We want to pick up right where we left off at our last session. At the end of our session, each of the sessions that we do, we leave some time for discussion and questions at the end, so we will do the same here. Then we'll take a short break and make sure we don't cut into Pastor John Miller's time for his wonderful, I've heard his session before, on the calling of the missionaries. Wonderful. Looking forward to hearing it again. In our last session we covered God, covenants, and revelation. We want to pick right up, and you have session two there in your notes in your notebook. We want to consider the last four headings, culture, worship, spirit, and glory. So first of all, culture. As we think about spreading the gospel to the other nations, to other cultures, we need to remember something that's very important. Jesus Christ is not a white American from North America. He's the Lord of Heaven. And when we go to other cultures, people do not have to first become Americans and then become Christians. Neither do they have to become Americans after they become Christians. As a matter of fact, they don't have to become like us. The truth is the missionary has to become like them. They have to adopt their culture. They have to learn to think the way other cultures think, because believe it or not, not everybody in the world thinks the way we think. And they have to learn to minister to them in their cultural context without diluting in any way or compromising God's truth. The gospel doesn't change, but the way you present it to a different culture is very significant. As a matter of fact, it's been said that this is the issue that often makes or breaks a missionary. Either he adopts the culture he goes to, or he isolates himself from the culture because the culture offends his Western sensibilities, and then his ministry is very much hindered because he has not adopted the culture for himself. Paul himself sets before us the model for this. I want you to turn in your Bibles to 1 Corinthians chapter 9. 1 Corinthians 9 verses 19 to 23 is Paul again addressing the subject of Christian liberty, which he addresses many times throughout the book of 1 Corinthians. He addresses it in Galatians and Romans. It's interesting to consider the different ways he applies Christian liberty. When it comes to Romans 14, for example, the context is dealing with brothers in Christ who live in the same church, and yet one's stronger and one's weaker, and they're having to get along with each other, and the difficulties of getting along as brothers when we have different convictions about different things that are not spoken to in Scripture. But then when you took the book of Galatians, he's exhorting the Galatian church who is being taught the doctrine of circumcisional regeneration. You must be circumcised in order to be saved. Stand fast in your liberty. Don't be brought into this bondage that is being taught you. But when you come to 1 Corinthians 9, Paul is taking the doctrine of Christian liberty and applying it to cross-cultural ministry. So let's look at it together. Verse 19, for though I am free from all men, that is, he's asserting the principle of Christian liberty, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win the more. And to the Jews, I became as a Jew, that I might win Jews. To those who are under the law, as under the law, that I might win those who are under the law. In other words, Paul says that when I'm among Jewish people, I adopt a kosher lifestyle. I eat kosher food. I live as one who's still under the positive ceremonial laws of the Old Testament, as it were, so that I might win them and not unnecessarily offend them. If they come to my house and see me eating pork, I'm immediately going to lose my audience. And so, when I'm in the midst of the Jew, I don't eat pork. I adopt the kosher lifestyle because I don't want to offend them. But then, You see what he says and goes on to, verse 21, to those who are without law, speaking of the Gentiles, as without law. In other words, I come into a Gentile's home and he gives me the pork chops. and I dig in and eat the pork chops and I give God thanks. I receive with thankfulness what he's given to me and I live as a Gentile that I might win the Gentiles. And the clear implication of his words is if he wasn't acting as a Jew to the Jews, his evangelism to them would be hindered. If he did not act as a Gentile to the Gentiles, his evangelism among them would be hindered. To put it another way, if you're called to be a missionary to Chile, you must become a Chilean. If you're called to be a missionary to Mexico, you must become a Mexican. And of course, because we're North Americans, we're not going to become perfect Chileans, we're not going to become perfect Mexicans, and the culture, I think, knows that. But we adopt their mannerisms, and so far as we're not compromising God's truth, we adopt their culture and live according to their culture so that we might win them by becoming one of them. As the Father sent me, so send I you. Jesus became one of us. And of course, there's not a one-to-one