Good afternoon. It is so wonderful to see you here and I have been looking forward with much anticipation to being with you and our church in Hiram, Georgia has been praying for these meetings and so we are thankful to be here this afternoon. If you would take your Bibles and turn with me to Matthew 28 as we begin. Doubtless is a familiar text to all of us. Jesus has died upon the cross. He's risen from the dead, and he's about to ascend to the Father. In Matthew 28, verse 16, we have the context in which he gives what we've come to know as his great commission. Then the eleven disciples went away into Galilee to the mountain which Jesus had appointed for them. When they saw him, they worshipped him, but some doubted. And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you. And lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. Let's pray and ask for God's blessing upon our time. Father, as has already been prayed, without the help of the Holy Spirit, this entire conference will be for nothing. Lord, we need the help of your Spirit to give both light and heat to our minds and our hearts, to help us to understand your truth, to understand the place that each of us is to take in the evangelization and discipleship of the world. Lord, would you grant us much grace, for we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen. My wife Angela and I love classic old films. We love Gary Cooper and Frank Capra and Jimmy Stewart and Gregory Peck and all those kind of things. And one of the films that we love is The African Queen. The African Queen was released in 1948 and it stars Humphrey Bogart and Catherine Hepburn. The film is set in German occupied East Africa in 1914 right at the outbreak of World War I. Catherine Hepburn plays Rose, the sister of a man who has been sent out from Great Britain to be a Methodist missionary to East Africa. And they're there in this small African village and the film opens up. with a worship service going on in the midst of this African village. And to read it, or to watch it, is to have an example of how not to do cross-cultural ministry. It's humorous, but painful all at the same time to watch. Before our purposes here, I want to focus upon the character of Samuel, the missionary who is preaching there, played by Robert Morley. Early in the film, Samuel receives news from Great Britain, it's the Methodist newsletter, and as he's sitting there at tea, he's reading about a friend that he had graduated from seminary with named Herbie Morton. And it's very obvious that he is jealous of Herbie Morton because Herbie had just been assigned to become a bishop in Great Britain, whereas here is Reverend Samuel stuck on the pioneering field of Africa, which he obviously views as a lesser post than that of this man Herbie. Well, a short time later we learn why Samuel is on the mission field and not back in Great Britain. German troops invade the village where they are. They burn the entire village down. They take all the Africans captive. And Samuel tries to resist them. He's hit in the face with the butt of a German gun. And the effect of the wound, but also the effect of having his entire mission shut down, shatters his health so that he begins to be delirious and ultimately dies. Now, I know you're thinking, spoiler alert, man, wow. Well, you've had since 1948 to see the movie, so I think you're okay. But Samuel's health begins to shatter, and as he's dying, his sister Rose is attending to him. And just before he dies, he is sitting there in his delirium, he's remembering his days in seminary. And he makes this statement, quote, I try so hard to study Hebrew and Greek, but I've got no felicity. In other words, I don't have the smarts to understand Hebrew and Greek. If I don't pass the examinations, I shall volunteer as a missionary. End of quote. Now, why have I shared that with you this afternoon? Because I believe the script writers tapped into a mindset that is still with us to this day. The idea that you become a missionary if you can't get a job anywhere else, and furthermore, more tellingly, that somehow the qualifications to be a missionary in a foreign land are less than the qualifications to be a pastor in our own land. And while I trust I speak with charity, this mindset is very, very real. So much of what goes on in modern missions is all theological. The idea is, let's go out there and get people decisioned up for Jesus, and then we'll give them a Bible and hope they know what to do with themselves, and we'll tell everybody back home what great things God did, and we'll move on to the next village, and we'll call that last village reached. And, let's say you go to a seminary that is very robust theologically, and you're getting a very robust, very good theological education. The truth is, so often as you're getting that education, missiology is not a part of the core curriculum. If you want to study missions, you've got to take a few elective classes that are voluntary but not a part of the whole thing. The problem with that, of course, is that the Bible is a missionary book from cover to cover, that God's heart has always been for the world, and that missions is not something we tack on to theology. It's something that is an integral part of it. But this absence of doctrinal concern, theological concern, in missions is a very real and a very significant problem. The idea is, well, let's get people decision up for Jesus, but theology and doctrine, that just divides and causes all kinds of difficulties and trouble. Let's not worry about that. Well, the problems with this are so many and varied, it's amazing. First of all, you can't share the gospel with someone. You can't do evangelism without theology. Because as you share the gospel with someone, first of all, you're telling them something about who God is. You're telling them something about who they are. You've got to tell them what sin is. You've got to tell them who Jesus is. You've got to tell