Pillar 8, Missions, Acts 17:22-31

Acts chapter 17, starting in verse 22, hear the word of the Lord. So Paul, standing in the midst of the

Arapagus, said, Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious.

For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription to the unknown

God. What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, being

Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.

And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek

God in the hope that they might feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, for in him we live and move and have our being, as even some of your own poets have said, for we are indeed his offspring.

Being then God's offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man.

The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent because he has fixed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed.

And of this, he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead. Now, when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked, but others said, we will hear you again about this.

So Paul went out from their midst, but some men joined him and believed, among whom also were

Dionysius the Aropagite and a woman named Damaris and others with them. May the

Lord add his blessings to the reading of his holy word. Mary graduated from Fuller Seminary's School of Missions.

Now, after following her to Singapore, I thought that she should have some experience in some real cross -cultural missions.

And so we ended up choosing to go to Ethiopia in 1993. At that time,

Ethiopia had soon come out, had just recently come out of a repressive communist regime called the Dirge. And because of that, it was so repressive.

The Ethiopian church had not had many opportunities, if at all, any opportunities to develop their own leadership, their own doctrine.

I don't think they could have Bible colleges during the Dirge, could they? No. So they had need then.

And we didn't want to go to some place and go to many places. You're kind of displacing a local leadership.

But we didn't want to do that. So there in Ethiopia, there was a there was need for people who were already educated and we could help raise up a new generation.

And here's a new generation right here. And we met Tesfai in Dila, Ethiopia, which is in the south, in the southern

Ethiopia. And Tesfai impressed us immediately as a particularly earnest and serious student. And we stayed in touch even before the days of social media.

Mary is still doing missions at this time, though not crossing cultures in Ethiopia, but in the

United States, which to her is just as much a mission field. You realize that, don't you? I mean, to her,

Ethiopia, United States, it's all kind of the same. It's all mission field to her.

And many American churches are used to missionaries coming through the churches, you know, periodically used to be the old days.

They show slides. I guess now they have PowerPoint showing slides about their mission field.

These are the natives in our mission field. Now, understand that you, you are the natives and this is the mission field.

And some of us, you'll go back to Singapore and should be telling people about you. You're the one being talked about. And we still want to be supporting missions to Ethiopians.

And so we support Tesfai. Missions is evangelism across cultures, strengthening churches across cultures.

It's making disciples of Jesus, obeying the Great Commission. Go and make disciples of all nations.

The word nations, ethnic, all ethnic groups, other cultures. And so that means sometimes you have to cross cultural divides to different kinds of people.

And here in this passage, in Acts chapter 17, we see missions in practice. We see Paul doing that, crossing a cultural divide.

And we see three keys to doing that, crossing that cultural divide to do missions. First, the connection.

Second, the content. And third, the controversy. First, there's the connection.

The Apostle Paul, think about who he is. He's a Jew. He's a Jewish man. He called himself a

Hebrew of the Hebrews and Philippians. Otherwise, he's saying, I'm really Jewish. I'm thoroughly Jewish.

I was raised that way. I was in that environment. This is what I'm used to. As he's going out spreading the gospel, then he first goes and targets

Jews. He goes to the synagogues, speaks to the people there. But he wouldn't stop there. If he's just reaching his fellow

Jews, that would be just plain evangelism. But it says in verse 17, he went to the marketplace in Athens.

Others would be mostly Gentile people. In his point of view, these would be pagans. And this is missions.

This is crossing cultural barriers. So he went to all kinds of people. And we see here that he understood that the way you reach one kind of people is different than the way you reach another.

You look at his speeches and acts when he's speaking to Jewish people. I'll be quoting often the Old Testament and speaking about Jewish issues when he's speaking here.

Very different. In verse 26, he says, God made every nation of mankind.

God made Ethiopians and Chinese and Indonesians and Americans. And yet, even though there is a great diversity of peoples and cultures, there's only one

God who made them all from one man. So all ethnic groups have one source.

And all of us being gods, he calls them here God's offspring. People are part of people are part of groups of ethnicities, of cultures.

And if you're going to reach them, you need to understand how to cross cultures and make connections.

That's connections. And that requires commitment. You have to do your homework.