correspondence there, but he's saying in the same manner, I'm sending you. Paul says, I become a Jew to the Jew, a Gentile to the Gentiles, that I might win them for Christ. But notice what he says in talking about Christian liberty. Notice in verse 21, to those who are without law, as without law not being without law toward God, but under law toward Christ, that I might win those who are without law. It's an important clarification he's making here. He's saying, I don't compromise God's ways in order to win the world. In other words, I don't become a fornicator in order to win the sexually immoral. I don't bow down to idols so I can win idolaters. I don't take God's name in vain so I can win blasphemers. I am bound to obey God no matter what culture I am in, but where there are things indifferent, things that are just matters of preference or cultural difference that are not things commanded in Scripture, I give latitude. And that gives us a paradigm for which we can evaluate these various things together. Not without law towards God. He says, I do this for the gospel sake that I may be a retaker of it with you. Again, referring to our confession. Our confession helps us here again. I love this fact in our confession. Chapter 21 is entitled, Of Christian Liberty. Do you know what the chapter, just two chapters before that is, chapter 19? Of the Law of God. The chapter right after the section on Christian liberty is chapter 22, Of Religious Worship and the Sabbath Day. Now do you hear that? They're couching Christian liberty right in between two chapters that deal with the subject of God's moral law. In other words, our Baptist forefathers saw no contradiction between a Christian obeying the Ten Commandments and living in Christian liberty. Isn't that amazing? I thought you were legalistic if you kept the Sabbath day holy. No, maybe you're being obedient, right? You're being obedient to God's commandment because we are obligated to walk in obedience to God's commands. But yet, there's this Christian liberty spoken of here. Well, that gives us some sense of what the Scriptures are saying. Turn to James chapter 2. James chapter 2. You'll remember that James was the half-brother of Jesus and a leader in the church of Jerusalem, one of the elders that was there. James 2, he has a lot to say about the Ten Commandments. Verse 10 of chapter 2, For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is guilty of all. Now what law is James referring to? Verse 11 leaves us with no doubt. For he who said, Do not commit adultery, that's the seventh commandment, also said, Do not murder, that's the sixth commandment. Now, if you do not commit adultery, but you do murder, you become a transgressor of the law. So speak, and so do as those who will be judged by the law of liberty. Earlier, he calls the law the royal law. Why is he called the Ten Commandments the royal law? Well, because it wasn't written by a peasant. It was written by a king, right? It's the king's law. Who's the prophet, priest, and king of the church? Jesus Christ. So the Ten Commandments are the royal law of King Jesus. You can say amen if you want. It's the royal law of King Jesus. We are obligated to obey our King. But if you notice, he didn't only call it the royal law, he calls the Ten Commandments the law of liberty. Isn't that something? There's no contradiction between obeying God's royal law, the Ten Commandments, and walking in Christian liberty. In fact, where you find that the moral law is not proclaimed and preached, you'll find there's very little Christian liberty. because you've got to come up with a new law, a man-made law to substitute for the ones that you've not preached. And that's what so often happens in fundamentalism, for example, is that you come up with man-made laws, man's traditions as law, rather than God's moral law itself. Now James tells us, if you shall keep the whole law but stumble in one point, you're guilty of all. It's an illustration I've used with our church that I've found helpful. Let's suppose that you had a window, and that window had ten individual panes in it. And you took and painted on each of those ten panes each of the Ten Commandments. Now, you could technically take a rock and throw it through the fourth pane, for example, and break the fourth pane, and the other nine panes would stay intact, wouldn't they? But that is what James is telling us we can't do with the Ten Commandments. Instead, take one single sheet of glass, paint all the Ten Commandments on it, and then try to take a rock and hit just the fourth and see what happens. What's going to happen to that window? The whole thing is going to shatter. It stands or falls together as an indivisible unit. And by the way, that's a New Testament doctrine, confirmed in the Old Testament as well. But nonetheless, it is a New Testament doctrine that you cannot divide and say, well, I'm just going to keep all nine of the Ten Commandments. because they are inseparable as an indivisible unit. So if you think about it, think of a circle, as it were, and this is the boundary of God's moral