The Great Commission: Implementing the Mandate - Acts 14:21-23

2:32Let me again, while you're turning, even while you're turning to Acts chapter 14, let me begin again by reading this quintessential statement on Christian missions, this quintessential statement that summarizes everything that we are all about as a church, summarizes what all the church is to do, what we are to be. And obviously, this statement is articulated. In the words of the Lord Jesus Christ, that say very simply, Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and 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. Now, what I fear is that we become so familiar with these words. We become so familiar with this particular text that it becomes a little formulaic to us. It becomes almost superficial to us. We can quote this by memory and we just go fast through it. But you know, it was not just a formula for the Apostle Paul. It was his life. It was his life and his ministry. And of course, he received this very same mandate, perhaps differently at his conversion. For example, in Acts chapter 9, we remember that he received his commission along with his conversion on the road to Damascus. We read, for example, in Acts chapter 22 and again in Acts chapter 26, his own version of the conversion account on the road to Damascus, where he states very clearly that as Jesus met him on the road, his life was dramatic. Changed. You remember that, don't you?

4:34His life was dramatically changed. Jesus meets him on that road. The great shepherd of the sheep meets the wolf on the road to Damascus, immediately humbling him. Jesus gives to Paul a commission that he would be Jesus' witness, both to Jews and to Gentiles, and to kings and to rulers and to authorities, wherever the Lord Jesus Christ sent him. Then we find in Acts chapter 14 a really wonderful statement, and I want to turn your attention then to Acts chapter 14, verses 21 through 23, that will serve as a kind of a serves as a summary statement of how Paul and his associates carried out the great commission mandate. So follow along either on the screen or in your Bibles as we read Acts chapter 14, verses 21 through 23.

5:39When they had preached the gospel to that city and had made many disciples, they returned to Lystra and to Iconium and to Antioch, strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith, and saying that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom. Of God. And when they had appointed elders for them in every church with prayer and fasting, they committed them to the Lord in whom they had believed. I believe that this is one of the most concise statements that you'll find either in the book of Acts or in all of Paul's letters relating to his particular missionary practice. These verses literally explain to us how the Apostle Paul carried out the Great Commission. So I'd like for us to look at these words and then look at them in a little bit more detail. Please keep in mind that these words are descriptive of what the Apostle Paul did at the midway point of his first missionary journey. We saw this morning that from his first missionary journey to his last missionary journey, there was about 10 years.

6:57So very early on and even before he started his first missionary journey, we see these particular principles in his life. This describes his life as he carries out the Great Commission. Now, as you know, if you wanted to back up to Acts chapter 13, the beginning of Acts chapter 13 and look at verse 4, we see here at the very beginning of this missionary journey that Barnabas and Paul, and then later on, John, Mark, they are called out and sent by the Holy Spirit from the church in Antioch to go on this missionary journey. And they head toward the island of Cyprus. They head to Cyprus and they evangelize that island. And then at that point, they head about a hundred miles north across the Mediterranean to Pamphylia as they head up to southern Galatia and they focus their attention on four different cities that we see here in Acts chapter 13 and Acts chapter 14. They focus on Antioch and Pisidia, Iconium, Lystra, and Derby. Four cities. They went. None of these cities had a church. This is the first time that the gospel is being proclaimed to these particular villages and towns and areas.

8:27To Antioch, to Iconium, to Lystra, and to Derby. So once they get to Derby, they turn around on the Via Sebastia, the Roman road, and head back right through those same cities, not evangelizing this time, but doing a different kind of ministry among these brand new congregations that had just begun. And as they do this, Luke shares this narrative with us in the verses that we just read. Now, from this summary statement of Paul's philosophy of ministry, we can see five different important components, five different important components of the fulfillment of the great commission.

9:17And I understand again, like we were talking about this morning, I understand that for many of you, this is just simply review. We are just reviewing these very basic truths. This is repetition. But I hope that you understand as a Christian that when it comes to biblical truth, repetition is always not only good but needed. We need to hear the truth, the same truth, over and over and over again. It's always good to be reminded of the most basic aspect of our ministry. Because you know what happens when we don't remind ourselves of what we're doing? We forget, we become distracted, we go off on tangents. Many in the church today are looking for the newest and the greatest methods that will bring success to the church in the eyes of the world. They're looking for what is going to bring the most bodies, bucks, and large buildings.