them what Jesus came to do. You've got to tell them what they have to do about Jesus coming. They must repent and believe, and so you're going to talk about justification by faith. You may not use those terms, but the concept you're going to explain. Do you know even as you share the gospel, have you ever thought about it, in evangelism, you can't do evangelism without eschatology? You have to talk about last things because you talk about heaven and hell and a judgment to come and that there is wrath to come that they must flee from. So you can't even do evangelism without solid theological content. But the second thing I would set before you is this. The Great Commission is not exclusively about evangelism. You know, it's amazing when you look at the verses I've just read, there are actually three commands, three precepts Jesus gives. He says, make disciples, baptize disciples and teach disciples. Well, first of all, make disciples. Yes, the obedience to the Great Commission begins with telling people about Jesus and telling people how they must be saved. But that's it isn't in there. It begins there, but it doesn't stop there. Once they're converted, what do you do with them? Well, the next thing Jesus says is you baptize those who've been made disciples. You mark them out as distinct from this world. And when you look at the book of Acts, every time someone's baptized, and in almost every case, they are then added to the church. You cannot do the Great Commission, you can't obey the Great Commission without being a church planter. Which means a missionary must have the desire, graces, and gifts necessary to labor in a type of pastoral ministry to plant churches. And that includes not only discipling people, it includes mentoring men to be leaders, indigenous elders in each local church. And furthermore, teach disciples, teach them to observe everything that I've commanded you. In other words, you must preach the whole counsel of God to the people who've been converted so that they know how to walk in obedience to Christ. And that is what is entailed in great commission obedience. Obviously it begins with evangelism, but the great commission is not just concerned with the conversion of the lost. It's also concerned with the sanctification of the saved. And so we have to send men out who are qualified to obey that great commission Christ has given us. And brothers and sisters, I want you to understand this isn't just a theoretical problem. According to David Seals in his book, Reaching and Teaching, which is available on our book table, I would encourage you to get a hold of it. We always talk about China. And China is the fastest growing church in the world. And certainly God is doing great things in China, no question about it. But do you realize that 85% of the churches in China are pastored by women? Furthermore, did you know that every year an estimated 10,000 local churches are lost to pseudo-Christian cults? Pastor John Miller has been to China several times, and he's talked about how there is a particular heresy that the Chinese are very prone to called lightning from the east. And it's the idea that Jesus has come back to earth, but he's come back in the form of a woman. And they're very susceptible to this kind of teaching. Now, why is it that the church in China is in so much trouble? because they do not have biblically qualified leadership in their churches to establish them in the faith, to teach them sound doctrine in such a way that they're not tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine. And that means their souls are in grave danger. Because they haven't been taught the real thing in such a way, you know, if you're a cashier learning how to handle money, how do you learn how to recognize a counterfeit? You handle the real thing for a long time, and then when you slip in a counterfeit, you know what you found. You recognize it instinctively. Even so, you've got to be given the real truth, the whole counsel of God, so that when the counterfeit comes in, you recognize it. And you see, I'm not going to go there. I'm not going to swallow this hook, line, and sinker. So the problem is very, very real. And so, brothers and sisters, we believe in world missions. But we believe in biblically robust world missions. We believe in theologically robust world missions. And furthermore, let me just say it, we believe in confessional reformed missions. Some have said that our confession doesn't have a sufficient framework for missions. I beg to differ. Now granted, the who and the how of missions isn't given in our confession, but I honestly believe that it gives us a framework that is the best kind of robust missions you could ever want to get a hold of. And I hope to give you something of that this afternoon. Well, the subject assigned to me is to talk to you about the theological foundations of world missions. It goes without saying, but I'm going to say it anyway, that I'm not going to be exhaustive. All I can do is give you a survey, an overview in this lecture and then the next. But I do want to give you some flavor, some taste of how the various theological disciplines impact missions in various ways, and I want to do so under seven headings. You have in your notebook the lecture notes on page one for this lecture and then the next, and I have seven one-word headings. We're going to cover the first three in this first lecture, then we're going to take a short break, we're going to come back, and then cover the last four. But what are they? The first is God. Second, covenants. Third, revelation. Fourth, culture. Fifth, worship. Sixth, spirit. And seventh, glory. So let's begin with our first one, God. And you see your subheadings there in your notes. God is the motivation of missions. He is the proclamation of missions. And He's the goal of missions. So let's consider each of those in turn. Motivation. God himself is the source, the motivation for missions. Tom Wells