Full Transcript

Okay, I wanna talk about the gospel. We’re gonna relay some foundations for missions in the church that have been part of this church. And this is mostly for people who are new. You guys, we don’t have, actually, the Protestant church in America doesn’t have a full, kind overall, doesn’t have a comprehensive picture of what the gospel really means, right?

[00:00:23] We have an Americanized version of the gospel. That has been developing for the past 500 years of Protestantism, but God wants us to complete it. What the reformers did was essential to the church. We needed to be reformed from where the Catholic church had gotten to after 1500 years. But in that reformation, the work wasn’t done.

[00:00:47] They just laid, they just got the church back on the right track at the foundation of Protestantism. But God gives progressive revelation of what’s already in scripture, and so I wanna bring another part of the gospel that most American churches don’t understand. In March 16, Jesus had gone to all the.

[00:01:07] Preach the gospel to all creation. That’s our job. Go into all the world and preach the gospel. We know that the gospel definition is good news, so that means if what we’re preaching doesn’t sound like good news to unbelievers, then we’re not preaching the gospel. And this is actually a challenge with most Protestant churches, what they’re preaching as the gospel doesn’t sound like good news to unbelievers, and yet the gospel means good news.

[00:01:39] So what is that good news we’re supposed to share. What is the gospel now? It’s taught in Bible school right here. Christ for the Nations in Dallas, right? With any theological idea, there’s one verse that gives you the definition of this idea, and then the rest of the Bible expounds on it and fills it in, right?

[00:02:02] So I do this when I go to churches or teach at pastors conferences. Tell me the gospel message in one sentence. I wanna highlight. What we have to do to heal the gospel or to bring in the missing bits that we don’t have. You know what I get when I ask in one sentence, give the gospel, they go, God loves us, John three 16.

[00:02:24] Those are all part of the gospel, but that’s not the one sentence that the Bible defines as the gospel a sing. Galatians three, eight. Paul defines the gospel for us. He says, scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles, and those were the people who didn’t have God, right? The Gentiles. Today, we call them unreached people groups, but in the Bible they’re called gentiles.

[00:02:49] The scripture foresaw that God would justify the unreached people groups by faith and announced the gospel. To Abraham. So the gospel didn’t start with Jesus. It started way back in the beginning of the Bible, and actually way back, infinite in the past, beyond even the creation of the earth. The gospel isn’t new with Jesus because it’s been eternal and will be eternal.

[00:03:16] So God announced the gospel in advance to Abraham saying, I’m going to send Jesus, dine the cross for the forgiveness of your sins and the eternal salvation of your souls. Is that what God said? No. What did he say to Abraham? He said something what he actually said to Abraham. We won’t go there.

[00:03:36] Forget that. What did God say to Abraham? All nations will be blessed through. So in Galatians, Paul defines the gospel as all nations will be blessed through you. That’s a different gospel than we hear being preached, isn’t it? So this is actually the good news. The good news is all nations will be blessed through us, that our God is so big, so huge, so omnipotent, so omnipresent that he has.

[00:04:08] Power to bless everyone on the planet, and that’s what he wants to do, right? Said Peter in Acts three. Now you’re gonna see this idea repeated in the Bible three times in the New Testament. Peter, while he was explaining the gospel, only the second time he ever preached after he was filled with the Holy Spirit, he gave the same definition for the cause.

[00:04:32] I’m gonna preach the gospel. Here it is. Indeed, all the prophets from Samon, as many as I’ve spoken, have for told these days. And you guys were all heirs of the prophets, we’re all descendants and of the covenant, God made with your fathers when he said to Abraham, through your descendants, all nations will be blessed.

[00:04:54] So for the second time in the New Testament in the context of the gospel, we see this one scripture from the Old Testament that we’ll look at in just a. The third time in fact, I’ll just say this before we go, on the next verse, it says, when God raised up his service, Jesus, he sent him first to you to bless you by turning each of you from your wicked ways.

