Never be lacking in spiritual zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor serving the Lord. That's standing orders from God's word. Well, we've had 40 years in the front line, 42 actually by now. Our purpose is to glorify God, and I thought it would be good to go over our priorities and some of our principles in light of what we've just experienced across the country. Our first priority right from the beginning was to assist persecuted churches in many different ways. Evangelizing in neglected and restricted access areas, as epitomized by the war zones of Mozambique and Angola and Sudan, And, Working for Reformation and Praying for Revival. And Kwasabantu Mission in Zuland, and that's a scene by drone of this last Sunday the 23rd. Gives you a bit of a feel. Just look at all those crowds of people working through. That's the boys' meal tent. People moving to come into the auditorium. They've got overflow at the back, and they've got overflow with a screen, and overflow tent that could accommodate another 3,000 too. By the way, that building was the original building. There was a time when that was the only building on the whole mission. And the upper room there is where they had their meetings for many years. That door is the dining room where they had most of the meals and then all the services for many, many years before the auditorium was built, which Dr. Philip Stott produced. And this is the choir, the mass choir this last Sunday with the brass band. That gives you a bit of a feel for it. The Mess Choir is basically all the choirs combined. So it's not just the Questamento Choir. It'll be the choir from Morrison, the choir from up in Schultzendal, Harding. There's a whole group of different Questamento affiliates. So the Mess Choir is something in the region of 130 there. But some of the mass choir are part of the brass band. And at a certain point, all the brass band people put down their equipment and went and joined the choir when they didn't need the musical accompaniment. They normally sing without musical accompaniment. Of course, we count our success also by our field missions completed. The churches we help, like this is the famous Loi Cathedral in South Sudan, Maryland. This is a picture I took now of the youth conference. You can see something in the region of 8,000 youth here, they say. 6,900 came from outside and registered, not counting the youth from the mission itself. And these are some of the visitors on Sunday for the service, including mayors, members of provincial councillors, and many members of the Zulu royal family and the Swazi royal family as well. In fact, I think you've got to think of Kwasiwanta Mission as like the national church of KwaZulu. And this again, Sunday service, people attending from all over. That gives you a bit of feel from the back of the Sunday morning service. The outreaches we conduct are also why we are here. And of course, we need people to support the different projects that we can provide, the Bibles, Indigenous, African languages, and all that we need to do from here that we can give away free literature. Our radio program has been key from the beginning, and we can conduct many radio programs every year, including Radio Tiger. We've been part of that for the last 29 years. This August, it'll be 30 years since Radio Tygerberg began, and we got in at the ground floor. We're part of the original program, and we were the first English program on Radio Tygerberg. The entire funding failed, to quote the founder. Of course, literature has always been a key part of the work. Right from the beginning, we were distributing World Mystery Press Gospel Booklets and All Nations Gospel Publishers Heart of Man Booklets. That's crossing a crocodile infested river in Zangola. And by the way, there was no space in the canoe for us. We had to swim on the side, pushing the canoe. Because the canoe contained the literature. It couldn't contain people and paddlers as well. The amount of tracks we print have been key from the beginning. And of course, make them available, download it too. The tracks redistribute. Now this, last night, no, the night before last. Sunday night, we managed to distribute a record number Monday night. We distributed 14,000 gospel booklets at the KSB Youth Conference. I found gospel booklets, there's so many numbers that we organized the marshals at each gate door and distributed to each person too. There's a gospel booklet, and a Heart of Man track from all nations. So as I sorted out the stores, I saw I had enough. And every person was able to get one, or get two, one of the booklets, one of the tracks. And those are very effective ones. The books we publish, now downstairs we've got our cabinets with books we've desktop-published, designed in-house, but of course, they're all printed out by different printing agencies over the years. Some of these were even printed at Kwasa Bantu when they had their own printing press there, like Bill Baffin's Going Through and Our Putting Feet to Your Faith were some examples that were printed actually at Kwasa Bantu Mission itself. The audiovisual materials we've produced, which now is more solidified on sermon audio and on SoundCloud and SoundWare. In the past, we used to use the audio cassettes. Many of these are donated in box sets, MP3 box sets and CD box sets in many libraries around the continent. And these represent many seminars, conferences, and courses. DVDs we've produced, I took in the filmmakers from Jeremiah Films to produce Sudan and Holocaust, Terrorism, Persecution, and even took in the SATV character that did Three Days in Sudan, which is quite an interesting story. 1995, we started Christian Liberty Books. And I believe, is it correct to say we've got about 6,000 titles? If you count the audiovisuals. If you count the DVDs and CDs, too. And the Joy magazines remind us that for quite a while, we contributed articles to Joy. For 10 years, I wrote regular articles, worked out at the end 780 articles that I wrote for Joy or were translated to you over a 10-year period. Of course, the books we've published, we've got some at the cabinet back there. 140 titles in the cabinet up here in the upper room, of which I wrote 70. That counts manuals and booklets, too. But we've published for others like Bill Bathman, and we've done God Amongst the Zillers and others for Uncle Olo, Kurt Koch. So there's 140 titles in the upper cabinets here of books we've published. This is what the storeroom looks like at KSP in KwaZulu. I went through and sorted it out. You can see quite a bit of our titles as well. They are very short of Old Testament surveys, but they're doing not bad with New Testament surveys. They say the Old Testament surveys fly off the shelf, so we must resupply that pretty quick. And these are just some of the materials we've organized there. I found World Mystery Press Gospel booklets all over the place, so if you're wondering about the background, this is like what I call a loft of this angled roof. They've got, at the back, behind the actual auditorium platform where the speakers deliver the messages from, they've got an IT room and then they've got a storeroom for literature. And so that's why you've got this angled roof there. And it's not on the ground floor. One floor up, and you go up a sort of rickety wooden stairs that have been improvised, more like a ladder. So the poor people have got to get the literature up