Sunday, May 14, 2023 AM

Sunnyside Baptist Church

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May 15, 2023

Sunnyside Baptist Church Jonathan Willcock

00:20: Father, rydyn ni 'n ddiolch i chi. Rydyn ni 'n ddiolch i chi am yr hyn rydyn ni 'n clywed yma 'r bryd, o 'r canfodion, o 'r canfodion sydd wedi 'u canfod, y byddwch chi 'n rhannu.
00:35: Rydyn ni 'n rhannu yng nghanol yr ardd. Weithiau, mae 'n anodd i ni ei weld.
00:42: Weithiau, mae 'n anodd i ni 'n credu y byddwch chi 'n cyflawni pan edrychwn ni ar yr hyn sy 'n digwydd o 'n ymwneud â ni.
00:50: Fodd bynnag, rydyn ni 'n ddiolch i chi fod yn gyflawni. Rydyn ni 'n ddiolch i chi fod yn rhannu.
00:57: Ac, fyddwn ni 'n ddiolch i chi, rydyn ni 'n ddiolch i chi 'r pethau rydych chi wedi 'u ddweud i ni 'n ymlaen.
01:07: Rydyn ni 'n gofyn i chi siarad gyda 'r unrhyw un o ni. Rydyn ni 'n gofyn eich bod chi 'n helpu ni i ddeall beth yw gweithio gyda chi, beth yw rhannu eich swydd.
01:22: Ac rwy 'n gobeithio, Father, er byddwn ni 'n mynd allan o 'r lle hwn yn ymlaen, byddwn ni 'n mynd allan wedi 'i gysylltu, dim ond ychydig mwy o hynny, i rannu eich swydd, i ddangos eich ysgolion, mewn llawer o ffyrdd, i 'r byd, i ddangos eich gwaith yn cael ei wneud ar ein bywydau mewn ysgolion.
01:47: Felly rydyn ni 'n gobeithio 'r pethau hyn nawr, Father, rydyn ni hefyd, rydw i eisiau cynyddu i ddiolch i chi, fel sydd wedi 'i gysylltu o 'r blaen.
01:55: Rydyn ni 'n ddiolch i chi i 'n mamau, i 'n ffyrdd, sydd, mewn llawer o ffyrdd, sydd wedi 'i ddangos i ni, i 'r lle rydyn ni nawr.
02:08: Ac, Father, rydyn ni hefyd yn ddiolch i 'r rhai sy 'n anodd heddiw, oherwydd ffyrdd, oherwydd y pên o 'r ffyrdd hynny.
02:24: Ac, Father, rydyn ni 'n ddiolch iddyn nhw, y byddwch chi 'n ymdrechu iddyn nhw, y byddwch chi 'n ymdrechu iddyn nhw heddiw.
02:33: Felly, Father, rydyn ni 'n ddiolch i ti ym mhob amser rydyn ni 'n ei chael nawr, ac rydyn ni 'n ymdrechu i fod ymdrechu iddyn nhw todi i 'r un ohono.
02:45: Ac rydw i 'n gofeio 'r pên hwn i Jesus. Amen. Oh, iawn.
02:56: Mae 'n dda i gael ati. Mae 'n dda i fod yma eto. A ydych chi 'n gwybod pa mae 'n dda iawn
03:05: Mae yna llawer o feysydd rydw i ddim yn gwybod. Mae 'r ysgol yn mynd i ffwrdd, ac mae hynny 'n dda.
03:12: Mae hynny 'n anhygoel i 'w gweld. I 'r rhai ohonoch a ddim yn gwybod
03:21: Rachel a fi, siaradwch â ni. Dydyn ni ddim yn gweithio, nid yn anodd.
03:30: Yn exception barbecues. Rydw i 'n gobeithio barbecues, ond mae hynny 'n wahanol.
03:37: Mae Rachel a fi yn teimlo 'n ymdrech i fod yn aelodau 'r ysgol hon.
03:45: Fe wnaeth Brian ysgrifennu hyn, rydyn ni 'n ymwneud â 'r aelodau gyda 'r record ychwanegol.
