Good morning, welcome to Trinity Reformed Baptist Church Jackson, Georgia. It's March 30th, 2014. Join us now as Brother Steve Martin brings us a message from the word. Please turn in your Bibles to the book of Romans chapter 10. This morning in Bible study we looked at Genesis chapter 3 and I argued briefly that it was the saddest chapter not only in the Bible but of all human literature. I also said in Sunday Bible study that the elders asked me to do something of a mini missions conference and the first message in Bible study was on why is it that people don't care that Jesus Christ is the answer to their problems? Why is it that people in the world don't see their problems and don't see Jesus as the solution? Why is it that for most people the best they get is a yawn, the worst they get is outright persecution? And we saw that Genesis 3 explains what's wrong with the planet, what's wrong with each individual human being. And those orange flyers or orange handouts went through the details of that. I won't repeat that. But it was also read in your hearing from Isaiah chapter 49 verses 1 through 7. It was a sovereign decree of God. It was one of four servant songs in the book of Isaiah. Four times God talks about a servant who is coming. And this servant will be unlike anyone else. It will be unlike unfaithful Israel. And this servant will do amazing things. And in chapter 49, we just read about how the servant is so great in the eyes of God the Father that he is going to do a very special thing for the servant. We'll come back to a minute. The point is, is that In this chapter, Isaiah 49 verses 1 through 7, we saw what was called the sovereign decree of God. I am going to do something. Nothing thwarts God. He is omnipotent. He's sovereign. He didn't forget something. There's no new information. There's no unforeseen details that will alter his plans. When God says, I will do something, Theologians called it a sovereign decree. If the sovereign one says he's going to do something, he's going to do it. And nothing you or I or anybody else or all the hordes of planet Earth can do to stop it. I am going to give the nations to my son. It's too light a thing. It's too small a thing that he should die just for Israel. And at this place, Israel had gone off into captivity, the ten northern tribes, and only the two southern tribes were left. The ten northern tribes never returned from being in Babylon, they never, excuse me, Assyria, they never returned. The ten northern tribes stayed in exile, never to return. They disappeared from history. Only the two southern tribes, Judah and the half-tribe of Benjamin, survived. It's too light a thing that my son would come and die just for Israel. I'm going to give him the nations as his inheritance. That's a sovereign decree of God and nothing that anybody, any ruler, any politician, any nation, anybody can have anything to say about. God's purpose to do it, it's a done deal. But it's not the only word in Scripture, because in Romans chapter 10, God says, I have not only sovereignly decreed that I am going to give the nations to my son, I have sovereignly decreed this is how it's going to happen. God's not going to hover above the earth in some kind of outer space vehicle. He's not going to send a blimp. He's not going to drop outlines from heaven. He is going to use cracked clay pots, human beings, that he fills with his spirit, that he regenerates, that he causes to be born again, that he makes into his children, and they are going to be the instruments, the vessels that he uses to take the sovereign decree of God around the world, and God is going to save everybody he's going to save through these saved cracked clay pots. So, in Romans chapter 10, you have the issue of human responsibility sandwiched between two of the strongest chapters in the Bible on God's sovereignty. Romans 9 and Romans 11 say this, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will harden whom I will harden. Now, Psalm 80, which we just had read in your hearing, is a good passage to go back and review, because in Psalm 80, it talks about God's hardening. And the reason I can say that is, you go back and read it carefully, it says, Lord, in the, I was reading out of the ESV, I believe you were reading out of the New American Standard. Okay. In one version it says restore, the other version it says return. What's going on here? The question of the hardening of God can sometimes flummox or confuse people who don't know their Bibles very well. What does the Bible say about human nature? Well, we saw in Sunday school that, excuse me, Bible study, we saw in Bible study that God made us out of the dust of the earth. But as Thomas Watson the Puritan said, sin has made us proud dust, fallen dust, sinful dust, dust with an attitude. Okay, we're made out of the dust of the earth and sin has affected us. And the Bible says that sin has so affected us that God doesn't need to do anything to us If you go back and read the passages in the Old Testament, it talks about God hardened Pharaoh's heart. What did he do? Is Pharaoh just kind of walking down the streets of the capital of Egypt and suddenly this ray comes out of heaven. He becomes this really sinful, gross person. This hard person. Is that what the Bible teaches? Is that your understanding of hardening? That God infused something into people that wasn't there before. It also says that Pharaoh hardened his own heart. Well, what's that all about? Which is it? And in the answer to many Bible conundrums, it's both