Speaker 1: Brothers and sisters, it is a real privilege to be with you today and what a joy to sing those songs to God's glory.
Speaker 1: So when the elders first reached out to me and were asking me to come, they shared that the theme verse for the weekend was Philippians 1.5.
Speaker 1: And so when we read that it says Because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, that it says because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, this is a passage in which Paul is thanking God for the partnership that he has in the gospel with the church in Philippi.
Speaker 1: And so this morning that our Sunday school service those of you that were here earlier heard us talk a little bit about what that looks like practically for the church to engage, why the church should be engaged in partnership for the gospel with the workers which you send out.
Speaker 1: And tonight we're going to talk about a little bit more specifics about what it looks like practically.
Speaker 1: But today I hope you'll indulge me if we just go over and do some review of the theological underpinnings, the biblical narrative that tells us about God and his heart for his global glory.
Speaker 1: So I apologize to those of you that are visiting for the first time.
Speaker 1: I'm not the regular speaker here, so you will not get the dynamic excellence that you normally may be accustomed to, but I want to begin by just asking a very, very simple question, and that is what does God think about the people around the world that haven't heard about him?
Speaker 1: Now, I don't know if you've ever really considered this, so I'm going to talk to you about somebody specific rather than just making it a general, hypothetical question.
Speaker 1: I'm going to tell you about a little girl, and her name is Silik, silik Bichi-Olovna, and so Silik Bichi-Olovna has grown up as a member of a people group in central Siberia, among a people group that are known as the Tuvans, and so her father and her father's father and her father's father's father, as far back as they can remember, have herded sheep and goats, and they live kind of like in these yurts on the steppe of Siberia.
Speaker 1: It gets down to minus 40, minus 50 in the winter there.
Speaker 1: So when that happens they huddle around their stove and they're pretty much indoors for six months at a time, and then in the summer she runs and plays while her dad takes care of the sheep.
Speaker 1: Her mom has a job at the government school for the little village nearby, she teaches at the kindergarten, and Sailuk Bichi Olavna grows up her whole life in this environment.
Speaker 1: Now, there is no church in her language, there's no Bible translation in her language, and so her parents are what are known as animists.
Speaker 1: Now, animists believe that the spiritual world controls the physical world.
Speaker 1: So whether or not they get sick, whether or not their sheep wander into the river, whether or not wolves show up, all these things are controlled by the spirit world.
Speaker 1: And so, to make the spirit world happy, they would claim to be Tibetan Buddhists or shamanists.
Speaker 1: Either one is fine with them.
Speaker 1: They will go to the Buddhist temple, they will ask the lama to pray over them, they'll spin the prayer wheels, or they'll go to the shaman.
Speaker 1: They'll pay him some money and then he will speak to the spirit world and tell them you know when they should have that birthday celebration, or you know whether they need to avoid any car journeys for the next two weeks, because the spirits are saying bad things about them, all those kinds of things.
Speaker 1: So I don't know if you can imagine what life is like in an animistic worldview, because for most of us we are so used to a comfortable life that is just very American and very divorced from that reality.
Speaker 1: But for most of the world they believe that the spirits control what happens to them.
Speaker 1: And if you give that any thought at all about the logical implications of it, it doesn't take very long before you realize that you live in fear all the time.
Speaker 1: Why?
Speaker 1: Because you never know if you've made the spirits fully happy.
Speaker 1: How do you know?
Speaker 1: Have I spun the prayer wheels enough times?
Speaker 1: Have I hung my prayer flag in the right place?
Speaker 1: Should I have hung a second prayer flag or a third?
Speaker 1: When something bad happens to them and you ask them why, they'll say well, I must have made the spirits angry in some way.
Speaker 1: You know, I dip my toskarak, my little nine-eye spoon, into the milk and I flicked it to the north, south, east and west every time I ate this week, but maybe I forgot on Tuesday.
Speaker 1: You east and west every time I ate this week, but maybe I forgot on Tuesday.
Speaker 1: You never know when you've done enough to make the spirits happy.
Speaker 1: So Silek's dad, in just pure fear and terror that he lives in constantly, has turned to drinking alcohol and he is constantly drunk and beats her and her mother, and this is the life in which she's growing up in utter poverty, in utter ignorance of the fact that Jesus came to earth thousands of years ago to die for her sins.
Speaker 1: Now I want you, with that reality in mind, to answer the question does God care for Silic?
Speaker 1: Does he care for the millions upon millions, and even billions of little boys and girls who are growing up just like that all over the world in people groups completely without access to the gospel?
Speaker 1: I think it's a sobering reality that we need to sit in a little bit sometimes as Christians, because I think that we can tend to forget that, yeah, it's easy for us to say the obvious answer is that yes, of course God cares for her.
Speaker 1: But how?
Speaker 1: What does it mean?
Speaker 1: What has God done for her to show his care for her?
Speaker 1: So we're going to take a look at what the Bible says about that question.
