So what I want to talk about is on the subject of evangelism. And I think Tawfiq told me he may have preached last week on evangelism. I believe he said he was planning to do that. So my message may be related. But the title of this message is Bearing Witness for Christ in Jerusalem. And a subtitle is The Church and Local Missions. The Church and Local Missions. And by local missions, I mean evangelistic efforts that take place locally in the area or city or perhaps even the state where a church is located, as opposed to foreign missions, which take place in foreign countries, right? And so a lot of times, you know, when we talk about missions, What we're thinking is we're thinking foreign missions. But what I'm going to try to point out to you all this morning or just maybe remind you is that in a sense, at least in one sense, every Christian has been given a mission. Right? And so, and at least in one sense, every true Christian then is a missionary. All right? Okay, it doesn't matter where you're located geographically or what your vocation is, as we heard about earlier, right? So we're gonna be looking at a fairly familiar passage in the book of Acts to start. So if you wanna turn with me to the book of Acts chapter one. Acts chapter one. Okay, and I'm gonna read chapter one, starting in verse one, down through verse 11, and primarily we're gonna be looking at verse eight, but let me read verses one through 11 of Acts chapter one. Okay, so the apostle Luke writes, in the first book, O Theophilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach. until the day when he was taken up after he had given commands through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen. He presented himself alive to them after his suffering by many proofs, appearing to them during 40 days and speaking about the kingdom of God. And while staying with them, He ordered them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which He said, You heard from Me. For John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now. So when they had come together, they asked Him, Lord, will You at this time restore the kingdom to Israel? He said to them, it is not for you to know times or seasons that the father has fixed by his own authority, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth. And when he had said these things, as they were looking on, he was lifted up and a cloud took him out of their sight. while they were gazing into heaven as He went, behold, two men stood by them in white robes, and said, Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw Him go into heaven." Okay, alright. Let me just, let me pray again. Our Father in Heaven, Lord, we We again just thank you for this time to gather together. Lord, thank you for the hymns that we can sing, hymns of praise and worship to you. And I just pray that you would be with us now and help me to speak clearly and help everyone here to listen. I pray that your word would have its effect in our lives and that the Holy Spirit would come and minister to us during this time. I ask and pray for your help. We pray in Jesus' name, amen. Amen. All right. So let me give you, we're going to be looking at verse 8 where we read, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth. And so let me give you, first of all, just kind of the context of this, this verse. And these are actually the final words, final recorded words we have that Jesus spoke on earth before he was taken up into heaven. And so, you know, I was thinking when I began studying this, usually the last words spoken by someone are important, all right? even criminals on death row are given the opportunity to say their final words, right, to those who are gathered there for their execution. And I ran across an interesting website that records, actually, the final statements of every, I think like five, well, the last time I looked, there were like 565 inmates in the state of Texas who had been executed, and you can see what their final statement was. It's kind of interesting. So, but in the Bible, There are, we have many accounts of men uttering their final words. So let me just give you a couple of these. When Jacob was dying, and you can just listen to these, when Jacob was dying back in Genesis 49, he gathered his 12 sons to him. And he blessed each of them with an appropriate blessing for very specific for each of his 12 sons. And then he commanded his sons to bury him in the same cave where Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Rebecca, and his wife Leah were buried. And so when he had finished blessing and instructing his sons, we're told in Genesis 49, 33, he drew up his feet into the bed and breathed his last and was gathered to his people. Okay, so he said his final statements, his blessings and instructions to his sons, and then he died. You remember Stephen, the church's first martyr, as he was being stoned by the Jews in Acts 7, he cries out, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. And then in verse 60 of Acts 7, he says, it's recorded, and falling to his knees, he cried out with a loud voice, Lord, do not hold this sin against them. And when he had said this, he fell asleep, he died. And then you remember, how about the repentant thief on the cross, right? Who was crucified with Jesus. And, His last recorded words, remember what did the thief say on the cross? Remember me, yeah. He said, Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom. And then Christ told him that very day he would be with him in paradise, all right? And there's even a book, somebody gave me a book, a brother down in Laredo by a man, his name is Herbert Lockyer. Has anybody ever heard of him? He's written these books that kind of, like all the women