03:52: Dydyn ni ddim yn dod yma 'n aml, ond rydyn ni 'n ymwneud â 'r aelodau. Rydyn ni 'n ddiolch i chi am eich cefnogaeth.
04:00: Nid dim ond cefnogaeth ariannol. Mae hynny 'n helpu, ond mae cefnogaeth gyda 'r aelodau 'n cael ymddangos.
04:06: Mae Facebook yn dda iawn i hynny. Mae Rachel yn cymryd pethau 'n well na fi ar
04:12: Facebook. Ond rydyn ni 'n gobeithio 'r holl beth rydych chi 'n ei wneud i ni.
04:20: Felly, rydyn ni 'n mynd i feddwl drwy 'r cwestiynau hon y diwrnod hon.
04:26: Beth sy 'n ei wneud i ni ddiogelu 'r Comisiwn Gwych? Fel y gwelwch chi 'r gwasanaeth yno, mewn 16 .15,
04:35: roedd Jesus yn dweud i 'r aelodau ei hun i fynd i 'r holl byd ac i ddweud y gwybodaeth da i bawb.
04:43: Mae 'r cyfeiriadau rydw i 'n cael yma o 'r trafodaeth newydd. Dw i 'n gwybod nad yw 'r fersiwn rydych chi 'n teimlo ei ddefnyddio yma.
04:50: Mewn gwirionedd, rwy 'n credu bod hynny 'n beth da. Mae 'n mynd i 'r holl byd.
04:56: Nid yw hynny 'n ei ddweud. Mewn gwirionedd, mae hynny 'n beth da i 'w helpu i 'n gweld unrhyw aspect gwahanol nad ydyn ni 'n teimlo ei wneud.
05:08: Un o 'r pethau rydw i wedi 'u gwneud dros y blynyddoedd yw gwneud...
05:14: Rwyf nawr yn mynd i 'r gwasanaeth. Rwyf a Rachel yn mynd i 'r gwasanaeth. Rydyn ni 'n gwneud gymhariaeth at y Bible bob dydd. Rydyn ni 'n defnyddio rhwng y rhaglenau gwahanol i grwpio ar y
05:23: Bible yn ystod
05:48: So, anyway, that's for free, that has nothing to do with the sermon. That's just so you know, just in case you're looking at the references and thinking, that's not how it says it in my
06:00: Bible. So, yeah, Mark 16, 15 says that, and then
06:05: Acts 1, verse 8, he says, You will receive power. This is just before Jesus went up to heaven.
06:12: He says, You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses, telling people about me everywhere, in Jerusalem, throughout
06:21: Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. Remember that reference, because we'll come back to that one in a little bit.
06:30: So the responsibility of the church is to take the gospel to the ends of the earth so that everyone will hear.
06:40: Everyone can hear the gospel and to respond. So how are we doing?
06:46: The Joshua Project tells us this. These statistics are from just this week.
06:55: The global summary of the people groups and the unreached groups in the world, and then the population of the world, which is now, what is it, 7 .93?
07:08: Yeah, still the same there. 7 .93 billion. And so around 42 % of the world's population is unreached.
07:23: So if we think about it, right now, the church is divided roughly in half.
07:33: Half in each side of the church. So if we take from the smooths forward, okay, and all of this side, you're good.
07:46: Okay? The rest of you, sorry, yeah, you're unreached.
07:53: That's what we're looking at. Okay, why is that?
08:02: Why is it taking us so long? Just to show my age, when
08:09: I was young, there were only, what, around 3 billion people on the earth?
08:21: Okay. Yeah. Roughly, yeah. How many unreached people are there now?
08:30: Okay. It's getting away from us. Okay, so there's something wrong that it shouldn't be that way.
08:40: Okay, so we're going to look at four reasons why the church has not yet completed the task that Jesus left us to do.
08:50: I'm not even going to argue the point that it is our job. Yeah, I'm taking that as obvious.
09:00: Hopefully, if you're not sure about that, then we can talk about that afterwards. But, you know, it is the job of the church to reach the world, to take the gospel to the ends of the earth.