Speaker 1: Now, normally, when you gather, your pastor is going to open up a single passage and he's going to exposit that passage, teaching what it means.
Speaker 1: But today we're going to do something a little bit different.
Speaker 1: We're going to go through the whole narrative of scripture, so we're going to be taking a 30,000 foot view at what's going on in all of scripture.
Speaker 1: So if you don't want to keep up, that's okay.
Speaker 1: Don't feel like you have to turn to every passage, because you're going to be turning to a bunch of them, but if you want to try, I invite you to.
Speaker 1: I want to go back to the very beginning.
Speaker 1: To start with.
Speaker 1: I want us to think about do you remember what is the very first thing that God ever said to his creation?
Speaker 1: After he makes Adam and Eve, what's the very first thing he says to them?
Speaker 1: Be fruitful and multiply.
Speaker 1: That's the answer I usually get.
Speaker 1: Some people guess that's don't eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Speaker 1: Actually, if you read carefully, there's something he says before that.
Speaker 1: Let's go to Genesis 1.26.
Speaker 1: God says let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.
Speaker 1: So God created man in his own image, in the image of God.
Speaker 1: He created him Male and female.
Speaker 1: He created them and God blessed them.
Speaker 1: The very first thing God says to Adam and Eve is he pronounces a blessing upon them.
Speaker 1: Why have Adam and Eve done anything at all to merit God's blessing?
Speaker 1: No, they've literally three words before been created and God blesses them instantly.
Speaker 1: It shows us something of the character of God and why he created humanity.
Speaker 1: Doesn't it that God would bless them before he does anything?
Speaker 1: Then he says be fruitful and multiply.
Speaker 1: Fill the earth and subdue it.
Speaker 1: Have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to propose that we can begin to see God's great idea for humanity Enjoy my blessing and extend my glory.
Speaker 1: God blesses them utterly without merit.
Speaker 1: They have just been created and he says I want you to enjoy my blessing Now.
Speaker 1: I want you to extend my glory, be fruitful, multiply.
Speaker 1: My plan is for my image bearers to be all over this world, multiplied in every corner of it, glorifying me.
Speaker 1: Enjoy my blessing Now, extend my glory.
Speaker 1: So God's given them this command.
Speaker 1: He's created Adam and Eve in his image, to reflect who he was, in order that they might bring him glory.
Speaker 1: In short, they are created to worship him.
Speaker 1: And now God says I want the whole planet full of worshipers.
Speaker 1: So what happens in the story.
Speaker 1: Just a couple chapters later, we read that they fail.
Speaker 1: There's a fall and a removal from the garden and the removal from fellowship with God.
Speaker 1: So has God changed his mind?
Speaker 1: Does he have a new plan?
Speaker 1: Does he go to plan B for creation?
Speaker 1: You know, maybe we've got to come up with a new plan.
Speaker 1: No, he says I want you to enjoy my blessings and extend my glory.
Speaker 1: In fact, a few chapters later, humanity gets to a peak.
Speaker 1: There's so much corruption and evil that God judges them and he saves only Noah and his family from the flood.
Speaker 1: Do you remember what he says when they get off the ark?
Speaker 1: Genesis 9, verse 1, and God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.
Speaker 1: We haven't gotten to a plan B.
Speaker 1: It's still plan A.
Speaker 1: Judgment came, noah and his sons are saved, and God says enjoy my blessing Now, go and extend my glory, go, fill up this earth that I made for you.
Speaker 1: It's the same plan.
Speaker 1: So do they obey?
Speaker 1: Is the earth filled up with God-glorifying people on every corner?
Speaker 1: No, what happens Again?
Speaker 1: Just a few chapters go by and we're already reading the story of humanity's failures again.
Speaker 1: What happens?
Speaker 1: They gather in the plains of Shinar, and instead of saying let's go, spread across the earth to glorify our God, they say come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.
Speaker 1: It's the opposite plan, isn't it?
Speaker 1: Don't enjoy my blessing, extend my glory.
Speaker 1: Stay in one place.
Speaker 1: Extend our own glory.
Speaker 1: It's like humanity has a plan that's in direct defiance to God's plan for his name to be glorified across all corners of the earth.
Speaker 1: First of all, the concept of making a name for ourselves is basically the same as let us bring glory to ourselves.
Speaker 1: We're going to see later that God has a concern for the glory of his name.
Speaker 1: That is basically the same as his command to extend his glory.
Speaker 1: That is, god wants it to be his name that is lifted up and worshiped.
Speaker 1: And at the Tower of Babel, noah's descendants say no, we want our name to be lifted up and made great.
Speaker 1: Secondly, they resolve to gather together Rather than spread out to create a diverse community of worshipers all over the world that God has planned.
Speaker 1: They want to gather together and stick in the same place.
Speaker 1: So what does God do?
Speaker 1: He confuses their language and he forces the diversity that would have come naturally if they had obeyed him.
Speaker 1: And in Genesis 11.8, it says so.
Speaker 1: The Lord dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth and they left off building the city.
