Committed to the Lord

Good morning again, nice to be back with you. Today we're going to be in Acts 14, it's where we're going to end up in the passage verses 19 to 28, and it was the end of Paul's first missionary journey.

Have you ever committed to a goal, but over time lost your zeal, or your desire, or your focus on what that goal is? Maybe you've shifted it to another target. Maybe an achieving, it could be a college degree, it could be a position at work, it could be some sort of standing, or maybe it was a possession, a house or a car, good, necessary things.

Or maybe it was a relationship, a person, somebody you wanted to talk to Christ about, or maybe it was a friend that you wanted, a more committed, more intimate, more transparent relationship with, maybe a spouse, maybe you desire a spouse because you didn't have one, or maybe you were just simply trying to improve your relationship with your spouse.

But after working towards that goal, towards attaining that desire, after days, or weeks, or months, or years, and you just can't seem to get there, have you maybe given up, or just shifted to something that's closer, more attainable, easier reached?

Have you given up what your first love was for something different? So history proves that Christians have done that since there's been Christians. They don't stay focused on God. They have an initial zeal and love for the Lord, but they soon fail to operate inside the guidelines and the standards that He's given us.

We tend to look for something easier, cheaper, closer, more graspable. It's easily seen in the church and how it's evolved over the years, and what the church teaches, and how it operates, and who the church preaches.

Christ is eternal, and infinite, and in some ways, unreachable in this life. But He has gifted us His Word, and His Spirit, and His presence, and we can know Him, and love Him, and have Him if we will only continue to be focused on Him and continue to search for Him.

Three Questions and One Main Thought

Today I have three texts, three words, three questions, and one main thought. Might sound like a lot, but I'm gonna give you.

All of that right here, right now,.

So there's no questions. And I'm not going to read, and we're not gonna turn to two of those texts. I'm gonna give them to you so you can write them down and look at them later today. They helped me as I was preparing for this message and understanding who Paul is, and what his desires were, and why he was doing what he was doing.

1 John 4, verses 9 and 10 talks about God's love, and the epitome of that love being seen in Christ's coming and the Father pouring out His wrath for our sins on His Son, 1 John 4, 9 and 10. Proverbs 6, 16 to 19 shows us six things that the Lord hates and seven that He abhors.

We're gonna see all seven of those things in today's message carried out and illustrated by the Jews. And then our passage for today, Acts 14, 19, to the end of the chapter. It's the final leg of Paul's first missionary journey.

It is the culmination of years of work that comes with his initial salvation and maturation and what he's committed to and how he's carrying that out. Three questions for today are, why was the path to Paul engaged in missions?

What is missions? Those two questions I'm gonna answer for you according to the Word. And the last question is for you to consider, for you to answer for yourself. How should I be involved in missions?

As we walk through and look at this narration, this documentary of Paul's life, I hope that you will recognize a terrible sinner who was transformed by the grace and the mercy of God into an imperfect saint who loves God and is committed to following their Savior.

That's the one thought for today. Please read or follow along with me as I read Acts 14, 19 -28. The Jews came from Antioch and Iconium and having persuaded the crowds, they stoned Paul and dragged him out of the city, supposing that he was dead.

When the disciples gathered about him, he rose up and entered the city and on the next day he went on with Barnabas to Derbe. When they had preached the gospel to that city and had made many disciples, they returned to Lystra and to Iconium and to Antioch, strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith and saying that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God.

And then they had appointed elders for them in every church with prayer and fasting and committed them to the Lord in whom they had believed. Then they passed through Poseidon and came to Pamphylia and when they had spoken the word in Perga, they went down to Etyria.

From there they sailed to Anorak where they had been commended to the grace of God for the work that they had fulfilled. When they arrived and gathered the church together, they declared all that God had done with them and how he had opened a door of faith to the Gentiles and they remained there a little time with the disciples.

Paul’s Conversion, Antioch, and the First Christians

Please pray with me. Heavenly Father, where you are, you are a good God. You have given us your word to guide our thoughts and to guide our actions, to focus our desires, to subdue that which is sinful in us and to build up that which is good, that resembles you, that comes from you.

Lord, help us today to understand who we are as Christians redeemed by the blood of Christ or who we are as an unrepentant sinner still warring with him. Lord, may your truth go out, may your glory be revealed, may our purpose be understood and our commitment be solidified today as we look at the life of Paul.

