Connecting People to His Mission
ReConnect
Connecting to His Mission
Acts 1:8
 
I want to begin by asking a question:  How many of you here are Christians?  What I mean by that is not that you have joined the church, not that you have been baptized, not that you try to live a good life; but you have repented of your sins, by faith acknowledged Jesus Christ as God's Son, accepted His death on the cross as payment for your sins, and totally committed your life to Him as your Lord and Savior.
 
Now my second question is this:  How many of you are missionaries?  Now be very careful, because if you responded to the first question, but not to the second question, then you ought to be embarrassed.  Because a Christian and a missionary
are really the same thing.
 
 
What is a missionary?  Webster's dictionary defines a missionary as "a person sent on a mission, especially on a religious mission."  Well by that definition every Christian is a missionary because every Christian is here on a mission. That mission has been defined for us in II Corinthians 5.
 
“Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation, that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation.
 
Therefore we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us: we implore you on Christ's behalf, be reconciled to God. For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. (vv. 18-21)
 
The truth of the matter is every person on earth is either a missionary or a mission field.
 
Have you ever thought about the last words Jesus ever said before he ascended into heaven?  Did you know that the last words Jesus ever uttered while he was on this earth were these: "to the end of the earth." (Acts 1:8)  When Jesus left this earth He had missions on his mind.  Jesus came as a missionary from heaven that he might make us missionaries for heaven.  Now we are seeking to reconnect to our purpose and calling as a church, and in particular as a Sunday School.
 
And it is the purpose, in part, of the Sunday School to make it possible for every member of the church to get involved in missions and ministry.  And I think it is vitally important that we earn what God expects and requires of us in regard to doing missions.
 
As a Sunday School, we ought to keep informed about where we are doing mission work, and how we can personally get involved. I believe that many of us are woefully ignorant of our responsibility to missions and the great heritage that we have as Southern Baptists in taking the gospel around the world.
 
 
 
I heard about a pastor who asked his WMU Director to visit a new Baptist family that had just moved into town.  After the visit was over she came back and said, "Pastor, you won't believe this!"  She said, "When I began to talk to this lady I asked her who Annie Armstrong was, and who Lottie Moon was, and she told me she had never heard of them."  The pastor said, "Well, what did you tell them?"  She said, "I told her to study her Bible."
 
Well you won't learn a whole lot about Lottie Moon and Annie Armstrong studying your Bible, but you will learn about the kind of heart and spirit they had as people that God sent out into this world as missionary servants.  And their heart is the heart of God.  God is a missionary God with a missionary message that we delivers through people fulfilling the mission of The Great Commission.
 
It is my hope that our Sunday School classes and teachers and members will get excited about serving the Lord and supporting through your prayers and offerings the ministry and mission that we are called to do.
 
Now the most obvious reason we are to do that is because Jesus has a concern for missions. In fact, He is so concerned about missions, He has commanded us to have a concern for missions.  The last command he ever gave on this earth was The Great Commission: "Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age."
 
We’ve already looked at that as we saw our need responsibility to connect people with Jesus.  In fact, it is at this point that the ministry of the Sunday School comes full circle.  We as a church and Sunday School go out into the world and share the gospel.
 
Through that, people get connected with Jesus, start learning His Truth, get involved in His community called the church, and the first thing they discover is their responsibility to go out into the world and help others connect to Jesus.
 
And that process has been taking place since Jesus first gave the commandment to go into all the world and make disciples. And I will tell you, even though we have this clear-cut instruction from the Lord and have been quipped by him to do the job, we are losing ground.
 
It was not until 1850 that the number of people on this earth reached one billion.  Eighty years later, in 1930, the number doubled to two billion.  Thirty years later, in 1960 the number reached four billion.  In 1985 it reached five billion people.  We are now nearing seven billion and the number continues to grow. That means there are multiplied billions and billions of people who have never even heard the name Jesus.
 
And allow me to add another dimension to that number.
 
 
 
 
 
 
If the population of the world could be compressed into a community of 100 people, 75 of them would be uneducated, underclothed, and underfed, 37 would live under present or former communist domination, 25 would belong to the Roman or Eastern Catholic Church, 15 would be Moslems, 11 would be Hindus, 15 more would either be Confucianists or Buddhists, and only 8 would be true Christians.
 
We desperately need people who hear God calling them to missions because we believe with all of our hearts that people without Jesus Christ are dying without Christ and going to hell.
 
Romans 10:13 puts it plainly, "For whoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved."  But listen carefully to what follows:  "How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed?  And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard?  And how shall they hear without a preacher?  And how shall they preach unless they are sent?" (Rom. 10:14-15a)
 
And if we really believe that people without Christ are lost, if we really believe that the good news is the gospel of Christ, if we really believe that Jesus Christ is the only way to heaven, then we must be obedient to His call to missions and ministry.
 