and. God hardened Pharaoh's heart and he hardened his own. And hardening is talked about in many texts in the Old Testament. It's talked about in the New Testament. In Romans 9, Paul refers back to the hardening of Pharaoh's heart. But the question is, what occurs in hardening? Well, let me ask you this. If you have a... I'll ask boys and girls. The boys and girls here today know the answer to this question. If you have some clay or some Play-Doh, what do you do to harden it? Well, you don't have to do anything. Just leave it out of the bag or out of the box and just let it sit there and interact with the atmosphere. It'll become harder and harder and harder. And you can have a piece of clay that starts off as soft, malleable clay, but ends up like a rock right there. What does God have to do to sinful human beings to have them become so hardened they're impervious? The answer And I hope it scares you as much as it scares me. The answer is nothing. Do you know how God hardens a sinner's heart? He leaves them alone. He doesn't do anything to them. Think about it. How do you make a piece of clay soft? Well, you pick it up and you work it. And then as you work the piece of clay, it becomes soft and malleable or shapeable. You want it to become hard? Back away from it, put your hands in your pocket, and just leave it there. It will become as hard as a rock on its own. In the passage in Psalm 80 and in Isaiah chapter 63, where Isaiah is crying out to the Lord, Lord, why have you hardened our hearts? Then he gives a solution, return to us! Come back to us. Work in our hearts. Why have we become hard? Because you've been offended by us and you step back and left us to ourselves. You've put your hands behind your back. You're not working in our hearts. God doesn't have to do anything to send anybody in this room to hell. Sin will take us to hell on its own. Sin will make us hard. The idea of God hardening a sinner's heart is God leaving a sinner entirely to his own deserts, leaving him to his own resources, leaving him or her to harden into a rock that's oblivious to anything spiritual. And you wake up one day and you find yourself facing judgment. That's a brief discussion of the biblical teaching on hardening, leaving a sinner to herself or himself. with no grace, no input from God. Now, Romans chapter 10, verses 11 through 17, in the midst of these two scary chapters, 9 and 11, about the sovereignty of God in hardening or in making soft, we have a chapter on human responsibility. There are those who think that if you believe the things that your church believes, then you certainly don't believe in evangelism and missions and prayer and a lot of other stuff, because what you believe is so bogus and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. What we believe in this church is biblical. God is absolutely sovereign. He saves whom he wants to. He bypasses and leaves in their sin those who he wants to. It's his prerogative. Go back and read Romans 9 and 11. Does the Bible say that God's going to save five people or twelve or a handful? No. Like the stars of the sky, like the sands of the seashore, so shall your descendants be. A great innumerable host of people that Christ came to save. Didn't he say in Isaiah 49, it's too light a thing, it's too small a thing for you just to die and give your life for Israel. I'm going to give you the nation's people from every tribe and tongue and people group on the face of the planet are going to come to Christ because His death is of such infinite worth. How is this going to be happening? Is God just going to send out these rays, and a guy's walking down the streets of Calcutta, and suddenly he's dragged into an alley, and we hear some thrashing around, and he comes out, victory in Jesus. I mean, is that what your conception of missions is? That the sovereign God just does these whack jobs on people, and they come out different? Let's read Romans 10, verses 11 through 17. The sovereign God has sovereignly appointed how he's going to accomplish his works. For the Scripture says, everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame. In the Bible, one of that phrase, being put to shame, means on judgment day, you will not be found to be a fool for placing your trust in Christ. To be shamed would be to put your trust in what? You're facing judgment, trusting in what? What an idiot, what a fool. You've given eternity for nothing. That's to be put to shame. But to have trusted in Christ is the very right thing. And God will not put you to shame because you placed your trust in the only trustworthy one, the only trustworthy place. Everyone who believes in Him will not be put to shame. Boys and girls, moms and dads, I ask you, are you trusting in Christ as your Savior? Do you want to be put to shame? Do you want to be mocked and have people laugh at you because you are a fool and placed your trust somewhere else? Or is your trust in Christ? What does it say? Everyone, you can put your name there. Me, who believes in him, will not be put to shame. For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek. God doesn't care what your background is. For the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. Ah, for everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. There's another use of the word everyone. You can put your name in there. What's your name? Put your name there. Everyone, me, who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. If I call on the Lord and say, Oh Lord, I need to be saved. I'm a sinner. I can't save myself. Scripture makes very clear that you will save me. That you love to save sinners. You came to save sinners. Please save me. Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. How then will they call on Him on whom they have not believed? If they haven't heard anything about Christ and understand who He is, why in the world would they call on Him? Well, the inference is, they won't. And how are they to believe in Him of whom they've never heard? People aren't just walking down the streets of Calcutta going, you know, a name just popped into my head, Jesus. I think I'll trust that. That's not how it works. Someone's got to tell them. And how are they to hear without someone preaching? Someone has to go. Someone has to speak. And how are they to preach unless they are sent? Churches need to send preachers of the gospel. As it is written, how beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news. But they have not all believed the gospel, for Isaiah said, Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us? So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ. God is sovereignly determined to send whom he will and give them to his son. but he's also sovereignly determined that through the apparent foolishness of preaching, churches sending out missionaries, churches sending out preachers, people going next door and witnessing to their neighbors, witnessing to the kid who rides the school bus with you, witnessing to a relative at a family reunion, speaking the gospel in every kind of imaginable context. Through human beings speaking the gospel, God has sovereignly purposed to save whom he will. Now, human beings often divide things that belong together. We like, we have a difficult time sometimes, sometimes it's a temperament thing, sometimes it's just the way you were raised, of holding two things that belong together that may at first seem very different. People struggle. God is, Jesus Christ is holy God and he's also holy man at the same time. I don't get that entirely. Join the club. The Bible doesn't say it's easy to understand, but it says it's true. And rather than change the scriptures to fit our pea brains, we adjust our pea brains and we conform our minds to what scripture says. Jesus Christ is 100% God, and he's also 100% man, with no mixture of the two and no watering down. Boys and girls, when you go to Ryan's and you get some ice cream and they have chocolate, vanilla, or swirl, Jesus is not a swirl. He's 100% chocolate and 100% vanilla. You go, how can that be? And my answer is, I don't know. But he is. But my brain works at the level of Ryan's Steakhouse. And there are ice cream machines, so probably yours does too. We have to hold both together. The question of the nature of Scripture. Scripture is inspired by God. Every of the 66 books of Scripture is co-written by God, the Holy Spirit, who's superintended. It's God-breathed. But every book of the Bible is also written by a human being, with a divinable personality, and gifts, and education, and lack thereof. Peter writes like he might have been in a fishing business. He's not dumb, but he doesn't have a sophisticated vocabulary. The guy who wrote Hebrews uses words like that, like he must have gone to some kind of big-time college because he uses really hard Greek words. Luke was a doctor, and he writes very pretty Greek. And John writes like he might have been a fisherman, too. So, what? The Bible was written by men, and the Bible was written by God the Holy Spirit. Which is it? Both. God the Holy Spirit superintended men writing the Bible so we can trust in it. Well, sometimes people, when they hear about the things that the Scriptures teach, about the absolute sovereignty of God, they say, well, if you believe those things, you can't believe in the responsibility of Christians to take the Gospel to others. You can't believe in evangelism and missions. And my question has always been, why? If they're both taught in scripture, why can't both be true? God is absolutely sovereign, and he's absolutely sovereignly decreed that he's going to use feeble little folks like us, cracked clay pots, to speak truth to other people, and God's going to supernaturally work in their lives, and they go, oh, this makes perfect sense. You go, really? Whoa, what did I say? Well, it wasn't really you, but it just seemed right. God the Holy Spirit is going to work through our feeble witness to accomplish his purposes. Now, going back to the Isaiah 49 passage that Barry read to us, in the ESV, contrary to some other versions, it says, it's in verse 6, it says, it's too light a thing. Most versions say it's too small a thing. And the ideas are similar, but here's how one's based on the other. If something's really small, it's really light. Correct? It doesn't have much weight. You don't see it very often, but sometimes you can go to an old-fashioned grocery store, and they'll have scales to weigh things, and weigh produce or something, or weigh meat. And you wouldn't say to the person, excuse me, would you mind wiping the dust off the scale before you put my produce there? Why? Well, because it's weighing down the scale. It's so small, it's immeasurable. It's too light. Who cares? I'm cheap. Wipe off the dust. OK. It's too small a thing. It's too light a thing. Here are the scales of God's justice. You put Christ on one side. Thunk. The scale comes down with a definitive thunk. What do you put on the other side to make it even up? What would be worth the value of Christ? Let's put Judah on here. Oh, it doesn't