09:16: So, four reasons, and it's these four reasons. Ignorance, comfort, sin, and distraction.
09:25: And what we're going to do is we're going to go through each one of these. We're going to look at a biblical example related to that particular reason.
09:36: And then after that, we're going to go back through and we're going to make more of a personal application. Just so you know, that's where we're going.
09:43: So if you fall asleep and wake up, you know roughly where I'm at. Okay, so let's talk about ignorance.
09:53: Ignorance first. Can you read that?
10:01: Good. In Acts 10, we read this.
10:10: This is when Peter was about to go to talk to Cornelius. In Acts 10, the next day as Cornelius' messengers were nearing the town,
10:19: Peter went up on the flat roof to pray. It was about noon and he was hungry. But while a meal was being prepared, he fell into a trance.
10:28: He saw the sky open and something like a large sheet was let down by its four corners. In the sheet were all sorts of animals, reptiles, and birds.
10:38: Then a voice said to him, get up, Peter, kill, and eat them. No, Lord, Peter declared.
10:45: I've never eaten anything that our Jewish laws have declared impure and unclean. But the voice spoke again.
10:52: Do not call something unclean if God has made it clean. So if you're not super familiar with the story,
11:02: Peter was a Jew. And he had grown up eating
11:09: Jewish food. Everything was kosher. And so if it was meat, it had to be killed a certain way.
11:15: There were certain food types that couldn't be mixed and so on. And there was a whole host of animals from the
11:24: Levitical laws that he wasn't allowed to eat. He had also grown up his whole life believing that the
11:36: Jews were God's chosen people, chosen for salvation.
11:45: Sorry, what am I doing wrong? I'm fine. So he felt like anybody outside of the
11:56: Jewish nation was condemned, was under God's judgment. But if they were inside the
12:03: Jewish nation, then they were fine. They were good. And Peter knew that he should have nothing to do with non -Jewish people, with Gentiles.
12:20: A bit later in the chapter, Peter recognized, after he was already with Cornelius, he recognized his mistake.
12:30: And he says this in verse 28 of Acts 10. Peter told them, you know, it is against our laws for a
12:37: Jewish man to enter a Gentile home like this, or to associate with you. But God has shown me that I should no longer think of anyone as impure or unclean.
12:51: So from the very beginning, it was God's purpose for everybody to hear the message, for everybody to hear the gospel, and for everybody to have the opportunity to know him.
13:07: The Jews were not chosen for salvation. They were chosen to declare his glory.
13:15: They were chosen to serve him and to make him known throughout the whole earth.
13:23: A very important distinction. So Peter thought that the gospel was just for the
13:29: Jews. And then God had to show him, no, it isn't just for the
13:36: Jews. It's for everybody. Okay, moving on to comfort.
13:46: The comfort, now, remember Acts 1 .8, you remember that verse I read, yeah?
13:54: And I'm sure a lot of you can quote that verse, yeah? That Jesus said, you know, the
14:00: Holy Spirit will come on you, and you'll be my witnesses. Witnesses, where? Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth.
14:11: So Acts 8 .1 says this. Saul, this is just after Stephen had been killed. Saul was one of the witnesses, and he agreed completely with the killing of Stephen.
14:22: A great wave of persecution began that day, sweeping over the church in Jerusalem. And all the believers, except the apostles, were scattered through the regions of Judea and Samaria.
14:40: What did it say in Acts 1 .8? Who was Jesus speaking to in Acts 1 .8?
14:47: Who was there, not in the room, but on the mountaintop when that happened? Wasn't it the apostles?
14:56: And in Acts 8 .1, who didn't go anywhere? Is there a problem here?
15:02: Do you see a problem here? Yeah? The apostles stayed in Jerusalem.
15:11: But Jesus said, you need to get moving. You need to go and be my witnesses in Jerusalem, yes, and then
15:21: Judea and Samaria and the ends of the earth. Now eventually, some of them did. But at this point, they didn't.
15:28: And, I mean, it's reasonable to recognize that Jerusalem wasn't the safest place in the world.
