Welcome to church, that's what it says. It's great to see y'all tonight. It's great to be back here in Rocky Mountain, North Carolina. And man, so many memories in this place. I love y'all, we really do. My family does, my wife and our kids. Just so many vivid memories of driving through a hurricane to get here the first time. And then spending the Precious Missions Conference with y'all the following year when Pastor Pastor Nathan was here, and I appreciate the opportunity to come back to meet Pastor Willard and just precious, precious people. Y'all have a wonderful, wonderful pastor here. I hope you treasure that. I hope you love on him, love on his wife, and catch on to the vision he has for reaching this community. It's an awesome thing. It's a great thing to have a pastor that has a desire for the community to know the love of God. Amen. And I believe that's the case here. I see that love just for serving Jesus amongst everyone here, and that's an awesome, awesome thing. I want to share, just for a few minutes before we dive into the message for tonight, just what God's done and some of the fruit that's been added to your countdown in Columbia. As you've seen, my wife and kids aren't with me. We can go ahead and show the prayer card up there. I don't know how well you can see it. I've got four daughters. I know, four daughters. God said there's too much man in that house for any sons, so anyways. So we've got Amira, that's our oldest, she's here with me during this meeting and then Missions Conference down the road here later this week. And then we have Annabelle, she's six, and then Eris, she's three, and Aletheia, she's eight months. You know, they're all A names, but they're all weird A names. It just happened that way. And a lot of people wonder why we did that. And it really was an accident at first, because my wife had heard the name Amirah, which means princess in Arabic, before she met me. And so she decided that if she ever had a daughter, that's what her name would be. And so we eventually met a bit over 10 years ago. It was closer to 11 years ago now. And God knit our hearts together. And she told us as we were getting ready to get married, just so you know, I've already picked out a girl name. So if we ever have any daughters, don't even think about trying to name it. At least the first one. So anyways, so then there was three A's, Erin and Aubrey and Amira. And so then the second came along. And everyone said, well, you have to name it an A name. So anyways. All of us were A names and so we got down to Columbia and it gets even weirder because we had to have all of our blood tested, make sure we have the blood type on all of our document down there, that's very important for them and so as we tested all of our blood types, I already knew what mine was but Aubrey wasn't sure of hers and we didn't know about the kids and so it turns out we're all A positive. That's no joke. It just happened that way. I don't know. The Lord had a plan throughout all of that. Anyways, we've been down in Columbia since the end of 2013, and this church, y'all have supported us during all that time, and so faithful, and I really appreciate that. And as we went down, we went down with big plans and big dreams, expecting God to do big things. And we have a big God. Amen. We ought to dream big. We ought to make plans and work hard. And ultimately, it always is God that gives the result. It's not us. But we can be faithful to a process, and he's faithful to give fruit. Amen. So we're praying that God will do big things. And got down to the city of Bukaramanga. We picked the city because it has the coolest name. I'm just kidding. We picked the city because there's a lot of growth happening. It's one of the fastest growing cities in Latin America. It went from 500,000 in population to over a million in a span of about 10 years. Then it went from a million to 2.2 million in the next 10 years. This is incredible what has happened. And so we're seeing all that growth around us. A lot of the houses in that community that were already really close together, the big construction companies are coming in and buying two, three, four of these houses and putting up massive apartment buildings with 100 apartments in them. And so all this is happening all around our church. And so just within walking distance of where we eventually planted our church, there's about 100,000 people that live within a 10-minute walk of our church. It's incredible. And if you start to go farther, there's just people, people all over, multitudes of people. And what we found was in our city, there was very little being done to share the biblical gospel. Religion is on every side, but as far as the gospel, that's salvation by grace through faith. I'm not even just talking about the Baptist denomination. I'm talking about anybody that would preach salvation that's secure in Christ through faith in Christ. We just didn't find it. When we got there, we spent several months looking and looking and looking. We found a very small handful of churches and praised the Lord for them, and we prayed for them. And, you know, I was burdened, really burdened. And so as we started our church, we're praying, Lord, just help us to share this message, this beautiful message of the gospel with these people that desperately long to know you. So our first service, you can show the next picture up there, we had a good little group there, we had a little storefront on a main road, but in a residential area, and for our first service in 2014, we had a good group, and we decided, man, this is awesome, we're going to follow up with these people, and I thought this little storefront, about the size of about the size of the stage from here to the wall. Yeah, that's about right. That's how big our storefront was. But in Columbia, we could fit about 70 people in there. We tried it out. And I thought, this is great. This will last us probably our whole first term because we had enough room. And obviously, you can kind of see in the picture, all the chairs are kind of close together. And the front row, those poor people in the front row, I get showered every morning, every Sunday when I