move. It's dust. Let's put Benjamin on here. Scales don't move. It's dust. let's put Greeks, let's put barbarians, let's take the really depraved people, you know, the folks who live in Europe and America, let's put them on there. Whoa, it doesn't even move. It's too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, to bring back the preserved ones of Israel. I will make you as a light to the nations that my salvation shall reach to the ends of the earth. The value of Christ is so profound that simply saving the two remaining tribes of Israel isn't even something God wants to consider. So I'm going to give somebody from all the tribes and tongues and people groups on the planet to my son as a gift for what he's procured by his incarnation and his salvation. The work of Christ is so vast, so huge, so definitive, so powerful, so certain that not one single person that Christ paid for will be missing on Judgment Day. Everyone will be there. In fact, Paul says, I keep doing what I'm doing so that I will fill up the measure of all the elect that God is saving from around the world. There's still people that haven't been reached yet. And when the last elect person is reached, God will wind up time and history will be done. In fact, in Revelation chapter 5, this is what the creatures and the elders in heaven are saying. With your blood, you purchased men for God. And there are people from every tribe and tongue and people group are going to be there, and they're going to celebrate what Christ has done. You have purchased men for God. You paid the price for all the elect, for all time. You purchased them. Not you offered purchase ability. Not if they sign the contract and make it good, otherwise they can nullify it. No. You purchased men. They will come to you. You will send your spirit. You will change their heart. You will change their thinking. They will see their need. They will see that they're undone. They will see that unless they have a Savior, they're eternally undone. That Christ is the Savior. And lo and behold, He receives sinners even with the wicked things that people like you and I have done. He receives sinners. He makes them into children of God and cleanses them from all their sins and gives them the righteousness of his Son. It's too light a thing that just a handful of people in the Middle East would be the beneficiaries of all the things my Son has accomplished. I'm giving him the nations. So that takes us then to the second part of my message, which is the area of human responsibility. What can energize my responsibility more than a sense that God's sovereignly at work and what I'm doing is not in vain? I mean, with what we saw in Bible study this morning, I wouldn't want to be a missionary or a pastor if I knew that I had all these things opposed to me. I had the deadness, the lostness, the blindness, the pollution, the rebellion, all the things that are wrong with human beings because of the fall. I would give up in a heartbeat and find something else better to do than waste my life blowing smoke. Because who can reach these people? It'd be like BBs pinging off a tank. Nothing's going to reach these people. Unless there is a sovereign God who working sovereignly through seemingly weak things. It means some guy's going to stand up and he's going to read some words and explain it to people. And that's going to change their lives for eternity. Yep, that's what God says. Come on, get with it, this is the 21st century. We need media, we need technology, we don't need this old-fashioned stuff. It wasn't cool, so to speak, in the first century, and it's not cool today to stand up and simply speak a message and expect it to impact people's lives. Unless God is in the speaking of those words to these people. If there is a God who honors his word and he invisibly sends his Holy Spirit to sovereignly work in people's lives, then preaching, speaking truth into a context is not a waste of time. First point, because God sovereignly decrees things and it energizes our witness, were to have greater confidence in Christ's full and finished payment for our sins, the first thing you and I have to get over as witnesses for Christ, whether called to be a preacher and a pastor or a missionary or a layman who simply witnesses to their friends, we have to really come to grips with the issue, has Christ paid for all of my sins? Am I fully pardoned or am I on parole? You know the difference if you're on parole? Oh, there he did. You broke parole. Back to prison for you. God's not, you know, you're just, the jury's still out on you. God's not really sure what to do with you, but if you keep your nose clean for a few years, maybe he'll change his mind. It's not what the Word of God teaches. We are fully pardoned for our sins. There is not one warm coal in the ashes of what Christ accomplished on the cross where God is upset with us. He's angry with us. The Bible speaks of full and complete pardon. not pardonability, not a conditional sense. Your sin may seem and indeed be a boulder on your shoulders, but the tsunami of God's grace in Christ washes away boulders. Go back and look at some of the pictures of the tsunami. Locomotives moved a mile from the train tracks they were originally on. Apartment buildings washed away. Boulders ripped from their moorings and washed far away. In fact, in 1 Timothy, Apostle Paul shares his testimony, and if you were to go back and read it carefully, you'd see something you might not have thought about. He says, Do you know why God saved me, the