India Update (Bolivia Update by Bob Bowman)

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I'll get to my message here in a little bit. I've been busy, and I haven't really kept up with my schedule in terms of knowing where's everyone and who's on first and those kind of things.
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But we have Bob Bowman with us tonight, one of our missionaries. And Bob's here, and I've asked him to come up, and you have to know
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Bob Bowman, and most of us do. I said, you know, I've got my message and it wasn't planned, so come up and give us kind of an update on what's going on.
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Thank you. So, I said to Bob, I go, but five or ten minutes.
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You ask a pastor or a preacher to get up and speak, he's just going to keep going and going and going. And so, before Bob comes up,
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I just want to read 2 Timothy chapter 2, verses 3 and following. Bob will give you an update, but when
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I was thinking about Bob earlier this evening, this is what I was thinking about, 2 Timothy 2, 3 and following.
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Suffer hardship with me as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No soldier in active service entangles himself in the affairs of everyday life, so that he may please the one who enlisted him as a soldier.
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If anyone competes as an athlete, he does not win the prize unless he competes according to the rules. And in the third illustration, the hardworking farmer ought to be the first to receive his share of crops.
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Consider what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything. And I'd like to have
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Bob come up now, and when I think of Bob, he has acted like a soldier or acted like a farmer or acted like an athlete, and it's a testimony, not to Bob and his goodness or greatness, but how the
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Lord can use someone far away and even be glorified in trials. And so, let's hear from Bob and just if you'd give us a little update on what's going on and how are you?
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How am I? Yes. My face is falling off the left side. I'll just talk about that a minute.
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I woke up one morning and said to Judy, you can't close my eye. And then
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I realized this whole side of my face was gone. I said, oh my goodness, I'm having a stroke.
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And she didn't think I was having a stroke because I walked out of the bedroom, you know. And so then we have a missionary nurse friend down in Santa Cruz and we were able to call.
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And that's a great step forward for us, by the way. We go back to Bolivia five years after we had been there.
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You can call the cities, you know, on a telephone. We have email, all those kinds of things.
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Didn't have that before. Anyway, we called her and she said, let me rummage around in my books here and I'll see what we can see.
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So she called back a little while later and said, now you have something called Bell's Palsy. And I thought, and what that is for you biologists, that's the seventh cranial nerve that feeds your face, swells up in the little opening that comes through your skull and then that cuts it off and then your face falls off, you know, that sort of thing.
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So it turns out it's not life -threatening. It certainly is a nuisance. And I was, you know,
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I'd heard people say, oh, you'll be over this in a month or you'll be over this, and we've been at it almost five months now and it hasn't changed much.
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I went to a, was up in another city, Cochabamba, and saw an ophthalmologist there and he said, you can't leave that eye like that.
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And so they sutured, shut the corner of his eye so that it will remain lubricated.
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And I'm kind of hoping we'll get over it while we're up here in the States. Judy and I have to go back to Bolivia July 21st because I'm opening the field conference down there.
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And, you know, you really say things like Philippians 4, 4 funny. OK, so I've been preaching from First Thessalonians, which is much better.
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All right. So that's how that, that's how that deal works. We covet your prayers and I'm grateful for it.
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I know the Lord has his time about all of this. And we pray most of all to honor him in the midst of it all and in the busyness of all that goes on.
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We have some other things we have to take care of up here this summer. So this is really kind of a whirlwind trip that we're making.
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We were just in California, 106 degrees on the cool days. Come back here, 52.
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Great. So you didn't have spring this year, right? And OK, we at our
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M .K. school, our missionary kids school, of course, we've just finished graduation and we're very encouraged with our graduates.
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I have been telling folks about some of our Asian kids we had. There's a large Asian business community near Santa Cruz, Bolivia, 140 miles from us.
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And those folks would like their children to have a North American education. And so when we have room, we accept those kids into our student body.
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And many of them, most of them, come from a
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Buddhist background or from no background at all. And most of them, when they leave
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Tombo, when they graduate from Tombo, they have come to Christ. So it's kind of a little side ministry we have going on over here, in addition to to administering to the missionary kids of our people that are in tribes and and so on.
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Very touching little story about one of our eighth graders named Liliana. Liliana comes from a
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Buddhist family. When Liliana came to Christ, her parents subsequently informed her they were changing her name to a
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Buddhist name. And we surmise that's because they weren't real pleased that she had come to Christ and that really upset her.
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But finally, here's the conclusion Liliana comes to. I will be like Daniel.
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They could change his name and they can change my name, but they can't change my
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God. And so we're mightily encouraged as we see as we see those kids and how the
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Lord deals in their lives and how he works, works with them. So you continue to pray for us in our ministry with them.
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Some of them come to us hardly able to speak English. So not only do they learn English, but about the
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Lord. Little Frankie came. I think it was Frankie that came in sixth grader and told his teacher,
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I don't I'm not a Christian. I don't need to bother with all this Bible study and all that.
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And she told him gently, well, Bible is part of the curriculum here. And so you you need to listen.
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So at the end of this year, she gave a little assignment that went something like this. What is it that you need to change about yourself?