[00:05:18] So what is the gospel? God wants to bless the nations and the first blessing. Mercedes and big houses and lots of money. That’s what we think of blessings. The blessing is turning each of us from our wicked ways because it’s our sin that causes all the negative things in our life. And if we wanna have a better life, we’ve gotta do is turn from our wicked ways.

[00:05:47] And the blessing of God is that he gives us the power to turn away from that. Okay. for the second time. We say that same verse. God wants to bless the nations in the context of preaching the gospel, right? We see it for the third time in the book of Hebrews in chapter six. Talking about the gospel message.

[00:06:09] It says, when God made his promised to Abraham saying, I will surely bless you and through your descendants, bless the nations, God wanted to. Unchanging nature of his purpose, very clear to the heirs of what was promised. So what we have is something unique in the Bible. This one verse, blessed to be a blessing to all the nations, is a verse quoted by the Bible itself.

[00:06:36] More times than any other verse quoted in the Bible, that shows us how important it is. And in Galatians through Galatians, Paul said, that’s the gospel message. Okay. It’s the very core of it. Okay, so let’s look at the original passage. This is the, this is what they’re all quoting. Genesis 12, one to three.

[00:06:56] God says, I will, Abraham, I will bless you. This is the good news. Our God is a God of blessing. He’s not a alot of cursing. He’s not a God who wants to punish us. He’s not a God who’s against us. It’s not a God who stays. He’s a God of blessing. He wants to bless us. That’s the good news. The good news is the nature and character of God himself.

[00:07:25] He’s good and he’s on our side, and we’re the only religion who has a God, who’s good and is on our side. Every other religion has angry. Gods who bring judgment and destruction, but our God says, no. My goal is to bless you. I have got so much blessings. The first blessing is freedom from sin, but then other blessings come too.

[00:07:50] That’s the gospel, the nature and character of God himself. The cross is not the gospel message. It’s the most important thing in spiritual history. It’s the result of the gospel. If God wasn’t good, he would not have sent Jesus, but because he’s good and wants to bless us, he said, I know you can’t get yourself out of your mess by yourself, so I’m gonna send Jesus because I love you to get you out of the mess.

[00:08:18] So the good news is even better than the cross. The good news is who? God is a God of blessing, who’s on our side and is with us, but the gospel isn’t something we only receive. Okay? I receive the gospel blessed by God, free of Sid, everything else that verse goes on to. I will bless you and you will be a blessing.

[00:08:43] You won’t keep it to yourself. And where will we share that? All nations on Earth will be blessed through you. So the gospel message is blessed to be a blessing to all the nations of the earth. That’s the good news. God’s big wants to bless everyone. 8 billion people in the world just cross that line, and God is big enough to bless every single one. With not only a blessing of freedom from sin, but every other blessing in life too. So the good news is God’s a God of blessing. That’s the great news. The Kate Nature and character of God himself, and the cross. Keep this in mind is the result of the good news.

[00:09:23] Now, where do we start preaching the gospel at, man? You’re a sinner. You’re a sinner. You need to repent at the foot of the cross. Jesus came to die for your sin. We start the gospel at man and how wicked we are. Where does God start the gospel at himself and how good he is? Because what people need to know is God is for them.

[00:09:47] That’s the first thing they need to know, and it’s through him that they have freedom, the power to repent of their sins. So instead of yelling at people to, for being sinners, we need to first redeem their view of the nature and character of God so that they want to serve God and want to love him and want to be in relationship with him.

[00:10:09] That’s the goal of evangelism and missions. Because everyone has a wrong idea of who God is. If God is a God of love, why did he allow a Hitler to be born? They have all these kinds of questions. They have wrong views. So the gospel is sharing who God is, that he’s forst not against us, he’s on our side, doesn’t wanna punish us.

[00:10:31] He’s here to heal us based on our repentance and. And we see that, pastor quoted it this morning. Look at this, in Romans five, it says, Christ died for the ungodly. He said, very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, but for a good man, someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this, while in rebellion and sinners.