chief of sinners? I said, He can save me. He can save anybody. I supervised killing Christians. I used to use Christ's name as a curse word. I persecuted the church. I have a sadistic streak. I liked hurting these people. And God saved me anyway. But so that down through the pages of history, down through the time, beyond the time, he can point to me and say, look, if God can save Paul, he can save you. And so he said, God saved me as an example down through the centuries. Christ's perfect status is given to us as our perfect status for eternity. So we're not just a bunch of zeros or simple zeros. We have been given the righteousness of Christ. We've been cleansed from all of our sins. We're a cleansed tool that he can now choose to work with. If you think that you're useless to God, let me ask you a question. If God only uses big time and important people. The greatest evangelist up until Billy Graham, in terms of sheer numbers, was a man named Dwight Moody. And he was a great evangelist of the 19th century, and Moody Bible Institute and other things were started by him. Dwight Moody was a great and powerful evangelist. Wasn't well educated, only went to school as far as the 8th grade. Someone said he could make Mesopotamia into a one-syllable word. He had kind of a street-corner English. But he was a powerful evangelist because the Spirit of God was upon him and he believed the Bible and preached the Bible. Who led him to Christ? What famous person led this powerful evangelist to Christ? Dwight Moody was in the 8th grade. He got a part-time job working in the back room of a shoe store and a Christian shoe salesman led him to Christ. They don't even know his name. God does. But God used this one man to be faithful to witness to this 8th grade boy and changed the lives of millions of people. Arguably, the greatest evangelistic pastor of all times was Charles Spurgeon. He said, besides the family, he grew up in a Christian family, but he said, two laymen had a big impact on my life. He said, a cook who witnessed to me and explained the Bible in detail over time, besides what I heard from my mom and dad and my grandparents. And he said, I was walking to church one Sunday and got caught in a ferocious snowstorm. It's hard to believe today that people didn't have access to the weather 24-7 instantaneously. So if you just kind of, oh, it looks okay, and you take off, boom. and the snow was so bad you couldn't make it to the next town where your church was. So you go walk into this little primitive Methodist chapel, and the pastor couldn't even show up to stay. And so a layman stood up and he said, bless his heart, he didn't stand up straight, didn't speak real clear at first, but God gave him grace to speak the word of God, and that was the word that God used to save me that day. So there was a cook in his house, and a Methodist layman led Charles Burgeon to Christ. Tell me, who was the name of the man that God used to confirm the salvation of Saul of Tarsus? Remember his name? He was a layman in Damascus, Ananias. He was just Joe Average. God just chose to use him. He was a cracked clay pot filled with the Holy Spirit. The only tools God has to work with are us, redeemed sinners. And that's who he's going to sovereignly use to impact the world. Number two, because Christ has done what he's done, he's accomplished the salvation, and the Father has sovereignly decreed to give the nations to his Son, you and I can have greater boldness in praying for the lost around us, especially the hard cases. We plead the finished work of Christ on behalf of guilty sinners. Now think about it. Think about this person that you think is too hard, too lost, just too far gone, I mean, you've talked to them a few times and they've baffled you with their great intellect and their stubbornness and their cluelessness. They're too far gone. Is that what Isaiah 49 said? It's too small a thing that my son would die for these two tribes of Israel. But, of course, those hard guys, they don't count. But everybody else, I'm going to give them the nations except for the hard cases. Isn't that just rank unbelief? Could you say, Lord, Would you save this hard guy? I mean, if you were a first century believer, would you think Saul of Tarsus was somebody who'd become the leader of the next generation of believers? Wouldn't you think, oh man, this con artist is infiltrating the churches, professing to be a Christian. We're all going to get arrested before this is over with. No, God takes the number one hard guy, Osama bin Saul, and takes him and makes him into a Christian. Don't let their sin, their stubbornness, their seeming unsavability keep you from pleading the infinitely greater work of Christ and the sovereign decree of God. Father, it's too small a thing for you to save only Israel and some of us Gentiles. Your son Jesus is such a great Savior that I ask in his name that you save, fill in the blank, and make them into your child and glorify your Son in saving them. Wouldn't that be glorifying to Christ? Yes, they need to be saved. That's definitely true. But Christ is worthy of being glorified in their salvation. When unlikely candidates for salvation are saved and become children of God, God is glorified. One year I was On the beaches of Southern California with the student minister I was with, July 4th weekend, 11 million people in the Los Angeles Basin, probably 4 million were on the beaches from up in the northern part of Los Angeles County down to Orange County where I live. 4 million people on the