preach. But anyways, I was thinking, well this is great, Lord, we've got room to grow here. But what I didn't expect was that when people heard this message of the gospel, they actually believed it. I say I didn't expect it, I was, but not to the scale that we started to see, because as people believed this gospel message, they started bringing their friends and their families and their co-workers and neighbors, and man, you just talk about a great awakening taking place, and so within less than a year, there was no room to put anybody in this little building. The Lord opened up the door for us to rent the place, and it actually backs up to the same property. And that's hard to find there too, but a little bit of a bigger area, about twice as big, enough room for about 150 people, and I thought, well this place is going to last us for quite a while. This one's really big, it's going to last us for at least 10 years, but as you can see in the next picture, It filled up too, and that's really part of the picture there. It's an incredible, incredible thing what God has done, and just people after people after people, family after family, when they hear the gospel message, they're responding in faith. And so here's what happened, and I can go through and tell you the stories of these people. For some reason it cut off about halfway there. Ninety-five percent of these people are first-generation believers. That means they didn't come from a lot of other churches where they already believed the gospel. They came and they believed They got baptized and then discipled and just getting excited and bringing their family, bringing their friends. And they didn't come from knowing what you and I know so freely. And with that comes, you know, the Bible talks about being born into God's family and born again. As we're born, you know, I've had four daughters now and I was there for the birth of all four of them. And I can tell you that they don't know how to do much when they're born. How much can they do? They can cry, and they can digest food. They don't have to think too much about that. They know how to eat, and they know what to do with that afterwards, but they need help. They make a mess of themselves, and they don't know how to feed themselves. And so, I'll tell you what, ministry down there is exciting, but it's also very tiring, because we're dealing with all these new babies. But you know, the point of Scripture, it tells us this, that the point is not for them to stay babies, but actually to bring them to maturity. And so as they mature, what happens with, even in human life, as we mature, you have children that are grown. You don't want them living in your basement for 45 years. If there's anybody doing that, I'm really sorry. I'm not here to offend anybody. But your goal is for them to know how to function as an adult and how to have their own family and how to have a job and how to even bless other people and help other people. And so as we're ministering there, that's part of what we're praying for and part of what we've seen. And it's an incredible thing because that process of maturity has gone a lot faster than I expected as well. Not only the salvations, not only the growth of the church, but also the discipleship and even further training I'll speak about in a little bit. But I realized something. A church that's doing its absolute best to reach its community can really only reach about 50,000 people. That's about 13,000 homes. on an average scale in our city, and I don't know what it would be here, but 13,000 homes, that's doing everything it can to get the gospel into those people's hands and help them to hear at least the message. And you know, 50,000 people in light of 2 million, over 2 million. For our city alone, we'd need at least 40 churches. 44, as it stands right now, and it's still growing. It's still growing. And so I knew at the very beginning that we'd need to start multiple churches, and I didn't expect to be able to do that in the first term, but we were able to start another church in the very outskirts of our city about a year, a little bit over a year ago, in March of last year. We'd already been going down to the outskirts of the city to minister with the children on Saturdays. It was a Bible club type ministry, but we were able to expand that and to reach into the whole family. And once again, God has done incredible, incredible things. You can show the next picture there, brother. This is our second church. And it's just months after we started. It is full. It is full and entire families hungry for the gospel message. It's an awesome thing. Just a side note, I was just down there last week. God allowed me to go on a trip and a lot of crazy stuff happened during the trip. It was kind of like a roller coaster trip. A lot of exciting things and some very sad things that happened also, but I left encouraged and blessed. But one of the things that happened was as we were here, This house that we rented is right in a park. As you can kind of see in this picture, there was tarps up there. They were doing all sorts of remodeling. Right now, the park is finished, and it is the hub of that whole community. It's a beautiful, beautiful park. Now, we're in a house that's a very, very small house. It's about 500 square meters, or square feet. 500 square feet is like about half of this platform. And so all of our kids are meeting outside in the park, on the sidewalks. We have all the kids clubs and Bible groups. And then on the inside, the adults meet. And even there, it's very tight. And so we were praying. We've been praying since the very beginning that God would allow us to purchase a piece of land. There's a lot cheaper there than in our first church's location. And I was just down there. And we had three people in that whole block that told us they wanted to sell us their property. One in particular is already finished. It already has a huge space on the first floor and two other floors of what would be classrooms and bathrooms and whatnot. It's an awesome opportunity. So right now we've already been saving to be able to buy a piece of property there, but I ask that you make that a matter of