May 26, 2019 - GLOBAL MISSIONS

So actually this past Christmas my wife started calling me zanta. I did have one experience the Sunday before Christmas. I had a red shirt on and I'm walking into church and there's a family behind me and I could hear the little girl whisper to her mom that Santa Claus on of my dear friend Kevin DeYoung decided to label me Angry Santa. So this is better than that. I supposed to be with you guys. Are you tremendously enjoyed my time here until the early service I grew up in in Miami. So given the fact that in Miami, we thought the basically the end of the inhabitable world. Was somewhere around the Florida-Georgia border given the fact that anywhere north of that weird stuff happened. I mean, we actually heard rumors that sometimes like water would come out of the sky Frozen. What's up with that? You know, that's obviously impossible. And so this is further north than that. I could even conceptualizes a child, but we have Barry I've been very warmly welcomed and it's particularly encouraging to me to see the fruit of the Cross conference that I hear in this congregation. You guys did some one of the largest contingencies of young adults to cross-con. It was a thing that really just began with a group of us getting together and realizing that we needed a student missions conference that that held to Historic Evangelical understandings of missions. Are there people really did need to hear the gospel to be saved and then unreached peoples really were a priority and none of those were sort of the two things. We wanted to focus. And to see how even in this congregation God is using those efforts as it's really encouraging to meet. I deeply appreciate it. I would ask you to turn in your Bibles to Matthew chapter 28.

Very familiar passage. Probably the most familiar of all missions passages. I'm going to read verses 16 to 20. So Matthew 28 verses 16 to 20.

At the 11 disciples went to Galilee to the mountains which Jesus had directed them and when they saw him they worshipped him but some doubted and Jesus came and said to them all authority in heaven and on Earth has been given to me 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 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you and behold I Am With You Always to the end of the age.

Father we pray that you would take your word and do your work in us through it. We pray that your Holy Spirit who inspired Matthew to write these words would now be the one who opens our minds to understand them how opens our hearts to love them and opens our Wills to abandon father. We pray that the result of this would not be just we do a Sunday morning service and go home, but rather that we would be made more like Jesus as a result of this time and that we would be more useful in the service. I pray this in Jesus name.

We live in a time and in a culture now in which missions is really unpopular. Is it part of part of western civilizations from the culture that we live in that? There's almost nothing conceivably more expensive than the thought that I would go somewhere and tell other people that they need to change their minds about the fundamental issues of life and agree with me or else they're going to face Eternal judgment that literally is the kind of thing that makes blood boil of of those who were the cultural Elites of our society of furthermore increasingly countries around the world are making it difficult to impossible for Steven to go as traditional missionaries overtly carrying that label and so country after country has closed its doors to traditional missionary work. If that's true outside the church, what's even more confusing in some ways is the way that things inside the church have gotten gotten messed up. So when I left North America back in 1992 to move overseas pretty much any church that called itself Evangelical had a pretty clear idea what we meant. We talked about missions of come back to discover. It's very different. Let's begin with even those who would who would have firm the authority of scripture are calling into question. Sometimes do people really have to hear the gospel to be saved isn't there surely some sort of Plan B. Do we have to go to that link in order for people to be reconciled to God so and if the even if the answer to that is yes, what really is Mission, is is Mission just any good thing. We do outside the walls of our own building in the face of opposition from the outside world and confusion on the inside of our churches. I think it's really critical for us to answer two questions. First of all, Why why do we do this? What gives us the rights to engage in Mission? How can we be so audacious as to undertake this task and number to what is it? Anyway, how do we understand? What missions is given the confusion of all these different things that are called Mission what actually constitutes it. I believe this task here actually answers both of those questions. In this text Jesus is essentially giving his final instructions to his followers. Remember, he's preached for 3 years all over the Holy Land focusing on the message of the kingdom of God essentially saying that the longed-for in Breaking of the rule of God in human history has occurred in him. He was then arrested tried and killed on a Roman cross on the third day. He rose again from the dead. He gloriously conquered death and sin and hell he appeared to his followers. He spent about 40 days helping them understand what all happened and now he's getting ready to ascend back to his father and is given them the the final instruction of what they are supposed to do and these are the things than that. We learn from his final words. First of all, he begins with saying why we should do it. He begins with giving us the reason why we're supposed to do this thing the foundation for Missions the justification for Missions lies in The Sovereign lordship of Jesus Christ, he begins by saying all of thority in heaven and on Earth has been given to me. So if he's been talking all this time about the kingdom of God what he saying now