It's getting a bit hot in here. I'll take my jacket off. That's all that conviction, right? What could you do? What could you do? And you know, Johnny presents the mission that he's on, but folks, that is the mission. That is the mission, and that's what we've been thinking about this weekend. We've been thinking about mission possible, not mission impossible. And on Friday evening there we looked at the method of the mission, you know, how are we to do this? And we looked at that great verse of Scripture, the Great Commission, and we seen there that we were to go and reach, get into the community, reach out to people, and then we're to teach. You know, it's not just about helping people in their physical need. It's about helping them in their spiritual need, the greatest need of all. And they need to be taught about the Lord Jesus Christ. And if they come to save in faith and praise God for the people that do that, there's more to it than that. There's a teaching process, a discipleship process, a life pouring in process that the local church and the congregation of the local church, that is the believers in Christ, have to be involved in. to see others grow. And then we're to replicate. That's what I like about the ministry in Romania. It's Bible based. Because they reach in the community, they teach them about the Lord Jesus Christ, they teach them about the Word of God, and then they plant local church in that area. That's the model. Reach, teach, and replicate. And that's pretty clear, it's pretty simple. You know, I like the way God lays things out. Now we complicate things. We do that. We complicate with all fancy programs and mechanisms and all that sort of stuff. And we want to just debate about, well, does go mean actually go? Or does it mean think about going? Pray about going? But God says it simply. Go, do these things. So, you know, we thought about the method of the mission, but this morning I want to focus upon, you know, if that's the how, if the method of the mission is the how, what about the why? Why are we to do these things? If it's clear what God has told us to do, if we understand, yes, Lord, you're telling us to go out there and reach and teach and replicate. I say that a lot because it rhymes. But if he's telling us to do that and we understand that, then why are we to do that? What is the motive for the mission? What's the motive for doing what God calls us to do? Author Ray Dobson wrote a book titled The Year of Living Like Jesus. And in it he tells this story of how he tried to live as Jesus lived and taught for a year. And he said this. My wife and I drove to Key West. I decided to take a day off from reading, and as we walked past a restaurant on Duval Street, a man who had previously been drinking called from the steps and said, hey, could you spare me some change so that I can get something to eat? Ed said, I've heard that line a lot, and I know that there's a number of responses. First, you can simply ignore such people. Walk on by. After all, they'll most likely use whatever money you give him to buy more alcohol, and therefore you're just feeding his habit. Secondly, you can offer to take him to a restaurant to buy him something to eat. In most cases, the person will not go because they merely want the money to buy the alcohol to feed the addiction they have it. Then thirdly, you can point him to an organization that provides meals for the homeless. And of course, many such organizations exist in the city. What did my wife and I do? We walked past the man without doing anything. as we've done with so many other people over the years. After all, it's not our fault that he is where he is. But after we walked on a little further, he called after us. Shouted out, can you not help a Vietnam veteran? It says, my youngest son. is a veteran, and I deeply respected those that have served their country in that way, so I stopped, walked back to him, and gave him a dollar. At that moment, I remembered the words of Jesus, give to the one who asks you, do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you. I had an obligation to give. And as I walked down the street, a wonderful peace came over me because I felt I'd actually obeyed one of Jesus' teachings, one of his commands. I knew he'd probably use it to buy more alcohol, and I probably hadn't made the wisest choice. And I also knew that the dollar that I gave him wasn't going to really help him in the long term. But I had no other choice. He asked, and I was obligated, because my master had told me. Still, What caused me to give the money was not really my responsibility to follow Jesus, but the fact that he was a veteran. So after my initial euphoria, I had realized I had done the Jesus thing for the wrong reasons. You know, motive matters when it comes to God. It's extremely important to God because you can do the right thing with the wrong motive and the wrong attitude. But God sees the heart first. We have to get this. He sees