The Providence of God in Planting Churches (Acts & Philippians) | Adult Sunday School

So we're talking about after we finish verse 2 and timing, the timing was different in practice than what we just did.

We can go up. Before we're just chording, the first part of the bridge, we have to plan everything.

Okay. So we just usually. Is it coming together?

It's your part. Is it together? Yeah, we're coming together. I feel like it's funny. All right, good morning, everyone.

If you're out in the foyer or standing up, can you come find your seat here? I'm going to introduce our guest speaker for this morning.

All right, set this out in the weekly updates so everybody would know what is coming. This last March, I was at the

Shepherds Conference and the day before the Shepherds Conference, there was a Master's Academy Symposium. The Master's Academy International trains pastors here in the

United States and then sends them back to their native countries where they open up basically like offshore extensions of the

Master's University and they train pastors in those countries all over the world. So they had a symposium in the

L .A. area and I went to that symposium, it was on missions, and Evan Burns was the speaker there at that symposium, one of the speakers there, and he taught on God's calling to missions,

I think, and the theology of God's calling to missions. And I heard him critiquing the idea that God calls us through still small voices and whispers and impressions and nudgings and promptings and liver shivers and all the other subjective means and that this is a horrible thing that has infected missiology worldwide.

And I thought to myself, this is a guy I have to meet if he takes that position. So we have subsequently met and had lunch and I've had the joy of getting to know him over the last couple of months and he was going to be in the area and so I asked him if he would be willing to stop by and do something here in our church for either

Sunday school or worship service and he is doing both. So Evan Burns is the director of Great Commission Alaska.

He is based out of Big Lake, Alaska, which is between Anchorage and Fairbanks.

And he also is a missionary in Asia, Asian areas. He teaches with a seminary.

He is a professor. He is the author of four books, one of them on Adoniram Judson, and some of those books are on the table out in the foyer.

So if you want to take a look at those, you can at least see that they're not for sale but he did bring one example of each of his books so you could look through those today.

And there's also a sheet out there if you would like to sign up to receive his update that he does.

It's not weekly, monthly, quarterly, something like that. He'll send you an email every once in a while and tell you what he's doing. And it has been great to get to know him because it's always encouraging to find theologically robust, well -equipped, theologically thinking missionaries and know that they are out there training pastors on the mission field and dealing with the issues that come up.

So with that, please welcome E .D. Burns. I'm glad to be here and yeah, if you would like to receive our prayer updates, we send them out about every quarter or so.

There's just a, I'm pretty low -tech so there's a pen and a paper out there. And you know,

I always joke, some people have the gift of writing in tongues and I can't interpret your chicken scratch so if you could write really clearly, that's really helpful because a lot of times other people get our emails that didn't sign up for it because I didn't understand somebody's handwriting.

So I, my family is originally from North Idaho. My dad is from Kellogg and my mom's from Moscow and I'm, I guess, you know, as missionaries, you don't usually, people, you know, missionaries don't say, where are you from?

Usually you just say, where have you lived? That's kind of the mindset of a missionary. So if you ask me where I'm from,

I don't know, kind of from all over. I direct Great Commission, Alaska, but we have work internationally and so my work in Alaska is pretty seasonal because we work with bush natives and we fly out to their villages when the weather is good and the sun is up and we can see where we're going.

But most of the year, I'm teaching in Southeast Asia, working with Hill Tribes people, specifically small language groups that don't have any

Bible translations or very minimal Bible translations. Those non -priority people groups that aren't, you know, usually the priority people groups are about 100 ,000 plus.

I work with groups that are about 10 ,000 to 20 ,000. Languages that don't even have a word for Jesus in their language, so as I was telling

Jim last night, you can't go to their tribe or their village and say, have you ever heard of Jesus Christ? Because it's an impossible question.

There's no word for Jesus in their language. So you have to do what

I call teaching evangelism, you have to teach them categories, you have to create theological language to communicate the

Bible. So that's really the heart and the drive of my family and me.

I'm married to Christy and we have twin boys, Elijah and Isaiah, and they'll be 13 this year, and they all have a great, deep heart for the

Lord and love the ministry. And my boys love Alaska, but they really like Southeast Asia as well. Just as an example of the type of wife

I have, when I proposed to her, she said, I'll only marry you if you take me to a Muslim country.

And I said, amen, and we ended up going to Turkey, we were in the

Middle East in Turkey for a while, and then the Lord moved us to train

Asian missionaries going to the Middle East, and so we ended up doing that for the longest time. And now we're in Southeast Asia where I still train

Asian missionaries and pastors, but based out of a more formal setting in a seminary.