is I'm the king of the kingdom and to be the king of the kingdom of God means to have Sovereign Authority. for the entire universe She is the king of kings and Lord of lords. Jesus does not come to us as an advisor whose counsel we can take or leave. It doesn't come to us as an elected official a president or prime minister that can be voted out of office. He's King and he's not King in the manner in which the Queen of England is is Monarch as she's a figurehead. I mean she's a you know, a very Noble woman, but she actually has no power. That's not the kind of kingship we're talking about here. We're talking about the kind of kingship of an absolute monarch in whom is the full government executive and legislative and judicial branches all combined into one Sovereign ruler over the universe. And the extent of his rule is everywhere over everyone and everything a much of the conception of the ancient world was God's had territory kind of like police forces have jurisdictions. And if you were this God you just sort of rule this area. If you were this guide your rule this area and unfortunately that's spilled over often into modern society where well, you know, so if you from this country is supposed to be Muslim. If you're from this country, you're supposed to be Catholic and and that just sort of fits together that way Jesus claims a lordship that has no boundaries that encompasses all the world and everyone in it. That has profound implications for us as we think about the task commission's first of all, Jesus is King over our nation and over the nation's he is King over Western society, which means his opinion matters a whole lot more than the newspaper or the news media to because he is Sovereign Lord of everything. What he says goes has always gone and we'll always go and the fact that culture around us disapproves is simply irrelevant. It also means that he is King over the very Nations that are trying to keep the gospel out. And his word Trump's there's his word completely overturns any opposition to him. Now as Christians, we are convinced that we have an obligation to be fully obedient to the Civil War at every point in which such obedience does not constitute Disobedience to God, but just like the apostles as soon as we're commanded to do something contrary to the word of God. We have to say we must obey God rather than man. And so when I was in the Army, if it if a captain told me to do one thing and a general told me to do something else, which did I do obviously I did what the general said. He he outranked the captain and so I will obey the Civil Authorities until they tell me that I can't share the gospel. But then my king outranks those governments so I have the right to do even what are my own Society thinks is bad and what many governments around the world wish to forbid. Jesus is King. Therefore I have every right to undertake this mission that he is giving me but there's actually more to it than that. There's this or like this is 2H sword. So yes, he authorizes me to do it, but he also requires me to do it. He's not just King of the Nations. He's King Of My Life. And again, he's not my advisor. He's my ruler and what he says goes we do not belong to ourselves. You are not your own you were bought with a price we belong to him. We do not exist for ourselves, and we do not exist for our comfort or safety or worldly success we exist for his glory and for the advance of his kingdom. The Great Commission is not the great suggestion. It's a great commandment. And being a royal command, it is non-negotiable. He has absolute rights over us even to send us into things that are uncomfortable for us that are costly for us even in the situations that might require our lives. So if all authority in heaven and on Earth has been given to Jesus then his authority gives us the right to take the gospel to the Nations. It also gives us the obligation. And so we need to recognize it for all of us. If we are to be obedient Christians. We are to be healthy churches taking the gospel to the ends of the Earth must be Central in our lives. So that's why we should do it. That's why we have the right to do it. Why does what constitutes missions anyway now I know looking out on a crowd like this that probably 99% of you grammar. Was your favorite subject in school. I'm alright. Well, it's seldom does is that right? Most of us? It's just something we sort of got through. But if you can think back to studying grammar in school and for some of you with what you're doing now for some of us it was many decades ago, but there's this there these parts of speech call verbs and action word and there's different kinds of herbs and one kind of herb one verb tense is the imperative tense. The imperative tense is a command if I tell my child to do something and I you know, I basically say get your feet off the table feeder on the table even before elbows on the table. Then that's a command. Will there is one imperative in this verse only one, there's one command and everything else around it and helps us to understand it and one command here in the Great Commission is command to make disciples and so we are commanded to make disciples and we're commanded to go and baptize and teach as father. Idea what that task involved but those are participles thinking back to grammar. The imperative is make disciples. What does that mean? What's a disciple? For the word we use a lot I will use it some but but but seldom and so we don't really have much of a conception of what it meant in Jesus day to be a disciple. Our closest analogy is to be a student I teach in seminary and I teach a class that is required of every student who goes to the cemetery in Louisville. So they all have to take this which means I often teach very large classes and I'm in the big Auditorium and their students who sit in the back the very far into the auditorium thinking that I will not notice if they fall asleep while I'm lecturing. I do always but the way the class Works can be very impersonal not like the kids who sit in front cuz they're the