Speaker 1: So now people are being spread across the globe, like they were supposed to do in the first place, right, but now we have a problem.
Speaker 1: Now they speak all these different languages.
Speaker 1: How is God and his name and his fame going to be heard by all these different peoples that he's now created?
Speaker 1: In the table of nations, genesis 12.
Speaker 1: , god picks a man named Abram and he says to him Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you and I will make of you a great nation and I will bless you and make your name great.
Speaker 1: Why?
Speaker 1: So that you will be a blessing.
Speaker 1: Enjoy my blessing, extend my glory.
Speaker 1: I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed.
Speaker 1: God has not given up on his divine plan.
Speaker 1: We're still in plan A, the plan that he intended from the time of creation, and I think many of us read the Old Testament as a story about God interacting with the Jewish people, and it is.
Speaker 1: But God's plan is never just for the Jewish people.
Speaker 1: It's always for his name to be glorified by everyone.
Speaker 1: Israel is supposed to be a beacon, a kingdom of priests, a holy nation that reflect his glory to all these different nations.
Speaker 1: Have you ever looked at a map carefully, where God put Israel?
Speaker 1: It's fascinating.
Speaker 1: Look at a map sometime of where the nations of the earth, the major civilizations, were in the time of Abraham and then consider where God places the nation of Israel.
Speaker 1: There's a big giant nation up in Turkey.
Speaker 1: There's a big giant nation on the upper, on the lower Nile Valley, there's one in the upper Nile Valley and there's one in Mesopotamia.
Speaker 1: Those are the major civilizations of the day.
Speaker 1: And where does God place Israel, the one place that's not a major desert, to walk between those nations?
Speaker 1: God says I want you here as a signpost on the main highway showing people about me.
Speaker 1: It's supposed to be about my glory among all the nations.
Speaker 1: Does Israel do that?
Speaker 1: They faithfully administer their task.
Speaker 1: They just witness to all these other nations.
Speaker 1: We hear so many stories about every nation looking at Israel seeing the holiness of God?
Speaker 1: No, that's not what happens at all.
Speaker 1: Right, over and over and over again, we go through this pattern of Israel failing to reflect the glory of the God who had chosen them as his nation.
Speaker 1: Let's look at some verses that remind us that, even in the midst of that whole story, that God is interacting with these Israelites, that his passion is still for the glory of his name among all nations.
Speaker 1: I don't want you to think that I'm making this up, that I'm imposing this on the text.
Speaker 1: I want you to see it with me.
Speaker 1: Why does God send the plagues on Egypt?
Speaker 1: Exodus 9.16 tells us for this purpose.
Speaker 1: I have raised you up to show you my power, so that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.
Speaker 1: When the spies come back and they report to Israel, hey, there's giants in the land God promised us.
Speaker 1: You know we're going to be destroyed.
Speaker 1: And God says because of their faithlessness, I'm going to destroy them, I'm going to wipe out this nation.
Speaker 1: Why does he not do it?
Speaker 1: For the sake of my name among all nations, numbers 14.
Speaker 1: What about the Ten Commandments?
Speaker 1: What does God say?
Speaker 1: Why did he give those to Israel?
Speaker 1: Deuteronomy 4, 1-8 tells us, so that God's name would be made great among all the nations.
Speaker 1: When God parts the Jordan River so the Israelites can walk across on dry land.
Speaker 1: What does Joshua 4, 24 tell us?
Speaker 1: It says that he did it so that all the peoples of the earth may know that the hand of the Lord is mighty.
Speaker 1: Why is it that word peoples and not people?
Speaker 1: What's the difference there in plural?
Speaker 1: Why does Joshua 4 say that God did this so that all the peoples of the earth may know that he is mighty?
Speaker 1: Well, we begin to see a concept called people groups or language groups, what the New Testament will call ethne, these ethnic groups.
Speaker 1: I want all of them to hear about who I am.
Speaker 1: I'm the one that made them back at Babel.
Speaker 1: I want them all to hear about me.
Speaker 1: I want to be glorified by all these nations.
Speaker 1: Later in Israel's history, we see a shepherd boy named David standing before Goliath.
Speaker 1: Now, I don't know if you've ever thought about this story, but I think this is a powerful, actually, image of missions in many ways.
Speaker 1: We see God picking the most limited person in all of Israel's army to go up against the giant.
Speaker 1: Why, now?
Speaker 1: Okay, israel does not have a giant of Goliath's size that can meet him man to man.
Speaker 1: But I guarantee somewhere in Israel's army there's a guy who's six foot five and ripped and like their fastest swordsman, right.
Speaker 1: Why does God not pick that man to go up against Goliath?
Speaker 1: David tells us in 1 Samuel 17, 46,.
Speaker 1: He says this day the Lord will deliver you into my hand, so that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel.
Speaker 1: Because when the little boy beats the giant, nobody thinks the little boy was special.
Speaker 1: Everybody says, oh, god is special.
Speaker 1: All the nations are going to hear about this.