opens his classic work, A Vision for Missions, which is taking God's attributes and showing us what they mean to missions. He opens it by telling of a missionary who said, quote, a need will not keep you on the mission field. People will rebuke and repel you. End of quote. He goes on to speak of a conversation he had with a woman missionary to Thailand. She was a woman who had ministered for many decades in a very hard place. And he asked her the question, what's the secret of your staying power? What's kept you on the mission field? And without hesitation, she said, quote, God's command. If it wasn't for God's command, I wouldn't be there. And Tom Wells goes on to say this about her. The stars had gone from this woman's eyes. She had not lost her ideals, only her idealism. Neither response to human need nor the spirit of adventure could have kept her at her post. Yet she had an answer. She fell back on God's directions. She was under orders, so she stayed. End of quote. Sometimes in a mission conference like this, you'll hear a zealous pastor or preacher get up and say, the Great Commission is the greatest commandment in all the Bible. Well, you know, it is a great commandment and it's an important commandment. But it's not the greatest commandment. Jesus himself identified something else as the greatest commandment. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And the second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. And this is what is behind all evangelical obedience to God's command. This is the motive. And this is the motives, the twin motives behind obedience to the Great Commission. But even in thinking about that, now let's stop and think about this. Do any of us, are any of us guilty of loving the lost too much? Certainly not. But that being said, I want to point something out to you. There is a divine priority on loving God even more than we love the lost. And that is important to get ahold of when we think about world missions. I've pastored a church in my own state for almost 14 years now. And any pastor who's been here for any length of time who's been in the ministry will tell you. that you cannot be in the ministry and be faithful without having some scars in your soul. You will have them, your wife will have them, your children will carry some of them. Being in the ministry is hard. Your reputation will be slandered. You will be accused of everything under the book. I think I've just about been called everything under the sun, or if I haven't, I will soon be. We go through rejection. People who were once loyal to us betray us. People slander our character. It hurts. And I'm going to tell you, if I had a nickel for every time I felt like quitting, not only could I quit, I could quit in style. My wife and I could go on an all-expense-paid tour of the Bahamas for three months, okay? I mean, it is not easy. Because the pastorate hurts. We are facing warfare, difficult things. And when you ask yourself the question, is it worth it? What do I really have to show for all this pain I've gone through? If you said, is it worth it? Sometimes you would say no. And to be honest with you, in our more carnal moments, if we ask ourselves, are God's people worth it? We might struggle with coming up with that answer too. Now, we know the answer is yes. Paul said, I endure all things for the sake of the elect. I've been thinking a lot about the hymn lately, I Love Thy Kingdom, Lord. The line where it says, beyond my highest joy, I prize your heavenly ways. In other words, even among my own happiness, I put the welfare of the church ahead of that. That's what Paul was saying. He was in prison and saying, I endure all things for the sake of the elect. Yes, it's true. God's people are worth it. But fundamentally, the question you have to come back to is, is Jesus worth it? Helen Rosevere, some of you may have heard of her. She was a medical missionary to the Congo in the 1950s and 60s. And while she was there seeking to labor for the Lord, uh, guerrillas military guerrillas invaded the village where they were. She, along with a number of other women were captured and they were brutally and cruelly raped. And as Helen Roosevelt was being raped, she said, she cried out to God in her heart and said, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And she's sitting there thinking about these things, and she said from the time that she was a little girl, whenever she was planning a venture or thinking about doing something, she would count the cost and ask herself, is it worth it? And she said as she was being raped, the thought came to her mind, is it worth it? And then she said, I realized in that moment, I had always been asking the wrong question. The question is, is he worth it? And when I ask that question, I know what the answer is. Rather than take all the martyrs and all the pain that all of us have ever endured for standing up for Christ, all the persecution, all the rejection, all of it, take all of it and put it all together. And you know what? It's not so much as a drop in the bucket compared to what Jesus suffered on the cross to secure my redemption and yours. Not even a little bit. This is what the Hebrew writer has in mind in Hebrews chapter 12 verse 3 when he says, For consider him who endured such hostility for sinners against himself, lest you become weary and discouraged in your souls. Remember what Jesus suffered for you and realize I've suffered nothing comparatively. And the suffering of this present age is just momentary light affliction not worthy to be compared with a greater weight of glory in the age it is to come. But these are things we have to be reminded of. I have to be reminded what's the question? Christ is worth it. My triune God, He's worth it. He's worth every sacrifice we've made to make Him known. So before I leave the subject of motivation, though, I do want to touch upon a specific attribute of God that I think is imperative we talk about