ones who interact with me and actually tell them that they have an advantage. They're going to get more out of the class if they sit right up front and talk to me during the class. But for most of the students you come in you sit down you take Notes as a professor lectures you do the reading assignments you write the papers, you take the final exam and the class is over. Basically, it's just an information Exchange in which you may or may not have any interpersonal interaction at all with the teacher that is not the way things worked in Jesus day. Let's begin with of course, you're in an environment in which there were no media. There were no Electronic media there weren't even any newspapers or books or anything like that and you had Scrolls written out by hand and that was pretty much it. So if a teacher wanted to wipe hearing he had to move around just as you see Jesus doing but he wasn't wasn't alone in this means the Greek philosophers would do this some Jewish. Rabbis would do this, you go from town to town and Village to Village in you would give that sort of the course summary of your teaching in each public setting for Jesus. That probably was pretty much The Sermon on the Mount. It's probably a representative example What he would say from town to town and Village to Village and the majority of people would just get that no more but there were disciples. These were people who did more than just hear the teacher once they attach themselves to the teacher. They went with him everywhere. And so we read in in Mark that Jesus appointed 12 and we also named Apostles so that they might be with him and that he might send them out to preach. We sometimes miss that so that they might be with him. That's the heart of being a disciple you hung out with the teacher 24/7 you were with him nonstop. You heard him give his standard speech over and over again and having heard it many times you almost certainly had it memorized and you could repeat it to anyone else you learned what the teacher had to teach, but you also saw how the teacher lived and the expectation was that your life would come to resemble that of your teacher that you would adopt his lifestyle as well as his message. And you had advantages of being able to ask follow-up questions getting additional teaching things like that, but literally being with him was the key and it was said in the ancient world that you could tell who's student. Someone was just by looking at them and listening to them because literally they would pick up the mannerisms in the figures of speech of their teacher so that the disciple came to perfectly reflect and represent the teacher they came to be in the image of the teacher and that's what a disciple is a disciple of someone who not only learns what Jesus had to teach so well that reshapes they're thinking it's also someone who was with Jesus sufficiently that literally you remind others of Jesus when you're out in public you reflect him well in culture and in society and this fits with the whole thrust in Scripture, We were created in God's image. We messed that image up by our sin. Jesus was the perfect image of the invisible God. He perfectly reveal God to us in the process. He also perfectly showed us what we're supposed to be like as those created in God's image. Perfect. God perfect man perfectly showed us who God is and who were supposed to be and now as his disciples were told that him he foreknew. He also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son. Who literally I know your destiny. If you're a Christian and your destiny is to be like Jesus that's where we're all headed. And that's what we are commanded to make in this missionary task. Now that task necessarily starts with evangelism. You become A disciple of Jesus by hearing the gospel and by his grace repenting and believing in it. It's a necessary start the symbol of what happens when somebody does that is baptism. And so we are to go in to go to all the nations and make disciples baptizing them in the name of the father Son and Holy Spirit baptism literally is a mark of the radical start of discipleship because baptism is a celebration of death in life death and Resurrection. I will literally are holding a funeral for the old person as they go into the water and then celebrating that the new life they have in crisis. They come out discipleship is a radical thing. It begins with sharing the gospel. It's symbolized by baptism. So we have evangelism necessarily built into this whole issue of making disciples. But it doesn't stop there. It's not like you're you're a newborn and they need to stay in newborn forever. Then goes on into a process of teaching obedience to everything. He is commanded. So given that Jesus indoors the whole Old Testament and the New Testament is the apostolic testimony to Jesus that essentially means knowing the whole Bible but more than that can form in your life to what the Bible teaches cuz we're teaching or also teaching obedience. So there is conversion as part of this but it's conversion that leads to a transformation of character as we become more and more like Jesus and the development of competence in the things that God has called on us to do as his servants and that's what it means to fulfill the Great Commission is to make disciples like that those kinds of disciples. Well, where does discipleship happen? He'll give us we've been discipled by individuals that's been very helpful or we may have taken A discipleship class and we may think of that but if you read through the New Testament carefully, you'll begin to realize that nothing less than a local church will serve to make disciples. If I'm discipling somebody one-on-one do I have all the spiritual gifts not according to 1st Corinthians 12. I don't I don't have everything that believer needs. It is only the whole body that has everything each of us needs to go to maturity and Jesus and so if he's ins for literally makes that point and that is only as each part of the body does its work that any of us grow to maturity in Christ, which means both