[00:10:54] He still came to save us out of it. See, that’s because he is a good God who wants to bless us and help us and he doesn’t trying to revenge and take vengeance. You’ve been rebelling against me, so you’re going to hell. Just the opposite. He said. Even though you’re in rebellion, I still love you. Come on.

[00:11:13] Come here. Okay. Jesus said it in Matthew 11, five. The blind received sight, the lame walk. Those who have leprosy are cured. The deaf ear, the deader race, and the good news, it’s preached to the poor. See, that’s who our God is the God of blessing. Not the God of judging and cursing. That’s not the main deal.

[00:11:33] Matthew five tells us. God causes his son to rise on the evil and the good and sends reign on the righteous and unrighteous. See, all of scripture conveys the blessing of God, even on unbelievers that he loves and wants to provide for. So we need to learn how to present God in that kind of a way. So in our evangelism, if you’re talking to people about God, first thing you have to.

[00:12:00] Your coworkers or whatever is find out what they currently know about God and then help them go farther. So that’s what happens with me. I’ll ask someone, tell me what your idea of God is. And it’s usually something negative. Thou schult, not thou schult. Do thou schult not.

[00:12:15] And I say, that’s not who God is. Let me tell you, I, I know God. I’ve experienced God. Let me tell you what I found out about God. Even when I was a , even when I was in rebellion and really a bad person, Jesus. God said, Jesus, to get me out of this, he’s a good God, right? We’ve gotta redeem the.

[00:12:34] God first in our evangelism. Rather than saying, you’re a sinner, come to the foot of the cross. We gotta start with who God is and redeem that. Now, you guys, in our mission, in the mission I’m part of, we’ve studied every word in the Bible and counted them up. And the top three verbs, God calls himself.

[00:12:53] In the Book of Genesis are not God punishes. God judges, God, is mad at us. The top three verbs, God attributes to Himself are, God gives God blesses, God creates. So the whole Bible is just a revelation of this goodness of God that we haven’t really preached well in the Protestant church. In fact, 80% of God’s commands are skated in the positive.

[00:13:19] All of his commands are not the negative ones, thou shalt knots. But that’s what most people think about us. It’s 80% are stated in the positive and the 20% that are negative, most of them are don’t fear, don’t worry about tomorrow, things that are for our benefit. It’s only like a few that are, thou shall not thou schult not right?

[00:13:40] So we’ve gotta help. So the gospel messages, God is a God of blessing. That’s what we receive, but the gospel message is also. Take this God blessing to all the nations. The gospel’s also something we do take the message to the nations. So that’s, we’ve gotta reform this. Now, this is a graph, un graph of quality of life, all the nations of the earth.

[00:14:06] Blue, green is Islam, yellow and orange or Hinduism. Buddhism. Purple and gray. Gray is Judaism, purple is Christianity. What does that show you? Quality of? The Christianized nations have the best quality of life. Why? Because God is a God of blessing. That’s what’s the best thing we can do for Iran?

[00:14:30] Preach the gospel, not nuke. What’s the best thing we can do for India and China? Preach the gospel. What’s the best thing we can do for the country’s Islamic countries? Down at the bottom? Preach the gospel so they can go up the chart. So even un statistics show that God is the God of blessing when a nation embraces Christ, and this is why we’re our country’s in trouble.

[00:14:56] As more and more people turn away from. The blessings in our country are decreasing. Okay, so we’ve got some work to do. Here’s some other, see, poverty. 19 90, 50 2% of the world. By 2019 it was we decreased poverty by 42%, and the vast majority of the decline is in the newly Christianized countries.

[00:15:20] That started during the 82,000 movement in the nineties that pastors Carrie and Susan, they brought the church in, and that’s when got connected. I was involved in this thing called the 82,000 movement, the greatest missions movement of all time. The church here was in the middle of that too, and as a result, the blessings of God in all the countries that got the gospel poverty decreased down to 10%.

[00:15:45] This is the greatest fact of the past 30 years. That doesn’t get reported enough. And you guys, of the 10% of people in the world are still in extreme poverty. The vast majority, almost 90% are in the unreached people groups who don’t have the gospel because they’re not blessed, because they’re not following Christ.