when it comes to motivation. And that attribute is the self-sufficiency of God. So often in missions, discussion, missions, motivation, we are made almost to pity God as if He needs our help. I remember singing a hymn that was written back in the 1970s. Not many good hymns have been written since the turn of the 20th century, but this was one that was particularly bad. And it went something like this, my children all love to eat at my table, but so few want to work in my fields. And you almost want to go sniff, as if God is a frustrated father. who wants his children to do better, but they're just spoiled rotten and so he can't kind of get over all this. What a weak and pathetic God our God would be if that's the way He was. A. D. Betozer in his Knowledge of the Holy nails this so wonderfully well. In his chapter on the self-sufficiency of God, he says this, quote, we commonly represent God as a busy, eager, somewhat frustrated father, hurrying about seeking help to carry out his benevolent plan to bring peace and salvation to the world. Too many missionary appeals are based upon this fancied frustration of Almighty God. An effective speaker can easily excite pity in his hearers, not only for the heathen, but for the God who has tried so hard and so long to save them and has failed for want of support. I fear that thousands of younger persons enter Christian service from no higher motive than to help deliver God from the embarrassing situation his love has gotten him into and his limited ability seem unable to get him out of. Add to this a certain degree of commendable idealism and a fair amount of compassion for the underprivileged and you have the true drive behind much Christian activity today." Brothers and sisters, this is what we need to realize. Yes, God has chosen to use us, and that's glorious. And we thank God that we have the privilege of being used by Him. But you know something? Jesus was building His kingdom long before I was ever born, and He's going to still be building His kingdom when I'm dead. He doesn't need me. He does not need you. He is going to save all His elect. And yes, He uses means, but He is a self-sufficient God. So don't think, oh boy, I'm going to do God a favor. and somehow enlist for the mission field because he somehow needs me. No, he doesn't need me, but he's chosen to use us and we thank God for that. So, we see first of all, God is the source, the motivation of mission. Secondly, we want to speak of proclamation. God himself is the content of missions. There's a fascinating verse in 1 John 1 and verse 4. John says this, this is the message we have heard from him. and declare to you." In other words, he's saying this is the message that Jesus preached while he was among us and this is what we heard and it's our message too. That God is light and in him is no darkness whatsoever. Now that's a fascinating verse to me because he doesn't say this is a message that Jesus spoke or one of many messages. He says this is the message that we've heard from Jesus. And the message he taught us is the same one we're teaching you. God is light. in him is no darkness whatsoever." He's just distilled all the parables and all the things that Jesus had to say, and you're thinking, okay, why is that so profound? Why is that important? But do you remember John 1, verse 18? No one has seen God at any time. Speaking of God, the father, no one's seen God, the father at any time, but the only begotten son who's in the bosom of the father, he has declared him. He has expounded him. In other words, Jesus ministry was to come and tell us what the father's like. And you say, why is that so important? It's important because when you know who, what God is like, then you can know what you're like. You see, in the light of who He is, we realize who we are. And back in 1 John 1, that's exactly where John goes. He says, take this truth that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all, and you can know whether you're a true convert or a false convert. Because what he says in the next verses is this, if we say we have fellowship with Him and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ, his Son, cleanses us from all sin. John says Jesus' message is our message. We're to go and tell the nations what God is like. Now think about it. Have you ever noticed in Acts 17, when the Apostle Paul went to Athens and he was on top of Mars Hill? He preaches to the pagans in Mars Hill in a way that he does not preach to the Jews in the synagogues. When he's in the Jewish synagogues, he's preaching to people who are biblically literate. They have the Word of God read to them constantly every single Sabbath day. They're biblically literate. But when he's standing on Mars Hill, these people don't know the Bible. And they are pagans and they don't have the first clue about God, but they're very deeply religious. They've got idols all over the place. It was said in ancient times you could spit and it would more easily hit an idol than you would hit a man. And just to make sure they didn't miss anybody, they have another altar to the unknown God. Let's make sure we don't offend some unknown deity. So let's make an altar to them. So Paul tells them, the one whom you worship in ignorance, I make known to you. If you notice his preaching then, he basically gives them theology 101. He tells them this is what God is like. First of all, you've created all these gods, but there's a God whom you didn't create. He created you. He's the eternally uncreated one. Furthermore, he's a self-sufficient God. He doesn't need you for anything, but you need him for everything. He is a sovereign God. He's ordained the number of days you're going to live. He's even ordained where you're going to, the places you're going to live, the boundaries of your habitation. He's a just God. He's appointed a day of judgment and he has an appointed judge. And this God has a son and his name is Jesus and he's raised him up