there. Anyway, I just sorted out while up there. And these are some of what we have pre-positioned. Most of it Zulu, of course, but also Peri, and Sasutu, and Debeli, Saswati. The audiovisual materials that we donate is very important. Many DVDs have been donated to us over the years, or that we've been given permission to copy and distribute widely, such as for Justin Peter's ministry, Call for Discernment, the What if Trees Never Been Born from James Kendi, Todd Farrell, Richard, Radio and TV's programs as well. And we've built up many libraries around the world, including this is Petioka, which used to be a terrorist training center in the old days of the Rhodesian War in Zambia. But now we've got Covenant College we established there, and it's run by the Free Church of Scotland now. We donated it to them a few years ago. Library donations delivered is key. Of course, the amount of shipments and Joy & Joch magazine articles we've contributed have been very key aspects of our work over the years. Some of the most important things we contributed was the Ten Commandments series, which was translated into Afrikaans, which we published as books as well, ultimately. And the Bible in a nutshell, which Throughout the six years I was doing that program, which of course got centralized into our Old Testament Survey and New Testament Survey books, which are about four times more text than what was published in Join York, but they had the summaries. They did also produce these booklets, and I think we've got their manuals where they've got just the articles, Old Testament Survey, just the New Testaments. Our frontline news being produced over the years and being distributed widely, from the all black and white to multicolored, Our websites, which are now very much updated from this. I don't know what program that was, but Johan van der Merwe set up our first website. Here's our first IT person, and a phone changer to the FrontlineMissionSA.org website. Our social media outlets have been increasing over the years, and now we've got at least 70 of our tracks available online. The Bible is distributed as one of the most important lines of us working out how effective we've been. And I calculated, because I did all the printing programs and everything for Sedan, that we took in over 650,000 Bibles into Sedan. And since then, there's been other people who we helped get started who've been taking more Bibles, but I don't know that they've been as effective, because I wondered how they managed to take in 40,000 Bibles in their shipments, because that's since the ceasefire. But then I told them, bring one of these back, and we weighed it, and it was 0.40 of a kilogram. Now, the Bibles I printed are all one kilogram. One kilogram is a good size or weight for a Bible. But unfortunately, these that were printed in Belarus by the more recent teams, they are so small, you need glasses or magnifying glass to read these things. And they're printed in China or, in this case, Belarus. And they're designed for maximum amounts of Bibles for people who don't care about whether you can read them or not, but just that they can say, we did so many. This is what? How do you get 40,000 Bibles in a container? Bear in mind, if you think of a container we've got, our container can't take 40 tons. Our average container takes 17 tons. So if you've got a Bible that's one kilogram, well, 40,000 Bibles would be 40 tons of Bibles. And so that just explains why they managed to suddenly get these huge amounts of Bibles recently into Nuba, because the text is too small. And I think there's some people who order, you know, who can print the cheapest Bibles in the world? Well, China. And you've seen some of these Bibles that come into stores, what they call a dollar Bible. Yeah, and the typesetting is shocking. It's so small. And I think the commons specialize in, OK, if people want Bibles, we'll print them Bibles, just ones that you can't read. without a magnifying glass, microscope, or an extra magnifying glass. But anyway, so our Bibles, which you can see in a display cabinet downstairs by reception, you can see how big they are. And then we've got an example next to it of one of the new ones that they were taking, organized by the Americans, which are printed in Belarus, which are far too small. But this is one of our greatest achievements, the first 3,000 copies of the Bible in Moro. Of course, leadership training programs are so key, like the Ministers' Conferences. We even managed to run a Parliamentary Biblical Worldview Seminar once, back in 1999, for Ministers and this National Council of Provinces leader, Kurt Kent Doe. Our Worldview Weekends have been key, often at back-to-basics campsites, or in this case, some people recognize this venue, Rocklands in Simonstown. Very nice venue, that. And this is Eagle's Nest, where we ran many Great Commission camps and courses over the years, near Franschhoek and other parts of the world. Evangelism Workshops, and this is an open-air preaching session with Small Paul out in Muesenberg. You can see just across the road from here in Muesenberg is the George Whitfield College. I've always wondered why they don't get involved in outreach New Year's Eve and New Year's Day, when you get tens of thousands of people pouring into Muesenberg Beachfront, and it's absolutely swamped with people. Next to no one would go and help small Paul, who always would do outreach there, but we thought that's a great opportunity. Muslim evangelism is key. From the beginning, we've looked at Muslim evangelism as one of the most important priorities because Muslims are the largest group of unreached people in the world. The largest group of non-Christians. They're the biggest threat to the church. They're the biggest enemy of the church. They're the most violent enemy and persecutor of the church. But most people don't try to reach them. Can you guess how many missionaries are dedicated to reaching Muslims in the world? Full-time missionaries. 3,000. Now, there's only 1.2 billion Muslims in the world. That means you've got roughly three missionaries for every million Muslims. Of course, not evenly distributed, but that just shows you how under-evangelized and how neglected the Muslim world is. But there's one million full-time Christian workers in the United States of America. So when one of our people who had been working here for a while said he needed to go back to concentrate in ministry in America, I said, now there's a million full-time Christian workers in America. Do you think you can make a bigger impact for the gospel in America than you can in Africa? There's someone with Bible college training, gifted, could be used well, but he reckoned he was going back to America to minister then. I just can't imagine a bigger waste of my time than devoting my time to entertaining the Christians in America. rather than reaching people who are teachable and open and enthusiastic like in Africa. Reformation conferences, often we run them up at Frontrop. We've had many a conference in Frontrop because it's by the museum and monument that's directly linked to the Reformation, only an hour's drive from Cape Town. We can also look at the amount of pastors we've trained over the years. Pastors training in the field, pastors training in Sudan, Zambia, This would be where Anthony Stunder got started. This is the main lecture hall in one paratrooper regiment in Bromfontein, Tempe. And you'll