law, his Ten Commandments. Everything outside of it is lawlessness. And if you profess to know Christ and live in habitual lawlessness, you're not truly in Christ at all. Jesus said, many will say in that day, Lord, Lord, did we not do many things in your name, cast out demons in your name, preach in your name, et cetera? It's us, we're the religious folks. Jesus will turn to them and say, depart from me, for I never knew you, you who practice lawlessness. Right. So we are to live inside the boundaries of God's moral law, which means we are the people who love the Lord our God with our heart, soul, mind and strength and love our neighbor as ourself. And that looks a lot like keeping the commandments, doesn't it? But inside of that boundary, there's latitude. There's latitude over things indifferent, things that scripture itself is silent upon. The Bible is sufficient even in its silence. And we can't forbid what God permits, because if you forbid what God permits, tomorrow you'll be permitting what God forbids. Right? But inside that boundary, there is this latitude. And this helps us in cross-cultural ministry. How? First of all, the perpetuity of the moral law tells us this. Sin is sin no matter who you are. It's a sin to worship another god no matter what culture you're from or what your skin color is. It's a sin to blaspheme God's name no matter what your skin color is, no matter what your national background or ethnic heritage. And it's imperative that we have the law of God as we preach among the nations. Because so often in America, we love to say Jesus is the answer. The problem is the world doesn't know what the question is. They don't know why they need a savior. And you have to show them that they need a savior. And the way to do that is to show them God's law. Because God's law is not just a rule, a bunch of rules and regulations that God dreamed up to make us miserable somehow. They're a transcript of his own immutable character. This is what God is like. As a matter of fact, look at the Ten Commandments. You know what the Ten Commandments are? They're the sandal prints of Jesus himself. What kind of way did he walk when he was on this earth? He walked in obedience to his father's law. The righteousness we're dressed in is his obedience to his father's law that he obeyed as a man. All right, so this is the character of Jesus himself, and it shows man just how unholy we are. Spurgeon said it this way, quote, I do not believe that any man can preach the gospel who does not preach the law. The law is the needle, and you cannot draw the silken thread of the gospel through a man's heart unless you first send the needle of the law to make way for it. In other words, it shows me my need of a savior when I preach the law of God among the nations. I want to make two applications of two specific commandments from the Ten Commandments that would, I think, help us in missionary methodology. The first is this. The second commandment says you should not make for yourself a carved image. And certainly that forbids us from making carved images of false gods. But you need to understand that it also forbids us from making images of the true God as well and bowing down before them. I don't know how many of you have read it, but Philip Graham Reitken has, I think, one of the best modern treatments of the Law of God called Written in Stone. And I want to read to you what he says about the Second Commandment. This was the problem with idolatry all along. It created a false image of God that was inadequate to His deity and unworthy of His majesty. God is infinite and invisible. He is omnipotent and omnipresent. He is a living spirit. Therefore, to carve Him into a piece of wood or stone is to deny His attributes the essential characteristics of His divine being. An idol makes the infinite God finite. the invisible God, visible, the omnipotent God, impotent, the all-present God, local, the living God, dead, and the spiritual God, material. In short, it makes him the exact opposite of what he actually is. Thus, the whole idea of idolatry rests on the absurdity of human beings trying to make a true image of God. An idol is not the truth, but a lie. He is a God who cannot see, know, act, love, or save. Now a specific application of this to missions. So often one of the particular evangelistic methodologies that is used on the mission field is the showing of the Jesus film translated into other languages. And certainly I'm not going to say to you that no one was ever converted after watching the Jesus film because there's enough truth proclaimed in the Jesus film that people could be converted. But you know the moment you try to take a totally depraved actor and have him portray the sinless Son of God you have already misrepresented him." There is no way that the best actor on earth can capture the essence of who Christ is. And you cannot escape this fact that Jesus is the second person of the Godhead. And to show him, even in a celluloid image, is to show an image of God. I mentioned Ray and Cheryl Gibello in Papua New Guinea. I was talking to him about this