that we are we are essential to one another and that I am insufficient apart from the church to be to be a fully equipped disciple of Jesus. So if I'm going to make disciples for Jesus in places where there are no churches necessarily the mission God has given us involves church planting necessarily you can't make disciples without churches. And so where there are no churches you must plant churches and that has been the understanding of the mainstream Protestant Mission work literally going back to the very beginning of the modern missionary movement the church to be a faithful disciple. I myself individually even as a missionary on the mission field, I need the church where I am and these new Believers need the church as the context in which they are going to grow as healthy faithful disciples. So that means then that the task is to make disciples that necessarily involves evangelism to create disciples and it necessarily involves church planting in order to have the context in which discipleship can happen. That's what we're called on to do. And the only other question really to ask is Will. Where are we supposed to do this and the answer is everywhere where we are to the ends of the Earth? What Jesus said was he wants us to make disciples of all the nations are all the peoples of the earth. It's a theme literally throughout scripture when God called Abraham. He promised him that through him all the peoples of the Earth. All the families of the Earth would be blessed in this theme just keeps going all through the Old Testament even as God is focusing his attention on one people one nation the nation of Israel. He's constantly promising that is his intention is desire is to bless all the peoples of the earth and to have worship from all the peoples of the earth. So Psalm 67 let the people's praise you. Oh God, let all the people's Praise You the promise of a messiah in Isaiah God speaking to Messiah says, it's too light a thing that you should My servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to bring back the preservative Israel. I will make you as a light for the Nations that my salvation May reach to the ends of the Earth and we talked about a nation or people here were not talking about a country with a seat in the UN. We're not talking about the modern nation-state as we can see that that that didn't exist in biblical times. We were thinking about here is a group of people who think of themselves as a distinct people group. They may have their own language their own religion there on geography. They don't necessarily have a flag in an army. It's just people who think of themselves as us as opposed to them. And so, you know in this relatively small geography of Israel, you had the Canaanites in the perizzites in the Hittites and the hivites and all those names that you don't actually pronounce out loud when you read through those lists in your quiet time. And in modern terms, you have a country like honest on which has 52 different languages spoken in an area the size of the State of Texas. But each one of those is a distinct people and each one of those constitutes a barrier to the further spread of the gospel hits. Someone must was cross in order for the gospel to keep going. So it missionary terms. We Define a people group as the largest group of people within Whom The Gospel can spread without encountering a significant obstacle to further spread. We just want to get the gospel to everyone. So that's what a people group is. But what that means then is that there's at least eleven thousand people groups in the world. And right now we have only gotten the gospel to about 5,000 of those 11,000. There's about six thousand people groups in which there is effectively no witness for Jesus Christ are those people make up about 2.8 billion Souls. So just to give you a sense of perspective. They're the year. I was born there were 2.7 billion people alive on the planet. Is that seven billion now and 2.8 billion of them live among people groups with no effective access to the gospel. And there's a lot more lost people who are among people groups that do at least technically have the church in their midst what Jesus is telling us is that he wants the gospel planted along every one of them and really here here's how the whole thing worked. So this was essentially the mission strategy the Jesus laid out and the apostles follow They went and planted churches around the ancient world and then moved on with the expectation that those churches would continue to share the gospel and plant more churches. Were they were that's why someone like the Apostle Paul can make the audacious statement in Romans. I have fulfilled the gospel that from Jerusalem to Alaric come from what is now Israel to the Croatian Coast whole Eastern North or North Eastern Mediterranean, I fulfill the gospel. He didn't come close sharing the gospel with everyone but do you plan to churches and those churches then had a responsibility to share the gospel and plant more church is where they were and then to continue sending people where the gospel wasn't that's the missionary plan of the New Testament. It involves people evangelism in church planting all is contact for making disciples. That's the task. We've been given and what we're seeing now, is that about a third of the world's population actually more than 1/3 40% of the world's population still has been unreached with this good news of Jesus. Well, this is a kind of task that frankly it is like if it doesn't overwhelm you you haven't heard what I've been saying. If it's like if you're not panicking, you don't understand the situation. This is something that is absolutely overwhelming if it feels that way to us, imagine how it felt to the original 12. So here they are there actually 11 of them cuz I've lost one the other got a few other followers and maybe come to about a hundred but they are poor uneducated members of a a subject people in an occupied country. They have no ships. No cars. No buses No Electronic media, none of that in Jesus's just told them you