence and there was no deceit in his mouth, yet it was the will of Yahweh to crush him.

He was put to grief. When his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring.

He shall prolong his days. The will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied.

By his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous.

And he shall bear their iniquities. Therefore I will divide him a portion with the many, and he shall divide the spoiled with the strong.

Because he poured out his soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors.

Yet he bore the sin of many and makes intercession for the transgressors. Transgressors. What's going on there, beloved?

There's our Lord Jesus Christ taking on your sin to make you righteous.

He's doing away with your sin to make you righteous. He is taking the judgment of God for you to make you righteous.

So that beauty may reign in you. You see, judgment works here, doesn't it?

The beauty of Christ is found in judgment and the fact that he takes judgment for you if you believe upon Jesus.

Judgment is interlaced with grace, with Christ, because he has taken sins for you.

We don't have time, but we could go to Romans 3, 21 -26 and see how he is the propitiation.

He is the one who has taken the anger of God against sin and the ugliness and he's taken it upon himself.

So when he sees you, he sees righteous beauty. We have a wonderful Savior who justifies his people and makes them righteous before God.

The believer in his justification is judged and the penalty falls on Jesus.

Then this is seen practically in his progressive sanctification as he grows after the image of the one who bore their sin.

Turn with me to Philippians 3. Turn with me to Philippians 3. See, not only do we see judgment in the believer's life, in this life here, through justification as we believe upon Jesus and your sins are placed upon Christ in judgment.

As Christ bears your judgment, but also your sins through progressive sanctification is brought to Jesus and you start and you begin to look more and more like him.

Look at what Paul says in Philippians 3, 7 -11. He says, But whatever gain

I had, I count it as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because it is a surpassing worth of knowing

Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish in order that I may gain

Christ and be found in him. Not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ.

The righteousness from God that depends on faith. That I may know Christ and the power of his resurrection and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death.

Do you understand that? When you're justified and you're found in Christ, now your goal is to become like him in his death.

His death is the judgment he received for your sins. And we want to now, in our progressive sanctification, to become like him in his death.

That by any means possible I may attain to the resurrection of the dead. And so we participate in the judgment that Jesus received on the cross by dying to our sins and living unto

Christ. And so in our progressive sanctification, the judgment of Christ is on display as we grow in holiness.

The beauties of Christ is on display in you as you turn away from your sin and you show his righteousness.

In your progressive sanctification. Behold the beauty of Christ's judgment in the believer to take away the ugly of your sin to make you beautiful.

You see, it was this sort of progressive sanctification, this sort of constantly bringing your sins to Jesus so it can be judged and he can pay that penalty so you can begin and progressively look like him.

It was that sort of beauty of judgment that the fire and brimstone guy wanted nothing to do with it.

He wanted his own standard of righteousness that he abided by perfectly and he just wanted to lay it out on other people.

But whenever he considered his own life, he did not want to conform to the image of Jesus at all.

But you see, our delight is that we would constantly go to the one who bore our reproach and we would gain his righteousness and justification and also we would look like it through progressive sanctification.

Now, how does the judgment of Christ look like for the unbeliever in this life?

You see, if you haven't caught on because I'm not always the best speaker, is that our sin as believers are dealt with in this life.

Now, what does that look like for the unbeliever though? Look at Romans 1, 18 -32. Very interesting to see the contrast being played out before us.

Romans 1. For the believer, his sin is dealt with.

Justification altogether and then progressively through progressive sanctification. Sin is being rooted out both objectively and practically in our life.

But what does it look like for the unbeliever? Well, look at Romans 1, 18.

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.

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 and the things that have been made.

So the unbelievers are without excuse. 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.

Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for the images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

In order to do such a thing, you must be insane or dead in your sins. But what does

God do with those people? It's interesting. Verse 24,

God gave them up in their lusts of their hearts. What does that mean? His wrath is revealed to them by saying, you want to live in filth and not honor me as God?

I'm going to give you up in it. Part of God's wrath is to give people up in their sin to show just how insane it is to substitute glorifying

God and his righteousness for goofy, silly things. He gives them up to it.

It says in verse 24, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves. They could honor

God with their bodies. Instead, they're going to dishonor him. Because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator who is blessed forever.

And once more for this reason, God gave them up to dishonorable passions for their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature.

You know how beautiful it is to show Christ and his relationship with the bride by a healthy marriage?

We would give it up for lesbianism or a gay relationship? What kind of ugliness is that?

But God in his wrath gives them up to their passions. And the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with a passion for one another.

Men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty of their error.

I could make a political statement there about some current events, but I won't. And since they did not see fit to acknowledge

God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They are filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice.

They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, and maliciousness. They are gossips, slanders, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.

Though they know God's righteous decree, that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them, but approve those who practice them.

What's the point there? It's that God allows them, gives them up to the impurity of it to show just how ugly it is to deny his righteousness.

He doesn't rid the sin right away. You see, in the believer, what is he doing?

He's taking the sin out of you. Through justification, through progressive sanctification, he's bringing it out with the unbeliever.

In his wrath, he gives them up to it. The ugly is showcased, and the beauty is showcased in the church.

See that contrast work in there? Why does he do that? See, where the beauty is of Christ's judgment in this life, and the believer is seen in him ending our sin, both objectively and practically, to the unbeliever it is seen in him giving them up to it in his wrath.

Why? Why does he do that? Why does he do it that way?

Why not end it all totally now? Because God loves to express himself by contrast.

Have you ever noticed that? God loves to show who he is by contrast.

He loves it. And what are we? We are the contrast of the ugliness of unrighteousness, aren't we?