Speaker 1: The time when a little boy beat a giant, that's the point of that story, and David knows that.
Speaker 1: He knows he's not the hero of the story.
Speaker 1: God is the hero of that story.
Speaker 1: God is telling a much bigger story than just him versus a giant.
Speaker 1: He's telling a much bigger story than Israel versus the Philistines.
Speaker 1: He's telling a story about who he is, a God that created the world.
Speaker 1: Later on, his son, solomon, is made wiser than any other man, and 1 Kings 4.34 tells us why.
Speaker 1: For the sake of the name of the Lord among all nations, solomon himself was wise enough to know this.
Speaker 1: You know a lot of people by this time in Israel, have forgotten about all these other nations.
Speaker 1: They're totally consumed with their own nation and what's going on and what's happening, the political struggles that are happening there.
Speaker 1: But Solomon builds the temple and in 1 Kings 8.43, he dedicates it in order that all the peoples of the earth may know your name and fear you, as do your people, israel.
Speaker 1: See, that was the point of the temple, that was the point of the David and Goliath story, that was the point of crossing of the Jordan, that was the point of all these other stories.
Speaker 1: It's supposed to point to God and say we're going to extend his glory to all these nations.
Speaker 1: Now, when Israel fails to be the beacon that God created her to be, god allows Israel to be captured and taken into captivity as slaves.
Speaker 1: And why does he do that?
Speaker 1: He says I acted for the sake of my name, that it should not be profaned in the sight of the nations.
Speaker 1: You, israel, are being faithless to me and that reflects on me and my name, and I won't have it.
Speaker 1: My name will be great among the nations.
Speaker 1: Even in the exile, god is still concerned for the nations and how they see him.
Speaker 1: He rescues three of the exiles from a fiery furnace.
Speaker 1: Daniel 3.29 says he does it for the sake of his name among the nations.
Speaker 1: Daniel is rescued from the mouths of the lions for the sake of his name among the nations.
Speaker 1: Daniel 6.25 and 26.
Speaker 1: And finally, god brings Israel back from exile into the promised land.
Speaker 1: Ezekiel 39.25 to says he does it for the sake of his name among all the nations.
Speaker 1: See, over and over and over, the story of the Old Testament that we think is just an Israelite story is a story of God saying Israel, you're supposed to be a beacon because I'm concerned about the glory of my name among all the nations.
Speaker 1: That's why it matters Israel, that you're faithless.
Speaker 1: The whole story of the Old Testament is Israel saying we're all about the enjoy my blessing.
Speaker 1: We like that part.
Speaker 1: That part is good.
Speaker 1: The extend my glory.
Speaker 1: We stop short of that.
Speaker 1: Enjoy my blessing oh yeah, I like that part.
Speaker 1: God, enjoy my blessing, extend my glory.
Speaker 1: Ooh, that sounds like it might cost me something.
Speaker 1: Not so much about that.
Speaker 1: Does that sound like any other people group you might have heard of on Long Island, possibly?
Speaker 1: We like to enjoy God's blessing.
Speaker 1: We don't like to extend his glory because it costs us.
Speaker 1: The Old Testament is a God-centered story.
Speaker 1: It's the story of a God who created a whole world full of people who he wants to know his name, to know who he is, to recognize how glorious and how worthy of our worship he is.
Speaker 1: And it closes with the book of Malachi and God makes one final promise about the glory of his name.
Speaker 1: He says in Malachi 1, for from the rising of the sun to its setting, my name will be great among the nations.
Speaker 1: In every place, incense will be offered to my name, a pure offering for my name will be great among the nations, says the Lord of hosts.
Speaker 1: So how is God going to do that?
Speaker 1: Israel hasn't extended his glory.
Speaker 1: So what now?
Speaker 1: Well, after Malachi, we have 400 years of silence, right by the time Jesus is born.
Speaker 1: The Jews don't even believe that God wants the nations to be saved at all.
Speaker 1: We hear almost nothing about that in their culture.
Speaker 1: However, hopefully, this part is pretty well known to you, this part of the story.
Speaker 1: I hope nobody here is going.
Speaker 1: I wonder what happens next.
Speaker 1: Jesus is born, right, he lives his life among the people of Israel.
Speaker 1: He dies to pay the price for our sins and then he's resurrected.
Speaker 1: And there's a very familiar passage in Matthew 28, where Jesus comes and says to his disciples all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
Speaker 1: Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you, and behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.
Speaker 1: Does that sound familiar?
Speaker 1: It's the same plan.
Speaker 1: I want my name to be glorified by all these nations.
Speaker 1: Go, make them into disciples.
Speaker 1: He says it in every one of the Gospels's some version of this, and we hear over and over again jesus saying the same plan enjoy my blessing now, extend my glory.
Speaker 1: I want to be glorified everywhere in the world, among all the different nations.
Speaker 1: So who is jesus speaking to in this passage?
Speaker 1: Is he just speaking to the 12 people that are sitting in front of him?
Speaker 1: No, how do we know?