of the Bible, all the promises of the Bible, kind of these compilations of different, he's got kind of a whole series. Anyway, so I'm not real familiar, I'm familiar with the books and I haven't really read any of them, but this brother gave me the book in Laredo and it's called all the last words of saints and sinners. And so it's a compilation of some of the final words recorded of various Christians throughout history and even non-Christians, kind of famous people. You know, what did they say when they were on their deathbed? So it's interesting. That's why I've kind of skimmed through that book. And so now I don't want to make too much of the fact that These words spoken by Christ to his apostles here in Acts 1, verse 8, were his final recorded words. Because there are some Christians, professing Christians, who believe that the words actually spoken by Jesus, which in some Bibles are printed in red ink, you might have a Bible that's got the words of Christ in red, right? Some professing Christians believe that these verses are more important than the other verses in scripture. And there's even a movement, you may have heard this, called Red Letter Christians, that teaches this very thing. And so one of the main motivations for this kind of movement, if you're not familiar with them, you can look them up online, is one of their main motivations for teaching this is because they really, they want to justify homosexuality. And so they appeal to the fact that Jesus never directly addressed homosexuality as sinful, okay, in his recorded words, even though other passages in the Bible make it very clear. And so that's a wrong understanding of scripture, right? You know, we know that all scripture, whether it's the spoken words, recorded words of Christ or not, carry equal weight and authority. And how do we know that? Well, we're told, right? We're informed very clearly. 2 Timothy 3, 16 teaches us, informs us that what all scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness. All scripture, right? So not just the words of Jesus or even the final spoken words of Jesus for that matter. Okay. But nonetheless, After living with his disciples and teaching them for three years, and then fulfilling many prophecies from the Old Testament, performing miracles, dying on the cross, being resurrected, and then spending another 40 days instructing and speaking to his disciples further about the kingdom of God. We read that earlier in this chapter. I mean, Jesus could have said anything to them as his final parting words, right? And yet this verse has been preserved for us as his final statement while on earth. And so it must have been important for his disciples and the apostles to hear, and it's important for us to hear and to take heed to as well. Okay, so what's the significance of this verse? Acts chapter one, verse eight. Well, verse nine says, and when he had said these things, As they were looking on him, he was lifted up and a cloud took him out of their sight. Okay, so what are these things that Jesus said? Well, you have to go back to verse eight. And he makes really two statements in verse eight, okay? And we'll look at these in turn. So the first statement that he says in verse eight, he says, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you. Okay, that's the first statement. And then the second is, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth. Okay, so we'll look at the first part of that verse first. The first statement that he made is, you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you. Now that word power in the Greek, and you may know this, it's the word dunamis. It means force. literally or figuratively, it means inherent power, power residing in a thing by virtue of its nature, especially miraculous power. Okay, that's what that word means. It's used about 120 times in the New Testament, mostly it's translated power, but about 11 times it's translated as mighty. And that's the same word that's found in Romans 1 16, that pretty well known verse. that says where the Apostle Paul writes, for I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes to the Jew first and also to the Greek. And so, and you may know, you probably know that our English word dynamite is derived from this Greek word dunamis. And so where does this miraculous life transforming power come from? Jesus says that they're gonna receive power, his disciples. Where does it come from? Well, the verse tells us from the Holy Spirit. And so we see this same truth that the disciples, the apostles, are gonna receive power from the Holy Spirit. It's also, we're told this in the parallel passage, you don't have to turn there, but the parallel passage to Acts 1, that we're looking at, is found in Luke's gospel, chapter 24. And so this is what we read at the end of Luke's gospel, chapter 24, verse 49. Luke says this, and behold, I am sending, I'm sorry, Luke records Jesus saying this, and behold, I am sending the promise of my Father, and that's a reference to the Holy Spirit, upon you, but stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high. And so now how do we know that the promise of my father refers to the Holy Spirit? Well, because we're told elsewhere, Jesus tells us in John 14, 16, he says, and I will ask the father and he will give you another helper to be with you forever, even the spirit of truth. Okay, so this power, It comes from the Holy Spirit, and we see this a lot of, many places in the New Testament, especially in the book of Acts, this connection between the Holy Spirit and miracle-working power. Paul writes to the Corinthians in, if you want to turn here, you can, 1 Corinthians 2, verse 3. 