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And Frankie's answer was, I need to change my attitude because now
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I'm a Christian. Now I belong to Jesus and I need to change some of my attitudes. So it's a it's an interesting and fruitful ministry we have to those kids as well as our own
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MKs. About Bolivia itself, you can pray the political unrest there is growing.
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We are we are all communicating down there now so that we go out at the right time and don't go out at the wrong time and that sort of thing.
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And the reason is there are several reasons. One of them is the government is almost infinite to to deal with the economy, which started to go in the tank when the remember when the
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Argentines had their great problems with inflation and so on. All that slopped over into Bolivia.
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And so a lot of Bolivians that have gone to get good jobs in Argentina are back in Bolivia and there's no work and crime.
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The crime rate is rising and and so on. And Bolivians, even when there is work, you know, the average
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Bolivian farmer makes about 800 bucks a year and and so on.
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Perhaps you read in our newsletter about my experience with Mario, our good friend, who is one of our who is our mechanic, really our head mechanic at Tombo, sharp guy.
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And because he works for us, has one of the best jobs in our valley. But this will give you some insight into how these folks do.
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I went out one day and our house is right down by the maintenance area of Tombo. So we say we live at number three maintenance way, you know.
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And I came out and Mario was there and we to chat a little bit. And I noticed he had on a shirt that said
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Chili's on it right up here, which was one of those waiter shirts. And when you go to Chili's, the guy has that thing.
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I said, oh, Mario, that's that's great Mexican food up in the States. Little expensive, though.
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Mario said, thought about it a second and he said, oh, well, you mean like McDonald's and Santa Cruz.
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I did not have the heart to tell him that people up here go to McDonald's and it's no big deal.
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Don't feel like cooking. Don't feel, you know, laid out of church. Pastor Mike has gone to, you know, that thing.
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So we go on by McDonald's and get something to eat. And and then
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I did the mathematics. OK, a number, you know, a Big Mac meal at McDonald's is
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I don't know what it is here, but it was about three bucks in Santa Cruz when
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McDonald's is there. McDonald's is no longer there. And this is the reason, OK?
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I calculated out that three dollars is half a day's pay for Mario. So when you go into McDonald's and you think you're too poverty stricken to have them supersize it, imagine what it would be if you were making, say, thirty thousand dollars a year up here and it was half a day's pay.
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That would be about 60 bucks. Probably you wouldn't go to McDonald's too often and neither did the
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Bolivians. Many of them. That's one of the problems of the country, a very rich class and a very grindingly poor class also.
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So you can pray about the economic situation in Bolivia, which gives rise to the political situation.
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Part of that is has to do with with our war on drugs. You know, the war on drugs ought to be going on, don't you?
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Right here, up in the United States. How are you going to tell a Bolivian farmer that makes eight hundred bucks a year if he grows potatoes that he could double it and make sixteen, fifteen or sixteen hundred bucks a year if he grew coca?
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And then we tell him, no, you can't do that. That has not gone over real well and gives rise to some of the political unrest in terms of the tribal works that are going on.
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We are now moving into southern Bolivia. There's a large river down there on the Paraguayan -Argentine border called the
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Pico Mayo River, which is hard to say with this. But anyway, some friends went down there just a few weeks ago now and they surveyed villages south of the
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Pico Mayo, which are villages of Simba Guarani people.
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The Simba Guarani were people so fierce that even the Incas could not subdue them and neither could the
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Spaniards. And they're living down there in southern Bolivia and northern Argentina and Paraguay and very, very independent.
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Our guys went across the river, talked to them. We're in these eight villages. Every chief of every village said, you come back.
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We've heard enough of this story that you want to tell us that we want you to come back.
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Problem is, there's nobody to go back, all right? So you can pray that the
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Lord would send laborers into the harvest that can be there for the long haul. Let me tell you,
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Spanish is a piece of cake compared to something like Simba Guarani. It's a language which is exceedingly difficult, like Quechua and some of those others there.
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So you pray about that work in southern Bolivia that we might be able to pursue it as we go.
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We want to thank you for your support of us in prayer and finances and all that, all those ways.
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How many of you are on Pastor Mike's email list? Yeah, I get that every day, too. And it's a great encouragement, buddy.
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Don't stop. And in fact, I've saved a lot of that stuff. I mean, occasionally
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I got to write him and say, Michael, no, no, that's not really true. That's not so.
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But that's a great ministry that he has and a great encouragement to us. So anyway, we're grateful to see you again and we'll stay in touch with you.
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Thanks so much. Well, thank you for that quick update.
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Let's just pray now for Bob and Judy and Todd while they're here. Bob, when will you be going, leaving
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New England? OK, good.
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Let's just bow together, please, if you would. Father in heaven, it is so wonderful and thrilling to be able to come to the throne of grace at a moment's notice and that you're willing and able to hear our petitions.
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And Father, they might be small in our eyes or they might be large. But Father, we know that you give grace and help in time of need and that you want us to come as your children on a day like today,
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Father's Day. We worship you this evening as the great father, the father who gives every good gift, that does everything in perfect timing.
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It is the Lord and King over all. And so we're thankful for Bob and Judy and Todd being here for these short few days.
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Father, we want to say thank you for how you've sustained them for so long in their ministry and even in the last five months.