prayer. I'm not asking that you give an offering, but just pray that if it's God's will that it'll all go through. Amen? and ask that God would provide the funds as they're needed. It's an exciting thing. And like I said, our plan was to start multiple churches. And we put on our prayer cards, church planting missionaries to Columbia. So that was kind of our goal from the beginning. But I realized something also from the beginning. In order to even just reach our city, that's a lot of churches, just to get the gospel to people's hands and to people's ears. I'm still pretty young. I'm in my 30s. Tomorrow, I'll still be in my 30s. I have a birthday tomorrow, and I still feel young. I still feel like I can serve God for a lot of years. Say I can serve God maybe for another, what, maybe 30 years, 40 years would be awesome. If I could serve God for another 40 years at full speed, full strength, that'd be great. I look forward to that. If God allows me to, we plan to live and die in Columbia. That's our plan until God moves us somewhere else. But to be honest with you, if I could start a church every two years, which is a stretch, that's still only less than half of what we would need just for our city. And that burdens me. You know, the biblical pattern is that they didn't just add churches. We see this process of multiplication. Jesus, instead of starting one church with the disciples and all their friends and all these other, the believers, and then going somewhere else and starting another church and going somewhere else and starting another church, what did Jesus do? He poured his life into these men that would later go out and change the world. And we're here today because of that multiplication process. And the apostles did the same thing. The apostle Paul, as you look through what he did, he always spent time pouring his life into other people who would be able to do the work of the ministry later. So I was praying, Lord, for this first term, let us You know, show us, give us clear direction where to start a church, how to start the church, help us to share the gospel, help people to not only hear but also to believe. I pray also that you would help us, help me to have one or two guys that I could just pour my life into. or calls them into the ministry. I long for that. I desire that. And my prayer was for one or two. And what God did was way more than we expected. And you can show the next picture, brother. This is our Bible Institute. We have about 30 leaders training, wanting to serve God in ministry. Some of these will stay in local churches as lay leaders, as deacons or Sunday school teachers. We have a few ladies there that aspire to be missionary and pastor's wife. If the guys ever get the courage to ask, That's a true story. Anyways, I was just down for the wedding of two of these young people last week, and just wonderful, wonderful young people God is raising up. Out of these about 12, 12 to 15 of the men really feel like God has called them into full-time ministry as pastors or missionaries and preachers. They're ready to go wherever. We're looking at starting several more churches as soon as we get back. We already have places mapped out in our city, and we've got two or three places. We're ready to start a church. There's already groups of people asking us to start churches there. People that are traveling about an hour to an hour and a half to come to our main campus, our main church. I don't think I've ever used the word campus. Anyways, our main church there, and they're asking us for a church in their area, and there's so many opportunities. Beyond that, we're looking to send some men to China, to Venezuela, North Africa, there's possibilities. All throughout our country of Colombia, there's tons of towns and villages. There's literally thousands of towns that have zero gospel preaching churches. And I don't know if that affects y'all at all, but it sure does me. Can you imagine Rocky Mount? How many good churches are here? Praise the Lord for them. Can you imagine having to go about an hour and a half in a car to get to the closest Bible church? Or in the case of some of these towns, they've got to travel six, seven hours to get to the closest Bible preaching church of any denomination. I'd ask that you pray that God would raise up more laborers, not just for our country of Columbia, but all around the world. There's places like that. Amen? Let's go ahead and dig into Scripture right now. I want you to go to the book of Psalms. I'm going to share one of my favorite Psalms with you, really related to Psalm 29 that we just heard a few minutes ago. We're going to go to Psalm 67. Psalm 67. This is a prayer, it's also a song, but I really believe this prayer could very well become the theme of why we're here as a church. I would encourage you to adopt this at some point as a family or as a church or even you individually as you pray and as you have your time before God. You would use the words or use this idea, this concept of what we're about to read here in Psalm 67. Let's look at verse number one. God be merciful unto us and bless us. I want to pause just for a second here before we go on. Have you thought about how audacious it is to ask for God's mercy? I mean, how bold is that? Asking for God's mercy is basically saying, God, don't give me the punishment that I deserve. withhold for me the judgment and the condemnation that I should deserve. As the sermon this morning and even some of the worship song talks about, that we're unworthy, that He would bless us and save us, and that we come before Him in faith. And part of that's just saying, Lord, be merciful unto us. We are unperfect. We've messed up. But coming before God and saying, God, be merciful unto us, that is a very bold thing. I'll just put it this way. Down in Columbia, we have birds that are about this big. They have several wings and a needle. Oh, mosquitoes, I mean. They're about the size of small birds. We have a few of those down there. And as they're flying, I know you'll have those here in North Carolina, too. But as they're flying around, if they come into our house, if I see a mosquito flying around me, He's not going to