1 Corinthians 2, verse 3, Paul writes, and he contrasts his own natural weakness as a man and his fearfulness with the Holy Spirit's power. In 1 Corinthians 2, verse 3, he says, He says, and I was with you, Corinthians, in weakness and in fear and in much trembling, and my speech and my message were not implausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power. Okay, and that's that same word, dunamis, right? And then Paul writes something similar to this, to the church in Thessalonica, in 1 Thessalonians, you can just listen to this. 1 Thessalonians 1, verse five, he says something similar. He says, because our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction. All right? So when did the apostles receive this power from on high? Well, If you know your Bible, you know the book of Acts, right? In the next chapter of Acts, in Acts chapter two, what happens? Well, it's the day of Pentecost, right? And the apostles and disciples are all together and suddenly the Holy Spirit manifests his power and presence in very tangible ways. You remember some of the things that happened? There's a sound of a mighty rushing wind filling the house where they're sitting. Tongues of fire appear and rest on each of them. The Spirit gives believers the ability to proclaim the mighty works of God to those Jews who were gathered in Jerusalem for Pentecost in foreign languages that were not previously known by them, right? I mean, the gift of tongues was given, right? The biblical gift of tongues. And then Polder, Polder, Peter, Peter boldly preaches that Jesus is the Christ to these same Jews and 3,000 of them are saved that very day. This all happens on the day of Pentecost, right? And so the Spirit came in power upon the disciples who were gathered there. And then again, we see this power manifested in the lives of the apostles and disciples throughout the book of Acts. And so we won't take the time to look at all those. And so this is the first declaration that Jesus makes in Acts 1.8. He says, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you. And this was fulfilled shortly thereafter. And it's still being fulfilled today, right? As the Holy Spirit comes and regenerates sinners and indwells believers. And so, This is the power that that God gives us to enable us to, you know, to seek to accomplish things for him. And so but I want to talk about primarily the second part of verse eight. So the second part of verse eight, Jesus says, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth. And so Jesus makes an assertion that his disciples will be witnesses for him, first in Jerusalem, where they were, right? Then in Judea, which was the larger region that Jerusalem was in, and then to Samaria, which was the region north of Judea. and then to the end of the earth, okay? Or some translations say to the uttermost part of the earth or the remotest part of the earth. And so this was a very ambitious mission that Jesus gave his early disciples and by extension to those of us who are disciples today, this is still our mission as well, right? So how could Jesus be so confident that such a relatively small group of weak, insignificant men and women would be able to overcome the great opposition, the obstacles, and the persecution that they would face from various, you know, from the Jewish religious leaders, from the Roman Empire, from the spiritual forces of darkness that would be arrayed against them. How could Jesus be confident that they would have the ability, His disciples would have the ability to fulfill this great mission? Well, He could make this assertion, And he could be confident of its ultimate fulfillment because he knew that the power and the ability to accomplish this momentous task lay not in these weak men and women themselves, but in the Holy Spirit, right? Who was promised to come and to be with them and to fill them with the miracle working power they would need to accomplish this great task, right? And so the same thing is true for us here in the 21st century. And so I wanna just comment or point out that this statement by Jesus, it's a declaration, it's an assertion, it's not a commandment, right? So he's not instructing or commanding his disciples that they need to be witnesses for him. He's asserting that when the Holy Spirit comes upon them in power, they will be or they shall be witnesses for Him. And so you can kind of contrast this a little bit with, you remember the great commission in Matthew 28 verses 19 and 20? which Jesus also spoke to his disciples after his resurrection, which would have been very close to the time that he said what he says here. But in that passage, in Matthew 28, 19, and 20, he gives his disciples, and by extension us, several commands. So Matthew 28, 19, and 20. Does anybody know that by memory by any chance? The Great Commission? It's one of the verses I memorized when I was a young Christian, Go therefore, I've changed translations so many times that I, okay. 