April Sermon

God’s Global Mission

For those of you who don’t know, Rachel and I went to and met at Ethnos360 Bible institute, formerly known as New Tribes Bible Institute. It was a school that taught us through the whole bible with a focus on cross cultural missions work, or overseas missions work.

Ethnos is actually the Greek word for Nations. We absolutely loved it there. We learned from current missionaries who were working in places like Brazil, and Papua New Guinea, and Southern Asia spreading the Gospel. in those places. They would come from right off of the field, and come teach us on their furlough. It often seemed like we were right in the middle of what God was doing over seas.

So who has heard the term missions before? Does anyone want to be brave and take a stab at what missions means?

Missions comes primarily from the coined term “The Great Commission” from Matthew 28:19 , Which were Jesus’ last words while He was on earth before ascending into heaven. Throw it up on the screen.

Matthew 28:19 ESV

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,

So the idea of missions is going outside of your local church to spread the Gospel which is the news of Jesus Christ, with unbelievers, and to disciple them, bringing them up in the faith and baptizing them.

This is actually why we do Imprint! Our goal is to complete the Great Commission like Jesus has called all Christians to do.

You see, every single person is a sinner. I am a sinner, Bobby Lane is a sinner, and you’re a sinner. We cannot escape that fact. And because of that, we fall short of the Glory of God, cannot have a relationship with God, and cannot spend eternity with Him…. Outside of Jesus. Jesus has a beautiful and amazing gift that He is offering us which is eternal life and relationship with Him, if we choose to accept it and follow Jesus with our lives.

Gods mission is to spread this gift worldwide.

This mission we actually see throughout the bible is God’s heartbeat for creation. From the beginning of time, God desired for every nation and tribe and tongue to belong to Him. We just studied a lot about Israel in the time of David a few weeks ago. Through Israel, God was trying to reach all the nations. It was never about just Israel. Let alone just North America.

Check out this verse from Revelation 7:9-10 during the last days of the earth, this is God’s plan!

Revelation 7:9–10 ESV

After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!”

Every nation, tribe, people and language.

Growing up, I had a very North American attitude about the church. Of course I knew about missions, I went to a missions trip to Central America when I was very young, I understood that there were people out there that needed to feel the love of Christ. But I did not really get God’s heartbeat for the nations.

There are groups of people that in the Missions world are called UPG’s or Unreached People Groups.

An unreached people group (UPG) is a group of people with a common language and culture distinct from those around them that has little to no access to the gospel of Jesus Christ and therefore no opportunity to respond to the Gospel.

I would like to share a few statistics about the state of the world right now.

over 6000 UPG in the world. 42% of the world is considered unreached

2.7% of all missionaries are among UPGs. 1.7% of Missions funding towards UPGs

Take a look at this map

So the green dots are the people groups that are more reached, the yellow is more-less reached and all the red dots are considered the unreached people groups, and this big rectangle here is called the 10-40 window. the latitude/longitute range that has the most significant amount of unreached people groups.

Okay this is something I did not get when I was in high school. Do we know what happens do every single person that lives in one of these red zones? Everyone listen here.

These people are being born, living their entire lives, and dying without hearing the name of Jesus. And the tragedy of this world is that the bible tells us that if you do not accept Jesus as your saviour, the punishment is eternal separation from God, in Hell. Does that not seem unfair to you? This is why we are here at Imprint. This is why we gather on Sundays at church and read through the Word of the Lord. Eternity is not some silly thing that “will come when it comes”. This is eternity! And we have the opportunity to share the Gospel with people so that they can have a chance to be on the victorious, good, and perfect side of eternity. As oppose to the evil, restless, and pain filled side of eternity.

Does it not bug you? We were all born in a society that has churches all over the place, and the Gospel, although not super popular, is in our schools and our homes. With thousands of bibles in Sarnia alone, and hundreds of different English translations on the bible.

It took me way to long to realize that I was not just comfortable and okay with this state of the world. And here is the thing, we are not supposed to be comfortable with this. This is a tragedy! What we should be doing as Christians, it gratefully accepting God’s graciousness in our lives by placing us in this half of the world where the Gospel is very present, and taking this Gospel to those people who were not blessed in the same way.

It is God’s heartbeat throughout the whole bible that we as followers of God, as Christians, need to be doing something about this!