last long. He really isn't. He starts flying around my kids. That's that power under control there. You want to kill the mosquito, but you don't want to kill the kid. If he lands on my child's head or her arm or her shoulder or her leg, that little bug is a pest, and he's not only bothering us, but he's also sucking life, literally, sucking blood out of my daughter, and he could be carrying diseases, he could be this or that, and so, as I think about that little mosquito, my thoughts are really about judgment. He doesn't deserve to be, or she, I don't know, are mosquitoes, I don't know which ones are the ones that always, anyways, y'all are with me, alright? I paused there just so y'all wake up. The ones in the back, they're asleep. You know who you are. All right. I'm just kidding. All right, so when I see one of these mosquitoes, my thought is, he needs to die. And if this little mosquito looks up and says, have mercy on me, that's pretty audacious. Obviously, it's not going to do that. But then the psalm goes on and says, and bless us. It'd be like saying, don't smash me, Lord, even though I deserve it. But actually, why don't you give me a whole cup of your blood as blessing? Or why don't you adopt me into your family? Because the very next thing is, and cause his face to shine upon us. We want to know you, God. We want to be in this close relationship with you. What a bold type of prayer. You know, the very interesting thing is, this little idea of God, be merciful unto us, and bless us, and cause his face to shine upon us, we like that idea. They're really too extreme to this because some people, they believe that God doesn't want to bless. They think of God, we need to fix our idea of who God is. We think of God as this mean old guy with a stick waiting to wallop us across the head if we mess up. That's not God. He really does desire to bless His children. He's a loving Father. When Jesus was teaching His disciples on how to pray, that's the very first thing He had to correct. He said, you guys, you need to fix who God is in your mind, because He is Father. When you pray, you come to Him as your Father, and you're His child, and He wants to hear you. He's not bothered by your prayer. He wants to bless you. He wants to give you good things, every good gift and every perfect gift. Who's it come from? The Father. Amen? That's one extreme that we think God is just this angry guy that we're afraid even to ask Him to bless us. And this other extreme is, Lord, bless me, bless me, bless me, bless me, bless me. Lord, I want a car, I want a job, I want a wife, or I want kids, or I want this or that. I want stuff. Lord, bless me. Keep it coming, Lord. I want to be under the spout where the glory flows out. Amen. And I've heard that before. That's all right. But there's kind of an extreme over here where we ask for God's blessing so much, but we forget why God should bless us. And over here, we're afraid to ask for God's blessing at all. But the key to this psalm is really that very next word, verse number two. And if you're in the habit of marking in your Bibles or taking notes, this is the word that the whole psalm hinges on. Help me out. What does it say? That. In other words, so that. The very first verse, God be merciful unto us and bless us, cause his face to shine upon us, that thy way may be known upon earth, thy saving health among all nations. I'll continue reading. Let the people praise thee, O God. Let all the people praise thee. Well, let the nations be glad and sing for joy, for thou shalt judge the people righteously and govern the nations upon earth. Salah. Let the people praise thee, O God. Let all the people praise thee. Then shall the earth yield her increase, and God, even our own God, shall bless us. God shall bless us, and all the ends of the earth shall fear him. There's three things that we see here. First of all is purposeful grace. Purposeful grace. God desires to bless us. He desires to pour out His grace on His people. He's a good Father who gives good gifts to His children. And we have to fix that idea of God. But that being said, we're often the end of our prayers. I touched on this a little bit this morning in Sunday school, but so often, more often than not, our prayer life revolves around us. Isn't that true? I know, I'm so guilty of that. You stub your toe and you spend more time praying for that stubbed toe than you do for millions of people without the Gospel. I'm guilty of that. But the object of this prayer is sure, God bless us, that there's this purpose behind the blessing, the purposeful grace. God wants to bless others through us. Amen? God desires to bless others through us. It starts at the very beginning in creation, and even after the fall when God made His covenant with Adam and Eve, and He talked about people being blessed, even though they messed up, that all the people of the earth would be blessed. He repeated that over and over again with Noah and then with Abraham. Three times God told him parts of this covenant, this special promise with Abraham. And every time he told him, Abraham, I'm going to do a great thing through you. I'm going to take you to a new place in this new land that's going to be yours. And your seed from you will sprout nations that will be more than the stars of the sky and the sand of the sea. But here's what he said also. Through you, all nations of the earth will be blessed. Through the blessing I'm about to do through you, Abraham, not because you deserve it, but simply because you're going to believe me, and that faith will be counted for righteousness, as Romans 4 tells us, and Galatians also tells us. That's a whole other message in itself. But here's what he says, I'm going to bless you way more than you deserve, Abraham, but everyone's going to be blessed through the blessing I'm going to bless you with. And that's all through the Bible. You see that's repeated. God loves us. so we can love others. God forgives us so we can forgive others. God blesses us so we can bless others. God gives us so we can give to others. And this purposeful grace is an idea that's really a major theme of Scripture and one that's often overlooked in our own