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Father, we know that you're Lord and King over Bell's Palsy and that you're Lord and King over everything. And we are thankful that you have given sufficient grace, not only to Judy, but also to Bob.
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Father, we're thankful for the doctors there and we're thankful for the doctors here. And it's our desire for our friend and our brother to have his face restored and to have this, in fact, stop.
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And if it's five months in a day or six months, Father, we know that the grace will be there in the future for Bob.
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But we just ask that you'd be pleased, Father, to heal Bob, that you would keep him effective and strengthened for ministry there.
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We've heard some exciting stories about what you're doing in faraway lands, whether it's India or Bolivia or even here.
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And we know that your kingdom is progressing and that you'll not lose one of those that you have chosen in eternity past and that your son has died for.
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We pray for Todd and his ministry in Maine, that you would bless him and give him boldness and he would be a life of living out the gospel and preaching it there.
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And then just give Bob and Judy a traveling mercies and a sweet time together as they go to Wisconsin and see friends and enjoy the goodness that you've given them.
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Father, please be merciful to Bob and to help his face and to help him for ministry in the coming days and months and years as you grant him that.
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We're thankful for what you will do and what you have done. We ask these things for your son's glory.
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Amen. All right. Well, if you have your Bibles, let's turn to Matthew chapter 13 tonight.
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Typically, we go through the Bible verse by verse. New Testament in the morning, Old Testament at night. You'll need a
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Bible tonight. Last week, we pretty much looked at the mission trip to India. For those of you that weren't here last week,
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I spent 17 days in India, in Pune and Nasik and Arundhat and Bombay.
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Praise the Lord, it was only three days in Bombay. I won't probably tell you as many stories tonight.
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Tonight will be a little more biblical, if you will. So you'll need your Bible. But I do want to continue with a theme from last week.
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And that will be just some random or key thoughts that I've learned or rethought about in India.
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Before we go to Matthew 13, there was a very interesting story. Probably the biggest thing
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I would do when I was there teaching pastors is I was trying to teach them that it is the Word of God and then experience.
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And sometimes there, just like here, we switch those around, that it's experience and then it's
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God's truth. And I was trying to get the engine and the caboose in the right order. It is always God's Word and then experiences follow.
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Emotions are good, experiences are good, but they do not determine truth. Truth determines truth and we live in light of that truth.
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And so I was trying to hammer that down in every session, whether it was evangelism, legalism, whatever
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I taught, I was trying to say the Bible has authority and the
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Bible is sufficient. And so exactly what I just said to you, I said to a group of pastors and I said, we are going to be submissive to the
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Word of God. And this particular group was a very Pentecostal group, a very charismatic group.
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We had sweet fellowship and there in this little town of Nasik, whenever you shake hands in this particular group, they would say, praise the
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Lord. Hallelujah. Amen. And so I kind of caught on to that pretty quickly. Even two -year -olds,
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I'd shake their hand and here I am again, this big white guy, you know, and I praise the Lord. Hallelujah.
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Amen. And we just, I got that figured out and it was exciting. And so I'm preaching in this apartment complex basement that was a parking lot.
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And so here's this apartment complex and you drive down and there's pillars everywhere and they've changed it into a church.
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It's the first church I've been in that was actually in a parking lot. And so I'm down there preaching and behind me, there are all these pastors.
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And of course it's Indian. We were all barefooted and there's a variety of people sitting and I don't know if there was maybe 60, 70 people there.
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So I said, we are going to be submissive to the word of God, no matter what. What it teaches, we will do.
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And everybody's praise the Lord. Hallelujah. Amen. We were just had a group together and it was on evangelism.
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So the very end, I started talking about altar calls and I was talking about evangelism.
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And I said, could someone, if we there, if we are underneath the authority of God's word, could someone show me why we do altar calls from the scripture?
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And of course they couldn't find it because it's not in the scripture. And all of a sudden the hallelujah, praise the
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Lord, amen, choir stopped. And the congregation was looking at their pastors because the congregation was used to having altar calls given by their pastors.
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It was very, very interesting. I was sweet about it and I was kind and my job was not to go there and say everything you're doing is wrong, but I was teaching through evangelism and I wanted to challenge the people that no matter what
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Mark Schaefer says, I see your hand, every head bowed, every eye closed, no one looking around.
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I noticed that when you said that today for the hymns, I see your hand, that we want to be captive to God's word.
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And what we do or don't do should be dictated by scripture. And why is this in my message tonight?
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I don't have any idea why it's in my message. It was just a story about India before we start. With the theme, we want to be submissive to God's word and everything.
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Last week we looked at fellowship with other Christians all across the world is sweet. And we also looked at the immensity of the gospel and Christ atonement all around the globe.
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And tonight I want to focus on a few other things. Firstly, the value of the gospel.
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I realized, and you'll see in Matthew chapter 13 in just a moment, how precious the gospel really is.
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What can save India? What could save Bolivia? There are more people in India than every other country except one.
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And you know that one country? China. In the census of 2001, it was 1 ,027 ,000 ,000 people in India.