We pray this in Jesus' name, amen. As most of you know, Acts is a historical record. It's a documentary of Paul's life. Luke gathered information and he assembled it into this book so that all of his posterity would have a record of the gathering, the organizing, the ordering and the institution of the early church.

It starts after Christ's death, burial and resurrection on the day of his ascension. It starts with the last command, the last instruction from Christ on what we are to do. And that's just as important today as it was 2 ,000 years ago.

We have it so that we can stay fixed with our eyes on Christ so we don't shift, we don't fall away, we don't settle for something less than what he has commanded us to do. So when we consider what is missions and why we should be engaged with it, we're gonna look at what the disciples of the early church were doing, what, why they were doing it, how they went about it.

And to do that, we're gonna start with a short look at who Paul is and what Paul became. You know, Paul the apostle started his psalm from Tarsus. He was a pharisee, studied in the Old Testament scriptures.

He was in the Jewish tradition. He loved the law and hated Christ. He approved of the stoning of Stephen back in Acts chapter six and seven, then went on this terrible mission to persecute the church.

He got a letter and he went about and he drug people out of their homes and he committed them to the prison for simply loving and following Christ. And then by an incredible, merciful act of God, Jesus himself blinded him on the road to Damascus.

He came down and he took away Paul's view of this earth and blinded him and drought him with this incredible supernatural understanding.

Of the gospel.

He gifted him a new faith, a new hope, a new life in this revelation of the gospel. But because of Saul's terrible history of persecuting the church, he wasn't immediately invited into the fellowship of the local gathering.

He needed somebody to vouch for. He needed someone inside of the church who was faithful, who was well-known, who was respected to vouch for him. And this story begins there. We see back in chapter 11, and you can flip back a couple of pages.

We're gonna kind of hop into a couple of the high points of this first missionary journey of Paul. And if you look in Acts 11, you'll see that the narrative turning from the focus of Peter proclaiming to the Jews and turning towards Paul proclaiming to the Gentiles.

And in verse 19, you see the scattering that happened with the persecution from Stephen. You see this great martyr. He preached this incredible bold message to the Jews. He told them, this is who you were and this is what you knew in the Old Testament Scriptures and then this is what you did.

You crucified the Christ. And they got angry and they stoned him because of it. But because of that stoning, because of that persecution, the disciples were scattered and the word of God went forth and it spread in the area to God's praise.

It spread into Antioch, which is where they are here. This is Antioch in Syria. It's not the Antioch in Galatia that we're gonna see later in today's message. There's two Antioch. So keep in mind that here this is in Syria.

This is a major historic event that started here where the gospel that has been historically contained in God's chosen nation of Israel is now being spread to all the people of the earth. And so the church of Jerusalem took this faithful man and they said, we hear these things going on in Antioch, but we can't see them.

So we're gonna send you because we trust you. Go see what's happening. And so Barnabas went to Jerusalem and he saw what was happening there and he encouraged the church and people were saved. And towards the later parts of the chapter, we see Barnabas left and he went to Antioch and he got Saul and in verse 26, he brought him back.

I'm sorry, he went to Jerusalem. He brought him back and for a whole year, they met with the church in Antioch and a great many people were saved. This is important as we look forward to the last leg.

We need to see Paul as being discipled and being accepted in the church so that he can be matured as this man who will preach the gospel and teach. There's another incredible thing that's stated here.

The last part of verse 26, and then Antioch and the disciples were first called Christians. What an amazing historical event, a milestone. Christians flag was planted right there. We can look back 2000 years ago and see where was the first Christians?

Where were they? And we can see that it was right here at Antioch. And if we examine the history there, we know that this wasn't a pleasant thing for them, but they were actually being scorned. They were being mocked because Christians means to proclaim Christ and they were being mocked for their beliefs.

They weren't saying, yeah, go get them. We love this Lord. They were saying, you're an idiot. You're believing in this false God. They mocked them for that, but that's the origin of Christianity.

It's persecution.

That's where it started. It's where it continues. And it's where it'll end on the day that Christ come back. That's what Paul went and brought Paul into. And that's amazing because the trust that Barnabas had.

Have you ever had somebody like that in your life when you were acting like a fool? You were doing terrible things and somebody reached out to you and they brought you in and they loved you anyway. They showed you grace, right?