minds. This purposeful grace. Every gift is an opportunity to reach farther. We become so selfish with these blessings. We think of ourselves Really, it's the end of God's blessing instead of a river through which God's blessing flows. If you have a pond that has an inlet but no outlet, it just becomes kind of nasty. But if it's a river, man, it's just fresh, fresh water. You know why we get so stagnant sometimes as Christians? Because we receive God's blessing, we don't do anything with it. We're so full, but we never share. We've been so blessed. I'd love to dig a lot more into this. If you take a note, 1 Peter 4, 7-11, it's an awesome text. It talks about us being stewards of the manifold grace of God. As we've received, let us so minister. And there's different gifts and different blessings and different abilities that everyone has, but let us do it as stewards of the manifold grace of God. That idea of steward, it's like a manager. Somebody that's received something, or an amount of money, or whatever it is, and we are to put that where the Master wants it put. Amen? We're stewards. We're not the owners. He's the owner. And as we're stewards of the manifold grace of God, that means other people will be blessed with that grace as we're faithful to it. Amen. And so this purposeful grace, number two, I want you to see in verse number two again, it says that thy way may be known upon earth. Thy saving health among all nations. Verse 4, O let the nations be glad and sing for joy. For thou shalt judge the people righteously and govern the nations upon the earth. Let the nations be glad. First of all, we considered purposeful grace, number two, progressive gladness. Progressive gladness here talks about over and over again, this idea in different aspects of the gladness of the nations, let the nations be glad. Have you ever thought about that? Around the world. There's not a lot of gladness. Hebrews talks about there's pleasure in sin for a season. In the context of Moses and even all believers, we can choose to live or not live in that pleasure of sin for a season. Moses chose not to. That's a great idea, a great concept. So the world has this pleasure in sin for a season, but it's not lasting gladness. It's not true joy. We've seen that. As we go to Columbia, there's drugs everywhere. They're so open about it too sometimes. You walk down the street and there's a lot of homeless people that I talk to. They used to be engineers. They used to be university students doing really good, but then they started down this road of drugs and they've lost their families. They've lost their jobs. They've lost their houses. Why? Because it's all consumed by something that promises gladness, but doesn't deliver. These young people, I mentioned in Sunday school how in one of these shanty towns that we go into, there's a lot of children that are also having children. Young girls tell us by age 12, they fully expect to have a husband. They use that term very loosely. They fully expect to be starting to form their own families. By age 13 and 14, these girls are around the whole town, they're pregnant. They're expecting children and there's children themselves. The young boys, they join gangs generally by the time they're 8, 9, 10 years old. They're already doing certain types of drugs. They start with this industrial glue, and it fries their brain cells. They start carrying large knives, and it's hard to find guns, but eventually they might find a gun. And there's all this violence, and it's over silly stuff. To them, it's like a video game. It's just real life. And people actually do die, and they don't have an extra life to come back again. It's a sad reality. Why do they do that? Because they're looking for joy. They're looking for a purpose. They're looking for somewhere to belong. They're looking for fulfillment in life. And we go down to another part of the city where there's extremely expensive apartments and extremely expensive cars. And they just built one of these buildings about 15 minutes from our church. And this building is one of the tallest in the whole area of Columbia. It's close to 50 stories high. And the apartment started at about $1 million. And they go up from there. Dollars, not pesos. And people buy them. It's full. And we meet these people. We have people in our church that have come from that background as well. Doctors and lawyers and engineers and entrepreneurs. And let me tell you, before they knew Christ, there is no joy. There is no gladness. It's the same sin, just masked a different way. And from all the different classes, and all the different races, and all the different religious backgrounds, we see the same search for joy. America was spoken of in the very early days of this pursuit of happiness as a right of the American people. You know, Americans are looking for that too. That's only found in Christ. And here it says, let the nations be glad and sing for joy. How are they going to be glad? This goes back to the purposeful grace, but this progressive gladness, how are they going to be glad? It says in verse 2, that thy way. Help me out there, that thy way. way may be known upon earth. Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, the life. No man cometh unto the Father but by Me. Once they know Jesus, once they know His way, they'll know His saving health. It brings healing. It brings health. It brings sanity, really. And once they know that, then the nations can be glad and sing for joy. And it says, Thou shalt judge the people righteously. Now, we already talked about God knowing everything about us, and yet, as we plead mercy from God, how is this going to bring joy to people, knowing that God will judge righteously? Because part of knowing His way and His saving health is knowing that He's already poured out His wrath on Christ for us. He's already judged His Son, Jesus Christ, in our place. And that through believing simply in Him and what He's done, we have free salvation. And He invites us into this relationship with Him, not only for this time on earth, but through all of eternity. What an awesome gladness we have access to and that the world needs to hear. Now, why do I