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And what's their hope? You walk around and you see the 18 million Sikhs, you see the Jainists, you see the
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Buddhists, you see the Muslims, you see all these people. What is the hope for the world? And the hope is the gospel.
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Gandhi and his nonviolence did some things, but that didn't give them ultimate hope, did it?
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Mahatma, by the way, do you know what Mahatma means? It was a name given to Gandhi, Mahatma. It means great soul.
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He was a good man relatively, but that's not the hope of salvation. Let's take a look at what is the hope.
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Look at Matthew chapter 13, verse 44. This is what we really need to do.
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The hope in Bolivia, the hope here in New England, the large Roman Catholic population are the hope in India.
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It's the gospel. And it struck me how precious the gospel really was. Jesus said in Matthew 13, verse 44,
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He said, The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in the field, which a man found and hid.
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And from joy over it, he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.
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This is a parable. And if you're in your children's Sunday school class, what is a parable? Kids, adults, an earthly story with the heavenly meaning.
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And Jesus is trying to teach a point. He was a masterful teacher, the best teacher. And here's an earthly story with the heavenly meaning.
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What would you do back in those days if you had something valuable? Take it down to Wells Fargo? No, most rabbis said you do three things with it.
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You'd hide some, you'd keep some on your person, and then you would invest some of the other money.
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And here, this kingdom of heaven, this glorious character of the kingdom that you're brought into by salvation is worth every sacrifice.
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It's like walking around trying to find this hidden treasure in the field. And actually, you do.
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Jesus knew what these people did. And what would they do? They would hide money or valuable treasure in the ground.
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And do you think you would hide it in the ground underneath your home or someplace else? Most of the time, someplace else.
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Why? Because the marauders and the bandits and the thieves, they would know, oh, you know, it's under the guy's pillow.
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I'm not saying they had a pillow, but you wouldn't hide it in your house. You'd go out into a field. That's exactly what they would do here. There's only one safe location for valuables, the rabbis would say, and that was in the ground.
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Robbers and wars and revolutions. So what are you going to do? And just imagine if the owner was killed.
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And here, once in a lifetime, once in a thousand lifetimes, Jesus is saying, entrance into the kingdom.
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Salvation is like this treasure that was hidden. Can you imagine the man's digging in the field and hit something hard?
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And what is that? And what does he do? He sells all that he has. You say, oh, he's kind of tricky.
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He's ungodly. He's not going to tell anyone. Well, Jesus isn't trying to make all these points exactly line up.
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Although rabbinic law said that if a worker found a treasure in the field and took it out, it would belong to his master.
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But if you did not remove the treasure and you bought the field, you would obviously own it. D .A.
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Carson said, so the parable deals with neither the legality nor the morality of the situation, but with the value of the treasure, which is worth every sacrifice.
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He's not talking about is it right or wrong to sell something and be conniving. He's talking about it's worth everything.
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Any good teacher in those days is going to teach two things. And if you look at verse 45 and 46, he's talking about this precious treasure.
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Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking fine pearls. And upon finding one pearl of great value, what did he do?
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He went and sold all that he had and bought it. The object of my desire, no matter what,
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I want that. He's not talking about buying the kingdom of heaven. He's talking about no matter what the sacrifice is,
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I have to have that precious, valuable commodity. Now, they didn't have oyster farms back in those days.
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Matter of fact, some people would go to the country of India to find these pearls.
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Cleopatra's two famous pearls were valued at $400 ,000 even in the 1800s.
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Some would go to the Red Sea. They didn't have very good pearls there. The Persian Gulf had the best. They'd go to India and they wanted to find these pearls.
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And here this merchant, he's in the business and he finds the one, this one pearl.
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He's going to be unrestrained in his response to get it. When I was looking at India, I thought the only hope of the nation, the only hope for New England, the only hope for any country is this precious commodity, the gospel.
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That's why it so blows my mind when people say, as long as they acknowledge
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God as creator and worship Him, they don't really have to believe in Jesus. Jesus' death will pay for their salvation and they'll be saved even though they didn't know it was
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Jesus doing that. I'm just appalled by that. Dr. Roskup said, the difference in emphasis between the two parables is this.
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The man stumbles unexpectedly under the treasure without specifically having sought it. But with the pearl, the man was specifically searching and found it.
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It's worth every sacrifice. This is the precious gospel. This is eternal life. There's no other hope. Let's turn our
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Bibles to James chapter 1 and let me give you another comment. Last week, it was pretty much all stories about India.
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Today, I want to go to a few more texts in the time we have left. Something else that struck me about India is that I was reminded in this country, although it is so big, some people call
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India not a country, they call it a continent. It's a subcontinent, if you will, but it's so big.
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How many different states, Sunita? Twenty -nine? Twenty -six?
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Well, we better change the photos, the fortress thing that I looked at. I think it said twenty -nine, but maybe I looked at the nine upside down or maybe there's been civil war since you've left.
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I'm not sure. Twenty -six states, twenty -nine states. And what I noticed about this huge continent, the subcontinent, is that there are secular
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Hindus and secular Christians there just like there are here. I thought there are non -lordship
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Hindus. What do I mean by that? People that will just throw their god kind of a gumball once in a while, forget all the rules and regulations except a couple times per year and hope that appeases their great god, gods or goddesses.