10:16But what we rather need to concentrate on, to be reminded of, are these most basic biblical aspects of our ministry, of our ministry. And so, first of all, the first component. That Paul and Barnabas were engaged in as they applied Jesus' commission was the work that we will call evangelization, the work of evangelization. Now, look again at verse 21, at verse 21. We read that the team had preached the gospel, verse 21, to that city, that's referring to Derby, and had made many disciples. They had preached the gospel and had made many disciples. And here we find two verbs which express the heart of this kind of work, that express the heart of this kind of ministry. The first verb emphasizes the public proclamation of good news, the public dissemination of good tidings.

11:18The good news that there is forgiveness of sin in Jesus Christ and that belief in Jesus Christ, faith in Jesus Christ, frees everything that the law could not free them from. That's the gospel. And that's what Paul and Barnabas were active in doing. They were actively, publicly proclaiming and disseminating and preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ. It's called evangelism. We know that word, don't we? They went out, they went in public, they took the gospel, and they boldly proclaimed and preached the gospel.

12:00I mean, that's pretty basic. I think we're, I don't think we have a difficult time getting our heads around that one, right? We know that in order to fulfill the missionary mandate, we must go intentionally to the nations of the world, and we must boldly proclaim the message of good news in the Lord Jesus Christ. But note also this very same text says, as we read in the text, they were not only proclaiming the gospel, but they were making many disciples. Really, when you look at this, this was kind of one and the same ministry. They were proclaiming the gospel, and then those that came and responded in faith to the gospel, they were immediately engaging with them, and they were discipling them. They were teaching them and helped them learn right from the beginning to become followers of the Lord Jesus Christ.

12:55They worked immediately with those that responded to the message. Matthew 2O, to make a disciple, to make a follower. We looked at that this morning. And this is the same exact verb that is used in Matthew 28:19. And undoubtedly, it also involved the ministry of baptism, even though that's not stated in the text. It seems obvious when we study the Great Commission mandate in the Gospels and we compare the verbiage of verse 21. Obviously, when they preached the gospel and made many disciples, most conservative Bible. Commentators assume that what is involved in that was also they were baptized. These people came to Christ, they proclaimed Christ, they professed Christ, and those that professed Christ then followed the Lord in baptism, and disciples were being made into followers of the Lord Jesus Christ. So, as they preached, how did they make disciples? Well, the first step was responding to those that had believed the gospel message and baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. They began to work with those who had believed and responded to the gospel. This is the work of evangelization. It's the starting point of any true missionary endeavor. Mission starts with the gospel and it starts with unbelievers. Those two things we need. We need unbelievers and we need the proclamation of the gospel. Now, unbelievers are not hard to find, right?

14:32The proclamation of the gospel sometimes is hard to find. But that's where mission starts. We go intentionally to all the nations of the world, we proclaim faithfully the gospel, and we begin to make disciples. So it begins with the glad tidings that we bring and those who are in need of that good news. The second component that we see here in this text is that of instruction. Instruction. Remember this morning in the Great Commission, Jesus said to baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And the second part was what? To teach them all things that I have commanded. In Acts chapter 14, we see the same work taking place. And it's expressed by this verb that emphasizes the strengthening of the souls of the disciples. Do you see that there in verse 22? It says that they strengthen the souls of the disciples.

15:45Really, this is the verb that expresses the idea of edification, the building up, the making of someone strong or the making of someone stronger, making someone firm in their beliefs and in their convictions. And what they made strong here was not referring to an external structure. What they made strong was not the trellis that supports ministry, but what they were active in doing was making strong, it says, the souls of the disciples. They were focused on people. They were focused on strengthening the eternal souls of people. And those who had responded. To the gospel message and have been baptized into Christ. This was their work. This was their work.