use this term progressive gladness? Most people around the world don't know what's missing. They're searching. But according to 2 Corinthians 4, the enemy has blinded them. And they don't know. 2 Corinthians 4, I believe it's verse 4, it says, for if our gospel be hid, it is hid unto them at a loss. Maybe verse 3. If we hide our gospel, that light of the gospel will never get to them. Satan's already doing everything he can for them not to see it. If we don't do everything we can to get it to them, we're basically helping the enemy out. I know that's not our desire, that's not our plan, but this progressive gladness starts with us realizing our responsibility to share. In Sunday School I also touched on Romans 10, how it says, shall be saved. How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? How shall they believe if they have not heard? How shall they hear except there be a preacher? How shall they preach except there be sin? Now we can send and we can preach, but they have to hear, they have to believe, and they have to call on Him. Now for people to call on the name of the Lord, they'll be saved. That's so simple. But there's people that can't do that because they've never believed, and they don't believe because they've never heard. Now, the first two steps of sending and preaching, we can do something about that, amen? So this prayer, God be merciful unto us and bless us, cause us, face us, shine upon us, that thy way may be known. It's basically saying, Lord, we want to do our part so that the nations can know you. It's a wonderful, wonderful thing. When we've received the water of life freely from Christ, He gives us an abundant supply to share with the world. Hold your finger there in Psalm 67 and go with me to John chapter number 7. I love this text. Jesus is there at the Feast of the Tabernacles, which was something that the Jews celebrated annually. It was a very large feast, one of the largest ones that they did, out of three. And they're celebrating how God provided for them in the desert, and through the manna, and through the water, and there's all this symbolism going on. And it says in verse number 37, in that last day, in the last day, that great day of the feast. Now on this great day, before I continue to read, there's these massive barrels of water. There's four of them all throughout that court area of the temple. And they're very, very large. Very large. And they would pour these out to show how God poured out water for them in the desert. And he provided for them. And so in the last day, Jesus is standing right there. They're probably doing this in the background. And notice what he says. Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me. And what? Drink. Then he says, he that believeth on me, as the scripture has said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. This is a very interesting concept because Jesus basically said, if you're thirsty, come to me. But if you come to me, you're going to be converted into a river. Now, it's not just going to benefit you, but all around you, people are going to notice that there's something different. All around you, people are going to be refreshed by what's coming out from inside of you. And later it says that he's speaking about the Holy Spirit, which would be given at a later time. But here's this idea. Jesus invites us to come to Him freely. He wants to bless us. But then he wants to bless others through us. This progressive gladness of the nations really starts with us. We say, Lord, use us to get this message to the world. There's another theme, and I believe it's the overarching theme of Psalm 67. We saw purposeful grace and progressive gladness. Number three, a praiseworthy God. Praiseworthy God. Verse number three, it says this, let the people praise Thee, O God. Let all the people praise Thee. Verse five, let the people praise Thee, O God. Let all the people praise Thee. Verse seven, God shall bless us and all the ends of the earth shall fear Him. Now, this is a very interesting concept here because here it says basically, alright, so God we want you to bless us so that others can experience gladness so that they can praise you. You see that progression there? It's a very natural thing we see here on all sides. But here's the idea. God deserves praise that he's not receiving right now. That's what Psalm 29 talked about. I'll just read it once again. That was an awesome song. Give unto the Lord, O ye mighty, give unto the Lord glory and strength. Listen closely. Give unto the Lord the glory due unto his name. Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. He deserves glory. Amen. And in the very end, all nations of the earth will recognize that He is God. Jesus made Himself a servant, and He humbled Himself, and He was obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. But at the very end, everyone's going to realize This is Jesus. Every tongue will confess, every knee shall bow. As I read the book of Revelation chapter 4 and 5, I just get this idea of how the great throne room of God. Isaiah 6 paints the same picture from a slightly different perspective there. Ezekiel paints the same picture also, and a lot of things are similar there, but it's all basically about Him. And I love reading Revelation 4 and 5, because we see us there, too. People from every tribe and tongue and language, everybody around the world. There's a group of people that were praising Him day and night, saying, Lord, Thou art worthy to receive glory and power and honor and strength, for Thou has redeemed us with Thine own blood. I want people to be able to sing that song alongside of me someday. The motive of this prayer, God bless us, so that others can know you, so that they can praise you, so they can worship you. There's a story, a guy named Johann Leonard Dober and his friend David Nietzschman, who lived in Germany in the 1700s. Very interesting story. They went to church. It was called the Moravian Church. Very similar to the Baptist in doctrine and faith and practice even. And so as they heard the message over and over and week after week after week, that was when Germany was very strong in its faith. Now if you go to