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And then when I look at someone else and say, how could they do that? I always have to look at myself. And if you'll look at James chapter 1 verse 22 and following,
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I kept thinking about American Christianity. I had time and time again opportunities to tell people, the things you see on TV about America, that's not
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America. First of all, all the Hollywood stars and everything else, that's not really an average person, at least not in New England, at least not in West Boylston.
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We don't have the Brad Pitt's walking around and Jennifer Aniston's or whoever she might be.
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Those are kind of celebrities. And I said, it's the same thing with Christianity.
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All that stuff you see on TV with the big crusades and the healing ministries and all these things, I said, that's not really mainstream
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Christianity either in America. I said, do you think
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America is a Christian nation? And most of my friends in India that I met, not the pastors, but just the other lay people said, yes, it's a
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Christian nation. I have a question for you. Is this a Christian nation? Maybe we have vestiges of Christianity and a worldview of Christianity, but I thought just like the
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Hindu that will pay homage to Ganesh for 10 days and worship him.
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Remember Ganesh? That's the God with the elephant head and kind of sometimes it's a human kind of Buddha body and sometimes it's kind of a rat's body.
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Try to say Buddha body quite a few times fast. And then they worship him for 10 days.
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And then at the end of 10 days, the one I told you about last week, they drowned him. That's like Christians these days, paying lip service to God.
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I said, America is not a Christian nation. Before we look at the passage,
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I thought this was very insightful by Chuck Swindoll. Imagine if you will, that you work for a company whose president found it necessary to travel out of the country and spend an extended period of time abroad.
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So he says to you and the other trusted employees, look, I'm going to leave. And while I'm gone,
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I want you to pay close attention to the business. You manage things while I'm away. I will write to you regularly.
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When I do, I will instruct you in what you should do from now until I return from this trip. During that time, he writes often, communicating his desires and concerns.
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Finally, he returns. He walks up to the front door of the company and immediately discovers everything is in a mess.
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Weeds flourishing in the flower beds, windows broken across the front of the building. The gal at the front desk is dozing, loud music roaring from several offices.
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Two or three people engaged in horseplay in the back of the room. Instead of making a profit, the business has suffered a great loss.
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Without hesitation, he calls everyone together and with a frown asks, what happened? Didn't you get my letters?
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I can just see Chuck Swindoll laugh as he says it. You say, oh yeah, sure. We got all your letters.
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We even bound them in a book. And some of us have memorized them. In fact, we have letter study every
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Sunday. You know, those are really great letters. I think the president would then ask, but what did you do about my instructions?
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And no doubt the employees would respond, do? Well, nothing. But we read every one.
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That's exactly what James talks about. Look at James 1 .22. I don't care if you're in India and say you're one of the 1 % of the
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Christians there, or you're in America and you say you're 80 % of the Christians. James challenges that very thing.
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It is a good thing to have your faith challenged. Because if you really do have faith, it'll stand the test.
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James 1 .22 says, but prove yourselves doers of the word and not merely hearers who delude themselves.
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Prove it. Prove that you're a Christian by doing what the Bible says. This is describing a characteristic behavior, not just an occasional thing.
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It's one thing to fight. It's another thing to be a soldier. And that's what
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I love about God's Word. It has imperatives. Do you ever read a cookbook?
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I love looking at the cookbook pages. To me, for whatever this was worth, I don't like cookbooks without pictures.
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I like cookbooks with pictures. But I've never read a cookbook that says, I command you to make these chocolate chip cookies.
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Have you ever read one like that? I mean, some of the pictures are commanding me in a sense and enticing me.
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I think my favorite cookbook is the one that you have with the Toll House cookies. And there's a picture there, but I think there's some grease stains of cookies that I probably put on there throughout the years.
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You read literature. It is not commanding you. It is not begging you. It is not ordering you to do it.
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But hear God's Word. It's not like a science book. It's a trumpet that you must obey. It's like the pastor who preached a great message.
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And the guy said, oh, pastor, that was an awesome message. And the pastor looked at him and said, so what are you going to do about it?
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People hate high pressure salespeople. That's why people buy Saturns. The car, no salespeople.
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And here, talk about high pressure. It's God's Word. The stakes are eternal. You must obey.
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People call themselves Christians and they don't obey. I was called in India to preach at Olam Methodist Church.
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And it was on East, let's see, East Street in Pune. And they said, pastor, we'd like you to go and preach.
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But I want you to know that most people there aren't saved. I said, well,
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I can go preach. But what do you mean most people aren't saved? Well, we've got a lot of property. And there's about 100 people that come, later services.
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That's a different ethnic background group. And about a thousand people come. And I thought, what are these people doing? So I just preached the gospel when
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I went there for my message. But if you look at James 1 .22, it says, don't merely listen to God's Word and deceive yourselves.
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That word here is the word for what? Auditing. We don't audit God's Word. Show me someone who says,
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I have God's Word. And I obey it when I want. I disobey it when I want. I don't have to hand in the paperwork.
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I don't have to do anything. I'll show you someone who should not call themselves a Christian. This is who delude themselves.
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This is a horrible error. It's a miscalculation. That word delude means to cheat or to deceive by false reasoning.
