What Price will You Pay?

How many of you are going home to unsaved family members today, can I see your hands? If you’re going home after church or after the Boiled Dinner and you will be with family members who reject the Gospel? ... Okay now how many of you will be visiting with unsaved family members over this holiday season? We need to diligently pray for these people. That God will give any opportunity perhaps to do the hard things. I think it is never easy to witness and share the gospel to people who know you well if you ever noticed that people who know you best the people who see you at you really are the people who know your manners, the inner most secrets of your life as it were

Those are the people often hardest to reach. I’ve been impressed over the last few years that nothing that is done of true lasting value to the Lord comes easy. And so my question to you this morning is: what price are we willing to pay to serve the Lord so as to be used an effective way?”

Are we willing to pay to see the Lord use us effectively? before you seriously answer that question, I recognize that most of us here love the Lord most of us here would desire to see the Lord use us. I wonder though if we have ever sat down to meditate on this question and have taken a review of our lives.

What price am I personally willing to pay for God to use me for His use of my life to be effective? What price are you willing to pay? are you totally willing to be used in God, or do you have a certain threshold where you say well I'm willing to give this much but no further?

Are you willing to pay for God to use you on the mission field? Um…I’m not a missionary. Yes you are! When you put your faith and trust in our Savior, you become a missionary--an ambassador for Christ.

What price am I personally willing to pay for God to use me--for His use of my life to be effective? What price are you willing to pay? are you totally willing to be used in God, or do you have a certain threshold where you say, “well I'm willing to give this much but no further?”

Are you willing to truly pay for God to use you on the mission field? Um…I’m not a missionary. Oh, Yes you are! When you put your faith and trust in our Savior, you become a missionary--an ambassador for Christ no matter here, there, or any. Are we willing to say the Lord this morning we want to be used and say, “Here I am Lord use me-- here is my life!”

What price are you used to paying, and are you personally willing to pay more for God to use you this week, and next month, and over this Christmas season?

Luke 9:1–6 ESV

1 And he called the twelve together and gave them power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases, 2 and he sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal. 3 And he said to them, “Take nothing for your journey, no staff, nor bag, nor bread, nor money; and do not have two tunics. 4 And whatever house you enter, stay there, and from there depart. 5 And wherever they do not receive you, when you leave that town shake off the dust from your feet as a testimony against them.” 6 And they departed and went through the villages, preaching the gospel and healing everywhere.

Luke 9:1-

Luke 9:1–9 ESV

1 And he called the twelve together and gave them power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases, 2 and he sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal. 3 And he said to them, “Take nothing for your journey, no staff, nor bag, nor bread, nor money; and do not have two tunics. 4 And whatever house you enter, stay there, and from there depart. 5 And wherever they do not receive you, when you leave that town shake off the dust from your feet as a testimony against them.” 6 And they departed and went through the villages, preaching the gospel and healing everywhere. 7 Now Herod the tetrarch heard about all that was happening, and he was perplexed, because it was said by some that John had been raised from the dead, 8 by some that Elijah had appeared, and by others that one of the prophets of old had risen. 9 Herod said, “John I beheaded, but who is this about whom I hear such things?” And he sought to see him.

Luke 9:1–6

Then turn to for just one more verse

2 Timothy 2:3 ESV

Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus.

This passage tells out the kind of life we can expect to live, the kind of price we can expect to pay if we want to see the Lord use us effectively.

There is a price to be paid to serve the Lord. There is a mission, there is a mandate. Jesus Christ, when he was talking to his disciples looked out across the harvest and do you remember what He said? He said,

Matthew 9:37 ESV

37 Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few;

“The harvest is plentiful,” there is no problem with the harvest, there is no lack for harvest--the harvest is plenty, So what was the problem? “but the laborers are few” and what’s the solution? We immediately think the solution is that we need more laborers. No, the solution that God gives, is what? Prayer!

Matthew 9:38 ESV

38 therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”

I had been in Bible College just long enough to have seen laborers going to the harvest just because Northland sent them, and you know what happened? Those laborers generally don’t last. The laborers that go into the harvest that last are those labors that have told many of an overwhelming unshakable undeniable call--that God sent them.