So this morning, what I wanted to do is to give you kind of an example of a type of teaching

I would do with my Hill Tribes pastor students, guys who might have a

Bible in their language, but they're not strong readers, and they end up telling stories a lot, and I only get one week with them.

I don't get to live with them because they live in some really far -flung villages, and I would draw a lot of attention not looking like them, because a lot of their villages, there's lots of heroin and lots of opium and lots of meth, and a lot of the, you know, it's the golden triangle, a lot of that stuff comes from where their villages are.

So I look like CIA, or I look like a businessman, or I look like a drug runner.

And so it's, I mean, you do have to go into the villages with guns, and you can't, it's pretty dangerous, so I have to do it in kind of more of a larger city setting where you can kind of get mixed in with everybody else, and they'll come from their

Hill Tribes to hear my classes. And so, you know, I have to prioritize, what am I going to teach, how am

I going to equip them, and leave an impression on them so that it gives them tools, not just techniques, but doctrinal tools, and like lenses through which to read

Scripture that will help serve them till our next little installment. And so I'm going to give you just a real quick flyby this morning of something

I might do, and I usually will use this lecture as kind of a lead -in, an on -ramp into some other teachings

I do with them. So a couple, I'm just going to model for you what I do, and it's going to be a little sermonic, and it's going to be a little instructional, but what

I try to do is I try to help equip them to interpret Scripture with Scripture. So I often will tell them, you know, the

Bible is its best interpreter. One of the best doctrines that I find in interpreting

Scripture is called the perspicuity of Scripture, which is a big word for meaning the clarity of Scripture. It interprets itself.

It was one of those doctrines that was recovered by the Protestant Reformation. And that if you read the

Bible over and over and over and over and over and over again, you begin to see how it interprets itself.

There's what I call a divine design, or an intelligent design to Scripture, just like when you look at creation, you see intelligent design.

Well, similarly, in the integrity of Scripture from cover to cover, there is a big capital

A author whose fingerprints are all over it. There is intelligent design that has crafted this beautiful book, and it interprets itself.

And so you give them tools and confidence that the Bible is clear. If you just slow down and read it like Paul says to Timothy, think hard over these things, and the

Spirit will give you understanding, or the Lord will give you understanding. Well, similarly, I try to give them those tools. And so what

I know, you have to always know your audience. You have to know kind of like the ditches, those things where they stumble.

And so I go into a lot of these teachings knowing that my audience has been... These are

Hill Tribes pastors, they're vulnerable, they may not even have a full Bible translation, and they certainly don't have good theological resources.

But I also know that the Charismatics and maybe even liberal missionaries and other

Pentecostal groups have probably gotten to them first. Hillsong, New Apostolic Reformation, Bethel, Reading, that whole influence has probably gotten to them first.

And they love the kind of signs and wonders groups. They love kind of the show, the fantastic aspects that mysticism promises.

And I know going into it that they're looking for a special key, like some sort of special secret knowledge, secret

Gnostic tool to interpret Scripture. And so I know that, but I also know that they're really well -meaning people, and they're just vulnerable, and they're just misled, and they really want to know the truth.

And they struggle with a former life of karma where you always have to live in light of this potentiality, where if you're obedient enough, then the blessings will come.

But if you're harboring some sort of struggle or secret sin, well, the flood that decimated your village, it's because the gods, the spirits, the ancestors were upset with you, and you earned bad karma.

Well, they live with this kind of relationship with the Lord, too. So you've got to know your audience. And so what

I try to do is I try to show them how the church grows. And I use a picture from the

Bible from Philippians, the church in Philippi, because I also know that a lot of these villages have already been contacted by these missionaries that teach them how to plant churches in a rapid cycle.

So they promise them if you follow these certain techniques, these spiritual principles, so to speak, you could plant maybe five or ten churches in a month, if you really tap into the power of the

Holy Spirit, and you figure out kind of the right chemistry and the right formula for how it's going to happen.

So I know this because this is very common in Southeast Asia. And so we go through what

I call the providence of God in church planting. And so I open up with Philippians 1, and I just kind of walk through, and I'll just do it with you just briefly.

I'm not going to elaborate as much with you because just for the sake of time. But I just, you know, lead with Philippians 1, 3.

I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you all by making my prayer with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now.

And I pause and I ask some simple interpretive questions. And I said, so what is Paul saying?

And, you know, I've kind of, he's harking back to some sort of good memory, some sort of event.

He's remembering something. There's a special memory that Paul has for the church in Philippi.

What is that? And then we go on and he goes, you know, it is right for me to feel this way about you because I hold you in my heart for you are all partakers with me of grace, both in my imprisonment in the defense and confirmation of the gospel.

And for God is my witness how I yearn for you with all the affection of Jesus Christ. And then I'm going to skip down to verse 12.