beaches. So, we were out there witnessing. Lord, show me somebody to witness to. Well, pick your pick. But, you know, you want to just, who is the Lord preparing? So I'm praying the Lord would show me who to witness to. So I'm kind of looking around. And I said, see this guy, and he's laying on his blanket. He's got one of these guys with a Greek Adonis build. He probably never lifted weights in his life, but he was just perfectly sculpted. And since this was 1970, he had this big afro. Nah, he doesn't look interested. Let's look for somebody else here. And I kept looking, and he just doesn't look like he wants to be saved. He's with his girlfriend. They're there. He doesn't look like the type. I don't know what the type looks like, but he didn't look like the type. He looked too intimidating. Oh, Lord, show me who to intercede. So the Lord kept saying, why don't you just go witness to this person? Okay, so you pray and you go over to this person. I plopped down in the sand. I said, hey man, you got just a minute. I'm sorry to interrupt you, but something happened and changed my life. And if you give me three minutes, I'll share something of it with you. And his girlfriend says, don't tell him to go away. He goes, shut up. I want to hear the man. So we proceeded to have a conversation. And I told him about how my life had been radically changed. through the intrusion of the sovereign God and his person of his son Jesus Christ. And this girl interrupted the second time and said, tell him to get lost. I don't want to hear about this. He goes, I do. Be quiet. Now, I didn't offer him to pray with me. He didn't pray with me right there. But he was very interested. I have a hope and a prayer that I will see him. He didn't look like a savable person. He didn't look like an interested person. He looked like an intimidating person. But he was interested. And God was working in that time. You can't tell from the outside. Nobody can tell what God's going to do in a person's heart. But based upon the work of Christ, you can plead and pray and talk to anybody. Third, you're to have a greater vision for local evangelism, missions, and worldwide evangelism. If God has given the nations to His Son, if He has sovereignly decreed that, then I can have far greater vision for what He might do in local evangelism. what he might do in missions and worldwide evangelism. What is God going to do? If we were in the first century living in Palestine, where the early Christians began, we'd know that the gospel went out to people around us in Palestine and Samaria, and then it went up into Asia Minor, what we now call Turkey. It was with the Middle Easterners. But the gospel didn't go to the Europeans because, frankly, the Europeans were the gross people of that era. In fact, there was a byword in the Roman world. Did you hear about Larry? Oh, is there anybody here named Larry? Did you hear about Leonard? Leonard Corinthianized. What's that mean? Corinth was known as such a vile place that when a person went off the deep end, morally, he had Corinthianized. The Europeans were the gross people of the Roman Empire. And to become like, well, they're just intimidating, lost, hard pagans. So what? God said, I'm going to send the gospel to these people. So Paul's going through Turkey, retracing the steps on a missionary journey, and he's getting ready to go to a place he's been before, and we don't know how, but it says the Holy Spirit wouldn't let him. Okay, we back up, we pray, I guess he wants us to go here. God won't let us do that. Well, what? So they go down to Troas, which is a seaport, which means you can go anywhere in the world from a seaport. And that night he has a vision. And he sees a man from Macedonia, which is in Greek. Macedonia still exists as a country over there. And this man is saying, come over here and help us. Come over here and help us. Paul recognized his dialect, recognized his clothes apparently, something about that, and said, we determined that God had called us to go to the European Gentiles. Whoa. How is this going to happen? The dreaded Europeans? Yes. How? Because a sovereign God has decreed that he's going to give the nations to his son, and these nations are included in that, and he's got his people. We're going to go witness and see whose people are. In fact, go read Acts 19. Can you imagine the Apostle Paul being scared? In Acts 19, it records God. Paul, stop being afraid. Now, why would God say that unless he's afraid? Stop being afraid. Continue here in Corinth. Because I have many people in this place. Keep preaching. The grossest place in the first century. I have many people I want to save for my son's glory. Keep preaching. Don't wimp out. Keep going. So we can pray with confidence. We are the lineal descendants of that missionary journey by Paul. We wouldn't be sitting here today if they hadn't crossed the Bosporus and gone to Europe and witnessed those first Europeans that had spread like wildfire through Europe. We think of Christianity as a Western European thing, but it was originally a Middle Eastern thing. It caught fire among the grossest people then. We are the lineal descendants of that missionary journey by Paul. The gospel has been planned in Europe for 2,000 years. We were once thought beyond your grace and saving power. You showed that it was just unbelief on the part of the first century Christians. And you've saved a great number of European Gentiles ever since. Now, Father, we don't want to look at the Muslims, the Hindus, the Buddhists, the atheists