The answer to the harvest problem is that we would pray that God would send laborers to the harvest and when we pray we ought to pray that God would send us into the field. Your prayer might be: “Lord, when You go to send laborers into the harvest, I want to be one of those laborers!” How many of you prayed that? We’re all willing to pray, “Lord, send laborers.” But what about instead praying, Lord we need You to send laborers, but when You are sending laborers, don’t overlook me! I want to be a part of that process! I want to be a part of the laborers that go on for the cause of Christ.”

I am now going to do something a little less traditional this morning and that is to give you a thumbnail sketch of a man who lived these 2 passages his adult life and how about 200 years ago he began a movement that have been building and bearing fruit ever since. His name is Adoniram Judson. Some of you have heard his life story. Some of you have read things about him or even his biography. But probably one of the most significant parts of his life after coming to salvation—which if we had time this morning to go through would thrill you to see how YHWH orchestrated that— but beyond his salvation is when on an August afternoon in 1806 in Williamstown, Massachusetts. He and a group of student from a seminary got together to pray about missions and to be used by God. They prayed in a harvest field the prayer to be one of the ones chosen to be sent as a laborer into the harvest. And as they were praying, YHWH responded with a short but powerful thunderstorm. So they took cover under a haystack as the storm grew fiercer. They continued to pray despite the storm and so this meeting became know as the Haystack Prayer Meeting. Two years later, after the Haystack Prayer Meeting, a society was birthed. This society comprised of five men who committed to give up their entire lives for the sake of full-time missionary living and to recruit other men to do the same. Keep in mind at this point, no American missionary had ever traveled out to foreign lands before this time.

Let me read to you the purpose statement of this society, which just four years after the Haystack Prayer Meeting became the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions:

“The object of this society shall be to effect in the persons of its members a mission to the heathen. Each member shall keep himself absolutely free from every engagement which is incompatible with the object of this society, and shall hold himself in readiness to go on a mission for the Lord when and where duty may call.”

Now let me ask you a question: when was the last time you have ever had a prayer like that in your personal life--where you have asked the Lord to be used to win others to the faith on an ongoing regular basis at the cost of the rest of your life—to be used to impact people with the Gospel in such a way as to have a lasting effect for generations to come? Have you ever had that kind of prayer where you offered yourself a living sacrifice, ready to pay whatever price YHWH may ask of you? Have you ever had your own Haystack Prayer Meeting? Because out of that kind of prayer the Lord answered by sending the first ever American missionary, Adoniram Judson, and he sailed for India. Let me list for you some of the costs of such a call: He turned his back on a promising ministerial career, He had been appointed associate pastor to the largest congregational church on the whole continent at that time, yet he turned his back on that. His Baptist family could not understand why he would throw away a promising ministerial career to go to a land where strangers didn’t even know (much less want) the Gospel. He met a young woman named Nancy. He married her in 1812 and six days later, they got on a ship and sailed for India. How is that for a honeymoon?

Let me read to you the letter he wrote to her father. If you were the father of this 18 year old daughter and some guy that was moving to India started dating her and you got this letter from him, what would your response be? this is what he said:

“I have not asked you, sir, whether you would consent to part with your daughter early next spring to never see her again in this world; whether you could consent to her subjection to sufferings and hardships of missionary life; whether you could consent to her exposure to the dangers of the sea, to the fatal influence of the climate of Southern India; to every kind of want and distress, to degradation, insult, persecution, and perhaps to a violent death. Can you consent to all this, for the sake of Him who left His heavenly home and died for her and for you; for the sake of perishing, immortal souls; for the sake of Zion and the glory of God? Can you consent to all this, in hope of soon meeting your daughter in the world of glory, with a crown of righteousness brightened by the acclamations of praise which shall redound to her Saviour from heathens saved, through her means, from eternal woe and despair?"