In other words, do you notice here how much commitment? Think about how much commitment it must have taken for Paul to make the effort to evangelize these people.

Because these aren't his kind of people. First, he has to be willing to break out of his comfort zone just to go there, just to go to Athens.

You know, he could have stayed in Antioch, could have stayed in Jerusalem. Well, they might have killed him in Jerusalem, but you understand.

But then he had to learn something about these people. And many of them don't think well of him at first.

In verse 18, they call him a babbler. So it's not as though, you know, he's out there by popular demand because they loved him.

Many of them weren't even interested in the truth. But as Luke describes in verse 21, they're just interested in just hearing new ideas.

They weren't there. They were there. They were there for the entertainment. They were there looking to learn what's true.

They were looking just to be entertained the time filled with hearing something new. It's sort of like some of the guys, maybe all of the guys come here later this evening, afternoon.

They come for the basketball. We're not in it should be under any delusions or they're actually coming here to hear the preaching of the word.

No, they're basically here the basketball. Now, Paul could have thought, well, these people that aren't worth the trouble.

I mean, they're calling me a babbler. They don't really care about the truth. They're so pagan. They eat pork all the time and they sacrifice to gods and bow to idols.

They don't care. And if Paul decided on what to do by what was most comfortable, what was most convenient to him.

Well, he would have stayed with the synagogues, wouldn't he? Stayed with his Jewish people. He was a Jew. He's comfortable with the

Old Testament. He's able to read it in Hebrew. He's familiar with that environment. He eats their same food. Those are his kind of people.

But he's a missionary. And so he's willing to go far outside his comfort zone. And so speak

Greek to the philosophers. And he does it all. You know, he does it all on their own ground. He doesn't say, well, if they come to me,

I'll talk to him about it. He goes to them. Notice the beginning of verse 22. He's standing in the midst of the

Arapagus. It was just a forum, a place for philosophers, sort of like a university for philosophers.

And he'd talk about their topics. He went to them. He didn't expect the pagan philosophers to come to him.

He didn't expect them to learn the Old Testament first and to be interested in his issues. He went to them.

He listened to them. We can see evidence of that here. And then he then he was able to communicate with them.

In verse 18, he was debating with the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers. He was able to hold his own with them.

He understood their philosophy. He was able to answer their questions. He could show that he had ideas worth listening to.

He had to study them. Now, in this speech, he quotes two of their poets. Think of that.

How did he know what their poets had said? Likely, he attended their plays, their drama, and he paid attention to what they were saying.

He's listening carefully, studying them. And that required that that is required for missions, for apologetics, giving an answer to the objections, the philosophies of the world.

But you got to learn what those objections are, what the world is saying. You got to listen to them. It's required for making disciples and teaching people from all nations.

You know, we have two errors today in the church regarding missions. Well, there's the error of the liberal and then there's the error of the fundamentalist.

The liberal studies the philosophy of the world. And gets converted to it, ends up believing it.

Liberal theology basically is just basically is just Western philosophy.

Whatever fad of Western philosophy happens to fall into at the moment. It's basically Western philosophy dressed up as Christian theology.

They may use some Christian biblical terms, but the content of their ideas is basically philosophy.

It's Western philosophy. Less than a century ago, Pearl Buck was the daughter of missionaries, American missionaries to China.

And she studied Chinese culture and philosophy and all that and was essentially converted to it.

She was converted away from Christianity to become. I don't want you to call her. I'm calling her

Confucian would be too much, I think. But basically, to believe like Chinese people believe. She ended up arguing that we don't need

Christian missions anymore because she didn't believe in what they were saying. On the other hand, we have the fundamentalist.

That's the first was the error of the liberal. They're converted to the philosophy that they supposed to be studying.

The other hand is the error of the fundamentalist who think, well, you don't need to study anything about the world. You don't you don't need to debate.

You don't need to dialogue. You don't need to discuss. You don't need to read their books. You don't need to understand their ideas. Certainly you don't learn from them.

We just they think we just preach at them in the worst sense of the word.

We berate them with scripture and we hope as we're berating them with scripture that they'll drop their ideas and accept ours.

In my opinion, some of the missionaries to Ethiopia didn't bother to study and understand the culture there.