notice, I really wish we could make another front-line flag. You can see the original front-line flag we made and designed looks very reminiscent of the Rhodesian flag. That was intentional. And we had some ladies in Stellenbosch made that banner of Frontline Fellowship as well. Not sure what happened to that, but it would be nice to get something like that designed again. So these are some of the paratroopers I was invited in for chaplain service. These are teachers in the teacher training college up in Kabwe in Zambia. And of course, donating books to... Teachers, TechSource for Teachers is a key priority of our mission over the years too. And then volunteers recruited and trained. These are some enthusiastic ladies trying out at our shooting range. Remember back in 2001, this is really dated because the theme there was Osama Bin Laden pictures, you know, of the World Trade Center tech. This vehicle was a four-wheel drive Land Rover that we purchased, turned into an ambulance and drove up overland to Sudan to donate to the church to take war-wounded to the local hospital. Boxes with Love delivered to Zimbabwe has been a very key part of our work over the years, too. Ministries assisted, especially by literature, and action groups we've established. We helped a lot to get pro-life groups up and running around the world. This is a pro-life group in Durban, as you can see. Instead of having the red... We had the red ones, abortion kills babies, here in Cape Town, but they had the blue posters to distinguish. Of course, Africa Christian Network is a key network that we've, over the years, with Christian Action Network first, recruited somewhere like 150 different groups in 20 different countries, about 7 million members, and 7,000 congregations were networked under Christian Action Network. Pro-life activities is an important part of our work, being so close to Parliament. that it's not far to drive and organize a march, and we've done marches for life and pro-life stands outside Parliament many a time over the last 30 years. Converts, one, is key. When you get down to it, everybody that we can win to Christ and disciple counts. In Zambia, we've had a lot of success. Christians discipled, and the first thing Christians need is a Bible. And considering we've got at least 500 million Christians in Africa that don't have a Bible or New Testament. I used to say there was 100 million Christians in Africa without a Bible, and I was rebuked a few times by different Bible ministries saying, you're out of date. That's way, way, way back. It's now about 500 million don't have Bibles. So the correct stat is there's 680 million people in Africa who call themselves Christians, according to Operation World. According to Operation World, only 150 million Bibles or New Testaments have been brought into Africa or printed in Africa in the last 20 years. And because the average life expectancy of a Bible is about 20 years, they're calculating that we've got at least 500 million people in Africa who call themselves Christians who don't have a Bible or even a New Testament, statistically, which means that obviously we need more Bibles. People counseled on this occasion. This is Levi Mwanawasa, the president of Zambia, who came from a Jehovah's Witness background. We counseled him, and he, after an hour with him, he decided to get baptized in a local Baptist church. He had a Jehovah's Witness background, and they, of course, cut him off when he went into politics. So he is without church affiliation, and he became a very vocal Bible-believing leader in Zambia. And of course, life's change is so pre-... And here's in Malawi, a person from the Yale tribe, and it's very exciting to hear, and I've just heard at Quest of Answer, now, from Gideon Jacobs, who's running a Quest of Answer mission up in Malawi. He's got a whole congregation on a farm entirely made up of Yao people. Now, the Yao people, that's Y-A-O, are 99% Muslim. And they're listed in all unreached people's movements as an unreached people group. In fact, many have called them an unreachable people group. The Yao used to be the slave traders for the Arabs. They would go in and enslave Chechewa or Bemba people, bring them to the coast, and the Arabs would take them into the Middle East. And so the Yao people are considered absolutely unreachable. And here, Gideon Jacobs, not knowing any of this, went and planted his mission station in Malawi, plumb amongst the Yao people, and he's got a large congregation of hundreds of people, all from the Yao people. Now this is earth-shaking news for the Unreached Peoples' Movement, because I know missionaries from around the world who've gone to the Yao people trying to reach them and returned in failure, since we couldn't convert any of them. Well, Lake Kwasabuntu went up, we supplied them with Bibles and WMP gospel booklets, and they've got a whole congregation made up and a whole mission base built up of Yao people, which is not meant to be possible. It's not meant to be that easy. But it really makes a big difference when the Spirit of God is with you, of course. Now, here's some principles of how to prepare for battle. I like these cartoons, so I added them to this of how to be involved in God's work. Of course, we're involved in spiritual warfare, first and foremost. Don't presume you can know the motives of others. We need to always tackle issues without being judgmental about people. So I may say that what you're doing isn't a very efficient way of doing it, but what I can't say is you are, and giving you an adjective of, you don't know the motive of the person, but you do know, you can look at the, Things being done, but you can't judge people's motives. So to say you're insincere or whatever, well, nobody knows that. God knows our motives. And that's enough. But we can only tackle issues without tackling people. And I think the principle in soccer is, kick the ball, don't kick the other player. And tackle the issue, don't tackle the person. And don't just be a talker, be a doer. In every organization, every church, every company, every business, there's a person who talks a lot and there are others who do the job, but seldom is the one doing all the talking the one who's actually doing the doing. It's important that we are people of action. And don't overreact. Keep balance. Keep things in perspective. There are some people who are like an unexploded grenade. And you just bump them, and the pin goes flying, and the lever goes off, and the timer starts, and next thing, everyone's diving for cover. Don't be a backstabber. Be loyal to friends and co-workers. Now, I was brought up in a country where being a tattletale was the worst thing you could possibly do. So in Rhodesia, we would be having all kinds of fights at school, but you'd never tattletale. I wouldn't tell a teacher, a prefect, or parents what was going on. I would be getting creative, putting on Helmets, Sultan type of, what do you call it when you put these, headdress, sorry? Yeah, wearing turbans at supper to cover bruises, gashes, cuts and so on, that my parents wouldn't see because you wouldn't want to tattle-tale even on a bully at school. And I remember this one time when I was at assembly, and there was a boy behind me stabbing me with a syringe. Now, we didn't have plastic disposable syringes back then. We had these glass syringes that you would sterilize in a kettle, effectively. This chap had actually a