16:39You know, really, this is a rare verb in the New Testament. We find it literally only two other times here in the book of Acts. For example, if you look at chapter 15 and drop down to verse 32, chapter 15 and verse 32, it says, And Judas and Silas, who were themselves prophets, encouraged and strengthened the brothers with many words. This word strengthened is the exact same word. They strengthened the brothers with many words. Again, referring to the strengthening of people and not external structures. And we find the same word in just a few verses later in verse 41 of chapter 15. If you drop down to verse 41, and it says, He went through Syria and Cilicia, strengthening the churches. Same verb, strengthening the churches. And again, it's not referring to structural work on a building, but it's referring to strengthening the souls of the disciples through the teaching ministry of the word.

17:52This is really the work of maturation. This is the work of building up the body of Christ in the spirit of Ephesians 12. Chapter 4, verses 11 and following. You remember that, don't you? Keep your finger here in Acts chapter 14 and go over with me to Ephesians chapter 4. Another very well-known passage. Ephesians chapter 4, beginning with verse 11. And Christ gave to the church apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness and deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into Him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly and makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. I mean, that's simply referring to the building up, to the maturation of the body of Christ. So, what we see here through this instruction was this missionary team, they were proclaiming the gospel, they were making disciples, and then they were strengthening the souls of these disciples through the teaching and proclamation of the word of God. Do you see that?

19:50Number three, exhortation. Exhortation. We read in this statement from Luke that Paul and Barnabas were involved. It says in verse 22, encouraging these disciples to continue in the faith. They were encouraging these disciples to continue in the faith. Here, the emphasis really is on exhortation. Not only must these disciples be strengthened in terms of doctrine and in terms of the words of Christ, in terms of everything that the Lord Jesus Christ had commanded, but they also had to be exhorted, particularly with respect to persevering in the faith. This was a key component, really, of their teaching that emphasized the need for perseverance.

20:46And what we read here in this particular verse is that they did this with respect to the reality of what? Of tribulations. Oh, wow. We don't like that word, do we? Do you like... Tribulations? Do you like suffering? Do you like affliction? Do you like trouble? Well, this whole area of exhortation and encouraging these disciples to persevere, to continue in the faith, was a key component of their missionary ministry. What's really interesting here in this statement is the use of the Greek third person, impersonal verb of methosetai. You could translate really what follows in this way. It could literally be translated that it is necessary with respect to us, that is the disciples, Paul and Barnabas, said it is necessary to enter the kingdom through many trials and tribulations. It is necessary to enter the kingdom through many trials and tribulations. Have you had any trials and tribulations?

22:08My dad used to tell me when I was a young person going through a trial, he'd say, cheer up, Jim, the worst is yet to come. You see, Paul and Barnabas understood right from the very beginning that the Christian life is a life of tribulation. It's a life of tribulation. Of trouble, of suffering, of persecution. In fact, what's very interesting to note is that toward the very end of Paul's ministry in 2 Timothy chapter 3, in fact, turn over there with me if you will, please. 2 Timothy. 2 Timothy chapter 3.

22:50Drop down to verse 12. 2 Timothy chapter 3. 2 Timothy chapter 3. Look at verse 12. Indeed, Paul says, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. They will suffer. And you know what? He states it as an absolute. He doesn't say maybe they'll suffer. He says they will suffer. And you know, it's very interesting to remember that Paul, who Paul said that to, who was he writing to in 2 Timothy? He was writing to his young disciple Timothy. Where was Timothy from? Timothy was from Lystra, from this very region that he had just preached the gospel in.

23:44And what almost happened there in these places? He was stoned to death, left for dead. Paul had suffered tribulation in those areas. In fact, if you look at verse 11 at 2 Timothy 3. 3 verse 11, Paul refers to the sufferings that he had already suffered there in that first missionary journey. And so, for the Apostle Paul, whether it was the first missionary journey in Antioch, Iconium, and Lystra, or whether it was even before he made that first missionary journey, Paul understood following his conversion that tribulation and suffering and affliction were going to be a part of his life as a Christian.