15:41: Stephen had literally just been killed. He'd been stoned. So it wasn't like it was the safest place.
15:49: But for some reason, the apostles didn't move from home.
15:56: They stayed where they were comfortable. They stayed where they knew what the rules were and so on.
16:05: We see, this is actually a pattern which we see throughout scripture. In Genesis 11, we read the people of that time said this.
16:18: They began saying to each other, let's make bricks and harden them with fire. In this region, bricks were used instead of stone and tar was used for mortar.
16:28: Then they said, come, let's build a great city for ourselves with a tower that reaches into the sky.
16:35: This will make us famous and keep us from being scattered all over the world.
16:42: Does that sound familiar? Yeah? The Tower of Babel or Babel, depending on which language you're speaking.
16:49: Thank you, James, for that. They said, let's build a tower so that we don't have to get split up.
16:59: We just stay together. And then the disciples did the same thing.
17:04: They stayed in Jerusalem. Now, I don't know how comfortable they were, but there's something about being comfortable that just helps us stay exactly where we are.
17:18: Yeah? I don't know if you got the rain before we did this morning, but how many of you were still in bed when the rain hit and you thought, you know what?
17:26: I'm comfortable. I don't need to get up yet. Yeah? And maybe you feel that at other times too.
17:38: So being comfortable, just why move?
17:45: Why make the effort? Let's just stay where I'm at.
17:53: Okay, let's move on before we get too comfortable. Okay, so in Joshua chapter 7, we read this.
18:04: The Lord said to Joshua in verse 12, Joshua 7 verse 10, sorry. The Lord said to Joshua, get up.
18:12: Why are you lying on your face like this? Israel has sinned and broken my covenant. They have stolen some of the things that I commanded must be set apart for me.
18:22: And they have not only stolen them but have lied about it and hidden the things among their own belongings. That's why the
18:28: Israelites are running from their enemies in defeat. For now, Israel itself has been set apart for destruction.
18:36: I will not remain with you any longer unless you destroy the things among you that were set apart for destruction.
18:47: We can't overestimate the damage that sin does in the life of the believer and in the life of the church.
19:01: But there's more than just the damage that it does to us. God doesn't bless what doesn't bring him glory.
19:11: And whenever we sin, we don't bring him glory. What's the classic verse on sin?
19:20: We've all sinned and fallen short of what? God's glory.
19:29: But God blesses when he's going to be glorified. So we see here in Joshua 7 that there's one man, only one man that sinned, and God abandoned him.
19:52: He left them to their own devices. He left them to do whatever they could do. And as a result of that one man's sin, 36 men died.
20:06: Okay. In Hebrews 6, verses 4 to 6, it says,
20:19: For it's impossible to bring back to repentance those who are once enlightened, those who have experienced the good things of heaven and shared in the
20:28: Holy Spirit, who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the power of the age to come, and who then turn away from God.
20:37: It's impossible to bring such people back to repentance by rejecting the Son of God.
20:43: They themselves are nailing him to the cross once again and holding him up to public shame.
20:52: In Psalm 66, verse 18, a very well -known verse,
21:00: If I had not confessed the sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened.
21:08: So if I don't give up my right to sin, we'll talk about that a little bit more.
21:13: If I don't accept that sin offends God and that he won't listen to me, as long as I hold on to that sin, my prayers are wasted and everything
21:26: I do is in vain. Okay.
21:35: Last one. Distraction. Distraction. We get distracted. In the book of Nehemiah, we see an important principle here.
21:45: So Nehemiah had returned to Jerusalem and he saw that the walls of the city needed to be rebuilt, and so he starts to rebuild the walls and so on, but there are enemies, and those enemies are trying to get
22:03: Nehemiah to stop the building, and so they're threatening him and so on.
22:13: So while Nehemiah was working at one point, those enemies, they wrote to Nehemiah and they invited
22:24: Nehemiah to go and talk with them. And so in Nehemiah chapter 6,
22:30: Nehemiah says this. He says, So Sambalat and Geshem sent a message asking me to meet them at one of the villages in the plain of Ono, but I realized that they were plotting to harm me, so I replied by sending this message to them.