very large glass syringe with a big horse-type needle, and he was stabbing me. And the code of silence was so intense that I couldn't let out a cry or let it be known or do anything that the teachers on the stage or so on could tell that I was being stabbed continually. I could feel the blood trickling down my leg, but I couldn't say a word. Well, at the end, when we had to file out, you file out from the back. There were no chairs. You sat on the floor in the hall. And as I turned to the right, I saw my tormentors right next to me. So I moved just behind him in his line, of course, the different class, but never mind. As we stepped into the light, I tripped him. And I saw he had this glass syringe in his hand. And so I brought down my heel like a Zulu warrior. on his hand, you heard the glass shatter and his scream echoed through the quadrangle. And I knew that just like he knew, he could torment me throughout assembly without me saying a word. So I knew he couldn't say who had just kicked him on his hand and tripped him, and nobody else would have seen a thing. And that's how the code of science works. But to be brought up where nobody's a tattletale, everyone covers for one another. I mean, we'd even cover for bullies at school in Malaysia. I don't know what would have happened if anyone was a tattletale. You'd probably have gotten into more trouble, but it was just unthinkable. You don't rat on, you don't tattletale on your co-workers, fellow soldiers, people at school, not even on the bullies. And we would come to school with our air rifles, and the kids would shoot birds. And I said, well, I'm going to be a game ranger, so you shoot the birds, and I'll shoot you. And I came to school with air rifle, and sure enough, we ended up shooting one another. And I still remember the teachers looking out their second story windows at the big glass windows with their tea in their hand. They could see us pulverizing one another, beating one another, shooting with air rifles, and not a word. Didn't come up in assembly, didn't come up in the classroom. Nobody approached us and said, you can't be doing this. We would be endlessly pulverizing one another. I mean, that was just normal boys' school, all boys' school. And you'd have people walking down the aisle in your class. And if somebody's head was in the desk, a person might take the desk and slam it down his head. I once picked up my desk to look inside and heard something hit. And somebody had thrown a compass, which was now stuck in my wooden desk lid. We got endlessly cut, bruised, stabbed, and we always covered for one another. It's shocking to go to missions where you find people are disloyal and can be backstabbers, and sometimes, you know, like, whistling away while making some comment that sort of kills the person next to you, and we shouldn't do that. Don't wait for the other person. Get started yourself. And, you know, at my first mission, Hospital Christian Fellowship, one of the things was, If you get the vision, get the job. When a person came along with, you know, somebody should do this or that, and Francis Grimm, Uncle Francis would normally say, you've got the job. When a person sees a problem, that's fine. Have a solution and get started. If we see something that's wrong, we can be the person to do it. It's so frustrating when you deal with a nothing person. They don't respond. They don't initiate. Apathetic. And don't become a whiner. There are problems. There are more problems. There's even more problems. And I like the sort of thought of duct tape. Duct tape can solve a lot of problems. In fact, with some bratty kids who just whine and whinge and scream and so on, I just think duct tape could solve this problem. Duct tape the mouth, duct tape or cable tie the feet and hands, and you could solve your problem. Choose your battles. You cannot do everything. I can't do everything, but I can do something. And so I've got to be selective. You've got to keep focused. You can't win every battle in the world, but you can choose which ones, the most important ones. Keep focused. Have a plan of action. Be decisive. There's some horrible statistics, like the average executive spends most of his time looking for a piece of paper or shuffling things on his desk. And the principle is you should not have a maybe file. It should be, this goes here, that goes there. Everything's got a place where it belongs. And be decisive. In fact, I was taught that what you should do is when you pick a piece of paper, make a decision what to do with it or where to put it. And so to be decisive, the maybe box should not be allowed. or maybe try. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. The fact they say, you know, I never meant to or I... Yes, we can have the best of intentions, but that doesn't mean it's going to be constructive. And here, you know, tiptoeing over good intentions and... The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Get to the point. There's so much butterfly language going all over the place and not getting to the point. And I think, to be fair, one can complain about women being guilty of this a lot. As simple as, do you want to go on a date? Well, maybe. Are you available for this? Instead of getting a yes or no, you get a maybe answer. I will see you. And we had one of these ladies here at the Mission Bond Stage where, I remember, Laura organized her a birthday supper, put a lot of work into it, you know, special baking and cooking. She came to her birthday meal, but she had been hungry on the way, so she stopped off and got McDonald's or something. She arrived there, so she wasn't hungry, ate nothing, left early because she had three other parties that night that others had organized for her. I mean, that was just classic. I won't use the name of this individual co-worker, but she was just such a nice person, so popular. And so to have three or four parties organized for her in one night and arrive with... What's a Portuguese takeaway place? I'm just forgetting the name of it. Something like that. So she arrives with a takeaway box in her arm, and she's munching these things to a supper that's been prepared for her, home-cooked meals, and then leaves early because she's got a few other parties. Now, but I mean, we've got to make a decision. Push the shout, stabber, jabber, mumble, mutter, and all that out the way, and let's get to the point. That's a big one, yeah. It is a big one. Get to the point. Communicate clearly. Let your yes be yes. Let your no be no. That's the way the world works. Especially for those in the off day. You have to communicate clearly. It's true. And the amount of meetings I've been to where the person comes to you and says, I'm sitting in the back row and I can't hear anything you're saying. I've got a hearing problem. Maybe you should sit in the front row. But the amount of people who've got hearing problems, and I had this particularly going around Britain and America, people who, you know, I see you at the back and I couldn't hear you, but how about moving to the front next time? And then someone else, we were talking away, and he kept watching, couldn't understand after a while, and he said, let me put on my hearing aid, and I, you've got a hearing aid you didn't put on? And literally this person's asking you questions, he can't understand what you're saying, and then afterwards he goes and fetches his hearing aid. Yeah. Well, in fact, the same person