Throw this passage up on the screen,

Romans 10:14–15 ESV

How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!”

How can these lost peoples be saved if we do not go? Do you want to know what a bad answer is? One that I believed for too long. Other people will go for sure. Im good here.

God will set apart some missionaries to spread the gospel overseas, thats great! Those guys are awesome! But not me, right? I know some of us are thinking that right now. I thought that.

Do not hear me saying that evangelism is much more important in the 10-40 Window than it is in your school. I’m not saying that. There are people in your high schools that are just as lost as the people in the 10-40 window. But the biggest difference is that the people in your homes and high schools and your work places are reached. You might ask how do I know they are reached, and the answer is that you are there. You are near them and you have the Gospel. It is our obligation to reach those around us with the Truth of Christ. So do that! Pray for boldness that you would have the courage to spread the Gospel where you are!

But let me tell you something, as Christians, if we are not involved with God’s mission, we are downright sinning. Hear me out. This is the mission of Christ. The last instruction for us before He ascended to heaven.

Go and make disciples of all nations.

But these people in the Red do not even have a CHANCE.

So how in the world would we get involved? I get you all are in high school still and have a lot going on. But this is one guaranteed way that we all can get involved, regardless of your busy schedule, financial position, or general situation in life.

Prayer. And I know that sounds redundant and we say it so much at church that it can lose its value. But it is the most powerful and effective thing that we can do. and it is not hard to do.

But we NEED to pray. And especially for the UPG’s of the World.

Pray to God and ask Him to bring up more missionaries to be sent to UPGs in the world. Pray the dangerous prayer, ask God if He wants YOU to be one of those people! We all really like to have this grasp on our lives that keep us comfortable. We like to just be able to hold on to certain things to feel like we have control over our lives. But the most Godly thing you can do is say “Jesus, I let go. I let go of all the things I am holding onto and surrender it to you”

Cause what is funny is that God already has control of all those things, but He wants you to be on the same page as He is desperately.

Giving.

Another way is to give. This will come into play more so for most of you guys when you get older and are making some sort of income, but there is a extreme financial need for funds to go towards equipment to get missionaries into these hard to reach people groups, to go towards supporting missionaries themselves so that they do not need to work for a ton of years before committing their lives to going and spreading the gospel.

Going.

And there is one last thing. This one seems the craziest, but I will tell you what, we need to examine our hearts if we think that God would never ask us or call us to do something like this, but the last thing is to GO. To be the person that surrenders their lives and actually goes to the people groups that have never heard the name of Jesus before to share with them the truth of the Gospel. It seems crazy. But it is oh so important. Remember the verse from Romans: How will they know unless they are told? and how will someone tell unless they go?

And actually right now, there are thousands of people that have come from UPG’s that are living in Sarnia! The Lord brings the nations to us as well! If anyone has gone to Remix, you know that there are tremendous amounts of diverse people groups there that are closed to the Gospel. You don’t have to look far if you don’t have the ability to look far right now.

I have a task for you guys. Something we can do right now.

Take out your phones. let me see them. Right now, Go to the app store on your phone and look up “Joshua Project”

An app should appear called “Unreached of the Day”

download that app, and open it. When you do, you will see a daily updated quick summary of a real life, real time people group in the world that we live in that do not have access to the Gospel. It will tell you a little about them and a button that says pray at the bottom.

I want to challenge you to join me in hopping on this app once a day to pray for a specific people group that is currently living just to die without ever hearing about Jesus’ gift to us.

Throw up the UPG of the day on the screen. Here is an example.

Todays unreached people group is the Walangs of Bhutan. There are 7200 of these people and they have zero evangelical people around them and they do not have a translation of the bible in their language. The biggest challenge for getting the Gospel to them is that they are primarily Bhudists and would generally not accept the Gospel peacefully if someone was to bring it to them. So there is a specific thing you can pray for for the Walangs.

We sometimes are afraid to ask God for big things. But we have no need to hold those requests back. Ask God to save the entire nation of Bhutan and the Walangs. God can do it! And God can handle our big requests.

When you pray, take a screenshot of the UPG of the day on your phone and post it to your story on instagram so that your friends can see and pray too. I’ll start it and you guys can jump on.

Okay lets pray and then we will discuss more in Small groups.