very thing. He was in my living room leading a prayer meeting for us once about a year ago. And I was talking to him about this very issue. He said, oh yeah, we've had all kinds of problems in Papua New Guinea because of this. He said, we were on furlough one year. And as we left, another missionary went in and without our permission showed the Jesus film to the Angave people to whom we minister. He said, when we got back, they were convinced that the Jesus they saw on that film was the real Jesus. That this had happened recently and somebody had taken a video camera and just recorded him right then and there. And said it took us months to undo the damage that was caused by that. And here's the great problem, brothers and sisters. The Bible does not teach us that faith comes by seeing. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. If they won't listen to the preaching of the Word, they're not going to listen to anything else. Remember Rich Man and Lazarus? Here was the rich man, he was burning in hell. He sees Lazarus across the void. He says, please send him over here, Father Abraham, so he can put a few drops of water on my tongue, because I perish in this flame. There's a great gulf fixed between you and he. He can't come to you, you can't come to him. Well, send Lazarus back to my brothers, because I have brothers who don't know about this place and let him testify to them. Do you remember Father Abraham's response? They have Moses and the prophets. Let them hear them. No, no, Father Abraham. But if Lazarus goes back from the dead, they'll believe him. Remember the response? If they will not listen to Moses and the prophets, they will not listen to Lazarus, though he rise from the dead. Brethren, we need to have a lot more confidence in the power of the word of God to convert sinners and trust it and preach the word. Don't show people Christ visually, preach Christ to them with a word, because this is sufficient to bring them to faith in Christ. The second commandment that I want to apply to you here may be a strange one, but it's the fourth commandment. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. I mentioned to you John Payton, the 19th century Scottish Presbyterian missionary who went to the New Hebrides. How many of you are familiar with John Payton? If you haven't read his autobiography, you should. It's one of the greatest biographies ever written on missions. This man went to the New Hebrides, which is about, I think, 2,000 miles east of Australia in the Pacific, in the South Pacific. The problem with going to the New Hebrides is it was completely populated with cannibals. In fact, the first two missionaries who ever went to the New Hebrides were cooked and eaten within five minutes of landing upon the shore. And to John Payton, his way of thinking, that meant that God had sealed it with the blood of his martyrs, so surely they're going to be one for Jesus. Everybody's looking at him like, you are crazy, man. And you're thinking, surely the emphasis that he had when he went there was the Sixth Commandment. You shouldn't kill people, right? It actually wasn't the preeminent law that he emphasized. When he was among these cannibals, he literally had to run for his life many, many times. He slept one night in a tree while the cannibals were looking for him underneath. And he said it was the most peaceful time of sleep he had ever had, and had a sweet time of knowing the presence of God. I'm going, well, probably is not the first thing that would have been on my mind, but anyway. But he saw God bring revival. And these cannibals were converted. And he talks about the first time he ever watched them take the Lord's Supper together. Here were men who literally had eaten the little body and blood of other men, and now they're taking these emblems of the body of blood in Christ and rejoicing in that. Well, what would you think he emphasized while he was there? It actually wasn't the sixth commandment. It was the fourth. Emphasize Sabbath keeping to a bunch of cannibals. Go figure. One of his fellow missionaries was a man named John Inglis. And in his footnotes in Ian Murray's Scottish Christian Heritage, he quotes this. This letter from John English where he said this, quote, I have no doubt that the steady and rapid progress of the gospel in the New Hebrides was due in no small degree to the manner in which we emphasized the scripture doctrine of the Sabbath and established its observance. We thus secured time for religious instruction, quietness for devotional exercises, and above all brought down upon us the influences of the Holy Spirit in accordance with the divine promise." End of quote. They recognized, my Creator expects me to set aside time every week to devote to Him. So we'll go and listen to the preaching of God's Word. And they were converted. Now isn't that counterintuitive to the way we think today? How God used his law to show them the need of a Savior and the Lord brought great revival. But inside the boundaries of God's moral law, there is legitimate latitude that helps us in cross-cultural ministry. Paul