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, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always to the end of the age. This is the Great Commission, right? Now, in that passage, if you note, there are several imperative verbs OK, we're told or we're instructed to go, go therefore. We're instructed to make disciples. We're instructed to baptize and to teach. And so these are all really commands that are given. Now, some of these are not technically, I think, if you're an English major, Participles, okay, baptizing and teaching, but they're given the force of a command. These are things that we're instructed to do, right? But in Acts 1.8, Jesus is not really giving commands that may or may not be followed. He's simply, he's stating a fact. He's saying that those who are his disciples, who have been empowered by the Holy Spirit, will be witnesses for him wherever they may find themselves. Okay? So, then what does it mean to be a witness for Christ? Well, a witness is someone who has seen or heard something and gives testimony as to what he or she knows to be true. All right? That's all a witness is. Someone who has seen or heard something and they give testimony as to what they know he or she knows to be true about that which they have seen or observed. The singular form of the Greek word that's translated witnesses here in verse eight, it's the word martur from which we get our English word martyr. Okay, and what is a martyr? A martyr is someone who bears witness to Christ by his or her death, right? And the King James Version actually translates this word as martyr in three places in the New Testament. So being a martyr is the ultimate way someone can bear witness for Christ. And we have many examples of martyrs, both from church history, from the Bible. Stephen, we looked at that earlier, being the first martyr. And of course, there are parts of the world today where Christians are being persecuted and even being put to death for their faith. So that is the ultimate way that you can bear witness for Christ, right? But that's not really, it's certainly not the only way, nor the most common way for most Christians to be a witness for Christ. And so the word literally means one who declares or can declare what he himself has seen or heard or knows by any other means. Now, you know, does somebody have to have specialized training or education or a seminary degree or do you have to have like an encyclopedic knowledge of the Bible to be a witness? No. No, you don't, right? I mean, think about witnesses in a legal setting. Now, witnesses are called in a trial to give testimony as to what they have seen or heard or know about some fact that is relevant to the case at hand. So in order to give credible testimony, a witness basically must open their mouth and speak truthfully about what they know. Okay, now sometimes witnesses cannot be physically present in the courtroom and so their testimony is taken ahead of time. And it's transcribed into written form by a court reporter. And then that transcript is given to the judge or to the jury in court. And so that's called a deposition. And that might be analogous to someone maybe giving a gospel tract to someone when you don't have time or opportunity to speak to them verbally about the gospel, right? And sometimes there are instances where A witness will have some specific training or some specific expertise. So, for example, you might have a medical expert who's going to testify in a courtroom setting, or you might have someone who's an expert in firearms to give some testimony, right? But most of the time, most of the time, witnesses in a legal setting are simply ordinary laypeople who are called upon to testify verbally with their mouths about what they have seen or heard or know to be true. And that applies to those of us who are followers of Jesus Christ as well. We can and should, as often as we have opportunity, testify about who Jesus is and about the great things he has done for us. And in fact, Jesus says, he declares in this verse that if we are his true disciples, we will be witnesses for him. Okay. So that's kind of the context of this verse. Now, let me talk about the scope of the witnessing that his disciples, that Jesus addresses here and us are to partake in. What is that scope? Well, he says, first of all, This was, they were to be witnesses, to bear witness for him in Jerusalem. That's right where they were. Jerusalem was the political, social, and economic, religious center of Israel. And it was the home for most of these early believers, right? Okay, and then their witness was to expand to the broader region of Judea, and then to the region north of Judea, known as Samaria. and you probably know this as well, but the mention of Samaria implies more than just geographical expansion. If you remember, the Jews and the Samaritans didn't get along well, right? The Jews viewed Samaritans as unclean, racially impure, and heretical in their religious beliefs and practices. Do you remember Jesus' encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4? Do you remember that? And the woman says to Jesus, after he asks her for a drink, in John 4, 9, she says to him, how is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria? And then John adds the explanation, for Jews have no dealings with Samaritans. So when Jesus tells his disciples that they will be witnesses for him in Samaria, He's informing them and us that our gospel witness must extend to people groups who might be beyond our cultural or religious or ethnic or socioeconomic comfort zones. Now I read an article online about a church in Kentucky that has an, I guess it's an inner city church, that has a ministry to strippers. And so what happens is a group of women in the church take food and care packages to strippers in local clubs, they befriend them, and they offer them the gospel. And the author of this article wrote, stripper ministry may seem odd on a church's outreach list next to nursing home ministry, but it shouldn't be if we follow Acts 1-8 and truly love our Samaritan neighbors. Walking through Samaria could make us feel uneasy, but that uneasiness is what makes it Samaria, okay? All right, and so then the progression of our bearing witness is to be to the end of the earth, all right? So the witnesses were all, I'm sorry, the witness of these early disciples was also to expand to the Gentile nations, to the farthest reaches of the Roman Empire at the time, to their most remote and neglected people groups in the world. And that's still