That's what we should be. God displays the nastiness, gives it up, so that he can say, and look at the beauties of those

I make righteous in Jesus. I, same judgment, work in both ways.

John 1 -5, Dale quoted it earlier, the light shines in the darkness.

Can I say this? The light shines best in the darkness. Matthew 5, 14 -16,

Jesus says that we're the light of the world to shine and glorify our Father. God loves to display his beauty in the contrast.

So as the world in their wickedness is given up to unrighteousness, he is creating a beautiful righteous bride to be that wonderful contrast.

Behold, the beautiful contrast of unrighteousness on display in the world through judgment with the righteousness on display in the church through judgment.

The beauty of judgment, that is it in this world. But look at the beauty of judgment in the next life, in the unbeliever first.

And I'm going to try to go through these quickly because I can hear your stomach starting to grumble. But look at Revelation 20.

Look how judgment is then portrayed in its beauty and what's coming in the future.

Look at Revelation 20, verse 11. John tells us what he sees in the revelation.

First, the unbeliever and the beauty of judgment in the next life. Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it.

From his presence, earth and sky fled away and no place was found for them.

And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne and books were opened. Then another book was opened, which is the book of life.

And the dead were judged by what was written in the books according to what they had done. And the sea gave up the dead who were in it.

Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them. And they were judged, each one of them, according to what they had done.

Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire.

And if anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.

So what do we see happen to unrighteousness and sin there? We see it banished.

We see God give them up to it in this life, but we see that there is coming a day in his beautiful judgment that he will banish it forever in eternal hell.

But what about the believer? What do we experience? Well, look, going on in Revelation 21.

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth. You see, that new heaven and new earth is only possible whenever God judges the sin.

And so with sin finally judged and done away with, banished forever in judgment and wrath, then he says,

I saw a new heaven and a new earth. For the first heaven and the first earth had passed away and the sea was no more.

And I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, and this might be the most beautiful sentence in all of Scripture, behold, the dwelling place of God is with man.

He will dwell with them and they will be his people and God himself will be with them as their

God. God does not dwell with ugliness. And here we see a new heavens and a new earth and the bride of Christ is welcome to be with God forever.

God will wipe away every tear from their eyes. And death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning or crying or pain anymore for the former things have passed away.

And he who was seated on the throne said, behold, I am making all things new. Also he said, write this down for these words are trustworthy and true.

And he said to me, it is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the waters of life without payment.

The one who conquers will have this heritage and I will be his God and he will be my son. But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, the murderous, sexual and immoral, the sorcerers and adulterers and all the liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.

Behold, the beauty of Christ's judgment by banishing the ugly of sin forever and providing a place where only righteousness dwells in all its beauty.

And beloved, if you believe upon Jesus, you are there too. This is our hope that we would behold the beauties of Christ in all his glory in the eternal state as unrighteousness is judged forever.

So in conclusion, we need to behold the rising sun, the beauty of Christ receiving

God's judgment in his death and resurrection. Behold the golden hue, color of the rising sun, the beauty of you looking progressively more like Jesus by this judgment.

As the dogs, the sorcerers, the sexual immoral, the murderers, the adulterers, and those who love and practice falsehood are used by God to display the beauty of Christ in contrast.

Behold the rising sun of Christ's final judgment where the golden hue of righteousness marinates the landscape into eternity as unrighteousness is banished forever.

And we dwell with Christ in righteousness because of him receiving our judgment.

Let us enjoy the beauty of Christ's judgment as it is seen in both his wrath and his grace.

Beloved, he is wonderful and wonderfully to be praised. Praise be to our great

God and King. God in heaven, I'm thankful for your judgment.

Lord, we know that you cannot blink or you cannot wink at sin. You cannot smile at it or giggle at it like sinners, even us, like to do sometimes.

Lord, you hate sin. You hate sin so much that you crushed your son because of it.

And I'm so thankful that as I look upon the judgment that he received, I see my judgment in him.

Lord, that I don't have to face my sin and the full weight of it in which I would be damned to hell forever.

But instead, the people of God can see that their judgment was placed on him. He was crushed for our iniquities so that righteousness may shine in us.

Lord, we know that we live in this age where there is much unrighteousness.

But we see that you use that to show just how beautiful righteousness is. But Lord, we know that we can go to the unbeliever and say, you need to believe upon Jesus so you can be made righteous too.

And so may we have a desire to proclaim your judgment, but proclaim your judgment and your grace nestled up with it so that people may be saved.

But Lord, I pray that we would also, as we see in the book of Revelation, yearn for the time when there is no more sin, both in ourselves and also around us, so that all we have is the beauty of Christ and his righteousness.

Lord, I pray that you would give us a heart that longs for that day. But let us show our longing for that day in the way that we proclaim

Christ today, both to ourselves, to our family, to our neighbors, to everyone who needs to hear that they can be found righteous in Christ today if they would only believe.

May we have such a heart for the gospel and his beautiful judgment. May we have such a heart for Jesus and may we see him as the one who is worthy of so much praise.

And may we give it to him more and more each day. To him be the glory forever and ever. Amen. Let's stand and sing.

Hymn 389, All I Have is Christ. 389. Now all

I know. Hallelujah.

The strength to follow yours. Could never be.

In any way you choose.

And let it be.

My only ghost is you.

Hallelujah. Hallelujah.

Jesus is my God. Return thanks for the food that God has given us and then we'll be dismissed to the back.

And don't be shy, just head for the lines, okay? We don't have time to stand around.

Let's pray. Father, thank you for the food that you've provided. Thank you again,

Lord, for reminding us of your work in the world. Thank you for showing us the beauty of Christ and his judgment.

Thank you, Father, that we have been fed the word of God. And we just praise you for that.