What would you do as the father with this letter? well 16 days after the wedding, Judson took her on the ship away from her family and her family never saw her again on this side of eternity. The journey lasted three months and while on board, the wife and newborn child of another missionary couple that went with them died and were buried in India. That wife died at 18 years of age and the son, only three days. Adoniram and his wife, however, had a baby stillborn on the ship. Nancy was pregnant before they departed, but she still took the risk of sea life in her last trimester. They hired a maid to come with her, but as soon as the ship left the dock, while in their room, the maid went into uncontrollable convulsions and died right in front of them. Nancy then went into shock, had the baby right there, and the baby was born dead.

When they arrived in Burma, there were 17 million Burmese, and there were no Christians and no Bible. On September 11, 1815, a ray of hope shine in the young Judson family. YHWH gave them another baby and they named him Roger, and Roger was the delight of there soul. He filled their house with joy and laughter. All the Burmese locals came and marveled at his whiteness. In fact, they even had political influential people over for tea and the baby would allow them to open the conversation up to the topic of the Gospel. But then in March of 1816, things changed.

Let me read to you the account of his passing. I think I want you to feel the weight that these people felt.

“For six months, little baby Roger waxed back and forth healthy. Then in March 1816, Nancy began to notice that he was feverish and perspired at night. Like any good mother, she was alarmed, but her fears were quieted when day broke and the fever left and his appetite returned and he seemed well during the day. He kept on gaining weight and she finally concluded that the baby had some kind of childish ailment and she almost forgot her worries for Roger as her concern grew for her husband. All of a sudden, Adoniram was suffering severe headaches. He became so weak that he couldn’t stand or speak. Reading and writing caused unbearable pain so he had stopped everything. In a mood of depression, he decided his missionary work was closing, but with any moment of relief, he would work on writing tracts in Burmese. Such was their life until May, where Adoniram was sick most of the time and Roger sick only at night. Then one morning Roger had a half-hour coughing fit with a high fever, which scared both Adoniram & Nancy, but the fever left and they decided that the attack had passed, but they were mistaken. The following morning, the cough and fever returned even worse. Something in Roger’s throat seemed to be choking him to death. They sent for the only doctor in town that gave Roger rhubarb in powder, but to no relief. This fit lasted over 24 hours while Nancy held him until she passed out from exhaustion. Adoniram took Roger, although suffering himself from the headaches. Roger drank his milk and Adoniram set him down in the crib. Roger slept for half an hour and then stopped breathing.”

After the second burial of their second child now, Nancy wrote a letter to her family. She said

“Our hearts were bound up in this child. We felt that he was our earthly all. We felt as if he was our only source of innocent recreation in this heathen land. But God saw it was necessary to remind us of our error, and to strip us of our only little all. O may it not be in vain that he has done it. May we so improve that He will stay His had and say, ‘It is enough’…and we would then say, ‘Thy will be done’”

So let me ask you again: What price are you willing to pay for God to use you? Are you willing to suffer like this for the sake of the Gospel to endure? They had been in Burma for two years now and not a single convert. Not one convert to show any gain for their loss! Did they make a mistake? Their first born buried at sea, their maid, and their missionary friend and even her child dead and gone. They were probably looking to see what had they sacrificed for and they had nothing to show. How much more were they to endure? What does the Bible say:

2 Timothy 2:3 ESV

Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus.

They endured for six years with no building, no convert to account for their investment. Was this all a big mistake? Well in 1819, they got to baptize their first Burmese convert and two years after that they had their first church of 10 native Burmese. In 1824, probably the lowest part in Adoniram’s ministry, he was imprisoned as a foreign spy. His now pregnant wife would travel to the prison every day to just get a glimpse of him in the stocks. She would try to feed him but they would not allow it. The only food he would get is whatever he could scrounge up in the yard. Adoniram, in a fit of despair doubted that the converts would last, doubted that the Burmese New Testament that he had work on and was only in manuscript form by this time and was hidden in fear that it would be destroyed if found, would ever endure.