could walk in evangelical obedience to God's law and yet live as a Gentile among the Gentiles. And he could live as a Jew among the Jews. When we go to other cultures, we need to realize that we need to adopt their manners, their customs, their gestures that are peculiar to their culture. Back in 1995, my wife and I went to Indonesia. My wife swore she would never get on a plane again because it was 30 hours in the air, one way. She's never gotten on a plane again since. So I think she's going to keep that promise. But when we got there, one of the things the missionaries told us is if you summon someone, make a hand gesture to someone, someone to you, you don't do like this. You don't have your palm up and pull your fingers like this because that's how you summon your dog. And they'll be deeply offended if you summon them like this. Instead, when you summon a person, you put your palm down and do like this. Now, it may seem stupid to us, but it means a very big deal to them. And because it means a big deal to them, it should be a big deal to us. So we don't put a fence if there's not a reason to give a fence. The way people view time is not the same as Westerners. We look at, okay, this very minute we're going to start, 3.30 we're going to stop, we're going to take a break, all this kind of stuff. But African cultures, for example, it's not the time, it's the event. And so, okay, we're going to have a wedding at 2 o'clock and you show up and you're the only people there. Four o'clock, they finally start trickling in because it's the event that's important to them, not so much the punctuality of being there at an exact certain time. Adopting their clothing, if it's not something that's offensive or something where you're having to compromise God's way, their architecture. When they build a church building, they don't have to make it look like a Western church building. They can build it according to their architectural forms and things like that. Well, that leads us into our next setting, which is worship. worship. Chapter 22 of our confession teaches what's called the regular principle of worship. That God alone has the right to regulate how he's worshiped, to which nothing is to be added or taken away. The Bible is sufficient to tell us how to worship God. And our confession makes a helpful distinction between two things. The elements of worship and the circumstances of worship. The elements of worship given to us in chapter 22 of the confession are four. The reading, preaching, and hearing of God's holy word. Prayer is the second. The singing of psalms, hymns, and spiritual song, and the observance of the ordinances of baptism in the Lord's Supper. You could say fellowship is a part of worship too, I suppose, but my point being, these are fixed, to which nothing is being added, to which nothing is being taken away. It doesn't say anything about having interpretive dance, or having mimes, or clowns, or anything like, or puppets. None of that kind of stuff is said there. These elements are fixed, right? But the circumstances of worship are different. The circumstances of worship are basically everything that a Lord's Day morning worship service has in common with a PTA meeting. PTA meeting, you've got to decide a time to meet. You've got to have a location. What kind of lighting are you going to have? Will it be no lighting? Will it be candlelight? Will it be electric lighting? How will you arrange the chairs? Will it be gathered in a certain way? Will you have rows after row? Will you sit Indian style on the floor? Will you have amplification? Things like that. How will you dress? What's the attire for the evening? Those are the kinds of decisions that are just circumstances of worship, not the elements of worship themselves. So the circumstances of worship in any indigenous local church may be vastly different from our own, and that's perfectly acceptable. If they build a church building, as I've already mentioned, it doesn't have to look like an American church building. As a matter of fact, it shouldn't look like an American church building. It should look like their own architecture, whether the congregation sits in pews or Indian style on a mud floor. In our culture, wearing a tie and a suit is perfectly legitimate on the Lord's Day, but in another culture, in a third world culture, that may be strange to them. So, you know, khaki shorts and a t-shirt may be the order of the day. I'm all for that, but anyway. When they sing God's praises, we do not have to convince them that Western Anglo-Saxon hymnody is God's favorite music. As God saves people from within their own culture, doesn't it make sense that they would take their own cultural forms and have poets and musicians raised up who can write reverent hymnody and pattern after the Psalms that indeed would be indigenous and peculiar to their own culture? Even our homiletics, our preaching, would be somewhat different in another culture. You know, here in the West, Roman numeral 1, 2, 3, and 4 works great. But it doesn't work so well in an Asian culture, where they don't think in linear