Some of them, not all of them. So there's some good ones, but some came in kind of like a wrecking ball crashing into issues.

They really didn't take the time to bother to understand very well, like polygamy. That's why

I think my opinion, the Lord in his sovereignty, use the Italians to move those missionaries out for a time.

I think to let the Ethiopian church grow without their impact. The Ethiopian Evangelical Church grew a lot when the missionaries were kicked out by the

Italians who had invaded shortly before World War Two. So it's best to learn first about the culture you're you're trying to reach and then partner with leaders from that culture because they already know the culture.

They know it thoroughly. They know it from their mother's milk, like testify. They already understand it.

Don't be a liberal who isn't grounded in scripture. He's just basically worldly. He was who has been one to the philosophy that he studies.

And don't be a fundamentalist who doesn't bother to study, to understand, to dialogue. And Paul here, he did neither.

Right. He studied them. He was able to dialogue with him. He understood them. He was able to communicate with them in terms that they understood that addressed their issues.

He was able to use their philosophy and their poets to win them to Christ.

Here in Acts chapter 17, we see that it is right to go out of the church and seek to be relevant.

And to speak in the terms of the world understands issues that they understand. Here, Paul uses a hook first to catch their attention.

You know, you have this altar to an unknown God. That's something in their culture. He'd gone been going around the city, saying things the way they live.

There's an altar to an unknown God. And he refers to that makes this reference to their religion.

It's a way of building a bridge to their culture so that the gospel would be would be better understood.

You've been preaching this unknown God. Well, let me tell you about him. Everything that he says shows that he thoroughly understood the people he was speaking to, that he had taken the time, the effort to learn who they are, the way that how they think.

He begins with what they have in common as the connections. You begin with what you have in common.

Many of the philosophers, these philosophers would have believed in a creator kind of unlike the sort of the common people in their pagan temples.

These philosophers, they would have believed there's a creator, God, the first source.

And so he so because they have that in common, he makes a connection. He begins talking about the creator in verse 24.

These philosophers probably would also have been critical of the superstitious idolatry of the common people, this superstitious idolatry, the things that the true

God can be confined in temples. And he needs people to sustain him.

He needs to be fed by the sacrifices people provide to him. Like in Chinese traditional religion, the kitchen

God that needs to be fed or your ancestors that need to be given hell money to be sustained. The philosophers would have looked down on all that.

And Paul basically says, yeah, we agree on that. We, too, don't believe in a

God who needs us to keep him with cash and with food. So he reached into their culture as pagan as it was.

It is condemn it all. You know, you're all wrong. He found the points that they were right about and he reached into it, look for points of contact, and then he makes a connection.

He was carrying on the mission of Jesus to make disciples of all nations. He was crossing that culture gap.

A biblical church supports mission missions. A biblical church is a church for others, first, first, first for God, the glory of God, and then for different people, people different from us, because it is for others.

It knows it's worth taking the time and the effort to learn how they think of their customs, how to make connections, how to do to interact with them on their own terms in order to share the gospel with them, to not be offensive because you just do something the wrong way.

You think is you think is normal. I didn't Ethiopia. You try to shake hands with both hands or at least hold your forearm.

Right. And in Chinese culture, you hold your hand, somebody, a piece of paper with both hands. I'll just like that.

You do little things like that. You thought it through. But in their culture, that's offensive. And you need to take the time to find out what those those things are.

You have to say with your life that the gospel is worth sacrificing. What is comfortable to me?

If you want to reach, say, kids here, you've got to offer them something they they want.

You don't just expect them to come quietly to church and sit and listen to our long winter sermons. That doesn't work.

You've got to be willing to maybe drive a vehicle, pick them up and to sit here and watch them play sometimes for hours on end.

You've got to make connections to bring the good news. We need to be able to make connections.

And we need to know the content, the content of the gospel.

Look at the content of his message here. Paul's message. He begins with God, the creator. He's not confined to religion.

He's not appeased by sacrifices. He doesn't need us to feed him, to keep us, keep him alive.

He's not preaching just what they thought in verse 18. You know, they thought he's just preaching another.

They call it they call a foreign divinity, another local god of another different ethnic group.

And maybe that's probably what they gathered for. Let's hear what this strange guy has to say about this other local myth way out there.