24:32And so, when you read the writings of Paul, the theme of suffering and persecution, the necessity of suffering for the Christian, is an integral part of his ministry. Paul taught the Christians that they were going to have to suffer, that he taught them how to suffer, that they must suffer. And really, you know, there is an eschatological emphasis here in this text. He didn't just say that this life is filled with suffering, but rather he is looking to a future time, and eschatology played an important role in his ministry right from the very beginning. I mean, as far as we know, Galatians was probably the first of his letters that was written, probably in the late 40s, 49, 50 A.D. And then, you know, which were probably the next two? 1st and 2nd Thessalonians, A.D. 51, and then. Later, 51, 52. And when you read 1 and 2 Thessalonians, guess what they are filled with? Eschatology. Eschatology. He taught it right from the beginning. The view of eschatology that the Christian is on a path to the celestial city. He's on a path to a future kingdom. This life is not the eternal kingdom. This is a life of suffering and tribulation and affliction and persecution. The eternal kingdom is yet to come.

26:05Unlike some are telling us, this is not your best life now. We go through this life of suffering to the eternal kingdom. And so there's a definite eschatological emphasis here. He said to these Galatian believers, Look, you are not citizens of this world. And this was a key component of his missionary effort to teach Christ's disciples that they were not citizens of this world, that suffering and persecution are a normal part of that Christian life. You say, well, I haven't suffered much.

26:46I think that anybody with any discernment at all looks around and says, it's coming. It's coming. Fourth, the fourth component. That we see here is indigenization. Paul and Barnabas were engaged in indigenization. What is something that is indigenous? If a flower is indigenous to East Texas, what does that mean? It's from there, it's characteristic of the plants and flowers in this area. So we're simply talking about the fact that Paul and Barnabas were engaged in establishing Christian churches that were taught by, discipled by, led by, supported by folks from that area. That's all that word means. Verse 23, notice what else they did. Notice what else this missionary team did. In verse 23, the first part of it says they appointed elders. They appointed elders. It says, they appointed elders for them in every church. Now, please note again that this is very early in Paul's missionary ministry.

28:07Of course, the liberal critics will say that the concept of eldership was a late first century or even early second century invention that evolved over a period of time. But that's simply not true. At the very, very beginning of Paul's ministry on his first missionary journey, as they're busy planting churches. What are they doing in these new Christian congregations? They are establishing what? Elders. Leaders, godly leaders, mature leaders. It's always amazed me when you study this text to realize that these new churches in Antioch, Iconium, Lystra, and Derby are only weeks old. At the most, they are months old.

29:02They're very young. And Paul didn't turn around and say to them, Listen, you guys, you know, you've just come to Christ. You're still very immature. Really, you're too immature to have your own personal leadership. So, you know, I guess we need to set up a hierarchy. We need to set up some sort of a bishopric. And we need to have somebody sort of guide you and be over you. Is that what Paul said? Not at all. Paul believed in localized leadership. And as soon as he could turn over the reins of leadership to local elders in that place, guess what? He did. He did.

29:44And really, there are two important things that we need to see here. First of all, there is a plural leadership, elders, it says. And then you have an important statement in every church. And he uses the Greek preposition keta in. A distributive sense so that they appointed elders literally according to church. Appointed elders plural according to each church singular. So there is a plurality of leaders. This is not a complex hierarchy. This is not a complex structure. It is very simple. I think we can understand this, can't we? One church. Go back to math, right? One church, one group of elders. And that's it. And you know, they obviously recognize their insufficiency. They recognize their dependency upon God.

30:45Because Luke records in verse 23 that as they appointed these elders only after what? Prayer and fasting. Prayer and fasting. This was no simple human endeavor. Some churches often say, well, they hear of the whole concept of plurality of elders. They say, oh, well, that's easy enough. We can just appoint two, three, four, five men in our church, and we got a plurality of elders. No, they have to be biblically qualified elders, 1 Timothy 3, Titus 1. These are godly men with godly lives that have the ability to teach the word of God.