22:49: I'm engaged in a great work, so I can't come. Why should I stop working to come and meet with you?
22:59: So what we see is Nehemiah knew that what he was doing was so important that he shouldn't go and meet with these enemies.
23:09: It was much more important than just having a chat, having a conference with these enemies.
23:16: He kept focused on what God had given him to do, and he finished the wars around Jerusalem.
23:25: It's very easy for us to get distracted by lots of different things. The apostle
23:30: Paul knew this, and he wrote to the Galatians in Galatians 3 verse 1. He says,
23:36: O foolish Galatians, who has cast an evil spell on you, for the meaning of Jesus Christ's death was made as clear to you as if you had seen a picture of his death on the cross.
23:48: He was reminding them, look, this is what God has done. This is what Christ has done.
23:54: Why are you getting distracted? Why are you getting moved away from the things that you first heard?
24:04: They'd begun to think, the Galatians had begun to think that they could please God themselves by what they do and not through faith in Jesus.
24:16: And Paul wanted them to remember, no, no, that's not what we taught you. What we taught you was that through faith in Jesus alone, that's how you live, that's how you please
24:29: God. Okay, so we've seen four different areas.
24:39: Can you remember what they are before we put them up again? What was the first one? Ignorance.
24:45: And then we talked about comfort, and then sin, and lastly we've got distraction.
24:54: So let's go back and think about how do we apply this to our own lives, to our own situations.
25:02: Firstly, ignorance. Maybe we're thinking,
25:08: I don't know about you, and it was interesting in the Sunday school this morning, we kind of touched on this a little bit, which makes me wonder if somebody isn't wrestling with this very thing.
25:26: Very often we say, oh, I couldn't share my faith.
25:33: I couldn't witness. I don't know enough. I'm not going to ask for a show of hands if anybody's actually thought that.
25:41: But I think it's a very common thing that people think that somehow they need to know a lot in order to witness to other people.
25:53: So let me ask you this. How do you know you're saved? Because if you know that you're saved, you know enough for somebody else to be saved.
26:11: You don't need to be a deep theologian or a great biblical scholar to witness.
26:19: You just need to be saved. And with that you can actually reach out to other people, and you can give your own testimony, what you do understand.
26:30: Don't worry about what you don't understand. Don't be concerned with what you do understand.
26:38: Because you can't save anybody. Only God saves them.
26:44: In the same way, with the same information that he saved you, he can save somebody else.
26:52: So ignorance is no excuse for not witnessing.
27:01: And today, there really are no excuses to be ignorant.
27:10: Not here, not in the United States, not in most of the world, you know, vast areas of the world, we have internet access.
27:22: There's sermons, there's books, there's, you know, good, solid teaching that we all have access to.
27:32: So, you know, hey, we can come to church and hear sermons here, hear teaching here.
27:43: So there's all of those opportunities for us to learn. It's a matter of priorities.
27:53: Yeah, for some of us, we prefer not to read.
27:58: Okay, don't read. Get audio books. Listen to sermons on YouTube.
28:06: Yeah, there really is no excuse for staying ignorant.
28:14: And it's not just so that we can know more, it's so that we can serve more, it's so that we can give out more.
28:24: We were hearing in Sunday school today, you know, one of the marks, if you like, of immaturity, in Hebrews 5, is that there are people that need to be fed, and they're not giving out.
28:40: Yeah, so if you're not, if you find yourself in that situation where you're really not giving out much, ask yourself, why is that?
28:58: Now, it's worth mentioning that in terms of taking the
29:05: Gospel to the ends of the earth, sharing the Gospel in a cross -cultural context is way more difficult than doing it in your own context, in your own culture.
29:22: And I think, obviously I'm biased, maybe, but I think that does require special training.
29:33: We should support those people, and you guys do. You support people who make the effort to prepare themselves for that type of a ministry.
29:46: And it can be financial support, but also, as I mentioned already, what you do for us with encouragement, with letters and prayer support particularly.