Speaker 1: Well, he says till the end of the age, I'll be with you.
Speaker 1: Those people aren't around anymore and we're still in the same age.
Speaker 1: So he's talking to us.
Speaker 1: He'll be with us until the end of the age.
Speaker 1: And he says that Greek phrase make disciples of all the different ethnic groups.
Speaker 1: This morning, those of you that were here in Sunday school, we used an analogy of ponds, of lakes, for this concept of ethnos.
Speaker 1: Right, what is an ethnos?
Speaker 1: An ethnos is the group of people among whom the gospel can spread.
Speaker 1: So if I throw a rock into a pond and it makes a splash, the ripple can spread.
Speaker 1: So I can share the gospel with someone that speaks the same language as me and they can understand it.
Speaker 1: And if the Holy Spirit works, they can accept it and then they can go and share it with someone else, and then that person can share it with someone else.
Speaker 1: As long as we all speak the same language, the ripple can keep spreading.
Speaker 1: But Jesus says I want all the languages to be glorifying me.
Speaker 1: It's not enough for me to be glorified by the people that speak English.
Speaker 1: I want to be glorified by the people that speak English.
Speaker 1: I want to be glorified by the people that speak Vietnamese and Azerbaijani and Indonesian, and it's not even those big, giant languages, it's every tiny little language.
Speaker 1: I want someone there worshiping me because you have enjoyed my blessing, now go and extend my glory.
Speaker 1: I want you to fill up this earth with image bearers from every different tribe and tongue and nation who worship me.
Speaker 1: That has been God's plan all the way back to Babel that every ethnic group would have God worshipers enjoying his grace and extending his glory.
Speaker 1: It's still his plan today, in 2025.
Speaker 1: It's still going on.
Speaker 1: The pages of God's story are not finished.
Speaker 1: He's writing it with every day that passes.
Speaker 1: So how are we, the Church of God, charged with going and making disciples out of all the ethnic?
Speaker 1: How are we doing with that mandate?
Speaker 1: It's a good question, right, because there's still a lot of people like Silik Bitiolov out there who haven't heard, whose language has failed to receive one person, to come and learn it, to start that ripple happening, to share with the first person in that language the glorious news of Jesus' blessing that they can then begin to extend his glory among.
Speaker 1: So we're going to talk about that in just a second.
Speaker 1: First of all, we're going to go through the book of Acts very quickly.
Speaker 1: So in the beginning of the book of Acts, we hear Jesus give a promise.
Speaker 1: So, first of all, he's given four different commission statements, right, great commission statements to go and make disciples to all nations.
Speaker 1: And then he gives us a promise in Acts 1 that says you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, to the end of the earth.
Speaker 1: So, right before his ascension, jesus promises them the Holy Spirit's going to come, and then you're going to begin the task that I've given you to make disciples of all these nations.
Speaker 1: You're going to start in Jerusalem, then you're going to go to Judea, then you're going to go to Samaria and eventually you're going to go to the uttermost parts of the earth, depending on the translation you have there.
Speaker 1: So does that sound familiar?
Speaker 1: Enjoy my blessing, the Holy Spirit, and then go and extend my glory.
Speaker 1: So the Holy Spirit did come and they preach in Jerusalem.
Speaker 1: Many of them are saved.
Speaker 1: However, have you guys ever noticed that at the beginning of Acts, we only hear about the ministry in Jerusalem?
Speaker 1: It goes on and on and on.
Speaker 1: All these incredible things that are happening in the first few chapters of Acts the early church is born, all these exciting things, but it's all happening in Jerusalem and, more importantly, it's all happening in one language.
Speaker 1: It's all happening in Hebrew.
Speaker 1: It's only happening among the Jews, one ethnos.
Speaker 1: The ripples are spreading and spreading, and spreading, but it's not going to the other ethne.
Speaker 1: And so at some point the early church becomes such a threat to the religious order that they murder a man named Stephen.
Speaker 1: And then I have a friend that likes to say if you don't do Acts 1.8, you get Acts 8.1.
Speaker 1: They didn't go to Jerusalem, and then Judea and Samaria and the uttermost parts of the earth, they stayed in Jerusalem.
Speaker 1: So what does God do?
Speaker 1: There arose on that day a great persecution against the church in Jerusalem and they were scattered throughout the regions.
Speaker 1: Where Of Judea and Samaria?
Speaker 1: Oh, where have we heard that before?
Speaker 1: I promise it's almost like stepping on a little ball of mercury.
Speaker 1: Right, they spread out.
Speaker 1: Now, hopefully, as a church we are spreading out willingly.
Speaker 1: We are spreading out joyfully to extend God's glory.
Speaker 1: But when we don't, he will do something like Babel, like the persecution that happens here, to spread us out.
Speaker 1: I will be glorified by all these nations.
Speaker 1: Whether you want to or not, it will happen.
Speaker 1: Malachi 1.11 told us right my name will be great among the nations.
Speaker 1: The earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord.