A small local god for one particular nation, for one particular culture. He's not preaching that.

And he makes that absolutely clear. I'm not talking about that kind of local cultural god. He's preaching the one supreme being that their

Plato had spoken about, the prime mover that their Aristotle had tried to describe.

He says that he is the lord of heaven and earth, the whole earth, including you here in Athens.

Then there's us, there's God, there's us, his creatures. We are one human family created by God, but created in different groups, nations and cultures determined by God.

God is both the one God for all people. And in verse 26,

God determines for nations, he says, their borders for allotted periods, their rise and fall.

He creates ethnic groups and cultures. So we're both one and diverse.

And both of those things are good and acceptable. Nations don't make God. They may make their own gods.

There's a false gods if they're made by a nation for a nation. Nations don't make God. God makes nations.

There's one creator and one created people. The actual content of the gospel, then think about this in our culture, the actual content of the gospel.

Even his most basic form here delivered to a bunch of pagans, it does not allow for racism.

It doesn't allow for this is a church for our kind of people. If you want to go, you want to go worship, go find one for your kind of people.

It doesn't allow for segregation, any of that. We so often want to divide humanity up into races, to nations and forget the basic unity of all people created from one man by one

God with one need. That God, he says, has put within us a conscience that testifies to him, testifies that the

God is real, that he exists. And so he says in verse twenty seven that there was there was a hope. Maybe I'm not sure how they should be translated.

This is the possibility. The people would feel their way, feel is like groping like a blind person, groping around in the dark, feel their way toward him and find him.

Otherwise, there's nothing outside of people that keeps people from finding God. God's not keeping them away.

He's not withholding the truth from them anymore. Of course, they don't find him, do they? It's because they don't look for him.

Anyway, he is near to us. And just here, when some of them would have a problem in their philosophy, when he says he's near to us and some of them would have thought in their

Greek philosophy. Well, yeah, there's a creator God, but it's like Aristotle's like a prime mover. He's just he's remote.

He's distant. He's not he's not anything in any way involved in our life. So just here is where Paul calls in reinforcements from their own culture.

He's not just a distant force from us. So Paul Paul quotes two of their poets to prove, in the words of the prophet

Jeremiah, that God is not only far away, but he is a God nearby, that he is both transcendent over everything and he is imminent nearby.

The vast, eternal creator of the universe overlooking galaxies is right here beside you.

And Paul quotes their own poets to them to prove it. This is the theme that he develops in the book of Romans.

He's right here. People know it. So we should grope for him, kind of like people grope in the dark, grope in the dark around the wall looking for a light switch.

That's the way you should be looking for God, maybe in the dark, but the light is there and you know it's there. You should grope for God.

But people don't. This is the theme he develops in the book of Romans, that there's enough testimony about God in nature and people's conscience that they should seek after God, but they do not.

Instead, they seek to suppress the true knowledge of God. And here they suppress that true knowledge of God with with images that they make to deceive themselves about God.

In other words, these religions that are out there are different ways of trying to find God. They're actually quite the opposite.

They are there because people really don't want to find him. They want to escape from him.

And that's what people did in the Paul's cause here. The times of ignorance. Now those times are over as the truth about God is being brought to all people.

The time of ignorance is over. There was the time when the truth was not being revealed to all nations. That time is over.

And now the time when the gospel is being given out to all people, that time is here. This is the time not of ignorance, but of missions.

There's one God for all people. It's a way of a mission to reach all people with the news that he is not far from any of us.

So it's now at verse 30 where Paul goes in. He goes in for the kill.

He builds on the connections that he's made. He with the content of the gospel and he calls for them to make a decision.

This isn't just philosophy for you to consider, for you to meditate on, for you. Oh, that's a clever idea.

I never thought of that. It requires a decision. An urgent decision is needed.

He's not just a babbler entertaining them with new ideas. He's coming with good news with truth that requires them to accept it and to change their lives.

And that truth is not just an idea, sort of a Greek philosophy, a log off principle.

But it's a person. It's the log offs, as John calls him, who became flesh and dwelt among us.

The Lord of heaven and earth. He says in verse 30, in the past,

God overlooked the ignorance. He now calls all people everywhere from America to China, Ethiopia.