our mission today, right? I mean, that's why we send, missionaries and evangelists and missionary helpers and medical workers and volunteers to places like Nepal and Lebanon and Mexico and Nicaragua, Ecuador, Papua New Guinea, Poland, other lands where there is very little gospel witness, right? And we need to continue to do that, right? And I don't know if you guys support any missionaries here, I hope so, but that should be a focus of any church, right? To have a burden for the gospel to go forth, for the light of the gospel to go forth in dark places. In fact, we looked at this verse this morning, Jesus tells us to pray, The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore, pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest." And so, you know, I'm thankful that our church in San Antonio has a real foreign mission mindset. And so, we support a number of missionaries in, you know, very dark places. And I'm thankful that we have, you know, families and singles that have a burden, a desire to go, and even sometimes just for a short term to go, you know, be an encouragement to some missionaries in foreign places. and rightly so, and we should. And so a lot more could be said about the need to bear witness for Christ to the ends of the earth. And a lot of times I think That's what is emphasized in sermons on this verse, okay, is kind of the need to go to the ends of the earth, right? But I wanna focus the rest of our time on the importance of bearing witness for Christ, not only in remote areas of the world or even foreign countries, maybe a little bit closer to where we are, but right here in Jerusalem. Right? Which for our, for us in San Antonio, it's, it's, you know, San Antonio and it's the inner city east side of San Antonio where the church is located. And I guess for you guys, you know, Jerusalem is going to be round rock and the greater Austin area, right? Right, right where you are. Okay. So I've got several observations that I want to make regarding witnessing for Christ in Jerusalem. All right. you know, or why should a church be committed to local missions? So observation number one is, where does the numerical growth in a church typically come from? Now, our church has grown dramatically since the church, well actually since we joined the church back in 2007, my wife and I. And you know, growth is encouraging and that's a good sign, right? I mean, no one wants to be part of a church that is shrinking or losing members regularly, although sometimes God does do that. He prunes a church before it begins to grow. That happened very, you know, in the early days of our church. So you know, numerical growth is, healthy and generally a sign of God's blessing, generally a sign of God's blessing on a local church, right? But I think it's a good idea to step back and ask, well, where does this growth primarily come from? And so, you know, speaking about our church in San Antonio, you know, we've had a lot of families who have moved to San Antonio from other cities, even other states, because they couldn't find a sound biblical church close to where they lived. And at one point I started making a list of all the states, you know, people have moved from, and I lost track of, you know, I got to about 15 states and I stopped counting. And, you know, maybe that's happened, I know some of you guys have moved here from another state, And one of the major motivations was because there was a sound church here, okay? So, and that's good. We've even had some people in the past that have moved to San Antonio from other countries, I mean, far away places. And again, because they were looking for a biblically ordered church and they had found us online and where they lived, there really wasn't something. And so we had a family that moved from Australia. And then we had a family that moved from Germany a couple of years ago. And part of their reason was they wanted to homeschool their children. And in Germany, it's illegal. But they moved all the way from Germany. And they didn't even, well, the wife spoke some English. The husband didn't speak any English at all. But they moved because they wanted to be part of the church. And so, and we've had other people who have come from, you know, other cities locally, again, because they were looking for a biblically ordered church. And so, you know, that's all good and well and that, you know, adds diversity to the church when different people come from different, they have different backgrounds and it brings different gifts that can be used for the, you know, for the building up of the church. You know, as I was thinking about it, I thought, well, how much of the growth, though, of our church, maybe your church, has been through God actually working and saving people from our local community and adding them to our midst. And, you know, we've had a lot of we've had spouses converted and children converted and we're and it's actually been very encouraging. Recently, we've had a lot of some of the teenagers in our church and children being saved and baptized. And it's very encouraging to see that. And we want more of that, and we have spouses that we're praying for, and we bless God for that. But I was thinking, but how many people from, in our case, from the east side of San Antonio have been converted as a result of the ministry of the church? And I would ask you all the same thing. How many people, if anybody, from, hopefully there has been somebody, from Austin or Round Rock have been converted as a result of the ministries of Grace Church Austin? And so, you know, when I thought about, you know, our church is, this summer, we'll celebrate our 20th anniversary, okay, which is a great blessing, and I'm sure we're gonna have