said... Some people said it's a blessing to have hearing problems because they can often switch it off when they don't like what's being said around or it's too noisy or something like that. But become a winner. Choose your behavior. You know, there are these people who sometimes have a choice to do nothing or to be indecisive, but changing attitudes and changing behavior and actions, voting with your feet, putting feet to your faith, that's key. Get out there and save the world. There's a world to save. When I saw these cartoons, I thought, yes, these all have a lesson. I remember sometimes leaving in the morning and Nora saying, you know, are you getting out there to just go and save the world? Well, of course, that's our job. Well, our priorities are in our manuals, evangelism, literature, distribution, love and action, leadership training, research and photography, establishing training, mobilizing reformation groups, action groups, leadership training. These are why we exist. And these are standing orders from God's Word. In the army, we had part-time orders, part two orders, and that was what changed from week to week, and then you had standing orders, which is, I'll deitate. So, whatever happens, conduct yourself in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ. Then when I come and see you, or only hear about you in my absence, I will know that you stand firm in one spirit, contending as one man for the faith of the gospel. Philippians 127, that's at the top of the list of our standing orders. One Corinthians 925, everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last. We do it to get a crown that will last forever. And so people put as much energy into the gospel as they put into sports. Just imagine. And it's very acceptable to be a sports fan, and fan is short for fanatic. CT Studs said, when I was a fanatic for cricket, everyone thought that was great. The moment I became a fanatic for Jesus, they were all, you know, he's a fool and a fanatic. So it's okay to be a sports fan, but you mustn't be a religious fanatic. Apparently soccer is more important than Jesus in most people's minds. Run in such a way to get the prize. If you are in a race, you run with determination, folks. You don't wander around and take every detail. You've got to go straight for the finish line. It's the race. Time matters. Seconds count. Eagerly desire the greater gifts. 1 Corinthians 12, verse 31. After looking at the different gifts of the Spirit, the Apostle Paul tells us, eagerly desire the greater gifts. There are different gifts, and some gifts are more helpful to the church than others. We should select the greater gifts, and we should desire them, and cultivate, improve our talents and skills. Try to excel in gifts that build up the church. 1 Corinthians 14, 12. Some gifts build up the church, but some people prefer a ministry of criticism, a ministry of discouragement, and a gift of criticism. But it's easy to break down, it's easy to criticize. In fact, if you believe a lot of people sitting in their armchairs, they're lazy boys with a beer in their hand and watching rugby or something, if they were in the field, they would do such a better job than the professionals. They'd be much better than the Springboks because, you know, what is that? The coach knows nothing, the team leader, the captain's an idiot, the forward and the side and the wingman, I mean, they're all imbeciles. But this chap, getting fat, dumb, and lazy with his can of beer or maybe coffee or beer. He's just sitting in the armchair and he's an armchair critic. There's lots of armchair critics in the church too. Anyone can criticize. It's easy to criticize. But to be in the field and to actually be with the dirt and the mud and the bruises and the sweat, slogging it out in the field. That is something else. To sit in the stands, to be an armchair critic, and in the arena, you can imagine maybe some people in the Colosseum in Rome, maybe thinking, these Christians could dive better or something. Well, you come into the arena, buddy. You want to wrestle a line, come down here and show us how to do it. Philippians 3, 13-14, but this one thing I do, forgetting what is behind, straining towards what is ahead, I press on towards the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. Anthony preached on this a few weeks ago, and it's just so important. Positive things in the past or negative things in the past, we've often got to just forget what's in the past and strain towards what is ahead, pressing on towards a goal. You know, whether you think of mountain climbing, racing, emptying a container, whatever it is, pressing on towards the goal to win the prize, which God has called me, heaven-written cross trees, to be more heavenly minded. we need to actually think in the light of eternity. What's going to matter in the light of eternity? What's going to matter in the light of the ultimate supreme commonality of the spectrum when we face our finals and have to answer to our Creator and Almighty God on the Day of Judgment? I was just reminding some of the people in Flemley down at Fisher today as well, you should be swatting for your finals. The finals are coming. We're going to have to answer to God one of these days. And there's so many people who are worrying about different things now, but we're all going to face God on Judgment Day, but some people are just closer to it than others. It's a bit disturbing when you think that old people can waste their time on so many unresolved issues, so much bitterness, resentment, grudges. That's just poisoning us away. And we're going to face God just now. And will any of these things really matter in the light of eternity? 2 Timothy 2.15, do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed, who correctly handles the word of truth. We handle the Bible. We handle it in correspondence, audio, video. physical, spiritual, books, textbooks, gospel literature, we are handling God's Word. And to handle it correctly, it's deeply disturbing to go to some place and find some literature damp, some literature badly stored, some literature has been on the floor, and there's a storm or whatever, and the next thing you know, dirt and damp has damaged this literature, where we never want that to happen, ever. We take looking after literature so seriously. At our Great Commission courses, everyone's given boxes of Arabic gospel booklets in their backpacks to keep dry and to, not just for weight training, but make sure it never gets damaged. At the end, they should be inspected and see that their literature is undamaged and not damp. Even if you've gone through rivers, even if it's been pouring with rain, we've got to come back with the literature undamaged. That's part of a Great Commission course training. Our Lord Jesus said, look at the fields, open your eyes, look at the fields, the fields are ripe for harvest. And if we just look around, there's so many opportunities for ministry. Ministry even in our suburb, around us, neighbors, people in the shops that we speak to, whether we're dealing with people at a petrol station, a post office, the harvest field is all around us. Even tax collectors at Charles need the gospel, I suppose. Anyone then who knows the good that he ought to do and doesn't do it, sins. This is called sins of omission. Most of us know about the sins of commission, which is negative things we do that we shouldn't do. But the