I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel so that, purpose statement, it has become known throughout the whole imperial guard and to all the rest that my imprisonment is for Christ.

And most of the brothers, having become confident in the Lord by my imprisonment, are much more bold to speak the word without fear.

And then I just pause there and say, so apparently, Paul, he's not rehearsing certain events.

He knows his hearers in Philippi are very familiar with something that happened. And it has to do with persecution, imprisonment, and the birth of the church.

And then I'll ask, well, you know, what are some principles that you know about church planning? They tell me what some of these missionaries have told them.

And I just kind of listen to them. I hear them out and I say, have you ever seen the

Bible prescribe those principles? Have you ever seen the Bible mandate those principles? And yes, no, and then

I say, well, let's slow down and let's look at an example of how God builds his church.

Because what does Jesus say? Does Jesus say, you shall build my church? No, this is

Christ's church. He says, I will build my church. Whose church is it? It's Jesus's church.

What does that mean? That means you're not in charge. You're not the head. The word is the authority and the power is in the seed, not the seed thrower.

You can get a PhD in seed throwing and it is no more effective because the power is in the seed.

I mean, you can throw the seed as hard on the ground as you want and stomp it in the ground, but the power is in the seed and the soils.

And so you just liberally disseminate the seed and sleep like God is sovereign and know that he will give the growth when he wants to.

And so through this, I try to kind of show them how to put your trust in the written word and to just sow the seed and let

God be God. And then we swing over to Acts 16, to the birth of the church in Philippi.

And so there's a variety of things I'll point out by way of context, historical context.

But one thing I try to do is I try to give them all kind of what I call a telos statement, like a main statement, a summative statement of what is the main point.

And usually I use, if I'm doing it in their language or if it's got to be through interpreter,

I try to use really simple English or simple statement in their language. But here's the telos in English.

God sets free imprisoned sinners through diverse providences. God sets free imprisoned sinners through diverse providences.

And so it's not coincidence. There's no such thing as random fate, random circumstance.

It's all providence. Everything is ordained by God, and it's working out according to his good pleasure, his good will.

And so let's look at the birth of the church in Philippi, starting in Acts 16, verse 16.

This is kind of leading up to it. As we are going to the place of prayer, we are met by a slave girl.

So, of course, Luke is writing, who had a spirit of divination and brought her owners much gain by fortune -telling.

She followed Paul and us, crying out, These men are servants of the Most High God, who proclaim to you the way of salvation.

And this she kept doing for many days. Paul, having become greatly annoyed, turned and said to the spirit,

I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her. And it came out that very hour. And I'll pause there.

I'll ask some simple interpretive questions. So notice Paul, Luke, and Silas, what were they doing?

They were active in prayer, intentionally on their way to meet together in corporate prayer. And oftentimes, in the book of Acts, the

Christians are led by the Holy Spirit to preach the gospel within the setting of constant, persistent prayer.

Often, they're filled with boldness and the boldness of the spirit to preach the gospel as a result of kind of the life cycle of prayer among the people of God.

And then let's look at another observation. The demonized slave girl is following them around for days, crying out,

These men are servants of the Most High God. And Paul, finally, he just can't take it anymore.

He didn't use some sort of magical secret exorcism method. He simply commands it out in the power of Jesus's name.

And, you know, it's a commentary. Even Paul, he's greatly annoyed. It doesn't say, and filled with compassion.

No, it's like filled with annoyance. He commands it out. I mean, only the

Lord knows his heart, but it was probably really impatient. And even still, even still in his annoyance,

God uses it. Whether or not it was sinful annoyance or his righteous anger, we don't know. We just know the fact that he's annoyed.

And we're complex people, and there's probably a mix. I mean, there's probably a mix of sin and righteousness in that reaction.

But the fact is, is that God uses sinful saints, okay? He uses us all.

He's not waiting for you to become perfect to actually get busy for him. He uses us all.

We are, you know, simultaneously justified and we're sinners. And so then we go on.

Verse 19, or excuse me, no, verse 21.

They advocate customs that are not lawful for us as Romans to accept or practice.

So, you know, they seize Paul and Silas. They drag them into the marketplace before the magistrates, and they're accusing them of these things.

They're accusing them of things. Verse 22, the crowd joins in attacking them because of slander being leveled at Paul, Luke, and Silas.

And the magistrates tore the garments off them and gave them orders to be beaten with rods. And when they had inflicted many blows upon them, they threw them in prison, ordering the jailer to keep them safely.

Having received this order, he put them in the inner prison and fastened their feet in stocks. And then we pause there.

God's purposes are fulfilled in the exorcism of the slave girl, which leads to Paul and Silas being beaten and imprisoned.

