A Faithful Herald of God’s Word

Grace Fellowship Church

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This sermon is from Grace Fellowship Church in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. To access other sermons or to learn more about us, please visit our website at graceedmonton .ca.

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Well, as I said once before, welcome to Grace Fellowship Church. We're working our way through the

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Gospel of Mark. And if you haven't been with us before, we preach expositorily, meaning we work our way through the passage, passage by passage, picking out the meaning, exegeting the meaning of the text that it is that we're looking at.

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And if you were here last time, you'll remember that as we were in the Gospel of Mark, that was two weeks ago, we considered what it means to be, or what it meant to be, a fruitful hearer of God's Word.

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A fruitful hearer of God's Word. And if you remember back to that message from Mark chapter 4 and the verse 20 verses, you'll recall that the emphasis of that passage that we studied was particularly negative.

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And what I mean by that is that three out of the four examples that we looked at in Christ's first parable were cautionary tales of what we ought not to be like as hearers of the

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Gospel and as hearers of the full counsel of God. And in that parable of the sower, we found only one positive example of what it looks like to receive the implanted

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Word and to bear fruit for the glory of God. And as I spoke with some of you afterwards,

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I got a little bit of this hint, and I thought it myself that perhaps for some of you it was a good reminder, but you were left desiring more.

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After all, three quarters of the message was very negative in a sense. It was evangelistic, but it was a negative perspective.

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And if that was you, that you were left wanting more at the end of the last message, I think that's only natural because what

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Christ was doing was just getting started on these parables and just getting started on what he had to say as it pertains to the

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Christian's relationship to the Word of God. Christ was just getting started, and as he continues to teach, what our

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Lord is going to do is he's going to further elaborate on the Christian's relationship to Scripture.

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Last time it was on our relationship to hearing the Word of God, and today we're going to be looking now at the

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Christian's relationship to the heralding, the speaking, the instructing, the sharing and proclaiming of the

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Word of God. This week as we turn to Mark chapter 4 and verse 21 through verse 34, this is what we're going to find.

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I always like to give the main point, I think the main thesis, the thrust of the text right at the beginning.

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Through this series of parables that Christ is going to give us, at least another three parables, our

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Lord Jesus Christ shows us what every Christian must do with the revelation that God has given to us.

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So we've heard about being a faithful hearer, now what do we do with that Word? God has spoken, and for those who are fruitful hearers of God's Word, we must also be faithful heralds of that same divine

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Word. Now as I was preparing this, it came to my mind that sometimes

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I feel like I'm preaching to the choir. I know that in this case we've heard some messages about evangelism and preaching the

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Gospel very recently, and I wanted to acknowledge that we have really a very unique culture in this small church of ours.

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I give thanks to God that He has built this church, that He has assembled this small group of believers, and that many of the faithful men and women in this church are zealous for the evangelization of the world.

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I think sometimes we take that for granted, but I want you to know that I've never been a member of another church that is as enthusiastic about proclaiming the

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Gospel as I've experienced in this church. And for that I am very, very grateful to the

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Lord. A good example of that is even just this last Tuesday, as a good chunk of our church went out to share the

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Gospel with Catholics outside of the Papal Mass at Commonwealth Stadium. Of all of the conservative, evangelical,

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Reformed churches that were outside of Commonwealth Stadium, we were probably the smallest, and we were probably the best represented.

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And for that I am grateful to the Lord. And not only that, but I'm thankful to the

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Lord that this church is zealous to give to the cause of missions, that we're prepared both to hold the rope and go down into the well.

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Now, I don't say this to flatter you, but to recognize that there are people in this room who love the

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Gospel, who have heard the Great Commission, and who are eager to go. And yet, and yet, we've come to a passage that is going to push us harder and further and deeper into taking the light of God's Word into a dark world.

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And I think this is important. I think that's why the Lord gives us so many opportunities to read and to study about the importance of proclaiming the

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Gospel. Firstly, we recognize that there's still room for us to do better. As good and as thankful as I am for this church, there's still room for growth.