[00:16:05] Okay. So we’re blessed to be a blessing to all the nations. The gospel is receiving the blessing, and the gospel is also giving the blessing. Now you guys do that great. Through your giving. The church has been faithful to steward the money to support strategic missionaries. It’s been great. So where are we at right now?

[00:16:25] In the 2000 years since the church age, still 3.3 billion Muslim, Hindu and Buddhists without the gospel. Okay, so where have we gotten to in this blessed to be a blessing to all the nations? About half the world still doesn’t have the gospel. They’re in this part of the world. We call the 10 40 window, 10 degrees below the equator to 40 degrees above it.

[00:16:47] Northern Africa, the Middle East Asia that’s the majority of the world’s population and that’s the biggest target cuz that’s where the gospel isn’t. All the unreached people are, in fact the majority of poverty in every and majority of. Terrorism all flows out of this part of the world that hasn’t received the blessing of God through the gospel.

[00:17:08] You wanna end terrorism, wanna end poverty, wanna end human trafficking? The vast majority of human trafficking and child soldiers is right there in that the only way to fix it, gotta preach the gospel there. Okay, that’s 42% of the world that still hasn’t heard the good news of the gospel and received God’s blessing.

[00:17:29] 2 billion of them have never heard the name of Jesus even one time. So we’ve got some work to do, in the next years. So I hope my prayer for you guys as a Sojourn will continue on the same foundation as that Pastor Terry and Susan. Of just being involved in strategic missions giving and sending so that you can continue to be part of this great move of God, 3,665 languages, still have no scripture.

[00:17:57] See, there’s work to do. I don’t think God’s ready to take us all home yet in the rapture. I think God said, bring the gospel to all the nations. We’re not there. Only got the gospel. 42% of the nations don’t have it. So I think we have a waste to go before Christ comes back. Says my personal heresy.

[00:18:15] I don’t think I, I don’t think we’re gonna see the return. If you’re hoping for the rapture before the next Visa card bill is due. Just wanna tell you. Or if you’re younger, You’re hoping for the rapture before your next report card. Hate to discourage you, but I think we’ve gotta get the gospel to this next 42% before we can say the gospel’s gone to the whole earth.

[00:18:39] Jesus said, I will build my church. I will, he will do it. The gates of hell will not overcome. God has given the church the power to get the gospel to the 3.3 billion Buddhist Hindus and Muslims who still don’t have it. Now what? Where’s our place? I wanna tell you why you’re so important, why our country is so important.

[00:19:01] America is more blessed than any other country on the. In all of human history, our country is the most blessed. None has been as blessed as we have been here in this country. It’s because most of the founders were Christian. Most, not all, but most, and even the ones who weren’t Christian, who were deists, which is a.

[00:19:27] I don’t want to look it up on Google. . The Deus, they believed in a God even though they didn’t believe like the Bible like we do. So all of our country was based on Christian foundations and so that’s why we’ve been most blessed. But beyond that, we have, when I listen to the news, there are angry, upset people. Now, there are things wrong with America, so we still need to get better. But you, if you listen to the news and to people who are activists and protesting, it sounds like America’s the darkest how hole on the planet. But we’re not, it’s actually the most free, the most prosperous women, the most equal could go on and on the least racist, actually, country in the world.

[00:20:16] That doesn’t mean there isn’t a problem in some places with women’s equality or racism, but that is so small compared to. Where all of history has progressed to. So our country is massively blessed. And so when we’re blessed, we have to be a blessing. We’re so blessed. That means we have to be the biggest blessing to the nations.

[00:20:40] So where are we at? 10% of global Christiandom is in the local church in America. We’re only 10% of the global church, but we have 60% of global Christian. in the church, in America, even if we don’t feel very rich, we’re very, we’ve got 60%, just the 10% of us. We’ve got 70% of global Christian technology like video systems, and 75% of global Christian training resources.

[00:21:08] So we’re blessed. We’ve gotta get this all out to the nations. We’ve got an obligation to do it. Jazz that Pastor Terry’s teachings are being put in video series. I’m going to use them to get to take that 75% and help get it out to the nations that don’t have it. So we’ve got a work to do.