And it's all part of the mysterious, meticulous providence of God, because this angry response is one of two responses to the proclamation of the gospel in the

Bible. It either brings about, as John MacArthur says, either a revival or a riot. Or, you know, the three, according to 1

Corinthians, the three possible responses to clearly understanding the gospel is it's either offensive, it's foolish, or it's good news.

So if you're sharing the gospel and people walk away thinking, well, that's really interesting. They didn't understand it or you weren't clear because it's not just what you believe.

So it's actually very disingenuous to say, well, you know, that's just what I believe. That's not true, though.

It's not just what you believe. It's the truth. And so you need to assert it as such. You need to say it like it's true.

And it's not just your opinion. That's just what Christians believe. That's not true. It's disingenuous.

It is truth whether or not anybody believes it. It's true. It's not just our opinion. And so you need to say it in a way that drives home the point, because to proclaim, you know, the word for preach or to proclaim in the

Bible means to a declaration or an announcement that lays hold of its hearers.

Just like, you know, David is being confronted by Nathan on his sin, and he goes the story of the man who takes the lamb, and David is angry at this analogy, and, you know, the prophet leans forward and says, thou art the man.

That's preaching, is when you lean forward and you say, you are guilty. You must repent.

You must turn and trust in Jesus. Because it leaves no room for getting around the issue.

It's not just information. It's information applied. It's information pushed.

You know, it's pushing for a decision. And I'm not promoting decisionism, but it has to be spoken in a way that they know this is not just information.

It's news. It's a broadcast. This is a proclamation. And so people are naturally offended by this.

And a lot of times, and you see this again in the Bible in Acts 19 -24 with Demetrius the silversmith, a lot of times persecution comes from not because they don't like your doctrine.

It's because people feel, a culture feels threatened by the

Christian message because it often threatens two things. Either the bottom line, it threatens the monetary system.

It threatens, you know, with the slave girl, it was their hope of gain is lost. She becomes a believer and she's no longer, you know, she's no longer a witch.

She's no longer a shaman. She's no longer a dream teller, an interpreter, a psychic.

She is now a regenerate born -again Christian and they've lost all sorts of monetary gain through her.

So it's usually a culture hates Christians because the Christian ethic typically threatens the bottom line or state stability.

Those are typically the two things. You know, you could say Jesus is Lord as long as you say Caesar is

Lord. But no, if Jesus is exclusively Lord and Caesar is not Lord, it threatens state stability.

They don't care what you think. They don't care what we do in this room. But if what we do goes public and our theology becomes, you know, quote unquote, a political theology in some ways where it actually affects our lives and it's not just freedom of worship, but it's freedom of religion and you're actually living out your religion in the public square and it becomes a threat to the state -sponsored sexual ethic, to the state -sponsored source of social cohesion, that's why they hate

Christians, not because we have a watertight Christology. It's because the ethics of biblical teaching reflect upon their sinful desires.

I mean, John the Baptist lost his head for pointing out the poor relationships

Herod was having. It was for biblical sexual ethics that John the Baptist lost his head.

So it wasn't because he was pointing to Jesus as the Messiah. So you have to remember this. And so when I'm talking to my students, a lot of times, you know, they're suffering persecution, but it's not because they believe in the

Nicene Creed. You know, it's not because they believe in justification by faith. It's because their belief in Christ demands allegiance in a way that shines a spotlight on all their

Buddhist families and their Buddhist relatives and their Buddhist traditions. And we live in a

Buddhist kingdom in Thailand. Our king is, you know, it's the state religion is Buddhism. And you can't criticize

Buddha. You can't criticize the king. You cannot say anything negative. Or you, I mean, you can't even have a tattoo of Buddha on you at the beach or you'll go to prison.

That's how strict it is. And so anything that threatens the bottom line or state stability is grounds for persecution.

And that's why they're being persecuted, is because the bottom line was hurt. And then slander is being spread about them.

And then what's happening while they're in prison? And so, you know, I would go on a sidebar lecture on kind of a theology of persecution from that.

But then I go to this. About midnight, Paul and Silas are praying, singing hymns to God, and the prisoners are listening to them.

So, okay, they've just been beaten with rods and they're praying and singing to God.

So, you know, this just demonstrates that God is at work with his people, even in prison.

But what's interesting is not that they're singing, but that Luke throws in, and there are prisoners listening to them.

Luke puts that in as an intentional evidence of the mysterious providence of God. We don't know what happens to these prisoners, but we do know that one man is listening to them.

And because as they're praying and singing, suddenly there's a great earthquake.

So that the foundations of the prison were shaken, and immediately all the doors are open and everybody's bonds are unfastened.