They gave you something you didn't deserve. They loved you when you didn't deserve to be loved. You didn't earn that love.

You didn't earn that grace.

But Barnabas grabbed onto Paul and he brought him in and embraced him and made him to be accepted by the church. I hope you have a Barnabas in your life because we need him. I need him. My wife is a great encourager to me sometimes.

Sometimes she tells me difficult things that I need to hear and that's not an encouragement, but it's necessary. We need those people in our lives and we need to be those people because other people need it.

Other people need us to go above and beyond and to offer grace and say, that's okay.

I give it.

You're better than that.

I'm coming home. So Barnabas and Paul, they were teaching in Antioch. That's where the Christians were. It's where the flag was planted. It's our heritage. That's where this journey for Paul begins. It's important to recognize that according to God's design, God's will, that his word goes forth to persecution.

It happened with Christ. It happened with Stephen. And Stephen identified with and respected and stood in the same shoes, if you will, as Christ. Simply presenting the truth. Guys, this is where you went wrong.

This is what you need to know. And they stoned him for it. We're gonna skip past most of chapter 12. We see the first apostle martyred, James. We see Peter imprisoned. We see Herod get ate by worms. And we come to the end of chapter 12 in verse 24.

And what is happening? The word of God is increasing and it's multiplying through these difficulties, through these persecutions, and through the judgment of God and those who attempt to take his glory.

Barnabas and Saul returned from Jerusalem and they completed their service bringing with them John, whose other name was Mark. This is, there's two things I wanna point out here. One is when they completed their service, they returned.

There is a work, it has a finish. When it's done, they go back to their home and send in church. There's a task. It has metrics, it has limits, it has standards, it has ways to measure what it's completed.

And when that's done, you go back to the church that sent you. And also here, they took John Mark with them. This is discipleship. They took Barnabas' cousin. They said, come with us. See what we're doing, watch what we're doing.

You're useful to us as a Christian and in this work that we wanna train you up for the ministry. This is intentional, specific discipleship. If we move into chapter 13 in verses two and three, the primary means of setting apart and identifying a missionary.

While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, while they were gathered as the church, what happens when we gather? We worship and we pray. So they were gathered together as the church and in whatever miraculous means, the Lord worked.

He said, these two guys have a specific work. I call them to it and I want you, the church, to set them apart for it. And that was done through fasting and prayer. Fasting means there's an amount of time that was spent with a specific intent on praying over this ministry, this mission.

So we as a church, we're gonna pray over this. We're gonna unite in the unity of the Spirit according to what this is and according to the command of God. We're gonna lay hands on them and send them out.

We've identified them according to the Spirit's leading as men who are qualified and gifted in this manner and we're giving them credibility through our church to go and do this work. It's the work of God in the church.

Again, this is exciting. This is Christ building His kingdom. This is men being taken from positions where the normal man is and being given gifts, gifts we don't deserve, given grace, given opportunity, given ministry, which is just service.

The meaning of ministry is service. It's service to the Lord. So these men were set apart for this work according to God's grace, trained, tested, and sent out. And where did they go? Flip the page to chapter 13.

If you have an ESV, it says, Paul and Barnabas are at Antioch in Poseidon, which is the province of Galatia, not the same Antioch where they were sent out of in Syria. We're gonna skip all of chapter 13.

There's an incredible sermon in there from Paul. It's well worth reading and studying, but we're gonna skip up to chapter 14. If you look at the, again, the label over verse one, it says Paul and Barnabas are at Iconium.

And there's a couple of things to take note of in this as they are working their way towards, working their way around the country of Galatia. They have, in effect, left Syria over here. They sailed to the island of Cyprus.

They preached the word. They got on another boat. They sailed to Pamphylia. They walked across the land, and now they're in the province of Galatia. They're in the city of Iconium. They're in the Jewish synagogue, and what do they do?

They speak in such a way that a great number of both Jews and Greeks believe. They profess the truth. They profess Christ. This is evangelism. All it is is taking the truth of God and speaking it in a way that desires to encourage others to have faith in the risen Christ, and what happened?

The unbelieving Jews stirred up the Gentiles and poisoned their mind against the betters. Persecution, hatred. Three things, the three words we're looking at today, love and hatred and commitment. Paul loved the Lord, and the Jews hated him for it, but what did he do?