from the dead. So in other words, he takes this truth about who God is, giving him the basics of who God is, and then takes him straight to Calvary and shows him who Christ is. So here's the thing. We must proclaim God to the world as he's revealed himself, not as men imagine him to be. We need to be so very careful. The Bible warns us in the Psalms, you thought I was a man altogether like you. But I'm not like you. I'm altogether different from you, is what God is telling us. And it's at this point that I think it's appropriate to talk about a controversy that our national association has been through. subject of chapter two of our confession that says God is without body, parts, or passions. What's it mean that God doesn't have passions, that he is impassable? There are some who have claimed that if you hold to the classical view that God is without passions, it will make you a hyper-Calvinist. There's others who said, why are we wasting time debating on this issue? We should go out and do evangelism instead of debating this issue. Well, I'm all for doing evangelism. But brethren, it's very important that as we preach to the nations, we don't misrepresent who God is. Men such as Scott Oliphant have postulated that God basically has a duality in Himself. There's a conflict going on between His transcendence and His eminence. And when God reveals Himself to men, He takes on attributes and covenantal properties He previously did not have in order to reveal Himself to men. Is that okay? No, the Bible teaches us that God is simple. That is, that there is no conflict inside of God between any of his attributes. Again, to read to you from Ada B'tozer, He's defining what an attribute is. He says this, the doctrine of the divine unity means not only that there is but one God, it means also that God is simple, uncomplex, one with himself. The harmony of his being is a result not of a perfect balance of parts, but of the absence of parts. Between his attributes no contradiction can exist. He need not suspend one to exercise another for in him all his attributes are one. All of God does all that God does. He does not divide Himself to perform a work, but works in the total unity of His being. The divine attributes are what we know to be true of God. He does not possess them as qualities. They are how God is as He reveals Himself to His creatures. Love, for instance, is not something God has and which may grow or diminish or cease to be. His love is the way God is, and when He loves, He is simply being Himself. And so with the other attributes. In other words, what Tozer is telling us is this. God says what he says and he does what he does because he is who he is. And God is who he is all the time. When he spoke to Moses in the burning bush, he didn't say, tell them I am becoming sent you. He said, tell them I am sending you a God who cannot change. Not only will he not change, he cannot change. Now you say, what in the world does this have to do with missions? Well, it has a lot to do with missions. First of all, I've been a Christian for almost 39 years. Next month will be the 39th anniversary, if you will, since I was converted. In that time, I have always struggled with keeping my passion for soul winning alive. Haven't you? Have you found the secret to where you're just always zealous for evangelism and just can't wait to go talk to the lost about the Lord? Or how many find that it's always in flux? that constantly I find myself, I burn bright for evangelism for 10 minutes and I think, wow, isn't God lucky I'm in his kingdom? And then no sooner has that 10 minutes gone, it's extinguished. It's like it's, you can see the smoke coming up in my head where the flame has gone out. Because I have passions, you have passions. But our God doesn't have passions. He doesn't have even affections. What he has is perfections. God, loving God is a perfection. And even when I don't feel loving, I can talk to the lost about a God whose love changes never. And I can tell, look at them and straighten the eye and say, you have sinned against God. Despite your sin, God loves you in spite of yourself. Your sin cannot make him love you less, nor can your righteousness make him love you more. Because His love is impassable. Of course, that's not what I'm going to say to a lost person. I'm not going to use the term impassable, but you get the point. I'm going to get the essence of what that is, to say God's love never changes. The reason God loves you is not because of any quality in you, it's because that's the way God is. But furthermore, as I think about that, meditate upon that, as my passions are going up and down and I'm growing in love and losing love and losing heat and all those things, is it not true? I can reignite my passions at that impassable flame of God's love and constantly come to that fountain of love to be renewed in my love for the lost. So imperative that as we preach to the nations, we make God known as He is. Well, the third element of God in his connection to missions in terms of the subject of God is exaltation. God is the goal of missions. He's the motive of missions. He's the content of missions. He's the goal of missions. John Piper was the one who famously said, quote, missions exists because worship doesn't. End of quote. Absolutely right. God is worthy of being exalted among the nations even when people don't accept him. Even when people do not receive Christ. Is it not worth the effort to make Christ known? As Peter says in 1 Peter 1.14, on their part he's blasphemed. But on your part, he's glorified. So even if others profane him, our goal is to fill the earth with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters fill the sea. Let's move on to our second heading. We've talked about God. What about covenants? Covenants. What in the world do covenants have to do with world missions? Well, they have everything to do with world missions. Covenant theology is a connective tissue of Holy