And then it says in verse 27, the jailer woke and saw that the prison doors were open and he threw, or he drew his sword and was about to kill himself, supposing that the prisoners had escaped.

But Paul cried out with a loud voice, do not harm yourself, for we're all here. And the jailer called for lights and rushed in and trembling with fear, he fell down before Paul and Silas.

Then he brought them out and said, sirs, what must I do to be saved? And they said, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved, you and your household.

And then this is where I pause and I ask my students, what was the miracle? What was the miracle?

And they're, you know, the earthquake. And I say, what brought about the earthquake?

They were praying. And I said, is there, can you look here, in your, if it's in English or in their local language, is there actually a command?

You know, in grammar, is there an actual, what they call imperative? And they look and they look and no.

And he said, it's all, it's describing something, isn't it? And they said, is God telling you that if you just pray hard enough that you can bust out of jail if you're persecuted?

Is that what he's teaching you? And they look and, you know, it's a long look. No, I said, that's not what it's teaching.

It's not teaching you to, it's not giving you techniques for getting out of jail. It's not giving you techniques for bringing about earthquakes.

So there's something else going on here. I said, you see that what's amazing, what the miracle is, is yeah, it was miraculous that an earthquake happened and that jail doors busted open, but the strongest military in the world has the technology to manufacture an earthquake that could bust open jail doors and rock walls.

It's not outside of the realm of human possibility to recreate something like this. What's more amazing is that God has providentially designed the loud prayers and joyful singing of persecuted people, along with causing the ground to shake and prison walls to tremble, to make a fearless Roman soldier's wicked heart tremble for fear of God and call out deliverance, asking prisoners for help.

When the bonds of a dead heart are broken off from its imprisonment to sin and set free to the light of Christ, that's 10 ,000 times more powerful and more miraculous than any earthquake or prison break.

And so then I go into a doctrinal sidebar teaching where I say, here's the problem is, we don't understand the doctrine of the hardness of the human heart or the doctrine of original sin, where you're both condemned and corrupt in Adam.

And I'll give, this is my analogy, is the analogy of, like,

I'll line up people on a wall, like a proverbial analogy.

Okay, on a wall, for your sakes, for here in Sandpoint, you know,

I'll say, okay, so if you have an Orthodox Jew, Southern Baptist little girl, a prostitute and a drug dealer and a

Roman Catholic priest, okay, let's just say, who is most likely to come to Christ?

And, you know, a lot of people would say, well, probably the little girl or maybe even the prostitute, somebody at the end of her rope.

And so humanly speaking, those are very legitimate guesses, right? But the way you answer that is then you say, well, what if there's a shipwreck out in the lake and face down in the water is an

Orthodox Jew, a prostitute, a drug dealer, a Southern Baptist girl and a Roman Catholic priest?

Who's most likely to take on a new nature and start breathing water like a fish?

Or who's most likely to pull themselves up out of the water and swim into a lifeboat?

Well, the answer is they're all dead. You don't take on a new nature when you're dead and you don't choose to get yourself into a lifeboat.

Dead is dead. You're not weak. You're not sick. You're dead. And so it takes a miracle to make dead live.

And that's the thing is we are all dead in sin and trespasses. We're not sick.

We're not weak. We're dead. And we need to be made alive. We need to be born again. And so this is a doctrinal sidebar teaching where so I'm using the text.

I kind of segue into doctrinal teaching and we talk through original sin and how that affects evangelism.

And it's a whole couple hours almost of fleshing this out. And so basically my point to them is whenever you guys are in your villages and you have these missionaries come in and they're promising you results based upon certain methods and techniques of church planning or evangelism, you got to look at those ministry methods and hold them up in light of scripture and what the

Bible teaches, especially about sin. Because a lot of times if you get the doctrine of sin wrong, you get everything else wrong because if the gospel is the solution to the problem, if you got the problem wrong, then you get the solution wrong.

And a lot of times you can tell by their methods what is the solution they're trying to sell you and that tells you what they think the problem is.

And if they don't get the problem right, they get the solution wrong. And so you could sit in your proverbial lifeboats and talk about how much fun the boats are.

You could try pouring warm water on the backs of dead people in the water just to be nice to them, to love on them.

We were talking about funny Christian slogans last night. That's, I mean, just you could use all the slogans in the world to kind of woo people to Jesus, just to be nice to them, help them feel part of community, quote movies, just try new things, hoping dead people will like them and join them.

But when missionaries do that, they're like clouds without water. They speak swollen language. They are like rescuers without life preservers.

But the miracle is in the power of the seed to germinate. And life comes through death as a seed falls to the ground, it dies, it bears life.