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Can you fill in the blank from this verse? 2 Corinthians 13, verse 5. Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith.
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Test yourselves. Luke 11 .27, as Jesus was saying these things, a woman in the crowd called out, blessed is the mother who gave you birth and nursed you.
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Jesus replied, remember what he said? Blessed rather are those who hear the Word of God and obey it.
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And I thought in India, just like America, they're using Christianity as a crutch. It's religious make -believe.
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Look at verse 23. For if anyone is a hearer of the Word and not a doer, he's like a man who looks at his natural face in the mirror.
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Great illustration. You can almost see James teaching like Jesus. Just great illustrations.
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He's like this man who looks at his face in the mirror. Verse 24. For once he has looked at himself and gone away, he's immediately forgotten what kind of person he was.
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Now, it doesn't really say this, but you can imagine yourself getting up in the morning, looking at yourself in the mirror, and we'll use men instead of ladies, unshaven, hair's all in a mess, you don't have a hairdo going on, you've got a scaredo going on.
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And you just look at yourself, you're getting ready for church, and then you just walk right out. I guess for some, scaredos would be a positive thing because they don't have any hair at all.
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And so I better be careful what I'm doing here. He looks, he goes away, never returns for a second look, doesn't care, out of sight, out of mind.
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That's how so many people treat the gospel. Verse 25. But the one who looks intently, like John stooping down to look at the tomb, the law of liberty and abides by it, not having become a forgetful here, but an effectual doer, this man should be blessed in what he does.
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It is easy to be deceived with Christianity. One percent of all the
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Indians, one percent of a billion, how many is that? Ten million. How about in America?
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How about our church? Let's say we have 200 people on a Sunday. You think we're all
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Christians? The only ones that should be able to say, yes, I am a Christian, are the ones who are trying to live by what
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God says, by His grace. It's easy to be deceived. Turn to 1 Corinthians 6, verse 9.
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What's the kid's song? I mean, sometimes the kid's theology songs are bad, but sometimes they're incredibly good. And I love that kid's song.
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If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands. If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands. If you're happy and you know it, and you're not afraid to show it.
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That one? What about the one when you're a Christian? If you're a Christian and you know it, then your life will surely show it.
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Beloved, there's no good in saying, I'm a Christian, I'm a Christian, and then really not being. Not on judgment day at least.
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Look at how easy it is to be deceived. 1 Corinthians 6, verse 9. What an amazing passage. I should have preached probably this verse in Oldman Methodist Church.
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Or do you not know that the unrighteous, it's a state. Of course, nobody can be practically perfect.
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In Christ, we're perfect, of course. But the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God. And what does he say?
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Don't be deceived. Why? Because you will want to be deceived. You will have a friend or a relative or a family member that you want in the kingdom so badly, you'll lower the standards to get them in.
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It's like Jessica Hahn. Remember her? The former church secretary who committed immoral acts with Jim Baker.
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She was asked why she did the Playboy magazine, Topless Pictures.
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And she said, God gave me, quote, real peace, end quote. We used to be fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, effeminate, homosexual thieves, covetous drunkards, revilers, swindlers.
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But something happened. Verse 11. And such were some of you. That's what you used to be.
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But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and of the Spirit of our
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God. That's why I'm sold out for India is training pastors there and trying to support the people there because I want them to preach this gospel that when
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God saves you, your life is changed. Your life isn't perfect, but you're changed. Charles Spurgeon said, if the professed convert distinctly and deliberately declares that he knows the
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Lord's will, but does not mean to attend to it, you are not to pamper his presumption, but it is your duty to assure him that he is not saved.
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I had a great idea. If there are 10 million Christians in India, why don't we forget, not because we're going to be mean to them, but all the
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Buddhists and all the Jainists and all the Hindus and the Sikhs, that's a mission field too.
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And if you want to go there, then I want to help train you to go. But what about the professing Christians? What a great field for evangelism.
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A Hebrew proverb said, when a rogue kisses you, count your teeth.
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A German proverb says, when the fox preaches, look to your geese. Abraham Lincoln said, you can fool some of the people all the time and all the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.
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And the Chinese proverb said, you fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. There's a way that seems right to the man, but the way of its end is death.
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Let's turn to Matthew chapter 28, and I think we'll probably run out of time here. I want to give you a charge to evangelize, whether it's in India, Bolivia, or right here.
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I want you to know that if you're a Christian, you are a missionary. One man said you're either a missionary or you're an imposter.
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We don't have to go to India to preach the gospel. You can preach right where you are. And I want to encourage you in this last passage to preach the gospel wherever you might be.
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And I want you to start looking at people as objects of the gospel.
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I like what Dave said today in Sunday school, scoping them out. That you look at someone and you just see someone who needs to be an object of God's grace.
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Matthew chapter 28, verse 16. You know this passage very well, but it's encouraging to me because I'm kind of a schmuck.
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And I'm kind of, you know, I'm no C .T.
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Studd. I'm no John Knox. I'm no
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Boxer Rebellion champ. I'm not Charles Spurgeon. And you're not either.
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So what are you going to do? Well, this passage can help the weakest person as we try to be missionaries for the gospel.