the heart first. Before any action that you do, God looks on your heart. So if your heart's not right and the motive's not right for doing what you do, the action is a waste of time as far as God's concerned. Because you haven't done it for Him. You haven't done it because you love Him. You've done it because you feel obligated, or you've done it because the emotions have been touched by somebody's need. But that's not the right attitude, and that's not the right motive for the mission. You see, we have to question ourselves this morning, and it's a question I'm going to ask and challenge us all, and me first and foremost. Why do I do what I do? Why am I doing it? Why does Johnny reach out to serve the poor? Why do I get up here and preach? Why do you work in the Sunday school ministry? Why do you get involved in the church? Why do you do the leafletting? Why do you do the book table? What is the motivation for the mission? God sees our attitude. And sometimes we're just worried about the act. And in the mission, the great mission of us all, there are many workers. There are many workers. But the question is, what is the attitude of those workers? I know what we see, but what is God seeing? What's going on in the inner man? Why are they doing what they're doing? Is God getting the glory? Are they doing it for Him? Or are they doing it for different reasons? So there are many workers in the mission, but there are many different attitudes, many different motives. And we're going to have a look at a few of those motives, a couple of wrong motives, and then the one and only right motive. So firstly, we're gonna have a look at those that serve because of a love for self. Those that serve because of a love for self. You know, we can be involved in the mission of God because we simply want to make ourselves look good. It makes us feel better about ourselves when we see that others see us at work. You say, pastor, I can't believe that's true. that somebody would do the work of the Lord because they want others to see them doing it. I can't believe a Christian would do that. I want to tell you that Christians do do that. How do I know that with all authority? Because I did that. I'll be honest with you, my early days, I did it. It was good to be the preacher man. It's not so good now to be the preacher man. But in the early days, you know, when people were coming up and saying, you know, that was a wonderful message, I'm going, oh, this is great. And the pride's being puffed. Maybe that's been you at a time. Well, you've been out doing something, and you've got some praise from others, and you just thought, yes. People do it for a love of self. And, you know, they want to make themselves look better around others. That's what they do what they do. That's why they get involved. Being in ministry, as a pastor, I'm around pastors quite a lot of the time. And when we have fellowships where you see pastors that you don't really know too well or whatever, but you're in a huddle. I've got to be honest, they do my head in at times. They do my head in. Present company accepted, of course. But they do my head in. Why? Because it turns into a sword drill competition. or every sentence they want to drop some theological new truth upon you to change your life in the ministry. Now, I'm all for sharing the Word of God and I'm all for sharing Scripture, but it needs to be to edify, not to impress. Come into town slinging your Scriptural guns saying, look at me. Where's the motive there? What's the attitude behind it? We've got to examine these things. We've got to look at ourselves. Now, the Apostle Paul dealt with this. This is nothing new. Turn with me to Philippians chapter number 1. Philippians chapter number 1. Nothing new under the sun. Philippians chapter number 1 verses 15 and 16. Here Paul writing from his prison cell writes this. Some indeed preach Christ, even of envy and strife, and some also of goodwill. The one preached Christ of contention, not sincerely, supposing to add affliction to my bonds. Now I want you to notice here that the issue that Paul had was not doctrinal with these guys. He doesn't call them out like he's done so many times before, and I'm sure just countless times throughout his ministry. Paul didn't tolerate untruth. He didn't tolerate false teaching. He deals with it when he writes to the church at Galatia. He says, I marvel that you are so soon removed from him that called you unto the grace of Christ, unto another gospel. So he's calling them out against false teaching. When he writes to the church at Corinth in 2 Corinthians 11, verse number 4, he says, For if he that cometh preaches another Jesus whom we have not preached. Now he deals with false teaching. He calls false teaching out. But when he writes here in Philippians in verse number 15 of chapter 1, Some indeed preach Christ, even of envy and strife. Verse 16, the one preached Christ. So he's not dealing with the doctrine. He's not dealing with