Now God has not left our mission enterprise to chance, secular innovation, or trial and error.  God has told us perfectly how we are to carry out the work of missions, and has already given us all the tools we need to do it.
 
 
1. God's Missionary Power
 
Jesus left his disciples with one of the greatest promises he ever gave, "But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you."
 
God has given to each one of us supernatural, pentecostal, effectual power to carry out the work of missions.
 
Now the thrust of missions is simply confronting people with their need for the gospel of Jesus Christ.  The foundation of missions is not money, nor manpower, nor methodology.  It is the power of the Holy Spirit that gives missions its thrust.  That's why everybody can be a missionary right where they live.
 
You see, witnessing is not dependent upon your personality.  It's not dependent upon your persuasiveness.  It's not dependent upon your position.  It is dependent upon the power of God and every Christian has available to him the power of the Holy Spirit to be a missionary witness wherever he is and wherever he goes.
 
There are so many people who think they just don't have the ability to witness, they don't have the ability to share the Lord Jesus Christ.  Well, my friend, God does not need your ability.  You need His ability.  All God wants from you is your availability.
 
Now you cannot give the excuse that you don't have the power. The power is available and it is yours for the asking. And if you have the power of God to do whatever God calls you to do, you don't need anything else.
 
God will supply the rest. If God will supply the power to do what you ought to do, you know He will supply the provisions for you to do what you need to do.
 
 
2. God's Missionary People
 
Now notice the purpose of this power.  Power is given so that "you shall be witnesses to Me."  The Holy Spirit is never given for our enjoyment.  It is given for His employment.  The reason why God gives to each one of us the Person, Presence, and Power of His Holy Spirit is so that we might be a witness for the Lord Jesus Christ.
 
When Jesus said, "You," He was talking to those eleven disciples.  If you are a Christian, and therefore a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ, He was talking to you as well.  Now you cannot call yourself a disciple of Jesus if you are not in the missionary business.  You really cannot call yourself a true Christian if you are not in the business of bringing people to Christ.  Jesus called twelve disciples, eleven of them went on to become soul-winners, one of them became a traitor.
 
You see, we are the people of missions. God cannot and will not win this world to Himself without us.  Christ alone can save the world, but Christ cannot save the world alone.  God has put everything into our hands.
 
I read one time a story, a legend, about a convocation of angels who had gathered around the Lord Jesus Christ after he had come back from earth.
 
 
They were asking him questions, and one angel said, "Lord, how are you going to spread the gospel message throughout the world?"  Well, the Lord Jesus said, "I have called out some disciples to carry out my great commission.
 
They in turn will go and share this wonderful message with others who will respond, and they in turn will go and share with others who need to be saved."
 
The angel said, "Are you telling me that you have entrusted the task of getting out the message of eternal life and salvation to those earthlings, counting on them to be witnesses to the gospel message and take the gospel around the world?"  The Lord Jesus said, "That's absolutely right."
 
The angel said, "Well Lord, if they don't do what you command them to do, what is Plan B?"  To which the Lord replied, "There is no Plan B."
 
If you want to know how God intends to reach a lost world for Jesus Christ, go home and look in the mirror.  There is no Plan B.  If we do not do it, it will not be done.
 
Now nobody can win everybody.  But everybody can win somebody.  It will be the nobodies that God will use to win people to His Son.  Somebody said, "I wanted to be a somebody, but God allowed me to be a nobody, so that I could share with everybody about The Somebody who can save anybody."
 
Notice carefully that God has called us to be witnesses.  God has not called us to be lawyers.  He has not called us to be prosecuting attorneys.
He has not called us to be judges.  He simply called us to be witnesses.  Now all a witness does is simply to tell the truth about what he knows, and what he's seen. God has not called us to persuade, force, coerce, or manipulate anybody into the Kingdom of God.  He has simply called us to witness to the Lord Jesus Christ and His saving power and leave the results to Him.
 
By the way, our witness is to be about Jesus.  I've heard some people say that we ought to share our faith.  Well, a Buddhist can share his faith; a Muslim can share his faith.  But what is unique about us is, we can share Jesus.
 
What this world needs is the Lord Jesus Christ.  He is the subject of missions.  He is the source of missions.  He is the sustainer of missions.  He is the strength of missions.
 
Jesus Christ is the only universal need in all the world.  He is the need of the Communist and the need of the Capitalist.  He is the need of the Republicans and the need of the Democrats.  He is the need of America.  He is the need of Russia.  He is the need of the rich, and He is the need of the poor.  I can tell you something about every man, woman, and child alive on this earth right now, their greatest need is a personal relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ.
 
