source
Audio http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIdW3B2JcRA
Audio http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIdW3B2JcRA
Today I will be talking to you about why I am a missionary. For I still am a missionary, although I was 27 years in the Philippines, I am still a missionary at BEE world. I think it is the responsibility of us to continue to be a missionary wherever we are. We do not have to go to the ends of the earth to be a missionary. We can go to the end of our street to our next door neighbor, even to our spouse, or parent or child or co-worker.
How many people have we shared the gospel with in our lifetime. Each time we share the gospel we are missionaries for the Lord and yet many Christians never shared the gospel. They have never acted as missionaries. Their life is like this; they get up in the morning they eat they go to work so that they can make money so they can buy food so they can pay their rent or mortgage so they can buy food so they can eat so they can go to bed so they can get up in the morning so they can eat, they can go to work so they can make more money, so they can buy some things to buy in their house so that then they can come home so they can eat so they can go to bed so they can get up the next morning and they can go to work. For most people that is the cycle of life. But that it is not the cycle of life that God wants for us. Every time we wake up, every single day there is something that God wants us to do. God has a wonderful plan for each and every one for us today. Wherever you are in, whatever your abilities, God gave it so that we may represent him to the world.
That main point I want to share with you today is this. We must use our God given salvation, calling, training, and gifts to be missionaries where we are. And so I want to share with you the four reasons why I am still a missionary and why I think you need to be a missionary.
▶1. The first reason that I am a missionary is on your paper and that is because of the commission or the call. Matthew 28:19 & 20 reads,
“19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
Also as you read this morning at 2 Corinthians 5:14 and 15
14 For the love of Christ compels us, because we judge thus: that if one died for all, then all died;
15 and He died for all, that those who live should live no longer for themselves, but for Him who died for them and rose again.
Instead of expounding or explaining these verses I think they are self-explanatory. So what I would like to do is illustrate each of the points that I have this morning from the story in my own experience.
I remember the time when my wife and I were called to be a missionary. I do believe in a call. I do believe that there is a time in our lives where we become aware that God wants to use us in a special way. My wife and I were members of a group by the name of The Navigators. It was 1969 and some of you are not even born yet and we were going to Colorado for a conference. We arrived late at night and this time we have this late speaker. He had been a missionary in Korea and he went back as a missionary to Korea after the Korean War. He has been wounded in his throat and could not speak well. He was speaking very quietly and he asks as he was preaching in Isaiah 6, “Here I am, send me”. And he was saying if there is anyone here who wants to do what you’re doing in the states but do it in another country would you still. And immediately I stood up. We had been only married 6 months so I forgot I had a wife. So I turned to look and see if Mary was standing and she was also standing and she looked at me because she forgot she had a husband.
The truth is God called us exactly the same time, we are both were willing to go wherever God wants us to go and a year later we found out that would be the Philippine and we spent 27 years there. When we were married, my wife said to me “Wherever you go I will go”, she had no idea what she was getting into for we have been all over the world giving the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ teaching the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ teaching the word of God.
We are taking another team back in the Philippines in July and we are also taking a team in Israel as well in May. It is because of the call that is why I am a missionary. Sometimes the only thing that would keep a missionary on the field is because he kno
ws that he has been called. There are many things that might cause you to say I need to go home. I think back of the life of the disciples how many of them terrible deaths died. I think of many times in our life when tragedy would happen and we would think the enemy would put into our mind, “Go home, Go home”.
I remember the first year that we were in the Philippines our son died. He is still buried there today and the devil whispered “Go home, Go home” but God said, “I called you, I called you, I called you”. And we stayed 27 years. It is the call that causes me to be a missionary it is your call that causes you to be a missionary and your call might be Fresco, Texas. I tell you Fresco needs missionaries. Amen!
The first reason that I am a missionary and I think you need to be a missionary is the call.
▶2. The second reason and I think you need to be is because of the condition of the world. The Bible reads,
Romans 2:10-12,
10 As it is written:
“There is none righteous, no, not one;
11 There is none who understands;
There is none who seeks after God.
12 They have all turned aside;
They have together become unprofitable;
There is none who does good, no, not one.”
Isaiah 53:6
6 All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned everyone to his own way; and Jehovah hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.
John Piper said, “Missions exist were the worship of the Christ does not” and we have a responsibility to take the message of the gospel does not exist. Did you know that there are over 6 billion people today? Let me try to put that in perspective. one billion seconds is 32 years ago, one billion minutes is two thousand years ago. If I were to shake hands with all 6 billion people in the world today, shaking hands one second only, it will take me over two hundred years to shake their hands. Our task is great, there are many who have never heard of Jesus Christ and they will never will if we do not go. And so our responsibility is great but it must start with one person, it must start with the compassion that we have for others. Because not only do we see that condition of the world we see the commandment to go. And we see the great commission to love others and the great commandment that God gave us.
I remember a story that illustrates this very well for us, reaching one person in these billions that are in the world. And I think it is a good illustration because Jesus uses leprosy in His illustration in His own teaching. Leprosy is a type of sin, it starts small and finally eats all the way of the body and one of the dangers of leprosy is that it destroys the feeling in the fingers and finally in many parts of the body. And sin also makes us hard and so we do not hear the word of God and respond to God, the Holy Spirit.