He stayed committed. They remained for a long time, verse three, remained for a long time, speaking boldly. Bold witness, they offered grace, but the people of the city were divided, some sided with the Jews, and in verse five, an attempt was made by both Gentiles and Jews where they used mistreatment, and mistreat them and stoned them.

Now they hated him so much, they were trying to put him to death, but Paul escaped. Praise God, Paul is building his, or I'm sorry, God is building his kingdom through Paul in all these different places where ethnics and language and tradition are set aside for the unity that can only be found in Christ.

This is, it's the continuation of this historic event, of the spreading of the gospel to all tribes, nations, tongues, and languages. God doesn't have a specific people. They're not qualified by these metrics that we look at as humans.

He simply pours out his grace on those he chooses. He saves because he's good. That's the missionary's hope, that God saves not based on our merit, on our words, but on his goodness. If salvation or sanctification or the building up of disciples was based on the quality of any man, whether it be Paul or Barnabas or today's preacher, and not just the power and the will of God, then no one would be saved, and no one would grow in faith.

As we move through chapter 14, we get towards this last leg of the journey. Paul, Barnabas, goes from Iconium to Lystra. Here in Lystra, the Lord does a miracle through Paul, and the people attempt to worship him.

They bring out sacrifices. They're gonna sacrifice to him. They're going to worship him as somebody who did this amazing thing. They're gonna idolize someone who does something great, a movie star, an athlete, a great mechanic, whatever it is that you appreciate in somebody.

They're just putting them in a place where they don't deserve to be. We might not sacrifice animals to them today, but we certainly sacrifice our time, our productivity, our finances, our possessions.

We sacrifice them to these people who don't deserve it, simply because they have a God-given gift or talent. The way that we spend our time is, it's an evaluation of what's important to us. Parents, if you spend one hour with your child every day from the time they're 10 to the time they're 18, that's 3 ,000 hours with your children that you can spend in biblical training, in biblical counseling, in preparing them for all the difficulties that they will have when they leave your home.

That's almost a seminary degree. Almost 3 ,000 hours of time. I wish somebody would have told me that or encouraged me in that manner when my children were growing up, because I would have spent more intentional time with them.

Because we live with people and we get into these routines and things are just normal and they're okay, well, I just gotta get through the day. And I'll be happy when my head hits the pillow and this day is done and then tomorrow we do it again and pretty soon, the days and the weeks and the months, they all just run together and these opportunities to be productive in the lives of our children, those that we love,.

They're now gone.

These guys are being intentional and specific. That brings us to the main passage, if you will, for today, but this passage can't be grasped and wrestled with without understanding who these people are and what's led them to this place and why they're so committed to this work.

Paul's committed because Christ blinded him on the road to Damascus, because God showed grace and mercy. And Paul loved him in return and Paul made an intentional conscious choice to be committed to him after that.

If we only rely on our emotions, the emotion of love, then our commitment will be weak and it will soon stale and our target will change, we'll grasp for something that's closer or easier to obtain. Paul didn't do that.

He'd been, at this point, persecuted six different times. If we start in Acts 9 and look at the time from when he was converted to this instance right here, he'd already been in this increasing cycle of persecution and it ends, well, it doesn't end, but it culminates for us today right here in verse 19 where the Jews stoned him for speaking the word of Christ.

And it's not just any Jews, it's the Jews that came from Iconium and Lystra and now Antioch. These people hated him so much, they were following him from city to city and stirring up others in their hatred into this riot where he was stoned.

They dragged him out of the city, they threw him on the garbage heap, his body's laying there to be picked apart by the birds and he was just bleeding in this terrible picture. Can you imagine that? This was not a court-ordered judgment that was carried out by the Roman gods.

This was hatred and anger displayed by this riot that drugged him, angrily grabbed him and drugged him out of the city and they scared him around and they picked up rocks and they chucked him at him and threw him at his head and his body until he was dead.

It's chaos, just unrestrained anger and malice, hatred, no contemplation, no consideration, no thought, just emotion. This is the epitome of the carnal man that we've come to attempt to satisfy our immediate desires.

And how destructive. May have very well taken the life of Paul. I don't know what happened here. The Bible doesn't really say. Maybe he died and he was supernaturally raised. Maybe he only appeared to be dead.

The Lord knows and Paul knows and all I can do is be amazed. The amazement comes in several areas here, partly from his friends. The disciples, those who were with him, who have been traveling with him are now outside of the city.

