The World Without Christ (4)

April 7 / 14

This series is very near and dear to my heart because I am going to be talking about missions. For those of you who don’t know, the school that Rachel and I went to in Wisconsin is called Ethnos360 Bible institute. It was a school that taught us through the whole bible from front to back and had a focus on cross-cultural missions work.

We actually were taught by past missionaries, as well as current missionaries who were working in places like Brazil, and Papua New Guinea, and Southern Asia spreading the Gospel.

So at first I want to explain what missions is, considering there are many things that come into our minds when we think about missions work.

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 our 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 church! This is the goal of the Christian life! To complete the Great Commission like Jesus has commanded every single Christians to be apart of.

And this specific 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 can think back to our summer series if you remember we walk through the Old Testament. That is the story of how through Israel — God’s chosen nation — God was trying to reach all the nations. It was never just about Israel.

Now, I have a challenge for everyone here real fast… I want us all to think… Have we thought of the Gospel of Christ as just for Ontario…. Just for Sarnia…. Just for our families? Or have we acted in such a way that would imply that?

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.

There was a clip that came out from the most recent passion conference in Florida. Tens of thousands of students were packed into this stadium when the worship team played a song that sings “Hallelujah, for the Lord God Almighty reigns. Holy, Holy are you Lord God Almighty. Worthy is the Lamb. Worthy is the Lamb.”

This stadium was so huge with so many worshippers that at the beginning of the song… The time that it took for the sound to travel to the back of the stadium caused

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.

but when he did… something amazing happened

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.

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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.

Good evening everyone! Who had a great time at FNL on Friday? It was a great job done by everyone involved. Thank y’all so much for being apart of that, we made upwards of 4000 dollars that will go towards SnoCamp, so that is pretty awesome

I saw a lot of you guys posting on your stories about the different unreached people groups you were praying for, super glad you guys got on that train for a while. Now it is super important to remember that praying for UPG of the world needs to consistent in all of our lives. So don’t just only pray for the souls of the unreached during that one week.

I am talking to myself and all the leaders when I say that too, not just the students. Praying for the unreached should always be present in our lives if we want to obey Jesus commands.

Today, we are going to shift our focus from the 10-40 window, and talk about how we can share the Gospel, right here where we are. Because the truth is, we need to be able to and actively be sharing the Gospel here, before we can think about doing that across the globe.

So the big word we are doubling down on tonight is Evangelism. Can everyone say Evangelism? —

Who in grade nine and knows what the word Evangelism means?

— Sharing our faith in Jesus Christ and what He has done for us.

And what had Jesus done for us? What is the Gospel? Grace, do you wanna give us a few sentences of what the Gospel is?

Those of you here who have not accepted Jesus Christ as your saviour, please hear this and consider. This is the biggest decision you will make in your entire life and its not close. Jesus Christ died my sins, and for yours. He wants a relationship with you and He is chasing after your as a loving father does a lost child. If you want to make that decision today, to acknowledge that you are a sinner, and to accept Jesus Christ as your saviour and to live for Him, Please come talk to one of the leaders anytime tonight or even next week and we would love to help you in this process by praying with you and encouraging you.

Amazing. See, sharing that is super easy to do right? Grace just did it off of the top of her head. There are no hardships to this, and it comes super naturally every time right? Evangelism is super easy.

Well, actually no. Although it should be! its as simple as having a conversation about your life and how Jesus has changed it!

But it never seems simple or easy does it? No when the opportunities come, it can feel like the hardest thing to do! Why is that? Well there are three reasons that I think are most prevalent among Christians.

1. Fear of Rejection.

2. Personal discomfort.

3. Lack of knowledge.

Now I want to break each of these down a little bit.

1. Fear of Rejection:

You might feel like the people around you or those whom you want to share our hope with will reject in you in some way, or they will dislike you for some reason.

Now truthfully, this might be a reasonable fear. Although most people would not reject you because you share with them something like this, there are people that might! It might even be a friend that loses respect for you because they are hardened to the Gospel.