Scripture. If you grew up in Sunday school, you heard all these really cool stories, didn't you? You heard about Jonah and the great fish, and you had a flannel graph with a fish with jaws, going to eat up Jonah. And you heard about David and Goliath, and you had all these kind of disconnected stories that you learned about, but you didn't really know how they were connected. But as you begin to study the covenants, what you find out is this is the connective tissue that connects all those stories together. And what you realize is these 66 books are not 66 separate stories. It's one story with one author, with only one people of God. And furthermore, it has just one hero. And that hero is the triune God himself. And so we start thinking through the covenants, it's imperative, the whole story of the Bible is summarized in the covenants. Covenant theology is often summarized by three Latin phrases, the pactum salutis, the historia salutis, and the ordo salutis. But to put it in plainer English, what that means is it's about redemption appointed by God the Father, redemption accomplished by God the Son, and redemption applied by God the Holy Spirit. That's our covenant theology. And by the way, that's the warp and woof and structure of our confession as well. And our covenant theology is our missiology. But as I talk about covenants this afternoon, I don't want to talk to you about the covenants God made with man. I would rather talk to you about the covenant God made with God. what our confession calls the covenant of redemption. This was an inter-sanitarian covenant that God made before time began, the Father with the Son and with the Spirit, concerning the redemption of God's elect. That is, the Father chose a people out of fallen humanity, according to the good pleasure of His will, whom He would save. He chose them in His Son, He chose them in Christ, put His favor upon them and chose that He would save them, decreed their salvation, and then committed to the Son the responsibility of securing that salvation. And he sent his son in the fullness of time who voluntarily received what his father told him to do, the commission he gave, and voluntarily said, yes, I will take care of their redemption. And the son came and he humbled himself, became a man, fulfilled God's law as a man in our place, died upon the cross, a strict substitutionary death in our place, and became the surety that we would inherit all the blessings. This coming Tuesday, God willing, I've got a roof repair to go do. There's a woman who has a chimney that's leaking and she wants me to repair her chimney. And part of our agreement was that after I'm finished, complete the roof repair, I'm going to give her a written warranty that says if your roof leaks for the next year, I will come back and fix it for free. But let's say that I told her, okay, you can hire me, but I'm going to give you a potential warranty. And she looks at me and says, what in the world is a potential warranty? I say, well, if your roof leaks again, I might come back and fix it and I might not. Do you think she would hire me? Because a potential warranty is no warranty at all. Jesus, when he died on the cross, did not make a potential surety. He made a certainty that all of God's elect would inherit the blessings of the new covenant. He secured it in strict substitution. He gave us a full atonement that is provided for all of us, all who are in Christ to be saved. But here's the point that I'm getting at. Who did God choose when He chose His elect? Did He choose the elect only from the nation of Israel? No. He chose them from every tribe, from every tongue, from every people group. When God made His covenant with Abraham, what did He say to him? He said, in your seed. And that is in your singular seed. Paul makes much of this in Galatians. In your seed, that is Christ, all families, of all nations. will be blessed. That is, there are representatives of my elect found in all those places. Many of you know the story. Well, turn first of all to Isaiah 49, if you would, if you have your Bibles. I want to show you something. I believe we have in Isaiah 49 a window into the covenant of redemption. There are these places in Scripture where we're invited, as it were, to come and put our ear to the keyhole of heaven's door and listen in to the conversations between the persons of the Godhead. It starts off in Genesis 1, let us create man in our image. You have the persons of the Godhead talking about creating man. Isaiah 49 is another place like that, verses 5 and 6. And now the Lord says, who formed me from the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob back to him so that Israel is gathered to him. For I shall be glorious in the eyes of the Lord and my God shall be my strength. Indeed, he says. It is too small a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the preserved ones of Israel. I will also give you as a light to the Gentiles that you should be my salvation to the ends of the earth." Do you see what's going on here? The father is speaking to the son and he's saying, your name is too great that I should limit you to saving only the tribes of Israel. I'm going to make you a light to the nations. I'm going to make you a light to the Gentiles. And throughout the Bible, Psalm 2 for example, we have the father saying to the son, ask of me and I will give you the nations as your inheritance. Endure the cross and I will give you the crown. And that's exactly what Jesus gave. That's what he's saying in Matthew 28 when he starts off and says, all authority has been given to me in heaven on earth. I love what our missionary Alan Beardmore said when he went to Australia. He says, we're not going to Australia to make Jesus king. Jesus is already the king of Australia. We're going to announce these king that God, the father has made this Jesus whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ, that he is in the inheritor of the nations. Now, what's