To repent, change your mind, to turn, change who you are.

God is now in this age, no longer the time of ignorance, but the age of missions.

God is now calling every person to turn around, turn around from going your own way.

Maybe the way that in your culture was normal, the way your culture nurtured you to be, the way it taught you to think, the way it taught you to live.

Turn around from that, from your ethnicity, and turn from that and go God's way.

Why repent? Because Paul says in verse 31, the day of judgment is set.

It is already marked on the calendar. In verse 31, he says, God has fixed a day, fixed it.

It's determined. Not going to procrastinate about it. Past tense. He has set it down on which he will, future, he will judge.

He has already judged the sins of his people on the cross. When Jesus hung there,

God judged our sins on him. He fixed a day before creation on which he would judge the sins of his people to save us.

Jesus is the lamb who was slain from the foundation of the earth. That day is past.

That day was fixed and it came about and still coming. We wait for a day on which he will judge the world.

Not his people, this time the world, the people outside of Christ. He will judge them in righteousness according to his own righteous standard.

We now live in between those two days. The day which he has judged the sins of his people and in which the day he will judge the world.

We live in between those times. And in this in between time. Is the age of mission.

The judge for that future day. Has already been selected. He's already been appointed for that job.

How do we know who the judge is? By the fact that he was raised from the dead. That tells us who he is.

The resurrection is the assurance given to all, not just to Christians, but to all.

He says to all people that he is the true judge. He is the judge who will judge the world. Now, apologetics or missions is telling all people that the

Lord Jesus is the judge that all will have to answer to. Maybe you have to argue why he was really raised.

You've got to show people defend the resurrection, the resurrection of Christ, that he was raised from the dead. So people will know he has been raised.

So he was my judge. I will have to answer to him. Maybe this mission, maybe people don't never even heard about the resurrection of Christ.

You need to tell them so they'll know he's the judge they have to answer to. And we can we can prove that he is the judge by his resurrection.

He is the risen Lord of all. And he sends us now to tell all. So that's the content.

God, Lord of Heaven and Earth, us created as one race, but in different nations, straying blind.

We should be groping toward him, but we don't even do that. Sin, judgment.

Jesus is the judge. And the resurrection. He's made these connections.

He's given them the content. And then at that last note, he dared face the controversy.

The controversy is over the resurrection. You see, the Greeks didn't believe in the resurrection.

In fact, they didn't just not believe in it. They didn't want it. They thought it was a bad idea.

You know, all the way back to at least Plato. They believe that the material world, the world of matter, world of flesh and blood.

It was kind of that was like that was like shadows on the wall of a cave. It's not really it's not really real.

The real world, they thought, was the world of spirit and the world of ideas.

The body was, in their view, a prison for the soul. So the goal then of religion, the promise of death was to escape from the body.

You want to get out of this body to be told that we would have we would be resurrected was not good news to them.

It was controversial. It was repulsive to them. That's why he said it says in verse 32 that when they heard of the resurrection, some mocked it.

Oh, oh, resurrection. Who was that? And notice, by the way, though, he saved it for last.

There's a reason that is the last thing he mentions here. So after writing that is to make connections, so many points of agreement, showing all the points of agreement that he could in the content of the gospel with what they believe.

Paul sparks a controversy. Why? Think of that.

He's shown so many ways we've agreed. He's he's tried to connect with them, to appeal to them, show what we have in common.

And then he brings out this thing that he knows that they will hate. They will just offend some of them.

Paul knew that the Greeks would find the resurrection offensive. And yet he preached the resurrection anyway.

Think about that. Why? Why would he work so hard to make these connections?

He's studying their culture. He's looking for everything they have in common, everything that he can. And in so many ways, he's gone through all that effort.

And then he blows it by mentioning the resurrection. This thing they found so offensive, something so controversial.

Why? Because the resurrection is so central to the content of the gospel.

That it could not be held back. You can't just kind of forget it.

It's not an optional doctrine. You can kind of take or leave is part of the gospel.

It shows us here that then we cannot compromise the gospel for the sake of winning approval.

We can be wise. We can be clever about communicating, but we cannot compromise the gospel.