31:29So this is. Not a simple human endeavor. It was not just Paul's personal preference. He knew that this was a part of the divine commission. And so that work he bathed in prayer and fasting. What did Jesus do all night before he chose his apostles? What did he spend the night doing? Praying. Praying. Finally, you have commendation. Commendation. Verse 23, the fifth component that we read about in this missionary team says that they committed them to the Lord in whom they had believed. This is very important, very important. The commendation, the commendation. Now, Paul and Barnabas were apostolic authorities over these churches, right? That's pretty clear. And they had also set up elderships over each individual church. Nevertheless, they recognized that these churches did not belong to them as apostles. They recognized that these churches did not even belong to the elders who were over these churches. Rather, they recognized that these churches belonged to who? To the Lord. These churches belong to the Lord. And so an important part of this missionary activity was to commend or to commit these churches. Churches to the Lord.

33:03And you know, Paul is going to follow this pattern throughout his ministry. You might say, well, Jim, you know, this is a narrative text. This is a descriptive text, but really, does this become normative? Does this become prescriptive for the church? You know what you could do? This will be a little exercise for you this week. You can take Acts chapter 14, verses 21 through 23, and you can superimpose them over 2 Timothy. And you can find every single one of these five components in 2 Timothy. You know why that's significant? Because 2 Timothy was the last letter that the Apostle Paul wrote just before his martyrdom. So from the very beginning of his life to the very end of his life, Paul believed in and practiced these very simple missionary principles.

33:58Now, at our recent TMAI meetings, we kind of sat around and began to discuss some of the implications of these truths. So some of the observations and questions that I would like for us to look at now may be a little bit directed to professors at a seminary out on the field somewhere, but I think that we can find application for all of us in some of these observations, especially as we think through a missionary, a biblical missionary philosophy. Of ministry in our local churches. So I'd like for you to look at three important observations here. First of all, Paul's ministerial practice did not evolve over his missionary career. They did not evolve over his missionary career. What he did at the end of his ministry is the same that he did at the beginning of his ministry.

34:55It's exactly the same. You can take these five components in Acts 14, superimpose them over 2 Timothy, and you will find all of them articulated very clearly in 2 Timothy. They're all there. Paul's approach to missions never changed. It never evolved over his lifetime, nor should they ours. Number two, Paul's ministerial practice underscores the beautiful simplicity of the missionary endeavor. The beautiful simplicity of the missionary endeavor. It really underscores the simplicity of what missions should be all about.

35:40We have a tendency, particularly in America, but also as Europeans, we have a tendency to over-complicate things. Coming back to this, we recognize these five basic components and see that the missionary endeavor is intended. Divinely so to be rather simple. It's not simple to go out. It's not a difficult thing to know to go out and proclaim the gospel to sinners. It's not difficult. It's not difficult to begin to work immediately with those people that come to Christ and begin to disciple them and help them understand the basic truths of Scripture. It's not difficult to strengthen their souls in Christ and to instruct them in the Word of God. It's not difficult to help them get involved in a biblical local congregation called the church. Really, that's not difficult.

36:41But we have a tendency to overcomplicate things. Back when Carolyn and I were at Bible College, back up in Canada, that was about 500 years ago. Like I told you this morning, the primary focus of the school was missions. One of our primary textbooks was a book written by Roland Ronald Allen, a book entitled Missionary Method, St. Paul's or Ours. Ronald Allen was a missionary in North China in the late 1800s and the early 1900s. And in this book, you have to understand that by that time, the modern missionary movement was about 100 years old. The missionary societies began to develop. In the early beginning in the early 1800s, with the London Missionary Society. You remember that guy, William Carey, don't you? And during the 1800s, there were many, many missionary societies that exploded across Europe and throughout India and many other China and many other areas. But just a short hundred years later, Ronald Allen is sounding the alarm and he is saying, wait just a minute, we're getting far too complex in what we are doing in our missionary efforts.

38:04And he began to enunciate some of those difficult things. He said, for example, we're creating a tremendous hierarchy that the nationals are not going to be able to reproduce or they are not going to be able to sustain on their own. And he challenged the missionaries back at the beginning of the 19th, of the 20th century, to go back and examine these biblical practices and allow these five components to drive your missionary efforts. It's true. There have been a lot of very complicated structures developed all over the world in many mission fields of the world by American Western missionaries. That if those American missionaries were to all of a sudden be removed from those countries and their money was to be removed from those countries, there is absolutely no way that. The national Christians in that country could sustain those difficult hierarchical structures. No way.