[00:21:28] Let me just show you two things to show you why we’re so blessed. God has put a special calling on our country. Every country has a unique calling. Our unique calling is to be the greatest supporters and sending senders of missionaries ever in history. That’s our calling. Everyone needs to do it. We’ve got a special calling.

[00:21:48] Let me just tell you a couple advantages. Actually. I have a list of 40 advantages. I’m gonna just show you two. Our river system. I want to, God designed this into our country, you can transport manufactured goods 13 times to 25 times cheaper. In rivers barges and rivers than you can in trucks or any other mode of transportation.

[00:22:13] We have more navigable rivers in America than the rest of the entire world combined. That allows us to transport manufactured goods from where they’re made to the whole country very cheaply. That makes our economy very strong. If you look a low resolution view, this is our river system, the main ones, the Columbia, the Colorado, and the Mississippi River system.

[00:22:39] That means cities way up in Ohio. Can export their goods down the Mississippi and out to the ocean, to the whole world. It makes all of our major cities global exporters in every other country. Only a couple cities right on the coast can export. So that makes our economy strong. Our river system here is the highest revolution re resolution.

[00:23:02] This is our river system in America. This is one of the greatest natural blessings God has given us to give us the wealth we have so that we can use it to bless the nations, you guys. So we shouldn’t take for granted where God has let us live. We are living in one of the most best places on the planet.

[00:23:23] And on top of that, look at this. This is our population growth, right? What’s really important, the trajectory. There’s only. Countries in the world that have a trajectory of young people in growth like this. Only three, cuz young people are the future. They’re our greatest resource. Pastor Vernon, this guy needs a raise, because he’s one of the most important people in the church.

[00:23:50] Sorry. Love you Terry. At Susan and Chris and Vanessa. But our young people are our greatest resource, and we’re one of only three countries with this kind of a growth trajectory. There’s China, they’re declining, right? So they’re not gonna be the ones with a lot of young people for missionaries who is America, I could show you other countries.

[00:24:14] So what do we need to. continue to give like you’ve been given to missions Number two, we’ve gotta raise up 200,000 brand new young missionaries from America. This is what we need to do. Why is our country? So the very foundational law of the universe is blessed to be a blessing to all the nations.

[00:24:32] Guess what happens if we don’t bless the nations? The other half doesn’t work either. The blessing part goes away. Guess what’s happened? Since the year 2000, we’ve stopped sending missionaries to the tune of 30. We’ve lost 35% of the American mission force for the first time in our history cuz we’re not sending no longer sending young people into missions like we used to.

[00:24:56] As a result, our blessing is going, you wonder why we have problems in our country is because we’re self-centered and selfish instead of thinking of the needs of others and serving them like Christ taught us. So we’ve gotta get back to blessing the nation. So we need to raise up young people to missionaries.

[00:25:14] We can support 200,000 brand new young missionaries. Why do I say young? Some of you who’ve been around have seen this. That was me. H 20 Total Babe Magnet. Okay, we need those. For Missioning. Here’s me age 50 women, flee and Terror . Okay? That was 30 hours from India. As soon as I got off the plane and snapped the picture, that guy will die in two weeks.

[00:25:37] In India, that guy will work in India 30 years. That’s how we need young missionaries. That’s one reason. Second reason. New missionaries think differently. The world’s transitioning. Yeah. And we’ve gotta think in new ways. This is why Pastor Terry and Susan just godly. I can’t wait for your book on transitions with you and Pastor Chris.

[00:26:00] I want to tell you guys, most churches that transition to a new pastor crash. Yeah. It doesn’t work. This is one, I’m serious. I’ve been in this 49. Working in kingdom work and I know the inside out of churches, I can’t think of another church that’s actually had a successful transition. And you guys have had a successful transition from Pastor Terry and Susan to pastors Chris and Vanessa.