the message. He's dealing with the motive. He's dealing with the attitude. He's dealing with why they're doing what they do. And he says some of them preach Christ out of envy. Envy and jealousy are not the same things, and when we think about it in a modern society, we lump them two together. And they're different, they mean different things. They're close in meaning, but they're not the same thing. Jealousy makes us fear to lose that which we possess. Envy creates that bitterness or sorrow about things that we do not have that others have. So there's a difference in the words. In other words, we're jealous of our own possessions, but we're envious of others' possessions. These preachers were envious, not jealous. They were envious of Paul. They wanted what he had. They resented what he had. And this was an attitude of ill will. And this attitude of envy can seep into all within the Christian faith. Look at what they're doing. I want that. So I'm going to do something to get what they've got. It can happen. Envy cannot bear the prosperity of others. Spurgeon said this, I hate quoting Spurgeon, but at times he does say good things. Spurgeon said this, how often if one Christian brother does a little bit more than his fellow workers, they begin to find fault with him. You ever seen that within the church? Ever felt that within your own heart maybe? And if one is blessed with greater success than others are, how frequently that success is disparaged and spoken of lightly. The spirit of envy is more or less in us all. And though perhaps we are not exhibiting it just now, it only needs a suitable opportunity for its display and it would be manifested. You've got to guard against that envy. Paul says there's some out there preaching Christ out of envy. Then he says there's some preaching Christ out of strife. That means discord, wrangling, quarrels, it's rivalry. And that can motivate us to serve. It can. We can see others, other churches doing things and we think, right, we're going to do this better. What's the attitude behind that? Not because of God. It's because we want to make ourselves feel better, look better. It's going to be a motive for our service. And Paul says, the one preached Christ out of contention, you know, selfish ambition. It's that love of self. And it was present then and it's present now. And we have to guard against it. Each one of us has to guard against it because pride will rise up. if we're not careful in what we do for the Lord. So these people preach Christ, but the motive was all wrong. The love of self is absolutely not the right motive for the mission. The second wrong motive that we're gonna think about is a love for others. So we move self out of the way. We kill that, done. I'm not serving for selfish reasons. Then we move on to this, loving others. You can't help but look at those children on those pictures and have their heart tugged, right? If that's not touching you, get to the doctors and make sure your heart's still beating. It's true. It's true. A lot of organisations vie for our money. A lot of charities vie for our money and they create advertisements on the TV. What's the first thing they'll do? Show you around their headquarters? Talk with the CEO, say he has a nice car? No. What are they going to do? They're going to go straight to your emotion. They're going to say, you're a human being, do you not have feelings? Do you not want to help others? And that's a good thought. It's a noble thought. But when we come to ministry, when we come to the mission that God has given, a love for others, if that's our primary motive for doing what we do, it's the wrong attitude and it's the wrong motive. You know, there are many parachurch organizations, those organizations that are meant to work alongside the local church, that do great works and are involved in great humanitarian works, but simply and truly, the love of man comes before the love of God. And that motive is wrong. Whatever way you slice and dice it, that's idolatry. In simple terms, that's idolatry. If you love man more than God, it's idolatry. That's what Bible calls it. We gotta be clear. But we often do this. We often put others before the Lord. A classic example of this, and this is one of my favorite books in the Old Testament, is Jonah. Let's turn to Jonah. We know this, but I love Jonah. I see a lot of myself in Jonah. my path to ministry. I see a lot of myself in this man, this prophet of God, and we just pick up in chapter number one. We're not going to spend too much time here, but this is a guy that loved others more than he loved the Lord. Jonah 1, verses 1-3 says, So here Jonah gets an instruction from God. He gets a mission. Not an impossible mission, a possible mission. Why is it possible? Because God gave it. He doesn't give impossible mission. So Jonah has his instructions, but Jonah, instead of getting up and doing what God says, he flees. Now Jonah's not new to this work of a prophet. Jonah, when