thought the way we do. They think in more circular thought. You don't change the gospel message itself, but you do learn how do they process information? How do I get into their head and explain to them in a way they can understand the gospel? Because if you don't, you're speaking a language that only you understand, and they can't. So learning not only their language, but their culture is very, very important. And yet, while the circumstances of worship are extremely fluid and adaptable, the elements of worship never change. Now think about that. It means that I can go to a third world country and be with my brothers and sisters in Christ and worship with them, and I don't understand the language. And they're sitting on the floor in a grass hut, sitting in the mud, gathered around in a semicircle. In a language I can't understand, I can't understand the preaching, I don't even recognize necessarily the style of music that's being used. Nonetheless, I would know exactly what was going on. The Word's being read, and the Word's being preached, and they're listening to the Word. And as we join our hearts in prayer, I know what's going on there. And as we sing God's praises, I may not recognize the song because it may not be a song I'm familiar with, but I know who they're singing to. And I have a pretty good idea what they're singing about. And as they pass the Lord's Supper out, the elements of the Lord's Supper, I can join my brothers and sisters and know exactly what that is. As a matter of fact, our brothers from 500 years ago could step out of the mists of time and they would recognize exactly what was going on in that place. because the elements are the same, and that unites us as one people of God. It's a beautiful, beautiful thing to think about. So as we think of worship, we realize we need to adapt to the various cultures without compromising God's truth. The sixth thing, spirit, spirit. I'd be very negligent to talk about evangelism and world missions and not talk about the role of the Holy Spirit. Spurgeon once said, without the spirit Jesus promised, we could not fulfill the commission Jesus gave. And it's absolutely true. You ever notice the Great Commission ends with a specific promise? Lo, I'm with you always, even to the end of the age. If Jesus wasn't with his church, we would have no hope of success whatsoever. But he's promised he will be with us. When is the moment? Tell me the moment in the last 2000 years when Jesus has not been with his church. He is always with his church because he promises he's there when we feel like he's there. And he's there when we don't feel like he's there. He is always with his church. And so, we need to bear in mind the need of the Holy Spirit if we're going to see success at all in world missions. In Luke 24, when Jesus first gave His Great Commission, it's interesting, He said, go, but He also said, wait. Tarry in Jerusalem until you're endued with power from on high. He repeated it in Acts chapter 1 and verse 8. And as we go through the book of Acts, the Spirit of God never lets us forget about it, does He? You have Peter getting up and he preaches at Pentecost, one sermon, 3000 converts. I feel like I can preach 3000 sermons and have one convert, but you know, but you know, you need to be careful to realize that Peter did not win 3000 people to Christ by a clever opening illustration. He, the reason there were 3001 is because the Holy spirit fell with power. And the scriptures are very clear to tell us at the end of Acts chapter 2, and the Lord added to the church daily such as were being saved. When you come to Antioch, and there's this cross-cultural predominantly Gentile town, a number of people, saints, come from Jerusalem and they begin preaching in Antioch, but the scriptures are very clear, the hand of the Lord was with them. and so many were added to the kingdom. When Paul came to Philippi and went to the ladies auxiliary prayer meeting by the river there, there was Lydia and he starts preaching to her and the scriptures are very specific, the Lord opened her heart to heed the things spoken by Paul. One of the most fascinating illustrations I think in Acts is when Peter preached to Cornelius. Here he is preaching to Cornelius and the Bible says, while he was still speaking, the Holy Spirit fell upon Cornelius and upon his household. And if you're Peter, you're thinking, but wait, I haven't gotten to that part yet. But see, the point is this. It wasn't about Peter. It was about what the Lord was doing. And every time Paul will come back from the mission field, the scriptures are very careful to say, he reported to the church in Antioch all that God had done, all that God had accomplished. We plant, we water, but God gives the increase. We must have the Holy Spirit. As many as were appointed to eternal life, the Bible tells us, Acts 13, believed. It was all God's work, not man's work. Yes, we must be faithful to preach the gospel, but it's God's work to add men to His kingdom. Only He can do that. And that's a great comfort, isn't it? There's a mystery in regeneration that I can't