Good morning, I'd like to welcome you back to a new week and another Anchored in the Word morning reflection. And last week we did six episodes, this week we're gonna do just four, and we're gonna really have to sandwich it in. But what I'd like to do is I'd like to talk about what passage we looked at for the opening of our missions emphasis, kind of a get you started for missions emphasis. And so the text that we dealt with was Psalm 96. Typically what we do in our church is we have missions month in October, And we will be doing that this month or this year like we normally do. However, we had two families that were able to present this month and I wanted to give just a little bit of a what's your appetite for our missions month. So the text we're going to deal with this week throughout the rest of the week is Psalm 96 verses 1 through 3. And we're going to talk about the importance of having a healthy motivation in the area of missions. And this is something that Having been a missionary and working with missionaries very closely, this is something that is really on my heart, and I hope that the things that we'll look at from Psalm 96 will be an encouragement to you this week. So let's go ahead and take our Bibles. Let's turn there, please, and we're going to look at this text together. Psalm 96, verses 1 through 13. Here's what it says. Oh, sing unto the Lord a new song. Sing unto the Lord all the earth. Sing unto the Lord, bless his name. Show forth his salvation from day to day. Declare His glory among the heathen and His wonders among all people. For the Lord is great and greatly to be praised. He is to be feared above all gods. For all the gods of the nations are idols, but the Lord made the heavens. Honor and majesty are before Him. Strength and beauty are in His sanctuary. Give unto the Lord glory and strength. Give unto the Lord the glory due unto His name. Bring an offering. Come into His courts and worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. Fear before him all the earth. Say among the heathen that the Lord reigneth. Now, I didn't read the entire psalm because it is a pretty lengthy psalm, but I want to give you some introductory thoughts as we think about Psalm 96, and we'll look at this the rest of the week. The first is this. Psalm 96 calls all of creation to conform to God's created purpose. God made us for a reason, all of us for a reason, and that primary reason was that we could bring glory to Him in relationship, living in a way that is consistent with His designed purpose and nature. And so God created us in His image to care for His creation and to grow in this knowledge of God forever. The problem that Psalm 96 addresses is that not all of creation glorifies God in a relationship because they do not know Him as Savior. We are a nation or we are a humanity, a people that need to be redeemed because we are a fallen people. And Psalm 96 is going to focus on that. It's really going to appeal to those who know the Lord. to proclaim his glory to the nations, the uttermost parts of the earth. And so what we're going to see this week is that God wants us to passionately declare the gospel wherever his name is not worshipped. And that would include our families when we are raising our children. Our children are not born Christians. They may be born into a home. where they're hearing the gospel at a young age, but they're not born Christians. They have to be born again. That includes proclaiming the gospel, not just in our families, but also in our community. And so Anne Arundel County has around 600,000 people in it. That's a lot of people. And there are many people in this county that do not know the gospel. Maybe it's never been clearly articulated to them. Maybe they've heard it, but it's never been something that's settled in their heart. then we think about our nation. One of the things that's amazing about the United States being such a melting pot of cultures is that we have people in this country from all over the world who come from cultures where they've never had access to the gospel, at least not in this generation, or they have a very limited access to the gospel, and so we have an opportunity to reach the nations within our nation. And then we think about our missions, and we have missionaries that we partner with that go all over the world and preach the gospel in places that are extremely needy. So that's going to be the driving point of the text in front of us, that God wants us to passionately declare his gospel wherever He's not being worshipped. And we can partner with people, and we can pray for them, and we can give so that they can go, and we can encourage them when they're here. We can encourage them while they're there. This is going to be where we land throughout the week. So the question that I want us to consider is, well, how do we approach this great need and this great command in the right way? It's all about motivation, a motivation that's going to shape going about this in the right way. So I'd like to develop the concept by reminding you of some things that we talked about in the middle of two weeks ago as we've been working through the Sermon on the Mount. I've been talking about this issue of doing things the right way, confronting people in a way that is ultimately going to be for their good and in a way that honors the Lord. And so there were three concepts that we talked about on Wednesday night that have bearing on what we're going to discuss this week from Psalm 96. How we can think clearly about this issue of missions. Two Wednesday nights ago we talked about how we are to judge in a way that is