we look in 2 Kings, don't turn there, but in 2 Kings chapter 14, we'll find that he was preaching a message before to the people of Israel, and the message was one of prosperity, about how God was going to increase the borders, and he did that. Now God gives him a different mission. He says, I want you to go to Nineveh, that wicked city, that enemy of your people, of my people. Those that are known for their fierceness and their harshness. Those that have no good things in their mind for the nation of Israel. God says, I want you to go. I want you to go and tell them. If they turn from their ways, I'll forgive them. That's his mission. But he doesn't go. He runs. He flees. And that's the wrong act. And it's also the wrong attitude. And God deals with him. We all know that God gets a hold of him. And then we get to chapter number three. Jonah's been chastised. He's been given some thinking time. Chapter number three, And the word of the Lord came unto Jonah the second time, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee. Verse number three, So Jonah arose and went unto Nineveh according to the word of the Lord. Now at this point, Jonah gets his act together, and he goes and does what God calls him to do. So he's got the right act. Chapter number one, wrong act, he flees, and the wrong attitude. Chapter number three, he's got the right act. He's gonna go and do what God tells him to do. And he does that. And he witnesses one of the greatest revivals or national repentances in the whole of the Word of God. You think as a missionary you'd be pretty pleased about that, right? All you missionaries here. You're going to Vietnam, what's the population of Vietnam? 96 million. You went on your first day and you said, repent. And they all said, okay, we're going to repent. Would you be pleased Boris? I'm sure you would. You'd be doing somersaults, you'd be on the phone. Guess what happened? They all get saved. What happens to Jonah? Chapter number four. Chapter number four and verse number one. But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry. It was the right act. He went. What about the attitude? Wrong. Wrong. Verse number two. So basically he says to God, this is your fault. And what's going on here when we examine the core of what's going on with this man? Why is his attitude wrong? He knows that God is the creator of God. He knows that God is sovereign over all. And God gives him a mission, and he should go. And because the people have turned, he should rejoice in that, that the purposes and plans of God have worked out, the message has gone out, and people have responded. But he doesn't respond in that way. simply because he loved others more than he loved God. What do I mean by that? Jonah was a patriot. He loved the nation. And in his mind, he thought about his people, forgetting they were God's people, thought about his people, his friends, his family. And then he thought about Nineveh and the Assyrians. And he thought, if God spares them, What's going to happen? They're just going to roll in and wipe us out. So I don't want them to be spared by God. So he went from the wrong act and the wrong attitude to the right act with the wrong attitude because he put others before God. And the reason that I look at Jonah and see a lot of myself in him, in my path to ministry, which hasn't been a smooth one, I've got to be honest. There's been ups and downs and ups and downs and downs and downs and ups and ups. And at times, you know, I flee. from what God was calling me to do. And for those of you who know my story, there was a point there in Bible college where everything just came upon me, and I was doing so many different things, and I never really just cast it all away and focused upon the Lord. And I was down, and I come out of college, And at that point, I was still working for an IT company. I was a director of an IT company. They'd just moved to America, opened an office in America. And they wanted me to go out there. They wanted me to go out there and work and help build the business. And they flew me over to Atlanta. And we had a nice time out there. They took us around, showed us the area, very affluent. Showed us all the big houses that you see on the TV. And you think, wow. These little gated communities, swimming pool, very family orientated. It's in the South of America, a strong Christian presence. You know there's a strong Christian presence when you go into the petrol station and they're playing gospel music. You'd be surprised if that was happening at the Shell, wouldn't you? They took me around, showed me schools for the children. They were going to pay to put our children through Greater Atlanta Christian College, which is just a phenomenal facility, $8,000 a year term. They were going to pay for all that, rehouses. At this point, God had called me to something, but I was fighting it. And I looked at this land, and I look at it now, and I think, what a mess. What a mess it's in. And I