39:10Paul's ministry practice was quite simple. And really, Ronald Allen in his book says it is essential that each generation of the church resubmit the traditions of men to the Word of God and to the Spirit of God. And I submit to you, that's exactly what we need to do in 2016. We need to take all of our missiological traditions and practices and we need to resubmit them to the Word of God. And do they hold up according to the Word of God?

39:45Thirdly, Paul's ministerial practice always focused on three priorities. First of all, always focused on the proclamation of the gospel, always focused on the gospel and all of its beauty and all of its components. I would say in that everything from salvation to eschatology, the doctrine of God, the doctrine of the church, the doctrine of sin, the biblical worldview. He taught them all of that. His ministry also focused on human souls. Paul's ministry was focused on people, believe it or not.

40:27You would be surprised at how many missionaries. There are all over the world whose lives never interact with people. They go down, they sit in an air-conditioned office, they type on a computer, they talk on a phone, they send stuff back and forth to the states, and their lives just simply do not interact with people. That's what a missionary does. You go intentionally to all of the nations of the earth and you get on the ground and you learn the language and you get to know the people and you interact with the people. You look at Paul's life in his ministry, it was people-focused, it was gospel-focused, it was people-focused.

41:17Dear friend, if you don't like people here, you are not going to like people there. They speak a funny language, they eat funny food, they sometimes dress in funny ways and do funny things. If you don't like people here, please never leave the soil of this country. Paul's ministry focused on the gospel and it focused on human souls, not external structures. And finally, his ministry focused on the Lord. On God. You know that sermon we referred to this morning in Acts chapter 2 that Peter preached? It's really interesting, not only to go through that sermon and see how many times he quoted the Old Testament, but it's interesting to see how many times he referred to God. It's like in every verse, sometimes in every other verse, it's God this, God that, God the other, God did this, God did the other, God did this. His whole sermon was focused on God, God, God. And he preached the gospel of God and he interacted with people, real life people.

42:39If you don't like people here, please don't even think about being a missionary there. And at the end, he commends them to the Lord. He does all of this for the Lord. This is his act of worship to the Lord. It all belonged to the Lord. You see, five links in a chain. You see this logical sequence here: evangelization, instruction, exhortation, indigenization, and commendation. You see that? They're all like links of a chain. There's a logical sequence. You can't. Break any one of these here. They are all essential to doing biblical New Testament missions. They start here, they finish here. This is what missions is all about.

43:42This is what biblical missions is. Really, every church, every missionary sent by the church needs to be committed to these five priorities, these five commitments. Now, at our TMAI meetings, we sat around and began to ask ourselves some questions, evaluate our ministries. It's good to evaluate your ministry from time to time, assess your ministry. Sometimes you need to have an out-of-body experience. Not literally. Sometimes you just need to back off and back away and just kind of try to look at your ministry from the outside in with an honest, transparent evaluation. Look at what you're doing in the light of Scripture. Do some honest evaluation by asking yourself some honest questions. What are we doing in these areas? Now, I realize all of these areas that I'm getting ready to show you may not apply to you specifically, but I think they generally apply to all of us. Let me give you five questions, and I know that you'll be able to come up with many, many more questions as we evaluate. Our ministries. First of all, can you objectively demonstrate a clear relationship between your ministry activities? I'm talking about your day-to-day ministry activities and any one or more of these five components in the chain links. Can you trace what you're doing to any one of those components in the link?

45:25That's key. We ought to always be able to say, you know, what I'm involved with today is directly connected to this particular component. And you know, I'm not talking about just being able to try to, through some drawing, some kind of a squiggly, weird line in your life and ministry, somehow be able to come back to one of these components. I'm talking about drawing a direct line from what you are doing in your life directly to these key components.