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Matthew 28, verse 16. But the 11 disciples proceeded to Galilee, to the mountain which Jesus had designated.
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And when they saw him, they worshipped him, but some were doubtful. Worship means to just get down on your face in homage.
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They weren't doubtful for long though. And then here, look at this great passage that you know.
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And Jesus came up and spoke to them saying, all authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth.
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Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I've commanded you.
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And lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. Let me give you three quick truths with this passage to help you with your missionary work.
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Three quick truths. Number one, your authority to preach the gospel is derived from Christ Jesus.
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Jesus has the authority. You're his ambassadors. Have you ever had this happen to you?
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I try to tell someone Jesus Christ is the only God. He's the Redeemer. He's the only one that can forgive sins. And they look at me and they say this, either on the internet or in person.
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How dare you? Who are you? Get off of my what?
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Case. Get off my cloud. Since we talked about legalism and liberty this morning, we have liberty to even quote a song from the 60s.
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Who are you? Well, the Lord has authority and he has delegated that to us.
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Authority comes from the word dunamis. Official right or power. And look at Christ's authority, the breadth there.
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All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. It's been given.
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It's been conferred to Christ. No borders. He's healed all diseases and sicknesses.
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Cleansed lepers. Cast out demons. Raised the dead. And now he has all authority on heaven and earth.
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It's amazing. Hendrickson said, why did Jesus say this?
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So that when he now commissions his apostles to proclaim the gospel throughout the world, they may know that moment by moment, day by day, they can lean on him and his authority.
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Secondly, look at verses 19 and 20. Here's your responsibility and what you should do, your accountability in being a missionary.
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Now, how many sermons have you preached on the four components of missionary work? What are the four components in a typical sermon on missionary work?
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Anyone? Go, baptize, teach, make disciples.
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Well, there's one key verb here and it's not go. Your English text says go in verse 19, but it's really going.
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What are we to do as missionaries? We are to make disciples by going, by teaching, by baptizing.
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We are to go make learners. We are to go make followers of Christ by going.
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Think about the Old Testament for a second. Think like a Jew. If you were someone who needed to get saved in the
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Old Testament, what would you do? You live far away from Jerusalem, what would you be told to do? Most likely, go to Jerusalem, go to the temple.
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Now the things switched around. That's why Jonah had a conniption fit. Go to Nineveh?
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Wait a second. Those Ninevites should be coming to Jerusalem. That would make things a lot better. By the way,
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I think I probably would have done what Jonah would have done because in Nineveh, for the people that they didn't like, they would fillet them alive and put their skin on the wall when you would go into the city.
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That reminds me of the Scottish covenanters when they would stand up against Rome and they would take the heads of the men and cut them off and stand them right up high in the port city.
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So then you would come into port, you'd see the heads of people. Then the one young man saw his father's head up there, snow on his face, over and over thinking, my dad has died for the gospel.
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Here we're supposed to go. You can go to India, you can go to Bolivia, or you can go next door if you want. Also, there's baptizing.
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Certainly here not salvific or somehow saving, but baptism means to dunk, it means to dip, it means to immerse into.
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And then the big component there, teaching, teaching what? To observe all that I have commanded you.
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He teaches the disciples, the disciples teach the next ones, and the next ones teach the next ones. It's just like second Timothy, chapter two, verse two.
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What are we to teach? All his commands, all his discourses, all his parables, all his sayings, all his apostolic messengers and their letters to preach the gospel.
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This is like a three day message combined here into five minutes. But listen to this quote by George Matheson.
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If I were to live, I would preach substitution more than I've ever done.
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On your deathbed, what do you wish you would have preached more? Substitution or to teach that and everything else.
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And here he says, go therefore and make disciples of what? All nations. Bob, you'll think this is interesting.
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Ninety seven percent of the world has heard of Coca -Cola. Do they have Coca -Cola in Bolivia? They have Coca -Cola in India, but they have something they like better.
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Pepsi. Pepsi's everywhere. And they also have thumbs up. Thumbs up is kind of like Sam's, you know, some kind of cheaper version.
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Right, Sunita? Seventy two percent of the world has seen a can of Coca -Cola.
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Fifty one percent of the world has tasted a can of Coca -Cola. Coca -Cola has been around for one hundred years.
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That is pretty good market penetration to use those terminologies. And Bill McGibbon said 72 percent of Americans don't know their next door neighbors.
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Go make disciples of all nation. This book almost starts like it ends. Go to Matthew chapter one, verse one.
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And we'll wrap this up here quickly. But look at Matthew one, one. The themes introduced in the first verse and it flows all the way to the very end.
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The blessings promised through Abraham that he would be a God of Abraham and all the nations are coming to fruition in Christ as we go out and preach the gospel to all nations.
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Matthew one, one. The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Starts like it ends.
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All the nations. As Bob was talking about the heart language,
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I just kept thinking about, I wonder if somebody in our church would desire to learn that language and go down to this warrior tribe and preach the gospel.
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And then lastly, let's go to Matthew 28, 20. And this is the one that I wanted to really preach about, but we're pretty much out of time.
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We have assurance in being a missionary. Look at Matthew 28, verse 20. We have hope.