Lord's emphasis in Matthew 25 is more on sins of omission. So when the Lord describes the Day of Judgment in Matthew 25, it's not so much, you know, you smoked, you drank, you did drugs, you're a homosexual pervert, whatever. I'm sure those things are bad, but the Lord describes the Day of Judgment as, you didn't visit those in prison. You didn't care for those who are sick. You didn't give food to the starving. You didn't give clothes to the naked. You didn't care. Depart from me, accursed in the lake of fire, prepared for the devil and his angels." So in the Lord's own description of Day of Judgment, His emphasis is on the good things that we should do that we fail to do. And many Christians spend most of the time thinking, I've got to avoid these bad things, but we should be more concerned about the good things that we are commanded to do. So to know the good we ought to do and not to do it, that is sin. Those are sins of omission. And that's why we sometimes speak about the great omission. Just take away the C. Because the great commission is our purpose on Earth. And for many people, it's a great omission. I went into a church missions conference where I was a speaker, and the folder, the banner they'd done, had folded over so that the C was missing. So literally, I was standing under the great omission, which made a great subject to preach on. Because it's not just a joke. It's true. Acts 20 verse 35, the apostle Paul said, in everything I did, I showed you by this kind of hard work, we must help the weak. Remembering the words of the Lord Jesus Christ, he said, it is more blessed to give than to receive. And that, of course, is why we exist. We exist for hard work and to give. And work is a blessing because the devil has evil work for idle hands. And some temptations come to the industrious, but all temptations come to the idle. And often having productive hard work protects us from all those temptations that we might have fallen for. We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves. Romans 15 verse 1. There are people in God's work who are weak in some areas, and we should be bearing with that, because our goal is not to please people, and certainly not to please ourselves, but to help strengthen those who are weak and help them to be stronger. We urge you, brothers, warn those who idle, encourage the timid, help the weak, be patient with everyone. It's a hard call, but that's a command of God. 1 Timothy 5, 14. Warn those who are idle. Encourage the timid. Help the weak. Be patient. That's hard. Lord, give me patience now. We're impatient even for patience. Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might. Ecclesiastes 9, 10. If a thing's worth doing, it's worth doing well, and it's worth doing wholeheartedly. If not, it's not worth doing at all. But half-hearted and Apathetic is just disgusting, and the Lord hates lukewarm Christians. Got to hold track of this. Lukewarm Christians make God sick. Those who sin are to be rebuked publicly, so others might take warning. 1 Timothy 5.20. Not a popular teaching, but there's a place for it. Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. Ephesians 5.11 is one of the verses inspiring African Christian action. So we've done demonstrations and protests outside brothels, outside so-called adult stores that we call adultery stores. We've had big stands against abortion and pornography, and when they've tried to legalize prostitution. Well, it's a command of God. Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. So watch yourselves. If your brother sins, rebuke him. If he repents, forgive him. These are all standing orders from God. This was the slogan of Baptist Theological Seminary where I studied. 2 Timothy 4 verse 2. Preach the word. Be prepared in season and out of season. Correct, rebuke, encourage with great patience and careful instruction. That was the slogan even on our tie we had. Preach the word on our blazer pockets. Preach the word. That is our priority, proclaiming God's word. Encourage and rebuke with all authority. Do not let anyone despise you. Titus was young, but Paul, the apostle, is encouraging Titus not to put up with people despising him. He is being sent to Crete, after all, and the people who live in Crete are Cretans. And the Bible says, all Cretans are liars, and this, that, and the other. Well, it's going to be a bit rough to live on an island and have that in the Bible condemning you as all Cretans are liars. Psalm 141 verse 5 says, let a righteous man strike me at his kindness. Let him rebuke me at his oil to my head. My head will not refuse it. In other words, be teachable and be open to rebuke and correction, which is hard because the average person says, I can take rebuke if I deserve it, which I never do. And if it's given the right way, which it never is, and if it's given by a person who's earned the right to give it, which no one has. So, theoretically, I can take rebuke, it's just as practically no. A fool spurns his father's discipline. Whoever heeds correction shows prudence. Proverbs 15 verse 5 shows to be teachable, to be humble enough to receive rebuke, is commendable. But it's actually foolish not to. Well, I was brought up in a society where being rebuked and corrected was very normal. My mom used the shambaka, a leather whip, and at school I used the bamboo cane. And we even had a teacher, some delightful teacher, who had a principle of we got cuts with a bamboo cut for every spelling error, punctuation error, grammatical error. It just calculated up at the end of the day, and you'd line up, and even a teacher's pet would get several cuts a day. And I tell you, it made me a good proofreader. Errors just jump out the page. And in fact, Churchill, you're asking me that even when you're filling out a form at doctor's search, you find yourself proofreading the document. It's just there. When you've been doing a lot of proofing, and I've trained my oldest daughter like that, I gave her one run for every error she found in anything I wrote. And boy, she could spot these errors. And it's something. But we should not take... offense, because often rebukes are meant well. I can remember some of the harshest rebukes I got, whether it's from Francis Grimm in Hospital Christian Fellowship, or at school, or from the soldier major in the Army. I look back now and I think even the harshest, most unloving rebukes were actually a blessing. They helped long-term in my life. And we've got to appreciate that there's constructive criticism and there's destructive criticism. Destructive criticism comes from an enemy who wants you to fail. Constructive criticism comes from someone who wants you to succeed. So, when my children came home crying because the coach shouted at them and so on, I'd say, no, but the coach wants you to succeed, so you've got to take it. I always took the side of the coach or the teacher because it didn't matter how much it got my children crying and so on. You've got to realize that the coach wants you to succeed. He wants you to win. He doesn't want you to fail. Now, if somebody who hates you says something like, you're worthless, useless, you'll never amount to anything, well, that you can ignore because that's destructive charisma. That's got no intention of you winning. This one's someone who doesn't want you to win. But someone who wants you to succeed, any charisma they give, we should not take offense and say, well, I don't like