Speaker 1: Habakkuk 2 says this is going to happen.
Speaker 1: You better get on board.
Speaker 1: And so there arises this persecution.
Speaker 1: They're scattered throughout the region of Judea and Samaria.
Speaker 1: And what happens when they get there?
Speaker 1: So do they immediately all recognize like, hey, I'm not really cut out to be a missionary, I didn't go to seminary, I didn't take any cross-cultural communication courses.
Speaker 1: I better stay in my house and hide away.
Speaker 1: No Ordinary believers Acts 8.4,.
Speaker 1: Now those who are scattered went about preaching the word.
Speaker 1: It's the natural outflow of being a Christian is saying I have enjoyed his blessing, now I'm going to extend his glory among those around me Everyday, regular people.
Speaker 1: They're the ones that start this movement.
Speaker 1: So what happens next?
Speaker 1: Now?
Speaker 1: I don't know if you've ever noticed.
Speaker 1: In the book of Acts there's this very pivotal scene, and missionaries can see this way, maybe even easier than pastors and seminary students, because we're so immersed in this world of different languages.
Speaker 1: But there's a very critical shift that happens in Acts 11, where everything up until this point has happened among one ethnos, the Jews, and finally somebody's going to take the gospel and throw a rock in a new pond.
Speaker 1: What happens in Acts 11, 19 through 21?
Speaker 1: It says Now those who were scattered because of the persecution that arose over Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch speaking the word to no one except Jews, why that's the only language they spoke.
Speaker 1: They're traveling around, ripples are spreading and spreading to Judea and Samaria, and they're traveling around and they're telling all the Jews about it because they only speak Hebrew.
Speaker 1: But in verse 20, some of them, men of Cyprus and Cyrene, on coming to Antioch, spoke to the Hellenists, also the Greek speakers, preaching the Lord Jesus.
Speaker 1: And we have this massive pivot in the book of Acts.
Speaker 1: Everything till this point has been centered around what's happening in Jerusalem and we have a big pivot to what starts to happen in this new city of Antioch.
Speaker 1: And the hand of the Lord was with them and a great number who believed turned to the Lord.
Speaker 1: Somebody just threw a rock in a new pond.
Speaker 1: The Greek-speaking world is now starting to ripple and now from Antioch, we're going to see that this is a much bigger pond.
Speaker 1: In fact this might be called an ocean.
Speaker 1: This is the whole Roman empire of Greek speakers that the gospel is starting to pivot and it's beginning to ripple out from Antioch and what happens?
Speaker 1: In this point the gospel has only traveled in miles, but it's all happening in one language, so it's all one ethnos.
Speaker 1: And finally somebody recognizes.
Speaker 1: Hey, jesus told us we should make disciples among all the nations.
Speaker 1: Maybe we should reach out to these Greek-speaking guys.
Speaker 1: And in the Sinti of Antioch they begin this great work and the Holy Spirit is with them, and a multicultural church is born.
Speaker 1: Two chapters later, the leaders of that church are praying and fasting and they're seeking the Lord and something really vital happens Now.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you have ever thought about this prayer meeting in Acts 13, but I think it's incredibly significant.
Speaker 1: Do you realize that if you were to trace back the person that led you to the Lord and then find out who led that person to the Lord, and find out who led that person to the Lord and who led that person to the Lord, and you go far enough in generations back I don't know how many, you know hundreds and maybe thousands of generations your great, great, great grandfather in the faith, you can trace it back to this prayer meeting?
Speaker 1: Almost certainly if you're in this room today and you're a believer.
Speaker 1: The way you heard about the gospel started here in Acts 13, with a church praying, fasting, seeking the Lord.
Speaker 1: And what happens at the beginning of Acts 13?
Speaker 1: While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said set apart for me, barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.
Speaker 1: Then, after fasting and praying, they laid their hands on them and sent them off.
Speaker 1: The first church in history to intentionally send missionaries to go extend the glory of God to new places, to new peoples, to new ethnic.
Speaker 1: This church is saying, hey, we have to respond to what Jesus is calling us to do.
Speaker 1: That's what we're for as a church.
Speaker 1: We're supposed to be about doing this mission that we got and the church is praying about it.
Speaker 1: They're fasting, they're seeking the Lord and the Holy Spirit says these two guys Now let me ask you, are these two guys the church wanted to lose?
Speaker 1: I mean Saul and Barnabas Like, these are probably their top two guys, these are two of their elders, right?
Speaker 1: They're not sending out the guys that like, oh, the guy that you know, we or two of their elders, right, they're not sending out the guys that like, oh, the guy that you know, we don't really know what he does and he's got a little oddball and whatever.
Speaker 1: They're sending out their best, because that's how important this task is.
Speaker 1: We have to go get it done.
Speaker 1: The Holy Spirit says these are the people I want doing it.
Speaker 1: The first church to recognize the size of the task and say, whoa, we have to start doing something.
Speaker 1: We have to start discipling all these ethne.