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There's still room for sanctification in our proclamation of the Word. And so, this text is important to us.

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And secondly, we recognize that it's easy to grow weary in doing good. It's easy to become complacent.

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It's easy for us to say, yeah, we have been a very evangelistically driven church, and then to rest on our past performance.

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And then to become cold -hearted and legalistic. Or even to wilt under the intense and unabating heat of persecution.

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So, church family, today we're going to consider, again, what it means to be not just faithful hearers of the

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Word, but now faithful heralds of God's Word. And what we find is that our

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Lord, through these parables, gives us some very helpful and practical advice. Little brother, that's why

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I picked you up on our way here. And I ended up being late because I thought we have one really zealous brother.

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And our Lord gets so practical in this passage. And we can all benefit from it. So, let's turn to Mark 4 in verse 21.

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I'm going to nurse my T's. Mark 4, verse 21.

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I'll read from verse 21. And Christ said to them, Is a lamp brought in to be put under a basket, or under a bed, and not on a stand?

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For nothing is hidden, except to be made manifest. Nor is anything secret, except to come to light.

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If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear. Today we're going to consider three qualities of a faithful herald of God's Word.

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Three qualities that Christ puts before us in these three parables. And the first one that I want to point our attention to is this.

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A faithful herald is an attentive herald. A faithful herald is an attentive herald.

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Christ begins this parable using the imagery of a lamp in a dark room. This lamp would have been a small clay bowl that could be filled with oil, with a floating wick on the top.

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And the owner of the lamp would dip that wick, would saturate that wick into the oil, and then would place it on a shelf in a prominent place in their home.

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If you weren't in a wealthy home, you probably had a little shelf that just jutted out. It protruded out of the side of your wall.

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And you'd place your lamp there to light the room. If you were in a more wealthy home, or perhaps if you were in maybe a ceremonial setting like the temple, there might be an ornate lamp stand made of gold or some other precious metal.

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But regardless of the type of stand, the idea was that when a person had a lamp, they would place it in an elevated and prominent location to act as the primary source of artificial light in a dark room.

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But Christ introduces us here to an idea that would have been absurd to his hearers.

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He asks if those in his company would place this primary source of light, this lamp, under a basket.

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Here Mark uses the word modion. It's what some would call a bushel basket, an 8 -liter basket that people would use, they'd keep in their kitchen, maybe fill it with weed or some other kind of cooking material.

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He asks if they would store their lamp under a bed where its light could not be seen. And even the kids, you could answer that question.

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The obvious answer is no. You would not put a lamp under a basket or under a bed. But you'd put it in the middle of the room where it could benefit everyone in the room.

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And what our Lord is getting at here is that just as a lamp is not meant to be lit and then hidden under a basket or a bed, in the same way the revelation of Jesus Christ, once it has been revealed, is not meant to be hidden out of sight, but it is to be rightly understood and then broadcasted to the world.

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In the context of this parable, we see that Christ is teaching that we who have truly heard the word of God are not to obscure or to hide

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Christ's teaching, His parables, His gospel, or His person, but to the contrary, we who have been faithful hearers of God's word must seek out greater understanding still and then turn and become faithful heralds of God's word.

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Well, it's true, and we've looked at this two weeks ago, that Christ hid His teaching in parables for a time.

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The day was coming when His disciples would make plain the meaning of these parables. And while Christ hid

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His own divine identity from crowds during His earthly ministry, there was coming a day when

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His people would testify to the fact that He was Savior and Lord and God. And that day, brothers and sisters, has come.

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Christ desires that His people would come to His word, that all of us, dear saints, dear friends, would come to God's word with a sense, a heightened level of interest, that we would have ears to hear, that we would pay attention and take heed, that we would learn attentively at the feet of our

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Lord Jesus Christ, and then that we would put, not put this revelation, this revelation of the

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Lord Jesus Christ under a basket, but lift it up that Christ might be seen and understood and worshipped by others.