Germany, it's a whole different story. But in those days, nearly 300 years ago, you talk about a hub of strong churches. It was an amazing thing. One day somebody comes by and they talk about this island that an atheist had bought, he had purchased in the Caribbean. And on this island a lot of other people had done the same thing to grow different things. And what they did was they went and bought slaves from Africa and took them to the islands and made them work on the island to grow different types of crops. And so this one man, he said, you know, I've seen what they've done in other islands and I've seen how missionaries and pastors have come and they've tried to talk to the slaves. But the same thing happens every time. The slaves ask for a day off. They ask for Sunday off or one of the days so they can worship and meet together. But my slaves will not have a day off. We're going to work them until they die and we'll go find some more. I don't want production to go down. And so there will be no missionaries and no pastors to ever step foot on my island. And this was made known in Europe, and so the news got to these young men, Johan and David. And they started to think about this. Thousands of slaves likely never heard the gospel and will die. They will work until they die. Nobody's allowed to go tell them. They started to pray and talk with family and friends, and they made a very, very radical decision. In 1732, you can read the history books, 1732 they sold themselves into slavery and got on a boat that was going toward this island. They abnegated all their rights. They said goodbye to their families, likely for the last time. People were crying there in the harbor as the boat sailed off, and it wasn't a fancy cruise liner. It was a slave ship. These men knew that they would be mistreated, they would be abused, and they would probably die within a few short years. But they went with one purpose in mind. As we work, we want to be a light to these people who have no other hope. A lot of people didn't understand what they were doing or why they did this. And as the boat was leaving the harbor, before they were out of earshot, one of them shouted forth with a very loud voice, may the lamb who is slain receive the reward of his suffering. And the lamb who was slain received the reward of his sufferings. Jesus paid it all, all to him I owe. He paid it all, not just for me, but for the nations of the world. And he wants to redeem the nations of the world. And what are we doing so that the nations of the world could be glad and praise the name of him who has loved them? What a sacrifice. You read their story and providentially God allowed them to come back and they were able to even continue to minister there in Germany and that island was very well evangelized but they also sent forth a lot of missionaries. It started what was the Moravian missionary movement in the 1700s. A lot of churches and a lot of areas of the world to reach with the gospel. I'm sorry I'm getting all tangled with my words here, but this is the idea. God deserves praise. Amen? He really does. Now here's the conclusion. We've really considered three great motivations for missions. First of all, our obedience and our stewardship. Our obedience and our stewardship, this is really the result of looking at us, looking at myself and seeing what I have, how God has been so good to me. And as I see what God has given me, I want to share that with the world, this purposeful grace. I look at myself and I say, God has been so good to me. And the world needs this, amen? Then the second motivation was this compassion in our outreach. The progressive gladness of the world really depends on us. We ought to have compassion. That's the result of looking at others and seeing what they don't have. And this other motivation is passion in our worship. And God, He deserves all praise and all glory and all the worship of the nation, so I look at God and see what He deserves, and it motivates me to do something about missions. All these motivations are great, but I think they all work together, too. I want to illustrate this real quick, and then we'll be done. We're going to have Luke and Josh and Gavin. All right, y'all come up here. I want y'all to help me out. A case of water. All right, we're doing good. Actually, Luke, you can go stand like toward the back, all right? And you two, you guys come just right down here, all right? All right, so y'all just use your imaginations here. I want you to picture with me, if you will, Gavin and Josh here have accepted Christ as their Savior. They've come to Christ, and what Jesus said was, if you're thirsty, just come on, there's plenty to drink. Amen? Are you guys thirsty at all? Go ahead, just enjoy it. Just enjoy it. I'm serious, just go for it. It's water. I lived in Dawsonville for a while. That's where they make a lot of moonshine. It's not from Dawsonville. This is living water from Walmart. Amen? All right, and so here's what he also said. He said, I'm going to give you plenty for you, but also to share with somebody else. Because as you look at what you have, which one did you open here? It's kind of hard to tell with these. All right, you can drink as much as you want. If you need more, just ask me. But I'm also always going to have extra in your hand to share with somebody. And so Gavin and Josh have a decision to make. They can look at what they have, and they say, man, God has been so good to me. He's refreshed me with this salvation. And then, you know, I want you to consider this guy way over there, this ugly dude in the back. His name is Luke. Look how sad he is. And Luke is thirsty. Can you have like a thirsty face or something? What's a thirsty? I don't even know what a thirsty face is. All right, anyway, so Luke is really thirsty. Well, listen, I'm going to give you enough to take to Luke and to satisfy his thirst. Now, Gavin and Josh have a decision to make. They can say, well, that's kind of uncomfortable. I'm really glad that I have something to drink, but, you know, he's really far away. That means that I'd have to share some of what I have. What if I get thirsty later? I've got some here for me, but