some kind of a celebration. And God has really blessed our church, and it's grown, and is using it in many different ways, and I'm thankful. But Jesus declares that His disciples will receive power when the Holy Spirit is given to them, and He calls them to be His witnesses beginning in Jerusalem, and so, My question to you all, to myself, is, well, how well are we living up to that calling? Now, I realize, you know, ultimately God is the one who brings the increase, right? And we don't have the ability to save anyone. But My challenge is, are we being as faithful to witness and labor for Christ, to pray for conversions, and to demonstrate the love of Christ in tangible ways as we should be to those who live right here in our local Jerusalem? Okay, so that's my first observation about this. All right, the second one is, is that local missions should be the testing ground for those who desire to serve on the foreign mission field. If a church wants to encourage its members to go overseas, to serve in some missionary capacity in remote parts of the earth, well, how is it gonna know who may be qualified or gifted or committed to that task? And sometimes you'll hear, a young Christian will say, well, how can I best prepare myself for going overseas to serve in some capacity on the foreign mission field? Okay, and I would answer that. I would submit that those who are qualified to go overseas are those who have demonstrated a usefulness and a faithfulness to some local evangelistic endeavors, right? I mean, if somebody doesn't have much of a burden to be engaged in, you know, evangelistic and benevolent outreach ministries right where they are now, you know, what makes you think that they're suddenly going to develop a heart and a compassion for lost souls in some foreign country. And this kind of came home to me. I remember a couple of years ago, I spoke with a young brother from our church who is no longer a member of our church, but he told me he had a very strong desire to go overseas. I think he was thinking about Nepal. We have some missionaries in Nepal for a short term mission trip. I think maybe it was going to take two weeks to go to Nepal. And so this brother, He doesn't have any preaching abilities or he doesn't have any medical skills, but I encouraged him to pursue doing that. I told him I thought it would be a good experience for him to go and that he could be an encouragement. We have a team of missionaries and some others who were there in Nepal and he could be involved in some of the evangelism that they're doing and the benevolence there. And so I said I thought that was a good idea and I encouraged him to really kind of pursue that. And then shortly after that conversation I asked the same brother, I asked him if he could help us for a couple of hours on a Saturday morning with our, we have a monthly food distribution outreach that we've been doing for about two years. Once a month we get boxes of food and on the part of town we're in it's a lower income and we feed people, we give people food and in the process we share the gospel with them. And it's been a real blessing. So I asked this brother, well could you help us out with this, just you know for a couple hours on a Saturday morning. And he hesitated for a moment, and then he said, basically, he didn't have time for that. And so, now I realize that people have different burdens for different types of ministry, and people also have other commitments and obligations outside the church. But I told this brother, again, he was single and it wasn't like he was working full time and going to graduate school. He had a lot of time on his hands. I said, if he couldn't sacrifice a few hours of his time on a Saturday morning to help feed people in Jesus' name, and share the gospel with them right here where he lives. You know, why did he think he was going to have a heart to do this 8000 miles away in Nepal? And so, you know, he was willing, at least in theory, to make the sacrifice. He was gonna take two weeks off from work. He was gonna have to buy a plane ticket. He was gonna travel halfway around the world to help witness for Christ at the end of the earth. But he wasn't willing to make a much smaller sacrifice to help with an effort to witness for Christ and to demonstrate Christian compassion to those right here in Jerusalem. And you know in the parable of the dishonest manager in Luke 16, verse 10, Jesus makes the statement, you can just listen, Luke 16, verse 10, that's a parable of the dishonest manager. And at the end of that parable Jesus says, He says that one who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much. And the converse of that is also true. He who is not faithful in little, that which requires comparatively little sacrifice and time and effort, will not be faithful in much, that which requires comparatively greater sacrifice and commitment of time and effort. Another, I think, good example of this is Hudson Taylor. You all are familiar with Hudson Taylor, right? The great missionary to China in the 1850s. He founded the China Inland Mission. And so I think he understood this. He felt God's call for him to go to China from a very early age. In fact, his parents dedicated him to that country even before he was born. All right, and so he began studying Chinese at a young age. He couldn't afford a Chinese dictionary, so he made a dictionary of his own so he could learn the language. He also studied Latin and Greek and Hebrew, all in preparation for one day bearing witness for Christ in that very remote and spiritually dark land of China. And we can bless God and thank God that he went. But was that all Hudson Taylor was doing before he went to China when he was 21? No, no. In the