So what is the final price tag on your life where you would say, “that’s it, I will not pay any more for our Lord?” Where is your boundary? Would you persevere though all this? Are you willing to go twelve years with nothing for your journey, no staff, nor bag, nor bread, nor money and turn around on a life of agony and pain and still say, “Thy will be done”?

In 1826, He received a black letter in prison that his wife and young daughter, Maria had to go on a sea journey because Maria, at two years old, had been taken with a terrible illness and the only cure the doctor could muster is that the sea journey would heal her. So Nancy went with Maria on the boat and when she could, Nancy would send letters of Maria’s progress, but the letters were not encouraging. When Adoniram got the black letter, he assumed it was the news of Maria’s passing, but the captain of the ship wrote that Nancy developed a terrible fever and passed away on this week long journey and had been buried at port. And two years later, he was able to bury little Maria. At this point, he went into the tiger infested jungle and dug a grave for himself and sat there waiting for his turn. But, by the strength of YHWH from that forest, he got up and left the grave and married a widowed missionary lady, named Sara, who had come to Burma with her now late husband. Sara had a little boy from the first marriage that became obvious to both Adoniram and Sara that if he stayed in India he would join Adoniram’s other children. So they decided to save the boy’s life they would have to send him back to America to live with family.

I want to read to you what Sarah wrote to her sister about the parting, this is what they were willing to pay:

“It was a heart rending parting... Oh ! I shall never forget his looks, as he stood by the door and gazed at me for the last time. His eyes were filling with tears, and his little face red with suppressed emotion.

Six years old! this boy was six! and she continued

But he subdued his feelings, and it was not till he had turned away, and was going down the steps, that he burst into a flood of tears. I hurried to my room ; and on my knees, with my whole heart, gave him up to God ; and my bursting heart was comforted from above. I felt such a love to poor perishing souls, as made me willing to give up all, that I might aid in the work of bringing these wretched heathen to Christ.”

Sarah would never see her son again. Adoniram would get to see him again, but not until he would be 25 years old.

Are you willing to endure hardship and loss for the chance to witness to someone? Are you willing to endure harsh treatment from neighbors, and from friends, or even family for opportunity to lead them to eternal life?

Sarah would give Adoniram another son, Henry, which Adoniram also buried Henry after 1 year and seven months. Sarah then dies at sea on there way back on furlough to America. The details relating to her last days are written by Mr. Judson :

“On our passage homeward, as the strength of Mrs. Judson gradually declined, I expected to be under the painful necessity of burying her in the sea. But it was so ordered by divine Providence, that, when the indications of approaching death had become strongly marked, the ship came to anchor in the port of St. Helena. For three days she continued to sink rapidly, though her bodily sufferings were not very severe. Her mind became liable to wander, but a single word was sufficient to recall and steady her recollection. On the evening of the 31st of August she appeared to be drawing near to the end of her pilgrimage. The children took leave of her and retired to rest. I sat alone by the side of her bed during the hours of the night, endeavoring to administer relief to the distressed body, and consolation to the departing soul. At two o'clock in the morning, wishing to obtain one more token of recognition, I roused her attention, and said, “Do you still love the Saviour?’ ‘Oh, yes,” she replied, ‘I ever love the Lord Jesus Christ.’ I said again, ‘Do you still love me?' She replied in the affirmative, by a peculiar expression of her own. ‘Then give me one more kiss;' and we exchanged that token of love for the last time. Another hour passed, life continued to re cede, and she ceased to breathe. For a moment I traced her upward flight, and thought of the wonders which were opening to her view. I then closed her sightless eyes, dressed her, for the last time, in the drapery of death, and being quite exhausted with many sleepless nights, I threw myself down and slept.

Judson finally returned to America after 33 years, but only stayed one year because he could not live apart from his Burmese brothers in Christ. So he headed back there to die 5 years later.

Here is a man that suffered so much. Why would anybody pay this price? Because our God sent him there and YHWH blessed the Burmese people with generation after generation of people who would be saved and come to know why it is worth the price Judson paid.

In sending out the twelve disciples, Jesus said to them:

Matthew 10:16 ESV

“Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.