the way that was given to me. I don't like your attitude. I don't like the tone of voice. I don't like whatever. That's irrelevant. That's only hurting ourselves. It is better to hear a wise man's rebuke than to listen to a song of fools. Well, there's a lot of songs of fools out there, and people might write songs in your praise, but that's not as good as a wise man's rebuke. Do not make light of the Lord's discipline. Do not lose heart when he rebukes you. And you just think of the Lord's rebuke can sometimes be famines, floods, droughts, pestilence, illness, sickness, and it's not nice to have kidney failure, to suffer from cancer, to, there's so many, but that's God's rebuke. We should not make light of the Lord's discipline. We shouldn't lose heart when he rebukes us. First time I had a motorbike accident, and my bike's in pieces, and I'm bruised and cut up and lying all over the place there, and I think I was still rolling, and I was starting to repent, because I don't know about you, Vaughn, when I've had a motorbike accident, I've always felt like God was rebuking me about something, and I mean, it's very painful, and your beloved, precious vehicle is in pieces. It's not nice, but you've got to accept that if it's God's rebuke, it's for good reason. And I can say, Lord, that's not very loving, but nevertheless, even if it's a harsh rebuke, it can be constructive. Just like surgery is not pleasant, a knife cutting in to cut out the cancer or whatever, but it's better than apathy. is what lets me go over the edge of the cliff into destruction. But even a sharp, harsh rebuke can be good. He who heeds discipline shows the way to life. Whoever ignores correction leads others astray. We are all an example. We might be a good example, we might be a bad example, but people follow our example. Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge. He who hates correction is stupid. And we're not meant to call anyone stupid, but Proverbs 12 verse 1 is objectively saying if you hate correction, you are stupid. It is extremely foolish to refuse discipline and to not love knowledge. I've got to love knowledge, love Bibles, love every opportunity, every sermon, Bible study opportunity, love knowledge, love libraries, and correction I should love too, because discipline and correction is being put together. It is wise to love knowledge, it is stupid to hate correction. A man who remains stiff-necked after many rebukes will suddenly be destroyed without remedy. Proverbs 10.91. So you can think, you know, you're being warned. You know, the bridge is out. Danger. Molten lava down below. And you just keep going, keep going, keep going. Well, at a certain point, every decision we make puts us more down the broad way to destruction. Every temptation we resist puts us more narrow way to life. And as C.S. Lewis said, we are We're the product of thousands of decisions throughout our life. And every decision we make makes us stronger or makes us weaker, makes us more wicked or makes us more righteous. And so, in a sense, it's not just one decision that I made at that one crossroads, it's thousands of decisions. Nobody is destroyed without thousands of times ignoring God's warnings and God's instructions and other things like that. Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful. He who is faithful in small matters can be trusted in large matters. He who is unfaithful in small matters cannot be trusted in large matters. It is required those who have been given any trust must prove faithful. And if I can be faithful in small matters, God will trust me with large matters. A man's own folly ruins his life, yet his heart rages against the Lord. I saw this lived out in Hillbrow, doing a lot of street evangelism back in the early 80s when we started our work. We used to use Hillbrow as our training ground. Remember this one woman who was just raging against the Lord. God made my child, I forget what the problem was, but the child was born with some kind of serious deformity. And then it came out further that she had been mainlining LSD while pregnant. So she had ruined her life, ruined her child's life, but she blamed God. How could God let me be born with this, whatever deformity the child had? And yet she mainlined LSD, and she thinks it's God's fault that her child was born deformed. Now, how many people have done that? Like, you know, driving while drunk, and then you crash, and then you blame God for the crash. Well, driving drunk is stupid. Why should any man living complain who is punished for his sins? Lamentations 3-9. Jeremiah wrote Lamentations. Lamentations and Jeremiah used to be one book actually. Because Jeremiah is warning about what's going to happen to Jerusalem if they don't repent. Lamentations is lamenting what happened to Jerusalem because the people didn't repent. And Jeremiah says, why should any man living complain when punished for his sins? I could say, God, this isn't fair. Why did you allow this to happen? And then you look back and say, but actually it was my decisions or refusal to decide or to repent that led to that. So at the end of it, we should be able to say, I'm just an unprofitable servant. Everything is by God's grace. I remember at one point saying to Laura when she was in her last days, it's just not fair. And she responded, why not? She said, I'm a hell-deserving sinner like anyone else. Why should I be exempt from the cancer that so many other people are afflicted by? I mean, like, what, 12 million people die of cancer every year? Why should I be exempt? And I mean, that attitude, that, you know, I was worked up, but she would not complain. Never heard a complaint once. John 643, well, I shouldn't say I never heard her complain once about anything, but she never complained about her cancer. She certainly complained about other things, like things I didn't do or did do, but not about the cancer, I mean, the biggest thing. John 6, 43, Jesus answered, stop grumbling amongst yourselves. You know, God does not like grumblers. Do you notice what he did with grumblers in the desert when he had rescued all the children of Israel from Egypt from slavery? We've got the symbol of the medical profession is the serpent lifted up on the stake. It's even a symbol of the veterinary surgeries. They've got a V over a stake with a serpent wrapped around it. That reminds us that when the people were grumbling, God sent a plague of serpents amongst them, and many died. That's what God thinks about grumbling. He is not pleased with them grumbling. And so just ask any medical professional, paramedic, do you know what that symbol represents or where it comes from? I mean, it's all the way from the Bible, from when Moses was commanded to lift up the stake and put a serpent on it, and the people must look at that to be healed from the serpent's bite, the venom. And that reminds us that God hates grumbling, but also reminds us that he provides a means of salvation. And of course, the serpent, based on the stake, was a symbol of Jesus dying on the cross for our sins. He became like sin, cursed as anyone who is nailed to a tree. And so you get right there at an ambulance or paramedics bag, you've got a symbol you can use for communicating the gospel. 