They're standing there looking at his body and after witnessing the situation and on one hand, probably a little relieved that it's not them laying there and on another hand, they're grieving and they're mourning and they don't know what to do because Paul is leading this charge of proclaiming the gospel and building the church and now their leader is apparently deceased.

It is not. He's alive.

Praise God. This supernatural act, this God-glorifying situation, Paul gets up and in one of his greatest testimonies, his next action is to go back into the city and go on with Barnabas to Derbe. When they had preached the gospel in that city and had made many disciples, they returned to Lystria, Trichonium, and Antioch.

So if you look at the map of what's happening, they had left Antioch and Syria and they went this way and went to the mainland of Galatia and made this trip and now what this just said is they did that same trip again.

After Paul had just got stung to death, he went back to the exact same cities where the Jews had stirred up this dissension and this division where he was worshiped and then he was stung. Why do we commit to things?

It's so we don't get affected by these titles of change, right? Ephesians 4 tells us the purpose of the church and building up saints is so that you don't get tossed about by every weight of doctrine.

What just happened here in this passage? These people were worshiping Paul, then they stung him. What keeps us from doing something like that, from looking at someone and saying, wow, he's so great, and then in the next instant, picking up a rock off the ground and chucking it at his head?

It's wisdom and understanding and commitment to something. Their motivations were small and selfish and their desires were for immediate gratification. Their goals were nearsighted and ignorant. Have you ever been knocked down into a place where you were just finished, dead?

You were spent and then some precious people came and they picked you up, they gathered you, they encouraged you, they stayed committed to you and carried you along, they revived your spirit. It's what the disciples did with Paul.

They too were committed to the mission. Parents, I encourage you to pray for your kids because kids aren't saved by their parents' faith. And when they enter the world and some other winged doctrine or something exciting or some other idol or fascination comes along and they get awestruck with that and they leave the faith, as is so often said.

Well, they didn't leave the faith because they weren't in the faith. They weren't saved, they were mimicking someone else's salvation and faith. We must teach them and we must train them but we must pray for them because salvation is the work of the Lord.

And we can't do that.

The Great Commission and the Cycle of Missions

Verse 21, here is the, verse 21 and 22, the bulk of the practicality of missions. When they had preached and when they had made many disciples. Isn't this familiar wording? It sounds like Mark chapter 16, go and proclaim to all the creation or Matthew 28, teach the disciples, make disciples, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded.

This is great commission work. This is what Paul was committed to. See what he's walking out. When they had done this work, when it was finished, what did they do? They made this circle and they went back to these same places again because more had to be taught and more roots had to be grown and more knowledge had to be given.

They strengthened the souls of the disciples. Those who were Christians,.

They encouraged them,.

Continue in the faith. And Paul, the greatest example ever, the one with the most authority and credibility to say that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God. Seven times now, it's recorded.

We don't know how many other times, but it's recorded seven times of his persecution up to and maybe including death. But yet he didn't give up. He didn't quit. He didn't take the easier path. And when he was done with evangelizing and discipling, he did the same thing here in chapter 14, verse 23 that was done with him in chapter 13, verses two and three.

Paul appointed elders with prayer and fast and they committed them to the Lord in whom they had believed. This is the cycle. It's the completed cycle of missions. The ministry of the church is proclaiming, raising up, setting elders in a local gathering so that they can proclaim and raise up and set elders in another local congregation.

That's it. That's what Paul's driving at. This is his goal having been completed after all this labor, these years, these difficulties and persecutions, his goal has been met. It's been seen fulfilled by Christ.

He was able to pass on what was given to him to others. They committed them to the Lord in whom they had believed because God is powerful and he will go before and he will end behind. He will be their shield and their strong fortress.

He will protect them from their enemies. He will give them refuge and rest. He will be the light to their feet and the guide to their path. It is God who enables the church to move forward. It is God who protects.

It is God who allows persecution and it is our job to be committed to him as he does the work of building his church. Continuing on to the rest of this passage, we don't need to go through these names and these cities again as long as we understand the difficulty of travel and the general scope of travel was for Paul to go out, to go to these areas and to those who the gospel was given, who had faith and that faith was grown, to those areas the church was grown.

To the others, there's no recognition of churches in those other places. There's no recognition of a church on Cyprus. There's no recognition of a church in Pamphylia at this point. There's only the ones in Galatia.