[00:26:26] That’s so rare. That’s why you need the book so you can teach the rest of us. But why do we need young people? I wanna introduce you to Alex. Alex has been with me five years, right? I latch on to young people. We’ve gotta take our young people, get ’em trained, cuz they’re the future. So Alex just shared something with me on the plane as we were coming here that I want them to share with you.

[00:26:49] Yeah, recently there was a NASCAR race that was a qualifying race in order to get into the championship round and you needed to be in the fifth place or higher in order to make into that championship round. And one of the NASCAR drivers was coming around one of his final laps in 10th place, and he was stuck there thinking.

[00:27:08] How am I gonna get into fifth place? And if I was there, I’m like, what am I gonna do? Make another left turn ? But he himself was thinking, okay, everyone else is going slow around the corner because that’s the safe thing to do that all NASCAR drivers do. And instead of that, he did the exact opposite.

[00:27:23] He sped up around the corner and use the wall as a brace, scratching up his car and sped around just in the nick of time to get into his place. And make it pass to qualify for the championship round. And afterwards, everyone was high fiving him. They’re like, my goodness, dude, that is awesome. Giving him high fives.

[00:27:43] And one of the reporters came up to him and said, where did you learn this idea? And his simple response was when I was younger, I learned it from Nintendo video games is where I played

[00:27:58] That’s the exact reason we need younger people coming into leadership is they think in ways that all of us older people never think, when you go to NASCAR race driving school, I’m sure they don’t say, okay, everyone plain Nintendo . That’s. They don’t, they’re in the old way of thinking rut. You need people who are younger, who think differently, who have the advantage.

[00:28:25] And in this fast changing world, this is one of the most critical things. So the handoff to Pastor Chris and Vanessa and then empowering people like Pastor Vernon is, you’re in the spot on best place We. We need new thinking and everything else. What will these 200,000 new young missionaries do? We’ll plant churches amongst the 3.3 billion unreached.

[00:28:48] We’ll produce Bibles for the 3,665 Bible list languages, and brothers and sisters were on track. If we can see the 200,000 raised up, if we can see that in the next few years. I’m working with some other leaders on that to mobilize the body of Christ. We can see every language. For the first time in history, have the Bible by 2033.

[00:29:11] That’s 11 years from now. The 2000 year anniversary of the resurrection. That’s what we’re trying to do is Jesus, 2000 year anniversary of your resurrection. Here’s the gift. We’ve got the Bible in every language on Earth. See, and this is what you’re part of because of your support for me and other missionaries, so we can do this, you guys.

[00:29:31] I was really encouraged earlier in the, so what do we need to do? We have to have a mentality of blessed to be a blessing. We have to have a mentality of focusing on our young people to raise them up so we can send them as part of the blessing we send out. So we can’t have a hunker down, America’s collapsing, let’s just hunker down and keep our own family safe and our own church.

[00:29:53] We’ve gotta have an opposite mentality. When the Warren Ukraine started, president Biden offered to rescue President Zelensky. He said, all send helicopters will fly you out to a safe country. I don’t know if you remember this. You know what President Zelensky said to him instead of getting flown out to a safe place, he said, I need ammunition, not a ride.

[00:30:15] His mentality was, I don’t wanna just be safe. Us four, no more hunkered down in my house, in my church, and we’re keeping our, he had an offensive mentality. We need am, I need ammunition, not a ride out. I’ve translated that for the church. We need revival, not the rapture. We don’t need a ride out of the mess the world is in.

[00:30:42] We need the empowering of God so that we can get the gospel to the whole world, which is the only answer for the world. So this is why we do missions. This is why you do missions, is because we don’t need a ride out. We need the power to go through it and see the victory of God. Winston Churchill said in the middle of World War ii, if you’re going through, hell, don’t stop.

[00:31:07] Yeah. . And so that’s what the church needs to do. Our country’s in bad shape, right? We shouldn’t stop. We should get the power of God instead of looking for a way out of this so we can see the gospel established here in a greater way and then out to the ends of the earth. You’ve been doing a great job.

[00:31:25] Don’t stop. Okay? God bless you all.