as being too hard for you or too lost for you or too beyond the grace of Christ. Father, it's too small a thing for your glorious son Jesus to save only Israel and some European Gentiles. We're asking you to save a great multitude of Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims and atheists that no man can count, that you might receive the glory and that your son might be adored for all eternity by the recipients of this saving grace. Fourth, because of the sovereign decree of God, you can send out men and women to the hard places with confidence. Because God has promised the nations to his son. I wouldn't want to go to a Middle Eastern country. I wouldn't want to go to France. There's many places in the world that are just tough. Some parts of America are tough. But you can persevere in hard places because he says, I have given the nations to my son. And whether he wants to save five people in France or five million people in France is up to God. But he has a people in France. He has a people in Saudi Arabia. He has a people in Indonesia. It says in Revelation 5-9, this is what the elders are singing in heaven to the Lamb. Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain and by your blood you ransomed people from God, from every tribe and language and people group and nation. And you have made them to be a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth. That's what they're singing in heaven already. Christ, you did it. You purchased it. The infinite worth of who you are and what you did has accomplished something. And so, we can go to hard places, knowing they're hard, not being naive. Read the diaries of missionaries who've gone to hard places. Imagine going, reading about the Sawi people in Indonesia, where the number one virtue of that culture is deception. What do you mean? A missionary, Don, wait for it, wait for it, Don Richards, thank you. My wife is actually ventriloquist, and sometimes you can't even see her listening. Don Richardson goes to Indonesia, goes to people, he's explaining the gospel, he explains how Judas betrays Christ, and they all begin cheering. What? This is the greatest con imaginable! He pretended to be this great guy's friend, and he deceives him, and the great guy's killed. Man, this is awesome. How depraved and upside down does your thinking have to be for Judas to be the hero of the Gospels? You go back to your hut and you say, How in the world do you take a gospel of good news to these people who are so perverted in their thinking? And I won't tell you the rest of the story, but God did an amazing thing and saved tens of thousands of those people. John Calvin's church in France sent a missionary expedition to Brazil. They had an opportunity. France was a Catholic nation and Protestants didn't have access to the seas, but the French nation wanted to start an outpost of Frenchmen in Brazil. So the Christians, the Protestants said, hey, let's get on board the ship and get a free ride to Brazil and we'll start a colony there and start preaching the gospel. So they got a whole bunch of different craftsmen and farmers and people and a pastor, a missionary or two and all their families and they got on this boat and they went to Brazil and it didn't go well. It didn't go as they planned. Churches all over France and Switzerland were praying for that ministry outreach. It didn't go well. The leader of the expedition changed his mind. decided he wanted to be a firmer Catholic. A couple of the leaders of the Protestant group were killed. The rest were either taken into slavery or sent back to France. It didn't go as they planned. And they had poured literally tens of thousands of man-hours of prayer into that. Is that lost? I mean, look at what we did and nothing happened. But we did see that God is sovereign and he's decreed to give the nations to his Son. So, flash forward a couple hundred years. The greatest missionary nation of South America is Brazil, and it sends out missionaries to all the Portuguese-speaking lands. All the rest of the countries in South America are Spanish-speaking. Brazil is Portuguese-speaking, and back to Brazil, to Angola, to Mozambique. All the Christian literature that's in Portuguese comes from Brazil. They have conferences for Reformed pastors, with 1,500 pastors attending now in Brazil. And fifty years ago there was nothing. But those prayers were not wasted. God heard the prayers of the saints. He just laid the answer to them. And fifthly and finally, and this is where a typical missionary thing, we have you sign up. We're going to have boats chartered and we'll send you off to the mission field. But nowadays we're modern, so we have planes at Hartfield-Jackson. You can each become a missionary family and go off to the end of the world and be a missionary. But that's really not biblical because God only calls a handful of people to be pastors or missionaries. And so I'm not going to talk to you about becoming missionaries and going to the ends of the world. You can stay a layman knowing that your prayers and giving and witnessing are not in vain. You can stay a layman and be used of God right where you are. Am I trying to squelch the idea of raising up ministers? No. Am I trying to squelch the idea of raising up missionaries? No. But there's a lot of people who go to the mission field and never should have gone. And they get there and they're confused. They don't know what they're doing. They really don't have a grasp of the gospel and they don't have the gifts requisite. And they flame