God determines where the churches will be built and who's in them. It's our job to go and to spread the gospel everywhere and to those who are here to continue speaking to them. So they went, they went home.

They sailed to Antioch in Syria where they had been commended to the grace of God for the work that they had fulfilled. The church that sent them out with a mission, a specified mission was now receiving them back with that work having been completed.

They arrived, they gathered the church together and declared all that God had done with them. Man, can you imagine? This is, as a missionary, this is something I haven't experienced but something I long for.

Maybe in one, two, five, 10, 20 years, we'll get to do the same thing that Paul did. We'll get to come back to a church that sent us out and say, look what God did. Look what he did here. You guys have this church, this local gathering of elders and deacons and congregants and you supply prayer and finances and practical needs for us to go spread the truth.

And we went and did that and here's the persecution and here's the fruit and look what God did. Man, how exciting. We went from the original Christian church to now they are the sending church. They are the multiplying church.

They are fulfilling the great commission by God's power and through his grace. I can't imagine what that excitement was to come back to people that they knew, friends and family who probably anticipated they were never coming back.

Right, in that day and age and the difficulty of the travel and the war that was waged against Christians, people who anticipated, my brother, my cousin, my friend, Paul, he's never coming back. But he did.

What a glorious reunion. That is the God-ordained and described and narrated and recorded means of gospel missions for every age that started after the death of Christ and ends when he returns. In its simplest form and fashion, it is the identifying of, the sending out and then the returning of missionaries for the proclamation of the gospel and the glory of God and the building of disciples into another local church.

It's illustrated over these many chapters. I wanna share with you a couple of definitions that are not necessarily these, but defining these terms. They're not these exact definitions, but these terms, identifying these helps me be specific in understanding and staying committed and focused to what is missions.

I pulled these definitions off a website, missionary .org, I think is, it works with Radius International, grouped with them. I wanted definitions that were repeatable. They say that evangelism is sharing the good news of salvation from sin through the blood of Jesus Christ for those who have not heard it or who have not yet believed it.

We understand that. We understand the four things that are necessary in evangelism, God, man, Christ response. Every time we evangelize, we proclaim Christ and his goodness and his grace, we include those four things because it shows our creator God, his love through Christ, our sinful nature and what our response is to the God that created us.

Discipleship is following Christ and encouraging others to follow in their knowledge of and obedience to God. The next step for the Christian, the new believer, is following Christ. And it is an encourager to help them follow Christ.

This is part of the whole life application of the Christian. It's where we live in our day-to-day life. We evangelize and we disciple and we be discipled. Church planting. Church planting is a process of beginning and organizing a new congregation of Christians who worship Christ, enjoy the common means of grace and observe the sacraments together.

That's what Paul was doing. He gathered those who believed. He taught them the proper order as given by God in the church. What are we to do? What are we to observe the graces of God? We pray, we sing, we sit under the preaching of the word and we enjoy the sacraments.

What a blessing. And the last definition is foreign missions. Churches sending qualified, trained workers to start and strengthen churches across significant geographic, cultural and linguistic and or linguistic barriers.

For what? To build the church. To proclaim Christ. To see him glorified. With these definitions in mind, I wanna go back to where this historical account started.

In Acts 1.

Acts 1 .8 does not specify a priority over local and global missions. It says Jerusalem, Judea and all the earth. It's easier for us to evangelize and disciple in our local context. It's harder across these geographic, cultural and linguistic barriers.

But according to God's word, these things are all on the same plane. So when the local church led by their elders looks at their participation in the global church, what ought they to be looking at? Internal, local and global impact of that church.

How do we, with the same degree of importance and commitment, apply ourselves to all these different areas? Well, of course there's lots to be considered there and it comes restricted according to God's provision and graces.

But it's not restricted in command. So maybe today I can't do that or I can't participate or I can't help, but maybe tomorrow or maybe the next day or the next year. Staying committed to God's commands and God's promises to build his church, to save terrible, unrepentant sinners who ate God and to bring them into the fold of the church.

That's the mission. And it's a mission that takes our whole life to complete. So staying focused on what that mission is, who that mission is about, is important. Being specific is important. The local church is to be a consumer of God's word and a worshiper of God's grace and a sender of God's people to the whole earth for God's glory in this life and the next.