midst of his preparation for serving Christ in China, he was actively engaged in serving, ministering, and witnessing to the neediest parts of society right where he lived. And so this is what he did. Instead of going to church, his custom was to go to church twice on Sundays, morning and evening. But instead of doing that, he gave up the evening service so that he could visit the poorest parts of the town where he lived in England so he could distribute tracts and hold gatherings in people's homes. And so in the book, Hudson Taylor's Spiritual Secret, which is a smaller book, it's written by his son and daughter. I don't know if anybody's read that, but I would highly recommend that since it's not long, but it's a rich book. This is what his children say about that. They say that he became a welcome figure in crowded lodging house kitchens and his bright face and kind words opened the way for many to hear the gospel. And then later, while he was working as a physician's assistant, he was studying medicine, he moved from his aunt's very comfortable home to an unattractive neighborhood known as Drainside in the town of Hull in England. And so they called it Drainside because there was a canal that ran through this town and where people would throw their garbage into the canal. And then when the tide was high enough, the garbage would be carried out to sea. All right? But he did that so he could be closer to the people he was seeking to evangelize. And so during that time that he spent there at this town of Drainside, this is what he wrote. He said, that Sunday was a very happy one. As usual, my heart was full and brimming over with blessing. After attending divine service in the morning, my afternoons and evenings were taken up with gospel work in the lowest part of the town. At such times, it almost seemed to me as if heaven were begun below, and that all that could be looked for was an enlargement of one's capacity for joy, not a truer filling than I possessed." So, if you have a desire to possibly one day serve Christ on the foreign mission field, either in a short-term capacity or a long-term capacity, I would encourage you to follow the example of Hudson Taylor, and give yourself to serving Christ by ministering to the neediest people you can find right where you are now. All right, my third observation is, what types of local missions should a church be engaged in? Well, this is where, you know, church leaders and church members need to be creative at finding different ways to bear witness for Christ in our communities, right? I mean, all communities are different. And you know, the Bible doesn't give us a list of specific activities to accomplish this, right? I mean, we're told in Titus 2.14, Titus 2.14, we're told that Jesus Christ gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works. All right, and then a little later in Titus, Titus 3, 8, we're told that those who have believed in God must be careful to devote themselves to good works. All right, so as Christians, as disciples of Christ, as those who are called to bear witness for Christ, We are to be both zealous for and devoted to good works. And that word zealous means, you know, one burning with zeal, a zealot. Another synonym for zealot is fanatic. All right, so Christians, we are to be fanatics for good works done in Christ's name. And so what are some good works that we can be zealous for as we seek to witness for Christ in our communities? Well, here's some things that at least we're doing down in San Antonio, and you guys may be doing some of these things up here. So here's just a sampling. Well, there's a prison ministry is a great opportunity to bear witness for Christ. Nursing home ministry. door-to-door evangelism, street preaching and evangelism. We have a group of people, mostly young people but not exclusively, they go downtown Friday nights near the Alamo and they get a speaker and they preach and they pass out tracts and they talk to people. And they've been doing it for over a year and it's very encouraging to see them continue on in doing that. campus ministries. I was converted through a campus ministry. I'm glad that there were some people on the college campus I went to that invited me to a Bible study and God used that to save me, right? So that's a great opportunity. And I know there are campuses here. in Austin and Round Rock. Food distribution ministry. That's been a blessing. We've just, we've been doing that about two years and it started very slowly. And now, you know, once the pandemic hit and then, you know, more people were affected and needed food. And then last month we had this freeze and people needed food. And so we're, we're now, we started off, we were distributing about I think about 25 to 30 boxes to families. We're up to about 100 boxes of families that are coming, and they come to the church, and we give them the food, and we share tracks with them, and we've got a brother. He's got the speaker out there in the parking lot. He preaches while they're in their cars, and we invite them to church, and we've had some people come to church, so it's been a blessing. Pregnancy care center. Evangelistic Bible studies at workplaces. Medical outreaches. Outreaches targeted to a specific demographic group. For example, Muslim refugees. We have a young brother that's got a burden for that and he's seeking to minister to, there are a lot of refugees. in the medical center part of our town. Outreaches at abortion clinics, right? Even seeking to plant churches in other cities. These are all ways that we can be involved in seeking to bear witness for Christ in Jerusalem. So my encouragement, my exhortation to you all is if you have a burden to start some new local