go evangelize the world. And it is overwhelming. And pretty much anybody who takes seriously the Great Commission has to come to the point of saying this is completely Beyond me and was like, I don't trust missionaries who haven't come to that point how you've got to come to the point of realizing. This is so far beyond me. It's absurd but God gives the ultimate promise of provision that he's given throughout scripture. He said yeah, it's overwhelming but don't worry. I'm with you and that's all you need. That really is all we need we tend especially given our cultural baggage and background. We tend to want to rely on our our cleverness or education on our resources on our technology what he says is all this really necessary as me knows what he's been saying all along you remember when Moses was given an absurd task. Now, you're supposed to go to the most powerful man in the world and tell them to let a bunch of slaves go and Moses's right? Sure. Yeah, right. Who am I? I should do that. Now. If God had been a modern person he would have probably given Moses a pep talk that would have boosted his self-esteem to realize yes. I have within me all that is necessary. There's one guy did God essentially says bat wrong question who you are is irrelevant because God's answer is I'll be with you Moses asked. Who am I God says who cares who you are. I'm with you. That's all that matters. What Jesus is saying here is that

Do what he's told us to do as we take the gospel to those who have never heard of his presence will be with us with all the provision that his presence provides and that that is sufficient. We don't need all the all the resources. We normally think of all we need is Jesus and indeed with Jesus these unlikely characters in the first century did turn their own world upside down a how much more with a larger body of Christ today is what he is told us to do something that he can do through us. So what let me let me summarize this and then make some applications. The Authority for Missions comes from The Sovereign lordship of Jesus he is king of kings and Lord of lords, he has authority over the nation's that gives us the right to do it and authority over us that gives us the obligation to do it. She is the head of this church. He owns it. He's its king belongs to him. It all the task of missions is to make disciples of all people groups in to make a disciple involve sharing the gospel baptizing those who repent and believe and teaching them to obey everything that Jesus commanded and of necessity that includes the task of planting churches which by the way if you read the book of Acts is exactly what they did and we can see how they understood Jesus words because everywhere the apostles movie Left Behind the church is it is the the absolutely enviable pattern of apostolic Mission share the gospel plan churches. That's what they understood. They were supposed to do the scope of missions is all the nations and people groups on Earth, which requires us both to evangelize those that are here and those that are far away is have not yet had any access to the gospel. By the way, you guys are in one of the most amazing places on the planet in terms of the way. God has brought the nation's to you. And I tell folks in the States this applies to you as well. I really don't care what your political views are. I don't care how you feel about the fact that the nation's are here. The fact that the nation's are here is because God brought them here because he Sovereign he's in control of it and he brought them here with you like this or not to be near you and you brought them here to be near you so you could share the gospel with him. And if you're afraid of them the best way to deal with that Fierce again saved, you know, I mean you got them saved you had to be afraid of me anymore. So that's why they are here but we have to go. Just go here. We do have to do that. We also have to go to the ends of the Earth. And the power of missions is the enduring presence of Jesus and he is sufficient regardless of how daunting it looks so he hears just just a few applications and it will close this morning. First of all, I encourage you I plead with you to learn the word and learn the world. The bus to justification for Missions and full instruction an hour to do it is in the word of God. I believe in the sufficiency of scripture in the authority and sufficiency tells me what to do. That obligates me tells me how to do it. And as you look in scripture you begin to realize the missions is not just some little subsets for a small special interest group in the church that it really is a theme moving from Genesis to Revelation. The God's heart for the Nations that God's intention for this. Of human history is precisely this to get the gospel to all the peoples of the earth and then get to know the world. So I have long harbored the conviction that as an American citizen and Americans are the most geographically ignorant people on the face of the planet. Because IIT Seminary students, I make them find every country of the world in a blank world map is part of their final exam and they do terribly and and you know, we we get all sorts of wild stuff like people in locating Syria where Sweden is and things like that. I was hoping coming up here that the Canadian educational system would be superior and you guys know geography better. I've unfortunately been informed by the people. I've been around that you may be as bad as we are. I'm sorry if you are, but the fact is it is human nature to be broke. Yo, it's human nature to thing most in care most about where you are and just literally not to know much about the rest of the world and unfortunately our news media are awful. About either ignoring the rest of the world or just totally hopelessly misrepresenting them. I tell my students in Louisville that they are steadfastly to ignore both CNN and Fox News, and basically, I'll fail them. If a report from either one of those I have my my my homepage of my my browser set to BBC World News service because I want to know