30:00: Something else to mention when we talk about ignorance is in today's society, it's very easy for us to become blinkered.
30:15: Social media and all the algorithms and all that stuff that they use allows us to, or leads us, to create our own little echo chambers.
30:29: So the only thing that we hear is what we want to hear. We see that more and more in the
30:40: United States. The political parties used to be, you know, there would be some dialogue and there were people in the middle.
30:48: But now they're polarized. They're very separate, and they're angry.
30:55: As believers, we shouldn't have anything to do with that. I'm not saying we shouldn't be interested in politics, but we shouldn't be getting angry.
31:07: We should be looking for reconciliation, for bringing people together. So one of my areas of responsibility in security for the mission is that I need to keep current on what's happening all over Latin America, which means
31:34: I spend a certain amount of time most days looking at articles and things.
31:40: But I don't just go to sites that I agree with. I have to go to other sites, which sometimes is really annoying.
31:50: But you find that by doing that, you have a much better picture of what's going on around you.
31:58: And I would just challenge all of us, if we find ourselves looking only at things that tell us what we want to hear, that we're actually creating a level of ignorance of what is actually happening around us.
32:17: Not just in spiritual terms, but obviously in what's going on in the world.
32:29: OK. Comfort. Something interesting that I've seen, and it's not true here,
32:42: I'm pretty sure it's not true here now, which you'll be glad to hear, but I've seen in a lot of churches around the world is that a church is made up of two or maybe three families.
32:56: And everybody's related to everybody else in the church somehow. And that's not a problem in one sense.
33:09: We should be concerned about our relatives. We should be concerned about our family and seeing them saved.
33:19: But what about the people that we're not related to?
33:25: Are we concerned for them too? We should make the effort to go outside of our comfort zone.
33:42: The goal of the Great Commission is that everyone hears of Christ, not just our family members.
33:56: Again, as we think of this, as we think of that comfort zone, missionaries or anybody who's involved in cross -cultural work, and I hesitate to use the term missionary because now there's lots of different types of missionary.
34:15: Some never leave their passport country. Some never leave the city they were born in.
34:21: But they're still doing cross -cultural work. Around the world there are so many people now that you have huge refugee migrations.
34:35: And so instead of going to the ends of the earth, the ends of the earth are coming to you.
34:42: But it's still cross -cultural work. You still have to understand the culture and the world view of the people that you're trying to reach.
34:50: And that means breaking out of your own comfort zone.
34:56: And so looking for opportunities outside of your normal class, race, if you want to use that term, type of the people that you're going to be meeting with.
35:14: And so, yeah, it's, again, people who are involved in those types of ministries need, in a sense, they need more prayer because of the challenges that that brings.
35:33: When I taught in Mexico, I taught in the Mexican training program, so training Mexicans as missionaries.
35:40: And one year, well, we did this every year. We had a field trip from the training program to the
35:48: MK school, the missionary kids school, to see what we could learn about American culture.
35:55: Because although we were in Mexico, the school was run as an American school.
36:01: It did K through 12 and so on. Everything was in English.
36:08: All of the subjects were American -based and so on.
36:15: Our children went through that system. And so it was like a little piece of America in Chihuahua.
36:24: And so the students would go and they'd spend the morning just looking around.
36:31: They'd wander around and they were allowed to go into the class and sit there and listen for a while and just see what was going on.
36:41: And as part of that exercise, they were looking for things that could be a hindrance to the gospel.
36:52: You know, thinking just of, you know, maybe a hindrance to understanding the gospel or, you know, whatever.
37:01: So one of the students, one year, he commented that the degree of comfort in the school,
37:08: OK, there was air conditioning. None of the tables or chairs were broken.
37:16: They had a water fountain for, you know, for the students and so on.
37:22: There were just several different things that they looked at and they said, well, it's really comfortable.
37:28: And he said that his comment was that that level of comfort could hold people back from taking the gospel because they're comfortable.
37:40: They don't want to go. We have had missionaries, well, we were in Mexico.
37:48: There was one missionary family that they were looking to go into a tribal work and their first question was how far the tribal work was from a beach resort so that they could get their breaks on a regular basis.