evangelistic outreach, well, I would say, well, pray about it. Seek counsel from others and from your pastor. And if you get a green light, well, then do something about it. A couple of years ago, my wife had a desire to start a pregnancy care center on the east side of San Antonio. And if you've been down to where our church is located, it's, you know, it's, again, we're not in the, we're in a kind of a low income part of town and it has the highest pregnancy rate of anywhere in Bexar County. And so my wife had never even worked at a pregnancy care center before, but she spoke with, at the time it was Tim, Tim Conway was one of our pastors, and he basically told her, well, if you get it started, we'll support you. And so it's been kind of a slow process, but just last month, the Eastside Pregnancy Care Center moved into a new location. We're about a mile from where the church is located, and it's directly across the street from the building where the church first met about 15 years ago. And we have a sonogram machine that we've had for a number of years. Another pregnancy care center gave it to us, but we never had anybody that could operate it. And so recently, a woman who's come, she's joined the church, and she's a sonographer, and she's got a burden for this. And so we're able now to give sonograms to women. And so we're very excited about this new location, being able to minister to women, to help them, to offer them resources and counseling and encourage them to give birth to their child, but all as a means of bringing the gospel to them also. So, you know, different ways that we can be creative. You know, another thought I had when we were doing our food distribution about two months ago, maybe it was last month, We have to meet on Fridays, there's a lot of work to actually prepare the boxes before we distribute them on Saturdays. So we were meeting at the church, a number of people were helping, and somebody wanted some coffee, and so I volunteered to go buy coffee for everybody. And I had a real hard time, I had to drive quite a ways just to find a coffee shop, and I had this thought, well what if there was a Christian coffee shop somewhere in our community? I thought, wouldn't that be a good way to meet people, to get to know people in your community? And you could play sermons on the speaker. You could have good Christian music. You could have Bible studies there at the coffee house. And I don't know anything about operating a, if you've got any business people here, maybe somebody could think about opening a Christian coffee shop as a means of seeking to reach people in your community. All right. So we need to be creative. Fourth observation is that, you know, this is a prime time for churches to be actively engaged in local missions and not retreating, right? Okay, especially at a time like this. Now, you know, this, I think the pandemic is, you know, hopefully kind of, hopefully kind of dying down, but I guess you guys still have, you know, mask requirements up here in Williamson County. And so a lot of churches still really aren't even, I think aren't meeting or they're not meeting, you know, in person or they're not meeting regularly. And so, But we don't want to waste, I think, unique opportunities to creatively demonstrate Christian compassion and kindness, which enhances our witness for Christ. There is a lot of uncertainty in the world, right? And there's been a lot of political unrest and tensions. And so more people, I think, are thinking more seriously about death and the uncertainty of the future. And so we want to take advantage of this, right, and find ways to communicate the hope and the certainty of the gospel to people in both word and deed. You know, John tells us in 1 John 2.18, he says, little children, let us not love in word or talk, but in deed and in truth. And so, you know, and if churches are not, you know, actively even meeting some of them, then they're probably not doing much evangelistically either, right? So, and I know that, you know, there are situations and circumstances and some, you know, some churches have a high population of elderly people or other people that are at high risk. And so, you know, you need to take precautions and, you know, we need to respect different Christians' convictions about things. But at the same time, Jesus He calls us to be His witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth. And He has empowered us by His Holy Spirit to fulfill that calling. And so we don't wanna shrink back, right? But we wanna live up to that calling, especially at a time like this. And it's really one of the marks of being a true disciple of Christ. It really is. So may God help us, help you all here in Round Rock and Austin and us down in San Antonio and wherever we are to be faithful witnesses for the Lord Jesus Christ, beginning right where we are in Jerusalem. Amen. Let me pray. Our Father in Heaven, Lord, we again just thank You. Thank You for this time. Thank You for the privilege that we have to gather together as Your people to worship You, to sing praises to You, to learn, to hear from You and Your Word. And I pray, Lord, that You'd help the brethren here in Austin and Round Rock to to be diligent in seeking to bear witness for you here in their community. I pray that you'd help them to be creative and to be thoughtful and intentional about seeking to bring the gospel to those who are lost around them. We pray that you'd cause many, many in the community to hear the gospel and to be converted and to be saved and added to this assembly. Father, help us to be faithful in our various spheres to bear witness for you. We just ask for your grace and for your help and we pray all of this now in Jesus' name. you