out and they return home in embarrassment or shame. There are far too many people who weren't called who go. So the question is, can I stay and be used of God? The answer is definitely yes. For one thing, He's already put you in the fourth largest nation in the world, population-wise. So you have a big mission field. There are 330 million people, most of whom are lost. That's a good mission field. But you can stay here in the church in Jackson and Griffin, and you can know that you're having a key role in the fulfillment of Christ's Great Commission. For one thing, do you have children at home? Can you teach them the promises of God that we looked at today? Can you teach them those verses in Isaiah 49? God has given the nations to His Son. It's a sovereign decree. It's too light a thing that Jesus would just die for two tribes of Israel. He's giving them the nations. How gracious, how big-hearted our God is. He's not just saving a handful. He's not just saving a few Jews in the Middle East. He's saving people from every tribe and tongue and people group on the face of the planet. People in Butts County. People in Spaulding County. People from surrounding counties. People from this whole dark lost nation. People in Las Vegas. People in San Francisco. Even people in Atlanta. God is sovereignly at work to give the nations to his son. But you know what? And it says here in Romans 10 that we're supposed to go and talk to people. That God's given us the responsibility of telling others. You know, I remember my mom went out witnessing one time and she had the training and you're going to go and she goes, oh no. And my mom was so scared she got to the door and she forgot her own name and had to look at her name tag to figure out who she was so she could tell the people. Kind of go, hey, that's like me. Well, God can use people like you. He says, I'm not looking for the brightest bulbs in the pack. I'm just looking for faithful bulbs. I'm not looking for somebody with 5,000 gifts and just oozing ability. Because if you have 5,000 gifts and you're oozing ability, who gets the credit when people come to Christ? You do. But when just show average witnesses to someone and they later come to Christ, God gets the glory. Teach your children by having pictures of your missionaries on the refrigerator and pray for them. By name with your children. Pray for the people of that land. Claim the promises of God for them. Pray for your neighbors, friends, relatives. We moved into a community of senior citizens. Except for us, we're much younger. But anyways, there's a lot of old people where we live. Anyway, and we're coming up with a template where everybody lives in our neighborhood. Why? Because we want to pray for everybody in our neighborhood by name. Because God has a people probably even there. We already know some professing Christians, but there's lots of people who don't profess Christ. Ask God in, asking God to save them for Christ's sake. It's too small a thing. You know, I used to pray for people because they were lost and they needed Christ. And then this guy's strung out on drugs. This guy's on his fourth relationship. This girl's doing this. This guy's not doing this. Look how lost these people are. And that's valid to pray. But you know, the longer I'm a Christian, the more I see the importance of the glory of God in Christ. Isn't Christ worthy of more glory by saving more people and having them behold His wondrous salvation forever. I mean, do you ever pinch yourself? Man, He really did save me. I'm not the person I used to be. I'm really on my way to heaven. But I would want more people to have that recognition. More people to experience the salvation of Christ. That Christ gets the glory. Give generously. Give wisely, knowing that God's going to use your monies. Who knows what God will do through your witness, through your prayers, and through your giving. Sovereign decree of God and the responsibility of his people to be faithful, given that sovereign decree, is going to see the accomplishment of the Great Commission and all of God's elect are going to be saved. And they'll all stand before the throne in heaven. You'd be standing next to a guy and you'd go, whoa, what country are you from? Outer Slavovia. Whoa, how'd you get here? Well, a missionary was sent to our people and I remember praying for that missionary when I was in 10th grade. My parents had that missionary on the refrigerator. You might be standing next to someone in heaven who was somebody that your relatives prayed for, that you gave for, or that you witnessed to. Let's pray. Father, we've tried to look at your sovereignty, and you've made a decree, and nothing's going to thwart that, nothing's going to stop that. You are going to save a great number of people from all the nations of the earth, and you're giving them to your Son. For it's too light a thing, too small a thing, for him to die only for two tribes of Israel. But you have sovereignly decreed that you're going to work through cracked clay pots, saved sinners, who speak the word of truth to others. For how shall they believe in him whom they've never heard of? And so we're to tell them, and we're to tell them a second time, and we're to pray for them, and maybe tell them a third time, and pray for them, and someone else will tell them, and they will be prayed for again, and then one day they will come to Christ. Lord, help us to be faithful, counting on your sovereignty, and by grace, being faithful. For the honor and glory of your Son, we pray. Amen.