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We don't have to go it on our own. Look at Matthew 28, 20.
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It's your turning there. Eric Sauer said if you wish to be disappointed, look to others. If you wish to be downhearted, look to yourself.
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If you wish to be encouraged, look upon Christ Jesus. That's exactly what we get to do here, to be encouraged.
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Jesus said earlier, apart from Me, you can do nothing. And now He says, I'm going to send you to go preach, even though I am with you, always, even to the end of the age.
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For you Greek students, I am present tense. I'm always with you. Continually with you. All the time. It's also emphatic.
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In an emphatic position. I am with you. No less than I Myself, Jesus says. He's going to be with you.
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Literally, it says all the days. It's not going to say always, but it's literally all the days.
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Day in and day out. Remember Jeremiah 1, but the
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Lord said to me, Do not stay out of My youth, because everywhere I send you, you shall go. And although I command you, you shall keep.
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Do not be afraid of me, for I am with you to deliver you, declares the Lord. Then the Lord stretched out
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His hand and touched my mouth, and the Lord said to me, Behold, I have put My words in your mouth. Tell me what this means.
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Emmanuel. God is with us. That's exactly right. A .T.
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Robertson said, this blessed hope is not designated as a sedative to an inactive mind and a complacent conscience, but as an incentive.
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Did you get that? I'm with you always. Jesus is with me as a sedative. But as an incentive to the fullest endeavor to press on to the fullest limits of the world that all the nations may know
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Christ and the power of His risen life. So gospel of Matthew closes in the blaze of glory.
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I was driving down the street yesterday and I said, God, what do you want me to do with my life? God, I'm willing...
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Actually, I don't know if I can possibly repeat. I said, Lord, I'll go anywhere.
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I just want to be your servant. I know I'm weak in so many areas, but if it's here, I'll stay here. If it's somewhere else, just use me.
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It was one of those kind of things because I wasn't saying, I've got to get away from this church or anything like that because these are marked or built against me and stuff like that.
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I wasn't saying that, but I was just like, I was just trying to be... You are the begotten God. I'm ready to go.
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And then I said, but I don't think I want to go anywhere. Because this is part of me. And I thought, that just shows you what my faith is like.
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It just shows you what I think about other people. That just shows you what I value in terms of my creature comforts.
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Everything is exaggerated with your kids and everything I'm thinking. And I'm cringing, I'm proclaiming, but look at the loss.
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And then I said, it's worse than me because my kids need me. But then I said, this is a good thing. I don't know intellectually, yes
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Lord, I'll go anywhere. But this God in those public churches that we don't like to talk about, we say, yeah, but God, I kind of like my life the way it is.
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I'm not too sure. I haven't kind of done my little plan. I've got my five year plan, my ten year plan.
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It reminds me of dating. I think Doug Wilson is right. Girls should live their life instead of going to be single.
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If you're a single girl and you can live your life and if you want to go to college and you want to learn and study and get the credit and all these things and get a job, you should do that.
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The parents should teach you this. You should wait for a young man to come along and break all those patterns.
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And for you to say, I love this man so much, I'm willing not to go to school, to go follow you to the mission field,
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I'll wear him. But in my heart, I just love the way things are.
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And I thought, if I think that way, don't you think that way? I'm just going to spend my two years and I'm going to get my degree and I'm going to get married and all those things.
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I'm thinking, life could be over pretty fast. I want my knowledge and my intellectual knowledge of the divinity of God and believing in God and knowing
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God will, you know, I want to be right where God wants me to match my heart and my heart is deep in prayer and I'm thinking,
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I don't know. I'm back to Bombay and the first day, I said to myself, how can
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I get out of this place? I can't. What am I doing? I can't do this.
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I can't do this. I was tired. I guess it was congested. It was very bad. I have not read any
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Christians yet. They don't have these people that say, God, I have a heart for China. God, I have a heart for the
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Chinese. I am Chinese. God, I want to be God. I'm going to go preach the gospel to these warriors.
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And there was others that were saying, well, I'm doing good things and I'm ministering here.
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Let's send some guys who are warriors who have a wife and he doesn't have a wife and he doesn't have kids and they don't have to be monitored.
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That's the way to do it. That's the way I think. So what does
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God want us to say? God, here is ourselves, here is our children, here is our church, and we have to do something for the kingdom.
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I don't know about you, but I have a hard time saying that for me. I mean, theologically, you have to say, okay, you know,
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I'm from India. I'm a Christian. I'm from Europe. I'm from India.
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It doesn't seem that and they all just say, I don't know what to say. This is my
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God. I'm giving you ideas that are more linear. This is what God wants.
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I'm telling you, no, no, no, God doesn't want me to be one. It's weird. Maybe that's my job though, but maybe it is my job to find the people, the equipment, and the parts you build.
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Maybe that's my job to build your parts, everything.
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The fact that you've given us so much equipment, you've taught everything, and I could not have done that for 20 years.
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Now we have had such a hard time. We have suffered so much.
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Increasingly, we have pleasures and comforts. We have had a lot of problems with it.
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But you've given us so much equipment. You've given us skills. You've given us a job. Now there's going to be better jobs in the future.