this have to do with us and world missions? Nate Saint. I'm sure many of you know of Nate Saint and Jim Elliott. In the 1950s, these brothers were in Ecuador seeking to reach the Aka Indians for the Lord. Of course, they weren't called the Aka Indians now, but that's what they called them then. And Nate Saint thought to himself, he said, you know, some people were critical of them for wanting to go after the Aka Indians and share the gospel with them because they were a notorious tribe who were very violent. And he said, why on earth would we go to the Aka Indians with a gospel? And he says, well, when I read my Bible, I see that the last time in heaven, there are going to be people from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation before the throne singing God's praises. And that means there's going to be Akka Indians there, and maybe God will be pleased to use us to bring them into the kingdom. Now, what's interesting about Nate Saint was he was not a Calvinist. He was from a Plymouth brethren background, but as a convinced Calvinist, I can see no flaw in his logic. that indeed we should have every confidence that God is going to save His elect, and those elect come from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation. We have some friends in Papua New Guinea, Reformed Baptist missionaries who are there, Ray and Cheryl Gibello. And Ray preached in our church about a year and a half ago, and he preached on the covenant of redemption. First time I ever heard a missionary preach on the covenant of redemption, it was glorious. But he said this at the end of it, he said, you know, My wife and I are in Papua New Guinea because we believe God called us and sent us there. But you know what's kept us on the mission field? The covenant of redemption. We have a 100% guarantee that God will save every one of his elect without fail in Papua New Guinea. So we've only seen five conversions, but we stay there because we know God is going to save all of them. It gives us confidence, something the Lord's been working on in my own life in recent days. I preach evangelistically. without really expecting he's going to save anybody. I think, well, he'll sanctify his saints, yeah. But I'd be shocked if he actually saved somebody, wouldn't you? And you know what? That's an indictment against God's character, isn't it? That's unbelief. I shouldn't be shocked. I should dare to believe my God has the sovereign power to save sinners, even in this hardened culture that we live in. And I should expect him to do so. Don't necessarily have the right to expect him to do so every single week. But I should be expecting that, indeed, we will see conversions, because His Word has power. And the Gospel is the power of God and salvation, and it's lost none of its power in 2,000 years. And it can save even stubborn-hearted North Americans, right? And so we should have this belief. So it gives us the fuel to keep on going. One missionary said, before I became a missionary, I thought I could never be a missionary if I believed in the doctrine of election. He says, after working with the hardness of men's hearts for 20 years, I couldn't be a missionary if I did not believe in the doctrine of election. And it's so true. Well, a third point we're going to have, and then we'll take a break, is revelation. Revelation. The Bible tells us that God reveals Himself in His creation. It's what theologians call His general revelation. David speaks of it in Psalm 19, the heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament shows His handiwork. Day unto day utters speech and night unto night brings forth knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. The speaking voice of God in creation is heard even among cultures that don't have one word of the Bible translated into their language. It is evident to them there is a God who has created all of it, who is worthy of their worship, worthy of their thanksgiving, worthy of their obedience. Paul picks up the same theme in Romans chapter one. God has made his invisible attributes clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made. He goes on to tell us men's consciences bear witness that there is an absolute right and there's an absolute wrong. This is proven because they justify themselves or condemn themselves based on what's going on inside their hearts, even if they've never been given the written word of God. The problem is that revelation of God is sufficient to condemn them, but it's not sufficient to save them. It's not sufficient to save them. And so God has given us his holy word, which is sufficient to save sinners. What did Paul tell Timothy in second Timothy chapter three, verse 15 from childhood, you have known the holy scriptures, which are able to make you wise and to salvation through faith, which is in Christ Jesus turned to Romans chapter 10. Romans eight, Paul gives us the golden chain of redemption. Romans 10, he gives us the golden chain of world missions. World Missions has five links in its chain that are indesirable. And you're very familiar, I'm sure, with this text, but as we read through verses 13 through 15, I want you to notice the five links in this golden chain of World Missions. And notice that Paul goes from effect to cause. He argues backwards here. Verse 13, whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. How then shall they call, that's the first link, how shall they call on him in whom they have not believed, the second link is faith, and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard, that's the third link, and how shall they hear without a preacher, that's the fourth link, and how shall they preach unless their Sent. Sent. Tells us something right here. The one who sends is as important to the work of world missions as is the person who sent. Alan Beardmore again said this, you don't fly to the moon if you don't have a good launching pad to launch from. And even so, the local church has to