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I like what John MacArthur wrote about this passage. He called this the pre -Great

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Commission commission. And he elaborates on this in his own commentary. He says, the purpose in keeping something hidden is so that one day it can be revealed.

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Jesus' teaching was never intended to be just for an inner circle of followers.

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It was the responsibility of the disciples to communicate the gospel of the kingdom to the world at large.

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Our brother read it just before our pastoral prayer time, Matthew 5 .15.

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No one puts a lamp under a basket but on a stand that gives light to the whole house. And then Christ says, in the same way, let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your

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Father who is in heaven. I know that you know this, but you need to hear it again, that if you are a

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Christian in this room, you are called to be an earnest student of God's Word.

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And one of the purposes of being an earnest student of God's Word is that you might be an able instructor of that Word to others.

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Christ wants us to hear His Word. He wants us to know His Word, to attend to His Word, and then to take

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His Word out into the world. So what does it look like then to be an attentive herald of God's Word, dear brother and sister?

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You want to be an attentive herald of God's Word. Christ says in verse 25, from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away.

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It ought to go without saying, but what this means is that you need to be truly converted. You need to be right with God on His terms through Christ alone.

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It ought to go without saying, but it must be said. And I think maybe sometimes when

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I say this, it can sound harsh or critical, but I'll just say it. Sadly, there are many men and women on the mission field today who are profoundly lost.

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They know nothing of the Gospel. They have no experience of the grace of God in the face of our

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Lord Jesus Christ. And they have nothing to offer lost sinners. They are the blind leading the blind into the ditches of heresy and false

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Gospels and false assurance. As we prepared to plant this church,

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I was monitoring, just looking at the church planting culture. I read a large number of the church planting books that are out there, probably three quarters of them.

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I followed church plants on social media and even met with some church planters who were in some cases of a different ilk than ours.

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And one of the things that I marveled at is that there are many church planters today who have no personal experience or understanding of the

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Gospel whatsoever. And that they are planting churches, not to proclaim the Gospel, but to proclaim moralistic, therapeutic deism.

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Now, maybe you've never heard that term, but you've probably seen what it looks like, and it's this. There is a God out there, and that He wants to help you succeed in life.

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He wants you to feel good. And His chief aim is to make you happy and to teach you how to win friends and influence people.

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Dear ones, that is not the Gospel. That is not the Gospel that we are to proclaim.

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That is a worldview that uses biblical language and leads people to hell. Now, I say all of this because we as a church need to be careful.

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We need to guard ourselves against encouraging, against commending, against sending out any man or woman who is not truly converted.

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I once heard a story from a brother named Charles Leiter, who is a pastor in the United States.

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And he shared a story about a woman that he once met in the course of his ministry. And after getting to know her for a period of time, he learned that she was very, very zealous for missions.

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That she wanted more than anything to be a missionary. And as he got to know her more and more, he realized one day, it would seem to me, he thought, that this woman desires to be a missionary more than she desires to be a

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Christian. And so he observed her for a little longer, and then one day he just approached her about it and said,

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Can I ask you, would you say, is it true that you desire to be a missionary more than you desire to be a

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Christian? And the woman was offended, initially, as we expect she probably would be.

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But as she gave it some thought, she really did realize that she had no conversion experience.

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Her only conversion experience was one day she didn't want to be a missionary, and the next day she did want to be a missionary.

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And by God's grace, she was saved as a result of that conversation. And in the

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Lord's providence, she left that church to be a missionary, but she left that church in a converted state.

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Dear friends, it's so important, there are people in this room, you might desire to serve the

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Lord in some capacity, but you need to be saved first. The next thing we need to do is we need to devote ourselves to rightly understanding

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God's word so that we can instruct others. This is a long first point, but this is a sub -point of that.

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Christ says in verse 23, If God has given you ears, which he has, listen carefully.