looked at my young family, and I thought, I know what you're saying, God, but I've got a family to protect, and I've got a family to look after. And if I take the family to this nice place where we'll have everything, where I can put them into a good Christian environment, where they'll go to a Christian school and they'll get a Christian upbringing, this'll be much better. And at that point, I was doing exactly what Jonah was doing. I was putting others before the Lord. Now, those are my nearest and dearest on this earth, mean more to me than anybody on this planet. But at that point in my life, I put them above God. I put them above God. And it may have looked like the right act, but it was absolutely the wrong attitude. And praise the Lord, the Lord just wouldn't let me let him go. And we came back, and instead of the shiny lights of Atlanta, he brought me to the hub metropolis of Spalding. That's what you get when you think, no I'm joking. I'm joking, I'm joking. Jonah had a love for others. But he should have loved his God first and foremost because God knew best. He knew best. So we've had a look at the two wrong motives. The love of self and the love of others. What about the right motive? The only right motive for the mission folks is a love for God. Hudson Taylor, when he was director of China Inland Mission, he often interviewed candidates for the mission field. On one occasion, he met with a group of applicants to determine their motivations for service. He said this, "'And why do you wish to go as a foreign missionary?' he asked. "'I want to go because Christ has commanded us "'to go into all the world and preach the gospel "'to every creature,' was the reply. Another said, I want to go because millions are perishing without Christ. Others gave different answers. Then Hudson Taylor said this, all of these motives, however good, will fail you in times of testings, trials, tribulations, and possible death. There is but one motive that will sustain you in trial and testing, namely the love of Christ. A love of God and a love for God is a true motive for the mission. We don't do what we do just because we are told to do it. We do it because we want to do it. We do it because we love the one that gives the command. You know, if you love somebody, you'll do anything for them. But we sing, oh Lord, we love you. I love you, Lord. But what are we doing for? If you love me, keep my commandments. If you love me, you'll do these things. You'll want to do them. We love him because he first loved us. And if you love the Lord and your motive for the mission is the love of God, then you will go to places where naturally you don't want to go. Spaulding. There's a couple of Spaulding people in here. You don't say this when we go back to Spaulding, okay? This is for up here. But we'll go to places where we don't naturally want to go. We'll do things that we're not in our comfort zone. We'll reach and minister to people that particularly, generally, normally, we wouldn't fellowship with. We'll reach out if we love the Lord. I like what one missionary in Africa said when he was asked if he liked doing the work that he was doing. His response was this. Do I like the work, he said? No. My wife and I do not like dirt. We have reasonable, refined sensibilities. We don't like crawling around in the vile huts through goat refuge. But is a man to do nothing for Christ he does not like? God pity him if not. Liking or disliking has nothing to do with it. We have orders to go and we go. Love constrains us. That's the motive for the mission. And if we get that attitude right, we'll go wherever God calls us to go. We'll do whatever he asks us to do. We'll not question it. We'll not debate it. We'll say, God, I love you. That's all. I'll do what you need me to do. C.T. Studd, our great missionary, said, If Jesus Christ be God and died for me, then no sacrifice can be too great for me to make for him. C.T. Studd walked away from a cricketing career. He inherited a huge fortune. He gave it all away. Because the love of Christ compelled him. And C.T. Stodd's answer to his critics, who said he was overboard and his zeal was simple. He said this, You know, if we love the Lord, we'll get out there. We'll get involved in the mission. We'll get involved in his work. That's the right motive. And the only motive for the mission is a love for God. It's a love for God. So when it comes to our mission possible, the motive for acceptance and action is hinged upon attitude. It's all attitude. Our motive's got to be right. We cannot be motivated by the love of self. We cannot be motivated by the love of others. It has to be a love for God. So my question this morning that I leave you with is simply this. What's your motive for doing what you do? Is it a love for self? Is it a love for others? Or is it a love for God? Because it's only a love for God that will enable us to complete the mission His way and in His time through His strength. Let's pray.