be a solid launching pad to launch out missionaries to the mission field. But what is Paul telling us? He's telling us that if people do not have the Word of God preached to them, they cannot be saved. They must have God's special revelation. They must hear about Jesus, or else they can't believe on Jesus. And if they can't believe on Jesus, they can't be saved. In other words, general revelation is not sufficient for this. And so we must take the Gospel to them and preach Jesus and Him crucified to them. Otherwise, they will certainly be damned. And there's the imperative of world missions. Dr. Jim Renahan pointed this out about our confession, and I love this fact. You ever notice that Chapter 1, Paragraph 1, the very two opening sentences of our confession start with the need of world missions. Listen to what it says. The Holy Scripture is the only sufficient, certain, and infallible rule of all saving knowledge, faith, and obedience. Although the light of nature and the works of creation and providence do so far manifest the goodness, wisdom, and power of God as to leave men inexcusable, yet they are not sufficient to give that knowledge of God and His will which is necessary unto salvation. The necessity of world missions is how our confession begins." And brothers and sisters, believe it or not, Christianity didn't originate here, it originated on the other side of the world. And you and I would have never heard the gospel if it wasn't for world missions. we would have been lost without hearing about Christ. And that points us to something else, the necessity of Bible translation. John Payton, whom I'm sure many of you are familiar with, a 19th century Scottish missionary to the New Hebrides, I'll have more to say about him later, he said this, quote, Bible translation is that noblest handmaiden of every missionary enterprise, end of quote. And again, our confession helps us here. Chapter 1 of the Holy Scriptures, paragraph 8 says this, The Old Testament in Hebrew, which was the native language of the people of God of old, and the New Testament in Greek, which at the time of the writing of it was most generally known to the nations, being immediately inspired by God and by His singular care and providence kept pure in all ages, are therefore authentic so as in all controversies of religion the church is finally to appeal to them. But because these original tongues are not known to all the people of God, a show of hands, how many of you know Hebrew and Greek? A few. I know a little Greek, he runs a sandwich shop in Powder Springs. Because these are not known to all men, what's he going to say? Who have a right unto and interest in the scriptures and are commanded in the fear of God to read and search them, Therefore, they are to be translated into the vulgar language of every nation unto which they come. That the word of God dwelling plentifully in all, they may worship him in an acceptable manner, and through patience and comfort of the scriptures may have hope." Now, that's quite a statement. But you know, as we think through that, we need to realize that we think of that and we think, well, yeah, of course the Bible should be translated in every language, right? But you need to remember, this was not written in the 21st century. This was written in the 17th century. This was a time when the Bible itself was forbidden. The Roman Catholic Church didn't let you read the Bible because you might start interpreting it and applying it to your life or something. And we couldn't have that. And so it was forbidden. It was literally against the law for you to translate the Bible into another language. William Tyndale put his life on the line when he began translating the Word of God from Greek into English. In fact, you know, that's exactly why he was killed. That's why he was martyred. He was talking to a man who was an ardent priest, and he was talking about the excellency of the Scriptures to them, and this guy was getting offended by how much the guy was talking about Scripture. And he looked at William Tyndale and said, we'd be better off if we didn't have any of Christ's words and just the law of the Pope. William Tyndale looked at him and said, I defy the Pope and all his laws. And he said, and I will make it my aim that the common plowboy plowing in the field will know the Scriptures better than you do. And that was his life's ambition from then on. And it was why he was killed, why he was martyred. His blood was spilled to give us the English Bible. So we need to remember this was radical stuff in those days. And we need to understand as well Bible translation is a distinctively Protestant doctrine. And it's been a distinctively Protestant practice. Look at William Carey. Look at John Payton. Look at Adoniram Judson. All these men labored in Bible translation faithfully to this day. Judson's Bible is the Bible that's used in Burma. As a matter of fact, there was a story back in 2012. A missionary had been to, a believer was in Burma, and he didn't know Burmese, but he got to meet some of the Christians who were there. You need to know that when Adam Jetson was in Burma, he only had about 25 converts. There weren't many people converted through his ministry. In fact, it's said more people died coming to the mission field than actually were converted through the influence of the missionaries. But he saw this Burmese Christian, he was holding a Bible, and on the spine it said, translated by A. Jetson. And he looked at him and says, do you know who that is? The man's eyes filled up with tears. He said, We all know who this man was. We all know about how he lost his children. We all know about all the sufferings that this man went through. There are two million Burmese Christians and we call this man our spiritual father. So his labors were not in vain. The word of God had been translated into the mother tongue and therefore the people could hear the word and hear the gospel for themselves.