what's going on in the world because what's going on in the world involved the mission of God because pretty much anywhere something's happening. It's affecting either Christians who already live there or Christians who were trying to get the gospel to there and I want to know that as I have scripture saturating my mind as I'm more and more aware of what's going on in the world. Then I have the fuel to drive me to the next thing I would urge you to do which is to pray. To pray diligently for the events of the Gospel around the world that may include I've certainly hope and expect that all of you will pray daily for the sister. You're sending out right now. It's it's your obligation is the body of Christ. You have to pray for her every day. But I hope you pray for more than that. I hope you see there's a war in this place and you pray God, please use this to show people the futility of what two things are pursuing and open them up to the gospel. And please give your people boldness in that place are there's a famine somewhere and you need to pray God, please raise up your people to step in and show the mercy of Christ there and share the gospel and uses to advance the gospel. So get to know the world for the sake of prayer. Are there some great resources operation world is one that's a tremendous resource to help, you know, how to pray for the world but be regularly in the habit of praying for the world and then God's got you where he wants you once Got you on your knees, who knows we're going to end up. I pray it someplace strange, but God has you in a position to reshape your thinking. Let me also encourage you. To give so here's where I have a distinct Advantage. I am not supported by this church. I'm not on staff in this church so I can say all the obnoxious things that someone who is can't say we are self-indulgent and title people may just be blunt. Our culture. In fact encourages us to be self-indulgent. It encourages us to consume as those that we're going to create happiness. And the result of that is that missions giving is a low priority for the vast majority of professing Christians in North America on this continent the average Evan jellicle Christian spends more money on dog food than we do on missions.

We need to do different. It should not be as hard as it is for missionaries to raise support. It should not be as hard as it is for churches to send missionaries. And the fact of the matter is it's not like there's missed the poor missionaries who live this way and everybody else would just sort of only thinks about it. Occasionally We're All in This Together We Are One mission force in the hands of God. And what would it be? Like if everyone live like missionaries do And use the remainder of their resources to bring the gospel to the ends of the Earth. Suddenly. We wouldn't have the missionary funding a missionary mobilization problem that we have and so I'm just going to throw that daring proposition out before you live like a missionary live the way somebody on missionary support does you don't need more than that? Live that way and regard what you have not as yours, but it's God's cuz you know God doesn't does not like you all 90% guidons 10 got tons a hundred percent. It's all his property and he is entrusted it to you as a stewardship to use for his purposes according to his instructions. And so I would encourage you to re-examine your values and your lifestyle and to adjust those in such a way that gods were sources are freed to do God's work, but then finally I would urge you to send and to go Send people notice in one person said a lot of people I would encourage you in fact it for to be part of the sort of the buzz of this congregation you be nudging each other's hey, why aren't you have you thought about finding a church over there? If you thought about taking the gospel to Djibouti? I mean why why would that not be a natural and glorious part of the conversation of any Christian congregation parents be willing to let your kids go don't discourage them. So often we hear from missionaries that the greatest discouragement they have received has been from their families and that includes Christian families. That is tragic. You should be a glorious celebrated thing. When you raise a child Whose desire and yearning is to take the gospel to the ends of the Earth raise than that way. But then finally, I would say ask yourself. Why not me as someone who should go. Why not me? Why do we have the default that we stay where we're needed less? Rather than the fault that we go where we needed most. We really should each of us say I am available guy for whatever you want. I am available to share the gospel where I am, which we all should be doing. I am available to plant churches in Ontario. If you ask me to do that and I'm available at the drop of a hat to go anywhere in the world that the gospel is not yet. If all of us asked why not instead of why I think the missionary problem would be largely solved as my encouragement to you. I really do want to thank you guys everything I have seen everything I have heard is encouraged as encouraged me in this church. This is a church that loves the word appreciative Faithfully. This is a church that has a strong desire to be faithful to God in the Great Commission and I'll pray for you is that God blesses that desire in a bunch of ways that in fact what you have is a steady stream of people coming in because you share the gospel with him. Steady stream of people who were going out to take the gospel to those who have never heard. Let's pray now. Father I do thank you so much for the ways. You have worked among this group of saints father. Thank you for their history of faithfulness to your word. Thank you for their desire to grow in Evangelistic and missionary undertaking here to the ends of the Earth father. I pray that you would raise up many from this group of people who find themselves in the years ahead and surprising places telling people who've never had a chance before to hear the good news of Jesus. I pray this in Jesus name. Amen.