Taking the gospel to other cultures does not mean adapting it to other cultures, changing it by what?

Oh, so you Greeks don't like the resurrection. Never mind. You know, Jesus just goes like a sunrise in your heart.

It was a really physical resort because you don't like it. No, it doesn't work like that. Taking the gospel to other cultures does not mean adapting it to other cultures, adapting the content of it just to avoid controversy.

So it'll be more readily accepted. No, we might adapt it. Now, our presentation of it, we might even save the controversy.

That is the thing that the culture finds so hard to accept. We might save that controversy for last.

What's the things that our cultures around here have today have find controversial?

Maybe among some Chinese, you can't sacrifice to your ancestors, not even at their funerals.

Oh, you can't do that. That's that's giving worship to some other God. God's maybe here in the south.

You can't treat some of your neighbors as second class citizens.

You can't enslave them or segregate them. Well, yeah, we know it's part of your culture.

You can't do that. It's love your neighbor as yourself. You don't want to be made a slave. You don't want to be made to sit in the back of the bus.

Then you can't treat others like that. Maybe today today's modern American culture.

The controversy is over the Bible's teaching about homosexuality. You know, it's considered.

Understand now this is I've seen this change in my lifetime. It's considered scandalous by many in our culture that the

Bible teaches that all homosexual practice is sinful. There's no acceptable kind of homosexuality.

There's not. That's that's controversial to say that today. Now, if you're preaching the gospel to someone or an audience that actually

I bet say homo to homosexuals. But as many other people that aren't homosexual, if you're preaching the gospel to people who believe like that.

You might save that controversy for last for later, like Paul does here.

But eventually you have to confront the culture. You have to tell them.

To repent. God calls all people everywhere. To repent.

God now calls in between the two fixed days, the day on the cross, when the sins of the saved were taken care of, when they were judged on Christ on the cross between that day and the day in the future, when the sins of the of the wicked of the world will be judged.

God now calls all people to repent. And those who do, they do repent.

They don't just then go their own way. Kind of happy that now they've taken care of their own need.

Now they're saved and they don't need to think about anything else. They're now separate, saved, disconnected individuals.

No. Notice that salvation joins us together. Notice the verse 34 near the very end here.

Those who believe Paul, they heard him preach this. They they even accepted the controversy.

Oh, we can believe in the resurrection. They it says they just say they believed they prayed a prayer and went their way.

It says they joined. Paul joined. Two of them are apparently prominent because they're they're actually their names are given

Dionysius, the Arapaia guy and a woman named Damaris. They don't just meet with Paul, you know, shake his hand and at the altar and then go their separate ways.

It says they they joined him. They're now connected to him. They committed to him.

So these are educated Greek philosophers. Now they're former pagans. Now they're Christians and they join

Paul probably together with some of the Jewish converts from the synagogue. Some of the common

Gentile folks from the marketplace. And this is the church made up of all kinds of people joined together.

Americans, Chinese, Ethiopians called out to be to be one joined with each other.

And as the church, the body of Christ, they're commissioned that great commission to carry on the mission to make disciples of every.

Nation, every ethnic group, every tribe to cross cultural divides.

Missions or evangelism is not just about creating individual converts. It's about planting and growing, nurturing churches, bodies of believers who are joined together.

And right now, in between the day that was fixed for our sins to be dealt with on the cross and the day that the world will be judged in the future.

We are still joined with the church, so joined together as the church.

We must continue the mission of Christ in this age of mission to make disciples of different kinds of people, people from different, different ethnic groups than you.

Like Dionysius and Demeris here, Dionysius, the Arapaagite and Demeris. You know, they were different from Paul, but they joined him.

Like testify may be different from you, but you join with him in this age of missions.

Christ calls us to turn from the lie that we can come to God. Unjoined, it's just individuals that we can just care about, you know, just about our kind of people, as long as our family, our tribe, our ethnic group is doing

OK. That's all we care about. He calls us to be raised with Christ, join with his body, to be disciples who follow in his steps and make disciples of all kinds of people, even people different than you.

To care about more than just your family and your nation, to care about the kingdom of God, about the body of Christ made up of all kinds of people, to care about all the people that Jesus died for.

He calls you now to do your part. Joined with the church to continue his mission.