I've got some here for me later too, and then what? And so they've got a decision to make. So one of them is going to decide to take water to Luke. and to give him. And then as you go, you have to tell him, this is from God. This isn't for me. This is from God. All right. So one of you, just whoever it's going to be. All right. So Gavin decides he's going to go. And Josh, he's going to drink another, take another swig. Go for it. Yeah. And so as he drinks, that's an interesting thing. All right. So Gavin comes back now and even Luke, too. Come on, Luke. All right, so they come back and now Gavin, he has an empty hand. And as they come, they pray and they say, God bless us and be merciful to us and cause your face to shine upon us that other people might know. And so as they pray, you know, you know what God's going to do? He's going to be like, all right, well, you've been really faithful with that and you're just starting. So so go for it and go see if there's anybody else that wants water to drink. And if Josh asked. He didn't have any room for that. His hands are full. Alright, so if you guys want to go ahead and share that, go for it. Just go see if anybody wants to drink and tell them that's a gift from the Lord Jesus Christ. And as they receive it, help them to know that that's not from you, that's from God. And as they receive it, they're going to praise God. Let me hear praise God from everyone that received it. Praise God. And as they come, alright, as they come, You know, God says, hey, you've got a hand there. You've got plenty of water to drink there. If you run out, you can just come back, and I'll give you as much as you want. And now you can actually share that with somebody else that's thirsty. Go for it. And you know, somebody. All right, well, that's great. There you go, brother. All right, there you go. And so we've always got these decisions to make. Now, what happens is sometimes we share that once, and then we're like, well, all right, we did our part. What's this constant, constant thing? And as people are receiving this water, they say, thanks, praise God. Let's hear it. If you've received a bottle of water, say praise God. All right. Well, this is this goes on and on and on. You know, as we are faithful. I notice everyone's kind of getting tired of this. All right. You've gotten the idea. All right. You guys can sit down as we are faithful. with what God has given us, and we realize that God is the one who's put it in our hands for a purpose, and that there's a world who needs it, and that they will give God the praise He deserves, but if we don't share it with them, they won't ever know about that God, and about the praise that He deserves. We are faithful to that. You know what? God always provides for us. He always does. You say, well, you're just preaching about money. Well, this is partly to do with that. The Bible talks a lot about that, but it's not just that. This is about our time. It's about the abilities and the gifts that God has given us. God gives it to us so that we can bless others through it. Amen. So that's the challenge today. We're blessed to bless. We're blessed to bless. And it's okay to ask for God's blessing as long as we do something with it. Amen? It's okay to ask for God to help us find a better job. It's okay to ask for God to prosper us and to help us as long as there's a purpose to that. That the nations might know and that they might praise you, God. As you've given me, let me be faithful. Even give me some more so I can be more faithful. As we're faithful in the little things, he can trust us with a lot more. I'll let you know this, as my wife and I, we're testaments of this. We've never lacked. This is really strange. It really is. There's months where numbers just didn't add up. They really didn't. There's times where savings accounts are empty. There's nothing in the checking account. No money coming our way. We got bills to pay. And then God starts to lay something on our heart. And you know what? That's hard sometimes. It really is. Y'all have been there before. But as we obey his voice, you know what? In that context is what Paul wrote the Philippian church in Philippians four. He says, you guys have been faithful and my God is able to supply all your needs according to his riches and glory. Amen. But it's only as we're faithful and we can make decisions like just this little illustration to say, well, I might need this later or I've got plans for this. And God's not going to bless us as much. That's Bible. You see that all through Scripture. So let's be faithful. Amen. Blessed to bless. Lord, I thank you for your truth here that we've seen tonight. I pray that you would make it real in our lives. I pray that you would continue to bless this church. I know that they've been faithful for so many years, not only to support us, but to support so many other missionaries. And it's hard sometimes. We start to think there's other things we could do. Families that have come and gone, but there's also people that have been sticking with it. And I know that thought comes through our minds sometimes. I pray that you'd help us always be faithful. would help us understand that we're blessed to bless this community around here in Rocky Mountain and surrounding area here. They need you, God. There's people looking for true gladness in everything but you. Let this church be a beacon of light to that community. Lord, I pray that you would help them to even send forth missionaries out of this congregation that would realize you've given us so much, God, and to whom much is given, much shall be required. But Lord, help us to be faithful with that. But help us to see the nations of the world and have compassion on them. To want to do something to help meet their need of eternal security and knowing you. Ecclesiastes says you've put eternity in our hearts, and humanly speaking, we can't attain that. We can't reach that. We need you, God. And I pray that you give us this passion for your glory amongst all nations, that as people know you, they can give you the praise and glory and honor that only you deserve. Give us a great vision of this. In your name we pray. Amen.