1 Corinthians 10.10, and do not grumble as some of them did and were killed by the destroying angel. And that's what God thought about grumbling. And again, it's easy to grumble. It's natural to grumble. It's human to grumble. But it is wicked as well. God hates grumbling. Do everything without complaining or arguing. Philippians 2 verse 14. I don't know if you've ever had the experience of coming to somebody's home and they serve you a meal and they keep telling you about all the cost of food. And all the trouble I went through to prepare for this meal, and the problems I went through to get this, and all the things that happened as they were going to the shop. And after a while, you just wish that you hadn't come, and you wish they hadn't served you anything, because you just feel bad. And it's all just turning sour in your stomach, and you get indigestion without even having a thing. Well, imagine if the pastor told you all the problems he went through this week in preparing for the sermon and the things he preferred to do. And when you're getting hospitality or anything with a lot of complaining, it makes you think, well, I wish he hadn't bothered. In fact, let me go and get some takeaway. Because it isn't pleasant. And so, doing things without complaining and without arguing is important because it's not just what is done, it's how it's done. Like a person bringing you a gift and telling you how inconvenient it was to get the gift and how expensive the gift was, or leaving the price tag on. That's just not right. That's not a gift. That's, after a while, a burden. Instead of being a blessing, we can be a burden, often without intending to, just by being a complaining person. Philippians 4 verse 11, the Apostle Paul says, I've learned to be content whatever the circumstances. Now this is someone who was stoned, whipped, shipwrecked, was often hungry, thirsty, without clothes, in great dangers. And the Apostle Paul says, I've learned to be content whatever the circumstances. to be abounded and to be abased. I mean, we have also in the mission sometimes had wonderful hospitality and been treated in luxury, and other times we've been in filthy, stinking cells with rats nibbling on us and rats climbing all over. And yes, so you've got to be able to be content in the best and in the worst. Godliness with contentment is great gain, we read in 1 Timothy 6.6. This is in the context of the love of money as a root of all kinds of evil. But godliness with contentment is great gain. If we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. That's a very low standard. If we have food and clothing, we'll be content with that. Well, there's a lot of people who don't have that much. The idea of contentment. We're living in a very discontent age where we're taught to be discontent with everything. And that's the whole aim of advertising as well. You should be unhappy with whatever you've got. You need the new, better edition. Be content with what you have because God has said, never will I leave you, never will I forsake you. Hebrews 1 verse 3 to 5. Be content with what you have. We're not living in an age of contentment. We're living in an age of entitlement and of grumbling and complaining. Go from strength to strength. Psalm 4 verse 11. That is an important thing. Progress, growth. Every day we should be getting stronger, fitter, healthier, more biblical, more godly, more prayerful. Flourish like a palm tree. Grow like the seed of Lebanon. When we moved into this mission house 22 years ago, almost immediately, we had people coming wanting to buy our palm trees. All over Cape Town, you saw palm trees being moved on trucks to Century City. They wanted a lot of palm trees there. And they wanted fully grown ones. They weren't willing to just wait for the seed to grow. And so people asked to buy our palm trees. And I said, on the here and I'm standing here, yeah. And later, people saying, but how much for the offer? I said, I don't know. I'm not interested. They're not for sale. These palm trees are biblical trees, and it's good to look at the palm trees and just to remind ourselves of what the scripture says. Flourish like a palm tree. Grow like a seed of leaven. What a privilege to have palm trees in our garden here in Cape Town. We're not in a palm tree area. This is not an indigenous plant. So I'm not going to uproot a palm tree here. One day, I remember a big crash, and I thought a bomb had gone off. The neighbor's palm tree had been pulled down. It fell to the ground with such impact that everything, even here, shook. And that was next door. That palm tree must have been so heavy. Why they did that, I have no idea. But anyway. The path of the righteous is like the first gleam of dawn, shining ever brighter till the full light of day. Be diligent in these matters. Give yourself wholly to them so that everyone may see your progress. Progress should be visible. I should be growing better, deeper, further. the final battle in Chronicles of Narnia. Further up and deeper in, and that's the whole thing. Go further up into Aslan's land and go deeper in. Whether we're going deeper into God's word, further in the spiritual, the Psalms report, sort of like climbing Table Mountain. It's a long, hard slog at the beginning, but after a while you do get into the swing of it. And the thing is, you can't get the top of a table mountain in one jump. It takes thousands of steps. In fact, My wife, we had one of these tracker things that tells you how many steps you've taken. She calculated one that was 15,000 steps to get to the top of Tape Mountain. Now, I've certainly not counted, but that's what I'm told from one of these tracker things. 15,000 steps. Now, in your Christian walk, it's gotta be tens of thousands of acts of repentance, obedience, discipleship, prayer, repentance, all these things to get where God is calling us. And you can't do them all in one go, but we can do them one by one. Therefore, let us leave the elementary teachings and go on to maturity, being called to the deeper things. Crave pure spiritual milk so that you may grow in your salvation. Growth and progress is continually emphasized in God's Word. No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the service in the kingdom of God. And this depicts Lot's family, they are being rescued from Sodom and Gomorrah, which is about to be destroyed by a time brimstone from heaven. And Lot's wife is told, don't look back, and she looks back and she's turned into a pillar of salt. And you can go to that area near the Dead Sea and see these pillars of salt. And they've got one that says Lot's Wife. Looks like it could be Lot's Wife looking over the shoulder. There's literally a pillar of salt that looks like it could be her. And that just reminds us it's bad to look back. You put your hand to the plow, you've got to plow straight. If you're looking back, the plowing's going to be skew. A curse on him who is lax in doing the Lord's work. Jeremiah 48 verse 10. I remember Uncle Lolo preaching from this very text at a minister's conference. A curse on him who is lax in doing the Lord's work. A curse on him who is deceitful in doing the Lord's work is another translation. It is a wonderful privilege to be involved in the Lord's work. It is a terrible curse if we do it badly, if we don't do it wholeheartedly and as unto the Lord. May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and for everyone else, just as ours does for you, until we all reach unity in the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. Ephesians 4, 13. Speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the head, that is, Christ.