And the miracle here is that God sets free in prison centers through the most diverse providences. And then

I'll just kind of wrap it up with this, I could go on. But they spoke the word of the Lord to him and all who were in his house and he took them that same hour of the night and washed their wounds and was baptized at once, he and his family.

Then he brought them into his house and set food before them and he rejoiced along with his entire household that he had believed in God.

And this is the beautiful providence of what's going on here. A Roman killing machine who would have gladly executed

Paul and Silas a day ago has humbled himself, endangered his job and his family by bringing

Jewish prisoners, Jewish Christian prisoners into his home. This tough prison guard who makes a living at killing people, what does he do?

He compassionately washes and nurses their wounds. He doesn't give his wife to do it, he does it.

It's the power of God. It's the power of God to change a heart. It's not mainly in earthquakes and prison breaks.

The power of God is in setting free bound hearts from imprisonment to sin and adopting them into a new covenant family.

A Roman soldier and his family are repenting, trusting in Jesus, getting baptized, and rejoicing with profound joy that God set free the real captives that night.

They're the first members of the church in Philippi along with the slave girl and Lydia. This is the birth of the church in Philippi.

And is there any imperative for how you're supposed to do this in the text? No, it's all

God. And here's the other cool thing, is God mentioned even once in any of this narrative?

And they look through, no. This is like the book of Esther. It's called a divine passive, as theologians might call it, where that God is so meticulously involved, it would be redundant to even point out that this is

God doing it. That's the point, is the fingerprints of providence are all over the pages of this narrative that it can only be possible because God is building his church.

It would be silly and redundant to even point out that God is the one doing this. That's the point, is

God is planting his church. And they're just getting busy casting seed, and they're just watching God give the growth.

So that's kind of my teaching. I did it in 20 minutes. I usually do it in a couple hours, along with my doctrinal sidebar lectures.

So use the text, let the text interpret itself. So I led with Philippians, led into the historical context, kind of showed how it happened, asked them simple interpretive questions along the way.

And I really try to teach doctrinally, so I want them to walk away understanding the doctrine of sin, maybe the doctrine of regeneration, doctrine of maybe revelation, doctrine of the spirit, whatever, it just depends.

And so use the text to interpret the text and use it doctrinally. So that's kind of my approach. And then

I push back against a lot of false teaching along the way as stuff comes up. So I'll just make a kind of hard stop there.

Does anybody have any questions? It can be about this, can be about other things we do, could be about anything you feel like this has brought up some questions or thoughts.

Yeah. Well, fame and gain, right?

So I mean, gold, glory, and girls are the three big ditches for everybody.

Well, they get all of those things because they can easily manipulate people.

And so they're just kind of like the imams or the Buddhist monks tend to manipulate people with religiosity.

Well, they kind of do a similar thing, but they'll use signs and wonders types ministries because a lot of those people, they appreciate the fantastic, the miraculous, the mystical, because every major religion has its mystical strains.

So like in Islam, it's Sufism. In Buddhism, it's all over the place. So they have lots to gain.

And so if you're a monk at a

Buddhist monastery, for instance, you don't necessarily get a lot of money if you're just a monk.

But if you're a pastor and people are giving you money and you're the secretary, you're the pastor, you're the treasurer,

I mean, you get to finish off the communion line at the end of the day too. It's all you, it all revolves around you.

For the narcissist, it's a perfect position because you get to build your team around you of people who are just psychophants, who just live off of you and that you are the

Pope in your little village that you speak ex cathedra. They have everything to gain. It's massive social stability, but they got to build it because if they don't have that, they could be persecuted by their

Buddhist neighbors for being an aberrant cult or something. So they have to go out of their way to create kind of financial infrastructure and there's lots of money to be gained from that.

So yeah, and yeah, I guarantee you they hear about false teaching sometimes quicker than we do over there.

Missionaries are some of the most activistic people in the world and they're bringing, before you guys hear about it on the front page, the proverbial front page of evangelicalism, a lot of stuff has already been on the mission field for sometimes decades.

Like, I mean, you guys have probably all by this time, all probably heard of like critical race theory and all the, that's been around for decades.

I mean, I've been dealing with a lot of that stuff in the missions world for a long time because the seeds of those ideas have been worked out in missiology for a very long time and I was chafing at that for 20 years ago.

And so it was just a matter of time that that would come back over the ocean and affect the

American church. But that came out of, that was popularized in some seminaries who exported it into their missions methods.

So it's, I definitely was not surprised by it when

I saw it come back to the States. So yeah, yes. Yes and no.

I mean, they have really arbitrary laws and so they have like kingdom laws that you can't say anything bad about the king or Buddha or Buddhism and you can't proselytize so you can't be handing out tracts.