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Pay attention to what you hear. If you do, still more will be added to you. Christ says to the one who has, more will be given to you.

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I don't know about you, dear saints, but I want to know more of the word of God. I'm sure that you do too, that you want to know

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God better in his word. But how do you do it? How do you get more benefit from your understanding or from the word of God?

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Christ says that we need to be ready to receive it. We need to be found faithful with the illumination that he has given, and he will add more illumination still.

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Do you want to be a faithful and effective and attentive herald of God's word? Then give yourselves, dear brothers and sisters, to the careful study of Scripture.

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Study to show yourselves approved. Rightly divide the word of truth.

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Read, study, meditate, and memorize as much of the Bible as you can. Love and cherish

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God's holy word. I love what Paul says to the Colossians in Colossians 3 .16. He says,

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Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, that you may be able to instruct and admonish others.

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Peter wrote to the dispersed church. He said, But in your hearts, honor Christ, the Lord is holy, always being prepared to answer anyone who asks you for a reason, for the hope that is in you.

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Brothers and sisters, do you study? It's excellent if you get up in the morning and you study and you read the word of God that your own soul might be benefited by it.

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But do you read the word? Do you study? Do you memorize? Do you consider the texts of Scripture, the whole counsel of Scripture, so that you can share it with others?

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One man who, I think, exemplified what it means to be an attentive herald of God's word is

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William Carey. When William Carey was saved by the grace of God and became a

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Christian at the age of 18, he began an intensive study of the Bible and of the biblical languages.

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He poured himself into that work so that he would be able to better understand and better explain the

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Scriptures. And if you remember anything about William Carey, I know we've talked about him before, but he worked as a cobbler during the day.

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Kids, do you know what a cobbler is? Anyone remember? A cobbler is someone who makes and repairs shoes.

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And as a cobbler, he remained just barely below the poverty line.

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You could not make a lot of money as a cobbler. But what it did do is it afforded him the opportunity to go home in the evenings and to study the

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Bible and to learn the biblical languages. And that 18 -year -old cobbler, in the course of his evenings, didn't just learn basics, but he mastered

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Hebrew and Greek and Latin. And then when the Lord called him onto the mission field, he used that intensive

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Bible study time and that language, that knowledge of the languages of the Bible to translate the

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Bible into Bengali and Oriya and Marathi and Hindi and Assamese and the

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Sanskrit languages. And then to translate into 29 other languages and dialects, in part.

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He would sit hunched over his Bible every day for hours, all with the aim that he might know the

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Word of God so that he could reach others with it. And I think one of William Carey's quotes that I appreciate so much really captures what it means to be an attentive hearer of God's Word.

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He said, to know the will of God, we need an open Bible and an open map to find those who still need to hear the words of the

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Bible. So we need to be an attentive hearer of God's Word. Next we'll look at verses 26 through 29.

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Here we see the second characteristic of a faithful herald is to be a dependent herald.

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A faithful herald is a dependent herald. Here Christ returns to agricultural language to describe the growth of the kingdom of God and of every individual who receives the implanted gospel word.

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The seed of the gospel is sown broadly. The seed that falls on fertile ground sprouts and grows.

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But this is not because of any action on the man's part. I want you to notice this. But to the contrary, it says, he knows not how the seed grows.

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And Christ says in verse 28, the earth produces all by itself. Here Mark uses the

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English word automatic. The seed takes root and it grows and it does so automatically without any additional input or intervention from the planter until the time of the harvest has come.

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This is how God's kingdom grows on the earth. Those who have been fruitful hearers of the word take that same gospel seed by which they were saved and they sow it too upon the soil.

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And God, who in his divine sovereignty caused them to grow, brings about new growth in others as well.

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Now what is Christ's purpose, dear saints, in teaching this parable?

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He intends to show us that we are to be completely and utterly dependent upon God for the purpose of promoting the expansion of God's kingdom and to seeking out the conversion of men.