But we should not be surprised by this, and this should not turn us away from sharing the truth of the Gospel. Check out here in 1 Peter—

1 Peter 4:12–14 ESV

Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed. If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you.

Peter says don’t be surprised when this happens to you, (not if, when) but rejoice! Because we are blessed if we are insulted for the name of Christ. Because the spirit of God rests on us.

2. Personal Discomfort:

Look, I get it. We might just not really feel like sharing the Gospel. We might think it’ll be too awkward, or we will stumble over your words, maybe we get anxious… I was 100% there, I understand those feelings… But what this comes down to is how important we think the Gospel is.

Do we think of the Gospel as a good message that people should hear… As one of the truths that we believe…

Do we think that Jesus was a good man that died a sucky death, and its cool that we can get to heaven cause of it?

Or Do we think of the Gospel as the Power of God for Salvation? That is the method to save us from Hell?

Do we think of the Gospel as the only cure for a lethal sickness called sin, that we carry an unlimited supply of as we daily walk around lost and infected people

Guys a get that it feels uncomfortable to us. But we are blessed enough to live in a society that does not send us to jail or worse for sharing the Good News of Christ. Most of the world we live in will! There are thousands of Christians risking their lives in those places to just plant a seed of Jesus Christ in the hearts of the unreached .

The excuse of being uncomfortable or Anxious… or being afraid of awkwardness. Man… do I even have to say? It’s pretty pathetic guys… I wont sugar coat it. And guys I am preaching to myself here too… There are way too many times in my life where I gloss over an opportunity to share the Gospel because I don’t really want to. And shame on me for that…

Are we ashamed of the Gopsel?

Romans 1:16 ESV

For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.

The Gospel is so important, it holds so much power, and it is NOTHING for us to be ashamed of.

Lastly, 3. Lack of Knowledge:

Man, lack of knowledge… Not being adequately equipped to actually present the Gospel.

This is something that I take as my personal task and goal is to do my absolute best to get to the point where each of you who love Jesus are adequately equipped to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ when the opportunities arise, and to not be ashamed to do so.

If you find yourself in that position, there is so much for us to do to gain knowledge. First and foremost, read the word. Read through Matthew, Mark, Luke and John to gain a broader perspective of who Jesus is and what His goal was during His time on earth.

Scott is actually holding an evangelism class on Tuesday nights for people feeling the exact same way!

Another thing you can do is ask one of us leaders to personally walk you through how this should look!

And for us who have an appropriate understanding of the Gospel message, there is always more for us to know and explore… dive into Theology… learn how to defend the faith when we are challenged by others.

Okay.... Im going to say something important here.

Although having a bunch of knowledge and having a clear and concise message is definitely good and important, YOU DO NOT NEED IT TO SUCCEED IN SHARING THE GOSPEL.

It can be hard! Maybe you do know the Gospel well and you just blank on words… but i’m telling you, if you get to nothing else, but you get to Jesus… you’ve succeeded. If you forget everything else, but you mention Jesus… that is what you need.

Do you want to know why? Because it was never up to us giving a perfect or clear message in the first place, it was up to God. It was up to the Holy Spirit working in us and working in others.

A great example of this that you might already know is our friend Korbyn Roberts, at Snocamp a few years back, he came to know Christ because of weird analogy about Pizza! It didnt make sense to most of us, but the Lord used it to get to Korbyn, and soon his whole family accepted Christ as their saviour.

Colossians 4:2–4 ESV

Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving. At the same time, pray also for us, that God may open to us a door for the word, to declare the mystery of Christ, on account of which I am in prison— that I may make it clear, which is how I ought to speak.

Even Paul prayed for himself and asked for prayer from others for opportunities and also to speak clearly! You think Paul did not know his stuff? I think Paul knew his stuff.

The reason why Paul values this is because it is through God’s power. Not our own.