Speaker 1: Starting from that little church in Antioch, you can draw a direct line today, thousands of years later, across the ocean, way over here in Long Island.
Speaker 1: We are all the products of churches that were planted by this prayer meeting, that then went out and planted churches.
Speaker 1: That then went out and planted churches.
Speaker 1: That went out and planted churches, and on and on, and on and on, until we get here today.
Speaker 1: But guess what?
Speaker 1: We haven't gotten to the end of the age yet.
Speaker 1: Jesus said I will be with you always to the end of the age when he gave us this promise and we haven't gotten there.
Speaker 1: That chain that goes back those thousands of years stretches through generations that were beaten, tortured, imprisoned for their faith, and God is still calling us to the same mandate he gave them.
Speaker 1: Jesus told us we needed to make disciples of all the ethne.
Speaker 1: He would be with us to the end of the age, and we haven't gotten there.
Speaker 1: It seems weird.
Speaker 1: Thousands of years have gone by and we still haven't gotten to all the ethnic.
Speaker 1: So if we look at where are all the ethnic groups in the world, how many languages are spoken in the world?
Speaker 1: You can talk to linguists about this and I'll tell you.
Speaker 1: This is the water in which I swim professionally.
Speaker 1: And so somewhere between 7,000 and 11,000 languages are spoken in the world today.
Speaker 1: Now, which of those numbers is accurate?
Speaker 1: How many of them are dialects versus languages?
Speaker 1: This is something you could go to.
Speaker 1: You know professional linguists and have fierce debates with.
Speaker 1: I'm not too interested in that.
Speaker 1: My question is always is the gospel likely to spread across this border If it's a dialect or if it's a language?
Speaker 1: I don't, it's not so important to me.
Speaker 1: It's like is the gospel naturally going to spread between these people and these people?
Speaker 1: If not, then this is a separate ethnos and we want to reach them with the gospel.
Speaker 1: Now that becomes a pretty difficult technical question when you're going into these places in the world today, because the truth is, globalization is causing languages to go extinct faster than we're reaching them with the gospel.
Speaker 1: If we look at that example of, if there's 11,000 of them, how many of them have a gospel witness?
Speaker 1: Well, somewhere around 3,000 to 4,000 of them don't have a Bible or don't have a church.
Speaker 1: So at a minimum we've got that many left to do.
Speaker 1: You guys have been thinking about this.
Speaker 1: All weekend, I think we've been talking about it.
Speaker 1: We looked at Philippians 1.5 and that partnership in the gospel.
Speaker 1: What does it look like for us to go into a world where we're still not done with the job that we have?
Speaker 1: We talked this morning about taking a name off the board, saying we can't reach thousands of unreached people groups.
Speaker 1: We just can't do it.
Speaker 1: But if we're faithful we can do it to one.
Speaker 1: We can take one name off the board, we can take two names off the board.
Speaker 1: We can see people go into those people groups.
Speaker 1: We can support them.
Speaker 1: We can pray for them.
Speaker 1: We can engage with them.
Speaker 1: We can help them run their businesses.
Speaker 1: We can help them, counsel them when they're struggling spiritually.
Speaker 1: We can, you know, help them to print a Bible when they translate it, all these kinds of things.
Speaker 1: We can do that for one people group.
Speaker 1: Right, that's not an impossible thing if, given the Holy Spirit's help, we can imagine the Lord doing that through us.
Speaker 1: We read in Romans 15,.
Speaker 1: Paul says Thus I make it my ambition to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named, lest I build on someone else's foundation, but as it is written, those who have never been told of him will see, and those who have never heard will understand.
Speaker 1: What does that mean for us?
Speaker 1: Today, practically, there are some people not all of us are going to get on a plane and fly to Indonesia or Azerbaijan or Somalia or Brazil, but all of us are called to be engaged in that process.
Speaker 1: Have you ever thought about that?
Speaker 1: All of us have been commanded by God to go into all the world and make disciples of all nations.
Speaker 1: Now does that mean we're literally going to get on a plane?
Speaker 1: Most of us no, most of us are going to send.
Speaker 1: You ever heard the expression go, send or disobey.
Speaker 1: Those are the three choices you get.
Speaker 1: If you're not going, then you better be sending.
Speaker 1: What does that look like for you as a believer?
Speaker 1: I think these are very important questions to be asking yourselves.
Speaker 1: Am I praying for this work?
Speaker 1: Am I going before the Lord, honestly seeking him, or do I just open the email and click it?
Speaker 1: And that's the extent of my engagement in missions.
Speaker 1: This is why we exist as a church.
Speaker 1: This is what we're for to make disciples of all nations and, yes, that includes the people around you here, but it also includes the people that haven't heard yet, those pauline works where it's like man, there's nobody, there's no foundation here, there's nobody that has told these people the gospel.
Speaker 1: Now the good news is that we know where the story is headed, because we just walked through all of Scripture, right.
Speaker 1: We walked through the Old Testament and how it told us about a God who says enjoy my blessing now, extend my glory.