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One commentator put it in a way probably better than I could put it. He said, apart from sowing, you and I, apart from sowing, the only human activity in this parable is waiting in faith, confident of a harvest to come.

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The process of growth is strangely independent of human activity.

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The seed, like the gospel, prospers of itself as faithful heralds of God's word.

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You want to be an effective evangelist. You want to share the gospel with your friends and your family and your neighbors.

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We must operate, dear friends, in complete dependence upon God, recognizing that God alone,

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God alone has the power to conquer hardened hearts, to find and draw lost sinners to himself, to produce regeneration and conversion, to bring about redemption and sanctification and glorification.

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It is God's divine initiative alone that brings about the conversion of a soul.

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Now, for some of us here, probably for many of us here, this is common knowledge.

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But for many others, again, something that perhaps we take for granted, for many others, this is something that is a completely foreign way of thinking.

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I once heard a story that really illustrates this well of a brother who went to visit a church.

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And when he did, he had an opportunity to speak to this pastor, the senior pastor of this church.

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It was a bustling, mega church, growing and growing and growing, one of the fastest growing churches in the area.

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And this brother asked the senior pastor how this church was growing so exponentially.

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This is a solid brother that shared this story. The senior pastor explained that the church devised a system to ensure growth and to ensure multiplication on an annual basis.

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And that this exponential growth had afforded this particular man, this senior pastor, the opportunity to speak at major conferences and to even get a very good book deal.

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And so he was very invested on maintaining the ongoing growth of this church. And when this brother asked this senior pastor how the church was able to see so many conversions, so frequently, so often, so commonly, the senior pastor answered, he said, we require our interns to go out, share the gospel, and make three converts a week.

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Now this seemed like an overly formulaic approach, so the brother asked the pastor, what happens if your interns don't produce three converts a week?

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And without skipping a beat, the pastor looked at him and responded, if our interns can't bring in three conversions a week, then we will find and replace them with interns who can.

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This is the type of view that does not respond, does not look in dependency upon God for the success of the mission, for the conversion of sinners, for success in the proclamation of the gospel.

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And yet this is the mindset of many Christians today. But it's nothing new. It's the same mindset that was in the

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Corinthian church. If you remember when Paul wrote to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 3, he said, what then is

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Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed is the Lord assigned to each.

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Paul wrote, he said, I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.

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So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.

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Something we need to realize if we're going to be effective, faithful heralds of God's word, that only God gives the growth.

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And so we must look to him in dependence upon his power alone.

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I love hearing stories that demonstrate the truth of this reality. Many of you know about Jonathan Edwards.

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You've heard of him at least once or twice before. He was a pastor theologian in the 18th century. He had a thorough understanding of the utter dependence that he must have, that he did have upon God.

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And one of the sermons that he preached, I even love the sermon title. The sermon title is God Glorified in Man's Dependence.

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In the sermon he told his congregation, he said, we are dependent upon the

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Son. He stopped. He said, we are dependent upon the Father.

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He stopped. He said, we are dependent upon the Holy Spirit. And then he preached, he said, men are dependent on the power of God for every exercise of grace and for carrying on that work in the heart, for subduing sin and corruption, increasing holy principles, and enabling to bring forth fruit in good works.

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Now perhaps it was because Jonathan Edwards was dependent upon God that God used him so prominently in what has been called the

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First Great Awakening. This was a revival, if anyone likes history, a revival that broke out in the 1700s that resulted in the conversion of tens of thousands of people.

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Just in New England alone, if you can picture this, they went from having 25 ,000 active church members in the state of New England to 50 ,000 over the course of two years.

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They had to plant hundreds of churches to accommodate all of these new believers. It was during this revival that Jonathan Edwards preached what has been called the most important sermon in American history.

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Does anyone know of that? I'll ask an adult. What's that sermon that Jonathan Edwards preached that you think has been called the most important sermon?

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Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. We're told that people could barely get through that sermon, not because it was bad, but because it was so good and yet so hard.