So then you might ask, why use us to begin with? What are we even here for if God is just going to work it out anyway?

Well the answer to that is that there is immense blessings in working for the Lord towards the Great Commission. And not only that but the Lord has specifically chosen and called us as Christians to partake in His work.

It is a privilege that He wants to use us because He doesn’t have to!! How cool is it that God looks at us. God, the creator of the Universe, looks at us and says “I want you to be apart of my plan” (Maybe use names from crowd)

Like we talked about last time… It is our responsibility to be honoured by God’s calling in our lives and obey willingly and excitedly.

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Good evening ladies and gents! nice to see you all today! Special welcome to any visitors! If you are new here this is something we value very highly here at Imprint, opening up the bible which is the word of the living and true God to see what He has to teach us each week.

Who remembers what talked about last week?

• Sharing our faith with others

Does anyone remember the three common things that stop us from sharing the Gospel?

• Fear of rejection

• Personal Discomfort

• Lack of Knowledge.

Great job! We are wrapping up our series on The World Without Christ, talking about God’s plan for the world, otherwise known as missions! The first week we talked about the broken state of the world and the UPG’s / unreached people groups, last week we talked about what we are suppose to do about people around us right now who are in need of the Gospel, and this week we have something a little different planned.

I hope this message of the need for Christ in the world that does not have it has convicted you guys.

Today we are going to hear from a couple of my friends who are actively involved in missions work right now. We are going to try and layout what all you can do if you are looking to be involved with missions in your life. it doesnt all look exactly the same.

What we are trying to show you guys is that this is a real and important thing that is happening, with a big need for more christians to get involved.

ETR — EBI — BI —

first we are going to hear from our friend Corbynne, girl Corbynne. And how she is involved with God’s missions for the world.

and secondly we have a video from one of my friends David, who is currently a student at EBI.

lastly we will hear from my friend Joe, he is currently working on staff at the Ethnos missionary training centre in Missouri. Please listen to him, he is a super cool guy… could cook any one of you in basketball and runs 100 mile marathons for fun. For real.

Check this out.

As you can see from a few of our favourite people… This is a real thing. This missions thing, it is one of the most important things on this earth that we need to be involved in. Remember what we talked about in our first lesson, also Joe reiterated in his video, we HAVE to be involved. At the very least, although not to diminish it, PRAYER. We need to pray for the Unreached as well as for missionaries who are going to those places… and we need to consider Giving and Going and finding a way in our city that we can get involved in Gods mission.

I said it before but ill say it again. I am confident that there is someone if not multiple people in this room that God will call to be apart of this for Him. I am confident that God will convict someone if not multiple people in this room to join in on God’s mission for the world.

And if you are someone sitting in the room, listening to this and thinking to yourself: “its definitely not going to be me” Cause I know there are some of us thinking that… Im going to challenge you to check your heart in that. Why is that your thought process?

Why is that going through your mind? Is it because you think you wouldn’t do a good job? that someone else would be better fit? Don’t you think thats a little selfish and diminishing the power of God and what He can do through you?

Is it because you don’t want to leave behind something you are currently holding onto? Like a career path… like a relationship?… Like a sense of comfort?

if you have any interest in this missions thing or EBI please come and chat with me or Rachel… would love to have a conversation.

My challenge for you is to surrender your plans for your life to the Lord. He knows what your life looks like in the future, and He wants you to be on the same page as Him. Pray and tell God that you want what He wants for you. Like Joe said, Find out what is important to God and make that important to you.

I am going to end this series off with these verses from Romans 10:13-15

Romans 10:13–15 ESV

For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” 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!”

BW mission strategy:

Categories: Pro-life / Francophone /middle-east

Jerusalem / Judea / Samaria / Ends of the earth

Gospel centred- fruit bearing - multiplication focused

**awareness and prayer**

BW has 17 different ministries.|

Compassion coming in November. — 200 ish children sponsored (Christian education / local churches)