My daughter went to school in the Philippines, that is my youngest daughter, and they have a team that will visit a leprosarium in the Philippines. She tells of one story that really touched my heart. They visited this large building, much larger that this but open very much like your auditorium. As they went inside of this large building they can smell this rotting smells. There are numbers of people on beds and lying in the floor and sitting against the wall, all of them in different stages of leprosy and dying. And as they would go from sections to sections they would sing songs and pray with the people who are there. And then give a simple plan of salvation. Finally they got to the back of the building and there on the bed was a young man with no hands and no feet. His ears had been eaten away, his nose was open and they came upon him and they looked at him and begun to pray. And as they did everyone in the group reached out and placed their hand on the body. After they finished praying they noticed that there are tears falling down his ears. They asked him in Tagalog, Why are you crying? he said I have been here for ten years and this is the first time someone touched me.
And spiritually today there are people in the world today that has never been touched by the gospel, they have never been touched by the love of God and you are the only hope that they have. Your community can only be reached by some of you. The first reason that I am a missionary and I think you should be is because of the call. The second reason that I am a missionary and I think you should be is because of the condition of the world.
▶3. The third reason that I am a missionary and I think you should be is because of the confrontation of the enemy.
1 Peter 5:8
Be sober, be watchful: your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour,
John tells us that Jesus came into the world to destroy the work of the devil. one of my favorite verses in the bible is Exodus 14:14, “The Lord will fight for you and you shall hold your peace.” This again is Moses speaking to the people as they were watching pharaoh’s army comes towards them. And Moses simply said, “Be quit trust the Lord, He will fight for you”. And we have the history of what happened. For all of Pharaoh’s army and all of his followers drowned in the Red Sea. I have met some as a missionary a demon possessed people.
I remember specifically one case like your pastor and like you I like to start churches. There is something exiting about starting churches. And when we have started new church in a place called Gower. The pastor that we placed there was a very evangelic preacher. one Sunday I was visiting him and preaching for him and outside a woman walked by who looked very strange. She had no clothes her hair was very long down to her feet. She was very, very dirty almost black covered with filth and dirt and she would scream out and scream out and she would come by the church. The pastor run outside and she started reading to her John 3:16 and then she was gone. The pastor told me that she did this many times every week and everyone in the city called her the demon possessed woman. So one day they stopped her so she couldn’t pass by. He quoted John 3:16, he quoted Romans 3:23, he quoted Romans 5:8, “But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” and he kept on going until finally there is recognition in her eyes. She calmed down and stopped screaming. She said how can I believe in Christ and he explained to her very clearly and standing in front of the church she accepted Christ as her savior. She went home, bath, cut her hair put on some clothes, started coming regularly to the church, two years later she married one of the deacons. She now has four children there in the church.
The condition of the world is terrible there is that confrontation with the devil that we have to give. Are we willing to stand against temptation? Are we willing to talk to those people that are seemingly controlled by the devil? Are we willing like this pastor to run outside to share John 3:16 with someone who is demon possessed. Might be your boss, might be your friend, might be just someone you know, a next door neighbor, maybe someone in your family but the devil has them and the only way they will be free is you share the gospel to them.
How many times? As many times as you forgive people you should share the gospel, 70 times 7, which means in unlimited time.
So I am a missionary because of the call, I am a missionary because of the condition of the world,
I am a missionary because of the confrontation of the enemy,
▶4. and finally I am a missionary because of the cheer that will come at the end.
The bible says in 1 Corinthians 9:24,
“Do you not know that in a race all runners run but only one gets the price? Run in such a way as to get the price.”
Hebrews 12:1&2
"Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God."
The Bible tells us that there is great joy in heaven of one soul receives Jesus Christ as savior. I like to think of it as a great football game and when your favorite team scores and wins the ball game at the last moment and there is this great cheer that goes out from the thousands in the center and in the stands when a person comes to the Lord Jesus Christ as his personal Lord and savior.
I think of football because that is what my father and I are always connected on was football game, we love the game of football. And he used to tell me a story about a coach of Oklahoma by the name of Bud Wilkinson. I thought Wilkinson one time that he had a player in his team that is only a medium player. No matter how much he coached him, no matter how much he taught him the player just did not seem to be as excellent as he could be. The coach found out a little later that what was happening was the young man has a father who was very ill and was dying. And he was playing football but also trying to take care of his father. one day there was a big game, very important and the person who was very good at that possession was hurt and the only substitution is him. So the coach put in the young man to play. He taught well he could not really do very well but what happen was this guy played the best football game he had ever played in his life. He scored 3 touch downs and won the game for Oklahoma. Coach Wilkinson asked him afterwards. He said son what happened to you, you have never played like this before and he said I will tell you why. He says coach as you know my father was very sick and he can never see me play, he said last week my father died and he is in heaven, he said today he is watching me play and I have to play the best game I could pray and my father is cheering for me today.
I believe that as you win people to Christ, as you lead other to the Lord that there are people who have gone on before as your mothers, and your fathers, your brothers and your sisters and your friends who are looking down upon us today, just as the list of people that are found in Hebrews 11 that they are cheering for us today. You can’t imagine the cheer when one person comes to know Jesus Christ as savior.
So there are four reasons why we should be missionaries.
The first reason why we should be missionaries is because of the call.
The second reason we should be missionaries is because of the condition of the world.
The third reason why we should be missionaries is because of the confrontation of the enemy.
The forth reason why we should be a missionary is because of the cheer that will come at the end.
And so I challenge you. Be missionaries where you are, here, oversees, wherever God has called you but to be a missionary for Jesus Christ in the place where He has put you.
Father we thank you for this time together and I ask you to use those who are here this morning to your honor and glory as missionaries. If that is in fresco, or in China, or the Philippines, or wherever they may go, may we honor you as missionaries. AMEN
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