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Jonathan Edwards, I bet, would have never imagined the effect that that sermon would have on the church for centuries to come.

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But just to show Jonathan Edwards' dependence upon God, he sought the

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Lord for help all through the preparation of that sermon. Even after Jonathan Edwards died, the

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Lord has used that sermon for 270 years to bring about the conversion of many.

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I think sometimes we believe the mission depends so much on us and on our abilities, and yet the

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Lord says, no, it depends on God and upon His power. And I know a brother who just about a decade ago was listening to Sinners in the

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Hands of an Angry God on a CD in his van, commuting to and from work. And as he was listening to this sermon,

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Jonathan Edwards was not alive. He could not persuade this man. He could not reason with him.

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He could not point to a text of Scripture. He could not so much as read a word of the Bible to this man.

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And as this man listened, not even to Jonathan Edwards' voice, but to the voice of another man reading his sermon,

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God converted him there in his van. The man repented of his sins and placed his faith in Christ because he heard that he, too, was a sinner in the hands of an angry

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God. We must be dependent upon God. Now, how do we live as dependent heralds of the

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Gospel? Some of you have probably heard the saying, and sleep like a

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Calvinist. Has anyone ever heard that? I believe it's attributed to someone that I'm not actually too fond of.

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But for those of us who resolutely believe in the sovereignty of God, we might find this quote amusing.

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We might even find that we relate to it in some ways. But is this really the way that God wants us to live?

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To work like an Arminian and then to sleep like a Calvinist? I would say that based on what

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Christ has taught us here, the answer is no. That God wants us to work.

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He wants us to rest. He wants us to harvest. He wants us to trust dependently upon our sovereign

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God from beginning to end. I like what John Piper said. He said we ought to work, play, and sleep like a

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Calvinist. He says outproduce, outplay, and outdream everyone by trusting in your sovereign

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God. And so, dear saints, how do we then work and play and sleep like Calvinists?

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Or maybe to remove the human term, to work, rest, and sleep, or to work, play, and sleep like those who are dependent upon God entirely.

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I'll give us just a few quick points of application. The first is prayer.

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Let me ask you, how many of you, if you look at your prayer lives, you'd say, my prayer life betrays a hidden and a subtle lack of dependence upon God?

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Far often I think, brothers and sisters, that we are inclined to pray as if all depended upon us and nothing depended upon God because we bring nothing to Him.

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But Christ has just showed us this is completely backwards. Almost all depends upon God and very little upon us.

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We must therefore pursue God in prayer. If the conversion of the lost depends on the divine initiative of God alone and not on any power that lies within us, then we ought to pray like it.

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Oh, dear saints, we ought to be people of prayer. We need to work independence upon God.

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How many of us share the gospel with this sense of fear and burden that all depends on my words, on the argument that I can muster, on my intellect, on my winsomeness, that it's something within me that will either make or break this evangelism outing or this evangelistic conversation?

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Dear friends, this is a burden that God does not intend for you to carry because you are dependent on the power of God from beginning to end.

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And this should free you, in fact, to proclaim the gospel of God with joy and with freedom and with humility.

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And this ought to spare you from fear or guilt or spiritual pride. I remember the first time in thinking about evangelism and when we were getting ready to go out and do street evangelism with a group of people, someone reading from John chapter 10.

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Oh, how freeing it was to read this. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.

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I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. When it comes to working, when it comes to bringing the gospel,

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I've often said we just need to be like the faithful letter carrier. We don't convince the person to open the letter.

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We don't convince the person to pay the bill. We just bring it to their door. We bring it to their home.

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We bring it to their heart. We say, this is the gospel. This is what Christ has done.

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No more and no less. And then we ought to rest in that, dear brothers and sisters, that if we have faithfully proclaimed the word, that God will use his means.

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He sleeps, it says in verse 27, and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows. He knows not how.

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We should pray like those who are dependent on God, work like one dependent on God, and then rest as if all were dependent on God because it is.