You can do stuff in your home but you can't do like street preaching. So there's stuff like that. But usually the laws you're talking about are more locale based because every little neighborhood is built up around a temple.

A Buddha would call it Wat. That's how you say it in Thai, like a Buddhist temple. And it's kind of like here back generations ago where they would build little towns around the church.

The church was the education center, it was the community center, it was the religious center. Well, similarly, like our neighborhood, you know, all the streets in the neighborhood feed into a temple in the center and the monk is kind of like the mayor of the neighborhood.

And so he tells all the neighbors, you know, there's just certain types of Christian activity you can't do or they disassociate with you or you lose your lease, something happens and you can't pay your water bill or something, you know.

So there's stuff, little petty stupid things like that that they do. But not as many restrictive laws as probably

India right now. China's really pushing hard on Thailand to lock down on Christians and get

Christians out of there. So that's happening. A lot of Christians are leaving Thailand because the religious freedom's dwindling.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I like, kind of my roundabout way of answering it is, you know, if you look at the book of 1

Corinthians, they kind of put the fun and dysfunctional in Corinth. Like, I mean, the sins that they were entertaining and the false teachers, the super apostles of 2

Corinthians, but you have to understand that they were all persecuted too. So, you know, persecution in the early church didn't fix problems like we think it does today.

I think persecution actually complicates things more than that. And some of the worst sermons

I've ever heard are by persecuted pastors who don't know otherwise. Like in China, the most influential pastor in China is

Benny Hinn. And when I have worked with pastors from that country, they would often, you know, back before YouTube and stuff, you know, they'd pass around VHSs and DVDs of Benny Hinn.

That was in the underground church. And, you know, I'd have people say, well, I go to this guy's church, his underground church, because he drives a

Beamer and God's really blessing him. And it's like, you know, I mean, there is, I mean, even in a very persecuted context, there is money to be made even in an underground church.

And, you know, just working with Asian pastors, a lot of them have mistresses and they beat their children.

And there's lots of spousal and child abuse and things that would disqualify pastors here in the

States are highly tolerated over there. And, you know, you ask, well, so -and -so has family problems.

He really shouldn't be a pastor. And they're like, well, there's no other church for like 100 miles from here. I mean, what are you going to do?

You can't just get rid of your pastor because you have nobody else to pastor. And it's very complicated.

And I would just say persecution makes it very difficult because in some ways it stunts growth because they don't have access to good teaching.

They don't have access to good resources or to the freedom of assembly. So that really hinders the ability to gather and learn.

So it really, it's all legend in a lot of ways. It sells magazines. Organizations in the

States can build revenue based off of very fantastic, elaborate, legendary stories that are sometimes just hoaxes, frankly.

So I would be, anytime you hear a fantastic story of what God is doing in Iran with the women planting churches and seeing visions of Jesus and stuff like that, you know, just kind of roll your eyes and just pray that the

Lord is working in spite of his, you know, missionaries who want to believe everything.

And I think sometimes they mean well and they're just not discerning. And then there are truly some who are just straight up liars.

And I think they're so self -deceived that they don't know the difference anymore between truth and lie. They believe their own imaginations, frankly.

So it's very complex. And I would just say persecution does not purify a church. It reveals what's on the church's heart, but it doesn't purify the church per se.

Yes. Yeah, so I'll answer it by answering it the way

I just recently heard somebody ask Sinclair Ferguson, if you could instruct your 20 -something -year -old self when you're at the front end of your ministry, what would you do differently?

He said, I would spend more time with old people. I would spend more time teaching children and I'd read my

Bible more. And I thought, when I heard him say that, I thought, you know, that's actually what

I have always thought in some way, shape, or form. I've always thought, when I first started out in ministry, I was in a very elderly church and I worked in a nursing home.

And I worked, it was just, there's a different style of teaching people who are either at the end of their life or who have health problems or just are tired or they just have lots of life wisdom and you need to do more listening than talking.

And then when you teach with children, you've got to be able to take very complex, highfalutin ideas and bring them down here and teach them in a way that sticks, not in a silly, ridiculous, childish way.

I mean, kids can take big theology and they can digest it, but it has to be given to them in very clear, little packaged chunks.

And they're very smart. Kids are very, very intelligent. And you just, you got to speak to them at a level they get.

And I'm also a TESOL teacher. I'm trained in TESOL. And so I speak in very, you know, certain levels of clear

English. And so by training, I've been teaching English as a second language for 20 years. I try to think in terms of what

I call sticky concepts. And that's basically just a fancy way of saying metaphors or analogies.

Like the book of Proverbs is one big book of sticky concepts where you take life metaphors and you stick truth to certain observations you see.