46:02So evaluate your life and ask, what is occupying my time? What is requiring my energy? What is requiring me to stay up late at night and get up early in the morning? Those things are tied directly to any one of these five components in your life. Number two, if you are involved, we were asking this question to ourselves as those involved in training. Men in the Word of God, but you could apply this in the whole area of making disciples. But as one who is involved in training, are you simply educating students and granting diplomas, or are you strengthening the souls of Christ's disciples?

46:47If our training doesn't strengthen the soul, we dare not call it biblical training. It can be academic, but it may not necessarily be biblical training. If what we're doing is biblical training, then it must strengthen the souls of the disciples. It must edify, it must build up the souls of the disciples to prepare them for more pure worship and ultimately to prepare them for eternity. Number three, to what extent is the topic of suffering a part of your instruction?

47:29That your students, your disciples, are not citizens of this world, and that the Christian life in general is going to be marked by hardship. And how much more should missionaries and pastors be ready to suffer? Have you heard of Paul Washer at all? Perhaps not. Paul speaks typically at the Shepherd's Conference every year, stays typically in the same hotel. Christ Day. And I've had an opportunity to get to know him more at a personal level. I ran into him one night at the recent Shepherd's Conference. We ended up standing in the hallway talking for about two hours with a couple of other guys.

48:15And he was telling us a little bit about his evangelistic ministry here in the States and around the world. And at the conclusion, he looked at us and told us, he says, You know what? I fully expect at some point to spend the rest of my life in prison. So I fully expect that. Now, obviously, he doesn't know that. We don't know that. We don't know how soon more suffering is coming to us. I dare say, if the Lord waits for his return longer enough for our generation of children to grow up and get married and have children, I can only imagine what they may face. Are we preparing the disciples in our local churches? Are we preparing our children even for suffering?

49:11Is suffering an identifiable part of your curriculum? Does your instruction include a strong eschatological emphasis? Eschatology is so easy to forget. It's so easy to minimize. We just think it's all going to work out at the end, you know? It's like the guy said, Well, you know, there's all millennialism and pre-millennialism and post-millennialism. He said, I'm a pan-millennialist. And he went on to explain, he said, I have no idea what I believe about the end times. He said, I just believe everything's going to pan out okay.

49:51And you know, we make little and we make light of eschatology. But when you study the scriptures, the scriptures give it a major emphasis. Paul emphasized eschatology right from the beginning, just as we saw. He writes to the Thessalonian saints only months after they were established as a congregation on his second missionary journey. They were newborns. They were newborn babies in Christ, and he's already reminding them of the eschatology that he had already taught them concerning the rapture and the day of the Lord and other things.

50:26How much is eschatology a part of your curriculum? Basically, what we're saying here is: we need to teach as we make disciples, we need to teach people that this life is short and eternity is long. Carolyn and I don't watch a lot of television, and when we do, we try to be selective. But sometimes we get drawn into crazy weird programs. In the last couple of years, there's been a, I don't know if it's a new program or not, it's been new to us. It's called Strange Inheritance or Your Strange Inheritance. Have you ever seen that program?

51:15Strange Inheritance, I think it's put on by Fox News. And what they do is they go around to different people in the United States that talk about strange, weird inheritances that they've received from different people. And then the whole show is around that strange inheritance they developed. One night it was about a family that had inherited hundreds of tractors or hundreds of cars or hundreds of toys and find out that they're just worth an enormous amount of money. Well, obviously, it's not a Christian program, but what's been very interesting to me is that the moderator of that program, the very last sentence she says as they're closing out the program, she looks at the audience and says, Remember, you can't take your inheritance with you. Or when you die, you can't take your inheritance with you.

52:12To my knowledge, she's not even a Christian. But there's a woman of the world that at least realizes that when you die, it's all over as far as your earthly inheritance. How much of your time, how much of your effort, how much of your money are you putting in? Investing into this world that is so short? And how much of your time and how much of your money are you investing that will last through eternity? We don't often think about those things. Jonathan Edwards, and you know, in all of those resolutions that he wrote out, when he, how old was he? When he wrote those 20 something, he was a young man when he wrote out all these resolutions. You know what one of his resolutions was as a young man that he made? He said, Every single day of my life, I will deliberately, intentionally think about death.