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And then lastly, in verse 30, verses 30 to 34, we see a faithful herald is a confident herald.

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One commentator says of this passage, the kingdom of God arises from obscurity and insignificance.

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As a small church plant, this should encourage us. The kingdom of God arises from obscurity and insignificance.

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That which no one would imagine, or if one did, would seem utterly impossible, will in time loom inescapably before us.

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God's reign will not only be more real than the world can imagine, but it will also be larger and more encompassing.

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Now children, I want to ask you. I went to the grocery store, so I better not forget to do this.

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Kids, do you guys see this seed right there? Is that visible?

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Can you see it in the back there? Can you guys see that? This is a mustard seed.

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Now, it's very likely that Christ was speaking in hyperbolic language when he said it's the smallest of all seeds.

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It is not the smallest of all seeds, and I think my wife could probably name about ten seeds, just hold tight, ten seeds that are smaller than the mustard seed.

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But it is one of the smallest seeds that becomes one of the largest plants.

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Children, this single mustard seed, if we were to plant it in the right location, with the right amount of water and sunshine and good soil, would grow to be up to 15 feet tall and 6 feet wide.

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I find it kind of interesting that the Lord would compare his kingdom to that of a mustard seed, but he does.

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Christ did not come as a Roman emperor, but as a poor man in the nation of Israel.

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He did not ride into Jerusalem on a white stallion. I'll answer after, okay?

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On a white stallion, but on a donkey's colt. And in the same way, just as Christ would send out his 12 disciples to proclaim the gospel, what we've seen, we've seen it before our eyes, that this mustard seed, this word of God, the living word of God who came as Christ in the flesh, his church started with one seed, and it is expanding, and it's going to expand more and more and more.

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And this is why a faithful herald is to be a confident herald. A faithful herald is to be a confident herald, that Christ will build his church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.

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Now, what does it mean that the birds nest in the trees? I think if we go back to the

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Old Testament, and we look at some of those examples, we'll find ones in Daniel 4 as an example, but I think

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Ezekiel 17 really captures what it means when Christ says the birds will find their nests in the trees.

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In Ezekiel 17 .22, it says, Thus says the Lord God, All the trees of the field shall know that I am the

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Lord. I will bring the low tree high, and make the high tree low, dry up the green tree, and make the dry tree flourish.

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I am the Lord, I have spoken, and I will do it. What God means here in this passage in Ezekiel is that he was to establish a new tree, and that these birds, these were the nations, that the nations would come and make their nests in the tree.

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And I think what the Lord is saying here is that he will build his church, that he will plant his gospel seed, that this mustard seed will go into the ground, and that he will build his church to the point that it reaches all of the nations, that all of the nations find their home in Christ's one kingdom, in God's one kingdom.

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It's trite, it's kind of cliche. We hear people say, in the end, God wins.

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But it's true, that in the end, God and his gospel cause will win.

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And so when we go out, as we did on Tuesday, and you see tens of thousands of people, and the task seems insurmountable, still we can go with confidence that his cause will have the victory, that the gospel will go out into the world and succeed, that the

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Lord will win, that all of the nations will find their home in this kingdom.

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Martin Luther is another example of one of those people that had confidence, had this confidence as a herald of God.

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And if you know Martin Luther, you probably know that some of that confidence was actually arrogance, and probably not to be emulated, just based on some of the things that we can read about him.

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But one of the things was true, that he had great confidence in God's ability to carry out his purposes in the world.

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Martin Luther began to take a stance for the gospel, and as he was counting the cost of boldly heralding the true gospel in the face of the

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Roman Catholic Church, he took some time to write out Psalm 118, verse 17, on the wall of his study, where you could often look at it and be reminded of those words, and where others could read it as well and be emboldened by them.

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Inscribed on that study wall were these words, I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the

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Lord. Luther knew that many of the Reformers who had gone before him had done so at the cost of their own lives.