Speaker 1: Over and over again he says that to his people and we saw how he repeats that over and over and over again.
Speaker 1: This theme of I want to be glorified among all nations.
Speaker 1: My name will be great among all nations.
Speaker 1: A pure offering will be great among all nations.
Speaker 1: A pure offering will be offered for me.
Speaker 1: The knowledge of the glory of the Lord will cover the whole earth.
Speaker 1: Over and over again, we see God's passion for the glory of his majestic name among all the nations.
Speaker 1: And sometimes I think it's easy to look at the world today and look at the ones that are left and like it's too hard, I don't know.
Speaker 1: How are we going to do it?
Speaker 1: How are we going to go into these remote valleys where there are Muslims and Buddhists and Sikhs and animists.
Speaker 1: How are we going to expect the Lord to do something to see them reached with the gospel, to see his name glorified by people who utterly reject him and want nothing to do with him?
Speaker 1: But we know that's going to come, because we can read in Revelation 7, the end of the story, where John writes After this, I looked and behold a great multitude that no one could number.
Speaker 1: Where did they come from?
Speaker 1: From every nation, from all tribes, all peoples and all languages, standing before the throne, standing before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hand, crying out with a loud voice salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.
Speaker 1: Belongs to our God who sits on the throne, into the Lamb.
Speaker 1: That's where we're headed the throne room of God, with all of us standing there, with a global choir represented by people from every tribe, every tongue, every nation.
Speaker 1: Do you know?
Speaker 1: The people group that Sileg Bitshi Olavna belongs to have a way of singing that cannot be done by anyone else in the world.
Speaker 1: It's called throat singing.
Speaker 1: If you want to have a fun time on YouTube this afternoon, you can look it up Tuvan throat singing.
Speaker 1: They can make a sound in their voice where they can actually harmonize with themselves.
Speaker 1: They can make more than one note at the same time.
Speaker 1: No one else in the world knows how to do that.
Speaker 1: We're commanded by God to produce this choir that's going to be so diverse.
Speaker 1: It's going to have thousands of unique voices and languages and worship styles and instruments, all proclaiming how glorious is our God.
Speaker 1: That's the end of history.
Speaker 1: That's what we're moving towards, and right now the choir's not finished.
Speaker 1: There are people, groups, who sing in languages that none of the rest of us know.
Speaker 1: How can their voice be heard proclaiming God's glory if someone doesn't go and tell them, if we don't see a church established among them?
Speaker 1: How are we going to hear the tube and throat singers proclaiming his glorious gospel in two different notes at the same time?
Speaker 1: None of the rest of us know how to do that, and yet we know that that will happen, and in the case of Sileg Bitshiolovna it did happen.
Speaker 1: A little tiny church of 90 people in North Carolina sent out me and my wife and our children.
Speaker 1: We moved over there to Siberia.
Speaker 1: We learned Russian, then we learned their language.
Speaker 1: It was very challenging.
Speaker 1: We ran a business for multiple years that had struggles with the mafia and the government there, struggles that are almost impossible to explain in a very short period of time, struggles that are almost impossible to explain in a very short period of time.
Speaker 1: And yet we went through all of that and one day had the glorious privilege to share the gospel with the Tuvan people, and now there's a Tuvan church.
Speaker 1: Those of you that came last night heard that story.
Speaker 1: The answer to the question does God care about Tag Bichiole?
Speaker 1: Is yes, he does.
Speaker 1: He cares so much that he created the institution of his bride and gave her this command to go and extend his glory to all of the people like her.
Speaker 1: She was able to hear the gospel.
Speaker 1: You saw pictures last night of her being baptized.
Speaker 1: That's the glorious truth of the gospel that God loved these people so much that he commanded his church to extend his glory to them, and he is doing that around the world today, and he continues to do it through workers that you have sent out.
Speaker 1: That's the exciting truth about missions is that it allows all of us to participate in what God is doing to proclaim his global glory.
Speaker 1: All these people who are growing up in utter spiritual darkness because of their separation from God because of their lack of access to the story of his son and the rescue he provides from their sin.
Speaker 1: God cares so much about his image bearers.
Speaker 1: He orchestrates the whole narrative of his word to show his son would come into this world to be a blessing to all the nations, including Salik Bichiolevena's and the thousands of other nations like hers.
Speaker 1: Then he created an institution his bride us, the church to spread that message to all the different languages of the world.
Speaker 1: Why?
Speaker 1: So that he would be glorified in all eternity from every nation, tribe, people and language, and he is calling each of us to be a part of that.
Speaker 1: Let's pray.
Speaker 1: Heavenly Father, I thank you for the tremendous privilege to look into your word, to study it and to know who you are.
Speaker 1: Lord, I thank you that you continue to work for your glory among all nations and, father, I pray for those who don't have access to your word.
Speaker 1: Lord, that you would continue to use your church to extend your glory to all of them.
Speaker 1: We pray this in Jesus' name and for his glory, amen.