understand or explain. The farmer goes, he plants his crops, he goes to sleep, and he knows not how, but suddenly there's a crop spring up, and he doesn't know how it happened. Even so it is as we preach the gospel. We don't understand the mystery of the new birth. But let's leave it there. Let's trust the Lord that He knows how to regenerate sinners. We give Him the gospel and trust Him to do His work. When we think about the Holy Spirit and His work, we can summarize, and this is just a summary, summarize His ministry perhaps with the words illumination, application, and exaltation. First of all, apart from the work of the Holy Spirit, sinners can't even understand the gospel in any saving kind of way. We are dead in trespasses and sins, and the natural man does not understand the things of the Spirit, for they are spiritually discerned. If men are going to understand the gospel, the Spirit of God must open their minds to understand it and to comprehend it. And so He must give illumination as to who Christ is and about our sins and convict us. But there's application. It's by the word and by the spirit that the Father applies the work of redemption to the souls of men. It is the spirit who grants us the ability to repent and believe. It is the spirit who gives us a new heart, takes out our heart of stone, gives us a heart of flesh. And his task is exaltation. Our Pentecostal and charismatic friends give a lot of emphasis to the third person of the Godhead. But you know, I think sometimes it's an undue emphasis. Because if your worship is truly Spirit-filled, it will be thoroughly Christ-centered. Because Jesus said, when the Spirit comes, He will take of mine and He will exalt me. He points us to Christ, and who does Christ point us to? He points us to the Father. Who does the Father point us to? Right back at Christ. The persons of the Godhead are always exalting the other persons of the Godhead. But the Spirit points us to who Christ is and makes Him irresistibly beautiful to sinners. So we need the Spirit of God in missions. Now, you and I can't manipulate the Spirit of God. We can't twist his arm and make him do our bidding because we're not sovereign over him, he's sovereign over us. But what we can do is we can pray fervently for God to pour out his Holy Spirit. What did Jesus tell us? He said, if your son comes up to you and asks you for a piece of bread, will you give him a stone? And if he asks you for a fish, will you give him a serpent? Well, of course you wouldn't. And if you're evil, if you're depraved and sinful and know how to give good gifts to your children, How much more should the Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him? We can come pleading the merits of Christ saying, Father, would you pour out the Spirit of God upon your missionaries? I would say to you, how do you hold the ropes for our missionaries? What's the most important thing you can do? Well, it's great to give money. That's important. But seriously, the most important thing you can do is pray. Anytime you ask a missionary, what can we do to help you? The first thing they'll say to you is pray. And I know it's cliche, but it's really the truth. What we need is your prayers because if the Lord doesn't do it, it's not going to happen. How often I come to the Lord's day morning and I say to the Lord as I'm preparing to preach, Lord, if you don't move us, we're not going to be moved. If you don't come in converting power, no one's going to be converted. If you don't come in sanctifying power, no one's going to be sanctified. We're not going to be different. We're not going to be changed if you don't come and do a work. We can't manipulate the Holy Spirit, but like Jacob, we can wrestle with God and say, I'm not going to let go until you bless me. And to cry out to Him to do a mighty work among us. So the Spirit of God, we need the Spirit. Well, what have we seen thus far? Our first six headings. We've spoken of God and of covenants, revelation, culture, worship, and spirit. Finally, it's fitting to end with mescatology, glory. What does eschatology, the study of last things, have to do with missions? Well, everything. Paul told the people at Mars Hill in Acts 17.31, God has appointed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness by the man whom he has ordained. He has given assurance of this to all by raising him from the dead. Why do you share the gospel with your children? Why do you share the gospel with your neighbors? Why should we do world missions and share the gospel with those who are outside of Christ? Because there's a day of judgment coming, that's why. I have had the privilege over the years of doing a fair amount of jail and prison work and ministry. And whenever you're talking to an inmate who's behind bars, and you ask him, how can I pray for you? You know the answer is always the same. Usually it's pray, I'll get out of here. But usually it's some variant of this, pray for my court date. And I've thought about that a lot over the years. Why are they asking me, pray for your court date? They understand that they have a day