thinking clearly so that we can help other people. And the text that we talked about was Matthew 7. He says, Judge not that ye be not judged. First, cast out the beam out of thine own eye, and then thou shalt be able to see clearly to cast out the mote in thy brother's eye. So the driving point of Matthew 7 is not don't ever confront people who are in the wrong. The driving focus of Matthew chapter 7 is before you try to help another person or before you go and rebuke another person, you better make sure that you are not blinded by your own sin and in a position that's unable to actually help them. That's what Matthew 7 is all about. Well, this is going to help us actually as we come to this Psalm 96 passage because we talked about the concept of concern. It's a genuine desire to consider the needs and the struggles of other people and we do this because we actually value them. It's a quality that should distinguish every Christian. Every person who's a believer should have a genuine concern for other people. That's what Psalm 96 is going to say. Have a concern for the nations. That's what Matthew 7 is saying. Have a concern for your brother who is stumbling. Concern is a good thing. When we do not have a burden in our soul to see other people drawn close to the Lord and walk with him, there's a huge problem. The second concept that we talked about is the concept of discernment. And that is the idea of having the ability to determine what is right and wrong, and then based on that knowledge, what is the best way, according to God's standard, to handle a complicated situation. Well, when we're talking about the confronting of another person who is not walking in an orderly manner, obviously we need discernment. When it comes to navigating the complexities of a culture that's drifting away from the Lord and walking the way that a Christian should in a distinctly Christian manner, there's a need for discernment. And when it comes to this issue of taking the gospel to the nations, missionaries need discernment. and those who partner with missionaries need discernment. We need to know what is right, we need to know what is wrong, and we need to take what we understand and apply it in the very best way possible. But then there's a third concept that is really important for us to remember. That is a concept of a critical spirit. Now what do we mean by a critical spirit? What we mean by that is that a person has this condescending preoccupation with others not considering their own faults and struggles in an objective way. and they're looking down on other people. And this is a fleshly response to the struggles and the burdens and the sins of other people. And this is something that the scripture condemns. We are not to have this critical spirit. So when a person's going to the uttermost parts of the earth and taking the gospel to the nations, they're to be going with a compassion in their heart, with discernment that guides how they go about it, not with this critical condescending spirit, And when we are partnering with missionaries, we need to have a sensor we can recognize if a missionary, potential missionary, or a current missionary has this or not. We want people to be properly motivated. These are the people that we try to partner with. So how do we apply a text like this? And how did we apply it when we were talking about the passage in Matthew 7? Well, what we saw is that God wants us to develop discernment and a heart of compassion. He wants us to walk with a conscientious spirit. He wants us to regularly consider our thoughts, motives, actions, and patterns. And so one of the things that Missions Month does is it allows us to pause and ask the question, are we considering how we're living? Are we considering how we're motivated? Are we considering the patterns that we've allowed to be established in these areas? And how does this affect the involvement that we have in taking the gospel to the nations. He wants discernment to shape how we address situations. So when we have Missions Month, one of the things that we do is we're reminded of the struggles, the burdens of the world, and we're hopefully exposed to people that are with good sense, discernment, in a very godly way, they are approaching this issue of missions. He wants us to have discernment shaping the way that we approach these issues. And so as we think about it, We don't want to just be discerning. We want to also be compassionate. So what's this going to do is this is going to provide this balance. I know it is right. I know the best way to do it, or I'm growing in my knowledge of these things and I'm approaching things in the best way that I possibly can. And I'm not losing the compassion that I need in these areas. And so he wants compassion to shape the way that we approach these issues. Well, this week, Psalm 96, going to be an invaluable text to help us in shaping the discernment, the motivation, helping us think correctly about missions. And so I hope that this week you will join us as we look several days at Psalm 96. And I know it's just kind of whetting our appetite for what is coming up when we go into the month of October. If you're a part of our church family, I hope that you'll be excited about missions, about really being encouragement to those who come through, some on furlough, some who are getting ready to go to the field, some who we've partnered with for a long time. May the Lord help us to think clearly about this. Well, have a great rest of your day, and Lord willing, tomorrow I will get this video up a lot earlier. Take care, and Lord willing, we will meet again tomorrow. Bye now.