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The Reformers were far more familiar with dying on the stake than they were dying peacefully in a deathbed, surrounded by their family.

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That's evidenced by years like the year 1555, when Mary I had over 76

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Reformers burned at the stake. Just one year, 76 Reformers. Over the course of her reign, that would expand to 280 men and women who held to Reformation doctrines, and that's why people called her

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Bloody Mary. So Martin Luther knew that there was a great cost to his ministry of gospel truth, but as one biographer writes,

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Luther was cheered by the firm conviction that he was perfectly safe until his work was done.

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In this full assurance, he went bravely to meet his enemies at the Diet of Worms, and indeed went courageously whenever duty called him.

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He felt that God had raised him up to declare the glorious doctrine of justification by faith.

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Dear friends, he's called you to that same purpose. And he knew that all other truths of what he believed to be the gospel of God, and therefore he felt that no fire could burn him, and no sword could kill him, till that work was done.

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Thusly, he bravely wrote out his belief and said it before many eyes to see, I shall not die, but live and declare the works of the

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Lord. This biographer writes, it was no idle boast, but a calm and true conclusion from his faith in God and fellowship with him.

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Luther was a confident herald of God's word because he firmly believed that he belonged to God alone.

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That God would use him for the time and for the purpose that he had foreordained, and that long after he would expire,

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God would continue to advance the gospel cause. Luther had placed his confidence in Christ because he knew that Christ alone would build his church.

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And so how ought this to encourage us as we herald

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God's word? For one, let us not despise small things.

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It says in Zechariah 4 .10, For whoever has despised the day of small things shall rejoice.

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R .C. Sproul writes of that passage, he says, It's easy to be discouraged with eager results in progress evident in Zechariah's day.

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The question in this verse reminds us not to judge God's work by human standards.

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Even these skeptics will be brought to rejoice over God's faithfulness. Because of Christ's sure victory, it means that we can preach the gospel in spite of persecution, that the gates of hell, to quote from Matthew 16 again, shall not prevail against it.

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It's to go out every day, every day that we do go out, and to share the gospel with great confidence.

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It says in Isaiah 55 .11, So shall my word be that goes out from my mouth.

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It shall not return to me empty. It will not return to me void, bearing the seed for so, oh sorry, but it shall accomplish that which

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I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it. And it means, dear saints, that we can share the gospel with a sense of great expectation.

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It might be hard, but we look forward to the future joy, the future rewards, the future victory that Christ will have.

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Psalm 126, we read the psalmist writes in verse 5, Those who sow in tears, sowing the seed in tears, shall reap with shouts of joy.

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He who goes out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, bringing his sheaves with him.

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We can go out with great confidence, dear saints, prepare with great attentiveness, certainly to prepare with great attentiveness to herald

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God's word dependent upon him, and then to go out with great confidence.

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And I will end with these words from a 19th century Scottish minister, a man named

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Robert Smith Candlish, who spoke to his church and exhorted them to be faithful in preaching the gospel.

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He writes this, he says, Then open ye your own lips at once, now, this very day.

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Wait not for any sign, or any impulse, any favorable opportunity even, any pressing call.

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Begin now. Let some friend or neighbor hear you before the sun goes down, speaking a word in season, a word of admonition, a word of comfort, telling something of what the

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Lord is doing for your soul and his willingness to do the same for theirs.

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I will call upon you just to prove the earnestness of your repentance and the strength of your resolution.

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Then one commentator that's quoting this, he says, What are you waiting for?

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We must improve what we have, yes. We must seek to be more and more the men and women that God would have us to be, yes.

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We must pursue prayerfully the joy of God's salvation and a consistent life of godliness, yes.

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But what are you waiting for? Are you opening, are we opening our mouths and teaching transgressors

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God's ways? Because if we are not, nothing is likely to change that reality.

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I would add, apart from the word of God, apart from conforming yourself to the word of God and saying,

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As for me, I will be a faithful, a fruitful, an earnest herald of God's word.