Like, you know, there's no analogies in Proverbs about, you know, the Packers and the

Bears game or something that's culturally loaded, but it uses normal life experiences that everybody has.

Like consider the ant that was sluggered, how it builds up for the winter. Normal things that you see out in creation and you just look.

You just look through the windows of creation and look for, you know, metaphors or analogies for how doctrinal truth can stick to those things.

And I find by, especially in certain languages, like Mandarin or like Thai, they use a lot of metaphorical language.

A lot of, not stories, but metaphors. Just turns of a phrase and you listen for how they speak and you speak in metaphors and it really sticks.

And so between trying to teach, thinking of my audience, like in Alaska with the natives, the average education level for natives is fourth grade.

So I'm a PhD up here and I teach in a doctoral program, but then

I have to bring it down here and you gotta just think, how would I do this for my children and homeschooling them?

And then I use sticky concepts a lot. And it just takes a lot of practice and a lot of just laughing at yourself and just, you know, listening for feedback and ask what helped?

How did it connect? And so I do that a lot. And part of learning other languages is you learn to think in other categories that you otherwise don't have.

So that's helpful, but I wouldn't suggest everybody go learn another language here, but, you know, think of it in terms of, you know, using the analogy metaphor, simple sentences in teaching so that a child could get it.

Well, I mean, you get to a point where you have to ask the hard question like, okay, so there's this language group up in the hills in remote area of Burma that they've never had a missionary.

Somebody back in like 1938 finished part of the Gospel of Matthew, but nobody knows where that is. Nobody's trying to reach them.

So God has elect from every tribe, tongue and nation. So it's like, kind of like, why not?

Somebody's got to do it. And if you're okay with not being on the front end of some big massive language group and you're okay with just being obscure out in the middle of nowhere and having, it's, you don't have a really fascinating story.

Just like, well, somebody's got to do it. So just do it. And so, you know, like somebody needs to stack chairs or unstack chairs, just got to do it, right?

So I don't know. my dad was, he was always, he kind of raised me up to always consider kind of the underdog or the person that's overlooked.

And I think in missions, I try to look to the people in the uttermost, the people that just are not priority.

And so the Lord gives us opportunities to reach those people. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we have a house in Thailand and we would say that our home's in Thailand and we work in Alaska in the summers because we're really seasonally bound to the summer season in Alaska because most of the stuff we have to do is out in the bush.

But we really, it's inaccessible most of the year. And so that was, that was the agreement when

I took over that organization was I said I could do it in the summer months at least because at least in Thailand and Southeast Asia, it's dengue fever season, it's monsoon season in the summer and most people are really hard to get to anyways and you end up kind of just hunkering down through the summer and just sweating it out.

And then when the school year starts, people get busy again. So it's, it works out well and it actually works out okay because then we're back every summer, can raise support, you know, see churches, see family and like at least for my boys, they can feel,

I think they still probably feel more at home in Thailand but they don't feel too much like a foreigner when they come back to their passport country.

They can, you know, diversify pretty naturally and there's that barrier that some

MKs are kind of stigmatized for isn't there as much for them. So that's helpful.

No, they were, they're actually born in Spokane. Yeah, they're, the

NICU, we couldn't afford the NICU and we weren't living in Thailand. We were in another country at the time.

So, but we had insurance that would work in the States so we just came back and had it at Sacred Heart. Yeah, but we went back right away afterwards.

Yeah, I don't have any information out there.

You know, everywhere I speak is different so I don't typically publicize that but I can, if you just want to write down our web, our church, or excuse me, our ministry's website, you can just easily find it on there.

It's like AK is in Alaska, akmission .org is the, that's that website, akmission .org

and then the international arm of Great Commission Alaska is called Last Frontier Global, Last Frontier Global and that's what we, if you want to support our international work, that's kind of the, the sister 501c3 to our

Alaska work. So we receive support in both places. Some people want to help us with our Alaska work, some people want to help us with our international work.

akmission .org or lastfrontierglobal .org, both places you can donate to.

How about, I should probably close this in prayer. It's kind of that time but if you have any questions afterwards,

I'll be in the back and I do, just before I forget, I do have some copies of, of one of my books.

They reprinted the cover and I didn't particularly prefer the cover art on the first printing and neither did they and so, but they had already reprinted a bunch so I have a bunch to give away.

So if you want, if you want the first printing of one of my latest books, I think

I have probably 10 out there or something, you can come grab one but I'll be in the back afterwards and I'd love to meet with you afterwards.

So thank you for your time. Lord, thank you for these brothers and sisters. I pray that they would be encouraged by the word this morning, that they would have their eyes open to see

Jesus in a way that is refreshing, encouraging and life -giving and that they would know that they are secured and sustained for a great salvation.