53:08Why on earth would he say that? Because he wanted to constantly remember that this life was short and eternity was long. And what he did now had a lot to do with long eternity. Where are you? Where are you investing your life, your gifts, your money? Where are you investing in all that? Because remember, when you die, you will not take it with you. Only that which you have done for Christ will be an eternal investment. Number four, as a missionary, how intentional and sacrificial are you in developing local leadership to supplement and then finally to replace you? We talk a lot about that in TMAI. It's a part of our strategy. It has to be a part of the missionary strategy. You have to be. Sacrificial and intentional. You have to recognize your dependency upon the Lord, and you have to do it with much prayer and fasting. Number five, is your greatest desire to bring others directly to God, or do you see yourself as the permanently necessary mediator between God and those in your ministry?

54:23Now, obviously, pastors do have a mediatorial? Is that the English word? Mediatorial role in the sense of a little, lily, little tiny, tiny M. We do bring people before God and God through the scriptures to the people all the time, but we do that in a limited way. And ultimately, we do it in such a way that when we leave those disciples, they recognize that they have a direct relationship with the Lord. They don't have to come to the Lord through us.

54:57We're not that permanent necessity. We are very, very dispensable. Do you teach people? Do you teach the men that you train? Do you teach the disciples that you make that you are an indispensable person in their life or that you are a dispensable person in their life? That the Lord remains. He is their confidence. He and only He is the head of the church. We need to think about these things. I had, I was recently in Mexico, a few months ago, teaching a conference on marriage just north of Mexico City to one of the new church plants there. Two graduates from our seminary started the church.

55:49They naively thought that they could reform their previous church, which was unsound in doctrine. But after two or three years of trying, their denominational leader showed up surprisingly and unexpectedly one morning and fired them. They were kind of surprised. Just fired them. You're a Calvinist. You believe in the doctrines of grace. You're a heretic. Get out of here. And literally, from one day to the next, they were thrown out on the street. No church, nothing. After about a month or so went by, the Lord just, a lot of the people from that church began to come to them and say, we actually were believing the things you were teaching us.

56:38And so about a year and a half ago, they started a brand new congregation. I think they're up to about 80 or 90 people already after about a year and a half. And anyway, I was there recently teaching a marriage conference, doing a great job leading that new little congregation. But they said, you know, my sister, the pastor said, my sister-in-law and her husband live next door. We would like for you to stay with them while you're here. Which I did at a beautiful home. But it was kind of interesting because they also were Christians, but they had attended for a long time. They had attended a church that had been started and led and pastored by an American missionary 23 years ago. Guess who was still the pastor of this little church? This American missionary.

57:24And over the weekend, as I would talk with them, you could just tell that this pastor was just an indispensable person. Well, we need to go talk to the pastor. Well, we need to ask them. Well, we need to, you know, their lives revolved around that American pastor. Folks, that is not God's design. That is not God's design. God's design for the missionary is to go and be involved in these five components that we look, to leave nationally established churches with national leadership that then teach themselves, reproduce themselves, finance themselves, support themselves, and duplicate themselves. That is God's method.

58:08Well, I was going to leave some time for questions, but my time is gone. So why don't we just pray? And if you have any questions, I would be happy to answer them personally following our time tonight. Before I pray, let me, I almost forgot again, brought some. A little booklet and some brochures that describe and talk a little bit more about the ministry of TMAI. They are out there on the shelf as you come in the door, and I would like to invite you to feel free to take one or several pieces of this literature and take it home with you to your own personal study. Let's pray. Father, help us to reflect on these simple priorities, not only in our own local ministry, but also in the worldwide missionary enterprise that you have called us to. Father, I pray that you would help us to be faithful to these principles, to these truths, to these things.

59:14Lord, in areas where we need to be reproved and corrected, we pray that you will be faithful in doing that where we may have strayed from these very simple but divinely powerful principles for making disciples in the entire world. Lord, help us to understand where even we may be off even slightly from the biblical path. And help us, O Lord, to be committed to these things. Lord, our desire is to follow Christ and just like the apostles did, to carry out his commission to us. Empower us for that, we pray, in Jesus' name.

1:00:00Amen.