Our great God has no other plan, no other method, no other idea on how lost people are going to be reconciled to His Son except that we take a saving message to a lost world that has yet to hear the wonderful gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.
 
3. God's Missionary Plan
 
Now the plan for missions is so simply beautiful, and yet so beautifully simple.  We read it here.  We are to be witnesses to Jesus "in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and Samaria, and to the end of the earth."  (v.8)  The Lord has not only told us how to go, He has told us where to go.
 
First, we are to go to our community. Now Jerusalem was where they were when the Lord spoke these words.  He said to them in effect, the first place you ought to go is next door.  I will remind you that the light that shines the farthest, shines the brightest nearest home.
 
Now I believe in world missions.  I believe in foreign missions.  But I also agree with Dr. R. G. Lee who said, "One soul is worth a thousand worlds."  If we are not doing everything we can to reach our city and our community for Jesus Christ, we have no right to call ourselves "mission minded."
 
Some of us have the idea that getting on a plane and crossing the water is what really makes a person a missionary.  But I want to remind you if you are not a missionary where you live, you will never be a missionary if you go somewhere else.
 
Dwight L. Moody was once on a train, and he happened to sit across from a young man who was just bubbling over with excitement, and he said, "Where are you headed son?"  The young man said, "Oh, I'm going to be a missionary.  I'm going over to Africa and win the heathen to Jesus."
 
 
Dwight L. Moody said, "Well, let me ask you a question.  How many souls have you brought to Jesus at home?"  The young man said, "Oh, I have never won anyone to Jesus at home."  He said, "Well son, let me tell you something, you are not a missionary, you're a sightseer."
 
I want us to continue our support in Africa and Mexico.  We are looking at some possibilities in the Philippines.  I want us to give to missions and be involved in missions, but it is impossible to do missions if there is not a strong home base to support that work.
 
There is a desperate need for folks to just be faithful at home.  Sunday school teachers, you should be the ones that set the mark for that.  Be faithful and supportive.  Lead your class in visitation and outreach. You be the pacesetter in supporting missions and ministry.  And if you can’t do that or don’t want to do that, get out of the way and let someone lead who is willing to do it.
 
Sunday School members, follow the example of our teachers and church.  Learn to minister right where you are.  You have a two great opportunities to do that in the next two weeks.  Next Sunday is our Harvest Offering day.
 
I trust you are prayerfully seeking God on your part in giving to His work.  One of the things that offering will allow us to do is be faithful to our missions commitments around the world, through our church, and the greater work of Southern Baptist.
 
 
 
Then in two weeks we have our high attendance day.  There are many of you who need to make a commitment today,, right now, you are going to get up and come to Sunday School that day.
 
And beyond that, you need to learn to just be faithful to your church in attendance.  Over the last quarter, we had 270 something different Sunday School members who came to class at least one time, but we only averaged 190 in Sunday School classes.
 
How in the world will we be a faithful witness to our Jerusalem when we don’t even have the reputation of being faithful to our church?  I will tell you one of the things I’ve learned over the last 30 years in the ministry.
 
Those who are faithful to attend and tithe and come to prayer meeting are the ones who will generally be involved in every other ministry and mission.  Those
who just show for church on Sunday morning generally can’t be counted on for anything else in the ministry either.
 
If we are ever going to be effective as Great Commission missionaries it will flow out of our commitment to the Lord and His church right here at home.
 
After Jerusalem, we are to go to "Judea and Samaria."  We are not only to reach Ardmore and Oklahoma, we are to try to reach our own country.  Now I know that there are many people in America who have heard the gospel more than a lot of people will ever hear the gospel.
 
 
But that doesn't excuse us from the fact that we have millions of people in this country who do not know Jesus as Savior and as Lord.  In fact, we are now seeing missionaries from other countries traveling to America to share the gospel.  We have become their foreign mission field.  What an embarrassment to the American church.
 
Then Jesus ended by saying, we are to go to the "ends of the earth."  That is, we are to saturate every place with the gospel of grace found in the Lord Jesus Christ.
 
It is very interesting to note that the progression of missions given in Acts 1:8 is exactly the sequence in which Acts was written.  In chapters 1-7 the focal point is Jerusalem.  In chapters 8-12 the disciples go to Judea.  Then in chapters 13-28 they scatter to Samaria and to the uttermost parts of the earth.
 
I read one time of a missionary that was writing from Manchuria.  He told of seeing a display by Standard Oil Depot in that far away country, and on that display was this slogan: "Get the light to every dark corner of the world."  That is exactly what God has called us to do, and we must not, we shall not, we dare not shirk that responsibility.  God help us to be a people that are vitally and intimately connected to His Mission.
 
Let’s pray.