38:12: OK. That family is no longer on the field. But on the other hand, we have other young families who are going through all sorts of things and they won't give up.
38:32: They continue on. I was talking to a couple just the other day that one of their daughters has ectodermal dysplasia.
38:50: Anybody know what that is? No, I didn't know what it was either. Basically, without going into all the details, basically, if you live in...
39:01: You can't regulate your own body temperature. So if you live in the tropics, you're going to overheat.
39:07: And they live right on the edge of the Amazon basin. Kind of tough.
39:15: But they're still there. And they're not giving up. So I say that partly because the new generation,
39:28: I think, very often gets a bad rap. They get a lot of criticism for being lightweight and so on.
39:35: And some of them are. But you know what? So will we. Our generation was the same.
39:43: We're not losing more missionaries now than we used to. Some of them, they will tough it out, if you like.
39:56: OK. Sin. Let's talk about sin. Well, not too much.
40:03: I hope it's not necessary to spend too much time talking about this.
40:09: I think it's kind of obvious. We know that continuing to sin, continuing to maintain sinful habits is wrong.
40:19: We know that's wrong. We know that that's the true. So we're not talking about the everyday things that we do that we know we shouldn't do.
40:34: Yeah. That we say, oh yeah, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have done that. I got angry.
40:40: Or whatever it is. But when we excuse ourselves, when we justify what we're doing, we're not actually really asking for forgiveness.
40:55: We're saying, well, no, it was OK. It was all right to do that. Yeah. When we refuse to accept that what we're doing is sinful, then
41:06: God turns his back on us. We don't want to be like Achan.
41:17: Yeah. The sin of one man caused the deaths of 36 men.
41:25: If you tell people, doesn't matter who it is, if you tell people that you're praying for them, but God's not listening to your prayers because you're holding on to some sin, it might be sexual sin, it might be anger, it might be pride, it might be justifying your behaviour and saying, no, it's
41:59: OK, that's just me. Yeah. Whatever it is, if you're holding on to that sin,
42:07: God isn't listening. Yeah. Now, as missionaries, we depend on you guys to pray for us.
42:22: Yeah. Because there are times that we get into situations that we don't know how
42:30: God gets us out of them. But we depend on you guys praying for us.
42:38: If you're harbouring sin, there's one less person that's praying.
42:48: Yeah. So, potentially, your sin, and I don't want to labour this too much, but your sin, your refusal to accept that what you're doing is sinful could cause the deaths of a whole lot more than just 36 people.
43:10: Serious stuff. And talking of missionaries, it's tragic when we hear of missionaries who get caught up in sin.
43:29: Missionaries... And, I mean, obviously, I'm a missionary, so I don't want you to think that I'm a terrible person. But, you know, very often people say,
43:38: Oh, missionaries, they're wonderful people, they do these wonderful things. No.
43:44: We might do extraordinary things from time to time, but we're just ordinary people. We're still weak.
43:52: We still need support. We still need people to pray for us. And so, very often, you hear of missionaries and they fail and they get into all sorts of problems, but they need your prayer.
44:11: OK, that's enough about sin. Let's talk about distraction. So, it's very easy for us to get distracted.
44:23: We get distracted by the good away from the best. In missionary work, there's a very real danger of being distracted by good work, by social work.
44:39: So, in Mexico, we had to... As part of our visa requirements, we had to do some sort of social work.
44:48: Water, you know, drinking water projects, that type of thing. Dental clinics, other medical brigades and so on.
44:59: And they're good things. They actually give us an entrance into the community. It gives us an opportunity to show people that we care.
45:11: But if the gospel doesn't get preached at the end of it all, they're still going to die.
45:19: They're still going to go to hell. So, it's easy to get wrapped up in those things that sidetrack us, that distract us from the main purpose.
45:34: Now, for me, I was planning to become an agricultural missionary.
45:41: And then when I was in Colombia working on a farm, God made it clear that he wanted me as a missionary, period.
45:52: Not an agricultural missionary. And I recognise that some people are called to do, if you like, social work.