in court and when they stand before that judge, that judge is endowed with authority either to set them free or to lock them in prison and throw away the key and if they committed a capital crime, to actually give them over to the death penalty. And what they're saying, even though they don't say it in this way, is pray that I'll find mercy with my judge. That's what they're saying. All of you in this room, myself included, we all have a day in court. And there is nothing more important in this life than you finding mercy with your judge. And Jesus has already told us what he's going to say on that day. He's going to put a people on his right and a people on his left. Matthew 25 tells us the people on his right He's going to say, come, you blessed of my father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. And the people on his left, he's going to say, depart from me. You curse it into the everlasting fire, prepare for the devil and his angels. Now, let me ask you, I don't want to presume everyone in this room knows the Lord. If you died right now, what would Jesus say to you? Would you be standing on his right hand or his left? You know, we can be all excited about the next new thing, the next new form of entertainment. What we're going to do next, what school we're going to go to, all the things that we're involved in every day, day in and day out. But at the end of the day, nothing is more important than knowing that you have found mercy with your judge. On that great day, nothing else is going to matter. And there's only one way to find mercy with your judge. That's through Christ Jesus, through his blood, through his righteousness. And there is no other way. Jesus is not the best way to God. He's the only way to God. He is the way, the truth, and life, and there is no other way to the Father except by him. Peter was bold and said, there is no other name given from heaven by which men may be saved. Jesus was bold and said, all who came before me claiming to be somebody were thieves and liars. Jesus alone is the way of salvation. So if you're here on the outside of Christ, flee to Christ because He's the only way to escape from the wrath that is to come. But for us who are in Christ, why is there an urgency about evangelism and missions? Because people are facing this day in court. And the only thing standing between them and eternity in hell is the gospel that you and I have received freely. And yet we have this great hope. that there will be success among God's elect, that all of God's elect will be saved. I don't know who God's elect are. I'm commanded to preach to all men and then trust the Lord that he knows his elect and he will draw them to himself. But what did Jesus say? He said, this is the will of my father, that of all he's given me, I should lose nothing, but should raise it up at the last day. All the father has given me, John chapter six, will come to me. And the one who comes to me, I will in no wise cast out. Revelation 5, turn there. I've been referencing it in my quotes all afternoon, but I want you to see it. Revelation 5, we see this glorious multitude that no one can number standing before the throne of Christ. Revelation five, verse eight. Now, when he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty four elders fell down before the lamb, each having a harp and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. And they sang a new song saying, you are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals. For you were slain and have redeemed us to God by your blood out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation and have made us kings and priests to our God. And we shall reign on the earth. And then again, Revelation 21 and verse 22. We have this glorious vision of the new heaven and the new earth and the new Jerusalem. Verse 22 says, but I saw no temple in it for the Lord God almighty and the lamb where it's temple. The city had no need of the sun or of the moon to shine in it, for the glory of God illuminated it. The Lamb is its light, and the nations of those who are saved shall walk in its light, and the kings of the earth shall bring their glory and honor into it. Its gates shall not be shut at all by day, there shall be no night there, and they shall bring the glory and honor of the nations into it. but there shall be by no means anything that defiles or causes an abomination or a lie, but only those who are written in the Lamb's book of life." That's how it ends. Brothers and sisters, we win. However hard the mission field can be, however hard the ministry can be, however hard evangelism is, we have this guarantee. Jesus is going to save every single person God gave to him. We win. There's a lot of things I don't understand about the last book of the Bible. I'll admit that to you, but I know this much, we win. We win. Christ wins. And all of his elect are going to be safe and sound in heaven forever. Let's pray. Lord, help us to think biblically about missions and to truly bring biblical reform to the subject by your grace. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.