46:02: You know, we're friends with a doctor who works with pioneers, but he's a doctor in Mexico.
46:13: And he has opened up the way for missionaries to go into places because he treats them.
46:20: And he's opened clinics and so on. And several years ago, I was helping him learn language.
46:27: And it got to the point after about a year,
46:34: I said, you know what, Kenny, you're not going... You will not get the language to the point that you can teach unless you close a clinic.
46:48: You can't do both. And so we had quite a long discussion about it.
46:55: And he chose to keep doing the medical so that other people had entrance and they then would teach and preach and so on.
47:11: So it's not a straightforward thing, but it's recognising when God gives you something to do, that's what you do.
47:21: And you don't need to be distracted by other things. In Matthew 13, 22, the parable of the sower,
47:29: Jesus tells us that the seed that fell among the thorns represents those who hear God's word, but it's crowded out by the worries of this life.
47:40: Rachel and I have now, crazily enough, and we don't know how
47:46: God did it really, it's a miracle, but we have actually owned two houses.
47:52: We're on to our second one. Only one at a time, but we're on to our second one now.
47:58: We own the house, and the thing is, for all the rest of our married life, we rented or we were put into different places.
48:07: I guess we kind of owned a house in the tribe. That was a little different, didn't have walls.
48:14: Makes decorating a lot easier. But now we own a house, now we can argue about paint colours and carpets and those types of things.
48:33: And for us it's been a struggle, because for our whole life our focus has been on ministry and doing what
48:41: God has called us to do, and now all of a sudden it's very easy to get distracted.
48:51: Does the curtains match the bed cover? I don't know.
48:58: Maybe it's just not a guy thing or something. All of those things all of a sudden begin to be important.
49:07: I'm not knocking you, the people that do that, but is that the main thing in your life?
49:15: If it is, then you've got your priorities wrong. The house should be a tool that God can use to see the gospel go to the ends of the earth.
49:36: Okay, nearly done. I'm not sure what time I'm supposed to finish, but I'm nearly done. And I'm not going to look at Brian, because he'll tell me.
49:48: Okay, if we can move to the next one, there you go. So, to summarise.
49:57: Firstly, the Church is responsible for the Great Commission to complete what God has asked us to do, to take the gospel to the ends of the earth.
50:06: Every member of the Body of Christ ought to be involved in some way in spreading the gospel to the ends of the earth.
50:13: We don't all have to go, we don't have to go that far, but everybody should be involved in some way in spreading the gospel.
50:24: Some of us don't have to go beyond our front door, some of us go a lot further, but the
50:31: Church should definitely be supporting people that go much further, and you guys are doing that.
50:38: So then we've got these four questions up here, which we almost finish on.
50:45: Do I understand what the gospel is? If I do, then
50:52: I can share it with others. Am I more concerned about my own comfort rather than spreading the gospel?
51:02: Am I secretly continuing to sin and so hindering the spread of the gospel?
51:09: Am I distracted by other things that are less important than the gospel?
51:20: Okay, just to finish, last slide there. Thank you. Well -known verse, but I'm going to read this.
51:31: I recognize I've been negative, heavy -handed.
51:39: We're talking about this again in Sunday school. Ken was talking about rebuke, and I thought, ooh, yeah, it's kind of what this sermon is.
51:52: But I know I need it as much as you guys do. But for all of us, we're doing something, however small it is.
52:09: So my prayer for us is that God gives us the strength to do what's necessary, gives us the courage to do what's necessary, both as individuals and as a church, so that the gospel can go to the ends of the earth.
52:26: And so then, as it says there, so my dear brothers and sisters, be strong and immovable.
52:33: Always work enthusiastically for the Lord, for you know that nothing you do for the
52:38: Lord is ever useless. Thank you.
52:46: I don't know who's coming up now. Chris? Thank you,
53:13: Jonathan, for that message. You say it was heavy -handed or a rebuke.
53:19: I found it that, but also encouraging. So thank you very much for sharing with us.
53:26: If you all would stand, we shall be singing
53:36: Jesus shall reign where the sun, verses 3 and 4.